The Dovekeepers: A Novel

by Alice Hoffman

  Abba was so old he had to be brought everywhere in his chair, carried by four strong men; so pure Tamar whispered we must sit sixty arm spans away, the distance kept by all of the women, their heads covered, their eyes downcast yet shining, for although women were not included in the strict Essene ways, they were radiant when they heard the great man speak. Another priest of Abba’s magnitude would have turned us away, too enmeshed in prayer to be bothered with our pleas. Or perhaps such a powerful man might have agreed to hear us if we had brought silver in exchange for his favor. But Abba was convinced that every man was his brother. He was a follower of a teacher from Galilee who taught that peace was the only hope for mankind. Without it, we were like the jackals in the desert, nothing more.

  Beside me, Tamar whispered that Abba had had ten wives and outlived them all; he now spent his days giving glory to God and teaching the ways of peace. The men here prayed three times a day; in the morning as they faced in the direction of Jerusalem, then again at sunset, and once more after nightfall. They carried what was holy within them, for every man was a temple, and every prayer spoken could be heard by our Father above us.

  When told of our plight, Abba presented my father with a fever charm, a prayer slipped inside a metal tube that was to be attached to the arms of the afflicted. He offered a length of blessed rope, to tie into knots in the children’s tunics and bind them to good health, as well as a precious bulb of deep purple garlic to keep away demons. We were to recite the name Adonai a hundred times over a cup of water and garlic that had been boiled three times atop a hot fire, then instruct those who had sickened to drink while they prayed for grace from God.

  WE WERE GIVEN pressed dates and barley cakes and allowed to spend the night. A light rain was falling, and the earth quickly flooded with puddles. My father was led to a common house to stay among the men. I tied my goat to a tamarisk tree and went with the unmarried girls, who looked at me with puzzled expressions. I must have appeared as a wild beast to them. When I uncovered my hair before them, they were shocked by the knots and set to work on them with wooden combs. They brought me to bathe in their ritual pool, where the water turned black all around me. Even I could see it was a bad omen, but the Essene girls laughed and said holy water took away all sin. Their people believed immersing themselves brought them closer to God, and they bathed several times a day. There was a double staircase into the bath; one flight of the limestone steps to enter, the other for the pure who had been cleansed so they might walk out of the water without touching those who were still unclean. Indeed, when I stepped out of the water, I felt truly cleansed for the first time since leaving Jerusalem. My hair was so red that the bees came to me, circling round. The Essene women laughed, suggesting that my hair must appear to be a field of roses. I had to run from the swarm and shout out that I was a woman, not a flower.

  I was given a tunic by Tamar. It was a simple white garment, with a goat-hair rope to tie at the waist. I said it was too great a gift, but Tamar insisted. “Possessions are nothing, for they will be worthless in the World-to-Come,” she told me. “You cannot take any of it into the house of the Lord.”

  The past seemed like a distant dream. We were far from the carnage we’d known in Jerusalem, several days’ walk from the caves where we’d found shelter. But what I’d done and what I’d come to know had been more than a dream. When I narrowed my eyes, I could see beyond the orchards to the pocked limestone cliffs and the path I’d marked with bits of blue. I could feel a pulse at the base of my throat, a flush of panic at having left Jachim ben Simon behind. I feared what had bound us together might disappear if I were no longer in his sight. Perhaps he would come to believe that I, too, was only a dream from which he had now awakened.

  I wondered what our hosts would think if they knew the truth about us. My father continued to bide his time and keep our secrets. He believed these pious people to be fools, convinced that those who sat and waited for the End of Days were creating it for themselves. But of course it was inevitable that he would think so. Every man engaged in war tells himself he can alter what has been written, that it is he, not God, who is the maker of destiny, free to change what is meant to be.

