The Dovekeepers: A Novel

by Alice Hoffman

  When Herod’s soldiers were lowered from the tops of the cliffs on thick ropes, dressed for battle and ready to defeat him, the rebel cut the throats of his seven sons, one by one. He then slashed the throat of his wife before he followed, leaping into the ravine where he’d scattered his sons’ bodies. He would not allow those he loved to be subjected to the torture and cruelty of the king. Instead he left this world alongside them, even though it is written that none of our people may harm himself. As Taxo cast himself upon the rocks, perhaps he imagined God would blame the rocks for his death and he would be forgiven in the World-to-Come.

  Though our law states that no man may wound himself, Yoav has destroyed the father he had once been to his sons, and in doing so he has destroyed himself. My son-in-law never comes to see the boys, for when he lost himself, he lost them as well. Should he happen upon the children in the alleyways or the orchards, he walks on the way a blind man might. At first the boys ran to him and clutched at his legs, but it did no good. Yoav does not blink, or stammer, or even gaze upon them, not if they throw themselves at him, desperate for his attentions. All that is good in this world is concealed from the man who was my son-in-law. The glinting water in a cup is sinister in his eyes, the clear sky is an affront, and his children have become nothing more than reminders of how flesh can burn and be turned to dust.

  People take his negligence as proof that something is wrong with the children. Why would their own father disown them, even though they are so beautiful, with golden hair and dark eyes, reminiscent of their mother’s? There are those who whisper that the boys are possessed and this has caused their silence, but I understand that words aren’t necessary. The doves have taught me that. It is possible to speak without words, to know another creature’s wants and desires though there is only silence. That was my lesson to learn, my fate all along.

  Each morning when I arrive, the doves know me; their song rises and falls with pleasure and acceptance. It is always there, a river of sound. Someone who isn’t accustomed to such noise might cover her ears and run outside. Yael did exactly that on her first day with us, hiding her head in alarm. We laughed and teased her, calling out that if mere birds could frighten her so, she had best never face a fierce beast. And yet the doves go to her as if she could speak their language. Though she doesn’t seem to care for them, they fly to her as if charmed. It’s her silence that draws them in and comforts them.

  As for me, I’m grateful for my work in the dovecotes. The more distracted I am, the more possible it is for me to go on for another day. The sun streams in, and I begin to feed my charges their grain. I chase the nesting ones away to search for eggs. Most flutter up, but if they refuse to leave their nests, I shake my apron at them. How is it that I can feel sorrow for the doves, so much so that when I take their speckled eggs and place them in a basket I often weep, and yet when I dream of the men I killed, I feel nothing at all.

  BEFORE WE came here we believed that our village in the Valley of the Cypresses was heaven, or perhaps we imagined it was not unlike the heaven we would someday enter. We should have known it would be taken from us. Nothing in this world is lasting, only our faith lives on. One day soldiers from the legion arrived, six across, walking down roads my own father had helped to build. First the legionnaires came, trained in Rome, decorated with chain mail and helmets; then the fierce auxiliary troops arrived, many of them tribesmen, wearing leather tunics, carrying long broadswords and lances. They wanted any riches they could find. From that morning when they entered our village, our land belonged to them and our lives did, too. They killed a white cockerel on the steps of the synagogue. In our law, that is a sin. They were well aware of this doctrine. The bird’s blood defiled us. This initial act of violence announced what the future would bring, if only the priests had bothered to read the signs left behind by the rooster’s bones. A hundred of our people went to rally against the legion and demand an apology. These were men who paid taxes and had homes and families, reputable, honest men who were certain this day would end with an apology from Rome.

  They could not have been more wrong.

