Lilah (6 page)

‘Others?'

‘The woman came back four days later. Not alone, but with six other women. Younger than her, also from the
zorifes
. They weren't weeping, but they told me they were all in the same situation, with one or two children and no husband. The summer and autumn were very dry, and the harvests
were poor, so they couldn't glean. They were starving. You could see it, I swear.'

‘And you gave them food, just like the first woman?'

‘I asked Ezra first. He gave me another of his moonless-night looks. Then he asked if we had enough. I told him we did. “So give it, I don't want them to cry – but be sure to share it fairly. They don't all have the same number of children.”'

Lilah was silent for a moment. ‘Is that what he said?' she asked, in a low voice.

‘Yes.' Sogdiam was staring at her anxiously now, biting his lip. ‘Do you think I did wrong? They're women like my mother and—'

‘Oh, Sogdiam,' Lilah said, smiling to stop herself crying. ‘Of course you did what you had to do.'

As Sogdiam had predicted, Master Baruch forgot the pain in his stomach and his desire for herb tea when he smelt the dish the boy had prepared. For a moment, he allowed himself to be overcome by the aroma of the food. ‘Delicious,' he murmured, a rapturous look on his face, while Lilah made sure he was comfortable. ‘Exquisite!'

Sogdiam had helped Lilah to bring in the bowls and place them on the writing chest. His eyes shone with pride. ‘I was thinking of you as I cooked it. Master. And your teeth,' he added, with a bow.

‘May the Everlasting bless you, my boy, wild as you are.'

‘Wild now, Master,' Sogdiam said, serious again, ‘but one day you may make a good Jew of me.'

Master Baruch roared with laughter. ‘It takes more than a dish of turnips and fish to become a child of Israel! But perhaps the Everlasting will make an exception for you.'

Sogdiam laughed and went out, dancing despite his limp.

‘I didn't know Sogdiam took such good care of you,' Lilah observed, as she wrapped a blanket round Master Baruch's frail shoulders.

‘For a barbarian,' Master Baruch chuckled, ‘the boy certainly has many qualities. Perhaps the Everlasting has already made an exception for him.'

Ezra had pushed his stool under the window, and sat there with a scroll across his knees. He had not looked up during this exchange.

‘Master Baruch, can't you persuade Ezra that he, too, must eat from time to time? The news from Jerusalem won't be any better if he dies of hunger.'

‘You're right, my dove. You're absolutely right. His studies won't be any better either, I might add. An empty stomach does nothing for the eyes or the ears.'

‘I eat my fill!' Ezra protested, without looking up.

‘Increase your fill, then,' Lilah said, annoyed.

Apparently indifferent to the quarrel that was brewing, Master Baruch closed his eyes as Lilah filled his bowl. But after he had eaten a mouthful, he murmured, in that voice of his that was always obeyed, although it seemed never to give an order, ‘Such is the irony of the Everlasting. We're gloomy and sick because we received bad news from Jerusalem. Sogdiam does the cooking, and the shadow of Jerusalem no longer pains our stomachs, only our hearts and minds. Is that why Nehemiah failed? Or because the people of Jerusalem no longer have the hearts or the minds to suffer what they've become? Lilah is right, my boy. Do honour to our Sogdiam and share my meal.'

Reluctantly, Ezra resolved to try. After swallowing a few spoonfuls, he seemed to find the food pleasant, and emptied the bowl rapidly.

Lilah looked at him and smiled. Ezra was like that. Severe, obstinate, tormented by the desire to do the right thing, the correct thing. And sometimes too impatient, too impulsive and unyielding, unconcerned about the realities of life, as if the years of childhood were still with him. But perhaps that was only the result of his faith: according to Master Baruch, he was becoming wiser than any sage, purer than any zealot.

Ezra became aware that his sister's eyes were on him. He looked up at her and gave the smile that
had delighted her for more than twenty years, the smile that spoke of the indestructible love that linked brother and sister, uniting them in the same tenderness, like two sounds in harmony on the same lyre, sweeping away all doubt and discord.

