by Barbara Wood
Finally the heat of summer passed and Hadadezer consulted the local seer who declared it was a propitious time for the caravan to depart.
On the night before departure, Hadadezer confided in Avram that he would rather not have turned the caravan business over to his sister’s sons because they were a shiftless lot who despised hard work and had no business sense. He frankly admitted he thought they were cheating him. Unfortunately, tradition dictated that inheritance must stay within the family. “But that does not mean that I cannot place agents along the route, men whose loyalty I can count on.”
Avram would be Hadadezer’s representative at the Place of the Perennial Spring. The four other agents were the sons of the woman with whom Hadadezer had lived for many years. The eldest bore such a strong resemblance to Hadadezer that Avram was reminded of Yubal and himself, and Bodolf and Eskil. Hadadezer trusted these young men for they loved and honored him and would keep honest accounts of trade in the settlements where they would live: in the country of the lebonah trees, on the coast of the Great Sea, at the mouth of the Nile delta, and at the village that was flourishing and rapidly growing on the southern banks of the Nile. Hadadezer offered his guest gifts and Avram chose carefully, thinking of Parthalan, Reina, and Marit. These gifts would be the beginning of his atonement to them. In return, he gave Hadadezer Bodolf’s amber polar bear, which Hadadezer delighted over like a child.
On the morning of departure Avram saw another curiosity: donkeys trained to carry great loads. Although the People of the Reindeer had half-tamed their reindeer for milk and dogs for pulling sleds, they had certainly not attempted to burden the animals. This was astonishing. “There are limits,” Hadadezer warned. “Treat the donkeys well, feed them well and they will carry your burdens for you. Do not try to ride them yourself, for you will meet with a most unpleasant return to the ground.” Avram laughed and thought the old trader must be drunk, for who ever heard of a man riding a beast? Hadadezer had the donkeys and men loaded with goods to trade—seeds for cultivation, obsidian for tools and weapons—as well as provisions such as salt fish, beer, and bread. “As an investment,” he said to Avram, puffing from the exertion of having to give so many orders even though he had not left his carrying chair. “Refortify the settlement at the spring, Avram. Make it a prosperous place again, thereby making my caravan profitable again.”
Avram kissed Hadadezer’s plump nieces good-bye and as he led the caravan through the main gate of the walled town and toward the southern mountain pass, he hardened his heart and braced his spirit. He was prepared to beg his brothers’ forgiveness for running away and dishonoring the family; he would throw himself before Parthalan and restore the family’s honor; he would beseech Marit for exoneration and rededicate his heart to her. But he would never beg forgiveness from Yubal’s ghost, for it was Yubal who must ask forgiveness of Avram.
The caravan traveled the same route southward that had carried a bereft youth northward ten years prior, but now Avram saw the countryside with open eyes. On that journey in the past, when he was in the company of the feather-workers and he was a boy without a soul, he had looked at the landscape through soulless eyes and had seen nothing. But now he saw forests of cedar that were fragrant and magnificent, the Cave of Al-Iari and the home of his ancestors, and a river so sweetly familiar that he fell to the earth and wept with remorse-filled joy.
The sky was gray and a light winter rain fell when the caravan arrived at the Place of the Perennial Spring. The welcoming crowd on the hill was smaller than in times past, and Avram wondered if it was because there were no watchtowers, no one to alert the citizens that the caravan was arriving. But as he drew nearer, walking ahead of his pack donkey, he saw that the settlement itself was much smaller than when he had seen it last, and realized in shock that there were no mud-brick structures, not even the house he had grown up in. He recognized the man who came running to greet them as Namir, the goat-trapper, older and grayer, and shuffling with a limp. Behind him trailed people unfamiliar to Avram, so that he wondered if perhaps the entire population had changed in ten years.
Then Namir stopped suddenly, blinked owlishly, and cried, “It is a ghost!” and ran back to the settlement before Avram could assure him he was not Yubal returning from the dead.
Others, the older citizens, likewise stopped and gawked at Avram, their faces white with fear, while the younger ones ogled Dog and the laden donkeys, having never seen such things before.
