Death of a Monk

by Alon Hilu

  And when the doors are opened and the house fills with the old familiar noises and his mother and his sister and his brother and even the manservant return, battered and beaten but alive and healthy, Aslan sequesters himself in the servants’ room and does not go out to greet them, but he hears their communal tears and their bereavement for Uncle Joseph, and they remove the criss-crossed planks from the windows and they rinse the fountains with new, fresh water and they rake the leaves from the orchards that have clogged the courtyard, and each and every one does his part, not a one shirks from labour, and quite slowly, shards of laughter steal their way back into their lives and they resume their pleasure in one another, and Aslan’s parents embrace and kiss, and his younger brother, whom he has not seen for so long, regards them with knowing, mature eyes, and it is as if his older sister’s infamous fury has dimmed, and the manservant prepares a light evening meal for them to partake under the apricot tree now beginning to blossom, and Aslan shuts himself inside the servants’ room and with tremendous strength attempts to squeeze out of himself his tears, to let them flow to the water from the latrines and the evil depths, but he is unable to extract anything from his body but a single, dry cough and a throttled gurgle from his throat.

  7

  THE WAR ANTICIPATED by all broke out a short time later and was brief and blood-splattered, and the young Turkish Sultan Ibd Almajid Khan, so prone to fainting spells, dispatched his many forces to engage in battle with Muhammad Ali, and the nations of the world supported him and offered assistance in the task of restoring freedom and his courtiers encouraged his fighting spirit, and the greedy Egyptian rebel sent many of his sons to defend the lands he had plundered, and these were faced with tens and hundreds of thousands of the Turkish sultan’s troops reinforced by garrisons from England and Austria and Russia and Prussia; thus the men were squared off against one another in long lines, and when the sign was given they approached each other at a gallop and clouds of dust filled the arenas of battle near Beirut and Damascus, and their skirmishes ensued for many long hours and they beat one another brutally and showed no pity for these precious manly bodies – not for their stubble-studded cheeks, nor their low and pleasant vocal chords hidden deep in their throats, not even for that sweet organ always ready for acts of pleasure and love – trampling all these into a single colourless mash, first with shots and the firing of artillery shells and finally, sleeves rolled back, uniforms in shreds, exchanging powerful bare-handed blows, each man grabbing hold of his comrade and roaring in his ears until both fell dead, some by strangulation, some bleeding to death, some through sheer exhaustion.

  And when the dust clouds of this brief war dissipated, the young sultan’s grand victory was known to all, and the massive armies of Ibrahim Pasha, from among the regiments of Muhammad Ali, fled southwards to Egypt and all the young men fell in the streets, and all the men of war were cut down, and they abandoned Aleppo and Damascus and Tiberius and Acre and Jaffa and Jerusalem to their former owners, rightful and desired, and Sharif Pasha, governor of Damascus for the seven years of Muhammad Ali’s reign, gathered his aides urgently and ordered them to spirit him secretly out of the fire-rampaged palace, but Muhammad Ali’s emissaries beat him to it and forced him to follow them into a side room in the palace where they fell upon him at once, and after binding his body with thick ropes and gagging him with a black handkerchief they smuggled him away to Egypt where he would be tried by Muhammad Ali, who was sorely suspicious that his subordinate had betrayed him.

  Several days later the armed forces of the Great Powers entered the city of Damascus with pomp and circumstance, among them troops of the Turkish sultan and many English soldiers, and the Muslims welcomed them and their commander, Augustus von Jochmus, with sweets and rice and cheers, and great was their joy at the end of Egyptian rule, for the Egyptians had debased themselves before the Christians, had allowed the infidels to raise their heads high and sound their church bells and ride through the city on horseback, and now, at last, order would be restored.

