One morning when he was walking idly back to his lodging place he happened to pass through the fonduk of Genoa, now largely empty because of the war between Genoa and Pisa, and he discovered that a group of Jews, newcomers from France, had taken residence in one of the unused caravanserais. He had never really spoken to a Jew, nor had any of his ancestors, since that day in 1099 when Volkmar I had tried vainly to save some of the Jews found in Ma Coeur, but Gunter had slain them and for nearly two hundred years no Jew had lived there.
Having nothing better to do Volkmar wandered over to the newcomers, who had set up a dyeing plant which produced handsome fabrics, and began chatting with them in French. To his surprise one of the men, thin and with a dark beard, showed a willingness to talk—even an eagerness—and Volkmar lounged against a pillar and tried to discover why the Jew and his friends had adventured into Acre.
“This is our homeland,” the Jew explained.
“Where were you born?”
“Paris.”
“I should think Paris would be your homeland,” Volkmar suggested.
“This is the land of the Jews,” the bearded one said, tapping the stones of Acre.
Volkmar laughed. “It’s the land of the Italians, that much we know. And the Franks. And the Germans …” He hesitated.
“And the Arabs,” the Jew added laughingly. “They seem to own more of it than anyone else.”
“In spite of this, you call it home?” Volkmar continued.
“Yes. All during my life in Paris we said each night, ‘To next year in Jerusalem.’ So one day I decided to come.”
“What is a Jew?” Volkmar asked, in sudden concern.
The dyer looked up from his work, wiped his hands and came to the knight. “Maimonides says …”
“Who’s Maimonides?”
“A great thinker … lived here in Acre in the last century.”
“Were there Jews in Acre … then?”
“Of course. Maimonides came here after fleeing from Spain.”
“Were there Jews in Spain?”
“Of course. After they were driven from the Holy Land they went to Spain.”
“Who drove them from the Holy Land?” Volkmar asked. He knew that his ancestors had killed enormous numbers but he had never heard …
The Jew ignored the question and said, “Maimonides drew up a list of thirteen marks which identify the Jew. They are …”
“Why do you remember the rules? Are you a priest?”
The bearded Jew looked at the knight and smiled. For two centuries this Crusader’s family had lived in the Jewish homeland, yet he did not know that Jews no longer had priests. The Jew made no comment, but returned to his list, ticking off the marks on his fingers: “A Jew believes in God. That He is one alone, has no physical form, and is eternal. Only God may be worshiped, but the words of His prophets are to be obeyed. Of these prophets Moses our Teacher was greatest, and the laws which came to him at Sinai came directly from God. The Jew obeys this law of Moses. He believes that God is all-knowing, all-powerful. He believes in reward and punishment, both in this world and hereafter. He believes that the Messiah will come and that then the dead shall rise.”
“I believe most of that,” Volkmar said. “Where’s the difference?” The Jew looked hesitantly at the Catholic church of SS. Peter and Andrew and was inclined not to reply lest he offend the knight, but Volkmar sensing this said, “Go ahead. I’m not a priest.”
The Jew moved closer, wiped his hands again and said, “You believe that God is three, that in the body of Jesus He took human form, and that in such form God can be worshiped. We don’t.”
Instinctively Count Volkmar drew away from the Jew. Blasphemy had been spoken in his presence, and he suffered at the utterance of the intemperate words. He was at first tempted to leave the man, run away, and then he, too, saw the church at which he and Muzaffar had prayed, and it seemed strange that the Christians could share a church with Muslims, whom they were fighting to the death, but could not possibly do so with Jews, from whom Christianity had sprung. He stemmed his impending flight and asked, “Why do we hate you Jews so deeply?”
The bearded one replied, “Because we bear testimony that God is one. We were placed among you by God to serve as that reminder.”
