“See what happens when you don’t shave?” I said to him in low voice.
“I’ll never shave again!”
I poked him in the ribs, which only delighted him more.
The leader of the village, Berehanu Bekela, a gigantic man with enormous pendulous ears and gigantic teeth, welcomed us with full honors. He and several others wore many ceremonial white handkerchiefs around their necks which formed a thick, warm stole, very inappropriate for that temperature. Then, on a straight path from the dock, they took us to the center of a dirt esplanade. Houses were grouped around it, brightly illuminated by torches tied to long wood poles, stuck in the ground. Once we got there, Berehanu shouted some incomprehensible words and people exploded in wild cheers that kept up until the leader raised his hands in the air.
In seconds, the esplanade was filled with stools, rugs, and cushions. Everyone took his place, ready to attack the mountains of food carried out of the houses on wood trays. They quit paying attention to us to concentrate on the mounds of meat on great green leaves that served as platters.
With their own hands, Berehanu Bekela and his family served us our food that looked like a pile of raw meat. They watched expectantly to see what we would do.
“Injera, injera!” a darling girl of about three said seated at my side.
Mulugeta spoke with Farag who watched the captain and me with a serious look on his face.
“We have to eat this even if we die of disgust. If we don’t, we’ll deeply insult the leader and the entire town.”
“Don’t say such foolish things!” I exploded. “I don’t plan to eat raw meat!”
“Don’t argue, Basileia. Eat!”
“How I am going to eat those pieces of who-knows-what?” I argued apprehensively, picking up something that looked like a black, plastic tube.
“Eat!” Glauser-Röist muttered gritting his teeth, putting a handful of that stuff in his mouth.
The celebration grew larger and larger as the bottled beer flowed among the townspeople like the Atbara River. The little girl kept staring at me; her large black eyes gave me the courage to open my trembling lips and insert, very slowly, a pinch of raw meat. Managing not to gag, I chewed as well as I could, then swallowed what I later learned was a piece of antelope kidney, almost whole. Next I bolted down a piece of stomach with a milder flavor than the kidney. To finish, I gulped down a small slice of still hot liver that stained my chin and the corners of my lips with blood. Ethiopians seemed to love those delicacies. I gulped down a bottle of beer and would have drunk another if Farag hadn’t grabbed my wrist.
The celebration went on for a long time. When the meal was over, a group of young girls, among them the girl who had tugged on Farag’s beard, entered the circle and began a very strange dance in which they never stopped shaking their shoulders. It was incredible. I never thought a body could move like that, at such speed, as if they were disjointed. The music had a simple beat marked by a single drum. Soon others joined in, and then another and another, until the cadence became hypnotic. Between that and the beer, my head was no longer on my shoulders. The girl who apparently had decided to adopt me rose from the ground and sat down between my crossed legs as if I were a comfortable chair and she, a small queen. I liked watching her carefully tie and arrange her veil so it covered her head, hanging all the way down to her waist. Again and again, I had to put the veil back in place but that white linen never stayed still on her curly, black hair. When the dancers disappeared, she leaned back on my stomach and got comfortable as if I actually was a throne. Just then, the thought of my niece Isabella struck my mind. I would have loved to hold her in my arms as I was holding that little girl. In an Ethiopan village, lost in the middle of nowhere, under the light of the moon and the burning torches, my mind flew to Palermo. I realized that sooner or later I would have to go back home to try to make things better. Although I knew I would never succeed in doing so, my conscience told me I should give them one last chance before I left forever. That tribal attachment, so similar to that of the Anuak people, that my mother had inculcated in me, stopped me from cutting all ties with them even though I knew now how disappointing my family really was.
As soon as the drums went silent and the dancers left the scene, Berehanu Bekela walked with measured steps to the center of the plaza, deep in silence. Even the children stopped fidgeting; they ran to their mothers and stood there, quiet and still. The occasion was solemn and my pulse began to race. Something told me the real party was just about to begin.
Berehanu delivered a long discourse that Farag explained in a whisper. He spoke of the very ancient relationship between the Anuak and the Staurofilakes. The simultaneous translation by Mulugeta and Farag left much to be desired, but our interpreters were doing their best, so the Rock and I had to make do with half phrases and half words.
“The Staurofilas,” Berehanu said, “came to Atbara hundreds of years ago in great boats… the Anuak the word of God. Those men of… the faith and showed us how to move rocks, to farm… to make beer and build boats and houses.”
“The Staurofilas made us Christians,” the leader continued, “and taught us what we know. All they asked in exchange… their secret and bring the saints from Egypt to Antioch. We Anuak have… that Mulualem Bekela gave in honor of our town. Today, three saints… over the waters of the Atbara, the river that God gave to… we are responsible for… and the Staurofilas expect us to fulfill our duty.”
Suddenly the people broke out into a deafening ovation. A small squad of fifteen or twenty young men got to their feet and set off, disappearing into the darkness.
“Men, go prepare the road for the saints,” Farag translated after the fact.
