Fifth Mountain: A Novel

  Elijah did not reply. The name that had once awakened in him such hatred now sounded strangely distant.

  "Akbar will be rebuilt, in any case," the old man insisted. "The gods choose where cities are erected, and they will not abandon it; but we can leave that labor for the generations to come."

  "We can, but we will not."

  Elijah turned his back on the old man, ending the conversation.

  The three of them slept in the open air. The woman embraced the boy, noting that his stomach was growling from hunger. She considered giving him food but quickly dismissed the idea: fatigue truly did diminish pain, and the boy, who seemed to be suffering greatly, needed to busy himself with something. Perhaps hunger would persuade him to work.

  THE NEXT DAY, ELIJAH AND THE WOMAN RESUMED their labors. The old man who had approached them the night before came to them again.

  "I don't have anything to do and I could help you," he said. "But I'm too weak to carry bodies."

  "Then gather bricks and small pieces of wood. Sweep away the ashes."

  The old man began doing as they asked.

  WHEN THE SUN reached its zenith, Elijah sat on the ground, exhausted. He knew that his angel was at his side, but he could not hear him. "To what avail? He was unable to help me when I needed him, and now I don't want his counsel; all I desire is to put this city in order, to show God I can face Him, and then leave for wherever I want to go."

  Jerusalem was not far away, just seven days' travel on foot, with no really difficult places to pass through, but there he was hunted as a traitor. Perhaps it would be better to go to Damascus, or find work as a scribe in some Greek city.

  He felt something touch him. He turned and saw the boy holding a small jar.

  "I found it in one of the houses," the boy said.

  It was full of water. Elijah drank it to the final drop.

  "Eat something," he said. "You're working and deserve your reward."

  For the first time since the night of the invasion, a smile appeared on the boy's lips, and he ran to the spot where the woman had left the fruits and grain.

  Elijah returned to his work, entering destroyed homes, pushing aside the rubble, picking up the bodies, and carrying them to the pile in the middle of the square. The bandage that the shepherd had put on his arm had fallen off, but that mattered little; he had to prove to himself that he was strong enough to regain his dignity.

  The old man, who now was amassing the refuse scattered throughout the square, was right: soon the enemy would be back, to harvest fruits they had not sown. Elijah was laboring for the invaders--the assassins of the only woman he had ever loved in his life. The Assyrians were superstitious and would rebuild Akbar in any case. According to ancient beliefs, the gods had spaced the cities in an organized manner, in harmony with the valleys, the animals, the rivers, the seas. In each of these they had set aside a sacred place to rest during their long voyages about the world. When a city was destroyed, there was always a great risk that the skies would tumble to the earth.

  Legend said that the founder of Akbar had passed through there, hundreds of years before, journeying from the north. He decided to sleep at the spot and, to mark where he had left his things, planted a wooden staff upright in the ground. The next day, he was unable to withdraw it, and he quickly understood the will of the Universe; he marked with a stone the place where the miracle had occurred, and he discovered a spring nearby. Little by little, tribes began settling around the stone and the well; Akbar was born.

  The governor had once explained to Elijah that, following Phoenician custom, every city was the third point, the element liking the will of heaven to the will of the earth. The Universe made the seed transform itself into a plant, the soil allowed it to grow, man harvested it and took it to the city, where the offerings to the gods were consecrated before they were left at the sacred mountains. Even though he had not traveled widely, Elijah was aware that a similar vision was shared by many nations of the world.

  The Assyrians feared leaving the gods of the Fifth Mountain without food; they had no desire to disturb the equilibrium of the Universe.

  "Why am I thinking such thoughts, if this is a struggle between my will and that of the Lord, who has left me alone in the midst of tribulations?"

  The sensation he had felt the day before, when he challenged God, returned: he was forgetting something of importance, and however much he forced his memory, he could not recall it.

  ANOTHER DAY WENT BY. MOST OF THE BODIES HAD been collected when a second woman approached.

  "I have nothing to eat," she said.

  "Nor have we," answered Elijah. "Yesterday and today we divided among three what had been intended for one. Discover where you can obtain food, then inform me."

  "Where can I learn that?"

  "Ask the children. They know everything."

  Ever since he had offered Elijah water, the boy had seemed to recover some part of his taste for life. Elijah had told him to help the old man gather up the trash and debris but had not succeeded in keeping him working for long; he was now playing with the other boys in a corner of the square.

  "It's better this way. He'll have his time to sweat when he's a man." But Elijah did not regret having made him spend an entire night hungry, under the pretext that he must work; if he had treated him as a poor orphan, the victim of the evil of murderous warriors, he would never have emerged from the depression into which he had been plunged when they entered the city. Now Elijah planned to leave him by himself for a few days to find his own answers to what had taken place.

  "How can children know anything?" said the woman who had asked him for food.

  "See for yourself."

  The woman and the old man who were helping Elijah saw her talking to the young boys playing in the street. They said something, and she turned, smiled, and disappeared around one corner of the square.

