by Anne Rice
Some of this was said in jesting, most in very bold goodwill. But some made these remarks with a sneer, and in my hearing there was plenty of murmuring, at work and in Nazareth, of “Had it been any other man in that grove!” and “Well, you know it was Yeshua, of course, nothing happened.”
The family was all astir with the work that needed to be done, and even Silent Hannah was pressed to leave the village for the first time since her arrival years before, and go with my aunts and my mother into Sepphoris, there to get the finest sheer linen for Avigail's tunic, and robes and veils, and to find those who sell or sew the most intricate of gold-threaded needlework.
As we worked on our various jobs in Sepphoris, I found every reason I could to assist James, and he took the little kindnesses from me graciously. I put my arm around him whenever I could, and he turned and did this with me; and our brothers saw these embraces, and heard the easy words, and so did the women at home. Indeed his wife, Mara, said that he seemed something of a new man and she wished I'd dressed him down a long time ago. But that she didn't say to me. I heard it from my aunt Esther in a whisper.
Of course James asked at some point, because he thought it best, should someone send for the midwife again to put the mind of Reuben of Cana at rest? I thought my aunts would destroy him with their bare hands.
“And how many midwives can wander in that virgin territory,” demanded my aunt Esther, “before they break down the very door they're seeking to find intact, do you think?”
And that was the end of that subject.
Avigail I never saw. She was deeply secluded with Old Bruria in rooms to which only the women went, but three letters had come for her from Reuben bar Daniel bar Hananel of Cana, and she'd read them out to all assembled and written her replies in her own hand, gentle and sweet sentiments, and these letters I myself took for her to Cana.
As for Reuben, he was in the village every chance he got with Jason disputing this or that point of the law, but mostly hanging about in the vain hopes of catching a glimpse of his bride which was not to happen.
As for Shemayah, his shame was erased. A rich man, far richer than any in Nazareth, had done what a poor man might dream of doing, and those in between might never attempt. And this had been done swiftly and completely.
The first anyone heard of Shemayah was a week later when he heaved into our courtyard every single item or article of clothing that had ever belonged to his daughter, Avigail.
Oh, well, these precious things were in leather chests, and no worse for having come crashing through the lattice like so many missiles hurled at a besieged city.
As for myself, I was in torment.
I was as weary as a man who'd trudged for seven days without cease up a sheer mountain. I couldn't go to the grove to sleep. No, the grove was now tainted by my own blunders and I would never have that peace again, not without bringing forth fresh recriminations and scowls and scorn. The grove was forfeit.
And never had I so needed it. Never had I so needed to be alone, pleasing as it was to be amid such frank and innocent happiness.
I walked.
I walked at evening through the hills; I walked to Cana and back and walked as far as I could and sometimes made my way home under heavy darkness, my mantle wrapped tight around me, my fingers freezing. I didn't care how cold I was. I didn't care how tired I was. I had one purpose and that was to wear myself out so that I could sleep without dreams, and thereby somehow endure the pain I felt.
I could put no real finger on this pain. It wasn't that men whispered as to my having been alone with the girl; it wasn't that I would soon see her happily married. It wasn't even that I had wounded my brother, because in the healing of that wound, I felt his warm love for me and mine for him all the more keenly.
It was a terrible restlessness, a sense again that all that happened around me was somehow a sign to me.
At last one afternoon after the work of the day was done—the laying of a floor, in fact, which had hurt my knees about as badly as it ever did—I went to the House of the Essenes in Sepphoris, and let their gentle linen-clad men wash my feet as they did for any weary man who wandered in, and I let them give me a cold drink of water.
I sat in a small foyer near the courtyard watching them for a long time. I wasn't sure of the names of those who worked at this house. The Essenes had many such houses, though not of course for men such as myself, who lived only a few miles away, but for travelers in need of lodgings.
Did they know me, these young men, who had come from other communities of the Essenes? I didn't know. I searched the shifting groups of those who swept and cleaned and, even beyond, those reading in the small library. There were old ones here, old ones who no doubt knew everyone.
I didn't dare to shape a question in my mind. I only sat there, waiting. Waiting.
Finally one of the very old men, swaying as he made his way to me with one leg dragging and his right hand knotted on a stick, came and sat on the bench beside me.
“Yeshua bar Joseph,” he said, “have you heard any word at all of late from your cousin?”
That was the answer to my question.
They didn't know where John bar Zechariah was, any more than we did.
I admitted that we'd had no word, and we talked then in quiet, the old man and I, about those who go off into the wilderness to pray, to be alone with the Lord, and what it must be like, those lonely nights under the stars with the howling desert wind. The old man himself did not know. I did not know. John's name was not spoken again, by either one of us.
At last, I went home, taking the longest routes, up this little hillock and down through that olive glade and up past the creek and through it and on until I was bone weary and glad to fall down by the fire, and could without effort look truly too forlorn for anyone to question me.
How many days passed?
I didn't count them. The rain visited us again in light and beautiful showers. A blessing for every blade of grass in the fields.