  ON THE MORNING we left, Tamar brought me to her house and gave me a portion of cheese, salty white haris halab, that would last several days and keep us well fed, along with some sweet pressed dates. She had four young sons, unused to strangers, their mouths agape at the sight of me until their mother shooed them away. When we were alone, she warned that we must take care on our journey. There had recently been a raid at another settlement, called Ein Gedi, an oasis where four springs met with each other to cause great waterfalls, one of which formed a pool where King David was said to have hidden from his enemies. It was here that the Moringa Peregrina grew, a bloom with magical powers that had allowed David to write his songs with such purity. There were flowering acacias growing beside the waters, and jujube trees, whose orange fruit attracted birds from Greece and Egypt, and there were groves of balsam, whose sticky gum formed the incense that was more valued than gold. Ein Gedi was a place of plenty in a time of hunger. Because of this, it had called out like a lamb to those who were starving. The attackers had come in the night. Seven hundred people had been killed or held captive by the Sicarii who had raided the settlement’s warehouses. The Essenes knew these were the culprits because the curved knife, the weapon that finds its mark, then pulls out the soul of its victim, had been used. The thieves had stolen everything, grain and wine and water, along with the lives of the innocent.

  My heart dropped at the mention of the Sicarii.

  “The murderers won’t find you if you’re careful,” Tamar told me. “Should anyone approach you in the wilderness, hide as best you can. Perhaps now you understand why we are certain the end is near. With such treachery on earth, the angels will surely come to us and guide us into the World-to-Come.”

  I nodded, even though I knew that my father believed that daggers and not angels were the answer to betrayal. I didn’t blurt out that my brother might have been among those who had raided Ein Gedi. We made haste to leave, and as we readied ourselves one of the men came to deliver a last message from Abba. My father’s eyes were hooded, his heart closed, but he listened, for he was a guest in this settlement, and must at least pretend to have manners. I overheard what was said and quickly lowered my eyes. When the messenger had finished speaking, my father nodded a farewell, but he never offered his gratitude. That was my father’s character, silent and heartless; exactly what I expected of him. He signaled to me with the wave of a hand, and like his dog I went with him, following at a distance, my eyes cast down.

  As we set off, several of the women escorted us, waving, wishing me well, calling out how pretty I looked in my new garments. They knew nothing of me, only the little I had revealed, some of which felt like a lie. My father and I were strangers to each other as well. We knew as little of each other as the Essenes knew of us. We had many days to walk, and, although my father had ceased to humiliate and berate me, we had nothing to say. I knew nothing of my father’s life before he’d taken up the dagger, though I had heard rumors that he’d had a brother who’d been sold into slavery. If a man sees his brother tied with ropes and dragged down the cobblestone road, does he ever see anything else? If ten men are kept in a room with a lion and only one survives, what does that man become? If a woman with red hair keeps silent, will she ever be able to speak the truth again?

  As we journeyed, we looked back in order to see the ever-changing colors of the Salt Sea. We could spy the sails of the flat-boats that traveled across the sea to the country of Moab, ruled now by a fierce people called Nabateans. In this fertile land Moses was said to be buried, yet no one had ever discovered where that holy place might be, though many had searched. Perhaps this was best, for Moses held the key to secrets that were too immense for men to absorb, a gift and a burden too heavy for our people to bear.

  One day, after we had climbed the tallest c
liffs, the sea disappeared from view, sinking into the earth as though it had been swallowed. Waves of blistering heat rose above the spot where it had been, for its waters were even hotter than the air. Soon even that disappeared. We trudged on. I did not think about the fact that I was a young woman in the desert, alone and on fire. I refused to let my thoughts dwell on roaming beasts or robbers. Most of all, I did not allow myself to imagine what might have occurred at our camp in our absence, how a fever can burn like a flame until there is nothing left but ash, how it spreads the way fire does, leaping from one victim to the next.

