Azazeel (42 page)

Pharisee stared into the blazing fire and, like a Zoroastrian seer, started to conjure the unknown from the shape of the flames. He paused for a while, and tears began to form, then trickle down
his puffy cheeks into his beard. I thought he had finished but he wiped his face with the palm of his hand and continued, this time in a voice which was uncharacteristically shaky. ‘Religion
is a heavy debt which no one can repay. Our religion condemns us, condemns all who profess it, more than it condemns those who do not believe, but it also condemns unbelievers. Everyone is
condemned, everyone is lost, and the heavenly Father is a distinct hypostasis hidden behind all these doctrines. He does not reveal Himself to us in full because we cannot grasp His full presence.
He transcends the word hypostasis, transcends the word nature, beyond our comprehension. He is remote from us and we are remote from each other, because we are all indebted to our delusions. The
hypostasis itself is a mysterious delusion which we have invented and asserted, and then we have argued about it and we will fight each other over it forever. The day may come when everyone has his
own private doctrine, different from those of others, and the basis of Christianity will be undermined and the holy law will be forgotten. That day... will be... I will go up to my
room!’
¹⁴

Pharisee suddenly left me, as though I had not been with him in the first place, and he did not bother to shut the door after him. The crunch of the gravel under his feet grew fainter as he
walked away and disappeared into the depths of the night. Stillness prevailed around me and I felt very alone, and lonely. I shut the door, took off my cap and stretched out close to the warm
embers, my back on the floor and my arms akimbo. I fell into a sleep like a coma.

The dawn chorus of the birds woke me up but I remained stretched out on the floor. I felt like someone who had returned from a long journey and was about to embark on a journey
that would last even longer. I tried to summon up the strength to stand but I could not do so. I dozed intermittently without dreaming until someone knocked on the door. At first I thought it was
one of the monastery servants but when I opened the door I realized it was one of the guards from the Roman contingent.

‘The old woman wants you at the gate!’ he said.

Which old woman could that be at this early hour? I went out anxiously and saw Martha’s aunt in the twilight, sitting on the square rock next to the gate. She had an old piece of wool over
her shoulders. When I approached her, she stood up politely and tried to kiss my hand. The guard left us and went down the hill, as though he were going down to the contingent’s base. I sat
on the square rock and the old woman sat on the ground. The air was so cold that my shoulders began to shiver.

‘What brings you here so early, aunt?’ I asked.

‘I want you for something important,’ she said.

Her ‘something important’ was strange. The old woman wanted me to persuade Martha to go back to Aleppo to sing there, because living here was too hard, she said, and they had to
resort to living on what she could earn from singing. The old woman took me by surprise when she said, ‘As long as Martha isn’t going to sing in church, then let her go and sing in
Aleppo.’

How did the old woman know that we had postponed the singing? The abbot had just told me, so how did the news reach her so quickly? Someone who lives in the monastery must be visiting them or
perhaps the abbot told their relative the priest, and he told them. I did not worry too much who told them, because the most important thing for me at the time was that Martha might go to Aleppo to
sing in the evenings to vile Arab and Kurdish merchants, and I was being asked to push my only bird into a cage of wild cats.

‘But Martha told me you were working on the loom and cooking for the soldiers.’

‘All that does not make a profit, sir. No one buys what we weave and the soldiers are miserly.’

It took me aback that she called me ‘sir’. She did not say ‘father’, and she no longer addressed me with deference, as she used to do. Had Martha told her what happened
between us? Why was the old woman complaining now about the hardships of life and their dire circumstances? How dare she come to see me before sunrise to ask me about something like this?

‘Go back home, aunt, and I’ll speak to Martha about this in the afternoon.’

I wanted some time to think and I did not want to give the old woman the impression that I was upset. I went straight to the big church to join the other monks in preparing for Sunday prayers.
Before entering the church I looked over towards the ruined gateway and saw the old woman sitting in her spot and the guard who came and knocked on my door climbing the hill again. I stood there a
moment, watching from afar. I saw the guard come up to where the old woman was and sit on a rock, where I had just been sitting.

From over the stone wall of the monastery wall I saw them talking, but I could not hear what they were saying because of the distance. The way the guard was sitting was striking. He was speaking
as though he were resuming a conversation which had been interrupted, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees, waving his hands in a way that suggested he thought that what he was
saying was important. The old woman was nodding as though she agreed with what he was saying. I was about to go out and find out what it was all about but I heard footsteps on the gravel, coming
towards me.

‘Good morning, Hypa.’

It was Pharisee with his podgy face, which was now even podgier, and with red eyes that suggested that he had not slept. I rebuked him gently for his sudden departure the previous night, and he
said he was sorry but he had been upset. I asked him whether he was ill and, grumbling, he replied, ‘On the contrary, I have all the symptoms of the diseases of the spirit!’ We went on
with heavy steps and entered the big church by the inner door. A sense of apprehension hung over the place and was evident on the faces of all the monks.

After the prayers were over and the visitors had gone, I went down to Martha’s cottage and called out for her. She joined me at the edge of the cultivated land. It was quieter there and a
better place for us to sit because no one could see us. I looked into her face at length, trying to discover what her innocent features were concealing, but I could see nothing. I asked her about
the guard who had been talking to her aunt in the morning and I begged her to speak honestly and tell me what was really happening.

