Seeker of Stars: A Novel

by Fish, Susan

  I stepped off the camel unsteadily at my father’s door, and as I hesitated to enter, a figure dressed in white stepped out from the shadows of the house. It was Reta. She answered my unspoken questions with a nod, reassuring me I had arrived in time. She led me to a seat, removed my sandals, and bathed my feet. She gave me a glass of wine and a piece of bread and a basin with which to wash my face, and then she pointed me toward my father’s room.

  I was mesmerized. Reta had always stayed in the shadows, doing as she was bid to do. My father’s illness had released her from this. Even Daria had slumped, sitting by our father’s bedside. Leyla was in confinement, expecting her third child any day. Salvi and Taz were still on their way home. Decisions, care, the household fell to Reta as it had to Salvi and me after our mother’s death. But where we boys floundered and stumbled as best we could, Reta glowed with the responsibility. Her white clothes, Daria explained to me later, were what Hebrews wore in mourning, but to me she moved through the house like a star tracing an arc across the sky. Grace and beauty were in her gentle touches.

  Little could be done for our father. We could not tell what he was aware of. We could not tell if he was in pain or if he slept. His dying was as aloof and silent as his life.

  One day he stopped. I looked at the casing of my father’s body and wondered. I had known death many times, of course, but my father’s death I observed as I had learned to watch the stars—with deliberate objectivity. I did not mourn him as I had mourned my beautiful mother or even Omar—my father had never belonged to my heart in the same way. Still his death left me an orphan. For the first time I asked myself questions other magi often asked: Where do the dead go? Is there life after this life?

  My brother and sister did not share my questions, though I tried once or twice to talk with them. Beyond the grief I felt at my father’s death, I mourned, feeling a loss of all that had been my sense of home. This loneliness in the midst of a familiar place was hard to bear, and I made plans to return to the city as soon as I reasonably could.

  One night I came down to the same kitchen to eat. Reta sat at the table. She startled when I came in but remained seated. The kitchen smelled sweet, full as it was with the fruits neighbors had brought after my father’s death. I loaded a plate and was about to return to my room when Leyla’s baby began to wail.

  “May I join you?” I asked Reta.

  “Of course.” I could see traces of tears on her face.

  “Are you well?” I asked.

  She looked at me in surprise. “I miss your father.”

  Now I was surprised.

  “He was kind to me,” she said. “Especially these last few years after Leyla came. He no longer needed me in the house, but he insisted I stay. I will always remember that.” Tears flooded her eyes.

  I reached out my good hand and clasped hers. I had meant it as a gesture of comfort, but as I did so, a shock ran through me, filling me with a deep yearning for more. I looked fully at Reta all in white, and something in her echoed deep in me. She looked back without blinking, and I could not breathe for longing. A moment later, it was gone, but I still held her hand within my own, blindly asking about her plans for the future. She had none yet but knew she would move on, perhaps back to Israel to seek her distant family. Panic rose within me. I was to return in two days to the city, and by harvest time Reta would surely have disappeared into the desert, leaving no trace. No one had ever moved me as Reta had just for that moment.

  As Daria had often told me, I was serious. I was a dreamer, too, though not prone to taking risks. Yet something told me I could not lose Reta, and so, still holding her hand, I asked her to marry me.

  The next morning, Reta answered me with a brave yes. The veil had fallen again, and I looked at Reta much as I always had, yet with the same sense I had after awakening from a sweet dream I ached to recall. Acting in faith that my decision had been based on some deep truth, the next day we were married.

  ~ 12 ~

  Sandstorm

  One thing I have discovered about journeys is that at first you look back. You look back on your life and see it in relief. Daria’s image of Reta as a pomegranate came back to me each time I prepared one for eating. Was Reta one of those pomegranates that looked so promising and yet was bitter or tasteless? I couldn’t accept that she was, and yet I had to confess that I had not savored my wife as I did the fruit. I had not found a way to get behind her shell. Truthfully, I had not tried. Far too quickly I had cast her in the same role she had always occupied in my life: taking care of my needs. She did this well, as she always had, and though the wives of the astronomers might not have welcomed Reta as one of them, many of my colleagues envied my wife’s cooking and the quiet peace of our home.

