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the Glittering Square, which is paved with stones full of mica that flash and
sparkle in the sunlight. We children were on the long south balcony to see God
dance.
Just as the dance was ending a cloud came across the sun as it stood still over
the right shoulder of the mountain, one cloud in the clear blue summer sky.
Everybody looked up as the light dimmed. The glittering died out of the stones.
All the people in the city made a sound, "Oh," drawing breath. God Himself did
not look up, but his step faltered.
He made the last turns of the dance and went into the ash-house, where all the
Goiz are in the walls, with the bowls where their food is burned in front of
each of them, full of ashes.
There the dream priests were waiting for him, and God Herself had lighted the
herbs to make the smoke to drink. The oracle of the birthday was the most
important one of the year. Everybody waited in the squares and streets and on
the balconies for the priests to come out and tell what God Himself had seen
over his shoulder and interpret it to guide us in the new year. After that the
feasting would begin.
Usually it took till evening or night for the smoke to bring the seeing and for
God to tell it to the priests and for them to interpret it and tell us. People
were settling down to wait indoors or in shady places, for when the cloud had
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passed it became very hot. Tazu and Arzi and the idiot and I stayed out on the
long balcony with Haghag and some of the lords and ladies, and Omimo, who had
come back from the army for the birthday.
He was a grown man now, tall and strong. After the birthday he was going east to
command the army making war on the Tegh and Chasi peoples. He had hardened the
skin of his body the way soldiers did by rubbing it with stones and herbs until
it was thick and tough as the leather of a ground-dragon, almost black, with a
dull shine. He was handsome, but I was glad now that I was to marry Tazu not
him. An ugly man looked out of his eyes.
He made us watch him cut his arm with his knife to show how the thick skin was
cut deep yet did not bleed. He kept saying he was going to cut Tazu's arm to
show how quickly Tazu would bleed. He boasted about being a general and
slaughtering barbarians. He said things like, "I'll walk across the river on
their corpses. I'll drive them into the jungles and burn the jungles down." He
said the Tegh people were so stupid they called a flying lizard God. He said
that they let their women fight in wars, which was such an evil thing that when
he captured such women he would cut open their bellies and trample their wombs.
I said nothing. I knew Ruaway's mother had been killed fighting beside her
father. They had led a small army which God Himself had easily defeated. God
made war on the barbarians not to kill them but to make them people of God,
serving and sharing like all people in God's country. I knew no other good
reason for war. Certainly Omimo's reasons were not good.
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Since Ruaway slept with me she had learned to speak well, and also I learned
some words of the way she talked. One of them was techeg. Words like it are:
companion, fights-beside-me, countrywoman or countryman, desired, lover,
known-a-long-time; of all our words the one most like techeg is our word
in-my-heart. Their name Tegh was the same word as techeg; it meant they were all
in one another's heart. Ruaway and I were in each other's heart. We were techeg.
Ruaway and I were silent when Omimo said, "The Tegh are filthy insects. I'll
crush them."
"Ogga! ogga! ogga!" the idiot said, imitating Omimo's boastful voice. I burst
out laughing. In that moment, as I laughed at my brother, the doors of the ash
house flew open wide and all the priests hurried out, not in procession with
music, but in a crowd, wild, disordered, crying out aloud
"The house burns and falls!"
"The world dies!"
"God is blind!"
There was a moment of terrible silence in the city and then people began to wail
and call out in the streets and from the balconies.
God came out of the ash house, Herself first, leading Himself, who walked as if
drunk and sun-dazzled, as people walk after drinking smoke. God came among the
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staggering, crying priests and silenced them. Then she said, "Hear what I have
seen coming behind me, my people!"
In the silence he began speaking in a weak voice. We could not hear all his
words, but she said them again in a clear voice after he said them: "God's house
falls down to the ground burning, but is not consumed. It stands by the river.
God is white as snow. God's face has one eye in the center. The great stone
roads are broken. War is in the east and north. Famine is in the west and south.
The world dies."
He put his face in his hands and wept aloud. She said to the priests, "Say what
God has seen!"
They repeated the words God had said.
She said, "Go tell these words in the quarters of the city and to God's angels,
and let the angels go out into all the country to tell the people what God has
seen."
The priests put their foreheads to their thumbs and obeyed.
When Lord Idiot saw God weeping, he became so distressed and frightened that he
pissed, making a pool on the balcony. Haghag, terribly upset, scolded and
slapped him. He roared and sobbed. Omimo shouted that a foul woman who struck
God's son should be put to death. Haghag fell on her face in Lord Idiot's pool
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of urine to beg mercy. I told her to get up and be forgiven. I said, "I am God's
daughter and I forgive you," and I looked at Omimo with eyes that told him he
could not speak. He did not speak.
When I think of that day, the day the world began dying, I think of the
trembling old woman standing there sodden with urine, while the people down in
the square looked up at us.
Lady Clouds sent Lord Idiot off with Haghag to be bathed, and some of the lords
took Tazu and Arzi off to lead the feasting in the city streets. Arzi was crying
and Tazu was keeping from crying. Omimo and I stayed among the holy people on
the balcony, watching what happened down in Glittering Square. God had gone back
into the ash house, and the angels had gathered to repeat together their
message, which they would carry word for word, relay by relay, to every town and
village and farm of God's country, running day and night on the great stone
roads.
All that was as it should be; but the message the angels carried was not as it
should be.
Sometimes when the smoke is thick and strong the priests also see things over
their shoulder as God does. These are lesser oracles. But never before had they
all seen the same thing God saw, speaking the same words God spoke.
And they had not interpreted or explained the words. There was no guidance in
them. They brought no understanding, only fear.
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But Omimo was excited: "War in the east and north," he said. "My war!" He looked
at me, no longer sneering or sullen, but right at me, eye in eye, the way Ruaway
looked at me. He smiled. "Maybe the idiots and crybabies will die," he said.
"Maybe you and I will be God." He spoke low, standing close to me, so no one
else heard. My heart gave a great leap. I said nothing.
SOON AFTER that birthday, Omimo went back to lead the army on the eastern
border.
All year long people waited for our house, God's house in the center of the
city, to be struck by lightning, though not destroyed, since that is how the
priests interpreted the oracle once they had time to talk and think about it.
When the seasons went on and there was no lightning or fire, they said the
oracle meant that the sun shining on the gold and copper roof-gutters was the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]