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End of the Age of Innocence
David B. Green
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(October 25, 1999) A.B. Yehoshua hits a lot of sensitive buttons in his millennium novel, but his efforts come off as masterly rather than manipulative.
If there's one characteristic that especially distinguishes A.B. Yehoshua as a writer, it is his constant willingness - or need - to experiment. Each chapter in his first novel, "The Lover," is narrated, alternatingly, by a different one of six central characters, so that the ongoing narrative is told and retold from several points of view. In "A Late Divorce," this device is pushed to its limits, as the author - in direct homage to Faulkner - enters in the first chapter into the mind of a mentally retarded child, and there and in subsequent chapters leaves the reader to figure out just who is doing the talking. In "Mr. Mani," Yehoshua removes the net before ascending the high wire: Not only does he present the epic tale about five generations of a Sephardi family in reverse chronological order, but the entire book is told as a series of dialogues - where only one side of each dialogue is reported.
But it is not just Yehoshua�s play with literary devices that makes him Israel�s most imaginative writer. He is entranced by the material world. He told me earlier this year that in writing each book he has immersed himself in a new subject, studying it sufficiently to be able to write about it in a natural manner. For "The Lover," he developed some expertise in auto mechanics; for "Open Heart," he studied not only cardiology but also India, so that he could write alluringly about the light and fragrances of that country before he had ever visited it.
But it is perhaps in "A Journey to the End of the Millennium" that Yehoshua has undertaken his greatest challenge to date. In this case, there is no literary gimmick being employed, and one isn�t required to read a half-dozen pages before grasping just who�s talking or what is going on. This time, all of the author�s chips went into a wager that he could write compellingly and convincingly about the lives of a group of people living exactly a thousand years ago.
To make this work - and it does, brilliantly - Yehoshua adapts the voice of a more-or-less ominiscient narrator, who tells the story from the perspective of the period being described. That is why the writing has an archaic feel to it. The narrator knows what most of his characters are doing and thinking - but no more than this. He knows no better than we do today whether the turn of the century and millennium a few months down the line will bring the supernatural events some have predicted.
Other reviewers have already commented how savvy Yehoshua was in injecting into his story not only the millennial theme but also a number of conflicts that have great resonance today: between Sephardim and Ashkenazim, the religiously rigid and the more liberal, Jews and Christians, men and women, North and South. Perhaps, but "Journey to the End of the Millennium" feels neither manipulative nor cynical in its choice of themes; rather it seems that its author is simply preoccupied with some of the same issues as the rest of us.
The title refers to several journeys. One of course is the reader�s, to a period a millennium ago when the vast majority of the world�s Jews lived in the lands of Islam, and the small minority of European Jews lived in fear of what the turn of the millennium might mean for them, considering the widespread Christian belief that the momentous date would be accompanied by the return of Jesus.
But there are geographical journeys too in the book. A successful mercantile partnership has been threatened, and the senior member of the group has decided to travel from Tangiers to Paris in an attempt to save it. Ben Attar and Abu Lutfi, a Jew and a Muslim from Morocco who work together in harmony, travel to Spain each summer to rendezvous with the former�s nephew, Abulafia. They bring him spices and oils, fabrics, bejeweled daggers, even live animals from "luxuriant Africa," and he then spends the time until their next meeting selling the goods in a "desolate Europe" starved for material comforts.
But in 996, Abulafia, a widower, marries Mistress Esther-Minna, a fair-haired, blue-eyed rabbi�s daughter from Worms who now lives in Paris. She too is a widow, and childless, and her new husband�s business partnership fills her with trepidation. Not only is she unhappy that Abulafia must spend most of his time on the road as a traveling salesman, but she is shaken when she learns that his uncle has two wives. This is the era when Rabbenu Gershom, historically associated with the ban on multiple marriages among Ashkenazi Jews, lived. So she pushes Abulafia to quit the business and "repudiate" the bigamist Ben Attar. Abulafia is reluctant, but in the end accedes to her request, for he has great respect for his wife, who is 10 years his senior.
