Lilah (3 page)

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Authors: Marek Halter

BOOK: Lilah
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‘Axatria,' Lilah said, trying to sound calm, ‘we've agreed I'm to go alone. There's no point in arguing.'

‘You agreed it with yourself,' Axatria replied sharply. ‘It's just a whim.'

‘It isn't a whim, and you know it.'

They were silent, glaring at each other. Lilah was the first to look away. The young slave had been following their quarrel as he stroked the cheek of one of the mules.

‘Am I in your way?' Axatria asked, plaintively. ‘Why stop me seeing him, Lilah? You know perfectly well . . . perfectly well . . .' Rage and distress prevented Axatria from finishing her sentence. But there was no need. She was right. Lilah ‘knew perfectly well'.

Lilah was embarrassed by the tears that glistened in her handmaid's eyes. ‘It's stupid, quarrelling like
this,' she said, more harshly than she had intended. ‘Wait for me here. I shan't be long.'

Axatria straightened, eyes flashing. ‘Very well, Mistress. Since you've made up your mind, and I'm nothing but a servant to you!' She turned away stiffly, lifted her tunic and climbed into the chariot. Wisely, the young slave lowered his eyes.

Lilah hesitated. What was the point of protesting? There was only one thing she could say to mollify Axatria, and she refused to say it.

She walked away with a heavy heart. It was a bad start to an already delicate mission. Behind her, she heard Axatria lecturing the slave: ‘Instead of eavesdropping, boy, turn this chariot in the right direction.'

Lilah had only to walk some sixty cubits before the paved road became an uneven dirt path that led to the labyrinth of the lower town. Prickly pear and acacia bushes, a few empty fields and ponds overrun by frogs were all that separated wealth from poverty.

Lilah's eyes were on the ground, her shoulder hurting from the pressure of the straps, as Axatria's words echoed in her mind. She had never seen her like that before.

Strong, intelligent and conscientious, Axatria had entered Lilah's service on the day she and Ezra had gone to Uncle Mordechai after their parents'
death. Axatria had been twenty at the time, not much older than her young masters, a woman of insatiable energy. Within a few days she had fallen in love with Ezra.

At the time, he had possessed all the incandescent beauty of adolescence, which struck Axatria like a lightning bolt. Lilah was not surprised: she thought Ezra handsome – as handsome as Antinoes, who was much admired by the young Persian girls – but Ezra was wiser already.

Lilah had been amused by Axatria's feelings for him, but proud too, neither afraid nor jealous. Wasn't the tie that bound brother and sister an eternal one?

Axatria had been sensible enough never to display her feelings in words or gestures. However great her passion, she expressed herself entirely through the excellence of her service, the washing she did for Ezra, the meals she prepared for him. She was so discreet that he had not become aware of her love until the day Aunt Sarah had teased Axatria about it.

Axatria had been content with Ezra's gratitude, his occasional kindness towards her, gifts that were sufficient in themselves.

It was their love for Ezra, though, boundless but chaste, that had brought Lilah and Axatria together.

Then the terrible day had come when Ezra had left Uncle Mordechai's house and moved to the
lower town. His uncle and aunt had tried and failed to stop him. Then Axatria had stood in his way, her face streaked with tears. ‘Why? Why leave this house?'

Ezra had tried to push her away, but she had quite shamelessly collapsed at his feet and stopped him, clinging to him like a human millstone. Ezra had been forced to answer her. ‘I am going to a place where the children of Israel have not forgotten the pain of exile. I am going to study what should never have been forgotten – all that my father Serayah, his father Azaryah, his father Hilqiyyah and all their fathers for twelve generations learned from their father Aaron, the brother of Moses.'

What was Axatria, a Persian from the Zagros mountains, to make of such words?

She was stunned into silence. Appearing to yield, she let go of Ezra. But as he stepped away, she clutched at his tunic. ‘Take me with you, Ezra!' she begged, forgetting her dignity for the first and only time. ‘I'm your handmaid, wherever you go.'

‘Where I'm going, I have no need of handmaids.'

‘Why?'

‘Because it's impossible to study with a handmaid around.'

‘You don't know what you're saying! Who'll cook your food, wash your clothes, keep your bedchamber clean?'

