The Sheen of the Silk

Sixty-one

GIULIANO WATCHED UNTIL THE SLENDER, LONELY FIGURE of Anastasius disappeared into the distance, then he walked over the rough ground and climbed back up to the road, joining it farther to the south and west. Was that the true Golgotha on which they had stood? The desolation of it seeped into his bones, drowning his mind. Why hast Thou forsaken me? The cry of every human soul who looks upon despair.

Was the sad, powerful face on the wooden painting he carried really that of Mary? It didn’t matter. The passion was real. Who cared if it was this place or that place? This woman or another?

Why did the sight of Anastasius dressed as a woman trouble Giuliano so much? He not only looked so natural in the clothes, he even changed his walk and the angle of his head. The way he looked at the passing men was feminine, different. His character had changed. He was no longer the friend Giuliano had come to know so well. At least he thought he had. There were days at a time when he forgot that Anastasius was a eunuch. His sexuality, or lack of it, was of no importance. It was his courage, his gentleness, his intelligence, his quick wit and soaring imagination that mattered and made him who he was.

Now suddenly the whole issue was forced into the open. Anastasius truly was a third gender, neither male nor female. He could slip from one to the other as silk changed in the light, almost as if there were nothing i

But it was worse than that. It was something deeper, something within himself, that troubled him. He had found Anastasius dressed as a woman to be beautiful. He knew perfectly well that he was, if not a man, then definitely male, yet momentarily he had responded to him as if he had been female. He had felt protective and then been aware of the sharp stirrings of sexual attraction.

Giuliano was relieved that he had to go to Jaffa and there was no real question of his traveling to Sinai as well.

Yet the moment Anastasius, such a vulnerable figure, was gone, he felt strangely alone. He would soon be surrounded by people, but there was no one to whom he could speak of the burdens inside him, the guilt at having fallen so far short of being the kind of friend Anastasius needed and deserved.

Perhaps worse than that, cutting more deeply into the fabric of himself, he was not the man he himself needed to be. He had realized that perhaps he could not love, passionately or with lifelong honor and completeness, as his mother could not and his father did so unrequitedly. Perhaps the depth of that was not in him. But he had believed that friendship was another kind of love just as profound and just as precious. And he was wrong in that, too.

Had Anastasius the gentleness to forgive that? Out of the great well of his loneliness, the compassion Giuliano had seen in him so often, could he? And should he?

Sixty-two

DRESSED AS A PILGRIM ONCE MORE AND HAVING TO FORCE herself to adopt the habits and gestures of a eunuch again, A

A

The caravan that left the shelter of Jerusalem numbered as near as she could tell about fifteen camels, twenty donkeys, and about forty pilgrims, plus a number of camel and donkey drivers and two guides. It was apparently a small number compared with what was usual.

It was a journey that began easily as they followed the road south. The first place of any note they passed was desolate, unremarkable, until the man on the donkey beside her crossed himself and began to pray over and over again, as if warding off some evil fate. She was startled by the fear in his voice.

“Are you ill?” she asked in concern.

He made the sign of the cross in the air. “Aceldama,” he said hoarsely. “Pray, brother. Pray!”

Aceldama. Of course. The Field of Blood, where Judas slew himself. Surprisingly, it was not fear that took hold of her but a savage and overwhelming pity. Was that really a road from which there was no returning?

When they moved past Aceldama and into the ever-shifting, ever-changing desert, there was nothing left behind but an old grief.

The first night she was stiff and cold, too tired to sleep at first, and very aware of the miserable accommodations: three dirty, leaking sheds where they huddled together, trying to find enough rest to gain strength for the next day.

It was a relief to eat and drink a little and begin the day’s journey. At least it was warmer to move, even in the wind, than to lie still.

The scenery changed from black and white to faded colors, bleached by heat and cold, almost devoid of life except for miserable little tamarisk trees thick with thorns. Pale sand gave way to almost black, flat and hard, covered with little flints. Black mountains were dense and jagged in the distance. The wind roared and stung with hard little edges of sand, like myriad insects stinging. They were told quite cheerfully by the guides that at other seasons it was worse.

They were warned not to leave the caravan for any reason whatever. To stray was to invite death. One could become lost in minutes, disoriented, and perish of thirst. The wastes beyond the known path were littered with the white bones of the foolish.

At night, the sky was ink black and burned with stars so low as to seem barely out of reach. Beautiful and alien, they exerted such a profound fascination that A

Day followed day. The scenery changed, limitless horizons giving way to lines of hills. Black desert changed to pale or even white with gray lines and shadows across it.

Then at last, on the fifteenth day, almost as if a cloud had cleared, in front of them, two towering summits appeared with a deep-clefted valley between, high and steep.

“The Mountains of Moses,” the caravan master a

At last they reached the outer walls of St. Catherine’s. The vast, square fortress towered above them thirty to forty feet high, crammed into the fork between the peaks of Horeb and Sinai. It was built out of smooth, dust-colored rock hewn into giant squares and placed together so one could barely get a knife blade between.

The only way in was to hail the watchtower and request entrance. If it was granted, a small door opened high above and a knotted rope was let down. The guest would place his foot in a loop at the end and, on command, be hauled up.

After only a short hesitation, A

She scrambled a little awkwardly through the small door. An elderly monk greeted her civilly enough, but with little interest. Perhaps he was so used to seeing pilgrims that they had all melted into one for him. So many of them would come with impossible dreams, expecting miracles, here where Moses had seen a burning bush from which God had spoken to him.