On the Road With the Archangel by Frederick Buechner

Author:Frederick Buechner
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780062005434
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1997-10-01T04:00:00+00:00

NINE

The Two Sacks and Gabael

THE FEASTING THAT FOLLOWED WENT ON FOR A FULL FOURTEEN days. There was no end to the eating and drinking and no end either to the grumbling of the two maidservants as well as of the three or four others who were especially hired for the occasion. Raguel invited everybody he could think of for miles around not only because his heart was overflowing with benevolence because of the many marvelous things that had happened, which almost made him wonder if possibly the Holy One existed after all, but also because he wanted all Ecbatana to know that the family curse had been lifted and his daughter was married to a preeminently eligible husband whom any young woman in the city would have been more than delighted to claim for her own. Edna also was in seventh heaven because for the first time in her life she found people not edging away at her approach but actually seeking her out and patting her on the arm and offering to do things like peel onions for the feast in hope that maybe some of her good fortune might rub off on them.

All this hullabaloo was no more to Tobias’s liking than finding himself the constant center of everyone’s attention with all the men hanging on his every word and all the women hanging on his sleeve, and he slipped away with Sarah, who felt much as he did, as often as he politely could although he was greatly cheered when Raguel drew him aside one afternoon during a lull in the festivities and told him that once the fourteen days were over, he was planning to turn over to him one half of his entire fortune with the sworn promise of the other half as soon as he and Edna were no more.

The bridal chamber was so heaped with wedding presents that he and Sarah could scarcely weave their way to bed at night through the stacks of cedar chests of all sizes, the piles of sumptuous clothes and bedding, and the endless things from the bazaars such as gewgaws of ivory and beaten silver and turquoise and all that. There were picnics on the banks of the icy streams, and midnight revels by torchlight. There were excursions into the mountains where peasants seemed to appear out of nowhere to do abandoned dances in their honor.

It was somewhere around the eighth or ninth day that Tobias found me where I was sitting behind a large acacia tree in hopes of being granted a few moments’ peace. There were circles under his eyes, and his shirt was torn where one of the dancing peasants had grabbed it in an excess of high spirits. For once the dog was not with him, probably because he was hiding one place or the other like me. Tobias squatted down on his heels and dabbed at his brow with the blue scarf which he still occasionally carried with him for old time’s sake.

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