Avram gave the signal for the caravan to make camp. Weary men unloaded their burdens, grumbling loudly as was their right, cook fires were lit—although more smoke than flame rose from the damp twigs and dung—and tents went up in the light drizzle. Avram thought it was a sad, ragtag affair, not at all like the grand days of Hadadezer. But his spirits were high as he anxiously searched the growing crowd for familiar faces. His brothers, would he even recognize them? His grandmother would not still be alive. But Marit, still a girl in his mind, surely she was here?
Finally a man of short stature but with the strut of a rooster came forward, walking with an impressive wooden staff. It took Avram a moment to recognize Molok, Marit’s abba. “Welcome, welcome!” he shouted with enthusiasm, but Avram saw the look of curiosity on the old man’s face as he stared at Avram with the frown of a man trying to identify something. Now they all came to greet the caravan as word spread through the settlement and more people arrived.
Three men came running, digging hoes still in their fists. Avram barely recognized them. In all his years of journeying, his brothers had remained boys in his mind, he had never imagined them growing up. But they were men now, robust and handsome. To Avram’s shock, Caleb fell to his knees and wrapped his arms around Avram’s legs. “Oh blessed day that brings our brother home! We thought you were dead!”
“Rise up, brother,” Avram said, lifting Caleb by the elbows. “It is I who should be at your feet.”
They embraced and shed tears on each other’s shoulders, and then the younger brothers welcomed Avram, openly crying with joy.
“Do I know you, man?” Molok said, squinting at Avram with eyes clouded with cataracts. “You look familiar.”
“Abba Molok,” he said respectfully, “I am Avram, son of Chanah, of the House of Talitha.”
“Eh? Avram? They said you were dead. But you are too meaty to be a ghost!” Molok raised his arms in a self-important way and declared the rest of the day to be one of celebration, an unnecessary announcement since already vats of beer were being rolled out, freshly slaughtered goats and sheep arrived on men’s backs, flat barley bread materialized along with jars of honey, platters of salt fish and fruit aplenty. The sound of flutes and rattles filled the air before all of the tents had been erected, along with shouts of reunion and recognition and welcoming laughter as people from the caravan mingled with people from the settlement.
It was, after all, like the old days.
By sunset the entire settlement, it seemed, had turned out, sharing food and cook fires, gossip and news. But the two faces Avram watched for had not yet appeared. He was afraid to ask his brothers what became of Marit and Reina the priestess.
Although the settlement was his home, Avram set up a small camp within the caravan, uncertain as yet of his status among his people. Although no longer guilty of Yubal’s murder, there was still the matter of dishonor. But nothing seemed amiss as his brothers happily brought ducks to roast on the fire, baskets of bread, and skins of wine. They were full of news, but were also eager to hear Avram’s news, remarking on his forehead tattoo and wanting to know where he had been all these years.
When Avram saw how his old friends and neighbors merrily launched themselves into the impromptu celebration, their misfortunes momentarily forgotten, their worries about tomorrow flown like a bird, something occurred to him that had not occurred to him in all the years of his absence: that the people in this settlement did not know it was he who had stolen the blue-crystal heart of the Goddess. Further, they did not know he ha
d run away out of cowardice, or that he had purposely dishonored the contract Yubal had arranged with the abalone hunters. The reputation of disgrace and shame among his people had been in Avram’s imagination only, because as Hadadezer had said, they had no idea what happened to him. They thought I had been killed, or kidnapped, or wandered off out of grief and somehow died. How can I ask them for forgiveness when they do not know what there is to forgive?
And then he saw something else in their hope-filled eyes: that they did not want to know the truth. He realized in a shuddering moment that so great had been their burdens and misfortunes during his absence, that it would be the worst cruelty to introduce dishonor, shame, and guilt into their lives now. So he made up a lively tale involving grief, getting lost, losing his memory, being captured, and fighting his way back—an epic story filled with gods and monsters, lusty women and feats of heroism, all of which everyone found suspect but loved for its entertainment, and as they passed around the wineskins no one blamed Avram for what happened ten years ago. The past was gone. Getting happily drunk was all that was on their minds now.
