Tomáš Zmeškal - A Love Letter in Cuneiform

“One sleepless night, in a fit of grief and soul-wrenching sobs, I confided my terrible secret to my wife, and God, whose loving embrace is beyond enduring, rewarded me with a heavy, dreamless sleep. The next day on opening my eyes I saw that my wife had spent the night awake. I guessed that she had been protecting my slumber, driving away the spirits of darkness and summoning legions of angels to help with our sorrowful fate. The next day before sunup she grasped me by the hand and took me out to see her uncle, her father’s oldest brother, who lived on the city’s outskirts. We told him our story. He listened carefully, sipping tea, his diminutive eyes receding into the cracked lattice of his shriveled skin. With his docile movements and deep wrinkles, he reminded me of an African elephant. When we had finished our story, he gazed at me somberly and said: ‘My son, you have offended Azrael too many times. Your arrogance seems to know no bounds.’ I rose from my seat at the insult, and only respect for his age stopped me from unleashing a string of curses at his expense, the mildest of which would have been to declare that he had the soul of a mangy stray mutt. The old man looked at me askance and softly laughed. Then he asked me to hand him a few books and some scrolls of paper from the shelves. He said he hadn’t been able to reach them in ages but hadn’t needed them for years. Opening the books and unrolling the lengthy scrolls of paper and parchment covered in foreign scripts, he began to read through them, losing all interest in us.

“The sun was just coming out, and for the first time that day my wife smiled, saying that was how he had always been. In most of her memories he was engrossed in books, and in order to keep his children from disturbing him, he had learned to make the most delectable sugar cakes anywhere in the region. As long as they didn’t disturb him, they could play quietly in his room and afterward they would get sweets. But if they weren’t quiet, they got them anyway, since he was their uncle and didn’t have the heart to tell them no. He never did find it within him to get married, and for that matter what woman would have wanted a man like him, who cared only for his books and lived off of the charity and respect of others? But all of the children loved him. After many hours of sitting in his meager dwelling, fetching water, loafing about, and driving away unpleasant thoughts like mosquitoes, as evening fell and I decided to turn on the lamps, all of a sudden my wife’s uncle stood up and snapped shut one of the books. He looked at me and said: ‘Your problem has been more hinted at than identified and described by scholars, but I can explain what happened. According to holy scripture, the Garden of Eden was in fact originally located in Armenia. What the villagers told you is probably true. As you may know, our religion, as well as the religion of the barbarians, even the religion of those Christian dogs, dreams of a paradise where our souls will be freed from the cave of darkness and ignorance; where we will come face to face with God, whose glory shall extend unto eternity. Even that ancient and peculiar religion which does not recognize God, whose founder’s vision was likely inspired by divine spark in a deer park in India, has a shrine in the region you described to me. It never occurred to me before that there might be some truth to these legends.’ Then my wife’s uncle spoke about the various types of angels, and gates from one heaven to another. About paradise, which can be entered only by him who is adequately prepared. He showed me our holy scriptures, as well as those of the pagans and the barbarians. He demonstrated the connection between what had happened to me and the verses of several prophets, including the barbarians’ as well as ours. He demonstrated not only connections but contradictions, which were restored to a divine harmony uniting things that were, in my pitiful, uneducated, sickly opinion, incompatible, like an abandoned withering flower in the marketplace, the first encounter of lovers, and the foresight of saints. I listened to it all carefully, stunned and dismayed by his vision and scholarship, but I couldn’t fathom how it was related to my shabby fate. I couldn’t see where my own kismet fit in all of this. My spirit flagged and hopelessness weighed upon my bowed back. Just then my wife entered the library with our dinner. Her uncle, standing with his gaze fixed on the garden, was explaining something to me about Raziel the archangel, God’s closest servant, separated from his Lord by nothing but a screen. Without so much as moving his head, he answered my wife, who hadn’t said a word: ‘But of course, little one, I know. Forgive your conceited old uncle, who is just drunk on his own eloquence. Now then,’ he said, turning to me, ‘what do you understand best? Tell me what you understand best, and I will try to advise you and my little one.’ I didn’t know what to say. I was going to say I understood trade, but before I could open my mouth, he nodded. I was going to say in recent years the new rifles were selling best, but before I could even get the words out, he shook his head disapprovingly. Then I said: ‘I’m the finest spice dealer in the region. I buy and sell aniseed, star anise, tarragon, galanga, cardamom, bay leaf, turmeric and coriander, nutmeg and walnuts. I sell sumac and saffron, ginger and hyssop. I love the smell of spices as much as I love the jingle of money they bring me.’ ‘What do you get,’ my wife’s uncle asked, ‘when you mix hot paprika, white pepper, a touch of fenugreek, turmeric, coriander, and cardamom?’ I laughed out loud: ‘Everyone knows that’s the basic mix of spices for curry,’ I said. ‘That’s right,’ he nodded, ‘and you have too much hot paprika and choleric pepper in your disposition. You’re hot-tempered, to put it mildly, and you’ve crossed paths with Azrael, the archangel of death, several times in your life. You probably even did so in his domain, in the territory that used to be the Garden of Eden. That time when you killed the servant who was trying to rob you, did you feel remorse?’ His question was clear, as was my answer. ‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘How else could I do business, how else could I look after everything, how else could I clothe my family? How else?’ The old man looked at my wife and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Too much fire, little one. Too much fire. When you rode down into the valley by way of the trail that resembled a viper’s nest, which no doubt you will be surprised to know is described in a book I once bought in Medina,’ the old man went on, ‘you crossed the former border of paradise, the land where the Garden of Eden was once located, and when you killed your servant, that brought on the curse you now bear. The angel of death took his revenge by soaking you in the water of immortality. Which shows a certain sense of humor on his part, I must say,’ my wife’s uncle said. I had no idea what he was talking about, but for once I decided not to interrupt. After a brief pause, he went on. ‘Your only chance now is complete repentance.’ ‘What does that mean?’ I asked. ‘It means you never take another person’s life again. It means you put your hot-temperedness at the service of those who are powerless, whom God has given the gift of suffering.’ ‘You mean that I should become a poor man and a beggar?’ I asked, raising my voice. ‘It won’t help you to see things in opposites,’ he replied. ‘Help him, if it’s not too late, little one,’ he said to my wife, with an expression on his face that made it clear that we should leave.

