“Yeah … I was thinking something like that too …” Jessica said, chewing on the cap of her Bic pen. Listening to Alex munching on her food was making her hungry. Maybe she’d swing by the house and surprise David for lunch. David’s leftover curried chicken sounded a lot more appealing than whatever was waiting in the cafeteria.
Another short silence. “So you’re scared, huh?” Alex asked.
“It’s for real now. It’s definitely for real. He even talks about going to Africa someday, to Ethiopia. Exotic places. It’s really tempting.”
“Mom’s going to have a fit.”
“Oh, Lord, yes.” And who could blame her, really? One year away could turn into two or three, or more, and Bea Jacobs didn’t believe in airplanes. Once, while Bea was visiting her brother in New York, a traffic jam made her miss Flight 401 back to Miami. The plane crashed into the Everglades swamps. More than anything else, that was what made Jessica believe in miracles.
“But you have to live for yourself, Jessica. Life’s too short, you know? Here I am still in Miami, and I’ve been talking about going to South Africa since way back when Mandela was voted in. I have an application to direct a clinic at a township just sitting in my drawer. I wish I had somebody to carry my tired butt out of here, to spur me on. Safe and comfortable is also very boring.”
“I know that’s right.”
“I’ve always known you had bigger fish to fry than the Sun-News. I mean that.”
Jessica’s stomach jumped. Alex was right. Her destiny had nothing at all to do with the Sun-News and drug dealers or corrupt politicians. All of that was very small compared to whatever it was the Lord had waiting for her. “I guess I’m going to swing by home and get some food,” Jessica said.
“Y’all better not go nowhere without telling me goodbye.”
“Oh, please,” Jessica said. “Get back to work finding the cure for sickle-cell. I’ll catch you later, Dr. Jacobs.”
After Jessica hung up, she looked up and saw one of the young mail clerks standing over her. He smiled at her sheepishly, tossing a manila envelope on top of her desk. The envelope was scuffed and wrinkled at the corners.
“What’s this?”
“Sorry,” the clerk shrugged. “It fell behind the cabinet. If I hadn’t dropped a dollar back there, it would have been buried until Christmas.”
Jessica glanced at the envelope’s return address. It was from the Cook County Police Department, with someone’s initials scrawled from Media Relations. Confused, Jessica looked at the postmark; it had been mailed nearly two months before.
Of course. The Chicago nursing-home lady. No wonder the original copy of the police report never arrived. Jessica had forced the poor sister to fax the whole report for nothing, and then she’d misplaced the fax anyway.
“Well, damn. Thanks a bunch. Rick,” Jessica said.
“Sorry,” he said, blowing her a kiss as he turned to walk away. “Hope it’s not important.”
In her hand, the envelope felt like an unearthed memento from an era long past. Jessica could remember the woman’s name, Rosalie Tillis Banks, but she could barely relate to the time when her story had seemed so vitally important. The time when Peter was so anxious to have her fly to Chicago.
Her stomach churned slightly at the thought of her meetings with Peter to discuss the book idea that had died with him. Some things were not meant to be, she mused. Only Jesus knew the master plan. Peter’s death had shaken her faith, a tremor at the roots, which time had stilled, but Jessica was stubborn in her belief that everything happened for a reason. She had to believe it. God wouldn’t create a random world.
“Rest in peace, Rosalie Tillis Banks,” Jessica muttered, leaning over to search for her trash can.
Shit. Missing again. Trash cans, telephone directories, and chairs were valuable commodities in the newsroom, and one or the other was likely to vanish at any time. Jessica wasn’t in the mood to search for it. Instead, she slid the unopened envelope into the overcrowded mess of her bottom desk drawer.
Soon, it would all be trash to her anyway. Just papers. Very soon, Jessica realized, she might be cleaning out her desk in Miami for good.
24
The music arrested Dawit’s attention, making him pause his fingers above the keys of his computer and crane his neck toward the stairway. He heard the mystical, soothing sound of the tambura and flute playing from the tape in the bedroom, casting a spell. Neither he nor Jessica had touched that tape in days. Dawit stood, forcing the cat to leap from its resting place on his lap. Someone was there.