The discussion continued for some time, after which Volkmar walked thoughtfully to his room in the Venetian fonduk. He sought out Muzaffar, and they went together to pray, after which they ate in a house run by Italians from a town near Venice. During the meal Volkmar asked, “How do Muslims treat Jews?”
“Muhammad was very just in his attitude,” the old trader answered, throwing the end of his turban back as he prepared to drink wine. “You know, of course, that Muhammad had a Jewish wife.” The conversation continued with truths and half-truths and Damascus folklore. It was Muzaffar’s opinion that much Islamic teaching had been borrowed directly from the Jews.
Acre grew increasingly hot, and each morning Volkmar said, “Today I must go home,” but he found excuses for discussing military matters with the leaders of the religious orders, and there was the constant invitation of the Circassian girl, long-legged and vibrant in bed, and he remained in the city, always hiding from himself the real reason for his delay: he was finding intellectual pleasure in his random conversations with the Jew at the dyeing vats. Of all the residents of Acre in that vital, doomed summer only this Jew seemed to be contemplating the universal problems of life and death, of God and the humility of man; and Volkmar wanted to talk about these things.
“Do the thirteen rules of your Maimonides keep me from heaven?” he asked one day.
“Oh no!” the Jew cried eagerly. “While he was living here in Acre, Maimonides said plainly, ‘God is near to everyone who turns to Him. He is found by anyone who seeks Him and turns not aside.’ ”
“You are more generous than we,” Volkmar replied.
“Maimonides also said, in a letter to a man much like you—a non-Jew who loved God—that this man was as much the charge of God as any Jew. He wrote, ‘If our descent is from Abraham, your descent is from God Himself.’ ”
“Do you believe that?” Volkmar asked.
“I believe that you are the personal child of God, even though you spend your nights with the Pisan whore.”
Volkmar was tempted to strike the Jew, but he spoke with such authority that to molest him would be a sin. “How do you know these things about me?” the knight asked.
“Because I have wondered who you were, what trouble haunts you,” the Jew said.
“Acre haunts me,” Volkmar replied. “How long shall you and I be here?”
“Not long,” the Jew said. “And when the Mamelukes storm through the gates”—he looked at the small stone gate leading into the deserted caravanserai—“you may perhaps escape. Not I.”
“Then why don’t you flee Acre now?”
“Because this is my homeland,” the Jew replied.
That day there was no more talk, but on the next morning, as Volkmar wandered back from the Pisan fonduk, the Jew remarked, “You and I look upon death with such different views that I wonder if you would care to see one of my manuscripts?”
It was a peculiar question, for the two halves did not seem to correlate, but Volkmar, having nothing better to do, assented and the Jew led him to a mean hovel which the Genoese had deserted at the beginning of their war with the Venetians, but the meanness was only external. Inside, the Jew’s wife had made a clean, good home, along whose farthest wall rested a collection of manuscripts which even in that day were practically beyond price. The bearded Jew took down one and showed its pages to Volkmar, parchment leaves on which not Hebrew but Arabic letters had been beautifully written from right to left. Pointing to a special page the Jew said, “These words are for you and me in this hot summer.”
Volkmar took the folio and read the remarkable passage in which Maimonides considered the case of Rhases, the cynical Arab who had written down a list of every evil thing in the w
orld: war, famine, lust, betrayal, the Arab had listed them all, and at the end he had concluded that evil in the world outweighed good, that hope was irrational and that it would have been better if man had not been created. Volkmar laughed and said, “Seeing the anarchy in this city I would agree with Rhases.”
The Jew took back the folio and read what Maimonides had replied to this reaction: “ ‘Such reasoning stems from narrow parochialism. A man looks at his own fate, or at what happens to his friend, or at the disasters facing the whole human race, and he thinks: This is decisive in the vastness of things. Or a man finds that in his life unhappiness predominates, and he judges the universe from that experience.’ ” The Jew’s voice rose to heights of power as he thundered: “ ‘But we are not the center of the universe, you and I, neither as individuals nor as the representatives of the whole human race. God’s universe must be considered as one great whole composed of interrelated parts, and its majestic purpose is not the gratification of our puny selves.’ ”
Impulsively Volkmar wrested the manuscript from the Jew and read the words with his own eyes. “What do you call yourself?”
