Testament

by Nino Ricci

  It was well known throughout the region how Yeshua had saved the life of Ribqah, the daughter of Urijah, for since he had come to us her father had ceased to abuse her. But now it happened that Urijah conspired to have his revenge on Yeshua, contracting to have Ribqah sold to a man in Migdal who was three times her years, and who already had a wife who had given him sons. When Yeshua learned of the arrangement he said he would not stand for it, and proffered twice Ribqah’s bride price out of our own purse so that she might be spared a life of misery and servitude. Urijah, who in this way saw more money than he had ever laid eyes on, immediately agreed to the thing. But soon enough the matter became known, and so reached the ears of Chizkijah.

  Now Chizkijah, in his cunning, didn’t do as he might have done, and simply denounce Yeshua’s actions in the matter. Instead he asked those who had let him into their trust for every detail of Ribqah as if he was very taken with her plight, then began to go about the towns of the region telling how Yeshua had saved her and what a great thing he had done for her. In so doing, however, he didn’t omit to say in passing how beautiful Ribqah was, and how she cried when Yeshua left her, and how on some occasions in the night, when she feared her father, she had gone to Yeshua at the house of Shimon; and in this way he let the putting together of one thing and another make its own accusation, though he himself didn’t say the words. Indeed, if he had said, Yeshua has taken her for his concubine, even Yeshua’s enemies would have dismissed him, knowing the man he was and that he was Herod’s spy. But because he came as if in praise, it happened that the first to be swayed by him, and to have their doubts, were exactly Yeshua’s disciples, who couldn’t see through Chizkijah’s guile and so believed they had arrived at their indictment of their own accord.

  Thus many things began to be whispered among Yeshua’s followers that, because they passed secretly from ear to ear, we could put up no defence against; and since Chizkijah had picked his words judiciously, and had said nothing that wasn’t true, those who began with only the smallest doubts saw them grow into certainties. For it was true that Ribqah was beautiful, as anyone who had seen her could attest; and it was true she could hardly bear to be from Yeshua’s sight, though this could be put as much to her fear of her father as to her love for Yeshua. Then there were many in Kefar Nahum who could bear witness that on more than one occasion Ribqah had come in the night to the house of Shimon and had stayed until morning. These were the times, as she had told me, when her father had moved against her and she had been afraid for her life; and the people of Kefar Nahum, knowing what her father was and that the house of Shimon was a respectable one, had said nothing of her visits. But now the matter appeared in a different light.

  By the time we among the twelve got wind of the accusations that had begun to circulate, they already seemed to have gained wide currency. Yeshua would not deign to respond to them in any way, not even to the twelve, saying only that he would not shun those he loved for the sake of a rumour and still keeping us women by his side when he preached. But eventually people began to see in his silence a sign of his guilt, so that his name, which even among his enemies had always been raised above that of the common lot, was now tainted with petty slander and the gossip of the marketplace. Many of our own followers began to say that Yeshua had indeed acted wrongly in preventing Ribqah’s marriage, and that it was not his place to interfere with how a man disposed of his daughter or to beg alms so that he might turn them over as ransom. Meanwhile Urijah, seeing how the matter had gone against us, began to put it about that Yeshua had coerced him, and that it was only because Yeshua had promised to take Ribqah as his own wife that he had agreed to his payment.

  For my part, I felt the coolness towards us women now at many of the meeting houses we went to, since we had all been painted in the same light, and saw the looks that went to us behind Yeshua’s back, and heard the hint of condescension in the voices of those who had been our friends. Among the crowds it was worse—the men leered at us as if we had become a spectacle. I was happy enough to put up with these things for Yeshua’s sake; but I saw that Ribqah, being the one who was named, took them much more to heart.

  If there’s no truth to the charges, you needn’t concern yourself, I said to comfort her.

  But to my surprise she answered, If he married me, then he would save my honour, as if to ask that I petition for her.

  I didn’t know what to say. I began to fear that she herself had misunderstood Yeshua’s intentions, and that because he had paid her bride price, she imagined him beholden.

