Azazeel (39 page)

I had to speak, to comfort her. ‘They told me you went with him, and I thought. . .’

‘Do not think ill of me, Hypa.’

‘Ah, now you’re calling me by my name!’

‘I’m sorry, I was confused, and happy because you have wronged me with your crazy ideas.’

‘Happy, Martha!’

‘Yes, because your crazy ideas prove to me that you love me, as I love you.’ She stood up straight away and fled away to her cottage. She left me in a state that merciful God alone
can know, the God who is occluded beyond his farthest heavens.

SCROLL TWENTY-FOUR

L
ove can have dramatic effects, wielding awesome powers which I cannot withstand or endure. How can a human being tolerate the emotional swing
between the burning valleys of hell and the balmy meadows of heaven. Whose heart will not melt when subjected to the sweet breezes of love, the searing winds of desire, the fragrance of flowers,
fiery blasts, then sleeplessness at night and anxiety by day? What should I do with my love when the storm of it has raged and blown me away to somewhere I did not expect? Should I rejoice in
Martha’s love, or should I fear it? They will say that I beguiled her, or rather they will say that she beguiled me. I shall never escape from this love which Martha has kindled with a single
word, which turned it into passion, and I have no experience of frequenting the world of passion.

That day the Lord had mercy on me and no one intruded on my solitude except Deacon, who dropped in on me after noon to tell me he was on his way to pick up the boys. I told him that today they
would have a rest from singing practice. He must have told Martha that, because she did not come at the usual time that day. In the afternoon I was longing for her and I told the abbot after the
three o’clock prayers that we must go ahead with the plan to grow medicinal herbs on the slope because it was the season to plant them. He welcomed the idea and called two of the monastery
servants to help me prepare the ground. Deacon and another boy joined us, and when Martha saw us coming towards her cottage her face shone with the light of love and my heart went out to her. From
afar she called out ‘Welcome, father,’ and when we were alone together she whispered to me, ‘I was longing to see you, Hypa.’

Deacon stood on a piece of land, flat as a platform and overlooking the cottage, and shouted out that it was ready and good for planting. I explained to him that we needed five spots of the same
area, terraced like the gardens of Babylon. He laughed idiotically and said, ‘What are those gardens of Babylon? They must be a long way from here.’

The next morning the owner of the big farm, the first patient I treated here, sent two professional farmers who lived on the land and three workmen. Over three days they put in order the land
surrounding the cottage, turning it into five large terraces as I wanted. In the middle of each terrace they dug a channel for water and at the end a place where the water would fall down to the
channel on the terrace below. We would bring the water from the rock tanks on the western side of the monastery where the rainwater collects every winter and stands stagnant until the next winter.
The herbs I intended to plant would not need much water anyway.

On the afternoon of the third day they planted saplings on the edge of the five terraces so that the thick roots would prevent the edges from eroding when the winter rains fell. When they
finished their work at sunset the sight was magnificent, and Martha was delighted. When the workmen and the farmers had gone she came up to me, so close that her shoulder almost touched me, and
said, ‘Among all the plants our cottage will look like a palace in paradise.’ I didn’t know how to answer but she knew what to tell me. With her honey-green eyes she looked into
my eyes and said something which took my breath away. ‘I love you very much, Hypa.’ Then she hurried off to her aunt.

I walked up to the monastery gate, buoyed by my love, in fact I was borne on the wings of angels. I hurried across the courtyard, avoiding meeting anyone so that I would not hear a word from
anybody, after what I had heard her say. I went up to my room with her words ‘I love you very much’ ringing around me. I shut my eyes to the echo of her words, trying to retain them
within me. A wonderful daze led the way to sleep and my night was full of delightful dreams, all of them featuring Martha. In the morning I was another person, not the one I had known through all
the past years of my life.

