Thief of Corinth

by Tessa Afshar

  Justus rose. “Will you return?”

  “Give me time . . . Brother. I feel like I am swallowing a whale.”

  “Take all the time you need. I will always be here for you.”

  Father sold most of his land save for a small orchard of apple trees and paid off his debts. He had enough left to invest in a sizable cargo of soap. Theo had thrown his own savings into the pile, and between them they had managed to create a respectable partnership. Father handled the business in Corinth, taking care of production, while Theo traveled, promoting and selling their hair pomade, as they called it.

  Who knew soap would prove so popular? Their first cargo made enough money for Father to keep the house. He freed his slaves as a means of economizing. Most asked to remain and work as servants. He could not refuse them, of course. So much for economy. Money would always stretch tight in his hands.

  The stern physician finally unwrapped the bandages from Father’s leg, threw out the splints, and pronounced him cured. He had no hint of a limp. I never ceased to thank God for that miracle.

  Eight months later, I married Justus. The week before the wedding, Paul brought a package to our home. “I asked my friend Lydia to send this for you. A wedding present.”

  “Lydia of Philippi? The seller of purple?”

  “The same.”

  “You know her?”

  “I baptized her. Will you open your package or shall I return it?”

  “Don’t you dare!” Inside, I found the most exquisite purple tunic and lavender palla I had ever seen. Squealing like an adolescent, I touched the soft silk. My heart sank. “Paul, dear Paul. I cannot accept this. It is too costly.”

  He shrugged. “Your brothers paid for it. I was merely the instrument of purchase. And the means to a friendly discount.”

  “My brothers? Plural?”

  “Dionysius and Theo.”

  I buried my face in the luxurious fabric, my eyes hot with tears. Theo had been spending more time with Justus in recent months. But he still avoided me. Justus had foisted a large piece of prime property and a sizable amount of cash on him, saying it was his inheritance. Father said Theo intended to build his own house there.

  Dionysius arrived from Athens on that same day. Before he had a chance to greet us properly, he sped off to Stephanas’s house. He had been corresponding with Chara for months. A blind man could see Father would have another wedding on his hands soon.

  On my wedding day, I had more dear friends attending me than I could once have dreamed of. Delia applied my makeup and put my hair up as befit a proper married lady. For the first time, I donned the veil of marriage, taking on the mantle of traditional modesty. Galatea, who had helped Delia with my preparations, pronounced me beautiful and blessed me in the name of the Lord Jesus, in whom she had placed her trust.

  I had three Claudias attending me: Younger, Fourth, and Elder. Felonius had thankfully vanished as I had suspected he would, leaving Claudia the Elder and her father in peace. The violet eyes examined my wedding finery with approval. “It would have looked perfect if you could have filled up the top a little more,” she said. “But you are so charming, no one will notice the lack.” And that was quite a compliment coming from Elder.

  “I am so happy for you!” Younger cried. “You are ravishing. Justus’s eyes will pop out of his head with admiration when he sees you.” It was hard to believe the two women were related.

  Fourth and Junia adjusted the folds of my veil, kissed the air above my cheeks, and quoted Ovid. All this fuss over the girl who once could not boast of one true friend outside of Theo. I could have burst with thankfulness for all that God had done.

  Dressed in Lydia’s purple, white blossoms in my soap-washed hair, I walked into Justus’s arms and knew myself known, the good and the bad in me, and loved whole.

  I had not expected him to come, but Theo surprised me. He embraced Justus first. “I wish you all the happiness this world can offer, Brother.” Then he took my hand in his. His smile had a tinge of pain. “May God bless you, Ariadne. My sister.”

  I squeezed his hand. He had been through so many valleys. Even his conception had been an unconquerable canyon, his birth a cavern of despair. But God was a higher rock. Slowly, Theo was climbing out of the depths and conquering the old ruined places. “May God restore to you the years the locusts have eaten,” I said, my heart in the blessing. And I knew it would come to pass.

