The Bible of Clay (21 page)

She asked her bodyguards to keep their distance. She wanted to be alone, without having to feel their constant presence, alert to her every footstep. But they refused. Alfred's orders had been clear: They were not to let her out of their sight, and they were to kill anyone who tried to harm her, although first, if possible, they were to extract the identity of the perpetrator and who had hired him. Anyone attempting to harm Clara would pay for it with his life.

The most Clara could win from her escort was a promise that they would keep a prudent distance—but she would never be out of their sight.

She walked all around the perimeter of the site, which had now been cleared, her fingertips gently brushing the stones that formed the structure for the mysterious building. She observed the ruins from every angle, flicking dirt off a stone here and there, picking up shards of tablets that she carefully slipped into a canvas shoulder bag. Then she sat on the ground and leaned back against a rock and let her imagination wander through the desert, in search of Shamas.

21

"abram, can we go on with the story of noah?"

"In truth, it is not the story of Noah but rather the story of God's anger with the impudence of men. Everything God saw on the earth was evil, and so He decided to exterminate its most beloved creature: man.

"But God, who is always merciful, was moved by Noah's goodness, and He decided to save him—"

"—And that is why He ordered Noah to build an ark of gopher wood, with pitch inside and out. I know, I've written this before," Shamas said, rereading one of the tablets stacked beside him. "And the ark was built three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide, and thirty cubits high. The door to the ark lay on one side, and God ordered Noah to build it three stories tall."

"I see that you have written all that I have told you." "Yes, Abram, of course. Although I do not like this story as much as the story of the creation of the world." "No, my son? Why not?"

"I have been thinking about Adam and Eve and how they hid from God because they were ashamed of their nakedness before Him. And about how God cursed the serpent for having tempted Eve to disobedience. It seems unfair."

"Shamas, you cannot choose which stories to like and which stories to question. You asked me to tell you the history of the world. As part of that story, it is important that you know that God decided to punish mankind and so He flooded the earth. If you do not wish to go on—"

"But of course I do!" The boy bit his lip, fearing he had angered Abram. "Forgive me. Please go on."

"Where was I?"

Shamas read aloud the last few lines he had incised in the tablet:

Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation. Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female; and
of
beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.

"Ah, yes. Now write as I shall tell you," Abram commanded him:

Of
fowls also
of
the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face
of
all the earth. For yet seven days and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from
off
the face
of
the earth. And Noah did according unto all that the Lord commanded him.

And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood
of
waters was upon the earth. And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him, into the ark, because
of
the waters
of
the flood.
Of
clean beasts and
of
beasts that are not clean, and
of
fowls, and
of
every thing that creepeth upon the earth, there went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah. And it came to pass after seven days that the waters
of
the flood were upon the earth.

In the six hundredth year
of
Noah s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day
of
the month, the same day were all the fountains
of
the great deep broken up, and the windows
of
heaven were opened.

And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. . . . And the Lord shut Noah in.

In the boy's hand, the reed passed rapidly across the tablet. Shamas' imagination was stirred by the image of the windows of the heavens opening and the rain pouring out. He thought of a clay water jug breaking, releasing its contents. He continued to write, never lifting his eyes from the clay as Abram went on. . . .

Shamas took advantage of Abram's respite to rest. The task he had undertaken was not easy. His inscriptions demanded his full concentration; his results filled him with self-doubt. And he wanted to go back to Ur. He felt that he was a stranger here in Haran, even with his father, mother, brothers, and sisters. But happiness had long abandoned their home. Now he hardly saw Jadin, and his mother was always ill-humored. They all missed the coolness of the house his father had built at the gates of Ur and longed for the security of a permanent settlement.

"What are you thinking of, Shamas?" Abram asked. "Ur."

"And what are you thinking?"

"That I would like to be with my grandmother, and to go to school with Ili again."

"Do you not like Haran? You're learning just as much here." "Yes, but it's not the same." "What's not the same?"

"The sun, the nights, the way people talk, the flavor of the figs— nothing."

"Oh, you are homesick!" "Homesick? What illness is that?"

"Nothing you will die from, my son." Abram smiled. "It is the memory of what you have lost, or left behind. It is a yearning." "I don't want to leave the tribe, but I do not like living here." "We will not be here for very long."

"Terah is an old man, and I know that when he is no longer with us you will lead us to Canaan, but I am not sure I want to go to Canaan. My mother would also like to go back."

Shamas then fell silent, afraid he had opened his heart too wide and expressed his sadness too freely. He feared that Abram would tell his father and that his father would grow concerned, knowing his son was unhappy.

Abram seemed to read his thoughts. "Don't worry, Shamas, I won't tell your father, but we must try to make you happy again."

The boy smiled a bit, relieved, as he picked up the reed in readiness for Abram's next words.

And so he learned that Noah sent first a raven and then a dove out of the ark, to see whether the earth was dry, and that he had to release a second dove, which returned with an olive branch, and then a third, which did not return. And that God took pity upon Noah and said, "I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; neither will I again smite any more every thing living as I have done."

