Chapter 7
Genesis 34; 35:16–19, 22
The desolate majesty of the horizon stretched out across the plain, sprawling in a dusty, undulating sea and thoroughly encompassing the little gathering of tents propped together in the temporary solitude of safety. A tall man with thick, curling white hair stood alone in the midst of this camp of desert wanderers, facing two of his sons—dark-haired young men with glowering dark eyes, arms crossed defiantly against his anger.
A woman with a young face stooped down beside a younger, solemn-eyed boy who stood watching. “Joseph,” she whispered, a loose, dark curl falling across her cheek, “come away from here.”
“The men of Shechem promised peace.” Jacob, he of the white hair, gestured accusingly at the sons standing before him. “You have made us a family of murderers—”
“Our sister was betrayed,” Simeon snarled. “It was for her honor—”
“She would have been protected,” Jacob snapped back. “What life have you given her?”
“Take him away from here,” murmured Reuben—that was the oldest brother’s name—and the young woman, she of the dark curl, glanced at Reuben, who stood behind her, feeling the lightness of his touch on her back.
“I want to see Dinah,” Joseph said, looking up at her. “She’s all alone.”
“She’s all right, Joseph,” the woman said quietly. “The other women have to help your mother—”
“Bilhah.” The woman turned, looking toward where another, older woman had appeared, beckoning sternly from around the corner of a nearby tent. When the second woman saw Reuben, her eyes narrowed, and Reuben looked down, eyes suddenly fixed on the top of his younger brother’s head. “Bilhah,” the woman repeated, hissing so her low voice would carry the distance, “we need your help—”
Bilhah also looked down at the boy—the beloved and only son of her mistress, Rachel—but Joseph was looking past her, toward this other woman, his mother’s sister, who was older and taller and had borne seven children. He took a step toward her, but she gave a firm shake of her head, gesturing to Bilhah, who caught his arm.
“Not yet, Joseph,” Bilhah whispered. “The baby’s not here yet. I’ll go see your mother”—she tried to smile—“and you go see your sister.”
She left him, not looking at Reuben as she brushed past. Joseph stood watching as the two women disappeared around the corner of the tent. Then he looked up at his older brother, and Reuben smiled and crouched down, putting an arm around the boy.
“Your mother will be fine,” he whispered. “Go and see Dinah.”
“Your sister’s marriage”—Joseph suddenly heard his father’s voice again, breaking like waves against the outer edges of the camp—“would have made peace with a people who would have protected this family.”
“Queen to a man who violated her,” Simeon shot back, and Joseph felt Reuben tense beside him. “Marrying her does not atone for what was done. Nothing can forgive—”
“You dare to speak of forgiveness?” Jacob advanced closer, broad and strong in his aging years. Simeon gazed back at his father for only a single furious moment before lowering his eyes. Jacob had moved close enough to strike his son or to himself be struck. But neither of them moved. “You are a child,” Jacob said, his voice low, “who understands nothing.”
“Come away from here,” Reuben murmured, rising and steering Joseph away by the shoulder. “You should be with Dinah.”
Joseph crept softly into his sister’s tent in case she was sleeping, but she was not sleeping. She lay on her back with mute, open eyes, barely shifting her attention as her little brother came creeping in.
“Dinah,” he said, as he moved closer to where she lay, stepping across the sheepskin carpets lining the ground and kneeling beside her. She looked toward him. Her eyes were pale and shadowed.
Joseph brushed a loose strand of hair off her forehead, the way he had seen his mother do.
“How is she?” Dinah asked, her voice quiet.
Joseph shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Dinah’s hands rested on top of her stomach, her body loosely robed. Joseph rose to a seated position and rested his own hands together in his lap. They sat together without speaking.
“Did . . . the prince hurt you,” Joseph asked at last, “again?”
Dinah’s face was fair and still half-childish, with long, inky-dark hair and a delicacy that resembled her little half-brother more than the other boys. “No,” she said.
