The Dovekeepers - Alice Hoffman [88]
The old man in the settlement of goat-hair tents and unclothed children could not believe the good fortune of his trade. He was only too ready to give up his ax in return for pure silver. It was a heavy weapon, made for a woodsman rather than a warrior, much stronger than the one that had split my dear Zara in two. As we went on, I could hear Yoav practicing with it in the early-morning hours, when the sky was still black, turning to the ax as he had once turned to his prayers and his scrolls. He slept beside it, as he had once slept beside his wife.
My premonition that Yoav would run into the wilderness and forsake us in his grief had been correct, only not in the manner I had envisioned. He was with us, yet he had been summoned to another place entirely, the kingdom of vengeance. This was when his hair turned white overnight and grew long and tangled. His body became lean and strong. We heard little from him, except when he practiced the art of destruction, throwing his ax with such force that he grunted and groaned, like a man in his death throes. His own children, those sweet silent boys, shied from him. I realized that he looked like the madmen we sometimes spied in the desert, warriors, hermits, prophets, priests; men who saw only their own path and no one else’s.
MY FIRST SIGHT of the fortress took my breath away. A mirage emerged from the stone, a miracle appearing beneath the midday sun. We paused in the valley, spellbound. It was the season of the winds, the time when the Ruach Kadim, the hot and furious wind that arose from Edom, brought us clouds of dust. My grandsons were wrapped in capes, staying close to each other for comfort. Perhaps they spoke to each other through their dreams, for they seemed to communicate and could clearly understand each other without the use of language. They refused to be separated and slept beneath the same blanket, just as they ate from the one plate and drank from a single cup. I thought the sheer cliffs leading to Masada would frighten them and they would hesitate. I expected that their father would have to tie ropes around their waists to help them navigate the cliffs, but the younger one, Levi, was the first to start up the spiraling snake path, scrambling like a goat, and Noah applauded his brother’s sure-footed bravery and was quick to follow.
I then had the vision that the boys would never have a father again, and that this perilous climb would be the last time we would be with the Yoav we had known before this other man, the one who would not be separated from his ax, took his place completely. The sun struck against the earth as it had when the beasts in the oasis had fallen upon us, emboldened, without mercy. My grandsons were climbing up, the clouds of dust rising behind them, carried by the wind in little whirls that disappeared before our eyes. I placed my hand on my son-in-law’s arm before he began his ascent. Yoav turned to me, but his eyes were hooded. He was like the hawk, seeing only what he must to survive. All he wanted was revenge, but I gave him more. I told him I had bent to take Zara’s last breath. Neshamah, our word for soul, means breath, and so she was with us still.
A sob escaped from my son-in-law when he heard this. He shook his head and turned from me. “I can never hear her name again,” he insisted. “Don’t speak it in my presence.”
I had come to realize the depth of his love for her. Everything else about him had changed, but in this he was constant. He was the only one who could understand what it meant to lose Zara. Because of our mourning, we were bound together despite the