He lit a fire of dry sticks, then burned the parchment in its flames.
He washed himself. He brushed and brushed his beard. He oiled his hair. He donned his one clean tunic and his Sabbath robe, then fairly ran to the home of Joachim and knocked on the door.
But there was wailing inside the house, a voice filled with outrage and pain. No one heard Joseph’s knocking. The voice was howling, “How could you bring such disgrace on—”
Hearing that, Joseph made a fist and pounded the door with all his might. “Joachim!” he bellowed. “Joachim, open your door and let me in!”
The house became very still. No one spoke. No one moved.
“Joachim,” Joseph roared, “open this door.”
“Go away.” It was Joachim’s voice, whining piteously: “You don’t have to finish the roof. Just go away and leave us alone.”
But Joseph only roared the louder: “No, I will not leave until we’ve set the day for my wedding to your daughter. And you’re right. I don’t have to finish the roof. But I will. After we are married.”
The little house seemed altogether deserted after that, so long did silence last inside. Then Joachim called softly, “Joseph, do you know that Mary is with child?”
Joseph said, “Yes, I know.”
“And Mary my daughter says that you are not the father.”
“She’s right. I’m not the father.”
The new wooden door on Joachim’s house opened a crack. A tiny eye peered out. “And you wish to marry her anyway?”
“Yes. I do.”
Joachim threw open the door and burst into tears. “I am overcome with happiness!” he cried. “I am suffocating in gladness!” He spread his arms and moved toward his son-in-law, but Joseph saw one figure only.
Pale in the interior dark—scarcely visible, as if she were winter’s breath on the air—Mary was gazing out at Joseph, hesitating, chewing her bottom lip. Oh, the worry in her features broke his heart!
Joseph couldn’t help himself: he ran past Joachim and gathered Mary into his arms and held her tightly to his body.
“I love you,” he whispered in her tender ear. “Don’t cry, don’t cry. I love you, Mary, and I know who is sleeping in you, and I will love him, too. It is well. All is well. I know what God is doing, and I love you.”
IV
IN THE YEAR before he was assassinated, Julius Caesar had drawn up a will in which he named his nephew Octavian as his son. When the old dictator died, then, young Octavian stepped into his father’s glory by changing his name to Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus.
There followed seventeen years of struggle for power in Rome. Its empire reached from Britain to Asia Minor and Syria, from Egypt through Africa to Spain. This was a bloody period for Rome, but it was also the slow, intelligent, methodical rise to power of Octavian: to supreme power, finally, in all the Roman world.
He never took upon himself the trappings of royalty. Faithfully he observed all the formalities of traditional republican rule. He never characterized his position with a greater title than princeps: “the first citizen.” Nevertheless, the Roman Senate and the people conferred upon him the title Augustus: Reverend, a person commended to deities and to people alike, one bearing within himself the qualities of divinity.
At the same time, he dropped his birth name in public and assumed the name of his adoptive father, Caesar.
Thus, by his thirty-sixth year Gaius Octavianus became Caesar Augustus, in power and in practical fact the first emperor in Rome, a phenomenon whom the inhabitants of certain provinces began to worship as a son beloved of the gods: Soter, they called him, Savior, for he now inaugurated a period of peace so deep and sweeping that throughout the known world old wars ceased, merchants traveled everywhere without fear, commerce developed in safety, prosperity appeared, prosperity descended to tired lands and sat down and smiled.
In the fourteenth year of his reign, Caesar Augustus made a grand sacrifice to Roman gods for the peace of the world. At the same time he ordered that a marble altar be built to honor this remarkable state of human affairs. In the eighteenth year of his reign he dedicated the altar, a marvel of sculpture around which stood a wall carved with the stories of Rome: Romulus and Remus suckled by the she-wolf, Mother Earth with children on her knees, figures depicting air and water. The monument was called the Ara Pacis Augustae, Augustus’ Altar of Peace.
