The Dovekeepers (26 page)

Yoav began to pray, hour after hour, as if that could prompt him as to what to do next. I had tried and failed to make bread in a griddle over our small fire. I could only make crackers that hadn’t the strength to rise. I finally was able to cook bread on hot stones that I placed beneath burning kindling. The boys called the black, risen loaves ash bread; it was as bitter as it was satisfying. The goatskin
bags of water were less heavy, drained by our thirst, and the rains hadn’t yet come. Yoav promised that
Adonai
would lead us, and we had no choice but to accept his decree. Secretly, I wished we could find a guide among the tribesmen in their blue robes that we sometimes spied heading toward Moab. I would give them all I had if they could help us navigate a trail.

Though our village was gone, I still thought there was a world for us to return to.

I kept my eye on the heavens. There were more birds all the time. Each day their numbers increased. I tried to count them, but it was impossible, they were as numerous as the stars, and in the end I gave up. I still felt the Baker was with me, and that brought me comfort. I spoke to him under my breath, trying to amuse him with my descriptions of the many sorts of winds we encountered: the billowing kind, the howling sort, the soft, warm wind from the south, the stark, blue wind that arrived at nightfall and abruptly departed at daybreak, the violet wind of despair. I chattered to my husband whenever no one could overhear.

Then one day I awoke and he was gone. I felt his departure as surely as if I had seen his spirit rise. All at once, my aloneness settled deeply, a stone inside of me, hard and sharp. While I slept, my husband’s spirit had been claimed by the World-to-Come. He was utterly gone. When I spoke of the hissing, rain-spattered wind that would come to us when winter arrived, he made no reply. When I described the sunstruck wind of the drifting dust funnels, I was speaking to no one but the dust itself. There were only black birds above us now, a bank of feathers and flesh that roiled across the sky like storm clouds. I waited till dark to weep, holding my grief inside, for there was no point in sharing my sorrow.

We had no choice but to go forward, as only emptiness was around us. The following day we did so. I had to leave that unmarked place, abandoning the last of my husband’s essence. I carried my loss as my burden; it weighed me down and made me
slow. I could not keep pace with the tired donkeys who bleakly made their way. The boys ran back to me and grabbed my hands and urged me on. Because of them I continued, but God must have known it had crossed my mind to stay behind. I wanted to lie down beside the rocks and dream of the Baker, to call for him to come back to me, even if it meant giving up this world. Perhaps that was the sin I committed. I forgot that even the worst of lives is a treasure.

WE WANDERED
to a small oasis. There was a waterfall flowing from a cliff, pouring over the rocks to form a pool of fresh water. We felt blessed, overjoyed by our good fortune.

“I told you to have faith,” my son-in-law chided. “God has done exactly as I said He would.”

There were date palms and a jumble of fragrant jasmine. Reeds on fleshy stems grew along the banks of the pool. White flowers drifted in the green water, each forming the shape of a star. There was a cluster of wild mulberries where wasps and dragonflies gathered, their drone like music. The air was cool and sweet when the breeze stirred. I could have described that breeze to my husband if his spirit was still beside me, a wind so calm it inspired envy in all other winds in every corner of the world.

My son-in-law thought we could wait out the Romans here, in this mild place. We should have known that in such cruel times it was best not to be attached to a single location, even if there was water and the air was refreshing. Envy is envy, both for the wind and for men on earth. The better the place, the more others covet what you have. Be a pauper, a wanderer, a secret in the darkness of night. Once you possess something others do not, you are a target for the wicked. It would have been better if we’d made our camp in one of the caves beyond the oasis, or perhaps gone farther into the
wilderness, following the trampled paths beaten down among the thornbushes by bands of wild camels. But my son-in-law feared the heart of the desert and intended for us to stay where we would be safe. I had a rush of fear, a premonition. I saw the speckled shadows beneath the palm tree form the shape of a viper; it slithered along the sand, stopping at my feet.

My daughter hushed me when I spoke of my fears, suggesting we move on. There were people who had entered the wilderness that spread out before us never to be seen again, she whispered. Wanderers who were abandoned or devoured by beasts, defeated by hunger and thirst, kidnapped, enslaved by the tribesmen who wore blue cloaks. Here we had everything we might ever need; to leave would be an ingratitude in God’s eyes.

“Think of the children,” Zara urged. “They’re happy here.”

When I looked at the boys, cheerfully shouting as they played together in the shade of the date palms, I put away my fears. We stayed where there would be water, the most precious element of all, even though hyenas came to drink in the twilight, drawn to water, as all beasts in the desert are. These fierce creatures stayed close, their eyes gleaming as they stalked the donkeys, another omen we ignored. At night these ungodly spotted animals made a wailing sound, for they desired what little we had, or perhaps they wished to convince us they were tame, like dogs, longing for our company, when what they really wanted was our flesh.

We saw few people during this time, only stray travelers who filled their water flasks, then moved on, too wise to make camp in such uncertain times. We were told that Zealots from Jerusalem had taken over several outposts nearer the Salt Sea, including Herod’s fortress, that marvel of a palace perched on white cliffs, built by a king so cruel he murdered anyone who opposed him. One old man, a hermit with his feet bound in cloth and his tunic shredded by the wind, warned that, although the desert might appear vacant, it was teeming with life. What looked empty was
full, much like water in a cup. What was most important was invisible to the eye.