  A month after our wedding I received a letter from my mother, her first in six years. My fingers shook as I broke the seal. The roiling bitterness of years rose to the surface of my mind. What poison did her letter contain? What fresh accusations did she have for me after so long a separation?

  There was no greeting. No farewell. I read three words, all that the scroll contained, and allowed the parchment to slip from my nerveless fingers. Justus, who had stood by my side, quiet and sure like an immovable mountain, bent to pick it up.

  He gasped when he read the words: I am dying.

  Dionysius had forwarded the scroll and included one of his own, assuring me that this was no ruse. Our mother had been fading over the past months. The physicians thought that she would not last the winter. Come quickly, Ariadne, he wrote. It is time for farewells.

  Unforgiveness is a marauder. A bigger thief than my father ever was. It robs the heart of peace.

  I had not vanquished this old enemy; the bitterness against my mother still exerted its power over me. In these final days of her life, I could wield the sharp edge of revenge against her. I could withhold my presence. Not go to Athens. Let my absence speak the last word.

  But I knew that I would regret such a choice, because it was a choice against God as much as it was against my mother. The Jesus who had welcomed a thief into paradise, the one who had extended forgiveness to me, now waited silently for my decision.

  I had to go.

  It took Justus several days to arrange for our trip to Athens. I spent those days thinking of all the words I wanted to say to my mother. The long list of wrongs she had committed against me. As true as they were, they left a bitter taste in my mouth. I realized that I would find no satisfaction in finally expressing them. On the night before our departure, I lay sleepless, striving for some measure of peace.

  “Father, help me,” I implored. I remembered with sudden clarity the many prophets God had sent his people over the years. They had gone to reason with his children. To speak truth to them. Show them the error of their ways. Tally their wrongs. Help them to repentance so that there could be reconciliation. It had rarely worked! In the end, God had not won the hearts of his people by reasoning with them. By explaining their wrongs. He had won those who were willing through . . . love. A love so deep it was willing to die.

  That was what my mother needed. Perversely, it was also what I needed.

  Not my vengeance and condemnation. Not words that would vindicate me and prove her insufficiency. The only healing I could receive was through the balm of love. Undeserving love. Sacrificial love.

  A love crucified.

  I was not at all sure I had such a measure of love in me when I boarded that ship, my husband by my side. Dionysius met us at the harbor when we disembarked. I sensed a calm in him in spite of the hollows that sorrow had carved in his cheeks. His peace was not of this world, I knew.

  I had dressed carefully for this meeting, donning a plain tunic of white linen, my artfully arranged hair covered under a modest palla. I presented the picture of Greek femininity so admired by Mother and Grandfather. It was not one final bid to win her approval. I was cured of that. I merely wanted to give her the only gift I could.

  Before entering through the gates of my grandfather’s house, I took a gulping breath, and placing my ice-cold fingers into Justus’s hand for strength, I pressed forward.

  Dionysius ushered us into my mother’s room. It looked the same as I remembered. Nothing had changed, as if time itself had ground to a halt in this airless chamber. The same alabaster jar of perfu
med oil, the same ivory-topped table, the same mirror of polished silver, the same windowless walls, whitewashed to cover the grime of generations. I remembered the words of a psalm Paul had taught me:

  For a thousand years in your sight

  are but as yesterday when it is past,

  or as a watch in the night.

  I thought how to God the years that had separated us had been no more than a whisper, a sigh, while our lives had burned like a lamp wick. And now, hers was coming to an end.

  Grandfather sat by her bed. It shook me to see him. Had he always been that small, that frail? He had seemed so imposing in my mind. Now he seemed a shrunken old man with red-rimmed eyes. Powerless to hurt anyone.

  Powerless to save his daughter.

  My mother lay huddled under too many covers, a skeletal creature made of skin and brittle bones. Her eyes bored into me like fire. I moved forward on legs that wobbled and sank next to her on a stool, facing Grandfather.

