The Book of Longings

by Sue Monk Kidd

  Her laugh was bitter. “He knew how anguishing it would be for me to have a daughter out there who was lost to me. He knew it would haunt me all my days. When my sons died, the grief was an agony, but with time I reconciled myself to it. I’ve never reconciled myself to losing Chaya. One moment she seems within reach and the next moment she’s in an abyss I can never find. Haran was pleased to offer me this special brand of torture.”

  Yaltha leaned back in the chair and I watched her anger fade and her eyes soften. She let out an extravagant breath. “Did the document record the name of the priest who bought the girl, or what temple he served?” she asked.

  “It mentioned neither.”

  “Then Chaya could be anywhere in Egypt—here in Alexandria or as far as Philae.”

  Finding her suddenly seemed impossible. I could tell by the disappointment in my aunt’s face that she thought so, too.

  She said, “It’s enough that Chaya is alive.”

  But, of course, it wasn’t.

  xi.

  One morning shortly after I’d arrived in the scriptorium, Haran’s servant appeared at the door. He made a little bow in my direction. “Haran wishes to see you in his study.”

  During the many months we’d been here, I’d never been summoned by Haran. In fact, I’d rarely seen him, having passed him no more than two dozen times as I moved between the scriptorium and the guest quarters. I’d paid his rent requirements to Apion.

  It’s a curiosity how the mind alights first on the worst scenario. I immediately thought Haran must have discovered I’d been prying into his locked cabinet and box of secrets. Wheeling about on my stool, I looked at Thaddeus, who seemed as surprised and disconcerted as I. “Shall I come with you?” he asked.

  “Haran asked only for the woman,” the servant said, shifting about impatiently.

  My uncle sat in his study, elbows propped on his desk, one fist balled into the other. He glanced up at me, then refocused his attention on an array of scrolls, pens, and ink vials scattered around him, making me wait. I didn’t think his servant had seen my intrusions, but I couldn’t be sure. I replanted my feet.

  Minutes passed. “Thaddeus tells me your work is satisfactory,” he said. Finally. “As such, I’ve decided to waive your rent requirement. You may stay for now as guests, not boarders.”

  Guests. Prisoners. There was little difference.

  “Thank you, Uncle.” I tried to smile at him. It helped immensely that he had a dab of ink on the side of his nose, which he’d placed there with his smudged finger.

  He cleared his throat. “I leave tomorrow to inspect my papyrus crops and workshops. I travel to Terenouthis, Letopolis, and Memphis and expect to be away for four weeks.”

  We’d been shut up in this house for nearly a year and a half, but here it was—sweet freedom. It was all I could do to keep from breaking into song and dance.

  “I’ve bidden you here,” he said, “to advise you in person that my absence does not change our agreement. If you or my sister leave the house, you will forfeit your right to remain here and I will have no choice but to renew the charge of murder against you. I’ve instructed Apion to watch you. He will report your movements to me.”

  Sweet, sweet, sweet freedom.

  * * *

  • • •

  FINDING NO TRACE OF YALTHA in our rooms, I hurried to the servants’ quarters, where she sometimes retreated. I found her there with Pamphile and Lavi, hunched over a game of senet, moving her ebony pawn over the board, trying to be the first player to pass into the afterlife. The game had become a salve, a way to distract herself, but her disappointment about finding Chaya still hung over her like a small cloud I could almost see.

  “Aghhh!” my aunt cried, landing on a square that symbolized bad fortune.

  “I’m in no hurry for you to reach the afterlife,” I said, and the three of them looked around, surprised to see me.

  My aunt grinned. “Not even this paltry afterlife on the game board?”

  “Not even that one.” I slipped beside her and whispered, “I have welcome news.”

  She flipped her pawn onto its side. “Since Ana has requested that I not visit the afterlife today, I must withdraw from the game.”

  I led her to a private spot near the outdoor kitchen and told her what had just transpired.

