Mr. Mani (43 page)

Despite the age difference between them, the couple's marriage worked out well. Rabbi Haddaya continued to travel widely, and his wife Flora was accustomed to being alone. When Avraham Mani sent him his son Yosef, the rabbi was pleased by the gesture of conciliation and took the boy in, even though he himself hardly taught anymore due to his frequent absences. Although Yosef proved to be a highly imaginative child who at times seemed out of touch with reality, he was able to charm whomever he met, and above all, the rabbi's wife, whose childlessness had left her increasingly isolated. Thus, he grew up in the Haddaya household, the excitable child of two elderly “parents.”

Rabbi Haddaya did not play an active role in the betrothal of his wife's niece Tamara Valero to Yosef Mani in Beirut. For a while, he even seemed opposed to it. However, after the newlyweds settled in Jerusalem and Avraham Mani disappeared there too, and especially, after hearing of Yosef Mani's death from the rabbinical fund-raiser Gavriel ben-Yehoshua, Rabbi Haddaya grew so distraught that his health was affected. He decided to set out for Jerusalem to find out what had happened, and since travel by land was unsafe, he resolved to sail from Salonika on a ship manned largely by Jews. In the late spring of 1848, more than thirty years after last having set foot in Europe, he crossed the Bosporus westward.

Rabbi Haddaya was received in Salonika with great pomp and ceremony and seen off at his ship by Rabbis Gaon, Arditi, and Luverani. Yet his own excitement must have been even greater than theirs, because the robust though slender old man had hardly been at sea for a day when he suffered a stroke, a thrombosis in the left hemisphere of his brain that caused him to lose the power of speech and all control over the right side of his body. Although able to understand everything said to him, he could no longer answer, and when he tried writing, the letters came out backward in an illegible scrawl. Since it was impossible to sail on in such circumstances, the captain changed course for the port of Piraeus, from which the paralyzed man was brought to a Jewish inn in Athens. There he lay, often smiling, nodding, and making sounds like “tu tu tu.”

News of the revered rabbi's illness spread quickly and Jews gathered from near and far to help Doña Flora minister to him. In no time an entire support system sprang up that was most ably directed by her. The Greek governor of Athens stationed a permanent guard by the entrance to the inn, and Rabbi Haddaya, who sat covered by a silk blanket in a special wheelchair brought from Salonika, seemed almost to be enjoying his new situation, which spared him the need at last to express his opinions and left him free to listen to the Jews who came to see him while smiling at them and occasionally nodding or shaking his head. Nevertheless, his wife, who discerned a slow but gradual deterioration in his condition, did everything she could to avoid exciting him.

Thus, when the “vanished” Avraham Mani turned up unexpectedly one winter day at the inn in a state of great agitation, Doña Flora granted him permission to see his old rabbi “for a brief while and only for a single conversation.”

Doña Flora's half of the conversation is missing.

***

—In truth, Doña Flora, for a brief while only, for one short conversation. I am compelled to, for the love of God! Please do not deny me that. Am I not, after all, besides a member of the family, also the eldest of his pupils?

—Yes. I will cry no more.

—There will be no raising of my voice or upsetting him.

—I will be most gentle.

—With much anxious supplication. Who of us does not pray for God's grace? “Though a sharpened sword lie athwart a man's throat, he must not...” But does the rabbi know I am here? Has he retained his active intelligence? The Jews outside say, “Rabbi Shabbetai has left his own self; he now ascends from dream to dream.”

—The Lord be praised.

—The Lord be praised, madame.

—No, no more tears, Doña Flora. I swear to you by my departed son to choke back every one of them. As if I had any left! Since morning I have been saying psalms with them all—crying, saying psalms, and crying again.

—Yes, I promise not to cry in his presence.
Hallas,
as the Ishmaelites say...

—Directly from the ship. Before the first sail was folded I was already in a carriage speeding from Piraeus to Athens.

—No, madame. The bitter news reached us at sea, halfway through the voyage. We were boarded by a pirate boat out of a small port in the devil's own island of Crete, and after we were relieved of all our valuables, one of the pirates, who knew me from my shop in Salonika, said to me, “Your rabbi's lute has popped a string.”

