Read Online Sarah by Marek Halter - Free Book Online Page B

the old woman had cried. The warning still echoed in Sarai’s ears. The sun was disappearing beneath the rim of the world. She was finding it increasingly difficult to keep going. Her legs felt heavy. She had lost her beautiful kid sandals in the mud. Water slapped beneath her bare feet. The bottom of her tunic was soaked. Bulrushes struck her arms and shoulders.
    She was wading along the riverbank without knowing how she had got there. She had followed an alley; the houses had become less frequent. She had hurried straight on, exhausted, too terrified to stop, still hoping to find something—a hut made out of bulrushes, a boat, a tree trunk, a hole in the ground—anything that could protect her. The cold and the night were pressing against the back of her neck.
    Suddenly, her foot hit something hard. She felt a blow against her thigh, thought of the demons, and screamed in terror. Headfirst, she tipped over in the water. Her fingers sank into the mud. The torn fabric of her toga almost strangled her. Sarai pushed herself up until she was sitting, ready to face the most horrible of deaths.
    But what she saw, standing outlined in the dim light, was not a monster but a man.
    Perhaps not even a man: a boy. A head crowned by a halo of curly hair, a long, thin, but muscular body, naked but for a raw linen loincloth, legs black with mud up to the knees. In his left hand he carried a kind of cylindrical wicker basket, with animals moving about inside it. Sarai could barely make out his features. Only the gleam in his eyes as he stared at her.
    He made a furious gesture with his arm, pointed at the river, and said something in a language she did not understand. Then he stopped speaking and took another, closer look at her.
    She wiped the mud from her cheeks with her hand. Her tunic was torn, so she knelt in the water, covered herself as best she could with the soaked cloth, then finally stood up.
    The boy was a head taller than her. He was watching her calmly, staring at her braids without a smile although she must have been a horrible sight.
    â€œWhat are you doing here?” he asked, in her language this time. There was no harshness in his voice, only surprise and curiosity.
    With the back of her wrist, Sarai again wiped her cheeks and eyelids. “What about you?” she asked in return.
    He raised his basket and shook it. Inside it, two frogs with swollen necks blinked. Now she could see his face clearly, a narrow face with a high forehead and very arched eyebrows that almost met above a big curved nose. The slightly greenish brown of his eyes was translucent in the last light of day. His checks were covered with a sparse down. He had beautiful lips—big, full, shaped like wings—a prominent chin, and a thin neck. The skin between his shoulder blades was damp.
    â€œI was fishing,” he said with a smile, and glanced at the river, which seemed to grow bigger as the night deepened. “It’s the best time for frogs and crayfish. If nobody steps on you and screams.”
    Sarai was sure of it now: He was a
mar.Tu
. One of those Amorites from the borders of the world, where the sun disappeared. A man who worshiped lesser gods and was never allowed to set foot in the royal city.
    She shivered, the skin on her arms bristling in the cold. The wind rose, making the wet cloth cling to her body. Without knowing why, she felt a desire to tell the truth, to let this boy know who she was.
    â€œMy name is Sarai,” she said, in a low, frail voice, hardly pausing to take a breath. “My father, Ichbi Sum-Usur, is a lord of Ur. Today was the day a man was supposed to take me as his wife. He, too, is a lord of Ur. But when he looked at me, I knew I would never be able to live with him, in the same bed and the same chamber. I knew I would rather die than feel his hands on me. I thought I could hide in my house. But it wasn’t possible. The handmaid who takes care of me knows all my hiding places. I