Seeker of Stars: A Novel (2 page)

~ 2 ~

S
and

“You won’t let Melchi do anything,” Taz argued. “You’ll do it all yourself. You’re still young!”

“My wife was young too.” Our father silenced Taz’s argument, piling a stack of rugs into Taz’s arms. When Taz came back for the next load, he had a new line of reasoning prepared.

“The king pays astronomers and pays them well.”

Our father paused and considered this in silence while Taz tightened the ropes around a bundle of small rugs. Hope rose in my heart—and set again when my father shook his head.

“A few, maybe, but Melchi is not one of those city boys. For Melchi such knowledge would be unprofitable. He is young, and his fingers are ready.”

I stopped listening and blindly loaded rugs onto the camels. They stared at me with unflinching expressions of resignation, which I tried to match.

As we piled the rugs higher and higher, each camel became a rainbow-hued mountain. Taz stuffed shoes and food between layers of rugs while our father warned him against marauders and thieves. When the balancing act was accomplished, we stopped for a late supper.

We gathered in the courtyard as we had each night since my mother’s death. Somehow the open spaces seemed less empty than the house itself. The house would be emptier still when Taz and Salvi were gone. I could not think of it, or I would start to howl. Salvi shone with anticipation. His grief, unlike mine, was tempered by what lay ahead. Though he would have exchanged anything for our mother’s life, her death had quickened the future he had longed for. We assumed this, although our father had not said so. I could not imagine our father would be so cruel as to dash Salvi’s hopes, even though he continued to recline in the shadows without speaking while Salvi and I watched him, hopefully and fearfully. The girl Taz had employed to cook and clean for us brought out bowls of stew and fresh bread. I watched her silent, quick movements; she was a nervous night creature scuttling across the desert. Her presence in this house of men did nothing to fill the absence of my mother. The food may have been good, but it was not my mother’s cooking; I ate simply out of habit, with no awareness of taste or smell.

As we finished our meal, our father nodded to Salvi.

“Gather your things,” he said. Salvi jumped up with a yell that pierced the stillness. Now his fate was clear, and it was what he had hoped. Our father shuffled off to bed. He was over the paralysis of grief, but our mother’s death had left him soured and hardened.

“I’ll get my pipe.” Uncle Taz gestured at the roof.

It was the only time on this visit that Uncle Taz and I sat together under the stars. He seemed to understand that my mother’s death had closed the book of my childhood. He spoke to me now as an equal, and I dropped the “uncle” in front of his name.

“I tried, Melchi,” Taz said, sand trickling through his hands.

“I know, and I’m grateful.”

“You can learn from your father. He is a good man and a good rug maker.”

“I know.”

“He misses your mother.”

“I know.”

“It makes him lash out sometimes.”

I smiled ruefully, fingering the bruise on my leg, where our father had thrown his sandal one day when I whistled as I walked through the workshop.

“It won’t last forever,” said Taz. “Our father was the same after … our mother died. Be gentle with him, Melchi. And forgiving. Like Daria managed him.” When Taz said my mother’s name, his face twitched as though he was remembering a lost delight. I never knew whether Taz was in love with my mother, but he certainly loved her tenderly. And though he had many women, he never married.

As Taz turned to go down the stairs, he paused and put his hand on my shoulder. “You are a good man too, Melchi.”

Before I knew it, Salvi was preparing to climb up with Taz, who sat with the ropes in his hands. One hand upon his camel, Salvi turned to me. “Thank you, Melchi,” he said. “Don’t forget our sister.”

I had forgotten the baby, and when the dust stirred up by the caravan had settled again, it gave me something to do when our father spent the early morning with his ledgers. I loaded figs, wine, and bread and carried them to our aunt’s house.

When our aunt expressed surprise over not having seen anyone from our household for several days and inquired after our health, I explained the changes that had occurred.

Our aunt chattered with surprise while I sat on the floor next to baby Daria on her goatskin.

“Gone with Taz?” our aunt repeated. “I guess you boys are growing up. How is young Reta doing?”

“Reta?”

“The orphan girl. The one who makes your meals?”

I had not been aware of her name. I shrugged and looked again at Daria, who gazed at me expectantly from her mat. I did not know what she wanted. “What do you do with her, Aunt Babu?”

She smiled, perhaps recognizing my loneliness as well as my inexperience, and showed me ways to amuse a baby.

That afternoon, our father took me into his workshop and showed me the tools he used and introduced me to the two men he employed. I had known them all my life, but instead of them slipping me bits of cheese from their meals as they would have done not long ago, they rose and shook my hand. My father was pleased with the questions I asked, and I saw happiness dawn on his face for the first time in a month.

I settled into the routine of mindless dusty days in the workshop, ending, as I had predicted, with my head drooped on the table each evening. It was better that way. Better than staying awake with the hollowness of the house.

~ 3 ~

F
easts

When Salvi and Taz returned from that first trip, my brother had changed. His shoulders rippled, and his eyes had Taz’s ability to assess a situation in a moment. When he greeted me, though, Salvi commented on the changes in me—in my hands. I looked at them and realized how quickly they had grown to resemble our father’s: dye permanently ringing my fingernails, callouses at the base of each finger, and that annoying cut, which was daily aggravated by the strings of the loom.

That first night, we were allowed to be boys again and to doze by the fire while Taz laughed and our father calculated profits. Salvi had stories to tell: a two-headed camel, a wall of sand rising during a storm, the men and women who danced naked under the stars. I scarcely listened in my immeasurable comfort at the presence of my brother and uncle. I could have missed my mother, but I was so hungry for happiness that I would not allow the grief to penetrate the moment. I found myself laughing, and the sound was foreign in my mouth and ears.