  The corners of her mouth twitched. “I’ve been thinking. There’s one person who would have known about Haran’s deception and that’s Apion’s father, Apollonios. He was Haran’s treasurer before Apion, but also his confidant, doing his bidding. It’s likely he was involved in the matter.”

  “Then we’ll go and find him.”

  “He will be old now,” she said. “If he’s alive at all.”

  “Do you think he would help us?”

  “He was always kind to me.”

  “I’ll approach Apion when the time is right,” I told her and watched her tilt back her head and drink in the spaciousness of the sky.

  xii.

  Apion was in the small room he called the treasury, writing numbers onto a piece of lined parchment. He looked up at my approach. “If you’ve brought money for your rent, Haran has done away with the requirement.”

  “Yes, he told me himself. I’m here to ask for the favor you owe me.” I tried to look modest, to be the kind of genial person one is eager to grant favors.

  He sighed audibly and laid down his pen.

  “I understand my uncle has placed Yaltha and me under your watchful eye while he’s away. I would like to respectfully request that you forgo this onerous task and leave us to ourselves.”

  “If you plan to venture out of the house against Haran’s wishes and expect me to say nothing to him, you are mistaken. It puts me at risk of losing my position.”

  “It seems taking undisclosed bribes also puts you at risk,” I said.

  He rose from the table. His dark curls glittered with oil. I caught the scent of myrrh. “You threaten me then?”

  “I only ask that you look the other way while Haran is away. My aunt and I have been here more than a year and have seen nothing of the greatness of Alexandria. Are a few excursions too much to ask? I don’t wish to go to Haran about the bribes you took from me, but I will.”

  He studied me, seeming to weigh my threat. I doubted I would follow through with it, but he didn’t know that. I held his gaze. He said, “I’ll ignore your goings and comings, but once Haran has returned, my debt to you will be paid. You must give me an oath you will extort me no further.”

  “Extort is a harsh word,” I said.

  “It’s also the correct word. Now swear before me that your uncle’s return will be the end of it.”

  “I swear it.”

  He sat down again, dismissing me with a flick of his wrist. I said, “May I ask, is your father still living?”

  He looked up. “My father? Why is this of interest to you?”

  “You may recall that when I first met you in Sepphoris—”

  He interrupted, his mouth tightening, “Do you mean back when you were with child?”

  It took a moment to realize what he meant. I’d forgotten the lie I’d told him; clearly he had not. When I’d pretended I was pregnant in order to obtain from him what I needed, I hadn’t known I’d be traveling to Alexandria, where the months would reveal my falsehood. I felt an embarrassed heat on my cheeks.

  “Are you going to lie again and tell me you lost the child?”

  “No, I confess I lied to you. I’ll not do so again. I’m sorry.” I was sorry, and yet my lie had helped win us passage to Alexandria. And my extortion, as he insisted on calling it, now offered us the freedom to roam about the city. Yes, I was sorry, and no, I was not sorry.

  He nodded, his shoulders dropping. My words seemed to mollify him.

  I began again. “As I was about to say . . . when we
first met, I mentioned that my aunt had known your father. She was fond of him and asked me to inquire of his health.”

  “Tell her he’s well enough, though he’s grown corpulent in his old age—he lives on a diet of beer, wine, bread, and honey.”

  Apollonios is alive. “If by chance Yaltha wished to see him, how would she find him?”

  “I don’t wish to give you another reason to stray from the house, but it seems you plan to do so anyway. My father can be found at the library, where he goes each day to join the enclave of men who sit in the colonnades and debate exactly how far God is from the world—a thousand iters or seven times a thousand.”

  “They think God far?”

  “They are Platonists and Stoics and followers of the Jewish philosopher Philo—I hardly know what they think.”

  This time when he flicked his wrist, I left.

  xiii.

  I moved along the Canopic Way as if thrust from a bow, flying ahead of Yaltha and Lavi and then having to pause for them to catch up.