Two days had passed without any singing practice and on the Wednesday morning the abbot asked me when to expect the hymns to start in church. I did not hesitate to answer.
‘We’ll be ready next Sunday, father.’ His face beamed with a smile of satisfaction.

Deacon dropped in on Martha when he went down to pick up the boys. She came slightly before them and I saw no objection to her waiting for them with me in a far corner of the library, because I
was sitting there before she came. She was wearing a black velvet dress, decorated at the sleeves with a band of shiny red silk which ran from the base of the neck to the back of her hands. The
same band ran around the hem of the dress and covered the top of the bodice. She looked like the princesses I had seen in my dreams in my childhood, or the angels which hover in my imagination when
my mind is clear.

Before she sat down she told me that on her way she had seen the abbot and had asked him if her dress was proper for singing hymns, and he had given her his blessing. She added, ‘So now
you can’t object to my dress, though it does accentuate my bosom and make me a beautiful woman.’

‘With or without this dress, you are the most beautiful woman to walk the earth,’ I said.

‘Sweet words. Where do you find such heady words? But wait, why didn’t you tell me you instructed the caravan leader to give me those dresses? The abbot told me yesterday what took
place between you two.’

‘I didn’t order him to do anything. I said he should give you a dress and he gave you three.’

‘He gave more because he wanted to thank you more, my love.’

‘What did you say, Martha?’

‘To thank you more.’

‘I don’t mean that.’

‘Ah, you mean “my love”. My love, my love.’

Our eyes made contact and I lost all sense of my surroundings. I think she felt the same way. Lost in each other’s gaze, we were not aware of the passage of time. We stayed silent,
immersed in what we shared, until the clamour of the boys and Deacon arriving dragged us apart. We went straight into the singing practice, in the library that day, not the church.

The singing went better than ever, and every now and then we would look at each other in such a way that the boys would not notice, nor Deacon who was sitting at the table nodding to the rhythm.
But I did notice an unevenness in the way Martha sang the words on the long notes. When the boys were gone I asked why her heart and her voice were perturbed, just to tease her, and she said in
seriousness that she had some pain in her chest and had been coughing badly the last few nights. What she said worried me. I stood up at once and fetched some seeds which have the effect of
soothing a cough and making it easier to breathe. I realized that the smoke from the oven was the reason why her chest was inflamed. When I came back with the seeds, I passed them to her and she
stretched out her hand to take them, and she closed her hands on mine. It was the first time we had touched, and at her touch I lost a part of myself to her. I was standing in front of her and she
was sitting where her aunt had sat the first day they came to see me.

‘Aren’t you going to listen to my chest, Hypa?’ she said.

I understood what she meant. She wanted me to put my ear on her back, as I had done with her aunt. I hesitated a moment, then I sat next to her and she stood in front of me. She turned and took
two steps back until my knees almost touched the back of her knees. At the time I did not worry that any of the monks or any patient might come in on us through the open door or that the abbot
might come to visit me, as was his habit. I thought of nothing but her and I was emboldened by the fact that I had heard no footsteps on the gravel in the courtyard.

The silence was complete, and my desire for her was overpowering. I pressed my ear against her back to hear her pulse and find out the cause of the rasping in her chest. But there was nothing
wrong with her chest and all I heard was the steady beats of her heart, loud. I felt that the beats were calling me. I lingered, listening, enjoying the feel of the velvet dress pressed between her
body and the side of my face. Without thinking I put my hands on her hips and pulled her gently towards me. She leant back until her bottom touched my chest. Then she put her hands on my hands and
brought them round to meet in front. She squeezed my hands and I squeezed her stomach. I raised my hands, with her hands on top, until I touched her breasts with my palms. She pressed my hands with
hers and I pressed her breasts beneath. At that moment I ejaculated in great spurts, like a flood pent up since time long past, watering land that had cracked from twenty years of drought. Martha
trembled, the same tremble I had witnessed twenty years earlier in the wine cellar, but Martha’s trembling was more gratifying and more receptive.

