Rashi's Daughters, Book II: Miriam (8 page)

“Shalom aleichem, Natan.”

“Reuben, aleichem shalom.” Natan’s face lit up. “I was beginning to worry that you wouldn’t be here this year.”

“You don’t look worried,” Reuben said. “That was quite a beauty you were flirting with.”

“I wasn’t flirting with him. We were studying Talmud.” When Reuben looked at him skeptically, Natan continued, “His name is Judah, and he’s a new student at the yeshiva. Quite a good one in fact.”

“Are you thinking of teaching him to play the game?”

“Not now that you’ve arrived.” Natan smiled seductively. “But the idea is tempting.”

“Try to restrain yourself. Otherwise you’ll just upset the poor fellow and leave him frustrated.”

“I’ll try,” Natan replied with a wink.

Reuben sighed. Natan would stop flirting with attractive men when the sky stopped being blue. “I’d like to unpack. What room are you in?”

“I’ll show you.” Natan picked up the dish containing the remains of Judah’s meal. “You can finish this if you’re hungry.”

The next day after services, Natan inquired about Judah’s health and then introduced Reuben, “Who has been my friend and study partner for many years. In fact I met him about ten years ago when he was studying at this very yeshiva. Maybe you’d like to study with us this evening.”

Judah’s jumble of feelings confused him. Last night he couldn’t get away from Natan fast enough. Then he’d prayed desperately for the Merciful One to not blast his bones, to give him strength to conquer his
yetzer hara
. But today he watched with envy as Natan and Reuben argued with each other with an easy intimacy, and when they left together to share their midday meal, a stab of loneliness assailed him. After studying with Shmuli all afternoon, Judah knew he’d be back at Josef’s Grotto that night, and on any other night Natan invited him.

 

In the weeks that followed, Judah’s days fell into a pattern. Most nights the three men studied together, although sometimes Natan or Reuben spent the evening elsewhere. The first week in March, Natan announced that his business in Mayence was nearly finished. In that silky voice that seemed to penetrate to Judah’s very core, he asked Judah to share a special farewell meal with him.

Judah gulped. “Will Reuben be there as well?”

“No,” Natan replied softly, taking a step closer to Judah. The two of them were almost touching, and Judah could smell Natan’s perfume. “I thought it would be pleasant to have only the two of us, like when we first met.”

Judah again felt the blood rushing to his loins, but this time he didn’t panic. He told himself that Natan wanted only what he said—a pleasant farewell dinner. Yet in his secret heart, he wondered if Natan was offering more than a meal, and that night he prayed once again for the Holy One to give him the strength to conquer his
yetzer hara
.

But the next afternoon, on his way to the bathhouse, he ran into Shmuli in one of Mayence’s narrow alleys. The boy’s clothes were torn and his nose was bleeding.

“What in heaven happened to you?!”

“Oh, Judah, I’m so glad to see you.” The youth collapsed into Judah’s arms and began to sob.

“Did the Edomites attack you?” These things tended to happen during the weeks before Easter.

“No, not the Edomites,” Shmuli stammered.

“You mean another student did this?” Judah stared at him in shock. “Who would want to hurt you?”

“I won’t tell you his name, but I had to fight him.” Shmuli blew his nose on his sleeve. “He said bad things about me.”

“Bad enough to warrant getting hurt and ruining your clothes?” Judah began to get a sinking feeling inside.

At first Shmuli whispered, but then his voice rose accusingly. “He said you’re doing
mishkav zachur
and that I must be too since I sleep with you.”

Judah could feel himself shaking.
Mon Dieu
—
someone has accused me of lying with men.
He forced himself to answer without screaming. “He just said that because I’m French.”

The German students did hold a low opinion of the French ones, believing them too fond of rich food, good wine, and other sensual pleasures. Frenchmen considered Germans sanctimonious prigs, who would rather sit in a freezing house on Shabbat than have a servant relight a fire that had gone out.

“I suppose that just because your King Philippe took so long to have children doesn’t mean that all Frenchmen are like that.” Shmuli’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “But he said you spend all your time at that tavern where men go if they want to do
mishkav zachur
.”

“Josef ’s Grotto isn’t ... that kind of tavern.” Judah couldn’t bring himself to say the word. “Scholars go there to study in peace and quiet. Shmuli, you’ve been living with me all year. Do you think I’d frequent that kind of place?”

“I don’t think that,” Shmuli said loyally. “But he did. That’s why I had to fight him.”

“I was just on my way to the stews.” Judah’s heart swelled at his young defender’s devotion. “Come with me and let’s get you cleaned up.”

As he sat in the warm water and listened to Shmuli proudly retell how he had fought the older boy, Judah knew he wouldn’t be dining with Natan that night. And he would never go back to Josef’s Grotto.

Judah faced Shmuli. “Listen. Just because two men are great friends and like to study together doesn’t mean they’re doing ...”

“
Mishkav zachur
,” his young companion added.

“For example,” Judah continued as if he hadn’t heard Shmuli, “in the Bible, there were no truer friends than Jonathan and King David, and in the Talmud, there are many great companions: Rav Ami and Rav Assi, Rav Yohanan and Reish Lakish.”

“Rav Yohanan, I just read about him in Berachot,” Shmuli said excitedly. “Isn’t he the one who was so beautiful that he used to sit by the
mikvah
so the women coming out would see him and have sons like him?” Shmuli proudly recited the passage, almost identical to the one in Bava Metzia.

“You remembered it perfectly.” If the two of them hadn’t been sitting naked together in a bath, Judah would have hugged him. “That same story is in another tractate of Talmud too. Here, let me teach it to you.”

