The Book of Heaven: A Novel (49 page)

Sheba still loved to swim, and whenever she had the opportunity, she would make her way to a secluded cove overlooked by a pavilion, all that remained of what had been a magnificent palace destroyed by fire. The water of the cove had the wonderful property of being at times smooth as a lagoon, at others, passionate as a miniature sea. On this warm afternoon, the Philosopher was reading in the pavilion, which he had also privately discovered; loving bird flight as he did, he cherished the rich variety of water fowl drawn to the cove.

He looked up from his book; his adored actor was kneeling by the water's edge, letting the water ripple over his hand. Apparently, the temperature pleased, because the boy stood up and kicked off his boots. The Philosopher watched, indulging himself in the sweet pleasure of watching a beloved unaware, glimpsing the extra dimension of someone engaged for the moment in nothing but living his own life.

The boy unwound his turban; a flood of dark hair cascaded to his waist. He swiveled, and slipped out of his tunic, his breasts shining in the golden sun just beginning to set. She dove into the water.

“Oh, God,” the Philosopher said. “You're a girl.” His book fell from his lap as he raced to the edge of the lagoon, and plunged in, still in his clothes. He swam to the girl. The pools of her long hair swirled around him, like the inks of a calligrapher erasing his first picture. In an ecstasy of horror and exaltation, he took her in his arms and embraced her.

In the pavilion, they made love for the first time, with the moving courage and extreme vulnerability of all lovers willing to stand before each other naked. And their lovemaking cannot be described. No one yet has succeeded in describing lovemaking, except through the most oblique and fleeting glimpses: for making love returns us to a state of being that exists before memory, and makes us miraculously present at our own conception. And the act of love is itself description, as each lover describes with body and soul the other's body and soul.

As they lay entwined in the pavilion afterward, the Philosopher caught sight of the constellation of the Lovers' Cluster, and pointed it out to her. He told her how an old Sheban woman had first taught him to see it, relating the story of their journey and her inexplicable disappearance. Sheba, in her elderly quavering voice, sang him the same song she had sung by firelight that night.

“Oh, God,” the Philosopher said. “You were a boy. Are you also your grandmother?”

“Of course,” said Sheba. “That too. And a boy and a beech tree and a dolphin. At times a devil. A man, too, and a baby. Even now and then, a goddess and a god. Like all Shebans. And like you, if you knew it.”

“Then we Philosophers have made grave errors in our thinking. We are taught to renounce the company and love of women. And yet, if women are as you say, it is not women who are false; it is our own laws that are false. We have based them on a premature idea of what a woman is, instead of exploring them as beings whose dimensions we have still to discover.”

“As is a man,” she said.

In the two years that followed, the Philosopher discovered a truth he had never been taught: that love and learning could never be separated, and that the sages of love were far fewer than the sages of philosophy. His education began gingerly; he learned not to be afraid or embarrassed to inquire and speak as candidly, courageously, and searchingly of love as he did about the nature of good, evil, or power.

At times during these years, he was tormented by love, as he had been schooled; at other times, his thoughts were as ecstatic as his body; he made love with his mind, he learned with his body.

Love educated Sheba, too; she learned that an epic was not only a poem, but that a person, the living of a human life, could also be epic. She saw this in the way the Philosopher loved her and, at the same time, struggled with his love for her. She saw it in the way the world was greater for her when she could see some of what he perceived. They never knew the same stories. The earth she saw was different from his; the Heaven he saw was different from hers. Yet at times, she could live on his earth, and he in her Heaven.

There was no better time, they discovered, to tell stories than after lovemaking, in the darkness and quiet lit only by the glow of their bodies' bliss, the perfumes drifting from Sheba's incense clock telling the hours. It was then they amused themselves by comparing the stories they had been told, of the origins of fire and jewels, the creation of the world. One night, inspired by a rainstorm, he told her a story of a flood that destroyed the world, except for a family who survived on a wooden ark.