Dawit was not afraid. After all the waiting, it was a relief.
Dawit found him lying in the precise center of the bed, propped up on a bank of pillows, his arms folded behind his head, and his bare feet crossed before him. He wore only white drawstring pants and a skullcap, and his eyes were closed as though he were in deep concentration. He wore a closely trimmed beard, new for him.
Was it a happy irony, or a cruel one, that he should be the one?
“Mahmoud,” Dawit said, grinning. The grin was sincere. He did not move from the doorway, but he wished to hug his dear friend close to him. The sight of Mahmoud, more than anything, always reminded him of his real life, the other life, life in innocence, before the Living Blood.
Languidly, Mahmoud opened his eyes. His mouth, too, gave way to a warm smile on his bearded face. “At last, my brother,” he said in Arabic. He sat up, dangling his legs one by one over the edge of the massive bed.
They did not speak, the two of them, for many seconds. There was much love between them, innumerable shared experiences. Yet, they stood before each other now as adversaries. To Dawit, Mahmoud’s eyes looked sad as he studied him. The tambura player’s sure fingers glided along the strings, filling the room’s silence.
“You’re very fit,” Dawit said, noticing the ridges of the tight muscles in Mahmoud’s forearms as he lowered his palms to the mattress. He knew the Searchers had rigorous routines of fasting and exercise to give them a mental and physical advantage in their work.
Mahmoud nodded, accepting the compliment with a gracious smile.
“How did you find me?” Dawit asked.
“You are predictable, my friend. And your name is known here. I enjoyed Body and Soul. This music, jazz, sounds like a cruder cousin of what you and I improvised three centuries ago in the House of Music. Do you remember?”
“Of course,” Dawit said. Their music had a stronger North African influence, but the rhythms and chord patterns were strikingly similar. “I wish I could have written of it too.”
Mahmoud’s smile, that quickly, was gone. “Our music is not for them,” he said curtly. “You insult me with the thought, Dawit.”
Dawit knew he should have expected no other response. Mahmoud had always been conscientious about any undertaking, so he was certain to be as rigid as any other Searcher. They treated their work as a religion, with strict adherence to Khaldun’s words: As immortals, we are this planet’s only true inhabitants. The others are only visitors, and our place is not with them. Their concerns are not our concerns. As the sun shuns the night, so too shall we be separate.
“I would never write about what belongs to us,” Dawit said, hoping to ease the silence that now separated them. “You know that much about me, I hope.”
Mahmoud’s face didn’t soften. “Well, perhaps you’ve already written too much for your own good, Dawit. Your book jacket listed Miami as your home—I found this house the first day I set out.”
Dawit nodded regretfully. “I was not hiding,” he said, but he knew he had not been careful. He’d attempted to learn from the mistakes of his reckless days in Chicago by living in anonymity, or close to it; but his expertise still brought attention to him, even when he did not seek it. Foolishly, he had led the Searchers to his family’s doorstep.
Long ago, Khaldun had even asked Dawit to join the Searchers. Despite being honored at the invitation—and although he’d never then imagined he migh
t one day make a home with a mortal— Dawit knew he had too much fondness for the mortal’s way of life. He would be too sympathetic to those, like himself, who could not live long away from it. How could he agree to restrict others who shared his own taste for exploration?
Dawit’s refusal had visibly disappointed Khaldun:
Dawit, I fear the knowledge you value most is experience. You must learn that, to an immortal, worldly experience spells lasting emotional ruin.
Learn to relish the clouds, to marvel at the sunrise. The clouds and the sunrise are constant, like yourself, and will never cause you grief. Do not underestimate the tyranny of grief. Humans were not meant to bear the grief of hundreds of years, and mortals do not. But living among them you will, Dawit. And then you will know Hell.
How could he have told his beloved teacher the truth, that he had already been tainted?
He’d once shared his Life brothers’ pleasure in life for life’s sake, but he needed external stimulation; his heart, his hungry loins, all of his being. He could not unlearn it, no matter how much Khaldun entreated him and how hard he tried.
