The Dovekeepers - Alice Hoffman [79]
In the morning, the flocks of birds fleeing over the hillsides were so enormous they blotted out the sun. I held my tongue, though I was certain this was a bad sign. The white cockerel who’d been murdered on the stairs of the synagogue was following us, that was what I believed, sending his messengers to pursue us. The birds passed us, their flight faster than we would ever be, and that told us something as well.
If we had paid attention, we would have understood there are some things in this world you cannot outrun.
THE DAYS PASSED, and before long we had eaten nearly all we had, the bread, the olives, the cheese. We began to ration our food. My son-in-law’s plan was simple, the tactics of a logical man. We would wait out the Romans, then return to our village and start anew. I didn’t say what I knew, that there’d be nothing to return to. We would have only blood and broken bricks. I saw that my son-in-law was intimidated by the wilderness before us and our place in it. The desert loomed, a harsh landscape even for those experienced in surviving its dangers. In all his hours of study, Yoav had never built a fire from twigs with the use of a flint, never hunted with a bow, never found water or made his way over limestone boulders and rocks so harsh they set our feet to bleeding. He was an important man in the village, but here he was nothing. Before long we were lost. Each thorn tree looked the same to us, ravaged, black. Each hillock led to yet another. Only the sky changed, flushing pink at twilight, and then sifting into a dove gray light before the darkness overcame us.
Yoav began to pray, hour after hour, as if that could prompt him as to what to do next. I had tried and failed to make bread in a griddle over our small fire. I could only make crackers that hadn’t the strength to rise. I finally was able to cook bread on hot stones that I placed beneath burning kindling. The boys called the black, risen loaves ash bread; it was as bitter as it was satisfying. The goatskin bags of water were less heavy, drained by our thirst, and the rains hadn’t yet come. Yoav promised that Adonai would lead us, and we had no choice but to accept his decree. Secretly, I wished we could find a guide among the tribesmen in their blue robes that we sometimes spied heading toward Moab. I would give them all I had if they could help us navigate a trail.
Though our village was gone, I still thought there was a world for us to return to.
I kept my eye on the heavens. There were more birds all the time. Each day their numbers increased. I tried to count them, but it was impossible, they were as numerous as the stars, and in the end I gave up. I still felt the Baker was with me, and that brought me comfort. I spoke to him under my breath, trying to amuse him with my descriptions of the many sorts of winds we encountered: the billowing kind, the howling sort, the soft, warm wind from the south, the stark, blue wind that arrived at nightfall and abruptly departed at daybreak, the violet wind of despair. I chattered to my husband whenever no one could overhear.
Then one day I awoke and he was gone. I felt his departure as surely as if I had seen his spirit rise. All at once, my aloneness settled deeply, a stone inside of me, hard and sharp. While I slept, my husband’s spirit had been claimed by the World-to-Come. He was utterly gone. When I spoke of the hissing, rain-spattered wind that would come to us when winter arrived, he made no reply. When I described the sunstruck wind of the drifting dust funnels, I was speaking to no one