Sarah Read online

  “ABRAM is playing at being a father,” Lot said, with a scornful laugh.

  It was a few days later, and Sarai had resolved that she would try to persuade Lot to leave her and take a wife.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Among the newcomers from Damascus, there’s a young boy who never leaves him, who’s always dogging his steps. Or else it’s Abram who never leaves him, whichever you prefer.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Eleven or twelve. The same age I was when you became my mother.” Lot smiled, and his face creased like a peach that had fallen in the sand. He shrugged his shoulders. “A good-looking boy with very curly hair, a big mouth, and a long nose the women will like. He’s crafty, too, and cheats at games. I’ve been watching him. He knows just how to win Abram over. He’s more affectionate than I ever was.”

  “Why does he hang around Abram?” Sililli asked. “Doesn’t he have a father or a mother?”

  “He has everything he needs. And now he has all Abram’s attention.”

  “Point him out to me,” Sarai said.

  The boy’s name was Eliezer, and he was exactly as Lot had described him: handsome, lively, affectionate, and endearing. And yet, from the moment she set eyes on him, Sarai disliked him. She really did not understand why. Was it the way he tilted his head to one side when he smiled? Was it his rather heavy lids that made his eyes into slits?

  “Could it be you’re jealous?” Sililli asked, with her usual frankness. “You have every reason to be. All the same, the boy is good news. Abram has finally noticed how tired he was of not being a father. He’s discovering the joys of fatherhood with this Eliezer. Who could blame him? Wanting to be king of a great people without knowing what it is to be a father, your husband was starting to worry me.”

  “Well, I can’t see anything in this boy to delight me!” Sarai replied, dryly.

  She took the first opportunity to ask Abram about him. “Who is this boy who’s never out of your sight?”

  Abram’s smile was radiant. “Eliezer? The son of a muleteer from Damascus.”

  “Why do you like him so much?”

  “He’s the most adorable child in Canaan. He’s not only pleasant-looking. He’s intelligent, brave, and obedient. And he’s a quick learner.”

  “But he already has a father, Abram. Does he need two?”

  Abram’s smile faded. For the first time in all their married life, Sarai had the feeling that he was forgetting his love for her.

  They stood looking at each other in silence, both dreading the wounding words that might emerge from their mouths. Sarai knew that for several moons now, she had been right. Her beauty was no longer enough. Was the sin of it weighing more heavily on her than on Abram?

  “I’ve known for a long time that it was bound to happen,” she said, as gently as she could. “Nobody could have been better than you, having a sterile wife.”

  Abram remained silent. He waited, a severe expression in his eyes, sure she was about to add something.

  “We’ve both always thought of Lot as our son,” she went on. “Not only in our hearts, but in reality, he has been our son for years. Why prefer an unknown boy who has his own father and mother, when you could adopt Lot and make him the heir I can’t give you?”

  “Lot is my brother’s son,” Abram replied, coldly. “He already has a place beside me, now and in the future.” He turned and left the tent.

  Night had only just fallen. Once more, he spent it far from Sarai’s arms.

  THE following winter, the wind blew but the rain did not fall. The earth became so hard that it was almost impossible to dig furrows. In the spring, the rain still did not fall, and the seeds dried in the soil without germinating. At the first shimmer of warm air above the pastures in summer, the thought on everyone’s mind was drought.

  Sarai, like many, spent each day dreading the next. She recalled her bad dream. Sometimes, it seemed to her that the land of Canaan was becoming like her: beautiful and barren.

  She would have liked to be able to confide in Abram, question him again. “Aren’t you wrong about the meaning of this beauty that clings to me? By forcing this beauty on me, isn’t your god trying to tell you that my sin is greater than you think? Must I go away before the barrenness of my womb spreads to the pastures of Canaan?”

  But whenever she spoke of these torments, Sililli would give a cry of horror and urge her to keep silent.