In the twentieth year of his reign, the fifty-sixth year of his life, these words were inscribed in stone to celebrate the birthday of the Emperor:
The birthday of the god was the beginning of the good news to the world on his account.
In the twenty-third year of his reign, Caesar Augustus decreed that the people of the provinces throughout his empire should be enrolled. This enrollment would constitute a general census; the information gathered would facilitate the levy of taxes upon every household in every territory in the whole Roman world. In order to cross-check families and to produce a lasting and effective record, heads of households were ordered first to return to their ancestral cities or villages—the places of their parents—and then to await documentation there.
So Joseph the son of Jacob left Nazareth in Galilee and, obeying imperial decree, set out for Judea. Mary, his wife, went with him. They were bound for Bethlehem, the city where King David had been born one thousand years before, because Joseph was descended from the house of David.
Mary rode the donkey. Joseph had fashioned a small, rolled saddle to support her back. She had nearly reached the term of her pregnancy. The infant inside her was huge. She was breathless and tired, swollen in her hands, wrists, and ankles. Her long hair had lost traces of its beauty. But the angel had said of her son:
To him will the Lord God give
the throne of his father David—
“Of his father…David.” Therefore, Mary had insisted, and no one could deny her, neither her mother nor her husband: Mary was determined to go with Joseph to bear her boy in the city of his father David.
It was Mary’s conviction that the great and distant Caesar Augustus was nothing more than a tool in the hands of the Most High God. For she could conceive of no reason more valid for this decree of the Emperor, than that her holy child would now be born in Bethlehem.
ASHEPHERD LED his smallish flock down the side of a hill to a grassy valley. It was dusk, so he descended into shadows; but he knew the valley by heart. Low stone walls created several protected areas, folds for his animals. He stood between two gates in the wall, each leading into separate enclosures, and he called the flocks toward himself. As they approached, he turned the fat-tailed sheep through the gate on his right. The goats he nudged to the left. He was counting them, watching carefully for signs of disease or of any injury a beast might have received during the day’s pasturage.
He was a young man, studious in his countenance, given to the thoughtful, internal frown. Thin lips. His lips were compressed with thinking. He wore leather sandals and a camel’s hair cloak. There were two leather bags attached to his belt, one bulky, one stoppered for water.
When he had finished his count, he closed the rough wooden gates and sat down with his back against the right one, then drew from the larger bag bread and cheese and began to eat.
He allowed his eyes to rise to the stars, bright glittering sands on the shores of heaven. Absently, he lifted his right hand and blotted out ten thousand stars.
“Simon!”
He brought the hand down again and turned
. Two other shepherds with two more flocks came over the ridge of the western hill. These flocks were much larger, pale in the starlight, a hundred white shadows floating down the dark slope toward him.
“Simon, are you there? Have you gathered brush yet? Where is the fire? Why haven’t you made a fire for us? It’s going to be cold tonight.”
MARY RODE SLOWLY toward Bethlehem. Joseph led the donkey, but Mary’s condition controlled its speed: the beast walked with a long bobbing of its head.
&n
bsp; The enrollment had already begun before the tiny family arrived. Bethlehem’s regular activities had been drowned in the great flood of Jews. Children of David filled the village and the hillsides around about. Roman officials had established their booths on the ridge road which went north from Hebron to Jerusalem and passed directly through Bethlehem. Citizens waiting to register stood in long lines from morning till late afternoon. Then they ate and they rested. Most would return to the census takers again tomorrow. It was a monumentally slow process. The inns were crowded. Strangers slept side by side on the earthen floor, or in lofts. The owners of the inns withdrew to the smaller, private rooms built on roofs of their buildings.
It was dusk when Joseph led his donkey and his wife through the gate and into the village. Though there were few people wandering the streets, he knew immediately how burdened Bethlehem was with humanity: the very air vibrated with the breathings, the low murmurings, and the talk of ten thousand people—like hornets humming inside a hive.
