Sarah (21 page)

But when they arrived an arrow's length from the dazzling white walls, the huge blue-painted gate that constituted the only opening remained resolutely shut.

Above the crenellated walls, helmets and spears could be seen moving, and in the vertical openings of the narrow towers shadowy figures were visible.

Abram raised his stick, and the column came to a halt. He placed his hands around his mouth.

“My name is Abram!” he cried. “I come in peace with my people to salute those who have beautified this land and built this city!”

Abandoning his stick, he held out his right hand and took Sarai's hand, then with his left took Lot's. He asked all of them to do the same. Families joined hands, forming clusters, and came together with Abram and Sarai, until all were united in a crescent shape. It was obvious now to those watching them that they were not concealing any weapons.

They remained like this for a while, in the sun.

Then suddenly the door creaked, rumbled, half opened, then gaped wide open.

Soldiers appeared. Dressed in harsh-colored tunics, with shields and spears in their hands, they advanced with a firm stride in two parallel columns toward Abram and his people. Some could not help taking a few steps backward in fear. But when they saw that Abram had not moved an inch, they resumed their places.

When they were some twenty paces away, the warriors came to a halt. Everyone noticed that they were not pointing their spears at the newcomers' chests but toward the sky, and resting the shafts on the ground. They also noticed that their faces were similar to theirs. Their eyebrows, beards, and hair were jet black. Unlike the warriors of Akkad and Sumer, they wore neither wigs nor helmets, but strange-colored hats. Their eyes, as black as their skin, glittered with kohl.

A trumpet sounded at the gate of the city. A gentle, solemn sound.

An excitable, colorfully dressed crowd of people came out. At their head were ten old men with round bellies and long beards, dressed in capes of intense red and blue, their heads wrapped in wide yellow turbans, and necklaces of silver and jasper hanging from their necks. Young boys walked beside them, carrying palms to give them shade. The surprising thing about the old men was that they were smiling a smile they all recognized, and Sarai first of all: It was the same smile her husband had had since morning.

The wise men of the city came to a halt. Abram let go of Sarai's and Lot's hands and took two big loaves from the nearest wagon. He bowed respectfully to the oldest, most richly dressed, and most noble-looking of the men, and offered him the loaves.

“My name is Abram. I come in peace with my people. They call us the Hebrews, the men from across the river, for we have come a long way. These are the loaves we baked yesterday and today. I am happy to offer them to the inhabitants of this city, although it is a rich city and well able, I'm sure, to bake a hundred times as many.”

The old man took the loaves between his ringed fingers and passed them to those beside him. Behind them, the soldiers could no longer hold back the crowd, who thronged around the newcomers, curious and excited. Children cried and gesticulated to attract the attention of the travelers' children.

The old man Abram had addressed raised his hand. The trumpet rang out, and silence returned.

“My name is Melchizedek. I am king of the city of Salem, of this people, and of this land, which we call Canaan. From the river in the east to the shores of the sea in the west, other peoples share this land with us.”

He spoke slowly and calmly, in the Amorite language, though with an accent that Sarai had never heard before.

“I, Melchizedek, welcome you, Abram, and those who are with you. Salem and Canaan welcome you. We open our arms to you. In the name of God Most High, who created heaven and earth, I bless your coming.”

A heavy silence fell.

Abram turned to Sarai, his face jubilant. “Did you hear?” he cried, in a voice loud enough to be heard by everyone. “Lord Melchizedek, King of Salem, blesses us in the name of the One God. These people are our brothers.”

Sarai's Beauty

T
heir happiness lasted ten years.

That first day, there was a great feast, at which both food from Salem and the newcomers' food was served. They all became drunk on beer and stories. It was an occasion for mutual admiration and discovery. It was decided that Abram would pay a tithe for each animal from his flocks that grazed on the lands of Canaan. It was also decided that he would not build a city, in order not to compete with the beautiful city of Salem, and that, as their fathers had done in the past, he and his people would put up and take down their tents according to where they found pastures.

King Melchizedek and his wise men questioned Abram about the land from which he had come and the lands they had crossed in the course of their long march to Salem. They were astonished that Abram's people had found their way to Canaan across a thousand mountains and valleys, rivers and deserts. They knew nothing of the kingdom of Akkad and Sumer and asked Sarai to show them, on a tablet of fresh clay, the writing that was used there. They found it remarkable that things, animals, men, colors, and even feelings could be depicted by signs.

Finally, they asked Abram what he knew of the One God. They themselves venerated Him: He was the God of their fathers, and He had always assured them peace and prosperity on their land. However, the invisible God had never yet spoken to them. He had not told His name to any of them.