  “What pride, my child, to think that the rain falls or doesn’t fall because of you! Even in Ur, where you lords were quite capable of thinking you were the cat’s whiskers, it took more than one sin for the gods to stop the rain! And I’ll tell you something: This nonsense isn’t going to get your husband back between your thighs!”

  During all this time, Abram seemed the most heedless of them all. Not a day went by that he did not set off across the pastures with Eliezer. They would sleep in the open air, or cast nets on the seashore. He would teach the boy to weave baskets or mats out of bulrushes, to carve horn and train mules.

  Seeing them, Sarai would feel a lump in her throat, and her saliva would turn acid, as if she were chewing green lemons. She would try to see reason, to listen to Sililli’s advice: “It’s all right. It’s as it should be. Love this child as Abram loves him, and you’ll be happy again. What else can you expect?” But however hard she tried, she still did not like Eliezer.

  Then a day arrived when Melchizedek came to the black-and-white tent.

  “Abram, the seeds are no longer germinating, the grass in the pastures is drying up, there’s less water in the rivers and wells. Our reserves are not large. Nobody can remember a drought here in the land of milk and honey in living memory. But the soil of Canaan has so many people on it now, it can no longer feed us all.”

  “God Most High gave us this land. Why would He cause a drought?”

  “Who could know the answer better than you, since He speaks only to you?”

  Abram frowned and said nothing.

  Melchizedek placed a hand on his arm. “Abram,” he said, affectionately, “I need your help. We don’t have your confidence. We need to be reassured and to know the will of Yhwh. Remember, I greeted you before the walls of Salem with the words ‘Abram is my dearest friend.’”

  Abram clasped him in his arms. “If Yhwh has a wish in this trial, He will tell me.”

  He ordered young heifers, rams, and lambs to be offered up, and went off with Eliezer to call on Yhwh in all the places where he had built altars in Canaan. But after one moon had passed, he had to admit the truth.

  “God Most High is not speaking to me. We must wait; nothing happens without a reason.”

  “What’s the use of a god who doesn’t help when we make him offerings?” someone dared to say.

  Abram’s mouth quivered with anger, but he contained himself. “You have all known ten years of happiness,” he said. “A happiness and a prosperity so perfect that they have aroused the envy of all the people around Canaan. Now at the first drought you forget all that. You’re free to think what you like. But I say: We have known happiness, now we must know hardship. Yhwh wants to make sure that we trust Him, even when times are hard.”

  THE drought lasted another year. The wells dried up, the pastures yellowed, then became dust. Long crevasses opened in the fields of cereals and became the lairs of snakes, which lay in wait for any prey they could find. The grasshoppers began to die, then the birds. The animals went mad, tearing off at a gallop until they fell to the ground dead. Sometimes they would simply drop dead in the heat of the sun or the cold of the night.

  King Melchizedek opened the jars of grain kept in reserve in the cellars of Salem, but it was far too little. Hunger was a constant companion. Everyone was ashen-faced and hollow-cheeked. Sarai no longer dared show herself. Like everyone else, she was growing thinner, but her beauty was unchanged.

  “I’m ashamed of my appearence,” she said to Sililli one night when neither could get to sleep. “How c
an I exhibit this horrible beauty that never leaves me, when the women don’t have enough milk in their breasts to feed their children?”

  The only response was Sililli’s harsh breathing.

  “Sililli?”

  Sililli was gasping for breath. She was shivering, her eyes large with fever, her body hunched in order not to collapse.

  “What’s the matter?” Sarai asked, anxiously.

  “It started this afternoon . . . ,” Sililli breathed, with great effort. “There’s a lot like me . . . It’s the water . . . The dirty water . . .”

  Sarai sent for Lot and a midwife. They wrapped Sililli in covers and skins. She began to sweat and gnash her teeth. From time to time, her lips drew back to reveal unnaturally pale gums.

  “The fever is taking her,” the midwife observed.

  “She knows about herbs,” Lot cried. “She’ll know what she needs.”

