The Girl from the Garden (16 page)

Some bird of the night laughs from a nearby tree. Rakhel jumps back from the well and looks around frantically. She holds her breath, her heart lurching against her chest. She waits until the night resumes its silence, and turns back to the well.

“Kill the baby that grows in her belly, and give me a son,” Rakhel says. “No matter the cost. Give me a son.”

She breathes heavily, shuts her eyes, and reaches under her blouse to unfasten the rope about her waist. She shifts through the keys and finds the one that belonged to her mother. She slides it out and holds it between her fingers. She brings it to her lips and kisses it, then leans over the edge of the well. A thousand stars float around the dark shadow of her reflection in the still water. Rakhel opens her fingers and drops the key into the well. It breaks the surface of the water, shattering the night sky. The stars elongate and separate in the waves of Rakhel’s offering. When the water in the depth of the well is still again, she turns and walks back to her room. Once inside, her fingers are clumsy in lighting the lantern. She sits on the rug and takes a gold hand mirror, brings it to her face, and looks fiercely at the reflection of her own eyes.

Rakhel rises from the floor and opens the door leading into the breezeway. She walks beneath the picture of Moses
striking his staff before the pharaoh and his court. The staff turns into a hundred snakes. She comes to the room at the end of the breezeway. A light escapes from the window between the slit of the drawn curtains. Rakhel presses her face to the glass and in the gold light of the room, she sees the naked back of her husband, sitting, and around his neck, Kokab’s long, white arms, spilling on his shoulders, the lush of her black hair. Rakhel watches the face of the woman in her husband’s arms. Kokab’s eyes remain closed, her lips apart. Rakhel watches Asher throw his head back, a look of pained agony on his face. She watches them become still. She waits for them to separate.

Rakhel wakes with a start. She sits up in her bed. It is not yet dawn. She hears a door open and shut. She listens to the footsteps in the courtyard. The splashing of water from the shallow pool. She rises from the bed and walks across the room to the window facing the courtyard. She pulls the curtains back slightly to see Khorsheed standing beside Ibrahim. Ibrahim motions for her to return to her room. Khorsheed leaves, reluctantly. The knot in Rakhel’s throat turns into a slow burning. These days, whenever Rakhel tries to speak to her, Khorsheed replies with cold, polite formalities.

“Damn you,” Rakhel says out loud. She raps her knuckles against the glass. “Damn you and your lack of loyalty.”

Another door opens and shuts. Rakhel hears the familiar footsteps on the marble stones of the breezeway. Asher walks across the courtyard to the stables. He does not look in the direction of her window.
It is as if I have vanished,
Rakhel thinks,
that nothing of me remains, not even the room I inhabit.
A few minutes later, he returns leading the horses. The two men each take the reins of a horse and walk out of the courtyard, through the narrow passage leading to the door that opens into the street.

The previous night, to disguise the strained silence of their dinner, Ibrahim told stories about the harvest in the villages. Rakhel tried to listen, but each time she started to see the fields of wheat and the men swinging sickles with sweat on their brows, she’d remember that Kokab sat directly across from her, and she knew that if she looked at Asher, she’d see him entranced by Kokab masticating.

The first few nights after Asher left her bed, Rakhel had sat down to the family meals resolved to stop eating and waste away. But when she noticed that nobody paid her slow death any heed, she developed a ravenous appetite. While Ibrahim spoke about the villages, Rakhel ate voraciously, smacking her lips, licking her fingers, leaning over to help herself to a second, a third helping.

“Even the women with new babies work,” Ibrahim said. “They leave the infants in the shade of a tree, work behind the men gathering wheat, and when it is time to nurse, they return to the shade.”

“What if wolves eat their baby?” Khorsheed asked.

“Wolves wouldn’t approach such a large group of people,” Ibrahim said. “Besides, Asher and I have seen these men wrestle. Each night, they hold contests. Should a wolf come, thirty men would fall upon the poor beast.”

Khorsheed giggled. Rakhel felt a wave of nausea and decided to conclude her meal noisily with a tall glass of water.

“The village heads host our stay. They spread the best of their bedding for us to sleep, and each night, their wives prepare stews with lamb meat. They do not eat so lavishly themselves. They slaughter a lamb when we arrive and treat the three days of our stay as a feast. It is a pity to miss it, this year. I feel terrible regret.” Ibrahim looked to his brother, but Asher did not notice, or perhaps even hear his brother.

“I wish I could go, just once,” Khorsheed said. “I’d leave the baby in the shade and try my hand at gathering.”

