Sarah (30 page)

As for Abram, he displayed his delight throughout Canaan. Everywhere he went, he thanked his god for the son Hagar had given him. But he returned quite soon. He no longer spent hours in the black-and-white tent engaged in discussion, but would sit and watch Hagar as she offered her nipples to Ishmael's mouth, which she did endlessly. And then he would start to laugh. It was a laugh such as Sarai had never heard from him before, a laugh that soon burst forth at the slightest opportunity.

As soon as he could, Abram began to play with his son. For hours on end, while Hagar looked on tenderly, Abram and Ishmael would hug each other and roll on the rugs or in the dry grass, in a cacophony of cries and gurgles. They would imagine birds in the clouds, play with the insects, and burst into laughter at the slightest thing.

Sickened by all this laughter, exhausted by the spectacle of all this joy, Sarai stopped sleeping. She got into the habit of leaving her tent in the middle of the night and wandering like a ghost. Sometimes, in the cool, dark air, the furnace of her jealousy would subside.

Fiercely proud as ever, she did her best to conceal how much she was suffering. She would force herself to take Ishmael in her arms, to cradle him, to breathe in his sweet childish odor. Tenderly, her eyes half-closed, she would let his tiny head nestle against her neck until he fell asleep. Then she would hide away again, shaking feverishly, her cheeks not even refreshed by tears.

She held out as long as she could, almost longer than she could bear. There came to be something strange, almost transparent about her beauty. Though her skin did not crease, it became a little rougher, a little thicker. It was as if it were charred from within and horribly irritable. She could no longer stand being touched, even by Abram.

IN the second winter after his birth, Ishmael began to walk, to break pots and laugh out loud, to stammer his first words. One day he bumped into Sarai's legs. She bent down, as so often, to take him in her arms. With a frown, Ishmael pushed her hands away. He stared at her as if she were a stranger. Then he cried out like a hungry, frightened little animal, and ran screaming to Hagar's arms.

Sarai turned away as if the child had hit her.

This time, jealousy set her whole body ablaze. It was completely intolerable.

At twilight, Sarai climbed the hill of Qiryat-Arba. It was cold, almost freezing. But her flesh was burning as if firebrands were being applied to it. She saw again the look Ishmael had given her, and thought of all she had endured, season after season. She could not bear it anymore.

By the side of the road, she heard a stream gushing. Without thinking, she ran into the icy water. The stream was not very deep, but the current beat against her lower back while she splashed her belly and face with handfuls of water.

It occurred to her that she could stay here like this, in the freezing cold, until her body finally yielded. She wanted her beauty to shatter, she wanted age to carry her away like a forgotten fruit, a branch broken by winter.

Yes! That was what she should do. Remain in the stream until her flesh finally yielded! The current could wear away the hardest rocks, so why couldn't it destroy Sarai's useless beauty?

Shivering, she looked up at the night sky, which was filled with stars. Those thousands of stars that the great gods of Ur—or so they had told her when she was a child—had immobilized one by one. She remembered the poem she had learned when she was a Sacred Handmaid, ignorant and avid for life:

When the gods made man,

They toiled and toiled:

Huge was their task,

Infinite their labor . . .

It was then that the cry burst from her mouth, in a scream that made everything around her shake.

“Yhwh! Abram's God Most High, help me! I can't bear it any longer. I can't bear my barren womb, my fierce jealousy, I can't bear it any longer. The trial has lasted too long. Yhwh! You speak to Hagar! You pity her and help her, and for me, nothing! Nothing for so long. You hear my handmaid's lament, but me, the wife of the man you singled out, me, Abram's wife, you ignore! Oh, how heavy your silence is! Oh, Yhwh, what's the point of being only Abram's god? How can you give birth to his people without putting life in my body? How can you make a beginning if Sarai is dry? How can you promise a people and a nation to my husband while my life cannot engender life? If you are as powerful as Abram says you are, then you know. You know why I did wrong in Ur, so long ago, with the
kassaptu
's herbs. Oh, Yhwh, it was for love of Abram! If you cannot forgive a sin committed through innocence and love, what is the point of creating such hope in Abram's heart? Oh, Yhwh, help me!”

