The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman, and Matters of Choice (76 page)

But the easy travel allowed unlimited opportunity for him to think, and the memory of Mirdin was with him every step of the way, so that the ordinary wonders of a journey—a sudden flight of thousands of birds, a sunset that set the sky to flaming, the way one of the elephants stepped on the lip of a steep ditch to crumble it and then sat like a child to slide down the resulting earth ramp—these things were noticed but brought little joy.

Jesus,
he thought.
Or Shaddai, or Allah, whoever You may be. How can You allow such waste?

Kings led ordinary men into battle and some who survived were poor stuff and some were purely evil, he thought bitterly. Yet God had permitted one to be cut down who had had the qualities of saintliness and a mind scholars envied and coveted. Mirdin would have spent his life seeking only to heal and serve mankind.

Not since the burial of Barber had Rob been so moved and shaken by a death, and he was still brooding and in despair when they reached Ispahan.

They approached in late afternoon, so that the city was as he first had seen it, white buildings, blue-shadowed, with roofs of reflected pink from the sand hills. They rode directly to the
maristan,
where the eighteen wounded men were handed over to others for care.

Then they went to the stables of the House of Paradise, where he rid himself of responsibility for the animals, the troops, and the slaves.

When that was done, he asked for his brown gelding. Farhad, the new Captain of the Gates, was nearby and overheard, and he ordered the groom
not to waste time trying to locate one horse in the milling herd. “Issue the
hakim
another mount.”

“Khuff said I would get back the same horse.” Not everything had to change, he told himself.

“Khuff is dead.”

“Nevertheless.” To his own great surprise, Rob’s voice and stare became hard. He had come from carnage that had sickened him but now he yearned for something to strike, violence as a release. “I wish the same horse.”

Farhad knew men and recognized the challenge in the
hakim’s
voice. He had nothing to gain from brawling with this
Dhimmi
and a great deal to lose. He shrugged and turned away.

Rob rode beside the groom, back and forth through the herd. By the time he saw the gelding he was ashamed of his ugly conduct. They separated the horse from the others and put a saddle on it while Farhad hovered and didn’t hide his contempt that this flawed beast was what the
Dhimmi
had been prepared to fight for.

But the brown horse trotted eagerly through the dusk to Yehuddiyyeh.

Hearing noises among the animals, Mary took her father’s sword and the lamp and opened the door between house and stable.

He had come home.

The saddle was already off the brown horse and he was in the act of backing the gelding into the stall. He turned, and in the poor light she saw he had lost considerable weight; he looked almost like the thin, half-wild boy she had met in Kerl Fritta’s caravan.

He reached her in three steps and held her without speaking, then his hand touched her flat belly.

“Did it go well?”

She gave a shaky laugh, for she was weary and torn. Only by five days had he missed hearing her frantic screams. “Your son was two days in coming.”

“A son.”

He placed his large palm against her cheek. At his touch the flooding relief made her tremble, so that she came close to spilling oil from the lamp and the flame flickered. When he was away she had made herself hard and strong, a leather woman, but it was deepest luxury to trust again that someone else was shielding and capable. Like turning from leather back into silk.

She set down the sword and took his hand, leading him inside to where the infant lay asleep in a blanket-lined basket.

Suddenly she saw the round-faced bit of humanity through Rob’s eyes, tiny red features swollen from birthing travail, fuzz of darkish hair atop his head. She felt annoyance at the kind of man this was, for she couldn’t tell if he was disappointed or overjoyed. When he looked up, mixed with pleasure there was agony in his face.

“How is Fara?”

“Karim came and told her. I observed
shiva
with her, seven days. Then she took Dawwid and Issachar and joined a caravan bound for Masqat. With God’s aid, by now they are among kinsmen.”

“It will be hard for you without her.”

“Harder for her,” she said bitterly.

The child began a thin wailing and Rob picked him from the basket and gave his little finger, which was taken hungrily.

Mary wore a loose dress with a drawstring at the neck, sewn for her by Fara. She opened the garment and lowered it beneath her full breasts, then took the babe from him. Rob lay down alongside them on the mat as she began to nurse. He moved his head onto her free breast and soon she felt his cheek’s wetness.

She had never known her father to weep, or any man, and Rob’s convulsive shaking frightened her. “My dear. My Rob,” she murmured.

Instinctively, her free hand gently directed him until his mouth was on the nipple. He was a more tentative suckler than his son and when he drew on her and swallowed, she was vastly moved but tenderly amused: for once, part of
her
body was entering
him.
She thought fleetingly of Fara and, with no little guilt, thanked the Virgin that it had not been her husband who had been taken. The two pairs of lips on her, one tiny and the other large and so familiar, filled her with a tingling warmth. Perhaps it was the Blessed Mother or the saints working their magic, but for a time the three of them became one.

Finally Rob sat up, and when he leaned over and kissed her, she tasted her own warm richness.

“I am not a Roman,” he said.

PART SIX
Hakim

61

THE APPOINTMENT

The morning after his return Rob studied his man-child in the light of day and saw that the babe was beautiful, with deep blue English eyes and large hands and feet. He counted and gently flexed each tiny finger and toe and rejoiced in the slightly bowed little legs. A strong infant.

The child smelled like an olive press, having been oiled by his mother. Then he smelled less pleasing and Rob changed a baby’s cloth for the first time since tending his brothers and sister. Deep within him he still yearned to find William Stewart, Anne Mary, and Jonathan Carter one day. Wouldn’t it be joy to show this nephew to the long-lost Coles?

He and Mary quarreled about circumcision.

“It will do him no harm. Here every man is circumcised, Muslim and Jew, and it’s an easy way for him to be more easily accepted.”

