by Marek Halter
One morning, with the sun not yet completely risen in the east, Abram was searching the horizon, a frown on his face, his mouth tense with anxiety, when he felt Sarai’s eyes on him. He turned and smiled at her, but the frown remained. She came to him, stroked his brow with her fingers, and placed her cool palm on the back of his neck.
“He doesn’t speak to me anymore,” Abram said. “Not a word, not a command, since we left Harran. I don’t hear His voice anymore.”
Sarai gently continued her caress.
“I’m going where I think I have to go,” Abram went on, “toward the land he promised me. But what if I’m wrong? What if we’ve come all this way for nothing?”
Sarai added a kiss to her caress. “I trust you,” she said. “We all trust you. Why shouldn’t your god also trust you?”
They never spoke of it again. But a few days later, Abram decided to change route and head westward. They left behind them the rich pastures beside the Euphrates and entered a country of sand and rough, sparse grass. Arpakashad came to see Abram and asked him to let the herds rest.
“Soon we’ll be going into the desert, and nobody knows when we’ll see grassland again. Better to let the animals grow fat and gather their strength. A little rest will do us good, too.”
“Are you worried?” Abram asked.
Arpakashad smiled. “No. Nobody’s worried, Abram. Or impatient. You’re the only one who’s anxious. We’ll follow you. Your road is our road. And as it’s likely to be a long road, what’s the point in hurrying?”
Abram laughed and declared that Arpakashed was right. It was time to pitch camp for a moon or two.
From that day, their march again became what it had been when Terah was leading the tribe. It took them more than four seasons to cross the desert of Tadmor from one oasis to another, and reach the country of Damascus, where they discovered strange trees and fruit, but cautiously avoided the cities, settling only in the poorest pastures in order not to attract the anger of the inhabitants.
They grew so accustomed to this wandering life that some almost forgot that it would end one day. Sometimes, during a halt, a member of the tribe would form a relationship with a man or woman they had met around the wells or while trading. Abram would give him or her permission to marry. More and more children were born. The only woman whose womb remained stubbornly empty was Sarai. But there were no more insistent looks. Even Sililli refrained from pestering her with advice and had stopped reporting the women’s gossip. It seemed to be generally agreed that if Abram himself was prepared to wait for Sarai’s womb to become fertile, then they, too, had to be patient. Abram’s nephew Lot would take the place of their son. It was only Sarai herself who could no longer bear the emptiness of her womb.
One day, she entered the women’s communal tent as a young married woman was giving birth to her first child. The woman’s name was Lehklai, and she was younger than Sarai, with very pale skin, big dark eyes, and opulent breasts. For moons, Sarai had watched as her belly had become rounder, then her whole body: her hips, her buttocks, her breasts, her shoulders, even her cheeks and her lips. Every day, she had watched her with envy. There were quite a few other pregnant women in Abram’s tribe, but, for Sarai, Lehklai was by far the most beautiful. Although she did not show it openly, she envied her, loved her, and hated her with an intensity that gave her more than a few sleepless nights. So, although she usually avoided the communal tent when women were giving birth, she had come in now to be present at Lehklai’s confinement.
From the start, it was clear that things were not going according to plan. Lehklai was moaning. Sweat plastered her hair to her face, her mouth gaped open, her lips were dry, and her eyes wide and staring. It seemed as though her whole body were wracked with pain. The rest of the day passed in this way. The midwives spoke encouragingly to Lehklai and anointed her belly and thighs with sweet mentholated oil. Their words and gestures were the usual ones in this situation, but Sarai could see that they were growing increasingly worried. Lehklai would moan, become short of breath, then moan again. Her eyes still stared, as if turned inward.
By the afternoon, she was no longer answering when they talked to her. Finally, the midwives asked Sarai and Sililli to help them to massage Lehklai, for it seemed that the blood was refusing to circulate normally within her. Yet when Sarai stroked Lekhlai’s body she found that it was burning hot.
