The Lord imparted to me the cause of the man’s suffering and the treatment that would save him. I took the boss’s helpers over to where he was sitting in a heap and whispered to the three of them that the treatment would be difficult and he would have to endure what I was going to do and not be impatient. The man was resigned, breathing rapidly and his eyes were wandering, as though the devil they imagined truly possessed him. In a croaking voice the caravan leader kept repeating: ‘Do what you see fit, with the help of the Lord, do what you see fit, with the help of the Lord...’
The abbot was standing close to us, watching anxiously what was happening, and Martha was standing next to her aunt at the gate, looking at us warily. The Roman soldiers were looking at Martha from behind and whispering to each other. I brought a rope from the goat pen and asked the helpers to tie their leader to the platform by his hands and feet. Then I whispered to Martha to fetch a bucket of muddy water and dissolve plenty of salt in it, then bring a jug of cold fresh water, scented with essence of mint. Martha hurried off to do what I asked and I went to the monastery kitchen and took plenty of scraps of bread and food leftovers.
To the astonishment of all I leant down towards the sick man’s ear and whispered to him that he must eat everything I put in his mouth and try to swallow it, or else he would never recover. He nodded in agreement and I started to stuff the rotten food in his mouth after mixing it up and soaking it in some of the water. The poor man began to swallow it with great difficulty. When he stopped swallowing I shouted at him and he opened his mouth and I started to stuff in more of the food. He was swallowing it reluctantly and gasping. When his insides were full I shouted at him to bear with me for a moment in what I was going to do. I took some straw mixed with goat dung from the floor of the pen, and tried to push it into his mouth. He moved his face to the left and right to avoid it and tried to break free from the ropes. Everyone around me was terrified and Martha was holding the bucket trembling. I took the bucket from her hand. I pinned the man’s thigh down with my right knee and tried to push the straw in with one hand while I made him drink the salty water. The man kept resisting me and I kept shouting at him, ‘This is the only cure. Be patient.’
When I felt that his strength was ebbing and that his insides were full, I stood up straight, forced his lips apart and poured more salty water in his mouth. When the man was about to expire completely and his vigour was quite spent, I asked his assistants to untie him. I moved away to where Martha was standing, watching the scene with her beautiful, bewildered eyes. The abbot was sitting on a large rock, anxiously resting his head on his stick.
When the ropes were untied, the man sprang up and rushed towards me like a bull. He raised his arms in the air as though he were about to wring my neck. I did not move. He stood in front of me a moment, panting, his hands outstretched in the air and sweat dripping from his brow. At that moment he looked like a giant who had escaped from some ancient fairy tale. Suddenly, what I expected and what I intended finally happened. The man turned and ran towards the wall of the goat pen, crouched on his knees and began to vomit in the most ghastly manner. I went over to him and began to shake his shoulders from behind, urging him to vomit more, and he did so. Everyone was appalled and astounded.
When the man had finished vomiting I washed his face in the salty water left in the bucket and had him drink some of the water scented with mint. He soon recovered his strength and was elated. He stood up laughing, came over to me, took my hand and started to kiss it, saying, ‘The devil is out of my belly.’ His companions cheered, as did the rest of the caravan men who had lined up at the monastery gate.
‘Allow me, father,’ I said, addressing the abbot. He stood up and I took him, the caravan leader and his three assistants to the place where the man had vomited. Martha joined us. I pointed to the man’s vomit for them to look and explained to them what the man was really suffering from. ‘Those tiny worms you see are a kind of leech that lives in brackish water. When the man drank from the disused well that night, he swallowed some with the water without seeing them. The worms that went deep into his intestines were killed by the stomach’s digestive powers, but those that stayed in the upper part of his stomach began to suck his blood and make his stomach bleed. His stomach expelled the blood, which he vomited.’ Then I said, ‘So now you know the devil that’s in the well.’
They all laughed like children whose father had come home from a journey and I advised them to give the man goats’ milk to drink, and to give him only a little soft food to eat until he had completely recovered his strength on the third day. One of the monastery servants brought him a jug full of milk and the man glugged it down with relish. Then, unexpectedly, he asked me, ‘Can I sleep here a while?’
The abbot took him to one of the rooms next to the small church and left him to lie down there. The crowd moved away towards the caravan resting beneath the monastery but first many of them came and greeted me and kissed my hand. Shortly before sunset the abbot came to me in the library, along with the man who had been sick and who had now put on a sumptuous gown. The two men who had held him came in too, full of joy, and behind them four of the monks. The abbot said the man wanted to reward me for my medical services, but I told him that I took no fee for treatment and that it was God who had cured him.
The caravan leader came forward, sat on the chair nearby and said, ‘Holy monk, God chose you as the instrument of my recovery and I will carry out with pleasure whatever you ask of me. I have plenty of money, goods and clothes, so do not hesitate to ask.’
‘Thank you, good man,’ I said, ‘but I ask nothing of no man, and I take no fee for treating people.’
