The Book of Longings(108)

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.”

I picked up a serving bowl of pomegranate seeds. “It is good of him to miss me.”

She smiled and rolled her eyes at her platter. “I’ve refilled it four times. Let us hope they leave a morsel for us.”

Though Yaltha had been designated as a junior, I noticed Skepsis had allowed her to recline on one of the couches reserved for seniors. Lucian left his couch and stood before Skepsis. “Yaltha should be serving us alongside the other juniors,” he said angrily, his voice carrying across the room.

“Anger is effortless, Lucian. Kindness is hard. Try to exert yourself.”

“She shouldn’t be here at all,” he persisted.

Skepsis waved her hand. “Leave me to eat in peace.”

I looked at Yaltha, who was biting a turnip, unfazed.

When the banqueting wore down, the community made their way to the opposite end of the room, where a waist-high partition ran along the center with benches on each side, women to the left, men to the right.

I sat on the last bench with Yaltha and Diodora. “Get comfortable,” Yaltha told us. “You’ll be here the rest of the night.”

“All night?” Diodora exclaimed.

“Yes, but you will not lack for entertainment,” Yaltha said.

Coming behind us and overhearing, Skepsis said, “Our gathering is not entertainment, as Yaltha well knows—it’s a vigil. We watch for the dawn, which represents the true light of God.”

“And we will sing ourselves into a stupor before it arrives,” Yaltha said.

“Yes, that part is true,” Skepsis conceded.

Skepsis began the vigil with a lengthy discourse, about what, precisely, I couldn’t say. I gripped the scroll on which I’d written my hymn. My song suddenly seemed too audacious.

I heard Skepsis call my name. “Ana . . . come, offer your hymn to Sophia.”

“I call my hymn ‘Thunder: Perfect Mind,’” I told her when I reached the front of the room. Someone struck a timbrel. As the drumbeat began, I lifted my scroll and chanted.

    I was sent out from power . . .

Be careful. Do not ignore me.

I am the first and the last

I am she who is honored and she who is mocked

I am the whore and the holy woman

I am the wife and the virgin

I am the mother and the daughter



I stopped and looked at their faces, glimpsing both wonder and bewilderment. Diodora was watching me intensely, her hands tucked under her chin. A smile moved on Yaltha’s lips. I felt all the women who lived inside me.

    Do not stare at me in the shit pile, leaving me discarded

You will find me in the kingdoms . . .

Do not be afraid of my power

Why do you despise my fear and curse my pride?

I am she who exists in all fears and in trembling boldness



I paused once more, needing to find my breath. The words I’d sung seemed to swirl over my head. I wondered where they had come from. Where they would go.

    I, I am without God

And I am she whose God is magnificent . . .

I am being

I am she who is nothing . . .

I am the coming together and the falling apart

I am the enduring and the disintegration . . .

I am what everyone can hear and no one can say



I sang on and on, and when the hymn was ended, I walked slowly back to my place.

As I passed the benches, a woman rose to her feet and then another, until everyone was standing. I looked uncertainly at Skepsis. “They are telling you that you are Sophia’s daughter,” she said. “They are telling you she is well pleased.”