EPILOGUE

Yes, that was what I cried.

I remember it very well. My face turned to heaven, my arms raised, my body full of pain, I screamed like a lioness howling at the moon: “Help me, Yhwh! Help me!”

Addressing Abram's God Most High without shame. Not really believing he would hear me, needing to scream more than anything.

I was still Sarai.

Everything was still hard for me.

Today, as I wait calmly for the moment when Yhwh will take my breath from me, the memory of it makes me smile. Because it happened: Yhwh heard me!

That freezing stream is not far from here. From where I am sitting, outside the cave that will be my tomb, I can see the bushes of mint on its banks. That night, there were only stones and darkness. I stayed so long in the water I could have died. But Yhwh didn't want that.

In the first light of day, I went to see Abram.

“I can't help it, husband,” I said. “My jealousy is too strong. But I don't want to cause you shame or spoil the happiness your son gives you. Let me pitch my tent up there, under the terebinth trees, away from your camp.”

I didn't tell him I had called the name of Yhwh until I was out of breath. Because then I would also have had to tell him how I had stayed in the frozen stream, and what was the point? They all thought I was mad already. Why embarrass him even more than I already had?

Abram listened to me in silence. Now that Ishmael could jump onto his knees, he didn't really care whether I was near or far. He kissed me and let me leave.

In my solitary tent, away from everyone, without even a handmaid to keep me company, I finally slept. I slept for two or three days on end, waking only to drink a little milk.

That sleep was as good as a caress. It calmed me. I could even laugh at myself. Why keep struggling, why keep going back endlessly over something that had been over and done with for ages? Why so many tears, so many dramas, now that a child had been born and Abram finally had his offspring? Wasn't that what I'd wanted? True, Hagar was the child's mother, but did that really matter? Soon Ishmael would grow, and everywhere, and for all time, forever, he would be known as “Abram's son.” Nobody would care whose womb he had sprung from.

Yes, I thought about all that with a smile, trying to make myself see reason. Knowing full well, alas, that I was unlikely to succeed. That was the way I was. I'd been carrying my burden for such a long time, and yet I'd never been able to get used to it.

Then, one morning, when I had gone down to the river to wash linen, I discovered some little dark blotches on my hands. Irregular, like marks on the bark of a tree. In the evening, I looked at them again. They seemed darker. The next day, as soon as I woke up, I lifted my hands in the dim light and examined them carefully. The blotches were there, quite visible. Even more visible than the day before!

In the days that followed, the muscles of my arms and thighs began to shrink. My whole body was being transformed! After careful inspection, I discovered an unusually deep crease on my stomach. The next day, there was another crease. And the day after that. Yes, my stomach was becoming crumpled! I examined my breasts, and found them less high, less round. Not flaccid like a goat's udder, nothing like that, but less firm than before. I lifted them to feel the weight and they spread over my palms. Where once they had been convex, now they were concave. I ran and filled a wide-brimmed bowl with water to examine my face in the reflection. Wrinkles! Wrinkles under my eyes, above my cheekbones, on the edges of my nostrils, dozens of tiny wrinkles around my lips! And my cheeks were less taut, my neck more lax . . .

My face was becoming the face of a woman of my age. I was getting older.

I leaped in the air and screamed with joy. I started dancing, clucking with happiness like a young girl after her first kiss. At last, at last I was getting older! It was over, that youthful beauty that had clung to my limbs and had covered me with a false veneer for so long!

For one moon at least I examined myself constantly, looking at my reflection in the water, counting my wrinkles, measuring the drooping of my breasts, the creases in my stomach. Each time, it became clearer that it really was happening. I was drunk with happiness.