“Simeon . . . wanted to protect you,” Joseph said, and she glanced back at him.
“I saw him die.” Her eyes were glazed. “I saw what Simeon did.”
Joseph reached out, touching her arm as if to pull her back from that strange and silent place that had swallowed her whole.
The covering of the entrance to the tent was drawn back again, and Joseph looked over his shoulder as another brother ducked in. With bristly dark hair and a round teenaged face just losing its boyishness, he had his father’s broad expression and his mother’s brisk movements. He tip-toed lithely over the sheepskins, settling down next to Joseph.
“I was wondering where you went,” he said, ruffling his little brother’s hair. “Reuben said you came to keep Dinah company.” He looked at his sister and smiled at her. “Are you hungry?” She shook her head. “We can bring you something.”
“What’s happening outside?” she asked, voice still quiet.
“Father’s with Simeon and Levi,” Judah said, keeping his voice light. “The other women are with Rachel.”
Dinah looked at him. “It’s been a day already.”
Judah shrugged and looked down at Joseph. He put his arm around the boy who so resembled Rachel—his father’s beloved second wife, who had been in labor with her second child since the previous morning—with the same dark eyes and beautiful, curling hair. “Don’t worry,” Judah said, “your mother will be fine. Sometimes it takes a long time for a baby to come. She’s just worn out, because . . . we had to move quickly.”
Dinah pushed herself off her sleeping mat and sat up, taking a slow breath. “Because of me.”
Judah reached out, taking Dinah by the arm, as if to steady her. “Not because of you.”
She looked at him. “She’s done so much, taking care of me . . . and . . . we had to leave . . .”
“Stop,” Judah said, shaking his head once.
“I can help take care of you,” Joseph said, quietly. Judah and Dinah looked at him, and Dinah tried to smile.
“Thank you, sweet boy,” she said softly.
Judah smiled too. “Your mother will need you to help take care of your new brother.”
“Is it a brother?” Joseph asked.
Judah grinned. “Probably.”
“Will he look like me?”
“Oh,” Judah said, “most certainly. He’ll be very handsome.”
Joseph looked at Dinah. “Or if it’s a girl,” he said, “she’ll look like you.” Dinah smiled too, but her smile was sadder. Then Joseph looked back up at Judah. “But,” he said, “I bet he’ll be a brother.”
And Judah smiled.
Sleeping, lying on his back in the darkness with the camp quiet all around, Joseph opened his eyes.
And as he did, he found himself staring, rising, up into the stars, watching the brilliant patches of light swirl and spin, and he was stunned, breathless, and his body rushed higher into the sky—tumbling, free and safe and whole, and the stars encircled him as he hung suspended in the sky, enclosing his entire being in a pulsing, trembling globe—and up above, beyond the burning, he saw the great dancing disk of the sun embrace the silvery, shadowed moon, the one passing over the other and subsuming both into a glorious, shimmering flame—and he closed his eyes and the stars themselves began to speak, calling him by name—
Joseph—
Joseph—
“Joseph . . .”
His eyelids fluttered. His little body lay curled on a sheepskin where he had fallen asleep in his
sister’s tent. Dinah was rubbing his back.
“Joseph,” she said again, and he raised his head, blinking the darkness from his eyes. Dinah looked as if she were about to speak, and Joseph blinked again, looking up at her. There was something strange about her face and the stillness of her body.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She was not all right, because she had come to tell him that the world was not all right.
She had come to tell him that he had a brother, a big, healthy baby boy born in the wilderness of their afflictions, a child their father had named Ben-jamin, Son-of-My-Right-Hand, and that the baby was sleeping in Bilhah’s arms. But Bilhah herself was weeping, and Leah sat beside her in the stillness of the shadows with Zilpah at her feet, and Jacob walked alone in the desert, and the moonlight ran freely down his face.
