Читать книгу Escaped from the Nations - Alexandra Glynn - Страница 8

The wilderness of Sinai, circa 1500–1300 BC

1.

The further they got away from the palaces of Pharaoh and the hovels of Goshen, the more troubled the mixed multitude became. Around the fires at night, Beulah’s mother had sung with the others freely at first. But, now, as the days went by, and they got further and further into the desert, increasingly Beulah’s mother saw many hanging back from the fireside, drifting into the chill of the sepulchral dark of the desert night. Mocking laughter would sometimes spread out from them and find her as she listened between verses. “What about Egypt?” Beulah’s father would mutter, as he tied up the livestock at night.

What about Egypt? What about the Egyptians? What were they doing tonight? Did they still mourn the loss of their dead oldest sons? Did their memories of the signs and wonders that had been done among them roam like lost beasts in their subconscious? Or had they gone back to the gaudy love of their priests, and their reproachless intoxications? Beulah didn’t know.

Night had fallen like a blind cave. Lying in her small bed inside her family’s tent, Beulah could hear the night singing outside the tent. She pictured the bowed heads and folded hands of the people gathered. She could not distinguish her mother’s soft voice from the stronger voices of the others. But Beulah knew her mother sang, for the song they now sang was one of her favorites, one about lost children. The song always reminded Beulah of an Egyptian boy in Goshen. His name had been Thutmose. Some of the Egyptians had come to live in Goshen when Beulah was a baby, yearning for some peace and kindness. They had gotten peace and kindness, but also persecution. Many of them now traveled with Beulah and her family away from Egypt. But not Thutmose. He slept in the dust back near the Nile River. The scent of the trees and herbs in the fertile spot he had been buried would sometimes sneak like a symbol into Beulah’s brain as she breathed in the still and dead wilderness air day after day. The boy had been kind to her, a few years older than her, but willing to show her how to help with the livestock, and how to play some of the games that the children used to play in the streets of Goshen. But he had died of the plague. Many young children had died of the plague that year. Father said he thought it was God’s way of sparing them from the visitation of God’s wonders and signs on Egypt that were to come. At least that’s what Father said now. Beulah couldn’t remember how he had explained the tragedy while it was happening in Egypt.

The front flap of the tent rustled. Beulah looked past the dead fire pit beside her bed to the little square of sky the open tent door revealed. Beneath it, Zillah’s dark hair, tangled and full of wisps, shone in the moonlight as she leaned her head in. “Can I come in?”

“Sure,” Beulah said. Zillah was a distant cousin and her best friend. She wore ribbons to hold her flowing hair back. It was snarly and sticky from her running around all day outside. Beulah’s hair had no ribbon. It fanned around her face on the pillow. Her body lay spectre-thin and pale underneath some old worn animal skins.

“We are pulling up stakes at noon tomorrow,” Zillah said, hurriedly and breathlessly as usual, her merry words tumbling out. “So I will have some time to visit you in the morning. But I came now, too, because that song is so sad and melancholy.”

“Sad, but true. Why is the gathering going so late?”

“I don’t know.”

Zillah sat next to Beulah’s bed and put her hand into Beulah’s. Their hands were the same size, but one was strong and tanned from playing and helping all day traveling through the wilderness. The other was tremulous and weak from day after day lying in bed or being pulled behind a beast of burden.

Zillah’s excitement was feverish, “The sky, Beulah, the colors—you have to come out with me in the morning and we’ll count the shades of blue.”

“I will feel too weak tomorrow. I know I will.” The dissolution of her strength was daily more insidious.

Zillah patted her friend’s frail and insubstantial arm. “Well, we can just sit here and talk, too.” She lowered her voice, “What do you think of the manna?”

“The manna?”

“Yes, there are some who are talking about it.”

“What would they be saying?” Beulah scanned her friend with kindred eyes and then looked over at the empty manna jar in the corner. They had eaten some in the morning and then had the rest for supper. Her mother gathered it in the morning, and put it in the jar. It tasted wholesome to Beulah, but sweet, too, like honey. She loved the manna. She had heard in a sermon once about the manna that God fed them with in the wilderness. It was manna to humble them, and to examine them and test them, and to do them good in the end.