  “She isn’t in any fit state to tell us how to save her,” Sarai said, with a lump in her throat. “She can’t even speak.”

  By the middle of the night, Sililli was no longer conscious. The fever seemed to have turned her eyes inward. The midwife was called to other tents, where the same horror was being repeated. Lot stubbornly tried to pour beer down Sililli’s throat. She choked and vomited, but for a time she seemed to settle down.

  The next morning, in the cold dawn, she opened her eyes. Apparently quite conscious, she gripped Sarai and Lot by the wrists. They asked her where they could find herbs and how they should treat her. She batted her eyelids.

  “My hour has come,” she murmured, in an almost inaudible voice. “I’m slipping into the underworld. All the better—it’ll be one less mouth to feed.”

  “Sililli!”

  “Leave it, my girl. We’re all born and we all die. That’s as it should be. You’ve been the great joy of my life, my goddess. Don’t change, stay as you are. Even Abram’s god will bend his knee before you, I know it.”

  “He has no body, remember,” Sarai tried to joke, her face flooded with tears.

  Sililli half smiled. “We’ll see . . .”

  Sarai bent, in a gesture familiar from her childhood, and placed her forehead between Sililli’s breasts. Her body was almost cold, but still throbbing with fever. Gently, Sililli’s hand came to rest on the back of Sarai’s neck.

  “Lot, Lot,” Sililli breathed in a last effort. “Forget Sarai and find a wife.”

  She died before the sun had cleared the horizon.

  FOR a long time that morning, Sarai stood outside her tent, overcome with anger. She did not weep, though she could hear weeping all around her. The sorrow of loss and the pain of living were feeding the only abundant streams left in Canaan: streams of tears.

  All at once, Sarai set off in the direction of Abram’s great tent. She found him with the other men, having one of their usual endless discussions. Eliezer was sitting a few steps away.

  Abram’s face had a closed, severe, weary look. Like a rock abraded by sand. But as soon as he looked at Sarai, he understood. He asked everyone to go out and leave them alone. Eliezer remained seated on his cushion.

  “That means you too, boy,” Sarai said.

  Eliezer looked her up and down, fire in his eyes. He looked to Abram for support, but Abram gestured to him to obey.

  “Don’t be too hard on Eliezer,” Abram said, as soon as they were alone. “The drought isn’t his fault, and his father and mother died yesterday.”

  Sarai took a deep breath to calm her rage. “And dozens will die today. Sililli died this morning.”

  Without a word, his eyes dimming, Abram lowered his head.

  In the silence, Sarai’s voice was like the crack of a whip. “Who is this god, Abram, who can neither feed your people nor make your wife’s womb fertile?”

  “Sarai!”

  “He’s your god, Abram, not mine.”

  Abram’s hands were shaking, his chest heaved as he breathed, and the blood throbbed in his temples. Thinking of Sililli’s fever, Sarai took fright. What if the sickness had struck him, too? She rushed to him, seized his hands in hers, and lifted them to her lips.

  “Are you sick?” she asked, anxiously.

  Abram shook his head, gasping, unable to speak. Suddenly, he gripped Sarai’s shoulders and clasped her to him, burying his face in her hair. “He doesn’t talk to me anymore, Sarai. Yhwh is silent!”

  Gently, Sarai pushed him away. “Is that a reason for you, too, to become powerless, Abram?”

  Abram turned away.

  “Your god is silent,” Sarai went on, “but this silence must remain between you and him. Abram, my husband, Abram, the equal of Melchizedek, the man who led us from Harran, who opened up the land of Canaan to the newcomers: That man is not reduced to silence! We are here, outside your tent, waiting for your words. They are here, those who came running to you, trembling with hunger and fever. They’re waiting for Abram to give the order to strike camp.”

  “Strike camp and go where? Do you think I haven’t been dreaming of that for moons? Canaan is surrounded by drought and deserts: to the north, the east, and the south. To the west, there’s the sea!”

