The Flame Tree (20 page)

Mary’s hand flashed out. Her palm slapped Imam Ali’s cheek with enough force to leave an imprint as deep and seared as that from a red-hot brand. Tears of pain came to his eyes. He clenched his fists and took a menacing step forward.

“Be still!” The Tuan Guru’s command bound and held the Imam. After a second the old man turned and said to Mary, “Did that feel pleasurable? Did that feel true and righteous?”

Mary closed her eyes. She trembled.

The Tuan Guru moved closer to her. “Allah ordains as He
wills, and I see that He has called you here to this moment, has chosen this place and this time, to speak to you. He, who has been hidden from your heart’s eyes and silent to your soul’s ear, is speaking to you now. What is it He is saying? What was the word that He gave His prophet Isa, whom you revere as Yesus Kristus, to speak to the Jews of his age, and that Isa speaks through the ages to you now? What is this word that Allah murmurs to you?”

Mary, with her eyes still closed, lowered her head, clenching her jaw.

“Vengeance?” The Tuan Guru’s one-word question was a burning whisper.

Mary shook her head. She opened her eyes, looking at the Tuan Guru through brimming tears. She whispered softer yet, “Forgiveness.”

“Ahhh.” The Tuan Guru sighed deeply. “Forgiveness. And can you forgive the abuser of your son, Ibu Isak?”

She cried out, “I don’t know!”

“Don’t seek the forgiveness in yourself, then, but turn to Allah for His help, for He forgives as easily and freely as a baby smiles.”

Mary Williams flicked away a tear. She murmured, in English, “Lord God, help me.” She took a deep breath and looked at Tanto. “I forgive you,” she said.

Tanto looked down at his feet. Mary turned to Udin, who shrank and gulped at this towering bulé woman who had cause to want him obliterated from the face of the earth and who still
looked capable of carrying out this desire. “I forgive you,” she said.

Slowly, she faced Imam Ali, whose expression remained as unyielding as a tombstone. She extended her hand. Her fingers brushed his branded cheek. “I am sorry I struck you,” she said in Indonesian. She looked Imam Ali fully in the eyes. She bit her lower lip until its blanched skin seemed on the verge of tearing. The tears that had filled her eyes turned to sharp and dangerous shards ready to sunder flesh. She closed her eyes. “Help me,” she whispered again in English. She opened her eyes and said unevenly, “And I forgive you for what you did to my son Isaac.” She inhaled again, drawing the air through her nostrils. “I forgive you,” she repeated. The words came more easily, but they were still stilted and empty, without meaning. Suddenly, though, something flashed through her eyes. “I forgive you,” she said yet a third time, and now there was life to these words.

She turned to the Tuan Guru. “I forgive you all,” she said, a hesitant joy rising in her face. But it halted as the Tuan Guru slowly shook his head.

“That is well, an honest start,” he said. “Yet there is one more thing that must be done, the hardest forgiveness to be granted.”

She said, with some bewilderment, “You mean God? God does not need my forgiveness any more than the ocean needs salt.”

“No, Ibu,” the old man said. “I am not referring to forgiving God, who, as you say, needs no forgiveness from His creatures.” He held out both his hands and took hers, pulling them unresistingly
from her body. The brown leathery hands that had all his adult life been surrendered in the service of Allah the Most Exalted, the one incomparable Supreme Being who begetteth not and was not begotten, gently held the paler, softer ones of a doctor who had dedicated her life and career to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. “The hardest forgiveness of all is the one that you must seek for yourself.” His gaze dropped briefly upon Isaac before returning to her.

Mary Williams gazed searchingly into the Tuan Guru’s eyes. Her own filled with tears as she slowly nodded. She gently withdrew her hands from his and turned to Isaac. She took a deep breath and began to speak in English. “Isaac, I’ve done you a very great wrong. When I decided to stay here while you got on that helicopter, I thought I was following the Lord’s will, putting His calling first. But I wasn’t. I was putting my pride first. I put my pride before my love and duty to you. You feel I abandoned you…” Mary Williams’s words began to teeter, as though they were stumbling on a downhill run through a rocky field, barely keeping their balance. “…and you are right, I did abandon you. I should have been with you the whole time, I should have…I should have…” The words tumbled to a halt. In the smallest of voices forced across the longest of distances, she said, “I was so very wrong. Please forgive me.”

Isaac stared at his mother. He’d never seen her like this. He knew without wanting to know it that he had the power to hurt her cruelly. And heaven help him, for a moment there burned a fierce desire in him to do so. She had abandoned him. But he loved
her. He trembled briefly, as if shaken by an inner wind, and the moment passed. “You didn’t know what was going to happen,” he said. “Of course I forgive you.”

She gathered him up in a hug.

“Mom,” he said, embarrassed.

She released him and wiped her tears away with the back of her hand. She said wonderingly to the Tuan Guru, “Who would have thought…you are truly a man of God. I don’t understand it, and I won’t try to. God bless you. It may not be possible for us to be friends, but God bless you.”

