On another occasion, still before the rains had really come, I joined the brothers in the sitting area, this time with a question for them. “Why did you buy my house?” I asked.

“We didn’t,” said Lily’s father. “Our corporation did.”

“That makes no difference,” I said. “You desired it, so you bought it. Why?” It felt empowering to be on the attack against these two. I smiled.

“Ah,” said Lily’s father. “But it makes all the difference: we are foreigners and we are not allowed to own property.”

My smile faded into a look of perplexity. I was puzzled.

“It makes no sense to him,” Lily’s father said to his brother. “Yet you think he will make a good highway companion.”

“Nathet,” Lily’s uncle said to me. “We have decided to scale down our operations. We are using your house as a warehouse; in this way our goods are much more easily guarded, our property expenses go down, we free up some capital for the coming famine, and we reduce our inventory, all at the minor expense of laying off several employees.”

I stared even further into this opaque space. What was he saying? Why did he need my house? Why did he need to buy the house?

“Which of the two houses is older,” asked Lily’s father. “Yours or mine?”

“Mine,” I said. “Because it is smaller, from a different time, before the prosperity which built your house.”

He replied, “You are right to say that your house was built before the time of this present prosperity, which is coming to an end. Nevertheless, there was a time of prosperity before your house was built, a very long era, under a very different king, during which this house was built. Consider the differences.”

I laid out the two houses in my mind. Lily’s house opened from its main entrance into great, open spaces. The framework was made from great timbers, as thick as my body, held together with stone walls which were covered in a plaster that seemed to need no repair, ever. The great open space had a hearth holding it down at one end. A large doorway took the house into the sleeping areas, one for Lily and one for her parents. I had never been through that doorway, so I did not know how it was laid out. Another doorway to the left opened into the back room where we had our evening narrative and song. To the right of the great open space was the kitchen. The hearth extended into the kitchen, forming the oven; however, a stove was at the near wall. A window looked out onto the front garden over the stove. The pantry room was in a corner on the wall opposite the oven. A door between the stove and the pantry room led outside to the little river and the rear garden, where Lily’s uncle and I trained.

My house was quite different. The main entrance opened into a hallway. To the right was an opening to a small living space and a kitchen. To the left was a wall, on the other side of which was a sleeping area. The living space extended a bit further to the right than the kitchen did. The kitchen opened out of the rear of the house. The soldiers came in through that door. The entrance to the first sleeping area was to the left of the entrance to the kitchen, and the entrances to the other two sleeping areas were down a short hallway to the left once you entered the kitchen. The hearth was in the kitchen immediately to the right of the entrance; it served also as the stove and the oven by some means which my father had fashioned for my mother, but I could not now remember. A small opening in the “rear” of the hearth allowed some heat and light into the sitting area, where my uncle used to crouch on his chair to tell stories of the North. My father was always making repairs to the interior, hiring plasterers, masons, and carpenters, usually after he tried to make repairs himself. I liked when my father tried to make repairs because he taught me how to swear and curse in many ways. I felt I could cow a man twice my size with the sheer force of language of frustration.

“I do not see it,” I said. “I do not see how I can know this is an older house.”

“Which is laid out by slaves?” said Lily’s uncle. And now I was on defense, fully.

“The one with all the walls, doors and corners—my house,” I said.

“Your king is a slave maker,” said Lily’s uncle. “And has been for generations now.”

“When was my king a different king?” I asked.

“The answer is before your eyes—at least in your mind’s eye,” said Lily’s father. “And it lies in the fact that we are foreigners, and we cannot own property, but our corporation can.”

I stood up, walked through the kitchen under the watchful forehead of Lily’s mother, and stood outside the doorway to look at my house from there. I still could not see it. And I did not understand anything they were saying, except that my king was a slave maker. This I was beginning to feel in the marrow of my bones.

“I could not have bought your property,” I remarked. “For we are not permitted to own adjacent properties.”

“What did he say?” said Lily’s father, rising from his seat, along with his brother.

“We are not allowed to own two properties which are adjoining,” I said more loudly.

“Yes, indeed,” said Lily’s father, coming to me outside the door. “We discovered an ambiguity in the law. My property is owned by my corporation as a domicile property, under a distinct tax code, therefore, in a distinct section of the library. Our property in town is a commercial property. We have filed the purchase of your house as a commercial property.”

“No one has challenged by remonstration the purchase,” said Lily’s uncle. “Since we brought no one’s attention to the fact that the corporation owns this property here.”

I shook my head.

“Clever, no?” said Lily’s uncle.

“It seems to be dishonest,” I said. “Not terribly malicious, but dishonest, a way of violating the law without violating it. I imagine that even if a lawsuit were to arise, years would pass before the case came to a final settlement, and the famine would surely be passed, and you would have no more need of my property.”

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“A consideration, certainly,” said Lily’s uncle. “Let me enumerate further.” He returned inside the house to fetch our cloaks. Even with the last sentries of the south resisting the inevitable rainy season, the movement of the air was cold on our skin. He handed me mine, and he led us to the corner of the walls which divided our property.

“You have quite properly declared that the king of this city has a law preventing a single property owner from owning adjoining properties. This is an old law, but it is a corruption of a more ancient law which created civilization, the recognition that a person may own property and that a people may have a right-of-way.”

“What is a right-of-way?” I asked. I didn’t know which word to emphasize.

“There was a time,” said Lily’s father, “when the king was just a man, such as we, whom everyone understood to be more powerful than everyone else. He was under a law, however, a law from heaven. Good kings knew that peace came through strength and freedom. Freedom came from strong protection of each individual as the substance of a people. In theory, even though his strength gave him power, his power flowed from a people with a common understanding of rulership who allowed him to protect them. ‘Enthronement Ceremonies’ or ‘Throne Renewals’ did not exist; neither did revolutions or assassinations—not that this city ever had the latter events.”

