Sarah (17 page)

THEY left Ur, hidden among the cargo on a boat. Abram had paid the oarsmen handsomely. After going upstream for about ten
ùs,
they were let off on the opposite bank. There, a light wagon with slatted sides of bulrushes and matting, drawn by two mules, was waiting for them.

As soon as possible, Abram left the Nippur road, to avoid the royal checkpoints. Harnessed in turn, the mules followed the tracks of the herds, which they knew well. They did not stop to rest. Occasionally, Abram and Sarai got down off the wagon to lighten the load, and walked together hand in hand, without a word.

It seemed to Sarai that her nuptials were beginning. They had not yet kissed, but she did not dare do anything to provoke a kiss. It would come in good time.

She recalled their encounter on the banks of the Euphrates, when Abram had taken her hand, led her to the shelter of the dune, and lit a fire. She remembered his mocking words.

“It isn't every day that the daughters of the lords of Ur get lost in the bulrushes by the river. I could take you to my father's tent. But he'd think I was bringing him a bride, and my brothers would be jealous.”

Now it was finally happening: Abram was taking her to his father's tent. Tomorrow he would be her husband. The interrupted night of their encounter could finally resume.

IT was the middle of the following day when they arrived at the encampment.

Terah's tribe had grown so large that the array of tents was like a small city.

At first, they paid less attention to Sarai than to Haran. Sililli's herbs and care had limited his fever, though not his pain. When his wound had been anointed, and he had drunk some spiced wine to help him sleep, he pointed at Sarai, who had been standing in the background.

“This is my brother Abram's wife,” he said, with a wan smile. “Let us rejoice at his stubbornness. We, the shepherds without a city, should feel honored, not because she was born among the lords of Ur, but because of her beauty and her courage. Believe me, her presence here among us is a promise of better things to come.”

Sarai bowed her head at the compliment. Abram's eyes misted over with gratitude to his brother.

She only fully realized how fine Haran's words had been when Abram took her to see Terah. Up close, he looked older than he had in the courtyard of Ichbi Sum-Usur's house. His eyes were bright and cold, and his thin lips accentuated the hardness of his expression. Despite his wrinkles and his graying hair and beard, he exuded a sense of power, before which even Abram bowed his head.

He looked at Sarai without any tenderness. It was quite obvious that the beauty and courage of the woman chosen by his son had little effect on him. He let the silence linger longer than necessary.

“My son has decided it would be you,” he finally said. “It isn't customary for the daughter of a lord to mix her blood with ours, but I shall respect Abram's wishes. Among us, everyone is free to make his own choices just as he is responsible for the consequences of his mistakes. Accept our welcome.”

Without any further effort to be friendly, he entered his tent.

Sarai bit her lips.

“Don't be angry at my father,” Abram said in a low voice. “He likes only what he knows. He'll change his mind when he gets to know you better.”

Abram was wrong. It wasn't Terah's bad humor that had suddenly brought a chill to Sarai's happiness, but the thought of the blood that the old
mar.Tu
feared to see mixed with his own. In truth, her womb contained not the least drop of the life-giving substance. She felt less able now than ever to reveal her secret. Could Abram's love possibly have the power to take away the barrenness within her?

Abram led her to the women's tent, accompanied by laughing children. The young women inspected Sarai, unable to hide their curiosity or, in some cases, their jealousy. But the older ones welcomed her with open arms. One of them, a tiny woman with fine, smooth skin despite her age, dragged Sarai to the great mothers' tent. The others followed.

For the first time, Sarai discovered the warm light filtering through the canvas, the sweet smell of skins and rugs that covered the ground, the painted wooden chests, the jewels hanging from the tent posts.

The old woman opened one of the chests and took out a length of fine linen fabric with openwork stitching, embroidered with colored wools and encrusted with slivers of silver. Approaching Sarai, she held out the cloth with a smile.

“Welcome, Sarai, Abram's betrothed. My name is Tsilla. Abram's mother died a long time ago and when necessary I've taken her place. Among us, bride and bridegrrom wed with less ceremony than where you come from. We eat lamb outside the bridegroom's tent, we drink beer and wine and listen to flute music and sometimes a few songs of good omen. The bride wears a simple robe and this shawl, which covers her whole body. It's an old shawl, and a precious one: It has covered more than a hundred women. It has heard their sighs and their fears, their joys and their disappointments. We women call it the Shawl of Life.”

