6
That day, during the few hours that followed the bird’s departure, in the brief period after the bird took flight from the groves, rose into the air, and disappeared into space’s labyrinth like a speck of dust vanishing into the ocean of the void, at that time when he felt empty and desolate and experienced a distress that surpassed the calamity of the years, that was greater than the pain of his whole life, he dashed out of the sanctuary. He traversed the valley’s groves, scaled the rugged, rocky scree with the vigor of a young man, and climbed the elevation leading to the encampment. He took long strides, forgetting that the Law had also stipulated how the leader should walk, forgetting that the forefathers had not neglected to shackle the leader’s feet, to teach him to imitate the way cranes walk. He forgot the Law and the forefathers, because he forgot he was a leader. He did not merely forget he was a leader then, he forgot that he was carrying another bird in his right hand. He was carrying the aged bird that old age had prevented from traveling, from joining his close-knit flock. He forgot he had lost that day not only the bird in the groves, the bird that sang, the bird that brought the secret and glad tidings; he had also lost the aged, haughty, indifferent bird that had in recent days been another boon companion for him. Even when he encountered the vassals and ordered them to assemble the nobles for a meeting, he didn’t notice their astonishment, he didn’t notice that they were looking furtively at his right hand, scrutinizing the dead bird. Even when he approached the sages and met with the elders in the tent, with the immortal Emmamma front and center, he did not relinquish the dead bird. He was still grasping its two long legs and dandling the scrawny body, which death had left even scrawnier and less significant, leaving it the size of a small handful of straw.
When he spoke to them that day, he said, “He left. He departed. He has flown away. You can rejoice: he has departed.”
The elders exchanged suspicious glances and looks of amazement and then of disapproval. They did not notice the pallor that had spread over the leader’s cheeks because they were following the movement of his long, thin fingers over the bird’s body, over its feathers.
The diviner had the audacity to ask, “Who departed, Master?”
He did not reply; instead he continued grooming the bird’s feathers with all the affection of a mother combing her virgin daughter’s hair on her wedding night. His eyes circled their faces, moving with the ecstasy of someone moved by singing, because he saw what he wasn’t observing, because he saw what he had longed to observe for the longest time. He didn’t see them. They were all certain that he didn’t see them.
He said, “You can make your preparations. You can dodge the horizons as soon as tomorrow. You can flee from here, but realize that you won’t be able to flee from your souls. I know you want to flee from your souls, but you attribute that desire to the Law, because you are cowards. Yes, you are cowards. Ha, ha, ha. …”
He laughed. The leader laughed. He laughed out loud, actually, offensively.
He didn’t just laugh; he borrowed the language of the street and humiliated the council. He characterized them as cowards and denigrated the Law. So was the person sitting opposite them the leader they knew or had the jinn succeeded in possessing him, there in the sanctuary, in Retem Valley, and substituted for him another creature, a hateful member of their jinn community?
The diviner said, “You’re feverish, Master. It’s best for people with a fever to rest in bed.”
The hero Ahallum remarked, “My master is ill. The best thing would be to send for the herbalist.”
But a stern sage threatened him with his forefinger. “No, he’s crazy. Only madmen speak like this. So send for the sorcerer, not the herbalist.”
The leader guffawed again, laughing sarcastically. Then he embraced the dead bird and asked, “What’s the point of all this, given that we’re setting out tomorrow or perhaps today? Haven’t you said that travel is the antidote for every ill? Let’s go! Prepare! In fact, rise and depart now. Now! Now! Hee, hee, hee. …”
Silence descended over the council, an ancient silence, a mysterious silence, an aloof silence, a hostile silence.
The next morning the diviner appeared before the tribe and made the pronouncement they always feared, the phrase they shied away from just as they shied away from fire — more than they shied away from a raid, more than from an epidemic: “Amghar yazzrenghin: the leader has preceded us.”
Children, women, and weak-hearted men began to sob, but the sages yielded to an ancient oasis, to the ancient silence, the stern, hostile, aloof silence.
______________
7. Disproportionate, dissimilar.
IV THE CHAPLET
What is love — this ill-natured thing that makes enemies even of friends?
1
The first garland was plaited like a girl’s braids.
He came to her tent shortly before sunset and placed the noble garlands on her lap. She leaned forward to examine the many strands. Then the breath of the mysterious blossoms perfumed her face. She noticed the flowers’ slender inflorescences (which young men compared to virgins’ locks and avoided referring to as crests) that intertwined in intimate embrace. Two side stems, which were crowned by white flowers with five petals, twisted around a central stem, which was also crowned by white flowers with five petals, the way a snake in the forest twists around the branch of an acacia tree till the branch, in turn, twists around the body of the snake, as the sages of those tribes say. The central stalk, which was crowned by almost imperceptible flowers, borrowed the flexibility of strands of hair to twine around the bodies of the two side stems. Then these slender bodies vanished in this intimate embrace. Of this marriage, all that showed was the soft, tender flowers’ fuzz that evoked the essence of a conquered creature. This being curved with the bend of a taut bow, meeting in a part that resembled a bow because in the rigor of the weaving, in the precision of the craftsmanship, in the inchoate, insane desire to suppress the stem, to hide the stalk, and to obliterate the three stems until nothing showed in the braid but retem blossoms, the juncture of the intertwining braids became a noble garland of white pearls.
The creator of this chaplet had not been content to make a single garland; that evening he presented the beauty a whole cluster of them. The beauty inhaled the perfume of the flowers piled in her lap and smiled. She smiled the type of smile that sorcerers normally see only in people “who have spent a long time talking about eternity” (as they describe hermits) and raised her fingers toward the void. The lover saw the row of her lower teeth when she laughed. She laughed in an odd way and then sneezed twice.
2
He had settled in the tribe’s camp a few months back and had attended the evening parties of the young women in the moonlight. He had, however, not rolled around ecstatically on the ground, and the jinn of ecstatic trancing had not seized hold of him. He had sat off by himself in the open. By sitting apart, he had seemed to be a loner like all foreigners and intimidating like senior jinn. Some individual tribesmen, however, affirmed that they had observed him swaying in response to the music and emitting incoherent sounds in response to the vibration of the single string of the imzad, which sought inspiration for its sweet tunes from the stars in the heavens and from the kingdoms of the Unknown. It was, however, certain as well that the ecstatic jinn had not seized him in the young women’s circle and that he had not tranced along with other fellows his age.