The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman, and Matters of Choice (43 page)

Aryeh made his loathing plain. He was careful to watch his words in front of Lonzano and Loeb, but when the other two were out of earshot his comments to Rob were apt to be cutting. Even when speaking to the other two Jews, he was often less than pleasant.

Rob was larger and stronger. Sometimes it took an act of will to keep from striking Aryeh.

Lonzano was perceptive. “You must ignore him,” he told Rob.

“Aryeh is a …” He didn’t know the Persian word for bastard.

“Even at home Aryeh wasn’t the most pleasant of men, but he does not have the soul to be a traveler. When we departed from Masqat he’d been married less than a year and he had a new son he didn’t want to leave. He has been sullen ever since.” He sighed. “Well, we all have families, and often it is hard to be a traveler far from home, especially on the Sabbath or a holy day.”

“How long have you been gone from Masqat?” Rob asked.

“This time it is twenty-seven months.”

“If this merchant’s life is so hard and lonely, why do you follow it?” Lonzano looked at him. “It is how a Jew survives,” he said.

They circled the northeast corner of Lake Urmiya and soon were in high, bare-earth mountains again. They stayed overnight with Jews in Tabriz and Takestan. Rob could see little difference between most of these places and the villages he had seen in Turkey. They were bleak mountain towns built on stony rubble, with people sleeping in the shade and stray goats near the community well. Kashan was like that too, but Kashan had a lion on its gate.

A real lion, huge.

“This is a famous beast, measuring forty-five spans from nose to tail,”
Lonzano said proudly, as if it were his lion. “It was slain twenty years ago by Abdallah Shah, father of the present ruler. It played havoc on the cattle of this countryside for seven years and finally Abdallah tracked and killed it. In Kashan there is a celebration each year on the anniversary of the hunt.”

Now the lion had dried apricots instead of eyes and a piece of red felt for a tongue, and Aryeh scornfully pointed out that it was stuffed with rags and dried weeds. Generations of moths had eaten the sun-hardened pelt down to bare leather in spots, but its legs resembled columns and its teeth were still its own, large and sharp as lance-heads, so that when Rob touched them he felt a chill.

“I wouldn’t like to meet him.”

Aryeh smiled his superior smile. “Most men go through life without seeing a lion.”

The
rabbenu
of Kashan was a chunky man with sandy hair and beard. His name was David ben Sauli the Teacher, and Lonzano said he already had a reputation as a scholar despite the fact that he was still a young man. He was the first
rabbenu
Rob had seen wearing a turban instead of a leather Jew’s hat. When he spoke to them the worry lines came back into Lonzano’s face.

“It isn’t safe to follow the route south through the mountains,” the
rabbenu
told them. “A strong force of Seljuks is in your way.”

“Who are the Seljuks?” Rob said.

“They are a herdsmen nation that lives in tents instead of towns,” Lonzano said. “Killers and fierce fighters. They raid the lands on both sides of the border between Persia and Turkey.”

“You can’t go through the mountains,” the
rabbenu
said unhappily. “Seljuk soldiers are crazier than bandits.”

Lonzano looked at Rob and Loeb and Aryeh. “Then we have but two choices. We can remain here in Kashan and wait for the trouble with the Seljuks to pass, which may take many months, perhaps a year. Or we can skirt the mountains and the Seljuks, approaching Ispahan through desert and then forest. I haven’t traveled on that desert, the Dasht-i-Kavir, but I have been over other deserts and know them to be terrible.” He turned to the
rabbenu.
“Can it be crossed?”

“You would not have to cross the entire Dasht-i-Kavir. Heaven forbid,” the
rabbenu
said slowly. “You need only to cut across a corner, a journey of three days, going east and then south. Yes, it is sometimes done. We can tell you how to go.”

The four regarded one another. Finally Loeb, the inarticulate one,
broke the thick silence. “I don’t want to stay here for a year,” he said, speaking for all of them.

Each of them bought a large goatskin waterbag and filled it before leaving Kashan. It was heavy when full. “Do we need this much water for three days?” Rob asked.

“Accidents occur. We could be on the desert a longer time,” Lonzano said. “And you must share your water with your beasts, for we are taking donkeys and mules into the Dasht-i-Kavir, not camels.”