  We had Abba’s blessing and his medicine. We needed only to find our way. I hurried my father along, collecting scraps of blue as we followed the map they made, grateful to my brother for his gift. The fabric was tattered. Some of the squares had been carried off by hyenas or by the wind, so all that remained were the threads cast from silkworms that had turned into butterflies. One day there was a heavy rain. My father wanted to wait out the rain, taking refuge in a limestone cave, but I insisted we walk on, though our skins glistened with water and our garments were sodden. My father had little choice. He would be lost without me, for I alone knew the direction we must head toward. As we walked on, my father raved and complained, but the rain ended, a little at a time, so that we walked through the drops and then through the fresh, cool air.

  The campsite was empty when we arrived. There was the fire pit and the basket I used to collect mint and greens. There were the bowls for our meals, and the ax which had cut the thorns from our path. A fine layer of grit covered everything, and I thought of the two girl-brides Ben Simon had showed me and how he had cried and how I had fallen under his spell. We had stolen our time together, time that had seemed endless in the dark. I felt something sharp in my throat. I didn’t know it was the beginning of my grief until my father silenced me. I had been wailing, the way the leopard does, suddenly and without regard for any other living creature.

  We discovered them in the dank cave, searching for comfort and shelter in their final hours. They were together, as they deserved to be. All had the red marks of illness pocking their skin, all had wasted away so that bones showed through their flesh. Ben Simon had set his wife and children onto a stone ledge before he lay down beside them. The veins in his arms were still blue, but they were fading, and his skin had grown cold. I fell to my knees and clutched at him, desperate for any last warmth. I put my mouth upon his, but there was no breath, no life. I could taste the World-to-Come.

  I would not move when my father shouted at me, or when he raised his hand to me. In the end my father had to bury them. It was a woman’s place to ready bodies for the Angel of Death and chant lamentations, then to set herself aside until the specter of death was no longer with her, but I refused. Welts rose across my back and shoulders when my father beat me, but I would not be his dog on this day. My father shouted out that I was a coward, afraid to see to the needs of the dead, but he was wrong. I wasn’t afraid to be unclean any more than I was frightened of the dead. I only feared that if I held Ben Simon for too long, I wouldn’t be able to let him go.

  My father carried the bodies to the highest cliff and set rocks atop them so hawks and vultures and jackals couldn’t get near. He said prayers of lamentations, having folded Ben Simon’s prayer shawl around his own shoulders to honor him. For seven days after this ritual, my father had to sit in the sun to cleanse himself because he had been so close to death and was considered tamé, impure. He sang the lamentations that a woman was meant to sing because I would not allow those words into my mouth. I would not recognize Ben Simon’s death or see him walk into the World-to-Come. When I closed my eyes I could envision the natural grace of his strong body, the sharp planes of his face, his deep glance of appraisal which cut right through me. I did not want to let him go, yet I could hear my father’s laments and prayers even when I covered my ears with my hands. His chanting sounded like the wind, and like the wind it wrapped around me until I heard nothing but a single song.

  I wondered if in his illness Ben Simon had been like the lion who had fought so hard against nine warriors, only to lay down his head and die before the tenth. I wondered if he had lasted until the day when it rained, when we were so close, only moments away, and if that rain had been made of his tears, for he had not been ashamed to weep.

  I remembered the words I’d overheard before we left the Essenes when Abba had sent his messenger to my father. Even for the righteous, it is only up to Adonai to punish. Perhaps this holy man had known who we were all along. Now the assassins’ punishment had fallen upon us. If one of the Sicarii carried all the men he had murdered on his back wherever he went, did the dead not wish to eventually take their revenge? Perhaps their spirits had followed Ben Simon, and when he was weakened by grief, when he sank down, eyes shining wet before the still forms of his children, they had burned through his flesh and overtaken him.

  I buried the Essenes’ cure, for it was worthless now, as they said things of this world always were. As I dug in the hard, white earth, I wondered if perhaps I was the one being punished, if I was now meant to suffer as I had made my friend suffer when I stole what belonged to her.

