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

coils that had been meant to be symbolic had become all too real, and as soon as she discerned his purpose she started to struggle, as fiercely and desperately as if he were to be made to pay not just for what he had done earlier to the first wife but for all the unrequited excitement that had quickened within her as she watched the sailors wandering around half naked on deck.
    Angrily she reached out to catch the minuscule mouse, as though she wanted to strangle it or even to tear it apart, but the mouse disappeared , and in its place there reared up a gentle young snake, which soon hardened into a fierce lizard that tried to escape from between her fingers and lay its thin vertical lips upon her eyeballs. Then, from the lust that moved painfully before her, she knew that her husband was regretting having tied himself up, and her spirit began to be appeased ,for now that he was bound helplessly, not spontaneously, she was able to remove her shift and take from him slowly and right to the end everything that he owed her, not only since they had set sail on this voyage but ever since her father had given her to him as wife, even if she ended up dragging out of herself a wild moan that would rouse the boy sleeping on the other side of the curtain.
    But the loud groan that almost turned into a shriek of pleasure did not even scrape the outer shell of Rabbi Elbaz’s son’s consciousness, so deeply was he immersed in youthful slumber. Instead, it startled the young slave, who had crept back to warm himself against the lordly bodies of the young camels and to remind himself of the smell of the desert from which he had been snatched. Virgin though he was, he understood only too well the meaning of the groans, which flooded his heart, as though through two curtains his master’s rod had pierced him too. He stroked the hindparts of the two camels, who also, to judge by their closed eyes, understood what it was that was echoing around them. Who knew, he thought, if they too would not be slaughtered and cooked before the ship reached the city? He wanted to bow his head and pray to the spirit of the fragrant bones that death would draw out of them, but eventually he gave up and shinned up the rope ladder to disappear before the Jew came out and flogged him, even though this time he had sinned by hearing alone and not by seeing. He was suddenly seized with a longing to enter the little cabin in the bow and see the smile of the first wife, whose white body he had seen gleaming earlier in the night. At this time he could go wherever his spirit wished, for the ship was still, every last sailor was asleep, himself excepted. He was kept awake and alert from the start of the night to its end by the divinity that emanated from everything, so that in these last moments of the night he became the true master of the ship, and if he wished he could even weigh anchor and hoist the triangular sail, and instead of sailing east along the river and into the heart of Europe he could head due west and sail beyond the horizon into a new world.
    But a little bird striking a rope with its wings proclaimed that dawn was nigh. Before he had time to bow down and worship before its tiny holiness, it gave a chirp and sped off toward a new speck of light moving into the horizon of the new continent. Even though it was but a speck, it was sufficient to wake Rabbi Elbaz, of whom the rhymingwords of the poem that had been swaying all night between his thoughts and his dreams demanded order and logic. But since the fine rays of light drawn slowly from the land were still too faint to illuminate the lines rustling on the paper concealed among the sheepskins that were his bed, he took on deck only his quill pen, which soon, as the light grew stronger, he would be able to sharpen and dip into his inkhorn, and then he would be able to insert the correct word in place of the empty space that had been waiting for it for several days. He bowed his head in shamed gratitude