A Dove of the East Read Free Page A

they flashed and glowed. His chin had extended until it looked like the flat wooden pallet bakers use for taking bread out of the oven, and he was foaming at the mouth. Up and down the rock walls sparks flew, and as he gesticulated and mouthed the words of evil animals a hot wind came through the crevasse, and hot drops of rain, and then thunder. The wind, at least it seemed to me, was trying to blow the donkey’s body off the path. The more big brother danced and fumed, the higher the wind became and the more the donkey moved bit by bit, almost imperceptibly. After a while big brother seemed to get tired, the wind died down, and darkness began to fall. Then he seemed to be like a bandit again, with the almost pitiful exaggerated half-bearded chin, and he called out to me: I am going to hunt you down and cut your throat with a razor. I will follow you anywhere on earth, in these mountains, on the seas, in cities, anywhere. I will strike when you think you are safe and comfortable. I can walk through walls—nothing can keep me out—and when I cut your throat I will be laughing and wild with pleasure, and you will be frozen like a board, unable to move as the razor glides. I can do that. You know me, and your life will be far worse than your death, which will be a well of terror.
    â€œWell, I don’t scare that easily, so when darkness fell I cut the treasure from the donkey and pushed him off the ledge, as if to bury him. I heard a hissing of air as he fell into the blue-black darkness. Then, even though it was dark, I almost ran over that path all the way to the army station. I dared not tell them what had happened for fear that they would go mad (those peasant soldiers living alone on mountaintops were really crazy, believe me), but they took me in for a night.
    â€œYou don’t believe that they were really crazy? They spent hours slapping each other’s faces. They moaned and whimpered like dogs. They used to go around on stilts to scare away devils. This is not crazy?”
    By this time it was dark: no more light came in through the louvres, and the old man had been talking into the night for longer than he thought. Yacov reached out to touch him as if to make sure he were really there, then got up to turn on the light, which blinded them both. Surely this was something his father had imagined long ago on a terrifying day and night in the mountains, and yet even if not entirely consistent, it was convincing. With the excitement of a fool who knows one small thing, Yacov asked his father, “If he were really the Devil, why could he not have flown across the gorge on the wind and killed you with his teeth, or have sent a snake from above to poison you?”
    â€œHe wasn’t the Devil. He was only a half devil, perhaps the son of the Devil and a human woman. He had powers, but they were limited. That is why he has grown old, and why I was able to beat him. Very few men, at least not the likes of me, can beat the Devil. But one of his sons, well, that’s different.”
    â€œHow can you be sure he knows you are here?”
    â€œBecause
he
is here.”
    â€œWell, I think we should wait and see what happens. Maybe it’s nothing at all. Maybe we are dreaming.”
    â€œOf course my son,” said Najime, “of course we’ll wait, that’s part of it.” He expected the weeks to pass, and they did.
    Meanwhile, stories had been spreading about the newcomer. It seems he had arrived from nowhere with a large wagon full of the finest avocados. Since avocados were out of season, he sold them at a very high price and was almost immediately transformed from beggar to prosperous merchant. When people asked him, as they did, where he had gotten so many thousands of avocados he said that his brother had a farm in the desert, where it was so hot that he could grow anything he wanted year round, even at night. It was said that beggars were envious of him, a beggar become