Studying him closer, I realized I’d also seen him earlier today on Golgotha. He was the man who’d approached Jesus as he hung on the cross and who, like me, had been turned back by the soldiers. I offered him a sorrowful smile. He was the disciple who’d stayed.
He settled himself on the courtyard tiles while Martha muttered absently about the empty wineskins, finally setting a cup of water before her guest.
“What has brought you here?” asked Mary of Bethany.
His gaze shifted to me and his face turned grave. Wedged between Mary and Tabitha, I reached for their hands.
“Judas is dead,” John said. “He hanged himself from a tree.”
vii.
Shall I confess? Part of me had wished my brother dead. When Judas had turned Jesus over to the Temple guard, he’d breached some sacred boundary in me. I’d offered him that gesture of pity as he’d stood in the distance on Golgotha, but in the aftermath, it was mostly hatred I felt.
In those blank, bewildered moments, as Mary and Salome and the others waited for me to respond to the news of Judas’s death, it occurred to me that Jesus would attempt to love even the lost, murderous Judas. Once, when I’d ranted to him about some slight Judith had done to me and declared my loathing of her, he’d said, “I know, Ana. She is difficult. You don’t have to feel love for her. Only try to act with love.”
But he was Jesus, and I was Ana. I wasn’t ready to let go of my animosity toward Judas. I would do so in time, but right now it saved me. It left less room inside for pain.
The silence went on too long. No one seemed to know what to say. At last, Mary of Bethany said, “Oh, Ana. This day is a desolation for you. First, your husband, now your brother.”
Something about these words caused a flash of indignation. As if Jesus and Judas could be mentioned in the same sentence, as if the loss I felt over them could be compared—but she meant well, I knew that. I stood and smiled at them. “Your presence has been my only solace this day, but I’m overcome now with weariness and will retire to sleep.” I bent and kissed Mary and Salome. Tabitha rose and followed me.
I curled onto the mat in Tabitha’s room, but could find no sleep. Hearing me toss about, my friend began to play her lyre, hoping to draw me into sleep. As the music moved through the darkness, grief rose in me. For my beloved, but also for my brother. Not for the Judas who betrayed Jesus, but for the boy who pined for his parents, who endured our father’s rejection, who took me with him when he walked in the Galilean hills, and who always took my part. I mourned the Judas who gave my bracelet to the injured laborer, who burned Nathaniel’s date grove, who resisted Rome. Those were the Judases I loved. For them, I buried my face in the crook of my arm and cried.
viii.
When I woke the following morning, the sky was white with sun. Tabitha’s mat was empty and the smell of baking bread floated everywhere. I sat up, surprised at the lateness, forgetting for a single, blissful moment the ruin of the previous day, and then all of it returned, winding itself around my ribs until I could barely breathe. Once again, I wished for my aunt. I could hear the women out in the courtyard, their soft, droning voices, but it was Yaltha I wanted.
I stood at the doorway, trying to imagine what she would say to me if she were here. Several minutes passed before I allowed myself to remember that night in Alexandria when Lavi brought news of John the Immerser’s beheading and I’d been overwhelmed with the fear of losing Jesus. “All shall be well,” Yaltha had told me, and when I’d recoiled at how trite and superficial that sounded, she’d said, “I don’t mean that life won’t bring you tragedy. I only mean you will be well in spite of it. There’s a place in you that is inviolate. You’ll find your way there, when you need to. And you’ll know then what I speak of.”
I pulled on Jesus’s cloak and stepped outside. My feet were tender from walking barefoot on the stones of Golgotha.
Lavi squatted near the oven, packing his travel pouch. I watched him layer bread, salted fish, and waterskins inside it. With all that had happened, I’d forgotten he was leaving. The ship we’d arrived on would sail back to Alexandria in three days. In order to be on it, Lavi would set out for Joppa early tomorrow morning. The realization jarred me.
