Alabaster

by Chris Aslan

  “Two more trees and we’re finished,” says Eleazar, beaming, wiping his brow, spattered in olive juice.

  I walk over to the tree that Malchus is beating, while Marta collects olives from Eleazar’s tree. “So,” I say. “Whoever finishes first goes to the brook while the others prepare a celebratory meal.”

  Marta grins and looks up at Eleazar. “Looks like you’ll be eating Miri’s cooking tonight.”

  We race, but this is one thing I can do better than Marta and our tree is finished first. “Come on, Malchus,” I say. “We’ll see these two later.”

  We leave them with the donkey and just carry a small sack of olives each.

  Finally, I’ve got him alone. “What will you do now?” I ask. “You know you can stay as long as you want.”

  “I need to find the teacher again,” says Malchus. “When I left, he was talking about his time being almost at an end. I didn’t understand what he meant, but it scares me, Mariam. I’ve got to get back to him.”

  I pause, choosing my words. “Before we knew about Father’s leprosy, there was a man who courted Marta. We thought they’d be married soon, although nothing was official. When Father was cast out, he stopped coming around. As I said, there was never anything official, but it hurt her deeply. He’s married now.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” says Malchus.

  “I like you, Malchus. But don’t hurt my sister. Don’t leave without making it clear what your intentions are.”

  Malchus flushes red and is pensive. “I know what I would like, but how could she ever want me? She knows what I was.”

  I laugh and tousle his hair affectionately. “Oh, Malchus, sometimes you can be really stupid. There’s not a girl in this village who can keep her eyes off you – including my sister. Why not settle here? You can live with us, start trading dried fish or something.”

  “You’ve really thought this through, haven’t you?” he grins.

  “You really haven’t, have you?” I retort. If they do marry, at least one of them will be practical. We near the compound.

  “Go,” I tell him. “Go to the brook by yourself and think about what you’re going to do and what you’re going to say. I’ll make sure that me and El are out of your way at some point this evening.”

  The next morning Malchus prepares to leave. “How will you find the teacher?” I ask.

  “It’s not that hard. I’ll just go to the capital and find out where the latest stories of curing are coming from.”

  “Tell him to come back soon,” says Eleazar. “He promised me that he would.”

  Marta sighs at the doorway as Eleazar walks with Malchus to the main road. “Thank you. I heard you helped.” She turns to me and gives me a squeeze. “I heard that you helped.”

  She doesn’t tell me more, but that’s enough for now.

  Over the next few weeks, Eleazar and I work hard at brining the olives. We make a good team. He slits each olive, while I replace the brine daily in the completed vats and stir the hot water and salt together until a raw egg floats, which tells me the consistency is just right. We have three stone vats in the storeroom between the stable and our inner room, and soon they’re all filled, but we still have olives left. Eleazar borrows donkeys from some of our gathering and loads them up to take the remaining olives to the capital city where they’re pressed for oil. He returns with several large jars of oil, which are more than enough for food and lighting.

  “We’ve never had a harvest like it,” I say on the evening Eleazar returns. “We won’t even need the alabaster jar to pay for the completion of the upper room.” Marta looks worried. “What?” I say. “You can’t work on your carpets outside in winter, and El needs something to do. Let’s finally get the upper room finished.”

  Yokkan agrees to help Eleazar plane the floors, and Elisheba’s husband lends a hand with plastering the walls with adobe, even though it’s a little cold in the year to be squelching barefoot, mixing the mud and straw. Once the adobe has had a week to dry, they whitewash everything. I’m kept busy cooking for the workmen. Eventually the room is ready. Marta waits until her current carpet is finished before moving her loom upstairs, tying the warp threads to sturdy posts that Yokkan has purpose-built. We don’t have the money to pay for all this yet, but we will in midwinter when we start selling the brined olives.

