Here’s a new scene from The Atternen Juez Talen, translated out of MetaEnglish poetry into standard prose.
These events take place in the hills outside of Genoa, where Saadya, the Eternal Jew and his wife Batkol have settled. The year is about 1420 CE.
While I be bent to a draftin' desk, pourin' thru maps ...
Batkol set out on a different route. Leavin' such chaos and madness to me, she discovered that herbs and cures from extracts, infusions, oils and salves be well-developed in Liguria's hills....
So off she gone a second time, out to see them sorcerous dames, me absorbed in work, and yet concerned for her wanderin' alone. And my worries increased day by day, til after a week my mind won't bend to interpretin' sketches and decipherin' scrawl.
After mornin’ prayers I'm sittin' at the bench, and I thrown up my hands.
"I gotta find my wife, now gone over a week. That ain't right. I'm worried sick."
Out the door and up the road I hustles. I remembers a town up the river where she first gone to learn about healers in the hills. Walkin' all night, I arrived the next day, and begun askin' about women that heal. Well, men, they don't know a pimple from a pox. But women, soon as they hear me ask where that healer dwelt, they clams right up, all suspicious and evil eyes.
So nothin' for it. I'm up the road to a further hamlet. There I tells some juicy yarns about my wife. I exaggerates just a teeny bit, sayin', a wonder healer she be, with many a potion to soothe the soul. There's chitter and chatter a-plenty now. That gone on for a day or some, when a miserable crone come beggin' me to brang some potions for her sickly girl.
"I'll send my wife in a fortnight or so."
says I, and her shoulder sags like a roof on a rotten hut; she's all dismayed.
"That won't do, oh no, not at all. I needs them remedies right away. Guess I must go to that sorcerer,"
says she, and I mumbles,
"Suit yourself."
But soft and secret I watch her close. The very next morn she's out the door and up the road and down some trail and onto paths only animals use, and come to that witch.
I expected to find Batkol inside, when I knocked and gone in. And there, that witch starts screamin' at me, and pulls a knife, howlin' the while like some wild and injured animal --
What the hell was Batkol doin' there amongst such souls untouched by God? --
Thankfully, my walkin' stick kept that hyena woman at bay while I drags Batkol down the trail a ways, til she collapsed. I carried her -- fragile as a dried out stick of birch -- til I couldn't hear them howls no more. Then I built a litter to lay her on and drag her nice and comfortable thru them hills and hamlets and towns. Many a gasp and askance look we drawn, but nary an offer of help -- like I been some brute that beat my wife -- til we come to the outskirts of Genoa, where I hired a wagon for the cobbled streets.