“People are sick of it.”

“How could anyone get sick of manna?” Beulah shook her head. She leaned back tiredly into the bed. The heat, almost like a kind of glamour, hung immanent around her. Her fingers picked at threads holding together the animal skins that covered her. Then they fell away weakly.

“Well, in Egypt we had a variety of food,” Zillah said. Her voice sounded soft and blurry to Beulah.

Beulah thought about that. It was true, there had been cucumbers and lots of flesh in Egypt. She said, “But manna is good for you. It’s enough. And it is a picture of God’s Word of grace. Sweet and new every morning.”

“It is?”

“Yes, don’t you remember when we named it? When we first saw it we said, ‘mah-na’—‘what is it?’ and so it got called ‘manna.’ You should go see if there are any crumbs left in that jar on the shelf over there. Mother sometimes saves the very last of the day’s manna to give to us before bed.”

Zillah got some manna, and the two girls ate, savoring its sweetness, listening to the psalm being sung outside the tent in the distant night where stars paved the firmament. It was a new song, a song by Miriam, which she had written after they had crossed the Red Sea.

When the song was over, the two girls began to sing, “The Lord is my strength and my song. He also has become my salvation.” It carried beyond the tent, beyond the tents of the thousands of others, beyond the boundless horizon of sand, above, to the expanse, dark and unspotted.

2.

The voice of a man came to Beulah as she drifted out of sleep the next morning as the sun crept over the camp outside. The voice came from just on the other side of the skin of the tent next to her head.

The man’s persuasive accent was soft, friendly and diffuse. He was saying, “Let’s meet tonight. We’re going to start journeying at noon today, and we will travel all day. We should stop at sundown, as usual. Let’s meet then.”

“Where?” another voice answered. This voice was deeper, and sounded precise and suspicious, but it held a fascinating elegance.

“How about right here? The people who travel in this tent are always gone. There’s nobody there, they’re too busy. And they have this extra animal skin hanging here to keep this spot shaded.”

Beulah shifted stealthily in her bed on the other side of the tent skins. She noticed a little tear in the skin where the sewing of the skins had come loose. She reached out and pulled the tear back. Now she could see the two men talking. The man with the deeper voice was saying, “Yes, let’s do that.” He had wispy black hair and a full black beard with a little bit of gray in it. He looked older than her father.

Beulah looked at the other man, the one with the soft and friendly voice. He was much younger, and not very tall. He wore a braided belt, and his sandals were freshly made. His garb was that of the Levites, but showed gold filings in it that told of wealth. His face was handsome, as if a covering of beauty had been drawn on it. “Moses is proud.” The younger man’s voice was as if it dropped manna. “He has lifted himself up above the congregation.”

The deeper voice of the adder-eyed man with the long black beard was muffled, but Beulah could still make out the words, “Yes, he shouldn’t be in charge. Let’s go back now, though; we wouldn’t want to be missed.”

“Right,” said the man who wore the garb of the Levites. “Or to miss anything.”

Then the older man, with the long black beard, stopped, and grabbed the sleeve of the kind-looking Levite. “Can I be part of the inner circle next time?”

The Levite’s mouth twitched. The eyes of the hard-faced older man glittered. He clutched the Levite’s arm convulsively, then let go. The Levite let his arm drop placidly to his side as each man turned away from the other.

Beulah felt drawn to the Levite’s atmosphere of purity. She beheld absorbedly as the two men left the shade outside her tent. They each went a different way. The man with the black beard went over toward a large tent facing east. It was a big tent, Beulah could see; even from this distance she could tell. She knew that some very wealthy and important people tented there. They had many children, but the children were older. One of the youngest was friends with Beulah’s older brother, Jubal. Beulah couldn’t remember his name. But Jubal liked to go visit there because there was always plenty to do, and young people to visit. Much of the work of herding cattle was hired out with the people who tented over there, because the people were so wealthy.