The next morning our father took Taz and Salvi to see the rugs I had made in the workshop. “His fingers are still a bit clumsy,” our father explained, fingering the rug with a hint of a smile, “but he has the knack —and such an eye for detail.”

“He gets that from his stargazing,” Taz said.

“Honest work has helped Melchi forget his little hobby.” Our father patted my back.

Taz looked at me. “Is this true, Melchi?”

I shrugged. “I’m usually too tired. And it’s been a cloudy fall.”

When our father proudly explained that I worked as long as he did, Taz became angry. “Melchi is still a boy!” he exclaimed. “Salvi sleeps nearly every afternoon as we travel.” (At this, Salvi protested.) “You’ll break the boy! There are worse pastimes than stargazing.”

That night I lay rapt beneath the blanket of stars, enveloped in the beauty of the night. The next night I addressed Reta, who usually roused me in her attempts to retrieve my bowl, asking her to wake me fully so that I could go up to the roof rather than stagger off to bed. Meekly she agreed and never forgot the arrangement.

As my body became that of a man’s, I began to look at girls the way my brother had and saw that they also were aware of me. I was taller now than our father, and I had work to do and responsibilities. This no doubt added to my appeal, but the only opportunities I had were under my father’s eyes, when we delivered a new rug to a neighbor’s or when our families met to share a feast.

Late summer was a sociable time: gardens were harvested, animals were slaughtered, and feasts were held. Somehow the women worked out a schedule so we could share in one another’s bounty and no food would go to waste. Since my mother died, those who made such arrangements only sometimes remembered to include us, but my father’s workers never failed to invite us, and we in our turn hosted them. Garta was a young man with an industrious wife and no children; meals at their house filled me for days. The other, Manu, was a widower and the father of Leyla. Many of the boys admired Leyla, and as I watched her serve her father and mine, I could see why. Young Leyla had a woman’s body with full command of its powers. She sat next to my father, offering him dates and oranges from her bowl. Though she giggled often, no sandals did my father throw that night.

I invited Leyla to come to the roof and was fully prepared for her to decline but was shyly pleased when she accepted. The next night, I was eagerly watching the light fade from the sky when I heard a noise behind me, and, excited to share my beauties, I turned to the waiting Leyla. As she moved toward me, her hips swayed sensuously. I was stunned.

“What are you doing?” I managed to say, realizing in an instant that her interest in seeing the stars was feigned, or that perhaps she thought I was proposing an open-air tryst. Later I would consider the opportunity I had missed, but at that moment, I was only disappointed. Leyla, like my father, could not understand my passion.

It became a test: I would invite girls to view the stars, and invariably they would think I spoke in some sort of code and would look at the stars in order to contrive a kiss. For a while, my contempt and passions melted together, and I accepted the beauties offered me. But I never invited those girls again.

My friend Omar was now working with his father, making dyes, and we began to renew our friendship. A round, enthusiastic boy, Omar had always reminded me of a ripe date; now he had matured without losing any of his sweetness. When I invited Omar to join me to view the stars, he was struck dumb at their beauty, as I had hoped Leyla would have been. Omar apprenticed with his father by day and with me by night until I had taught him everything I knew about the stars.

One day, Omar came running to my workshop in the middle of the day. He held a scroll in his hands and offered it to me. Inside were diagrams of the stars and many words in a language I did not recognize. Omar had found the scroll in a stack brought back by one of his father’s men. Taz would know the language, I supposed. In the meantime, I pored over the drawings.

That night when Reta woke me from the table, she gasped when she saw my scroll. Tears welled in her eyes. Tired as I was, this unusual display of emotion from the girl who was still largely invisible in our lives surprised me. “What is it?” I asked.

“Your book,” she said. “It’s Hebrew.”

“Hebrew?”

“My mother tongue. Your book is a Hebrew book.”

My chest tightened. “And you—can you—read Hebrew?” I asked.

When Omar arrived, I was still at the table, listening to Reta as she faltered through the beginning of the book. The Hebrew descriptions of the beauties were less accurate than those of our own astronomers, but they had a cadence that caught the mystery of the heavens.

Suddenly our lamp burned out. Omar yelled. I clapped a hand over his mouth. In the dark, Reta laughed quietly. I smiled.

The next night, I invited Reta to join Omar and me in watching the stars. She agreed. My prize pupil Omar explained about the dance of the stars. I watched Reta’s eyes sparkle as she listened to Omar and then widen in amazement as she surveyed the skies. Tentatively she pointed out the patterns she had read about in our book. Reta did not come often—could not, I supposed—but when she did, she drank in the stars.

One evening our class swelled to include a fourth—my uncle Taz. Reta retired to her room after Taz joined us. Taz indicated his pipe after her. “That one, Melchi—that one is a treasure.”

I laughed and shook my head.

“I’m serious. She’s fed you and that father of yours with his temperamental stomach. She knows her place, and she likes stars. What more could you ask, Melchi?”

I laughed again. Taz was an incurable romantic, a bachelor always trying to marry us off.

“She honestly is interested in the stars. Not like some.” I told him about the girls who had ignored the stars in their attempts to reveal their own beauties.

Taz threw back his head and laughed. “Melchior! Melchior!” he gasped when he finally caught his breath. “Here you are at home with your out-of-the-world hobby, being propositioned left and right, and there’s your big brother traveling the world—and I have to pay the dancing girls to play with him a little. I knew you were the smart one, Melchi!” He laughed again, and soon we descended the stairs to sleep.

Another night, Taz asked about Reta. I shrugged my shoulders, but Omar filled in details. An orphan of Jewish exiles, Reta had a large family in Israel but was not sure where or how she could find them. I was startled by how much Omar knew and wondered when he had learned it.

“While you were looking at the stars,” Omar explained. “You shut everything else out then, Melchi.”