Seeker of Stars: A Novel (6 page)

~ 11 ~

P
omegranate

This journey to find the new king reminded me of Salvi. These desert routes had been his home so long that the family jokes about him being a nomad now described him well. My relationship with Salvi was not as it had been for our father and uncle, and though I was forever glad to be done with my work in the shop, I missed the easy connection between us. Perhaps even without the accident, without Stela, without the magi, this distance would have grown. We were so different. At the same time, in this lonely place, I longed for my brother, for his simple words that cut cleanly through my confusions, for his hearty laugh I had rarely heard in years. Salvi and I had never spoken of what had happened between us, but nothing had ever been the same. My heart grew heavy at the thought of him, and each time we met, the silence was unbearably awkward.

Salvi had had his own struggles: the business could not afford a second caravan, but after years as Taz’s equal, my brother was full of frustration. The fact that the rugs were made by girls was also a source of occasional ridicule and mirth to many. Such comments, I knew, must sting Salvi, especially since one of the girls was his wife.

Salvi married well. I can say that much. It took many years and distance for me to be able to accept fully Leyla as Salvi’s wife, although now I can truly say that my love for Leyla is easily that for a sister. At times, I find it hard to imagine she was the girl of my dreams so long ago. At first, I fled into the desert, blindly traveling through a storm toward the city. My own storm broke when Balzar saw the pain I tried to hide and made a place for it to be revealed; I would never forget his kindness. When the storm was finally spent, I still felt disoriented, tricked, grieved. But it was done. I returned to my work, only occasionally finding a piece of grit from the storm still chafing me.

Salvi’s Leyla has many outlets for her industry—her four sons and her work. She is the most precise of the weavers, though my fateful experience with the loom has left her forever afraid to set the strings; that task she leaves to her father or to Daria.

Daria runs the workshop now. They—we—obey her in everything. She is bossy and imperious but also wise and clever, and her judgments of people are precise and true. It was Daria who wrote to me when I fled back to the astronomers and my beauties after Leyla confessed her betrothal. All the announcements of Leyla’s children came from Daria too.

I was afraid to hear Daria’s opinion of my own surprising betrothal, and I managed to avoid serious conversation with her until I was safely married. Daria had always treated Reta well, as far as I knew, from the time Daria entered our father’s household, but whether she welcomed a Hebrew servant as a sister, or merely tolerated her—as I suspected Leyla did—I was uncertain. For the first time, I began to allow the question to invade my thoughts unguarded. Our paths had crossed only when Reta and I came home for the yearly harvest festival, but on this journey to Israel, where I had much time to be alone with my own thoughts, I wondered about Daria’s ideas about my wife.

My brother, I knew, still worried about me with Leyla, especially since Reta and I had had no children of our own. When would the tumult settle? The most genuine smile I had seen on Salvi’s face sprang forth when we announced our hoped-for child. The smile was one of relief.

What Daria thought of Reta was far less certain. This question became stuck in my mind as we rode, like a melody echoing again and again, through the monotony of sand and the lulling rhythm of our horses’ paces. I longed to gallop ahead, but for Balzar’s comfort and Shaz’s sense of dignity we moved across the sand in a steady but slow rhythm. Sometimes I found myself nodding off to sleep on my horse. Nearly always my mind drifted during the heat of the day. It was at night when the temperatures dropped and the stars pierced the skies that my mind became alert and steadied. By day, my thoughts drifted and shifted and swirled so that past and future mingled. What Daria thought of Reta became one of those vague but fixed ideas rattling around behind my eyes. I recalled expressions on Daria’s face that made me wonder exactly what she had been thinking when she saw Reta and me at family gatherings each year. Though knowing Daria’s thoughts might be useless to me—what could I do?—I became driven to know.

I would have an unusual second visit with my family in three days’ time, as Shaz had determined my village would be the best place to load up on stores of water and food for our long journey. I would have a day or two to see Daria.

“What do you think of Reta?” The question, which had been forming itself in my mind as I listened to the hypnotic thud-swish of the horses’ hooves against the sand, sprang forth the instant Daria and I were alone.

Daria smiled, though her eyes looked puzzled at the urgency of my question. “She is lovely. Why?”

Why indeed? I shrugged, unable to find words.

