The Carpet Makers (6 page)

“Oh, that may be,” the teacher backed off carefully.

*   *   *

After Garubad left, Parnag stood for a long time in the entryway and stared straight ahead. It felt as though someone had pierced him with a big iron hook to stir everything up inside him—a thick sediment of repressed memories and feelings and an overpowering flood of images. The words of the cattle breeder echoed inside him like the sound of steps in a great cave.

A rebel? What might that mean? Was it even possible to depose the Emperor? He understood the words, but the idea seemed absurd and contradictory to Parnag.

But there were those books he kept hidden under stacks of dry wood and baraq dung. The other planets where hair carpets were knotted. That rumor that had reached him twenty years ago from the Port City.

Now he had to decide—what was the right thing to do? Something that required courage. Something that was frightening, because the unknown was lying in wait on the other side.

He suddenly felt how his hands were cramped and his fingers were digging into his own flesh. There was not much time for reflection. Nobody could know how long the foreigner might stay at Schabrat Rock. If he missed him, he would someday come to the end of his life with still-unanswered questions.

He met only a few old women on his way out of the city, and they didn’t even bother to look at him. When he had left the city gates behind him, he could feel that the disquiet of the past few hours had disappeared. He was filled with calm clarity.

The horizon had become a molten, fire-red band and the first stars were appearing in the blue-black sky when he arrived at his destination. The cave-filled rocks rose up against the twilight like gloomy domes. He could see no one.

“Hello?” Parnag called finally, cautiously and quietly at first. Then, when he got no answer, louder: “Hello?!”

“He’s not here anymore, the foreigner,” intoned a voice, sharp as a knife.

Parnag twirled around. The preacher was standing there as though by magic. Brakart, the preacher. Brakart, the holy wanderer. Brakart, who had abused little girls. And now even more men came out from their hiding places behind the rocks.

Parnag saw that all of them carried stones in their hands. A hot wave rose from his belly and crashed in his head. He knew that they would kill him.

“What do you want from me, Brakart?” he asked with pretended indignation.

The preacher’s eyes gleamed maliciously. “Don’t call me by a name! I am a holy wanderer, and I no longer have a name.”

Parnag was silent.

“It has been reported to me, Parnag,” the preacher began slowly, “that many years ago you made heretical statements, and that you even tried to seduce your fellow men.”

At that moment, Parnag discovered Garubad among the men who had made a large circle around him. “You?”

The herdsman raised his hands as though to defend himself. He was the only one not carrying a stone. “I didn’t tell him anything except what I told you, Parnag.”

“When Garubad told me about his chance meeting this afternoon, and also that you were the first one to learn of it, I thought the time had come to test your faithfulness,” the holy wanderer continued. With naked triumph in his eyes, he added, “And you didn’t pass the test!”

Parnag said nothing. There was nothing more to say. His guilt had finally caught up with him.

“I don’t know who or what Garubad met. Maybe someone was playing a bad joke on him. Maybe he ran into an insane man. Maybe he imagined the whole thing—it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that you came. It proves that you think it’s possible that there could be a rebellion against the Emperor. Maybe you even think it’s possible—although a delusion of that magnitude goes beyond my imagination—that somebody could depose the Emperor. However that may be, your mere presence here proves that you are not a believing, god-fearing man. It proves the opposite. You’re a doubter, and you probably have been all your life. And who knows how much misery you have brought on your fellow men?”

“Heretic,” screamed one of the men.

The first stone struck Parnag near his temple and knocked him to the ground. He saw the sky … the wide, empty sky. I submit to you, my Emperor, he thought. The stones rained down on him now. Yes, I confess. I doubted you. I confess. I gave doubt a place in my heart, and I didn’t repent. I confess. In your righteousness, my Emperor, you will destroy me, and I will be lost. I confess, and I submit to your judgment.…

IV

The Lost Hair Carpet

LATER, HE COULDN’T REMEMBER
what had awakened him, whether it had been the smell of fire or the rustling of the flames or something else. He jumped up from his bed and screamed with only one thought—the carpet!

