NAOMI'S GREAT GIFT
With the coming of the gift of hearing, the other gifts with which Naomi
had been gifted in her deafness, and the strange graces with which she
had been graced, seemed suddenly to fall from her as a garment when she
disrobed.
It seemed as though her old sense of touch had become confused by her
new sense of hearing, She lost her way in her father's house, and though
she could now hear footsteps, she did not appear to know who approached.
They led her into the street, into the Feddan, into the walled lane to
the great gate, into the steep arcades leading to the Kasbah; and no
more as of old did she thread her way through the people, seeming to see
them through the flesh of her face and to salute them with the laugh on
her lips, but only followed on and on with helpless footsteps. They took
her to the hill above the battery, and her breath came quick as she trod
the familiar ways; but when she was come to the summit, no longer did
she exult in her lofty place and drink new life from the rush of mighty
winds about her, but only quaked like a child in terror as she faced the
world unseen beneath and hearkened to the voices rising out of it, and
heard the breeze that had once laved her cheeks now screaming in her
ears. They gave Ali's harp into her hands, the same that she had played
so strangely at the Kasbah on the marriage of Ben Aboo; but never again
as on that day did she sweep the strings to wild rhapsodies of sound
such as none had heard before and none could follow, but only touched
and fumbled them with deftless fingers that knew no music.
She lost her old power to guide her footsteps and to minister to her
pleasures and to cherish her affections. No longer did she seem to
communicate with Nature by other organs than did the rest of the human
kind. She was a radiant and joyous spirit maid no more, but only a
beautiful blind girl, a sweet human sister that was weak and faint.
Nevertheless, Israel recked nothing of her weakness, for joy at the loss
of those powers over which his enemies throughout seventeen evil years
had bleated and barked “Beelzebub!” And if God in His mercy had taken
the angel out of his house, so strangely gifted, so strangely joyful,
He had given him instead, for the hunger of his heart as a man, a sweet
human daughter, however helpless and frail.
Thus in the first days of Naomi's great change Israel was content. But
day by day this contentment left him, and he was haunted by strange
sinkings of the heart. Naomi's frailty appeared to be not only of the
body but also of the spirit. It seemed as if her soul had suddenly
fallen asleep. She betrayed neither joy nor sorrow. No sound escaped her
lips; no thought for herself or for others seemed to animate her. She
neither laughed nor wept. When Israel kissed her pale brow, she did not
stretch out her arms as she had done before to draw down his head to her
lips. Calmly, silently, sadly, gracefully, she passed from day to day,
without feeling and without thought--a beautiful statue of flesh and
blood.
What God was doing with her slumbering spirit then, only He Himself
knows; but the time of her awakening came, and with it came her first
delight in the new gift with which God had gifted her.
To revive her spirits and to quicken her memory, Israel had taken her to
walk in the fields outside the town where she had loved to play in her
childhood--the wild places covered with the peppermint and the pink, the
thyme, the marjoram, and the white broom, where she had gathered flowers
in the old times, when God had taught her. The day was sweet, for it was
the cool of the morning, the air was soft, and the wind was gentle, and
under the shady trees the covert of the reeds lay quiet. And whither
Naomi would, thither they had wandered, without object and without
direction.
On and on, hand in hand, they had walked through the winding paths
of the oleander, between the creeping fences of the broom, and the
sprawling limbs of the prickly pear, until they came to a stream, a
tributary of the Marteel, trickling down from the wild heights of the
Akhmas, over the light pebbles of its narrow bed. And there--but by what
impulse or what chance Israel never knew--Naomi had withdrawn her hand
from his hand; and at the next moment, in scarcely more time than it
took him to stoop to the ground and rise again, suddenly as if she had
sunk into the earth, or been lifted into the sky, Naomi disappeared from
his sight.
Israel pushed the low boughs apart, expecting to find her by his side,
but she was nowhere near. He called her by her name, thinking she would
answer with the only language of her lips, the old language of her
laugh.
“Naomi! Naomi! Come, come, my child, where are you?”
But no sound came back to him.
Again he called, not as before in a tone of remonstrance, but with a
voice of fear.
“Naomi, Naomi! Where are you? where? where?”
Then he listened and waited, yet heard nothing, neither her laugh nor
the rustle of her robe, nor the light beat of her footstep.
Nevertheless, she had passed over the grass from the spot where she had
left him, without waywardness or thought of evil, only missing his hand
and trying to recover it, then becoming afraid and walking rapidly,
until the dense foliage between them had hidden her from sight and
deadened the sound of his voice.
Opening a way between the long leaves of an aloe, Israel found her at
length in the place whereto she had wandered. It was a short bend of the
brook, where dark old trees overshadowed the water with forest gloom.