Daria excused herself and returned with a pomegranate from the tree outside. “Eat this, Melchi,” she commanded. I shook my head, but she insisted. “They’re very good this year. Try one.”

Obediently I stripped the pomegranate of its leaves, cracked the outer casing with my teeth, and peeled the fruit and pith from its shell. I filled a small bowl with water and cracked the pieces of pith underwater. Tiny rubies fell to the bottom of the bowl and I fingered them out from under the floating casing and put several in my mouth, feeling them explode with tart sweetness. I smiled as I savored the bite. “There are no pomegranates like the ones at our oasis!”

“That’s Reta.”

I tried to grasp her meaning but failed.

“Reta is like a pomegranate,” she explained. “She is rich in spirit and mind and heart, but she keeps herself hidden away, just as the fruit of the pomegranate is hidden behind layers of hard casing. I was delighted when you saw that in Reta because you have depths in you, too. Leyla would not have satisfied you, Melchi. She is beautiful and I love her dearly, but she does not have the depths Reta offers you.”

I pondered my sister’s words long into the night as I lay on the rooftop we had once used as our observatory. The house was Salvi’s now. Though he was away, his wife and children slept below. Daria slept in a little apartment at the back of the workshop. Salvi had built it at Daria’s request. It was unusual for a woman to have her own home, and it would have been customary for Daria to stay with her brother’s family until she married, but everyone understood that Daria meant no slight to her family, nor was she being aloof. She ate more meals at the house across the garden than she did in her own kitchen, but she liked having her own kitchen too.

“I can’t go from being the master of the workshop all day to letting Leyla be my wife too!” she said with a laugh.

Thoughts of the kitchen made me hungry, and I slipped downstairs to find some fruit. After so many years, the kitchen in the big house, as they now called our childhood home, was not entirely Leyla’s but still Reta’s. I had never spent much time in the kitchen, but I found little had changed since Reta had left.

Why exactly had I married the girl? And why had she married me? I had considered the first question many times but never really the second. Had I simply been a way out of a difficult situation? A source of provision?

Until the time of our father’s final illness, I had certainly never thought of Reta in any way other than absently counting her among our father’s household assets.

News of our father’s illness had come by horseback. Daria and Leyla had decided the illness was grave enough to justify the expense of bringing Salvi and me home. The chief astronomer immediately gave me leave to return home, for which I was grateful. The messenger continued on his way, searching for Salvi, and I hired a camel and driver and spent four days clinging to the back hump, being swayed about with nausea, grief and confusion mingling.

I stepped off the camel unsteadily at my father’s door, and as I hesitated to enter, a figure dressed in white stepped out from the shadows of the house. It was Reta. She answered my unspoken questions with a nod, reassuring me I had arrived in time. She led me to a seat, removed my sandals, and bathed my feet. She gave me a glass of wine and a piece of bread and a basin with which to wash my face, and then she pointed me toward my father’s room.

I was mesmerized. Reta had always stayed in the shadows, doing as she was bid to do. My father’s illness had released her from this. Even Daria had slumped, sitting by our father’s bedside. Leyla was in confinement, expecting her third child any day. Salvi and Taz were still on their way home. Decisions, care, the household fell to Reta as it had to Salvi and me after our mother’s death. But where we boys floundered and stumbled as best we could, Reta glowed with the responsibility. Her white clothes, Daria explained to me later, were what Hebrews wore in mourning, but to me she moved through the house like a star tracing an arc across the sky. Grace and beauty were in her gentle touches.

Little could be done for our father. We could not tell what he was aware of. We could not tell if he was in pain or if he slept. His dying was as aloof and silent as his life.

One day he stopped. I looked at the casing of my father’s body and wondered. I had known death many times, of course, but my father’s death I observed as I had learned to watch the stars—with deliberate objectivity. I did not mourn him as I had mourned my beautiful mother or even Omar—my father had never belonged to my heart in the same way. Still his death left me an orphan. For the first time I asked myself questions other magi often asked: Where do the dead go? Is there life after this life?

My brother and sister did not share my questions, though I tried once or twice to talk with them. Beyond the grief I felt at my father’s death, I mourned, feeling a loss of all that had been my sense of home. This loneliness in the midst of a familiar place was hard to bear, and I made plans to return to the city as soon as I reasonably could.