  We aren’t for marriage but something higher, I said finally, meaning she mustn’t think in the old ways, of husbands and wives, when Yeshua had taken us beyond such things. But I didn’t think she understood.

  The truth was I held her words against her, and was afraid she had begun to imagine that Yeshua did more for her because he loved her more deeply, rather than because she had greater need. However, I didn’t go to Yeshua then with my apprehensions, not only to spare Ribqah disgrace but because I didn’t wish to add this concern to the many others that had beset him. For in addition to the accusations against him and the growing distrust of his own people, it had also happened now that the sick had suddenly become a plague to us, coming in ever greater numbers and expecting every sort of miracle. As it turned out it was Chizkijah, again, who was behind this—in the same guise of praising us, he had gone about the countryside exaggerating Yeshua’s powers so that the sick would overwhelm us and it was certain that large numbers of them would be forced to go away unsatisfied and uncured. Yeshua could hardly bear any more to see the hordes that awaited him at every turn, most of whom came to him now not as to a man of God but as they would to a common sorcerer. Once there was a mother awaiting him at Shimon’s gate with two infants, twins, already blue with death—she wouldn’t accept that he couldn’t help her, but railed at him and cursed him as if he were the one who had killed them.

  Soon enough it happened that Yeshua was openly accused from the crowd on Ribqah’s account. We were surprised, however, when he did not answer the charge but left it to hang over us in silence. No one had ever seen him fall mute in this way and not have a response to a thing. Afterwards there were some of the twelve who began to wonder privately if indeed there wasn’t some truth to the accusations against him.

  You’re no better than our enemies to say so, Shimon said, growing angry, and because even Yihuda supported him in this, he was able to put the others in their place. Nonetheless, it seemed that the poison Chizkijah had released among us had now seeped to our very core, and we could no longer be certain even of our own perceptions.

  Urijah by now had forbidden Ribqah to accompany us, saying we had disgraced her. So closely did he keep watch over her that she did not even come out to the smoking sheds to do her work and I no longer saw her even in passing. But though we felt certain Yeshua would take some action on her behalf, the days passed and he did nothing. When we asked why he had abandoned her, he said he did not wish to do her further harm.

  Shimon said, Did you harm her before in saving her from her father.

  But Yeshua asked how had he saved her when he had taken from her what he couldn’t restore, her reputation.

  For several days then he seldom left his quarters and made us turn away all those who came looking for him, even the sick. Thus, in the end, it wasn’t Yeshua who went to Urijah but rather Urijah who came to him—one day he presented himself at Shimon’s gate, waving the very bag of coins that Yeshua had given him for Ribqah’s bride price and shouting like a madman for Yeshua to show himself.

  By the time Yeshua went out a crowd had already gathered. There in front of everyone Urijah said to him, My daughter is pregnant by you. And he threw the bag of coins at Yeshua’s feet.

  We could hardly believe the accusation, or that Urijah, a man of so little character, should have the gall to make it. And yet everyone had seen how he had gone so far in supporting the charge as to return our money to us. My mind s
trained to piece the thing out—surely he had lied to say Ribqah was pregnant. Yet how would he dare, when the truth would be known soon enough.

  Urijah left the town at once then, not waiting to hear any response, but Yeshua quickly set out after him with a group of us so that he might have a chance to answer his charge. By the time we reached Migdal, however, Urijah had already enlisted his cousins to bar us from his house. Indeed, by dint of shouting his accusations from his gate as we tried to approach, he managed to draw half the town into the street and turn them against us, so that even the teacher Sapphias, who had never had anything but contempt for Urijah in the past, was quick to take up his side. Yeshua demanded that Ribqah be allowed to appear to speak for herself. But Sapphias said we could hardly be expected to take her word on the matter, one way or the other. In the end, to avoid violence, we were forced to retreat back to Kefar Nahum.

  Philip said to Yeshua, You must either marry the girl or put her away from us, or risk losing all our efforts.

