by Paulo Coelho
“Why do you want that?” the boy asked.
“To defend myself.”
“The Assyrians aren’t here anymore.”
“Even so, it’s good to have it with me. We have to be prepared.”
His voice shook. It was impossible to know what might happen from the moment they crossed the half-destroyed wall, but he was ready to kill whoever tried to humiliate him.
“Like this city, I too was destroyed,” he told the boy. “But also like this city, I have not yet completed my mission.”
The boy smiled.
“You’re talking the way you used to,” he said.
“Don’t be fooled by words. Before, I had the objective of removing Jezebel from the throne and turning Israel back to the Lord; now that He has forgotten us, we must forget Him. My mission is to do what you have asked of me.”
The boy looked at him warily.
“Without God, my mother will not come back from the dead.”
Elijah ran his hand over the boy’s hair.
“Only your mother’s body has gone away. She is still among us, and as she told us, she is Akbar. We must help her recover her beauty.”
THE CITY was almost deserted. Old people, women, and children were walking aimlessly through its streets, in a repetition of the scene he had witnessed the night of the invasion. They seemed uncertain of what to do next.
Each time Elijah’s path crossed that of someone else, the boy saw him grip the handle of his sword. But the people displayed indifference; most recognized the prophet from Israel, some nodded at him, but none directed a single word to him, not even one of hatred.
“They’ve lost even the sense of rage,” he thought, looking toward the top of the Fifth Mountain, the summit of which was covered as always by its eternal clouds. Then he recalled the Lord’s words:
“I will cast your carcasses upon the carcasses of your idols, and my soul shall abhor you. And I will make your cities waste, and bring the land into desolation.
“And upon them that are left alive of you I will send a faintness into their hearts; and the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them; and they shall fall when none pursueth.”
“BEHOLD, O LORD, WHAT THOU HAST WROUGHT: THOU hast kept Thy promise, and the living dead still walk the earth. And Akbar is the city chosen to shelter them.”
Elijah and the boy continued to the main square, where they sat and rested on pieces of rubble while they surveyed their surroundings. The destruction seemed more severe and unrelenting than he had thought; the roofs of most of the houses had collapsed; filth and insects had taken over everything.
“The dead must be removed,” he said. “Or plague will enter the city through the main gate.”
The boy kept his eyes downward.
“Raise your head,” Elijah said. “We have much work to do, so your mother can be content.”
But the boy did not obey; he was beginning to understand: somewhere among the ruins was the body that had brought him into life, and that body was in a condition similar to all the others scattered on every side.
Elijah did not insist. He rose, lifted a corpse to his shoulders, and carried it to the middle of the square. He could not remember the Lord’s recommendations about burying the dead; what he must do was prevent the coming of plague, and the only solution was to burn them.
He worked the entire morning. The boy did not stir from his place, nor did he raise his eyes for an instant, but he kept his promise to his mother: no tear dropped to Akbar’s soil.
A woman stopped and stood for a time observing Elijah’s efforts.
“The man who solved the problems of the living now puts in order the bodies of the dead,” she commented.
“Where are the men of Akbar?” Elijah asked.
“They left, and they took with them the little that remained. There is nothing left worth staying for. The only ones who haven’t deserted the city are those incapable of leaving: the old, widows, and orphans.”
“But they were here for generations. They can’t give up so easily.”
“Try to explain that to someone who has lost everything.”
“Help me,” said Elijah, taking another corpse onto his shoulders and placing it on the pile. “We’re going to burn them, so that the plague god will not come to visit us. He is horrified by the smell of burning flesh.”
“Let the plague god come,” said the woman. “And may he take us all, as soon as possible.”
Elijah went on with his task. The woman sat down beside the boy and watched what he was doing. After a time, she approached him again.
“Why do you want to save this wretched city?”
“If I stop to reflect on it, I’ll conclude I’m incapable of accomplishing what I desire,” he answered.
The old shepherd was right: the only solution was to forget a past of uncertainty and create a new history for oneself. The former prophet had died together with a woman in the flames of her house; now he was a man without faith in God and beset by doubts. But he was still alive, even after challenging divine retribution. If he wished to continue on this path, he must do what he had proposed.
The woman chose one of the lighter bodies and dragged it by the heels, taking it to the pile that Elijah had started.
“It’s not from fear of the plague god,” she said. “Or for Akbar, since the Assyrians will soon return. It’s for that boy sitting there with his head hanging; he has to learn that he still has his life ahead of him.”
“Thank you,” said Elijah.
“Don’t thank me. Somewhere in these ruins we’ll find the body of my son. He was about the same age as the boy.”
She lifted her hand to her face and wept copiously. Elijah took her gently by the arm.
“The pain you and I feel will never go away, but work will help us to bear it. Suffering has no strength to wound a weary body.”