  The first order issued by the new Turkish governor of Damascus, Yusuf Ahmed, with the blessings of the young sultan, was to cleanse the city of its diseases, for the plague had claimed so very many victims, and he authorised the temporary diversion of the River Barada to flow into the numerous sewage canals linking the buildings throughout the length and breadth of the besieged city, and masses of men strained their muscles to the limits in order to erect provisional dams that would force the water to wind its way to the valleys and the streams flowing underground, and Aslan peered through a crack in the wall of his father’s home into the street, where a great horde of beggars and curious onlookers had assembled to watch this wondrous display after so many years of neglect, and the water rose suddenly from afar and the River Barada roared in upon them with great speed, sweeping through and overflowing, reaching as high as a man’s neck, wings of water outstretched, and the flow of the river is strong and abundant and it fills the channels and gushes over the banks, and the waters are clear and blue and fresh and in one thunderous swoop they cascade through fetid Elnahar Alaswad, and with the meeting of the two rivers, the debris and the bones and the rats in residence for such a very long time are swept away, uprooted from their filthy abodes and transported downriver with the force of a cleansing volcano outside the city gates, to the poor farmers whose lands are mortgaged and whose herds are enslaved, and in their turn these poor farmers laud the many waters come to irrigate their wretched plots of land, enabling them to grow the most sumptuous tomatoes and aubergines.

  And the river descends upon the Farhi household and the fountain sprays its waters once again and the manservant irrigates the jasmine bushes and the lemon trees, and at eventide, when Father returns home after a long day of commerce, he removes his cloak and shows his family the wounds that have not healed, the snaking scars from the kurbach lashings and the raw, seared skin left exposed from toenails torn from the toes, and Maman hastens to massage the damaged skin, spreading upon it unguents that she had used, in better days, for her own grooming, and Father sighs deeply, and slowly his body mends and his shorn nails grow back to cover the raw skin and his blue bruises lighten and disappear, and if Father awakens in the small hours of the night, his heart pounding and his eyes dark and black and his muscles tense and his sweat dripping, then Maman covers him with a blanket and reassures him in a light whisper that he is back in his own home, his magnificent family estate, and she flutters lemon blossoms under his nostrils and smears his lips with anisette.

  And it seems to Aslan that his family is learning the pleasure of their great wealth and their spacious home, and it is as if a new-found spark of wisdom lights their faces, even that of his sister, whose blue gaze bemoans her lack of a groom, and she seems more clever, more reasoned, more beloved to him now, intelligence emanating from her visage, and his younger brother Meir has ceased playing his childhood games and is now a quiet, pensive youth, and when a sad spirit settles upon Aslan, and he takes to his room and sobs, he knows not why, and he seeks to comfort himself with words of consolation and encouragement, for Egyptian rule has ended and its evil representatives have been heaved from the city, and now the Jews can expect times of peace and pleasantness for endless generations to come.

  Aslan overhears his parents whispering to one another and he pricks his ears to discern the meaning, and he learns that they wish to uncover the root of the evil that befell them and the acts of envy and evil that plagued them, and Father tells Maman of the matters that the Khaham-Bashi preached to him during their long weeks of imprisonment, how they have neglected their religion and their tradition, and with Maman’s agreement he removes the crucifix hidden under her many pillows and snaps it in half, and with his own hands he sweeps up all manner of incense and burnt offerings meant for the statuette and dumps the lot of it down that cesspit from which the bones of the donkey were exhumed, and they descend to the good and winding river as it perseveres in running its course under the city st
reets, and the eddying water whips the broken statue to and fro and submerges it to the depths, and lo, that very same messiah that had provided so much aid to Aslan and was his true love and the first friend not to abandon him was plummeting down the slopes of refuse and sewage just like Aslan himself, to the absolute bottom, to the ebb, to the hush and stillness, but Aslan knows that the tiny wooden hands and the tiny wooden head of the statue will float to the surface of the water and the daughters of the poor farmers will mend his broken parts and place him in the wall of their home.

  And after three days and three nights during which the cold waters of the River Barada flowed through every quarter of Damascus and left them clean, the new governor ordered that the river be restored to its natural course, and the city’s doctors announced that the plague had abated, that it was dissipating and disappearing, and the health of Aslan’s own family improved immensely and they grew round and fleshy, their cheeks rosy, their appetites aroused, and it was clear that they enjoyed the company of one another.

