The Carpet Makers (7 page)

“And short-term credit?” Borlon asked.

“With what do you intend to pay it back?” the guildmaster asked tersely.

“I’ll tie another carpet,” Borlon assured him hastily. “If I should have no heir, I can pay back the loan with it, and if I actually do have a son, then the credit could be changed over to a long-term loan.…”

The old man sighed. “I’m sorry, Borlon. I’m really sorry for you, because I have always valued you, and I loved the carpet you were making. But I am responsible to my office, and at the moment, I think I have a more realistic view of things than you do. First, you’re no longer very young, Borlon. How large a carpet can you make, even if you work until you’re blind? And a carpet that doesn’t reach the prescribed dimensions will draw an extremely low price, as you know. In most cases, one would have to be satisfied if the trader took it at all. And second, you’d have to do your work on a new carpet frame whose wood still has to settle and which hasn’t yet been under tension for decades. Everyone knows—and you know it, too—that you can’t achieve the same quality on a new frame as on an old one. And you want to build a house, you have to live—I can’t see how you could accomplish all that.”

Borlon listened in disbelief while the guildmaster, whom he had considered a friend in good times and from whom he had hoped for help, delivered blow after blow without mercy.

“But … what should I do, then?”

The guildmaster looked at the floor and said quietly, “It happens from time to time that a carpet maker’s line comes to an end. Some die young or without heirs—that’s always been the case. Then, the guild looks for somebody who wants to fill the vacant position and found a new line, and we take care of his training and so on.”

“And give him credit.”

“If he has a son, yes.”

Borlon hesitated. “One of my wives … Narana … she may be pregnant.…”

It was a lie and they both knew it.

“If she bears you a son, the credit will be no problem, I promise you,” the guildmaster said, and stood up.

At the door, he turned around again. “We’ve talked a lot about money, Borlon, and very little about the meaning of our work. In this difficult time, I think you should try to renew your faith. There’s a preacher in the city, I’ve heard. Maybe it would be a good idea for you to look him up.”

*   *   *

Borlon sat motionless after the guildmaster had gone and brooded in numb silence. Soon Karvita entered and asked about the outcome of the discussion. He just shook his head angrily.

“They don’t want to give me a loan, because I have no son,” he finally explained when she persisted.

“Then let’s try,” she responded immediately. “I’m not too old yet to have children.” Reluctantly, she added, “And Narana’s not nearly too old.”

Why was everything the way it was? Why did everything have to be this way? You spend your entire life on one single carpet …

“And what if it still doesn’t work? Karvita, why have we been together for so long and still don’t have any children?”

She looked him over while her hands played with a lock of her blue-black hair. “Your son,” she said cautiously, “just has to be borne by one of your wives. But it isn’t really necessary that … you also father him!”

What was she daring to suggest to him? Penniless and battered by fate—now he was supposed to let himself be dishonored?

“It would naturally have to be done with the greatest discretion…,” his wife continued her thoughts.

“Karvita!”

She looked into his eyes and stopped in fright. “Pardon me, it was just an idea. Nothing more.”

“Do you have any more ideas like that?”

She was silent. After a while—after she gave him a cautious glance—she said, “If the guild won’t help you, maybe you have friends who will give you a loan. We can ask some of the more well-to-do carpet makers. Benegoran, for example. He must have much more money than he and his family can ever spend.

“Benegoran won’t give me anything. That’s why he’s so rich—because he doesn’t give anything away.”

“I know one of his wives well. I could make a casual inquiry through her.”

Borlon looked at her as she stood there in the doorway, and suddenly he could see the young girl in her again, and he remembered another late afternoon many years ago when she had stood in this doorway, exactly like this. The memory sent a sharp pain through his heart. She had always been a good companion to him, and he hated himself for all the times he had done wrong by her or treated her badly.

He stood up, actually intending to take her in his arms, but then he turned away and walked to the window.

“All right,” he said. “But I don’t want the whole city to hear about it.”

“Sooner or later, we won’t be able to keep it a secret.”