The Tuan Guru solemnly nodded. “And to you,
Allah umina amin
.”

Mary Williams stepped up to Tanto and said, “I haven’t thanked you for what you did to save the hospital and the compound from being looted and destroyed. That took the true courage of a good man. I thank you now, Mas Tanto.”

Tanto, this most reserved and unemotional of men, could not keep bottled up his pleasure at Mary Williams’s praise. He flushed darkly, and his embarrassment at flushing only deepened the color. He muttered down to the area where his right foot was squirming into the carpet, “You’re welcome.”

Imam Ali glared at Tanto.

Mary Williams took Isaac’s hand and left the room. Isaac, however, felt a pull on the back of his head, as though a heavy hand had clamped on his skull with squeezing fingers and was rotating his head against unwilling muscles. He found himself staring into Imam Ali’s beady eyes, and he recalled a spooky line
he’d read somewhere, that when you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back at you. The skin of his neck crawled, his penis shrank with an achy sensation, and the rest of him shuddered.

His mother might have forgiven Imam Ali, but he couldn’t. Not ever.

W
HEN HE AND HIS
mother returned home late that afternoon, Isaac wandered to the schoolyard and stood on the circle of ground where the flame tree had once grown. The grass that had been planted over the scar left by the stump removal was already taking good root. Nothing indicated that a great and memorable tree had once soared to the sky here.

He had stood in front of the whole world and kept the faith, but God had not kept faith with him. But perhaps God knew that if the Tuan Guru had brought out the beheading sword, Isaac would have recited the
shahadah
and become a Muslim. Perhaps this was why God was silent and the place that He had occupied in Isaac’s heart had been ripped out. What did this make Isaac? Maybe, just like he was neither a Javanese nor an American, he was no longer a Christian, but not quite a Muslim.

He stared up at the sky. The sun was an ugly blob of dull orange. That awful yellow smog was returning to Wonobo.

And into Isaac’s heart came that old familiar fear.

The Lord of the Crows was on his way.

That evening at dinner Isaac declined the sandwiches and barely touched his soup. Graham Williams told Mary of something that
Mr. Ali, the business manager, had passed on to him, that Ibu Hajjah Yanti had seen Ruth in the Wonobo market and that Ruth had told Ibu Yanti, who told Mr. Ali, who told Graham, that she was deeply regretful that she had walked out of the Williamses’ household. This circuitous message passing was a time-honored Javanese method of communication between two aggrieved parties.

Isaac went up to his room and got ready for bed. He eyed the Qur’an on top of his dresser. He opened the cover of the book and read again the inscription:
May you grow in the grace of Almighty God, and may you do so in peace wherever you live
. Ha. In the distance a stray dog yelped. The fragrance of jasmine mingled with the metallic odor of smog.

The Lord of the Crows was coming, headed straight for this room. Isaac had no doubt at all of that. There was unfinished business at hand.

Even though he knew it was futile, he made sure his windows were shut and the door to the porch locked. He pulled the curtains and stretched out on his bed.

He promptly fell asleep. Not a deep sleep, but deep enough for him to revisit the day’s events as though experiencing them all over again. The recounting slowed down the closer he got to the Tuan Guru’s carpeted office, slower and slower yet as he was inside it, and then it halted altogether as Imam Ali walked into the room, Isaac’s perspective frozen onto the carpet in front of him, unable to look up at the Imam, who, he knew, had shed his human form, revealing his true and monstrous identity, which was a lot more pointy and beaked.

There came from somewhere outside the dream a sharp sound, like a giant mousetrap snapping, and his eyes flew open. The fuse box had blown. A moment later his dad stomped down the stairs. Isaac was in blackness thicker than anything he could dream. He couldn’t even see the hand that he brought up and waved in front of his face. With the fan dead, sweat began to gather on his forehead and under his arms. Fear trailed a fingernail across his heart.

A photon pinged upon his retina, then another. This was no normal light. He lifted his head. On the top of his dresser the shut pages of the Qur’an gleamed palely between the dark covers.

Isaac rose from his bed. He held his hand above the Qur’an’s front cover. He felt no radiating heat. He put his forefinger under the lip of the cover and flicked it open.

No burst of flame enveloped him.

He drew closer and noticed that the front page was glowing in splotches. He picked up the paperback and riffled the pages, finding similar splotches throughout the book. Where the splotches were the brightest, he could read the words printed on top of them. It was most peculiar, but it was assuredly a natural phenomenon. Maybe a fluorescent fungus, but natural.

From somewhere behind him, someone breathed out his name.

“Isak.”

Isaac whirled around, clutching the Qur’an to his chest. The voice that cawed his name, the Muslim pronunciation of his name, came from far away, too far away for mortal voices. Isaac shivered. He listened with strained ears. He did not hear his name again,
but once was enough. He wanted to flee, wanted desperately to flee, but he made himself reach for his desk chair. He pulled it out and sat down, facing the closed door to the porch.

He waited.

“Please,” he pleaded quietly, “I don’t want to go through this night after night.”