  We did not see beyond the cypresses that grew with fragrant twisted bark set within a wood that had been there for so long we thought it would last forevermore. Outrage howled from ruined villages nearby for those who could hear, but we turned a deaf ear to their misery. For those who breathed deeply, there was the stink of war, but it was also the season when the oleander’s pink blooms sent out their fragrance and perfumed the air. Our land had been conquered many times, the sweet groves and fields drawing outsiders to us just as surely as the baker called to his customers with the rich scent of his loaves. But that was in the past; we wanted to believe that our lives were settled. My husband paid no attention to what was happening. In that he was indeed single-minded, as well as hardworking. The wise men and rabbis bowed to the legion, accepting taxes so high we could barely survive, but as long as there was wood for his ovens, my husband was happy. He cut the logs himself, and there was a pile as tall as a mountain in our yard. My husband asked only for a blessing from Adonai for what he was about to bring forth into this world each day, the mystery of the challah. He had white powder in the creases of his skin. Each time he kissed me he left a white mark, a baker’s kiss. He assured me that, if we paid no attention to what was around us and did no harm, we would be safe. People always needed bread.

  He left our home determined to bring the first round loaves to the synagogue as an offering, as he always did. He had vowed to avoid trouble, but on this day it found him. Our neighbors had collected in a beleaguered group on their way to plead their case so they would not lose their homes to the Romans. My husband was convinced to go with them. He had his tray of offerings, the loaves covered by a prayer shawl that had been so finely spun gold threads were braided among the purple fringes. He was ready to go to the rabbis, but when his neighbors scolded him and said all men must make a stand, he was compelled to make his mark with the others. The letter R fashioned into the crusts of the loaves he baked should have been enough of a mark for him, my name his inspiration and his shield. Instead, he joined those men who wanted more.

  I KNEW something was wrong when I smelled smoke. There were loaves in the oven. I checked them, but they weren’t yet burning. Why did he go on this day of all days? Why on this morning was he not single-minded when at all other times he saw nothing but his own bakery? The barley, the salt, the coriander, the cumin, these were the ingredients that made up his world. Until now the only difficulty that had plagued my husband was that rats slunk through the windows; like many bakers, he often had to lay down hemlock to turn them away from the flour bins. Now there was peril in every corner of our world. The demons had flung open the doors to our village. They had declared us to be victims as they stood on a dark ledge and rubbed their hands together gleefully. What you are given, they declared, we now take away.

  As the hours passed, I began to pace back and forth in alarm. The baker had expected to return before the loaves in the slow-burning oven were brown. Does a man go off and disappear like that? He’d told me to remove the loaves when the sun was in the center of the sky if he hadn’t yet returned. I didn’t. What had he meant by that? Had he had some idea of the trouble to come? Noon came and went. I gazed out in alarm as I saw the shadows lengthening, the smoke drifting over courtyards and roofs.

  I thought if I waited to remove the loaves, my husband would smell the bread and know it was burning and run back home. At worst he would be cross with me for not doing as I was instructed. But he still hadn’t returned when the sun had begun to drop down in the direction of evening. By now the loaves were charred, the crusts black with soot.

  I had one thought, and that was to find my husband. I could be single-minded, too, perhaps that was what had bound us together for so many years. I opened the door, frantic to begin a search for the Baker, ready to dart into the street though it was now teeming with our neighbors, many of them stained with their own
blood and with the blood of their fathers.

  As I was readying myself to leave, I found my son-in-law, Yoav, in my doorway. He wasn’t a fighter then, not yet the warrior who would vow to never again cut his hair. Instead, he was a gentle man who longed to run from trouble. He had the panicked look of a scholar who is suddenly faced with the brutalities and the vile concerns of life. Like my husband, he had been dedicated to his work, concerned with his studies and with the will of Adonai. I had already wrapped my head scarf close to my skull, possessed with the intention to search for my husband, but my son-in-law stopped me. He warned I must prepare myself for what he had to say.

  I raised my chin, ready to push past him, not willing to listen. What could stop me from going to my husband? What excuse could my son-in-law offer that might compel me to give up my search? My son-in-law, who was devout and would never touch a woman other than my daughter, his wife, placed his hand on my arm.

