The Book of Longings

by Sue Monk Kidd

  We wandered up the stairway onto the loggia, past the sleeping quarters. Peering into my room, I thought of the girl who’d studied and read and begged for tutors, who’d made inks and word altars and dreamed of her face in a tiny sun. In my youth, I’d heard old Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai say that each soul possessed a garden with a serpent that whispered temptations. That girl I remembered would always be the serpent in my garden bidding me to eat forbidden things.

  “Come,” Lavi said urgently from the doorway.

  I followed him to Judas’s room, where he pointed to a half-full waterskin, mussed bedcovers, partially burned candles, and a fine linen coat tossed on a bench. On a table near the bed, two scrolls had been opened and marked in place with reading spools.

  Haran’s emissary had arrived and made himself welcome in our house. No, not our house, I reminded myself. It and everything in it belonged to Haran now.

  I walked to the table and glanced over the unfurled scrolls. One contained a list of names—officials and landowners—and next to them, recorded sums of money. On the other, a recording of the house’s contents, room by room.

  “He could return at any moment. We should leave and return later when he’s here,” Lavi said. Careful, prudent Lavi.

  He was right, yet as we swept past my parents’ room, I stopped. An idea suddenly sat in my head, sunning itself. The flick of a scaly tail. I said, “Wait on the balcony and alert me if you hear anyone.”

  A protest formed on Lavi’s face, but he did as I asked.

  I stepped into my parents’ room, where the sight of Mother’s bed halted me with a sharp intake of loss. Her oak chest was coated with a glaze of dust. I creaked it open and my mind swept back to my girlhood—Tabitha and I pillaging through the contents, preparing for our dance.

  The wooden jewel box was midway down, beneath neatly folded tunics and coats. Its heft in my hands reassured me it was still full. I opened it. Four gold bracelets, two ivory, six silver. Eight necklaces—amber, amethyst, lapis, carnelian, emerald, and gold leaf. Seven pairs of pearl earrings. A dozen jeweled and silver headbands. Gold rings. So much. Too much.

  I would have Lavi trade the jewelry in the market for coins.

  Thou shalt not steal. Guilt made me pause. Would I now become a thief? I strode across the room and back, shamed to think what Jesus would say. The Torah also said love your neighbor, I reasoned, and wasn’t I taking the jewelry out of love for Yaltha? I doubted I could get her to Alexandria without a substantial bribe. Besides, I’d stolen the ivory sheet from Antipas—I was already a thief.

  I said, “This is your parting gift to me, Mother.”

  On the balcony, I hurried past Lavi toward the stairs. “Let’s take our leave.”

  As we reached the floor below, we heard someone at the door stomping mud from his sandals. We broke for the passageway, but we’d taken only a few strides when a man entered. He reached for the knife at his waist. “Who are you?”

  Lavi stepped in front of me. It was as if I had a sparrow caged inside my ribs, flailing about. I edged around Lavi, hoping the man didn’t notice my apprehension. “I’m Ana, niece to Haran of Alexandria and the daughter of Matthias, who was head counselor to Herod Antipas before his death. And this is my servant, Lavi. This was my home before I married. May I ask, sir, who are you?”

  He dropped his hand to his side. “Your uncle in Alexandria sent me to dispose of this property, which is now rightfully his. I am Apion, his treasurer.”

  He was a young man of brutish strength and size, but he bore delicate, almost womanly features—lined eyes, full lips, well-shaped brows, and black, curling hair.

  The travel pouch strapped across my chest bulged with odd contours. I nudged it toward my back, smiled, and bowed my head. “Then our Lord has blessed me, for you are the one I’ve come to see. Haran sent word to me through the palace that you were in Galilee, and I came immediately with my husband’s blessing to beg a favor of you.”

  The lies rolled from my lips, water over river rocks.

  Apion’s eyes darted uncertainly from me to Lavi. “How did you come to enter the house?”

  “We found the passage from the courtyard unbolted. I didn’t think you would mind if I found shelter.” My hand went to my belly, which I protruded as far as I could. “I am with child and felt weary.” The audacious turn my lies were taking surprised even me.