When he finished, Sheba said, “I have heard of that story. But the version we tell is quite different. The characters do not have quite the same names. But we also call it ‘How the World Was Saved.' Do you want to hear it? Or I could tell you ‘How Love Was First Invented.'”

“I am on fire to hear how something so dangerous was invented.”

“We would be in even greater danger if it had not.”

“But it always requires suffering.”

“I would say almost always,” she said, and put a finger to his lips.

“Almost always,” he said, with a Philosopher's reluctant smile of concession at the end of a debate.

“But if the world wasn't saved, love could not have been invented. So let me begin where I should,” she said, and sat up, pulling a silk shawl over her shoulders.

“Only a traveler who had had the good fortune to range the earth as widely as a migrant bird could have seen vineyards as beautiful as No's. The vines were set in terraces cut out of chalky cliffs high above a glittering blue sea. The terraces descended to the sea with the thrilling symmetry of a perfectly played musical scale. No and his wife labored in these vineyards, and they grew rich on the dark purple wine, the color of an empress's carpet, that they sold in barrels.”

“What was No's wife's name?” the Philosopher asked, reaching for a pear and a piece of blue cheese.

“Now you have asked a profound question, a true Philosopher's question. Her name was Malista.”

Sheba took a sip of water, and continued. “The couple prospered not only in the abundance and excellence of their grapes, but in their own fertility. Malista brought three sons to the light of earth's sun, and each of these married well in his turn. No added the substantial dowries of the wives to his own holdings, and built an imposing walled compound to house the family and, he hoped, all its future generations. It was built on the highest point of the surrounding countryside, and from it, No could look down the sweep of the terraced vineyards all the way to the brilliant sea. He had built his estate in the exact spot his God had found for him, as he had been told in a dream.

“In all his good fortune, No did not neglect the God he worshipped. He sacrificed to his God in perfect accordance with the prescribed ritual, and poured out the correct inch of wine from every cup to give God his taste of the vintage. He was vigilant over his family, seeing to it that they worked hard and did not wander far from the compound except for commercial or religious necessity, so that they would not fall into temptation.

“He was not entirely free of faults; he was rather too fond of his own wine, and periodically drank himself into oblivion. As is sometimes the case with upright men, he was bitter and insulting when in his cups, and given to violent cursing, as if drunkenness unleashed all the pent-up resentments and hidden angers he carefully controlled.

“Then he would harass his sons, accusing them of laziness and ineptitude, and mock their tenderness for their young wives as if he were jealous of them. And he would call Malista to him, and beat her, the mother who had reared such inferior sons, with rather more force than the light correction with which a man is entitled to chastise his wife, sometimes even leaving visible marks, though that was expressly forbidden.

“On those occasions, Malista would weep and refuse to speak to him, and would run through the vineyards to the shore when her husband finally collapsed in a stupor. These occasions brought her to despair. She longed to please No and was as conscientious a wife as she knew how to be, rising before dawn, and working tirelessly in house and vineyard, always awake long after the household was asleep. She searched her conduct for faults severe enough to warrant punishment, and could find none.

“So she ran to the shore and desperately leapt into the sea, and let the salt water heal her cuts and bruises, while she struggled with the thought of swimming out as far as she could see, to death or some other miracle.

“Instead, she would make her way into town, exactly as No forbade. It was a place of godless cheats and dissipated rabble, he said, and to be avoided as much as possible. He knew all their tricks; he traded with them, after all. The townsmen wrangled ruthlessly to evade a fair price for the wine, and once agreed to, it was the devil to get them to pay on time. And perhaps worst of all, they often cut his beautiful pure nectar with water, or blended it with other wines, and resold it under other names, contaminating the work of No's hands, the fruits of the labor he dedicated to his God.

“The first time Malista walked through the town, the people she encountered fell into an uneasy silence. A cut on her cheek that she thought had closed had begun to bleed again. She walked through the central marketplace, and was calmed by the sight of the heaped-up breads and cheeses; the clarity of the actions of buying and selling seemed stable and comfortable after No's incoherent attack.