She was seated on the trunk of a fallen oak, and it seemed as if she had
sat herself down to weep in her dumb trouble, for her blind eyes were
still wet with tears. The river was murmuring at her feet; an old
olive-tree over her head was pattering with its multitudinous tongues;
the little family of a squirrel was chirping by her side, and one tiny
creature of the brood was squirling up her dress; a thrush was swinging
itself on the low bough of the olive and singing as it swung, and a
sheep of solemn face--gaunt and grim and ancient--was standing and
palpitating before her. Bees were humming, grasshoppers were buzzing,
the light wind was whispering, and cattle were lowing in the distance.
The air of that sweet spot in that sweet hour was musical with every
sweet sound of the earth and sky, and fragrant with all the wild odours
of the wood.
“My darling,” cried Israel in the first outburst of his relief, and then
he paused and looked at her again.
The wet eyes were open, and they appeared to see, so radiant was the
light that shone in them. A tender smile played about her mouth; her
head was held forward; her nostrils quivered; and her cheeks were
flushed. She had pushed her hat back from her head, and her yellow hair
had fallen over her neck and breast. One of her hands covered one ear,
and the other strayed among the plants that grew on the bank beside her.
She seemed to be listening intently, eagerly, rapturously. A rare and
radiant joy, a pure and tender delight, appeared to gush out of her
beautiful face. It was almost as though she believed that everything she
heard with the great new gift which God had given her was speaking to
her, and bidding her welcome and offering her love; as if the garrulous
old olive over her head were stretching down his arms to sport with her
hair, and pattering; “Kiss me, little one! kiss me, sweet one! kiss
me! kiss me!”--as if the rippling river at her feet were laughing and
crying, “Catch me, naked feet! catch me, catch me!” as if the thrush
on the bough were singing, “Where from, sunny locks? where from? where
from?”--as if the young squirrel were chirping, “I'm not afraid, not
afraid, not afraid!” and as if the grey old sheep were breathing slowly,
“Pat me, little maiden! you may, you may!”
“God bless her beautiful face!” cried Israel. “She listens with every
feature and every line of it.”
It was the awakening of her soul to the soul of music, and from that day
forward she took pleasure in all sweet and gentle sounds whatsoever--in
the voices of children at play--in the bleat of the goat--in the
footsteps of them she loved--in the hiss and whirr of her mother's old
spinning-wheel, which now she learned to work--and in Ali's harp, when
he played it in the patio in the cool of the evening.
But even as no eye can see how the seed which has been sown in the
ground first dies and then springs into life, so no tongue can tell what
change was wrought in the pure soul of Naomi when, after her baptism of
sound, the sweet voices of earth first entered it. Neither she herself
nor any one else ever fully realised what that change was, for it was a
beautiful and holy mystery. It was also a great joy, and she seemed to
give herself up to it. No music ever escaped her, and of all human music
she took most pleasure in the singing of love songs. These she listened
to with a simple and rapt delight; their joy seemed to answer to her
joy, and the joyousness of a song of love seemed to gather in the air
wheresoever she went.
There were few of the kind she ever heard, and few of that few were
beautiful, and none were beautifully sung. Fatimah's homely ditties were
all she knew, the same that had been crooned to her a thousand times
when she had not heard. Most of these were songs of the desert and the
caravan, telling of musk and ambergris, and odorous locks and dancing
cypress, and liquid ruby, and lips like wine; and some were warm tales
which the good soul herself hardly understood, of enchanting beauties
whose silence was the door of consent, and of wanton nymphs whose love
tore the veil of their chastity.
But one of them was a song of pure and true passion that seemed to be
the yearning cry of a hungering, unfilled, unsatisfied heart to call
down love out of the skies, or else be carried up to it. This had been a
favourite song of Naomi's mother, and it was from Ruth that Fatimah had
learned it in those anxious watches of the early uncertain days when she
sang it over the cradle to her babe that was deaf after all and did not
hear. Naomi knew nothing of this, but she heard her mother's song at
last, though silent were the lips that first sang it, and it was her
chief and dear delight.
O, where is Love?
Where, where is Love?
Is it of heavenly birth?
Is it a thing of earth?
Where, where is Love?
In her crazy, creechy voice the black woman would sing the song, when
Israel was out of hearing; and the joy Naomi found in it, and the simple
silent arts she used, being mute and blind, to show her pleasure while
it lasted, and to ask for it again when it was done, were very sweet and
touching.
