The Carpet Makers (8 page)

She reached for the wine bottle and looked inside. “And all you contribute to the effort is to get drunk and feel sorry for yourself. Do you think that’s a solution?”

He understood dully that she wanted an answer—the way she was standing there and looking at him.

“No,” he said.

“And what sort of solution do you have in mind?”

He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

“Borlon, I know that Narana is important to you, probably more important than I am,” she said bitterly. “But I implore you, at least think about it. At least, it’s a possibility. And we don’t have many possibilities.”

There were so many things he had always wanted to tell her and so many things he wanted to tell her now that he didn’t know where he should begin. Above all, he needed to make her understand that he loved her, that she had an unassailable place in his heart, and that it pained him that she didn’t want to fill that place. And … that none of these things had anything to do with Narana.…

“You could at least speak with Benegoran yourself,” she insisted.

That was useless. He knew that it was useless. Everything was useless.

“Then what will you do?” she asked.

He didn’t know that either. He was silent. Silent, awaiting the sentence of the court. Silent, waiting for the towers of guilt all around him to collapse and bury him beneath them.

“Borlon? What’s the matter?”

The words had again forfeited their meaning and become part of the background noise of the night. He turned back to the window and looked out at the dark sky. The small moon was there—it could be seen moving quickly across the firmament toward the big moon, which moved slowly toward it in the opposite direction. Tonight the small moon would pass directly across the bright face of the big moon.

He heard someone speaking, but he understood nothing, and understanding wasn’t even important. Only the moons were important. He had to stay here and wait until they met one another and touched. A bang, like the slamming of a door, but that, too, was meaningless.

He sat motionless while the small moon moved. When he sat this way and waited, he could see how the stars in the lesser moon’s path seemed to move closer and closer to the little oval ring of light until they were finally overwhelmed by its brightness and disappeared. And so the two moons drifted, star by star, toward one another across the vault of the heavens until they finally melted together into a single disk of light … while he sat without moving and watched.

He was tired. His eyes burned. When he finally turned away from the window, the oil lamp had already gone out. No more flame, no fire. That was good. He no longer knew exactly why, but it was good.

He could go now with his mind at rest. It was time. Out to the entryway to take his cloak from the hook, not because he would need it, but to tidy up, to leave no unwelcome traces behind. He mustn’t trouble anyone with the odds and ends of a failed life. He didn’t need that guilt, too.

Then open the door and close it slowly behind you. And just let your legs carry you along … along the street to the city gate and beyond, away from the city, farther and farther, and farther still, until your path meets the two moons and you melt away into their light.…

V

The Peddler Woman

ON HER TRAVELS
between the isolated country houses of the carpet makers, she often saw only women for weeks at a time. The carpet makers’ headwives, subwives, and daughters could hardly wait to invite her into their kitchens. However, it wasn’t for her textiles and household implements that they waited so impatiently, but for the news she could tell about other families and about goings-on in the city. Then she sat there for hours with the women, and it was often difficult and required skillful manipulation of the conversation to bring up the subject of her wares. New recipes. That was her favorite trick. Ubhika knew an extensive number of unusual recipes—both for food and also for beauty aids of all kinds—that all had one thing in common: for each of them, either a special utensil was needed or a special spice, or some other special thing, which had to be purchased from her.

If she was lucky, she also got a bed for the night, since, with all the chatter and gossip, it often grew late. Today she had not been lucky. And what irked her most especially was that she should have seen it from the beginning. Hospitality had never counted for much in the house of Ostvan—not even in the days of the old Ostvan, and especially not in the house of his son. Shortly before dusk, the young carpet maker had walked sourly into the kitchen and said it was high time for the peddler woman to move on. And he spoke in a tone of voice that made everyone start with fear and wonder what sin they had committed. For a moment, Ubhika had felt like an adulteress instead of an itinerant peddler.