But Mary had begun to glisten in the moonlight. More and more she was leaning back against the ridge of her wooden saddle, grimacing. Her teeth shone white.
Just once as they approached the gate she had whispered, “It’s time, Joseph. It’s time now.” She did not have to repeat it. The word had triggered soft explosions in his brain: It’s time, Joseph.
The glistening on her brow was sweat.
For a moment the carpenter felt completely helpless. Mary must not bear her baby in the open, in some dark corner; yet he could think of no place which could accommodate them. Every human den or nest was inhabited. The dark village was a crush of population.
Then the donkey shook its head and began moving of its own accord. It shuffled into an easy trot. Joseph called sharply, twice, for a halt. But because the beast continued trotting, he was forced to run alongside, gripping Mary’s wrists in one hand and bracing her back with the other.
Joseph, it’s time!
The donkey took a narrow street downhill. It wound around a large inn to the back, where a cave had been dug as a sort of basement in limestone. Here Joseph smelled the warm consoling odor of many beasts, the russet sting of a clean dry hay. The cave was enclosed by a rude wooden fence. The donkey stopped at a gate and waited.
Mary gasped. Joseph could hear the grinding of her teeth and a deep internal moaning: It’s time, it’s time!
He lifted the wooden bar of the gate. Immediately the donkey entered and walked to the back of the cave where several feed troughs had been carved in the virgin stone. Other beasts lying about on straw swung their heavy heads to watch this new intrusion.
Mary cried out and fell from the donkey.
Joseph caught her. Her body astonished him. It was like iron ingots, heavy and very hard, all her muscles doubled down and flexing: “Ahhh!”
With his feet Joseph kicked together a huge pile of clean straw. He laid Mary there. He laid her down in such a way that her robe became her bedding, covering all the straw beneath her.
Suddenly Mary threw back her head, bent her torso up at the belly, then crouched forward, howling: “Oh, Joseph!”
For the second time that night Joseph felt completely helpless. His face was on fire with fear and foolishness.
He was not a midwife!
But Mary reached and grabbed his big hands and pressed the palms of them to her vulva, crying, “Not yet! Not yet! Hold it in, Joseph. Hold it back till I’m ready—Ahhh!”
He felt the baby! Joseph felt the round crown of the baby’s head, slick and warm—and pulsing! Pushing out of Mary! It seemed to the carpenter that he had just fallen off the top of a high cliff and that he would soon hit stones below—but the drop between was breathless and exhilarating!
Gently he pushed back, denying the child entrance into this world.
Mary was twisting her body around, first to her left side, then over on her hands and knees. Joseph kept his hand in place, overcome by his wife’s extraordinary strength and wisdom.
“Steady me!” she cried. “Get behind me, Joseph—please don’t let me fall!”
She rocked up on her heels. She rocked back against the huge chest of her husband. He released the infant’s head between her legs and caught the woman at the hips.
Now Mary, squatting, her knees straining apart, hunched her body down. She started to scream—but the sound was cut to solid silence by the monstrous effort she was making. Joseph trembled. His throat was raw. He smelled the mossy scent of Mary’s sweating. Her hair was a thick tangle under his face, all filled with dust and straw. Now a squeal, thin as a harp string, endlessly long, began to sing in the cave-stable: Eeeee—Joseph felt the sound between his arms. It was Mary’s tiny cry, growing stronger, growing louder, never breaking for a breath, a surge of power gathering within her and driving downward, driving her baby out into the world: Now!
There was a quick slurping sound, and suddenly a baby lay on his back in straw under his mother, his face confronting Mary’s face directly. She burst into tears. She fell backward against Joseph, howling in delight and relief and in pain and in great sorrow. The baby kicked and wrinkled his face and began to cry. Mary reached up and pawed the beard of her husband. Then she was pulling him down by it: “Wash him, wash him, wash my baby, wash the blood away, wash him perfectly clean, wash him and salt him, then bring me my knife.”