  As we rode into the desert, stores fully stocked up, I voiced my thoughts to Balzar by asking him why he had married his wives.

  “Lust, Melchior, I married my first wife chiefly for lust.” He chuckled at the recollection. “Lust for her body, and also for her father’s approval. My second wife I married because she was a good friend. Why do you ask?”

  I shrugged, unable to explain my thoughts.

  “You’re thinking of your wife. She’ll be fine. You’ll be back in time for the birth of your son.” Balzar patted my arm reassuringly.

  We rode on. Hours later, the questions still scratching at me, I spoke to Balzar again.

  “I don’t know why I married her, Balzar.”

  He nodded, not surprised at the delay or the resuming of the conversation. Desert conversations drifted like the landscape. I saw a bird land upon the sand.

  “I feel like that bird,” I said, gesturing. “Flying away from my home. Running away into blinding storms. Hiding my head under my wing.”

  Again he was not startled. “You know what the sand does for the bird, don’t you, Melchior? It cleans it. Sand sticks to the bird’s oils and dirt, and when the storm is over, the bird flies away, free from all that soiled it.”

  I pondered his words silently.

  “And sometimes it eats a bit of sand to help it digest its food.” Balzar paused, and I felt his gaze fix upon me, though I still looked at the bird. “A little sandstorm can heal and help.”

  I became aware of other aches in my heart that needed healing. Among the ten of us on our journey was Balzar’s son Hasin, who had not been chosen as one of the magi but who had begged leave of the chief astronomer to go as one of our servants. He was kept busy cooking and caring for the animals, but he also took care that his father was drinking enough water each day and that a portion of food was set aside for him before it was too heavily spiced. In return, Balzar was grateful and affectionate with his son. Though Balzar and I often rode together during the daytime, in the evenings, around the fires, it was Balzar’s son who would recline with his head in his father’s lap. The two would laugh with an easy intimacy, listening to each other’s stories. Just as the smell of a meal cooking over the fire would suddenly awaken a hunger I had not been aware of, so watching this father and son filled me with an ache for what I had never known. I longed for such a father and thought back to what my own father had been. There was not much even to remember.

  It was only when I recalled with a smile that Reta was indeed expecting our child and vowed that I would learn all I could from Balzar and his son that I was able to move beyond the upheaval. Things would not always be the same. I could be part of a different father and son relationship than what I had known. Salvi, with his boys, was very much like what Taz had been to us—a fun-loving visitor who stirred up their world with his whirlwind visits before leaving again—but this was not what I craved in a father, nor was it the kind of father I could imagine being. My hungry heart printed Balzar and his son upon my memory.

  The trip was not an easy one for Balzar. I saw the heat weaken him a bit each day, just as a flower left out in the blazing sun will wilt hour by hour. I wa
s torn between wanting to urge Shaz to slow down the pace and my desire to finish our journey. Shaz was now so eager to get to Jerusalem that if he was not reminded, he often drove us through the hottest part of the day without rest. I joined Hasin in taking care of Balzar along the way.

  Balzar regarded his failing body as one might a favorite old pet—with a mixture of impatience and affection. Despite his physical weakness, Balzar pushed himself to keep up with the rest of us, but when he couldn’t, he would tell Shaz. With no attempt to disguise his annoyance with the old man, Shaz would call a brief halt.

  It was on one of those halts in the white sun that Shaz began to speak about Jerusalem and the great Jewish king, Herod. Shaz and Caspar agreed that the star signaled that Herod had had a son. Balzar warned Shaz of all he had heard of Herod—the rumors, the wives, the murdered sons, Herod’s jealousy. These traits were all well known in diplomatic circles.

