The Fifth Mountain Page 0,22
anything he chose, but no one could remember things that never were.
"And what have I to tell?" the widow continued, filling the cup that Elijah had quickly drained. "I don't have the strength or the beauty of Jezebel. My life is like all the rest: a marriage arranged by my father and mother when I was a child, household tasks when I came of age, worship on holy days, my husband always busy with other things. When he was alive, we never spoke of anything important. He was preoccupied with his trade, I took care of the house, and that was how we spent the best of our years.
"After his death, nothing was left for me except poverty and raising my son. When he becomes a man, he will cross the seas and I shall no longer matter to anyone. I feel neither hate nor resentment, only a sense of my own uselessness."
Elijah refilled his cup. His heart was beginning to give signs of alarm; he was enjoying being at this woman's side. Love could be a more frightening experience than standing before Ahab's soldier with an arrow aimed at his heart; if the arrow had struck him, he would be dead - and the rest was up to God. But if love struck him, he alone would have to take responsibility for the consequences.
"I have so wished for love in my life," he thought. And yet, now that it was before him - and beyond doubt it was there; all he had to do was not run away from it - his sole thought was to forget it as quickly as possible.
His mind returned to the day he came to Akbar, after his exile on the Cherith. He was so weary and thirsty that he could remember nothing except the moment he recovered from fainting, and seeing her drip water onto his lips. His face was very close to hers, closer than he had ever been to any woman in his entire life. He had noticed that she had Jezebel's green eyes, but with a different glow, as if they could reflect the cedar trees, the ocean of which he had often dreamed but never known, and - how could it be? - her very soul.
"I should so like to tell her that," he thought. "But I don't know how. It's easier to speak of the love of God."
Elijah took another sip. She sensed that she had said something that displeased him, and she decided to change the subject.
"Did you climb the Fifth Mountain?" she asked.
He nodded.
She would have liked to ask what he had seen there in the heights and how he had escaped the fire of the heavens. But he seemed loath to discuss it.
"You are a prophet," she thought. "Read my heart."
Since the Israelite had come into her life, everything had changed. Even poverty was easier to bear, for that foreigner had awakened something she had never felt: love. When her son had fallen ill, she had fought the entire neighborhood so he could remain in her house.
She knew that to him the Lord was more important than anything that took place beneath the sky. She was aware that it was a dream impossible of fulfillment, for the man before her could go away at any moment, shed Jezebel's blood, and never return to tell of what had happened.
Even so, she would go on loving him, because for the first time in her life, she knew freedom. She could love him, even if he never knew; she did not need his permission to miss him, to think of him every moment of the day, to await him for the evening meal, and to worry about the plots that people could be weaving against the foreigner.
This was freedom: to feel what the heart desired, with no thought to the opinion of the rest. She had fought with her neighbors and her friends about the stranger's presence in her house; there was no need to fight against herself.
Elijah drank a bit of wine, excused himself, and went to his room. She went out, rejoiced at the sight of her son playing in front of the house, and decided to take a short walk.
She was free, for love liberates.
ELIJAH STARED at the wall of his room for a long time. Finally, he decided to invoke his angel.
"My soul is in danger," he said.
The angel said nothing. Elijah was in doubt about continuing the conversation, but now it was too