Alabaster

by Chris Aslan

  “Sisters, you go on,” says Elisheba. “I want to talk with Mariam.”

  The women scrutinize the slough that was once a path, sigh, and then pick their way down. We return to Elisheba’s rock. “How long has it been now?” she asks.

  I know she means since my father was exiled. “Around two years,” I say.

  “And Eleazar?”

  “Please, Auntie Elisheba, I don’t want to talk about my brother.”

  Elisheba nods sympathetically. “Hillel, my son-in-law, leaves tomorrow for the north. I’ll get him to ask around and see if he can find out anything.” I thank her and we’re silent for a moment. I sense that there is more Elisheba wishes to say. “Mariam, one of Hillel’s colleagues returned from the capital yesterday with news.”

  I hold my breath.

  “It’s probably better that you talk to him yourself. He said that the authorities have begun a new campaign against the nationalists, the militants, and the insurrectionists. He said…” She pauses and swallows, and then lowers her voice. “He said that they’ve nailed up prisoners all along the road leading into the northern gates of the city. He said that they’ve spared no one. Young and old were nailed, whatever their age.”

  She puts an arm around my shoulder. I say nothing.

  “I can introduce you to him if you’d like to hear more,” she says, and I shake my head.

  “What good would it do?” I say. “And please don’t mention this to Marta or Mara or Aunt Shiphra. It’ll just make them worried and there’s nothing we can do.”

  Elisheba nods. “About your father,” she says. “Hillel says that everyone in the north is talking about the new doctor. There is no sickness he cannot cure, they say.”

  I’m about to ask more, but one of the women shouts at me. It’s my turn at the spring. I thank Elisheba and turn my attentions to my water jar. I angle it under the trickle of water from the spring above, and as it slowly fills, I ask myself silently how I feel; sometimes it’s the only way I’ll know, as no one else asks. I feel numb. If Eleazar was nailed or not, what difference does it make? As far as I’m concerned, my brother is dead to me. It’s just me and Marta left.

  After Father’s banishment, Eleazar spent more time at Auntie Shiphra’s compound than at ours. His devotion to Yokkan had grown even more since Yokkan had beaten up the first boy to make a joke about Father, and the first boy who tried to stop Eleazar from swimming with them in the brook in case he polluted the water. Auntie Shiphra also shared some of the stigma, being a leper’s sister. It was hardest, though, for Marta and me. So many people in the village had prayed and fasted for a miracle and we were a living and constant reminder that those prayers had failed. I even hated myself for it.

  Marta rarely left the compound, pouring all her energies into carpet-weaving. Whenever I suggested that she come and help up at our land with the olives, she found some excuse or simply said that we needed the income from the carpets she wove. Annas stopped calling round.

  Nothing was spoken because the engagement had never actually been formalized. I don’t know whether it was his choice or pressure from his father, but either way, who wants to take a leper’s daughter into their home? Marta refused to talk about it but sometimes I’d hear her get up in the night to go outside, and I knew it was to weep in privacy. I bumped into Annas on the street a few times on my way to the well or returning from the market. The first time he opened his mouth as if about to ask after Marta, but then stopped, nodded awkwardly, and hurried off. After that, whenever we met we would both nod to each other but leave it at that.

  Eleazar and Yokkan began to sit at the feet of Holy Halfai and to learn the law. Eleazar burnt with an insufferable new religious zeal, and during the times he was actually home, he would recite long sections of it to us. Marta would nod encouragingly, her hands busy with cooking, cleaning, or weaving.

  He became increasingly obsessed with purity laws. Marta was told off one morning in winter for huddling under her woollen shawl. “Don’t you know it’s a sin to wear wool and linen together?” Eleazar demanded, quoting that passage about not mixing fibres. He was also hard on himself. One morning I caught him slicing a nub of soap with a change of clothes draped over his shoulder.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  He reddened a little. “I must purify myself,” he said. “I’m going to the brook to bathe and to wash these sullied clothes.”