  In the center of the street, narrow pools of water cascaded one into the other for as far as I could see, and hundreds of copper pots filled with kindling lined the sides, waiting to be set afire at night to light the thoroughfare. The women were clad in blue, black, or white tunics cinched under their breasts with bright-colored ribbons, making me conscious of my plain Nazareth dress, dingy undyed flax. As they passed, I studied their coiled silver snake bracelets, hoop earrings with dangling pearls, their eyes lined in green and black, hair swept into knots atop their heads with a row of curls on their foreheads. I pulled my long, single braid over my shoulder and held on to it as if it were the end of a tether.

  Nearing the royal quarter, I spied my first obelisk—a tall, narrow structure that jutted toward the sky. I craned my head back and studied it.

  “It’s a monument to a particular part of the male body,” Yaltha said, perfectly serious.

  I looked at it again and heard Lavi laugh, then Yaltha. I didn’t say so, but I’d had no trouble believing her jest.

  “They are more useful as timekeepers,” she said, inspecting the long, bright black shadow the obelisk cast. “It’s two hours past noon. We’ve tarried long enough.”

  We’d set out at midday, leaving quietly through the servant quarters when no one was about. Lavi had insisted on accompanying us. Aware of our mission, he shouldered a pouch containing the last of our money in case it became necessary to bribe Apollonios. Lavi had constantly implored me to slow down, and once had steered us across the street when a legation of officious-looking Roman men approached. I looked at him now, thinking of him and Pamphile—they seemed no closer to realizing their plans to marry than when he had first told me about them.

  At the entrance to the library complex, I halted and drew an awed breath, my palms coming together under my chin. Before me, two colonnades stretched along either side of a vast courtyard that led to a magnificent building of white marble.

  Finding my voice, I said, “I cannot seek out Apollonios until I’ve seen inside the library.” I knew there to be ten halls containing the half million texts Yaltha had told me about. My heart was running rampant.

  My aunt linked her arm in mine. “Nor I.”

  We wound through the courtyard, which was dense with people whom I imagined to be philosophers, astronomers, historians, mathematicians, poets . . . every kind of scholar, though they were likely ordinary citizens. Reaching the steps, I read the Greek inscription carved over the doors—“A Healing Sanctum”—and scrambled up them two at a time.

  Inside, dimness hit my eyes first, followed by lamplight. A moment later the walls came alive with brightly hued paintings of ibis-headed men and lion-headed women. We moved along a dazzling corridor covered with Gods, Goddesses, solar disks, and all-seeing eyes. There were boats, birds, chariots, harps, plows, and rainbow wings—thousands of glyphs. I had the sensation of floating through a storied world.

  When we arrived in the first hall, I could barely take in the sprawling room with its cubicles reaching toward the ceiling, each one labeled and stuffed with scrolls and leather-bound codices. Enheduanna’s exaltation to Inanna was likely in here, as well as at least a few works by female Greek philosophers. It seemed absurd to think my own writings might be housed here one day, too, but I stood there and let myself imagine it.

  As we moved from hall to hall, I became aware of young men in short white tunics dashing about, some carrying armloads of papyri, others on ladders arranging scrolls in cubicles or dusting them with tufts of feathers. I noticed that Lavi watched them intently.

  “You are very quiet,” Yaltha said, sidling next to me. “Is the library all you hoped?”

  “It’s a holy of holies,” I said. And it was, but I could feel the tiny lump of anger tucked beneath my awe. A half million scrolls and codices were within these walls, and all but a handful were by men. They had written the known world.

  At Yaltha’s urging we turned back to search for Apollonios and the men who debated the distance to God and back. We found them seated beneath one of the colonnades, as Apion had predicted.

  “He’s the ample one with purple on his tunic,” Yaltha said, pausing in a niche to observe him.

  “How will we manage to draw him away from the others?” I asked. “Are you going to boldly interrupt him?” He was at that moment ardently debating some point.