The other man, the younger one, the Levite with the voice steeped in honeyed friendliness, was going toward the tabernacle. It was a very large tent structure. In it the people gathered to hear the Word of God and to see the sacrifices, so that they could be reminded of God’s sacrificing love for them. The man must be an important Levite, Beulah thought, watching his figure get smaller and smaller and then disappear into a gathering of people outside the door of the tabernacle.

What did they mean? Her entire soul felt blotted and gaunt as she picked up her sewing. Should she tell her mother? Moses had led them out of the promised land, she remembered. But he wasn’t their leader. God was their leader. So what did they mean that Moses shouldn’t be in charge? Moses wasn’t in charge. God was.

Beulah lay there, her face blotchy, her mind confused, waiting for her mother to come back as the drowsy moments flaked away. Her mother and father always left to help with the herding, the manna-gathering, and the watering, early in the morning breezes. Her older brother, Jubal, always went with them to help, because he was fourteen. Beulah was twelve, and all her friends went to help. But she stayed in bed, sometimes hacking as if her whole lung would come up, and breathing with difficulty. Her other sibling, Enoch, who was only four, would always go over to the neighbor’s tent to play with their littler children while the neighbor lady’s mother watched them all.

The sun felt even hotter today, beating down on the crumbling nothingness of the wilderness around them. Beulah wiped sweat off her brow. It soaked the pillow under her head. Why were they waiting so long to get traveling for the day? Usually they left around sunup.

Beulah peeked out the hole in the tent again, waiting for the morning to elapse. There weren’t many people walking around. Here and there a mother with little ones would hustle on by with a water pot, or a little girl would go by carrying something. There were tents everywhere, pitched close together. Where had all the people gone? She looked toward the direction that the younger man had disappeared into. There they all were! There at the front entrance to the tabernacle, the crowd had gotten bigger. More people were coming toward the gathering, too. Beulah couldn’t see much, and she couldn’t hear what was being said. But she watched for many minutes as the people gathered under the hot sun. Then, tired of holding herself up by the arm to see through the hole in the tent, she lay back, her heart filled with a shadowy fretfulness. The air in her family’s tent was still, and flies buzzed around her. The little pot of manna that her parents had gathered for the day’s meals stood on the rug.

I’ll just close my eyes for a moment, Beulah thought. And she began to pray, “The Lord bless us and keep us . . .”

3.

“Crash!”

Beulah awoke with a start. Something had fallen outside the tent. “Is he okay? Is he okay?” It was her mother’s voice, scared. Beulah’s veins tingled.

“I’m fine, mama.” That was her little brother Enoch.

“You gave me a great scare. I shouldn’t let you ride on mules.”

“Oh, mama, you’re no fun,” Enoch said. He scampered into the tent, and ran to Beulah. She weakly tried to hug his little lively body close to her.

Her mother came in.

“Hi, Beulah.”

“Hi, Mother. Where are Father and Jubal?”

“Coming.”

“Where were you all?”

“Over by the tabernacle door.”

“For what?”

Beulah’s mother came over with her silent watchingness and leaned over her pale daughter. Beulah knew that outside, around them, the camp activity hummed. Nearby little children played a game in the desert sand with sticks and rocks. The older children carried water and tended animals and little children. And everywhere the faces of the adults were weary but hopeful, like you are after a long and fruitful week of work on the evening before the Sabbath. Beulah’s mother smoothed Beulah’s hair back. “How do you feel, honey?”

“Good enough, Mother. Why did you all gather?”

“There’s no need for you to have anything more to worry about. You worry enough as it is.” Beulah’s mother got up and began to straighten the tent, preparing it for taking down and traveling. She could do the entire process in fifteen minutes.

Beulah sighed to herself. She thought about asking her mother again why they had all gathered so long instead of traveling, but instead she asked, “Is Moses proud?”

Beulah’s mother whirled around and stared at her. “What?”

“Is Moses proud?”

“Where did you get that question from?”

Beulah was quiet, pallid, remembering the Levite’s liquid-flowing syllables. “Does it matter? Is he?”