Today, though, Lilah remained deaf to its call. With a pang, she looked at Ezra's beloved face and thought of her beloved Antinoes. God of heaven! How could she speak the words she had been repeating to herself all night? How could she say to Ezra the phrases she had written on the papyrus scroll now hidden under her bed?

She closed her eyes, and the prayer she had uttered during the night again filled her mind.
O Yahweh, God of heaven, God of my father, she
implored,
give me the strength to find the words to convince Ezra! Give him the strength to hear them.

Ezra misunderstood her silence and her closed eyes. ‘Lilah, my sister, don't be sad. I'm eating – and you were right to insist. It's very good. Who could have predicted that Sogdiam would become such a cook? He was like a dog when he came here, all skin and bone.'

Recovering her composure, Lilah smiled at him affectionately. ‘He told me about the women you give food to.'

‘Oh yes, we had to.' Ezra drank his cup of milk in little sips. ‘It's of no importance.'

‘What do you mean, it's of no importance? Of course it's important! Those women are in need. Who can help them, here in the lower city, if not Master Baruch and you?'

Ezra threw a glance at Master Baruch over his cup. The old man was wiping the bottom of his bowl with a piece of biscuit, which he then swallowed before looking up with an ironic glint in his eyes.

‘In future,' Lilah went on, ‘I'll bring more so that you don't have to go without yourselves.'

Master Baruch chuckled. ‘Lilah, my dove, it isn't Ezra who helps the poor women, let alone me. It is written in the scroll of the Law given to Moses. “Do not gather the gleanings of your harvest, but leave them for the poor man and the migrant!” Do we glean the grain and bring it here? Lilah, without you the women who came into this courtyard would now be hearing their children scream with hunger. And we, the sages of Zion, would have nothing in our bellies but the bitterness of bad news and remorse.'

Blushing, Lilah rose hurriedly to clear the table. She was about to leave the room when Ezra asked, as if he had only just become aware of it, ‘Didn't Axatria come with you today?'

‘She's waiting for me at the gate to the upper town.'

Ezra laughed in surprise. ‘Why? Is she afraid to see me?'

‘Oh, no, all she thinks about is seeing you . . . I asked her to let me come alone today.'

‘Why?'

Lilah hesitated. Master Baruch had let his head roll back against the cushions supporting him and seemed to have dozed off. ‘Antinoes is back,' she said, in a low voice.

Ezra's expression did not change, and he said nothing. Had he heard?

‘I saw him yesterday. He fought Cyrus the Younger's Greeks and was awarded the breastplate of the heroes of the King of Kings.' Lilah fell silent. Her own words seemed to her out of place and offensive. She had wanted to say, ‘I love him. I want him for my husband. He wants it too, more than anything. I love to be in his arms. And I also love you, with all the love in a sister's heart.' But the words that had emerged from her mouth had been cold, fearful and colourless.

And Ezra's face remained stony, as before.

For a moment, they were both silent and motionless.

‘Is that why you stopped Axatria coming with you, so that you could tell me this?'

‘No,' Lilah breathed, hoping that Master Baruch was not about to wake up. ‘That wasn't why. It was
so that you and I could talk. Antinoes hasn't changed his mind – he hasn't changed at all. Neither have I . . .'

Ezra rose abruptly and went to sit on his stool.

‘You loved Antinoes, Ezra. We—'

‘Be quiet!' Ezra cut in. ‘I was a mere child, then an ignorant young man. As ignorant as it's possible to be in our uncle's family. As ignorant as the children of Israel have become in exile. But not any more.'

‘Ezra, I know that as well as anyone, and I'm proud of what you are, of what you've become. I would never—'

‘A Persian warrior comes back to the royal city of Susa,' Ezra interrupted. ‘What of it? It may be news to you, my sister, but not to me.'

Lilah put her hands together to stop them shaking, but she held her brother's gaze. ‘Don't be so unyielding! Have you forgotten that you used to call Antinoes “Brother”? Have you forgotten that he held your hand when you wept for our father and mother, that when you kissed me, you kissed him too?'

