After Abel and Other Stories

by Michal Lemberger

  Finally, she had to put him down. She felt too weak, too thirsty to keep going, and too angry that the gods would put the notion of running away into her head only to kill them here in the empty expanse of desert. The boy was almost dead. She could see that well enough, though she couldn’t bear to watch the breath actually leave him.

  She found the fullest bush she could and lay him beneath it. His eyes looked sunken, and when he turned his face to hers, she felt as if he was already looking past her into the afterlife. He was her prince, but there were no water lilies here to adorn his body. No water to wash away the grime of human life. She had nothing other than an empty jug to send with him on his journey. She set it down next to him, and hoped he’d find water when he got to where he was going. She turned her back, sat down just close enough to chase away the buzzards when they started to swoop in to investigate the scene.

  Surely, Hagar thought, some god will hear me. Surely, if I cry loudly enough, my master’s God or my mother’s will listen to my plea. Her mouth parched, voice barely a croak, she called out. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” and saw another shimmer on the horizon. There was a man standing beside it. Or above it. Her master, or her master’s God. Hagar couldn’t tell which. She wondered how he got here so quickly, when she had to walk for three days, always thinking their destination was around the next bend, but still there was no sign of her river home.

  The man didn’t speak, but she felt him beckon to her. Afraid she would be punished, Hagar sat still, staring at the shimmer, then the man, then the shimmer again. Then she knew he was like the dead cows, a sign that would disappear the closer she got. She hadn’t understood those, and she didn’t understand this one. She was scared and alone, and the expanse of sandy rock all around hurt her eyes.

  “You won’t trick me again,” she shouted as loudly as she could manage. “I know your ways now. But I am a poor woman with nothing left to give you. So take my boy and love him better than I could.” Except the spot in the distance kept shimmering, and though she thought it would be another patch of dry ground, Hagar felt pulled by thirst and the man who beckoned to her. She dragged her tired body on hands and knees. She had to be sure this was a deception, the last one, she knew, that would ever be played upon her.

  On any other day, she would have noticed that her palms and knees, though they started on hard rock, were soon cushioned by a thin layer of moss, that the ground was springing back up under her weight, if only a little. That day, though, she felt her attention split in two—the mirage ahead of her, the boy behind—so that she felt the moisture touch her fingertips before she registered what it was.

  “Water,” she said, amazed. She bent her head and lapped at it like a dog, scooped it in her hands and ran to rub it on her son’s hot brow, the back of his neck. Then she grabbed the jug, ran back to the small puddle, filled it as high as it would go, and ran back to her son, who still lay dying under the bush. Hagar poured the water over his head, down his back, and ladled it into his mouth, trying not to let any drops slip through the spaces between her fingers.

  Slowly, the color returned to his cheeks. He vomited once, then again, opened his eyes and looked at her, confused but no longer delirious. “Mama?” he said. When he saw who was with him, that it was Hagar, he began to cry. At first, Hagar laughed in relief to see tears form in his eyes and fall down his dusty cheeks. He would live. The gods did listen. They saved him for a reason, she thought. She looked at her boy with a new sense of wonder. There is greatness coming to him, she knew, and she had played a part in it. She chased the vultures away for good and laughed again as she felt the wind moved by their enormous wings.

  She looked back over to the shallow well, thought she saw the outline of the man who had been so clear just a few moments before, and finally understood. She had no past. It had been erased by the bag of coins the trader had placed into her father’s hands. All she could do was be with her boy, teach him to live with the family he had been given, the one she had been given no choice in joining, but whose fate was his, and now her own. Hagar filled her jug again, set it on her head, lifted her son, and turned north, for the long walk back home.

  ZERESH, HIS WIFE

  “There Haman told his wife Zeresh and all his friends everything that had befallen him, ‘If Mordechai, before whom you have begun to fall, is of Jewish stock, you will not overcome him; you will fall before him to your ruin.’”

  Esther 6:13

  Where is that tutor? she wondered, as her sons chased each other through their gardens, jumping over the low walls that snaked through the property.

  “Just don’t pull down the vines,” she called after them, watching as they grabbed onto anything within reach to give themselves a boost. Let them laugh now, she thought. They’ll have to be serious soon enough. The sons of the king’s chief advisor have to live up to very high expectations, even the littlest one.

  “It’s not fair. I can’t climb over this part. Wait for me!” Poor boy, trying to keep up with his brothers, but how can seven-year-old legs move fast enough to keep up with the older ones? She could see the tears begin to well in his eyes and how quickly he tried to suppress them. He’d be another little man before long. She had given her husband a house full of sons, but she wanted this one to stay with her, a boy with smooth skin and a high, little voice.

  Childish anger is the funniest kind, she thought not for the first time, but I shouldn’t laugh. Poor thing. Stuck here on the wrong side of the wall with a woman and servants.

  The boy was too young and angry to see what she did, how good it was to be back in Susa, her favorite court city, after a long summer. Everyone else marveled at Persepolis, but she felt relief when they left each year. The buildings and art were magnificent there, but they were built on a scale fit for gods, not men. Things were simpler in Susa. Winter here promised citrus trees, climbing ivy on the fortress walls, figs dropping seamed and sweet onto the ground.