Yhwh.

King Melchizedek declared that Abram, although he looked like a shepherd leading an ill-assorted group of people, some not even related to him, was undoubtedly a king as noble as himself. He announced, in his youthful voice, that he would bow to him, despite the difference in age, and with all the respect he would have granted an equal.

Following his words, all the wise men and all the inhabitants of Salem did the same. Then Melchizedek turned to Sarai, who had been standing there in silence.

“Abram,” he said, “allow me also to bow to your wife, Sarai. Perhaps her beauty seems quite normal to all of you, and she doesn't sear your eyes with rapture. But she is the most beautiful woman the One God has ever set across my path. And I have no doubt that he placed her by your side as a sign of all the beautiful things he intends to offer your nation.”

And Melchizedek bowed to Sarai, seized a tail of her tunic, and brought it to his lips. When he stood up again, his mouth was quivering.

“I am old,” he whispered so that only she could hear, “but that's fortunate, because if I were young and knew you existed but could never be mine, I wouldn't be able to go on living.”

SARAI had hoped that once they had reached the land promised by his god, Abram would order a city to be built. A real city, with brick houses, alleyways, courtyards, doors, and cool roofs. Yes, all the grandeur of a city. The truth was, she was missing the beauty of Ur. She was missing the solid, immutable splendor of the ziggurat. And the shade of her bedchamber in Ichbi Sum-Usur's house, the scents of the garden, the noise of the goatskins being filled, the murmur of water in the basins at night.

She was not the only one who was weary of putting up and taking down the tents and following where the animals' hunger led them. But it did not take many moons for everyone to see how miraculous a country Canaan was.

It was possible to stay on the same piece of land for two or three seasons. Milk and honey seemed to ooze from the hills and valleys. Rain alternated with dryness and coolness with heat without one ever exceeding the other. Abundance made both the herds and the children fat. Sons grew taller than their fathers. As the days went by, they all forgot their dream of a city, even Sarai.

The tents grew bigger, until they consisted of several rooms divided by curtains. Abram had a huge tent made, with black and white stripes, as a meeting place for the heads of the different families. The women of Salem taught the newcomers to dye wool and linen in bright, cheerful colors, and showed them new patterns into which they could be woven. They put away their old white-and-gray tunics and began to dress in reds, ochers, blues, and yellows.

Within two years, word of the peace and prosperity of Canaan and Abram's and Melchizedek's wisdom had spread far and wide, carried by shepherds and caravans of merchants.

Strangers began to arrive from the north and the east with their meager herds—only a few at first, then in greater numbers. They would bow to Abram with the same words and the same expectations.

“We have heard about you, Abram, and your invisible god who protects you and leads you. Where we come from, there is only poverty, dust, and war. If you accept us among you, we shall obey you and follow you in all things. We shall serve your god, and make offerings to Him as you instruct us. You will be our father and we will be your sons.”

Some arrived from the south after crossing the three deserts on Canaan's borders. They seemed richer, less like peasants, than those from the north and the east, but were just as eager to belong to Abram's people.

“We come from a land of great richness, irrigated by a huge river whose source nobody knows,” they recounted. “The king who reigns there is called Pharaoh. He is a living god, and has unlimited power. He sits beside other gods who are half men and half birds, cats, or rams. His cities and palaces are magnificent, the tombs of his fathers even more beautiful than his palaces. But his power intoxicates those who serve him. In Pharaoh's land, they kill men as easily as others squash flies. It isn't hunger that we fear, but servitude and humiliation.”

Abram never refused the pastures of Canaan to any of the newcomers. He blessed their arrival with as much pleasure as Melchizedek had blessed him at the foot of Salem. With a tolerance that surprised everyone, he never forced anyone to believe in his god, even though his own devotion to the One God was absolute. He built altars to Him all over Canaan, and never let a day go by without making offerings to Him and calling His name: Yhwh! Yhwh! His only sorrow was the silence that answered him. Not a day passed that he did not hope for a new call from God Most High, as he had started calling Him, a new command to perform a new task.

But Yhwh was silent. What was there for him to say? As promised, Abram was becoming a people, a nation, and a great name. And without Sarai giving him a son or a daughter! Since they had settled in the land of Canaan, they had stopped being surprised by Sarai's sterility.

Everyone—men and women, new arrivals, and those who had walked from Harran—was captivated by Sarai's beauty.

