The Book of Longings

by Sue Monk Kidd

  “The tetrarch is alive . . . and grows worse in his ways.”

  I sighed, but the news was not unexpected. I retrieved the wine jug and refilled Lavi’s cup.

  “There’s more,” he said. “The prophet that Judas and your husband followed . . . the one Antipas imprisoned . . .”

  “Yes, John the Immerser—what about him?”

  “Antipas executed him. He cut off the Immerser’s head.”

  His words collected in my ears and lay there, puddles of nonsense. For a minute, I didn’t move or speak. I heard Yaltha talking to me, but I was far away, standing in the Jordan River with John’s hands lowering me beneath the water. Light on the river bottom. A floor of pebbles. The silent floating. John’s muffled voice calling, Rise to newness of life.

  Beheaded. I looked at Lavi, a sick churning inside me. “The servant you spoke with—is he certain of this?”

  “He said the whole country spoke of the prophet’s death.”

  Some truths seemed insoluble, stones that couldn’t be swallowed.

  “They say Antipas’s wife, Herodias, was behind it,” Lavi added. “Her daughter performed a dance that pleased Antipas so much he promised whatever she asked. At her mother’s urging, she asked for John’s head.”

  I covered my mouth with my hand. The reward for a beautiful dance: a man’s severed head.

  Lavi watched me, his expression grave. He said, “The servant also spoke about another prophet who was going about Galilee, preaching.”

  I felt my heart scurry up into my throat.

  “He heard the prophet preach to a great multitude on a hillside outside Capernaum. He spoke of it with awe. He said the prophet lashed out at hypocrites and proclaimed it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to come into the kingdom of God. He blessed the poor, the meek, the outcast, and the merciful. He preached love, saying if a soldier forces you to carry his pack one mile, carry it two, and if you’re struck on one cheek, turn the other one. This servant said the prophet’s following is even greater than the Immerser’s, that people spoke of him as a Messiah. As King of the Jews.” With that, Lavi fell quiet.

  I fell quiet, too. The wooden door onto the courtyard was flung wide onto the Egyptian night. I listened to wind shake the palm fronds. The dark, tumbling world.

  vii.

  As Yaltha parted the veils that encircled my bed, I shut my eyes, feigning sleep. It was past the midnight hour.

  “I know you’re awake, Ana. We will talk now.” She carried a beeswax candle, the light flickering under her chin and onto the bony ledge over her eyes. She rested the holder on the floor and the choking sweetness of the wax filled my nostrils. As she squeezed beside me onto the pillows, I turned on my side, away from her.

  Since Lavi’s news seven days ago, I’d been unable to speak of John’s gruesome death or of my terror that his fate would become my husband’s. I couldn’t eat. I’d slept little, and when I did, I dreamed of dead messiahs and broken threads. Jesus on the hillside, sowing his revolution—that was a good thing, and I couldn’t help but feel pride in him. The purpose that had burned in him for so long was finally being realized, yet I was filled with a deep and immutable dread.

  At first, Yaltha left me to my silence, believing I needed time alone, but now here she was, her head on my pillow.

  “To avoid a fear emboldens it,” she said.

  I said nothing.

  “All shall be well, child.”

  I reared up then. “Will it? You cannot know that! How can you know that?”

  “Oh, Ana, Ana. When I tell you all shall be well, I don’t mean that life won’t bring you tragedy. Life will be life. I only mean you will be well in spite of it. All shall be well, no matter what.”

  “If Antipas kills my husband as he did John, I cannot imagine I will be well.”

  “If Antipas kills him, you’ll be devastated and grief-stricken, but there’s a place in you that is inviolate—it’s the surest part of you, a piece of Sophia herself. You’ll find your way there, when you need to. And you’ll know then what I speak of.”

  I laid my head against her arm, sinewy and tough like herself. I couldn’t grasp what she was saying. I fell into a dreamless sleep, a black chute that had no bottom, and when I woke, my aunt was still there.

