The Convert Read online

  IV

  Narbonne

  1

  I’d never formed an image of Narbonne; maybe that’s why I’m so surprised and charmed by this serene city, ten kilometres from the sea, bathed in Mediterranean light, founded long ago by the Romans, with a canal running through it. Leafy avenues and side streets. Aristocrats’ houses and spacious courtyards. Yellow stone, blue sky. The intensity of southern colours seen through northern eyes.

  The home of Richard Todros, direct descendant of the biblical David, is barely one hundred metres from the canal, which leads from the River Aude through the city to the sea. Halfway down the sleepy row of shops, I find a cul-de-sac: the Impasse Jussieu. Jussieu is a widespread surname in France nowadays, but its original meaning was ‘of Jewish descent’. This alley must have been the heart of the Jewish quarter, right in the historic centre. Narbonne was still taking shape in the eleventh century, and its wealthy Jewish community was an influential presence. Numerous Spanish Jews who had fled the escalating tensions in Moorish Spain ended up here. They brought along Spanish and Moorish influences, which changed how Hebrew was written. A series of tolerant archbishops acted as their protectors – thinking, no doubt, of the high tariffs they could demand from Jewish moneylenders.

  Jewish intellectuals in Provence were often highly educated and had absorbed the elegance of Spain’s courtly culture. They were open-minded and got along well with their Christian neighbours. Furthermore, Provençal women in general enjoyed a high social status, better than in most other communities. I try to imagine David’s sophisticated family making a place for the young Christian woman their son had brought home from distant Normandy. An appropriate response would require dialogue, tolerance and an open mind.

  The day after their arrival, David’s father invites the two of them to the synagogue. Vigdis, who is doing her best to become Hamoutal, trips over the seam of her robe and almost stumbles into the large candelabrum. The old rabbi takes her by the elbow, bearing her weight for a moment. She is mortified; her heart pounds. The men go on to the Talmud school, a yeshiva once built on Charlemagne’s initiative, where they discuss how to handle her official conversion. But first, she has a great deal to learn; her future mother-in-law will take charge of her education. The other women in the house will teach her how to behave in social situations and manage a household. For the first few months after the wedding, the couple will stay in his parents’ spacious home.

  Through waves of panic and disorientation, Vigdis feels a confusing new power raging inside her. Deep in the night, she tries to adjust to the thought that after leaving behind her whole past, she is now leaving her lovely names behind too.

  She dreams. A man with a long beard throws her a staff; she grabs it, and it turns into a snake. She throws the snake in the water; it becomes a staff again. The water parts. The man is young now, waving to her from the shore.

  She wakes with a start, doesn’t recognise the room, looks outside; the sunlight blinds her, almost taking her breath away. That same day a Greek Jewish woman named Agatha is assigned as her companion, an elegant lady from Alexandria with large gold rings on her fingers in the shape of tiny snakes.

  Two major Roman roads meet in Narbonne: the Via Aquitania to the west and the Via Domitia to the east. Thanks to its location at this major crossroads, the city grew rapidly. For centuries, the Arabs considered it the spearhead of their thrust into Gaul. They were reluctant to give up Narbonne. As late as the tenth century, the Arab geographer Zuhri wrote that the Christians there would have to turn and flee to escape beheading, and could fight till the end of their days if they wished but would never take back the city. At that stage, his words were a mixture of nostalgia, wishful thinking and bluff, rather than a realistic report. But thanks to Zuhri, I also know that in those days there was a large bridge over the placid canal where, as I walk along the bank one sunny Sunday afternoon, a flea market is in progress.

  Unlike in Rouen, it is impossible to determine the yeshiva’s exact location. But we do know the site of the old synagogue: around the corner from where the shops are today, in the Rue de l’Ancien Port des Catalans. David and Hamoutal probably lived nearby. The cathedral, like the one in Rouen, was just a few steps away from the Jewish quarter; members of the two faiths crossed paths every day.

