Джеймс Миченер - The Source

The Hebrews began to cheer but Zadok silenced them, for he comprehended the gravity of the step they were about to take, and as dusk fell upon their tents he commanded them to gather, a lean and sinewy group dressed in skins and woven cloth and leather sandals. They formed an intense congregation, kneeling while Zadok prayed: “Mighty El-Shaddai, whom no man has seen face-to-face, into your hands we deliver ourselves. It is your desire that we leave our ancient home for the valleys and the towns. Protect us, protect us from the dangers we cannot foresee.” With their faces upraised, the Hebrews praised their god, each man and woman committing himself to the deity that brooded over the desert, and finally they separated and by the light of flickering rushes packed their tents.

As they worked, Zadok the Righteous went alone into the womb of the desert, for only he appreciated what a terrible thing his children were attempting, this leap from the ancient ways into the modern. He had never been inside a town—not in sixty-four years of life; he had helped besiege several and had sent his sons trading inside their walls, and of course his little slave girl had lived in a Canaanite town to the north, which she delighted in describing as they lay together. But he himself did not fully understand what a town was, except that it was a place so crowded that El-Shaddai seemed not to frequent its narrow alleys. Other gods flourished in towns, but not El-Shaddai. Yet it was apparent to the old man that the moment had come in the life of his people when it was appropriate for them to try the town, uncertain and ominous though it was. El-Shaddai himself had ordained the move, and the eyes of his older sons had glittered with expectation as they listened to Epher and Ibsha describing the towns they had seen; but he looked back to the desert.

How far the horizons were this starry night, how sweeping the rocks as they fell sculptured by the hand of El-Shaddai. How sweet the waters were when they were found, how cruel the scorpions in the midday sun. It was the desert that tested a man, that issued the dreadful challenge, “Come upon me and see if you have courage.” It was this desert of illimitable magnitude that encouraged a man to consider the ultimate questions: not the matter of food tomorrow, nor the child to be born next week, nor the battle in the offing, but the questions beyond that and then far, far beyond that, too. Why, in the infinity of the desert, does this small speck called man have the confidence to move from this unknown point to that, finding his water and his food as he goes along? What divine assistance guides him and how is that assistance governed? Above all, how can man ascertain the divine will and then live in harmony with it?

The old man walked across the sand until he could look back and see his entire encampment, all the flickering lights and the shepherds guarding their flocks, and he remembered that night so very long ago when his people had been lost far east of Damascus in the worst desert they had ever traveled, and all were at the point where they must perish, but his father, Zebul, had said, “In the cool of the night we must push on.” The stricken Hebrews had protested, “We can go no farther,” but he had struck the tents and they had moved on till the next dawn, finding nothing. Through that day they had rested, parched and dying, and at night Zebul again said, “In the cool of the night we must march on,” and again they had protested that they were perishing, but they marched and they did this for three nights—wholly incapable of moving another step yet moving nevertheless—and on that last night when they refused to march, saying that they were finished, he went through the tents lashing out at them and shouting in rage, “Do you think, men of faltering faith, that El-Shaddai has brought us to this spot to perish without purpose? Does he not have an enemy waiting at the well to kill us in battle? Or a king to carry us off in slavery? Have we come so far to die inconsequentially? Up! Up! Let us see what terrible thing El-Shaddai has waiting for us.” And he drove his Hebrews, dying as they had threatened, but dying on the way to the well, not in some surrendered heap. And as the last sun rose—the one that none could have survived—Zebul found the well, and there they rested for three years.

Tonight Zadok did not intend to pray. No further communication between him and El-Shaddai was needed, but he did look with an aching hunger at the desert which he had known for all but seven years of his life, and he wondered if he would ever again find the peace, the consolation he had known amidst its sweep and challenge. He sensed that henceforth his vision would be diminished and his nearness to the stars removed. A way of life was being lost beyond the point of recovery and he was apprehensive about the future, but he felt certain that wherever his Hebrews went they would carry with them memorials of these desert years when they had lived close to their god.

Now he turned from his study of the tents, as if he wished to stand where none of his people could see him, and when he was hidden he wept, for he alone was conscious of the sin he had committed. “Almighty one, forgive me,” he said, and he spoke to El-Shaddai as if he were a little boy communicating with his father at the end of a day of naughtiness. “Six years ago, when the last of the clans moved south, you came to me in the desert and said, ‘Zadok, it is time for you to leave the desert and occupy the walled town.’ But I was afraid of battle. I was afraid of the town. I wanted to hold on to the security of the desert, and here I procrastinated, offering you this excuse and that. My sons came to me, asking that we move our flocks into the green valleys, but them too I ignored, and for the past six years I have stood against god and man, afraid to move. You were patient with me, El-Shaddai, but last month you spoke to Epher and sent him exploring by himself. Now he has returned with your commands and we shall move, as you ordered me to do six years ago.” He humbled himself in the dust and prayed, “El-Shaddai, forgive me. I was afraid.”

There was a rustling sound across the sand, as if a fox were running, and the voice of El-Shaddai said to Zadok the Righteous, “As long as you live, old man, you will be free to ignore my commands. But in time I will grow impatient and will speak to others, as I have spoken to Epher.”

“My home is the desert,” Zadok said in self-justification, “and I was afraid to leave.”

“I waited,” El-Shaddai said, “because I knew that if you did not love your home in the desert you would not love me either. I am glad that you are now ready.”

“El-Shaddai!” the patriarch cried in anguish, laying bare the real fear that had held him immobilized. “In the town will we know you as we have known you in the desert?”

“Inside the walls it will not be easy for me to speak with you,” the deity answered, “but I shall be there.”

With this eternal promise to his Hebrews, El-Shaddai departed, and when dawn came Zadok was at last prepared to order the small red tent to be dismantled.

In those centuries when the Hebrews dwelt in the desert, each clan maintained a sacred tent constructed of three layers of skin: upon a wooden frame so small that two men could not have crawled inside, goatskins were stretched and upon them were laid skins of rams dyed red with expensive colors brought from Damascus, and over the whole were thrown strips of soft badger fur, so that the tent was clearly a thing apart. Whenever Zadok indicated that his clan was to halt in a given place, the small red tent was erected first, signifying that this was their home, and on days like this, when the Hebrews were permanently abandoning an area, the last tent to be struck was always the red one, and it came down as the elders stood in prayer.