Rakhel snorted in response. Khorsheed paused and looked in her direction. Rakhel reached out to tear a piece of bread and soaked it in the pot of stew on the sofre, then stuffed it into her mouth. Then, she rose abruptly and gathered Khorsheed’s plate on top of her own.

“Rakhel, you seem to be in a bit of a hurry,” Zolekhah said. “We are still eating.”

“I’ll just take these,” Rakhel said and she left the room.

The sun crests over the mountains and the sky outside is pink and gold. It will be a warm day. Rakhel turns from the window and walks to the mirror. She stands before it and weaves her hair into two thick braids. She remembers the previous night at the well, her offering, her prayer. Something must change, now. She straightens her skirt and turns her thoughts to the day’s tasks.

The farmers brought in the grape harvest a week ago.
If Rakhel waits any longer, mold will ruin the year’s wine. Rakhel saw to it throughout the week that the girls string up hundreds of clusters from the ceiling of the cellar. She stood in the dim light of the cellar to oversee their work. Zahra and Sadiqeh worked silently. When she addressed them, they responded with as few words as possible.
Clean those bushels to make bottles of syrup.
Yes, Rakhel Khanum.
Extract the juice of the unripe ones and bottle that for stews and sherbets.
Yes, Rakhel Khanum.
Khorsheed avoids Rakhel, and Rakhel’s conversations with Zolekhah are sparse, so that some days the only sentence uttered by another in response to what she has said is
yes, Rakhel Khanum
. She spends days in this silence, under the hot sun, standing over the servant girls as they quietly burn the grapevines and boil down the ashes, then boil the yellowish water to dip clusters in for raisins.
There are still the bushels of
rang-e kishmish-e siyah
and
methqali
for wine making.
We cannot do that, Rakhel Khanum.
And Rakhel knows this, that it is blasphemous to their faith to make wine, but she says it regardless, asks them why not, drags reluctant words from them, pulls and tugs at the conversation to make it stretch until she knows it cannot go any further. Then she assigns them another task, and retreats to her room.

Rakhel must make the wine soon and she decides to do the arduous work alone. She brings up the buckets of grapes from the cellar one by one as the sun climbs to its zenith. She licks the salt of her own sweat from her upper lip. Her shirt sticks to the dampness of her body, the hair at the nape
of her neck is wet. In the few moments of her rest, she feels the thud of the heart in her chest and the pulse of blood in her veins.
Like the almost imperceptible motion of a fly’
s wings,
she thinks. So she works harder to keep from thinking.

If she had a child, Rakhel reasons, even a daughter, she might carry along with the rest of the world around her. That child, her child, will have another child, and another child will be born of that, so that through them, she might forgo such insignificance. But she has no child. She is the ending point of generations that stretch back to the beginning of time. She stops in the middle of the courtyard and places the buckets she carries on the ground. She looks up to the sun, dazzling white in the blue skies. Her eyes tear, but she keeps looking at the flaming disk.

“I will make things grow, the wealth of the estate, its abundance,” she says. “I will build a kingdom. At least this will remain of me, not the objects themselves, but the knowledge that I made them proffer. And the wine for the Sabbaths this year will be my own secret reminder, the product of my will and strength. It will be my hands that wash the grapes, my feet that press them, my diligence to nurse the fermenting liquid. I will funnel this wine of my labor into glass bottles to keep.”

She looks at the skies a moment longer, then turns and walks to the stables to drag a tremendous basin back to the center of the courtyard. She rolls up the cuffs of her tumban and the sleeves of her shirt. She goes to the pool and washes her arms and legs, her hands and feet, and sits for a
moment on the ledge for the sun to dry her skin. Yes, it will be the wine she has pressed that Asher will bless and drink. Rakhel jumps to her feet and hoists bucket after bucket of grapes into the basin. She feels the strain of the work in the muscles of her arms and back, in the tension of her thighs. Her clothes are wet with perspiration, she can feel the sun on the ridge of her nose. A fly hovers near her face. She swats at it and it returns. Rakhel looks at the basin full of red grapes, holds her breath and steps in. An explosion of grapes beneath the soles of her feet. Cold against her calves.

“Whoever drinks this wine will also drink the resolve of my heart,” she says beneath her breath.

She begins stepping up and down, one and two, a rhythmic dance. She keeps her hands on her hips. She thinks about Kokab, she sees the vision of her in Asher’s arms. She pounds her feet harder, brings her legs up and down faster, breathes heavily.

“You will see,” she says out loud, kicking and thrashing the pulp. “You will see what I am worth!”

