by Stant Litore
Those evenings spent in the People’s remembrances of David and Benaiah and Eleazar were the only moments of peace and wholeness in Yirmiyahu’s life since Miriam had gone. At these moments he felt something like happiness again.
Yet there would still be mornings when he woke shuddering from dreams filled with God’s quiet sobs, and as he lay breathing, he’d find himself whispering Miriam’s name, his face wet with tears.
He had sent her away. It was something he didn’t want to think about, but the memory of the pain in her eyes came to him when he wasn’t wary, in the moments before sleep or after waking, or worse—in the quiet hours between, when his dreaming self would walk through a wood of cedars, tall and dark, some forest of Lebanon in the north, a wild place. All through those trees he would hear her weeping, a sound that tore at him until he was frantic, his hair flying about his face as he leaped through the trees and underbrush but could never find her. A few times he thought he caught a glimpse of her from behind, a figure with long, unveiled hair and a dress the color of the sand; he would run for her, calling out, then awake before he reached her, his eyes opening at the very moment she turned to face him.
Now, in the well, where there were no mouths to feed, no kings to battle, no holy work that kept grief at bay, that memory found him and fastened to him like a great leech in the mud, and he lay against the wall as it drank from him.
As dawn slipped into his house with the sound of voices in the street on that last day, Yirmiyahu had lain beside his wife in their bed, his body sore and stiff, the wounds on his legs aching from the previous day’s stoning, though much relieved by Miriam’s ointment. The navi had watched her sleeping, her soft body, her graceful eyelids, the delicate curve of her jaw. He thought how beautifully she was made, how God, who had birthed her into the world, must have meant for the whole world to look like that, like her. At peace, glowing with beauty. Yirmiyahu smelled her hair and caressed the long strands of it. The navi’s task, he thought, in bringing God’s words to the People, was to call the People to be worthy of God, and worthy of such a woman as his wife, made in God’s likeness.
The first time he’d seen her, she was dancing in the barley during the Feast of Tents, with all about her the pavilions and booths of the People, and above her a night filled with stars. He had danced with her, and asked her name and her mother’s, and she had laughed when he told her he was a levite by birth, like her, for she did not believe him. After they danced they had kissed, and the touch of her lips on his left him dizzy, and when he stumbled back to his father’s tent he’d realized how sharp, how bright in color were the tents and the people and the wild thyme growing by the path.
The wedding bowl had cracked beneath their feet. He remembered how she had hummed as she moved about their first home in Anathoth, and the way she cried softly a few months later as she packed his levite’s robes and her green linen gown—a gift of her mother’s—for the long walk into the hills to Yerusalem. The words they’d spoken together when he came into the room to hold her. The soft warmth of her beside him as they finished the packing together.
They had gone in the summer, and on the first night of their journey, as they laid out their bedding beneath a stand of terebinths, the cicadas in the branches made a roar with their wings, a droning that drowned out all the world’s other sounds, wrapping husband and wife in a hum of privacy, the two of them alone together in the summer night. He remembered the gentleness of her kisses on his throat, the soft noises they had made together, the way she lay in his arms afterward and dreamed with him of children.
But they had also lost a child in this house, in this bed. That time Miriam had wakened in the chill hour before dawn to a flow of blood from her thighs, and her scream had awakened him. He’d held her, too numb for words, too shattered by the sight to rise and light the lamp; they wept together in the darkness of their small house. Everything in him had felt crushed and beaten by the sight of that blood. In this city the very bodies of women were violated and defiled in the narrow streets beneath the wall’s shadow; their very God was violated in the rape and desecration of those who bore her likeness. The city was desecrated, unable any longer to bear or sustain life, and the uncleanness and disease of the People had become so great that no house in Yerusalem could now be safe from its touch—even his own house, even his own bed.
At last he rose stiffly, gathered up the defiled sheets, and comforted his wife, though his breast felt hollow and empty as a dry well.
Things had been different after that. There had been a fierceness to her kisses, and a sorrow that welled up in both of them at times, so that they sat quietly by the cookpot some evenings without speaking. Some hoshekh had crept into their house.
And Miriam hadn’t conceived again, though she asked often for her husband’s touch and sometimes wept afterward; he, for his part, had felt an anxiety creeping upon him, fierce and bitter: a need to protect her. When he went out into the city with that grief behind his eyes, saw the sorrows around him, and when he went to the Temple to declare the words God had found for him, haranguing the priests on the white-baked stone steps, he felt keenly around him all the lives he was not doing enough for, but especially hers.
On that last morning of their lives together, Yirmiyahu lay beside her, his body bruised and battered, and thought of what must come. Those who had beaten him would seek her out as well. The night before, they had pursued him through the street even to the door of this house. He shuddered. His mind flinched at the thought of Miriam cast to the earth, bloodied and stoned. His heart pounded within him, his hands made fists around the bedding, and she stirred beside him at the movement. Yirmiyahu was breathing harshly. He searched inside his mind, frantic, maddened, like a man rushing about within a house with no windows and a lion barring the door, throwing himself bodily into one wall, then another, searching for some other exit. But there was no other. There was only one.