Shemayah was seen back at work, with the hands who'd gone ahead with the plowing when he himself had remained indoors refusing to give the simplest orders. I saw him one morning, barreling through the street and crashing into his own door as if to make war on his own household.
Days. Days of bracing cold, and gliding white clouds, and the earth vibrantly green all around us. Days of the ivy climbing the lattices once more, and days of happy designs and happy hopes. Little Cleopas and Little Mary would soon have a child, or so I was told, though of course I'd seen the evidence of it. And nothing new from Judea except that Pontius Pilate, the Governor, seemed to have settled in with only a few minor disputes with the Temple authorities.
One night after deliberately roaming until I could roam no more, my head teeming, I trudged in, well after supper, ate a piece of bread and pottage, and went to sleep. I felt my mother put a clean fresh-smelling blanket over me. With the water now so plentiful the house smelled of freshly washed wool. I kissed her hand before she withdrew. I went through the layers of dreams and softly into nothingness.
Suddenly I awoke. I'd been with someone who'd been weeping. Terrible weeping. The weeping of a man who can't weep. The suffocated and desperate weeping of someone who cannot bear to do it.
All was well in the room. The women sewed by the fire. My mother asked, “What is it?”
“Weeping,” I said. “Someone crying.”
“Not in this house,” said James.
I pushed off the blanket. “Where is the marriage contract for Avigail?”
“What, safely in that chest, why do you ask?” said James. “What's the matter with you?”
This was not the golden chest of the Magi's gifts. This was the simple chest in which we kept our ink and our important papers.
I went to the chest, opened it, and took out the marriage contract. I rolled it up tight, slipped a loose scrap of soft leather around it, and went out.
A faint bit of rain had fallen earlier.
The s
treets were shimmering. Nazareth under the luminous Heavens looked like a town made of silver.
The door of Shemayah's house was open. The barest light escaped.
I went to the door. I pushed it back.
I heard him crying. I heard that awful choking sound, that bitter sound almost as if he were strangling in his pain.
He sat alone in a cheerless room. The coals had long ago died to ash. One lamp burnt there, on the floor, a little crockery lamp, and the oil was faintly scented—the only comfort at all here.
I shut the door, and came and sat beside him. He didn't look at me.
I knew how this had to begin, and so I told him how sorry I was for all I'd done that had made him so miserable. I confessed.
“I am so sorry, Shemayah,” I said.
His cries grew loud. They grew huge in the little room. But he had no words. He slumped forward. He rocked back and forth.
“Shemayah, I have here the contract for her marriage,” I said. “It's all done properly and right, and she'll be married to Reuben of Cana. It's here, Shemayah, it's written.”
He groped with his left hand, gently batting at the paper, gently pushing the contract away, and then he turned blindly to me, and I felt his heavy arm go around my neck. He wept on my shoulder.
18
IT WAS AN HOUR perhaps before I left him. I brought back the marriage contract and put it in the chest. No one noticed.
Jason was there, and the Rabbi—they were on their feet and so were most of my brothers—and they were all talking excitedly.
“Where have you been!” cried my mother, and then it seemed I was surrounded by anxious faces. There was the rustling of parchment, Jason shaking my shoulder.
“Jason, let me be tonight, please,” I said. “I'm sleepy, and I want nothing but to go to bed. Whatever it is, can't we talk about this tomorrow?”
“Oh, but you must hear this,” said my mother. “Little Mary,” she said. “Go, call Avigail.”
I started to ask what I must hear, what was so important that Avigail should be woken up and brought in, but they told me all at once in broken phrases.
“Letters,” said my mother. “Letters you must hear.”
“Letters,” said the Rabbi, “letters from Capernaum, from your cousin, John bar Zebedee, and from your sister, Little Salome.”
“The rider just brought the mail,” Jason declared. “I have a letter. My uncle has a letter. Letters have come to people up one side of the hill and down the other. Listen, you must hear all this. By tomorrow and the next day, all Galilee will know these things.”
I sank down in my usual corner.
Joseph was awake, seated straight against the wall, watching the others keenly.
“This news is from Jerusalem,” said Jason, “and the letter to my uncle, it's from Tiberias.”
Avigail, sleepy and concerned, had come into the room and sat down with Little Mary.
James held up his letter for me to see. “From John bar Zebedee, our cousin,” he said. “And this is for all of us . . . and for you.”
The Rabbi turned, and took the letter from James.
“Please, James,” he said, “may I read it because he is the one who's seen these things, your young cousin.”
James at once gave the letter over to him. Joses handed James the lamp and he held it high so the Rabbi could read by the light of it.
The letter was in Greek. The Rabbi hurried through the salutation:
“ ‘This I must make known to you all and you must give this word especially to my cousin Yeshua bar Joseph and not rest until he has heard this.