THE BIRDS
had remained with us, like a plague hovering in the sky. Even I, a simple woman, knew this foreshadowed evil. One day there were so many we hid in the tent where we slept, frightened by such extreme darkness in the middle of the day, a world blackened by ravens. When we went out the next morning, the road that led to the east was strewn with feathers. Birds had fallen from the sky, stricken by some unknown disaster. Zara and I were busy foraging for twigs to make a fire so we could take our noon meal. Before I could stop them, my grandsons had gathered feathers and begun to play with them, adorning themselves, pretending they’d been turned into ravens. My daughter and I exchanged a look. All at once we had realized it was
Yom Kippur,
the Day of Atonement, when we ask God to forgive our sins. In the wilderness every day was much like the next, and we had forgotten the divine aspect of the day until that very moment. We had not been meant to work or eat, only to beg for forgiveness.

It was said that in the Temple there was a scarlet rope hung at the altar; at the close of
Yom Kippur,
after fasting and sacrifice and many prayers, it would turn white when God forgave us our transgressions. Now we had ignored the most holy of days, and in doing so we had turned our backs on our God. The boys were dancing in the sand, covered with feathers, clucking to each other like birds. It was the sort of mistake that calls demons from their hiding places. I wondered if we had taken the wrong path in our journey and had heedlessly turned to the left, the side that gives rise to all evil.

My daughter’s husband was furious when he saw the boys romping like savages. Compelled to make amends, he ran to pray, pacing into the desert, the wind hitting against him, leaving its mark
like whips. He shouted through that ferocious wind that he would make things right and beg for forgiveness, he would pray for God’s mercy, even if it took him all day and all night. But my daughter and I knew what we had done could not be righted. We had forgotten
Adonai.
We’d thought only of ourselves and our own trifling human needs. For that, we would suffer. Our sins would grow and swallow us whole.

I had named my daughter after morning’s radiance, but
morning
has two meanings, and perhaps I called down a curse when I chose to call her so. Now I wondered if I had foretold what was written even though learned men insist no woman can foresee what will come to be. They can say what they like. I knew nothing good would come to pass in the desert on the
Yom Kippur
that we forgot. My daughter’s husband could pray for forgiveness until his throat was dry. I could tell by the rising wind, the one without mercy, that there would be none.

THAT TERRIBLE DAY
would still continue to overtake my every thought if the racket in the dovecotes did not distract me with a constant stream of sound. A clatter of noise mirrors silence, for one is alone in both situations. I often noticed Shirah watching me as I worked. I wondered what she made of me. I was not afraid to get my hands dirty, and did not overstep my bounds. When she had her eye on me in the dim air, I bowed my head to hide what resided within me. There was a single stream of sunlight that poured in the roof, and I avoided walking through it, afraid the brightness would reveal the truth of my mourning. But one day, not long after my arrival, Shirah suddenly took my hand in hers. I was startled by her action, and before I could think to pull away, she gazed into my rough palm. Her touch was like water, cool upon my skin. Afterward, I could tell that she knew. I had a murderer’s hand. It burned
at night, in the dark. Other women looked at the moon as it rose to see their fate reflected, but I peered into the palm of my hand to see what was written and what I had done.

As I did not wish others to speak of me, I turned away from the gossip concerning Shirah. If she was indeed a witch, I had no fear of her, for when she clasped my hand in hers, she took a portion of my burden upon her.

“Being human means losing everything we love best in the world,” she murmured as she released me. “But would you ask to be anything else?”

I WAS SILENT
at the time, but afterward I wondered if I would indeed have preferred to be a snake rather than a woman, if I would have chosen to live my life beneath a rock, striking at dusk, devouring my sustenance, ravenous and alone in my cold skin. Did a snake love her children? Did she weep beneath her rock, yearning for arms with which to embrace them, for a voice with which to tell them stories, a heart that could be rended in two? Often I couldn’t sleep when I thought about such matters. These were the times when I saw Shirah walking at night. Perhaps she knew the answers to my questions, but I never asked, just as I never questioned where she was going or where she had been. If she had a box of sins kept under lock and key, as some people vowed, that was not my business. Once you have broken God’s laws, you are aware that He alone can judge us. You know that no man can understand what a woman may be driven to do.

WHEN YAEL
first came to us, I was convinced she was a foolish, selfish girl who thought too well of herself to clean up after the doves or carry heavy baskets of dung into the fields. I would have never imagined she would come to live in my house, if one can rightly
call a single chamber with a curtain as a divider from neighbors a proper home. And yet I myself had been guilty of those very same notions upon my arrival, bitter that I had been sent to work in the dovecotes. I’d held on to the position of my old life with an arrogance to which I had no right. I’d wept, convinced I’d been relegated to the lowliest position on the mountain, until my grandson showed me the truth of the doves. Now I understand the pride Shirah and her daughters show, a devotion which had puzzled me when I first walked through the carved wooden doors, a scarf tied over my face, afraid to draw a single breath because of the stench of the rich loam.