by Stant Litore
When Bar Nahemyah and other young men, ten or twelve, began bringing bodies down to the shore and laying them out in a long line on the sand, Shimon watched without speaking. The sight of the corpses was horrible, yet he neither flinched nor looked away; he felt detached, as though this were happening on some other shore and not here. He could see the rise and fall of their chests; these bodies still breathed. Their faces were flushed with fever, and they bore terrible wounds on their faces or their arms. Bites. Some had been torn open, and those were pale as though emptied out. Shimon bar Yonah knew some of them. There were old men and young, old women and young women, nearly a hundred. And among them, a few mercenaries, some dark-skinned, some olive, some white. Hired swords from every part of the Roman world, broken away from their brothers and then reassembled into a unit that could be put to the use of Empire, fighting for coin and glory rather than any bonds of blood or kin or covenant. Shimon did not understand how such a thing could be.
“Shalom, Bar Yonah. Will you aid me?” Bar Nahemyah called to him. He had the eyes of a man who did not remember sleep or rest, and so would not seek either. Gore had spattered his storm-coat.
“I have to wait for father,” Shimon said, his voice distant. “He’ll need me.”
“All Kfar Nahum needs you, every man who still breathes.” Bar Nahemyah’s voice was low and intense. He swept out his arm, indicating the line of unconscious bodies. “By noon all of these will be dead, and some will have risen, and they will hunger. They will want to eat our People, what is left of our People, our kin. Look at them. Romans and heathen, and our own brothers, our own sisters gone from us. Every one of these will kill. But that is not going to happen. Let us have justice. I will see that these unclean monsters suffer for all time, for what they have done this night. For Ahava my beloved. For our fathers and our children dead.”
But Shimon had turned his head back to the sea, whose waves were louder in his ears than Bar Nahemyah’s impassioned words.
When he said nothing, the other man’s eyes flashed hot with anger. “Your father understood justice,” he cried. “He would have helped me.”
Shimon felt no guilt. His whole heart was pulled by the emptiness of the sea, and he felt tugged beneath waves of dark terror. He gazed out desperately for some sight of his father’s boat that he could cling to.
Bar Nahemyah’s face hardened. He turned away.
There was the sound of Bar Nahemyah exhorting the other youths, a drone in Shimon’s ears. Then cries as other young men came down to the shore. Yakob the priest’s son was with them, and he exchanged harsh words with Bar Nahemyah. Heated voices. A fight broke out, men beating each other, some to protect their ill, others to seek vengeance for the eaten. For a few beats of the heart, men fought on the sand over the bodies of the dying. Still Shimon ignored them.
In the end, a few ran back to the town, led by the priest’s son. The others turned the bodies onto their bellies and bound their ankles. They took cloths and filled these with stones from the shore, then knotted up the cloths and bound those to the ankles of the bitten. One after another they lifted the feverish bodies, one youth at the head and one at the feet, and carried them into the boats, piling them atop each other like fish. And when there were no more, the boats slipped from the shore, each with two youths at the oars, their eyes hot. Shimon felt a dull horror as he watched the boats grow smaller on the waves.
Those in the boats were not dead. They lived. They breathed … though none of them were awake or aware, and none would survive the morning. Dimly, Shimon understood that Bar Nahemyah meant to toss them into the sea, that there would be no tombs on the hill for these. Yet the horror of it was something outside of him, like water beating against a rock; the horror inside of him, the memory of the blood on his father’s hand, the frantic look in his father’s eyes—that was far more personal and overwhelming.
Behind him, the priest’s son came running back with Zebadyah his father panting behind him. Perhaps the priest had been searching again among the tents and ruins for survivors; it had taken Yakob a while to find him.
And now it was too late.
When Zebadyah reached the shore, he broke to his knees in the sand, his eyes wild. He screamed at the retreating boats: “No! Come back! Bar Nahemyah, come back! The dead must be buried! They must be buried! The Law! Come back!”
But no answer was called back over the water, and none of the boats turned its bow.