If anyone down in Abram's camp had seen me, they would have thought, “Look at Sarai, all alone on her slope, consumed with jealousy—she's finally lost her mind completely!”

I didn't care if I looked like a madwoman. Time had at last returned to me. Just as a newborn baby is laid in its cradle, I was being laid in my true body. And with that body, my torment could finally cease: There was no way now that I could ever have a child. For the first time since meeting the
kassaptu
in the Lower City, it was normal and natural for the blood not to flow between my thighs.

What a relief!

“Perhaps Yhwh heard you after all,” I said to myself. “He heard your lament. As he can't change your womb, he's finally shattering the miracle of your beauty and soothing you with the sweetness of old age.”

That was what I thought! I went so far as to stand upright with my palms open, as I had seen Abram do when he thanked Yhwh, and for the first time pray to him and name him my God Most High. What pride!

Some time later, Abram climbed up to see me, his face solemn and anxious. I thought perhaps something was wrong with Hagar or Ishmael. Or perhaps he was going to ask me to move even farther away. I was prepared for that. Prepared, too, for his surprise when he saw me.

It didn't happen. He stopped, frowned a little more, glanced with just a touch of puzzlement at my neck and my brow, but didn't say a word. Didn't ask any questions. But then, how could a man like Abram, who already had dark shadows under his eyes, slack cheeks, and a slightly bent back, be surprised by anything?

I sat him down, made sure he was comfortable, and brought him food and drink. At last he looked directly at me.

“I'm listening, husband,” I said.

“Yhwh spoke to me this morning. He said, ‘I am making a covenant with you. You will be responsible for our covenant, and so will your children after you, and their children, too. The foreskins of all the males will be circumcised, and of all the male children when they are eight days old, as a sign of the covenant between you and me. My covenant will be written in your flesh.'”

Abram stopped, eyebrows raised, as if expecting me to say something. But I kept my mouth shut. On the subject of Abram's offspring, I had already said more than I should.

He smiled, for the first time since he had arrived. “God Most High is giving himself to us,” he said, as if afraid I had not understood.

I smiled, too, thinking of my wrinkles.

Abram misunderstood my smile. He put his big hand on my knee. “Yes!” he said, his voice shaking. “More than you think. Listen to this. Yhwh also said to me: ‘Your name will no longer be Abram but Abraham, and you will be the father of a multitude of nations. You will no longer call your wife Sarai, but Sarah. I shall bless her, too. And will give you a son by her. His name will be Isaac.'”

I think the sky shook as Abraham spoke these words. Unless it was my womb. My mouth shook, too. I thought of my cry in the stream, of the miracle of age that had come to me this past moon and shattered the miracle of beauty. It's quite possible I thought of all that, telling myself that what Abram was saying might be true and his god might finally be coming to my aid and supporting me.

But I revealed nothing of what I was thinking. After all this time, it was too much to hope for. Besides, one look at the two of us, old Sarai and old Abram, and anyone would have laughed at the thought us in bed together, let alone me giving birth!

No, I didn't want to hear anything about the promise contained in Yhwh's words.

I put my hand on Abram's hand. “I don't mind changing my name to Sarah. And Abraham has a good ring to it, too. I don't mind Abraham.”

He sighed like a young man. His eyes shone, amused and radiant. His lips stretched in a smile, reminding me of the lips that had so seduced me once, on the banks of the Euphrates. “You don't believe it, do you?”

“Believe what?”

“Oh, don't pretend! You know what I'm talking about!”

“Abraham, if that's your name now, haven't you noticed how old I've become?”

“You're not old. You only look as old as you ought to be, and I'm very pleased for you! Sarah, my love, Yhwh has announced it. He has blessed you. Your son will be called Isaac. What more do you want?”

“Abraham, my dear, sweet husband, do stop dreaming. From whose womb is this son—this Isaac—to come?”

“From yours. Sarah's. Who else?”

