The Book of Longings

by Sue Monk Kidd

  “Then how fine it is that you’ll have this chance to learn. Someone is required to write a new composition for every vigil and the songs have become sadly alike and unadventurous. The community will be glad to have a fresh hymn.”

  A hymn. To Sophia. And she wished me to perform it. I felt both petrified and captivated. “Who will teach me?”

  “You will teach yourself,” she said. “There won’t be another vigil for forty-six days—you have ample time.”

  Forty-six days. Surely I would not still be here.

  xx.

  The first two weeks I moved through my days as if wandering about in some languorous trance. Hours of solitude, prayers, reading, writing, antiphonal singing, philosophy lessons—I’d dreamed of such pursuits, but the sudden flood of them conjured the sensation of walking around without my feet touching the ground. I had dreams of floating, of ladders stretching into the clouds. I would sit in the holy room of the house and stare half-seeing, digging my nails into the pads of my thumbs to feel the flesh of myself. Yaltha said my untethered feeling derived from the simple shock of being here.

  Soon thereafter, Skepsis assigned me to the animal shed, which quickly cured me. Chickens, sheep, and donkeys. Manure and urine. Grunting and mating. The insect blizzard at the water trough. Hoof-churned dirt. It even came to me that these things might be holy, too, a sacrilege I kept to myself.

  * * *

  • • •

  ON THE FIRST COLD DAY after our arrival, I lugged the water vessel down the hillside to gather water for the animals from the spring near the gatehouse. The summer inundation, when the Nile floods, was over and cool winds were sweeping in from the sea on one side of the ridge and up from the lake on the other, creating a little maelstrom. I wore a shaggy goatskin cloak supplied by one of the juniors, which was so impossibly large it dragged on the ground. By my count we’d been here five and a half weeks. I tried to determine what month it would be in Galilee—Marcheshvan, I thought. Jesus would not yet be in his woolen cloak.

  He hovered constantly in my thoughts. When I woke, I would lie there and picture him rising from his sleeping mat. When I ate the first meal of the morning, I imagined him breaking his bread in that unhurried way of his. And on those days, as I listened to Skepsis teach the symbolic way of reading our Scriptures, I saw him on the hillside Lavi had told us about, preaching to the multitudes.

  As I descended the path, I came upon the hall where the forty-ninth-day vigils took place. The vigil was in eight days, and though I’d spent hours trying to write a song, I’d made no progress. I made up my mind I would inform Skepsis she should abandon all expectations of me either composing or performing one. She wouldn’t be pleased, but I couldn’t believe she’d send me away.

  There were thirty-nine stone huts scattered across the hillside, each designed for one person, though most of them held two. Yaltha and I shared a house, sleeping side by side on reed mats. Skepsis offered to restore Yaltha to her senior status, but my aunt had refused in order to work in the garden. She spent her afternoons in our minuscule courtyard, sitting under the lone tamarisk tree.

  Now that I’d found my equilibrium again, I liked having the holy room to myself. It had a wooden writing board and a stand on which to unfurl a scroll, and Skepsis had sent papyrus and inks.

  Reaching the spring, I squatted on the ground to fill my vessel. When I heard men’s voices in the gatehouse, I paid little attention—peddlers often came and went, the woman selling flour, the boy bearing sacks of salt—but then I caught certain words: “The fugitives are here. . . . Yes, I’m certain of it.”

  I set down the vessel. Pulling the shaggy cloak to the top of my head, I crept on all fours toward the voices until I dared edge no closer. The junior who kept the gatehouse was nowhere in sight, but one of the seniors was there speaking with two men who wore short tunics, leather sandals laced to their knees, and short knives at their belts. It was the garb of the Jewish militia. “My men will keep vigil along the road in case they attempt to leave,” the taller one said. “I’ll send word to Haran. If you have intelligence for us, you may leave your missives at the gatehouse.”