“What does this have to do with adjoining properties?” I asked. “Do you come from a land or city with such a king?”

“No,” said Lily’s uncle. “Under your slave maker property became his to deliver to his slaves, his people. Apportioning property is a way to prevent power from drifting out from his control. This is true under our king, as well, who himself is a slave maker; remember: we swore allegiances. Under the kings of free people, a single person could never own adjoining property because no property adjoined!”

And he pointed at the corner of the wall.

“See!” he said.

I did not.

“Whose wall is more ancient?” he asked me.

“Mine!” I said, knowing I was wrong.

“Correct!” he shouted. “For once, you are correct! But look more closely!”

Why were these two so excited? I leaned my head directly over the corner, where my crumbling old wall met their solid, square, plumb wall with immortal mortar. I saw nothing of note. Where ours adjoined along the road, theirs turned to run along our property line.

“Do you see the joint?” he asked. I stood upright.

“Do you see the joint?” asked Lily’s father. I looked at him. He was completely in earnest.

“Yes,” I said. “The joint forms a perfect square between my property and yours.”

“Is something not out of order?” asked Lily’s father. “Do look again!”

This time I crouched a bit, then stood upright. I put my hand on it and cocked my head, first this way, then that. Something was out of order, indeed, but my mind could not quite fathom what my eyes were seeing.

“Do not look at the squareness of the joint,” said Lily’s father, “Observe the joint itself.”

The perfect square was joined to the wall along the road by an immaculate line of mortar, abutting against it. I saw it again: that wall ran along the property line dividing mine and theirs. I ran my finger along the line of mortar which formed that square.

“It is a fine joint,” I said. I put my hand on a large stone which was in the wall which ran along the roadside. The brothers said nothing.

“Does this wall belong to the property owner or to the owner of the road?” I asked.

“Why do you ask that?” asked Lily’s uncle.

“This wall runs along the road, unbroken.” I said, “This stone is in both our walls. It has better mortar around it within your property, but it is still in both our walls. This is a single wall. It is unbroken.”

I broke off, looking at it as a single wall for the first time in my life. I had always seen it that my wall ran along the road to join with their wall, which squared off our properties. Now I could see that it was a single wall. It snaked around two curves, one above my house and one below their house. I knew where it formed its own corner above my property. There was a pathway there, where farm animals and ne’er-do-wells wandered from one side of the outskirts of the city to the other, a shortcut between fields and highways for those on foot and without great burdens.

“The stones in this wall are square on the inside and rounded on the outside,” I said, “But the stones in the wall which divides our property are square inside and out.” I gasped. “This dividing wall is a newer wall! It was joined to this wall.”

“The dividing wall was not a part of this wall!” said Lily’s father.

Until that moment, from the time I could remember, I saw that dividing wall as a part of nature, as certain a boundary as the ocean shore. Until that moment, it was ancient, of lore, a legend of unbreached strength. At that moment, it crumbled away; I saw it all, a more ancient land. My house crumbled away; I saw a grove in a meadow. The ground crumbled away beneath my feet. I swooned.

“Whoa!” shouted Lily’s uncle, and he took possession of me in his normal manner.

He whispered in my ear, “This is the land of our fathers. This city belonged to our people generations ago; this property belonged to a father of our father before he was driven from it by foreign invasion, men who spoke a different language, men who spoke a language much like yours.”

“Do you intend to take it back?” I asked.

“No, indeed, not,” he said. “We intend to buy it back. History is unkind to many societies, peoples who deserve better ends. Time sweeps men away without prejudice or design, it seems to us; one people invades and another retreats if it cannot defend. Since the beginning of that sweeping broom…”

We stood, surveying the land of their fathers, the more vast plot of property on the edge of a mighty city. I imagined myself as the father of their father, however many generations back that father was, owner of that property. No dividing wall kept me from running with my children down into the ravine which collected the little river, jumping across it to run up a grassy knoll, the hill upon which my house was not standing because it didn’t exist, throwing one child to the ground while another grasped me about the legs and still another threw his weight upon my hips to cause me to lose my balance so that we could roll and growl like a brood of puppies in the happiness of their mother. A plot of ground was beneath that hill, under guard of scarecrow, producing fruit of both vegetables and vine. A few acres away grazed our goats and some livestock under watchful eye of shepherd and caretaker. Who was the wife of this fine merchant? We all looked back to the homestead at mother, who stood in the doorway to the kitchen, waving, smiling, gathering hair from her face which the wind had blown, pulling it back behind her head, whence it immediately piled up and forward in a dark cloud upon her head; it was an ancestor of Lily, of life. Land caused me to imagine myself joined to Lily, the idea of landed-ness.

That night I imagined her body, in its full glory, without even trying to stop the image from coming into my consciousness. Hers was the body of a mother who had not yet given birth; every curve was designed for life, to receive life, to bear life, to feed life, to hold life upon her hip while life frolicked about her ankles. She was radiant, her body, without the burden or obfuscation of those clouds, those clothes, a shining light, a bursting dawn, a dawn and light which I always saw from her smile and in her eyes, but here, in the imagination of my mind, the source of light a sunshine not seen with the eyes of a man; it was seen by the eyes of God. I reached out to touch her body, but I did not know the touch of a woman, and my mind could not imagine what sensation light from heaven would give.

I rose from my place (a sheepskin cot near the couch) and walked to the entrance of the sleeping area. It was a boundary I had not breached. I would not breach it, but I was overcome with the desire to find her and take possession of her. Fear had yet more strength than desire, but I knew that this was the last time fear would prevail. If desire came upon me again, fear would be defeated, and destruction would come. I stood there, peering into darkness, utter darkness, with a mind to touch light.