  During the seven days my father was away to cleanse himself from his nearness to the dead, I did not eat or drink. I tied the goat to a low bush and didn’t listen when she called to me. On the dawn of every day I cut a mark of my sorrow into my leg, each more deeply than the last, for I now used Ben Simon’s sharp knife. Every wound was like a kiss to me, a dark slash of passion. The scent of blood emanated from my skin, a film that covered me. A leopard came one night and sat on the other side of the fire pit, watching me. I did not rise to chase it away. Come and devour me. See if I care. My eyes met with his, and I saw the yellow glimmer of violence in his glance. But in the end he must have deemed me worthless, for he slunk away.

  When my father returned from his days of purification, he was shocked to see my condition. I could barely rise from the ground, as ashen as the dust I would someday become. I had nothing in my life but to wait my turn for the World-to-Come. What was this earth to me now? A prison cell, a lash of rope. My father had always told me I was nothing, and that was what I had become. Later he admitted that, when he saw me before him, he thought of my mother at the hour of my birth, already gone from this world. On the day he found me wasting away, he thought of what she would have done had she been there with her only daughter. She would have wished to save me. That was why he convinced me at last to take a sip of water.

  On the eighth day after Jachim ben Simon was buried under stones, I broke my fast and drank from the leather goatskin that had belonged to him. I did so not for myself but for my beloved, for he was not yet gone from me. Though the Angel of Death had snatched him, a flicker of his spirit remained.

  By then I knew I would not bleed again.

  SOON AFTER, my father had a powerful vision. He awoke with tears running down his face and his faith renewed. He had dreamed that my brother was waiting for us in a tower. The dream was so real he could hear my brother speak to him. Look, and I will come to you, Amram had said. My father vowed that when the clouds lifted he would see his son.

  Believing this to be so, the assassin took a staff so that he might climb the highest of the crags, where he believed it would be possible to witness on earth what he had viewed in his dreams. I did not argue with him, but I was skeptical. My father might have faith, but I had none. I saw us as we had become: a man too old and frail to be a worthy assassin, his ruined daughter who was unable to weep or bleed. I thought perhaps someone had put a hate curse on me, perhaps it was Sia before she died, perhaps it was all I deserved in this world.

  The rains came now with great force. The air was blue and wet with heavy downpours. My father and I sat for days in the cave to escape the flash floods in the nachal, the goat our only company. This fetid cave was the last place that Ben Simon had been in this world; he had breathed in the damp, chalky scent of the limestone and had b
reathed out his soul inside the cobwebbed confines of this cavern. I thought I might feel closer to him here, but it was Sia’s spirit that hovered close by. I felt her pinch me as she tried to get my attention. She pursued me in my dreams. Did you think it would be any other way? Did you think you would get what you wanted? When I awoke, panting for air, I sometimes believed I could hear a burst of her laughter, as if we’d had a battle and she had been the one to win and was now pleased with the results.

  The months of winter were upon us. I wanted to run away, but the rains that had fallen in sheets made for a world I couldn’t flee. All at once the desert was a sea. Where there had been only the rattle of the wind, now all we heard was the rushing water in the nachal. What we had longed for we now had in abundance. There were pools everywhere; at the bottom of every ravine the floodwaters ran so fast that any goat or deer making a misstep could easily be carried away. Flying insects rose up in swarms, borne from the water in funnel clouds. Ibex came to drink and were refreshed. My little goat tugged on her rope; she’d always followed at my heels, but now she seemed maddened by the scent of rain. She kicked and raced in a circle, and her milk was fresh and tasted like grass. I wept to think that life went on even when so much had been lost, that rain still fell and myrtle grew between the rocks.

  I found a clear pool that had gathered in a gulley. I realized I hadn’t been cleansed since I’d gone to the ritual bath of the Essene women. I took off my garments and saw that I was bruised and thin. I barely recognized my own flesh. And yet my belly appeared thickened, bulging, so that I looked like a woman who had satisfied myself with too much water. I saw how deeply I had gashed my leg, scars that would never fully heal. I’d had to restrain myself from cutting myself to shreds, for the knife against me made me feel I was being taken by Ben Simon, and I longed for that blood-brimmed connection.