In the dying day, as a decade ago, I saddled my mule, ready to begin again. Leaving, again, from a place I had come to love, this time from nowhere to nowhere.
It may seem strange to you that it did not surprise me when Sarai told me she was not coming with me. I did not even, as I suppose I might have done in retrospect, fear for a moment that she meant something permanent, and it was not permanent. In truth, in those days, for all people, separation was nothing to be wondered at. There were many things that must be done, by nearly all men, in the farther fields and abroad—royal emissaries, for example, could more or less expect to be kept by the king to which they were sent as a kind of hostage, until another should come. Tradesmen often had to travel far to sell their wares. And, too, the world was dangerous. There was no way to be certain when those who left could, or would return—caravan routes were dangerous places, only slightly less dangerous than the trackless, the unknown wilderness. And if a man is detained in another kingdom for another years, might he not find a life he likes as well?
I was anxious indeed, but not about leaving. In truth something like this had been on my mind for some time, bidden or unbidden. There were many reasons for it, including the fact that I had less and less place here as our little settlement had grown into a kind of tradesman’s oasis. There were blacksmiths, and glassblowers, potters and carpenters. And I? I was a sheepherder without sheep, without pastureland. I was the leader of an enclave that needed no leader, indeed, in my mind, should no longer have one—man does not live forever. If something has been begun which should live, there comes a time when the beginner must step aside so that what has been created will not share his fate.
Yet some part of me knew too that the wilderness had taught me what I needed to learn, that this world had served, for me, its purpose. The next part of my journey, whatever it was, wherever it ends, lay elsewhere. It came to me like a faint calling in the air, something I had to follow. It sounded like the angel’s voice, it sounded like something I knew but had never seen on Earth. It sounded like the sea. That time had come.
I kissed my wife on the cheek, and told her that I loved her. I began north-east towards the darkening horizon. Behind me the falling sun imprisoned itself in the tattered ropes of tufa and gorse, encasing them in rubies, and the whole world blazed with a low and dying fire. The noise of my past surrounded me with howled blessing.
I listened, again, as I have always been listening, and heard the giant sea sighing upon itself, reaching arms for what it cannot grasp and gathering its enormous strength to try again.
It may seem strange to you that it did not surprise me when Sarai told me she was not coming with me. I did not even, as I suppose I might have done in retrospect, fear for a moment that she meant something permanent, and it was not permanent. In truth, in those days, for all people, separation was nothing to be wondered at. There were many things that must be done, by nearly all men, in the farther fields and abroad—royal emissaries, for example, could more or less expect to be kept by the king to which they were sent as a kind of hostage, until another should come. Tradesmen often had to travel far to sell their wares. And, too, the world was dangerous. There was no way to be certain when those who left could, or would return—caravan routes were dangerous places, only slightly less dangerous than the trackless, the unknown wilderness. And if a man is detained in another kingdom for another years, might he not find a life he likes as well?
I was anxious indeed, but not about leaving. In truth something like this had been on my mind for some time, bidden or unbidden. There were many reasons for it, including the fact that I had less and less place here as our little settlement had grown into a kind of tradesman’s oasis. There were blacksmiths, and glassblowers, potters and carpenters. And I? I was a sheepherder without sheep, without pastureland. I was the leader of an enclave that needed no leader, indeed, in my mind, should no longer have one—man does not live forever. If something has been begun which should live, there comes a time when the beginner must step aside so that what has been created will not share his fate.
Yet some part of me knew too that the wilderness had taught me what I needed to learn, that this world had served, for me, its purpose. The next part of my journey, whatever it was, wherever it ends, lay elsewhere. It came to me like a faint calling in the air, something I had to follow. It sounded like the angel’s voice, it sounded like something I knew but had never seen on Earth. It sounded like the sea. That time had come.
I kissed my wife on the cheek, and told her that I loved her. I began north-east towards the darkening horizon. Behind me the falling sun imprisoned itself in the tattered ropes of tufa and gorse, encasing them in rubies, and the whole world blazed with a low and dying fire. The noise of my past surrounded me with howled blessing.
I listened, again, as I have always been listening, and heard the giant sea sighing upon itself, reaching arms for what it cannot grasp and gathering its enormous strength to try again.
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