  At the end of the Impasse Jussieu I find a short flight of steps and a fence. Beyond, I see a garden and, through an arch of greenery, a portal, probably a side entrance to the nearby church. The cool of the paving stones in the late morning, the sound of doves’ wings flapping in the immaculate air. Silence. Here Vigdis Adelaïs, daughter of a Christian Viking, became the Sephardic daughter-in-law of Richard Todros, chief rabbi of southern France. Here she underwent the Jewish ritual of conversion, ‘dying to her former life’, in the words of the prayer that accompanies the immersion of proselytes. Here she descended into the living water of the Jewish bath, the mikveh. The ritual even specifies the volume of water: forty seahs. Each seah is about fourteen litres. That makes more than five hundred litres of water that had to be brought here from the River Aude, for the water must come from a living source.

  Unlike a woman cleansing herself after menstruation, a prospective convert cannot carry out this ritual alone; three rabbis must be present as witnesses. David stands next to his father and reads a prayer. The girl is escorted by Agatha, who helps her remove her outer garments; she keeps her light underclothes on. Yesterday evening, she announced that her chosen name was Sarah. She has made herself beautiful, trimming her fingernails and toenails as this purification ceremony requires. She hears them reciting the blessing, Baruch atah HaShem Eloheinu melech ha’olam … She sits down on the stone seat, probes with her toes underwater for the rough limestone step, and has never felt so alone. The cold makes her flinch and takes her breath away. She trembles from head to toe, closes her eyes, hesitates. She pushes off. As she sinks into the bath, it feels bottomless. In the synagogue, a slight sob is heard, something like a muffled cry, sloshing water. Then she vanishes, letting herself drop, deep, feeling her heart skip a beat in the bitter cold; she holds her breath, keeps her head underwater for the count of ten – it seems an eternity. Darkness surrounds her; she can feel the rough floor of the mikveh scraping her knees now. Her blonde hair fans out over the surface of the dark bath. A few air bubbles rise through the water. Will she stay down below, disappear from the face of the earth? It’s as if a womb has swallowed her, a timeless womb that has borne her out of the world and into a lightless eternity. In a flash, she sees before her the baptismal font in the church in Rouen, not much more than a dish, just large enough for a newborn baby. Here her whole body is sinking into the ice-cold depths that draw her in, as if she will disappear through the bottom into another dimension. For an indivisible instant, she feels the violation deep in her body again, long ago by the edge of the forest somewhere in an empty landscape. Now she is so overcome by emotion that she sobs and breathes in water. Coughing and hiccuping, she surfaces, wipes the wet hair out of her eyes, looks around in a daze, and lets out a sigh; the echo rises to the decorated ceiling, past the burning candles in their holders, to the sunlight, the world, the intent faces staring down at her. Agatha reaches out, pulls her up, helps her back on the stone seat, and holds out a towel, in which she lets herself be wrapped up like a child. There she sits, dripping and panting. She hears prayer; the men’s droning voices calm her. She thinks she sees a white dove patter through the patch of light by the open door. The slight swell of her pregnant belly, visible through her wet shift, is enough to tell the worldly-wise Roi aux Juifs that this ceremony of rebirth has acquired a double significance for the continuation of his own lineage; the proselyte, now reborn, has become Jewish through and through, and can carry on his line. The children of this fair-skinned foreign woman will be, in the fullest sense of the word, his grandchildren.

  Hamoutal, having solemnly relinquished her Norman name, soon feels safe in the erudite community. Five weeks after her conver
sion ceremony, she again lowers herself into the mikveh in strict accordance with Jewish law, this time for the purification ritual preceding her wedding. She has already been separated from David for weeks, living in the closed women’s quarters; she has laid out the prayer shawl that she must present to him; she recites Jewish prayers. She has found peace, aside from the few nightmares in which she seems to wander through a desolate landscape of rough limestone and keeps tumbling into a dark hole, calling for help. On the day of her wedding it rains; sheets of tepid water lash the building fronts, leaving her clothes drenched as she walks to the synagogue with the women. She is pushed ahead, a friendly push, a large hand in the small of her back; she sees the door to the little side room where her husband-to-be is waiting for her with the other men of the family. Entering through the low door, she finds David in the traditional robe she had made for him. She steps forward in her cream-coloured suede slippers; her amber gown rustles around her body like a skin slowly letting go. Together, they say the prayer for forgiveness, which she has learned by heart. On a marble stand lies the ketubah, the marriage contract she must sign with her new name Sarah; when her hand touches her husband’s, the contact is like a knife that tears through her skin and makes her bleed inside. David takes a step forward and covers her face with a light gauze veil. She breathes like an animal in a trap; she is as light and fragile as a petal on the wind. Surrounded by men and women carrying candles, she is led to a chuppah, or canopy, at the synagogue entrance.