  Her arm lifted with a flutter and her fingers touched my hand. “Beautiful,” she murmured.

  It took me a moment to realize she meant me. She meant that I was beautiful. Something in me broke. “I am sorry,” I said. Sorry that she suffered. Sorry that she was dying. Sorry that I had resented her, hated her, even. Sorry that I had not wanted to see her for six years. Sorry that we had wasted so much time and now it was too late.

  She squeezed my fingers. “And I.” She fell asleep after that.

  “She had a rough day,” Grandfather said, his voice gruff. “In the morning she will be stronger. She will speak more then.”

  “May I sit with her through the night?”

  “She would like nothing better.”

  Dionysius took Justus for a quick meal and a hot bath. I expected Grandfather to leave with them. I never imagined him the man to wait patiently in a sickroom. But he did not budge. We sat in silence.

  “It’s good you didn’t marry Draco,” he said without preamble. “The boy ran to drink. Became a disgrace to his family. Dionysius speaks glowingly of your Justus.” He studied my middle with narrowed eyes. “Could you be with child, do you think? I won’t live forever. I would like to hold a great-grandchild in my arms before I’m done.”

  I sputtered. “I’ve only been married a month.”

  “It only takes one night. Don’t you know anything?”

  My mother groaned in her sleep. I gripped her hand. “Can we do something to comfort her? Give her a tincture? Some wine?”

  Grandfather shook his head. “She has stopped eating and drinking.” He rubbed his eyes. “A man shouldn’t live to see his child die. His only child.”

  He loved her, I realized. He had heart enough for that. Her death was cutting him to pieces. I felt the stirrings of compassion. Gingerly, I reached my free hand and took his. He jumped, then grew still. His hand shifted, turned up until it grasped mine tightly. The three of us sat like that for a long time, with me holding on to both, the man and woman who had once been my nemeses.

  I dozed on and off through the night. Justus brought pillows for my back and hot broth that I could drink from a cup without releasing my hold on Mother.

  Late morning, Mother began to stir.

  “Still here?” she asked.

  “Still here.”

  She took a rattling breath. “It’s not fair, you know.” Her voice, though weak, was coherent.

  “What isn’t?” Dionysius asked. He had joined us at dawn and sat next to me on the floor.

  “Your father broke all the rules. But he always received the lion’s share of my children’s love.”

  I had never thought of it from her perspective. She had been the good one. The one who had obeyed the law, followed the rules. She couldn’t see that in the process of being right, she had forgotten to love right. “I am sorry,” I said again, helplessly.

  She gulped painfully. “I am proud of you. I should have said. I am proud of you, my daughter.” She paused, then asked, “Dionysius, will your God have me?”

  “Gladly, Mother.”

  “Then I wish to go to his home.”

  She fell into a fitful doze after that and awoke only briefly over the next few days. I rarely left the room. That airless, windowless chamber that I had once hated became a hallowed place. A place of mending what had broken, a place of farewells, a place of release. It became a place of love, and the love endured all things, even our twisted past. In the end, it even conquered the raging of death and covered our gaps.

  ONE

  I have been forgotten like one who is dead;

  I have become like a broken vessel.

  PSALM 31:12

  WHEN I THINK of the ruin my life has become, the slow wrecking of my dreams, the destruction of every love, I always return to the bee. That one tiny sting, which robbed my place of favor in my father’s heart and changed the course of my destiny.

  Sorrow came to me on a beautiful afternoon, with the sun shining and just enough heat in the day to warm the skin without scorching it. Wildflowers were abundant that year, and the hillside where Joseph and I had come to pass the hours was covered in a blanket of yellow and pink. I remember the scent of them tickling my nose and filling my lungs, making me laugh for the sheer beauty of the world.

