Cry of the Peacock: A Novel Read Free

sleep he had tried to remember who she was, strained his mind until it was dark. She stood so close to him he could smell her skin. Now at last she had spoken, and her voice had forced him awake.
    So he went to her, drawn by her call and the need to feel her. He found her standing by his door, a shadow in the night, and even before he had touched her he knew that she was naked under the black chador, that her hair was unbraided and long and dark as her eyes, that her skin was soft, and her tongue blistering red.
    She walked in and slipped into Isaac's bed—under the old comforter that smelled of tobacco and dust—and taught him what she had learned of love in the long and murky nights of Bandar 'Abbas. She went back to him every night, hiding in the darkness as she traveled the distance between his teahouse and the rubble where she stayed by day. Afraid his neighbors would see her come in, Isaac waited for her in the light of a candle, then closed the door and prayed that no one heard their whispers. He offered her tea and dates and all the food in the house. He was startled by her passion, filled with a thousand questions he dared not ask. He waited for her to speak first.
    "Marry me," she told him, "and I will give you a son. I will stay in your house forever and you will never know pain."
    Isaac lay beside her—cold, silent. He had been expecting the question, wondering what he would say when it came. If he married Esther he would be shamed forever, unable to look into the eyes of other men, ridiculed and ostracized by all his friends. No one married a woman he knew was not a virgin.
    "She is old," he reasoned with himself, "perhaps eighteen, perhaps more. Her womb is tired, and infected with the seeds of other men. She may never give me a child, and if she does, I won't know that it is mine."
    In the long silence that spread between them, Esther the Soothsayer read Isaac's doubts and became furious. She made love to him again, this time with anger, and all the while Isaac did not dare look in her eyes. Then she left his house and said she would never return.
    Thick Pissing Isaac dreamt of her through nights of agony and anticipation. He saw himself lying beside her and woke up to find that he was alone. He stood by the teahouse all day in the hope that she might walk by his door. He could not stop wanting her; his flesh burned where she had touched him last. He went to look for her.
    "Come back," he cried.
    The next day they were married.
    The night of her wedding, Esther the Soothsayer became pregnant. She dreamt of a bird with blind eyes and silver wings—a giant who flew toward her out of the red desert sky and sent rats and scorpions digging the earth in their fury to hide. It came closer, its wings shimmering against the light, and just as the sun was about to rise, the bird landed in Esther's hands. It had a woman's breasts.
    Esther the Soothsayer woke up and touched herself. Her face and neck were covered with moisture. Her hair had clung to her throat as if to choke her. She felt her stomach, her groin. She closed her eyes. It was dark. She saw her child.
    She told Isaac that she carried a boy, that it would look nothing like anyone he had ever seen. She told him that he would be wise, that he would bring honor to their name, that he would walk in the sun one day with his arms full of glory and his eyes full of pride. Isaac wanted to believe her, but all of Juyy Bar was laughing.
    The child, they said, would come before its time. It would look like an Arab, or a stranger, but nothing like Isaac himself. It must have been conceived out of wedlock—from Isaac, or perhaps another man. Esther must have come to Esfahan pregnant, run away from her own town to hide her shame and find a man simple enough to marry her.
    “Watch yourselves," Rabbi Yehuda the just warned the women of Juyy Bar in his sermons. “A child conceived in sin will bear the mark of his mother's dishonor."
    Thick Pissing Isaac began to doubt and