“I don’t wish him to be more easily accepted in Persia,” she said wearily. “I wish him to be accepted at home, where men aren’t bobbed and knobbed but are left to nature.”

He laughed and she began to cry. He comforted her and then, when he could, escaped to confer with Ibn Sina.

The Prince of Physicians greeted him warmly, thanking Allah for his survival and speaking sadly of Mirdin. Ibn Sina listened with close attention to Rob’s report of treatments and amputations performed at the two battles, being especially interested in his comparisons between the efficacy of hot oil versus wine baths for cleansing open wounds. Ibn Sina showed himself more interested in scientific truth than in his own infallibility. Even though Rob’s observations contradicted what he himself had said and written, he insisted that Rob write his findings. “Also, this thing concerning wine in wounds should be your first lecture as a
hakim,
” he said, and Rob found himself agreeing with his mentor.

Then the old man looked at him. “I would like you to work with me, Jesse ben Benjamin. As assistant.”

He had never dreamed of this. He wanted to tell the Chief Physician that he had come to Ispahan—from so great a distance, through other worlds, surmounting so many problems—only to touch the hem of Ibn Sina’s garment.

Instead, he nodded.
“Hakim-bashi,
I would like that.”

Mary made no difficulty when he told her. She had been in Ispahan long enough so it didn’t occur to her that her husband could refuse such an honor, for in addition to a comfortable salary there would be the immediate prestige and respect of association with a man who was venerated like a demigod, loved above royalty. When Rob saw her joy for him, he took her into his arms. “I
will
take you home, I promise you, Mary. But not for a time yet. Please trust me.”

She did. Yet she recognized that if they were to remain for a longer time, she must change. She determined to make an effort to bend to the country. Reluctantly, she gave in concerning the matter of the child’s circumcision.

Rob went to Nitka the Midwife for advice. “Come,” she said, and led him two streets away to Reb Asher Jacobi the
mohel.

“So, a circumcision,” the
mohel
said. “The mother …” Musing, he looked at Nitka through narrowed eyes, his fingers scrabbling in his beard. “An Other!”

“It doesn’t have to be a
brit,
with all the prayers,” Nitka said impatiently. Having taken the serious step of delivering the Other’s man-child, she slipped easily into the role of defender. “If the father asks for the seal of Abraham on the child, it is a blessing to circumcise him, isn’t it so?”

“Yes,” Reb Asher admitted. “Your father. Will he hold the child?” he asked Rob.

“My father is dead.”

Reb Asher sighed. “Will other family members be present?”

“Only my wife. There are no other family members here. I’ll hold the child myself.”

“A time of celebration,” Nitka said gently. “Would you mind? My sons Shemuel and Chofni, a few neighbors …”

Rob nodded.

“I’ll attend to it,” Nitka said.

Next morning she and her two burly stonecutter sons were the first to arrive at Rob’s house. Hinda, the disapproving merchant from the Jewish market, came with her Tall Isak, a gray-bearded scholar with bemused eyes. Hinda was still unsmiling but she brought a gift, a swaddling garment.
Yaakob the Shoemaker and Naoma, his wife, gave a flagon of wine. Micah Halevi the Baker came, his wife Yudit carrying two large loaves of sugared bread.

Holding the sweet little body supine in his lap, Rob had doubts when Reb Asher cut the foreskin from the tiny penis.“May the lad grow in vigor—of mind and body—to a life of good works,” the
mohel
declared, as the baby shrieked. The neighbors lifted bowls of wine and cheered, and Rob gave the boy the Jewish name Mirdin ben Jesse.

Mary hated every moment. An hour later when everyone had gone home and she and Rob were alone with their child, she wet her fingers in barley water and touched her screaming son lightly on the forehead, the chin, and one earlobe and then the other.

“In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, I christen you Robert James Cole,” she said clearly, naming him for his father and his grandfather.

After that, when they were alone she called her husband Rob, and it was the child to whom she referred as Rob J.

To the Most Respected Reb Mulka Askari, Pearl Merchant of Masqat, Greetings.

Your late son Mirdin was my friend. May he rest.

We were surgeons together in India, from whence I have brought these few things, sent to you now via the kind hands of Reb Moise ben Zavil, merchant of Qum, whose caravan is bound this day for your city with a manifest of olive oil.

Reb Moise will give to you a parchment chart showing the precise location of Mirdin’s grave in the village of Kausambi, that his bones some day may be moved if that is your wish. I also send the
tefillin
which daily he wound on his arm and which he told me you gave to him when he entered into
minyan
on reaching his fourteenth year. In addition, I send the pieces and board of the Shah’s Game, over which Mirdin and I spent many a happy hour.

There were no other belongings with him in India. He was, of course, buried in his
tallit.

I pray the Lord may bring some measure of understanding to your bereavement and to ours. With his passing a light went from my life. He was the finest man ever I have valued. I know that Mirdin is with
Adashem,
and I hope that one day I may be worthy to be with him again.

Please convey my affection and respect to his widow and stalwart
young sons and inform them that my wife has given birth to a healthy son, Mirdin ben Jesse, and sends them her loving wishes for a good life.

Yivorechachah Adonai V’Yishmorechah,
May the
Lord Bless You and Keep You. I am

Jesse ben Benjamin,
hakim

Al-Juzjani had been Ibn Sina’s assistant for years. He had achieved greatness in his own right as a surgeon and was the most notable success among the former assistants, but all of them had done well. The
hakimbashi
worked his assistants hard, and the position was like an. extension of training, an opportunity to continue to learn. From the beginning Rob did far more than follow Ibn Sina about and fetch things for him, as sometimes the assistants of other great men were called upon to do. Ibn Sina expected to be consulted when there was a problem or his opinion was required, but the young
hakim
had his confidence and was expected to act on his own.