  David is handed a glass wrapped in cloth; he crushes it ceremoniously under his foot. She listens as more blessings are recited. It all seems so unreal, as if everything she does is part of a dream.

  The wedding feast is modest but in good taste. The guests include many Spanish-speaking Jewish intellectuals. She understands little of their abstruse conversation, feels exhausted and ill at ease, eats almost nothing, drinks the sweet fruit juices, looks around in a slight fuddle, watches the sun sink behind the swaying myrtles by the wall in front of the old house. Her nose is red with sunburn.

  In the weeks that follow her wedding she keeps noticing, again and again, the many ways in which she’s travelled to a different world. She has to adjust to the listless heat of the afternoons, which can go on till early October. She gradually learns her way around the city. She visits the market with other Jewish women and sometimes walks with her husband along the main canal. She thinks back to the seagulls by the Seine, to her tall, dark childhood home, to her mother, to her affectionate, soft-voiced governess. They must have felt so betrayed, those people, her loved ones. Only now, as her life here settles into shape, does guilt sometimes clench her by the throat. At other times, she is flooded with such energy that she feels like dancing through the streets. She sits in the large rooms and cool garden, studies Hebrew, takes up the needlework her mother taught her, shows her handicrafts to the women in the house, and picks up new patterns from them.

  One day in late autumn the whole family rides out to the Gruissan jetty, ten kilometres away. It’s her first view of the Mediterranean, and she’s overcome by tempestuous joy. The sea is wild, deep purple with white breakers. The sun is merciless; the light blinds her. The tramontane scourges the few gnarled trees and shrubs. A couple of fishing boats bob on the white-capped waves. She squeezes David’s hand so hard it hurts. Laughing, he loosens her grasp and kisses her quickly on the neck. How strange this high-spirited sea, unlike anything she remembers of the grey northern mouth of the Seine. The squat tower on the shore is imposing in its mass; the wind whistles through the arrow slits, a melancholy, other-worldly sound on a glorious day.

  2

  On Cours de la République, along the Canal de la Robine, a large market is in progress, with clothes and all sorts of objects, useful and useless. The atmosphere is friendly; there aren’t many tourists, mostly locals shopping here and strolling past. On the other side of the canal, near Cours Mirabeau, is the covered marketplace, Les Halles, packed with thick crowds of people, stalls that serve ice-cold rosé before noon, the mingled fragrances of scores of foods, and all the rainbow-coloured bounty of the Mediterranean kitchen. Markets are timeless, a tradition going back long before the Christian era. It must always have been this way: dried fish, ham, heaped fruit, wine, olive oil, rosemary and thyme, vegetables of all shapes and sizes. The age-old feast of life.

  When I leave the market the back way, I stumble upon the Church of Notre-Dame de Lamourguier, which was still under construction in Hamoutal’s time. Now it has been emptied out and turned into a storehouse for ancient stones from the time of the Roman occupation. I’m the only one there. The treasured stones and fragments are piled up to three metres high, row after row. Sunlight streams down from the high windows; it’s like stumbling into a heathen temple. Dionysian ox heads – boukefalas – grin down at me from all sides. All around are the lamented dead on stelae and in low reliefs. I’m surrounded by Apollonian sun wheels, cryptic votive stones, fanciful leaf patterns, countless Latin inscriptions, and even open tombs and sarcophagi. I sit down on a stone, astonished to find this unique collection stacked there so casually. I learn from a folder that elsewhere in the city a brand-new home is being built for this musée lapidaire. Lapidary – that it is. I may be one of the last visitors to see the collection in its haphazard historical context. Soon these stones will be carried into their chic mausoleum, carefully numbered, well lit and accompanied by illustrations, stripped of all the past life I feel weighing down on me here in this overwhelming muddle.