  A breeze blew through the courtyard. Her head man, old enough to have served in her grandfather’s house, ordered his workers around with the rigid authority of a man half his age. His spine was still straight. His mind and eyes were clear. He was, she thought, a marvel. Proof of the Creator’s goodness, although she’d never share that with anyone else. He was, after all, just a servant, and not even a Persian by birth.

  It had been a long journey. The horses and mules were tired. Her sons were excited to be off the road and back in their house, with its connected gardens and buildings that wound up the hill from the road. They were also ready to settle down for the season.

  When she arrived, the compound had looked uninhabited, even though her husband had come weeks in advance to prepare the palace for the king’s arrival, bringing their eldest son with him. Not that it was apparent from the state of their home. Walking through, she felt as if ghosts had been floating through rather than people with the important work of the empire to do. It will take a few days to settle in, she thought. They hadn’t even seen her husband yet. He was at the court, of course. He had probably been there every spare moment, no time to order the furniture to be aired or tell the maids to go out behind the kitchen wall to beat the dust out of the rugs.

  Once she arrived, the work of their home got done, although it was hard with such a boisterous group of boys getting in everyone’s way. Only she, or that damned tutor, if she could find him, could rein them in. The servants would never dare complain about the vizier’s sons.

  She shouldn’t have worried. A wave of pleasure passed through her as her older boys, teenagers who would run heedless over any obstacle, stopped their game to come back and help their youngest brother over the wall. Her husband would be proud of the boys she was raising for him.

  She had known, of course, that he’d be more occupied once he took his new position. It’s what she had wanted and worked toward for so long. She had to remind herself of that. Now that he woke at dawn to be first at the palace should their king need him, she was left largely to he
rself.

  How things had changed in a year. Back then she could only imagine how life would be when she had urged him to become all he could. It was a year ago to the day, or maybe the week, she realized, since they’d seen the opportunity for his advancement drop neatly into their hands.

  That morning, the sky broke blue with high strings of cloud that skittered across its surface. Preoccupied with her work and the visions she had for how high her family could climb, she hadn’t noticed them.

  The air smelled of dust. It was the first thing she noticed when her husband rushed into her rooms to wake her. The maid had already pulled back the curtains, and she could smell the gardens through the open window. The sky was bright, and the air smelled. Usually Susa’s breezes carried the damp rich of winter, but here was summer’s dust.

  The previous day had been cold. She’d directed the gardeners to wrap the trees so they wouldn’t shrivel and drop their fruit too early. Just a week before she had swaddled herself in thick cloaks to walk her orchards and inspect her fields. But that morning, she struggled awake in the shaft of sunlight that fell, just as she liked it, onto her bed in these early hours.

  Her husband was shouting, but it was hard to tell if he was jubilant or angry. “He’ll bankrupt himself this time, for sure.”

  His outline blurred against the bright light.

  “Wake up, my dear. Big news. You’ll never guess how much our lord, the king has spent on this week of feasts. He’s running through the entire treasury.”

  That was news to bring her awake with a start.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Just talk for now, but court gossip is usually right about these things.”

  Zeresh flung away her blankets, the quilting making a new pattern of oranges and reds as the fabric folded over itself. Gold thread snaked along its entire length. She called to her chambermaid, demanded her best clothes.

  “I’ll go talk to my sister. This could be just the moment we’ve been waiting for.” Rushing past him to her dressing room, Zeresh stopped, looked back at him. Even when her father had presented this man to her as a potential suitor he had been short, his current stoutness foretold in his lean but stocky body. As usual, he was dressed in the most opulent silks and had oiled his hair to mask the thinning on top. But his beard was still thick and coiled. His vanity will be the ruin of him, she thought.

  But she didn’t wonder whether he could follow through on their shared goals. They had floated in the mid-level air of the court for too long, just another couple with money and lands but without the king’s ear. She had watched for years as others rose in rank around them. Each time a man was appointed to the cabinet, he’d enter into a secret fraternity, the only one that mattered, one Zeresh could never enter. Instead, she watched the wives intently, noticed their false modesty when they talked about their husbands. “Now that he’s minister,” they’d say, “we hardly ever see him,” and then they’d raise the finest wines to their satisfied lips.

  Now it would be her turn. She had a good feeling this time. She dressed carefully, perfumed her skin, the part in her hair. Her wrists clinked with piles of silver and gold bracelets. Her husband met her at the door, walked with her through the front garden, but they didn’t speak. They both knew her errand. Oranges released their scent into the air.

  Finally, she spoke. “Don’t do anything until I get back,” she ordered. “Once I find out what’s real and what’s just talk, we can think about how to proceed.”

  She rose onto her horse, was led through the quiet streets of Susa. Somewhere in the city, the market would already be busy, loud with buying and selling. Her own merchants would be there by now, getting the best prices they could on her grapes. But she rode through the early morning in the quiet precincts of wealth. On either side of her lay great estates where the women would still be doused in dreams, the men finishing their early plates of bread and olives. Only the servants stirred, doing the work that kept these places functioning.