  He swept his hand toward one of the couches. “Please rest.”

  I plopped onto the cushion, wrinkling my nose at the fusty air that came wafting up.

  “Speak your favor,” he said.

  I quickly gathered my thoughts. He’d accepted my lies easily enough, and he possessed a kind way—would I need the bribe? Should I forestall until I’d traded the jewelry? I studied the man. His curls were oiled with expensive spikenard. A gold scarab ring encircled his finger, the one he no doubt used to imprint Haran’s seal onto documents.

  “May I return tomorrow?” I said. “I find myself too tired.”

  What could he say? A woman with child was a mysterious creature.

  He nodded. “Come at the sixth hour, and present yourself at the main door. You will find the passageway from the courtyard locked.”

  xxix.

  The next day we returned at the designated hour. I felt confident. Lavi had traded my mother’s jewelry for six thousand drachmae, the equivalent of one talent. It was an unexpected measure of riches. Minted in silver, the coins were so voluminous, Lavi had purchased a sizable leather bag to hold them. He’d paid out more drachmae for a room at an inn, choosing himself to pass the night in the alley. I slept only a little, dreaming that Jesus returned to Nazareth on a spitting camel.

  If Lavi was shocked I’d taken the jewelry, he’d hidden it well. Nor had he appeared surprised when I explained I had no child in my womb, only a false tongue in my mouth. Indeed, he smiled a little. His spying and subterfuge in the palace for Judas seemed to have given him a certain appreciation for cunning.

  “I would offer you food and wine, but I have neither,” Apion said, opening the door. “Nor do I have much time.”

  I sat once again on the musty couch. “I will be quick. Haran’s sister, Yaltha, has lived with me for many years. She knew your father and remembers you as a boy. She helped you with your Greek alphabet.”

  He gazed at me with a hint of wariness, and it occurred to me he probably knew a great deal about my aunt, none of it favorable. He would’ve heard the rumors in Alexandria that she’d murdered her husband. If so, he would know Haran had banished her first to the Therapeutae and then to Galilee. Some of that fine, bright confidence I’d felt earlier paled.

  “She’s old, but in good health,” I continued. “And it’s her wish to return to the land of her birth. She wishes to go home to serve her brother, Haran. I’ve come to arrange for you to take her with you to Alexandria when you return.”

  Still, nothing.

  “Yaltha would be a pleasant and docile traveling companion,” I said. “She’s never trouble.” This was an unnecessary falsehood, but I uttered it anyway.

  He looked impatiently at the door. “What you’re asking is impossible without Haran’s permission.”

  “Oh, but he has given it,” I said. “I sent a letter of request to him, but it reached him after you’d departed. In his return message, he expressed his wish for you to see my aunt safely back to Alexandria.”

  He hesitated, uncertain. There had hardly been time for such an exchange. “Show me the letter and I will be satisfied.”

  I turned to Lavi, who stood a few paces behind me. “Give me Haran’s letter.”

  He looked at me, confused.

  “You brought it as I instructed, did you not?”

  It took a moment. “The letter, oh, yes. Forgive me, I fear I left it behind.”

  I made a show of anger. “My servant has failed me,” I said to A
pion. “But it’s not a reason to ignore my uncle’s consent. I will pay you, certainly. Would five hundred drachmae suffice?”

  Now we would see if he loved money the way I loved words.

  The arches of his brows swept up. I saw it the moment it came into his eyes: greed. “I would require at least one thousand drachmae. And I would expect no mention of the transaction to Haran.”

  I pretended to debate the matter in my head. “All right, it will be as you say. But you must treat my aunt with respect and kindness or I shall hear of it and report the arrangement to Haran.”

  “I will treat her as I would my own aunt,” he pledged.

  “When do you anticipate concluding your business and returning to Alexandria?”

  “I had thought it would require weeks, but after only a few days I’m ready to finalize the sale of the house. I will leave for Caesarea in five days in order to take passage on the next merchant ship.” He fixed his eyes on the bag strapped across Lavi’s chest. “Shall we complete our business?”