Dinah had come to tell Joseph that his mother—his beautiful, brave, beloved mother, Jacob’s most cherished wife, his “Little Ewe”—had given Jacob his twelfth son in a wash of blood that could not be stopped.
And Joseph—who had listened while Bilhah explained to him that it was love that brought children into the world and that the love of his parents had brought him and now this new little one into life—could not understand why love should demand such a hideous sacrifice.
Chapter 8
Dreams
Darkness—darkness and dryness encased by loose, pebbly sand, and his fingers raw from clawing at the earth that gave way in a hissing stream—the white sky high above beating down the day’s heat and gazing unblinking into the empty well shaft dug deep into the earth where no life breathed—the walls of the pit collapsing into greater darkness, with other groans, other bodies—he could hear voices—and the darkness came as searing as the harsh white desert sun, and he cried out—and nobody answered, and nobody came—
Stirring, Asenath opened her eyes and saw her husband silhouetted in the dim light, trying to catch his breath from some dream that had startled him awake.
“Are you all right?” she murmured.
“It’s nothing,” he whispered, “go back to sleep.” He slid his legs over the side of the bed and moved to his feet, tying his linen kilt around his body as he walked from the room. He moved alone down the corridor and out onto the private porch that overlooked the gardens. He closed his eyes, trying to slow his breath.
From behind, he heard the sound of soft, approaching footsteps, and Asenath came and stood beside him.
“What is it?” she asked.
He rubbed his hands over his face as if the night air were some sort of reviving water bath he might splash across his skin. “Dreams,” he said. “Nothing.”
“More dreams?” She was watching him as he stared out toward the great, dark, lapping River. “About your brothers?” When he didn’t reply, she looked out toward the River as well, where a gradual lightening was beginning to seep across the sky. The low croaking of night noises carried in from the garden. “There are not many moments,” she murmured, “when a man gets to glimpse the sun’s sacred progress so closely.” She glanced at her husband. “This is the most sacred time at the temples, when Ra returns to the world. When a soul goes to meet him, the soul begins there”—she pointed toward the horizon—“where the heavens and the earth meet. Where Osiris rises from the underworld. The in-between moments”—she looked at him—“are when all things are closest together. The in-between places are the passageways.”
Zaphenath watched the line of the horizon growing slowly brighter, Ra shining his brilliance back into the world, summoning up souls to ascend with him on into the heavens.
“Out in the desert,” he said quietly, “you’re always moving toward a horizon that can’t be reached.”
Asenath smiled. “In the desert,” she said, “every horizon blends into another, and there is neither beginning nor end. The horizon is both time and eternity.” She placed the palm of her hand against her husband’s chest. “Take a deep breath, my love.” He looked down at her, and she looked up at him; then he closed his eyes, and his chest rose and fell slowly beneath her touch, and she felt the pounding of his heart beginning to slow. “To breathe,” she said, her voice gentle in the early quiet of the morning, “is to embrace the gods and be embraced in return. The most sacred rituals center on restoring breath.” Her words were joined in a delicate duet by the croaking of river frogs over the wall. “Restoring the living with the dead.”
The Book of Breathings, which Isis made for her brother Osiris . . .
He opened his eyes and looked at her, his wife, daughter of the high priest of Ra. “Isis causes the soul and body of Osiris to breathe,” he said, reciting the words and smiling, “to make his soul appear in glory in heaven in the disk of the moon, and his body to shine in the womb of the stars.”
Asenath smiled too. “The stars are always the first place of rebirth.”
“Your brother gave me that text,” he said. “Maybe you know the mystery of why Isis brings Osiris back to life.”
Her eyes found his. “So that all things can be joined anew.” She reached out again, resting her hand over his heart. “My love,” she said quietly, “what are you going to do?”
Zaphenath didn’t answer her. But he looked up and beyond, toward where the rising sun and fading moon and the stars all hovered together for a single, unbroken moment in the horizon.