And then his brothers told him their own sad tale.
There were other bad-luck times while he was away, they told him, not just the raiders, but some bad-luck summers and then locusts one year devouring all the crops so that a lot of families pulled up stakes and resumed the nomadic life. The settlement, once so large and thriving, was reduced to a few hangers-on. “What is the use in planting and cultivating a crop only to have it stolen?”
He asked about the summer grape harvest as it was nearly the time of the winter solstice and they would be going to the sacred cave soon for the tasting of the new vintage. But Caleb sadly shook his head, saying that there had been a pitiful grape crop that summer, just enough to make raisins to trade to passing travelers. “The nomads come, camp here, and help themselves to our grapes. How do we three stop them? We cannot be vigilant night and day.”
“But what of the sons of Serophia?”
“After Yubal died, Marit went back to her family,” Caleb explained bitterly, “and so we no longer had the protection of her brothers. When the raiders came, the sons of Serophia did a good job saving their barley crop while our vineyard was stripped clean. It took us two years to have a good crop again, and then locusts came and ruined us once more. Since then we have barely been able to produce enough wine for ourselves, with a little extra to trade.”
This was alarming news, for the wine trade was the mainstay of the settlement, wine was what had made the people prosperous and was in fact what had caused people to end their nomadic ways and settle down in the first place. “That will change now,” Avram assured his brother. “We will make the vineyard flourish again, and the next time the raiders come we will be prepared.” He was already formulating a plan in his mind: he would offer local men a skin of wine in exchange for night patrol of the vineyard.
“Where is Reina the priestess?” he finally asked in a cautious voice, afraid of what they were going to tell him.
Reina was tending her shrine, they said. The Goddess no longer came out among the people, her processions ceased ten years ago. But she was still there, as was her faithful handmaiden.
Excusing himself from the company of his brothers, inviting them to eat and drink their fill and to stay by his fire, Avram rose on unsteady legs and made his way out of the noisy encampment. He went first to what was left of the Talitha vineyard and was dismayed to find it shrunken and impoverished in the dying light of a gray day. His brothers had erected what defenses they could around a small parcel of vines, but the rest of what had once been vast and flourishing fields lay weedy and untended. There was no evidence of the wooden watchtower that had once stood here, and where their fine mud-brick house had once been was now a large tent made of goatskins.
With a growing sense of dread, Avram continued into the settlement, which was quiet as most of the citizens were making merry in the caravan camp. Here he received an even greater shock. Conditions were worse than he had first thought. Guri the lamp-maker’s dwelling, the tent of the six linen-maker brothers, the abode of the Onion Sisters, the house of Enoch the tooth-puller and Lea the midwife, Namir’s mud-brick home and that of Yasap the honey-collector—all gone. The settlement had the temporary, ramshackle look of the days of the ancestors with no sign of permanence.
When he found Parthalan the abalone hunter, Avram nearly broke down. The old man was alone and almost blind, barely subsisting in a grass shelter and managing to carve the few shells that came his way. He cried when he saw Avram and laid no blame on the young man for his own misfortune. “Life is a curse,” Parthalan said. “Death is a blessing.” Avram thought of the gifts he had brought back for Parthalan: beautiful shells for carving that would be ruined beneath the blind man’s shaky hands.
As he left the old shell-worker, Avram tasted bile in his throat. Nothing happened by chance, he knew, everything had a cause. As he looked around at the impoverished settlement and the stamp of bad luck upon everything he saw, he knew the cause. This was all Yubal’s fault. If it hadn’t been for Yubal’s duplicity, working bad-luck alliances to obtain Marit for himself, he might not have died and today the vineyard would be flourishing, the settlement prosperous.
His heart heavy with bitterness, Avram took the last path he knew he must follow: to the residence of Serophia. To Marit.
Here, too, the mud-brick house was gone, its crumbled foundation visible at the edges of the tent that had been erected in its place. She was by the entrance, feeding grass into the oven, flat barley bread browning on the hot stones. She did not look up, but Avram sensed she knew he was there.