“Rabbi,” the Jew replied.
“And you are a follower of this Maimonides?”
“No. He was merely a Jew who once lived in Acre, no better than you or I, but more intelligent perhaps. I am a follower of God, Who is one, Who sees us as we stand here, Who has the future of this town in His hands.”
“I have been growing more hopeful, recently,” Volkmar lied. “The crops are good. Trade’s good. I’ve begun to think the truce will hold.”
“This city?” the rabbi laughed. “With eleven armies and seven foreign policies? I don’t worry about truce with the Mamelukes. I worry about truce with ourselves.” He shrugged his shoulders.
“Then why do you stay?” Volkmar pressed, and as he spoke, the great iron bell of SS. Peter and Andrew began tolling.
“Because this town, such as it is, is Eretz Israel.” The ponderous iron bell was joined by one of bronze pealing at a merrier tempo from the Coptic church.
“What do those words mean?” Volkmar asked.
“Maimonides explained it. ‘Eretz Israel, the land of the Jews, accepts no foreign nation or language. It reserves itself for its own sons.’ So your castle, even when the Mamelukes besiege it, can never be …”
“Don’t!” the count cried, putting his hands over his ears to keep out words which he himself had uttered: the castle was not his home nor had the Crusaders made Palestine theirs by any sensible occupation; but as he stood thus with his ears covered, the bells of Acre began pealing from all directions and he realized that news of moment had arrived. He could hear clamor in the street and regardless of its significance he wanted to be with his own people; and he left the house of Judaism, so battered on the outside, so clean and perceptive inside.
He ran toward the Venetian quarter, where many were gathered while the bells rose to a paean of jubilation, and soon he saw knights running from the various quarters, shouting, “The Crusaders have arrived!” And he joined the cheering, for there, rounding the Tower of Flies which protected the anchorage, came the fleet from Europe. At the critical moment, as had so often happened in Acre’s history, substantial reinforcements were at hand.
As the bells danced in their steeples with noisy glee the first ship tied up to the Venetian dock, and Volkmar noticed an ominous fact: the captain and crew showed none of the elation customary at the end of this dangerous voyage. Mechanically they tied the ropes and sighed as at the conclusion of a dirty business, and soon the knights of Acre were to understand why.
At Rome, Nicholas IV, the first Franciscan Pope in history, had hoped to make a name for himself by preaching a fiery Crusade that would finally wrest Jerusalem from the infidel, but he was unlucky in his timing, because none of the kings he had hoped to attract had any intention of leaving home. England, which in the past had provided many stalwart knights, offered no response whatever, for the English ruler was preoccupied with Scottish matters. In France, the birthplace of Crusaders, business was good and after the death of St. Louis the French had lost all stomach for Jerusalem. Aragon was engaged in open war with the papacy, while relations between Genoa and Venice had again degenerated into warfare. From all the countries of Europe, Pope Nicholas had been able to find only one nest of volunteers, and these came not from knightly families but from a cluster of backward villages in northern Italy, so this culminating Crusade consisted not of warriors but of sixteen hundred illiterate peasants who knew nothing of Jerusalem and less of Acre.
When the gangplanks were lowered and the triumphant army straggled ashore, the citizens of Acre gasped. Slack-jawed men, bowed from toil in field and shop, the Italian peasants straggled onto the Holy Land. Without leadership, without any arms but knives and clubs, the riffraff landed, listened to the bells, stretched their still wobbly legs and asked, “Where’s the infidel?”
