The nobles exchanged glances again. Aggulli asked even more skeptically, “What are you saying?”
The excavator dropped more stones into the column dividing the circle. The column was duplicated, leaving the design unbalanced. He lined up other pebbles along the horizontal line to restore the mandala’s balance. Without looking up, he replied, “I’m saying that the earth’s water is just as dear as the sky’s.”
The elders observed him with suspicious eyes as Aggulli resumed his questioning: “What are you saying?”
“I mean to say that the earth’s sacrificial victim will be no less significant than the sky’s!”
A grumbling murmur was audible in the council, and the excavator leapt to his feet.
10
Ever since he had learned how to excavate and had discovered his first drop of water inside the earth’s cavity, he had asked this messenger whence it came and where it was heading. At first it oozed from clefts in rocks — viscous, skimpy, and mysterious. He would run his fingers over the smooth slabs to feel the moist viscosity. He would lick the ends of his fingers with the tip of his tongue, savoring the salinity, the array of metals, the mix of soils, and the sweetness of the torrents’ waters in turn. The secret of this unidentified messenger, however, grew increasingly obscure during a migration.
In some places he found no trace of it but would hear its melodies once he had finished digging his shelter and stretched out to sleep. Then he would press against the earth, pulling the encircling blanket’s edge from his lower ear, and listen. At times, while listening, he would hear a distant, unruly roar. At other times he would hear an obscure, insistent chatter. Eventually, he learned something about the modus operandi of this messenger, which would growl when raging and rush away as if falling from an abyss. It hid in aquifers as if fleeing from a jinni afreet. It raced migrating nomads and beat them to an earth that does not exist on earth. It would sing during its eternal journey the hostile rap song that does not so much reveal as conceal a secret. The excavator followed the song and discovered its moist tongue. Torments of longing would overwhelm him, and he would not even be aware of the tears welling up in his eyes. He would not hear himself addressing this nomad with a nomad’s language: “Where do you come from, Water? Where are you heading, Water?” At times when the subterranean currents slowed, as he delighted in this traveler’s murky chatter, he understood his beloved was busy addressing creatures. These addresses were muffled but amiable and eager, and contained in their tunes the angst of lovers.
He would follow these arcane orations till he forgot himself. The tongue would engross him, and the messenger’s prophecies would seize hold of him. The creatures’ replies would also astonish him. The soirée would continue with diverting evening conversation, and he would quit the earth as astonishment at the talisman overcame him. He would repeat it as a mantra for reflection. Then a glow would lead him to the door of riddles. So he would be amazed, laugh out loud, question, explore, or doze off. By keeping tabs on the question, he would find solace and attain the life normally lost through sociability, which he considered a catnap.
He would have liked not to return from this slumber. He hoped he would not be forced to pry his ear from the earth. He would rather not have been obliged to stand on his feet. He hoped he wouldn’t emerge from the subterranean corridor’s dark recesses. He frequently remained beneath the lower levels for entire days, coming out only when the sages worried about his absence and came to intrude on his solitude in the shelter.
But departure also had a set date, and the hour of farewell would inevitably arrive one day. The herald would rush through the wasteland, crying out the day of their departure. Tumult would dominate the campsite, boys would race between tent sites, women would emerge to break down the tents, herdsmen would arrive with the caravans of camels, and slaves, servants, and vassals would start readying the bags and cinching up the luggage. Then he would descend.
He would descend to the lower reaches, pull the corner of the blanket away from his right ear, and prostrate himself. He would press himself against the dirt, stretch out, lie on his belly, and touch his lips to the clay. Then the salty crystals would slide into his mouth and onto his tongue as he sensed the delicious saline taste. He would press more firmly against the body and meld with it till he became the groom uniting with his bride on their wedding night. He would tremble and shudder, overwhelmed by an orgasmic climax. Then the eternal melody would break out from the solid rock. The song would grow louder and flow through the earth’s body before circulating through his whole physique. He would hear the eternal call, and longing would flood out and subdue the world of sorrows. He would mumble impotently, “Master, may I accompany you? Why don’t you take me with you, God of Wanderers?” The call would grow more intense; the leitmotif of sorrow would become more strident in the call, and tears would spring from his eyes while his breast heaved with groans of lamentation. Then the leader’s messengers would arrive to wrench him forcibly away from this feverish tryst.
11
“Master, may I accompany you? Why don’t you take me with you, God of Wanderers?”
He repeated this talisman to himself at first in secret. Then he uttered it in public. Next he sang the call once he found the articulated joint and began to strike the earth with a terrifying stone-headed pickaxe.
At first, boys gathered around him, but the elders soon arrived.
They arrived as if coming for a council meeting. The venerable elder led the way, but bursts of wind buffeted his skinny body, which lurched with the gusts. So he would swerve off the path for some steps. The group behind him veered off course, too, without ever offering to assist him. When he returned to the trail, they returned also, still walking behind him. He brandished his burnished stick in the empty air and emitted the groans of people who have lived for a long time, who have lost their contemporaries, who have lost their loved ones, and who wander through tribes like strangers.
The venerable elder stood above him and gazed at the void, which was flooded with mirage trails. His beady eyes stared at the expanse that everyone knew he couldn’t see, because eyes accustomed to gazing at the homelands of eternity cannot revert to viewing the wasteland of the living.
He emitted his painful moan, the moan of the defenseless, the moan of exiles, the moan of people who have crossed with those who have traveled back into antiquity, leaving behind in the desert only their scrawny bodies. To the excavator’s ears, this moan sounded like another wail of lament.
Emmamma uttered his prophecy from the other shore: “I was sure you would attempt to find the secret. I was certain that water is a treasure only found by a man with a talisman.”
The men removed their flowing garments, rolled up their sleeves, cinched their belts tight, and began to dig.
12
That night he heard the call.
He went to sleep and a little later heard the call. He did not exactly hear the call that night; instead he made the rounds with the wanderer, tasting the pleasure of sliding along, flowing past like the days, and losing spatial limitations once he discovered he was every place. When he awoke from his slumbers, he heard the messenger’s chattering clearly. He heard the messenger dancing with the outcroppings of solid rock, getting cheeky with slabs of stone, dispersing in hollows in the lowlands, complaining for a time, then clamoring, and jabbering in some other language occasionally. The messenger fell, frothed, leveled off, bubbled up, and flowed through the secret articulations, racing against the march of days without the days’ dominion realizing it. The messenger told the creatures of the lower reaches about the pit. It said it came as a messenger from the sky to become the earth’s blood, the earth’s tongue, the earth’s spirit, and the earth’s call. It wasn’t shy about revealing the secret and telling creatures of the lower reaches that it is the call. It addressed its loved ones only allegorically, but the creatures heard the word “call” as clearly as those inhabiting the nugatory realm. Then some factions believed what they heard and others denied it.