Michael Hoffman

The Sacrifice

From Nectar Fragments

http://www.authorhouse.com/BookStore/ItemDetail~bookid~36297.aspx

 

I

"He was mad! Mad! He wanted to sacrifice the boy! To his god! No, please, you must understand, the world must understand. I am on trial for my life, for murder, the murder of my husband. And you are my lawyer! Are you capable of representing a woman guilty of such an evil?"

"If the provocation is as you say, you are not guilty in the eyes of the law."

"But in the eyes of men? In the eyes of the gods?"

"You say he wanted to sacrifice the boy to his god."

"To his god, yes. He believed he was in communication with this... this invisible god, who spoke to him, who promised he would be 'the father of nations.' We had no children, you see, and it weighed on him."

"And on you? Did it weigh on you?"

"Well, yes, of course. A woman's... how shall I put it – a woman's whole life, her whole being, is bound up with motherhood… and a barren woman... how I hate that word, 'barren!' - a barren woman is scorned not only by her husband and her friends but by the very servants."

"Did your husband scorn you?"

"Didn't he take Hagar my maid and have a child by her?"

"Suppose you tell me about that."

"The simpering bitch! But it's partly my fault. I egged him on. 'Well, take her, if you want her so badly!' 'I don't want her so badly,' he said; 'who told you I wanted her?' 'Don't you think I see the way she looks at you?' 'I can't help that.' 'A woman only looks that way at men who want her.' And so on and so on, until finally... I was not myself, you see, I was… my nerves were shattered, with this 'father of nations' business. Did he scorn me, you ask. No, not in so many words. But when an aging and childless man is entering into 'covenants' with an invisible omnipotent god who is going to make him 'the father of nations'..."

"You felt that was his way of reproaching you?"

"I did think so at the time."

"And now?"

"Now? Now I know it was part of his madness! No, he wasn't reproaching me! He really believed it!"

"All right. Let's go back. There was, first of all, the restlessness, the wandering."

"We were perfectly happy where we were. We had our work, our home, we were surrounded by family and friends..."

"When suddenly - "

"Suddenly we had to pack up our tents and hit the road. His god had called him. We weren't to worship the moon god anymore, or the gods of the cult, the gods worshipped by everyone else, but only this... this invisible god who gave not the faintest sign of life to anyone except to him and yet who, we were asked to believe, was the one true god."

"And did you believe?"

"Me? No! 'The one true god' - there are as many gods in the heavens as there are stars in the sky! Everybody knows that. But Abraham would have none of it. It was almost as if his total absence - the god's absence, I mean - his total absence was proof, in Abraham's mind, of his existence, and the material presence of our gods was proof of their non-existence. Besides, I was content where we were. I was not a young woman by then, and as for him, he was positively old. That's no time of life for 'packing up your tents'."

"But he prevailed on you - "

"Yes, he prevailed. The man prevails. I'm merely a woman. We fought, we argued, but in the end he had his way. Don't even ask me where we went. I dragged along after him, and to comfort me - honestly, I don't know whether to be touched by this, or to laugh, or to cry, or... or to scream. 'Sara,' he would say to me, 'Sara, my princess, don't be downhearted, the lord has promised us a child, I am to be the father of a great nation, and you the mother.'"

"It's fantastic - mad, as you say - and yet in the end you did conceive."

"Yes. 'The lord opened your womb,' as my husband, in a transport of joy, put it. 'Why couldn't he have done it earlier?' I retorted. 'Why now, when I'm old and exhausted?' 'Woman,' he said sternly, 'that's a sin, a great sin.' 'Well,' I said, 'if it's a sin I take it back, but since that god of yours talks only to you and has not a word to say to me, how can I know what's a sin and what's not?'"

"That reminds me," said the lawyer, "of how I first came to hear of your husband. It was over the destruction of - "

"Sodom and Gomorrah, I know." Sara sighed wearily. "The three 'angels'."

"Tell me about them."

"What's to tell? Three dust-bitten wanderers, probably not as old as they looked, but in that scorched place you look old before your time - three men came to our tent in the desert, and Abraham, in the midday heat, starts fussing over them. He rushes into the tent, sets me to work baking bread, gets the servants busy slaughtering a calf for meat - perfect bedlam. And then while they're eating, one of them says to Abraham, 'Where's Sara your wife?' 'In the tent, why?' 'Because this time next year Sara will surely give birth to a son.' Evidently word of Abraham's madness had got about, and here were his guests, even as they accepted his hospitality, mocking him to his face!"

