‘The carpenter took away the empty dish in front of Nathan, sat down and said, “A brave hunter once rescued a bear from the jaws of a mighty dragon. The bear was filled with gratitude and followed the hunter with devotion. The two became companions, sharing meals and hunting together. In town, when the hunter went to sell his wares and buy sugar, bread and tobacco, people marvelled at how docile the bear was, as faithful to the hunter as a dog would be. However, some of them warned him, saying, the fondness of fools – meaning the bear – is deceiving. He dismissed these words as envy. On a particularly hot night when many flies were buzzing around, the hunter lay down to sleep in a clearing in the forest. The flies annoyed him, fluttering around his nostrils and disturbing his sleep. Seeing this, the faithful bear sat next to the hunter and swatted the flies away. He would not let a single fly settle on the hunter’s face. He waved his paws, but one fly was particularly persistent. No matter how many times he swiped at it, it buzzed and ducked down to the hunter’s face. The bear became more and more angry. That wretched fly! If only he could be rid of it once and for all. He picked up a rock and brought it down on the fly. The rock smashed the hunter’s face into pulp.’’

‘Nathan pondered this advice from the carpenter and on the following morning sent the lad back to the village. From now on, he would travel to Jerusalem alone. When he reached the sea, Nathan began to search for a ship on which he could set sail. He found that he would have to wait. This delay gave him time to work as a porter and earn more money for the journey. It was not easy to work while dragging around his heavy chains. Often, the snippets of stories he heard among the sailors and other porters distracted him from his struggles.

‘Once, he overheard an elderly sailor say to another, “When I say island, you no doubt imagine solid land, surrounded by water, but this place was not like that. It was soppy like snow, the air as thick as fog, the vegetation brittle and sparse. On that island, a giant ape was trapped and its cries were as eerie as the blowing wind. They pierced the heart of anyone who heard them. But instead of invoking terror, these screams sounded like convoluted laments, the anguish in them was such that anyone who heard them was struck down with a broken heart. Grown men would sob like babes and collapse utterly helpless. Too smitten to feel hunger or thirst, many eventually perished. The island was sloppy and airy, neither water nor solid, the only hard objects were the human skulls and bones strewn about. The few who escaped this island could not talk for three months. They could only weep with a sense of terrible loss. It was the sound of the trapped ape they kept hearing. It echoed in their ears for the rest of their lives.”