The Harlot by The Side of The Road: Forbidden Tales of The Bible (5 page)

“What, then?” her mother asked, a mocking tone in her voice. “Where are our daughters and their husbands?”

“They refused to come,” he said in a dull voice. “They laughed at me, as you do.”

Lot sounded so dispirited that his wife took pity on him for a moment. “Sleep, then,” she said in a softer tone, “and we’ll talk more of this in the morning.”

“Their husbands called me a fool,” Lot complained. “‘Up, up and out of Sodom, because God is going to destroy this place,’ I told them. And they said: ‘Every night there is plenty of food and drink, plenty of singing and dancing in the streets. Everyone in Sodom is happy but you—and only
you
say Sodom will be destroyed.’”

She beckoned him to the bed she had made up near the stove, and he laid his head on the pillow next to her. Lot and his wife slept, and so did their daughters, as if they had forgotten about the strangers who waited out the long night somewhere in their house, neither seen nor heard.

At dawn, an unfamiliar voice awakened them all.

“Arise!” said one of the strangers, hovering over Lot. “Arise, take your wife and your daughters, and flee.”

By now, Lot’s older daughter was awake, too, and the younger one followed her down the short staircase to the room where Lot and his wife now stood before the strangers.

“What is going on here?” the older daughter demanded. “What do these men want?”

The two strangers reached out and took each member of the family by the hand. Their touch was hot, and their fingertips seemed afire with fever. A strange light burned in their eyes.

“The Lord will show his mercy to you, but only to you,” one of the men said. “The rest will be destroyed—every man, woman, and child in Sodom, everything, right down to the last blade of grass.”

Lot cast a glance in his wife’s direction as if to say I
told you so
! She caught his glance and scowled back.

“Come with us now,” the other stranger said, “and we will take you to safety before we begin our work.”

Lot’s wife started to speak, but the two strangers moved abruptly to the door and then into the street, where they disappeared from sight in a silver-gray fog that had settled over Sodom by night. Lot followed in haste, and suddenly he was gone, too. Now Lot’s wife seized the two young women by the hand and followed her husband through the doorway. As if in a dream, they all seemed to float down the road in the morning mist, past houses where the carousers still slept, until they found themselves on the outskirts of Sodom, well past the city gates, on the road leading out of town. Here the two strangers stopped and turned to face Lot and his family.

“Keep going until you reach the highest mountain,” one of the strangers said, gesturing toward the range of black and gray peaks on the far horizon. “If you stay here, you will be burned into ash along with the others.”

“Flee for your life!” the other one commanded. “And do not look back!”

“Why can’t we look?” demanded Lot’s wife, emboldened by the fact that they were now safely out of Sodom.

“Hellfire and brimstone will rain from the heavens,” intoned one of the strangers in a solemn voice, “and all will be destroyed—”

“Right down to the last blade of grass?” Lot’s wife interrupted.

“Yes, that’s right,” the other stranger continued, glancing at Lot and then fixing a stern gaze on his wife, “and you are not permitted to see it happen, or something terrible will happen to you, too!”

“Hasten to the mountain,” the first one repeated, “and do not look back.”

“The mountain, you say?” asked Lot.

The stranger sighed in exasperation. “Yes, the mountain.”

“But, surely,” Lot said, “if your servant Lot has found grace in your eyes—and, surely, I am your very humble servant—and if you have stretched your mercy so far that you are willing to save the life of one miserable man—
my
life, you understand—well, then, surely you can stretch your mercy just a bit farther, can’t you?”

“What?” the stranger interrupted, now plainly out of sorts and anxious to get started on his work back in Sodom. “What are you talking about?”

“Kind masters, merciful masters,” Lot stammered, “it’s the
mountain
, which is so far off, and covered with snakes and wild beasts, I’m sure, and a hard climb even if we managed to get there at all. Surely it would be a foolish thing to spare my life here and now, only to have some evil befall me on the way to the mountain—and have me die anyway.”

“Perhaps you do not understand,” the other stranger said, struggling to control his temper, speaking slowly and clearly as if to a child. “A terrible thing is going to happen to the cities of the plain and everything that lives there, from your ill-mannered neighbors right down to the last blade of grass under your feet—as your wife has already grasped, even if you haven’t—and you can only save yourself by
going to the mountain.”

“What is it about the word ‘Flee!’ that you don’t understand?” the first one asked.

“Look,” said Lot, bargaining now rather than pleading. “There’s a small town not far away from here, just a watering hole and a few palm trees and some miserable hovels, just a
little
place, not a big cesspool of corruption like Sodom. I’m sure the people there are much nicer than the Sodomites who were so rude to you last night. Why don’t you let me go
there?
After all, it’s a tiny place, not even worthy of being called a town at all, really, don’t you see? But it’s so handy and close by, and if you could see it within yourselves to spare that little town, then my poor miserable family and I will find a decent place to lay our heads, and we won’t have to go all the way into the wilderness and climb the mountain you speak of. So we might actually survive all the terrible things you’re going to do, which is what you want, isn’t it?”