“
Isak
.”

The voice was closer, much closer, as close as the porch outside, the curtains quivering to the hoarse timbre.

“Isak.”

There was a movement of air as the locked door to the porch opened with a slight creak. A musty odor wafted into the room. Isaac nearly swooned with a terror huge enough to annihilate him. His bladder squeezed and his penis jerked, and it was this that saved him from surrendering to that terror. A part of his mind clung to a determination not to pee in his pants. He wasn’t going to suffer that humiliation.

“Isak.”

The voice was now distinctly present. It sounded like Imam Ali’s voice, a voice that Isaac would never forget, but yet it was somehow transformed.

Someone—or something—stepped into the room with a clacking of feet. The blackness grew even thicker, making it impossible to see anything. “Good boy, Isak, waiting so patiently for me.” The words were raspy and moist.

“
Inggih
,” Isaac said in a shaky voice.

“I am pleased to see you hold the Holy Qur’an in your hand.”

“Inggih.”

“So. It is time, my boy.”

“Yes, time to finish this.” Isaac’s initial terror was receding. The vise on his bladder decreased its pressure.

“Finish this? Ah, no, my beautiful boy, this is just the start, the new life that begins when you say the confession of faith. You do remember the words of the
shahadah?
I am sure you do. You are a bright boy who remembers such things.”

“‘There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is His prophet.’ There, I’ve said it, now leave me be.”

A moist rasp of humor. “A clever boy too. Not in English, you know that. In the Arabic. I am sure you remember the Arabic.”

Oh, yes.
Ashhadu anna la illaha ilia allah wa ashhadu anna muhammadan rasul allah
. “There must be two witnesses.”

“They are here.”

“I cannot see them.”

“They are here.”

Isaac lifted the Qur’an, holding it edgewise in front of him, allowing the rim of glowing pages to illuminate whomever or whatever was before him. The soft beam seemed to melt away into nothing. “I don’t see them,” he repeated. “I don’t see you.”

Again that chuckle. “Do you really want to see me?”

Isaac’s terror flooded back. He said nothing.

“I thought not. And as for the witnesses, listen.”

Udin’s sly voice said, “Isak, how are you?”

The reedy voice of Ibu Ruth said, “I am here.”

Isaac said, with trembling defiance, “I refuse your witnesses.
They must be Muslims of good standing, not bullies or wishy-washy apostates.”

That moist chuckle again, but not so amused this time. “Let’s not waste any more time with lawyering, Isak. You are conveniently holding the Holy Qur’an, so place your right hand on it and recite the syahadat.”

“I can’t. I’m a Christian.”

“No, you are not. No longer. You have deserted that faith. Or should I say, it has deserted you. Where is your Jesus now, hmm? He has never been, not when you were born, not when you were baptized, not when you were sick, not when you were in that mushollah cell. Come to Allah, Isak. Surrender yourself to Him. Submit yourself to Him in Islam.”

“You are no Muslim! You are a demon, a shaitan, and there are no witnesses, you are making them up—”

“Silence!” The voice did not roar, but it grabbed Isaac’s heart and shook it. The smell intensified into a stench, and there shimmered before him the outlines of a hulking figure that might have been that of a man, except that for the fleetest of moments Isaac saw the black shape of a huge oblong head and a wickedly curved protuberance that could only have been an outsized beak.

The Lord of the Crows.

The shahadah, Isak. Say it now
. The voice was now inside Isaac’s head.

Isaac remained silent.

Say it now!

Isaac knew with awful certainty that his confession would
make no difference. This Lord was going to take him anyway, whether he made the confession or not. His consciousness was fading. There blinked into his dying awareness a white speck of light, too dim and distant to grant any hope, but it was something for his mind to grab hold of.

“But I do have a choice,” he murmured. The light brightened and grew near.

Say the confession!
The voice was wrought with fury beyond description.
Say the confession, you miserable, stupid boy. You have forfeited your faith. You belong to me. Say it!

The light was bright enough for Isaac to feel its strengthening warmth. He realized with wonder that it was a light within himself. “I choose to forgive you,” he said. “I really do forgive you.”

With a roar so immense as to be soundless, the Lord of the Crows reared to strike, but the blow never came. The light within Isaac exploded into a brilliance that changed the roar into a shriek of alarm, and through the light’s blinding whiteness, Isaac saw a black form blown back and falling, falling, falling into a bottomless void.

Isaac blinked his eyes rapidly as his physical senses equilibrated to the ordinary surroundings of his bedroom. He was sprawled on his mattress. That awful, holy radiance faded into ordinary light.

The electricity had come on.

He spotted something on the wooden floor beside the desk, fluttering to the sudden breeze of the fan. He got up and bent to
retrieve it. It was a shiny black feather. A crow’s feather, each part of it perfectly formed, from tip to quill. But that was all it was. A crow’s feather. Isaac dropped it into the wastebasket and went back to bed. His heart was whole once more, and within him a still small voice said,
My son, in whom I am well pleased.