One night I came down to the same kitchen to eat. Reta sat at the table. She startled when I came in but remained seated. The kitchen smelled sweet, full as it was with the fruits neighbors had brought after my father’s death. I loaded a plate and was about to return to my room when Leyla’s baby began to wail.

“May I join you?” I asked Reta.

“Of course.” I could see traces of tears on her face.

“Are you well?” I asked.

She looked at me in surprise. “I miss your father.”

Now I was surprised.

“He was kind to me,” she said. “Especially these last few years after Leyla came. He no longer needed me in the house, but he insisted I stay. I will always remember that.” Tears flooded her eyes.

I reached out my good hand and clasped hers. I had meant it as a gesture of comfort, but as I did so, a shock ran through me, filling me with a deep yearning for more. I looked fully at Reta all in white, and something in her echoed deep in me. She looked back without blinking, and I could not breathe for longing. A moment later, it was gone, but I still held her hand within my own, blindly asking about her plans for the future. She had none yet but knew she would move on, perhaps back to Israel to seek her distant family. Panic rose within me. I was to return in two days to the city, and by harvest time Reta would surely have disappeared into the desert, leaving no trace. No one had ever moved me as Reta had just for that moment.

As Daria had often told me, I was serious. I was a dreamer, too, though not prone to taking risks. Yet something told me I could not lose Reta, and so, still holding her hand, I asked her to marry me.

The next morning, Reta answered me with a brave yes. The veil had fallen again, and I looked at Reta much as I always had, yet with the same sense I had after awakening from a sweet dream I ached to recall. Acting in faith that my decision had been based on some deep truth, the next day we were married.

~ 12 ~

S
andstorm

One thing I have discovered about journeys is that at first you look back. You look back on your life and see it in relief. Daria’s image of Reta as a pomegranate came back to me each time I prepared one for eating. Was Reta one of those pomegranates that looked so promising and yet was bitter or tasteless? I couldn’t accept that she was, and yet I had to confess that I had not savored my wife as I did the fruit. I had not found a way to get behind her shell. Truthfully, I had not tried. Far too quickly I had cast her in the same role she had always occupied in my life: taking care of my needs. She did this well, as she always had, and though the wives of the astronomers might not have welcomed Reta as one of them, many of my colleagues envied my wife’s cooking and the quiet peace of our home.

As we rode into the desert, stores fully stocked up, I voiced my thoughts to Balzar by asking him why he had married his wives.

“Lust, Melchior, I married my first wife chiefly for lust.” He chuckled at the recollection. “Lust for her body, and also for her father’s approval. My second wife I married because she was a good friend. Why do you ask?”

I shrugged, unable to explain my thoughts.

“You’re thinking of your wife. She’ll be fine. You’ll be back in time for the birth of your son.” Balzar patted my arm reassuringly.

We rode on. Hours later, the questions still scratching at me, I spoke to Balzar again.

“I don’t know why I married her, Balzar.”

He nodded, not surprised at the delay or the resuming of the conversation. Desert conversations drifted like the landscape. I saw a bird land upon the sand.

“I feel like that bird,” I said, gesturing. “Flying away from my home. Running away into blinding storms. Hiding my head under my wing.”

Again he was not startled. “You know what the sand does for the bird, don’t you, Melchior? It cleans it. Sand sticks to the bird’s oils and dirt, and when the storm is over, the bird flies away, free from all that soiled it.”

I pondered his words silently.

“And sometimes it eats a bit of sand to help it digest its food.” Balzar paused, and I felt his gaze fix upon me, though I still looked at the bird. “A little sandstorm can heal and help.”

I became aware of other aches in my heart that needed healing. Among the ten of us on our journey was Balzar’s son Hasin, who had not been chosen as one of the magi but who had begged leave of the chief astronomer to go as one of our servants. He was kept busy cooking and caring for the animals, but he also took care that his father was drinking enough water each day and that a portion of food was set aside for him before it was too heavily spiced. In return, Balzar was grateful and affectionate with his son. Though Balzar and I often rode together during the daytime, in the evenings, around the fires, it was Balzar’s son who would recline with his head in his father’s lap. The two would laugh with an easy intimacy, listening to each other’s stories. Just as the smell of a meal cooking over the fire would suddenly awaken a hunger I had not been aware of, so watching this father and son filled me with an ache for what I had never known. I longed for such a father and thought back to what my own father had been. There was not much even to remember.