The lawyer shook his head and lowered his eyes, as though this discourteous behavior reflected somehow on him.

"There was a burst of laughter, but Abraham, as I saw through a chink in the tent, fell face down in the dust and - to use his expression - 'worshipped.' To egg him on, one of the others starts in: 'Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him, shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?' And he went on to explain that the sins of the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah stank so horribly in god's heavenly nostrils that he was bent on destroying them, wiping them from the face of the earth. 'In fact,' he says, 'we're on our way there now.' 'Oh, my lord, no, no!' cries Abraham, springing to his feet - but then immediately sinking to his knees again - and me in anguish wanting to rush out there and put an end to this vile scene, this deliberate humiliation for sport of a good if misguided man, but restrained by ... well, by my upbringing - a woman stays out of a man's business. I don't believe it but obviously habit is stronger with me than ideas, and to my eternal shame, I stayed where I was, cowering and fuming. 'Supposing,' says Abraham, there are fifty righteous men in Sodom - surely you won't destroy the righteous along with the good?' The men seemed to consult among themselves, as though this had never occurred to them before but was worthy of consideration. At last the one who had started it says, with an air of great benevolence and forbearance, 'No, in consideration of Abraham the father-to-be of a great and mighty nation, I will spare the place for the sake of fifty righteous men.' And Abraham begins bargaining - like the desert sheik he was but also with the evident dread in his heart that one word too many could bring upon his hitherto honored head a wrath which the merely human imagination can scarcely conceive: 'Well, what if there are forty-five righteous men?' 'No,' says god, 'if there are forty-five righteous men I will spare the place.' 'Well, forty men?' says Abraham, slightly emboldened. And so on, down to ten. Later Abraham told me he wanted to plead for even one righteous man, but did not dare."

"I see," said the lawyer, who plainly did not. He sighed. He was a frail, faded little man whose watery blue eyes, magnified by thick lenses, seemed to overwhelm the rest of his face. Squirming, he extracted a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and delicately blew his nose. Every gesture he made, every word he uttered, conveyed a sort of timid discomfort. "Why me?" he seemed to be thinking. "Just as I was about to sink into comfortable retirement - why a case like this?"

"Well then." He cleared his throat. "Are you all right? Perhaps you'd like a... a glass of water or something?"

"I'm fine."

"He didn't dare, you say."

"He said."

"Yes, of course. And then, shortly afterwards, as I understand, the cities were in fact destroyed."

"They were."

"Well tell me something, Mrs... Sara. Didn't the destruction of the cities, following so close upon the... the prophecy that they would be destroyed... didn't that alter your views with respect to this... this 'god' of your husband's?"

"Am I to believe, then, that there were not ten good men, or women, or children, to be found among the thousands and tens of thousands who walked the streets of those towns? Or that even among the sinners there were no seeds of goodness in their hearts, withering for want of nurture?"

"I'm not sure I understand you."

"What's so terrific about the destruction of a couple of cities? Cities are destroyed all the time! The gods create at will and destroy at will. They're like children at play, and we're their toys. Creation, destruction - that's nothing new. Justice, mercy - that would have been new, that might have made me believe!"

"Yes, I... I see. Well. We come now to the birth of your son. Against all expectation, and again according to the promise of a prophecy you were inclined to scorn, you became pregnant. How old are you, by the way?"

"Sir, in my part of the world we don't celebrate birthdays. You see how old I look. Subtract a few years, for as I've said that environment makes you old before your time, and there you have my age."

"You are in any event well beyond the normal child-bearing age."

"I had supposed so, yes."

"Your supposition being based on... er... indications..."

Sara smiled faintly. "Yes. On indications."

"Here again was reason, if you chose to interpret it that way, to change your thinking with respect to your husband's god."

"Yes indeed. It was a factor to reckon with, certainly. Abraham was ecstatic. He fell down on his face and 'worshipped', and when he insisted I do the same, I... I joined him. I admit it: I got quite as dusty as he did. My eyes filled with tears. And Abraham said, 'We'll call the child Isaac, meaning laughter, because you laughed at me when I said you would conceive.'