  The apricot tree is bare and the nights cold. Eleazar starts helping Yokkan and Yokhanan, his master. It’s not what he wants to do, but he needs to do something. Marta teaches me to use the drop spindle. I’m a little clumsy at first and the yarn I spin is lumpy as a result, but I gradually get the hang of it and discover that I can spin while walking around the compound, which is far preferable to sitting at a loom, and the exercise keeps my legs from getting too cold.

  We continue meeting at Aunt Shiphra’s each week, wrapped in quilted robes and shawls. Halfai continues to preach against us, but things have calmed down and most people stay more in their own compounds during the chilly winter months. It snows a few times, but the winter isn’t too harsh. I see Imma near the well. She’s pregnant now and waddles with her hand on the small of her spine. She still ignores me.

  Twice a month, Eleazar and I ladle olives out of one of the vats and drain them, put them in sacks and then sell them to traders.

  Another carpet is finished, and Marta decides to teach the apprentices and me how to dye wool. Soon dripping wool skeins of red and yellow festoon the bare branches of our apricot tree. Marta decides that Sholum is now ready to start her own carpet.

  By the time Sholum completes her first carpet, the apricot tree blossoms. It’s a year since the earthquake. Life has taken on a steady and fairly predictable rhythm. I ask Marta when Malchus will return, but she doesn’t know. Then one afternoon, Yokkan hammers at the door and suddenly everything changes.

  “Fetch Mother,” he says, tugging someone else’s donkey inside the compound. Yokhanan follows to the side, trying to keep Eleazar upright. Eleazar is sprawled across the donkey, unconscious.

  “What happened?” I say.

  “Just go,” Yokkan snaps, so I do.

  At Aunt Shiphra’s compound she asks me what his symptoms are, but I don’t know. “Mara, stay here. Miri, if I need anything else, you will come back for it.”

  We hurry back to the compound. The men have carried Eleazar into the inner room. Marta is lighting all our lamps and brings in a clay bowl of glowing coals to warm up the room.

  “Stand back,” says Aunt Shiphra, taking charge. She feels Eleazar’s forehead and then prods his chest and his sides. “Boil me water. Quickly,” she says, and Marta and I almost collide in our eagerness to be of some use. Shiphra emerges with a small pouch of powdered willow bark, which she shakes into the water. I glance behind her. Yokkan cradles Eleazar’s head with a tenderness I’ve never seen before. Yokhanan joins us.

  “I’m not sure there’s anything else I can do,” he says. We ask what happened. “Everything was fine. It was just another working day. Eleazar seemed a bit tired, so I told him to sit down and rest for a while. Then he just keeled over. Yokkan said this happened once while they were away and that it was serious. So, here we are.”

  We thank him and he leaves.

  “I remember all those summer fevers he got as a child, but this is different,” says Shiphra.

  I go into the inner room. “Yokkan, apparently this happened to Eleazar before, when you were away?”

  Yokkan nods and tries not to let us see that he’s crying. “It was bad, Miri,” he says. “Some of the other insurgents were saying that we should just leave him, and that he compromised our safety. I think Shimon was almost convinced, but then someone mentioned the doctor who was nearby, so we slung him on a donkey. By the time we got to the village, I wasn’t even sure that he was still breathing, but the doctor took him by the hand and told him to get up, and then he did.”

  “This happened when he was little, too, but never this bad. Once the willow bark infusion has cooled a lit
tle we can try to make him drink some of it,” says Shiphra. She looks tired and defeated. “It will make him a bit more comfortable, but that’s all.”

  “What do you mean?” I say, feeling a sudden rising tide of panic. “He’s going to be alright, isn’t he? He has to be. Aunt Shiphra?”

  She ignores me and takes hold of her son with both hands. “Yokkan, my boy, you listen to me. You run. Run without stopping and get to the capital. Find out where the teacher is, then go and tell him to come here immediately. We haven’t got much time.”

  Yokkan glances at Eleazar and is about to bolt through the door, when Marta stops him and gives him a pouch of coins and Eleazar’s winter cloak to wear over his robe.

  “Now go!” Shiphra says.