God, Abram told Shamas, blessed Noah and his children and told them to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. He also gave men every moving thing upon the earth, and the green herb, but, said Abram, "He forbade man to eat flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof: 'And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man.' "

"You mean God allowed men to return to Paradise?" asked Shamas.

"Not exactly, although He forgave us and made man once again the most important of His creatures, for He gave us all things that had been created. The difference is that now, nothing will be freely given. Men and animals alike must struggle for survival; we must work to obtain the seed of the earth, and women must suffer to bring forth children. No, God did not allow us to go back to Paradise; He only promised not to wipe us again from the face of the earth. Never again will He open the windows of heaven and pour rain down in a torrent.

"Now let's stop for the day, Shamas—the sun is setting. Tomorrow I will tell you why not all men are alike and why we sometimes fail to understand one another."

The boy's eyes opened wide in surprise. Abram was right—there was so little light he could hardly see, yet he wished they could go on. Of course, his mother would be looking for him, and his father would want to see what he had learned that day in school. So Shamas leapt up, carefully gathered his tablets, and ran toward the mud-walled house in which his family abode.

The next day Abram did not go to meet Shamas. He sought solitude, for within himself he felt the call of God's voice. That night he had awakened covered in sweat, feeling a great weight upon his chest. When he arose from his bed, he left Haran and wandered aimlessly for hours, until at nightfall he sat down to rest in a palm grove carpeted with soft grass. He was awaiting a sign from the Lord.

He closed his eyes and felt a sharp pain at his heart, and he heard very clearly the voice of God:

Abram, get thee out
of
thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy fathers house, unto a land that I
will
show thee. And I
will
make
of
thee a great nation, and I
will
bless thee, and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing. And I
will
bless them that bless thee, and curse
him
that curseth thee, and
in
thee shall all families
of
the earth be blessed.

He opened his eyes expecting to see the Lord, but the shadows of night had crept into the palm grove, and the only illumination came from the reddish moon and the thousands of stars, like tiny points of light gleaming in the firmament.

Abram was filled with dread and uneasiness once again. God had spoken to him, he'd heard Him clearly, he could still feel the force of the message vibrating within him. He knew that he must now begin his march to the land of Canaan, as the Lord bade him. Even before leaving Ur, God had marked out the destination of his wanderings, which Abram had put off because Terah was old and wished to repose in Haran, the land of his fathers.

Days and nights, then weeks, then months had passed, and the tribe had not moved from Haran, where they found good pastures and a prosperous city in which to trade. They had settled here as Terah had wished.

But now the day to follow the commandment that God had given him to journey on to Canaan had come, and Abram's heart was heavy, for he knew that by obeying God, he would displease Terah.

His old father, with his eyes cloudy and his legs unsteady, half-slept most of the day, his mind lost in recollections of things past and fearful predictions of things to come. How was Abram going to tell him that they had to move on? Grief pressed upon his chest, and tears flowed from his eyes unbidden. He loved his father, who had been his guide throughout his life. He had learned everything he knew from Terah, and by watching his dexterous hands creating statues he had seen that hands do not create a God.

Terah believed in the Lord, and he had been able to plant the love of God in the rest of the tribe, though still today its people worshipped the highly adorned figures of clay upon their altars and in their sanctuaries.

Abram walked quickly. He had to go to his father's house, where Sarai would be waiting, still awake though the sun had set hours ago. He knew that Terah would be waiting for him as well. His father called out for him in anguish when he was not near.

By the time he came near Haran, Terah had fallen into a stupor from which no one had been able to rouse him, and the only word he spoke was the name of his son, Abram.

When Abram entered the house, he sent the women out of his father's room and asked his brother Nahor to let him sit alone with the old man. Nahor, exhausted from his long vigil, went outside to breathe the cool air of the night while Abram sat with Terah.

Those who remained inside heard the soft murmuring of Abram's voice, although they also thought they could hear the weary voice of the old man.

Dawn brought the death of Terah. Sarai's slave made her way to the tent of Jadin, who hurried to console the family of the tribe's deceased patriarch. There he found Abram and his brother Nahor and the two men's wives, Sarai and Milcah, and his nephew Lot.

The women were crying and tearing at their hair, while the men were rendered mute with grief and desolation.

Jadin took charge of the situation and sent for his wife, so that with the other women they might cleanse the body of Terah and prepare it for burial in the land of Haran.

Terah had died in the place he loved above all others, for in Haran, though they had wandered with their flocks and herds in search of grain and pasture, almost all of his ancestors had been born.

The tribe waited the designated time before burying Terah's body in the dry, cracked ground of the Mesopotamian summer. Grief marked Abram's face; now it fell upon him to lead the tribe, into a land where there were green pastures and they could live without fear. A land promised his people by God.

"We will go to Canaan," he announced to them. "We must make preparations to depart."

The men discussed the route they should follow. Some preferred to settle in Haran forever, while others proposed returning to Ur, but most pledged to follow Abram wherever the road took them.

Jadin met with his kinsman Abram, who was now the leader of the tribe.

"Abram, we will not be going with you to Canaan." "I know."

"You know? How can you know, when until yesterday I did not know myself?"

"I could read in the faces of your family that you would not be going with me. Shamas dreams of returning to Ur; your wife yearns for