Hegira (2 page)

“He's in bad shape,” Barthel said. “He'll die soon anyway.”

The hostel desk was unstaffed. The interior of the building was fitfully lighted by gas lamps. Disintegrating wallpaper crept up the walls, and the floor creaked suspiciously. A smell of wet, decaying wood mixed with the animal smell of the hostel's patrons. It was a miserable place for anyone to die in. Therefore, Bar-Woten told himself, the young man would not die.

He rang a verdigris-crusted bell. The half-sotted proprietor appeared shortly after. He took their names and their money and raised a hairless, worm-white eyebrow at the penitent. “Can you get a physician?” Bar-Woten asked.

“No,” the proprietor said, heading back to his room. “If he dies, you'll have to move nun.”

“I am an Ibisian,” Bar-Woten said softly. “If this man dies here, I will have this building condemned.”

The proprietor stopped and turned to reexamine him. “You can find a doctor a block down. We have nothing to do with penitents. They aren't too popular here.”

“And Ibisians?” Bar-Woten asked testily.

“Unarmed Ibisians are only human,” the proprietor said. “I employ bullboys like every other innkeeper on this strip. They carry rifles and crossguns. Do you?” He turned and waddled off.

Bar-Woten picked up the key from the desk and told Barthel to summon the physician. He hoisted the penitent from the floor and swung him over his shoulder.

The stairs were steep and in bad repair. The room was abominable. An open skylight admitted rain until he tied a dirty blanket over it. The beds were in fair repair and looked clean. Perhaps health regulations were enforced with regard to beds, but cleaning facilities were minimal, toilets were one to a floor and public, and other regulations ended at the edge of the mattress. Paper scraps and dirt littered the torn patchwork carpet.

The penitent sighed and rolled over on the bed, then groaned. Bar-Woten stripped off his bloody clothes and took the basin down the hall to clean it and fill it with water. The plumbing banged hideously in the narrow washroom. When he came back the man was sitting up against the headboard and staring feverishly into empty space. Using a handful of powdered soap and paper towels, Bar-Woten began to scrub him down. Few of the wounds were deeply infected. Nevertheless, he knew an antiseptic and clean bandages would have to be applied, or blood poisoning would set in. He had seen small wounds fester into deadly foul pockets many times on the March.

Barthel returned with a small, seam-faced doctor a half hour later. The man said his name was Luigi, examined the penitent quickly, and expressed his reluctance to treat him. “He's one of God's own,” he said. “God will take care of him.”

“You will take care of him, or he'll die,” said Bar-Woten. “You wouldn't want to be charged with malpractice, would you? I can take you before a deputato if you wish.”

The little doctor shrugged and set his bag down. “You cleaned him?” he asked. Bar-Woten nodded. “I'll have to do it over again,” the doctor complained. “He's whipped himself into a fine fever.”

An hour later the penitent was bandaged and sleeping fitfully. “He'll be weak for a day, maybe longer. Why do you want to help a penitent? Did he ask for help?”

Bar-Woten didn't answer. Barthel thanked the doctor and paid him a gold piece. They sat in silence and fell asleep before morning.

Bar-Woten stood by the skylight on a rickety stool, lifting the stained blanket and peering out across the smoke-tracked foggy rooftops at the wan morning light. The slate and tile roofs glistened with an oily sheen of dew and reflected the golden zenith. The horizon was still deep blue. The zenith light expanded and turned yellowish, then green. In a wink the green accomplished its magical transformation into blue. A steam can hissed and rattled in an alley below.

“Won't the master Sulay miss us, Bey?” Barthel asked sleepily from his blanket on the floor.

“Not for a while,” Bar-Woten answered. He turned to look at the man on the bed. His breathing was light and regular. His pale face had taken on a better color during the night. He looked almost healthy.

Bar-Woten checked his pulse and pinched his fingernails, and still the man slept. Barthel said pounding rocks together wouldn't wake a healing man before his body was ready.

“You told me your mother knew stories about Kristians,” Bar-Woten said. “Do you remember any of them?”

For the briefest of moments the boy's face clouded and his eyes narrowed. Then it was clear again and he smiled. “Not too well, Bey. Mostly derogatory stories about their customs, which I am no longer qualified to criticize since I share them with you very often. The eating of unclean foods, the drinking of wine and other forbidden beverages.”

“Nothing about why a man would drive himself to illness to meet his god?”

