The Dovekeepers (25 page)

As the hours passed, I began to pace back and forth in alarm. The baker had expected to return before the loaves in the slow-burning oven were brown. Does a man go off and disappear like that? He’d told me to remove the loaves when the sun was in the center of the sky if he hadn’t yet returned. I didn’t. What had he meant by that? Had he had some idea of the trouble to come? Noon came and went. I gazed out in alarm as I saw the shadows lengthening, the smoke drifting over courtyards and roofs.

I thought if I waited to remove the loaves, my husband would smell the bread and know it was burning and run back home. At worst he would be cross with me for not doing as I was instructed. But he still hadn’t returned when the sun had begun to drop down in the direction of evening. By now the loaves were charred, the crusts black with soot.

I had one thought, and that was to find my husband. I could be single-minded, too, perhaps that was what had bound us together for so many years. I opened the door, frantic to begin a search for the Baker, ready to dart into the street though it was now teeming with our neighbors, many of them stained with their own blood and with the blood of their fathers.

As I was readying myself to leave, I found my son-in-law, Yoav, in my doorway. He wasn’t a fighter then, not yet the warrior who would vow to never again cut his hair. Instead, he was a gentle man who longed to run from trouble. He had the panicked look of a scholar who is suddenly faced with the brutalities and the vile
concerns of life. Like my husband, he had been dedicated to his work, concerned with his studies and with the will of
Adonai.
I had already wrapped my head scarf close to my skull, possessed with the intention to search for my husband, but my son-in-law stopped me. He warned I must prepare myself for what he had to say.

I raised my chin, ready to push past him, not willing to listen. What could stop me from going to my husband? What excuse could my son-in-law offer that might compel me to give up my search? My son-in-law, who was devout and would never touch a woman other than my daughter, his wife, placed his hand on my arm.

“There is a reason I tell you not to go out there,” he murmured. There could be only one reason. A world that had unraveled so completely that the man I’d spent a lifetime with had been lost. I could see the truth in my son-in-law’s eyes when he began to speak. He confessed he had seen the husk that had been my husband in the center of our town, cast upon the plaza with dozens of our neighbors, broken like a branch in the wind. It was too late to retrieve the body. If I tried, I would only lose my life as well.

Despite his report, I tried to push past the place where my son-in-law had planted himself in my doorway. He was stronger than I imagined, or perhaps I was weakened by regret.

“Listen to me,” Yoav insisted. He said it in a way that gave me no choice but to hear. “There is no other way for me to say this, and no time to reason with you. Your husband is already in the World-to-Come.”

There was no map to lead the living there. I could not reach him. The Romans were already piling up bodies in the street. They had lit the fire which had alerted me to the misery of the day. Now I realized it was not bread I smelled on the waves of smoke pouring through town but the bitter odor of flesh.

Yoav was a young rabbi who was respected and learned; because of his rank he’d had to think twice before taking a baker’s daughter as his bride. Most rabbis searched out other rabbis’ daughters
in marriage, for like congregated with like, as the birds in the sky gathered with their own kind. But of course Yoav had wanted my daughter. Zara was beautiful beyond measure. No wonder he had courted her, ignoring the more suitable girls who chased after him. My daughter’s name meant beautiful morning, and she truly was brighter than anything in this world, her skin golden, her hair like wheat, her countenance made even more lovely because her black eyes were a reminder of night before morning broke through, a time when the world was a mystery and shadows were all we had.

I’d often wondered if perhaps Zara had been given to me by an angel. How else could a plain woman such as I be blessed with a daughter who resembled a queen? I took great pride in her, and for good reason.

I never once stopped to consider that what you are given can also be taken away.

WE HAD BEEN
flattered when Yoav came to live in our house. My husband always cut a piece of the loaf offering for him every morning, the first of the bread baked that day. Now this learned young man we had so honored with our pride and respect had been turned pale, quaking with fear. As I leaned against him, sobbing, he was no different than any other frightened man, no better certainly, perhaps more terrified than many. He insisted I hurry and pack. I hesitated until he informed me that my daughter and her boys were already awaiting us.

Something compelled me to pack a few extra ingredients. You would think I would take up my finest robes or my marriage bracelets, those special, valued items I kept in the cabinet beside the bed, hidden where no thief could reach them. Instead I took what had belonged to the Baker: a wooden bowl, a clutch of heavy spoons, the white cloth he tied around his waist while he was at work, the garment he wore so that no evil would come upon us as long as he
was dressed in his prayer shawl. At the last moment I collected several of the vials he kept beneath the stove: coriander and cumin and salt. A jar of the fermented dough which caused the loaves to rise.

I knew that the dead did not leave us so quickly, so I whispered to my husband as I packed.
Look at us now,
I said to the man I’d lived beside for so many years, as if he was beside me still.
Look what we’ve become.

We were like rats, scurrying away before the flood of death overtook us. I grabbed the burned bread from the oven, scalding my hands. Blisters would rise on my fingers, but at least I made certain we had the last loaves of the Baker’s bread to sustain us. Yoav took my arm to lead me away. I knew we dared not linger. But I believe my son-in-law was not the only one with me in the bakery that day. I am convinced there was an angel standing beside me, whispering
Take this, not that.