“She would have liked to stop and buy a piece of fruit, or a bunch of garlic, for the sake of enjoying the predictable exchange that would accompany the transaction. But unlike normal merchants, no one called to her to show off his wares, or chanted a rhyme praising the perfume of his fruit. Instead, the sight of her seemed to stop conversation.

“A sudden gush from the wound dropped on the bodice of her dress, staining her chest with a setting sun of blood. She put her hand to her cheek, and saw that it was as red as if she had butchered an animal. Embarrassed, she hurried away from the center of the town, and walked toward the secluded orchards beyond.

“Several groups of children were seated in circles under apple trees, reading in turn, or answering questions their teachers put to them. The sight of them made her remember her own children's school years. Young children, even when tutored privately, like hers, always had their lessons under apple trees in fine weather. For some reason—no one remembered why—these trees were associated with knowledge, and said to stimulate the appetite for learning and its fruits.

“She saw a gaunt, gray-haired man lean over, place his hand on a boy's shoulder, and whisper something in the child's ear. The boy frowned, as if trying to absorb a complex lesson, then stood up and raced past Malista. She could not have touched him even if she had tried; he was as swift and wheeling as a swallow. No one spoke to her. She was ashamed; they must think she was a witch or a wandering madwoman, and sent the boy for help. She thought she must now hurry back along the shore, and climb toward home. What would happen if they detained her here?

“She turned back on her path, and began to retrace her steps toward the town, walking with the new pulsing energy of fear. She saw an unmistakably pregnant woman and a child coming toward her on the path, and gave way for them to pass, making herself as inconspicuous as possible.

“The boy was the same one who had run past her as if he were her prey. He looked at her, looked at the pregnant woman, and without speaking to either of them, seemed to take wing toward the orchards where the groups of children were clustered.

“The pregnant woman spoke: ‘Will you let me clean the cut and give you something to eat?' She neither smiled nor reached out her hand. Her tone was so simple and lacking in seduction that Malista knew she was being offered only those things. And in that security, she recognized that those two things were just what she wished for.

“That meeting began Malista's acquaintance—her first—with anyone outside her family and clan. The pregnant woman, who was a doctor, serving that town and two others nearby, was surprised to learn who Malista was.

“She had never seen any of the women of the vineyard clan, though she knew exactly who No was by sight, and had drunk his wine, and heard years of stories about this uncompromising tradesman, who never drank a glass with the merchants, unlike the other traders, who sold their barrels through a haze of toasting, impossible boasts, and raucous, slurred drinking songs.

“After that day, Malista would escape No's spontaneous and unpredictable furies by slipping away from his palace on the rooftop of the world to town as she had that day. No never questioned her about these absences; his silence was a form of contrition for his rages.

“In this way, Malista came to know the doctor, whose name was Ember, her fleet little son, and her husband, who led a silk workshop. Over the next months, she came to know many of the townspeople, the teachers she had seen on the first day, the baker who invariably cheated her when she bought his confections to give as gifts, the town drunk, who could never afford No's wines. As soon as he understood who the stranger woman was, he stubbornly harassed Malista, begging to be treated by the great vintner's wife.

“To escape him, she began to periodically leave a sum with the wine merchants for his entertainment. Now, when he caught sight of her, he would raise a glass and toast her with an elegant gesture, like a prince in disguise under his tattered clothes.

“Malista bore the beatings now with true resignation; she had discovered another world, a world that had also discovered her. From visit to visit, the place and the people who lived there became more real.

“She would never forget the moment when Ember put her new daughter into Malista's arms, born three weeks ago, after her most recent visit. She relived the extraordinary sensation of holding a sleeping baby, the feeling of superhuman, protective strength in the face of its fragile and absolute being, the surge of oceanic, inexhaustible tenderness.