“What is wrong?” Her voice beside him was soft with sleep.
He relaxed his hands, and calm came over him, cold as winter. There was only one door in this house. He accepted it. He had to, because he was not strong enough to bear seeing her body broken in the dust, beaten and torn by jagged stones. He rolled to his side and then got to his feet, not looking at her. He couldn’t, not yet. “Get dressed,” he said, his voice cool and distant.
“Yirmiyahu?” Worry in her voice.
He moved about the small, lovely house, slowly but with purpose. He took out the little wooden box in which he kept his coin and spread a woolen cloak beside it, a winter garment he hadn’t needed to wear in months. He opened the box and emptied it out, all of it. A music of metal, coins clacking against each other and then thudding into soft, heavy wool. He let his hand rest for a moment on the empty box; his eyes traced its ornate carvings. It was a rich little thing, a parting gift from his grandmother when he left Anathoth. It had been in the family, she’d said. “Your mother’s mother’s mother’s mother’s mother kept her little wooden gods inside it.” The skin around her eyes had crinkled with amusement. “If my parents had not betrothed me to a levite,” she said, “I might still be keeping little wooden gods inside it. But it has been consecrated for other uses now.”
Yirmiyahu trailed his fingers across the little coins. Few enough, yet more than many in the city had. Keeping them in the box—was that another idolatry? Had there been moments when these coins had been to him like small metal gods? Governing his life, choosing his paths for him? Had he prized comfort and this little house with his wife more than his responsibility as navi? If the navi was to urge the People to become worthy of women like his wife, he must throw himself even in the path of stones. He could not do that here, in this house, where some stones might fly past him and strike his wife.
For the briefest moment, his hand stilled over the coins. His heart raced. He thought of bowing before the priests, wearing again the white robes. Residing in safety in this home with Miriam, until their lives were blessed at las
t with children. This would mean refusing to be navi, turning a deaf ear to God’s cries in the night for the lovers who’d forsaken her. Yet even if he could do that thing, even if it were possible to shut out the voice of God, he could not do that and remain himself, remain true. Uprooted from truth and Covenant, he would be a man he reviled, a man who disgusted him, a man who could ignore the bruises on the thighs of children and the screams at the summit of Tophet. In time, even Miriam would revile him if he broke Covenant with God, if he became that man.
His lips thinned, and he wrapped the wool around the coins and knotted the cloak tightly to keep them from spilling. He did not need them. He would leave that box empty and let God fill it with her invisible but fertile presence, as she did the Ark in the Temple, leaving no space for other things. Compared with what else Yirmiyahu was giving up this day, these little coins were trivial, quaint objects—curiosities that others had attached importance to, as he himself once had—but in the final measure of little worth.
He felt a touch on his shoulder, a soft hand. He drew in a shuddering breath and blinked back hot tears. He didn’t turn to look at her, and his voice was gruff. “I am hated here.” His rough hand closed over her smaller one, gripped for a moment, one warm squeeze, and then he removed her hand from his shoulder and got to his feet. His body ached with soreness. “I cannot have you killed with stones in my place, and I cannot say what things God will need me to do, what angers I will provoke in the city.” He left the cloak full of coins at his feet and moved to the urn of water that stood near their bedding; he felt her eyes on him as he took up a waterskin—the large goatskin bag he used when he had a long walk to make—and dipped it in the urn, filling it. In the dim light, the reflection of his face was just a shadow on the water; the water was cool and wet on his hands. He stood bent over the urn for a long moment, just breathing. Unwilling yet to lift his head and face her.
“My husband?” That quiver in her voice caught at him. “You are frightening me.”
He couldn’t delay this. “The coins are for you,” he said, his voice rough. “You must go. I will sell the house and send the money after you.” He straightened and took up the waterskin. “I am going out to hire a few guardsmen to keep you safe on the road to Anathoth.”
“Anathoth?” The word was almost a scream. Suddenly he felt her touch at his waist, her arms moving to hold him; he shrugged her off and strode toward the door, halted at her cry.
“But you cannot send me away! I am your wife!”
Swiftly, she came before him and knelt; in her eyes burned a panic too fierce for words. “Please,” she wept. “Please, do not put me away, Yirmiyahu. Husband! I have been with you—in everything—suffering with you. Does it mean nothing to you?”
Yirmiyahu groaned and bent swiftly, taking her arms and pulling her to her feet. He had never seen her so helpless before, not even when she’d lost the child. Never seen her kneel or seen her eyes overfill so openly with tears. She did not even turn away her head; she just looked at him.
Something inside him choked off all words, all explanations. None of them were sufficient or could ever be. None of them could speak his heart to her. He held her eyes with his. “I have to keep you safe.”
“Not like this,” she whispered. Her eyes flickered with understanding and with terrible grief.
“It will be all right. Miriam.” His hands trembled where they grasped her arms. He forced the words out: “I free you of your bond to me, though there is no priest here to affirm it or record it. Go where you will. Be safe, my beloved.”
She just gazed at him; it was as though she’d been struck across the face and was now holding terribly still. He gripped her arms once, then released her, turned from her. He felt the burn in his eyes and feared he would weep, too. If he did, he would not be able to refrain from embracing her, from begging her forgiveness for this thing he had to do, this thing he must do to keep her safe.