  * * *

  • • •

  AS WE TOOK OUR BREAKFAST the following morning, Yaltha said, “We must talk about this plan of yours to return to Galilee.” She dipped her bread into the honey and pushed it into her mouth, dribbling the nectar onto her chin, and I felt my appetite return. I tore a chunk from the wheat loaf.

  She said, “You fear for Jesus’s safety—I fear for yours.”

  A slate of brightness had formed beside us on the floor. I gazed at it, wishing some magic scribble of light would appear telling me what to do. Returning was dangerous, perhaps as much now as when I’d first fled, but my need to see Jesus had become urgent and insurmountable.

  “If there’s a chance Jesus is in danger,” I said, “I want to see him before it’s too late.”

  She leaned forward, her eyes softening. “If you return to him now, I’m afraid it would make Antipas more inclined to snatch Jesus as well.”

  I hadn’t considered this. “You think my presence might endanger him further?”

  She didn’t answer, but looked at me and lifted her brows. “Don’t you?”

  viii.

  I’d not shown up in the scriptorium all week, but I appeared that morning resolved to carry on for now in Alexandria. I slid onto the stool at my desk, which, I noticed, had been cleaned, the yellow wood gleaming, smelling of citrus oil.

  “You’ve been missed,” Thaddeus commented from across the room.

  I smiled at him and set to work copying a petition from a woman who asked for the tax on her grain stocks to be reduced, something about her crops failing to receive irrigation from the year’s flood—a most lackluster entreaty. I was glad, though, to give my mind something to contemplate besides my own worries, and as the morning passed, I became lost in the mindless, rhythmic movement of my hand as it formed letters and words.

  Thaddeus stayed awake, perhaps a little animated by my return. Near noon, catching me glance at him over my shoulder, he said, “May I inquire, Ana—what was it that you and your aunt were searching for in the scrolls?”

  I stared at him dumbly. Heat shot through me. “You knew?”

  “I enjoyed my sleep, and I thank you for it, but I did wake now and then, if only barely.”

  How much had he actually seen? It crossed my mind to tell him that Yaltha had been in need of tasks to fill her time and was assisting me with my work, nothing more, but the words reached the precipice of my tongue and stalled. I didn’t want to lie to him anymore.

  I said, “I took the key that unlocks the cabinet. We read the scrolls inside it hoping to find some record of Yaltha’s daughter.”

  He stroked his chin, and for an awful moment, I thought he might go straight to Haran. I jumped up, forcing myself to speak calmly. “I’m sorry for our deceit. I didn’t wish to involve you in what we were doing in case we were discovered. Please, if you could forgive me . . .”

  “It’s all right, Ana. I have no grudge against you or your aunt.”

  I felt myself unclench a little. “You won’t report this to Haran?”

  “Goodness, no. He’s been no friend to me. He pays me little, then complains of my work, which I find so tedious I take naps to escape it. Your presence, though, has brought a certain . . . liveliness.” He smiled. “Now, what record were you seeking?”

  “We sought anything that might tell us where her daughter could be. Haran gave her out for adoption.”

  Neither Thaddeus nor any of the servants had been in Haran’s employ back then—Yaltha had been careful to inquire about this when we’d firs
t arrived. I asked if he’d heard the rumors about my aunt.

  He nodded. “It was said she poisoned her husband and Haran sent her to the Therapeutae in order to save her from arrest.”

  “She poisoned no one,” I said indignantly.

  “What’s her daughter’s name?” he inquired.

  “Chaya,” I told him. “She was two years old when my aunt last saw her.”

  He squinted, tapping his fingers against his temple as if to dislodge some memory. “That name,” he muttered more to himself than to me. “I know I’ve seen it written somewhere.”

  My eyes flared wide. Was it too much to think he knew of her? He’d presided over the scriptorium and its contents for nine years. He knew more about Haran’s business than anyone. I wanted to go over and tap the other side of his head, but I remained waiting.

  He got up and walked in a circle about the room and had started a second loop when he stopped. “Oh,” he said. A look passed over his face. Dismay, I thought. “Come with me.”