Ezra thrust her away from him. ‘Be quiet! I'm leaving this house to be closer to the will of God, not to the will of a handmaid.'

For days, eaten away by shame and sorrow, Axatria had been unable to stop weeping.

She was not the only one. The house of Mordechai and Sarah echoed with tears and lamentations. For the first time, Lilah had seen her uncle brought low, incapable of work or even of feeding himself. Her aunt Sarah had closed her workshop for six days, as if in mourning. Axatria's tears had been swallowed up in the general sense of woe. She went about her daily tasks like a soul that had already passed into the other world. ‘Why? Why?' she would mutter from dawn to dusk, in a stunned whisper.

Then one day Lilah had said, ‘I know where Ezra has found refuge. Get ready, and we'll go and take him food and clothing.'

That had been the first time. Less than a moon later, they had again filled a basket and borrowed one of Uncle Mordechai's chariots, to which Mordechai had turned a blind eye.

Since then seasons had passed, rain, snow, stifling heat, but neither exhaustion nor sickness had persuaded Lilah and Axatria to cease their visits to the lower city.

Hardly had the sun risen than Axatria would fill the basket set aside now for this purpose with
pitchers of milk, loaves of bread, cheese, bags of almonds, barley and dates. The basket had become so bulky over time that it weighed more than a dead ass, forcing Lilah to tense her muscles beneath it.

Today she wanted to be alone with Ezra.

What she had to tell him would be difficult enough without Axatria's bustling presence.

Cries jolted Lilah out of her thoughts when she was half a
stadion
from the lower town. As if they had emerged from the earth, a group of about twenty boys, aged from four to eleven or twelve, wearing nothing but loincloths, appeared between the first tumbledown houses and came running barefoot on the hard pebble-strewn ground, yelling their heads off.

Two old men carrying tubs of tar on a hoist towards the upper town moved aside quickly to let them pass.

Raising as much dust as a herd of young goats, the children reached Lilah and came to a sudden standstill, their screams ceasing just as abruptly as their run. Smiling sweetly, they lined up in two perfect rows, the little ones gripping the rags of their elders.

‘May the mighty Ahura Mazda and the God of Heaven be with you, Lilah!' they cried in unison.

‘May the Everlasting bless you,' Lilah replied, earnestly.

Surprised that Axatria was absent, the children looked from the basket to the chariot, which they could glimpse on the road to the upper town. Lilah smiled. ‘Today, Axatria is waiting for you in the chariot. She has brought you honey bread.'

No sooner had she spoken than the children leaped into the air like a flock of sparrows.

Lilah adjusted the basket on her shoulder. The two old men bowed respectfully, then set off again with their burden. She responded to their greeting, and hurried on.

‘Lilah!'

She heard the shout at the same time as the sound of running feet. ‘Sogdiam!'

‘Let me carry your basket.'

He was a well-built boy of thirteen or fourteen, but looked two or three years more. When he was not yet a year old, a fall from a brick wall on a stormy day had left him crippled. The bones of his legs had set haphazardly, but he had learned to use the misshapen limbs through an effort of will. Today, although his gait was grotesque and lopsided, he could run and walk for long distances without pain.

His fine features made people forget his misfortune, and his eyes burned with intelligence. Soon after Ezra had settled in the lower town, he had spotted Sogdiam among the orphaned children who
ran around the streets. Before long, he had become Ezra's capable and devoted servant.

Lilah pointed to the piece of honey bread that Sogdiam was carrying. ‘Eat that first.'

‘No need,' Sogdiam said, as proud as a warrior. ‘I can do both at the same time.'

Glad to relieve the pressure on her shoulder, Lilah passed him the basket. The boy strained his young muscles and slid the straps over his own shoulder. ‘Axatria has filled it even more generously than usual today,' she said.

‘It'll be all right,' Sogdiam groaned, gallantly.

Lilah smiled at him tenderly. He set off, arching his back proudly, to conceal the strain on his neck. They were being watched from the houses at the other end of the path, and Sogdiam would not have missed for anything in the world the opportunity of showing everyone that he was privileged to help Lilah, the only lady from the upper town who dared to enter the lower town.

‘Axatria shouldn't have let you carry this,' he said severely, as he hurried along. ‘At least she should have helped you.'

‘I wouldn't let her,' Lilah said.