  But Yeshua was furious with him.

  Why do you offer me the same choices as my enemies, he said.

  That night when I returned to Migdal I couldn’t rest until I knew the truth. By moonlight I went to Ribqah’s window and woke her from her bed, and she slipped out to me then, though her father slept by the gate.

  We went out to the lakeshore and I asked her if she was indeed pregnant. But she wouldn’t look at me.

  My mother says it is so, she said finally.

  I stood dumbfounded. It seemed suddenly I didn’t know her at all, that such a thing could be true. To my shame, I felt it like a betrayal, that she had shown herself different from me in this way when I had imagined us sisters, of a kind.

  Who is the father, I said.

  But she wouldn’t answer me. I didn’t press her because of my fear of who she might name.

  I could hardly hold together my thoughts then, or imagine what to say to her. I ought to have found the way to comfort her yet it seemed that surely she had disgraced us all.

  Tomorrow I will speak to Yeshua, was all I said, and then I left her.

  In the morning, however, the word went out through the town that she was missing from her bed. Everyone assumed at once, as even I did, that she had fled to Yeshua at Kefar Nahum, and Urijah and some others immediately set out in a mob to fetch her back. It wasn’t long, however, before the message came that she had been found in a cave up the beach near Kinneret, in a fit of delirium. Seeing her thrashing, those who had discovered her had promptly imagined her possessed, and so had sent for Sapphias. This was a mistake, for Sapphias was only too glad to have a report that lent further credence to the scandal against Yeshua and so made a great show of going out to the place, drawing half the town with him and causing delay that perhaps cost Ribqah her life.

  I was among those who went out. Seeing her moaning there on the beach, still in her convulsions, I didn’t waste time in accompanying the others as they returned with her to the town, but quickly set off to fetch Yeshua in Kefar Nahum. I could not keep up my pace, however, and past Kinneret had to stop to regain my breath, practically in a faint. My mind was swimming then with everything that had happened. All night I had been unable to sleep with the worry of the scandal Ribqah had brought to us, and it crossed my thoughts now in my agitation that it might indeed go better for all of us if Ribqah should die, not least for Ribqah herself. But later I had my punishment for thinking in this way.

  It was mid-morning by the time I reached Kefar Nahum, finding Yihuda and a few others gathered together in Shimon’s courtyard. When they learned what had happened they hastily prepared a boat, and a group of us set out with Yeshua for Migdal. The wind was with us and we made the town quickly. But when we came ashore we found that Urijah had simply laid Ribqah out on one of the tables near the harbour where the fish were gutted, though she still had not settled from her convulsions, and was working there beside her hardly minding her yet not permitting anyone else to come near her. If my father had been present, he would never have allowed such a thing. But he was away at market, and no other man in the town had dared oppose Urijah, even though it was clear from the wild look of him and from his actions that he was not in his proper mind.

  Yeshua, however, didn’t hold back his anger or make any allowance for Urijah’s state.

  Would to God you lay in your daughter’s place, he said, and Urijah didn’t try to hinder him as he had everyone else, but instantly moved aside, seeming relieved, indeed, that Yeshua had come.

  Ribqah was barely conscious and showed no sign that she recognized any of us, even Yeshua. Yeshua had her moved to my father’s house and put in my own bed there, and while the others waited by the door, I stayed next to him to help tend to her, full of remorse now that I had not shown Ribqah more comfort when I had had the chance. There was an abscess on her ankle where it seemed she’d suffered a bite of some sort, but when Yeshua went to lance it we saw it didn’t resemble the bite of anything that we knew except crudely, as if a thorn or spur of some kind had been taken to the place in imitation. Then we saw the purple stains on the skin there and also on her lips, the colour of the gall that grew among the rocks on the lakeshore.

  Yeshua opened her mouth. Her tongue was purpled like her lips, and bits of foliage still stained her teeth.

  Finally Yeshua said to me, She has poisoned herself.

