A Dove of the East Read Online Free Page B

rises!” about their newly baked bread. For during the previous few weeks the bread in Ha Tikva Quarter had not risen. Najime was left to spend the rest of his life pondering on whether he had beaten the Devil or just the Devils son, and thinking about the clear air of his mountains and the championships he had been born to take in sawing, chopping, and many village games.

BECAUSE OF THE WATERS OF THE FLOOD
    J ETS FROM airfields in Nevada trailed fine white lines across the sky. At the head of white columns the planes themselves looked like silver ticks. When she looked up, there was a roundness of light as if she were seeing through glass or a lens, but she was only looking through her eyes. All her life the B-52S had left their smoke trails above her. It was almost a part of nature, akin to the rising of the moon, or setting of the sun.
    They were miles from Tippet, a town of about thirty-five, and Tippet was miles from anywhere else. You could pull in two or three country music stations. Sheep grazed in the lower depressions of the mountains and drank from clear pools, near gray porous rocks. In summer Henry made a fire, and lining his sheep up one by one he pulled off the ticks and cast them into the flame. Always the air was cool and deep. Around the house was no argument, no lawn—just pine trees, wind, and a view of mountains. Winter was hard and sometimes it snowed late in June, though only at night. They were high up where the air was thin. They didn’t waste it. Stories were therefore short, expressions clipped, and Agnes had a habit of giving long looks without saying a word, during which her mouth was slightly smiling and her eyebrows slightly raised. When she looked this way, everyone knew she was good-natured and wanted to kiss her and twirl, eyes closed, with so much in reserve.
    She cooked. Steam swirled upward around the spoon as she looked into the pot, her body arched away from the stove. The kitchen was full of windows. Through them was miraculous blue and white of mountains, hanging aerial ice, and sky.
    And her face. Her face was an extremely beautiful face. When she laughed you did not laugh at her face nor did she become less pretty. When she was angry it was the same. The eyes were blue. There was a mirror in the hall, surrounded by a frame of grayish-white tin. When she looked at herself in the mirror she saw the blue eyes, shining out, and the simple blond hair, energetic. “Bong Bong,” she said as she patted her hair into place and went to the porch to wait for Henry.
    She was wearing a loose white dress held together at the neck by a button which said, “All the Way with Alf Landon.” The wind blew her hair. She settled her eyes to stare into the valley, past the rocks, past the sheep that looked like moving cylinders of cream or cloud, past the pools and pines, to the road where Henry would be coming. She picked up a knife and stuck it into the chopping block on which it had been lying. She loved Henry, and had doused everything to marry him. Those are the only marriages that work—where you say to hell with it, and hurt three or four dozen people, and tell fifty more to go to hell, and then move out to Nevada or Alaska, or Brazil. If you don’t do that, you’re not really married. She was married to Henry. Henry tried to tell their parents about how to marry.
    â€œWhy?” said their parents.
    â€œBecause,” said Henry, “if you love you make no concessions—none at all. And in the beginning this is especially true. And Agnes and I are angry at concessions—little ones, big ones. We want to start clean. I love Agnes. We bought a sheep ranch.”
    The pot was boiling over. She went in and turned off the heat. It was a simple principle: if the pot boils over, turn off the heat. She always thought passionately that to think is somehow dispassionate. Henry said she was right and drove her in his car up the mountain to their house with