  “There is a reason I tell you not to go out there,” he murmured. There could be only one reason. A world that had unraveled so completely that the man I’d spent a lifetime with had been lost. I could see the truth in my son-in-law’s eyes when he began to speak. He confessed he had seen the husk that had been my husband in the center of our town, cast upon the plaza with dozens of our neighbors, broken like a branch in the wind. It was too late to retrieve the body. If I tried, I would only lose my life as well.

  Despite his report, I tried to push past the place where my son-in-law had planted himself in my doorway. He was stronger than I imagined, or perhaps I was weakened by regret.

  “Listen to me,” Yoav insisted. He said it in a way that gave me no choice but to hear. “There is no other way for me to say this, and no time to reason with you. Your husband is already in the World-to-Come.”

  There was no map to lead the living there. I could not reach him. The Romans were already piling up bodies in the street. They had lit the fire which had alerted me to the misery of the day. Now I realized it was not bread I smelled on the waves of smoke pouring through town but the bitter odor of flesh.

  Yoav was a young rabbi who was respected and learned; because of his rank he’d had to think twice before taking a baker’s daughter as his bride. Most rabbis searched out other rabbis’ daughters in marriage, for like congregated with like, as the birds in the sky gathered with their own kind. But of course Yoav had wanted my daughter. Zara was beautiful beyond measure. No wonder he had courted her, ignoring the more suitable girls who chased after him. My daughter’s name meant beautiful morning, and she truly was brighter than anything in this world, her skin golden, her hair like wheat, her countenance made even more lovely because her black eyes were a reminder of night before morning broke through, a time when the world was a mystery and shadows were all we had.

  I’d often wondered if perhaps Zara had been given to me by an angel. How else could a plain woman such as I be blessed with a daughter who resembled a queen? I took great pride in her, and for good reason.

  I never once stopped to consider that what you are given can also be taken away.

  WE HAD BEEN flattered when Yoav came to live in our house. My husband always cut a piece of the loaf offering for him every morning, the first of the bread baked that day. Now this learned young man we had so honored with our pride and respect had been turned pale, quaking with fear. As I leaned against him, sobbing, he was no different than any other frightened man, no better certainly, perhaps more terrified than many. He insisted I hurry and pack. I hesitated until he informed me that my daughter and her boys were already awaiting us.

  Something compelled me to pack a few extra ingredients. You would think I would take up my finest robes or my marriage bracelets, those special, valued items I kept in the cabinet beside the bed, hidden where no thief could reach them. Instead I took what had belonged to the Baker: a wooden bowl, a clutch of heavy spoons, the white cloth he tied around his waist while he was at work, the garment he wore so that no evil would come upon us as long as he was dressed in his prayer shawl. At the last moment I collected several of the vials he kept beneath the stove: coriander and cumin and salt. A jar of the fermented dough which caused the loaves to rise.

  I knew that the dead did not leave us so quickly, so I whispered to my husband as I packed. Look at us now, I said to the man I’d lived beside for so many years, as if he was beside me still. Look what we’ve become.

  We were like rats, scurrying away before the flood of death overtook us. I grabbed the burned bread from the oven, scalding my hands. Blisters would rise on my fingers, but at least I made certain we had the last loaves of the Baker’s bread to sustain us. Yoav took my arm to lead me away. I knew we dared not linger. But I believe my son-in-law was not the only one with me in the bakery that day. I am convinced there was an angel standing beside me, whispering Take this, not that.

  At the last moment I reached for the small jar of the hemlock my husband used on vermin.

  Perhaps the angel had given me what I needed most of all.