She fell silent. All around, the women were observing Sarai with a mixture of friendliness and severity that reminded her of the faces of the young handmaids as she prepared to confront the bull. She smiled, and her eyes shone with happiness. Tsilla nodded her head and smiled back at her.

“That's good,” she said, approvingly. “You must wear the Shawl of Life with those eyes! When you are in the tent, alone with your bridegroom, before he lifts the Shawl, you have only one thing to do. You must turn around him, at arm's length, three times in one direction and three times in the other. For the rest, Abram will teach you . . .”

The women chuckled, and the chuckles grew until everyone in the tent was laughing loudly, including Sarai.

IT happened just as Tsilla had said.

Sarai entered the tent covered with the Shawl of Life. Her heart was in her mouth. Through the loose stitches, in the light of the lamps, she could see Abram's face, full of desire.

Her thighs and belly painful with her own desire, she turned around him, three times in one direction and three times in the other. Then she stopped. In spite of the laughter and the flute music outside, she could hear Abram's breathing.

He approached and spoke her name. “Sarai, my beloved.”

He came closer still and placed a kiss on her lips, through the shawl. Sarai began to tremble.

Abram took the hem of the shawl and lifted it. She did not move. They looked at each other while his hand rose to Sarai's temple and his fingers slid down her cheek to the back of her neck. She stopped trembling. He smiled.

He slid her dress off her, and she was naked. He moved back as though he were afraid to touch her. A moan came from his mouth. His tunic fell all at once, and he, too, was naked, his penis erect.

Sarai raised her hand to place his fingers on the smooth skin at the base of the neck. The blood was throbbing so rapidly there that her fingers trembled. Abram was panting, shivering under her caress. Sarai felt her own sexual organs beating lightly against her womb. Then her knees gave way. Abram lay down with her on the rugs, his lips on hers, sharing the same breath, the same moan of happiness. And sharing the kiss that would at last protect her to the end of her days.

Sarai's Tears

T
erah's tribe followed the Euphrates downstream along the route used for trade with the northern barbarians. They advanced slowly so that the herds could graze regularly without becoming exhausted. Every night, Sarai and Abram shared a joy as bright as starlight. Sarai submitted to the privations and obligations of
mar.Tu
life with an ease that astonished even Terah. In less than one season, the girl who had been the daughter of a lord of Ur and the Sacred Handmaid of Ishtar, surrounded by slaves and servants ready to pander to her slightest whim, eating only what other hands had prepared for her, had abandoned her golden-hemmed togas, sumptuous jewels, and makeup, and opulent hairstyles without slightest regret. As naturally as if she had been born in a camp, she wore a modest tunic, plaited a braid of red-and-blue wool in her hair, and slept in a tent. She learned to grind cereals, cook meat, bake bread, and make beer. The only thing she carried over from her former life was the skill she had acquired from her aunts for carding, spinning, and dyeing wool, which won her the admiration of the other women in the encampment.

They left the kingdom of Akkad and Sumer, with its rich, powerful cities where the
mar.Tu
were despised. As they approached the mountains to the north, they passed merchants coming from Ur. Sarai learned that Kiddin had died defending the walls of the city from the
Gutis
. She spared hardly a thought for her father, Ichbi Sum-Usur, who had dreamed of his son's glory, though she did think about the streets of Ur and the house where she had spent her childhood, now perhaps overrun by the barbarians. But her sadness did not last. Her childhood seemed distant, and Abram was watching over her now, protecting her.

She saw snow for the first time, discovered how real cold felt and what it was like to spend whole days under sheepskins, forgetting the ice outside by making love with Abram until she was bathed in sweat. Abram did not seem surprised that his seed had not made his wife's belly round, nor did he show any impatience to have a child. There was nothing to mar the happiness they felt on waking each dawn lying side by side.

The misfortune happened suddenly, one gray, icy afternoon. Despite his father's warnings, Haran had decided to take a shortcut by fording a river at a hazardous spot. His wife, Havila, and their son Lot were on a wagon laden with heavy baskets of grain. The cold was so intense that the stones protruding from the water were covered with ice. As they crossed, the wheels slipped on a rock and became trapped in a hole. The wagon was sturdy, but it could not withstand the strength of the current and began to come apart. The terrified mules struggled in vain to free themselves from the backbreaking weight. Lot and his mother screamed with terror. Haran and Abram dived into the water.