She slips to her knees, throws her hands forward instinctively. The liquid pulp is beneath her chin. If she could just overcome the impulse to breathe . . . She clutches grapes in her hands and squeezes them, the juice dripping from between her clenched fingers, the pulp falling from her closed fists. She grunts and stands, her clothes stained deep purple and dripping with juice. She begins pounding the grapes beneath her feet, again. She thrashes wildly about the basin, the liquid sloshing back and forth violently. She slips again
and yells, jumps to her feet and resumes, kicking her legs, dripping with juice.

“Rakhel, G-d be merciful, have you gone mad?” Zolekhah says.

Rakhel turns to see Zolekhah’s bewildered face. Khorsheed, Kokab, and the servants stand behind her, their mouths agape.

“Fine, fine, Naneh Zolekhah. Just seeing to the wine, that’s all.”

“Now? In the heat of the noon?”

“Allah forgive us, Rakhel Khanum, you will die of heatstroke,” Fatimeh says.

“Don’t worry, I’m capable enough to do this task alone.”

“Rakhel, three grown men couldn’t do this task. Get out of that basin before you bring black calamity upon us.”

Rakhel continues to step up and down, now with a measured pace. She steadies her voice and says, “If we let the grapes go any longer, they will spoil, and if I leave the task now, the grapes will cook. Someone must see to this year’s stock of Sabbath wine?”

“I can help her,” Kokab says.

Rakhel stands in the basin. The liquid settles around her calves. She looks down to where her legs disappear in the juice and pulp. The skin above the line is stained purple. Her clothes are sticky. She looks up and sees the women staring at her expectantly.

“Yes, Kokab jan, and Khorsheed, too,” Zolekhah says.

“Zolekhah Khanum, Khorsheed, the poor child, is a nursing mother. You put her in this sun to do this work and, G-d mute my tongue for uttering these words, she will perish,” Fatimeh says.

“Well, then, Kokab and Rakhel can share the work.”

Kokab bends to roll the cuffs of her tumban. She steps into the pool and washes her legs and her arms. Khorsheed looks at Rakhel and lifts her eyebrows. Rakhel shrugs her shoulders and looks away.

“Rakhel, step out a moment and rest. Kokab will take over,” Zolekhah says.

“Naneh Zolekhah, really, I’m already stained and doing the work, no need—”

“Out, Rakhel.”

Rakhel takes one leg out, then another and stands in front of the basin, barring Kokab’s way.

“Thank you for allowing me to help,” Kokab says.

Rakhel ignores her and walks to the pool. She hears Kokab step into the basin. Rakhel bends and splashes water on her legs and arms.

“Rakhel, your clothes are ruined,” Zolekhah says.

Rakhel does not respond. She sits on the ledge of the pool and turns to look at Khorsheed. The two girls stare at each other for a long time, then the baby begins whining and clutching at his mother’s hair. Khorsheed turns her attention to Yousseff, and Rakhel finally looks in the direction of the basin, to watch Kokab stepping on the grapes.

Kokab moves with slow, deliberate steps. She closes her
eyes and tilts her chin up slightly. She places her braceleted hands on her hips. She lifts one leg, presses down, lifts another. Rakhel imagines Asher’s hand on Kokab’s legs. He will think the beauty of her white calves heightened by the stained skin.

“Strange sensation,” Kokab says and smiles with her eyes closed.

Kokab’s upper lip glistens in the sun. Sweat beads on her forehead. She shakes out her hands, and the jangle of her bracelets startle Rakhel from her trance.
There is something in Kokab’s face, something in her expression,
Rakhel thinks. Then she imagines that same look on Kokab’s features, in Asher’s embrace.
Here, before all these witnesses,
Rakhel thinks,
she is polluting the Sabbath wine, sweating into it her wicked thoughts, the scent of her sinful body.

Rakhel imagines Asher reciting the kiddush. She imagines him pouring a glass of the wine for the prayer. She sees Kokab in the glow of the Sabbath candles. Asher puts the translucent garnet of the liquid to his lips, closes his eyes, and drinks. And Kokab spreads warm inside him, flows deep into his veins. He opens his eyes, only to see Kokab. He passes her the glass, one hand to another, red black wine wetting their tongues, in their mouths. And Rakhel, too, would have to raise that glass to her own lips and believe in the sanctity of wine, Sabbath, prayer, marriage, even though she bore witness to the profanity of this moment, now, where the grapes are being pressed beneath Kokab’s feet. She sees herself in the dark of the cellar, each morning
and evening, a slave to the fermenting liquid. Her fingers stained purple as she draws off the fluid from the settled refuse. She sees herself kneeling, funnel in hand, doggedly filling bottle after bottle with the wine of the woman who has intoxicated her husband.