The midwives decided they could wait no longer. They placed the bricks of childbearing on the ground of the tent and, supporting Lehklai, tried to draw the baby into life. A long and terrible struggle followed. The midwives plunged their hands into Lekhlai’s womb and managed to pull out a tiny baby girl, her mouth already formed for weeping and laughing. In the last light of day, Sarai and Sililli emerged from the tent, both shaking, their heads and chests still resounding from Lehklai’s screams, which only death had stopped.
Sililli and Sarai looked at each other in silence. On the handmaid’s aged face, Sarai read the words her mouth would not speak: “At least you won’t die like that.”
Sarai stood watching the sun as it vanished below the edge of the world like a drop of blood. A glittering full moon loomed over the approaching night. It was very hot, with a dense heat the evening breeze did nothing to allay.
Sarai shook her head. “You’re wrong,” she said in a low voice, just loud enough for Sililli to hear. “Lehklai doesn’t frighten me. I envied Lehklai when she was full of life, so beautiful and so big with child. And I still envy her.”
THAT night, Sarai decided to do something she had not done since Abram had become her husband. She opened one of the chests in her tent and took out a bag containing a handful of cedarwood shavings and a painted wooden statuette of Nintu. In spite of Sarai’s scorn, Sililli had insisted on keeping it.
She slipped a few brands into an openwork pot with a leather lid. Then she left the encampment as stealthily as she could and walked in the moonlight to the other side of a hill. When she was certain she could not be seen, she lit a small fire between some stones.
Kneeling, her mind empty, Sarai waited until the fire was an ember, then threw in the cedarwood shavings. When the smoke was thick enough, she took from her belt a thin ivory knife Abram had given her, and slashed first her left palm, then her right. She then took the wooden statuette, rolled it between her hands until it was smeared with her blood, and murmured:
Nintu, mistress of the menstrual blood,
Nintu, you who decide on life in the wombs of women,
Nintu, beloved patroness of childbearing, hear the lament of your daughter Sarai,
Nintu, patroness of childbirth, you who received the sacred brick of childbearing from the hands of almighty Enki, you who hold the scissors to cut the birth cord,
Nintu, listen to me, listen to your daughter’s pain,
Do not leave her in the void.
She fell silent, her throat rough and her eyes stinging from the cedarwood smoke. Then she stood up, and turned her face to the moon. The statuette against her belly, she resumed her lament. She repeated her prayer seven times, until the blood stopped flowing from the cuts. Then she crushed the embers with a big stone and returned to the encampment.
Cautiously, she walked to Abram’s tent. The lamps were out. Abram liked to spend all night in conversation with Arpakashad and some of the old men of the tribe, but tonight, luckily, he had chosen to go to sleep early.
The cloth over the entrance to the tent had been folded back to let the air circulate. Sarai let it drop noiselessly. In the milky half-light that filtered through the material, she picked her way between the tent posts and the chests. Abram lay naked on the heap of rugs and skins that served as his bed. His breathing was slow and regular, like that of a man in a deep, dreamless sleep.
Delicately, Sarai slipped the statuette of Nintu between the layers beneath Abram’s feet. She took off her tunic, knelt beside her husband, took his penis between her palms, and gently stroked it. Abram’s chest and stomach began to tremble
. Sarai let her long curly hair slide over her husband’s torso, grazed his chest with her nipples, kissed his neck and his temple, found his mouth. Abram opened his eyes like a man who does not know if he is still dreaming.
“Sarai?” he whispered.
Her only response was more caresses. She offered the small of her back to his hands and her breasts to his mouth. He was a mere shadowy figure to her, and she to him. Abram whispered her name again and again, “Sarai, Sarai,” as if she were about to escape him, as if she might dissolve in his arms at the very moment she took him into her, wrapping him deep inside her womb. They grasped at each other like starving people, their whole bodies offered up to their voracious desire. They were both aware that their lovemaking was different tonight, fierce and unrestrained. The waves of pleasure that shook Abram’s body swept through Sarai, too. She felt as though she had suddenly become as vast as an entire country, as light and as liquid as the horizon between sea and sky. Then the waves of her own pleasure took her breath away and Abram turned her over on the bed. Clasping his neck as if she was hanging from an enormous bird that was taking flight, Sarai offered her mouth and chest to Abram’s breath, and let the final rush of his desire flood her.