  Joseph ran amongst the soft stalks, piercing the leaves with his make-believe sword, playing Roman soldier. He knew better than to play the game with our parents around. They were staunch Jews whose lineage in Jerusalem went as far back as the days of Ezra. Romans may have been generous patrons of my father’s wares, but they were still dangerous enemies. My parents certainly did not consider them a matter for fun and games. But Joseph was four, and he loved the Roman horses, their uniforms, their rectangular painted shields. He wanted to be one of them. And I let him, seeing no harm in a little boy running wild and pretending to be something he could never become.

  “Elianna, come and play,” Joseph called over his shoulder and thrust his invisible sword in my direction.

  “Hold a moment,” I said. “I will come soon.”

  I was distracted, sitting on the coarse felt blanket I had brought, twirling a pink flower, trying to fathom a way to leach out its color and use it for dye on linen. A large shipment of flax had just been delivered to our workshop and we would have plenty of fibers for weaving. My father traded in luxurious fabrics. He even had a small but brisk business in purple, the lavish dye that was derived painstakingly from sea snails and remained more expensive to produce than any other color. It was a measure of his success that he could afford this particular trade.

  Joseph had been left in my care that afternoon because everyone in the household was busy working on the flax. Even my mother, who rarely participated in my father’s business, had been drafted to help.

  My father bought his flax already steeped and dried, with the seeds separated from the stems and discarded, and the stalks beaten to pull out the fibers. His workers were left with the task of combing out the fibers, making them ready for spinning. The stalks of this particular harvest were thick, which produced coarse linen, and would be used for weaving towels. With Romans and the new Jewish aristocracy so fond of their baths, towels were in high demand throughout the main cities of Judea.

  I was twelve years older than Joseph and more than capable of caring for him. My mother, suspicious of my passion for my father’s trade, and looking for ways to distract me from my fascination, had given me charge over Joseph for the afternoon. Her plan worked to double advantage: it got my exuberant brother out from under the busy feet of the adults while at the same time withdrawing me from direct contact with my father’s work, lest it feed my obsession with the secrets of his trade.

  “Leave that to the men,” she always told me, thrusting some feminine task into my lap before I grew too enraptured with the mysteries of creating a better grade of dyed fabric.

  “Elianna!” Joseph’s voice bellowed from farther down the hill. “Come. Now! You promised when you brought me here that you’d play with
me.”

  I grinned. My little brother could be imperious. No one had expected the birth of another child to my parents at their advanced age. When Joseph was born, we were all a little dazzled with his mere presence in the world and became instant slaves to his charm. Add to that the reality that he was a boy—the son of my father’s dreams—and, well . . . even a burning seraph could be excused for being a little spoilt under the circumstances. If he seemed bossy, the fault belonged to us. By nature, Joseph was so sweet that the overindulgence of a hundred adults could not render him tyrannical.

  “You better hope I don’t catch you,” I said as I rose to my feet. “My sword is a lot sharper than yours.”

  “No, it’s not. I’ll defeat you.” He let loose a fearsome bellow and began to run up the hill, his short legs pumping under his hitched-up tunic at a speed that made me flinch. I needed my whole strength to keep up with that boy.

  “Hold fast,” I cried, catching up with him at the top of the hill, thrusting my pink flower forward as if it were a deadly weapon. Joseph doubled over, giggling.

  “That’s not a sword! That can’t even cut thread. You’re such a girl, Elianna.”

  “You dare insult me, Roman dog? I shall have your head for that.”

  Joseph rushed toward me, his imaginary sword pointed at my abdomen. “No, you won’t. My horse will eat you for breakfast.” He did a fair imitation of a parry and then followed with a quick thrust, his little fist hitting my ribs. I grabbed my side as if in pain.

  “You will pay for that, young man.” With a quick motion, I reached forward to untuck his tunic from his belt. Distracted, he looked down, and I shoved my flower in his face, leaving a powdery yellow stain on his nose and forehead.

  I laughed. “You still need some practice, Roman.” Just behind him, I noticed a lone sheep chomping on a bush. I looked around, trying to locate the shepherd or herd to which it belonged. It seemed to be alone. I walked over to examine it for any hurts. A shepherd somewhere must be missing the fat fellow.