When he loosened the bandage wrapping the eyes, he found that the linen had adhered to the eyelids as the blood dried. Then he, too, began to sway back and forth, as if mimicking the hero, and released a long, barely audible moan. He plunged his fingers into a container filled with a dark, viscous liquid and began to anoint his patient’s eyes. He continued to moan his mysterious song till he finished freeing the scrap of cloth from the dried blood. He pulled the cloth away, and then the damage to the eyes was obvious. They were bloody and swollen, as if a wild beast’s fangs had ravaged them.
The herbalist scooted back and sighed deeply. He remarked like a diviner repeating a prophecy: “When a herbalist is perplexed about the cure, a patient is left with the choice between a sorcerer or a diviner.”
He dipped a piece of black linen in another container, which was filled with a green liquid, and began to massage his patient’s eyes with that. He added, “It doesn’t harm the herbalist to acknowledge his inability to effect a cure when he sees that the malady resisting him isn’t — like ordinary diseases — an enemy spawned by the wasteland, but a messenger from the Spirit World.”
He tossed the rag aside and drew a leather pouch from his satchel. He untied its ribbon very slowly and sprinkled dark powder into his palm. Then he spread this suspect dust around the eyes, and the maniac responded for the first time by ceasing his muffled moaning, even though his fist continued to pound the mat with the same beat.
“I haven’t concealed anything from my master. I shared my doubts with him about the affliction the first day.”
The feverish hero resumed his moaning, swaying, and drumming.
The herbalist soaked another piece of cloth in a liquid from another container and then wrapped the cloth around the invalid’s head.
He started to bandage the eyes carefully and remarked in the same enigmatic tone, “I wasn’t stingy with advice for my master yesterday. I haven’t been stingy with advice for my master today. My master would do himself a favor if he went to the diviner or sorcerer today, not tomorrow. The stubbornness of heroes, master, is useless in combatting diseases from the Spirit World.”
He emitted a long, heartrending groan, and tears formed in his eyes. He traveled far away — the way lovers, hermits, wayfarers, poets, and ecstatics do. He hummed as if singing a stanza of poetry from an ancient epic.
“Physical pains afflicted man one day, and the herbalist arrived in the desert. Secret pains afflicted man one day, and the herbalist couldn’t find a cure for them in the desert’s herbs. So man was about to go extinct. Then the spiritual worlds collaborated and sent the sorcerer to the wasteland. When man was afflicted by other, even more mysterious diseases, and was threatened by annihilation once more, the Spirit World intervened and man found that the soothsayer had settled in the wasteland — as if he had sprouted from the belly of the dirt like grass or truffles or had fallen from the sky like rain or specters of jinn.”
2
He went to visit the female diviner.
She appeared and sat with him in the Chamber of Sacrificial Offerings.
She said with a diviner’s tongue: “The pains of heroes are the calamity of hypochondriacs.”
“And the sympathy of noblemen is the calamity of heroes.”
“I thought that the sympathy of the nobles was always a balsam.”
“A balsam for the masses and for foreigners but a fatal blow to the hearts of the elite men commoners refer to as heroes.”
“Are you sure about this or do you merely suspect it?”
“Actually, this is the normal course of events, my lady. We have typically grown accustomed to finding people gloating whenever calamities strike our homes.”
“Enemies’ gloating for the judicious man today is a treasure that will help him on the morrow.”
“The matter would be easy, my lady, if this gloating was that of enemies. The gloating of boon companions, my lady, leaves an aftertaste in the throat bitterer than colocynth.”
“But this is also the Law of things.”
“You’re right, but I don’t know why we acknowledge all the laws, accepting even the harshest of them, and yet disparage the Law that makes yesterday’s boon companion the first to deliver a blow when calamity strikes.”
“This is the wisdom of the Spirit World.”
“But this is a cruel wisdom, my lady; it is a wisdom crueler than any other.”
“The Spirit World does not offer us its wisdom gratis. The Spirit World has given it to us on the understanding that we will pay the full retail price.”
“But that’s the cruelest possible price.”
“We should trust no one.”
“Tribes customarily teach this lesson to their children without understanding it.”
“The phrase is brief, as you observed, but exposes our life to danger if we understand it too late.”
“I don’t understand wisdom’s utility when understanding it too late is a precondition for it.”
“True wisdom is only understood after it is too late.”
“This is what’s worst about the matter. This is what’s worst about wisdom.”
“But let’s drop the question of wisdom and search for the cure.”
“The truth is that my only reason for approaching the sanctuary has been to search for a cure.”
“My tongue may possibly reveal something that embarrasses me.”
“I will give my lady everything I possess if my lady will show me the sun’s disc.”
“My tongue may possibly reveal something that embarrasses me.”
“I will give my lady everything. I will give her even the title ‘hero,’ which became part of me, if my lady can show me the sun for a single day, a single hour, or a single instant.”
“My tongue may possibly reveal something that embarrasses me.”
3
“In the urine of a woman who has known only her husband is found the cure.”
The prophecy was inscribed on soft gazelle-skin parchment wrapped in a piece of faded linen and fastened with straps of colored leather. Her messenger brought it at twilight. He said his mistress refused to accept any fee for this prophecy until the cure was effected.
“In the urine of a woman who has known only her husband is found the cure.”
What correlation does the Spirit World see between women’s liquids and sorceries that blind the eye? Why does prophecy keep surprising us with one marvel after another? Or — does the secret of prophecy rest in its marvelous quality? Would prophecy lose its magic if marvel were not its mate?
But he knew better than to ask too many questions. He knew that what is covert is the Spirit World’s share and that he had no right to question a matter that time had not brought to the badlands. He knew that stubborn resistance to a sign differs from a hero’s stubborn resistance to enemies with spears or swords. He knew that obtaining a prophecy’s text was easier than expounding it and that the exegesis of a prophecy was easier than searching for the secret behind a prophecy.
But … how could he find a woman in this desert who had known only her husband? In an oasis where nations mixed together, where a babel of foreign tongues was heard, where human nature was up for grabs — would he be able to locate a woman protected by the amulet of faithfulness? Would he discover anywhere in the desert even one woman who had never cheated on her husband — if not with her body surely at least in her heart? Would the Spirit World generously provide news from the Spirit World without inserting into the message an impossible condition? Didn’t the Spirit World say prophetically that woman could deceive even herself — as she was always happy to do — but could not deceive the Spirit World a single time?