He screamed, screamed as loud as he could, screamed out against the raging crackle of the fire, filled the whole big house with the sound of his voice.

“Fire! Fire!”

He saw nothing but the licking tongues of flame, the scornfully flickering orange-red reflection on the walls and doors, the soot trails ascending like ghosts, and the smoke swirling and boiling at the ceiling. He shook off the hands trying to hold him back; he didn’t hear the voices calling his name. He saw only the fire that would destroy his life’s work.

“Borlon, stop! Save yourself!…”

He dashed ahead, without a thought for his wives. The smoke enveloped him and launched a stinging attack: it filled his eyes with tears and burned his lungs. Borlon grabbed a tatter of fabric and pressed it to his face. A clay pot burst on the floor; he stumbled over the shards and ran on. The carpet. He had to save the carpet. He had to save the carpet or die.

The fire roared through the house with unimaginable violence, like a raging storm; it looked for a worthy opponent and found none. Half-suffocated, Borlon reached the foot of the stairway leading up to the carpet-knotting room just as the wooden steps, charred black and spraying sparks, collapsed. His uncomprehending eyes watched as tongues of flame leapt up in a wild ballet to the balustrade where his knotting frame stood, and his ears heard the sound of the supporting beams slowly beginning to give way—it sounded like the terrified scream of a child. Then something inside him, which understood that it was too late, took over and allowed him to retreat.

When he reached his family standing outside at a safe distance, everything happened very fast. They took him between them—Karvita, his headwife, and Narana, his subwife—and he watched with a stony expression and without feeling as the fire ate its way through the ancient house, as it shattered the windowpanes and then flickered through them as though offering a derisive greeting, and as the roof suddenly began to glow, became more and more translucent, and finally collapsed, sending a cloud of sparks spiraling toward the sky. They hung there in the darkness like gently dancing stars and went out one after another while the fuel for the fire ran out below; in the end, there were hardly enough embers to send a bit of light into the night.

“How could that happen?” he wanted to ask, but he couldn’t. He could only stare at the walls, charred black, and his mind refused to grasp the enormity of the event.

He would have stood there, motionless, until dawn, not knowing what to do. It was Karvita who found the charred remains of the money chest and put the sooty coins into her scarf, and it was Karvita who led the three of them along the difficult footpath through the bitter cold night to the house of her parents on the edge of the city.

*   *   *

“It’s my fault.” He said it without looking at anyone, his tortured eyes staring off into an uncertain distance. A nameless pain swirled inside his chest, and something within him hoped to bring just punishment more quickly and painlessly down on his head by indicting himself and declaring his own guilt.

“Nonsense,” his wife responded firmly. “Nobody knows whose fault it is. And you should finally have something to eat.”

The sound of her voice pained him. He took a quick, sidelong glance at her and tried to find in her again that girl with the breathtakingly long, black hair he had fallen in love with. She was always so cool, so unapproachable, and in all the years, he had never succeeded in melting the ice. It was his own heart that had been frostbitten.

Without a word, Narana pushed a plate of grain mush across the table to him. Then, almost frightened that she had overstepped her bounds, she retreated to her chair. The delicate, blond subwife, who could have been the daughter of the other two, ate silently and quietly, bent over her plate as though she wanted to make herself invisible.

Borlon knew that Narana believed Karvita hated her, and she was probably right. Whenever the three of them were in a room together, there was tension in the air. Karvita never let it be seen in her cool mien, but Borlon was sure that she was jealous of the young subwife, because he slept with her.

Should he have forgone the pleasure? Narana was the only woman from whose bed he ever rose with a happy heart. She was young and shy and troubled, and originally he had only taken her to wife because of her glorious white-blond hair, which formed an unbelievably effective contrast to Karvita’s hair. And she had lived untouched in their household for several years before he slept with her for the first time … at Karvita’s suggestion.

When he was alone with her, she could be wonderfully relaxed, passionate, and filled with grateful tenderness. She was the ray of light in his life. But since that time, Karvita’s heart had become inaccessible to him—permanently, it seemed—and he felt responsible for that.