One of the women, at least, had helped her to pack up the yuk mules with her baskets and leather bags and bundles. Without that, she would not have made it down the steep descent from Ostvan’s house in daylight. Dirilja was the woman’s name. She was a small, quiet woman, considerably past her marriageable years, who never said much during the discussions; she always just stared sadly into the distance. Ubhika would have liked to know why. But that’s the way it was with the womenfolk of the carpet makers: they appeared at some point and were simply there, and most of them told little about their past. Dirilja was the last wife old Ostvan took, shortly before his death. Which was odd, because his carpet must already have been finished by then, and Dirilja’s hair was dry and brittle and thus not of the appropriate quality for a hair carpet. Ubhika trusted her judgment about that, because her own hair had been like that, even in the days when the silver-gray of age had not begun to show. This Dirilja, what could she have been up to with old Ostvan? A puzzling story.

The sun sank quickly toward the horizon, casting long, bothersome shadows between the hills and bare rocks, and it became noticeably cool. When Ubhika felt the wind nipping up under her skirt, she was peeved for allowing herself to be delayed so long. If she had set off earlier, she could have reached Borlon’s house, where she was always allowed to stay the night.

But now, once again, there was no choice but her tent. Ubhika kept an eye out for a protected spot, a small cave or an overhang, and finally she found a hollow in the lee of a rock toward which she led her animals. She tethered them to stakes, which she painstakingly hammered into the ground. She removed the loads from the two pack yuks and blindfolded all three animals—the surest way to avoid having to search far and wide in case some noise spooked them in the night. Then she set up her small tent, padded it with a couple of layers of her cheaper fabric, and crawled in.

And once again, she lay there in the night, listened to the cracking of stones and the rustling of insect feet, and sensed that she was all alone in the middle of the wilderness, protected by nothing but a tiny tent and two packs on either side of her filled with foodstuffs, fabric, and utensils. And she thought, as always, that she would never get used to it. That it really should have been different. And, as always before going to sleep, she rubbed her hands over her body, as though to reassure herself that it was still there. She stroked her breasts, which were still firm despite her age and felt good to the touch; she ran her hands over her hips and regretted that no man’s hands had ever touched them.

When she was of marriageable age, she didn’t get a husband, and with her brittle hair she couldn’t hope to become a carpet maker’s sub-wife. So she was left only with the lonely business of an itinerant peddler woman. Occasionally, she had considered responding to the coarse suggestions of a craftsman or a herdsman, but in the meantime, even those advances had stopped.

As always, she eventually fell asleep and woke up in the early chill of the morning. When she crawled shivering out of her tent with a length of fabric wrapped around her body, the sun was just rising from the silvery morning twilight. And the vast view into the solitude all around made her feel like an insect, tiny and unimportant.

She could never bring herself to eat where she had spent the night. She untied her yuks, loaded them, removed their blindfolds, and was in a hurry to move on. Along the way, she chewed on dried baraq meat from her supplies or ate fruit if she had any.

Borlon’s house. It was a good place to arrive in the morning, as well. Narana, Borlon’s young subwife, would make tea for her; she always did. And then she would buy some new fabric from her, because she enjoyed needlework and did a lot of sewing.

But when Ubhika caught sight of Borlon’s house, still a long way off, she immediately thought something was odd—much darker than she remembered it, almost black, as though charred. And when she got closer, she saw that, in fact, all that remained of Borlon’s house were those bits even a mighty fire could not destroy.

Driven by morbid curiosity, she rode on toward it until she finally stood before charred wall fragments, smelling of fire and destruction, with the ashes of the wooden beams and shingles piled between them. She felt like a scavenger arriving late at the scene of a dramatic event, when the only thing to do is to make use of whatever is left. Maybe a few coins still lay somewhere in the ashes.