  “El, are you mad? It’s winter. You can’t go swimming,” I said.

  “I’m not swimming. I’m washing. It is the law.” Then clearing his throat and avoiding eye contact, he quoted the passage in the law that deals with semen emissions.

  As he left, I looked at his broadening frame and realized that my little brother was growing up. I didn’t like who he was growing into.

  Soon the washing line was permanently hung with his drying waist cloths, and then he started enquiring about our menstrual cycles. “It’s none of your business,” I snapped.

  “I am the man of this house,” he replied. “And it is my duty to ensure that we keep our holy laws. If you and Marta are bleeding, then you shouldn’t be sleeping in the inner room; you should go up on the roof, and wash your bedding afterwards.”

  “What an expert you’ve become,” I glowered. “If you’re so concerned, then you can sleep on the roof. Or go and sleep with Yokkan. You spend all your waking hours together.”

  Eleazar stalked off and we didn’t see him for over a week.

  While Marta wove carpets and Eleazar studied the law and issued orders, I was left to manage our olive groves, to fetch water, and to go to market. At first I tried to drag Eleazar with me to the olive groves, knowing it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to be alone up there as a woman. This precaution soon appeared unnecessary.

  You see, there is something more contagious than leprosy that people fear catching through contact with the sufferer, and that’s misfortune. Wherever I went I was accompanied by tongue clicks of pity, and whispers of “poor girl” and “shame”, but never enquiries as to how I was doing, or even a hand on my shoulder. The girls with whom I used to joke and gossip so easily would now offer me their place while waiting at the well, and I would be offered cheaper prices at the stalls around the well. I learned to accept pity and distance.

  Throughout this, Imma was the only girl who still talked and interacted with me as if I were a normal person. In fact, the first distancing of our closeness was not because of my father but because of Eleazar.

  “I’m sick of him,” I told her, as we sat under the shade of a large fig tree near the prayer house. “He and Yokkan do nothing but recite the law and tell us what we’re doing wrong. Ever since they started sitting at the feet of –” I tailed off, realizing how insensitive I’d been.

  “You mean, ever since they started sitting at my father’s feet?” she said.

  “I’m sorry; it’s not your father’s fault. He’s our holy man. But these boys strutting around issuing orders…”

  “I think it’s good that Eleazar is studying under my father. He needs men in his life to show him the right way to live, and we need young men willing to fight for our nation.”

  “Yes, but you don’t understand –”

  “No, Miri, you don’t understand,” said Imma, and got up and left.

  The hardest times during that first year of Father’s exile, and the times I would long for, were when someone would come knocking at our compound door to let us know that lepers had been spotted out near the main road.

  Marta would always press a few coins into my hand and tell me what to buy. I would run down to the market, make the purchases as quickly as possible, never haggling, and then head for the main road. Marta wasn’t far behind, always keeping ready some of Father’s favourite dishes, which she would wrap into fig-leaf parcels. Sometimes Aunt Shiphra and Mara would join us. Yokkan even joined us briefly once. Eleazar never did, managing somehow to absent himself every time. It just made me hate him.

  Fat
her was never alone. He explained on his first visit how lepers travel together, partly for protection from stone-throwers, but also because they lose the sensation of pain in their skin and rely on each other to spot injuries.

  “Usually whoever’s healthiest leads the way, which right now is me,” Father explained during his first visit. He was squatting under a date palm while we kept the required seven paces from him, shielding our eyes with our hands from the glare of the sun. The other two lepers squatted further away from us in the scanty shade of another date palm, giving us a little privacy. One was once a handsome young man; now a lesion grew down his chin and the left side of his throat. The other was an older, stooped woman, in the advanced stages of the disease. “Auntie Demarchia has developed lesions on her eyelids, which means she scrapes her eyes every time she blinks, and now she’s losing vision and needs me or Malchus to guide her,” said Father. “She comes from a wealthy family in the capital and shares generously with us whatever they give her.”