Borlon thought about the isolated homes of the carpet makers in the mountain gorges and valleys all around the city. There was probably no spot in the whole region from which you could see two of these country estates at the same time. If all of them had succumbed to flames, it would have taken a long time before it was noticed in the city.

It would probably be the itinerant peddler women who would find the charred ruins and pass the news along.

“If so, then I prefer later. After we know how we’ll get on with our lives.”

The sun was low on the horizon again. Borlon could see the city gate and a few old women who stood chatting beneath it. An older man hurried out of the city; Borlon thought he looked familiar, but couldn’t place him at the moment. Only after he was out of sight did it occur to him that it had been the teacher. In the past, he had come occasionally to ask about children, but he hadn’t come for many years now, and in the meantime, Borlon had even forgotten his name.

I don’t know the people in the city anymore, he thought. I had already reached the point in a carpet maker’s life when he no longer leaves the house. Among all the feelings coursing through him at that moment was a powerful disillusionment: the boundless disillusionment of a man who has taken on a great and arduous enterprise and has failed shortly before reaching his goal.

He felt the strain and stress of the day—physically now, as well: the long march in the night and the few short hours of fitful sleep from which he had repeatedly awakened with a start; the forenoon when they had all tramped back out there to pace around the burned-out skeleton of the house, to rescue a few household articles from the ashes and to estimate the damage. Borlon reached for a bottle of wine and two cups. Suddenly, the acrid smell of the ashes was in his nose again, and he thought he could taste the smoke on his tongue.

He set down a cup for Karvita and one for himself. Then he opened the bottle. “Come,” he said. “Drink with me.”

*   *   *

He was up early the next morning and was drawn out into the city streets. For the first time in his life he had lain with both his wives in one night, and also for the first time in his life, he had not been able to successfully complete this marital act—neither time.

My life is crumbling away beneath me, he thought. One piece after another is disappearing, failure is rippling out in all directions, and in the end, I will sink down and disappear, too.

No one paid him any heed, and he preferred that. It felt good to be invisible—not to be seen and to leave no traces behind. He had feared that the rumor might already have gotten around and that they would stare at him and whisper behind his back. But there were other things on the minds of the city folk. From what he gathered of their conversations in passing, a heretic had been stoned the previous evening on the order of a holy wanderer who had been in the city for two days.

Borlon recalled the advice of the guildmaster and turned his steps toward Market Square. Maybe it really was a question of his faith. He had not thought about the Emperor for a long time now; he had been concerned with nothing but his carpet and his own petty worries. He had lost his vision of great things, of the whole picture, and he would probably have continued along the same path until the end of his life, if nothing had happened.

Maybe the fire was his punishment for that. I don’t want your carpet, if you don’t tie your heart’s blood and your love for me into it, the Emperor seemed to be telling him.

Oddly enough, these trains of thought comforted him. Everything seemed to have an explanation: at least there was that. He had sinned and, as a result, had deserved to be punished. The verdict was not up to him; whatever had happened was just, and it was his duty to accept it without complaint.

Market Square was almost empty of people. A few women sat at the edge of the market offering some vegetables they had spread out on tattered cloths, and since hardly anyone wanted to buy, they killed time with chatter. Borlon approached one of them and could tell by her eyes that she didn’t recognize him. He inquired about the holy wanderer.

“The preacher? He already moved on early this morning,” she responded.

“His words were so moving,” interrupted one of the others, a fat woman missing her lower incisors. “Too bad he was here only one day.”

“Strange, isn’t it?” opined a third in an unpleasant, yapping voice. “I mean, usually you can’t get rid of these holy men. I think it’s odd that he’s already taken off.”

“That’s true,” nodded the fat woman with the gaps in her teeth. “I heard his sermon yesterday morning, and he listed all the subjects he wanted to preach to us about.”

