“You’re lying!”
“You won’t regret it.”
“I know this trick.”
“You won’t regret it.”
She spoke while continuing to suck on her finger. Seduction flashed in her eyes. She walked seductively and bore herself seductively. O Lord Ragh, how quickly the daughters of the desert mature! They are like desert plants that send up spiky stalks the day after it rains. Every part of our neighbor-girl had ripened and filled out: cheeks, breasts, and hips. When we were playing around the campsite, the naughty girl had grown accustomed to putting an index finger in her mouth while slipping her other hand stealthily between my legs. She would fool around there while she laughed and continued to suck on her finger. One time, I asked her straight out what was the secret of this tail boys have. She said that boys don’t play with dolls because they have a tail, whereas girls want a doll, since they do not have a tail. Then, laughing shamelessly, she placed her hand between my thighs and began to press what lay there. One day when I accompanied her to the pasture, she tried to pull my clothes off. I resisted her, but she calmly tore my shirt in two and dragged me under a bushy retem tree to be alone with me there. This evening also I yielded and accompanied her to nearby Retem Ravine.
When we were alone, I asked her what the secret was. Placing her index finger in her mouth and then withdrawing it, she said, “I wanted to tell you the secret about your mother.”
I replied with idiotic naiveté, “The priest told me I’d killed her.”
“Never believe a priest.”
“How can we doubt a priest who’s the author of a prophecy?”
She entertained herself by sucking on the invisible nectar of her slender finger. Her large black eyes, which resembled a gazelle’s, gazed into mine. Within her eyes there was a profound, secret treasure. She dropped her eyelids to veil the treasure. Then she withdrew her finger to say, “It was the priest who killed your mother.”
I did not believe her. I suddenly felt weak. My powers flagged. I stammered, “You’re lying!”
In her eyes, however, I saw what I did not want to see. I saw something the tongue could never convey. I saw the truth. I asked, “But why did the priest kill my mother?”
Sucking on her finger, she stuttered, “It was your mother who wished it.”
“What?”
“To pay for your return to the world.”
“What are you saying?”
“When you set out to search for your father, the men of the tribe set out to search for you. She vowed to sacrifice a she camel to the goddess Tanit if they found you alive. When they gave you up for lost, she vowed to give her entire herd to the goddess. When you entered the pasture lands with the body of a gazelle and the head of a man, as the news spread through the tribe, she offered her neck to the priest if he would return you to the world.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“He slaughtered her like a ewe on the tomb of the ancestors.”
“Shut up.”
“It’s said this wily strategist sought her life as the price of your deliverance from the reign of metamorphoses.”
“I asked him to tell me about my release. He said he freed me with the ancients’ charms, with those only the shrewdest magicians know.”
“They say that when she lay down to be slaughtered, she declared: ‘It’s not important whether I die. What’s important is for him to live. I didn’t come into the world to stay here. I came into the world so he could be.’”
We fell silent. Dusk changed into nightfall, indeed into the dark of night, but my eye could still see the treasure and the invisible universe in her eyes, just as I had seen it in the eyes of the gazelle that day.
She said, “That’s not all.” She closed her eyes. Her finger continued to poke around in her mouth but did not prevent her from saying, “Your father!”
She fell silent, and I could not bear it. I asked, “What do you want to say about my father?”
She replied coldly, “He followed you home after you departed.”
“That’s a lie.”
“I know no one will ever tell you the truth. My grandmother says that we have to learn to read people’s eyes, if we want to know anything.”
“Why did the priest conceal the truth from me?”
“Because the priest is a member of the tribe, and the tribe does not want us to trail after our fathers, because that’s a violation of the teachings of the ancient law.”
“The lost law?”
“The law that everyone refers to as lost, even though its presence among us is more powerful than that of breathing.”
“Who taught you this?”
“I know this because I’ve learned to listen. Learn to listen if you want to know things.”
“I think I’ve also heard that the law is hostile toward fathers and anyone wishing to affiliate himself with the race of fathers.”
“In the customary practice of the law, fathers have no legal standing.”
“But what’s the secret behind the law’s hostility toward fathers?”
“For us to learn the true reason for this hostility, we must live a long time and listen a long time.”
I was trembling. My body had begun to burn with emotion, fever, and misery. I asked, “But why didn’t he wait for me?”
“He didn’t leave until he had given up all hope.”
“How did the law-abiding folk treat his arrival?”
“They thought it ill-omened.”
“Ill-omened?”
“The truth is that their prophecy was soon fulfilled, because a curse fell on your dwelling the moment he left.”
“What curse?”
“Is there a curse more dreadful than for the tent post to collapse and for the home to be destroyed? Is there a fouler curse than for the mistress of the home to fall? Is there any curse more evil than for the family’s son to be transformed into a creature with a monster’s body?”
Silence sank deep roots, and the dark of night did as well. Her distant eyes were now veiled from me, and my mind soared far away. I obstinately focused on the foyers of my first birth. I scrutinized them but gained nothing more from this trip than a vision. I gained nothing beyond that figure who had appeared to me one day, squatting beside the tent post and conversing with my mother about the riddle, back when I spoke the prophecy.
Without meaning to, I said, “I saw him one day. I saw my father once. How can I see him again?”
I heard her voice in the dark but did not see her eyes. I could not see the truth. It seemed to me I was hearing the voice of the priestess: “We only see our fathers once. A father must show us his face once, so we can lose him for good thereafter.”
“I saw him like an apparition beside the tent post. He seemed to be one of the prophets.”
“All fathers are prophets.”
“Since then, he’s remained hidden.”
“Our fathers vanish, because they are prophets.”
I implored the priestess of the darkness, without realizing what I was saying: “I want to see him. How can I see him? Can’t the priest summon him for me?”
In the darkness, prophecy issued from the tongue of the priestess, “The priest can summon your father’s shadow, but he will never be able to produce your father for you.”
I was convulsed by anxiety. I trembled and fell backwards. Overhead I saw the stars.
6 Night
THOSE VIPERS KNOWN as women bit me early in life: an émigrée visitor to the villages bit me on the hand. The tribe, for some reason I never knew, called her Tamnukalt, or “Princess,” and treated her with respect and pomp. She was rather haughty with an imperious bearing, a full body, a white complexion, and a beautiful face. Her eyes had an expression I understood only with hindsight; as that fang the tribe’s sages call “lust.” As I later realized, she was able to infect me with it, because I did not know its name. She moved from tent to tent with the grandeur befitting a woman of her wealth, beauty, and mystery. She would visit with the women, who treated her to banquets of meat and to singing parties, which would occasionally last until dawn. Several times I accompanied my mother to these parties, where I played with friendly girls, who liked to take me off into the corners of the tents. There I would hide with them and fall asleep before the evening’s entertainment began. My Ma would search for me to no avail and, when she despaired of finding me, return home alone. I would rejoin her only the next morning.