But his eyes remained on mine, and my hope died as I recognized the firmness behind his gaze. It wasn’t sadness—or at least, not the type of sadness that would do me any good.
It was regret.
“You need us on this side of the river,” he said, “more than you need us on your side.”
My hands were shaking now, but I managed to pull the glass jar out of the bottom of the boat. I hadn’t been certain, when I grabbed all these receptacles, what they might be for. Perhaps some part of me had feared, or known.
“Then give me something,” I said, “to take back to my side.”
He reached down, pulled a few weeds from the ground, and held them out to me, mud still clinging to their roots.
“Do you have these,” he said, “where you come from? They possess healing properties. Perhaps they can help your friend, the one who has already been touched.”
I tossed the weeds into the basket, but didn’t break his gaze. “What about the rest of us? We will all die, if the sorcerer is not stopped. I need some . . .” What was the Hebrew for spell? “Some thing. That I can use to—to fight—”
He was shaking his head even before my words stuttered to a stop.
“You are not a fighter,” the man said. “You were not meant to carry weapons across this river.”
My jaw clenched. “Weapons are what we need.”
“We have,” he said kindly, “nothing to send with you.”
But I didn’t need kindness from him. I needed help.
“What good are you, then?” I switched to Yiddish; it obviously didn’t matter whether he understood me or not. “Why can I see the river, if I was never meant to cross it? Why can I see you, if you won’t help me? Just to know that you’re here? What good does that do for anyone?”
From the expression on his face, I thought he might understand me after all. But I didn’t wait to hear what he might say, or not say. I turned myself around and used the broken oar to push my boat back into the smooth water.
* * *
It was much harder rowing with only one oar, and with no hope. By the time I reached my side of the river, my shoulders hurt as if the bones inside them had rubbed each other raw.
Which would have been a welcome distraction from the deeper pain in my chest. Except I wasn’t distracted at all.
I pulled the boat onto the shore and looked back over the water. I could see the man from the Ten Tribes still standing there, watching me.
I thought of the piece of oar I’d left in the rocks. At nightfall of the next day, when the Sabbath ended and the river started churning, would it be thrown up with the rocks, smashed between them and splintered into shards? Or would it be left behind, a piece of our land not subject to the river’s current, to sink into the mud beneath the water and disappear?
Either way, it would be as if I’d never been there.
I took the useless, broken half of the oar and thrust it, too, into the rocks, so hard the wood splintered my hand. I jabbed it again and again, my tears spilling into the water, where they, too, would leave no trace. Finally, I dropped the oar and watched it bob on the surface, which was so clear that I could see the deadly rocks lying heavy and still beneath the glassy water.
A few more plinks on the gentle current, and then nothing. My tears had stopped falling.
I stood staring into the Sambatyon for several minutes. Then I rolled my throbbing shoulders, reached into the water, and started pulling rocks out onto the shore.
* * *
I applied the weeds to Reuven’s forehead, and ground some into his water, but they did nothing. Over the Sabbath, he got weaker and weaker.
The sorcerer had not yet attacked any other Jews, possibly because we spent the day enclosed in our homes or praying in our synagogue. According to the travelers’ tales, the sorcerer preferred to touch us one at a time, when we were alone.
So I went out alone, after the late-afternoon prayer, under a sky bruised dark blue and purple. I went to the square where I had stood with my friends, dragging my sack along the street. It was filled to bursting with the stones I’d gathered from the river, and it was heavier than I had anticipated. By the time I let go of it, it felt like my shoulders would never recover.
Not that it would matter if I ended up dead.
I was fairly sure the sorcerer would find me. But the sack had slowed me down more than I had expected, and it was later than I had planned; I didn’t feel like taking chances. Also, I had spent much of the day listening to Reuven’s bride weep, and I was angry.
“Sorcerer!” I shouted into the twilight, in German, which I spoke better than I did Hebrew. “I challenge you to combat!”