Beulah’s mother walked back toward her. Her eyes were a troubled gray. “We are all proud, honey, every one of us. Nobody can say that one person is more proud than another.”

“So why would someone say that about Moses?”

Beulah’s mother would not answer. She seemed to be in some kind of transfiguration of annihilation, a durable soul-illness. She turned away, and went out the tent’s front door to begin the process of pulling up stakes. For some reason Beulah thought of something she had learned long ago: stars are bright still, though the brightest may fall.

Beulah settled back in her bed in the blistering heat. She listened to her mother’s sure movements outside the tent. Enoch had gone to the neighbor’s tent. As she listened, she could hear others coming out of their tents and pulling up stakes. With her thin hand she reached over and picked up her sewing. She was making a little doll out of animal skins. She tried to thread the needle. Over and over she took the thread and tried to get it through the eye of the needle. Her hands shook. She rested them for a moment, then tried again. The end of the thread filmed before her eyes, blurring, and she dropped her hands down to her thin chest. She set the sewing down on the blanket in front of her and folded her hands across her stomach, staring up at the skins above her head as tears rolled down her cheeks into her dark brown curls.

4.

They were finally on the move again. Beulah’s bed of animal skins was attached by ropes to a cow. The cow dragged Beulah behind her. Ahead of her, her cousin Zillah’s rich blue and purple hem dragged in the dust. It was Zillah’s job to be Beulah’s companion, and to make sure the ropes didn’t get tangled, and to make sure the cow walked at a steady pace. Zillah also watched out for rocks that might catch on the animal skin bed that held Beulah. Zillah was glad to help. Normally she would have been helping her mother with the smaller children in their family, but because she had other older sisters to help, the family could spare Zillah to be a helper friend to Beulah. Beulah’s family had only her mother, father, Jubal, Beulah, and Enoch. There had been other children, six of them, but they had all died, either in a plague, or after birth, or from miscarriage. They were all buried in Egypt. “God will remember them even there on the day when he raises us all up unto himself,” Mother had told Beulah. Beulah knew that was why Mother had named their last child Enoch. He was named after Enoch, a man who had lived very long ago, even before the time of Noah, and God had taken him up unto himself. Beulah’s mother had expected God to take this little boy from her too, so she had named him Enoch.

“Did you finish sewing your doll?” Zillah asked Beulah, sweet as always, like a little brown kitty in a basket. Even her eyelashes were dusty, because the animals kicked up so much dust. With so many people and animals on the move, the whole desert around them had a little dust cloud swirling at all times. Far to the back of the procession, where they were, the carrion creatures lurked. Day by day Beulah’s father tried to go faster and get up near the front, but somehow they always ended up almost at the end, with the slowest, the sick and the struggling.

“No,” Beulah said, the dust sheening the mottled paleness of her cheeks. “I’m too weak to sew today. Where was everyone this morning?”

“Different places,” Zillah said. “Some were at the tabernacle, others were gathered around drinking water where the jars of water are kept. Quite a few were at my parent’s home, actually.”

“Really?” Her tone was deferential, undemanding, but tinged with an undefined ache.

“Yes. My mother and father agree with Zed the Levite. He is a close work companion to Korah. They think something must be done to Moses.”

“Who is Zed?”

“He wears a gold cord around his waist, you’ve probably seen him. He usually tents near our family’s tent.” Zillah went over to the corner of the tent-space where the food was. She lifted a gourd to her lips and tilted her head back. “This tastes so fresh,” she said.

Beulah remembered the conversation between the two men that had woken her up this morning. “I think I know who he is. Short? Kind of young? He has a soft and friendly voice.”

“Yes,” Zillah said. “He has the gift of discerning spirits, and he has a list of all the people, including Moses, who he says are proud.”

Beulah opened her mouth to protest, but then she heard her mother’s voice above the din of the pack animals all around them. Around them the desert surrounded, ensnaring and unforgiving. She felt like Noah for a moment, letting a dove fly off, out of a window, wondering if it would come back.