  However, the exception to all this, my friend, was, as always, Aslan, and he is not a partner to their laughter nor recipient of their pleasures, the members of the household are united in their treatment of him and they do not exchange words with him – neither good words nor bad – and they do not lay a place for him at the table at dinnertime, and if they hear him sneeze they do not bless his health, and if they cross paths with him they turn their heads, and he lives among them like a leech in its jar, and he shares eye contact with no one, shares conversation with no one, and Aslan’s head droops and he accepts all these torments with love and goodwill and his soul is debased and dejected.

  My foundling, my happy friend, one evening at the onset of summer and very near to the end of the affair about which you have written with your very own hand, I was sitting in the servants’ room when I discerned through a peephole all the love and happiness with which my family had been blessed, and there was Father embracing my brother and planting a kiss on Maman’s neck, and with every caress a butcher’s knife plunged deeper into my own neck, for I understood all at once from the swift and cruel thrusts of the knife that it was I who was the evil one and not my family, and it was they who had been my victims and not I theirs, and already I can see by your widening eyes that that which I comprehended only then, after many episodes, at the end of many long paragraphs and sentences, you yourself understood the very first time you drew your quill across the page as you wrote the first paragraph, the first sentence, of this story.

  So then I arose, greatly dismayed, and exposed my body at once, my skin, to discern whether my evil were inscribed there, and lo, my flesh was healthy and shiny, free of congealed blood and lacerated skin, and there were no snaking scars from kurbach lashings nor bluish bruises nor shattered limbs, yet my blood still pulsed its impurity and my weakness was still great, and even greater was the movement of black pus through my body, not only to the organs hidden deep within me, but also to my very essence, to the root of my soul, that Aslanish spirit – flawed, conflicted – and I can feel it contaminating everything, drowning even my friend the one-eyed shrew in my intestines in filth and muck, and I go out into the street to vomit, but I do not vomit.

  I had yet to fathom what I would do with this new-found wisdom and sadness when my fine, blameless parents who expressed their love in kisses announced that they would be hosting a festive banquet in our home for their friends and acquaintances, as a way of marking the month that had passed since their sorrow had turned to joy and their days of mourning had turned to days of celebration, and they wished to make them days of feasting and revelry, and of sending choice portions to one another, and gifts to the poor, and they had already ordered the slaughter of many lambs and sheep, had invited cantors to sing praises to God and to offer prayers of thanksgiving, and Maman, whose eye I was now careful to avoid, was reviewing the guest list and she had pardoned and forgiven all her former enemies, and was prepared to invite her traitorous, lying brothers-in-law and their wives and children, and Father approved it all with a nod and a murmur, and she added the courageous Khaham-Bashi, who was still heralding at every occasion in the Jewish Quarter the imminent arrival of the Messiah, his many followers cheering loudly and kissing and embracing one another, for relief and deliverance were on the rise in that period, and when Father mentioned the names of the Harari family and the Islamised rabbi Moses Abulafia they fell briefly silent, then decided as one to invite them as well, that they would throw off the last vestiges of muck and filth that had sullied their clean garments, would sit and share bread with them in irrational, groundless love, for in the end they were Jews one and all.

  On the eve of the festivities, my happy friend, all the invited guests arrive at my father’s home, their faces glowing with gratitude, and the many servants hired by my parents serve them wine and liquor and all the best Damascene delicacies, and their laughter blends and mingles in the air like curls of hashish smoke and I spy, among them, my former friend the barber, and he is still using crutches but his face looks healthy, invigorated, and there is Moses Abulafia, a prayer book tucked under his arm, and I exchange no words, good or bad, with a soul, nor do I approach the mounds of rice heaped on enormous trays or sample the roasted lamb’s meat, for I am in the grips of a terrible fear lest I taint these good guests – by my hand or by my tongue or by the breath that wafts from my lungs – with an impurity they will fail to remove from their skin for all eternity.