“You want to buy something, sir?” the first woman asked Borlon. “I have wonderfully fresh karaqui … or the bandroot here, great price—”

“No.” Borlon shook his head. “Thanks. I just wanted to ask … about the preacher.…”

Everything was black and gloomy. The court of judgment was gathering around him, and there was no chance that he could sneak off and evade his culpability.

The dark windows of the houses around Market Square stared back at him like curious black eyes. He stood motionless for a while and sought out the feeling within himself, the feeling that he was falling without ever reaching the bottom, condemned to tumble eternally without striking solid earth and finding relief. Abruptly, he turned around and headed back.

In front of the house, he encountered Karvita’s father, a little old man who was a weaver by trade and who, like all weavers, felt pious reverence for carpet makers. He had always approached his son-in-law in an almost subservient manner—but now Borlon also discovered the seeds of contempt in his eyes.

They merely nodded to one another. Borlon rushed into the house and up the stairs into Narana’s room. She was sitting on a chair at the window, quiet and shy as always and looking much smaller and younger than she actually was. She was sewing. He took the needle and thread from her hand and lifted her onto the bed; without a word, he threw up her skirt, unbuttoned his trousers, and immediately forced himself into her with hard, quick thrusts of total despair. Then he fell down next to her on the bed and, gasping, he stared at the ceiling.

She left her skirt turned up, but pressed both hands between her legs. “You hurt me,” she said quietly.

“I’m sorry.”

“You’ve never hurt me before, Borlon.” She spoke almost in amazement. “I didn’t even know that it could hurt.”

He said nothing; he just lay there and stared into space. After a while, she turned toward him, studied him with her large pensive eyes and began to stroke him gently. He knew that he didn’t deserve it, but he let her continue while he desperately tried to understand what was going wrong.

“You are so terribly worried, Borlon,” she whispered. “And all the while … think about it … we had enough money for the rest of our lives before the house burned down. Now we don’t have a house anymore, but we still have the money. So what can happen to us?”

He closed his eyes and felt his heart pounding. It just wasn’t that simple. “The carpet,” he muttered. “I don’t have a carpet anymore.”

She didn’t stop caressing his face with her fingers. “Borlon … Maybe you’ll never have a son—so why do you need a carpet? If you die without an heir, the proceeds from the carpet will revert to the guild anyway … the guild that doesn’t want to help you now.”

“But the Emperor—”

“The Emperor gets so many hair carpets; he surely doesn’t even know where to put them all. It can’t be important whether there’s one more or one less.”

He sat straight up. “You don’t understand. If I die without completing a carpet, then my life will have had no purpose.”

He stood up, straightened his clothing, and went to the door. Narana was still lying on the bed with one hand between her naked legs, and in her eyes was the look of a wounded animal. He wanted to say something, he wanted to say how sorry he was and that he was ashamed, he wanted to talk about the pain tearing at his heart, but he couldn’t find the words. “I’m sorry,” he said, and he left.

If he only knew what was going wrong. There seemed to be no escape from all the guilt that was piling up higher and higher around him. With each heavy, awkward step he took down the stairs, he expected to fall down and to shatter like a clay pot.

Nobody was in the kitchen. The wine bottle was there and next to it, the cups from yesterday evening. He poured the wine without bothering to wash out the cup and began to drink.

*   *   *

“I spoke with Benegoran,” Karvita reported. “He’ll lend you the money for a new house and a new knotting frame.”

Borlon, who had sat the entire afternoon silently at the kitchen window watching the slow progress of the shadows until the sun had finally set, didn’t move. The words barely penetrated his mind; they reached his consciousness as distant sounds devoid of meaning.

“However, he did set one condition.”

Finally, he managed to turn his head and look at her. “A condition?”

“In return, he wants Narana,” Karvita said.

He felt the bubbling beginnings of a laugh rising from his belly and stopping somewhere between his heart and his throat. “No.”

He watched as she curled her hands into fists and struck them against her hips in a gesture of helplessness. “I don’t know why I do all this,” she exploded. “I’ve been on my feet all day long, I humiliate myself, I plead and beg and swallow the dust of the desert, and you dismiss it all with one word.”