Shimon felt someone beside him, and though he didn’t turn, he knew by the sound of the youth’s breathing that Yakob was there.
“Amma is in the house,” Shimon said. He kept his eyes on the water.
“Yohanna and I will bring her water,” Yakob promised. He stood by Shimon a moment, seeming to understand why his friend was here, and whether because he could not think of something to say or because he knew that there wasn’t anything to say, he spoke no word but only gripped Shimon’s shoulder. Then he turned and went to help his father up from the sand. The strength seemed gone from Zebadyah’s limbs; his face glistened with tears.
Numb inside, Shimon gazed always past the boats out across the empty sea, looking for one boat, one boat that had set out in the dark and not returned.
Somewhere out in the middle of the water, as the sun rose hot over the sea, the youths set aside their oars and stood, their legs spread wide for balance as the boats rocked. They lifted the bodies over the gunwales and slid them, one after the other, into the cool womb of the sea. The wrath Shimon had seen in the youths’ eyes as they set out made the reason for their act clear. The young men knew the bodies would rise, and the memory of the dead devouring their village during the night was bitter in their minds and hot in their hearts. They needed someone to suffer for what had been done, for the kin who had been eaten, for the kin who were dying now. They needed to take an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. They could not make the Romans suffer; the Romans were gone, eaten or fled. They could not make the dead who’d attacked suffer; for they had been destroyed during the night and the dawn that followed, by Roman swords or Hebrew fishing spears or by Bar Nahemyah’s hammer and stone. But these bodies that lay now in their boats would become eaters, too. Unless speared through the brow or burned with fire, they would walk and moan for years, feeding on the People.
Or—dropped into the sea, their ankles bound, these new dead would writhe in the water, without food, without breath, their moans heard only by the fish. They could be made to suffer. The youths hoped this fiercely, and like the heathen tribes from whom their fathers had wrested the land many centuries before, they gave their dead to the sea. Not in reverence but in fury and a longing to forget. A punishment meted out, justice done, and the pain of that night would lie beneath the waves, never to be spoken of.
Afterward, as they beached the boats and walked back to the town, each of the young men spoke quietly to himself.
My father died in a storm at sea, one man whispered.
My brother perished in his boat, another said.
My wife was drowned.
My sisters were taken by the waves.
My friend, my beautiful friend, perished in a fishing accident.
It was easier that way.
All those whispers of fear and forgetting. Even a century later, travelers along that shore would claim that they could hear those whispers on the wind among the tombs.
But on the shore, Shimon still stood on the sand. He stood there throughout the day, unmoving, thinking neither of food nor rest. Just watching the sea. When the tide came up to his feet, he looked at the water’s edge lapping his sandals and realized his throat was scorched with thirst. Crouching, he cupped his hands in the water and lifted some to his mouth, but he kept his eyes on the sea, like Gideon’s men drinking while watching the far ridge for the coming of the dead in the old story.
Afterward he walked above the tideline where the boats were moored. After the violence of the previous night, many of these boats no longer had owners, and their
nets lay in them unused and unnoticed like dry leaves. Shimon stood among the derelicts and watched the sun set on the water, a fire as though God had seen that the land was defiled and had decided to burn it away and start anew.
Then the sun was gone and it was dark and there were stars, and no moon rose. Yet, by starlight, Shimon could see one boat coming back, a dark, low shape on the water. No splash of the oars. Just drifting in on the tide. Yet Shimon knew whose boat it was. The youths’ boats had all returned in the late morning after giving their cargo to the sea, and no fishers had set out with their nets this night. As the boat neared, Shimon could see that a single figure sat on the bench, its hands in its lap. A dark silhouette.
“Abba!” he called softly. “Father!”
The figure rose unsteadily to its feet, making the boat rock on the tide. Shimon heard its low moan of longing and hunger, loud over the water.
After a moment he covered his ears, his cheeks moist with tears or mist from the sea, but he could still hear it, he could still see that boat sliding in.