“And from whose seed?”

“Mine. What a question! Oh, I see! You don't think I'm capable anymore, is that it?”

I could not restrain my giggles. “Oh yes. You're capable of anything. But it's all over for me, after all this time. Just because my name is now Sarah doesn't mean I can give you a son. I'm wrinkled and I don't have periods, which is as it should be. A woman is a woman, Abraham. Even me.”

“Stuff and nonsense! You aren't listening to the word of Yhwh. I, too, doubted. I, too, laughed. It made Yhwh angry. ‘Could anything be too difficult for Yhwh?' He asked. “Sarah, all we need is to . . . Oh, stop laughing!”

But I couldn't stop giggling. I embraced my old husband. I took his head in my hands, kissed his eyes, placed his brow against my cheek. “You don't need all these words just to go to bed with me, Abraham. But don't be under any illusions. The woman I am now is a woman you don't know. She can't compare with Hagar.”

With a grunt, he searched for my mouth, still in a bad humor. “You are Sarah and I am Abraham. That's all that matters and, with the help of God Most High, I'm going to prove it to you.”

Which he did.

By satisfying me. By giving me a pleasure I had never known before, a calm, tender pleasure. I remembered the words of my dear Sililli: “Men never get tired of those things! They may not be able anymore, but as long as they can get their shaft up, they're always ready and willing!” But a woman never tires of it either, even when her body is no more than a memory of her youth.

After that, we both fell into a deep sleep. Mine was so deep that I did not hear Abraham get up in broad daylight. I was awakened by voices.

“Masters!” Abraham was saying. “Masters, don't pass your servant by. Here is water to wash your feet. Take advantage of the shade, this terebinth has thick foliage. Rest. I'll fetch bread and pancakes. You need to gather your strength.”

I heard the unknown travelers thanking him. “Do as you wish.”

Abraham seated them beneath the terebinth and ran into the tent. “Quick! Prepare curds and fruit.”

“But who are these travelers, Abraham?” I asked.

He looked at me as if he had not understood my question.

“Why all the rush?” I asked.

“They are envoys, angels of Yhwh.”

He went out again, still in a rush. Then I heard the voice of one of the travelers. “Where is your wife, Sarah?”

I stopped dead. I was perplexed. They knew my new name, even though Abraham had only given it to me the night before!

“She's in the tent,” Abraham replied.

“Next year, on this very day, your wife Sarah will have a son.”

I couldn't help it. I thought of the night I had just spent in Abraham's arms and I laughed. Not a giggle this time, not a chuckle or an amused little laugh, but a laugh such as I had never had in my life. A laugh of belief in Yhwh's words and of disbelief in those same words. A laugh that shook me from head to foot, that streamed through my blood and into my heart, that flooded my chest and coiled in my womb like a tremor of life.

A laugh that upset Yhwh, for the travelers asked rather dryly: “Why all that laughter?”

Immediately, from behind the flap of the tent, I tried to lie. “No, I didn't laugh.”

“Yes, you did.”

Impossible to hide the laugh, impossible to lie to God.

But now I know that Yhwh granted me that laugh, because I deserved it. After so many years of being only Sarai, Abram's wife with the barren womb, here I was, an old woman called Sarah, and fertile! Sarah, who would give birth to Abraham's offspring, my son Isaac! How could I not laugh?

No, I wasn't laughing at Yhwh. Who would dare? I was only laughing at myself, at the route my life had taken. At my fears, my consolation, and my delight.

For it all came to pass.

It was my turn to know how it felt to have a big belly, and heavy hips and breasts that swell and grow hard. To break out in sweats and be subject to whims. At last I saw Abraham kneeling between my thighs, his ear pressed against my navel, trembling like a young man and exclaiming, “He's moving, he's moving!”

It was my turn to be afraid, to have sleepless nights and gloomy thoughts. I remembered Lehklai, and all the women I had seen die while giving life.