  She turns back to Eleazar. I draw nearer and can feel heat radiating off him, but he isn’t sweating.

  “I don’t understand,” I say to no one in particular. “He was fine this morning. How can this be?”

  Chapter Twelve

  I don’t know what to do with my hands. I’ve scratched my wrists raw and now they’ve begun to bleed. I’m up on the roof, pacing. Every now and then I crane my head to see if I can make out any movement on the main road. It’s a stupid gesture, firstly because the trees are in blossom and obscure the view down to the main road and secondly, it’s only been a couple of hours since Yokkan left. Even if he ran all the way to the capital and the teacher happened to be there, and if the teacher then borrowed a horse to ride out here, he still wouldn’t arrive before sundown. That still doesn’t stop me craning my head. At least it gives me something to do.

  I climb down the ladder past the empty upper room to see if I can help Aunt Shiphra and Marta tend Eleazar.

  “Is there any change?” I ask.

  “Stop asking all the time,” Marta sighs. “If there is we’ll let you know.”

  Aunt Shiphra lifts Eleazar’s head onto her lap and then spoons tiny quantities of willow bark infusion into his mouth.

  “Will it help him?” I ask. I seem to be good at asking stupid questions.

  “Perhaps a little,” says Aunt Shiphra, without looking up.

  I climb back up to the roof but stop in the upper room on the way to collect my drop spindle and some wool; it’ll give my hands something to do other than scratching.

  I pace and I spin – craning my head towards the main road every now and then. The yarn is useless, overspun, and keeps crimping. I crane. I try praying, but all I can manage is a repetition of “Bring the teacher, bring the teacher, bring the teacher.”

  And anyway, which of my wishes should God listen to? For years I wished my brother dead. I remember praying that he would have a long and drawn-out end. Is this all my fault? I drop the spindle and start scratching myself again; harder this time.

  I pace. I crane. I scratch. Spots of my blood criss-cross over the roof. I don’t notice the sky darken. Eventually Mara comes to fetch me for supper.

  “Oh, Mariam,” she says, and helps me down the ladder. “What have you done? Let me put some salve on that.”

  “It’s my fault,” I mutter. “I hated him and wanted him dead.”

  “Mariam!” Marta, emerging from the lamplit inner room, sees the bloodied sleeves of my tunic, which are sticking to my wrists. “Don’t you think we have enough to worry about?”

  “It’s my fault. I’m killing him. It’s me.” Just speaking the words aloud makes them seem more true and I have an overwhelming urge to climb back up on the roof and hurl myself off. “It’s me,” I keep muttering. I feel something building up inside me. I let it come and the next thing I know, I’m screaming and hitting myself and scratching my face. Mara tries to restrain me and then Aunt Shiphra comes and slaps me as hard as she can across the face, doing the other side for good measure. The pain feels good and it shakes the madness from me.

  I slump and let her lead me to the kitchen area, where she hands me a bowl of soup. It tastes medicinal and whatever is in it, I start to feel drowsy. “Come, my peach,” she coos, and lays me down on a sleeping mat beside the clay oven. I lie down and fall asleep.

  I wake up groggy with a square of sunlight shining on my face. It’s late and I look around, wondering if the teacher has come while I’ve been asleep. Mara comes out of the stable where she’s been feeding the donkey. “How are you feeling?” she asks gently.

  My wrists hurt, but that’s to be expected. “I’m fine,” I say, rubbing my face and trying to shake the grogginess. “Has the teacher come?” She shakes her head. “Is there any change?”

  “Marta and Mother are with him,” she says, pointing to the inner room and evading my question.

  I get up, but then have to sit down again. Whatever Aunt Shiphra gave me hasn’t fully worn off. Mara offers me a bowl of cold water, which I drink, and then I enter the inner room.

  Lamplight dances around us, filling the air with the smoky tang of olives. This doesn’t mask the other smell, though. It smells of sickness in here. Marta is slumped beside Eleazar, holding his hand. I think she’s fallen asleep. Shiphra cradles Eleazar’s head in her lap, whispering words of comfort and wiping his brow. She looks up. “How are you feeling?”