A guide from Kashan rode with them on an old white horse as far as the point where an almost invisible track branched off from the road. The Dasht-i-Kavir began as a clay ridge that was easier to travel over than the mountains. At first they made good time, and for a little while their spirits lifted. The nature of the ground changed so gradually it disarmed them, but by midday, when the sun beat on them like brass, they were struggling through deep sand so fine that the hooves of the animals sank into it. All the riders dismounted, and men and beasts floundered forward in equal misery.

It was dreamlike to Rob, an ocean of sand extending in every direction as far as he could see. Sometimes it formed into hills like the great sea waves he dreaded, elsewhere it was like the flat smooth waters of a still lake, merely rippled by the west wind. There was no life he could detect, no bird in the air, no beetle or worm on the earth, but in the afternoon they passed bleaching bones heaped like a careless pile of kindling behind an English cottage, and Lonzano told Rob the remains of animals and men had been collected by nomadic tribes and piled there as a reference point. This sign of people who could be at home in such a place was unnerving and they tried to keep their animals quiet, knowing how far a donkey’s braying would carry on the still air.

It was a salt desert. At times the sand they walked on wound between morasses of salt mud like the shores of Lake Urmiya. Six hours of such a march thoroughly exhausted them and when they came to a small hill of sand which cast a shadow before the shallow sun, men and beasts crowded together to fit into the well of comparative coolness. After an hour of shade they were able to resume walking until sunset.

“Perhaps we had best travel by night and sleep in the heat of day,” Rob suggested.

“No,” Lonzano said quickly. “When I was young, once I crossed the Dasht-i-Lut with my father and two uncles and four cousins. May the dead rest. Dasht-i-Lut is a salt desert, like this one. We decided to travel by night
and soon had trouble. During the hot season, the salt lakes and swamps of the wet season dry quickly, in places leaving a crust on the surface. We found that men and animals broke through the crust. Sometimes beneath it there is brine or quicksand. It is too dangerous to go by night.”

He wouldn’t answer questions about his youthful experience on the Dasht-i-Lut, and Rob didn’t press him, sensing it was a subject best left alone.

As darkness fell they sat or sprawled on the salty sand. The desert that had broiled them by day became cold by night. There was no fuel, nor would they have kindled a fire lest it be seen by unfriendly eyes. Rob was so tired that despite his discomfort he fell into a deep sleep that lasted until first light.

He was struck by the fact that what had seemed like ample water in Kashan had dwindled in the dry wilderness. He limited himself to small sips as he ate his breakfast of bread, giving far more to his two animals. He poured their portions into the leather Jew’s hat and held it while they drank, enjoying the sensation of placing the wet hat on his hot head when they were finished.

It was a day of dogged plodding. When the sun was highest, Lonzano began to sing a phrase from the Scriptures:
Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.
One by one the others picked up the refrain, and for a while they praised God with juiceless throats.

Presently there was an interruption. “Horsemen coming!” Loeb shouted.

Far off to the south they saw a cloud such as would be raised by a large host and Rob was afraid that these were the desert people who had left the travel marker of bones. But as the sight swept nearer they saw that it was only a cloud.

By the time the hot desert wind reached them the donkeys and the mules had turned their backs to it with the wisdom of instinct. Rob huddled as best he could behind the beasts and the wind clattered over them. Its first effects were those of fever. The wind carried sand and salt that burned his skin like flakes of hot ash. The air became even heavier and more oppressive than before, and the men and the animals waited doggedly as the storm made them part of the land, coating them with a frosting of sand and salt two fingers thick.

That night he dreamed of Mary Cullen. He sat with her and knew tranquility. There was happiness on her face and he was aware her fulfillment came from him, which made him glad. She began to work embroidery
and, without his understanding how or why, it turned out that she was Mam, and he experienced a rush of warmth and security he hadn’t known since he was nine years old.

Then he awoke, hawking and spitting drily. There was sand and salt in his mouth and ears, and when he got up and walked it rubbed abrasively between his buttocks.

It was the third morning.
Rabbenu
David ben Sauli had instructed Lonzano to walk east for two days and then south for a day. They had gone in the direction Lonzano believed to be east, and now they turned in the direction Lonzano believed to be south.