Abram, his face blue with cold, managed to grab hold of Lot's hand. A human chain was formed to pull them out of the water. But a splinter from one of the broken wheels reopened the wound Haran had received from Kiddin during their fight in the great temple. Trying but failing to pull Havila out from under the overturned wagon, Haran was swept away by the raging current, his blood draining from him as he went.

They had to walk for two days along the river before they recovered his body. That evening, the funeral rites were observed for Haran and Havila. When the weeping and chanting finally stopped, Terah and Abram asked Sarai to take care of Lot as if he was her son.

It was after this tragedy that Tsilla started to worry about the fact that Sarai's belly was not getting any bigger, and that Sarai was never seen washing linen soiled with her menstrual blood. In order to allay suspicion, Sililli stole the blood of animals during slaughter and stained Sarai's sheets with it. She made heaps of offerings to her gods in secret, fetched herbs, and suggested various remedies to Sarai: circling trees on the nights when there was a full moon, anointing her thighs with pollen, eating snake, sleeping with a purse full of bull's sperm. Not a moon went by without Sililli coming up with some new solution. But Sarai soon refused to have anything more to do with such pointless magic, as much through revulsion as through fear of being discovered by Tsilla or one of the other women.

Meanwhile, even though Abram's desire for her showed no sign of lessening, and even though they slept in the same bed more often than many couples, Sarai, like everyone, became aware of her husband's increasing hard-heartedness.

When they reached Harran, Terah wisely decided to stop their march and let the herds gaze their fill. It was a rich city, constantly crossed by convoys transporting wood from the north toward the powerful cities of the kingdom of Ur. The wealthy local traders soon began to take an interest in Terah's statuettes. With his agile fingers, he fashioned a thousand idols, satisfying every one of his customers' whims. No two statues were alike.

The orders came flooding in so fast that it was decided that Abram would work with his father. But the following moon, Abram refused to place offerings on the altar of Terah's god or any other, and they quarreled violently. From that day on, relations between father and son grew increasingly sour. Terah avoided talking to his daughter-in-law. The mood of the whole tribe changed. Sarai felt she was being subjected to more and more speculative looks, to which she would respond with downcast eyes, for the truth was that she, too, thought it was her flat stomach that was causing Abram's ill humor.

Sometimes she would sit up in the middle of the night, listening to Abram's breathing beside her. What would happen if she woke him and told him the truth? Would he understand her childish terror? Would he understand how much she had loved him, even then, to resort to a
kassaptu
's spells? Could her words ever make up for the barrenness of her womb?

She doubted it, and instead of waking him, she would merely stroke the back of his neck and lie down next to him again with her eyes wide open, the silence gripping her chest like ice.

THE ball of wool rose into the air, wrapped in a piece of linen, and the children shrieked with joy. When it fell back to the ground, they threw themselves on it in a furious scrum. As usual, Lot was the first to extricate himself from the heap of legs and arms, the ball in his hands. Sarai, who had been watching with furrowed brow, relaxed. She resumed her work, spreading the newly woven and washed pieces of wool on the sun-warmed rocks.

The boys ran, shouting, through the fields of thick grass that bordered the encampment. Then their game took them farther, toward the river, the workshop, and Terah's kiln. They disappeared behind the brick wall, from which smoke rose constantly. Sarai thought to call them back, but they were out of earshot by now and she had no desire to run after them.

She glanced at the women who were busy around her, washing the newly woven wool or pressing it with stones to wring it and soften it. One of them smiled at her and waved her hand toward the river.

“Let them be, Sarai. If they disturb Terah, he'll know how to get rid of them!”

“He'll put their ball in his kiln,” another said, “and then we'll have to make them another one!”

They resumed their work, beating the cloths and rugs in time to the songs they hummed. Suddenly, the children's cries grew more shrill, and were followed by a suspicious silence. All the women looked up.

“They've been fighting again!” one of them sighed, rubbing the small of her back.

Lot came around the corner of Terah's workshop. He was alone and was holding his face in his hands. Swaying like a drunk, he began to climb the slope. Sarai lifted the bottom of her tunic and ran to meet him. Halfway up the slope, just before he reached her, Lot fell to his knees in the grass. Blood was gushing between his fingers and down his neck. Sarai parted his hands: There was a nasty cut, full of brick dust, running from his temple into the thick mass of his hair. It wasn't really a deep or serious wound, but it was bleeding profusely.