At the last moment I reached for the small jar of the hemlock my husband used on vermin.

Perhaps the angel had given me what I needed most of all.

PEOPLE
we had known our whole lives were swarming out of the village, some carrying all they owned. Chaos had overcome us, and our lives were like stones thrown in a game of chance, cast up into the air, only to fall and scatter upon the ground. Broken pottery littered the road, and many tossed away belongings they soon discovered were too heavy to bring on such a hurried, frantic journey. There were stray dogs barking and the echo of babies crying. Everywhere there were flames as people set their own homes on fire rather than allow the Romans to sack them after they’d been abandoned. People wanted to ensure that their enemies couldn’t enjoy what they had labored a lifetime to possess. By the next day not a brick would remain, our world having been snatched away overnight. There were women in the street sobbing, but the wind
had come up, the merciless wind from the sea that in time would bring us winter, and no one could hear these women’s voices. No one could determine if they uttered oaths or prayers.

I followed at my son-in-law’s heels, intent, as he was, on making certain that my daughter and her children were kept safe. I wept as we went on, certain I’d bring a curse upon us by not preparing my husband’s body. I was meant to sit beside him all night and help him travel into the World-to-Come with lamentations and prayers. At any other time I would have remained with the husk that had once housed his spirit before the body that had contained him was left in the cave beside the bones of our people. I thought of our forefathers fleeing from Egypt, of their children who stumbled in the sand as they made their way out of bondage, of the waters that rose and then parted before them. Their agony had never been more real to me. I felt I might weep on their behalf.

I draped a white shawl over my own shoulders, already in mourning for a man who had baked my initial into every loaf of bread. I slipped on the color of the garments of the dead, as though I had passed from this world along with my husband. For a moment, I thought I should stay behind, give up my life at the hands of the Romans and allow my spirit to join with his. But I had a vision of my daughter and of her children, dearer than any treasure, and I knew what I must do. I prayed for my husband, but I left our village that evening. Like the rats, I fled what was tumbling down around us, forsaking the lives we had led that were now destroyed.

BY NIGHTFALL
we were journeying toward the wilderness. It was the month of
Tishri,
when we celebrate
Rosh Hashanah,
the festival marking the time the Almighty begins to write down the names of those who belong in the Book of Life and will live for another year. I had no idea that we would still be wandering during
Yom Kippur,
the time to atone for our sins, and that the book would be
closed on that day, then sealed. The names that had not been written on its pages were those who would not live into the next year.

We were prepared for a long journey. My son-in-law had brought along the two donkeys and the cart that had pulled sacks of emmer and wheat to the bakery and turned the millstone to grind flour. I carried the last five loaves of my husband’s bread, tokens of what had brought us our good life. My daughter had packed jars of olives and oil and had brought along cheese wrapped in cloth and leather canisters of water. We ran, and the donkeys ran with us. Above us there were huge flocks of birds, all fleeing the billows of smoke issued by the many fires set in the village. We slept huddled together, in the open, unused to the cruel way of the wilderness, yearning for the scent of baking bread and the softness of our own beds. My son-in-law wore the long tunic of a scholar. He looked distraught when my daughter embraced him and told him we would be lost without him, perhaps frightened that the faith she had in him to lead us was misplaced. He was more at home with his scrolls and prayers than he was guiding us through the wilderness.

At night I dreamed of my husband. He was with me as the dead often are before they move on. They say those who have left us don’t change who they are even in the World-to-Come. My husband was kneading bread, working hard, as if he was still in our world. He seemed the same, a kind and serious man intent on his baking, just as he’d always been, but he was using ingredients I didn’t recognize. The dough was red, and the spices were ground from the petals of black flowers and from the sharp stingers of honeybees. I heard him speak then. He said,
Every loaf of bread feeds you in the way you need to be fed.
My husband had been a simple man and had used words only when necessary. Now, in my dreams, I felt certain he was telling me something I needed to hear. I awoke wishing he had said more.

In the morning, the flocks of birds fleeing over the hillsides were so enormous they blotted out the sun. I held my tongue, though I
was certain this was a bad sign. The white cockerel who’d been murdered on the stairs of the synagogue was following us, that was what I believed, sending his messengers to pursue us. The birds passed us, their flight faster than we would ever be, and that told us something as well.

If we had paid attention, we would have understood there are some things in this world you cannot outrun.

THE DAYS PASSED,
and before long we had eaten nearly all we had, the bread, the olives, the cheese. We began to ration our food. My son-in-law’s plan was simple, the tactics of a logical man. We would wait out the Romans, then return to our village and start anew. I didn’t say what I knew, that there’d be nothing to return to. We would have only blood and broken bricks. I saw that my son-in-law was intimidated by the wilderness before us and our place in it. The desert loomed, a harsh landscape even for those experienced in surviving its dangers. In all his hours of study, Yoav had never built a fire from twigs with the use of a flint, never hunted with a bow, never found water or made his way over limestone boulders and rocks so harsh they set our feet to bleeding. He was an important man in the village, but here he was nothing. Before long we were lost. Each thorn tree looked the same to us, ravaged, black. Each hillock led to yet another. Only the sky changed, flushing pink at twilight, and then sifting into a dove gray light before the darkness overcame us.