‘Why? Because she is ill-tempered this morning? She was shouting at us just now.'

Lilah could not help smiling. ‘It won't last,' she said.

‘What's the matter?' Sogdiam threw her a questioning glance. ‘Did the two of you have an argument?'

Lilah shook her head.

‘It certainly looked like it,' Sogdiam insisted. ‘There were tears in her eyes.'

‘There are days like that, when you feel sad,' Lilah said, with a lump in her throat. Then she changed the subject. ‘Tell me one thing. How do you know when we've arrived? Our chariot never comes near the lower town. You can't hear the wheels from here, and I don't see any of you in the fields. But no sooner do we get here than you all appear, shouting like Greeks.'

Sogdiam nodded proudly. ‘It's me who knows, not the others.'

‘You? How do you know?'

‘Easy. It's your day,' Sogdiam said, as if stating the obvious.

‘What are you talking about? I don't have a “day”. I might have come yesterday or tomorrow.'

Sogdiam laughed. ‘But you came today! You always come the day of your day.'

‘But it's not just the day, it's the exact moment . . .'

‘It's the same,' Sogdiam said. ‘You always come at the same time of the day. Didn't you know that?'

‘Well . . . perhaps not,' Lilah said, surprised.

‘But I know. In the morning I get up and I know.
Sometimes at night, when I go to bed, I say to myself, “Tomorrow, Lady Lilah will come.” And you do. Ezra knows it, too. He's like me.'

‘Are you sure?' Lilah asked, her voice betraying more emotion than she would have liked. ‘Did he tell you?'

The boy chuckled. ‘No need, Lilah. The day of your day, he washes himself thoroughly, rubs his teeth with lime to make them whiter, and asks me to comb his hair. In all the time you've been coming, haven't you noticed how handsome he is when you arrive?' Sogdiam was laughing so heartily that his limp became more pronounced.

Lilah laughed too to cover her emotion. ‘It seems I have no eyes for anything, Sogdiam. Whenever I come here, I'm so busy making sure you have all you need, I just don't pay attention.'

Sogdiam admitted, with a pout, that this might be a valid reason.

They walked for a while in silence, along alleys and past meagre gardens. The houses of the lower town were mostly huts of cane and mud. Some, the
zorifes
, consisted merely of roof of plaited palms supported by poles, with no walls. Women were busy over their frugal hearths, while their children tugged at their tunics.

Dirty as the streets were, and foul with stagnant water after the rains, Lilah had always refused to
venture in with her chariot. The carved, cushioned benches, the axle heads inlaid with silver and brass were worth more in themselves than a hundred hovels in this wretched slum.

She and Sogdiam were being watched by inquisitive eyes. Everyone had known for a long time who this beautiful young woman was, and where she was going with the boy and the heavy basket. Men and women alike stared avidly at her splendid tunic, her elegant hair, her leather clogs with their curved tips. Even her walk was different from theirs: she moved forward with a light, lively step, hips swaying in a way that was reminiscent of dances, feasts, banquets, and amorous songs at twilight. In a word, beauty, and the rapture the world might be for others.

As often as they had marvelled at Lilah, the inhabitants of the lower city never tired of the spectacle. For them, Lilah was a mirage, an image of something they would never know.

Most had never entered the upper town – if they tried, they were driven away brutally by the soldiers – let alone the Citadel. The most they could glimpse, above the roofs of the slums, beyond the gardens and the fine houses of the upper town, was the outer wall and colonnades of the Apadana. Against the morning sky, the Citadel seemed to touch the clouds, which was as it should be for the dwelling of the gods and the King of Kings.

Men and women alike had asked Sogdiam if the lady of the ‘wise Jew', as Ezra was known here, lived in the Citadel. Sogdiam was so proud that they might think so that he answered yes. A woman as beautiful as Lilah could only live in the Citadel.

With relief, Sogdiam put down the basket outside the house.

‘Ezra is probably still studying,' he whispered, pushing open the blue-painted gate cautiously so that it did not squeak.

The house was almost a palace compared to the hovels that surrounded it. The rough brick walls supported a roof of palm leaves covered with tarred earth, which afforded protection from both cold and extreme heat. Three little square rooms looked out on to the courtyard. Against the outer wall there was an arbour with a fragrant lemon tree.

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