Sarah (9 page)

She was once more stricken with fear. The boy could easily leave her here. The fire would attract the demons. She peered into the darkness, thinking she might see a sniggering crowd. But then her pride regained the upper hand. She was ashamed of herself. She must stop being afraid. She only feared what she did not know. Tonight, everything was completely unknown. The night, the fire, the river, the sky above her in its infinity. Even the name of this
mar.Tu
boy, Abram.

What a strange name! Abram. She liked the way the syllables coiled in her mouth.

Abram certainly wasn't afraid of the night. He moved about in it as if it were broad daylight. He didn't even seem to dread the demons.

Perhaps that was what being a
mar.Tu
meant?

In truth, she liked everything about this boy. It may simply have been because she had been scared of being lost and alone in the night. Or it may have been because he wasn't anything like Kiddin. Or the bridegroom her father had chosen for her.

It amused her to think how horrified they would all have been if they had seen Abram take her hand so unceremoniously! A
mar.Tu
daring to touch the daughter of a lord of Ur! What a sacrilege!

But she had not even thought of withdrawing her hand. She had felt no shame, no repulsion. Even his smell, so different from the scents with which the lords of Ur anointed themselves, did not disgust her.

Even the fact that he was a barbarian, a
mar.Tu,
pleased her!

Sarai wondered what he thought of her. She must be a dreadful sight, she knew, yet Abram had shown no reaction. Perhaps that was the way these
men without a city
behaved. Both her father and Sililli claimed that they were crude, cunning, inscrutable people. It didn't matter: This one hadn't hesitated to come to her aid.

Unless Sililli and her father were right and she never saw him again.

She hated herself for thinking such a thing. She put more wood on the fire and forced herself not to let her mind wander again.

HE woke her by dropping two thick white sheepskins and a big leather bag by her side.

“It took me a while because I didn't want my brothers to see me,” he explained. “They might have thought I wanted to sleep under the stars in order to get an early start hunting, and they would have followed me. They always follow me when I go hunting. I've already killed ten lynx and three stags. One day I'll face a lion.”

Sarai wondered if he was boasting or trying to impress her. But he wasn't. Abram unrolled the sheepskins, took a coarse dress from his sack, and handed it to her.

“To replace your toga.”

He himself had swapped his loincloth for a tunic held in at the waist by a belt. The handle of dagger protruded from a leather sheath hanging from the belt.

While Sarai withdrew into the shadows to change, he ostentatiously turned his back on her, stoked the fire, and took food from the bag.

When she came back and squatted again by the fire, he looked at her with a slightly ironic smile, which made his cheeks seem rounder. In the shifting light of the flames, the brown of his eyes was even more transparent.

“This is the first time you've worn a dress like that, isn't it?” he asked, amused. “It suits you.”

Sarai also smiled. “Are my eyes still black?” she asked.

Abram hesitated, then burst out laughing: a laugh he had been holding back for a long time, which made his whole body shake. “Your eyes, yes!” he said, catching his breath. “Your cheeks and temples, too. In fact, when I first saw you, if I hadn't seen your stomach, I'd have thought you were black all over. They do exist, you know—women who are black all over—far away to the south, by the sea.”

Sarai felt her cheeks burning with rage and shame. “It's the kohl they put on brides.”

She seized her toga furiously and tried to tear the bottom of it, but the cloth resisted.

“Wait,” said Abram.

He took out his dagger. It had a curved blade of very hard wood. Sarai had never seen one like it before. It sliced easily through the damp cloth. When he held it out to her, she seized his hand.

“Will you do it?” she asked, her voice shaking more than she would have liked. “You can see in the dark,” she added, trying to sound more confident.

He shook his head, embarrassed. So that they should both feel less awkward, she closed her eyes. Kneeling before her in the luminous warmth of the fire, he cleaned her eyelids, her cheeks, her forehead. Gently. As if it was something he had always known how to do.

When he had finished, Sarai opened her eyes again. He smiled, and the wings of his beautiful lips seemed to fly away.

“Do you think I'm pretty now?” she dared to ask.

“Our girls don't have such beautiful hair,” he said simply. “Or such straight noses.”

Sarai did not know if that was a compliment.

Then, to dispel their embarrassment and assuage their hunger, they threw themselves on the food Abram had brought: still-warm kid, whitefish, cheese, fruit, fermented milk in a skin gourd. Strong-tasting dishes, without the sweet flavors preferred by the lords of Ur. Sarai ate as heartily as Abram, showing nothing of her surprise.

AT first they ate in silence. Then Abram asked what Sarai planned to do when morning came. She said she didn't know, but perhaps she could find refuge in the great temples of Eridu, where girls without families were allowed to become priestesses. But her voice lacked conviction. The fact was, she had no idea. Tomorrow seemed so far away.

Abram then asked if she wasn't afraid her gods would punish her for refusing the husband her father had chosen for her and running away from home. She said no, this time with such confidence that he stopped eating and looked at her in surprise.

“No, because if they'd wanted to punish me, they'd have sent demons instead of making me fall over you.”

