The Death of Achilles

ONE

His father was called Pelef, which in ancient Hebrew means ‘flight’. In the year of his birth disaster befell the Brothers of Christ, who had lived in Moravia for two hundred years: The emperor revoked the dispensation under which the community was exempted from military service, because he had begun a great war with another emperor and he needed many soldiers.

The community picked up and left in a single night, abandoning their land and houses. They moved to Prussia. The Brothers of Christ did not care what differences the emperors might argue over — their strict faith forbade them to serve earthly masters, to swear an oath of loyalty to them, to take weapons in their hands, or to wear a uniform with buttons bearing coats of arms, which are impressions from the seal of Satan. This was why the Brothers’ long brown camisoles, the cut of which had scarcely changed in two and a half centuries, had no buttons; only cord fastenings were tolerated.

There were fellow believers living in Prussia. They had come there long, long before, also fleeing from the Antichrist. The king had granted hem the possession of land in perpetuity and exempted them from military service on condition that they would drain the boundless Prussian marshes. For two generations the Brothers had struggled with the impassable quagmire until finally the third generation conquered it and then they had lived a life free of care and hunger on fertile lands rich in loam. They greeted their fellow believers from Moravia warmly, shared with them everything that they had, and they all lived a fine, peaceful life together.

Having attained the age of twenty-one years, Pelef married. The Lord gave him a good wife, and at the appointed time she bore him a son. But then the Most High chose to subject His faithful servants to grievous trials. First there was a plague, and many people died, including Pelef’s wife and son. He did not complain, even though the color of life had changed from white to black. But the Most High wanted more than this, and He chose to reveal His love to His favored ones in the full measure of its rigor and intransigence. A new, enlightened king decreed that in his realm all were equal and annulled the law granted by that other king who had lived so long ago. Now even the Jews and the Mennonites and the Brothers of Christ were all obliged to serve in the army and defend their homeland with weapons in their hands. But the Brothers’ true homeland did not lie among the drained marshes of Prussia, but rather in the heavens above, and therefore the Convention of Spiritual Elders consulted and decided that they must travel to the east, to the lands of the Russian tsar. There was a community there also, and from that place there sometimes came letters, which traveled for a long time, with trustworthy people, because the state post service was the handiwork of the Evil One. In their letters the fellow believers wrote that the land in those parts was rich, while the authorities were tolerant and content with relatively small bribes.

They gathered together their goods and chattels, sold what they could, and abandoned the rest. Riding in carts for seven times seven days, they arrived in a country with the difficult name of Melitopolst-schina. The land there was indeed rich, but twelve young families and the widower Pelef decided that they wanted to travel farther, because they had never seen mountains, but only read about them in holy books. They could not even imagine how it was possible for the earth to rise up into the firmament of heaven for a distance of many thousand cubits, right up to God’s clouds. The young believers wished to see this, and Pelef did not care where he went. He liked to ride through forests and open fields on a cart harnessed to bulls, because this distracted him from thoughts of Rachel and little Ahav, who had remained behind forever in the damp Prussian soil.

The mountains proved to be exactly as they were described in the books. They were called the Caucasus, and they stretched out along the horizon in both directions as far as the eye could see. Pelef forgot about Rachel and Ahav, because here everything was different, and they even had to walk differently, not like before, but down from above or up from below. In the very first year he married.

This was how it came about: The Brothers of Christ were cutting timber on the only shallow slope, clearing a field for plow land. The local girls watched as the foreign men in the long, funny coats deftly chopped down the centuries-old pines and rooted out the stubborn stumps. The girls laughed and giggled and ate nuts. One of them, fifteen-year-old Fatima, was taken by the looks of the giant with white hair and a white beard. He was big and strong, but calm and kind, not like the men from her aul, who were quick-tempered and rapid in their movements.

Fatima had to be christened and wear different clothes — a black dress and white cap. She had to change her name — instead of Fatima she became Sarah. She had to work in the house and on the farm from dawn till dusk, learn a foreign language, and on Sunday she had to pray and sing all day long in the prayer house, which had been built before the dwelling houses. But Fatima was not dismayed by all this, because she was happy with white-haired Pelef and because Allah had not promised woman an easy life.

The following summer, as Sarah-Fatima lay in the torment of childbirth, wild Chechens came down from the mountains, burned the crop of wheat, and drove away the cattle. Pelef watched as they led away the horse, two bulls, and three cows and prayed that the Lord would not abandon him and allow his rage to erupt. And therefore the father gave his son, whose first cry rang out at the very moment when the greedy tongues of flame began licking at the smoothly planed walls of the prayer house, the name of Achimas, which means ‘brother of rage’.

The next year the Abreks came back for more booty, but they left with nothing, because a blockhouse now stood on the outskirts of the rebuilt village, and in it there lived a sergeant major and ten soldiers. For this the Brothers had paid the military commander five hundred rubles.

The boy was big when he was born. Sarah-Fatima almost died when he was coming out of her. She could not give birth again, but she did not wish to, because she could not forgive her husband for standing and watching as the brigands led away the horse, the bulls, and the cows.

In his childhood Achimas had two gods and three languages. His father’s God, strict and unforgiving, taught that if someone smote you on the right cheek, then you must offer them the left; that if a man rejoiced in this life, he would weep his fill in the next; that grief and suffering were not to be feared, for they were a boon and a blessing, a sign of the special love of the Most High. His mother’s God, whose name was not to be spoken out loud, was kind: He allowed you to feel happy and play games and did not demand that you forgive those who offended you. He could only speak of the kind God in a whisper, when no one but his mother was near, and this meant that his father’s God was more important. He spoke in a language that was called ‘die Sprdche,’ which was a mixture of Dutch and German. His mother’s God spoke Chechen. Achimas’s other language was Russian, which he was taught by the soldiers from the blockhouse. The boy was fascinated by their swords and rifles, but that was forbidden, absolutely forbidden, because the more important God forbade his people even to touch weapons. But his mother whispered: Never mind, you can if you want. She took her son into the forest to tell him stories about the bold warriors from his clan, taught him how to trip people up and punch them with his fist.

When Achimas was seven years old, nine-year-old Melhisedek, the blacksmith’s son, deliberately splashed ink on his schoolbook. Achimas tripped him up and punched him on the ear. Melhisedek ran off, crying, to complain.

The conversation with his father was long and painful. Pelef’s eyes, as pale and bright as his son’s, became angry and sad. Then Achimas had to spend the whole evening on his knees, reading psalms. But his thoughts were directed to his mother’s God, not his father’s. The boy prayed for his white eyes to be made black like his mother’s and her half brother Chasan’s. Achimas had never seen his uncle Chasan, but he knew that he was strong, brave, and lucky and he never forgave his enemies. His uncle traveled the secret mountain paths, bringing shaggy carpets from Persia and bales of tobacco from Turkey, and ferrying weapons in the opposite direction, out across the border. Achimas often thought about Chasan. He imagined him sitting in the saddle, surveying the slope of a ravine with his sharp eyes to see if border guards were waiting in hiding to ambush him. Chasan was wearing a tall shaggy fur hat and a felt cloak, and behind his shoulder he had a rifle with an ornamental stock.