A Traveler at the Gates of Wisdom

by John Boyne

  On the morning of our wedding, I presented her with the piece that I had been working on, placing it carefully around her neck. It was one of the most beautiful necklaces that I had yet designed. Five rectangular panels chained together, and I had employed a texture hammer to craft images of Artemis and Aphrodite on the left pairing, Hera and Selene on the right, and in the center I had chiseled the face of Ishtar, the Queen of Heaven, a goddess worshipped by the people of Mesopotamia some thousand years before. Inlaid at the top of each panel was a single pearl I had collected from the sea, diving to capture hundreds of oysters until I found the perfect mollusk, and at its heart that most unusual of jewels, the blue pearl with a pink overtone that seemed rich in history. Larissa wept when she saw what I had created for her and I cried, too, for we loved each other deeply, and I thanked the gods for the knowledge that, by nightfall, we would belong to each other forever.

  * * *

  • • •

  Ours was not the first marriage my family was to celebrate that year, for the betrothal had just been announced of my older sister, Abira, to the head of our army, Atlium. It seemed like a poor match to me, since Atlium was more than ten years older than she and already had four children with his first wife, who had jumped from the rocks to her death a few days after discovering that she was bearing a fifth.

  Abira didn’t care much for the idea either, knowing that she was being taken on as little more than a nursemaid to a group of motherless infants, but my father insisted and, of course, it was not her place to question the wisdom of men. Flania had pointed out that, approaching twenty years of age, this might be Abira’s last opportunity to find a husband.

  “Who says I even want one?” said my sister, rolling her eyes in annoyance. She was an ill-tempered creature at the best of times but talk of marriage had only increased her irritability.

  “What kind of girl does not want a husband?” cried my mother in reply, throwing her hands in the air, as if she could not believe the ingratitude of her stepdaughter. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  On the day that Abira’s engagement was announced, I discovered her sitting on her bed, weeping at the prospect of the life that lay ahead for her, and tried to console her by pointing out that, as Atlium was already thirty, he would surely die soon and then she would be free to return to her old life.

  “But the children,” she said, her face a mask of distress. “The moment he travels to the next world, they will become my responsibility. You think I want to be stuck with four mouths to feed?”

  “Then what do you want?” I asked, confused, for like my mother I could not conceive of a girl who did not long for a man to marry, a home to keep and children to care for. And although I sometimes found Abira’s deep attachment to me unsettling, I cared for her and hated to see her so unhappy.

  She shook her head now and looked me in the eye, and it was as if she were trying to see deep into my soul.

  “If I told you,” she said quietly, “you might be shocked.”

  “I’m not easily shocked.”

  “Then perhaps I should tell you my idea.”

  “I want to hear it.”

  “Even if it’s something that the gods might not approve of?”

  “We don’t know the minds of the gods, Sister,” I pointed out, taking her hands in my own. “Just tell me. It might not be as scandalous as you think.”

  She hesitated for a long time before speaking.

  “Do you remember that afternoon in the mountains?” she asked eventually.

  I stood up, releasing her hands as if they were flames. We had agreed never to discuss the matter again and I, for the most part, had locked the memory away in a part of my mind that I did not care to revisit. The incident in question had taken place a couple of years earlier. I had been walking through the forest, searching for peculiar and interesting stones that I could use for my jewelry, when I heard the sound of muffled screams in the distance. I followed their echo and, to my horror, discovered my sister being pressed up against a tree by a fat pig of a boy, Heevin, who was attempting to perform the marriage act with her against her will. I stood there, transfixed at first, not quite understanding what was taking place, for I was still young at the time and uncertain of the way of these things, but then she turned her head in agony and saw me standing there, watching. The expression on her face was one of such pain that I knew I had to act.

  I looked around, searching the ground for something I might use as a weapon, and settled on a heavy rock that I could just about carry between my hands. I ran back and, before Heevin could turn around to stop me, smashed it down upon the back of his head. He stumbled, reaching a hand slowly around to his neck, before turning to stare at me with despair and confusion in his eyes, and then falling to the ground, dead.

  Both Abira and I had stared down at him in shock before she turned away, pulling her clothes back together. When I asked her what had happened, she told me that she had been out searching for fresh mushrooms when she heard the sound of footsteps behind her. She knew the boy—we all knew him—for he had been discourteous to her on many occasions in the past, calling her vile names and telling her the things that he would do to her if she were his wife. When she saw him following her, she knew immediately that he meant her harm. She ordered him away but he refused and, before she knew it, he was pushing her up against the tree, ripping at her clothes and trying to put his toolie inside her. Which was when I appeared.

  We ran from that place, Abira and I, and when Heevin’s body was discovered a few days later, no one knew who had attacked him, or why. Some said it was a forest spirit, others that a bird had taken on human form when he tried to steal from its nest, attacking him for his larceny. But Abira and I knew the truth and revealed it to no one.

  “I never think of that,” I told her now. “And I don’t wish to discuss it. As far as I’m concerned, it never happened.”

  “But it did,” she said. “You saved me then, Brother, and you could save me again. It would be an act of love on your part, not of cruelty.”