Marit had grown beautifully plump in his absence. No longer slender, she was womanly, with flesh and curves to fill a man’s arms. But not his arms, he thought resolutely, for though his heart still ached with love for her and his body hungered for her touch, the memory of that last night, seeing her in Yubal’s arms, was more painful than a thousand knife wounds. He knew that he would never be able to look at her again without remembering Yubal’s deception, nor be able to lay a hand upon her skin without seeing the pair of them, naked and clasped in a feverish embrace.
“Why have you come?” she said in a voice as flat as dust.
Avram did not know what to say. He had thought she would be pleased to see him. Or at least glad to know that he was alive.
She turned and beheld him with eyes like stones. Her face, still round and beautiful, was etched with lines, and the corners of her mouth were turned down from too many years of hardship and disappointment. “I knew you were alive, Avram. Everyone else said you must be dead, but I knew in my heart what happened to you. You saw us that night, Yubal and me. You woke up and saw us and then you ran out. I waited for you to come back and when you didn’t, and days and weeks passed, I realized that you had run away, and why.”
“I had every right,” he said in righteous indignation.
“You had no right! You were jealous of Yubal and me without even knowing what it was you saw. You jumped to a conclusion and judged both of us. You thought that Yubal and I were taking pleasure together.”
“It is what I saw.”
“Avram, did you stare at the moon too long? If you had but watched a moment longer you would have seen me pull myself from Yubal’s embrace, you would have heard him call me by your mother’s name. You would have seen him apologize in embarrassment, you would have seen him start back for his bed, and then you would have seen him clutch his head and fall to the floor. Had you no better faith in either of us? Your abba and your beloved?”
He blinked. “I thought—”
“That’s your trouble! Too much thinking!” She dashed a tear from her cheek.
He stared at her, too dumbstruck to speak.
“No man would lie with me after that. I became an untouchable woman because they believed I was cursed and that I made men drop dead with my touch. In all these years I have not known the comfort of a single em
brace.”
“Why did you not set everyone right?” he cried.
“How does one fight a rumor, Avram? People will believe what they wish to believe, whether it is the truth or not.” She added bitterly, “Certainly you did.”
“All these years,” he whispered hoarsely, “how you must have hated me.”
“I did at first. And then I grew to feel only contempt. While everyone else said you must be dead and prayed for you, I kept my counsel. Who would listen to me anyway? A woman with a curse upon her!” Placing her hands on her hips, she tipped her chin and said in a challenging tone, “You are the only man I have lain with. Can you say the same, Avram? In these ten years, how many women have you lain with?”
He stared at her, a helpless fool, as his mind counted off the women: the feather-workers, the nomads, the cockle-eaters, the bison hunters, Frida, Hadadezer’s nieces.
She turned away from him and threw more grass into the oven. “Ten years wasted. You and I are in the midway of our lives, Avram. Your grandmother lived to be sixty-two, but she was blessed. No one lives that long. All we can hope for now is a few more years of good health before we become a burden to our families. And a burden I shall be, for the Goddess has chosen to withhold children from me. I am barren, Avram, and there is nothing less deserving of food and shelter than a barren woman. Now go away. Feel sorry for yourself elsewhere. You will find no pity here.”
He stumbled out into the night, dazed and confused. Great Goddess! cried his mind. What have I done?
His feet led him to the only place left for him to go. The shrine of the Goddess was smaller and humbler than the mud-brick one he remembered and was made only of timber and grass with an adjoining hut where the priestess lived. He had heard from his brothers that Reina had been reduced to low circumstances, even though she was still the priestess of Al-Iari. She had been raped by the marauders, they said, and the experience left her bitter. On top of that, because the blue stone had vanished, many people turned away from the Goddess—especially after the raiders, and the locusts, and then the bad-luck summer when all crops failed. People blamed the priestess for misinterpreting the signs and so Reina no longer received the generous gifts from the past but was getting by on bare subsistence.