A Journey to the End of the Millennium by A. B. Yehoshua

Seventy days and upward had passed since the ancient guardship had set sail from Tangier to ride the wild ocean waves so bravely toward a distant town named Paris, yet amid all the hardships that had visited the expedition, by sea and by land, Ben Attar had not known a single moment when he stood so alone, without rabbi or fellow worshipers, without business partner or nephew, without servant or sea captain, without horses or congregation, without even a house of prayer. Placed under a ban in the heart of an alien land, with his cargo-laden ship far away, pent up in the harbor of Paris. And all this a few hours before the start of the Day of Atonement, behind a little church built of grayish timbers, staring brokenheartedly at the wife of his youth wrestling with a fire like a servant while his second wife lay in pain in the house of an apostate physician. Although he wished with all his being that he could blame himself for what was befalling them all, because of his obstinate urge to demonstrate to the world the depth of his love not only for his two wives but for his nephew, he felt that he did not have the right, whether in defeat or in victory, to detract from the force of the destiny that had guided him, for good or for ill, since the day of his birth.

Ben Attar, a Jewish merchant living in North Africa, sets sail for Paris. Until now, he has done his business by sailing to Spain, where he would meet his nephew Abulafia. But Abulafia has recently married, and the new wife, a beautiful widow named Mistress Esther-Minna, has declared a repudiation--which, though I'm not totally sure what it is, carries a legal and religious force--on Ben Attar for having two wives. Incensed and eager to reestablish his business, Ben Attar intends to confront Abulafia's new wife, and has brought along both of his wives, along with a learned Spanish rabbi whose arguments will persuade her to drop the repudiation, the rabbi's young son, his Muslim business partner Abu Lufti, and an enslaved black boy--and a couple of camels.

All this happens against the backdrop of the coming millennium: not the millennium for Ben Attar, for whom it's the year four thousand-and-something, but for the Christians of Europe, who have been worked up into a fever in the anticipation of Christ's return. The Europe that Ben Attar moves through is a strange and foreign place, where he has trouble communicating even with the Jews, and where many of his former coreligionists have converted for fear of being slaughtered at the coming of the millennium. Israeli writer A. B. Yehoshua treats this background with a light touch; it's never really at the forefront of the story, and yet it hangs menacingly over the merchant's journey. When his younger wife sickens, Ben Attar stops at the house of a converted physician in Verdun, and when he asks whether she'll survive, the physician says, She will live, but them--referring to a gathering of German Jews who have gathered to make a minyan for Rosh Hashanah prayers--they will not live.

There's much to admire about A Journey to the End of the Millennium: For one, I loved a glimpse of a a wide medieval world separate from the courtly hall or monasteries that you might expect to find in a book set in the Middle Ages. Yehoshua depicts a medieval Europe characterized by diversity and free movement; how fascinating to see Ben Attar work contentedly alongside his Muslim partner, at the same time he feuds with the northern Jews he cannot understand. In Ben Attar's slave child there are intimations of modern atrocity, but toward the book's end, we learn that Abu Lufti has restocked the cargo hold with blond, blue-eyed slaves from Eastern Europe, and we are reminded that this world is not one we can take for granted as familiar. I was also struck by the prose, with its long sentences and concentrically nestled clauses, which, if not medieval in style, seem charmingly antiquated. It's remarkably engaging for having a kind of intended stodginess, even more remarkably for containing, when rounding down, zero dialogue.

But more than this I was touched by the novel's picture of human desire and grief. Ben Attar is shrewd and businesslike, but deep down he loves both of his wives intensely, and the repudiation of his nephew has wounded him sharply. Abulafia, in turn, has married Esther-Minna in the wake of the suicide of his own wife, who has left behind their mute and troubled daughter. The uncle and nephew share both intense love and intense grief, and these qualities simultaneously drive them toward each other and keep them from being able to reconcile. Even Esther-Minna, whose repudiation is driven by the fear that her husband will leave her--for business, perhaps, or by taking on a second wife, like his uncle--is touchingly recognizable. While the Christians of Europe wait for the grand drama of the apocalypse to unfold, the North African merchant and his compatriots live smaller lives, more sweet and more painful because they are lived on a human scale.

Final note: with the addition of Israel, my "countries read" list is up to 82!