Up to twenty of his brothers took periodic breaks to live in the larger mortal world, at least for a short time, usually traveling in groups. The fortunes their colony had received over time from the sale of crafts and artifacts, useless to most of the Life brothers, were used liberally by those who traveled. Two or three others, like Dawit, had even taken wives for a time. How had they not been changed by it?
Dawit was embarrassed to realize that his concept of time was now so altered, so much like a mortal’s, that even a mere year or two passed slowly for him. He could no longer enjoy four months’ debate on a single passage from Spinoza the way his brothers could. And several years’ silent meditation—commonly practiced in the House of Meditation, where Life brothers refused meals and instead breathed nutrients from vapors in the air—was out of the question. For as much as Dawit loved his home and his own kind, Lalibela had become tiresome to him.
And Mahmoud, whether or not he would admit it today, had once shared his mind. Had he also shared his weakness? What of the child he’d abducted from India, his son who had traveled with him? What had the boy’s name been? He couldn’t remember. But he remembered one thing well: Mahmoud had abandoned the boy, left him penniless, most likely to starve.
Dawit did not even think of the incident until two hundred years later, when he was summoned from his Chicago family’s side and escorted back to Lalibela. How, Dawit wondered, could Mahmoud have been so unfeeling? Of course, he had a scattering of his own children through the years, but at least they’d always had their mothers to care for them. Hadn’t Mahmoud worried for his child at all?
When Dawit had asked Mahmoud about it those many years later, he thought he’d detected sorrow, but then the expression melted into Mahmoud’s matter-of-fact gaze. “Why do you think we left him?” Mahmoud asked. “That boy you speak of has been dead nearly two hundred years. It’s an absurdity he was ever born.”
That boy, Dawit realized, might have awakened something in Mahmoud that frightened him. Could that explain why, in time, he had joined the Searchers? And why he was so changed now, his demeanor toward Dawit so different? Which of them, Dawit wondered, had changed more?
As if he knew his thoughts, Mahmoud sighed, looking away from Dawit to study the interwoven figures carved into the bedpost. “This visit grieves me, Dawit.”
“And me.” Dawit tried to salvage a smile.
“We were brothers, you and I, before the rest. Your love for Rana made us that.”
“Yes,” Dawit said, remembering Mahmoud’s sister, a smooth-skinned, brown-eyed girl of thirteen with black hair that shone like silk. She’d held his face in her tiny hands like a wonder. His first wife. His first love. Oh, to go back there and start again!
“We have shared much,” Mahmoud went on.
“And many,” Dawit added, thinking of the brothels they frequented, delighting in prostitutes who could make their female parts squeeze like fists and fling coins into the air.
“That was all long ago,” Mahmoud said, still not looking at him. “I am happily celibate now. My head is more clear.”
“Ah, yes. I forgot about that. Forgive me if it’s hard for me to imagine that you are a Searcher. You out of everyone else, Mahmoud.”
“Oh?” Mahmoud asked, his head snapping back so that their eyes were level. “It is not so hard to believe. First we are children, clinging to toys. And then we become men.”
Dawit did not answer the remark, though it stung and made him angry. The time for reminiscences had passed, he realized.
“Tell me why you have come,” Dawit said.
“You know why, my brother.”
There. It was said. Dawit’s jaw trembled slightly. “Then I have a message for Khaldun—I have not broken the Covenant and I am not ready to leave. With his permission, I would like to remain several more years with my wife and child.”
“That I cannot grant,” Mahmoud said evenly.
“How long, then?”
“One month. Two, if I choose to be generous.”
“When did you become so pompous? You speak for Khaldun?”
“I’ve told Khaldun what I have witnessed. He agrees that you are a danger to yourself and to all of us. The time for your return is overdue. Perhaps, then … you can be helped.”
Dawit frowned. “Helped?”
“Dawit,” Mahmoud said, features softening, “you are a madman, or very nearly one.”
At this, surprised, Dawit took a step closer to Mahmoud. “Explain what you mean.”