  PEOPLE we had known our whole lives were swarming out of the village, some carrying all they owned. Chaos had overcome us, and our lives were like stones thrown in a game of chance, cast up into the air, only to fall and scatter upon the ground. Broken pottery littered the road, and many tossed away belongings they soon discovered were too heavy to bring on such a hurried, frantic journey. There were stray dogs barking and the echo of babies crying. Everywhere there were flames as people set their own homes on fire rather than allow the Romans to sack them after they’d been abandoned. People wanted to ensure that their enemies couldn’t enjoy what they had labored a lifetime to possess. By the next day not a brick would remain, our world having been snatched away overnight. There were women in the street sobbing, but the wind had come up, the merciless wind from the sea that in time would bring us winter, and no one could hear these women’s voices. No one could determine if they uttered oaths or prayers.

  I followed at my son-in-law’s heels, intent, as he was, on making certain that my daughter and her children were kept safe. I wept as we went on, certain I’d bring a curse upon us by not preparing my husband’s body. I was meant to sit beside him all night and help him travel into the World-to-Come with lamentations and prayers. At any other time I would have remained with the husk that had once housed his spirit before the body that had contained him was left in the cave beside the bones of our people. I thought of our forefathers fleeing from Egypt, of their children who stumbled in the sand as they made their way out of bondage, of the waters that rose and then parted before them. Their agony had never been more real to me. I felt I might weep on their behalf.

  I draped a white shawl over my own shoulders, already in mourning for a man who had baked my initial into every loaf of bread. I slipped on the color of the garments of the dead, as though I had passed from this world along with my husband. For a moment, I thought I should stay behind, give up my life at the hands of the Romans and allow my spirit to join with his. But I had a vision of my daughter and of her children, dearer than any treasure, and I knew what I must do. I prayed for my husband, but I left our village that evening. Like the rats, I fled what was tumbling down around us, forsaking the lives we had led that were now destroyed.

  BY NIGHTFALL we were journeying toward the wilderness. It was the month of Tishri, when we celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the festival marking the time the Almighty begins to write down the names of those who belong in the Book of Life and will live for another year. I had no idea that we would still be wandering during Yom Kippur, the time to atone for our sins, and that the book would be closed on that day, then sealed. The names that had not been written on its pages were those who would not live into the next year.

  We were prepared for a long journey. My son-in-law had brought along the two donkeys and the cart that had pulled sacks of emmer and wheat to the bakery and turned the millstone to grind flour. I carried the last five loaves of my husband’s bread, tokens of what had brought us our good li
fe. My daughter had packed jars of olives and oil and had brought along cheese wrapped in cloth and leather canisters of water. We ran, and the donkeys ran with us. Above us there were huge flocks of birds, all fleeing the billows of smoke issued by the many fires set in the village. We slept huddled together, in the open, unused to the cruel way of the wilderness, yearning for the scent of baking bread and the softness of our own beds. My son-in-law wore the long tunic of a scholar. He looked distraught when my daughter embraced him and told him we would be lost without him, perhaps frightened that the faith she had in him to lead us was misplaced. He was more at home with his scrolls and prayers than he was guiding us through the wilderness.

  At night I dreamed of my husband. He was with me as the dead often are before they move on. They say those who have left us don’t change who they are even in the World-to-Come. My husband was kneading bread, working hard, as if he was still in our world. He seemed the same, a kind and serious man intent on his baking, just as he’d always been, but he was using ingredients I didn’t recognize. The dough was red, and the spices were ground from the petals of black flowers and from the sharp stingers of honeybees. I heard him speak then. He said, Every loaf of bread feeds you in the way you need to be fed. My husband had been a simple man and had used words only when necessary. Now, in my dreams, I felt certain he was telling me something I needed to hear. I awoke wishing he had said more.

  In the morning, the flocks of birds fleeing over the hillsides were so enormous they blotted out the sun. I held my tongue, though I was certain this was a bad sign. The white cockerel who’d been murdered on the stairs of the synagogue was following us, that was what I believed, sending his messengers to pursue us. The birds passed us, their flight faster than we would ever be, and that told us something as well.