  A laborer cut back the grass with a sickle outside the wall of a large but unadorned estate. Another stood behind him, whitewashing the wall. Neither looked up as she passed.

  She sniffed at the air again. The dates would be at their plumpest. She’d have to visit the orchards again after this trip to the palace.

  The king’s palace stood shining on the city’s highest plateau, where it was visible from every precinct. She could see it ahead of her becoming larger in her sight as she rode up and around to the back entrance. Guards stopped her at the gate, but when she pulled back her veil, they quickly allowed her to ride through.

  The palace grounds lay still. She never knew how they did it. Even after six nights of feasting, every noble and rich man in the province invited to drink himself into a stupor and then led to sleep it off somewhere in the side houses’ many apartments, the grass was even and full. No twig hung broken from a tree. The flowers grew tall and riotous. As many times as she had passed through, she had never seen a man take a tool to hand. No gardeners bent over in toil.

  Perhaps, she thought, the king really is the son of the Creator. Maybe he sends his angels to smooth over the ground at night so as not to bother the people within.

  Silly thoughts, even if they helped calm her nerves. She shook them off by the time she reached the women’s building and descended off her horse to the ground. Even here, where everything spread out like a field of gems, the soil lay ashy beneath her slipper, and beneath that was the winter’s wet earth.

  The eunuch who pulled back the heavy door smiled brightly when he saw who it was. He smiled even more when she pressed a small, gold-edged mirror into his hand. They were always happy to see her here.

  He led her quietly through rooms filled with pretty young women, most of them placid-faced and bored, all the royal concubines anointed and painted for another day of waiting to see if the king would call them. He usually didn’t, so they submitted themselves to the army of attendant eunuchs around them, and then had it all washed off when night came. They’d wake in the morning to do it all over again.

  Three nights before, all the aristocratic wives and daughters had feasted together, invited by the queen to celebrate their yearly return to Susa. The king was intent on celebrating for the entire week, but the queen had tired of the festivities. The women, she knew, needed to get back to their work. Households, fields, and tenant disputes wouldn’t wait on them for seven days, so she served the cakes and set them free. Let the men drink themselves stupid. Women had work to do.

  Zeresh walked through these familiar rooms, pressing small gifts into the hands of the eunuchs as she passed. The wooden walls hung with heavy drapery. Jewels inlay every possible surface. It was all as if to make up for the fact that these women, plucked out of obscurity when youth still rouged their cheeks, would never have husbands of their own.

  Her sister waited for her in the farthest room. As always, Zeresh was struck by her beauty. Long regal nose above thick lips. Black hair and hooded brown eyes that looked at everything as if from a distance no one could bridge. Zeresh shared every one of those features, but on her they resulted in what others called handsomeness. On her sister, they took on the solidity of fact, her radiance so obvious it had never occurred to Zeresh to feel jealous.

  Her sister’s looks had been good for them all. Their father had found good marriages for them both. She had married a rich man who gave her many sons. Vashti became queen.

  In public, Zeresh would have scraped and bowed, put on a show about the queen’s great beauty and wisdom, would have proclaimed herself unworthy to touch the great queen’s hem. But this was private, two sisters who knew one another too well for that kind artifice.

  She did know enough not to rush the conversation. Zeresh’s characteristic forthrightness irritated her sister, and right now, she could not afford to be irritated.

  “Who’s the new boy?” Zeresh asked, looking over at the young man standing by the far wall. She had brought trinkets to hand out, but she
hadn’t known of this one’s existence. By the time she saw him, her hands were empty.

  “Artakama. Brought in only a few months ago. Isn’t he lovely?”

  He was. He was also young enough to be her oldest son, with light brown hair curling over his shoulders and large green eyes. Like all the eunuchs in the harem, he took care to tailor his looks to a woman’s eye. But this one had an older man’s confidence. His mouth seemed to smile even as it stayed perfectly still.

  “He’s my new favorite,” the queen said.

  “Are you feeling the need for a son these days?”

  Vashti laughed off that idea. “The king is very taken with his dancing girls right now. And this one has, you’ll notice, long, beautiful fingers.”

  Zeresh often wondered what the men in the adjoining buildings really knew of what went on in the women’s building. They were brilliant men, of course, the leaders of a vast empire, but they had their preoccupations and were too confident in their own virility. The only thing a eunuch couldn’t do was impregnate. Surely, she thought, the men couldn’t be so caught up in their own ideas to know that castration does not strip a man of other skills.

  Finally, Zeresh thought she had spent enough time thinking about her sister’s pleasures to get to the point.

  “Is it true?” she asked.

  Vashti, attentive as always, was slow to answer. “Is what true?”

  “Is the king’s feast to be the end of the treasury?”

  “Quite possibly. But they all seem to lead that way, and then he manages to figure something out.”

  “You seem quite sanguine about it.”

  “What business is it of mine? He’ll have enough to keep this harem standing. Enough for the next round of battles and celebrations. Enough to ransom the prettiest girls from lands far and near. Only he grows tired of them, and I am left to care for them as they grow restless and bitter when they realize that they will never leave or take my place.”