Azazeel (38 page)

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.

That day I looked often towards the cottage from the library window, and I saw plenty of activity: Martha in her house clothes coming and going, her aunt in her dark black clothes, sometimes
sitting at the loom and sometimes standing, three boys singing as they repaired the walls of the animal pen in front of the cottage, the carpenter banging nails into the door. They must have many
repairs to do, other than the oven. Shortly before sunset, much smoke rose from the new oven and the activity died down.

That night I thought of sleeping in my room, so that the smoke rising from the new oven would not trouble me, then I decided instead to close the window and stay in the library, because it was
closer to her. I shut my door, lit the wick of my lamp and went back to reading my only copy of Galen’s book on the human pulse, hoping to find solutions to the confusing aspects of this
text, which was full of copyist’s errors. That night I missed dinnertime and I did not attend the night prayers with the other monks. After prayers, two of the monks from the monastery
visited me, one an old and dignified monk, the other younger and stouter. With them came a visiting monk who had stopped at the monastery on his way from Rome to Jerusalem.

The visiting monk did not say a word throughout our conversation and I hardly noticed him. In fact I do not remember now what he looked like. I just remember him looking down at length in
silence and that, according to the other two monks, he was carrying a letter from the pope of Rome to the bishop of Jerusalem about an important meeting. I was surprised at what I heard and did not
understand the mystery of why this monk was travelling alone by land rather than by sea, the usual route. Why was he avoiding the big cities and why had he not passed through Antioch on his way?
But I did not want to burden him with my questions, especially as I felt that night that he preferred to stay silent. The mystery came to light later and I realized that behind our backs they were
arranging the ecumenical council which created such an uproar in Ephesus.

While the two monks sat with me a while, I prepared for the visiting monk some medicine for a burning feeling he had in his chest. We spoke about the big churches in Rome, the many monasteries
spread across the seven hills of the city, when the time would come to start building the wall which would surround the monastery, and many other things. They left me at midnight, and at the door
the younger, stouter monk told me with a smile that the girl who had recently moved into the cottage sang at the party which the merchants held two days earlier to celebrate the recovery of their
leader. Highly suggestively, in a manner inappropriate for a monk, he added that the caravan leader and the girl seemed very friendly and that after the banquet she accompanied him to his tent.

I was devastated.

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I
did not shut my eyes all that night, and when the sun rose at daybreak my body and soul were fevered. I stayed tied to the window overlooking the
cottage until I saw Martha come out languidly to hang a sheet on the clothes line behind the oven, which they had lit the day before and from which the smoke was still rising. I threw on my clothes
and rushed off towards her. It was her aunt who saw me first and she came towards me full of cheer. I asked after Martha and she called her. She took her leave, saying she had to revive the fire in
the new oven because the fire had to be lit three days in succession. I nodded and stayed standing where I was, close to the cottage.

Martha came out in her house clothes, swaying as she walked as though she were deliberately taking her time. She was barefoot and on her head she wore a scruffy scarf which had once been blue.
Although her clothes were shabby she was cruelly beautiful in the early morning light. When she stood before me, jealousy tied my tongue and I could not say a word.

She spoke first, saying, ‘What is it, father? Are you travelling somewhere today?’

‘No, but I want you to tell me something. Did you really go with the caravan leader to his tent the night they stayed here, and did you sing to them?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because I...’ I did not finish. I had nothing further to say. I felt a burning in my throat, I found it hard to breathe and my soul was pained. Suddenly I turned to go back to the
monastery and left her behind me without looking at her, not even once.

I went straight up to my room, shut the door behind me and curled up in the farthest corner, my head between my knees and my arms wrapped around. Inside me I heard a babble of discordant voices,
tormenting me, tearing me to pieces and mocking me. After a period of self-absorption, I started to groan, as though I had hooks or scalpels tearing at my liver. I felt sorry for myself, despised
myself. Is this what you wanted, what you were working for, good monk and poet? To be the laughing-stock of people because of an ignorant girl about whom you know nothing? How could you let
yourself become the plaything of a flirtatious woman, simply because you think her beautiful? You kept wondering if she was a virgin, but the caravan leader whom you cured understood that she was a
wanton woman who would go with strangers to their tents at night. What misery have you brought upon yourself? I wanted to give her a dress through the caravan leader but he found his way to her and
showered her with gifts – three dresses and fancy sweets. . . There may be other gifts which she did not mention. You introduced her to him so you have only yourself to blame, and you so
proud that you can heal the sick. My God, I know You will punish me for my sin, so have mercy on me. I confess all the lust I have committed in my heart, all the rules and enduring commandments I
have broken. I ignored what is written in the Gospel according to Matthew: ‘Anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye
causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.’

