added green seaweed that a diver brought up from the sea bed. When it was ready, the patient’s hands were bound, and Abd el-Shafi insisted on personally pouring the acrid, steaming liquid down the convulsed rabbi’s throat with his own wooden spoon. Indeed, by evening the vomiting had begun to cease, and the rabbi’s son, Samuel, who had taken the opportunity afforded by his father’s illness to climb to the top of the mast, was able to see from his aerie the pink gradually returning to his father’s broad brow. As for the rabbi, he had a clear sense of the purgative and even spiritual quality of the Viking broth that had been poured inside him.
And so, on board a stilled ship not far from the port of Lisbon, a deep sleep fell upon Rabbi Elbaz, and so peaceful was his slumber that the captain did not wait for dawn but gave orders for the sail to be hoisted and the anchor weighed, so that the ship would forge ahead and when the rabbi awoke after a day’s sleep he would feel the rocking of the waves beneath him to be a natural and even necessary part of the world’s being.
Indeed, the vomiting did not return to plague the rabbi from Seville ,even on stormy days, and from that time on he learned to take pleasure in sailing on the sea. He preferred, even at night, to remain on deck so as not to miss the movement of the glittering sky as it led the ship on. At midnight, when Abd el-Shafi turned in in his own hammock , leaving a sailor or two to navigate by the stars, the rabbi would take a leopard skin and a sheepskin and lay them one on top of the other on the old bridge, which was warmed by the bodies of the two barefoot women who had sat there during the day, and there he would sink into an open-air sleep in search of a dream—either a real dream, if one came, or if not, then at least a waking dream combining snatches of memory with bundles of wishes. All unawares, his mind began to shed layer after layer, losing some of its scholarly clarity and curiosity in favor of a new philosophical introspection blended with a certain sentimentality.
The sharp-eyed owner had begun to notice signs of lethargy and indolence every time he told the slave to take the rabbi the ivory casket crammed with strips of parchment inscribed with the teachings of the sages and sayings of local saints, which had been selected especially for him by the famous uncle, Ben Ghiyyat, to season Andalusian scholarship and wisdom with North African wit and mystery. It did not seem as though the rabbi was interested in reading or studying anything new on the issue of dual marriage, which he had been hired to defend. The arguments he had prepared back in Seville seemed perfectly sound, and if there were any need to reinforce them, it was preferable not to use the Scriptures but the unwritten law, which billowed up first in the mind, then turned sometimes into chance, long-drawn -out conversations with Ben Attar, who may perhaps only have been waiting for an encounter with a bored sea traveler to speak openly about himself and his life. Whatever Ben Attar did not or could not tell, his two wives sometimes related, especially the first, but sometimes the second too, who for some reason was still somewhat afraid of the rabbi, who was only seven years her senior. And whatever the wives were unable to see or understand, the partner, Abu Lutfi, could add from his own Ishmaelite perspective. If even he omitted or concealed some detail, perhaps from an excess of loyalty, the captain or some clever sailor could often supply it, for anyone, if he is compelled, isable to deduce one thing from another. Even the black slave would have been regarded by the rabbi as a qualified witness, if he would only cease kneeling before him in the heart of the night.
But some ten days before, as the ship began to sail past the jagged coves of Brittany, Ben Attar had noticed that the rabbi was holding between his fingers a goose quill that he constantly sharpened with a penknife ,
And so, on board a stilled ship not far from the port of Lisbon, a deep sleep fell upon Rabbi Elbaz, and so peaceful was his slumber that the captain did not wait for dawn but gave orders for the sail to be hoisted and the anchor weighed, so that the ship would forge ahead and when the rabbi awoke after a day’s sleep he would feel the rocking of the waves beneath him to be a natural and even necessary part of the world’s being.
Indeed, the vomiting did not return to plague the rabbi from Seville ,even on stormy days, and from that time on he learned to take pleasure in sailing on the sea. He preferred, even at night, to remain on deck so as not to miss the movement of the glittering sky as it led the ship on. At midnight, when Abd el-Shafi turned in in his own hammock , leaving a sailor or two to navigate by the stars, the rabbi would take a leopard skin and a sheepskin and lay them one on top of the other on the old bridge, which was warmed by the bodies of the two barefoot women who had sat there during the day, and there he would sink into an open-air sleep in search of a dream—either a real dream, if one came, or if not, then at least a waking dream combining snatches of memory with bundles of wishes. All unawares, his mind began to shed layer after layer, losing some of its scholarly clarity and curiosity in favor of a new philosophical introspection blended with a certain sentimentality.
The sharp-eyed owner had begun to notice signs of lethargy and indolence every time he told the slave to take the rabbi the ivory casket crammed with strips of parchment inscribed with the teachings of the sages and sayings of local saints, which had been selected especially for him by the famous uncle, Ben Ghiyyat, to season Andalusian scholarship and wisdom with North African wit and mystery. It did not seem as though the rabbi was interested in reading or studying anything new on the issue of dual marriage, which he had been hired to defend. The arguments he had prepared back in Seville seemed perfectly sound, and if there were any need to reinforce them, it was preferable not to use the Scriptures but the unwritten law, which billowed up first in the mind, then turned sometimes into chance, long-drawn -out conversations with Ben Attar, who may perhaps only have been waiting for an encounter with a bored sea traveler to speak openly about himself and his life. Whatever Ben Attar did not or could not tell, his two wives sometimes related, especially the first, but sometimes the second too, who for some reason was still somewhat afraid of the rabbi, who was only seven years her senior. And whatever the wives were unable to see or understand, the partner, Abu Lutfi, could add from his own Ishmaelite perspective. If even he omitted or concealed some detail, perhaps from an excess of loyalty, the captain or some clever sailor could often supply it, for anyone, if he is compelled, isable to deduce one thing from another. Even the black slave would have been regarded by the rabbi as a qualified witness, if he would only cease kneeling before him in the heart of the night.
But some ten days before, as the ship began to sail past the jagged coves of Brittany, Ben Attar had noticed that the rabbi was holding between his fingers a goose quill that he constantly sharpened with a penknife ,
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