by Ann Swinfen
‘And I know why!’ Daniel always broke in excitedly, bouncing up and down. ‘He wasn’t a beggar at all—he was an angel!’
One night, when he lay down again to try and sleep after this story, he turned to me, yawning.
‘When I am a man grown, Mariam, that’s what I am going to do. I shall travel about, washing all the beggars’ feet, and one day I’ll find the angel.’
It was past the winter solstice when they came, two weary figures trudging up the slope from the village to our courtyard. All the neighbours’ dogs set up a great barking. Our own herd dog, who was new since Yeshûa left, ran at them frantically, then sat down suddenly and stared at my brother in puzzlement, as though he had called out a command, though not a word had been spoken. Both men were dusty and tattered, and Yeshûa looked older and thinner than I remembered. There was great excitement at the sight of them, the families from the other houses that shared our courtyard streamed out to greet the travellers. Soon everyone was crowding into the main room of our house, bringing food and wine, till we made a regular feast of it. There was no chance that evening to speak to either of them alone. Yehûdâ spent the night with us, but slept late, so it was my brother I finally managed to take aside from the others.
‘You decided not to stay with the sectaries, then?’ I did not try to conceal the relief in my voice.
We had left the courtyard and were climbing the lower hillside towards the midbar, where the grazing grounds were covered with a light fall of snow. He stopped and sat down on a rock, looking back over the village.
‘The Community. No. It was not right for me. They keep themselves too isolated. I need to be out in the world, to live and work somehow amongst the poor. But to tell you the truth, Mariam, I don’t see my way clearly even now. Though I did learn much among the brethren. And I discovered something new and strange about myself.’
He stopped.
‘What?’ I said. ‘What did you discover?’
‘It was perhaps because I was working with three skilled brothers. Probably on my own I’m nothing. It seemed that I healed a man of blindness in one eye. And a child—a little girl—she was like one dead, not breathing, and I breathed into her and she woke.’
I stared at him and shivered with apprehension. My brother, calling a child back from the dead?
‘It’s no miracle,’ he said hastily, seeing my expression. ‘The brethren have perfected the treatment for many ills, including this. I think it was not a miracle. But . . . it was what happened to me. At the time I felt . . . it was as though some power had entered into me from beyond myself. As though Yahweh himself acted through me. I have not felt it since.’
‘While you were away,’ I said slowly, ‘and Yehûdâ spoke to us of the cures these people perform, Father said that a good man may perform a cure in the Lord’s name.’
‘I think it may be so. Certainly I myself am nothing, a peasant from Galilee.’
I looked at him in sudden hope.
‘Daniel!’ I said. ‘Perhaps you could help Daniel! He is so ill every winter, and he grows so thin and weak. He barely recovers by the end of summer, when it all starts over again.’
I could see at once that he was reluctant.
‘It would be a presumption,’ he said. ‘Who am I to attempt such a thing? I am nothing, Mariam. Before, I was in the company of the healing brethren. It was surely their presence that effected the cures. I was nothing but an assistant. I don’t have the learning.’
I would not listen to his protestations, which I refused to believe.
‘You cannot deny help to your own small brother, Yeshûa.’
I pleaded and argued until he said at last, wearily, ‘I will not do anything without our parents’ consent.’
That, I was sure, was as good as a promise. But I was mistaken. Yeshûa explained to our parents what had happened when he travelled amongst the sick villagers with the three Essenes, and how he had cured the blind man and the little girl. He did not tell them, however, about the power he had felt running through him. I thought they looked shocked rather than pleased at what he said.
‘Mariam wants me to try to cure Daniel,’ he concluded, ‘but I will not do so without your agreement.’
I scrambled to my feet, my heart beating in my throat with hope.
‘He was too ill to leave his bed this morning,’ I said, leading the way to the stairs without even looking to see if they were following.
