He lay down on the cool moss. His thoughts were insupportable, so he slept. When he opened his eyes again it was twilight. The stars were dimly visible against a magenta sky. The world around him was empurpled.
He sat up. He hadn’t moved an inch from where he’d fallen and his body was stiff and aching. He stood up, stretched, and went over to the river to get himself a drink. He heard a soft noise behind him and whipped around, heart in his throat.
It was Eyanna. She was dirty and exhausted and had some minor scratches but was otherwise unharmed. She plopped down on the moss.
“Eyanna! Sweetie! How did you get away from the skalkits?”
“Ran. Hid.” Eyanna’s face was exhausted, expressionless.
“Well… um, I am happy you are okay. You are… You are very brave. Thank you.” The words ought to have turned his tongue to salt.
She didn’t acknowledge his words. Her back straightened determinedly. It was a strange gesture and signaled a change about her, a new solidity and strength. She was no longer the girl who skulked in the trees.
It pushed him away without a word and made him feel his smallness.
17.4. Thirty-Seventy Aharon Handalman
Aharon had enjoyed several quiet days of study with The Book of Torment. Well—enjoyed was maybe too strong a word. The spiritual work was hard, and the tension in the House of Divine Ordinance was like caged electricity. He sensed that things were occurring beyond his ken, wheels within wheels. He longed to speak with Kobinski, but since the night when he’d laid out his heart the kabbalist had not come again. The last day of Festival was the day after tomorrow and the heretic would be killed. Aharon himself felt like a condemned man, waiting for the powers on this planet to notice him again, to sweep them up in their current. And like a condemned man, he tried to make his peace with God.
He could see the beauty in the system the manuscript laid out: the sephirot, the ladder, the idea of balance. It had an intuitive right-feeling about it, and that in itself was disturbing. It was so completely different from his old beliefs, from the black-and-white world of the yeshiva. And although those old beliefs had been torn away from him, the memory still lingered of what it had felt like when they were inviolable. Their inviolability had always been the highest principle in and of itself, had it not? Because once you let things slide a little, then where would it stop?
Now he saw that kind of thinking for what it was: a way to keep his mind closed and frozen. But it was still a struggle to let it go. Such a double-edged sword! He decided to put the matter into God’s hands. The manuscript outlined exercises—prayers and meditations—for balancing your sephirot. Aharon was willing to admit, at the very least, that he could stand a little more compassion. So he tried the exercises for chesed, asking God to fill him with mercy, to fill up his heart.
He remembered the feeling he’d had that night, talking to Kobinski, when his heart had opened up and something greater than himself was pouring compassion through him. He wanted that feeling again. He prayed for chesed and he thought of Hannah. He thought of all the times he had been cold and hard because she’d failed his image of what a good Orthodox wife should be. Now it was not these things he remembered, not the times when she’d been obedient or silent. What he remembered was Hannah laughing goofily, like a girl, Hannah smart-cracking or stubborn, even that, yes, sexy rebellious pout, like a Jewish Greta Garbo. In expecting an ideal from her he had missed the opportunity to enjoy what she actually was—a crime and a shame, for both of them.
In response to these thoughts, he felt the blood stir in his chest, the almost physical swelling of his heart. Fill me with love, he asked, and he was filled. He had ignored his heart for a long time, he knew, because the tremors of love and compassion were like the quickening of the dead. But miraculously—and he knew a miracle when he saw one—his heart was not so shriveled that it could not rise again.
He heard the door, soft, quiet sounds, and when he opened his eyes Tevach stood by his chair. Aharon had made himself get out of bed for the past two days, fighting his way to the chair and back. His muscles were stiff and painful, but walking was easier.
“Tevach,” he said, genuinely glad to see him. “And how is Ko— How is My Lord?”
“He talks to no one.” The Fiore’s nose twitched like a rodent’s. He seemed to push himself to speak. “I came—I came to see the new Scriptures. I wished you would be sleeping.”
Aharon wasn’t sure he cared for the word Scriptures, but he had the manuscript on his lap, and he offered it to Tevach. Tevach gazed down at it in his hands with awe.
“I read a little. The night you came, when My Lord slept.”
Aharon was surprised Tevach would admit it, and more surprised that he was able to read Hebrew as well as speak it.
“He does not care for the Scripture.” Tevach spit on the floor.
“Tevach, My Lord wrote it.”
Tevach looked confused. “He…”
“Long ago.”
Tevach gazed at the manuscript with new bewilderment. “I did not understand what I read.”
Aharon made a nu gesture. “It’s not easy. I have a hard time myself.”
“Would you teach me?” Tevach cowered, as if expecting to be punished for making such an outrageous request, but his eyes had a mind of their own. They gazed into Aharon’s openly.
He felt the answer in his heart. “I’ll try to teach you, yes. If you wish.”
Tevach looked tremendously pleased. He glanced nervously toward the door. “Would you… Would you also please… yes?… to speak to another Fiore about it? Very important. I could take you tonight.”
This was something else entirely. Aharon knew at once that it was a treacherous idea—to leave his room? To speak with other Fiore about something Argeh would consider heresy? And yet the answer was in his heart just as clearly and immediately as the previous answer had been.
“Yes, Tevach. I believe that I would.”
Tevach returned long after darkness had fallen. Aharon had spent the time in meditation, struggling with waves of uncertainty and fear. But he felt no better by the time Tevach arrived. The Fiore was carrying one of Kobinski’s cloaks and a golden mask.
“This is an old mask he won’t miss,” Tevach said in response to the look on Aharon’s face. “My Lord sleeps now.”
“But, Tevach—”
“Fiore can see us in halls.” Tevach thrust the disguise at him. “Wear this.”
Aharon reluctantly took the things. He’d pictured a short distance to the carriage with almost everyone asleep. Now he was not so sure. But Tevach didn’t give him time to change his mind. He helped Aharon into the robe and mask, as he must have helped Kobinski a thousand times; then his hand was around Aharon’s waist, supporting him out into the hall.
The guards Kobinski had posted at his door paid no attention to them. They made a show of not looking at Aharon, contemplating the ceiling, the walls, scratching their chins, picking their teeth. It would have been funny if Aharon were not so afraid. He wondered if Kobinski knew how influential his little servant was. They moved through the halls with Aharon’s arm slung over Tevach’s shoulder, his legs struggling to keep up. They saw no one as they left the House, a blessing for which Aharon gave thanks; then they were out into the icy night.
A carriage was waiting. Inside, Aharon could not make out Tevach’s face across from him in the dark. Again his courage failed him. He was suddenly afraid to be alone with this strange beast, defying Kobinski, his only human protector. He was afraid to be back out in the bloody streets, afraid of where he was going. He had agreed to speak, god have mercy. What would Argeh do to him if he was caught? Would he die in the arena on one of those black devices?