  “I will return in five days with my aunt, arriving early in the morning. You will be paid then, not before.”

  His lips curled. “Five days, then.”

  xxx.

  As Lavi and I drew close to the compound, the aroma of roasting lamb filled my nostrils. “Jesus is home,” I said.

  “How can you know this?”

  “Smell the air, Lavi. A fatted lamb!”

  It would require a considerable event, such as the homecoming of her son, for Mary to trade for something as expensive as a lamb.

  “How do you know the scent is not from some other courtyard?” Lavi said.

  I quickened my pace. “I know. I just know.”

  I reached the gate winded and flushed. Yaltha was sitting near the courtyard oven, where Mary, Salome, Judith, and Berenice were busy turning the lamb on a spit. I went to my aunt, kneeling down to embrace her. “Your husband is home,” she said. “He arrived last evening. I didn’t tell him about your father, but I explained your absence before James had a chance to give his account of it.”

  “I will go to him,” I said. “Where is he?”

  “He has been in the workshop all morning. But first, did you persuade Apion?”

  “He was persuaded not by me, but by one thousand drachmae.”

  “A thousand . . . How did you come by such riches?”

  “It’s a long story, and not one I wish overheard. It will keep.”

  The women had scarcely greeted me, but as I ran toward the workshop, Judith called out, “If you’d heeded James’s commandment not to leave, you would’ve been here to greet your husband.”

  Her tongue was a pestilence. “His commandment? Did James receive it on a stone tablet? Did God speak to him from a burning bush?”

  Judith huffed, and I caught sight of Salome swallowing her laugh.

  * * *

  • • •

  JESUS SET DOWN the cross-saw he was sharpening. I’d not seen him for more than five months and he looked like a stranger. His hair hung long about his shoulders. His skin was darker and razed by desert winds, all the edges of his face severe. He seemed so much older than his thirty years.

  “You’ve been gone too long,” I said, letting my hands rest on his chest. I wanted to feel him, the flesh of him. “And you’re too thin. Is that why Mary has a banquet in the making?”

  He kissed my forehead. He said nothing about my red scarf. His only words: “I’ve missed you, Little Thunder.”

  We sat down on the workbench. “Yaltha said you were in Sepphoris,” he said. “Tell me all that has happened since I’ve been gone.”

  I described Lavi’s unexpected appearance. “He brought me news,” I said. “My father is dead.”

  “I’m sorry, Ana. I know what it’s like to lose a father.”

  “Mine was nothing like your father,” I said. “When Nazareth treated you as a mamzer, your father protected you. Mine tried to make me the tetrarch’s concubine.”

  “Is there nothing good you can say of him?”

  Jesus’s capacity for mercy baffled me. I didn’t know if I could give up the wrongs my father had done, the way I hauled them around like an ossuary of precious old bones. Jesus made it seem as if one could just lay them down.

  “I can say one thing for him,” I said. “One thing. My father sometimes provided me with tutors, papyri, and ink. He begrudgingly indulged my writing. This, more than anything, made me who I am.”

  I’d known this simple truth, but putting it into words gave it an unexpected potency. I felt tears start. Finally, tears for my father. Jesus pressed me to him, burying my nose in his tunic, and I smelled the Jordan River flowing beneath his skin.

  I removed my scarf and dried my face with it, unloosing my hair, and then went on, wanting to get through the rest of my telling. I spoke of my visit to Sepphoris, what it was like to be inside the house again, of Apion and his agreement to take Yaltha to Alexandria. There were things I didn’t mention—the jewelry, the coins, the lies. When I relayed the news Lavi had brought from the palace, I held back any mention of my ivory sheet and the kitchen steward.

  There was, though, information I couldn’t withhold. I hesitated a moment before telling him. “Herodias seeks to have John arrested.”

  “John has already been arrested,” he said. “Herod Antipas’s soldiers came for him two weeks ago while he was baptizing at Aenon near Salim. He was taken to the fortress at Machaerus and imprisoned. I don’t think Antipas will set him free.”

