Before the Crossing

The boy loved seeing the tent from outside, lit up by firelight, glowing brightest where it was wearing thin.

The sky was a tightly woven blanket of stars pulled between mountains. The air felt light and clear when the boy put his head out of the flap of the tent. He sat there, body warm inside and face cool outside, smelling the waxy plants. The fabric of the tent was rough against his neck.

A voice from inside called, Tea’s up. He pulled himself in and did up the toggles. The tent was embroidered with a diamond pattern, made with shifting colors of wool. It belonged to Arno, the man who’d called him in, who was hunched over the fire in the middle. Smoke trickled up to the hole at the top.

Arno’s grandmother had sewn the tent, and Arno was an old man himself, white-bearded and grizzled. The skin on his face was creased and brownish, his bony shoulders hunched around his big ears, and he had an ambling long stride from all the miles he’d walked with this tent on his back. The boy loved seeing it from outside, lit up by firelight, glowing brightest where it was wearing thin. It had been patched up in many places, and if he was in the mood he’d tell the boy where each patch came from. One patch was goatskin, and Arno would tell how he was staying by a river and someone had come to rob him in the night. He’d heard footsteps, then seen a blade come slashing through the tent. Some supernatural strength had overtaken him and he’d chased his attacker naked along the riverbank. He’d grabbed the blade with his bare hands but his hand didn’t have a scratch on it. A herdsman had seen everything, up with his goats before dawn, and had given Arno a patch of hide. Arno hadn’t kept the knife. He already had one, and he didn’t have room for more than what was absolutely necessary.

Arno poured the hot tea in a long stream from blackened pot to metal cup. The cup wobbled on the uneven floor as it filled. It smelled of juniper. Arno made tea with what he picked on his way: pine needles, nettles, rosy flower petals. He’d pick them and put them in the little brown pouch he kept at his belt. He seemed to do it absentmindedly, his knuckly hands with their split chipped nails fumbling for a twig as he paused for breath or looked around at the view. He’d pick it, roll it between his fingers, bring it to his nose, and then either drop it or tuck it in the pouch. If he was feeling unsettled, he might pull the leaves into tiny pieces and scatter them around his feet. All with a glazed look in his eyes that said he was elsewhere. The boy had got to recognizing these elsewhere times. In the past, he’d tried to call him back by making a joke or pulling at the old man’s elbow skin, but he never got much of a response, so now he just let him alone until he came back of his own accord. So many things had happened in Arno’s life, the boy reasoned, that he must have memories to sort through all the time.

Now Arno’s eyes were crinkly. He rocked back on his heels, puffing at the hot tea. The boy puffed at his too, watching how the steam rolled off the tiny ripples. It was a tiny sea in there, a tiny green sea, with tiny boats, and he was the storm. Wind was picking up outside too, buffeting the fabric. The fire was dwindling to embers so the diamond pattern was dim and seemed to the boy to be a depiction of the whole of life. It was as if in those rhythmic shapes there was the movement of everything. He wished he could convey this to Arno. Arno had grown up in this tent, so maybe it wasn’t the same for him, but when the boy had come up from the rain a while ago, when he’d had the bad time and been left almost broken and couldn’t remember his own name, and Arno had fed him and helped him, the walls of the tent had spoken to him and said he was safe.

They hung food up high in case of rats. There was a bag of salami and a loaf of bread and some apples they’d found on the way. It was good to see those full bags. Sometimes the bags were empty, and those were nights where neither slept much but neither admitted to being awake. The boy would lie there, listening to Arno hum and grumble. But tonight they would sleep soundly.

When the boy had been left almost broken and couldn’t remember his own name, the walls of the tent had spoken to him and said he was safe.

They finished their tea at the same time, and without speaking they rolled out their sheep’s wool beds. At first, the boy had slept on Arno’s bed and Arno had gone on the floor; then when the boy was healthy he’d slept on the floor; it had been a time when he wondered if he should go his own way. It was a good moment when they’d come to a little town tucked in the mountains and Arno had asked a shepherd if they could have some raw wool, then sat with the boy and sewed it roughly into a mat like his own. That was how he knew he could stay. Now the boy carried it strapped to his back along the hills. He loved the way it smelled. Like oil and woodsmoke. He laid a blanket over the top, and sighed comfortably. The fire made quiet sounds, and the wind pulled and tugged outside.

Tomorrow, said Arno, creakily, we make the crossing.

Tomorrow?

Yes, hear that wind? Weather’s changing. It’ll be too rough soon.

The boy thought he wouldn’t mind rough weather. He loved these hills with their cobbled towns and the white church towers through the olive groves, the tall stands of cypress trees that cast long lilac shadows. But Arno had to move. He always had to move. He would go back to the same place if he had to, but mostly he liked to stay a couple of weeks at most and move on. He didn’t say why. Now they were going to Africa. Arno had found a man in the harbor who said he would take them across if they helped him sell fish on the other side. An old man and a scrawny boy don’t make heavy cargo, the boatman had said. Often people helped them out. Arno had the kind of way about him that inclined people to kindness. He’d ask quietly and smile his creased smile.

So everything would change tomorrow, the boy thought, suddenly aware of the shape of his body in bed, the tingles that made up his legs and feet when he couldn’t see them. But everything changed all the time and still it stayed the same, so it didn’t make much difference.

The wind and the fire had died down. The hole in the top of the tent was a starlit circle. The soft walls seemed to breathe around him. He had a swooping sensation and suddenly felt he was inside a great being, and the hole was the eye, and they were flying through space, streaming along streams of stars into nothingness. The diamonds of the tent would weave themselves into the fabric of the night sky, and the boy and Arno and everything that had ever happened would be woven into the pattern too, and there they’d be forever, a tapestry among the stars.