But in Ben Attar, Esther-Minna doesn�t know what she�s up against. He buys a ship that once sailed in the fleet of the Umayyad caliph, and refits it as a merchant vessel. Then he, and Abu Lutfi, and a new shipload of merchandise, and a rabbi-scholar named Elbaz, and Ben Attar�s two wives, sail around Spain to the northern coast of France, and then up the Seine to the "remote provincial town" of Paris, where the uncle demands his right to challenge Abulafia�s repudiation before a religious court, with Rabbi Elbaz as his advocate.
Initially, it seems that the Southerners score a victory, as they put their case to a drunken lay tribunal in a Jewish settlement outside Paris. But Yehoshua�s "repudiatrix," as stubborn and proud as Ben Attar, is unwilling to accept the verdict, and responds by declaring herself a "rebellious" wife, an act that if she follows through with it, will automatically annul her marriage. Elbaz then suggests a trip overland to Worms, where the case can be heard again on Esther-Minna�s home turf by a real rabbinical court. He is so confident of his own abilities as a litigator that he is willing to take his client�s case into the heartland of the enemy.
These are fateful days: If the future of both a family relationship and a lucrative commercial partnership hang in the balance, there is also a feeling that the "balance of power" between the Jews of Ashkenaz and those from the Islamic South is also being put to the test by the dispute. Widening the circle yet more, it is the period of the year when tradition says the life of every Jew hangs in balance; at the same time the Jews of Europe are anxiously watching their Christian neighbors, who in turn are in deep trepidation regarding the impending year�s end.
Yehoshua creates, thus, an appropriately ominous atmosphere, and tinges it with irony, as the traveling party passes through places like Verdun and the Somme, names that have such horrific associations for us today. On their return they spend Yom Kippur with a medieval physician, a converted Jew who apparently has the gift of prophecy. He tells the Jews from Morocco that they will live, but pointing to a group of local Jews who have joined them in prayer, he declares, "These will not live," that when Jesus does not return at the millennium, his followers will go to his burial place, in the Land of Israel. "And so that Europe is not abandoned to the mercy of the Jews, who will remain here alone, the faithful will have to kill them all." Yehoshua is anticipating the Crusades of a century later, of course, but the reader may think of more contemporary wholesale slaughter of Jews in the heart of Europe too. The effect is unsettling, for we know things, many things, that the narrator does not.
Whatever one may think of polygamy, it�s hard not to root for Ben Attar to prevail in court. He is shrewd and tough, but he is a loving husband to his wives, both of whom have an airbrushed quality of luscious sensuality, the impersonality of which is not helped by their being referred to only as "the first wife" and "the second wife." (On the other hand, lest one accuse Yehoshua of sexism, the second wife testifies to a judge that while she has no problem being one of two wives, she can�t understand why she can�t take a second husband as well.) And one can�t help but be moved by the lengths Ben Attar goes to save his relationship with his beloved nephew Abulafia.
Though our modern sensibilities and values would be expected to direct our sympathies to the Jews of the North, they come off as highly rigid, legalistic Jews -- not unfeeling monsters, but people who have forgotten the spirit of the law for its letter. Sound like anyone we know?
Does Yehoshua accurately recreate the period he�s describing? Who can say? It certainly worked for me. In this lyrically stunning translation by Nicholas de Lange, he has brought us closer to our brethren of a thousand years ago, showing us not only the many ways in which we are different from them, but also how much we share - in our drives, desires and fears; as well as in religious belief and ritual. He makes us care deeply about these characters, perhaps even more so because they live in a time far more innocent than ours.
At the book�s end, Ben Attar sets sail for home after a momentous European visit. He is distracted, but not so much as not to be dismayed by the new cargo taken on by his partner Abu Lutfi for the return trip while he has been preoccupied with family affairs: slaves, white "pagans" from Europe, to be brought back to Africa. Ben Attar�s silence signals his tacit acceptance of his new line of business as slave trader. The age of innocence is already on the wane.
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