Mary, Salome, Martha, Mary of Bethany, Tabitha, and Mary of Magdala were gathered in the shade near the wall overlooking the valley. Even though the Sabbath would not end until sunset, Tabitha appeared to be mending something and Martha was kneading dough. I doubted Tabitha cared about the Sabbath law forbidding work, but Martha seemed devout about these things. When I joined them, sitting on the warm ground beside my mother-in-law, Martha said, “Yes, I know. I’m committing a sin, but I find consolation in baking bread.”
I wanted to say, If I had ink and papyrus, I would gladly sin along with you. Instead, I gave her my most commiserative smile.
Peering at Tabitha, I saw that she was sewing my sandal.
Mary said, “We’ll return to the tomb tomorrow after first light to finish anointing Jesus. Mary and Martha have provided us with aloe, cloves, mint, and frankincense.”
I’d said what felt like my final goodbye to Jesus the day before when I’d kissed his cheeks in the tomb. It unsettled me to think of repeating the wrenching process of leaving him again, but I nodded.
“I trust one of you remembers where the tomb lies,” she said. “I was too distraught to take notice and there were many caves there and about.”
“I believe I can find it,” said Salome. “I was careful to observe the way.”
Mary turned back to me. “Ana, I think that you, Salome, and I should remain here in Bethany for the seven days of mourning before we depart for Nazareth. I’ll need to seek out James and Judith in Jerusalem and learn their wishes, but I’m sure they’ll agree. Would this suit you?”
Nazareth. In my mind, I saw the mud-baked compound with the single olive tree. The tiny room where I’d lived with Jesus, where I’d birthed Susanna, where I’d hidden away my incantation bowl. I pictured the little storage room where Yaltha had slept. The hand loom on which I’d woven reams of poor cloth and the oven where I’d baked loaves of scorched bread.
The air grew very quiet. I felt Mary’s stare. I felt all their stares, but I didn’t look up from my lap. What would it be like to live in Nazareth again, but without Jesus? James was now the eldest, the head of the family, and it occurred to me he might decide to find me a new husband, as he had for Salome when she became a widow. And there was the threat of Antipas. In his letter, Judas had written that the danger to me in Galilee had lessened, but not fully passed.
I pushed to my feet and walked a short distance from them. There was a feeling in me like rising water. It broke over me, finally, leaving behind the thing I knew, but didn’t know. Nazareth had never been my home. Jesus had been my home.
Now, with him gone, my home was on a hillside in Egypt. It was Yaltha and Diodora. It was the Therapeutae. Where else could I write with abandon? Where but there could I tend a library and animals both? Where else could I live by the utterances of my own heart?
I breathed in, and it felt like a small homecoming.
Across the courtyard, I saw Lavi securing the opening of his travel pouch with a leather strap. The fear of disappointing Mary, of hurting her, of missing her, hurtled through me.
She called to me, “Ana, what is the matter?”
I walked back and sat beside her. She said, “You do not mean to return to Nazareth, do you?”
I shook my head. “I will return to Egypt to live out my days with my aunt. There’s a community there of spiritual seekers and philosophers. I will live among them.”
I said it gently, but without apology, then I waited for what she would say.
She spoke with her lips close to my ear. “Go in peace, Ana, for you were born for this.”
Those ten words were her greatest gift to me.
“Tell us a
bout this place where you’ll live,” said Salome.
I felt barely composed, astonished suddenly that I would be leaving so quickly, and I was anxious to alert Lavi and begin packing my own provisions, but I did my best to enlighten them about the Therapeutae, the community that danced and sang all night every forty-ninth day. I described the stone huts scattered across a hillside, the lake at its foot, the cliffs at the top, and beyond them, the sea. I told them about the holy room where I’d written my own texts and preserved them in codices, the library I was trying to restore, the song to Sophia I’d written and sung. I talked on and on, and I felt the longing in me for home.
“Take me with you,” a voice said.
We all turned and looked at Tabitha. I wondered if she’d spoken in jest, but she stared at me with utmost seriousness. I didn’t know how to answer.