EPISODE 3
AN EVENING VISITOR
Rahel’s husband had been dead four nights when there came a knock at her door.
A knock at the door, a strong fist, but the knocking was too urgent, as though the man demanding entrance was uneasy, uncertain of himself. Rahel lifted her face from where she knelt in the atrium with her husband’s tallit across her knees and the baby sleeping in his basket beside her, and for a moment she considered not answering.
Again the knocking, insistent.
She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, breathed deeply a moment, then folded the prayer shawl carefully and rose to her feet, the tallit still in her hand. She moved toward the door.
There were too few of them left to ignore each other.
That, and she couldn’t quite escape the candle-flicker of hope in her heart. She had seen her husband’s corpse, had confronted him on the sands. It couldn’t be him at the door.
And yet.
She found that she was running. She leapt from the atrium into the antechamber at the old door, and quickly tugged at the bolt. Unlatching the door and letting it creak open, she found herself confronting the priest. Zebadyah’s face was strained and pale—he hadn’t slept in several nights, perhaps—but his eyes were hard with purpose
“Shalom,” he said.
“Shalom,” Rahel whispered.
They stared at each other, one of those silences that are both uncomfortable to keep and uncomfortable to break. Shalom had always been their traditional greeting in Kfar Nahum, a wish for peace and a plea for peace. Not a Roman peace, not pax or order, the absence of conflict. No, Hebrew peace, wholeness, a community living and thriving together.
How empty that wish now seemed.
“Do you want to come in, Bar Yesse?” Rahel said at last. A week ago it would have been unthinkable to her to open her door to a man who was not her husband when no one else was home. But the pain in Zebadyah’s eyes called to her, and he was at least a survival of her husband, in some small part. And the days were brutal on her heart, alone in her house with her children. The house was strange to her now, for it had too many empty and silent spaces.
Zebadyah’s face became stern. “I have come to offer you my home.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You were my brother’s wife.”
Her eyes burned and she blinked quickly. It would be unbearable, weeping when her door was open and her face visible to the street.
“Now you are alone and you have a son—”
“I have two sons.” Rahel’s throat tightened. Such had been her grief that she’d had little time to fear, either for herself or Koach. Now all the fears came rushing in.
“You were my brother’s wife, now his widow. You have a son who is too young for the boats. When a man dies and his sons are not old enough to feed his house, the Law tells us his brother’s duty is to take his wife and provide for her, and to take her gladly to his bed to give her more sons in his brother’s name, so that his brother’s line might not die out from our land. All my life I have kept the Law. I will not fail to keep it now.” His voice turned gentle. “I had not planned to seek a second wife, but if I had, I could not have hoped to find one lovelier. My brother chose well.”
“No,” Rahel whispered. “This can’t be.”
Zebadyah’s face darkened. “Don’t make this harder than it is, woman. I grieve for him, too. But the winter is on us, and there isn’t much time.”
Rahel shook her head and began to swing the door shut, but Zebadyah blocked it with his hand and leaned into it, holding it open against her. She took a step back, but he followed, and then his hands were gripping her arms just below the shoulders, firmly. An echo of her husband’s strength. She gazed up at his face with wide eyes. She felt small and caught—by him, by the Law, by her bereavement. As though it were not his hands that held her but God’s, pitiless and demanding. God’s hands that demanded that she live a certain way, fulfill commitments that were made before her grandmothers’ grandmothers were born, and always without any sure promise from God beneath her feet, only shifting sand, pulled out from under her by the vanishing tide.
“I will treat you and Shimon well, and Cheleph’s son also,” he said quietly. “I loved Yonah. I will not let his widow starve alone in this house.”
“What about the baby?” She just managed to get the words out.
Pain in his eyes. “You know what has to be done.”
“No.”
“We will talk about it later. Come to my house. There are witnesses there already. You will eat well tonight, and you will have a warm bed.”
“Your bed,” she choked.
He gave a small nod.
“And my son? Will you have someone just take him out to the midden, leave him there? To die?” Her voice rose, shrill.