Through one of God’s inscrutable stage directions, some of the mob fanning out through the city happened onto the church of SS. Peter and Andrew, where they entered to give thanks for their deliverance from the sea. As they knelt they saw in the chapel opposite the prostrate figure of the Damascus merchant, Muzaffar, praying at the little Muslim mosque. One of the Italians dashed back to the door of the church, screaming, “The infidels are upon us!” on which the others unsheathed their daggers and lunged at Muzaffar, slashing him severely across the right shoulder. The startled Arab ran crying from the church, pursued by the Crusaders, whereupon others, seeing the Muslim with his sword arm covered with blood, concluded that the Arab had killed a Christian and leaped at him with their daggers and swords, and would have killed him had not Volkmar jumped forward to save the old man.
The local knights, apprehensive over what might develop if the peasants got out of hand, moved among the rioters and tried to calm them, but the crusading spirit was alive and they burst out of control, storming through the town, for on the day they had sailed from Europe they had been promised certain heaven if they killed an infidel, and they could see that the infidel was among them. “Hold them off!” the leader of the Templars shouted, and his knights formed barriers while bells lent music to the confusion, but the mob swung unexpectedly to the north, where two Syrian priests happened to be leaving the church of St. Mark of Antioch and their unfamiliar robes convinced the mob that here were infidels, and the two were slaughtered.
The massacre, that hot August day, was paralyzing. Armenian Christians whose families had lived in Acre for two centuries were slain. Mameluke ambassadors from Cairo, Mameluke emissaries in town to arrange trade treaties with the Venetians, were beheaded amid scenes of fire and cheering. Arab merchants on whom the prosperity of the city depended were stabbed to death, and churches which could not be easily identified as either Christian or Muslim were sacked. The delicate balance on which Acre existed, attained after so many decades of patient adjustment, was shattered in an afternoon.
At the height of the riot Count Volkmar thought of the improvised Jewish settlement in the fonduk of Genoa, and for reasons which he could not fully have explained he gathered some Templars and hurried there, only to find that the new Crusaders were storming through the place and screaming, “Kill the Jews! They killed Jesus!” Volkmar rushed to the mean hovel in which the rabbi lived, but he arrived too late. The rabbi was dead. The manuscripts were burned.
The Italians, riotous with victory and still unaware of what they had accomplished, were finally herded into the Pisan quarter, where they sang Crusader hymns while the iron bell of SS. Peter and Andrew concluded its dirge. When they sought the king, so that he could praise them for their fidelity, some of the older knights began arresting the leaders of the mob, hoping that by delivering them to the Mamelukes disaster could be forestalled, but the Italians resisted arrest, crying, “We were sent to kill Muslims and we’ve killed them. Take us not to jail but to Jerusalem.”
When news of the massacre reached Cairo the Mameluke
s refused even to discuss resumption of the truce; ambassadors sent from Acre with apologies were allowed to die in prison. Any possible reason for allowing Christians to remain in the Holy Land had been surrendered in the massacre, and St. Jean d’Acre must be finally eliminated. When this fiat reached the city the knights knew that barring a miracle their days in the Holy Land were ended. “Oh, God,” prayed the surviving priests, “why did those fateful ships not sink in the harbor before leaving Italy?” And all inside the walls made preparation for the final tragedy.
Count Volkmar, nursing a cut left arm which one of the new Crusaders had given him as he rescued Muzaffar, summoned his men and prepared for the doleful journey home, but before he left he felt that he must say good-bye to the tall Circassian girl, so he climbed the stairs of the Pisan caravanserai, but found there that the Italians had come upon this lively Christian as she wore a Circassian robe and had of course slaughtered her. Gravely he bowed to the other girls, then walked to the castle, where from the king’s general he obtained a basket of pigeons which he carried with him as he went to SS. Peter and Andrew for his final prayers. As the bells of the city pealed their litanies he led his men out through the walls of Acre, that cherished city, that strange abomination, and each man suspected that he would not again visit those walls, those gleaming turrets that so captivated the imagination.