I heard him laughing before I saw him coming. I blinked, and there he was: a tall shadow, like the night come early, that solidified into a cowled, black-clad man.
A man. But I could not quite convince myself that was what he was. I had left Reuven curled around his own body, covered with sweat.
“To combat?” he repeated, and laughed again. “Have the Jews of the Rhine learned sorcery, then?”
My hands were shaking, too, as I clenched one fist around a slick river stone. But they had been shaking since the night before. I had grown used to it.
“No,” I said, and raised my voice so those watching from their windows could hear. You need us on this side of the river, the man had said; and though I didn’t agree, I understood what he meant. What it had always meant, to know the Ten Tribes existed somewhere, safe and strong and free. “But the Jews on the other side of the Sambatyon have never forgotten it. They will come when we need them.”
I flung the rock, with all my strength, at the sorcerer.
All my strength was not a lot; studying to be a cantor does not do much to build one’s arm muscles, and mine still hurt from last night’s rowing. But my days of playing children’s games were not so far behind me, and I still remembered how to aim. The rock flew straight and true, directly at the face within the black cowl.
The sorcerer flung up one hand, palm out, his too-long fingers stretched wide. The rock stopped in midair and hovered several feet in front of him.
He clenched his gnarled hand into a fist and turned it, slowly. With a grinding sound, the rock shattered into pieces, and then into dust. The dust fell, a swift thick sprinkle, to the ground at the sorcerer’s feet.
I had expected as much. Even so, his deliberate ease sent fear shooting in sharp quivers through my feet and up my legs.
“Well?” he said. And when I just stood there, the shaking having taken over my entire body, he threw his cowl back so I could see his smile. “Have you nothing more for me?”
I turned and ran.
I heard him laugh behind me, long and slow. I heard his footsteps hit the cobblestones, unhurried but sure.
I did not turn around until I heard him scream.
Training as a cantor does not build muscles, but it builds a very precise sense of time. I need to know just when the sun appears over the horizon, which is when the recitation of the morning prayer is permitted. I need to know the moment the gates of Heaven close on Yom Kippur, which is when my pleas should reach their greatest intensity. I need to be able to judge precisely when the Sabbath begins.
And when it ends.
At the exact right interval after sunset, when the sky was dark enough to reveal three stars, the Sambatyon burst again into fury. Somewhere, behind my house or in another place, the rapids poured up into the sky and crashed down in violent waves.
And the rocks I had dragged from the Sambatyon whirled into the air in turbulent fury, bursting out of my bag, crashing and tossing and smashing, just as the sorcerer leapt over it. Even the droplets of water clinging to them did their best to form waves, hissing and scattering through the air, around and into the black-clad sorcerer.
He only screamed twice, so I think it was quick—that he was dead before the rocks pounded his body into a pulp.
But to be truthful, I can’t say I really ca
re.
* * *
The rocks did not continue whirling in the square for long. Away from the river, I suppose, they lost the source of their movement; or perhaps they knew when they were no longer needed. By the time the moon rose, they were jagged and still, piled on the sorcerer’s corpse in a broken heap.
Which was just as well. The fact that Jews are mocked for not fighting does not mean we won’t also be punished when we do.
I gathered the rocks and threw them into the Rhine. Whether they made their way back home again, I cannot say. I walked by the river several times a week, for many years, but I never saw the Sambatyon again.
I always went on Friday nights, even though it meant giving up the chance to lead prayers. I stood by the gray sluggish water, and closed my eyes, and listened with all my might.
I never heard anything but the faint echo of our own songs. And when I opened my eyes, the river was always dull and gray.
I did find that broken oar, over a decade later, long after I had paid my neighbor for it. I stumbled across it the day before I left Worms to accept a position as the cantor in a much larger synagogue in a city far away. It was an opportunity I had dreamed of for years, so I didn’t understand my sudden reluctance to leave. My parents had both passed away years ago, and I lived in a house on the other side of town with my wife and children. Yitzchak had moved to Speyer. Reuven’s widow had remarried, and I rarely saw her. There was nothing to hold me here, to this town on the banks of a river I would never cross again.
