by Clive Barker
The hungry bitch’s arrival in his life marked a distinct upturn in Zelim’s fortunes. A few hours later he came into a village many times larger than Atva, where he found a large crowd in the midst of what he took to be some kind of celebration. The streets were thronged with people shouting and stamping, and generally having a fine time.
“Is it a holy day?” Zelim asked a youth who was sitting on a doorstep, drinking.
The fellow laughed. “No,” he said, “it’s not a holy day.”
“Well then why’s everybody so happy?”
“We’re going to have some hangings,” the youth replied, with a lazy grin.
“Oh … I … see.”
“You want to come and watch?”
“Not particularly.”
“We might get ourselves something to eat,” the youth said. “And you look as though you need it.” He glanced Zelim up and down. “In fact you look like you need a lot of things. Some breeches, for one thing. What happened to you?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“That bad, huh? Well then you should come to the hangings. My father already went, because he said it’s good to see people who are more unfortunate than you. It’s good for the soul, he said. Makes you thankful.”
Zelim saw the wisdom in this, so he and his dog accompanied the boy through the village to the market square. It took them longer to dig through the crowd than his guide had anticipated, however, and by the time they got there all but one of the men who were being hanged were already dangling from the makeshift gallows. He knew all the prisoners instantly: the ragged beards, the sunburned pates. These were his violators. All of them had plainly suffered horribly before the noose had taken their lives. Three of them were missing their hands; one of them had been blinded; others, to judge by the blood that glued their clothes to their groins, had lost their manhood to the knife.
One of this unmanned number was Nazar, the leader of the gang, who was the last of the gang left alive. He could not stand, so two of the villagers were holding him up while a third slipped the noose over his head. His rotted teeth had been smashed out, and his whole body covered with cuts and bruises. The crowd was wildly happy at the sight of the man’s agonies. With every twitch and gasp they applauded and yelled his crimes at him. “Murderer!” they yelled. “Thief!” they yelled. “Sodomite!” they yelled.
“He’s all that and more, my father says,” the youth told Zelim.” ‘He’s so evil, my father says, that when he dies we might see the Devil come up onto the gallows and catch his soul as it comes out of his mouth!”
Zelim shuddered, sickened at the thought. If the boy’s father was right, and the sodomite robber-monk had been the spawn of Satan, then perhaps that unholiness had been passed into his own body, along with the man’s spittle and seed. Oh, the horror of that thought; that he was somehow the wife of this terrible man and would be dragged down into the same infernal place when his time came.
The noose was now about Nazar’s neck, and the rope pulled tight enough that he was pulled up like a puppet. The men who’d been supporting him stood away, so that they could help haul on the rope. But in the moments before the rope tightened about his windpipe, Nazar started to speak. No; not speak; shout, using every last particle of strength in his battered body.
“God shits on you all!” he yelled. The crowd hurled at him. Some threw stones. If he felt them breaking his bones, he didn’t respond. He just kept shouting. “He put a thousand innocent souls into our hands! He didn’t care what we did to them! So you can do whatever you want to me—”
The rope was tightening around his throat as the men hauled on the other end. Nazar was pulled up onto tiptoe. And still he shouted, blood and spittle coming with the words.
“There is no hell! There is no paradise! There is no—”
He got no further; the noose closed off his windpipe and he was hauled into the air. But Zelim knew what word had been left unsaid. God. The monk had been about to cry: there is no God.
The crowd was in ecstasies all around him; cheering and jeering and spitting at the hanged man as he jerked around on the end of the rope. His agonies didn’t last long. His tortured body gave out after a very short time, much to the crowd’s disapproval, and he hung from the rope as though the grace of life had never touched him. The boy at Zelim’s side was plainly disappointed.
“I didn’t see Satan, did you?”
Zelim shook his head, but in his heart he thought: maybe I did. Maybe the Devil’s just a man like me. Maybe he’s many men; all men, maybe.
His gaze went along the row of hanged men, looking for the one who had prayed while he’d been raped; the one Zelim suspected had left him the wine, bread, and fruit. Perhaps he’d also persuaded his companions to spare their victim; Zelim would never know. But here was the strange thing. In death, the men all looked the same to him. What had made each man particular seemed to have drained away, leaving their faces deserted, like houses whose owners had departed, taking every sign of particularity with them. He couldn’t tell which of them had prayed on the rock, or which had been particularly vicious in their dealings with him. Which had bitten him like an animal; which had pissed in his face to wake him when he’d almost fainted away; which had called him by the name of a woman as they’d plowed him. In the end, they were virtually indistinguishable as they swung there.
“Now they’ll be cut up and their heads put on spikes,” the youth was explaining, “as a warning to bandits.”
“And holy men,” Zelim said.
“They weren’t holy men,” the youth replied.
His remark was overheard by a woman close by. “Oh yes they were,” she said. “The leader, Nazar, had been a monk in Samarkand. He studied some books he should never have studied, and that was why he became what he became.”
“What kind of books?” Zelim asked her.