I said that and I bowed my head as if to end the conversation. The man stood up and kissed my head, begging me to accept whatever he would send by way of a gift. I told him, ‘Don’t send anything. Believe me, I need nothing, but ask the abbot if he needs anything for this place. If you want, you could give the girl who helped me a dress for her to wear when she sings in church on Sundays.’
SCROLL TWENTY-TWO
The Storm Brews
The caravan left at dawn, and at noon Martha opened the library door without knocking. I was engrossed in reading Galen’s book on the human pulse and the sound of the door creaking took me by surprise. I looked towards the door and saw her standing on the raised threshold, surrounded by the light shining in behind her, like a houri who had come down to earth wrapped in heavenly light to bring us peace and fill with kindness a universe which had previously been full of oppression and injustice. The sunlight framed her on all sides, so that she seemed enveloped in light. I shall not forget that moment as long as I live. Before I realized it, my hand had taken off my head cap with the crosses on it, in a gesture of welcome to the light which suddenly shone from the doorway, and at that moment I was sure that Martha was the most beautiful woman the Lord had ever created.
Her dress hugged her chest and waist gently, then fell in many folds, like a circle centred on her small feet on which she wore shoes of the same colour. On her head she had a scarf of glossy silk, holding her hair in place without hiding any of her face. On each side of the scarf plaits hung down to her breasts. Her dress was of purple velvet, rucked at the shoulders, then falling and opening, but tight around the arms. The sleeves were long and wide enough at the cuffs for the gilt embroidery to show on the back of her hand. The same embroidery decorated the hem of the dress and the border of her headscarf. Martha left me to contemplate her for a moment, tilting her head gently to the right and resting her fists on her hips. With a haughty gait and a smile she came towards me, holding the flowing dress at her thighs with the tips of her fingers and lifting it a little. The velvet folds and the train of the dress with the gilt stitching rippled with each graceful step that brought her floating towards me.
‘I see you like description, but that’s enough. Carry on with your account of what happened. Your description of Martha excites me.’
‘Get thee hence, A
zazeel.’
When Martha approached me, I looked up to the bodice of the dress. I gazed at the many buttons, arranged in two lines running up the bodice from the navel to the base of the neck, crossing on their way the fullness of her breasts. When she came closer to me, I looked up to where her neck met her fine chin, but my head was too low for me to look deep into her eyes. I think it was then she understood my torments, but she added to them with a serene smile which drew my gaze to the dimples in her cheeks. When at last I looked into her eyes, I plunged deep into a sea of honey.
‘What do you think, father,’ she said, ‘this is one of the three dresses the caravan leader gave me yesterday evening.’
‘Beautiful, Martha, very beautiful, my child.’
‘It’s slightly tight at the chest, but with time it will stretch to fit me.’
‘Yes, yes, come, let’s sit at the door.’
‘Father, it’s still too early for the boys to come. Let’s sit here.’
‘No, Martha, that wouldn’t be right. Our place is over there.’
It was not appropriate for us to sit in the far corner of the library, since the nearby window cast light only on the table where I read. It was better to sit at the door, to avert any suspicions. There was more light there too and I would be able to see the dress better. Martha followed me over and sat in front of me on her chair. She put her hands under her thighs and started to swing her legs back and forth. The dress shimmered as she moved and made me feel even dizzier. She was looking straight into my eyes while I avoided looking towards her. Without me asking she sang a song I was not familiar with, and then I looked at her, no longer able to resist.
When Martha sang, she was yet more beautiful. When she was absorbed in singing, she raised her fine chin and shut her eyes, as though she were confiding in heaven. Her singing that day acted on me like a drug, first numbing the surface of my body, then seeping deep inside me. Her voice transported me to a distant and infinite horizon, then it began to convulse me, filling me with sadness upon sadness until I lost all sense of who I was. When she finished singing, I was finished too.
‘Won’t you put your cap on, father?’ she asked.
Her question bewildered me, then reminded me I was not even aware that my head was still uncovered. In truth I felt only her overwhelming presence as it took possession of me and drew me out of myself towards her. I stood up reluctantly and fetched my cap. On my way back I had no qualms about looking at her. She, too, was looking at me with a mysterious smile which enhanced the magic of her face. I had to say something but the words on the tip of my tongue just vanished. I was telling myself that her beauty was cruel to those who knew her, cruel because it was too deep to be endured, too distant to be reached.
‘Why are you looking at me like that, father, and saying nothing?’
‘Nothing, Martha, nothing. I’m thinking. Tell me, how old are you? When did you get married? And where is your husband, and your family? Why did you come to live here with your aunt?’
‘Those are many questions, father. I’m twenty, and the other questions I will answer in the days to come, every day one question.’