  We slipped into Haran’s study, where Thaddeus retrieved a locked wooden box that sat unobtrusively on a low shelf. It was painted on top with an image of the falcon-winged Goddess Nephthys, guardian of the dead, a detail Thaddeus kindly provided. He produced a key from a peg beneath Haran’s desk and slipped it into a keyhole, then lifted the lid to reveal a cluster of scrolls, perhaps ten or twelve of them. “This is where Haran conceals documents he wishes to keep secret.”

  He sorted through the scrolls. “Soon after I began working for Haran, he had me make copies of all the scrolls in the box. If I remember rightly, there’s a death notice in here of a girl named Chaya. Hers was an unusual name; it remained with me.”

  The blood left my head. “She’s dead?”

  I sank down into Haran’s grand chair, taking a slow breath as Thaddeus opened a papyrus on the table before me.

  To the Royal Scribe of the Metropolis from Haran ben Philip Levias of the Jewish Council.

  I attest that Chaya, daughter of my sister, Yaltha, died in the month of Epeiph of the 32nd year of the Emperor Augustus Caesar. As her guardian and kinsman, I request that her name be entered among those who have died. She is not default in the payment of taxes being the age of two years at the time of her death.

  I read the notation twice, then pushed it back to Thaddeus, who perused it quickly. He said, “The laws do not require notification of the death of a child, only of an adult male who is taxable. It’s done, but rarely. I recall thinking it odd.”

  Chaya is dead. I tried to picture myself standing before Yaltha, saying the words, but even in my imagination, I couldn’t say them.

  He replaced the scroll and locked the box. “I’m sorry, but it’s best to know the truth.”

  So shocked was I, so choked with dread at passing on this horrific news, I wasn’t at all sure knowing was best. Right then, I preferred to go on living in uncertainty, imagining Chaya alive somewhere.

  * * *

  • • •

  I FOUND YALTHA walking about the garden. I watched her from the doorway for a while, then strode toward her, trying to steady myself.

  As we sat at the edge of the pond, I told her about the death notification. She looked at the sky, where there was not a bird or a cloud, then dropped her chin to her chest as a sob broke from her lips. I wrapped my arms about her caved-in shoulders, and we sat like that for a long time, quiet and dazed, listening to the garden. Birds chirping, the rustle of lizards, a tiny zephyr in the palms.

  ix.

  Days passed in which Yaltha sat and stared into the garden through the open door of the sitting room. I woke one night to check on her and there she was, gazing out at the dark. I didn’t disturb her. She was grieving in her own way.

  I returned to bed, where sleep came and with it a dream.

  A great wind rises. The air fills with scrolls. They fly about me like white and brown birds. Looking up, I see the falcon Goddess Nephthys streak across the sky.

  I woke with the dream still in my body, filling me with lightness, and what came into my mind was the wooden box in which Haran stored his secret documents. It was as if in my dream Nephthys had escaped from her confinement on the lid, as if the box had been thrown open and all the scrolls set free.

  I lay very still and tried to remember everything about those moments when Thaddeus showed me the box—the key, the creak in the lid as he lifted it, the cluster of scrolls inside, reading the death notice twice. Then, in my memory, I heard Thaddeus say, The laws do not require notification of the death of a child, only of an adult male who is taxable. It’s done, but rarely. I recall thinking it odd.

  The statement had seemed irrelevant at the time, but I wondered now why my uncle had taken the extra precaution of declaring Chaya dead if it wasn’t required. Why had it been so important to record it? And something else came back to me: she’d only been two when she’d died. Was it not strange that her life had ended so soon after Yaltha had been sent away?

  I bolted up.

  I was waiting in the scriptorium when Thaddeus arrived. “I must look once more inside the locked box in Haran’s study,” I told him.

  He shook his head. “But you’ve seen the death notice. What more is there?”

  I thought better than to tell him about the dream or my feeling that something was amiss. I said, “My uncle has already left to conduct his business in the city. It will be safe enough.”

