Джеймс Миченер - The Source

Then came the great days at the well, the kind of days that men in all societies know occasionally, the few days that make the many years endurable. Ur’s wife and son worked the fields and found new ways to make the earth produce; the sun shone upon them approvingly and enough rain came, but no more. The others in the cave thought it significant that these two were growing enough grain to feed almost the entire cave, and husbands began to ask difficult questions of their wives: “Why can’t you do what his wife did?” Ur’s daughter cared for her first-born and wished that another bird would fall to her care, but none did; the lovely bee eaters flashed through the wadi and crested larks followed the reapers gathering grains. Sometimes a deer would dart across the fields beyond the rock and owls would call from the cypresses. How good the days were.

For Ur and his son-in-law these golden days were a continuous dream. Inspired by the young man, Ur returned to the hunt, setting forth each morning to probe the far ends of the wadi or the edges of the swamp. It was amusing to watch them go, the young man striding ahead with stocky Ur chugging along behind, pumping his bandy legs and calling instructions, trying to teach the hunter all the secrets of the land. Sometimes, when they got on to the track of a boar, the young man would leave Ur to mark the spot while he loped easily back to summon others from the cave, and often there would be a mass chase. But usually it was Ur and the young man going it alone in the companionship of the hunt that was so treasured by the old man.

At intervals Ur felt the intimations of death. Some of his teeth had broken off, and after running uphill for two or three hours he felt a shortness of breath. He sensed that he must be going, and although he felt a kind of animal fear of death, he found much joy in the fact that his son-in-law was such a stalwart hunter. The boy was swift and daring, as brave as Ur had hoped his own son would be. He could use a spear better than Ur himself, and when Ur had time to teach him the tricks of fighting close to the tusks of the wild boar he might possibly excel the old warrior. “He’s a great hunter,” Ur reported proudly as the men sat about the fire. “I think he’s better than my father was.” The young men of the cave nodded but the old ones said nothing, for they remembered Ur’s father.

Then, as so often happens when the seasons have been too cooperative and the sun too gentle, the forces that surrounded the well and the wadi struck back to remind the men of the kind of world they lived in. Out of a cloudless sky, on a day when babies could play in the sun, lightning struck the wadi and set the grain on fire. By concerted effort the people of the cave were able to subdue the flames, but half the crop was burned away, and suddenly the food situation facing the people of the well was radically changed. Instead of an abundance, there was now only just enough, and the Family of Ur began to speculate on what might have caused the lightning to strike at that time; and no matter what rationalizations Ur offered, his wife became convinced that the aggrandizement of the family, its disregard for the immanent rights of nature, had brought this rebuke. “The hunter killed the dog,” she pointed out, “and we rejoiced that his first child was a boy, and we gave none of the grain to the waters of the wadi …” She went on and on, reviewing the arrogant actions of her family. She concluded that the forces which shared the wadi with her people were properly angry, and she felt that she must erect some sign of contrition to let them know that neither she nor her husband intended ever again to usurp their rights. In this reasoning her son supported her, but old Ur said he didn’t know.

The monolith was her idea. She said, “If we erect on the highest part of the rock a tall stone, the storm and the wind and the wild boar will see it and will know that we wish them well.” Ur asked how they would know any such thing, but his son assured him, “They will know.” And so all the men of the cave went with Ur’s son to a part of the wadi where stones grew, and there, with flint cutters and wedges and heavy stones dropped as hammers, they broke away a monolith much taller than a man and rounded on one end. They shoved and hauled it onto the highest point of the rock, where after two months of sweating and building of earthen ramps, they upended it into a socket that the boy had hacked into the solid rock. Securing it with stones wedged under the corners they left it standing upright, a thing without a name, but a thing from which they nevertheless took much consolation. It was their spokesman to the storm.

On the third night after its institution as guardian of the well, a wild boar—the symbol of implacable hatred—came rampaging out of the wadi and tore up a good two thirds of the remaining wheat fields. When dawn broke and the cave people saw the devastation, and realized how much food they had lost—crested larks were already feasting on the fallen grain—they became panicky and tried to push over the monolith, but Ur’s wife and son prevented this, reasoning, “If they have come at us even though they can see our sign, what might they have done otherwise?” Ur and his son-in-law followed a simpler reasoning. The wild boar had ravaged their fields. They would kill him. So they gathered their spears and set upon the chase that would long be recounted in that wadi.

In the dawn they went down to the swamps, where his trail lay, and among the waters and the flying birds they probed until they found his ugly foot marks leading deeper into the areas where the biting bugs hid. For a day they splashed their way through green water up to their knees, and at night they slept among the dreadful bugs. They could hear the great boar and knew that he was beginning to feel panic, and in the morning they were after him. He led them on a long chase away from the swamp and through the glades of lovely forests thick with oak and pine. He hurried up hills and toward caves, breathing harder as the persistent hunters clung to his muddy trail. The huge beast gathered strength and ran far down the valleys until the men could see before them the bright Whispering Sea which Ur had known of old but which his new son had not encountered. They followed the boar to the southern end of the sea, where hot waters bubbled from the ground, and there in a thicket of pistachio and thorn they finally cornered him.

“Remember what I said,” Ur called as they prepared to move in from opposite sides. His heart pounded with unprecedented speed, and when he was alone he whispered, “I must not die now. Not till the boar is killed. The young man doesn’t know how …”

With a scream the young hunter flew into the air, for the wily boar had lured him into range of his flashing tusks.

“Fall away!” Ur shouted, rushing into the thicket, but the young man could not control his fall, for there was nothing to grasp, and he fell onto the tusks again and was slashed to death. Before old Ur could penetrate the tangle the triumphant beast was galloping to the north, leaving the young hunter destroyed behind him.

It was then that the immensity of life, the awesome, aching mystery of man in conflict with the things about him, overwhelmed the old man. He looked at his dead son and visualized the man’s wife and little boy. “I was the one ready for death!” Ur cried. “Why was he chosen?”

From the north came echoes of the distant beast crashing about in victory. “Why should a thing so evil have triumphed?” Ur protested, rending his garment in anguish.

He thought of the futile monolith his family had raised to ward off just such contradictions and he wondered what extra thing he might have done to save this bravest of hunters. What had he left undone? Standing in grief over a man he had loved more than his own wife, more than well or cave, he began to formulate words which expressed his spiritual bewilderment:Why is the young hunter dead, why do I live?