“You almost split your head open!” Sarai exclaimed. “Does it hurt a lot?”

“Not that much,” replied Lot in a blank voice. He was making an effort not to cry, but was shaking like a leaf. “They pushed me down on the piles of broken pottery behind grandfather's workshop.”

By now, his cheeks were bathed in blood, and it was running down inside his tunic. Sarai quickly untied her belt and wrapped it around his head.

“Do you need any help?” a woman asked, above them.

“No,” Sarai shouted back. “It isn't serious. Just a cut. Sililli must have some herbs.”

She wiped Lot's face as best she could with the bottom of her tunic. He was finding it hard to hold back his tears.

“They were all against me!” he said, his mouth quivering with pride and anger. “Not one of them was on my side!”

“That's because you're the strongest,” Sarai whispered, kissing him on the cheek. “If they didn't get together to fight you, they'd never win.”

Lot looked at her with dark, serious eyes, and sniffed. The red stain was spreading on the bandage, making him look like a little warrior back from the wars.

“I'm proud of you,” Sarai said.

Lot forced a smile. He slipped his arms under her lifted tunic and hugged her bare thighs with all his strength.

“Let's go into the tent,” she said, gently freeing herself.

SILILLI, of course, cried out when they appeared. But in next to no time Lot had been washed and given new clothes and a big bandage over a plaster of crushed clay and grass.

“No more fighting, my boy!” Sililli ordered, stabbing his chest with an authoritative finger. “The bandage has to stay in place until tomorrow. If not, I'll let you bleed like the little pig you are!”

Lot shrugged. “It isn't serious,” he said, confidently. “Sarai will take care of me.” He hugged Sarai, while Sililli pretended to be offended. “I like it when you look after me. You're as sweet to me as you are to my uncle Abram.”

Sarai laughed softly, gave Lot several little pecks on the cheek, and pushed him away.

“Listen to that, the greedy little man!” Sililli said, slapping him on the buttocks.

Lot skipped to the opening of the tent. On the threshold, he turned to Sarai. “It's when you take care of me that I know you're really like my mother.”

Sarai, her eyes abruptly misting over, gestured to him to go. Nervously, she began putting away the bags of herbs and pots of plaster, aware of Sililli's eyes on her back. As she picked up Lot's bloodstained linen, Sililli decided to speak.

“Tsilla asked me again this morning: ‘Still nothing in Sarai's womb?' I answered no, as usual. She asked me if Abram and you often slept in the same tent. I said, ‘Too often for my taste. Three nights never go by without them waking me with the noise of their lovemaking!' That made her laugh—her and the rest of the gossips who were listening so hard.”

Sarai shook her head, wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand. Sililli approached, and took the bloodstained linen from her hands.

“Tsilla laughed to make the others laugh,” she went on, lowering her voice. “Because she likes you. She's liked you since the first day, when she gave you the bridal veil. She laughed because she loves Abram as much as I love you. But she's no fool. She's understood. She knows.”

Dry-eyed again, Sarai tried hard to stop her voice from trembling. “How can you be so sure? Did she say something?”

“Oh, no! She didn't need to. Old women like Tsilla and me don't need to tell each other everything, we understand each other perfectly well. She's been asking me the same question every month since we arrived in Harran. I'm sure she even knows about the blood on the sheets.”

Sarai turned away. “I have to get back to the others. I haven't finished my work.”

Sililli held her back by the arm, determined to spare her nothing. “Tsilla knows, but she's a good woman, and she knows how difficult life is. The others, the ones you work with, aren't so forgiving. I can read it in their eyes like a scribe reading a clay tablet. They're thinking: Sarai's beautiful, the most beautiful of us all. There isn't a man here—husband or son—who doesn't dream of having the girl from Ur in his bed and sharing some of Abram's happiness. Yes, their eyes are full of jealousy and their hearts full of poison. But time is passing, and the girl from Ur, the girl Abram chose as a wife against his father's wishes, the girl who drove all the virgins in the tribe to despair, has a belly that's still flat. And I see the smiles coming back to their faces. Because they're starting to realize that Sarai isn't going to have a child. Beautiful she may be, but she's as sterile as desert sand.”