They spent the entire day at the macabre task of collecting and piling up the dead; most of them were youths, whom the Assyrians had identified as part of Akbar’s army. More than once he recognized friends, and wept—but he did not interrupt his task.
AT THE END of the afternoon, they were exhausted. Even so, the work done was far from sufficient, and no other inhabitant of Akbar had assisted.
The pair approached the boy, who lifted his head for the first time.
“I’m hungry,” he said.
“I’m going to go look for something,” the woman answered. “There’s plenty of food hidden in the various houses in Akbar; people were preparing for a long siege.”
“Bring food for me and for yourself, for we are ministering to the city with the sweat of our brows,” said Elijah. “But if the boy wants to eat, he will have to take care of himself.”
The woman understood; she would have done the same with her son. She went to the place where her house had stood; almost everything had been ransacked by looters in search of objects of value, and her collection of vases, created by the great master glassmakers of Akbar, lay in pieces on the floor. But she found the dried fruits and grain that she had cached.
She returned to the square, where she divided part of the food with Elijah. The boy said nothing.
An old man approached them.
“I saw that you spent all day gathering the bodies,” he said. “You’re wasting your time; don’t you know the Assyrians will be back, after they conquer Sidon and Tyre? Let the plague god come here and destroy them.”
“We’re not doing this for them, or for ourselves,” Elijah answered. “She is working to teach a child that there is still a future. And I am working to show him there is no longer a past.”
“So the prophet is no more a threat to the great princess of Sidon: what a surprise! Jezebel will rule Israel till the end of her days, and we shall always have a refuge if the Assyrians are not generous to the conquered.”
Elijah did not reply. The name that had once awakened in him such hatred now sounded strangely distant.
“Akbar will be rebuil
t, in any case,” the old man insisted. “The gods choose where cities are erected, and they will not abandon it; but we can leave that labor for the generations to come.”
“We can, but we will not.”
Elijah turned his back on the old man, ending the conversation.
The three of them slept in the open air. The woman embraced the boy, noting that his stomach was growling from hunger. She considered giving him food but quickly dismissed the idea: fatigue truly did diminish pain, and the boy, who seemed to be suffering greatly, needed to busy himself with something. Perhaps hunger would persuade him to work.
THE NEXT DAY, ELIJAH AND THE WOMAN RESUMED their labors. The old man who had approached them the night before came to them again.
“I don’t have anything to do and I could help you,” he said. “But I’m too weak to carry bodies.”
“Then gather bricks and small pieces of wood. Sweep away the ashes.”
The old man began doing as they asked.
WHEN THE SUN reached its zenith, Elijah sat on the ground, exhausted. He knew that his angel was at his side, but he could not hear him. “To what avail? He was unable to help me when I needed him, and now I don’t want his counsel; all I desire is to put this city in order, to show God I can face Him, and then leave for wherever I want to go.”
Jerusalem was not far away, just seven days’ travel on foot, with no really difficult places to pass through, but there he was hunted as a traitor. Perhaps it would be better to go to Damascus, or find work as a scribe in some Greek city.
He felt something touch him. He turned and saw the boy holding a small jar.
“I found it in one of the houses,” the boy said.
It was full of water. Elijah drank it to the final drop.
“Eat something,” he said. “You’re working and deserve your reward.”
For the first time since the night of the invasion, a smile appeared on the boy’s lips, and he ran to the spot where the woman had left the fruits and grain.
Elijah returned to his work, entering destroyed homes, pushing aside the rubble, picking up the bodies, and carrying them to the pile in the middle of the square. The bandage that the shepherd had put on his arm had fallen off, but that mattered little; he had to prove to himself that he was strong enough to regain his dignity.
The old man, who now was amassing the refuse scattered throughout the square, was right: soon the enemy would be back, to harvest fruits they had not sown. Elijah was laboring for the invaders—the assassins of the only woman he had ever loved in his life. The Assyrians were superstitious and would rebuild Akbar in any case. According to ancient beliefs, the gods had spaced the cities in an organized manner, in harmony with the valleys, the animals, the rivers, the seas. In each of these they had set aside a sacred place to rest during their long voyages about the world. When a city was destroyed, there was always a great risk that the skies would tumble to the earth.
Legend said that the founder of Akbar had passed through there, hundreds of years before, journeying from the north. He decided to sleep at the spot and, to mark where he had left his things, planted a wooden staff upright in the ground. The next day, he was unable to withdraw it, and he quickly understood the will of the Universe; he marked with a stone the place where the miracle had occurred, and he discovered a spring nearby. Little by little, tribes began settling around the stone and the well; Akbar was born.