—Hush ... hush ... of course ... but how shall I speak to him?

—With all simplicity? Ah ... Your Grace ... señor ... my master ... Rabbi Haddaya...

—More softly?

—But how will he hear me when he seems so lost in himself? His very soul is folded inward...

—My master,
maestro y señor mío
” I create the fruit of the lips; Peace, peace to him that is far off and to him that is near, saith the Lord; and I will heal him.”

—Praise be to God.

—Does he thus sign his awareness? Praise be to God...

—If he does not know me, madame, whom should he know? Ah!...

—In truth, a wondrous smile.

—Most nonpareil.

—Most true, Doña Flora. So winsome a smile never graced his lips in all these years—and six-and-thirty years, Doña Flora, have I been at his side, long, long before you were. ‘Twas ages ago that first I was brought to him! “Yea, I was a lad and I have grown old...”

—Excessively burdened. All his life.

—Of course ... as you say ... señor, does Your Grace remember me? Truly, it is written, “All my life have I lived among sages and found no better course for a body than silence.”

—Ah!

—Your Grace has consumed himself with his endless wandering and preaching, and now Your Grace deserves to rest. Only “bless me, even me too, my father”!

—Ah ... forgive me ... forgive me, Doña Flora ... my feelings ran away with me...

—I did not know ... I was not warned ... I only wished to kiss his hand and ask his blessing as is my wont...

—I did not know ... I was not warned ... oh, madame...

—Ah! Have I hurt him? May I hope to die...

—I did not know ... forgive me, Doña Flora, I was not warned...

—In truth, the hand seems stricken and withered.

—The length of his body? Master of the Universe ... the entire length?

—How fearful and wondrous are the ways of the Lord! And I in my simplicity had thought it was widthwise—his lower half stilled as over against his upper ... but how came it to pass?

—And in a twinkling shall come his salvation, madame. Believe me, in a twinkling! Let the rabbi be silent for a spell, let him smile—in the end we shall rouse him. We shall not let Your Grace leave us, shall we, Your Grace? We shall not!

—No, God forbid; in all quietude. I already have, Doña Flora, a notion for reviving the power of speech in him. I thought of it while still at sea...

—For example, I thought we might put before him a likeness of that French Emperor, the first Napoleon, to pique the rabbi's soul—for forty years ago Rabbi Shabbetai was summoned to him in Paris, he and some other sages, and since then he often spoke of him. I can remember sitting at his feet in our house in Salonika and listening all night as he dwelled on the ways of that Emperor, who was then sinking deeper and deeper into the snows of Russia...

—Of course not. Perish the thought ... I did not mean this minute...

—Slowly but surely ... we will bide our time ... but did I truly hurt him, Doña Flora? He does appear to be looking at me with great wonder. Why, he cannot even cry out!

—How dreadful is the hand of the Lord! In a thrice it divides a man in two and creates an abyss between the two sides of him. But heaven forbid, señor, that Your Grace should feel diminished or divided, God save us! Your Grace should know that for us, his loving and reverent disciples, he will always be one and the same, his vegetative and animative souls joined together and worthy of our redoubled love. May I, Doña Flora, with your permission, and with the utmost care, take his saintly hand in my own ... surely I may, may I not?

—And may I give it a little squeeze? Just a small one?

—And a kiss? May I?

—Bless me, even me too, my father and teacher! Bless your oldest pupil ... bless a wretched, a much suffering man...

—No, Doña Flora ... God forbid ... I will not cry ... no more tears ... slowly but surely...

—No, madame... ‘tis nothing ... God forbid ... I am already over it...

—Slowly but surely...

—But how did I vanish? And did I truly?

—How can you say that? Surely you know, Doña Flora, that I was awaiting a birth.

—Indeed it did. The infant was delivered on the night after the Day of Atonement.

—A boy child, señores, a boy child born in Jerusalem—and you, madame, will be his grandmother. Your poor sister of blessed memory did not live to be one, and you must be one for her.

—Yes, I too, it would seem ... that is ... well, yes ... I too, with the help of God...

