Sarah (12 page)

“No, I went to the great temple of Inanna. I wanted to make offerings and ask the protection of the Almighty One so that my father should make a good choice for the man I am to marry.”

“The great temple? Is that where you were?”

“I need to be prepared. I don't want to be afraid again.”

“Without telling me—even though you know your father has forbidden you to leave the house?”

“The idea came to me while you were still asleep. Everyone was asleep, even my father. And I wanted to be alone before holy Inanna.”

Sililli shook her head. “You'll be the death of me, my girl,” she said again, “the death of me!”

Sarai summoned the strength to smile and to hug her, pressing her cheek against hers, until Sililli abandoned her questions with a sigh of resignation.

“Anyway, you're here. And we all have to die one day.”

But she never again let Sarai out of her sight. She would wake her in the night to make sure she had not run away. Because of this, Sarai was unable to prepare the herb of infertility until just before it was time for her to go back to the chamber of blood. Nor was she able to follow Kani Alk-Nàa's instructions to the letter.

She stole a pitcher of boiling water from the kitchen, put the five packets of herbs in it to soak, and hid it in the garden. But thanks to Sililli's vigilance, she could not drink the infusion as quickly as she wanted. It was not until the next day that she managed to escape her handmaid's eyes, slip out into the garden, and take the infused packets of herbs from the pitcher. They had become white and shriveled. Did it really matter that they had soaked for so long? Sarai doubted it. The important thing was to hide them until she had an opportunity to destroy them!

Recalling the disgusting stench of the witch's lair, she dreaded the taste of the potion, but she was pleasantly surprised: The infusion was sweet, almost as sweet as honey, with a slightly acid but refreshing aftertaste. It was far from unpleasant, and she would even have drunk it for pleasure. Fearing that she would have little free time in the hours to come, Sarai decided unhesitatingly to swallow the entire pitcher.

When she returned to the women's quarters, she felt calm for the first time in days. At last, it was done. At last, the herb of infertility was inside her. The blood wasn't coming to flow between her thighs.

She knew what would happen. After two, or three, or five days with no blood on her linen, Sililli, her aunts, and her father would think she was ill; it would not occur to any of them that she had been brave enough to enter the lair of a
kassaptu
. They would make a large number of offerings to Nintu, but the blood still would not flow. Two moons would pass, perhaps three.

Long enough for her father to postpone the bridegroom's arrival, perhaps even to renounce the idea of offering his daughter to anyone at all.

Long enough for the
mar.Tu
Abram to return.

That night, taking advantage of Sililli's brief absence, Sarai quickly hid the five packets of the herb of infertility under her bed. Then she stood before the red silhouette of the goddess Nintu at the foot of her bed, opened her arms and the palms of her hands, and turned her face up to heaven. Without her lips moving, without anyone hearing her, she implored Nintu's mercy.

O Nintu, patroness of childbirth, you who received the brick of childbearing from the hands of almighty Enki, you who hold the scissors of the birth cord,

Consider your daughter Sarai, be patient with her,

Look down on my weakness,

Look at the blood that is in my heart:

It is cold for the husband I have not chosen.

The herb of infertility is like a cloud in the sky,

It does not long stop the sun from shining.

O Nintu, forgive Sarai, daughter of Ichbi Sum-Usur.

IT was toward morning, while she was fast asleep, that hell entered Sarai's belly.

She saw it first in her dream. Dancing flames penetrated her body like a man. She tried to ward them off, but her hands went right through the fire without lessening it. She saw her own body become red and swollen, while the
kassaptu
's face creased with pleasure and she shouted in a loud voice: “You see, now it's true: You are an opened woman.” Sarai's body cracked open, her entrails split and burned. She saw them fall to the ground, black and shriveled. She twisted in pain. Her belly, like an emptied gourd, made her weep and cry out. The cries became her name and woke her.

“Sarai! Sarai! Why are you shouting like that?”

Sililli was leaning over her, holding her hands, her face distorted with fear in the dim light of the oil lamp.

“Are you sick?” Sililli was asking. “Where does it hurt?”

Sarai could not answer. The fire in her belly was sucking the air from her lungs. She could hardly breathe.

“It's only a nightmare,” Sililli said, imploringly. “You must wake up.”

The fire made her limbs ice cold. She could feel them becoming hard and brittle. She opened her mouth wide, trying desperately to breathe. Sililli seized Sarai around the waist and supported her back, which was arching as if it would break. Suddenly, everything inside her became soft, dusty, like something rotten reduced to ashes. The air finally entered her lungs, sweeping away the ash and what remained of the fire. She saw blackness coming. An immense, welcoming darkness. She was happy to vanish into it.

She did not hear Sililli's screams, which woke the whole of Ichbi Sum-Usur's household.

UNTIL daybreak, they thought she was dead.

