The Book of Longings(107)

“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 lake 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.”