  “What about the bag of coins the village gave you?” I asked. “Surely that will last you for a while.”

  Father smiled. “Don’t be angry with me, girls,” he said. “The colony is its own village; like a big family. The sickest people can no longer go out and beg, so we all agree to help each other.”

  “We’re still your family,” said Marta gently. “I’m glad you’ve helped others.”

  “It’s really very interesting,” Father continued, trying hard to stay positive. “We operate like a village but with different rules. It’s acceptable, for example, for men and women who are unrelated to travel together. Rich and poor live together; leprosy makes us equal.”

  “How do you know all of this?” I asked. “You’ve only been there for a few weeks.”

  “My new friend, Gamaliel, runs our colony. Under his leadership, we’ve improved our tents and the permanent hovels. There’s a better system for burying the dead and deciding who gets their bed. He’s even planning on getting the colony some chickens.”

  “It sounds much better than I thought,” I said. “And you look well?” I couldn’t keep my voice from inflecting a question.

  Father nodded. “The mark on my back is bigger, but it seems to grow slowly. Malchus washes it carefully for me each morning. I’m alive, and today I see my beautiful daughters! Just looking at you is nourishment for my soul.”

  “Father, when I do this,” I said, hugging my arms around myself, “it means that I’m embracing you.”

  “And the same when I do it back to you,” said Father, smiling, his eyes shining with tears. “And how is El?” he asked, trying to keep his tone bright and his eyes from leaking.

  “Oh, you know El,” I said. “He’s always off playing with the other boys. He’s become Yokkan’s shadow and we don’t see much more of him than you…” I tailed off.

  “Well,” Father coughed, and wiped his eyes. “I’m sure he’s very busy. Tell him I love him and that I miss him.”

  “I’m sorry about El,” I said.

  Father shook his head. “Don’t be hard on him, Miri. He’s still young. He’s just a boy.”

  We talked about general village news and passed on greetings from everyone.

  “When will you come again?” Marta asked, after Father had called the other lepers over to eat with him.

  “There is a system for everything in the colony,” Father said. “No matter how much a village or town weeps and wails as it casts out its lepers, no matter how much they were loved or how high their social standing, no community wants to be visited by lepers. The most they can tolerate is about once a month. If I come more often, then instead of running to fetch you, the village boys will run to collect stones.”

  “But Father, you’re one of us. You’re from the village,” I said.

  “Trust me, Miri, it’s always the same. I’ve learned a lot from Gamaliel.”

  And so, every month, Father would return. I soon sensed that he was right. Although friends of Father’s and some of our distant relatives would press coins upon me when they saw me in the street, saying, “For the next time you see your father,” no one outside our family ever came to see him.

  Perhaps because we saw Father so infrequently, we were more aware than he was of the steady hold on him the disease took. I remember the first time he dropped a basket containing a large, baked red-belly fish from the Great Lake, a special delicacy. “It’s alright,” he’d laughed, peeling off the baked skin, now covered in sand, and blowing on it. “The insides are still nice and clean.” His hands were becoming clawed.

  “Mind, it’s piping hot,” said Marta, as Father tucked in anyway. I wondered if he was losing sensation in his mouth. Oil from the fish dribbled down his arms, and he rolled the sleeves of his robe up to prevent them getting stained, casually revealing another white lesion growing along the underside of his left forearm. We said nothing. What was there to say?

  A month or so later, it was just Malchus and Father who came. “Please, Malchus, join us,” said Marta. It seemed rude to leave him loitering alone. “How is Auntie Demarchia?”

  Father and Malchus both looked worn out and tired. “She can’t move any more and it’s getting hard for her to breathe. It’s inside her lungs now,” said Malchus flatly.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Marta.

  “Malchus, I remember how much you liked Marta’s curds with date and pomegranate syrup,” I said, trying to lighten the mood. “Here, there’s enough for you to take back for Auntie Demarchia as well.”

