No, he said roughly, that is not what I mean. A husband and wife might embrace thus, but not an unmarried woman and an old man.
I did not understand him. He did not understand me. So I did as I liked.
Didymus liked best to tell his stories, of his brother, and their friends, and Yerushalayim in the autumn-time, when they ate goat together around a long table, and talked together about the nature of the world, and the nature of the soul.
What is a soul? I said.
A soul is what makes a man a man, he told me, and not a beast. It is the immortal substance of a man, that will live forever.
I will live forever, I said, and leaned my cheek against his.
Didymus did not really believe me. In his world, people live a short time and then die, like the first pioneers who settled the capital of Nural. In his world, when you bury a person in the earth, they stay there, and turn into bones, and do not grow at all.
Lamis, Who Visited Her Grandmother’s Tree Every Saturday and Talked to Her About Government and Cream-Making: No! No, Butterfly, say it couldn’t be. That’s too terrible, to die and stay dead!
Ikram, Who Trembled: Don’t cry, Lamis. We don’t live in that awful world.
Another time, I asked him: Do I have a soul?
Didymus Tau’ma said: I don’t know, Imtithal. I wish my brother were here. He could tell you. But I am only a man, and I do not know what you have, where my soul is.
And I could feel all his body beneath me rigid and tense, and I wanted him to be at ease, so I warbled a little, my favorite song, and fluttered my eyelids against his cheek, and he began to weep within my ears, because strangers are mystifying and sometimes incomprehensible.
Didymus lived with us for many years, until he was terribly old. We tried to tell him about the Fountain, but he insisted that he was happy to be so near to seeing his brother once more, and did not wish to lengthen their time apart. His hair turned white; his skin withered up like a walnut. He learned to make ox-tea. He built a little chapel where he could worship his god and prepare himself to meet his brother. He asked us to join him, but we did not wish to, taking comfort as we do in the universe as it is: subject only to our own love and seeking after wisdom, and governed by no jealous divinity.
And then, one day, he lay down and did not get up. He called me into his hut and I lay on him, lightly, since he could not move, and covering his face with my ears for the last time. By then, he loved the closing of them around him, the secret space they make. This is what we said to each other:
“Listen to me, Imtithal.”
“I listen.”
“I have been happy here. It has been a good life. I have known joy.”
“This comforts me. I do not want you to die.”
“Yet, I must. But before we part, I wish to tell you, and know that you will tell everyone: there are paths from my world to yours. Men will take them. Perhaps not soon, but one day they will.”
“I will be so jubilant, to meet others like you.”
“They will not be like me, Imtithal. Not all men from my world are kind, nor ever stood in the light of my brother’s love. They will come with swords and they will come with many loyalties that you will not understand, nor will they try to make you understand.”
“Like Alisaunder, you mean?”
And a look crossed his face as he considered the name. It seemed to sit on his tongue like a brand.
“Do you mean Alexander?”
Our languages clashed often thus—squabbling cousins.
“Alisaunder the Red, who closed the Gates, and trapped the tribes beyond the mountains, and made our land safe. It was a long time ago. Long before me, or even my parents. Before even the sciopods founded their great forest away to the east. Did he come from Yerushalayim, too?”
Didymus Tau’ma shook his head, troubled. I touched his face, grown old, but no less dear.
“They will come,” he sighed, “and they will not be called Alexander, nor called Thomas Didymus, and they will not make you safe. You must be wary, and not leap into their arms like you leapt into mine.”
“I am not a child anymore. I do not leap so often.”
And he laughed a little beneath me.