“But there are other tomes of wisdom in the Arabic tongue.”

Bilhah’s hand strays down to the money pouch tied around her waist. It is filled with only a few coins and the tiny charm.

“I could make it worth it for you to teach me.”

The girl looks at the money bag and pats her own. The silk bulges, and the bag droops from the weight.

Bilhah feels her chest tighten. Her offer is paltry. Laughable. But then, one who has 100 wants 200. Greediness knows no bounds. Maybe the few coins she has will still mean something to her.

The girl winks. “Oh, you will make it worthwhile for me. How?” She raises both hands, so the scrolls point to her sides. “We shall see how as time progresses.”

***

Leonora presses her palm against her forehead. Her head still aches from the wine. She dresses quickly, prays, and takes a deep breath, readying herself for her day’s work. Plans for the wool factory. And see what is delaying the establishment of the soup kitchen, for every day, their courtyard fills with children.

She is ashamed of the servants, afraid that they took word to Yishai and Amram, but really, she does not blame herself. How else is it possible to encounter the memories that seep, unwanted, into your mind? What did Noach do, when he saw that a whole world had been destroyed? He planted a vineyard, grew grapes, pressed wine. How else could man survive such devastation?

Downstairs, she sees the long line of children, already arriving for a midday meal. Two little girls carry earthenware pots that they will never be able to bear when it is filled with her stew; she will order the servants to accompany them and carry the food to their homes.

She sits down in her accounts room and summons Yishai. He comes at once, bends and kisses her hand, and asks after her welfare. What has he heard?

“So many children.”

Yishai gives a heavy sigh and sits down. “They say it is a sign of the Redemption, this poverty.”

She drums her fingers impatiently. “The signs must spur us to act. If there is poverty, the Almighty is sending us extra zechuyot.”

“Indeed.”

“How are the plans for the soup kitchen progressing? It is not convenient for the place to be overrun by children each day.”

Yishai leans back in his chair, a weary look on his face. “It is not simple to purchase a property here in Tzfat.”

“Explain.”

“There is one place, three courtyards along.”

“Convenient. The supplies can be taken directly to there, and when the servants are finished, they can return here at once.”

“The house was abandoned more than two years ago. There has been no sign of life, since.”

She stops and leans back on the chair. “Who would simply abandon a house? Are there legal proceedings against the owner? Is he accused of some crime?”

Yishai looks down at his sheaf of notes. “According to what we have found out, he is a man born of Spanish parents, who settled in Damascus before coming here.”

“Like half of the people who live here.”

“Indeed. And there was nothing criminal at all. Just a sad story about his wife, who was taken to the Next World a few days after she gave birth to their first child. The man could not take his grief and ran.”

His lip curls up slightly, as if amused by the man’s weakness.

She nods. Is it the aftereffect of the wine or the story that make her stomach turn? Or her son’s complacency?

“And the child?”

He shakes his head. “The child did not survive either.”

She looks down, thoughtfully. “So the man fled from his grief.”

Yishai shrugs. “It seems so.”

She is filled with sadness. Yishai sits there, with his chatterbox wife Bellida and his four children. And yes, there were two who did not survive infanthood; that is the way of the world.

But he talks about this man and the wreckage of his life as if he is a superior being, as if nothing like that could ever happen to him, cushioned as he is by money and family and success. When she knows, she knows on her skin how disaster could strike all of them, at any moment.

She blinks. He is a stranger. Inside, it hurts.

“And what is the halachah in this situation?”

Yishai looks through his pieces of parchment. “I have the responsa here. You see, Mama, I have not neglected your orders.”

He looks up at her. She knows what he wants. He wants to be patted like a little dog, thrown a bone as a reward. He wants her to smile and say, what a devoted and clever and fine son you are. But she simply swallows.

“Read it out to me.”

He reads:

Although usually we would not allow you to enter into the home and property of another, for if we do not respect the property rights of others, then harmony and peace will be lost from among us. But because, due to our sins and the long and difficult exile, we submit to the orders of the kadi and the Ottoman rulers. And their rules state no habitation can be left empty for more than a year, there is a danger that the Muslim authorities will seize the building. When they have done that, either they will extort high rents for it, or they will convert it into a house for their own purposes, whether religious and administrative. Therefore, there is a reason to allow use of this building in a temporary fashion, until the owner returns.

She clears her throat and forces out the words. “You have done well.”

He nods, hiding his smile. “Honorable mother, does this mean that we should proceed?”

She thinks for a moment. “Indeed. But I would like to see the place before work begins.”

She stands and escorts Yishai out of her rooms. It is good that he has found this abandoned house. Everywhere she looks in her home, there are more children. A little boy lingers in the doorway, and she beckons to him with her hand.

She bends down to talk to him. His hair flops over his forehead, his eyes keep looking around the room — for what, she wonders? Food? Or something else?

“Do you like the food that we eat here?” she asks.

He nods.

“Would you like something else?”

He thinks for a minute and then nods his head. “Mahn.”