My God, I know that I have sinned, so bestow Your pardon upon me and do not throw me into hell right away. Fire burns inside me, burns me up. Turn me into ashes or dust strewn along the road.
Have mercy on me, because I can bear no longer the constant torment. My God, I am wretched, broken, meek. I am grieved and You are merciful. Jesus the Saviour, in his first public sermon, said,
‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.’
And I, my God, I do not aspire to the kingdom of heaven, nor to inherit the earth, nor even to be comforted. All I beg of You is that You put out the flame burning inside me and bring an end to the
pain which has driven me to this corner, outcast and despised.

‘Father, are you inside?’

I heard Deacon’s voice, along with his frantic knocking on the door of my room, and it wrenched me away from the misery in which I was drowning. Perhaps it was a sign from heaven, to save
me from the pitiful state to which I had brought myself.

‘Father, are you asleep?’ Deacon called again and kept knocking. I stood up unsteadily from the dark corner, and leant against the wall as I raised the latch of the door. The light
coming in from behind Deacon hurt my eyes and his voice distressed me.

‘Father, you’re here!’ he said, ‘I’ve been knocking on your door for an hour. I didn’t know you slept so soundly.’

‘What do you want, my son?’

‘They want you in the library.’

Deacon went off and I almost collapsed on the floor, as though I had pulled myself together for his sake, or needed his sudden, unwelcome presence as a prop. They want me in the library! Who is
it that wants me now? I do not want to see anyone, and I do not want anyone to want to see me.

With heavy steps I went down the stairs, as if descending from the summit of desolate Mount Qusqam towards the desert which stretches away to the west. The courtyard of the monastery was empty
and the midday sun dazzled my sad eyes. I walked towards the library like a traveller fighting to stay awake, my mind hard at work wondering who might be awaiting me in the library. With difficulty
I reached the half-open door, and pushed it gently.

‘Martha!’

‘Yes, father, I’ve been waiting for you for ages.’

‘What do you want now?’

‘Sit down, father, I beg you.’

I sat down, without looking towards her. I was almost in tears, but I fought them back and overcame them. Martha stood speechless, and after a long silence I looked at her, and saw that she too
was on the point of tears. She was looking down at her left knee. Her thin silk scarf, black like her loose dress, hung down around her face. The blackness of her dress enhanced the radiant
whiteness of her childlike, innocent face. After contemplating her for some moments, I felt she was so perfect that she could never have done the wanton deed that I had imagined, and that if she
were truly a wanton woman, the Lord would have deprived her of this angelic countenance and given her instead the countenance of a whore. If she were truly a frivolous woman, she would not have
bothered to come to me and sat in front of me so silent and so innocent, so suggestive of chastity.

Martha raised her face towards me and, her eyes filled with a sad beauty, she looked deep into my eyes and spoke. ‘I beg you, Hypa, do not misjudge me. Injustice is cruel and I have
suffered much from its cruelty in my life.’

‘Did you go to that man’s tent, Martha, the night you sang for him?’

‘I’ll tell you everything,’ she said.

In words full of candour, before finally bursting into tears, Martha told me that the caravan leader sent to her that day towards sunset, with one of his retainers, three dresses, a sack of
wheat and another sack of dried fruit. The man told her it was a gift from the caravan leader for the people of the house next to the holy monastery. So he said. And after sunset the same retainer
came back to tell her that they had learnt from the neighbours that she sang well the songs of the potters, known by the name Quqoye. He said they were holding a banquet for the monks and the
people of the area to celebrate the recovery of their master.

Martha stopped a moment, then she continued. ‘The man told me that if I went to sing, the caravan boss would pay me, so I went to them with my aunt and sang. The songs of the Quqoye, as
you know, Hypa, are respectable songs, with nothing shameful about them, and many of the monastery monks and deacons were present, as well as most of the people who live around the monastery. I
expected to see you there and I kept looking out for you throughout the evening, but you did not come. When we had finished, the caravan leader took us towards his tent, my aunt and me. He went in
and came out with a dress for her and some money for me. We took what he gave us and went back to our cottage and did not go out again till the next day.’

Martha said all this with a tone of complete sincerity. When she had finished she bowed her head and broke into tears.