A Stranger in Olondria: A Novel (20 page)

“Look.” She pointed to her sister, the tall girl in the scarf, who sat mesmerized, opening and closing her hands in the dust of moonlight. “She wears a
brodrik
, but she’s not a widow. She’s not even married.” The girl’s voice sank to a whisper: “She had a baby, though. We buried it. . . . I know she’s prettier than me, but still, my time is coming. Mun Vothis read it for me in the
taubel
. A man with a long shadow, she said. He’s supposed to come on a Tolie. But today isn’t Tolie, is it?” She looked around at us, her face brightening.

“It’s Valie.” Miros’s voice was muffled, his face in his hands.

“Ah! That’s good. Look, Amaiv is sleeping. . . .” We all looked down at the child, who was curled up in a ball at my side.

“She would have been the most beautiful,” said Laris.

The next day when we were ready to leave, as I was climbing into my seat, the girl called Laris came rushing out to me. She had not combed her hair, and her scraggly plaits jangled about her face with its broad outlines, its firm, determined jaw. She caught my arm in the shade of a spindly acacia tree by the barren court. “Are you really an
avneanyi
?” she asked breathlessly. And without waiting for an answer she pressed my palm against her stomach, closing her eyes, in a long, sensual movement. She smelled strongly of
teiva
and old sweat, and I recoiled. Laris released me, giving her wild laugh. “Thank you,
avneanyi
,” she said, the shadows of the acacia branches jagged across her smile. “When the time comes, it will quicken me.”

C
hapter Sixteen

The Courage of Hivnawir

Loneliness was descending on us: we were reaching the end of the country.

It was not, of course, the end of the known world: that place, marked on maps by the dire word
Ludyanith
, “without water,” lay on the other side of the desert, beyond the mountains of Duoronwei. Yet the starkness of the hills of the Tavroun, rising about us, dazzled me after the delicacy and warmth of the Valley. For the first time, the road appeared ill-kept.
Go on if you like
, its pitted stones seemed to say.
It is no longer our affair
.

One afternoon we left our horse and carriage at the stable in a wayside inn and walked down to the river to board the ferry. Stones rolled beneath our feet and clay-dust rose on the wind, a single-minded and nameless wind, colder than anything I had known before I entered that wilderness. The priest was now able to walk, but he would not speak or remove his cloak, and clung to Miros’s arm with his frail hand as we slipped down to the water’s edge. The ferry was manned by slaves. A young girl on the boat, a bride, wept as we pulled away from the shore, trying to hide her face in her dark mantle.

Across that river, the great Ilbalin, I was to meet the angel’s body. The river, bordering the highlands like the beads on a woman’s skirt, was as sacred to me as it was to the ancient Olondrians and the Tavrouni mountain people, who called it the river of Daimo the God. That water, shining with subdued lights under the gray sky, would carry me to Jissavet and freedom. It stank of fish and rottenness, like the sea. On the deck an Evmeni in a black turban sold images of the gods carved from boars’ teeth.

On the other side stood the village of Klah-ne-Wiy. Mud walls, windy alleys, carts and donkeys, cider in the single unhappy café. The walls and floor were black with smoke, and dried venison was sold on strings, and the villagers did not know how to play
londo
. Miros brought out his own ivory pieces and tried to teach them, but they looked at him with suspicion and sucked their pipes. Later he burned his hand trying to turn the spit on the wayward fire and one of them treated him with the juice of an aloe.

Auram crept into one of the narrow bedrooms, beckoning for Miros to follow with his trunk. Then Miros came out again, leaving his uncle alone. I did not see Auram again until the
kebma
hour, when he swept into the common room, his wig purplish in the light of the coal-oil lamps. He wore a dark red costume with a spiked collar and gold-lined cape, and smiled at me coldly with artificial teeth. His eyes blazed. He was splendid, beautifully made like an image of worship. One could believe that he would never die.

After we had eaten, Miros went to sit by the fire. Auram rubbed his waxen, shapely hands so that his rings clicked softly. “You have begun,” he said to me. “Have you not?”

“Begun what?” I said, although I knew.

“You have begun to speak to her. I see it in your face.”

“I do not know what you see,” I said, looking back at him boldly, knowing how my face had changed, become sterner, less readable. But the priest smiled as if he saw only what he had most hoped for, though the light in his eyes, I saw with a start, was made of tears.

