The Book of Longings(115)

We lingered an interminable time for reasons I could not deduce. Then I heard one of them say, “There’s nothing back here but the coffin.”

Suddenly the wagon staggered forward.

We plodded on and on, jostling along the rutted road for much longer than seemed necessary. Pamphile had been instructed to stop the cart when the soldiers were out of sight, preferably along a lonely stretch, and free me. The heat inside the coffin had concentrated. I took the awl and knocked against the side of the coffin. I didn’t know whether people might be about, but I no longer cared. I forced the end of the awl beneath the lid and attempted to pry it upward, but there was not enough room inside for my arms to lift up or press down. I rapped harder on the side. “Pamphile!” I screamed. “Stop now and free me!”

The wagon traveled on for some minutes more before she brought it to a stop.

I heard the split of wood as she pushed her awl under the lid and wrested the coffin open. There was a dazzling rush of light.



* * *



? ? ?

LAVI AND I SET SAIL for Judea on the fifth of Nisan.





JERUSALEM


    BETHANY


    30 CE





i.

As Lavi and I arrived outside Jerusalem, the slopes of the Kidron Valley came into view lit with a thousand pilgrim campfires. Funnels of pale smoke drifted across the night sky, thick with the smell of roasted lamb. It was the thirteenth of Nisan. Passover.

I had hoped to reach the home of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha before nightfall, early enough to eat the festival meal with Jesus. I sighed. The meal would be over by now.

Lavi and I had suffered one excruciating delay after another. First, the sea winds deserted us, slowing our ship’s arrival. Then, on foot from Joppa, we had difficulty finding food due to the crowds, forcing us to detour to out-of-the-way villages to buy bread and cheese. We were obstructed for hours in Lydda by Roman soldiers attempting to control the clogged road to Jerusalem. Throughout, I’d practiced in my head what I would say to Judas, reassuring myself he would listen. I was his little sister; he loved me. He’d tried to rescue me from Nathaniel. He’d taken my message to Phasaelis against his own wishes. He would listen and then abandon this madness that would have him betray Jesus.

As I gazed at the hillside, the urgency I felt inside made it difficult to breathe.

Lavi said, “Do you need to rest?” We’d been walking since daybreak.

“My husband and my brother are just beyond this valley,” I said. “I will rest once I see them.”

We walked the last stretch to Bethany in silence. Had I not been so weary, my feet might’ve broken into a run.

“The lamps in the courtyard are still burning,” Lavi said as we reached the house of Jesus’s friends, and now, my friends, too. He pounded on the gate, calling out that Ana, wife of Jesus, had arrived.

I expected to see Jesus hurrying to let us in, but Lazarus came. He looked well, not nearly so yellow and pallid as when I’d seen him before. He greeted me with a kiss. “Come, both of you.”

“Where is Jesus?” I said.

His feet slowed, but he walked on into the courtyard, as if he hadn’t heard. “Mary, Martha,” he called. “Look who’s here.”

The sisters rushed from the house, throwing their arms open. They seemed shorter, their faces rounder. They greeted Lavi with the same warmth they’d once bestowed on Tabitha. Thinking of her, I looked about, but she, too, was nowhere to be seen. I did notice a stack of sleeping mats piled beside the outer wall. Folded on top of them was a worn flaxen cloak.

“You and Lavi must be famished,” Martha said. “I’ll bring what’s left of the Passover meal.”

As she hurried off, I went and picked up the cloak. It bore my poor, uneven weaving. I held the garment to my face—it was filled with his scent. “This belongs to Jesus,” I said to Mary.

She smiled in that serene way of hers. “It’s his, yes.”

“And this as well,” said Lavi, holding up a staff made of olive wood, the one Jesus had carved while sitting beneath the tree in the compound in Nazareth.

I took it, wrapping my fingers around the wood, feeling the smooth, polished place his hand had worn.

“Jesus and his disciples have been staying with us for some time,” Mary said, nodding at the mound of bed mats. “They spend their days in the city and return in the evening to sleep in the courtyard. This past week, each time Jesus came through the gate, he would ask, ‘Has Ana come?’ You seemed very much on his mind.” She smiled at me. I bit hard into my lip.

“Where is he?” I asked.

“He observed Passover in Jerusalem with his disciples.”

“Not here with you?”

“We expected them to share the meal with us, but Jesus changed his mind only this morning, saying he would take Passover alone with his disciples in the city. I admit, it did not please Martha. She’d prepared enough for the lot of them, and I can attest they eat a great deal.” She laughed, and it came out all wrong, high-pitched and uneasy.

“Was Judas among them?”

“Your brother? Yes. He hardly left Jesus’s side, except. . . .”

I waited, but she did not continue. “Except?”