Testament

by Nino Ricci

  It was Shimon who told Yeshua what had fallen out with regard to Chizkijah. But Yeshua said he had learned of his death on the road the previous day and had mourned it, and would not say any more on the matter. The truth was that even in the midst of our troubles Yeshua had not suffered us to say any word against Chizkijah, as if he were simply some follower who had strayed rather than a man bent on our destruction. At the time we hadn’t understood him; but now it seemed as if all along he had seen the truest course, that it was not by enmity that Chizkijah would be won to us in the end but by our example.

  It was clear, however, that there was something changed in Yeshua as a result of what we’d been through, some small hardening in him as in iron that had passed through the fire. Simon the Canaanite told how he had seen huge ghosts in Yeshua’s company on Mount Hermon, and how Yeshua himself had stood transfigured and white as if the very light of the Lord had glowed inside him. But I thought that the Lord’s light could also be the dark one of a smithy, and his crucible searing. So we had passed through a difficult trial and survived, and proved our worth. Yet it seemed also that a great deal had been lost to us or taken away, and with little solace.

  It wasn’t long before we discovered that Yihuda had truly left us. A stranger had come in search of him, as we heard, putting himself out as one of his family; and they had set off together on the southern road. Then the days and the weeks went by, and we had no news of him. We knew this was his way, to come and go as he pleased without any word to us. Yet there seemed a finality to his departure, for it had been many months now that he had not been comfortable among us.

  I was surprised that we didn’t feel any great relief at his going. But while it was the case that none of us had come to love him, still we had grown accustomed to him. Through Yeshua’s eyes we saw how it was a defeat for us that he’d gone.

  We won’t fill the place he has left, he said, to remind us always of the one we couldn’t win over.

  And though we were more at ease now and freer in our questions, since we didn’t have Yihuda to show up our ignorance, we also understood more clearly, from the general agreement among us and the lack of debate, how unreflecting and small we often were in our own thoughts.

  Now that Yeshua had been vindicated his followers were anxious to make amends with him. So the crowds began to approach their former size, and those who had avoided him tried to find the way to show their love. But Yeshua held back, and often when he came to a town, he came quietly so that instead of preaching to the crowd he might go to some small gathering of those who he remembered had stayed true to him even in adversity. It was also at this time that he began to travel across the lake into the Decapolis, finding the people there, both the pagans and the Jews, less obstinate and more open-hearted than the Galileans. He went to Gergesa and Hippus and even as far as Gadara and the villages thereabouts; and the crowds would come down from the hills at the sight of his boat to await him on the shore. Many there were like children in their beliefs, for even the Jews of those parts had fallen into superstitions and worshipped Baal or Augustus, as the Romans had decreed. Thus Yeshua’s words were a tonic to them, and many people were converted. Some had never heard of the one true God, and were amazed to learn of him, and it seemed to me that these were the ones that Yeshua held most dear, those pagans who were won over from black ignorance.

  Then one day a teacher came to us from Judea, a certain Yehoceph of Ramathaim, who said he had heard talk of Yeshua and wished to see him with his own eyes. He was an old man long gone grey and, as we heard, much respected in his town and in Jerusalem, where he taught and where he had known the teacher Hillel. He spent many days with us, going around to the towns as Yeshua preached and often talking with him at the lakeshore into the night until the rest of us had fallen asleep or returned to our homes. He put questions to Yeshua that those of us among the twelve could hardly fathom, about God and our will and on points of law. It humbled me when I heard them—I had never given any thought to the matters they spoke of though they seemed of such importance, and I understood then how we too were like children for Yeshua, and how he missed Yihuda, for he had been the only one of us who could challenge him.

  After Yehoceph had been with us for many days, he came to some of us among the twelve and said our master was graced by God, and would prove a great leader for the Jews.

  Philip said, What do the people say of him in Jerusalem.

  They hardly know of him in Jerusalem, Yehoceph said, which again surprised us.