  In front of the Hôtel de Ville lies another unchanging stone witness: a surviving section of the Via Domitia, exposed at the bottom of a depression in the square. Large stones, polished by feet and centuries, smooth and uneven. It must have been torture for horses with small hooves and thin legs. This tremendous project, a paved road hundreds of kilometres long, connecting Spain with the Gap and Sisteron region, included a raised footpath where you could even sit comfortably. Staring at the huge, primitive paving stones, I imagine the Romans racing over them, spanning great distances in a matter of days. Children play at the edge of this remarkable site. An American street musician sings Cat Stevens: ‘Oh, baby, baby, it’s a wild world …’ The outdoor cafes smell of cappuccino and suntan lotion. I feel a slight, strange euphoria; the present seems exotic today. I am so immersed in Hamoutal’s age that I feel as if a time machine has carried me into her distant future, where I have no right to be. Tomorrow I’ll drive north-east through Arles and Avignon, into the Alpine foothills.

  3

  Because Hamoutal is pregnant, she is lavished with care and attention. After a mild autumn, winter drenches Narbonne in crisp brightness, a new and brittle beauty: the bite of the sea wind, purple morning skies, the abrupt warmth of an early afternoon, the just as sudden cold descending at dusk, the sparkling night skies, the comets on their mysterious, fiery paths – signs that seem to come from heaven, beyond human understanding. From far away, they hear many stories of rioting and of clashes between Christians and Jews. She scarcely listens; their happiness consumes them. Hamoutal has fine clothes to wear every day now. She has become intimate friends with Agatha from Alexandria, whom she tells long stories about her old life on quiet evenings. Winter is a festival of white light and clear mornings. Everything promises to turn out well; spring is already fast approaching, January brings warm days. Then the rain floods down again and for days on end Narbonne is as grey and damp as Rouen. She sits at the window, humming and staring out at the low clouds with her hands on her swollen belly.

  Then, even before the swallows return, one afternoon in the silent hours of the siesta, Agatha runs into the room in panic; she was at the market and heard three men on horseback asking about a blonde woman from the north. They demanded that anyone with news of her tell all, without delay. They promised three silver pieces to whoever would help them find and capture the woman. The crowd swarmed around the horses; a man shouted, ‘I know, I know, it’s that blonde Jewess in the Todros house!’
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br />   Hamoutal feels the child kick in her belly; soon afterwards, David joins her, having heard the story from Agatha, and tells her they must go this instant, never mind how or where. The elder Todros calms everyone down; he has just come from the synagogue, where he spoke to the knights and convinced them that the woman fled for Spain on her own. The men galloped off after her. They’re sure to return at some stage, but for now he has gained them a little time – a few days, perhaps.

  Be that as it may, Rabbi Todros writes a letter that very evening on the skin side of a used piece of parchment, carefully scraped clean, to his friend Rabbi Joshuah Obadiah in the remote Vaucluse village of Moniou, a place no one has ever heard of, reminding him of the old bonds of fellowship between them. Bags are packed, preparations are made, all in utter secrecy – it’s too risky even to harness the horses, they’ll have to buy some later, somewhere along the way.

  Very early in the morning on 15 March 1091, David and Hamoutal take flight for the second time, around half past three, while the city is sleeping and the Via Domitia deserted. Just a hundred metres from the house where they’d hoped to lead a happy life together, Agatha, whispering and crying, hastens to send them on their way. Earlier, Rabbi Todros and his wife embraced the two frightened refugees behind closed doors and gave them a considerable number of silver coins, along with provisions for a week. They assured the young couple that their stay in Moniou will be temporary, that they’ll send a courier ahead to inform the village rabbi, that there’s nothing to fear. Rabbi Todros used a surprising word for their flight: aliyah, a journey up to safety, something like an ascent – it’s also the word for returning to Jerusalem. For the time being, all those connotations went over Hamoutal’s head, but she’ll later think back to that moment many times, without ever figuring out what the old rabbi meant.