  It wasn’t a surprise Haran had found us, only that it’d taken him so long. Yaltha and Skepsis devoutly believed he wouldn’t defy the sanctity of the Therapeutae by sending someone inside to apprehend us. “The Jews of Alexandria would most assuredly turn against him,” Skepsis had said. I didn’t feel as confident.

  When the soldiers departed, I hugged the ground and waited for our betrayer to pass by on his way back up the hill. He was a thin, bent man with eyes like dried grapes, the one called Lucian, who was second in seniority to Skepsis. When he was out of sight, I recovered the water vessel and rushed to the garden to inform Yaltha.

  “That snake Lucian was Haran’s spy when I was here before,” she said. “It seems he hasn’t improved with age. The man has fasted too much and been celibate too long.”

  * * *

  • • •

  TWO DAYS LATER, I glimpsed Skepsis and Yaltha hurrying toward me in the animal shed.

  I’d been gathering green grasses to feed the donkeys. I set down the rake.

  Without bothering to greet me, Skepsis lifted a parchment. “This arrived today from Haran. One of the soldiers who guards the road delivered it to the gatehouse.”

  “You know about the soldiers?” I said.

  “It’s my business to know what threatens our peace. I pay the salt boy to bring me news of them.”

  “Read it to her,” Yaltha said.

  Skepsis scowled, not used to being ordered about, but she complied, holding the parchment at arm’s length and squinting:

  I, Haran ben Philip Levias, faithful patron of the Therapeutae for two decades, write to Skepsis, the community’s esteemed leader, and ask that my sister and niece, who are presently under the Therapeutae’s guardianship, be relinquished into my care, where they will be accorded every concern and favor. By delivering them to the men who encamp nearby, the Therapeutae will continue to enjoy my loyal generosity.

  She dropped her hand as if the weight of the parchment had tired her. “I’ve sent him a message, refusing his request. The community will, of course, lose his patronage—his threat is clear enough. It will mean a little more fasting, that’s all.”

  “Thank you,” I said, saddened we would cause any privation at all.

  She tucked the message inside her cloak. As I watched her walk away, I understood that she was the only one standing between us and Haran.

  I would write the song.

  xxi.

  The library was a small, cramped room in the assembly house, teeming with scrolls that lay about on the floor, on shelves and tables, and in wall niches like piles of scattered firewood. I stepped over and around them, sneezing at the dust. Skepsis had told me there were songs here that bore inscriptions of both lyrics and melody, even Greek vocal notations, but how was I to find them? There was no catalog. Nothing was sorted. My animal shed had more order and my donkeys’ fur less dust.

  Skepsis had warned me about the disarray. “Theano, our librarian, is old with a weakness that makes it impossible for him to walk,” she’d said. “He hasn’t tended the library in more than a year and there’s been no one willing or able to take his place. But go and search for the songs—they’ll be instructive.”

  It struck me now she’d had another motive. She was hoping I would become her ad hoc librarian.

  I cleared a space on the floor, setting the lamp well away from the papyri, and opened scroll after scroll, finding not just Scriptures and Jewish philosophy, but works by Platonists, Stoics, and Pythagoreans; Greek poems; and a comic play by Aristophanes. I set about organizing the manuscripts by subject. By late afternoon I’d categorized more than fifty scrolls, writing a description of each one, as they did at the great library in Alexandria. I swept the floor and sprinkled the cor
ners with eucalyptus leaves. I was brushing the mint-honey smell from my palms when the marvel happened, the one that had been coming all day, unbeknownst to me.

  Footsteps. I turned to the door. There, in the broken light, stood Diodora.

  “You are here,” I said, needing to verbalize what I saw but couldn’t yet believe.

  “So she is,” said Skepsis, stepping from behind her into the room. Her old eyes sparked with delight.

  I drew my cousin to me and felt her cheek wet against mine. “How did you come to be here?”

  She glanced at Skepsis, who pulled a bench from beneath the table and lowered herself onto it. “I sent a message to her at Isis Medica and asked her to come.”

  “I didn’t know what had become of you and my mother until I got her letter,” Diodora said, still gripping my hand. “When you didn’t return to Isis Medica, I knew something had befallen you. I had to come and see for myself that you’re both well.”

