Iain Pears - The Dream of Scipio

Yet he stood waiting, pacing up and down the street as these thoughts went through his mind. He should not even talk to her. He would treat her with the utmost disdain, not even notice her next time he went to see Gersonides. It would be good for him, even a mortification of the soul, to be confronted with his error. The moment he went back to Avignon, he would burn all his silly verses, and thank God that he had read them to only a few.

And still he stood there, looking up and down the street, telling himself he would move on in a minute and go back to his lodging. But a part of him rebelled already. Those lines he had written were good, he knew, even though he could hardly bear to think of them. No matter. They would be destroyed. He would write an epic instead, celebrating noble deeds. The death of Cicero, he thought; that would be a topic worthy of the times. Not foolish love poetry deserving only scorn and derision.

Then she was there, walking down the street, and his heart stopped and his hands began to tremble. It was a mild evening, but he felt burning hot, then an icy chill crept over him. He would not talk to her; would walk straight past her.

But she would see him, might smile at him. He could not have that. Quickly, he pressed himself against the wall, hoping she would pass by without seeing him, and hoping as well that she would not.

“Sir, are you sick? Are you not well?”

Oh, that voice, so gentle and delicate, reassuring and caressing, so inviting and so soft. Of course she spoke like that; he had had dozens, thousands of conversations with her already and knew her voice better than he knew his own, long before he ever heard it. It had its own music, and he had borrowed it for some of his songs, written down by his hand, in her voice. They could only be read by her, and sometimes, when he read them back to himself late at night, he heard her so sweetly speaking his words.

“Sir? Is something not right?”

Of course it isn’t, he wanted to say. I am in love with a Jew. How can anything be right?

He shook his head.

“You must come in. Sit down by the oven. I will give you some food.” The concern was real. She reached out and took him by the hand to gain his attention and the touch burned through his skin like flame.

“No,” he said, and snatched his hand away, looking at her as though he had seen a devil.

She paused and frowned. “Then I will leave you. If you do not require any assistance.”

And she turned, and Olivier’s fine resolution crumbled. “Please don’t go.”

She turned back again, very patiently.

“Who are you?” he said.

She looked puzzled. “My name is Rebecca. I am the rabbi’s servant. You know that already.”

“Yes, but . . .”

“What?”

“I’ve seen you before,” he said in a rush. “I’ve seen you twice. Once, two years, three months, and twelve days ago. You were walking past the church of Saint Agricole in Avignon. The second time was five weeks and three days ago, in the market. You bought some herbs.”

He said it with such intensity, such seriousness, that she looked slightly frightened, then smiled. “Possibly,” she replied.

“Definitely. On the first occasion, you were dressed in an old brown cloak, which you had up over your head. You were not carrying anything, and you seemed in something of a hurry. You were alone. You only slowed to walk around a puddle on the ground. I don’t know how it got there, it hadn’t been raining at all. You were not wearing a star. The next time, you were wearing a blue cloak, with a patch by the right shoulder. No one talked to you. You bought the herbs and paid for them with coins that you took from a little purse you carried in your right hand.”

“You remember a remarkable amount.”

“I remember very little, usually. Whole days go by and they are blotted from my memory. I cannot recall anything that I was doing yesterday. For daily events I have a terrible memory. These were not daily events. My life has not been the same since. I have had nights without any sleep, when my head has pounded. I could not concentrate on anything. My friends and my master have criticized me for my rudeness, all because of you.”

“I don’t see—”

“I never want to see you again,” he said, growing angry as he thought of it. “How dare you.”

Had she grown angry in response, or been frightened, or turned away saying no more, then all would have been well. Olivier was sure of it. Instead she smiled at him, not mockingly, but with such sympathy and understanding. I wish I could help you, but I cannot, she seemed to be saying. And was there something in her glance that was a response, or a reflection of what he felt? Olivier recoiled from that smile, turned and stumbled, then ran away, oblivious to the strange looks the few other people in the street gave him.

He ran through the town and out through the gates, past the scattered houses and workshops outside and into the open country, then walked steadily and purposefully but without a destination. After an hour or so the effort calmed him, his feet slowed and his breathing returned to normal. He was not free of her; if anything, he had made his situation even worse. But slowly his mood lightened. He did not become happy, but a sort of peace came on him, and his mind began to wander, trying to think of everything and anything except for the way she had smiled at him. He mingled his lesson with Gersonides with the encounter in the street, blending what he had heard with what he had felt, the one turning into a metaphor for the other. “Woman of darkness, wisdom touching the light.” The line came to him, and he was pleased with it. The next one followed, then the next; soon the whole poem—short but so tightly packed—was in his mind dancing over his thoughts.

He shivered, though it was not cold. He walked back into Carpentras as quickly as he could, found a quiet spot in his lodgings, and, by the flickering light of a tallow candle, wrote the poem down. Then he slept, better than he had for months.

REBECCA DID NOT sleep well; she lay on the straw pallet beside the cold grate, wrapped in her blanket, her mind turning over what had happened that evening. But what had happened? A deranged, bizarre young man had spoken to her in a way that was hardly understandable, then had run away. That was all. Nothing to be concerned about.

But she was frightened nonetheless. Not of the young man—that would be ridiculous—but because of the reaction he had caused within her. For two years now, she had secluded herself in the rabbi’s household. No man had even looked at her or spoken to her. She had felt safe for the first time since she had become an orphan, forced to wander the world looking after herself. She had made herself forget that time; the loneliness of it all had been banished from her mind. Anything outside the cocoon she had built around herself was dangerous, and reminded her of fear and hunger. She knew far too much of the cruelty that lay just beyond Gersonides’s hearth, and away from his quiet, unquestioning protection.

For the old man had found her wandering the streets bedraggled and bruised from the evening she had been attacked—by whom she knew not, nor for what reason. She had asked him for money, as the Jews had often been generous to her, and they didn’t frighten her. He had looked carefully at her and seen her despair.

“I have no money with me,” he said sadly.

She had shrugged. It didn’t matter.

“But I believe I have some at home. Walk with me, and I will see if I can find it.”

She got up and walked by his side. He said nothing, but did not seem embarrassed by her company, did not want her to walk behind him to guard his reputation. And when they got to his house—this house, the first she had been in since she had left the empty place her parents had occupied—he ladled a bowl of vegetable soup onto a plate for her and made her sit and eat. Then gave her some bread and water. Then some more soup. And some more.