“Ah!
Avneanyi
, it is a privilege to watch you—you have discovered, I think, the courage of Hivnawir. You do not know the story?” He laughed, shaking his head so that the black horsehair of his wig rustled. As he spoke he chased the shadows with his hands, his narrow wrists turning in the thick lace at his cuffs. “Hivnawir,” he breathed, his eyes sparkling, “is a legendary character, one of our greatest lovers. His story comes from the great era of Bain, when the clans of the Ideiri slew one another in the streets. . . . The time when the Quarter of Sighs was built with its sturdy barred windows, when it was known as the Quarter of the Princes. Bain was a city of vicious noblemen and hired assassins, yes, in the very age of its highest artistic achievements! You must imagine,
avenanyi
. . . carriages studded with iron spikes, and women who never emerged from their stone palaces. . . . Darvan the Old, who was struck through the eye with an arrow in his conservatory, and Bei the Innocent, who had his ears filled with hot lead! Hivnawir was born in that quarter and little is known of him but that, and the tale of his passion from the beautiful Taur, who was forbidden to him not only because she was promised to another but because she was the daughter of his uncle. Our painters adore this story: they have represented Hivnawir as a beautiful, fiery youth with broad shoulders, often on horseback; somehow he has become associated with oleanders and goes wreathed in white and scarlet flowers through centuries of fine art. As for myself, I have always wondered if he were not wan and petulant, a mediocre young man who simply stumbled into a legend! Perhaps he had a drooping lip or wheezed when he ran too fast. But never mind! The goddess forbid we should dabble in sacrilege! We know no more of the beauty of Taur than we do of the splendor of Hivnawir—her portrait was never painted, despite the fashion of the times. Her tyrannical father, Rothda the Truculent, locked her up in a series of stone chambers, like a poor fly in an amber pendant. It is said that she was too beautiful to be looked upon by men: there is the tale of a Nissian slave who cut his throat for love of her. No man was allowed close to her, not even her own relations: Rothda himself did not visit the little girl for years on end! It was the scandal of the city, as you can imagine; they said it was barbarous, and several young men were killed or maimed in their efforts to rescue the damsel. Soon after she was promised in marriage to one of her father’s creditors, her cousin Hivnawir became inflamed by the thought of her.

“It is said that he was passing down a hall in his uncle’s palace when he heard a girl’s voice, sweet and sad, singing an old ballad. He was alone, and he searched the corridors for the source of the music and, unable to find it, finally called out. As soon as he spoke, the music ceased. Then he thought of his cousin Taur; he was certain that he had happened upon the regions of her prison. Knowing this, he could think of nothing else and returned there every day, carrying a taper and pounding vainly on the walls. The more he searched, the less he found, the more he craved a meeting. After all, he reasoned, she is my cousin; there can be no impropriety in my meeting her just once, simply to congratulate her on her engagement! But his determination was more than that which a kind relation would feel. He was stirred by the rumors of her perilous beauty. And Taur, in her carpeted prison, heard the faint cries of the unknown man and drew her shawl about her, trembling.

“At last his persistence began to drive her mad; she was cold around the heart, afraid to play her lyre or even to speak. And her curiosity, too, began to grow like a dark flower, so that her breath was nearly cut off by its thorns. Her women saw how she languished, losing her aspect of a bride, which they had tended so carefully by feeding her on almond paste. ‘O
teldamas
,’ they cried, ‘what can satisfy your heart?’ And she answered weakly: ‘Bring me the name of the man in the corridor.’

“So it began. Once she knew his name, she became captivated by the thought of her cousin, as he was by the thought of her. The poet says that she ignited her heart by touching it to his; and after that there was no peace for either of them. Taur began to harass her women, demanding that they arrange a meeting, which they refused with exclamations of terror. She became moody and would not eat, but played her lyre and sang, so that the shouts of her distant lover grew in their inarticulate frenzy. ‘Bright were her tears, falling like almond blossom’—that is Lian. Who knows where she discovered such bitter strength? Where did this secluded girl develop the strength to threaten to kill herself—to attempt to dash her brains on the wall? One supposes that she inherited the truculence of her father, along with his cunning of a
teiva
merchant . . . for just as he had satisfied a prince to whom he had lost everything at cards by promising him this pure and unseen girl as a bride, so Taur entangled her women in a net of lies and threats so that they lived in dread of the tales she might tell her father. They wept: she was a cruel girl; how could she threaten to say that they were thieves, so that their eyes would be put out with a hot iron? How could she force them to risk their lives, how could she endanger her cousin whom she loved—that unfortunate youth in the corridor? But she would not be dissuaded, and at last they reached a compromise: they would allow her to meet with the young man on the condition that they did not see one another: the women themselves would hold a silk scarf between them, so that the youth would not be deranged by the sight of her.”

Auram paused. Outside the sleet was whispering in the stunted trees by the road; a donkey cart went by, creaking. The priest looked dreamily at the lamp, his painted eyes glowing deeply, slowly filling up with the tale’s enchantment. “One wonders,” he said softly, “how it was. One can imagine her: what it would mean, the voice in a distant passageway. She had books, after all. So no doubt her cousin became the symbol of what she lacked: the sky, the trees, the world. But he . . .” The priest gave me a brilliant, significant glance. “What of Hivnawir? He had everything. Everything: riches, women, horses, taverns, the stars! That is why I said ‘the courage of Hivnawir.’ It is the courage to choose not what will make us happy, but what is precious.