“Tabitha!” Martha admonished. “You’ve been like a daughter to us all these years, yet on a whim you want to abandon us for a place unknown to you?”
“I do not know how to explain it,” Tabitha said. “I feel like I, too, am meant to be there.” Her voice was thickening, syllables starting to blunt and fall away. She looked slightly frantic to make her realization understood.
“But you can’t just leave,” said Martha.
“Why can’t she?” I asked. The question arrested Martha.
I looked at Tabitha. “If you’re serious about going, you must know that life within the Therapeutae is not only singing and dancing. There’s work, fasting, study, and prayer.” I didn’t mention Haran and the Jewish militia who’d sought to arrest me. “You must also possess a desire for God,” I told her. “Otherwise you won’t be admitted. I would be wrong not to tell you these things.”
“I wouldn’t mind finding God in this place,” Tabitha said, calmer now, her words intact again. “Could I not seek him in music?”
Skepsis would welcome her; I was sure of it. She would admit her based on that last question Tabitha had posed. And if not, she’d admit her for me. “I can think of no reason you can’t come with us,” I said.
“Do you have money for the ship’s passage?” asked Martha. Practical Martha.
Tabitha’s eyes widened. “I used all the money I had to buy the spikenard.”
I calculated quickly in my head. “I’m sorry, Tabitha, I only have enough drachmae for Lavi’s passage and my own.” Why hadn’t I thought about this before I encouraged her?
Martha made a noise, a little harrumph that sounded like triumph. “Well, it’s fortunate, then, that I have the money.” She smiled at me. “I don’t know why she can’t just leave if she chooses.”
My sandal lay in Tabitha’s lap, repaired and ready for the long walk to Joppa. She handed it to me, then rose and embraced Martha. “If I had more spikenard, I would bathe your feet,” Tabitha told her.
* * *
• • •
THE NEXT MORNING, Lavi, Tabitha, and I slipped from the house before dawn, while the others still slept. At the gate, I looked back, thinking of Mary. “Let’s not say goodbye,” she’d told me the evening before. “We shall surely see one another again.” She’d said this without artifice, with a believing hope so earnest, I thought it might be true. We would, though, never see each other again.
The moon was at its ebb, no more than a faint, curving crust of light. As we followed the path into the Hinnom Valley, Tabitha began to hum, unable to hide her joy. She had tied her lyre onto her back, where its curled arms peeked over her shoulders like a pair of wings. The happiness of home-going was in me, too, but it was lodged beside my sorrow. This was the land of my husband and my daughter. Their bones would always be here. Every step away from them was a pain in my heart.
Walking along Jerusalem’s eastern wall, I begged the darkness to last until we passed the Roman hill where Jesus had died, but the light broke just as we approached, a sudden, harrowing brightness. I let myself take one last glimpse of Golgotha. Then I turned my gaze toward the hillsides in the distance where Jesus was buried, where the women would come soon to wrap him in sweet spices.
LAKE MAREOTIS, EGYPT
30–60 CE
i.
Tabitha and I found Yaltha in the garden, bent over a row of spindly plants. Absorbed in her work, she didn’t notice us. She smeared her fingers across her tunic, leaving two trails of dirt, an act that filled me with inexplicable gladness. She was fifty-nine now, but she looked almost youthful kneeling in the sunlight among all these green-growing things, and I felt a surge of relief. She was still here.
“Aunt!” I called.
Seeing me, and then Tabitha, running toward her through the barley plants, she opened her mouth and dropped back onto her heels. I heard her exclaim in typical fashion, “Shit of a donkey!”
I tugged Yaltha to her feet and hugged her to me. “I thought I would never see you again.”
“Nor I, you,” she said. “Yet here you are after only a few weeks away.” Her face was a jumble of elation and confusion. “And look who you’ve brought with you.”
As she embraced Tabitha, a shout came from behind us, higher on the slope. “Ana? Ana. Is that you?” Looking back toward the cliffs, I saw Diodora racing down the path with a basket jostling in her arms, and I knew she’d been up there collecting motherwort. She reached us breathless, her hair sprung from her scarf into a riotous fan around her face. She swung me about, sending the spiky-leaved herbs flying.