Ubhika recognized the foundation walls of the kitchen where she had sat many a time with the women, and next to it, the small chamber where she had often slept. She had never been farther into the house than that. Only now, as she shuffled through the sooty ruins, stirring up ashes and the smell of smoke with her feet, did she see what other rooms there were in a carpet maker’s house. Which one might have been the carpet-knotting room? She would really have liked to know.

She found sooty footprints that led away from the rubble and disappeared somewhere on the rocky ground—the carpet maker’s family appeared to have survived the fire.

But she found no money and nothing else worth taking. Finally she decided to move on. Still, she now had some interesting news to report. With a little elaboration, it could help her make some good sales and maybe even get her a meal here and there.

And then a man was suddenly standing there at the side of the trail. Just like that, in the middle of the wilderness.

Suspicious, Ubhika maneuvered her riding yuk closer, keeping one hand on the grip of the cudgel she carried on her saddle. But he gave her a friendly wave and smiled. And he was young.…

She caught herself involuntarily straightening her hair as she slowly rode closer. After all, I’m still young, too—the thought startled her—it’s just my body that’s betrayed me and gotten older. Nevertheless, for fear of appearing ridiculous, she lowered her hand.

“My greetings to you,” said the man. It sounded odd. The way he spoke had something harsh about it, something foreign.

And he was oddly dressed, as well. He wore an outfit made of a fabric Ubhika had never seen before and which covered him completely from his neck to his feet. He wore a glittering piece of jewelry on his chest, and a belt around his waist to which all sorts of pouches and small, dark containers were attached.

“My greetings to you, stranger,” Ubhika responded hesitantly.

The man smiled even more broadly. “My name is Nillian,” he said, and he seemed to be making an effort to match the rhythm of his speech to that of Ubhika. “I come from very far away.”

“From where?” Ubhika asked almost automatically.

“From Lukdaria,” the man said. He said it with a slight hesitation, like someone who is taking refuge in a lie and fears being found out.

Ubhika had never heard of a city or a region with that name, but that might mean nothing. After all, it was obvious that the stranger had come from very far away. “My name is Ubhika, she said, and wondered why she was nervous. “I am a traveling peddler, as you can see.”

He nodded. “That means you sell the things you have with you?”

“Yes.” What else would that mean? she thought, and she studied his face. He looked strong and full of life—a man who could dance wildly and laugh out loud and drink along with everyone. He reminded her a bit of a boy she had loved when she was a very young girl. But nothing had happened there; he had married someone else, had learned the craft of a potter, and had died several years ago.

She admonished herself to get her mind on business again. Whoever the man was, he had asked what she had to sell. “Yes,” she repeated. “What do you want to buy, Nillian?”

The man looked the yuk mules over, with their tall packs. “Do you have clothing?”

“Sure.” Actually, she had mostly fabric, but there were also a few ready-made garments for men.

“I would like to dress the way that is customary in this region.”

Ubhika looked around. She saw no mount anywhere. If the man came from so far away, how had he gotten here? Surely not on foot. And why was he standing here as though he knew he would come across a peddler? Something was going on that she didn’t understand.

But business first. “Can you pay?” Ubhika asked. “Because that’s customary in this region, too—paying.”

The man laughed and said with a broad sweep of his hand, “That’s not such an unusual custom; you find that one everywhere in the universe.”

“I don’t know anything about that. But I do have clothes for you if you have money.”

“I have money.”

“Good.”

Ubhika dismounted, and she noticed that the man’s eyes were following her. Instinctively, she moved more energetically than usual, as though she needed to prove that she was still strong and agile and not as old as her skinny body and her wrinkled, weathered skin suggested. Then she was immediately cross with herself, and she roughly yanked the bundle containing men’s clothing out of her pack.

She rolled it out on the ground, and when she looked up, he was holding a few coins in his outstretched hand. “This is the money we get where I live,” he explained. “Look first to see if you want to take it.”

Ubhika took one of the coins from his hand. It was different from the coins she knew—more finely minted, shiny, made of some metal she had never seen. A beautiful coin. But not real money.