“Well, the cousins met. They knelt on either side of the silken scarf, neither one touching it. They spoke for hours. For days they met like that, weeks, months, speaking and whispering, singing and reciting poetry. A strange idyll, among the servant women tortured by dread, the lover risking with every meeting a sword in his reckless neck! In the stone room with its harsh outlines disguised by hanging tapestries, in the perfumed air of the artful ventilation . . . The love of voices, naturally, produces the love of lips. Imagine them pressing their ardent mouths to the silk. The poet tells us that Hivnawir outlined her shape with his hands and saw her ‘like a wraith of fog in a glass.’”

The priest sat silent now, tracing a scar in the dark old table, his face still haunted by a fluttering smile. He sat that way until the sleet stopped and the night crier passed outside, wailing “
Syen s’mar
,” which is in Kestenyi: “The streets are closed.”

At last I asked: “And what happened to them?”

“Oh!” The priest looked startled and then waved his hand, conjuring vague shadows. “A series of troubles—a muddled escape, an attempt on the life of the girl’s intended—at last, a sword in the back for the tragic youth. And Taur burned herself in her apartments, having chosen to meet her love and to wound her father by destroying her wondrous beauty. The barb went deep, deep! For Rothda hanged himself in the arbor where, in other times, he had played
omi
with the princes of that cruel city. A famous tale! It has been used as a warning against incest and as a fanciful border for summer tablecloths. But think,
avneanyi
—” He touched my wrist; his teeth glinted. “
They never saw one another face to face
.”

Village of Klah-ne-Wiy, I remember you. I remember the shabby streets and the cold, the Tavrouni women in striped wool blankets, the one who stood by her cart selling white-hot
odash
and picking her ear with a thorn, the one who laughed in the market, her dark blue gums. I remember her, the flyaway hair and strange flat coppery face and the way she tried to sell us a string of yellow beads, a love charm. She pointed the way to the sheep market, and Miros and I bought sheepskin coats and caps and leather sleeping-sacks to survive the cold of the inn.

Cripples begged for alms outside the market. A great bull was being slaughtered there, and expectant women stood around it with pails. One of them clutched Miros’s arm and quoted toothlessly: “The desert is the enemy of mankind, and the
feredhai
are the friends of the desert.” Geometric patterns in rough ochre framed the doorways, turning violet in the pageantry of dusk. By the temple smoked the lanky black-haired men called the
bildiri
, those whose blood mingled the strains of the Valley and the plateau.

Only once we saw the true
feredhai
, and they were unmistakable. They came through the center of Klah-ne-Wiy in a whirl of noise and dust. There were perhaps seven of them and each man rode a separate skittering mount, and yet they moved together like an indivisible animal. They drove the dogs and children into the alleys, and women snatched their braziers out of the way, and someone shouted as baskets overturned, and yet the riders did not seem to notice but passed with their heads held high, men and ponies lean and wiry and breathing white steam in the cold. The men were young, mere boys, and their long hair was ragged and caked with dust. Their arms were bare, their chests criss-crossed with scabbards and amulets. They passed down the road and left us spitting to clear the dust from our teeth and disappeared in the twilight coloring the hills.

Then the gloomy inn, the barefoot old man shuffling out of the rooms at the back carrying the honey beer called
stedleihe
, and the way that Miros made us pause before we drank, our eyes closed, Kestenyi fashion, “allowing the dragon to pass.” And the way we banged on the table until the old man brought the lentils, and later heard a moaning from the kitchen and learned that there was a shaggy cow tied up among the sacks of beans and jars of oil, with garlics around her neck to ward off disease. And the old man seemed so frightened of us and waved his hands explaining that he kept her inside to prevent the
beshaidi
from stealing her. And later we saw him taking snuff at a table with some Tavrounis; he was missing all the teeth on one side of his mouth.

Darkness, smoky air, the dirty lamps on the rickety tables and outside a mournful wail and a rhythmic clapping, and we all went to the door and watched the bride as she was carried through the streets in a procession of brilliant torches. The wind whipped the flames; the sparks flew. The bride was sitting on a chair borne on the shoulders of her kinsmen. I supposed she was the unhappy girl who had traveled with us on the ferry, though her face was hidden beneath an embroidered veil.

But I waited for another, as impatient as any bridegroom. And at last she came. We had then spent six days in Klah-ne-Wiy. She came, not carried by eunuchs and decked with the lilies sacred to Avalei but packed in a leather satchel on a stout Tavrouni’s back. They slunk to the door, two of them, looking exactly like all the others except perhaps more ragged, more exhausted, their boots in stinking tatters. They had walked a long way, through the lower hills of Nain, where it was already winter and freezing mud soaked halfway up their calves. And now they were here, at home, in Klah-ne-Wiy. They sat down at a table, and the one with the satchel laid it on the floor beside his feet. Auram put his hand on my arm and nodded, his eyes drowned in sadness. I swallowed. “It’s not her.”