“My dear Zillah!” Beulah’s mother greeted Zillah. She had dropped back from her fast pace up ahead so she could check on Beulah.

“What?” Zillah asked her, warily, baffled.

“Zillah, I heard what you just said. That’s not right,” Beulah’s mother said, her eyes unhappy pools, looking pitifully at Zillah. “Nobody should make lists of the bad and the good. Only God knows those things. He will reveal them in his time.”

“But Zed does know,” Zillah insisted. “He has the gift of discerning spirits.”

“If he says he knows the conditions of the hearts of men, then he is putting himself in the place of God.”

“But Moses really is proud.” Zillah was angry now. “He is.”

“Zillah, did your mom and dad say that?” Mother’s voice was sad.

“Of course. And my mother and father are good people. They cannot be wrong!” The brown of her eyes shimmered with bitterness, stormy and scrambled.

Beulah’s mother went close to Zillah and hugged her, as if by her embrace she could cause her to cast off her veil of distaste. “Oh, Zillah, I don’t know what to say. It is not for our righteousness that we are able to go into our homeland with our Redeemer, for we are a stiff-necked people. But because he loves us, and is faithful to the promises he gives.”

Beulah said, “We are all proud. At least that’s what I have noticed.”

“Yes,” Mother said. “And Moses is doing what he is doing because God commanded it. Not because he decided to do it himself. Now I have to go up ahead and help again. You girls watch over each other.”

“Okay.”

When she had left, Beulah gently asked Zillah, “Zillah, do you remember Eldad and Medad, some time back? How they came and prophesied in the camp?”

“Yes.”

“Well, they spoke about love, just as their names mean. ‘El-dad’ means ‘God loves,’ and ‘Me-dad’ means ‘love.’”

“So?”

“So I am just saying, we have to remember love. To be charitable. To put the best interpretation on what other people are doing.” Beulah thought about what she had learned of ancient stories. When Noah sinned after the flood, one of his sons went around and talked about it. The others went in and covered it, showing how God’s mercy covers our sin and nakedness. That was love. She knew this, but how could she explain it to Zillah?

“Sure,” Zillah said uncertainly, as if she yearned for her heart to twist.

The beats of Beulah’s heart pulsed in a commotion of compassion. She put her hand on her friend’s hand.

“What do you think of me?” Zillah asked.

“I think you’re my wonderful sister that God gave me,” Beulah said wistfully. She was still, as still as if somebody had switched something off inside her. Zillah’s stumbling confusion filled her heart like a story told in hieroglyphics written all over a huge wall. Zillah was journeying along merrily with the crowd going to Canaan. But, will I get there, Beulah wondered?

Zillah twirled the ribbon in her hair and laughed lightly, “And you’re my sister, too.” Then with a final kiss goodbye, with tresses discomposed and glowing cheeks, she scurried off.

5.

That evening seemed sharp with waiting, and they paused for the night earlier than usual. Far away the bleating of a great herd of goats sounded restlessly. Beulah watched as her mother quickly put up the tent. Her mother’s gaze was huddled, as if something ominous meddled with her thoughts. Other mothers were putting their tents up nearby. Soon Beulah’s vision was obscured by the soft skin walls of the tent. “Do you want me to drag you outside so you can look around more? It’s a while until bedtime.” Beulah’s mother’s question was tender.

“Yes, if I could,” Beulah responded, hoping the vision of the vast clear sky would stifle the sad unfoldings wrestling inside her.

As Beulah lay with her head propped up on pillows she watched some boys playing outside the neighbor’s tent. “I’m going to put your eyes out!” a child cried.

“Like Moses wants to do!” another replied savagely.

Beulah looked over at her mother. Her mother’s looks were covered with gray worry. She had heard the boys. They both turned to watch them playing. One boy took a rock and threw it at the other boy. It wasn’t a very big rock, and it missed the boy by quite a bit. Beulah’s mother started toward the boys and then backed up. Then she saw the child who had thrown the rock pick up another one. This rock was much bigger. Beulah’s mother ran toward the child like a gentle minister of chastisement.

