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done was far from sufficient, and no other inhabitant of Akbar had
assisted.
The pair approached the boy, who lifted his head for the first time.
I'm hungry, he said.
I'm going to go look for something, the woman answered. There's
plenty of food hidden in the various houses in Akbar; people were
preparing for a long siege.
Bring food for me and for yourself, for we are ministering to the city
with the sweat of our brows, said Elijah. But if the boy wants to eat, he
will have to take care of himself.
The woman understood; she would have done the same with her son.
She went to the place where her house had stood; almost everything had
been ransacked by looters in search of objects of value, and her
collection of vases, created by the great master glassmakers of Akbar,
lay in pieces on the floor. But she found the dried fruits and grain that
she had cached.
She returned to the square, where she divided part of the food with
Elijah. The boy said nothing.
An old man approached them.
I saw that you spent all day gathering the bodies, he said. You're
wasting your time; don't you know the Assyrians will be back, after they
conquer Sidon and Tyre? Let the plague god come here and destroy
them.
We're not doing this for them, or for ourselves, Elijah answered. She is
working to teach a child that there is still a future. And I am working to
show him there is no longer a past.
So the prophet is no more a threat to the great princess of Sidon: what
a surprise! Jezebel will rule Israel till the end of her days, and we shall
always have a refuge if the Assyrians are not generous to the
conquered.
Elijah did not reply. The name that had once awakened in him such
hatred now sounded strangely distant.
Akbar will be rebuilt, in any case, the old man insisted. The gods
choose where cities are erected, and they will not abandon it; but we can
leave that labor for the generations to come.
We can, but we will not.
Elijah turned his back on the old man, ending the conversation.
The three of them slept in the open air. The woman embraced the boy,
noting that his stomach was growling from hunger. She considered giving
him food but quickly dismissed the idea: fatigue truly did diminish pain,
and the boy, who seemed to be suffering greatly, needed to busy himself
with something. Perhaps hunger would persuade him to work.
THE NEXT DAY, ELIJAH AND THE WOMAN RESUMED their labors. The old
man who had approached them the night before came to them again.
I don't have anything to do and I could help you, he said. But I'm too
weak to carry bodies.
Then gather bricks and small pieces of wood. Sweep away the ashes.
The old man began doing as they asked.
WHEN THE SUN reached its zenith, Elijah sat on the ground, exhausted.
He knew that his angel was at his side, but he could not hear him. To
what avail? He was unable to help me when I needed him, and now I
don't want his counsel; all I desire is to put this city in order, to show
God I can face Him, and then leave for wherever I want to go.
Jerusalem was not far away, just seven days' travel on foot, with no
really difficult places to pass through, but there he was hunted as a
traitor. Perhaps it would be better to go to Damascus, or find work as a
scribe in some Greek city.
He felt something touch him. He turned and saw the boy holding a small
jar.
I found it in one of the houses, the boy said.
It was full of water. Elijah drank it to the final drop.
Eat something, he said. You're working and deserve your reward.
For the first time since the night of the invasion, a smile appeared on the
boy's lips, and he ran to the spot where the woman had left the fruits
and grain.
Elijah returned to his work, entering destroyed homes, pushing aside the
rubble, picking up the bodies, and carrying them to the pile in the middle
of the square. The bandage that the shepherd had put on his arm had
fallen off, but that mattered little; he had to prove to himself that he was
strong enough to regain his dignity.
The old man, who now was amassing the refuse scattered throughout the
square, was right: soon the enemy would be back, to harvest fruits they
had not sown. Elijah was laboring for the invaders the assassins of the
only woman he had ever loved in his life. The Assyrians were
superstitious and would rebuild Akbar in any case. According to ancient
beliefs, the gods had spaced the cities in an organized manner, in
harmony with the valleys, the animals, the rivers, the seas. In each of
these they had set aside a sacred place to rest during their long voyages
about the world. When a city was destroyed, there was always a great
risk that the skies would tumble to the earth.
Legend said that the founder of Akbar had passed through there,
hundreds of years before, journeying from the north. He decided to sleep
at the spot and, to mark where he had left his things, planted a wooden
staff upright in the ground. The next day, he was unable to withdraw it,
and he quickly understood the will of the Universe; he marked with a
stone the place where the miracle had occurred, and he discovered a
spring nearby. Little by little, tribes began settling around the stone and
the well; Akbar was born.
The governor had once explained to Elijah that, following Phoenician
custom, every city was the third point, the element liking the will of
heaven to the will of the earth. The Universe made the seed transform
itself into a plant, the soil allowed it to grow, man harvested it and took
it to the city, where the offerings to the gods were consecrated before
they were left at the sacred mountains. Even though he had not traveled
widely, Elijah was aware that a similar vision was shared by many
nations of the world.
The Assyrians feared leaving the gods of the Fifth Mountain without food;
they had no desire to disturb the equilibrium of the Universe.
Why am I thinking such thoughts, if this is a struggle between my will
and that of the Lord, who has left me alone in the midst of tribulations?
The sensation he had felt the day before, when he challenged God,
returned: he was forgetting something of importance, and however much
he forced his memory, he could not recall it.
ANOTHER DAY WENT BY. MOST OF THE BODIES HAD been collected when
a second woman approached.
I have nothing to eat, she said.
Nor have we, answered Elijah. Yesterday and today we divided among
three what had been intended for one. Discover where you can obtain
food, then inform me.
Where can I learn that?
Ask the children. They know everything.
Ever since he had offered Elijah water, the boy had seemed to recover
some part of his taste for life. Elijah had told him to help the old man
gather up the trash and debris but had not succeeded in keeping him
working for long; he was now playing with the other boys in a corner of
the square.
It's better this way. He'll have his time to sweat when he's a man. But
Elijah did not regret having made him spend an entire night hungry,
under the pretext that he must work; if he had treated him as a poor
orphan, the victim of the evil of murderous warriors, he would never
have emerged from the depression into which he had been plunged when
they entered the city. Now Elijah planned to leave him by himself for a
few days to find his own answers to what had taken place.
How can children know anything? said the woman who had asked him
for food.
See for yourself.
The woman and the old man who were helping Elijah saw her talking to
the young boys playing in the street. They said something, and she
turned, smiled, and disappeared around one corner of the square.
How did you find out that the children knew? the old man asked.
Because I was once a boy, and I know that children have no past, he
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