  “It’s not Haran I’m worried about, but his personal servant, the one with the shorn head.” I knew which one he meant. He was said to grovel before Haran, as well as snoop for him—anything to ingratiate himself.

  “We’ll be quick,” I promised, and gave him my most pleading look.

  He sighed and led me to the study. I counted nine scrolls inside the box. I unraveled one and read a harsh repudiation of Haran’s second wife for failing in her oath of fidelity. The second scroll was a settlement of their divorce.

  Thaddeus watched me, his eyes roving toward the door. “I don’t know what you’re looking for, but it would be prudent to read faster.”

  I didn’t know what I was looking for either. I smoothed open a third scroll, anchoring it on the desk.

  Choiak, son of Dios and a keeper of camels in the village of Soknopaiou, his wife having died and left him toil and suffering, does hand over his two-year-old daughter, Diodora, to a priest of the Temple of Isis for the sum of 1,400 silver drachmae.

  I stopped reading. My mind began to reel a little.

  “Have you come upon something?” he asked.

  “There’s mention of a two-year-old girl.” He started to question me further, but I held up my hand, signaling him to wait as I continued to read.

  The purchaser, who is granted anonymity by virtue of his status as a representative of the Goddess of Egypt, receives Diodora into his legal ownership and from this day will possess, own, and have proprietary rights over the girl. Choiak henceforth has no power to take back his daughter and through this sale agreement, written in two copies, gives his consent and acknowledges payment.

  Signed on behalf of Choiak, who knows no letters, by Haran ben Philip Levias, this day in the month of Epeiph, in the 32nd year of the reign of the illustrious emperor Augustus Caesar.

  I lifted my head. Heat crept from my neck into my face, a kind of astonishment. “Sophia,” I whispered.

  “What is it? What does it say?”

  “The two-year-old belonged to a man named Choiak, a destitute father whose wife died. He sold his daughter as a slave to a priest.” I glanced again at the document. “The girl’s name was Diodora.”

  I rummaged in the box for Chaya’s death certificate and placed the two documents side by side. Two-year-old Chaya. Two-year-old Diodora. Chaya died and Diodora was sold in the same month of the same year.

  I didn’t know if Thaddeus had arrived a
t the same supposition as I had. I didn’t take the time to inquire.

  x.

  I found Yaltha napping soundly in the chair beside the door to the courtyard, her mouth open and her hands folded high on her chest. I knelt in front of her and softly called her name. When she didn’t rouse, I gave her knee a shake.

  She opened her eyes, frowning, her forehead wrinkling up. “Why did you wake me?” she said, sounding annoyed.

  “Aunt, it is good news. I found a document that may give us a reason to hope Chaya is not dead.”

  She sat straight up. Her eyes were suddenly bright and churning. “What are you talking about, Ana?”

  Please, don’t let me be wrong.

  I told her about my dream and the questions it had stirred, compelling me to return to Haran’s study and reopen the box. As I described the document I’d found inside it, she stared at me, mystified.

  I said, “The girl who was sold into bondage had the name Diodora. But don’t you think it’s peculiar that both Chaya and Diodora were the same age? That one died and the other sold as a slave in the same month of the same year?”

  Yaltha closed her eyes. “They are the same girl.”

  The certainty in her voice startled me. It impelled and excited me, too. “Think of it,” I said. “What if it wasn’t some poor camel keeper who sold a two-year-old girl to the priest, but Haran himself?”

  She gazed at me with sad, stunned wonder.

  “And afterward,” I continued, “Haran concealed what he’d done with a notice of Chaya’s death. Does this seem possible to you? I mean, do you think him capable of this?”

  “I think him capable of anything. And he would have good reason to cover up the deed. The synagogues here condemn selling Jewish children into slavery. Haran would be removed from the council if this was discovered. He could be cast out of the community altogether.”

  “Haran wanted people to believe Chaya was dead, and yet he told you she’d been adopted. I wonder why. Do you think he wanted you to leave Alexandria believing she was loved and cared for? Maybe there’s a speck of kindness in him somewhere.”