The Book of Longings(103)

I threw my arms around each of them. “How did you come upon the key?” I asked, keeping my voice low.

“Haran has two for each door,” Pamphile said. “The extra ones are kept in a pouch that hangs on a wall in his study. Lavi was able to read the labels.” She beamed at him.

“You heard Haran’s threats?” I asked him.

“Yes, every word.”

I turned to Yaltha. “Where will we go?”

“I know of only one place where Haran wouldn’t trespass,” she said. “We’ll go to the Therapeutae. Their precinct is sacred among the Jews. We’ll be safe there.”

“They’ll take us in?”

“I spent eight years there. They’ll give us a haven.”

Since the moment Haran had locked us in, the world had pitched side to side like a ship, but I felt it settle now into an immense rightness.

“The community sits on the shore of Lake Mareotis,” Yaltha said. “It will take us nearly four hours to walk the distance. Perhaps longer in the darkness—we’ll have to carry a lamp.”

“I’ll see you there safely,” Lavi said.

Yaltha gazed at him—a frown, a twist to her mouth. “Lavi, you can’t continue to stay in Haran’s house either.”

Pamphile looked like the ground had opened beneath her. “He cannot leave here.”

“He’ll be in danger if he stays,” Yaltha said. “Haran will naturally assume Lavi helped us escape.”

“Then I will leave, too,” she said. “He’s my husband now.”

I touched her arm. “Please, Pamphile, we need you to remain here at least a while longer. I’m still awaiting the letter that will tell me it’s safe to return to Galilee. I can’t bear to think it would come and I wouldn’t know of it. I need you to watch for it and when it arrives, to see that it gets to us. It’s selfish of me to ask this of you, but I beg you. Please.”

Lavi said, “We have told no one of our marriage for fear Haran would dismiss Pamphile from his employ.” He looked at his wife of only a week. “He wouldn’t suspect you of being involved in their leaving.”

“But I don’t wish to be separated from you,” she said.

Lavi spoke gently to Pamphile. “You know as I do that I can’t remain here. The library has a domicile for the librarians who aren’t married. I will stay there and I wish you to remain here until Ana’s letter comes from Galilee. Then I will find us lodging together.”

I’d been away from Jesus for one year and six months. An eternity. He was traveling about Galilee without me, preaching that God’s kingdom was near, while I, his wife, was far away. I sympathized with Pamphile, but her severance from her husband would be an eye blink in comparison to mine.

“It seems I’m given no choice,” she said. Her words brimmed with resentment.

Lavi slit open the door to the garden and peered out. He handed the key to Pamphile. “Return the key before it’s discovered missing. Then unbolt the door in the servant quarters that leads outside. If anyone questions you about our whereabouts, tell them you have no knowledge of it. Behave as if I’ve betrayed you. Let your anger be known.” He kissed her cheeks and nudged her out the door.

I worked swiftly to squeeze my possessions into my two travel pouches. My scrolls filled one entirely, leaving me to stuff the other with clothing, the mummy portrait of my face, the little bag that contained my red thread, and what was left of our money. Once again, I would leave carrying the incantation bowl in my arms.





xix.


When Skepsis, the old woman who led the Therapeutae, looked at me, I felt swallowed by her stare. She reminded me of an owl, perched there on the edge of a bench with her piercing gold-brown eyes and white feathery hair ruffled from sleep. Her squat body was hunched and still, but her head swiveled from me to Yaltha as she listened to my aunt explain how we came to be standing in the vestibule of her small stone house in the middle of the night, begging for sanctuary.



* * *



? ? ?

THROUGHOUT OUR LONG, exhausting trek from Alexandria, Yaltha had schooled me in the community’s strange workings. “The members are divided into juniors and seniors,” she’d explained. “The juniors aren’t necessarily the youngest members, as you would think, but rather the newest. I wasn’t thought of as a senior until I’d been with them for seven years.”

“Are the juniors and seniors seen as equals?” I’d asked. If there were a hierarchy, I would most certainly be at the bottom of it.

“Everyone is seen as equal, but the labor is divided differently between them. The community has its patrons, including Haran, so I suppose they could hire servants, but they don’t believe in them. It’s the juniors who grow and prepare and serve the food, tend the animals, build the houses—whatever labor is required, the juniors do it, along with their spiritual work. I used to work in the garden in the mornings and return to my solitude in the afternoon.”

“The seniors have no work at all?”

“They’ve earned the privilege of devoting all of their time to spiritual work.”

We trudged past sleeping villages, vineyards, wine presses, villas, and farms, Lavi walking ahead of us holding the lamp and relying on Yaltha to call out directions. I marveled that we didn’t get lost.