  "How did you find out that the children knew?" the old man asked.

  "Because I was once a boy, and I know that children have no past," he said, remembering once again his conversation with the shepherd. "They were horrified the night of the invasion, but they're no longer concerned about it; the city has been transformed into an immense park where they can come and go without being bothered. Naturally they would come across the food that people had put aside to withstand the siege of Akbar.

  "A child can always teach an adult three things: to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires. It was because of that boy that I returned to Akbar."

  THAT AFTERNOON, more old men and women added their numbers to the labor of collecting the dead. The children put to flight the scavenger birds and brought pieces of wood and cloth. When night fell, Elijah set fire to the immense pile of corpses. The survivors of Akbar contemplated silently the smoke rising to the heavens.

  As soon as the task was completed, Elijah was felled by exhaustion. Before sleeping, however, the sensation he had felt that morning came again: something of importance was struggling desperately to enter his memory. It was nothing that he had learned during his time in Akbar but an ancient story, one that seemed to make sense of everything that was happening.

  THAT NIGHT, a man entered Jacob's tent and wrestled with him until the break of day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he said, "Let me go."

  Jacob answered, "I will not let thee go, except thou bless me."

  Then the man said to him: "As a prince, hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed. What is thy name?" And he said, Jacob.

  And the man answered: "Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel."

  ELIJAH AWOKE WITH A START AND LOOKED AT THE FIRMAMENT. That was the story that was missing!

  Long ago, the patriarch Jacob had encamped, and during the night, someone had entered his tent and wrestled with him until daybreak. Jacob accepted the combat, even knowing that his adversary was the Lord. At morning, he had
still not been defeated; and the combat ceased only when God agreed to bless him.

  The story had been transmitted from generation to generation so that no one would ever forget: sometimes it was necessary to struggle with God. Every human being at some time had tragedy enter his life; it might be the destruction of a city, the death of a son, an unproved accusation, a sickness that left one lame forever. At that moment, God challenged one to confront Him and to answer His question: "Why dost thou cling fast to an existence so short and so filled with suffering? What is the meaning of thy struggle?"

  The man who did not know how to answer this question would resign himself, while another, one who sought a meaning to existence, feeling that God had been unjust, would challenge his own destiny. It was at this moment that fire of a different type descended from the heavens--not the fire that kills but the kind that tears down ancient walls and imparts to each human being his true possibilities. Cowards never allow their hearts to blaze with this fire; all they desire is for the changed situation to quickly return to what it was before, so they can go on living their lives and thinking in their customary way. The brave, however, set afire that which was old and, even at the cost of great internal suffering, abandon everything, including God, and continue onward.

  "The brave are always stubborn."

  From heaven, God smiles contentedly, for it was this that He desired, that each person take into his hands the responsibility for his own life. For, in the final analysis, He had given His children the greatest of all gifts: the capacity to choose and determine their acts.

  Only those men and women with the sacred flame in their hearts had the courage to confront Him. And they alone knew the path back to His love, for they understood that tragedy was not punishment but challenge.

  Elijah retraced in his mind each of his steps. Upon leaving the carpentry shop, he had accepted his mission without dispute. Even though it was real--and he felt it was--he had never had the opportunity to see what was happening in the paths that he had chosen not to follow because he feared losing his faith, his dedication, his will. He thought it very dangerous to experience the path of common folk--he might become accustomed to it and find pleasure in what he saw. He did not understand that he was a person like any other, even if he heard angels and now and again received orders from God; in his certainty that he knew what he wanted, he had acted in the selfsame way as those who at no time in their lives had ever made an important decision.

  He had fled from doubt. From defeat. From moments of indecision. But the Lord was generous and had led him to the abyss of the unavoidable, to show him that man must choose--and not accept--his fate.

  Many, many years before, on a night like this, Jacob had not allowed God to leave without blessing him. It was then that the Lord had asked: "What is thy name?"

  The essential point was this: to have a name. When Jacob had answered, God had baptized him Israel. Each one has a name from birth but must learn to baptize his life with the word he has chosen to give meaning to that life.

  "I am Akbar," she had said.

  The destruction of the city and the death of the woman he loved had been necessary for Elijah to understand that he too must have a name. And at that moment he named his life Liberation.

  HE STOOD and looked at the square before him: smoke still rose from the ashes of those who had lost their lives. By setting fire to the bodies he had challenged an ancient custom of the country, which demanded that the dead be buried in accord with ritual. He had struggled with God and with custom by choosing incineration, but he felt no sense of sin when a new solution was needed to a new problem. God was infinite in His mercy, and implacable in His severity with those who lacked the courage to dare.

  He looked around the square again: some of the survivors still had not slept and kept their gaze fixed on the flames, as if the fire were also consuming their memories, their pasts, Akbar's two hundred years of peace and torpor. The time for fear and hope had ended: now there remained only rebuilding or defeat.