Hers was a beauty that seemed in itself such a perfect expression of abundance that they were obliged to suppress their feelings of jealousy or lust. Similarly, it was understood that Abram, taking advantage of this beauty like a newlywed, seemed to feel no sadness at having no heir. All was well. Peace and happiness were numbing their hearts and minds. Well-being had become their daily bread. It was an intoxication from which no sorrow roused them. Sarai's beauty, her flat stomach, her smooth cheeks and neck, her young girl's breasts and hips, had become a sign of the happiness that Abram's god, Yhwh, had granted them.

For a long time they did not realize the true miracle they had before their eyes: Sarai's beauty was untouched by time. The moons, the seasons, the years went by, but Sarai's youth seemed immutable.

The weight of this silent miracle, though at first it delighted her, was beginning to terrify Sarai herself.

ONE summer's day, Sarai was bathing in the hollow of a river, as she liked to do when the sun was at its hottest. It was a spot where dense trees formed a chamber of greenery, where the current had hollowed a deep basin in the rock, and where the greenish-blue water was deep enough to dive in. Sarai would often come there to bathe naked. Then she would emerge, shivering, while the hot sun sizzled on the foliage above her, and lie down on the bank, where the rocks, polished by the winter floods and as soft as skin, were still cool. More often than not, she would fall asleep.

That afternoon, a noise startled her out of her drowsiness. She half sat up, thinking it was some animal, or a dead branch that had fallen from a tree. She saw nothing, and the noise was not repeated.

She was resting her chest and cheek against the rock when she heard a laugh above her. A body leaped out from between the trees, seized her tunic, and disappeared with a splash into the water. Sarai had recognized him.

“Lot!”

Lot's head emerged from the water. With a great burst of laughter, he waved Sarai's streaming wet tunic above his head. Sarai huddled on the ground and covered her nakedness as best she could.

“Lot! Don't be stupid. Give me back my tunic and get out of here!”

With two strong bounds, Lot was at her feet. Before she could make a move, he threw her tunic away and embraced her calves. He kissed her knees and thighs fiercely, trying to put his arms around her waist. With a cry of rage, Sarai gripped a handful of his hair. Twisting her hips and pulling on his head, she freed her legs. No longer mindful of her modesty, she managed to place one foot on Lot's shoulder and push him away. But Lot had become a strong young man. He loosened his embrace, although he did not let go completely. Laughing, and drunk with excitement, he struggled, gripped Sarai's neck from the back, and placed a hand on her chest. Sarai, her muscles hardened by anger, moved to the side, kicked Lot in the crotch, and at the same time slapped him across the face with all her strength.

In shock and pain, Lot rolled off the rock and fell into the water. Sarai got to her feet, found her tunic, and quickly put it on, soaked as it was. With a childlike moan, Lot hoisted himself out of the river. He lay for a moment on his side, his features distorted with pain and embarrassment. Sarai stared at him, her rage still not abated.

“Shame on you! Shame on you, nephew of Abram!”

Lot stood up, his face pale, his chin quivering. “Forgive me,” he stammered. “You're so beautiful.”

“That's no reason. I'm Abram's wife. Have you forgotten that? I can't forgive you.”

“Yes, it's a good reason, and a true one!”

He had almost shouted. He looked away, and sat down on the rock, with his back to Sarai.

“You don't notice anything,” he went on. “I see you every day. At night, you're in my dreams. I think of you as soon as I open my eyes in the morning.”

“You mustn't.”

“It isn't my choice. You don't choose the woman you fall in love with.”

“You shouldn't even dare to say such words. If Abram's god heard you—”

“Abram's god can hear me if He wants!” Lot interrupted, fiercely. “You're the one who doesn't hear me! You don't even see that I'm near you more often than Abram. You don't see that I pay you more attention than he does. There's nothing you ask of me that I don't do gladly. But you don't see me. And when you speak my name, it's as if I'm still the child you used to scold. I'm no longer that child, Sarai. My body has grown and my thoughts, too.”

Sarai suddenly felt confused and embarrassed. Lot's voice was throbbing with pain. Why hadn't she seen his suffering? He was right. She didn't see him. Or rather, while she saw the handsome young man he had become, thinner and more delicate than Abram, with something feminine in his suppleness, she continued to think of the child he had been, always laughing and playful. Meanwhile, everywhere in Canaan young women must be going to sleep with his image in their minds, dreaming of having him as a husband one day.

Sarai's anger ebbed. She tried to find some wise and tender words with which to calm Lot. But he faced her, his eyes as bright as if they were coated with kohl.

“I know what you're thinking. I know all the words you have in your mouth, all the words you could use to condemn me or calm me down. You're thinking of Abram who's like my father. You're going to tell me you're like my mother.”

“Isn't that the truth? Is there any greater sin than to covet your mother—your father's wife?”