"Which was all very charming, but the pregnancy was no laughing matter, believe me. Pregnancy is a young woman's gift, and a young woman's joy, but to an old woman like me it was pain, sickness, exhaustion... I don't want to complain, of course; we are raised to face those things, but still. Abraham was supportive. His sympathy quite exceeded anything I would have expected of him. He fussed over me, sent me to bed when I seemed too tired to work. 'Don't you see,' he would say to me when my low spirits got the better of me, 'that we are the Lord's chosen instruments? That we are actors in a drama greater than ourselves? Doesn't the mere fact of your pregnancy prove that? Listen, Sara,' he said, 'I know you have thought me mad, but do I seem mad to you now?' He was looking deep into my eyes, so earnestly, so lovingly... No, he did not seem mad to me then. He seemed like his old - that is, his young - self. I closed my eyes and held his hand, thinking to myself, 'Only let me stay like this forever, with my eyes closed and his hand in mine...

"If only that Egyptian bitch Hagar hadn't been there! Things might have turned out differently. Once before I had got rid of her, her and that sniveling brat of hers, but she came crawling back, and now, seeing herself about to be nudged out of her inheritance, she was at me constantly whenever Abraham wasn't looking. 'You're carrying Satan's child!' she hissed. 'How else would an old hag like you get pregnant?' Weak, nauseous, I parried with Abraham's argument: 'I am to be the mother of a great nation.' She laughed. 'Great nation my arse! Great freak of nature is more like it! I wouldn't be in your shoes now for all the water in the Nile!'

"I complained to Abraham - he didn't believe me. 'She's not a bad woman,' he said. 'A quick tongue, but deep down a good heart. And the boy... well, after all, he is my son...' Courageous under his protection, she grew bolder and bolder. We were no longer mistress and servant - or if we were, she was the mistress. At last I could stand it no longer. 'Choose!' I said. 'Her or me. Either she goes or I do.' Abraham stroked his beard. 'I must pray,' he mumbled, and disappeared before I could stop him. I sank back on the pillows. Can I put the despair of that moment into words? Here I was, pregnant in my old age, my husband mad, my servant a viper, the true gods cast off in favor of this... phantom, this spirit, this I-don't-know-what... 'Let me die,' I prayed to Sin, the moon-god. 'My time is come; why should I live beyond it?' Abraham returned, his hair caked with dust. 'Woman,' he said, 'the lord has declared I am to hearken unto you, that in Isaac our son is to be my inheritance, that the bondwoman must go - she goes under the lord's protection, for from her son too, being of my seed, will spring a great nation.' Wonderful, I thought - all these 'great nations' springing up all over the place. But I held my tongue - whether out of prudence or out of sheer exhaustion I can't honestly say. Anyway, next morning the bitch and her brat were given bread and a bottle of water and sent on their way into the desert, where what became of them I neither know nor care. Maybe they're a great nation by now."

The lawyer's eyelids drooped, he held his hands together, fingertip against fingertip. A silence followed. A fly buzzed. It was very hot. The lawyer spoke at last. "Are you sure you wouldn't like a glass of water?"

Absently she shook her head.

"Well, do you mind if I call for one?"

"No."

"Guard!" The guard's appearance followed a heavy, echoing footfall; the order for water was given; a pitcher was brought; the lawyer drank deeply, with much gurgling and appreciative sighing. It seemed to revive him. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand. "Aahh! That's better! This climate doesn't agree with me!"

"I can't say it agrees with me either," said Sara, "though I hardly know how to live in any other."

"Well! Shall we return to your most interesting narrative?"

"It interests you?"

"Oh yes! Very much."

"From the legal point of view?"

"Yes, that. Also the human point of view. You see, I... we officials in general, I suspect... we live, and yet we touch so little of life. I'm expressing myself awkwardly."

"You live vicariously through your clients."

"In a sense, yes. I suppose you could say we do."

"Do you have children?"

"Two." The lawyer beamed with pride. "A son who will follow in my footsteps, and a daughter married into one of the noblest families in the region."

"No 'great nations' among your progeny?"

"No, no, nothing on that scale."

"Well, I don't know what you see of 'life' in my 'narrative,' as you call it. To me it tastes of death. And I am ready to die."

"What's this now?" With an effort, the lawyer recovered his gravity. "There is no question of you dying. You killed a madman to save your son. That is not murder, and no court will call it that."

"That madman was my husband. And are you so sure he was mad?"

"Why... a man setting out to sacrifice his beloved son to a god who doesn't exist... yes, certainly I call that mad!"

"But what if... what if I'm the one who's mad?"

"I don't understand."

"You don't know the desert."

"No."