The governor had once explained to Elijah that, following Phoenician custom, every city was the third point, the element liking the will of heaven to the will of the earth. The Universe made the seed transform itself into a plant, the soil allowed it to grow, man harvested it and took it to the city, where the offerings to the gods were consecrated before they were left at the sacred mountains. Even though he had not traveled widely, Elijah was aware that a similar vision was shared by many nations of the world.
The Assyrians feared leaving the gods of the Fifth Mountain without food; they had no desire to disturb the equilibrium of the Universe.
“Why am I thinking such thoughts, if this is a struggle between my will and that of the Lord, who has left me alone in the midst of tribulations?”
The sensation he had felt the day before, when he challenged God, returned: he was forgetting something of importance, and however much he forced his memory, he could not recall it.
ANOTHER DAY WENT BY. MOST OF THE BODIES HAD been collected when a second woman approached.
“I have nothing to eat,” she said.
“Nor have we,” answered Elijah. “Yesterday and today we divided among three what had been intended for one. Discover where you can obtain food, then inform me.”
“Where can I learn that?”
“Ask the children. They know everything.”
Ever since he had offered Elijah water, the boy had seemed to recover some part of his taste for life. Elijah had told him to help the old man gather up the trash and debris but had not succeeded in keeping him working for long; he was now playing with the other boys in a corner of the square.
“It’s better this way. He’ll have his time to sweat when he’s a man.” But Elijah did not regret having made him spend an entire night hungry, under the pretext that he must work; if he had treated him as a poor orphan, the victim of the evil of murderous warriors, he would never have emerged from the depression into which he had been plunged when they entered the city. Now Elijah planned to leave him by himself for a few days to find his own answers to what had taken place.
“How can children know anything?” said the woman who had asked him for food.
“See for yourself.”
The woman and the old man who were helping Elijah saw her talking to the young boys playing in the street. They said something, and she turned, smiled, and disappeared around one corner of the square.
“How did you find out that the children knew?” the old man asked.
“Because I was once a boy, and I know that children have no past,” he said, remembering once again his conversation with the shepherd. “They were horrified the night of the invasion, but they’re no longer concerned about it; the city has been transformed into an immense park where they can come and go without being bothered. Naturally they would come across the food that people had put aside to withstand the siege of Akbar.
“A child can always teach an adult three things: to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires. It was because of that boy that I returned to Akbar.”
THAT AFTERNOON, more old men and women added their numbers to the labor of collecting the dead. The children put to flight the scavenger birds and brought pieces of wood and cloth. When night fell, Elijah set fire to the immense pile of corpses. The survivors of Akbar contemplated silently the smoke rising to the heavens.
As soon as the task was completed, Elijah was felled by exhaustion. Before sleeping, however, the sensation he had felt that morning came again: something of importance was struggling desperately to enter his memory. It was nothing that he had learned during his time in Akbar but an ancient story, one that seemed to make sense of everything that was happening.
THAT NIGHT, a man entered Jacob’s tent and wrestled with him until the break of day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he said, “Let me go.”
Jacob answered, “I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.”
Then the man said to him: “As a prince, hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed. What is thy name?” And he said, Jacob.
And the man answered: “Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel.”
ELIJAH AWOKE WITH A START AND LOOKED AT THE FIRMAMENT. That was the story that was missing!
Long ago, the patriarch Jacob had encamped, and during the night, someone had entered his tent and wrestled with him until daybreak. Jacob accepted the combat, even knowing that his adversary was the Lord. At morning, he had still not been defeated; and the com
bat ceased only when God agreed to bless him.
The story had been transmitted from generation to generation so that no one would ever forget: sometimes it was necessary to struggle with God. Every human being at some time had tragedy enter his life; it might be the destruction of a city, the death of a son, an unproved accusation, a sickness that left one lame forever. At that moment, God challenged one to confront Him and to answer His question: “Why dost thou cling fast to an existence so short and so filled with suffering? What is the meaning of thy struggle?”
The man who did not know how to answer this question would resign himself, while another, one who sought a meaning to existence, feeling that God had been unjust, would challenge his own destiny. It was at this moment that fire of a different type descended from the heavens—not the fire that kills but the kind that tears down ancient walls and imparts to each human being his true possibilities. Cowards never allow their hearts to blaze with this fire; all they desire is for the changed situation to quickly return to what it was before, so they can go on living their lives and thinking in their customary way. The brave, however, set afire that which was old and, even at the cost of great internal suffering, abandon everything, including God, and continue onward.
“The brave are always stubborn.”
From heaven, God smiles contentedly, for it was this that He desired, that each person take into his hands the responsibility for his own life. For, in the final analysis, He had given His children the greatest of all gifts: the capacity to choose and determine their acts.
Only those men and women with the sacred flame in their hearts had the courage to confront Him. And they alone knew the path back to His love, for they understood that tragedy was not punishment but challenge.
