Free A Journey to the End of the Millennium by A.B. Yehoshua Page B

hides, cloths, and copperware. To these practical factors must be added, of course, the joy of reunion of kinsmen and comrades in that pleasant spot steeped in the azure of the Bay of Barcelona and reached by a smooth, calm sea voyage. Now that uncle and nephew had become in a sense partners, although not yet equal ones, it seemed that a summer meeting of these members of a small but ancient faith on the frontier between two great faiths that sought to swallow each other would become a fixed custom.
    On the return voyage from Barcelona to Tangier, however, on board the ship that was now lightened of its cargo, Ben Attar was suddenly stricken with fear. He felt himself to be naked and exposed. He missed the company of those bolts of cloth and sacks of condiments, which always warmed his heart and gave him a sense of security, and he needed that assurance all the more now that his belt and pockets were full of the coins and precious stones that Abulafia had brought him.True, Abu Lutfi was beside him, although from the moment they had embarked his old assistant had seemed for some reason to be alienated and displeased, whispering a great deal with the two Ishmaelite sailors, who seemed to have been smitten with a kind of religious fervor on the return journey, for instead of dancing naked on the prow of their boat they now knelt in prayer five times a day. It was not surprising that Ben Attar had forgotten how tedious the prattle of the Jew who had accompanied them to Barcelona was, and now he missed his company. In his newfound loneliness he even felt a pang of longing for the backward child, remembering with an ache in his heart how she had toddled toward him, tied by a cord, to peer into his eyes. He thought now that if the child were once again lying in his bosom, the Ishmaelite sailors would refrain from attacking him in his sleep, stealing his money, and throwing him overboard. But the little girl was now beyond the Pyrenees , and all Ben Attar could do was to order the sailors to hug the coast, in the hope that there would be someone nearby who could testify against them if they tried to harm him. But they adamantly refused, supposedly for fear of hitting a sandbar, and Abu Lutfi not only refused to intervene but even defended their decision. Had the Ishmaelite managed to follow Ben Attar’s conversation in Hebrew with Abulafia when he had promoted him to partner, while Abu Lutfi had to content himself with the leftovers? Ben Attar’s fear grew stronger, and by nightfall he had come to regret the whole expedition. He sat hunched in the stern of the boat with a dagger hidden in the folds of his robe, straining to keep his eyes open, waiting for the attack.
    Abu Lutfi sensed his Jewish master’s new fear, but did nothing to allay it. He had not managed to understand the Hebrew words spoken by the campfire at the old Roman inn, but he was sensitive enough to infer that if his employer was afraid not only of the sailors but of himself as well, it was a sign that he felt some new guilt toward him, so that when Ben Attar summoned him after a sleepless night and offered him a large gold coin he refused it, on the assumption that it was worth less than his forgiveness for an unspecified guilt. Ben Attar, startled by his refusal, was convinced that when the attack came Abu Lutfi would abandon him to his fate. So it was that after a second night without sleep, realizing that his strength was waning, he made up his mind toappoint the Ishmaelite as a partner as well, so that from now on the silver and gold would be as precious to Abu Lutfi as the apple of his eye.
    Although in the course of this voyage Ben Attar had acquired two partners to share his profit, he felt that he was not returning to Tangier diminished but, on the contrary, increased and strengthened. And when the fast sailing ship passed through the Straits of Gibraltar and to the calm, steady blue of the Mediterranean was added the wicked, dreamy green of the great