"Once, on one of our seemingly endless journeys - don't ask me where we were, or where we were going, or what for, or how long ago it was - I have no sense of direction at all, and as for time, the years just seem to fuse into one another, so that the past in my mind is one great fused lump of time - I'm sorry, that is the way I put it to myself, I don't know how else to express it, though I know it's scarcely comprehensible - 'life,' you say; this is what my life has been! - it was hot, I was parched, the sun glared down at us with a malevolence that didn't so much frighten as sicken me, and suddenly, I saw it as clearly as I see you, a great fountain of water gushing up from the ground. I ran towards it, screaming, laughing, crying. I threw myself upon it. In no time I was drenched, soaked. I was cool, my thirst was quenched. Oh, how good it felt, how good!... The next thing I remember I was on my knees, vomiting sand. You see, I'd been shoveling sand into my mouth, thinking it was water..."

"I have heard of such things," said the lawyer. "'Mirage,' I think it's called."

"Well, supposing my whole life is a mirage. Supposing this whole business about Abraham and his one invisible god and his 'great nation' and the sacrifice of Isaac - what if all that is a mirage too?"

"Sara, you mustn't think like that! We'll call witnesses. What about that Eliezer fellow? Your husband's servant?"

"Eliezer! Eliezer has one definition of truth: what Abraham said. If his master said it, it's true. If his master denied it, it's false. If his master didn't address the question, it's irrelevant."

"Even so. He can testify as to facts, and the facts are in your favor. Supposing in Eliezer's mind Abraham's god is the 'one true god.' And supposing in his mind the sacrifice Abraham contemplated was perfectly justified. Don't you see? He will show himself infected with his master's madness. However hostile he may be towards you, he will be unable to avoid portraying you as a mother acting in defense of her child."

"You underestimate him. If in what I just said I implied he's a fool, I did him an injustice. He's very clever, very shrewd. He would say nothing about 'Abraham's god,' or about a plan to sacrifice the child. He would claim to know nothing about all that."

"Sara, it's not as easy as you suppose to deceive the court. We lawyers are shrewd too, you know, in our own parochial way. We too have a trick or two up our sleeves."

"Oh, I don't doubt it. Still, if my fate is in his hands - "

"Your fate is not in his hands. It's in your hands. All the more reason for you to keep your courage up. Don't sink into self-doubt. None of this 'mirage' business."

Sara sighed. "I'll do my best."

"I have imposed upon you long enough for one day. I hear them coming with dinner." He rose heavily to his feet. "Get some rest. I'll see you again tomorrow."

II

"Yes, my name is Eliezer. Why?"

An unpleasant man, thought the lawyer. "Abraham's servant?"

"Yes. Why was I brought here?"

"To help us ascertain the facts regarding the murder charge against Sara, your mistress."

"Fact one: Sara is not my mistress."

"No?"

"No."

"Do you bear her ill will?"

"I bear her no will. No will of any kind. We lived on different planets."

"Forgive me for contradicting you. You lived in the same household."

"My master was very clear on that point: his wife was mad and I was to have nothing to do with her."

"He said that? Those words? He said his wife was mad?"

"As though it needed to be said! As though it wasn't obvious!"

"Obvious how?"

"A sane woman worships her husband's god. This Sara resolutely refused to do."

A most unpleasant man, thought the lawyer. Haughty, truculent, his confidence in his ability to twist his interrogator round his little finger written all over his swarthy, weather-beaten face. How old was he? You couldn't tell with these desert people. Probably he didn't know himself. Perhaps the question would never have occurred to him. How had Sara put it? "In my part of the world, we don't celebrate birthdays." A pity he was face to face with the man, instead of behind a screen, observing him unseen and at leisure. Though a veteran of countless interrogations over the years, he was nervous, and he knew that Eliezer, his glittering, penetrating eyes fixed on him, knew it, and a great deal more besides - more indeed than he, the lawyer, for all his training, had been able to read from the servant's expressive and yet oddly impenetrable face.

"Isn't it possible," he resumed, "that it was her husband who was mad?"

Eliezer did not answer. He showed no sign of having heard the question. The silence grew heavy. Sweat trickled down the lawyer's high forehead into his eyes, fogging his spectacles. The sun was barely up, and already it was as hot as mid-day.

"Tell me about her husband's god."

"It is not so easy to tell a man about a god." Eliezer laughed mirthlessly, showing much gum and few teeth.

"I understand it's not easy," said the lawyer after another uncomfortable silence. "But we must do our best - you to explain, and I to understand. Sara claims Abraham was intent on sacrificing his son to this god of his."

"She is mad. There was no such intention."

"No such intention?"

"As I said. It was all in the woman's mind. My master loved his son. He was the son of my master's old age. How could he have thought of sacrificing him? How could god, who loved my master above all men and had chosen him to father a nation of his servants, have demanded such a sacrifice? It is absurd!"