Judah recited the tale of Rav Yohanan and Reish Lakish up to the point when the two men first met in the river. Shmuli was impressed that a gladiator would want to become a rabbi.

“Unfortunately their story ends sadly,” Judah said.

Judah stopped to explain. “I’m sure Rav Yohanan didn’t mean to insult his friend by calling him a brigand. He was only saying that he would defer to Reish Lakish’s opinion because the gladiator’s training had made him an expert on weapons.”

Shmuli poured a bucket of hot water over his head to rinse the soap from his hair. “Of course not. It’s forbidden to remind a repentant sinner of his previous deeds.”

“In any case, Reish Lakish felt that Rav Yohanan had disparaged him, and Rav Yohanan saw Reish Lakish as belittling his teachings. It was a terrible misunderstanding.

Judah and Shmuli sat in their bath, silently mourning the two sages who had died of grief for each other hundreds of years ago. Judah remembered Daniel as well and wondered if he’d ever see his dear friend again. But Shmuli’s temperament was too sanguine to mourn very long for people he didn’t know.

“I just remembered something else I learned about Reish Lakish in Berachot,” he said proudly. “It’s near the beginning.

Then, despite the seriousness of the text he just recited, Shmuli cheerfully declared, “I’m hungry. Can we go now?”

 

The next day at services Judah was both disappointed and relieved to find that Natan, like many of the foreign merchants, had gone. Most of the yeshiva students had also left to spend Passover with their families. The only reason Judah was still in Mayence was that Azariel had written that he didn’t want to interrupt his search for Judah’s bride to escort his brother home and back. Judah toyed with the idea of going to Cologne for Passover, of finding Daniel and spending the festival week with him, but he didn’t have the nerve to show up uninvited.

March’s grey and drizzly weather only added to Judah’s despair. He’d see a man wearing a black cloak and remember Natan’s silky voice, the smell of his perfume, and the feel of his hand on Judah’s arm. But the excitement these memories generated sent him into a downward spiral of self-loathing.
How can I expect to deserve the learned bride I asked for while I harbor such sinful thoughts?

Despite the Talmud’s advice, studying Torah and saying the Shema were only temporarily successful at suppressing them, and Judah ended every day in desperate prayer. In a further attempt to control his unruly
yetzer hara
, Judah fasted on Mondays and Thursdays. But he was still growing, and by midafternoon he was so faint that the words on the Talmud page blurred before him.

One rainy morning in late April, Judah had to force himself to get out of bed. He hadn’t heard from Azariel since before Passover and despaired of what had delayed him. Despite Judah’s efforts to avoid sinful thoughts, Lillit had sent one of her incubi to torment him the previous night. Feeling unworthy of immersing his depraved body in the
mikvah
, he poured a bucket of cold water over his offending member, skipped breakfast, and went to services. Then, instead of eating his midday meal, he decided to take a walk in the freezing rain and ponder Reish Lakish’s final piece of advice:

Refusing to be ousted by spring, winter had hurled one last storm at the Rhineland. Rain poured down in sheets, yet something drove Judah toward the Rhine River. The muddy brown water was raging below, as it tried furiously to pass through the narrow bridge he stood on.

Judah stared into the murky depths, fascinated as an occasional tree branch or other piece of debris rushed by. He bent over to get a better look, and the urge to lean just a little bit farther overtook him. The longing to let the power of the river carry him and his sinful nature away became a compulsion. In a few months he would be twenty, and the Holy One would blast his bones anyway. His tears merging with the rain on his face, Judah closed his eyes and waited for the next big gust of wind.

T
he day the Cold Fair opened was chilly and clear, and passing through the St. Jacques Gate, the city’s easternmost entry, Miriam felt as if she were leaving a great burden behind. Riding through the forest that marked the beginning of Count André’s lands, she looked in vain for something familiar about the road she and Benjamin had traversed only a few months before.

She rode out toward Troyes several times the following week, looking for that fateful clearing, but the skeletal silhouettes of the trees in winter looked nothing like the abundant foliage she remembered. Even the alkanet bushes were gone; felled by the cold, they would grow anew in the spring. One morning she crossed paths with a hunting party from the castle. They were startled to see a young woman riding alone in the forest, but when she introduced herself as a relation of Lord Samuel, everyone was quite cordial.

By the following Shabbat, Miriam felt as though she were living in a dream. Her old world, including everything that reminded her of Benjamin, had been replaced with a new one. In Ramerupt, mealtime was when Samuel, Marona, and Étienne, the steward, discussed the manor’s business. There were no daily shopping trips; the estate provided almost everything its inhabitants required. Women rarely attended the small local synagogue, so Miriam and Marona prayed at home. Evenings were quiet, with everyone going to bed as soon as it was dark.

On the Sabbath, when business talk was forbidden, meals were more festive. The three of them didn’t sing quite as enthusiastically as a table full of yeshiva students, but Miriam found in their subdued voices a comforting memory of her childhood, when it had only been herself singing with Joheved, Mama, and Grandmama Leah. Her hosts found Miriam’s knowledge of scripture an unexpected delight. They didn’t know which impressed them more, that Salomon had written a commentary on the Torah or that Miriam had memorized most of it and could share it with them.

One Shabbat afternoon Miriam was intrigued when Marona suggested a game of chess. Chess was considered more an intellectual pastime than a game of chance, notwithstanding the wagers placed whenever two experienced players matched their skill. She had played during festivals but never at home. Papa thought chess took time away from Torah study.