Anger roared up inside him, a lion turned loose; he went to the door, threw it open, and strode through. She did not move or cry out his name, but he felt her gaze on him. He walked out into the street and then on into the tangle of the city, uncaring of where his feet might take him, leaving the house behind. His heart burned within him. He could not keep her here. He could not.
But how he’d wounded her!
As the lily among the thorns, his love, and he’d—
With a snarl, he quickened his pace until he was almost running. There were curses hurled after him as he jostled his way through the people in the street—the sweaty, reeking river of the living who made the rough stones of the street smooth with their hundreds of feet. He needed to find guardsmen he could hire, but first he craved only a moment alone, to breathe, to—
He threw himself into a side alley and against the shaded clay wall of a shop. Slammed his open palms against it. “God!” he shrieked. “God!”
Sobs grabbed hold of his chest and squeezed his breath and his life into something as small and tense as a wrung towel; he cried and beat at the wall; he fought for breath in small gasps. When he could he screamed again: “God!”
A hot wind blew down the street; he didn’t heed the glances of passersby who covered their faces with their hoods or street veils, if they were women, and hurried past. For a moment he felt the warm breath of the air on his skin and at his ear, like God’s breath. I am with you always, the breath whispered. Even now, even now, Yirmiyahu.
“I have broken covenant with my wife,” Yirmiyahu whispered back, a moan rising in his throat. “I have broken covenant with my wife.”
The wind brought no answer to his ears or to his heart.
Yirmiyahu slid to his knees and leaned his head against the wall, pressing the side of his face against the cool clay. His shoulders shook, and he spent the rest of the day there.
Yirmiyahu’s head jerked up. With terrible lucidity, he saw the mud in the well, the cold walls, felt the thirst in his throat. Panic seized him. He was going to die here.
With a cry, he forced himself to his feet, though the exertion threw him into such dizziness that he thought he’d vomit. His stomach heaving, he faced the wall, searching with his fingers. Stone, mortared and polished smooth by long years of holding water. His fingertips found small cracks, tiny ledges; gasping, he gripped them. Wrenched his foot from the mud with a sound like something spewed from the stomach of a sea creature. His numb toes slid along the stones. Whimpering and muttering, he tried to pull himself up by his fingertips, thinking his toes might find some higher purchase.
Nothing. He lost his grip and slid into the mud, his fingers badly scraped. He moaned and beat the wall with his hands. Bent his head, his forehead against smooth stone. Breathing hard, he muttered a quick, urgent prayer. He’d been taught that God was to be found in all the depths of the earth, in every place. She must be here, too. Though one of his eyes was swollen too dry to make tears, Yirmiyahu wept and begged.
Why had God let him be cast in here? How terribly had he failed as her navi? Had she utterly left the city, driven from it by the desecration of her children?
He quieted, listened. He heard only his own panting in the horrible silence of the well.
Roaring hoarsely, he lurched to his feet again, scrambled at the wall, fighting it in a panic, reaching for holds, anything. He got his toes into a crevice no wider than a coin, reached for a higher handhold, pressing his fingertips against the stone, wheezing as he searched. Nothing—nothing! His calf trembled from the strength it took to keep gripping the rock with his toes. He reached farther over his head, then groped far to the left, then to the right along the smooth stone. He found shallow impressions in the rock, nothing he could use to pull himself up. Tilting back his head, he gazed at the circle of daylight far above him. Almost more than anything else, more than water or food, he wanted that light. He wanted to stand in an open place, tilt back his head, and feel the sun’s heat on his eyelids. He howled, a bestial cry of need that echoed in the well but brought no ans
wer.
His leg gave out; he collapsed, fell over one of the corpses, shoved himself off it in horror. Losing his balance, he tumbled to the side, plunging his face into the dark, sucking mud. A moment of desperate terror, then he lifted his head and got to a crouch and pressed his back to the stone wall, his knees drawn up. Frantic, he scrubbed mud from his face with the heels of his hands. His eyes stung as he wiped the muck from them. The rot in the well assailed his nostrils anew; he beat at his face with his hands, moaning. He was alone, alone. He would die here. He drew his knees close and shut his eyes, praying again, muttering. “We are the People of the Covenant,” he rasped. “Made in the likeness of God.” Tapped the back of his head against the wall, as a child does when frustrated, a child who is too young to speak. “We are the People of the Covenant,” he groaned, “the spouse of the Giver of Life. None of us lost, none of us forgotten. We are her own.”
He fell silent, listened for some trace of that small whisper of God. Then prayed again. He kept tapping his head against the stone.
Darkness again.
He blinked his eyes but could not see. He tried to cry out—adonai, adonai, my God, my God—but his throat was too parched. He was shivering, though he felt hot as an iron blade set too near a fire. He touched his skin with fingers caked with mud; he burned. He became aware of wetness about his belly and sides; he was sitting slumped in the mud, leaning forward over his knees with his feet planted on what must be sound earth under the mud. Only that position and the cramped immobility of his bent legs was keeping him upright.