“I’M a sterile woman, Abram,” Sarai whispered: it was later, and her chest and hips were still painful with pleasure. “The blood hasn’t flowed between my thighs for years. Putting your seed into my womb is like abandoning it in the dust.”
“I know,” Abram replied, just as gently. “We all know. We’ve known for a long time.”
“I deceived you,” Sarai insisted. “When you came to find me in the temple of Ur, I was already barren, already incapable of giving birth to a child. I didn’t dare tell you. The joy of being carried off by you was too great; nothing else mattered.”
“I knew that, too. A Sacred Handmaid of Ishtar is a woman who can’t menstruate. Everyone in Ur knows that.”
Sarai lifted herself on one elbow and stared at her husband. In the pale moonlight, Abram’s face was as clear and smooth as a silver mask. He was more beautiful than ever, with a beauty so calm and tender that it brought a lump to her throat. With trembling fingers, she stroked his eyebrows and lightly touched his cheekbones above his beard.
“But why? If you knew, why take me as a wife? A wife with a barren womb!”
“You are Sarai. I want no other wife than Sarai.”
She shook her head, full of questions, uncomprehending. “Your god promised you a people, a nation. How can you become a people and a nation if your wife can’t even give you a son?”
Abram smiled. “The One God didn’t say to me: ‘You chose a bad wife.’ Abram is a happy husband.”
Sarai sat down on the bed and observed him in silence. These words should have calmed her fears, but she could not be satisfied with them. The memory of her pleasure had now entirely vanished from her body, leaving only sadness.
Why couldn’t she be delighted at Abram’s words? Didn’t they express all the love, all the kindness, she could ever wish for?
No, it seemed to her that Abram did not fully grasp how heavy was the burden of sin that she carried, a burden not only on the two of them but also on those who accompanied them.
“I fell in love you that first night,” she said, in an almost inaudible voice. “That night I fell over you on the riverbank while I was fleeing the bridegroom my father had chosen. I wanted you to kiss me.”
At last, she told him why she had bought herbs of infertility in the kassaptu’s lair. How she had almost died because of them and how, although he had left the city of Ur with his father, she had never stopped waiting for his kiss.
“I was barely a woman. My sin was due as much to the ignorance of youth as to my desire for you. The desire is still there, but I’ve become useless to you. You need a mother for your children, a fertile wife who will allow you to accomplish what your god expects of you.”
Abram shook his head. He seized her hands and pressed them to his chest. “You’re wrong: I need Sarai. Your stubbornness is my happiness. He who speaks to me, He who calls me and guides me, knows who you are. Just as I do. He wants you to be by my side. You, too, are blessed by Him, I know you are.”
He kissed her palms ardently. And then, abruptly, he looked up. His lips had touched the new gashes she had inflicted on herself out of devotion to Nintu. Sarai saw his neck stiffen with anger.
“What have you done?” he cried.
She left the bed and took the statuette of Ninta from under the sheepskins. She stood naked before him, bold but fearful, the statuette in her hands.
“A sterile woman,” she said, “would swallow earth, mud, and even monsters or demons if that could bring life back into her womb. Young Lehklai died today giving birth to a daughter. In spite of all my love for you, Abram, I wish no other death for myself.”
Abram got to his feet before her. In the opalescent half-light of the moon, his features were indistinct, as if his face had disappeared. He was breathing rapidly, his chest rising and falling.
“This evening, I caressed Nintu with my blood,” Sarai stammered, showing him the statuette. “Your seed is in my womb. The greater the pleasure the man and woman have had, they say, the more powerful the seed, the more agile . . .”
She fell silent, thinking that Abram was going to cry out, perhaps even hit her.
He held out his hand. “Give me that doll,” he said, in a calm voice.
With a trembling hand, Sarai held out the statuette. Abram grabbed it by the head. From one of the tent posts, he unhooked a short bronze sword with a curved blade, a heavy, solid weapon with which Sarai had seen him cut the head off a ram. Not even taking the trouble to put on a loincloth, he walked naked out of the tent. He placed the idol on the ground and, with a few blows, smashed it to pieces, then threw the fragments as far as he could.