“A few days later I sent my brother to see the old man and ask what he had meant by his words and what I should do. I wanted him to explain everything in plain and simple terms. I was just an ordinary businessman, not a scholar like him. The answer came back: ‘Give up the things you love most.’ After a few days of denial, rage, and considerable annoyance, I sent my best, most spirited stallion to the director of the city orphanage to sell to help pay for the children’s food and clothes. He sold it at the market for a large loss; I was seized with such rage when I found out that I went straight over to see him. As I stepped into the room where he sat hunched over the orphanage’s hopeless accounts, ready to upbraid him for losing at least a third of the thoroughbred’s actual worth, we were suddenly interrupted by two children, a boy and his sister whose scarf he had taken and refused to give back. For some reason I had the feeling I knew them from somewhere. The girl begged her brother at first, then tried to take it back by force. But he was at least a head taller, and standing on his tiptoes he waved the scarf above his head, well out of her reach. The director chided them both, snatched the faded scarf from the boy, returned it to his sister, pushed them out the door into the yard, and turned to me: ‘Do you know those children? Years ago supposedly their oldest brother rode with you on a trade expedition. They say he died somewhere in the mountains. Their parents passed away prematurely, and they didn’t have anyone else except their older brother, who did what he could to provide for them, but he died on your expedition through the mountains, leaving them orphans.’ My head suddenly started to spin, and when I came to on the bench, the director was gripping me by the shoulders. Those children were the brother and sister of my servant, the one who had tried to rob me and whom I had shot without hesitation. The director was talking to me, but I couldn’t hear a word he said, I just saw his mouth moving and the puzzled look in his eyes. I came back to my senses only when he held a cup of tea to my lips. I walked out and the next day I donated funds for him to expand the shelter. Another few days later, I went back to the director and inquired as to whether it might be possible for me to adopt these children, the brother and sister of the man I had killed. His face lit up and he said clearly the gossip he had heard about me was wrong. It wasn’t true my soul was as hard as stone. When I saw the way his feelings were reflected on his face, with every flicker of his soul visible, I was amazed he hadn’t sold the thoroughbred for even less. I had the children officially declared as my own, and since they were older than the ones my wife had given birth to, they were assured by law of receiving the largest share of my property in the event that Azrael changed his mind and decided to let me die someday. Later, my wife told me there had been nights when I cried out in my sleep, screaming words she had never heard me speak, such as guilt and shame , and begging for forgiveness . I still remember some of those dreams, as harsh as God’s justice, whose care crushes us as we crush olives in a wooden press to make oil. A few months later, I heard one of my assistants in the carpet warehouse say to another: ‘Our master has really gone downhill the past few weeks. He got old all of a sudden.’ They never did find out why I gave them a week off and paid the dowry of one of their daughters.