Joseph stood up. His muscles did not want to stretch. He walked like a drunk man to their knapsacks and found there the linen cloth that Mary had packed for the baby. Also, salt and a lantern and a knife.
When he knelt down and lit the lantern, he saw Mary in the grip of another task, bent forward, pushing against something else inside of her, as if there were another baby coming.
He also saw what a quantity of blood and water had soaked into the straw between her legs, and he pitied his wife.
And the infant, streaked with mucus and blood: as he washed it, he watched the tiny body turn from blue to a light pink and then to a rose color as if small fires had begun to burn within him. He wiped the baby clean. The baby sighed. Joseph could not stand the glory of the moment: the baby sighed.
Mary uttered a final shout, and the afterbirth flushed out, and now she looked as wet and exhausted as gravestones after rain.
“Joseph,” she whispered, “please bring him here.”
Joseph laid the baby upon Mary’s breast.
Mary bit linen and tore off a thin strip. With this she tied a knot in the cord that had connected the holy child to her body. Then she took the knife and cut that connection forever. Both the mother and the baby cried.
“Jesus,” she whispered. She gathered him to her bosom and rocked him. “Jesus, Jesus. Little Yeshi. Here you are. And I love you, baby.”
Mary opened the linen cloth. Slowly she began to wrap it round her baby, tight enough to assure him he was still embraced as in a womb, tight enough to be her love upon him even after separation, loose enough to allow the child to live and breathe on his own.
In the lantern light Joseph saw the great beasts surrounding them. They had raised their heads, sniffing the air. Perhaps a birthing scent spoke even to them of primal matters.
“Joseph?”
“Yes?” he said.
“Do you want to hold our baby?”
The huge man was a plain ox, thick in all his parts, a heavy ruinous creature. And the child in his arms was so light, composed of such crushable sticks. But Jesus opened his eyes and looked at the huge head and the beard above him. Little Jesus gazed at the hairy ox, and he was not afraid. Therefore Joseph, filled with the sense of his undeserving, began to weep and quickly laid the tiny boy in a feed trough for safekeeping and for sleeping.
Mary whispered, “You see? You bore the baby, too.”
Ah, Mary was generous! And beautiful. She put her swollen fingers to her brow and wiped the sticking strands of black hair back.
“Joseph,” she said softly, “would you come here with your clean cloths? Husband, would you darken the lantern an
d come and wash me, too? Would you wash all my parts clean again?”
BY MIDNIGHT THE FIRES of the three shepherds had collapsed into sparks and red embers. Simon and the two others who joined flocks and shared the long night watch had also subsided into silence.
One sent soft, moist snorings up toward heaven—a tough old man, content. One sat wakeful upon the stone wall, slapping it sometimes with the flat of his rod in order to warn wild animals away.
Simon had gone to lie among the sheep for warmth, but he wasn’t sleeping. He was gazing thoughtfully upward and enjoying the periodic huffings and sighs of the larger ewes.
All at once the stars began to explode.
Simon leaped to his feet.
The sheep stumbled up, bleating and running back to the stone walls.
The stars—in tens, and then in tens of thousands—were flashing like white fires in the black sky! They began to move.
Like burning bees, like a great whirling swarm of bees, the stars were crossing heaven from the east to the west.
Simon stood immobilized. Even the sheep were fixed in attitudes of awful fear.
Between the glorious motion of heaven and the dark earth below, there now appeared a single, endless pillar of a pure white fire.
And the fire spoke, and Simon understood what it said.
The fire cried, “Don’t be afraid!”
No, not the fire—but a figure within the fire! The brilliant form of a human, smooth and huge and very beautiful, his feet upon the mountains.
An angel of the Lord!
The angel said, “I bring good news of great joy which shall come to all the people. For to you is born this night in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord! And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger—”
Suddenly that swarm of the fiery heavenly host swooped down and filled the lower skies, praising God and singing:
The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel Page 54