She gave him a fearful look. “It’s better we don’t know,” she said.
“Well, I’m going to find my father,” the youth said to Zelim. “I hope things go well with you. God be merciful.”
“And to you,” Zelim said.
Zelim had seen enough; more than enough, in truth. The crowd was working itself up into a fresh fever as the bodies were being taken down in preparation for their beheading; children were being lifted up onto their parents’ shoulders so they could see the deed done. Zelim found the whole spectacle disgusting. Turning away from the scene, he bent down, picked up his flea-bitten dog, and started to make his way to the edge of the assembly.
As he went he heard somebody say: “Are you sickened at the sight of blood?”
He glanced over his shoulder. It was the woman who’d spoken of the unholy books in Samarkand.
“No, I’m not sickened,” Zelim said sourly, thinking the woman was impugning his manhood. “I’m just bored. They’re dead. They can’t suffer anymore.”
“You’re right,” the woman said with a shrug. She was dressed, Zelim saw, in widow’s clothes, even though she was still young; no more than a year or two older than he. “It’s only us who suffer,” the woman went on. “Only us who are left alive.”
He understood absolutely the truth in what she was saving, in a way that he could not have understood before his terrible adventure on the road. That much at least the monks had given him: a comprehension of somebody else’s despair.
“I used to think there were reasons …,” he said softly.
The crowd was roaring. He glanced back over his shoulder. A head was being held high, blood running from it, glittering in the bright sun.
“What did you say?” the woman asked him, moving closer to hear him better over the noise.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said.
“Please tell me,” she replied, “I’d like to know.”
He shrugged. He wanted to weep, but what man wept openly in a place like this?
“Why don’t you come with me?” the woman said. “All my neighbors are here, watching this stupidity. If
you come back with me, there’ll be nobody to see us. Nobody to gossip about us.”
Zelim contemplated the offer for a moment or two. “I have to bring my dog,” he said.
He stayed for six years. Of course after a week or so the neighbors began to gossip behind their hands, but this wasn’t like Atva; people weren’t forever meddling in your business. Zelim lived quite happily with the widow Passak, whom he came to love. She was a practical woman, but with the front door and the shutters closed she was also very passionate. This was especially true, for some reason, when the winds came in off the desert; burning hot winds that carried a blistering freight of sand. When those winds blew the widow would be shameless—there was nothing she wouldn’t do for their mutual pleasure, and he loved her all the more for it.
But the memories of Atva, and of the glorious family that had come down to the shore that distant day, never left him. Nor did the hours of his violation, or the strange thoughts that had visited him as Nazar and his gang hung from the gallows. All of these experiences remained in his heart, like a stew that had been left to simmer, and simmer, and as the years passed was becoming steadily more tasty and more nourishing.
Then, after six years, and many happy days and nights with Passak, he realized the time had come for him to sit down and eat that stew.
It happened during one of these storms that came off the desert. He and Passak had made love not once but three times. Instead of falling asleep afterward, however, as Passak had done, Zelim now felt a strange irritation behind his eyes, as though the wind had somehow whistled its way into his skull and was stirring the meal one last time before serving it.
In the corner of the room the dog—who was by now old and blind-whined uneasily.
“Hush, girl,” he told her. He didn’t want Passak woken; not until he had made sense of the feelings that were haunting him.
He put his head in his hands. What was to become of him? He had lived a fuller life than he’d ever have lived if he’d stayed in Atva, but none of it made any sense. At least in Atva there had been a simple rhythm to things. A boy was born, he grew strong enough to become a fisherman, he became a fisherman, and then weakened again, until he was as frail as a baby, and then he perished, comforted by the fact that even as he passed from the world new fishermen were being born. But Zelim’s life had no such certainties in it. He’d stumbled from one confusion to another, finding agony where he had expected to find consolation, and pleasure where he’d expected to find sorrow. He’d seen the Devil in human form, and the faces of divine spirits made in similar shape. Life was not remotely as he’d expected it to be.
And then he thought: I have to tell what I know. That’s why I’m here; I have to tell people all that I’ve seen and felt, so that my pain is never repeated. So that those who come after me are like my children, because I helped shape them, and made them strong.
He got up, went to his sweet Passak where she lay, and knelt down beside the narrow bed. He kissed her cheek. She was already awake, however, and had been awake for a while.
“If you leave, I’ll be so sad,” she said. Then, after a pause: “But I knew you’d go one day. I’m surprised you’ve stayed so long.”
“How did you know—?”
“You were talking aloud, didn’t you realize? You do it all the time.” A single tear ran from the corner of her eye, but there was no sorrow in her voice. “You are a wonderful man, Zelim. I don’t think you know how truly wonderful you are. And you’ve seen things … maybe they were in your head, maybe they were real, I don’t know … that you have to tell people about.” Now it was he who wept, hearing her speak this way, without a trace of reprimand. “I have had such years with you, my love. Such joy as I never thought I’d have. And it’d be greedy of me to ask you for more, when I’ve had so much already.” She raised her head a little way, and kissed him. “I will love you better if you go quickly,” she said.