The idea greatly amused Abram. “The lords of Ur are the only people who believe the night is populated with demons. All I've ever seen at night were bulls, elephants, lions, or tigers. They're fierce, but a man can kill them. Or run after the gazelles!”

Sarai did not take offense. The fire crackled, the embers were getting hotter and hotter, the sheepskins were soft to the touch. Abram was right. The night no longer frightened her.

All at once, she was aware of happiness suffusing her body, from the ends of her hair to the tips of her toes, and calming her mind. She felt warm, and there was laughter in her chest that did not need to cross her lips. The flames danced for her, time stood still, and this boy she had not even known when the sun was up, Abram, who was so close to her she could have brushed his shoulder, was going to protect her from everything. She knew it.

So they kept talking, kept asking each other questions. Abram told her about his two brothers, Haran, the eldest, and Nahor, and about his father who made clay statues of ancestors for people like Ichbi Sum-Usur, statues with heads so lifelike you'd think they could speak.

Sarai wanted to know if he liked living in a tent. He explained that the clan of which his father, Terah, was the head, reared great flocks for one of the lords of Ur. Every two years, when it was time for the royal taxes, they took their animals to Larsa to be counted by Shu-Sin's officials.

“Then we either come back here with just a few animals or start a completely new flock. One day, my father will earn enough from his statues, and we won't need to bother with rearing sheep anymore.”

He questioned her, too. Sarai told him about her life in the palace. She spoke about Sililli, Kiddin, her sisters, and, for the first time in a long while, the vague but painful memories she had of her mother, who had died giving birth to Lillu. So carried away was she by the excitement of confiding all this, she even mentioned the chamber of blood and the
barù
's strange prophecy: Queen or slave . . .

Abram was a good listener, patient and attentive.

They talked for so long that the wood on the fire burned down completely and the moon crossed more than half the night sky. Sarai said her people feared that one night the Lady Moon would vanish forever and that the gods, in their anger, would take the sun away. It would then be horribly cold.

“In a tent,” she said, “it would be even more terrible than in a house.”

Abram shook his head, poked the embers, and replied that he didn't believe in any of that. There was no reason for the moon and the sun to disappear.

“Why are you so sure?” Sarai asked, surprised.

“Nobody can remember it ever happening. Why should something that's never happened since the beginning of the world suddenly happen one day?” He paused. “Just because you sleep in a tent doesn't mean you can't think. It doesn't mean you can't learn by observing the things around you.”

For the first time, Sarai heard a proud, combative tone in his voice, which he immediately tempered by admitting that he could not read or write words in clay like the lords of Ur, who knew many things he didn't.

Suddenly he held out his hand to Sarai. “Come and see.”

He walked away from the fire. Stiff all over, Sarai hurried after him, vaguely worried she would lose him in the darkness, even though the moon was quite bright.

He came to a halt on the crest of the dune. Before them, as if suspended between the darkness of the earth and the sky swarming with stars, hundreds of torches glowed in the night, forming the outline of a tiara. It was the ziggurat, whose immense staircase and platforms were lit up every night. But she had only ever seen it like that from the roof of her house, and never from such a distance. Only here was it possible to understand how perfectly it was designed, and how its scale was not human but divine.

“You can cross the river,” Abram said, “you can walk far out into the plains, two, three days of walking, and you can still see it.”

He turned to her and seized her face in his hands, which were soft and burning hot. Sarai shuddered, thinking he was going to kiss her, wondering if she was going to surrender or resist the
mar.Tu
's impertinence. But all he did was slowly tip her face up toward the stars.

“Look at the fires of heaven. They're more amazing than the ziggurat. See how many there are, how far away! Do you believe a god lives in each one of them?”

How could she answer that? She said nothing, and placed her lips on Abram's wrist.

He gave a mocking laugh. “Do you really think the daughter of a lord of Ur can leave the city and her father's house without being found and punished?”

It was as if he had poured cold water over her body. Her happiness vanished at a stroke, to be replaced by tears and anger. She ran down the side of the dune and went and huddled on the sheepskin, making an effort to swallow her sobs. When he knelt behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders, she wanted to get up and slap him. But instead, she leaned against him, gripping his arms and hugging them with all her might against her chest. So it was that they collapsed side by side, her face buried in the sheepskin, and lay motionless.

“Forgive me,” Abram whispered in her ear. “I didn't mean any harm by what I said. I wouldn't want anyone to hurt you. If tomorrow you still want to run away, I'll help you.”

She wanted to ask why he would do that, but not a word passed her lips. It was enough that he was close to her, that she could inhale his strange smell, feel the heat of his body and his breath on the back of her neck. That was all that mattered.

They lay there, not moving. Her tears ceased, but something else, something disturbing, took their place. Abram's palms were pressed against her breasts. They suddenly seemed very hot to her, and so did the tips of her breasts. Against her buttocks, she could feel Abram's penis swelling. There was a quivering in her belly that had nothing to do with fear or anger. She remembered the man who had almost become her husband grasping the penis of the sculpted bull on the nuptial platter. This was still her wedding day. Her wedding night. She wanted to reach out her hand and touch Abram's penis. To turn to him and place her lips on his beautiful mouth.