And so it came about at last, that even as the human mother loves
that child most among many children that most is helpless, so the
earth-mother of Naomi made her ears more keen because her eyes were
blind. Thus she seemed to hear many things that are unheard by the rest
of the human family. It is only a dim echo of the outer world that the
ears of men are allowed to hear, just as it is only a dim shadow of the
outer world that the eyes of men are allowed to see; but the ears of
Naomi seemed to hear all.
There is one hearing of men, and another hearing of the beasts, and a
third of the birds, and one hearing differs from another in keenness
even as one sight differs from another in strength. And all the earth
is full of voices, and everything that moves upon the face of it has its
sound; but the bird hears that which is unheard of the beast, and the
beast hears that which is unheard of men. But Naomi appeared to hear all
that is heard of each.
Listening hour after hour, listening always, listening only, with
nothing that she could do but listen, nothing moved on the ground but
she dropped her face, and nothing flew in the sky but she lifted her
eyes. And whereas before the coming of her great gift her face had been
all feeling, and she seemed to feel the sunset, and to feel the sky, and
to feel the thunder and the light, now her face was all hearing, and
her whole body seemed to hear, for she was like a living soul floating
always in a sea of sound.
Thus, day after day, she was busy in her silence and in her darkness,
building up notions of man and of the world by the new gift with which
God had gifted her; but what strange thing the earth was to her then,
what the sun was with its warmth, and what the sea was with its roar,
and what the face of man was, and the eyes of woman, none could know,
and neither could she tell, for her soul was not linked to other
souls--soul to soul, in the chains of speech.
And for all that she could not answer; yet Israel did not forget that,
beside the sounds of earth and sky, Naomi was hearing words, and that
words had wings, and were alive, and, for good or ill, made their mark
on the soul that listened to them. So he continued to read to her out of
the Book of the Law, day after day at sunset, according to his wont and
custom. And when an evil spirit seemed to make a mock at him, and to
say, “Fool! she hears, but does she understand?” he remembered how he
had read to her in the days of her deafness, and he said to himself,
“Shall I have less faith now that she can hear?”
But, though he turned his back on the temptation to let go of Naomi's
soul at last, yet sometimes his heart misgave him; for when he spoke to
her it seemed to him that he was like a man that shouts into a cavern
and gets back no answer but the sound of his own voice. If he told her
of the sky, that it was broad as the ocean, what could she see of the
great deeps to measure them? And if he told her of the sea, that it was
green as the fields, what could she see of the grass to know its colour?
And sometimes as he spoke to her it smote him suddenly that the words
themselves which he used to speak with were no more to Naomi than the
notes which Ali struck from his dead harp, or the bleat of the goat at
her feet.
Nevertheless, his faith was great, and he said in his heart, “Let the
Lord find His own way to her spirit.” So he continued to speak with
her as often as he was near her, telling her of the little things that
concerned their household, as well as of the greater things it was good
for her soul to know.
It was a touching sight--the lonely man, the outcast among his people,
talking with his daughter though she was blind and dumb, telling her of
God, of heaven, of death and resurrection, strong in his faith that his
words would not fail, but that the casket of her soul would be opened
to receive them, and that they would lie within until the great day of
judgment, when the Lord Himself would call for them.
Did Naomi hear his words to understand them, or did they fall dead on
her ear like birds on a dead sea? In her darkness and her silence was
she putting them together, comparing them, interpreting them, pondering
them, imitating them, gathering food for her mind from them, and solace
for her spirit? Israel did not know; and, watch her face as he would,
he could never learn. Hope! Faith! Trust! What else was left to him? He
clung to all three, he grappled them to him; they were his sheet-anchor
and his pole-star. But one day they seemed to be his calenture also--the
false picture of green fields and sweet female faces that rises before
the eye of the sailor becalmed at sea.
It was some three weeks after his return from his journey, and the
fierce blaze of the sun continued. The storm that had broken over the
town had left no results of coolness or moisture, for the ground had
been baked hard, and the rain had been too short and swift to penetrate
it. And what the withering heat had spared of green leaf and shrub a
deadlier blight had swept away. The locusts had lately come up from
the south and the east, in numbers exceeding imagination, millions on
millions, making the air dark as they passed and obscuring the blue
sky. They had swept the country of its verdure, and left a trail of
desolation behind them. The grass was gone, the bark of the olives and
almonds was stripped away, and the bare trees had the look of winter.
The first to feel the plague had been the cattle and beasts of burden.
Without food to eat or water to drink they had died in hundreds. A
Mukabar, a cemetery, was made for the animals outside the walls of the
town. It was a charnel yard on the hill-side, near to one of the town's
six gates. The dead creatures were not buried there, but merely cast on
the bare ground to rot and to bleach in the sun and the heated wind. It
was a horrible place.