“Put that down.”

The child had curly brown hair and he turned wildly toward Beulah’s mother, surprised. “Why?” He sneered foully, like a bad inmate.

“We don’t hurt other people.”

The boy hesitated, then snarled a mean word at Beulah’s mother. But he put the rock down.

“Your mother is tough.” Beulah turned quickly. It was Zillah. She had come up while Beulah was watching her mother and the two boys. She had seen the whole altercation.

“Yes,” Beulah said.

Zillah raised her eyebrows. “Well, I hope she listens to Korah, not Moses.”

“Why?” Beulah asked.

Zillah was silent, because Beulah’s mother was coming near them. She picked up a copper plate and studied her dim reflection in it.

“Mother,” Beulah called, “Zillah wants you to listen to Korah, not Moses. Why?”

“Zillah,” Beulah’s mother pleaded. “I am not listening to the voice of man, but the voice of God. Moses is not my leader, God is. God led us through the great and terrifying wilderness, and is still leading us—in this wilderness where there are fiery serpents, and scorpions, and thirsty land, where there is no water. And it is God who brought forth water for us out of a rock of flint.”

“God will decide these things,” Beulah stated, her voice reaching out like an extended hand toward the turned back of Zillah.

“That’s right,” Beulah’s mother said, a weary inscription on her brow.

Zillah picked up Beulah’s doll. Seeing the unthreaded needle, she expertly threaded it and began sewing. “Oh, Beulah, I love this dress you are making for this doll.”

6.

“Who’s there?”

Beulah, who had been huddled under a sheepskin, turned toward the tent flap. Someone was standing there. In the distance she could hear the nighttime singing, like the murmur of yearning. Zillah had left to join it, and Beulah’s mother and father and brothers were doing the night work.

It was quiet in the tent and Beulah could hear the labored breathing of whoever was standing there. It was too dark to see much more than a tall shape.

The breathing of the man outside slowed.

“Who’s there?” Beulah repeated.

“Akhenaten.” The sound came out as if someone waded in a river of sand.

“Who are you?” There were so many timid spots in her soul, but for some reason she forgot them all watching the solid silhouette move into the tent and toward her.

“An Egyptian. I saw your large group moving through the wilderness. I’ve been following you many days.”

“We’re the Hebrews. We are leaving Egypt.”

“Leaving Egypt?” The man came and knelt beside Beulah’s bed. Beulah’s little jag of fear faded to nothing. She thought he looked like a good-hearted spy, and yet his eyes were lined with fatigue, as if his sleep was always filled with perturbations.

“And, child, why aren’t you singing out there with the rest of them?”

“I’m dying.”

The shaggy man smelled sweaty and dusty. Beulah inhaled in the deep night and leaned away from his haggard and woebegone figure. The man’s sad smile revealed broken teeth beneath a scraggly beard. Beulah knew that banners flew high above the camp in many cases to indicate what was below them on the ground. The man must have seen the banners from afar off and went toward them to see what they signified.

“Who told you that you are dying? And how is it that you are dying, and I am not? Every tale condemns me as a renegade. But you, you are innocent.”

“And yet the doctor affirms that I will die soon. And I just know. I am going from this life to eternity with God.”

“Why are you on this journey?”

Beulah laughed starrily. It was like the unclenching of floodgates. She thought about the stately tombs of Egypt, the bustling marketplaces, the leeks and the tasty cucumbers, the garlic and the savory meat. They had all been drawn to the life of Egypt, its beauty and enjoyment. They had been slaves to it all. And yet as they slaved for the idols they had set up in their own hearts, it was as if they were being beaten by taskmaskers demanding good things of them, keeping a record of everything and hounding them with that record. “What should I say?” she mumbled in the darkness to Akhenaten.

A harmless snake wound its way over the foot of her bed and she shook it off weakly. Akhenaten got up and brushed the snake out of the tent and then sat down on the ground near Beulah.

“Say the truth,” he said, looking like a raven in a nook, watching her.