  “Will you remain with us long?”

  “The priestess has given me leave for as long as I wish.”

  “You will share the house with Ana and Yaltha,” Skepsis said. “The sleeping room is just wide enough for three beds.” Tucking stray pieces of hair behind her ears, she studied Diodora. “I asked you to come so you could be near your mother and she near you, but I also asked for myself. Or, I should say, for the Therapeutae. We have need of you here. Some of our members are old and sick and there’s no one to tend them. You’re accomplished in the art of healing. If you remain with us, we would benefit from your care.”

  “You wish me to live among you?” Diodora said.

  “Only if you wish a quiet, contemplative life. Only if you wish to study and keep God’s memory alive.” These were the same words she’d spoken to Yaltha and me the night we’d arrived.

  “But yours is the God of the Jews,” Diodora said. “I know nothing of him. It’s Isis I serve.”

  “We will teach you about our God and you will teach us about yours, and together we’ll find the God that exists behind them.”

  Diodora gave no answer, but I watched a light come into her face.

  “Does Yaltha know you’re here?” I asked.

  “Not yet. I only just arrived and Skepsis wished you to accompany us.”

  “I would not have you miss Yaltha’s face when she sees who has come,” Skepsis said. Her eyes pored over my neat, methodical stacks of scrolls. “I pray we shall soon have a healer and a librarian.”

  * * *

  • • •

  YALTHA HAD FALLEN ASLEEP sitting on the bench in the courtyard beside our hut with her head leaning against the wall. Her arms were crossed over her thin breasts, her lower lip fluttering with each puff of breath. Seeing her at rest, Skepsis, Diodora, and I paused.

  “Should we wake her?” Diodora whispered.

  Skepsis strode over and shook her shoulder. “Yaltha . . . Yaltha, someone is here.”

  My aunt opened one eye. “Leave me be.”

  “What do you think, Diodora?” Skepsis said. “Should we leave her alone?”

  Yaltha started, looking past Skepsis to where Diodora stood near the entrance.

  “I think we should leave her alone,” I said. “Go back to sleep, Aunt.”

  Yaltha smiled, motioning for Diodora to come and sit next to her. When they’d said their greetings, she summoned me, as well. As I sank down on the other side of her, she looked at Skepsis. “My daughters,” she said.

  xxii.

  Diodora and I followed a zigzagging footpath to the top of the limestone cliffs that rose behind the Therapeutae community. Sunlight lay across the summit and the rocks were shining white as milk. Scampering through the few remaining poppies, I was possessed by the ebullient feeling of being set free. I didn’t like to think I could be happy with Jesus so far away and his circumstances unknown to me, yet I felt it—happiness. The realization brought a twist of guilt.

  “Your countenance has fallen,” said Diodora. She’d been trained to observe the body and little escaped her notice.

  “I was thinking of my husband,” I said. I told her then about the circumstances of our separation and how much it grieved me to be away from him. “I’m awaiting a letter telling me it’s safe for us to return.”

  She came to a standstill. “Us? Do you believe Yaltha will leave and go back?”

  I stared at her, silence gnawing around us. The night she’d come to Haran’s house, she’d become distressed when Yaltha had spoken of returning to Galilee, and she’d made it plain she had no wish to go there with us. Why had I said anything about leaving?

  “I don’t know if Yaltha will leave or stay,” I told her, realizing it was true. I didn’t know.

  She nodded, accepting my honesty, and we continued on more subdued. Reaching the crest ahead of me, she took in the vista and swept her arms open. “Oh, Ana. Look!”

  I hastened the last few steps and there before me was the sea. The water stretched all the way to Greece and Rome, glittering striations of blue and green, ripples of white. Our Sea, the Romans called it. Galilee was a million fathoms away.