  As Yehoceph put it, the Judeans paid no attention to what happened in the Galilee, because they believed nothing good came from there. But it was an evil time now in Judea, since the people no longer respected the priests, who thought only of their own gain, and so followed leaders who bent them on madness or worse.

  So you must lead Yeshua to us, he said, to spread his own mission there.

  How can we lead him when he always follows his own mind, Shimon said.

  You have to find the way.

  We didn’t know what to make of Yehoceph’s request. Clearly he had also put it to Yeshua and Yeshua had refused him, or he would not have come to us to sway him. But we were loath to be the instruments by which Yeshua would be sent away from us. Shimon said it was selfishness to think in this way, and that we must find every means for spreading Yeshua’s teaching. Yet even in his own voice we saw that he couldn’t bear that Yeshua should leave us.

  There were some among the twelve, however, who began to think of their own glory, imagining the fame that would come to them for leading Yeshua into Jerusalem.

  Thaddaios said, The Judeans will bow to the Galileans when they see the teacher we’ve brought, though he had been among the first to think of deserting Yeshua during his trials. And some of the others were swayed by him, believing that Yeshua would take them with him. We women, however, knowing that we would be left behind, argued fiercely against the thing. In any event, it was well known that the Judeans were even more stiff-necked than the Galileans, and so would be hard to win over, and also that the Romans of Judea slaughtered holy men as easily as thieves, to keep them from becoming leaders.

  In the end it was Yeshua himself who cleared our minds, calling us together and asking us each in turn if he should accept Yehoceph’s invitation. So he went around the circle, and one said that Jerusalem was the centre for the Jews, and so he should go, and another that he had won all the glory that he could among the Galileans, and another that it was always of Jerusalem that people spoke when they spoke of the best teachers.

  When it was my own turn to speak, however, I said, You came to us because we needed you, while the Judeans have many teachers and schools.

  I was sure I would be reprimanded for speaking selfishly. But Yeshua said, You’re right to say that, because you talk about need while the men only talk about glory.

  What about the needs of the Judeans, Philip said, who are being led astray.

  If they have many teachers and still go astray, it’s a matter of will, not of need, Yeshua said.

  So we put the question from us for the time and said nothing more about Jerusalem. Yet it seemed a restlessness had come to Yeshua, and that he was tired of his old battles and of all the intrigues he was subject to in Galilee. For many days at a time now he would be gone into the territory of the Gadarenes or even of the Samaritans, taking only some of the men with him, while at home he seldom went into the towns where he used to preach any more except to go to those houses he knew, otherwise wandering the countryside and sleeping the night in the open like a herdsman. People said that a madness had come into him, since he often went without shoes and stayed in the cold and ate or not as the spirit moved him. But in his words he had remained lucid and clear, and no one could mistake him.

  When the year of Jubilee was pronounced, some of those who liked to make trouble for us came asking if all debts should be forgiven and all the slaves set free like the old laws said, though no one followed them. To put them in thei
r place, Yeshua answered that indeed the laws should be respected, if there was anyone who had the courage to do so, since just as God gave forgiveness to everyone who asked it, so should we. Among his followers, however, he said that the biggest debts to be forgiven were not for this or that sum of money but rather the grievances and hates we bore against other people, and so we should take the Jubilee as the chance to clear ourselves of all our jealousies and hatreds. It seemed to me this was his calling to us to move past the troubles that had beset us on Chizkijah’s account, and how we had been divided then and perhaps still bore a sense of accusation against those who had gone against us.

  Because of the Jubilee there were many Galileans who planned to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover. For our part, we dared not ask Yeshua to lead us, because he had always disdained to; but then it happened that Yehoceph of Ramathaim sent a messenger to us to invite Yeshua to join him at the feast. We knew he had invited him in the hope of tempting him, and so were very surprised when Yeshua accepted the invitation—surely, we thought, he had not forgotten his decision, that he would remain with us. When some of us pressed him on the matter, he dismissed our concerns and said it would be rudeness in him to refuse the man’s hospitality.