  My hand went to my mouth. “Will they arrest his disciples?”

  He was forever telling me to consider the lilies in the fields, which were never anxious and yet God took care of them. I didn’t wish to hear it. “Don’t tell me not to worry. I’m alarmed for you.”

  “John’s disciples have scattered, Ana. I don’t believe they’re looking for us. When John was apprehended, I fled into the Judean desert along with Simon and Andrew, the fishermen, and two others, Philip and Nathanael. We hid there for a week. Even when journeying here to Nazareth, I cut through Samaria to avoid Aenon. I’m being watchful.”

  “And Judas? Lavi believes he became one of John’s disciples, too. What do you know of my brother?”

  “He joined us late last fall. After John’s arrest, he went to Tiberias in search of news. He promised to come here as soon as he could.”

  “Judas is coming?”

  “I asked him to meet me here. There are plans I wish to discuss with him . . . about the movement.”

  What could he mean? The movement was in disarray. It was over. Jesus was home now. We would go back to the way it had been. I gripped his hand. I had the sense of something awful coalescing around me. “What plans?”

  There were squeals at the doorway and three of the children—Judith’s two girls and Berenice’s youngest boy—charged into the workshop in a game of chase. Jesus caught the smallest in his arms and swung him about. When he’d given them each a twirl, he said, “I’ll tell you everything, Ana, but let’s seek a quiet place.”

  He led me across the courtyard and through the gate. As we left the village and descended into the valley, I smelled the citrus harvest that signaled the arrival of spring. He began to hum.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “If I tell you, it will not be a surprise.” His eyes were alight. Traces of his playfulness with the children still clung to him.

  “As long as you’re not taking me to the fields to consider the lilies, I’ll go willingly.”

  His laugh was like a clapper bell, and I felt the months of our separation fall away. When we took the road that led to the eastern gate of Sepphoris, I knew we were going to the cave, but said nothing, wishing him to have his surprise, wanting the lightheartedness to last and last.

  We walked through the balsam grove, through the thick,
piney smell to the outcrop of rock. My heart did a little stag leap. There it was. It had been ten years.

  When we stepped inside the cave, I looked toward the back where I’d once buried thirteen scrolls and my incantation bowl, and even now, they seemed buried to me, languishing in the bottom of my cedar chest. But he was here and I was here—I would lament nothing.

  We sat in the opening. I said, “Tell me everything, as you promised.”

  His eyes searched mine. “Hear me to the end before you judge.”

  “All right, I’ll hear you to the end.” What he would say would change everything—I knew this indelibly.

  “After I’d been with John for two months, he came to me one morning and said he believed God had sent me, that I, too, was God’s chosen. Soon after, I began to baptize and preach alongside him. Eventually he moved north to Aenon, where he could slip easily into Decapolis out of Antipas’s reach. But he wanted to reach the whole country and he asked me to remain in the south to preach his message of repentance. A small number of the disciples stayed with me—Simon, Andrew, Philip, Nathanael, and Judas. Multitudes came—you cannot imagine the crowds. People began to say John and I were the two Messiahs.” He drew a deep breath and I felt it blow warm on my face.

  I could see where he was leading, and I didn’t know if I wished to follow. He’d brought me here to the place of our beginnings, but only later would I think of the snake biting its tail, how the beginning becomes the end that becomes the beginning.

  “The movement spread like floodwaters,” he said. “Now, though, with John in prison, it has been silenced. I cannot let it die.”

  “You mean to take it up on your own?” I said. “It will become your movement now?”

  “I’ll go forth in my own way. My vision differs from John’s. His mission was to prepare the way for God to throw off Roman rule and establish his government on earth. I hope for this, too, but my mission is to bring God’s kingdom into the hearts of people. The masses came to John, but I will go to them. I’ll not baptize them as he did, but I’ll eat and drink with them. I’ll exalt the lowly and the outcast. I’ll preach God’s nearness. I’ll preach love.”