By the time he came back inside the tent, Sarai had put on her tunic. She stood there, her body stiff with humiliation and sorrow. Her eyes were dry and her mouth closed. In spite of the heavy heat, she was shivering.
Abram approached, seized her hands, and raised them to his mouth. He stopped the trembling of her fingers by pressing them to his lips. Then he kissed her palms, licking them with the gentleness of a mother kissing a graze on her child’s skin to take away the pain. He drew Sarai to him.
“In Ur,” he whispered, “they wanted you to confront the bull until it disemboweled you, on the pretext that no blood flowed between your thighs. My father, Terah, and all those who stayed with him thought badly of you, because we made love for nothing but our own pleasure. I know the questions Tsilla asked, moon after moon. I know the withering looks they all gave you. And I left you alone with the shame and the questions. I had no words to soothe your pain. How was I to tell them all that there was no shadow over the happiness I felt in having Sarai as my wife? That my wife’s love was growing as much as any sons or daughters she could have given me? They all invoked their gods, talked of sin and resentment. They saw nothing in your womb but evil spells. And I, who saw nothing but their credulity and submissiveness, I left you alone with the burden of your sorrow.”
He fell silent. Sarai held her breath. Abram’s words, the words for which she had been waiting for so long, were coming at last, pouring into her, as warm and as sweet as winter honey.
“Don’t keep taking upon yourself their fears and their superstitions. Trust my patience, as I trust you. You think that Abram’s god isn’t yet yours. You’re sure you haven’t heard or felt Him. Yet who knows if the herbs of infertility weren’t a message from Him to you, Sarai, daughter of a lord of Ur, in order to turn you away from their vain worship? Who knows if it wasn’t the road He showed you so that we could become husband and wife? In Harran, He said, ‘Leave your father’s house.’ He didn’t say, ‘Leave your wife, Sarai, who can’t transform your seed into a child.’ He always says what He wants and what He doesn’t want. He says to me, ‘You are a blessing. I bless those who bless you.’ Who blesses me mor
e, day after day, night after night, than my wife, Sarai? He promised me a people, and He will give me one. Just as He will give us the land He promised me. Sarai, my love, stop wounding yourself with the knife of shame, for you are in no way at fault and your pain is mine.”
Abram slid Sarai’s tunic off her, and let it fall to the ground. He kissed her shoulder.
“Come and sleep beside me. Tonight and every night, until the One God shows us the land where we will settle.”
Salem
It happened less than one moon later.
For some days now, the hills they had been crossing had seemed rounder and greener. There was no dust on the meadows or on the leaves of the trees. No need to search for wells, or to be content with stagnant water for the animals. Streams flowed from one valley to another, some of them so deep you could plunge your whole body in them. There were insects in abundance, such as are found only in fertile country. One morning, it started raining. Abram decided that they wouldn’t walk that day, to let the rain clean the fleece of the sheep and the canvas of the tents. When it stopped, just before evening, the sun peeped out again from between the clouds, and they were all stunned by the beauty of the scene that confronted them.
Alas, although they had seen nobody for days, it was clear to everyone that this land was not deserted. The pastures were bounded by walls; the paths bore traces of herds. That evening, they sat silently around the fires, dreaming of how happy they would be when Abram’s god led them to a country like this.
The next day, in the pale light of dawn, Sarai woke with a start. Abram’s place beside her was damp but empty. The tent flap was still swinging.
She rose in silence and was outside in time to see her husband walking quickly away. Without a moment’s thought, she followed him.
Abram broke into a run. He dashed across a stream, sending up a spray of water around him, up the side of a small hillock, and into a large copse. Sarai followed him into the trees. She could not see him, but ahead of her she could hear the dead branches crackling under his hurrying feet. As she was about to leave the copse, she stopped dead and hid behind the trunk of a green oak, recovering her breath. A hundred paces ahead of her, on the summit of the hillock, Abram stood motionless in the tall grass. He had his back to her, his face lifted slightly and his arms half raised as if he were about to grasp something in his hands.