“No, Bey.”

It was perhaps the same reason two million men had once left the beautiful land of Ibis to cross the Atlasade range into Barthel's land, Khem. Or why they had tortured themselves by crossing the Pais Vermagne, a thousand kilometers of swamp and pestilence and deadly reptiles, instead of taking an easier route — all to investigate legends in Khem of the City of the First-born. They had found a monotonous grassland and a central range of hills as barren and dusty as the deserts west of Ibis. No treasure, no fabled city.

The penitent was also searching for treasure, and his trek was just as rugged. Bar-Woten questioned his own sanity in feeling sympathy, but he did. Sympathy and warmth. Welcome, fellow traveler. How many souls have you killed inside yourself trying to find the right one to present to God, saying, Look — pure!

Surely not as many souls as I have killed, he thought, mostly in the bodies of others.

“Hello,” the penitent said. Bar-Woten started from his reverie and looked at the man sternly. The pale face returned the stare like a statue. The lips were fever-cracked, the nostrils red with broken vessels. “You've put me up for the night?”

“Nothing honorable,” Bar-Woten said. “You nearly killed yourself. Most people's gods resent suicide.”

“Where am I?”

“A hostel.”

“I have to leave.” The penitent's watery green eyes filled with enormous black pupils. The corners of his mouth turned up perpetually, and his eyes crinkled at their edges as though, like a mischievous child, he might laugh at any moment. But these were betrayals of his body. He was perfectly serious.

“Nobody's holding you. You should get your strength back, however. Eat some food.”

“I'm on a fast.”

“For how long? Until you starve?”

“I'm starving now. It brings me closer to my goal.”

“And what is your goal?”

“To live in the light of God, not the mud of the world.”

“What's your name?”

“Jacome. Yours?”

“Bar-Woten.”

“A peculiar name.”

“I'm an Ibisian. I picked the name up when I killed a bear fifteen years ago. He clawed out an eye before he died. Bear-killer, of the One-eyed God. Bar-Woten. Why do you call yourself Jacome? That's not your name. Am I right that penitents, if they try to deny the world, must deny themselves? Change their names?”

“Yes,” Jacome said. “Fools of God. Buffoons.”

“Then what was your name before you changed?”

“You'd have to ask the fellow I was. I can't answer.”

Bar-Woten motioned for Barthel to leave.

“Tell me about your god,” he said.

“You're interested?”

“I am.”

Barthel sat outside and leaned against the wall. His eyes surveyed the ceiling, searching for bugs to amuse him, certainly not interested by the drivel being spoken inside. He did not understand his master at times. It was often hard to like Bar-Woten. He was kind, but he loved nothing. Barthel, on the other hand, wished to love everything. That was impossible with Bar-Woten constantly calling for him. The man's gloom was sometimes appalling.

Bar-Woten interrupted Jacome's discourse long enough to debate a few points of logic. “This Heisos, also known as Yesu, is on every Obelisk across Hegira, right?”

“He is.”

“Then why isn't everyone converted by His truth?”

“Because there are words on the Obelisks that contradict what He taught. Inspired by the adversary.”

“How do you know which to choose, which is right?”

“By the heart, the way it beats to the right words.”

“Did Heisos live on Hegira?”

“No.”

“Then was His mission intended for the Second-born?”

“For all humanity.”

Barthel paced in the hallway, bent to listen at the door, then had an inspiration. He would go out for food. But he had very little of the Bey's money with him. He knocked cautiously. No answer. They were still talking. He feared the penitent might convert the Bey. A dreadful thing. He knocked again. Bar-Woten opened the door.

“Master, shall I buy food for all of us?”

The Bey looked at him intensely through his single eye, then reached into his jacket pocket for a coin. “Good food, fresh, and a variety of it. Enough to last all of us for a day or so.”

Barthel grinned and ran off.

Bar-Woten shut the door and asked Jacome another question. “What made you find the grace of Kristos?”

“The guidance of my heart.”

“Can you remember what made you follow your heart?”

Jacome scowled. “It's only important that I found the truth in time.”

“But you forget what happened. Was it someone who helped you?”

“I haven't forgotten. No one helped me at first. But when I joined the Franciscans, they helped me.”

“I want to know what converted you. Perhaps I can find something like it in myself.”