‘All right, Martha, all right. Tell me when you want and however you like.’ But would the days to come play out in the way I would like? I have grown accustomed to seeing you over the past few weeks and after a time the singing practice will come to an end. So on what pretext will I see you after that? Monks don’t welcome women coming into their monasteries, but I am resigned to the fact that you have found a way into my heart. Will I be content to see you only on Sunday mornings, singing in church with the choir? No, I will find another pretext. I shall plant medicinal plants on the land around your cottage and commission you to look after them, and every day I will pass by to check up on the crop, and see you without arousing suspicion. That could go on for years and years! And perhaps the day will come when they tell me that Martha is going to marry one of the farmers and will go off to live in his house. That day you will leave behind your elderly aunt and leave me to suffer.
‘You’ve gone back to thinking and not saying anything!’ Martha said.
‘Yes, Martha, I’m thinking about you.’
‘I know. I can sense you, Hypa.’
The way she pronounced the ‘p’ in my name frightened me, because I never thought she would dare to call me simply by my name. At that moment I was looking at her lips and saying to myself: is this girl deliberately arousing me, is she fooling with me? Perhaps she’s fallen in love with me after coming to know me and seeing my skill at healing her aunt and my sensational treatment of the caravan leader yesterday, to the amazement of all.
At the time I saw the admiration in her eyes and felt her pride in me. But would proof of my medical skill induce her to fall in love with me, me who trails around in holy garb and lives in a monastery? And then she’s just a girl of twenty who does not know what love is in the first place. What is love? You don’t know what it is either, you wretched monk. What happened with Octavia twenty years ago was not love; it was sin. No, it was pure love on her part, and sin on mine. My few days with her were extraordinary, but at the time I did not know what they were worth. It ended with me losing her, and I lost myself in that dreadful way because I was afraid of her love and chose to run away from her. Then, when she was killed in front of my eyes, I inherited a wound that has never healed. Do you think I’ll lose Martha too, she who sits in front of me swinging her feet like a playful child? And will I ruin myself for the sake of an obscure and passing fancy? No, that would not do. All you have to do is pull yourself together. Bear with the turmoil you are going through. Understand that love is a storm that lurks in a distant corner in the depths of the heart, always eager to sweep away everything that stands in its path. You are a reverend monk and an eminent physician, so do not give love a chance to sweep you away, or else it will hurl you into the desert as an outcast. But on the other hand you are also a poet, and you have these feelings of desire towards this beautiful girl who is sitting in front of you, taking pleasure in teasing you and causing you trouble. And then you are forty and she is like a daughter to you, and tomorrow you might find she has thrown herself into the arms of another man, and you can go back to your usual gloom and bleak existence.
What other man could deserve Martha and know her value? No one but I understands the depth of the magic in her eyes and the wonder of the secret hidden within her. A man other than I would turn her into a peasant woman of the kind that fills the villages. Careful, she was married before. What kind of man was it that she married? I wonder, did she submit to him in the long winter nights? Did he taste the delights of her nubile body? Did she have her fill of him? Have mercy on me, my God.
‘Do you want me to go, and come back when the boys come?’ she said.
‘No, you can stay a while. They will come presently.’
‘But you are silent and you no longer look at me.’
‘Martha, you...’
I had intended to divulge my feelings for her and explain what I was going through, and she had prepared herself to hear something important. She folded her arms across her breast and stopped swinging her feet. She was just as beautiful when she paid attention and listened. Her eyes opened wide, making them yet more beautiful. But that time I did not say anything, because just as I was about to speak my mind, after looking long and deep in her eyes, we heard the clamour of the boisterous boys coming from the monastery gate.
I stood up straight away, fetched my papers and gave Martha a copy so we could start the singing and bring an end to this dreamlike interlude between us. The boys started reciting the psalm, then Martha sang the verses of poetry, overwhelming all my senses and sweeping me away, out of this world. I came back to earth to the boys singing the psalm again, then when she sang again I floated away to another universe.
When they left, Martha lingered a moment to ask me if these were fasting days, and I told her they were not. She whispered, ‘I’ll bring you something.’
She quickly disappeared, and came back a while later carrying a plate of those sweets for which Aleppo and the surrounding villages are famous. One of the monks was sitting with me when she came. She put the plate on the table and left without a word. The monk resumed his description of the contractions which gave him pain in the intestines whenever he ate anything other than boiled food.
That evening I took the sweets with me to the refectory and the monks who ate them said how good they were. When I thanked Martha the next morning she told me that these fancy sweets were a present to her from the caravan leader. It looked like the man was very generous, because the previous night the abbot had told me at the dinner table that the man had given him a sum of money to build the monastery wall and a wooden gate in the shape of a large cross.
I did not tell Martha that I did not eat any of the sweets, and I did not tell her anything else either because that day she came very late after the boys had taken their places in line. She said that she and her aunt had been busy building a new oven and that day her singing was unsettled. She was wearing the Damascene dress she had worn when I first saw her. Martha left with the boys as soon as the practice was over and I spent the rest of the day in great misery.
Azazeel Page 27