At the door of our room, I turned round. Yeshûa was close behind me, but our parents had paused at the top of the stairs and were murmuring together. My mother was shaking her head. I opened the door and went in. Daniel was propped up, half sitting, for he was more comfortable that way. As he caught sight of me he started to speak, but before he could utter more than ‘Mariam’, his whole body was wracked with a terrible spasm of coughing. When he took his hands away from his mouth, there was blood on them. Yeshûa knelt beside the bedroll, but did not touch him. Instead, he poured a beaker of water from the earthenware jar and passed it to Daniel.
Our parents had followed us in and my father stopped by Daniel’s feet and stood looking down at his youngest child with immense pity. To my surprise, my mother stepped between Daniel and Yeshûa, and seemed to be shielding Daniel with her body. Her face was full of fear.
‘Your mother will not allow it,’ Father said.
‘By why!’ I cried. ‘You can see how ill he is. If Yeshûa can help . . .’
‘I will have no magic, no meddling with devils in this house,’ my mother said.
And I saw suddenly that she was afraid, not for Daniel, but for Yeshûa. Or was she afraid of Yeshûa? Everyone knows that serious illness is caused by evil spirits entering the body. And they contrive this because a sin has been committed. In the case of a young child like Daniel, it is probably a sin committed by one of his family. I had feared for some time that I was the one responsible, and had prayed that his illness be transferred to me, but my prayers had evoked no response. The curing of illness, in part, depends on the casting out of the evil spirit. My mother, in her fear, would not allow Yeshûa to wrestle with the evil spirit.
I argued, but I knew from the outset that it was in vain. When my mother was this determined, however unreasonable the cause, nothing could move her. And Yeshûa had given his word that he would not make the attempt without our parents’ consent. The three of them went at last, leaving me weeping and holding my little brother in my arms. I am not sure that he understood why we had been arguing. He was hot, with angry red patches like burns on his face, and the painful rasp of his breathing hurt me as if it were my own lungs fighting for air.
A few days later, Yeshûa and Yehûdâ told us of their plans. I think they had not wanted to spoil their homecoming by announcing that they were to leave almost immediately. Yehûdâ would go to Sepphoris and spend a few weeks with his parents, then they would leave together and travel down the Jordan Valley again to Beth ‘Abarâ.
‘But why?’ Yoses asked, as we sat around the family table, after Yehûdâ’s last meal before he left for Sepphoris. ‘What is there at Beth ‘Abarâ?’
‘Not at Beth ‘Abarâ itself,’ said Yeshûa. ‘But not far from there.’
He turned to our mother.
‘We have a cousin there. Or at least, his mother Elizabeth was your cousin.’
‘Yôhânân?’ she said. ‘He’s about your age. A little older.’
‘He’s gaining great fame as a preacher. Many flock to him.’
‘Is he another who preaches the end of the world?’ asked Yoses. ‘There have been a great many of them lately. We had one in the village last summer. The boys threw stones at him and drove him out.’
‘He was a madman,’ said Ya’aqôb, ‘not a true prophet. He babbled of fire and brimstone, and the world being destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrah.’
‘And the boys threw stones at him?’ said Yeshûa. ‘Even if he was a madman, surely . . .’
‘Daniel did not,’ I said bitterly. �
�Daniel would have washed his feet, like the beggar in your story, hoping to uncover an angel.’
‘Would he indeed?’ said Yeshûa thoughtfully.
‘Not this one,’ said my mother with certainty. ‘He was no angel. He stole two of our chickens.’
‘You don’t know that he did it,’ I said, as much for the sake of argument as anything. He probably had stolen them.
‘This cousin Yôhânân of ours,’ said Ya’aqôb, bringing us back to the point. ‘Why do you want to see him?’
‘It is rather that I want to hear him,’ said Yeshûa. ‘I want to know what message he preaches. I did not find what I wanted at Qumrân. Perhaps I shall find it at Beth ‘Abarâ.’
I saw very little of Yeshûa during the three weeks he stayed with us. He spent long hours in the workshop with Father, trying, I think, to make some amends for his long absence and his forthcoming departure. At the same time, I was occupied in nursing Daniel, who grew visibly weaker by the day. He continued to cough blood, and was no longer able to rise from his bed.