It was only when I recalled with a smile that Reta was indeed expecting our child and vowed that I would learn all I could from Balzar and his son that I was able to move beyond the upheaval. Things would not always be the same. I could be part of a different father and son relationship than what I had known. Salvi, with his boys, was very much like what Taz had been to us—a fun-loving visitor who stirred up their world with his whirlwind visits before leaving again—but this was not what I craved in a father, nor was it the kind of father I could imagine being. My hungry heart printed Balzar and his son upon my memory.

The trip was not an easy one for Balzar. I saw the heat weaken him a bit each day, just as a flower left out in the blazing sun will wilt hour by hour. I was torn between wanting to urge Shaz to slow down the pace and my desire to finish our journey. Shaz was now so eager to get to Jerusalem that if he was not reminded, he often drove us through the hottest part of the day without rest. I joined Hasin in taking care of Balzar along the way.

Balzar regarded his failing body as one might a favorite old pet—with a mixture of impatience and affection. Despite his physical weakness, Balzar pushed himself to keep up with the rest of us, but when he couldn’t, he would tell Shaz. With no attempt to disguise his annoyance with the old man, Shaz would call a brief halt.

It was on one of those halts in the white sun that Shaz began to speak about Jerusalem and the great Jewish king, Herod. Shaz and Caspar agreed that the star signaled that Herod had had a son. Balzar warned Shaz of all he had heard of Herod—the rumors, the wives, the murdered sons, Herod’s jealousy. These traits were all well known in diplomatic circles.

Shaz, however, was dismissive. “Every great man is slandered by lesser men,” he sneered, including Balzar in his insult.

Each day the sun blazed hotter. Heat rose from the ground like steam, confusing our perspective. I did not always know whether we were headed toward our destination or turning in circles. The days were endless infernos of heat, and at night we fell into unconsciousness.

One day I saw strange lumps on the horizon. As we drew closer I saw that it was a nomad with a herd of sheep. The sheep stood crowded close together, though they were in a wide space. I pondered this sight for hours and could come up with only one explanation: in this shadeless terrain, each sheep could find relief only in the shadow of another sheep. I had no shadow to protect me from the relentless blaze of the sun. I felt exposed and small on the vast landscape.

All that long day, I felt as though I were on a long tether and had unexpectedly reached my limit. I felt choked and stuck. My horse plodded with the rest through the raging waves of sand, but I resisted every step of the way. I did not understand this feeling. We were five days beyond my brother’s home and still a week from Jerusalem. The road we traveled was called the King’s Highway, though which king owned the highway was subject to local interpretation. We were on the outskirts of my own king’s territory. Aside from the nomad and his sheep, we had seen no one for several days.

Not only were we alone in the desert, we were also now traveling entirely by faith. Shortly after our departure, the moving star had disappeared from view. Some speculated that it could have been a seasonal phenomenon rather than a herald of a new king, and with bitterness I realized that if Herod were to look at us in puzzlement and mockery, this journey and my absence at my child’s birth would be foolish and costly indeed. I had not been able to bring myself to think of my own sweet mother as I prepared to leave home, but on the journey I dreamed of her almost nightly, though it was Reta’s face I saw.

The storm broke the night after we saw the sheep. My dreams shifted with the change in weather, though while the temperatures eased, my night visions became more disturbing. The night of the storm, I could not recall the details of the dream, only the atmosphere of fear and suspicion, but I attributed my restless sleep to the tempest outside. The second night, however, Balzar woke me when he heard my tossing and muttering. I lay still so as not to shatter the images from my dream.

“It was Herod, the Jewish king,” I whispered to Balzar’s eyes, bright against the darkness. “He had two faces, one behind the other.”

Balzar nodded. “I, too, have been dreaming of Herod. This new king poses him a real threat.”

Shaz had boasted to us some relative of Herod’s was a distant cousin of his—one of our people who had converted when she married Herod’s father. Herod had risen to power much as Shaz hoped to do. We could see that Shaz was hoping the family connection would lead to a faster route to success.

In the dark, Balzar whispered to me that he was worried for our safety if Shaz were to approach Herod wrongly.