  Yet you refuse your followers when they ask you to lead them, Shimon said.

  Then they shall follow me to Jerusalem, Yeshua said, and be the guarantors of my return.

  As he had never before led us in pilgrimage, we were unsure now whether he meant the offer in earnest or in jest.

  We asked if we should spread the word among his followers, but he would not put the thing clearly.

  You may say I have been invited, he said, and they may come as my own guests.

  So what ought to have been a cause for rejoicing among us instead only caused confusion, for though we were going to Jerusalem, still Yeshua refused to lead us, nor would he calm our fears with regard to Yehoceph’s offer to him.

  I couldn’t put from my mind how Yehoceph had said that Yeshua would be a great leader to our people. Indeed this was what we ourselves had imagined when he had first come to us, that he would grow famous and be a leader to those who had none. Yet at every instance he had put off the claims of leadership, and said how only the Lord was master, and how even the prophets had not sought to lead but only to speak their minds. So I could not figure what lay ahead for him, and if he put off leadership because we had not shown ourselves worthy of him or if we were only the stepping stone for some other greatness that must come to him. I remembered a visit I had made to Jerusalem as a child, and how wondrous the place had seemed, the seat of every eminence and marvel the world might offer up. Surely, I thought, it was in such a place that the greatness of Yeshua would be made manifest, a place of learning and of God himself, and not amongst the miserable backward towns of the Galilee.

  It would have been fitting for Yeshua and the man that he was that he should have gone into Jerusalem in glory, and trailed with him all those who had known his cures or been saved by his charity or affected by his words. Yet as the day for our departure approached and people began to gather with their baskets and tents on the hill above Kefar Nahum, we saw that for all the hundreds and thousands who had called themselves followers when it suited them, it was only those closest to us who had joined us. So the ingot had been fired, and the dross skimmed off until only the ore remained. In the time since Yeshua had come to us we had seen our fortunes rise and fall, and the days when the crowds had filled the hilltops and those when we were only a handful. And yet it was a fact that from the start Yeshua had never concerned himself with the numbers that had come, but only with whether they were true.

  I often remembered the first days that Yeshua had been among us, and how it had seemed then that I must burst with the newness of the vision he had offered us. My head was full of questions then, because he had awakened an aliveness in me I had not felt, so that it came to my mind to wonder at everything I looked at. But over time it seemed the questions had come down to a single one, which was what manner of man was this, to so affect me, that I would have abandoned every desire had he asked it of me except the one, which was to be near him. Even his enemies granted the power of him, if only in the force with which they opposed him; for if what he said was nothing, as they claimed, and made no logic or sense, they would merely have dismissed him with their silence and not their shouts. Thus it was that everyone who heard him or laid eyes on him formed an image of him, and believed him a holy man or a madman, a heretic or a sage, with deepest certainty. Yet I who was among those closest to him, who’d been embraced by him and had walked with him by the lake, could not say what it was that formed him, and indeed as the days passed and the weeks and the years, only knew him less. So he seemed like a glimpse I’d had of something that I could not put a name to, and which always slipped from my gaze before I had a chance to know it, like the great bird I had seen as a child when I travelled into the mountains and imagined a god.

  BOOK III

  MIRYAM, HIS MOTHER

  AS A CHILD I lived in Jerusalem, this in the time of Herod who was called the Great. Through many favours my father had gained a place at court, as a clerk, and he began to think how he might further advance our family’s fortunes by making a good marriage for me.

  Even in those days there were many Romans who passed through the court, soldiers and officials who came down from Syria or Caesarea, which Herod had built, or even from Rome. One of these, a legate awaiting orders, my father befriended and presented me to, leaving us several times alone. In the end, because I was young and did not know better and because he threatened me with harm, I was forced to yield to him. I was never able to forget the smell of him—he did not smell like a Jew but had a perfumed odour underlain with a stench like rancid fat. After that time I was able to bear many things, because I knew always that the worst thing was behind me.