  I was stunned. I couldn’t believe that I had been with her only the night before and had not seen the state of her mind, that she should have been driven to such a thing. I wondered how it could have been that she had admitted to me her pregnancy, yet I’d done nothing.

  I confessed to Yeshua then what she’d told me.

  You should have come to me at once, he said.

  I was afraid who the father might be.

  But he didn’t rebuke me for this.

  The father has already made himself known by his actions, he said, though at the time I didn’t understand his meaning.

  The others were still waiting outside the room. Yeshua said nothing to them of what we’d discovered, but it was clear he had lost heart now for his ministrations, merely kneeling at Ribqah’s side with her hands in his own. By now the poison seemed already well advanced—she had gone limp, as happened with gall, and had lost any sign of consciousness.

  Within the hour, she was dead. Yeshua wept.

  I did nothing for her, he said, and it seemed that all his mission was dismissed in this, for here was one he had apparently tried by every means to save yet she had taken her own life.

  I was hardly aware of what happened next. Yeshua said nothing to the others of how Ribqah had died and so left them believing she had suffered a bite of some sort; but because of this they couldn’t be any comfort to us, nor could they understand the strange mood we had fallen into. In our confusion, it was left to my mother to bring us back to our senses and arrange for the body to be dressed for burial. To the surprise of all of us, it was Yihuda who undertook to go into Tiberias to purchase linens, though in all his time with us I didn’t remember that he had exchanged so much as a word with Ribqah or shown the least awareness of her.

  By midday my father had returned, having learned of the tragedy on the road and hurried back to us. He took charge now of the preparations, sending for mourners and pipers. But to our bewilderment Yeshua said he wouldn’t accompany us to the burial.

  Surely you loved her enough to see her buried, my father said.

  I love the living, he said. I’m no use to the dead.

  What of the rest of us, one of the twelve asked.

  Do as you wish.

  Even I who knew the circumstances of Ribqah’s death didn’t know what to make of this—if it was a reproof to us or to Ribqah or simply that his grief had overwhelmed him. I would have welcomed his solace then, since I could not put from my mind my own guilt, which sounded in my head more loudly than the keening of the mourners.

  In the end we made a poor procession, with only a handful of the twel
ve and few from the town except my own family and Ribqah’s, her mother slack-faced with grief as if some of her had died along with her daughter. Urijah, though no one showed any remorse at this, could not be found; indeed, he had left town like a skulking dog at the first word of Ribqah’s death, nor had he dared to repeat any more his charges against Yeshua. By now it had also been discovered that the bag of coins he had returned contained barely a third of what he’d been given—no doubt he had already spent the rest, and had only made a show of returning the money intact to give credence to his accusations.

  My father had Ribqah put in our own family tomb, since her family had none and she would otherwise have had to be buried in the earth. We were all concerned over the matter of resurrection—Ribqah was one of the first of us who had died since we had come to Yeshua’s teachings, and we were unsure whether some different custom applied in the burial of her. Afterwards there were those who had the cruelty to mock us and say we should not have closed the tomb at all, but left it open for Ribqah to walk out of it. But I wondered if indeed we hadn’t failed in some important way and so doomed Ribqah to darkness, she whose life had already been one of perpetual dark.

  It wasn’t long before Yeshua’s enemies found the way to use Ribqah’s death against him, saying it was shame that had kept him from her funeral and a sign of his guilt that he had been unable to cure her, when he had worked so many other wonders. Then, only days after her burial, Urijah, who had not appeared again in Migdal but had several times been seen drunk in the streets of Tiberias, was found dead at the bottom of a cliff near the Tiberias gates. Whether he had merely stumbled to his death or willingly flung himself to it no one could say; but still there were many who were again ready to put the blame to Yeshua, saying it was grief over his daughter’s death that accounted for the thing. Those of us who knew Urijah, however, could not believe that grief was behind his actions. I began to think about what Yeshua had said of Ribqah’s pregnancy, and about Urijah’s behaviour, yet could hardly admit to my mind the conclusion that began to urge itself on me.