"I see. In your opinion, then, this is a case of murder pure and simple."

"Pure and simple."

"You have no sympathy at all for Sara?"

"For the murderess of my master? None!"

"And you are hostile towards me, her defender?"

"I am indifferent to you. I want only to be allowed to continue on my way."

"On your way where?"

"I have no master now. I must find my own way."

"Stay a bit. I understand your impatience, but if you would condescend to curb it" - an undertone of sarcasm was creeping into the lawyer's tone quite independently of his will; he himself had better do some curbing - "if you would just bear with me a little longer, I promise not to detain you a moment longer than absolutely necessary. Will you, in return for that promise, offer me a measure of cooperation?"

"I and my cooperation are at your disposal."

"Thank you. I return to my question about your master's god."

"Your honor, I am not a learned man. You can see that just by looking at me. What am I? Nothing - a grain of desert sand. I know no more than what my master deigned to teach me. He was, he said, the servant of the one true god. 'What do you mean, the one true god?' I asked. He said, 'God is one, god is invisible, he is infinite, without beginning, without end. Do you understand?' 'No,' I said. 'He rewards the good and punishes the wicked. You understand that?' 'Yes,' I said, 'I think so.' 'Well,' said he, 'and do you know what it means to be good?' 'To be good means to obey the commands of my master.' 'And suppose god were to appear to you as he appears to me and command you to kill your master.' 'I would cut my own throat first!' I cried, horrified. 'No,' said Abraham, 'you would not.' Suddenly he seized me by the folds of my robe and looked deep into my eyes. 'Promise me you would cut mine, if god so commanded you. Promise me!' 'Very well, I promise,' I said." He smiled. His face, ruggedly handsome when grave, was hideous when he smiled. The lawyer shuddered. What did that smile mean? "You think," it seemed to say, "I've played right into your hands, showing my master to be mad and his god capable of demanding precisely the sort of sacrifice Sara says he demanded." Well, hadn't he indeed "played into his hands"? Only the repulsive self-confidence of his smile belied that supposition.

"Was your promise," inquired the lawyer, proceeding gingerly, "made sincerely? Or were you merely putting your master off?"

"Putting my master off! Oh no. You evidently don't understand the master-servant relationship in our part of the world. I would never 'put my master off.' I would never utter an insincere word to him. Never."

"Would you to me?"

"To you?"

"Would you lie to me, if you thought it convenient?"

"You asked me to tell you about my master's god. I have told you just now everything I know about him."

"He demands total, unquestioning obedience."

"Yes."

"Which Abraham accorded him."

"Yes."

"Willingly. Freely."

"Joyously."

"I see. And so if this god should demand the sacrifice of his beloved son - "

"His beloved son would be sacrificed."

"Freely. Joyously."

"Yes."

"And yet you said - "

"I said that no such demand was made."

"You said no such demand could have been made."

"Your honor is mistaken. I would never have presumed to say what the one true god could or could not do."

"You said, 'How could god, who loved my master above all men and had chosen him to father a nation of his servants, have demanded such a sacrifice? It is absurd.' Those were your exact words. I have written them down."

"Your honor - " His exaggeratedly respectful form of speech was blatantly contemptuous, and if he was abashed at having been caught contradicting himself, he showed not the faintest sign of it. "Your honor, what triumph is there for you in proving yourself cleverer than Eliezer? It is possible I said what you say I said. My memory is not the equal of yours. I have written nothing down. Supposing I did say it. It proves nothing, except what I would willingly have admitted from the start: that I am an unworthy servant of my master Abraham, the servant of god. So? What is that to you?"

"Tell me about the relationship between Abraham and Sara."

Eliezer shrugged. "They were husband and wife."

"That much I know."

"What else can I tell you?"

"Were they close? Did they love each other?"

"As best an outsider can judge, I believe they did, before her madness came upon her."

"And after?"

"After? It is a fact, Mr. Lawyer, that a man cannot love a madwoman without becoming mad himself."

"So he stopped loving her?"

"I'm sure she could tell you more about that than I could."

"Can she really? Even if she is mad?"

"Her madness is nothing to me. It does not give me the power to see inside my master's heart. You are asking me things I cannot possibly know."

"You say she is mad; you say he could not love her without being mad himself; you maintain he was not mad. Therefore according to you he stopped loving her. This is simple logic, no? Maybe he even hated her, for refusing to worship his god. Did he hate her?"

"My master had no hatred in him."