‘He wants to marry me,’ she said.

‘How?’

‘Just as people get married, Hypa. He says that he came only two months ago and will stay here for years, and there’s nothing to stop him marrying. He wants to live with us in the
cottage or rent a house for us in the village.’

‘But...’

‘I don’t want him, Hypa. I want you. And if you abandon me I shall go back to Aleppo, because living there, though hard, is easier than here.’

‘And who told your aunt that the hymns in the monastery church had been postponed?’ I asked.

‘The Roman guard who asked me to marry him. He’s of Greek origin, in his thirties and his name is...’

‘I don’t want to know.’

I felt great anguish, and Martha was looking absentmindedly towards the distant plains. After a long moment of silence, Martha suddenly stood up to sit down beside me. When she put her hand on
my shoulder, I looked around for fear there might be someone to see us. There was no one around us, just a mountain dove pecking at the ground with its beak.

From inside came a whisper, pressing me to put my hand on her thigh and lose myself with her in erotic passion, then keep her by my side for the rest of my life. It was the
same whispering voice that I came to know several weeks later. It was the voice of Azazeel, alluring me with a call from deep within me: ‘Don’t lose Martha the way you lost Octavia
twenty years ago.’

‘That was not my voice, Hypa. That was the call of your own soul.’

‘Azazeel. Don’t try to confuse me. Let me finish what I’m writing. I don’t have much time and I am sick at heart, because I shall leave in a few days.’

‘Good, I’ll shut up, and shut up completely. But it wasn’t my voice.’

Close to two months have now passed since I last sat with Martha, at the edge of the land planted with seeds. It was afternoon and at the time I did not succumb to the call
that came from inside me, tempting me to lay my hand on her and taste the pleasure of love. Instead I was thinking what that would lead to. I would become more attached to her, and she to me,
whereas I was supposed to have severed relations with the superficialities of this world, let alone relations with a woman.

But Martha was not like other women, she was more like a child or an angel. How could I leave her to the embraces of this Roman guard of Greek origin, whose name I did not know? How could he
understand her as I understood her, how could he love her as I loved her? Would she warm to him one day and whisper her songs to him in bed? Martha was not like other women, but if she went to sing
in the inns of Aleppo, amidst the villainous and drunken Arab and Kurdish merchants, she would soon become a fallen woman, embraced and passed around from one itinerant man to another. Martha had
spent years singing there and she had told me nothing of what happened to her in those times, and I had not asked her. Or perhaps her aunt tricked me all along, to make me run off with her and
marry her. How could I marry her, when I had spent my whole life as a monk? The twenty years I had spent in monasteries I would offer as a dowry to a woman in her twenties, and then in ten
years’ time I would be an old man in his fifties and she would be a beautiful woman in her thirties. She would be interested in men, covetous eyes would gaze at her and maybe men would reach
out to touch her. Would I spend the last years of my life protecting and restraining her? Would I end up guarding a woman, after a life of so many changes that I no longer know how exactly to
describe myself? Am I a physician or a monk, consecrated or impenitent, Christian or pagan?

Martha was sitting next to me that day, but all these thoughts made me forget that I was beside her. After a long silence, she touched the back of my hand with the tips of her fingers and broke
my train of thought. Speaking with a charming twang, she said, ‘Hypa, take me with you to your home country. Let’s get married and stay there for the rest of our lives.’

‘Is it true what your aunt said, that you plan to sing in Aleppo?’ I asked.

‘She wants that, but I want only you. So let’s leave this place.’

‘How, Martha, how? The people in my country are mostly Christian.’

‘What does that matter to us? We’re also Christian,’ she said.

‘In the religion of Christ we are forbidden to marry.’

‘Forbidden!’

‘Yes, Martha, forbidden. In the Gospel according to Matthew, it says: “Anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”’

‘Commits adultery? So what did we do in the cottage yesterday? Did we not commit adultery there?’

Martha slipped away from my side, as the soul slips out of an emaciated body weakened by chronic ailments. I did not look towards her as she walked away to the cottage and I did not move from
the spot until Deacon came and summoned me to the abbot’s room. He said the abbot wanted me urgently. My legs were numb and I almost collapsed to the ground when I tried to stand, but I held
on to Deacon’s arm. We walked up to the monastery from the path that passes uphill of the cottage, so that I would not meet Martha’s old aunt. I was exhausted. When I went in to see the
abbot, beads of sweat were streaming from my forehead, running into the folds of my clothing like trickles of rain.

SCROLL TWENTY-SEVEN

I
went into the abbot’s room through the half-open door and found him deep in prayer. When he had finished he told me he had been praying for
Nestorius. He also said he was going to call on the monastery people and all the Christians living in the area to fast for a week, with constant masses and prayers, starting from that night, to
solicit divine grace on behalf of Christians and to relieve the distress of the great churches. I was surprised at what he said, but then he told me he had heard that Bishop Cyril, the bishop of
Jerusalem and a group of other bishops and priests had decided to convene an ecumenical council the next day, chaired by Cyril, and Nestorius did not plan to attend.