She turned her face towards me, with my arms still wrapped around her. She gave me a soft kiss on the cheek and hurriedly slipped away towards the door. I stayed sitting for a long while,
bewildered, then stretched out on the big bench and fell into a deep sleep, sweeter than normal sleep.

SCROLL TWENTY-FIVE

I
woke up at dawn the next day and found myself hugging one of the coarse pillows which were on the bench. I got up like a man brought back to life
after aeons. I shut my eyes and imagined myself embracing Martha and recalled the ecstasy of the previous day. As the light of the lazy sun spread, the farmer who planted seeds arrived with three
workmen who knew about farming. I accompanied them to the hanging gardens around Martha’s cottage and caught sight of her twice as we planted and prepared the soil. In the afternoon when we
had finished, I sent Deacon to fetch the boys and I dropped in on Martha to invite her to the last practice, because we had two days before we would start to sing at mass, just two days.

Martha joined me without delay and sat in her usual place in the library, with me facing her and her facing the door. I felt she was close to me. If she stretched out her arm, and I stretched
out mine, then our fingertips could touch, even interlock, and a single force would flow through us, enclosing us until we left every other world behind us. Then my heart would surge and my mind
would go blank, and were it not for a remnant of fear I would steal a march on my own death and my soul would escape my body, to soar through worlds of eternity and never return to this ephemeral
body and its agonizing desires.

Martha turned to me, showing the full sun of her face. She took off her black diaphanous cap, and her hair fell down around her face, making her look yet more beautiful. I was looking at her in
silence when she surprised me with a question. ‘Hypa, don’t you feel homesick for your country, the place you were born?’

‘Why do you ask?’

She turned towards me with just a twist of her right shoulder, but that was enough for my mournful eyes to see how her neck rose to her queenly cheeks. She must have descended from some bygone
royal line which had lost its kingdom in the vicissitudes of time but whose features showed up in their distant progeny. Smiling angelically, she said, ‘Will you answer my question with a
question?’

‘It’s not one question, Martha. I have many questions for you.’

‘Ask me anything and I will answer you, my lord.’

I could not help but smile, and she smiled too and there was a twinkle in her eye. She turned full towards me and my eyes fixed on her breast. I was unable to avert my gaze from the spot where I
would have liked to lay my head. She was not bothered that I was gazing so intently at this forbidden spot. Perhaps she wanted to offer her breast to me to soothe away the sorrows which had
afflicted my soul for so many years, and put an end to the age of abstinence. Ah, if I had rested my head on her breast that day, I would have knelt in front of her, put my head between her
breasts, held her to me, melted into her and died.

‘Aren’t you going to ask me?’ she said.

Her question brought me to my senses. I looked up to her neck, her cheeks, her nose, delicate as a flower bud, to the sea of liquid mountain honey in her eyes. Adrift, I held fast to words.
‘Martha, tell me about your family.’

‘That’s a long story.’ Her smile was almost a laugh now. She leant her shoulders back a little, then began to tell me stories. She recounted many unconnected happenings, about
her grandmother who never tired of talking about the city of Palmyra, which was destroyed when her grandmother was still a child; about her father who was a blacksmith in Damascus, well known there
for his skill at making fine swords out of Damascus steel, famous for its quality. For some reason which she did not reveal, or which perhaps she did not know, her father moved to Aleppo but the
people of Aleppo would not accept him and he spent years there trying to join the Christian community and serve the parish, but they refused because his wife, Martha’s mother, was a pious
pagan and had once been seen lighting candles secretly on the remains of the abandoned temple which used to stand on the road to Aleppo. Her father had to spend five years under the scrutiny of the
deacons and priests until the bishop agreed to let him enter the fold of the Lord. Her father did not stay long before moving his family to that small village which nestles beside the road between
Aleppo and Antioch, Sarmada, and there she was born nineteen or twenty years ago.