  I stared at her, feeling that sense of disorder that she often occasioned in me, for Abira was a strange creature, one whom I had never fully understood. What was she asking of me now? To kill the man she was to marry?

  Later that day, as I saw Atlium engaged in conversation with my father, planning the wedding feast, I feared what she might do to him in the future. Or what she might ask me to do on her behalf.

  * * *

  • • •

  After our marriage ceremony, Larissa and I walked hand in hand along the road that led to the tip of the peninsula. We had not yet told any of our friends or my family that I had put a baby inside her and as we stood there, my hand pressed against her belly, I felt more happiness than I knew was possible.

  “When this one is born,” I said, “and when you are well again, we will create another life, and another after that, and another after that. We will teach each child the order of the plants, the birds and the animals, and they will look after us when we grow old.”

  “Will you be strict with him?” she asked me, for she was certain from the manner in which the fingers on her right hand tingled in the mornings that our first child would be a boy.

  “Strict, but never cruel,” I said. “He will learn that there is more to the world than war and, if we have luck on our side, he will never have to fight in one.”

  Larissa shook her head. “There are always wars,” she sighed. “When one finishes, another begins. Such is the destiny of boys. They all die young.”

  “I didn’t,” I said.

  She smiled and we kissed, looking out across the sea toward the island of Crete, which lay far in the distance. It was a place of which I had heard many stories, and I hoped to visit it one day. An unexpected sound burst through the air and, when I looked up, it surprised me to see how all the birds
in the sky were flying in the same direction, toward the east of our village.

  “They’re scared,” I said, confused by their uniform pattern. “Something has frightened them.”

  “Tomorrow, we must tell your mother and father our news,” said Larissa, less interested in the unusual behavior of the flock than I. “They will want to know that they are to be grandparents.”

  “Yes, tomorrow,” I agreed, as the sound of the birds squawking overhead became even louder and more disconcerting.

  “Husband,” said Larissa, looking out into the sea. She gripped my arm suddenly, her tension growing. “What is that?”

  It was a fine day and I stared out, uncertain what I was looking at. Where usually the sky met the sea at the place of the horizon, now both seemed to have been replaced by a great white wall, rising higher by the moment. My mind could not make sense of it. I knew this view like I knew my own reflection and, through storms and tempests, I had never witnessed anything to compare with this before. It was as if the Earth were rising up and closing over onto itself. We watched in horror as the wall of water drew ever closer and Larissa let out a scream when we realized that the sea had drawn itself up into a single great tide and was charging toward us, preparing to swallow us within its frosted surf.

  “Run,” I said, grabbing her by the hand, and we raced back along the path in the direction from which we had come, but every time I looked around, the waves had grown taller and taller, until they almost reached the sky. It was the end of the world; I was certain of it.

  “Wait!” cried Larissa, slowing down and pressing a hand against her stomach as I tried to drag her along. “The baby.”

  I turned to urge her to follow me, but before the words could leave my mouth the waters had fallen upon us, our hands separated and we were washed away.

  GUATEMALA

  A.D. 420

  I SLEPT BADLY, my dreams poisoned by memories of the great shaking of the ground, and when I rose, the people of my village had not yet emerged from the darkness of the night. I felt a weakness in my stomach and forced myself to eat some of the plantains and queso blanco that my kindhearted aunt, Nála, had left out for me the night before. The flavors were rich and my body awoke quickly as they roused my senses; in my grief I had been depriving myself of sustenance, but the piquancy of the food forced me back into a life that I wanted only to abandon. When my plate was empty, I longed for more, so I plucked some ripe avocados from the trees as I made my daily pilgrimage to the other side of Yax Mutal.

  The journey to the North Acropolis took me past the workshop where I had spent the last few years crafting sandals for both men and women to wear. It was a lucrative trade, one that I enjoyed, and I had grown highly skilled in my work. From a young age, I’d found myself fashioning footwear for my mother and sister and, although my father had beaten me for it, it was my passion, a revelation that further diminished me in his eyes.

  “Sandals,” he would remark, spitting the word out as if it were a sour taste on his tongue. “That a son of mine should waste his time on something so trivial.”

  “You would prefer to cut the soles of your feet against the sharp stones that lie along our pathways?” I asked him, for as I grew older and more confident I began to take some pleasure in goading him. “If bloody feet are what you prefer, Father, then you may give me back the pair that you wear this very day.”

  The task itself was both complex and beguiling. I paid a hunter to bring me the hides of animals, which I would cure over a number of days, de-liming them first in a paddle before tanning and dyeing them and placing a cork sole beneath the skin. My great flair, however, was in turning the sandals from the functional to the beautiful; in order to achieve this transformation, I hired village boys to collect as many colored stones and bits of glass from the beaches as they could, which I would then bead into the stitching. Men preferred their sandals to be plain but women loved my decorative touches and competed with each other for the finest pieces. My order book was always full and, once, when I discovered a blue pearl with a pink overtone and laced it into the toe of the right shoe, I was paid so much money for my work that I could have easily abandoned my trade for several months and suffered no diminishment of my livelihood.