  Finding a cranny protected from the winds, we sat, squeezed together between the rocks. Since Diodora’s arrival she’d been effusive, telling us about her days growing up at Isis Medica. She’d asked questions as well, eager for stories about us. Our whispered talks on our sleeping mats had left me yawning and heavy-eyed the next day. But it was worth it. She was telling me now about Theano, whose illness prevented him from tending the library. “He has a weakness of the heart. It will give out soon.”

  Listening as she gave an all too vivid account of the bodily complaints she’d heard, I began to feel I should return and set to work on the hymn to Sophia. The forty-ninth-day vigil was tomorrow night and I sat idle on a rock while Diodora spoke of foot ulcers. “It surprises me,” she said. “After all the years I spent at Isis Medica, I do not yet miss it.”

  “What about Isis? Do you miss her?”

  “There’s no need for me to miss her. I carry her inside me. She is everything.” She continued speaking for many minutes, but I heard nothing more. I felt the song I would write quicken to life inside me. I didn’t know how to go on sitting there.

  I stood. “We must go.”

  She threaded her arm around mine. “The day we met, you said, ‘Let us be more than cousins. Let us be sisters.’ Do you still want that?”

  “I wish it even more now.”

  “It’s my wish, too,” she said.

  * * *

  • • •

  AS WE DESCENDED THE PATH, I spied a figure beneath the eucalyptus tree where I collected my aromatic leaves. He wore the white tunic and shaggy cloak of the Therapeutae, but I couldn’t identify him. Treading farther, I lifted my hand to shield the sun and saw it was the spy, Lucian.

  “It’s late in the day,” he said as we came nearer. “Why aren’t you engaged in study and prayer?”

  “We could ask the same of you,” I said, assailed by the uneasy feeling he’d been waiting for us.

  “I’ve been at prayer here beneath the tree.”

  Diodora bristled. “And we’ve been at prayer up there on the cliffs.” I gave her an approving look.

  “The rocks up there are treacherous and there are wild animals,” he said. “We would all be saddened if you came to harm.”

  His face had such a quiet malevolence that I looked away. He seemed to be threatening us, but I was unsure how. “We feel safe enough there,” I told him and attempted to pass. The words She is everything were like a fire in me. I had no time for him.

  He stepped to block the path. “When you are in need of a walk, it would be safer to travel down the hill and along the road to the lake. There are solitary places on the shore that are as beautiful as the sea. I will be glad to show you.”

  Ah. That was it. The la
ke lay down the hill and across the road, just beyond the protection of the Therapeutae’s precinct.

  I said, “The lake sounds like a pleasant place to pray. We’ll go there another time. Right now we have duties to attend.”

  He smiled. I smiled back.

  “Don’t attempt to go to the lake,” I told Diodora when we were some distance away. “You’ve just met Lucian, Haran’s spy. He means to lure us onto the road, where the militia wait to arrest us. The boy who brings the salt said the soldiers stop everyone who passes from the west, looking for an old woman with a drooped eye and a young woman with unruly curls. They could easily mistake you for me.”

  My words sobered her.

  When we arrived at our hut, we found Yaltha sitting in her spot in the courtyard reading a codex from the library. Seeing her, Diodora said quietly to me, “It isn’t merely a question of whether Yaltha will choose to go to Galilee or stay in Egypt, is it? It’s whether any of us will be able to leave at all.”

  She’d spoken my fear out loud.

  * * *

  • • •

  LEAVING DIODORA AND YALTHA in the courtyard, I cleansed my hands and face in preparation to enter the holy room and write the hymn that was burning a hole in my heart. I set the lamp on the table and poured ink into the palette.

  I dipped my pen.

  xxiii.

  The forty-ninth-day vigil began the next day at sunset. I arrived late to find the dining hall ablaze with lamps, the seniors already reclined on their couches, eating. The juniors were hauling about platters of food. Diodora was at the serving table replenishing a tray of fish and hen eggs. “Sister!” she cried as I approached. “Where have you been?”

  I held up the scroll that contained my opus. “I was finalizing the words of my hymn.”

  “Lucian has been inquiring of your whereabouts. He has twice pointed out your absence to Skepsis.”