When I introduced her to Tabitha, she said a priceless thing that Tabitha would remember all her life: “Ana has told me of your bravery.” Tabitha said nothing in response, which I imagined Diodora perceived as shyness, but I knew her silence was about the severed tongue in her mouth, her fear of sounding senseless.
Tabitha helped Diodora gather the spilled herbs, and all the while, Yaltha waited to ask the question, the one I dreaded. I looked out across the hillside, searching for the roof of the library.
“What has brought you back, child?” Yaltha said. Her face looked grave and stony. She’d already guessed the reason.
“Jesus is dead,” I said, feeling how my voice wanted to splinter apart. “They crucified him.”
Diodora let out a cry that I felt inside my own throat. Yaltha took my hand. “Come with me,” she said.
She led us to a little knoll not far from the garden, where we sat beside a cluster of brush pines that had been sculpted into outlandish shapes by the wind. “Tell us what happened,” Yaltha said.
I was weary from travel—we’d trekked for two and a half days from Bethany to Joppa, sailed another six to Alexandria, then jostled for hours in a donkey-pulled wagon that Lavi had hired—but I told the story, I told them everything, and like before with the women in Bethany, it took some of the brightness from my pain.
When the story was spent, we fell silent. Far down the escarpment I could just make out a slice of blue lake. Nearby, one of my goats was bleating in the animal shed.
“It was a relief to see that Haran’s soldiers are no longer encamped on the road,” I said.
“They disbanded not long after you left,” Yaltha said. “It happened exactly as Skepsis predicted: Haran was quickly informed that you’d returned to your husband in Galilee and that I’d taken the vows to remain among the Therapeutae for life. Shortly after that, the outpost was abandoned.”
Returned to your husband in Galilee. The words were like little cleavers.
I noticed Tabitha open and close her fists, as if coaxing the bravery Diodora had spoken about. Then she spoke for the first time. “Ana said the outpost would likely be deserted, but Lavi would not take chances. He insisted we wait in the closest village while he rode on alone to be certain. Only then did he return for us.” She spoke slowly, molding the sounds in her mouth.
As she’d spoken, though, a new concern had clamored at me. “Won’t Lucian inform Haran I’m back?” I asked Yaltha.
Yaltha pressed her lips together and pondered this for the first time herself. “You’re right about Lucian. He will most certainly inform Haran you’re back. But even if Haran decides once again to seek our arrests, he would have a hard time convincing the soldiers to return. Before you left, there were rumors of their discontent. They’d grown weary searching passersby and receiving little pay for it. And Haran is bound to resist doling out more of his money to them.” She laid her hand on my knee. “I think his revenge will go no further. But either way, we’re safe here with the Therapeutae. We can wait to venture beyond the gatehouse after Haran dies. The man is older than me. He can’t live forever.” A wicked grin formed on Yaltha’s face. “We could always write a death curse for him.”
“I’m very good at composing them,” said Tabitha, who may or may not have grasped our lack of seriousness.
“I took the vows,” Yaltha said. “I’m one of them for life now.”
I would never have expected this. She’d spent so much of her life rootless, exiled to places not of her choosing. Now she chose. “Oh, Aunt, I’m glad for you.”
“I took them, too,” said Diodora.
I said, “I will do so as well.”
“And I,” said Tabitha.
Yaltha smiled at her. “Tabitha, dear, in order to take the vows, you’ll need to be here for more than five minutes.”
Tabitha laughed. “Next week, then,” she said.
We rose finally to walk down the hill to find Skepsis and inform her of our return, but we paused first, listening to a bell clang in the distance. Wind was pouring down the cliffs, bringing the smell of the sea, and the air glowed with the saffron light that came sometimes on cloudless days. I remember this small interlude as if it were a sacred occasion, for I looked at the three of them poised before the brush pines and I saw that we had somehow shaped ourselves into a family.
The Book of Longings Page 39