I had gained some fame, by then, with my own prayer compositions. Some of my poems had spread up and down the river, been adopted by Jews in towns I’d never stepped foot in. Only I knew that my prayers, much as they were admired, were inadequate; that there was something missing, something I could not get down, no matter how hard I labored with pen and parchment. Something no scribe on this side of the river could force quill and ink to express.
A chance I had lost forever. A song neither I nor my people would ever get back.
When I found the broken oar, I turned it over and over in my hands. It was smooth and slick, whittled down by a steady current. I thought of taking it with me.
I left it there, in the mud.
It has been years since I last saw the Rhine. And as for the Sambatyon . . .
I keep the jar on my lectern, where I can see it when I lead services. I don’t need it; my sense of timing has always been excellent. But every once in a while, before I start the Friday night services, I glance over.
And when the water in the jar stops whirling and frothing, and settles into a smooth, tranquil stillness, that is when I begin to pray.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
* * *
My fascination with stories about the Sambatyon started when I was a child, probably originating with a book called The Secret of Sambatyon by Gershon Winkler (published in the 1980s, as you might guess from the title). Then, a few years ago, I heard a lecture by Dr. Chaviva Levin of Yeshiva University, in which she talked about the specific myth I retold here—the tale of Rabbi Meir, author of the Akdamot, a liturgical poem read by Ashkenazi Jews during the holiday of Shavuot. The Akdamot is a beautiful poem that I have always loved, and the combination of the two spurred me to seriously attempt a retelling. I started buying and reading books about the Sambatyon and the Ten Tribes, and wrote a retelling of the story in picture book form. That manuscript ultimately didn’t come together, primarily because it’s not really a children’s story.
So when I was contacted about writing a myth retelling for this anthology, the Sambatyon was one of the first ideas to spring to mind. Since I had spent so long trying to formulate it as a children’s story, it took me a bit of time to come up with a new approach that would be appropriate for Saga. I pulled up a lot of the books I’d read previously and reviewed them; in one, I came across a reference to a medieval man who claimed he had some of the Sambatyon water trapped in a glass flask. Even though that particular story was entirely separate from the Akdamot legend, I knew immediately that I had to incorporate it; and after that, the entire story came together in less than a day.
* * *
LEAH CYPESS
SISYPHUS IN ELYSIUM
BY
* * *
JEFFREY FORD
IN THE AFTERLIFE, AMID THE rolling green meadows of Asphodel, a grass sea of prodigious mounds and mere hillocks dotted with ghostly flowers stretching out in all directions, a solitary figure stood at the base of the tallest rise, the crest hidden in clouds.
Thunder rumbled in the distance as Sisyphus slapped his hands together to clear the dust and grit, and then spitting into each palm, he placed them upon an enormous green boulder three times his size, smooth as glass. An eon ago, he’d named the rock Acrocorinthus, as it reminded him of the mountain that overlooked the city where he’d squandered his humanity.
He dug into the summer dirt with the balls of his feet and curling toes. He leaned into the stone’s mass. His shoulder found the right spot, the muscles of his calves flexed, his thighs tightened, and his strength ran up from his legs into his back and arms.
There was a grunt that echoed over the meadow. The boulder, ever so slightly, broke its deal with gravity, inching forward, barely any distance at all, and rolling back from the incline. Sisyphus rocked his burden to and fro ten times, slowly building momentum. He screamed like a wounded animal, and then drooling, legs quivering, sweat upon his brow, he slowly ascended.
The condition of the ground was good, but rain was coming, lurking somewhere just over the next few crests. He challenged himself to make it to the top before the grass got slick and the ground turned to mud. Every iota of distance he won was an enormous strain. With muscles and joints burning, in intimate contact with the smooth surface of his personal tribulation, he needed to concentrate.