Rob had never been able to tell east from south, north from west. He asked himself what would become of them if Lonzano didn’t truly know south or truly know east, or if the Kashan
rabbenu’s
directions weren’t accurate.

The piece of the Dasht-i-Kavir they had set out to cross was like a small cove in a great ocean. The main desert was vast and, for them, uncrossable.

Supposing that, instead of crossing the cove, they were heading straight toward the heart of the Dasht-i-Kavir?

If that was the case, they were doomed.

It occurred to him to wonder whether the God of the Jews was claiming him because of his masquerade. But Aryeh, although less than likable, wasn’t evil, and both Lonzano and Loeb were most worthy; it wasn’t logical that their God would destroy them to punish one
goy
sinner.

He was not the only one entertaining thoughts of despair. Sensing their mood, Lonzano attempted to start them singing again. But Lonzano’s was the only voice raised in the refrain and eventually he stopped singing, too.

Rob poured a sparing final portion for each of his animals and let them drink from his hat.

What remained in his leathern bottle was about six mouthfuls of water. He reasoned that if they were nearing the end of Dasht-i-Kavir it wouldn’t matter, while if they were traveling in the wrong direction this small amount of water was insufficient to save his life.

So he drank it. He forced himself to take it in small sips, but it was gone in a very brief time.

As soon as the goatskin was empty he began to suffer thirst more severely than ever. The swallowed water seemed to scald him internally, followed by a terrible headache.

He willed himself to walk but found his steps faltering. I cannot, he realized with horror.

Lonzano began to clap his hands fiercely.
“Ai,
di-di-di-di-di-di,
ai,
di-di
di,
di!” he sang, and went into a dance, shaking his head, whirling, lifting his arms and knees to the rhythm of the song.

Loeb’s eyes glinted with tears of anger. “Stop it, you fool!” he shouted. But in a moment he grimaced and joined in the singing and clapping, cavorting along behind Lonzano.

Then Rob. And even sour Aryeh.

“Ai,
di-di-di-di-di-di,
ai,
di-di
di,
di!”

They sang through dry lips and danced on feet that no longer had feeling. Eventually they fell silent and ceased the mad prancing, but they continued to plod, moving one numbed leg after the other, not daring to face the possibility that they were indeed lost.

Early in the afternoon they began to hear thunder. It rumbled in the distance for a long time before it heralded a few drops of rain, and shortly afterward they saw a gazelle and then a pair of wild asses.

Their own animals suddenly quickened. The beasts moved their legs faster and then began to trot of their own volition, scenting what lay ahead, and the men mounted the donkeys and rode again as they left the extreme boundary of the sand over which they had struggled for three days.

The land evolved into a plain, first with sparse growth and then more verdant. Before dusk they came to a pond where reeds grew and swallows dipped and wheeled. Aryeh tasted the water and nodded. “It is good.”

“We mustn’t let the beasts drink too much at once or they will founder,” Loeb cautioned.

They watered the animals carefully and tied them to trees, then they drank and tore off their clothes and lay in the water, soaking among the reeds.

“When you were in the Dasht-i-Lut did you lose men?” Rob said.

“We lost my cousin Calman,” Lonzano said. “A man of twenty-two years.”

“Did he fall through the salt crust?”

“No. He abandoned all self-discipline and drank his water. Then he died of thirst.”

“May he rest,” Loeb said.

“What are the symptoms of a man dying of thirst?”

Lonzano was obviously offended. “I don’t wish to think on it.”

“I ask because I’m to be a physician, and not out of curiosity,” Rob said, and saw that Aryeh was gazing at him with dislike.

Lonzano waited a long moment and then nodded. “My cousin Calman became confused with the heat and drank with abandon until his water was
gone. We were lost and every man took care of his own water. We weren’t allowed to share. After a while, he began to vomit weakly but there was no liquid to bring up. His tongue turned quite black and the roof of his mouth was a grayish white. His mind wandered, he believed he was in his mother’s house. His lips were shriveled, his teeth were exposed, and his mouth hung open in a wolfish grin. He alternately panted and snored. That night under cover of darkness I disobeyed and dripped a little water on a rag and squeezed it into his mouth, but it was too late. After the second day without water, he died.”