  “The three of us will proceed along the colonnade and when we draw near him, I’ll call out, ‘Apollonios, it is you! I’m shocked to come upon you.’ He will have no choice but to come apart and speak with us.”

  I gave her an approving look. “What if he tells Haran of his encounter with us?”

  “I don’t think he’ll do so, but we have no choice. He’s our only way.”

  We did as she suggested, and Apollonios, though oblivious to our identities, left his bench and came aside to greet us. “Do you not recognize an old friend?” Yaltha asked. “I’m Yaltha, the sister of Haran.”

  A pained expression entered his face, passing quickly, followed by a gush of pleasure. “Ah, yes, I see now. You’ve returned from Galilee.”

  “And I brought back my niece, Ana, the daughter of my youngest brother.” His gaze swept over me, then over Lavi, prompting her to introduce him as well.

  The old treasurer bestowed a surplus of smiles on us, his belly so rotund he was forced to bend backward from his waist as a counterbalance. I could smell the cinnamon oil on him. “Do you reside with Haran?” he asked.

  “We had nowhere else,” Yaltha said. “We’ve dwelled with him more than a year and today is the first time we’ve left his house, a freedom we’ve been able to seize only because he’s away from the city. He forbids us to leave the house.” She feigned a look of distress, or perhaps it was real. “I trust you won’t tell him we slipped out?”

  “No, no, of course not. He was my employer, but never my friend. I find it remarkable, though, that he isolates you from the city.”

  “He does so to prevent me from asking about my daughter, Chaya.”

  He looked away from her to a crinkling of clouds overhead, frowning, arching back his spine, his fists bored into the small of his back. He knew something.

  “I cannot be too long on my feet,” he said.

  The four of us made our way to a pair of benches near his fellow debaters, the old man grunting heavily as he sat. “You’ve returned here to seek your daughter?”

  “I’m growing old, Apollonios. My wish is to see her before I die. Haran will tell me nothing of her whereabouts. If she’s alive, she’s a woman of twenty-five now.”

  “I may be able to help you, but first I must have your word and that of your niece and your friend that you won’t reveal how you’ve come to know what I’m about to tell you. Especially to Haran.”

  We reassured him quickly and he suddenly appeared pale and breathless, swea
t and oil beading in the folds of his neck. He said, “I’ve wished many times I could relieve myself of this burden before I die.” He shook his head, pausing for far too many minutes before continuing. “Haran sold her to a priest who served in the temple of Isis Medica here in Alexandria. I myself recorded the transaction.”

  Having confessed, he sank back, seemingly exhausted, his head resting on the great orb of his body. We waited.

  “I’ve wished for a way to repay you for my part in it,” he said, unable to meet Yaltha’s gaze. “I did as Haran asked and I came to regret it.”

  “Do you know the name of this priest or where Chaya might now be?” Yaltha asked.

  “I made it my business to know. For all these years, I’ve kept abreast of her from a distance. The priest died some years ago—he freed her before his death. She was raised as an attendant in the healing precinct of Isis Medica. She serves there still.”

  “Tell me,” Yaltha said, and I saw the effort in her face to remain composed, “why would Haran choose to sell my daughter? He could have given her in adoption like he falsely told me he did.”

  “Who can decipher Haran’s heart? I only know he wanted to be rid of the child in a way that would leave no trace. An adoption would have required triple documents, one for Haran, one for the adopted parents, and one for the royal scribe. And the parents would’ve been named, unlike the priest, who could be kept anonymous.”

  He pushed himself up from the bench. “When you go to Isis Medica, ask for Diodora. It’s the only name Chaya knows. She was raised as an Egyptian, not a Jew.”

  As he turned to leave, I said, “The men in the library who wear the white tunics and climb the ladders . . . who are they?”

  “We call them librarians. They keep the books ordered and cataloged and retrieve them for scholars at the university. You will see them running at great speed delivering them. Some of them sell copies to the public. Others assist the scribes in procuring inks and papyri. A fortunate few are sent on expeditions to purchase books in distant lands.”