"But he stopped loving her, in order to retain his sanity, and yet after that, long after, she gave birth to his son, the son from whom, according to a prophecy she scorned, was to spring a 'great nation.' How do you explain that? Well? You are silent. Did he rape her?"

"Your honor, a man cannot rape his own wife."

III

"We come now, Sara, to the sacrifice. How did you become aware of Abraham's plan? What steps did you take to dissuade him? And how did you finally reach the conclusion that your only alternative, the only way you could save your son, was to... to eliminate the threat that hung over the helpless infant's head?"

"He had been acting strangely, 'worshipping' more than usual, and the way he looked at Isaac was... you have to be a mother to see these things... not normal, not the way a loving father looks at his son - though he was a loving father. Oh yes. He loved the child - with a deep, intense, almost terrifying love."

"Terrifying?"

"If you could have seen the look in his eyes! If I could only show it to you! 'Abraham,' I said, 'what's the matter? What is it?' He didn't answer. His mouth worked up and down, but no words came. I took him by the hand and led him to the couch. 'Some water for your master,' I called to a servant, who ran out and returned with some. Abraham took the jar in his hands and drank deeply, paying no attention to the water trickling into his beard. 'Abraham,' I said, sitting down beside him, 'We have been through so much, so much together! Now in our old age we have not only riches, but a son. We have been blessed beyond anything we deserve. Abraham, Abraham, there are gods in the heavens, worshipped by our ancestors for generations and generations past. Let us worship them too. They are the gods who brought happiness to our parents, and our parents' parents, and they have not neglected us either, for our parents' sakes, though we neglected them. Abraham, listen to me. Why need we be the father and mother of a great nation? Isn't it enough to be the father and mother of Isaac? Look, here he is, clutching your leg and smiling up at you...'

"He said nothing, merely lifted the child up off the floor and sat him on his knee. Something in his manner frightened me, I can't say what. The child tugged at his papa's damp beard, cooing like a pigeon, and Abraham smiled, but it was not a happy smile, it was... ghastly.

"That night he said to me in the dark, 'Tomorrow morning I will take the child to Moriah to worship the lord.' 'No!' I cried. Terror seized me; I don't know precisely what I was afraid of. Never, never had I felt anything like it. It was as if the gods of our ancestors were warning me. 'Sara,' they seemed to be saying, 'you have cast us off, but we have not cast you off. Let us protect you...' 'No!' I shrieked. 'No! You will not take to child to Moriah to worship the lord!' 'Woman, be silent,' he said, but patiently, not angrily. 'You have no understanding. You see and hear what does not exist, and what does exist, you neither see nor hear. I must be your eyes and ears. What the lord has commanded me, I must do.' 'The gods command all mothers to protect their children,' I shouted back, 'and I fear for mine!' 'Woman, the child is the lord's! Not yours, not mine. The lord's. The lord demands him, and the lord shall have him.' 'What do you mean, "have him"?' For this was the first concrete indication, you see, that... that my husband's madness had taken a new and horrible turn. I still had only the dimmest inkling of what was involved, though even that dim inkling froze my blood. But Abraham... I don't know; maybe he supposed I had guessed more than I had, or maybe he thought I had a right to know, or maybe - and this seems to me further proof, if any is needed, of his madness - maybe he actually thought he could persuade me that he was only doing what had to be done. He unfolded the whole hideous plan. Isaac was to... to be sacrificed as a burnt offering!

"What happened next it is impossible for me to relate in a coherent manner. I was not myself, the thoughts in my head were not mine, the sounds issuing from my throat were foreign to me. They ring in my ears even now. I flung myself on him, my hands closed around his neck..."

"You strangled him," the lawyer prodded gently, laying a hand on the woman's heaving shoulder. Convulsed with silent sobs, she nodded. The silence dragged on; it seemed unbreakable.

"Sara." The sun had sunk beneath the horizon. The room was veiled in shadow. "Sara. How is it possible? You, a woman, no longer young, your health not fully recovered from your difficult pregnancy... how is it possible that Abraham, no longer young himself, of course, but still, by all accounts hale and vigorous... how is it possible he was unable to fight you off?"

Brushing her tears away with the back of her leathery hand, she shook her head. "In my mind," she said, her voice trembling but under control, "I have replayed the scene thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of times. Each time is subtly different, no two replays are ever quite alike... I mean in all the details... but this detail... this one detail... never varies: He does not resist. At the time I did not realize it. It is only here in prison that it has struck me. He did not resist."

"You're quite sure of that."

"Yes."