Barthel found his idea less attractive when he stood on the street. There were no food stalls nearby. The Bey's presence, at any rate, was always reassuring. Now, alone in a city he did not know well, he felt his pulse rise and his eyes widen. The people did not look harmful. Still, any city held thieves, cutthroats, pickpockets. Monsters to suck a poor Momadan dry. The Bey's teachings from Barthel's youth could not eradicate this fear.

As Barthel walked, swaggering slightly and looking from side to side to show his confidence, he thought of the comforts of Khem and how they had passed in such an inconceivably short time. The Bey had never bothered to explain or excuse the actions of Sulay in Khem — and for this Barthel was thankful. He didn't think he could stand the propaganda other servants told him they were regaled with. Bar-Woten was a good master.

But if it ever came to light who had killed his father and mother and two sisters . . . Barthel's swagger stiffened. He didn't know what he would do. He was young and no fighter. At times he wished he could be a fighter and kill Sulay, cold fishy Sulay, who cared only for kilometers crossed and confirmations of the greatness of Sulay.

But food was the order of the moment. He found a clean-looking stall that purveyed crullers, tins of coffee, and fresh vegetables. He didn't bother with the meat. Ibisians, like Momadans on Hegira, were not meat-eaters for the most part. They preferred vegetables, fruits, and fish or fowl.

He bargained rapidly and without mercy. The stall's owner, a man four times Barthel's age, smiled and gave in a little. Eventually a price was reached and they hooked thumbs, Mediwevan style.

The parcels were heavy. Barthel decided to rent a cart. He hailed a bicycle-drawn taxi when he saw no carts were available. The hack was little older than himself and regarded him with sharp dark eyes and taut lips. The fare hardly seemed worth pulling. But the hack mounted his wooden bike and pedaled without strain up and down the fiat-cobbled dips and gutters. Barthel relaxed his guard to look at the surroundings more leisurely. It didn't seem a bad city. Busy people were everywhere, and few were lame or crippled or ill-looking.

The Bey was still talking with the penitent when Barthel returned. The young man was sweating and looked upset. His hand motions were jagged, and he stammered. The Bey was as firm and persistent as ever. Barthel dropped the packages in a corner and sat down to listen.

“I can't tell you how I saw the wisdom of the Lord Heisos. It's a private matter.”

“Can there be private matters between two souls striving for salvation?”

“For this soul there is. You may confess what you wish.”

“Fra Jacome, I have learned much from you. Would you care to raise your health for God's work by joining us in breaking fast?”

"You sound pious, Fra Bar-Woten. I know you're not. You're ridiculing me.'

“I am sincere. I wish you to join us in our meal.”

“You know I can't eat until the Fast of Francis is over.”

Barthel disapproved of what the Bey was doing. He was baiting the penitent, drawing him onto limbs and cutting them out from under. The Bey had a deadly way of finding out how other people thought, like dissection. Barthel allowed himself a moment of judgment on his master.

“Your health will break and you'll die.”

“Why are you interested in my health? Your people would sooner destroy us than spit on us!”

Bar-Woten shrugged and lifted his eyebrow. “I can't speak for other Ibisians. Perhaps they do. Me, I wish to know what makes a man whip himself in the name of a God Who is kind.”

“My God is not kind!” Jacome bellowed. “He takes away cruelly and has no mercy for those who do not know and perform His wishes!”

Barthel cringed in surprise. The Bey had found the weak point he wanted.

“Then how did you come to love Him? Out of fear?”

The penitent tried to speak, but stammered into silence. His eyes were bright with tears and anger. “You p-p-pry,” he managed to stutter. “You t-twist my tongue like a serpent.”

“I am curious,” Bar-Woten said. “And concerned.”

"I saw the light of God in the middle of an agony so great

I couldn't stand it. I grieved so deeply I died. And when I was reborn, I was the child you see now, still not mature in God's eyes. I was a scrittori. I recorded the writings on the Obelisk. I was going to marry a woman of my own age in a village near Obelisk Tara. We were nine months betrothed." He paused and caught his breath, his wild look abating.

“She had been born the same day as a boy in Castoreto. They came from different families, but they looked alike. Some said they were twins by God's will. This boy was an apprentice scrittori. I knew him from our schooling. He fell from the side of the Obelisk and died, and that same day my only life and love froze hard as a block of ice. Her skin became a mirror. Nothing could revive her. That is what killed me — a touch from God's finger told me not to adore the beauties of the world!”