The skinny dogs of the town soon found it. And after these scavengers
of the East had torn the putrefying flesh and gnawed the multitude of
bones, they prowled around the country, with tongues lolling out, in
search of water. By this time there was none that they could come at
nearer than the sea, and that was salt. Nevertheless, they lapped it, so
burning was their thirst, and went mad, and came back to the town. Then
the people hunted them and killed them.
Now, it chanced that a mad dog from the Mukabar was being hunted to
death on a day when Naomi, who had become accustomed to the tumult of
the streets, had first ventured out in them alone, save for her goat,
that went before her. The goat was grown old, but it was still her
constant companion and also it was now her guide and guardian, for the
little dumb creature seemed to know that she was frail and helpless. And
so it was that she was crossing the Sok el Foki, a market of the town,
and hearkening only to the patter of the feet of the goat going in
front, when suddenly she heard a hundred footsteps hurrying towards her,
with shouts and curses that were loud and deep. She stood in fear on the
spot where she was, and no eyes had she to see what happened next, and
she had none save the goat to tell her.
But out of one of the dark arcades on the left, leading downward from
the hill, the mad dog came running, before a multitude of men and boys.
And flying in its despair, it bit out wildly at whatever lay in its way,
and Naomi, in her blindness, stood straight in front of it. Then she
must have fallen before it, but instantly the goat flung itself across
the dog's open jaws, and butted at its foaming teeth, and sent up shrill
cries of terror.
The dog stopped a moment, for such love was human, and it seemed as if
the madness of the monster shrank before it. But the people came down
with their wild shouts and curses, and the dog sprang upon the goat and
felled it, and fled away. The people followed it, and then Naomi was
alone in the market-place, and the goat lay at her feet.
Ali found her there, and brought her home to her father's house in the
Mellah, and her dying champion with her. And out of this hard chance,
and not out of Israel's teaching, Naomi was first to learn what life is
and what is death. She felt the goat with her hands, and as she did so
her fingers shook. Then she lifted it to its feet, and when they slipped
from under it she raised her white face in wonder. Again she lifted it,
and made strange noises at its ear; but when it did not answer with its
bleat her lips began to tremble. Then she listened for its breathing,
and felt for its breath; but when neither the one came to her ear, nor
the other to her cheek, her own breath beat hot and fast. At length she
fondled it in her arms, and kissed it with her lips; and when it gave
back no sign of motion nor any sound of voice, a wild labouring rose
at her heart. At last, when the power of life was low in it, the goat
opened its heavy eyes upon her and put forth its tongue and licked her
hand. With that last farewell the brave heart of the little creature
broke, and it stretched itself and died.
Israel saw it all. His heart bled to see the parting in silence between
those two, for not more dumb was the goat that now was dead than the
human soul that was left alive. He tried to put the goat from Naomi's
arms, saying, “It was only a goat, my child; think of it no more,”
though it smote him with pain to say it, for had not the creature given
its life for her life? And where, O God, was the difference between
them? But Naomi clung to the goat, and her throat swelled and her bosom
fluttered, and her whole body panted, and it was almost as if her soul
were struggling to burst through the bonds that bound it, that she might
speak and ask and know.
“Oh, what does it mean? Why is it? Why? Why?”
Such were the questions that seemed ready to break from her tongue. And,
thinking to answer her, Israel drew her to him and said, “It is dead, my
child--the goat is dead.”
But as he spoke that word he saw by her face, as by a flash of light in
a dark place, that, often as he had told her of death, never until that
hour had she known what it was. Then, if the words that he had spoken
of death had carried no meaning, what could he hope of the words that
he had spoken of life, and of the little things which concerned their
household? And if Naomi had not heard the words he had said of these--if
she had not pondered and interpreted them--if they had fallen on her ear
only as voices in a dark cavern--only as dead birds on a dead sea--what
of the other words, the greater words, the words of the Book of the Law
and the Prophets, the words of heaven and of the resurrection and of God?
Had the hope of his heart been vanity? Did Naomi know nothing? Was her
great gift a mockery?
Israel's feet were set in a slippery place. Why had he boasted himself
of God's mercy? What were ears to hear to her that could not understand?
Only a torment, a terror, a plague, a perpetual desolation! When Naomi
had heard nothing she had known nothing, and never had her spirit asked
and cried in vain. Now she was dumb for the first time, being no longer
deaf. Miserable man that he was, why had the Lord heard his supplication
and why had He received his prayer?
But, repenting of such reproaches, in memory of the joy that Naomi's new
gift had given her, he called on God to give her speech as well.
“Give her speech, O Lord!” he cried, “speech that shall lift her above
the creatures of the field, speech whereby alone she may ask and know!
Give her speech, O God my God, and Thy servant will be satisfied!”