  Shaz, however, was dismissive. “Every great man is slandered by lesser men,” he sneered, including Balzar in his insult.

  Each day the sun blazed hotter. Heat rose from the ground like steam, confusing our perspective. I did not always know whether we were headed toward our destination or turning in circles. The days were endless infernos of heat, and at night we fell into unconsciousness.

  One day I saw strange lumps on the horizon. As we drew closer I saw that it was a nomad with a herd of sheep. The sheep stood crowded close together, though they were in a wide space. I pondered this sight for hours and could come up with only one explanation: in this shadeless terrain, each sheep could find relief only in the shadow of another sheep. I had no shadow to protect me from the relentless blaze of the sun. I felt exposed and small on the vast landscape.

  All that long day, I felt as though I were on a long tether and had unexpectedly reached my limit. I felt choked and stuck. My horse plodded with the rest through the raging waves of sand, but I resisted every step of the way. I did not understand this feeling. We were five days beyond my brother’s home and still a week from Jerusalem. The road we traveled was called the King’s Highway, though which king owned the highway was subject to local interpretation. We were on the outskirts of my own king’s territory. Aside from the nomad and his sheep, we had seen no one for several days.

  Not only were we alone in the desert, we were also now traveling entirely by faith. Shortly after our departure, the moving star had disappeared from view. Some speculated that it could have been a seasonal phenomenon rather than a herald of a new king, and with bitterness I realized that if Herod were to look at us in puzzlement and mockery, this journey and my absence at my child’s birth would be foolish and costly indeed. I had not been able to bring myself to think of my own sweet mother as I prepared to leave home, but on the journey I dreamed of her almost nightly, though it was Reta’s face I saw.

  The storm broke the night after we saw the sheep. My dreams shifted with the change in weather, though while the temperatures eased, my night visions became more disturbing. The night of the storm, I could not recall the details of the dream, only the atmosphere of fear and suspicion, but I attributed my restless sleep to the tempest outside. The second night, however, Balzar woke me when he heard my tossing and muttering. I lay still so as not to shatter the images from my dream.

  “It was Herod, the Jewish king,” I whispered to Balzar’s eyes, bright against the darkness. “He had two faces, one behind the other.”

  Balzar nodded. “I, too, have been dreaming of Herod. This new king poses him a real threat.”

  Shaz had boasted to us some relative of Herod’s was a distant cousin of his—one of our people who had converted when she married Herod’s father. Herod had risen to power much as Shaz hoped to do. We could see that Shaz was hoping the family connection would lead to a faster route to success.

  In the dark, Balzar whispered to me that he was worried for our safety if Shaz were to approach Herod wrongly.

  ~ 13 ~

  Oasis

  One afternoon, we found a small but welcome oasis and were resting in the heat of the day when another caravan appeared on the horizon. Idly, I watched it come slowly closer and thought of my brother. I had wanted to believe that Salvi no longer held a grudge against me, that we could be brothers again, but something Daria said as I left our village had settled in my heart like a stone. When she told me she would not mention my visit to Salvi, I knew how little the rupture of the past was healed. My unease at moving forward into new land was rooted in how much I had left undone and unsaid in my own land, my own home.

  As the caravan drew closer, Shaz stood at the edge of the shade, leaning against one of the trees. “Israelites?” he wondered aloud. Balzar shook his head, but he knew by this point in the journey that Shaz needed to make discoveries for himself. “No,” Shaz said not long after. “They’re not. They’re from our country.”

  I watched the caravan so like Salvi and Taz’s. As it approached the oasis, I realized it was indeed my own family, and I rushed to greet them. Taz quickly dismounted and gave me a hearty embrace. Salvi called down a greeting but stayed seated, his hands tightly clutching his camel’s rope, eyes surveying our group.