The night before they were to leave, Yehûdâ arrived from Sepphoris and the conversation I had been dreading took place. My mother challenged him about his intentions for our marriage, while I, embarrassed and ashamed, lurked in a corner of the room. Since his return, I had realised with sudden intensity how much I wanted the marriage to take place. We had been betrothed for two years, but most of that time he had been away and my feelings had not been provoked by his presence. Now, every time I saw him I became dizzy with desire. I tried to pass by him close enough to touch him, as if by accident. When he took my hand or brushed my cheek with his fingertips, I thought a raging fire had been lit in my belly. But I was humiliated when my mother spoke of it, as if it were a business arrangement on which he had defaulted. I felt besmirched.
‘And when will the wedding take place?’ my mother asked bluntly, while I longed for a thunderstorm to break or the roof of the house to fall in on my head.
Yehûdâ looked across the room at me and I knew that he saw my shame. He held out his hand to me.
‘Perhaps Mariam and I might discuss this,’ he said gently. He wrapped my cloak around me and led me, mute and unprotesting, out of the house, beyond the wall of the courtyard and through the orchard until we were well out of sight of the house. The snow on the ground was several inches deep, and I shivered, until he put his arms round me and held me close. I knew that my mother had wanted any discussion to take place in her presence, but Yehûdâ had grown into a forceful and determined man, who could assert himself firmly, yet without offence.
He turned me to face him, his hands resting lightly on my shoulders underneath both our cloaks.
‘And what is your wish, Mariam? Are you anxious for this marriage to be soon?’
For answer I reached up and drew his face down to me and kissed him shamelessly. His mouth drove so hard into mine that my lower lip was bloodied, but whether his teeth had bitten into it, or mine, I did not know and did not care.
After a time I drew back breathless, gasping for air, and he laughed and brushed back my hair, which as usual had fallen over my face.
‘Your answer is yes, then?’
I straightened my tunic and looked away down the hill towards the olive orchard. It was easier for me to think clearly if I was not looking at him.
‘I know that my brother needs you,’ I said. ‘For a long time Yeshûa has been searching for something. He did not find it in Qumrân. Perhaps, as he says, he will find it in Beth ‘Abarâ. I want our marriage. I want you. There is no secret between us there.’
I paused to dab at my bleeding lip with my finger. Yehûdâ took the edge of his sleeve and tenderly wiped the blood from my mouth. It made a violent crimson stain on the fresh white cloth.
‘I want you, but Yeshûa needs you. I think we must wait. In any case, did you not say that you were to go to Jerusalem on business for your father, after you have visited our cousin Yôhânân in Beth ‘Abarâ?’
‘Yes. I will probably stay in Jerusalem about two months. I will leave Yeshûa in company with Yôhânân, then go back to Beth ‘Abarâ to meet him. When we return home after that, shall we make the arrangements for the marriage?’
I smiled at him.
‘By then you will know the country along the Jordan as well as our village streets. How I wish I could go with you! Take me with you!’
‘You would not want to come now, with Daniel so ill.’
‘No.’
‘But later, perhaps, we might travel together. It can been hard, you know, and dangerous, and uncomfortable.’
‘I should not mind!’
‘You have not answered my question.’ He looked at me quizzically. ‘I think perhaps you are not sure in your own mind. Perhaps you do not really want marriage.’
‘I do not want to lose my freedom,’ I whispered, ashamed of my boldness, but thinking of the women of my family and the lives they led. Yet I clung to him, my heart pounding in my throat.
‘I would not want to take it from you,’ he said and kissed me. ‘When Yeshûa and I return from Beth ‘Abarâ, we will decide what is best to do.’
‘Will you tell my mother?’
‘I will tell your mother. Your mother does not frighten me!’
My long betrothal had become the subject of speculation in the village, but my mother must have said something to put a stop to it, some hint about what would happen when Yehûdâ returned, for now all I had to endure was the usual ribald teasing any young girl is subjected to when her marriage is forthcoming. In any case, I hardly left Daniel’s bedside, except to fetch water from the well or to cook food which I hoped would tempt him, but never did.