  “Thank you,” said Malchus, as he and Father picked without appetite at the large dried gourd-half Marta had filled. “But she’s virtually stopped eating.”

  “That reminds me: I have more salve from Auntie Shiphra,” said Marta, placing the wooden dish near them and then backing away.

  “Please thank her for me,” said Father. I noticed a roughness to his voice that hadn’t been there before, as the leprosy worked its way inside him.

  The next time Father and Malchus visited, Father was limping and leaning on a wooden staff. “I had an accident,” he said, attempting a smile as Malchus helped him sit down under what we now referred to as Father’s date palm. He stretched out his leg, which was covered in a huge welt. “I was trying to follow your recipe for lentil stew.” He looked over at Marta. “And I must be getting clumsy because I managed to knock over the pot and was so busy trying to salvage the soup that I didn’t realize how much had gone over my leg.”

  “Aunt Shiphra needs to see this,” I said. “Let me fetch her. I’m sure she has a salve or a balm that would help.”

  “No, don’t trouble her,” Father rasped. He seemed to be finding it harder to speak. But I had already leapt to my feet and was running to Auntie Shiphra’s house, grateful for the escape. Perhaps I wasn’t so different from Eleazar.

  “You just sit there, and drink some of this to calm you,” said Auntie Shiphra, as I burst into the compound weeping. “Let me gather together what I need without you under my feet and then we’ll go back and see your father together.”

  Father’s leg recovered a little, thanks to the salves and balms Auntie Shiphra had concocted, but his body seemed to have forgotten how to heal properly. He still walked with a limp the next month we saw him. This time it seemed to take more effort for Father to speak and Marta, sensing this, asked Malchus to tell us more about his life.

  “I was married, but God had yet to bless us with children,” he said. “My wife was a beauty and all the men were jealous of me. I’m from one of the ten towns around the Great Lake. My father wanted me to follow him and my brother and be a fisherman. But I wanted a job where I could sleep at night and work during the day, and I saw how quickly the men would rush to get their catch sorted and to market before it spoiled. I saw an opportunity there and talked to one of the Western traders who told me how they smoke fish in his town to preserve it instead of salting it, which is expensive. So I started my own business. First thing in the morning I’d be on the s
hore waiting for the boats to come in with the night’s catch, and by sundown whatever I’d purchased would be smoked and hung up to dry. It’s not glamorous, but after a while you don’t even notice the smell; not that I can smell much these days.”

  “And how long ago were you…” Marta tailed off, curiosity replaced with embarrassment.

  “Cast out?” Malchus asked. “Around a year and a half ago my wife noticed the first spot. A week later, I joined the nearest colony. I wanted to stay close to my wife and to my father and brother. Then another man courted my wife and the holy man in our town declared that she was as good as widowed and gave them permission to marry. That’s when I travelled down to the capital and then heard about the colony.”

  “I’m sorry,” was all I could think of to say.

  “It’s hard not to let the changes on the outside change you on the inside, too.” He took another slow mouthful. “I think we forgot to tell you last time. Auntie Demarchia is dead.”

  It was towards the end of summer when we saw Father for the last time. He and Malchus arrived together. The lesion on Malchus’s chin had thickened and distorted his fine features even further. Father now had a lesion on his cheek, and his leg smelled as if it was rotting, although neither he nor Malchus seemed to notice. I wondered how ravished Father’s body was under his ragged robe.

  “Could El join us?” Father asked, once he and Malchus had assumed their position under the date palm and we had laid down platters of food and dried fish for them to eat. I looked to Marta, who seemed similarly uncomfortable.

  “You know how he is, Father,” she said. “Always running around somewhere. I could look for him, if you’d like.”

  Father shook his head. “He must be turning into a fine young man.”

  “I’m not sure about that,” I said. “But he’s the tallest out of the three of us now.”

  Father smiled. “I hoped I might see him one last time before I say goodbye.”