  I felt the familiar sense of shame I always had when Salvi entered the world of the astronomers. I had spent so many years, particularly when I lived with the chief astronomer, feeling poor and provincial, only to feel decadent and privileged beyond reason whenever Salvi arrived. Things and money mattered to Salvi much more than they did to me, though I had to admit I enjoyed the luxuries of wealth.

  “You know these … people?” Shaz asked, a barely perceptible pause between his last words, demonstrating again his subtle arrogance.

  Despite his tone and Salvi’s reticence, I was happy. Taz was Taz, and while he did not dote on me as Balzar did on his son, in some ways I belonged to him, and he offered me a familiar feeling in this empty place. And Salvi—there was so much I wanted to say to Salvi. Words had begun to form in my mind and I longed for time and occasion to speak them.

  “My uncle, Taz, and my brother, Salvi.” Taz was uncle to everyone, and he reached out to clasp Shaz’s hands and kiss his cheek. Salvi made an elaborate bow to Shaz and bent his head toward Shaz throughout their conversation. Even Shaz did not perceive the irony in Salvi’s tone. Shaz was impressed at my brother’s studied deference and invited him and Taz to join us for the evening. I was appreciative, and so was weary Balzar.

  When it came time to eat, some awkwardness ensued. Generally the magi ate alone, while the guards and servants sat together to eat. Taz took Shaz’s invitation to mean he could eat with us, while Salvi held back. Shaz looked disturbed, though he said nothing. I decided to break rank. I took my uncle by the elbow to the second group and introduced the men to Taz and Salvi. When I had finished introductions, I sat down and indicated seats for my brother and uncle.

  Taz was confused. “But what about—?”

  “Uncle Taz,” I said cheerfully, “wait until you hear the stories of these men. Miraz here has traveled with the king through mountains and green lands.” Miraz smiled. Salvi relaxed a bit and nodded at me.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Shaz did not like this arrangement any better than the first, but then I saw Caspar whisper to Shaz. The furrow in Shaz’s brow eased, and he began to eat. I did not know Caspar possessed such wisdom. I had always seen Caspar as Shaz’s shadow, the prince-in-waiting. Now, I suddenly saw things differently: Caspar was older than Shaz and was married to Stela’s older sister. By rights he should have been the brother treated with honor, but between Shaz’s personal wealth and connections, Caspar got the residue of Shaz’s glory.

  I wondered if my own brother was essentially in the same position. Though my elder, he was still supposed to eat with the servants, while I had risen above him when I joined the magi. When I said class did not matter to me, I believe I spoke truly, but it was an easier position to ignore than the
one my brother was in. I felt sympathy for Salvi and tried to be friendly and to lighten our conversation over supper. Salvi seemed curious though suspicious.

  “Can I sleep on the moving bed with you?” I asked.

  “Why?”

  For once, I was prepared with words. “Salvi, I am far from home, and my family is doubly dear to me. It is like a gift to see you.”

  My explanation did not lighten the tension, but Salvi agreed I could sleep with them. “Though I’m sure you would sleep better on the king’s silk sheets,” he grumbled under his breath.

  As the stars came out, we climbed aboard the caravan. I was sad to see how feebly Taz moved. I watched how Salvi helped our uncle and was glad to see the kindness he showed him. Soon Taz was snoring.

  “Will your great chief mind you sleeping out here with us?” Salvi scorned as we lay back under the canopy of sky.

  “Probably.”

  There was a long pause, but I knew Salvi was still awake.

  “This is how it could have been,” I said, treading carefully on fine, invisible threads, trying to regain a way in.

  “What?”

  “Like Taz and our father. Only we would have met in the village, at the workshop.”

  Salvi had a smile in his voice, in the darkness. “Daria and I have those conversations.”

  “And Leyla?”

  “Sometimes.” Salvi’s voice was clipped, and I knew to retreat from such territory.

  “I was there, you know. In the village. A week ago.”

  Salvi rolled toward me, his voice eager. “How were they? How was Damus?”