He watched from the corner of his eye as Karvita ran her fingers through her hair, and out of pure habit, he extended his hand to receive the hairs that had come out in her fingers. In the middle of this gesture, he realized what he was doing, and he stopped himself. There was no carpet anymore on which he could continue his work. He sensed the memory of it like a burning ache in his chest.

“It does no good to blame yourself,” Karvita said when she noticed the movement of his hand. “It won’t bring back the carpet … or the house. There could be any number of causes: a spark from the cooking fire, embers in the ashes, anything.”

“But what should I do now?” Borlon asked helplessly.

“First we have to rebuild the house. Then you’ll start a new carpet.”

Borlon raised his hands and looked at his fingertips, grooved from years of work with the knotting needle. “What did I do to bring this on me? I’m not young enough to finish a carpet of regulation size. I have two wives with the most wondrous hair ever seen in the Emperor’s realm, and—instead of tying a carpet—I will only be able to complete a narrow, little rug—”

“Borlon, please stop complaining. You could have died in the flames, then you couldn’t have accomplished anything in your life.” Now she was really annoyed. That’s probably why she added, “Besides, you still don’t have an heir, so the size of the carpet isn’t very important.”

Yes, Borlon thought bitterly. I haven’t managed to do that either. A man with two wives, who still had no children, had nobody to blame but himself.

*   *   *

Borlon thought he could see a hint of disapproval, even disgust, in the eyes of his mother-in-law when the little old woman let in the guildmaster of the carpet maker’s guild.

“I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Borlon,” said the guildmaster. “I was deeply shocked when your wife reported to me.… Such a misfortune hasn’t occurred for as long as anyone can remember!”

Was he trying to humiliate him? To rub his nose into it, to show him what a failure he, Borlon, was? He scrutinized the tall, gaunt figure of the guildmaster; the old carpet maker’s gray-flecked hair was more disheveled than Borlon had ever seen it.

It sounded honest. The old man, otherwise always businesslike and serious, was really deeply moved and filled with empathy.

“When did it happen? Last night?” he asked as he sat down. “No one has heard about it in the city—”

“I don’t want people to talk,” Borlon said with effort.

“But why not? You can use all the help you can get—”

“I don’t want it,” Borlon insisted.

The guildmaster observed him for a while and then nodded his understanding. “Well, yes. At least you’re informing me. And you’re asking for my advice.”

Borlon stared down at his hand lying large and heavy on the unfinished wood of the tabletop. The veins on the back of his hand pulsed almost unnoticeably, but continuously. When he began to speak, he had the feeling he was not speaking at all; he listened to himself and thought he could hear Karvita speaking in his voice. Hesitantly at first, then, after he got started, more and more fluently, he repeated what she had drilled into him.

“It’s about my house, Guildmaster. It has to be rebuilt, I need a new knotting frame, new tools—I don’t have enough money for all that. My father got a very bad price for his carpet, back then.” My father was a failure, too, he thought. He tied a wonderful carpet and gave it away for a lousy starvation wage. But at least, he
finished
a carpet—the son of the failure, on the other hand …

“I know.”

“And?”

“You’re asking for a long-term loan.”

“Yes.”

The old carpet maker opened his hands slowly in a gesture of regret. “Borlon, please don’t put me in a bind. You know the guild regulations. If you don’t have a son, you can’t get credit.”

Borlon had to fight the feeling that he was sinking into a bottomless black hole. “I have no son. I have two wives and neither will bear me a son—”

“Then it probably isn’t the fault of the women.”

Oh yes. Of course not.

He stared at the guildmaster. There was something he was supposed to say now, but he had forgotten it. Or maybe there was nothing he could say.

“Look, Borlon, this sort of credit would have a term of a hundred twenty or a hundred sixty years. The children of your children would still have to pay on it. You can’t make such a decision lightly. And naturally, the guild treasury needs some sort of security. If it appears that you might have no heirs, we can’t give you long-term credit. That’s the purpose of the regulation. And even so, we would be taking on a big risk, because who knows whether your son would have a son himself?”