He was quiet a moment and she tried to twist away, but he held her fast.
“We tried to follow only those parts of the Law that were easy. And look what happened. You have duties, Rahel, even as I do.”
“Don’t call me that.” Her heart beat a panic drum against her breast.
“I am trying to help, woman! You are my responsibility—I am trying to help.” He pulled her to him quickly and kissed her. She stiffened as his mouth covered hers. Warm and moist and so different from Yonah’s. The kiss was rough yet there was something tentative in it, as though he were a man never completely sure of himself. For a heartbeat or two she permitted it, still in shock. Then her stomach turned and she shoved her hands against his chest, turning her head away. “No,” she gasped.
“Rahel,” Zebadyah said quietly.
“I was his, and I will die his,” she said.
“Rahel.”
“You will call me Bat Eleazar. You have no right to my name.” She tried to pull away but he held her. Her eyes went dark with fury. She was shaking, though she didn’t know it. “I will wall my door against you and starve first.” Her voice rose in pitch. The panic was not so much that he would touch her, but that he would take from her the memories of Yonah and of her life here, in this house. The thought of sleeping beneath his roof was almost worse than the thought of sleeping in his arms. She drew back into the shadow beneath the arch leading to the atrium. From his basket by the olive press, her infant began to cry.
“Please go,” Rahel said.
Zebadyah glanced in the direction of the cries, and seeing the hard purpose in his face, Rahel went white. “This is your brother’s son,” she pleaded, her voice low and intense.
Zebadyah turned his face back to her. The gentleness was gone from him and his eyes had become hard as small stones. “Ezra cast even the wives, the heathen wives, over the wall,” he said quietly. “What is unclean, what isn’t whole—we must cast that out of our homes, out of our hearts.”
Zebadyah thrust her to the side firmly and made to step by her, but she caught at his arm and threw her small body back betwee
n him and the atrium and her son.
His face darkened. “Step aside, woman,” he growled.
“Get out!” she cried. “Get away from my son!”
He struck her.
Her vision white, she felt the wall against her back. Her head rang. She dug her fingers against the wall, desperate to stay upright. Panic in her heart like cattle breaking through long grass, trampling it, crushing everything in their way. Yonah had never, never struck her.
Her vision cleared.
Zebadyah stood silent, hesitating, as if startled by his own violence.
The baby’s cries broke her panic. She screamed and leapt at him, but the priest caught her wrists and held her as she kicked at him, still with that look of dawning horror on his face.
“What is going on?”
A young man’s shout.
The priest had left the outer door open. Shimon stood there, his face full of thunder—looking suddenly very like his father. Yakob, the priest’s son, stood beside him on the doorstep, his face shocked.
“Shimon!” Rahel cried, almost faint with relief.
Zebadyah released her quickly, as though his hands burned. He looked at his son and nephew, and his face darkened slowly with shame. “Bar Yonah,” he said, his voice a little hoarse, “I need to make sure your family is provided for.”
Shimon’s eyes were cold. They took everything in: the screaming baby in the atrium, the bruise developing over Rahel’s cheekbone, the priest’s slightly hunched stance. “They will be,” he said quietly. “Your son and I have reached an agreement. I am taking my father’s boat out tonight, to fish where he cannot. Yakob will help me, for a while.” He glanced at Rahel. “I’ll be able to feed us, mother. I am sure of it.”
For a moment, no one moved. Rahel drew in a sobbing breath, looked at her son carefully, and at Yakob. She saw in their eyes that Shimon had known she would not accept the protection of Yakob’s father. Shimon had known this. He had done this—taken on this responsibility—for her, and to honor his father. Knowing what it meant. Shimon’s bar ‘onshin had come and gone; in announcing his intent to feed the house of his father, he claimed that house and all within it. What was to be done with his brother, what was to be done with his father’s widow—this was all up to him now, and to no other. Rahel’s breast warmed with pride and gratitude. Shimon was his father’s son. He was her son.