Everyone started to dance in time to the drums. In the middle of the party, hands grabbed Farag, the Rock, and me and took us to different houses to prepare us for the upcoming ceremony. The women who took care of me took off my sandals, pants, blouse, and underwear, leaving me completely naked. They sprinkled water on my body with a bundle of branches and then dried me off with linen. They took away my clothes, so I had to make do with a shirt, white of course, that fortunately hung down to my knees. They refused to return my shoes. When they led me from the house, I minced along as if I were walking on pins and needles. I didn’t feel any better when I saw Farag and the Rock dressed the same way. I was surprised, however, to see my reaction when I saw Farag. The fact is, I still wasn’t used to the unexpected behavior of my hormones. My eyes were stuck on his brown skin, glowing under the light of the torches, on his hands, his long and soft fingers, his body, tall and lean. When our gazes finally met, my stomach felt as tight as a knot, and I wondered what was actually in that raw meat.
Between applause and beats of their drums, they led us down dark alleys and in the direction of large dense clouds of smoke, which gave off a disconcerting purple glow. The night sky was full of stars. Farag took my hand and squeezed it gently to calm me down. With all the preparations and drumming, a tremor had taken hold of my spirit. I felt like Jesus en route to Calvary with the Cross on his shoulders. Could the so-called True Cross be that very cross, the one the Staurofilakes were retrieving piece by piece? Surely not. We were here because of it, even if it was fake. I felt my legs trembling, my body sweating, and my teeth chattering.
Finally we came to a new esplanade; the people of Antioch were standing around it, in silence. Several immense bonfires consumed the last logs of wood with great sparks as the young men spread a thick wheel of glowing embers on the ground with the help of some long, sharp lances. Striking the coals with those lances, they broke apart the biggest pieces and smoothed out the surface, roughly about twenty centimeters thick by about four or five meters long from the interior to the exterior. They left a narrow walkway uncovered, wide enough so we could go down the center. When Mulugeta Mariam said something to Farag, he translated it right away so I’d know exactly what he was saying. At that moment Mulugeta was the joyful angel of God who comes to Dante in the se
venth circle and tells him he must enter the fiery walkway.
I squeezed Farag’s hand tightly and leaned my cheek on his shoulder; I was so frightened I could barely breathe.
“Cheer up, my love,” he whispered bravely to me burying his nose in my hair and kissing me softly.
“I’m scared, Farag,” I said, closing my eyes.
“Listen, we’ll get out of this as we got out of all the other tests. Don’t be afraid, my dear Ottavia!” But I was inconsolable. I couldn’t stop the chattering of my teeth. “Remember—there’s always a solution, Basileia.”
As I stared into that immense ring of fire, a solution seemed more a fantasy than a certainty. I admit I had violated, to a greater or lesser degree, the other six deadly sins at some time in my life. But I would not die for the sin of lust. Up to that very day, I was completely innocent of that sin. Besides, if I died in the fire, I’d never get the chance to sin against God’s sixth commandment: to commit with Farag those famous impure acts I’d heard so much about.
“I don’t want to die,” I said, pressed against him.
Glauser-Röist had silently come up behind us. “‘O my dear son,’” he recited, “‘there may be pain here, but there is no death. Believe me when I say that if you spent a thousand years within the fire’s heart, it would not singe a single hair of yours.’”
“Oh, come on, Captain,” I shrieked with acrimony.
Mulugeta Mariam insisted. We couldn’t stand there all night; we had to walk down that path.
I walked like a condemned man headed for the gallows, held up by Farag’s strong arm. Two meters from the tapestry of embers, the heat was so unbearable I felt it scorch my skin. As soon as we stepped on the path that led to the center, I felt, literally, that I was being incinerated and that my blood was boiling. It was unbearable. Farag’s and the captain’s beards were fluttering gently, stirred by the hot air. That red lake emitted a muffled crackle.
Finally we arrived at the center, and as soon as we got there, the group of young men who had made all the preparations covered our path with another pile of embers. Corralled like animals, Farag, the captain, and I looked stunned at the circle of Anuaks, a few meters from the ring of coals. They seemed to be impassible ghosts, pitiless judges, lit up by the fire’s glow. No one moved, no one breathed, and neither did we as the burning air filled our lungs.
Suddenly a strange song rose from the crowd, a primitive cadence that I could not make out clearly due to the crackle of the wood. It was a single musical phrase, always the same, repeated tirelessly like a slow, meditative litany. Farag’s arms around my shoulders tensed like steel cables and the Rock shifted uneasily on his naked feet. Mulugeta Mariam’s shout brought us back to reality.
Farag said, “We have to cross the fire. If we don’t, they’ll kill us.”
“What!” I exclaimed, horrified. “Kill us? They didn’t tell us that! How can we walk across that!” The top layer of embers was turning black.
“Think, please,” begged the Rock. “If our only choice were to start running, I’d do it right now, even though I might wind up dead, with third-degree burns all over my body. But before I commit suicide, I want to know for sure that there’s no other option, that there’s nothing in our brains that can help us.”
I twisted around to see Farag’s face. He also leaned over to look at me. Gazing at each other, our brains shared in a split second all the knowledge we’d accumulated over our lives. But we couldn’t come up with a single reference to walking on fire.