Sililli filled the women's courtyard with weeping. Ichbi Sum-Usur ordered all the fires to be extinguished. Shutting himself away in the temple of the house, he prostrated himself before the statues of his ancestors with a fervor that astonished his eldest son. Kiddin watched the tears streaming down his father's cheeks with a mixture of disappointment and disgust. When he saw him lie down on the floor and empty a goblet of cold ashes over his noble head, the thought occurred to him that the gods were infinitely wise: They had taken his sister from the world. A sister incapable of abiding by the laws and duties of women. An ill-fated sister who attracted demons but could still melt the heart of an overfond father. Had she lived a few more years, he and his father would both have become the laughingstocks of Ur.

Just before dawn, Egime let out a cry.

“Sarai's alive! She's alive, she's breathing!”

She repeated it until Ichbi Sum-Usur rushed to the women's quarters and a stunned silence ensued.

Replacing Sililli, who could not bear to approach the corpse of the girl she considered her own child, Egime had been about to wash, purify, and dress Sarai for her journey to the underworld. But doubt had stayed her hand.

“She isn't cold and she isn't stiff,” she explained. “And parts of her stomach are burning hot. I put my hand on her chest and listened to her mouth: She's breathing.”

As they stood there before Sarai's inert body on her beautiful bridal bed, Egime called them to witness. She held a dove's feather close to her niece's cracked lips. The feather shook, and slowly bent, first in one direction then the other. There was no doubt about it: Air was entering and leaving Sarai's body.

“She's alive,” Egime said. “She's just sleeping.”

Sililli yelped like a ewe being slaughtered, and collapsed on the floor. Ichbi Sum-Usur was shaken by a long, nervous laugh. Kiddin shot him a fierce look, and he managed to stifle it. He ordered all the fires to be relit, one hundred
silà
of cedarwood shavings to be burned, and Sarai's young aunts to purify themselves and go to the great temple of Inanna to offer half a flock of small livestock in his name.

When the sun had reached its zenith, Sarai was still asleep. She was still asleep at twilight. Sililli, who had been watching over this stubborn sleep as if she were watching a pot of milk on a fire, turned to Egime.

“It isn't possible. She can't be asleep.”

“She is. I know what happened. The punishment finally came. Her intended husband's gods asked Ereshkigal for justice, and Ereshkigal sent his great demon Pazzuzzu to take her last night and drag her down to hell. But Sarai must have found a way to move him. You know how she is. The demon finally let her go. She was so exhausted when she came back, she needs many hours' sleep.”

Sililli thought for a while, then shook her head. “Things may have happened that way. . . . But did Pazzuzzu let her go just so she could sleep?”

“That's what she's doing.”

“No. I know what sleep is. You move, your limbs twitch. She hasn't moved a muscle since this morning.”

“It'll come,” Egime replied, with a touch of irritation. “The way you sleep when you come back from the underworld is no ordinary sleep.”

“It isn't sleep at all!” Sillilli went on, stubbornly. “She's still sick. That's what I think.”

“She's asleep. It doesn't really matter what you think.”

“What do you mean? I'm almost like her mother. Her life is my life! She's as much part of me as if she had come out of me.”

“Some use that's been! We've all appreciated the kind of behavior you taught her!”

Soon, the two women were arguing so violently that they had to be separated. Egime left Sarai's bedchamber in a furious temper, which she took out on anyone who approached her.

Alone with Sarai's thin, motionless body, Sililli was more than ever confirmed in her opinion. How was it possible to sleep with two women screaming by your side? No sleep could be as deep as that.

With a terrible sense of foreboding, she decided to give Sarai another wash. In the middle of changing the bed, she came across the five little packets of dried leaves.

Evil herbs, the kind the
kassaptus
made! White and cracked from being left for a long time in boiled water!

“Great Ea! O Great Ea, protect us!”

Now she knew why Sarai had been gone from the house a whole day. Egime could shut her eyes to the truth as much as she liked. Sarai was definitely not asleep.

But she might as well be dead.

BY the next day, Sarai had still not opened her eyes and everyone was of Sililli's opinion: She was not asleep.

But Sililli, her skin gray and her eyes red from lack of sleep, kept her secret deep inside her. With her own hands, she had burned the packets, destroying the last traces of the sacrilege. She was sure Ichbi Sum-Usur would prefer to go to his tomb unaware that his daughter had obtained herbs from a witch. She was strong enough to bury Sarai's secret so deep in her heart that she managed to perform her daily purifications and her interminable petitions to Inanna with almost as much faith and purity as before.

Not that she had any better idea than anyone else how to bring Sarai back to the land of the living. While Ichbi Sum-Usur was spending a fortune on offerings to all the gods and goddesses who could care for the welfare of the family, Sililli did her best to keep Sarai from dying of hunger and thirst before the work of the underworld could be undone.