  My workshop had been closed, however, since the great shaking, a phenomenon that the gods had sent to claim the life of my wife, Latra, and our unborn child, along with those of many more of my neighbors. My days since had been filled with sorrow, my nights with weeping, and when friends came to offer solace, I sent them away, frustrated by their attempts to comfort me. More than once, I had spoken roughly with these good people and, although I despised myself for such fits of distemper, I could find no warmth inside my soul.

  Latra and I had only been married a few hours when the noises began to sound from beneath us and, at first, we had laughed, for it seemed as if the Earth were grumbling from hunger. But then cracks began to appear in the streets, great fissures that ripped at the earth beneath our feet. I watched in horror as some of our older neighbors, those who were not fleet of foot, fell screaming into the crevices that opened up and led to the core of the world. None of us knew what was happening but we ran toward the safety of our homes, even as the temples and stone houses tumbled around us. We had almost reached our hut when Latra cried out that she needed to stop, that the baby was hurting from within, and foolishly I agreed that we should pause. She sat down to catch her breath while I ran to the well to fetch cold water to soothe her forehead, but when I returned, she was lying on the ground, an enormous stone from that same building having fallen upon her. Her eyes were open, blood was running down her forehead, but all life had been extinguished. I was certain that the end of the world was upon us. It was not, of course, for by nightfall the land had fallen still once again and it was left to those of us who remained to gather the bodies of our dead and carry them, in dumbfounded grief, to the burial grounds.

  For weeks now, I had walked every day to the Acropolis, where Latra had been laid to rest, and sat by her grave, talking quietly to her in the vain hope that her spirit would hear my words and respond, perhaps through whispers on the wind or the symbolic appearance of a glorious quetzal that might sit upon my shoulder and sing in a language that none but I might understand.

  Others came throughout the day, too, visiting the resting places of their loved ones, but most ignored this part of the graveyard, where the common people lay, and made their way instead to the central area, where the great towers and ornamental sarcophagi stood, beneath which lay the bones of the great family of ajaws who had ruled our land in the past. These dilettantes would make a huge show of laying flowers and keening histrionically over the graves so that the guardsmen could see both their devotion to Storm Sky, who ruled over us now, and their eternal fidelity to the memory of Spearthrower Owl, the greatest ajaw of them all, under whose eternal benevolence the world continued to thrive. I despised their posturing, for what did they know of true grief? Their displays were the stuff of theatre and, had I the energy, I would have marched over to decry their stupidity, but, of course, I did nothing, said nothing, saving myself for hushed conversations with my beloved, silent Latra instead.

  As I sat by her burial place, I thought of Orpheus. Like me, he was an artist, one whose heart was filled with music, and like me, he had lost the woman he loved on their wedding day, Eurydice, when she was bitten by a snake and died. Afterward, Orpheus could play only mournful music and the gods, in a moment of tenderness, allowed him to plead his case for her return to the world of the living. Won over by his suffering, they granted his wish but with one stipulation: that he must walk ahead of Eurydice, not looking on her face until they were back on mortal terrain. He could not resist, however, turning back too soon, and the moment he laid eyes on his beloved, she disappeared forever.

  The gods would not allow me any such entreatment. Latra was lost to me, and so I had decided that to
day would be my last visit to the graveyard, for I no longer wished to engage with a memory of my wife but to see her in the flesh once again, to hold her hand, to press her body against my own, and so I had come to tell her that she and our child would not be lonely in the other-world for long, as I would join them soon. I had resolved to entrust my body and spirit to Ixtab, the Goddess of Suicide, who I believed would welcome my sacrifice and accompany me on my journey to the heavens, where my beloved would be waiting for me.

  As I left, I noticed a boy walking along the path whose face was familiar to me and called him over. He was the one who crafted the steles for the burial places of the wealthy, fine wooden sculptures, sometimes as much as fifteen feet in height. Not everyone could afford such luxuries, of course, but what need had I of money when I was preparing to leave this world for the next? Some months earlier, I had admired a stele that he had carved for the murdered son of a wealthy merchant and been impressed by his skill at crafting images of hunting, fishing, running, throwing spears and javelins, wrestling and climbing mountains, even though the dead boy had shown no aptitude for any of these things. I spoke to the craftsman now, telling him stories of Latra and asking him to fashion something in her honor, a memorial to her, to me and to our unborn child. He would find the money under a red stone in the corner of my workshop the following morning, I told him, more than enough for his troubles. He agreed to the commission and I felt satisfied as I went on my way that while our lives would soon be forgotten, a monument would be built to our existence and it would be a beautiful thing that might last through the ages.

  As I passed that same workshop on the way home, however, I was surprised to see my father, Manrav, standing outside, pulling at the doors which I had tied together earlier with a length of sisal rope. When he turned and saw me approaching, he looked me up and down with a mixture of contempt and pity on his face. He was getting older, I could see that; his hair, once golden and luxuriant, had thinned and grayed, and the scar on his left cheek lay pale against his coarsened skin. Although it was not in his nature to be compassionate, he had shown some degree of consideration toward me since Latra’s death.