Chapter 9
Genesis 42:17–24
Judah could not tell whether he had actually slept during any of the time he had spent curled on the hard dirt floor of the prison. The drifting, muted conversation of the guards lulled him in and out of a dim, in-between sleeplessness, and his neck twinged with a warning ache as he began to move. It was now the second morning since he and his brothers had been left, without further explanation, in this place. Two strangers had been taken out the first night and had not returned; where they had been taken was not something Judah cared to know.
He did wonder, however, just what the penalty was for spying in this mighty kingdom, beholden to none but itself. Why did no one come to speak to them, or explain what they might expect, or offer so much as a single chance to explain themselves? And another thought danced at the periphery of his mind, circling back and back again and looming ever larger with each return—how long could their families survive? How long before their wives and daughters and sons began to starve? How long until their aged father ceased to wake?
Rolling over, wincing, Judah looked up at the fissures in the mud bricks blocking the sky. His brothers had all remained close together, some sprawled sleeping, others speaking in low voices; it was still unclear who would be given the chance at freedom coupled with the onerous task of begging their father for Benjamin. Judah had finally removed himself from the discussion, feeling disinclined to bicker with Simeon or Reuben or any of the others, and instead tried to sleep, or at least lie with his eyes closed and try to dream. But in the darkness, no dreams came.
Snatches of thought came, though, with pricklings of memory, and he could not remember when he had last seen so many flitting visions of another brother’s face in all the years since the boy had been lost. He said nothing as others spoke hopefully of misunderstandings, of mercy. They did not deserve to hope for mercy.
A rising tide of voices, rippling into the otherwise undisturbed murmurs of low conversation, nudged him from his thoughts. He looked toward the growing sound. The other prisoners began looking over too, while the brothers seemed to draw closer together, protectively, against whatever uncertainty might be rallying against them now.
Steadying himself to his feet, Judah winced over to the solitary small opening in the wall, squinting to peer out. He saw a man clothed in fine-spun linens and an elegant wig standing in the central room outside their holding cell, surrounded by more guards, speaking to a prison official. He was accompanied by a bare-headed fellow in much simpler, unadorned dress. The wigged man kept looking over toward where the brothers were being kept. Judah glanced at his brother Zebulon,
who had risen to stand next to him in an effort to see what was happening.
“Do you recognize him?” Judah asked. “I can’t see his face.”
“It’s the man who accused us,” Zebulon said softly.
One of the guards turned and approached the cell. Judah and Zebulon backed away, stepping into the shadows. Judah could hear the men outside speaking rapidly to each other, and then their accuser’s face, with his dark-lined eyes, appeared in the opening. His elegant gold chain, bespeaking his wealth and authority, was dim around his neck in the poor light. He stared in at them and then he turned, speaking in a low voice. The bare-headed man stepped closer.
“The vizier of all Kemet returns to speak with you,” the man announced.
The vizier—could they possibly have had the misfortune to offend the greatest official in the country? Judah wondered in blistering disbelief—spoke again to the translator, who nodded. “You are still suspects,” they were told, and Judah felt a deep breathlessness, “and proof of your identity will be required. However,” the translator paused, and the vizier spoke again, the foreign interchange nearly inaudible within the cell, “because the vizier is a merciful man, he will allow you to return to your families with your grain.”
A murmuring wave swept through the brethren. Judah saw Simeon, one of the chief proponents of the imminent mercy that would surely be shown to them, look around, smiling to himself as the other brothers looked toward him. After all, it was he, aside from Reuben, who was the most senior among them—the one, it was quietly said, who felt he should have received the birthright after his older brother’s disgrace with one of his father’s wives.
“However,” the translator continued, and the brothers waited, “one of you will remain behind.”
The murmuring swelled again as the vizier pointed, saying something first to the translator and then turning to the guards, gesturing with his head in the direction of his outstretched hand.
The Eleventh Brother Page 4