Ezra gave a curious smile, a beautiful, profound smile, which did nothing to soften his expression. ‘I haven't forgotten anything, Lilah. I'm working every day with Master Baruch so that we don't forget anything of what we are – we, the people
who have a Covenant with the Everlasting. I never forget anything that doesn't deserve to be forgotten. I haven't forgotten that you're my beloved sister, and that without you there would never be any life in this hovel, any beauty, any tenderness. I haven't forgotten who we are. I haven't forgotten that nothing, not even your Persian warrior, can tarnish the eternal love of Lilah for Ezra.'

Master Baruch had woken, and was watching Lilah intently. She stood up and walked to the door, intending to leave without a word. But she could not help it: she turned and said, with a knot in her stomach, ‘Nothing that comes from my Persian warrior can tarnish me, Ezra. It is he who gives me life and beauty and tenderness.'

MORDECHAI'S WIFE SARAH
always supervised the women workers. She would go from one loom to the next, inspecting their work: the regularity of the stitches, the arrangement of the colours, the tension of the weft, the texture of a line, the quality of a knot. Today, though, she found it hard to concentrate. She was constantly drifting out into the empty courtyard where the autumn sun cast long shadows that vanished from time to time with a passing cloud. There her mouth, so perfectly shaped for the sweet things in life, would grimace in irritation, a frown would crease her brow, and her face would set hard as she went back into the workshop.

It was a long, vast gallery, with a series of arches along it that allowed the daylight to penetrate all the
way to the whitewashed wall at the far end, where seven weavers sat side by side.

Reels of thread were piled round the looms along with shuttles, empty and full, reglets for keeping the lines taut, and pails filled with bone or wood needles. Bronze blades of different sizes, used for measurement, were laid out carefully on low trestles. At one end of the workshop, behind two large shuttles on pedals, some fifty baskets contained an assortment of woollen threads of every colour in creation. At the other end, the finished rugs hung from wooden racks.

A few of the workers walked to and fro, carrying baskets of shuttles. The weavers, though, sat at the looms. The frames hung from bronze rings sealed into the wall at a man's height, and the looms rested on little trestle tables, beneath which there was space for the women's legs. Some sat on cushions, bending their legs with their calves under their buttocks. Others chose to put a pile of scrap wool between their buttocks and the rough brick floor.

Their hands moved with speed and precision, sliding, separating, pulling, counting. Weights that looked like tiny wheels were attached to the vertical threads. Every time the shuttles passed, the women would be hit in the stomach, or on the thighs or chest. The clank of the shuttles and the banging of the reglets could be heard out in the courtyard.
Sometimes the noise was so loud that it was like the sound of some fabulous, insatiable animal chewing.

Not one of the workers glanced up or turned away from her loom. They sensed Sarah's approach, as if they had eyes in the backs of their heads, and their hands seemed to fly even faster and more skilfully between the threads.

It was nearly fifteen years since Sarah had opened her workshop, at Mordechai's suggestion. Today she knew every speck of dust in it. She could tell from the sound of the shuttles, the reglets and needles, if the work was good or not.

Sarah watched the women's progress closely. Each day she would appear unheralded, sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon. The sweetness of her appearance, the placid roundness of her body and her face, matched one part of her character. She lost her temper only when the same worker repeated the same mistake. Often, she would caress a woman's shoulder, neck or cheek, especially if she was a young girl, new to the workshop and intimidated by it: they were encouraged by a little kindness to forget the pain in their fingers and back.

Very occasionally, she would praise someone, but compliments were useful only for their rarity value: nothing was worse than a skilled worker who became too proud of herself That was a sad waste, like those wonderful peaches from the Zagros
mountains that came to the upper town in the month of Elul, ripe peaches that had to be eaten immediately because they were already on the point of becoming rotten.

Sarah did not want older women as weavers. However experienced they were, they were often ill-tempered. And as it was for the mind, so it was for the body: for flexibility, nothing equalled youth.

The girls she chose had to be willing to learn. She liked to employ a few clever ones too. But they all had to know how to do as they were told.

A workshop of high repute such as Sarah's could not be run without strong leadership. For all her smiles, Sarah's tongue could be sharp, her eyes pitiless. And although the merchants who supplied her with wool or tools were often seduced by her curves, they soon learned to be on their guard when the time came for payment.