For the past millennium, at this juncture, he always returned to the same episode in his life. He’d thought through it seventy-two million different ways and would certainly think through it again. It took over his mind, letting his chest and biceps contend with the agony.
The time he’d cheated death happened back in the city of Ephyra where he had ruled, neither wisely nor well. He was a shrewd and conniving character, and the gods took a disliking to him. Treachery was afoot in his court; it was no secret to him. Zeus worked his cosmic will against the king of Ephyra to little avail. Sisyphus had outsmarted the gods more than once, and once was unforgiveable.
Before he was assassinated, he told his wife, Merope, that when he died, she was to throw his naked body into the street at the center of town. She complied with his wishes, as he knew she would, and because he’d not been buried, he was cast away onto the shores of the River Styx, forever unable to cross over into the afterlife.
Upon those sorrowful shores, he sought out Persephone, goddess of spring, on her yearly, contractual visit to Hades. When he tracked her down, just as she was stepping upon Charon’s boat to make the trip across the wild water, he laid out his case to her that he should be sent back to the world above in order to reprimand his wife and arrange for a burial for himself. With these tasks accomplished, he swore he would return to be judged.
The fair goddess, innocent as the season she represented, granted his wish. Of course, once he regained life, he didn’t return to the realm of the dead, but resumed his role as monarch of Ephyra and was soon up to his old tricks, betraying the secrets of Athena and plotting his brother’s murder by poison. Eventually the gods had to send Hermes to fetch him back to the afterlife.
He stumbled in a rut, and in an instant the boulder turned on him. It took him to the limits of his strength to wrestle the green globe into submission. His success cheered him, and he pushed on, breathing harder now. The rock grew heavier with every step. He whispered his queen’s name, Merope, repeating it like a prayer, struggling to remember her affection and a time he was worthy of it. There were moments he’d look up and see his reflection in the glassy surface of his work,
and it often spoke to him of things he dared not tell himself.
The rains came and went, the scorching heat of summer, snow and ice, circling for a hundred years. Then one day he was there at the crest of the hill, and he was no longer pushing the boulder but leaning against it to prop himself up. His body made haunted noises as the muscles and tendons relaxed. He took a deep breath, and staggered away from his charge.
A minute, think of it as a century, passed, and as always, the enormous rock somehow rolled to the edge of the hill. A moment later it tipped forward and then was off, galloping down the slope like a charging beast and quickly disappearing into the cloud cover. In his imagination, he saw Acrocorinthus already waiting for him at the bottom.
He descended along the path the boulder had made. During journeys to be reunited with the rock, his mind wandered, and he wondered how his life and death might have been different. He often thought of one summer day out behind their cottage, in a clearing in the tall grass—yellow butterflies, white clouds, blue sky—as the young Merope, copper hair and green eyes, discovered his future in the palm of his hand. She promised to follow him in his ascent to the throne of Corinth.
It had taken mere centuries of pushing the stone before he realized that only the intangible things in life had been worthy of pursuit—love, friends, laughter, hope. Instead, during his years above, he’d chosen to value wealth and contracted greed, which swept him up into its tempest. Soon murder made sense, treachery was second nature, and lies were the meat of his meal. The boulder was a strict teacher, though, and through the torrent of hours, he reversed all his burning compulsions for material wealth, grew calm with his work, and saw he’d been a fool in his life.
The work of the boulder was simple, impossible work. When he strained beneath its weight, grappling for purchase against the incline, time disappeared. He was lost to the task at hand. At first, he considered his sentence a crushing labor, but on and on through the eons he’d come to realize it was hardly work at all, and more a necessary form of meditation. His wildest dream from deep in those contemplations was that if he continued on with his work into infinity, somewhere along that misty track, he would, himself, become a god through the mere process of repetition.
The Mythic Dream Page 21