“All right, all right, we’ll do it,” said the first stranger. “We’ll spare the little town you speak of. But you’ve got to go, and you’ve got to go
right now
—”

“—because,” the other one interrupted, “we can’t even
start
doing what we came here to do until you’re gone!”

“We’ll go,” Lot conceded at last. “Believe me, we’re as good as gone already.”

The sun was high in a cloudless blue sky by the time Lot and his little band of refugees spotted the oasis and the cluster of low houses that made up the little town, and then, suddenly, the terrible thing began, just as the two strangers had said it would. From somewhere far behind them came a low nimble of thunder, a belch of foul-smelling smoke, and a shudder of the earth itself that seemed to travel under their feet, tossing them up and down like puppets on a string.

Lot’s older daughter began to cry.

“Father, what is happening back there?” she asked. “What is happening to our good sisters and their babies?”

“Maybe they have changed their minds,” the younger daughter suggested, “and they’re following behind us right now.”

“Yes, yes,” said Lot’s wife, no longer sounding so scornful of what the strangers had vowed to do. “Maybe the little one is right. Maybe we should wait here for them to catch up with us—”

“Don’t be a fool,” Lot commanded, though his quivering voice betrayed his fear. “We do what the angels told us—and flee!”

Lot’s wife laughed bitterly. “Angels?” she said. “You still call them angels, these strangers with the blood of your own daughters on their hands?”

Then, as if to silence her, a sharp cracking sound was heard from far away, and a wave of heat rolled up from behind them and enveloped them. The air seemed to thicken and shimmer before their eyes, the stink of sulphur filled their nostrils, and new sounds reached their ears, as if the cries of men and women and babies, suffering and dying, were carried on the hot wind across the plain all the way from Sodom.

“Oh, Momma—” cried the older daughter.

“Hurry!” cried Lot, pulling ahead of his wife and daughters.

Now they began to walk faster, panting and gasping in the vile air, suddenly so heavy with greasy white ash, and they hastened toward the first house on the outskirts of the little town. They heard another rumble from far behind them and broke into a trot, not stopping until they reached the shelter of the first house.

Lot bent over, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. His older daughter simply folded up like a doll and rolled to the ground, weeping quietly. But his wife stood upright and rigid. “Maybe the others are coming right now,” she said aloud. “Maybe we can see them on the road—”

“Momma, don’t!” cried the younger daughter, but it was too late. Her mother turned and looked. Shading her eyes with one hand, squinting against the terrible light that burned on the far horizon, Lot’s wife stared into the distance. What she saw, the rest of them never knew.

Her eyes widened, but she did not speak. Her mouth twisted into a horrible knot, and then, as Lot’s younger daughter looked up at a face she barely recognized, the terrible expression began to harden. The hot ash that was drifting down from the sky like silent rain began to cover the crown of her head, the tip of her nose, her arms and shoulders. And then, falling more quickly now, the ash cooled, hardened, and crystallized, until Lot’s wife was encased in a shell of opalescent white rock that turned her into a statue of herself. Whether it was the flakes of ash falling on her lips or the tears falling from her eyes, Lot’s youngest daughter suddenly tasted salt on her tongue.

“Father!” she shouted, but Lot could barely hear her voice over the hot wind that blew around them from the direction of Sodom. Then, turning to follow his daughter’s gaze, Lot beheld what had become of his wife. He nodded slowly, then sighed.

“She should not have looked,” their father said. “You heard the angels tell her so, did you not?”

The little town where they found refuge had been spared from hellfire and brimstone, as the strangers promised, but the place was deserted. To Lot’s relief, no corpses were to be seen in the tents and low houses that lined the road, but also no townspeople, no livestock, not even a stray dog. Perhaps the townspeople had been exterminated by the angels, or, more likely, they had fled before the sights and sounds coming from the direction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot and his daughters trudged along the road, hungry and weary, their eyes burning and their lungs straining for breath, until Lot stopped and held up one hand.

“Let us pause here,” Lot said at the threshold of the largest house, “and refresh ourselves.”

If the owners of the house had escaped, they left in a hurry. Lot and his daughters found warm food on the plates in the kitchen, clothing in the chests, a well-stocked pantry, and a storehouse behind the house, full of wine and grain and oil in earthenware vessels. They sat down at the table and dined in silence on the food that had been left behind. The two young women ate and drank sparingly, but Lot poured himself generous portions of wine from one of the jars that he found in the storehouse. Then he claimed a large bed that had belonged to the master of the house, wrapped himself in the dusty bedding, and fell into a deep sleep while his daughters searched out some blankets and made up their beds on the floor.