A Covenant with Death (29 page)

Well, there have been many moments. The moment of the acquittal and the moment of my marriage, moments later of birth and death and war and peace; but of them all that one was most mine. It was yours too, but it was very much mine, because the load that man was born to shed had been lifted from me, and not by chance, but because I had refused to bear it, and had been heard. Little enough? I'm not so sure. I never agonized with Aeschylus and Job, and sometimes at night I regret that, the fierce exaltation or wrenching agony of those who measure themselves against the gods. But I was born to duller work, and have too little vanity, or too much humor, to take gods seriously. I suspect that when a man challenges the gods, they are gods of his own creation, born of his own fears, and his victory or defeat is proportional to his fear but is of little help to anyone else, except perhaps as a reminder that fear too is vulnerable. Death is the only god I have ever glimpsed, and the only one I ever wrestled with. I pinned him once and he will get me for that, but until he does I will jeer and jab and let him know what I think of him.

So we were married and lived happily ever after. Hoo. Like hell we did. We committed all the stupidities that you have committed, but we shared a kind of love that had nothing to do with the half inches and quarter inches that make the grand bosom or the noble jaw. (Rafaela got fat, but slowly.) It was an Antaean love, so to speak, that fed on the earth, on touch, on sunlight; that made whole again Keats's weighty pearl. It fed even on death, because they all died, Ignacio and Eulalia too, they are gone now, the Colonel and Geronimo, the Governor, Hochstadter, even John, killed in a war; and their death diminished us but enlarged us too, and exalted us; we turned from death to each other, from nothing to everything, from the inescapable void to the earth and the fullness thereof. We loved and we made love because they are not different, and we were one flesh and the flesh is life; and the sun beat down on us and said, it is good. More, it is the only good, because what is not living is dead, and there is no love among the grains of sand, or among the stars.

Not much of a moral to a long story? But it is all I have to tell you, so listen:

Wiggle your fingers. Wiggle your toes. Go naked to the market. Rejoice in all mornings. Join hands and kiss. Laugh. Love. If you cannot love, pity. If you cannot pity, have mercy. That man is not your brother; he is you.

About the Author

Stephen Becker (1927–1999) was an American author, translator, and teacher whose published works include eleven novels and the English translations of Elie Wiesel's
The Town Behind the Wall
and André Malraux's
The Conquerors
. He was born in Mount Vernon, New York, and after serving in World War II, he graduated from Harvard University and studied in Peking and Paris, where he was friends with the novelist Richard Wright and learned French in part by reading detective novels. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Becker taught at numerous schools throughout the United States, including the University of Iowa, Bennington College, and the University of Central Florida in Orlando. His best-known works include
A Covenant with Death
(1965), which was adapted into a Warner Brothers film starring Gene Hackman and George Maharis;
When the War Is Over
(1969), a Civil War novel based on the true story of a teenage Confederate soldier executed more than a month after Lee's surrender; and the Far East trilogy of literary adventure novels:
The Chinese Bandit
(1975),
The Last Mandarin
(1979), and
The Blue-Eyed Shan
(1982).

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1964 by Stephen Becker

Cover design by Kat JK Lee

ISBN: 978-1-5040-2689-5

This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com

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