“I’m sorry, Kaspar.” Farag was sweating copiously, but the surrounding heat caused the sweat to immediately evaporate. We didn’t need the Anuak’s help to die. If we stayed there, we would die on our own, of dehydration.
“We only have Dante’s text,” I mused, distressed, “but I don’t recall anything that can help us.”
A sharp projectile cut the air. One of the lances they’d used to spread the coals stuck in the ground neatly between my feet. I thought my heart would never beat again. They were throwing lances at us.
“Leave her alone!” cried Farag, literally becoming a wild man.
The monotonous chant grew louder and clearer. It sounded like they were chanting in Greek, but I thought that was just a hallucination.
“Maybe the answer is in Dante,” the Rock said pensively.
“But when Dante enters the fire, Captain, he only says that if he could, he would have thrown himself into a pool of boiling glass to cool down.”
“True…”
We heard another lance cut the air. The captain stopped midsentence. A new lance stuck in the ground, this time in the space formed by our three pairs of defenseless feet. Farag went crazy, shouting a string of insults in Arabic that I’m glad I didn’t understand.
“They don’t want to kill us! If they did, they would have done it by now. They just want to get us to start!”
The musical chant grew louder. You could clearly hear the Anuaks’ voices now: “Macarioi hoi kazaroi ti kardia.”
“‘Good fortune to the pure of heart,’” I exclaimed. “They’re singing in Greek!”
“That’s what the angel was singing when Dante, Virgil, and Estacio were inside the fire, right, Kaspar?” asked Farag. Since the Rock had gone mute with the second lance, he just nodded. Farag was revved up now. “The solution has to be in Dante’s tercets! Help us, Kaspar! What does Dante say about the fire?”
“Well…,” the Rock stammered. “He doesn’t say anything, damn it! Nothing!” he exploded, disheartened. “Just that the wind parts the fire!”
“Wind?” Farag frowned, trying to remember. “There, from the inner bank,” he recalled, “flames flashed out straight, while, from the ledge, a blast of air shot up, bending them back, leaving a narrow path.”
A strange mental image formed in my head: a foot that fell swiftly from above, cutting the air.
“A blast of air shot up…” Farag murmured, pensive. Just then, another lance cut through the red glow of the coals and stuck deep in front of the right toes of the double saint.
“Damn them!” he bellowed.
“Listen to me!” cried Farag, very excited. “I’ve got it, I know what to do!”
“Macarioi hoi kazaroi ti kardia,” the people of Antioch repeated over and over, loud and grave.
“If we step very hard, really hard, we will create a pocket of air on the bottoms of our feet, and we will cut the combustion off for a couple of seconds! The blast of air that shoots up will drive back the flames and moved them away from us. That’s what Dante was telling us!”
The Rock stood motionless, trying to get what Farag said through his hard head. I understood immediately—it was a simple game of applied physics: If our feet fell from above with a lot of force and struck against the coals, for a very brief period of time the air accumulated on the bottom of our feet and retained by the shoes of fire that formed around the skin would impede burns. To accomplish this you had to step very, very hard and fast, just like Farag said. You couldn’t get distracted and lose your rhythm. If you did, nothing could stop your skin from being calcinated. The embers would devour the flesh in a heartbeat. It was very risky, but it was the very thing that fit Dante’s instructions. It was the only idea we had, and besides, we were running out of time. Mulugeta Mariam announced that fact, shouting from where he stood next to Berehanu Bekela.
“Be very careful not to fall,” the Rock added, when he finally understood what Farag was saying. “‘And I feared the fire or the fall,’ says Dante. Don’t forget. If the pain or anything else makes you lose heart or lose your footing, you will be burned.”
“I’ll go first!” Farag said, leaning over and giving me a kiss on the lips that also quashed my protests. “Don’t say anything, Basileia,” he whispered in my ear so the Rock couldn’t hear. Then he added, “I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you…”
He didn’t stop saying that until he made me laugh. Then, he pulled away from me and went into the
fire, shouting, “Watch, Basileia, and don’t repeat my mistakes!”
Farag stepped rhythmically and decisively on the fire. I couldn’t watch. I hid my face in the Rock’s chest. He held me tight. I cried as I’d never cried before, racked with such sobs, such pain and grief, I couldn’t hear Captain Glauser-Röist when he shouted.
“He’s out, Doctor! He did it! Dr. Salina!” He shook me like a rag doll. “Look, Dr. Salina, look! He’s out!”
I raised my head, not understanding what the captain was saying. I saw Farag waving his arms from the other side.
“He’s alive, my God!” I screamed. “Thank you, Lord, thank you! You’re alive, Farag!”
“Ottavia!” He shouted, and suddenly toppled over onto the ground senseless.
“He’s burned! He’s burned!”
“Come on, Doctor! Now, it’s our turn!”
“What are you saying?” I babbled, but before I realized what was happening, the Rock had grabbed me by the hand and was pulling me to the fire. My survival instinct rebelled and I braked, digging my feet firmly in the ground.
“Right this second! Now, step! Step hard!” Glauser-Röist told me, undaunted by my abrupt stop. Proximity to the coals must have made me react because I raised my foot and slammed it down with all my might.
The Last Cato Page 46