About a month after Yehûdâ and Yeshûa left, Daniel became incoherent. The evil spirit which had been wrestling for possession of him was winning the battle and all my care and all the prayers in the kenîshtâ were powerless. He thrashed helplessly on his bedroll, throwing aside his blankets, alternately burning up and shaking with cold. He gabbled strange words, or else the spirit spoke through him, and when his eyes opened, they did not recognise me.
Then one night about midnight, he grew calm and lay in my arms quietly, though his breath still had that terrible laboured sound. He opened his eyes and looked at me, once again like the little boy I had loved so dearly for more than eight years.
‘Mariam?’ he said.
‘Yes, my pet?’
He did not speak again.
‘Mama,’ Julia says, running into her mother’s cubiculum, where Fulvia has retreated, stricken with another of her headaches. ‘Mama, please come quickly. I think Grandmother Mariam is worse.’
Fulvia slips her feet into her sandals and hurries after her daughter, to the room which has been Mariam’s for the last ten years. Mariam is lying face up, drawing great shuddering breaths. She used to be such a commanding woman, Fulvia thinks. Almost as tall as her sons, with a back as straight as a cypress tree. Now she is so shrunken, she scarcely makes a mound under the light linen sheet. The room is surprisingly cool and pleasant, and Fulvia notices that someone, Julia probably, has picked a bunch of wild flowers and placed them in a vase beside the bed. It is one of Fulvia’s best, a precious black and red vase from ancient Greece which she brought with her as part of her dowry, and which depicts Atalanta stooping to gather up the Golden Apples of the Sun. She moves the vase a little further to one side, so that Mariam will not throw out an arm and knock it to the floor, but she does not take it away.
‘Run and tell your father to come,’ she tells Julia. ‘It may be nothing. No more than the heat troubling her.’
Mariam moans faintly, but does not wake.
The constant coming and going of Yeshûa and Yehûdâ did not go unnoticed amongst our neighbours, who sometimes brought us news, for it seemed that my brother was beginning to arouse general curiosity. The fame of our cousin had also spread, even to remote Galilee. People were flocking to him from all parts of the Land of Judah, to listen to his preach
ing and to undergo baptism, a kind of ritual cleansing said to be even more potent than the rituals undergone before Pesah in Jerusalem. Yôhânân’s preaching was grim and frightening, or so it seemed to me when I heard of it. Like the madman who had wandered into our village, he warned that the world was coming to an end, that the Lord Yahweh would stand in judgement, condemning all sinners to everlasting punishment. He demanded metanoia, followed by baptism, total immersion in the Jordan, from which the repentant sinner would emerge transformed into blessedness.
‘Metanoia is not merely repentance,’ Ya’aqôb explained, his eyes shining with excitement. ‘It is a Greek word, meaning a complete change of heart and life. How I wish I could go to Beth ‘Abarâ and join his followers!’
I heard, but did not listen. Since Daniel’s death, it seemed to me that everyone was far away, and their voices sounded muffled, as if a wall of water separated us. We had buried Daniel before the sunset following his death, in the family cemetery cave, around the shoulder of the hill from the midbar. From the slope outside, one could look down past the olive orchards towards the path Yeshûa had taken when he left us. I wished that we could leave the mouth of the cave open, so that Daniel might be surrounded by the warm embrace of the sun and the play of the wind, but the proper customs must be observed. My father and brothers rolled back the stone and I had to leave him there, cold and lonely in the darkness.
Shim’ôn of Keriyoth came from Sepphoris soon afterwards, to pay a visit of comfort to my parents. He brought news, sent from Yehûdâ in Jerusalem by a messenger, one of the men who worked for Shim’ôn as a small-time trader within Judaea.
‘There is a strange story going round about your eldest son,’ he said. ‘Yehûdâ was present when he received baptism from his cousin Yôhânân. There was much confusion, crowds slipping and sliding on the banks of the river, some crying out hysterically, a thunderstorm brewing and approaching fast.’