“What explanation is necessary? Do not think I am as gullible as these mortals you play with. I know what happened to the old woman in Chicago, your own flesh. I know what happened to your wife’s friend. And to the sick old man.”
So, he knew. Mahmoud had been vigilant in his watch, apparently. Dawit’s first impulse was to deny the charges, but he could not. It was true he had killed, and killed many. He crossed his arms before him. “I remember a time when blood did not make you squeamish,” he said.
Mahmoud’s eyes seared him. “Don’t mistake my concern for squeamishness. For the sake of the Covenant, I would take a life with less conscience than even you. But I would not be so careless. I would not rely on the stupidity of mortals to cover my deeds. Even the stupid can see what is obvious, with time. You are too obvious. And it has become sport to you.”
“I kill only for the Covenant,” Dawit said indignantly.
“Even if that is so, you are misguided. The Covenant was never intended as an excuse to slay mortals at will. Our Covenant compels secrecy. Which path is straightest to secrecy? Leaving mortals to themselves, or mingling among them and killing them when they recognize what we cannot hide? You build a fire only to stamp it out when the flames dance too close to your face, Dawit. It is foolish. It is childish weakness.”
Dawit heard the cat cry from the doorway, then it trotted into the room and leaped onto the bed, rubbing against Mahmoud with a raised tail. Mahmoud massaged the cat’s chin, keeping his eyes smugly on Dawit. Mahmoud must have been near their home for a long time to have won Teacake’s fickle friendship.
“If you like,” Mahmoud said, “you may bring the cat.”
“It has been a blessing to see you, Mahmoud,” Dawit said, ignoring his words. “Now, I must ask you to leave.”
Defiantly, Mahmoud leaned against the bedpost and bent his knee, one foot raised to the mattress. The cat licked Mahmoud’s chin and curled into his lap. “Dawit … I hate to point out how much you remind me of Teferi.”
Teferi! Teferi, the misery of Khaldun, was the reason the Searchers had been created. In the earliest days, fewer than a hundred years after the brotherhood’s creation, it was reported that Teferi had mortal wives and families in several countries—three wives and twelve children in the Kingdom of Ghana alone. He remained in their midst for so many years, the brothers complained to Khaldun, that his families w
ould have to be blind not to notice that he did not age as they did. It was also rumored he gave them advanced knowledge from the House of Science—battery-powered lights!—to help them improve their lives. This was also forbidden; obviously, it would only bring attention to him. Teferi was simply a heretic.
Khaldun decided Searchers would be designated to find and monitor Life brothers who were abroad. And, when it was deemed necessary, they would bring them back.
It had done nothing to improve Teferi. During Dawit’s last visit to Lalibela after leaving Chicago, he learned Teferi had lost his powers of reason while living in Turkey and slaughtered a dozen mortals in a marketplace. “I liberate you!” he had shouted, hacking indiscriminately. Searchers had been dispatched to free him from the Turkish prison, or else he might confess his Life gift. Teferi was brought back in chains to Lalibela; Dawit stared into his eyes as he shuffled past under guard, and absolute emptiness stared back at him.
After forty long years among his brothers, Dawit told Khaldun that he intended to return to North America. Khaldun urged him to think about Teferi, who was still imprisoned at the colony. He had daily meditations with Khaldun. Often, Khaldun confided to Dawit, Teferi cried like a child:
Shortly before his madness, our Teferi heard news that his mortal wife had been killed. This is what you seek, Dawit? The flesh lives forever, but not so the soul, the psyche, of man.
“How dare you compare me to Teferi!” Dawit said to Mahmoud. “I’m no madman, leaving the bodies of mothers and infants in my wake. He sickens me. I have done no harm. I simply wish to be left alone.”
“Then you are a fool, Dawit. You would rot in an American prison when they come for you? We cannot allow it. You jeopardize all of us with your sloppiness. You have a history here, like before. You must go.”
“Mahmoud,” Dawit said gently, standing directly before his friend, “you know I can be trusted. What of Christina and my children? I left when the Searchers found me because I knew my face was too well known. I have proven my loyalty. My loyalty even overrules my love. But it is too soon!”