  “To the south, after the desert, there’s the land of Pharaoh.”

  Abram stared at her in amazement. “You know as well as I do what they say about Pharaoh, how cruel he is, how he loves to enslave men and make them sweat blood for him.”

  “Yes. But I’ve also heard how fertile his land is, with its huge river, and how rich his cities are.”

  “Pharaoh believes he’s a god!”

  “Why should that worry a man whose name has been uttered by God Most High?”

  Abram looked sharply at Sarai. Was she mocking him?

  “Abram,” she continued, more gently, “don’t you understand that you have to decide without waiting for help? The worst thing we can do at the moment is stay in Canaan. We’ll die here. And the people of Salem who welcomed us will die with us. What do we risk by going and asking for Pharaoh’s protection? What death can he add to the death that already awaits us?”

  Abram made no reply.

  “Your god is silent,” Sarai went on, “and you’re like a child who’s angry because his father’s ignoring him. I, Sarai, who abandoned forever the protection of Inanna and Ea for yours, want to hear your word.”

  THAT evening, Abram told Melchizedek that they would set out for the land of Pharaoh the very next day. Moved, Melchizedek kissed him and promised him that the land of Canaan would always be his. When the barren times were over, Abram could return and would be welcomed with the greatest of joy.

  Abram asked another favor of Melchizedek.

  “Speak, and you shall have it.”

  “The parents of young Eliezer of Damascus are dead. Before you, I declare that I consider him my adopted son. The favor I ask is that you keep Eliezer with you while I’m in the land of Pharaoh. Nobody knows what awaits us there. If I were to be killed, Eliezer will be able to stay in the land of Canaan and represent my name.”

  Melchizedek thought the decision a wise one. But when Lot heard about it, he gave a cold laugh.

  “So, Abram’s found himself a child of drought,” he said to Sarai.

  Sarai, My Sister

  They moved slowly, walking for short periods, and only in the morning and the evening, when it was cooler. It was Abram’s intention not to exhaust those, human or animal, whose muscles had been weakened by the famine in Canaan.

  The sea was resplendent with light. It dazzled the eyes, intoxicated the gaze, with its immensity. Most of Abram’s people were not accustomed to it. At night, the noise of it kept them awake. But it gave them food. Abram showed them how to weave nets and then cast them, either standing on rocks or on the vast golden beaches with the water at their feet. He also showed them how to collect shells from beneath the sand and catch crayfish in baskets. The children, rediscovering laughter, were the quickest learners.

  Sarai would watch him, and her heart would fill with tenderness
as she recalled the words he had said to her on the banks of the Euphrates: “I was fishing. It’s the best time for frogs and crayfish. If nobody steps on you and screams!”

  They reached villages where the houses were nothing but huts. The wind from the sea blew through the bulrushes. They could be seen from afar: a motley crew moving slowly in a long line with their sparse flocks whose fleece had turned gray with dust. They were greeted with both suspicion and curiosity. Despite the fact that many of his animals had perished, Abram was always prepared to give up a sheep in exchange for dried fish, dates, fragrant herbs, figs—and information.

  “We’re going to the land of Pharaoh,” he would say, “because in the north, where we come from, there’s drought everywhere.”

  “Take care” would come the reply. “Pharaoh has waged many wars. He doesn’t like foreigners. He takes the women and the livestock, and kills the men and the children. He has soldiers everywhere, vast numbers of them, armed to the teeth. He says he’s a god, and he’s so powerful everyone believes him. They say he can transform things, bring rain or drought. They say he surrounds himself with gold. His palaces are covered in gold—even his wives’ bodies are made of gold.”

  Abram would raise a skeptical eyebrow. “Wives made of gold?”

  The old fishermen would laugh, and point at Sarai. “Not as beautiful as yours, of course. But that’s what they say, yes. Wives made of gold. Pharaoh wants only beautiful things around him. That’s his power.”