“Mahn?”

“It tastes like honey wafers, we learned. I don’t know what that is either, but my honorable teacher told me that this is what they eat in Gan Eden.”

She reaches out and brushes the hair away from his eyes. “Well, I cannot get you mahn, and I cannot even get you wafers, for wafers are what are eaten in the palaces of a king, and I am no king and I have no palace. But honey, I can get for you, and I can bake it into a cake, and you will eat honey cake, sweet and smelling of cinnamon.”

“What is that?”

“Cinnamon?” She laughs. “It is a smell… how can I describe it? — a smell that reminds you that even in This World there is comfort.”

The boy looks up at her, considering, then allows the thought to light up his eyes.

***

Each morning, Eliyahu helps Yannai climb out of the cave, so he can practice walking. He leans heavily on Eliyahu’s stick as he takes each laborious step, and every time, Eliyahu wonders if he should fashion Yannai a stick of his own. Each time he sees Yannai lean on it, it feels like another thing that the man has taken away from him, along with his solitude and his peace.

When he has finished his daily exercise, Eliyahu helps Yannai back into the cave, where the man rests and then sits up and closes his eyes, and learns the Torah that he finds under his eyelids. Then Eliyahu goes around his daily chores: tending the sheep, checking the ewes that are close to lambing, gathering the herbs that grow wild, and watering the vegetables he grows.

Small acts, but ones that give him a sense of peace and comfort.

When he has finished, he will cook a meal, and he and Yannai will eat together.

To his surprise, he has come to enjoy cooking. When he cooks, he imagines his wife — Tzipora — standing over the cooking pot, face flushed red with steam. She is with him for just a slip of a moment here and there, and when that happens, the clammy coolness that sits upon him like a heavy, wet blanket slips away. For a few moments he feels more than the peace that this place offers him, but a small lightening of the heart.

Today, when he ladles a spoonful of barley stew into a clay bowl, Yannai turns up his nose.

“More of the Almighty’s bounty?” Yannai asks, one eyebrow raised.

The man gets crotchety toward evening. Eliyahu tries to understand — surely, for him, the evening meal means being surrounded by wife, children, grandchildren. Maybe even students. And this is a different type of food. If he is chafing from this man, well, Yannai might be suffering, too.

But still. Eliyahu has worked to cook this, and worked, as well, to grow the barley and gather the herbs.

“Salt cannot be gathered like mushrooms, eh?”

“Not in these parts.”

He has heard that there are caves covered in clusters of salt in the south of the Holy Land, where Sedom and Amorah were overturned. But here, in the hills and mountains of the Galilee, the only sharpness is the buttercup leaves he adds to his broth. And it never bothered him. In the beginning, he did not care what food tasted like — it was just something to keep his body and soul in some kind of unhappy union. And then he grew used to it, so he tastes each flavor, each leaf and herb, and takes pleasure from it, too.

“Do you never have meat?”

Eliyahu spreads his hands wide. “I have here from the bounty of nature. The Almighty’s gifts to us.”

The man shakes his head. “These are his gifts to the sheep and butterflies. We have better. Meat. Lamb. Roasted over a fire. Put it into your mouth and it melts and you swallow and feel the strength enter your limbs.”

“At first, I thought to do this,” Eliyahu says slowly. “That here and there I would shecht a sheep, and eat the meat.”

He had even brought with him his chalaf, from home.

“But?”

Eliyahu shrugs. He could never bring himself to do it.

Nature has been healing him. Well, if not healing him, then at least soothing him. Something inside him recoiled from staining his small island of calm with blood and death.

Yannai shakes his head. “Without meat, grain has little taste.”

Eliyahu brings up another ladle of the stew to spill into his own bowl, but stops. How can he eat with this man pecking at him like a crow?

“I am happy with the way I live,” he says quietly.

Yannai puts down his spoon. It touches the rock with a click that echoes harshly.

“You are not happy. You are content, for the meantime, with the calm of your life. But that is not happiness.”

Eliyahu turns away from him, looks up at the mouth of the cave where the late afternoon light pours in: a last rush of warmth before the night closes in.

“Do you hear me, Eliyahu? Calm is not happiness.”

“I heard you,” Eliyahu says quietly. “But who said happiness is what I seek?”

“Nonsense. Happiness is life. It is being alive. Feeling the Almighty’s love. The love of your fellow man. And here you are, so afraid of life that you will not even shecht an old sheep and chew a bit of good meat.”

Eliyahu wraps his cloak around him and steps toward the mouth of the cave. He will go and see after the welfare of the sheep. Before he lifts himself up, he turns to Yannai.

“I am not afraid of life.”

The old man looks at him and shakes his head sadly.

“No, of course you are not afraid of life. You are afraid of death. But they come hand in hand. Hide from one and you run away from the other.”

Eliyahu grasps onto the rock and pulls himself up. As he lifts himself out of the cave, Yannai calls after him, “Why do you not simply tell me the story of your heart?”

to be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 797)