  Like Elijah, they too could choose a name for themselves. Reconciliation, Wisdom, Lover, Pilgrim--there were as many choices as stars in the sky, but each one had need to give a name to his life.

  Elijah rose and prayed, "I fought Thee, Lord, and I am not ashamed. And because of it I discovered that I am on my path because such is my wish, not because it was imposed on me by my father and mother, by the customs of my country, or even by Thee.

  "It is to Thee, O Lord, that I would return at this moment. I wish to praise Thee with the strength of my will and not with the cowardice of one who has not known how to choose another path. But for Thee to confide to me Thy important mission, I must continue this battle against Thee, until Thou bless me."

  To rebuild Akbar. What Elijah thought was a challenge to God was, in truth, his reencounter with Him.

  THE WOMAN WHO HAD ASKED ABOUT FOOD REAPPEARED the next morning. She was accompanied by several other women.

  "We found some deposits," she said. "Because so many died, and so many fled with the governor, we have enough food for a year."

  "Seek older people to oversee the distribution of food," Elijah said. "They have experience at organization."

  "The old ones have lost the will to live."

  "Ask them to come anyway."

  The woman was making ready to leave when Elijah stopped her.

  "Do you know how to write, using letters?"

  "No."

  "I have learned, and I can teach you. You'll need this skill to help me administer the city."

  "But the Assyrians will return."

  "When they arrive, they'll need our help to manage the affairs of the city."

  "Why should we do this for the enemy?"

  "So that each of us can give a name to his life. The enemy is only a pretext to test our strength."

  AS ELIJAH HAD FORESEEN, the old people came.

  "Akbar needs your help," he told them. "Because of that, you don't have the luxury of being old; we need the youth that you once had and have lost."

  "We do not know where to find it," one of them replied. "It vanished among the wrinkles and the disillusion."

  "That's not true. You never had illusions, and it is that which caused your youth to hide itself away. Now is the moment to find it again, for we have a dream in common: to rebuild Akbar."

  "How can we do the impossible?"

  "With ardor."

  Eyes veiled behind sorrow and discouragement made an effort to shine again. They were no longer the useless citizens who attended judgments searching for something to talk about later in the day; now they had an important mission before them. They were needed.

  The stronger among them separated the usable materials from the damaged houses and utilized them to repair those that were still standing. The older ones helped spread in the fields the ashes of the incinerated bodies, so that the city's dead might be remembered at the next harvest; others took on the task of separating the grains stocked haphazardly throughout the city, making bread, and raising water from the well.

  TWO NIGHTS LATER, ELIJAH GATHERED ALL THE INHABITANTS in the square, now cleared of most of the debris. Torches were lit, and he began to speak.

  "We have no choice," he said. "We can leave this work for the foreigner to do; but that means giving away the only chance that a tragedy offers us: that of rebuilding our lives.

  "The ashes of the dead that we burned some days ago will become the plants that are reborn in the spring. The son who was lost the night of the invasion will become the many children running freely through the ruined streets and amusing themselves by invading forbidden places and houses they had never known. Until now only the children have been able to overcome what took place, because they have no past--for them, everything that matters is the present moment. So we shall try to act as they do."

  "Can a man cast from his heart the pain of a loss?" asked a woman.

  "No. But he can find joy in something won."

  Elijah turne
d, pointed to the top of the Fifth Mountain, forever covered in clouds. The destruction of the walls had made it visible from the middle of the square.

  "I believe in One God, though you think that the gods dwell in those clouds on the Fifth Mountain. I don't want to argue whether my God is stronger or more powerful; I would speak not of our differences but of our similarities. Tragedy has united us in a single sentiment: despair. Why has that come to pass? Because we thought that everything was answered and decided in our souls, and we could accept no changes.

  "Both you and I belong to trading nations, but we also know how to act as warriors," he continued. "And a warrior is always aware of what is worth fighting for. He does not go into combat over things that do not concern him, and he never wastes his time over provocations.

  "A warrior accepts defeat. He does not treat it as a matter of indifference, nor does he attempt to transform it into a victory. The pain of defeat is bitter to him; he suffers at indifference and becomes desperate with loneliness. After all this has passed, he licks his wounds and begins everything anew. A warrior knows that war is made of many battles; he goes on.

  "Tragedies do happen. We can discover the reason, blame others, imagine how different our lives would be had they not occurred. But none of that is important: they did occur, and so be it. From there onward we must put aside the fear that they awoke in us and begin to rebuild.

  "Each of you will give yourselves a new name, beginning at this very moment. This will be the sacred name that brings together in a single word all that you have dreamed of fighting for. For my name, I have chosen Liberation."

  The square was silent for some time. Then the woman who had been the first to help Elijah rose to her feet.

  "My name is Reencounter," she said.

  "My name is Wisdom," said an old man.

  The son of the widow whom Elijah had loved shouted, "My name is Alphabet."

  The people in the square burst into laughter. The boy, embarrassed, sat down again.