  The legate did not take me as his wife as my father had planned, but abandoned me the moment he had received his commission. When he had gone it grew clear that I was with child, and so was disgraced. My father beat me when he discovered this, though as I said to him, It was you who put me in his way, which silenced him. To save me then from being outcast he began to search for a husband for me, asking among the lower orders, for surely no one of our own station would have had me.

  As it happened there was a mason employed at the temple works by the name of Yehoceph who was in search of a wife. He was an old man, three times my years, who had put another wife away from him for barrenness and did not want to repeat his error. So it was an advantage to him that I was with child, because I had proved myself fertile, and also that I was young, being not yet fifteen years. Nonetheless, to make up for the dishonour of me and the expense of being saddled with a child not his own, he asked much above the usual dowry, all in coin, and offered no bride price. It cost my father all his small fortune to satisfy him, in which however I took some bitter consolation, for he had ruined my life in the hope of advancing his own ambitions.

  We were married quickly, at Bet Lehem, which was Yehoceph’s town. Of my family, only my father and mother were present and my brothers and sisters, who were young and did not understand why matters had been done in such haste, and with such unhappiness. They thought that surely Yehoceph must be the groom’s father when they saw him, so ancient did he look, and I confess how my own heart fell at the sight of him, for I had not so much as laid eyes on him until then. It was the hardness of him that I could not bear—he seemed made of the same stone that he worked in. I was in the full flower of youth then, and had had my hopes, only to be coupled to such hard, unyielding flesh. However, that first night he came to me and said that because he judged me unclean, he would not lie with me or put any hand on me until I had brought forth my child, for which I was grateful.

  We shared a house with his brothers. Though Yehoceph was the eldest, he was the only one without sons and so had taken for himself the poorest quarters, which were no more t
han a cavern cut out of a rock face that rose up at the back of the courtyard. In Jerusalem, living near the palace, we had thought ourselves poor because of the many riches that surrounded us, and that we had no part of. But the floors had been tiled at least, and the walls plastered and adorned, while here there was nothing between us and the earth, and we lived no better than the animals in the stable.

  Until I had given birth I was not allowed so much as to step out from the house’s gate, to keep hidden the untimeli-ness of my condition. So day and night were spent in the gloomy damp of our cave, without company since the wives of Yehoceph’s brothers would hardly deign to address me and also kept their children from me. Yehoceph neither encouraged them in this nor reprimanded them, and so behaved, as he no doubt imagined, with fairness. It was exactly this fairness in him that most embittered me—for instance, he said to me that until I had produced an heir for him he would use no part of my dowry except to pay whatever expenses we incurred for the child I produced, so that the dowry would remain intact should he need to return me to my family. Thus he made clear to me that I was no more than a slave he had hired to make his heirs, and that he was ready to put me away from him as he had his first wife should I fail him in this. Never once did he ask after the father of the child I carried. But I imagined this was not to spare me embarrassment but only to keep me from plying him in any way for forgiveness.

  In any event, I saw him but a few moments in a day at the time, since in the mornings he left an hour before dawn to make his way to the temple works and in the evenings did not return until well after dark. As I was not allowed to prepare any food but my own, he took his evening meal with his brothers, and so by the time he came back to me in our hovel he was ready for sleep. Once, I remember, he brought a fig for me that he had purchased somewhere on the road, and for a moment then my heart softened to him and I asked him how his work had been, and how the temple progressed. But mostly I kept myself hard to him, out of pride: he thought himself my saviour, I imagined, but was only ignorant and ungenerous and dull-minded. It didn’t occur to me in those days that he might fear me—I was a child, after all, what power could I have over him. Not the power of the flesh, surely, for he had held true to his word to lay no hand on me, and not once even in accident had his skin touched mine. Even the fig he had brought me he set between us for me to collect, lest our fingers brush each other’s. It was the sort of man that he was, or seemed to me then, scrupulous like someone who had room in his thoughts for only a single notion.