He started to sob. All the fine thoughts he’d had a few minutes before seemed hollow now. How could he think of leaving her?
“I can’t go,” he said. “I don’t know what put the thought in my head.”
“Yes, you will,” she replied. “If you don’t go now, you’ll go sooner or later. So go.”
He wiped his tears away. “No,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
So he stayed. The storms still came, month on month, and he and the widow still coupled fiercely in the little house, while the fire muttered in the hearth and the wind chattered on the roof. But now his happiness was spoiled; and so was hers. He resented her for keeping him under her roof, even though she’d been willing to let him go. And she in her turn grew less loving of him, because he’d not had the courage to go, and by staying he was killing the sweetest thing she’d ever known, which was the love between them.
At last, the sadness of all this killed her. Strange to say, but this brave woman, who had survived the grief of being widowed, could not survive the death of her love for a man who stayed at her side. He buried her, and a week later, went on his way.
He never again settled down. He’d known all he needed to know of domestic life; from now on he would be a nomad. But the stew that had bubbled in him for so long was still good. Perhaps all the more pungent for those last sad months with Passak. Now, when he finally began his life’s work, and started to teach by telling of his experiences, there was the poignancy of their soured love to add to the account: this woman, to whom he had once promised his undying devotion—saying what he felt for her was imperishable—soon came to seem as remote a memory as his youth in Atva. Love—at least the kind of love that men and women share—was not made of eternal stuff. Nor was its opposite. Just as the scars that Nazar and his men had left faded with the years, so had the hatred Zelim had felt for them.
Which is not to say he was a man without feeling; far from it. In the thirty-one years left to him he would become known as a prophet, as a storyteller, and as a man of rare passion. But that passion did not resemble the kind that most of us feel. He became, despite his humble origins, a creature of subtle and elevated emotion. The parables he told would not have shamed Christ in their simplicity, but unlike the plain and good lessons taught by Jesus, Zelim imparted through his words a far more ambiguous vision; one in which God and the Devil were constantly engaged in a game of masks.
Three times in his life Zelim joined a caravan on the Silk Road and made his way to Samarkand. The first time was just a couple of years after the death of Passak, and he traveled on foot, having no money to purchase an animal strong enough to survive the trek. It was a journey that tested to its limits his hunger to see the place: by the time the fabled towers came in sight he was so exhausted—his feet bloody, his body trembling, his eyes red-raw from days of walking in clouds of somebody else’s dust—that he simply fell down in the sweet grass beside the river and slept for the rest of the day there outside the walls, oblivious.
He awoke at twilight, washed the sand from his eyes, and looked up. The sky was opulent with color; tiny knitted rows of high cloud, all amber toward the west, blue purple on their eastern flank, and birds in wheeling flocks, circling the glowing minarets as they returned to their roosts. He got to his feet and entered the city as the night fires around the walls were being stoked, their fuel such fragrant woods that the very air smelled holy.
Inside, all the suffering he’d endured to get here was forgotten. Samarkand was all that his father had said it would be, and more. Though Zelim was little more than a beggar here, he soon realized that there was a market for his storytelling. And that he had much to tell. People liked to hear him talk about the baptism at Atva; and the forest; and Nazar and his fate. Whether they believed these were accounts of true events or not didn’t matter: they gave him money and food and friendship (and in the case of several well-bred ladies, nights of love) to hear him tell his tales. He began to extend his repertoire: extemporize, enrich, invent. He created new stories about the family on the shore, and because it see
med people liked to have a touch of philosophy woven into their entertainments, introduced his themes of destiny into the stories, ideas that he’d nurtured in his years with Passak.
By the time he left Samarkand after that first visit, which lasted a year and a half, he had a certain reputation, not simply as a fine storyteller, but as a man of some wisdom. And now, as he traveled, he had a new subject: Samarkand.
There, he would say, the highest aspirations of the human soul, and the lowest appetites of the flesh, are so closely laid, that it’s hard sometimes to tell one from the other. It was a point of view people were hungry to hear, because it was so often true of their own lives, but so seldom admitted to. Zelim’s reputation grew.
The next time he went to Samarkand he traveled on the back of a camel, and had a fifteen-year-old boy to prepare his food and see to his comfort, a lad who’d been apprenticed to him because he too wanted to be a storyteller. When they got to the city, it was inevitably something of a disappointment to Zelim. He felt like a man who’d returned to the bed of a great love only to find his memories sweeter than the reality. But this experience was also the stuff of parable; and he’d only been in the city a week before his disappointment was part of a tale he told.
And there were compensations: reunions with friends he’d made the first time he’d been here; invitations into the palatial homes of men who would have scorned him as an uneducated fisherman a few years before, but now declared themselves honored when he stepped across their thresholds. And the profoundest compensation, his discovery that here in the city there existed a tiny group of young scholars who studied his life and his parables as though he were a man of some significance. Who could fail to be flattered by that? He spent many days and nights talking with them, and answering their questions as honestly as he was able.