  As if that matters. “How is he?” I ask.

  She smiles sadly. “He’s not struggling or fighting. It won’t be long now. Is there anything you want to say to him? Before…” She trails off.

  “Before what?” I feel my eyes fill with tears. “Auntie Shiphra, we can’t lose him now, not when we’ve only just got him back and things are finally right between us.”

  “Oh, my peach,” she sighs.

  “It’s still not too late. The teacher will get here in time, even if it’s at the last moment. I know he will.”

  My aunt’s face twists in grief. “It needs to be now,” she whispers, her voice thick with emotion. “We’re almost out of time.”

  “Can I?” I move over to her and she lifts Eleazar’s head carefully, and I position it in my lap. It’s unnaturally hot and dry. I smooth his hair and I weep. Shiphra leaves me with him.

  “Eleazar,” I say, trying to speak through the sobbing. “Please hold on for just a little while longer. The teacher is coming. You have to hold on.” I swallow and then, remembering what Aunt Shiphra said about saying any last words to him, I continue. “I take back every ill thought, every time I’ve held hatred and resentment towards you in my heart. I’m so sorry, El. If I could trade my life for yours right now, I would.”

  My tears splash onto his face and I wipe them with a cloth Shiphra gave me.

  “Oh God,” I cry out. “Please don’t let him die. You know how much the teacher loves him and you listen to whatever the teacher asks of you. Send the teacher now. Quicken his feet, show him the way. Have mercy on my brother who loves you.”

  We call out together and our voices have power. It almost feels as if God himself enters the room. “Have mercy because you are good, O Lord, and not because we deserve it,” I declare. Our voices interrupt and blend together, weaving a prophetic song. I don’t know how long we kneel together over our brother and pray like this. Then light floods the room and I think it must be an angel from God or that the teacher has arrived at the last hour.

  It’s neither. Aunt Shiphra has opened the door and the morning sun slants through it. She comes over and takes one look at Eleazar.

  “You can stop your praying now, girls,” she says gently. “I’ve brought salt and a shroud.”

  We both look at her in confusion. I feel Eleazar’s forehead and it does feel cooler, and for a moment my heart soars with hope that the fever is over, but then Marta begins to keen and I realize that before us is a corpse which has already begun to turn grey.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I sit at our weekly gathering in Aunt Shiphra’s compound. The vine above us is covered in little clusters of new leaves beginning to poke through the withered dry stems. They were still just buds this time last week, when Eleazar stood before us leading us in prayer. I remember being distra
cted by the warm spring sun on my face and not paying attention to what he was saying. I didn’t know that that would be the last time he would lead us. I didn’t realize how I should savour that precious moment.

  Two days have passed already since we stumbled home from the tomb, weak with grief. The teacher didn’t even make it for the burial. There’s no sign of Yokkan either. Maybe Halfai was right about the teacher after all. Why hasn’t he come? Why must it be my loved ones who die uncured?

  I’m surprised to see all the usual people at our gathering. Surely we should give up on the teacher now. He promised my brother that he would return soon, but he lied. Most of them, including Marta, still cling to hope.

  I don’t. Hope tires me. Hope means we can’t accept what has actually happened. Marta’s hope led to a big argument between us over the alabaster jar. I wanted to break it open and anoint our brother properly for his burial. “We never got to use it on Father,” I snap. “It’s useless just sitting there in Mother’s chest.”

  “No,” said Marta firmly, continuing to wrap each of Eleazar’s limbs in strips of linen, shaking spices into each fold. “Don’t you remember, El told us about the daughter of the holy man who was sick and died? She died but he still cured her. He brought her back to life. Father wanted this jar to be for the living, not the dead.”

  “Why are we still talking about the stupid teacher?” I demanded. “Where is he? He’s not here. He’s not coming. Look, he could have borrowed horses from someone. He could have ridden all night, but he didn’t. He’s not coming.”