“ ‘Our kinsman, John bar Zechariah, has come out of the wilderness and to the Jordan and makes his way northward towards the Sea of Galilee. He is baptizing all those who are coming out to him. He is wearing only a coat of camel skin and a leather girdle, and he's lived in the wilderness on nothing but the meat of locusts and wild honey. Now he is saying to all, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord.” And “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” And all are coming to him, coming from Jerusalem and Jericho and the towns northward and down from the sea. And these he baptizes as they confess their sins. And this is what John has said to those Pharisees who've come forward to question him. “No, I am not the Christ. Nor am I the prophet. I baptize with water; but after me comes One mightier than I, whose sandals I'm not worthy to carry for Him; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit, and with fire. He is among you, but you do not know who He is.” ’ ” The Rabbi paused, then read on. “ ‘This I've seen with my own eyes, and I ask you, my kindred, again to convey these words to Yeshua bar Joseph, as I return now to the Jordan, John bar Zebedee.’ ”
The Rabbi lowered the stiff parchment and looked at me and at Joseph, and at Jason.
“They're going to him by the hundreds,” said Jason. “From all the towns up and down the river, from the Holy City and back. The Priests and the Pharisees have gone out to him.”
“But what does it mean,” my uncle Cleopas asked, “that he baptizes for the forgiveness of sins? When has anyone done such a thing? Does he do this as a Priest, as was his father?”
“No,” said the Rabbi. “I do not think that he does do it as a Priest.” He gave the letter back to James.
“Listen to this,” said Jason. “This is what he's said to the Pharisees and the Sadducees who went out from Jerusalem to question him.” He read from his letter, “ ‘ “You are a generation of vipers, and who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth fruits of repentance before you come to me. And don't think to say to yourselves or each other, We have Abraham for our father. For I say to you that God is able to take these stones here and raise up from them sons of Abraham.” ’ ”
Jason stopped and looked at me. He looked at Joseph and then back to the Rabbi.
My brother Joses spoke up. “But what can it mean? Is he declaring with the Essenes that the Temple is impure, that the sin offerings there don't matter?”
“He's moving now north into Perea,” said Jason. “I'm going there. I want to see this new thing for myself.”
“And will you be baptized? Will you do this rite for the forgiveness of sins?” asked the Rabbi softly. “Will you do this?”
“I will do it if it seems right to do it,” Jason declared.
“But what can it mean, one man baptizing another, or a woman for that matter?” asked my aunt Esther. “What does it mean? Are we not all Jews? Are we not purified when we come out of the baths and enter the Temple Courts? Not even the proselytes are bathed for the forgiveness of sins, are they? Is he saying to us all that we must be proselytes?”
I stood up.
“I'm going,” I said.
“We're all going with you,” said Joseph. Immediately my mother said the same. All my brothers nodded.
My mother handed me the letter she had from my sister, Little Salome. My eyes fell on the words “from Bethsaida, from Capernaum.”
Old Bruria spoke up. “I want to make this journey. We'll take this child with us,” she said, putting her arm around Avigail.
“We will all make this journey,” said James. “All of you, immediately as soon as it's light, we pack up and we go, and we take provisions as we would for the festival. We all go.”
“Yes,” said the Rabbi, “it's as if we were going to the Temple, going for a festival, and we will all go. Yes. I'll go with you. Now, come with me, Jason, I must talk to the elders.”
“I can hear voices out there,” said Menachim. “Listen. Everybody's talking about it.”
He rushed out into the darkness, letting the door flap behind him.
My mother had bowed her head and placed her hand on her ear as though listening to a distant and dim voice. I drew close to her.
Jason had rushed out. The Rabbi was going. Old Bruria came up beside us.
My mother was remembering, reciting, “ ‘And he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb
. He will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. He will go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of fathers toward children and the disobedient to the understanding of the righteous—to prepare a people fit for the Lord.’ ”
“But who said this?” asked Little Joseph. Shabi and Isaac clamored with the same question.
“Whose words are those?” Silas asked.
“They were spoken to another,” said my mother, “but by one who also came to me.” She looked up at me. Her eyes were sad.
All around us the others accosted each other with comments, questions, talk of making preparations.
“Don't be afraid,” I said to my mother. I drew her near me and kissed her. I could scarcely contain my happiness.
She closed her eyes and leaned against my chest.
Suddenly amid all the haste and talk, amid the general consent that we would all go, that nothing could be done now really in the dark, that we must wait for first light, amid all this—holding tight to her, I understood the expression I'd seen in her eyes. I understood what I'd thought was fear or sadness.
And will I look back on these days, these long exhausting days, will I look back on them ever from someplace else, very far away from here, and think, Ah, these were blessed days? Will they be so tenderly remembered?
No one heard her except me as she spoke. “There was a man in the Temple when we took you there,” she said, “right after you were born, before the Magi had come with their gifts.”
I listened.
“And he said to me, ‘And a sword shall cut through your own heart also.’ ”
“Ah, those words you've never told me before,” I answered her, secretively, as if I were only kissing her.
“No, but I wonder if it isn't now,” she said.
“This is a happy time now,” I said. “This is a sweet and good time, and we are all one household as we go out. Isn't that so?”