  In my evilness I step away from the throng of guests, better to watch them from a corner, and from my hidden perch they appear glowing and beautiful, attired one and all in their finest raiments, and the Khaham-Bashi, whose thin bones have acquired some flesh in the meantime, embraces the members of my family, and after hesitating briefly he allows his nemeses, these men who withheld his salary – the Hararis – to enfold him in their arms, and the six pauper friends of Suleiman Negrin are there as well, stuffing their mouths, their cheeks swollen with effort.

  I sit on the ground like a mad dog, for my body is betraying me: the din of a storm is raging inside me, my heart is racing and I cannot make sense of this uproar, it is as though my illness has finally claimed victory and wishes to shatter my life, this divine punishment descending upon me now for all my heinous sins; and so it seems that my death will not come about by hanging at the city gates or by stoning or by slashing my throat or by strangulation, rather, by this whirlpool of pains and tremors, and I lean against the wall of the building, taking note that this is the wall of the servants’ room, its only tiny window locked and bolted shut.

  A large group of people gathers round the fountain in the courtyard to listen to the speech of a young British officer, a Major Churchill, who is among the liberators of the city, and he is a handsome man, and tall, his uniform pressed and spotless and spangled with medals and decorations, and the crowd cheers him and applauds with rapture, and the affable officer delivers a speech that is translated by one of the Jews, and he points out that in the course of this affair England has proven that she is a loyal friend to the Jews and that England and her queen have brought this evil to its knees and rescued the oppressed from their oppressors and banished the French consul – that instigator and inciter – and young Major Churchill goes so far as to venture a prediction that one day the English nation will assist the Jewish people in reclaiming its place among the nations of the world by renewing its existence in the Holy Land of Israel, and the many guests, their hearts gladdened with wine, brim with laughter at his exaggerations.

  Good tidings lead to more good tidings, for during the sumptuous thanksgiving feast at my father’s home a courier arrives in great haste bearing a sealed missive from Istanbul, capital of the empire, and Father opens it with trembling excitement and reads aloud to the assembled guests the contents of this firman signed by the young Sultan Ibd Almajid Khan in which he proclaims that in the wake of an appeal by Moses Montefiore and after having weighed the matters of the affair with great serious
ness he has issued an order to all his subjects in the many lands over which he reigns to the effect that blood libels against the Jews are henceforth in breach of the law and strictly prohibited, and the Jews are beside themselves with joy and they swamp Father with hugs and kisses.

  While the cantors fill the house with their sweet voices and praises to God, and aromas of fried kubeh and roasting meat scent the air, waves of nausea take hold of me, and they sear me, harass me, snipe at me from within, and my throat constricts and my colour drains away so that I am pallid, and I understand that now, with the affair over and done, my turn has come to receive my due punishment, namely a swift death at the hands of my roiling, poisonous blood, and I whisper to my friend the one-eyed shrew that my time has come to die.

  I have not yet finished uttering these difficult words, their acid taste still in my mouth, when a whiff of impending disaster, the smell of undigested food, rises from my belly, and I attempt to put a stop to this vileness which I detest more than anything, but the flimsy floodgates have been breached and a thick swill ascends with great speed, foaming upwards in my throat until it spews forth like gushing waters in an unnatural fashion, past my tongue that has grown accustomed to spouting odious lies, past my mouth that cultivates such pearls of wisdom, and it sprays upon tiny flowers placed there to adorn the window boxes, a row of bright roses which I douse with turbid liquid, and when I gulp down a quantity of air in order to mitigate the sour odour of my intestines I am attacked by another acrid wave, and another and another and many more, each one worse than the last, and I rise to escape from that place to mingle into the throng of celebrants, to stand between the two cantors singing praises to God, but the waves are stronger than I, pushing out from inside me, and the stench of vomit mixes with the purity of the cantors’ voices.