—Both mother and infant are well. I bring you greetings from them all: a greeting of peace from Jerusalem—from Refa'el Valero—from the rabbis of the city—from its streets and houses—from the Street of the Armenians and the Hurva Synagogue—from the cisterns and the marketplaces—even from your room, Doña Flora, your little alcove by the arched window—yes, even from your bed, the bed of your maidenhood, in which you slept so many a night. Wrapped in your quilt, I thought of your youth and of mine...

—In your very bed ... and with great pleasure. Your brother-in-law Refa'el assigned the bed of your parents, may they rest in peace, to our young couple, and that was where the unfortunates slept, while I was put up in the little room nearby, between those two most wondrous looking-glasses that you hung on the walls, which played the very devil with my mind. It is not to be marveled at, Doña Flora, that you never looked for a husband in Jerusalem, because in such a room one feels sure that there is already someone with one, hee hee hee...

—I named him Moshe Hayyim in the hope of a fresh start.

—No, he was not named after his father. It is enough that I am accursedly boxed in by the same name before and after me. I am weary of the names of dead patriarchs commemorating downfalls and defeats; I had my fill of Genesis and went on to Exodus, from which I took the name of Moses in all simplicity. May his great merit stand us in good stead ... for there was a miracle here ... before death could drain away the vital fluids, life saved a few precious last drops ... look, Doña, how wonderfully he smiles again. Does he approve of the name Moshe?

—He is nodding. He understands! God be praised. I promise you, Doña Flora, that the rabbi's salvation is nigh and that in a twinkling of the eye he will preach again...'tis but an interval...

—With moderation ... of course ... without compulsion...

—With much travail, Doña Flora, although through clenched teeth...

—Her father Refa'el so feared the birth that he ran off to the synagogue to say psalms, leaving me standing there for ten hours in my robe and shoes like one of the Sultan's honor guard, ministering with hot water and compresses.

—No, madame. It was in your old bed, which had become my bed and now became Tamara's. You may rejoice in the thought that the infant was born in your bed.

—At the very last minute Tamara was stricken with fear and refused to give birth in her bridal bed that had belonged to her parents. She beseeched the help of heaven, and so we moved her to the old bed of her beloved aunt, which conducted the efflux of her uncle's great merit ... and in truth, it was only his merit—does Your Grace hear me?—that stood by us in that difficult birth.

—Ten hours, one labor pain after another...

—There were two midwives. One the wife of Zurnaga, and the other a nunlike Englishwoman called Miss Stewart, a lady as tall and thin as a plank, but most proficient. She was sent by the British consul in Jerusalem, who has not yet ceased mourning our Yosef.

—'Twas at night, Doña Flora, before the first cockcrow, that we heard the long-awaited cry. And if I may say so without fear of misunderstanding, the two of us, the mother and I, so longed for you, madame, at that moment that our very souls were faint with desire for you in that great solitude...

—No, I will not cry...

—No, there will be no more tears ... señor
maestro mío
... he is listening ... I feel the lump of his silence in my throat...

—Your niece kept calling your name while racked by her pains. She was pining for you—she gave birth for you, madame—and in the times between one labor pain and the next, while I sat in the next room and watched her face dissolve toward me in the small mirror, I could not help but imagine you as a young woman in Jerusalem, lying in your bed in the year of Creation 5848 or ‘49 and giving birth too. We were too much surrounded by the shades of the dead, Doña Flora ... we needed to think of the living to give us strength...

—Most truly.

—Again you say I “vanished.” But where did I vanish to?

—In Jerusalem, only in Jerusalem. I walked back and forth between those stony walls with their four gates, thinking, “It was here that little madame toddled about forty years ago, among the stones and the churches, from the Jaffa Gate to the Lions' Gate, skipping over the piles of rubbish in the fields between the mosques, glared on by the red sun and in the shadow of sickness and plague.”

—In truth, Doña Flora. I took upon myself all your longing for Jerusalem, and all the memories of His Grace too, my master and teacher, who honored our sacred city with a visit in the year 5587. There are men there who still recall sheltering in his presence. Who knows but that that poor city throbs on in his heart if not in his mind. Ah!...