The Book of Longings(116)

“It’s nothing. It’s just that yesterday when Jesus and the others returned from the city, Judas was not with them. I heard Jesus ask Peter and John if they knew his whereabouts. It was quite late when he finally appeared, and even then he kept to himself. He ate alone over there in the corner.” She pointed across the courtyard. “I thought he didn’t feel well.”

I doubted this odd behavior of Judas’s was nothing, as she’d suggested, though I couldn’t have said what it meant. I was still clutching Jesus’s staff and his cloak, gripping them so tightly I became aware of an ache in my fingers. Relinquishing the items onto a bench, I walked to the gap in the courtyard wall and looked west toward Jerusalem. “Shouldn’t Jesus have returned by now?”

Mary came and stood beside me. “It’s his custom to pray on the Mount of Olives each evening, but even so, he’s long overdue.” Her face was shadowed, but I saw something there, something more than dismay at his lateness. I saw dread.

“Ana?” The voice came from across the courtyard, one I’d not heard in seven years.

“Tabitha!” I cried, running toward her even as she ran to me. We clung to each other for a long while, her ear pushed against my cheek. We spoke no words, but swayed together—a kind of dance. I closed my eyes, remembering the girls who had danced blind.

“I cannot believe you are here,” she said. “You must never go away again.” The words came out slow, measured, thick-tongued, as if they were too cumbersome for her mouth, but every syllable was there.

“You speak with clarity!” I said.

“I’ve had many years to practice. The tongue is an adaptable creature. It finds a way.”

I took her hands and kissed them.

Martha appeared then, carrying a tray of food, followed by Lazarus with a sloshing pitcher of wine. While Lavi and I cleansed our hands, Mary bid Tabitha to fetch her lyre and play for us. “You have never heard such music,” she told me.

I wanted to hear Tabitha play, I truly did, but not right then. Right then I wanted the four of them to tell me about my husband—the things he’d said and done. I wanted to know about the danger he was in that no one would speak of. I watched Tabitha dash away and said nothing.

Mary was right about one thing—I’d never heard such music. Quick, daring, even funny, the song was about a woman who cut off her torturer’s beard as he slept, causing him to lose his powers. Tabitha danced as she strummed, twirling about the courtyard, graceful as ever, and I thought how much she would love the Therapeutae’s forty-ninth-day rituals. All that endless music and dancing.

When she finished, I set down the nugget of bread I was about to dip in my wine cup and embraced her yet again. She was breathless, her face flushed bright. “Only yesterday I played my lyre as your husband and his disciples ate. I will not forget what Jesus said to me when I finished my song. He said, ‘Each of us must find a way to love the world. You have found yours.’ He’s very kind, your husband.”

I smiled. “He’s also very insightful—you have indeed found yours.” The most wounded thing in us always finds a way, I thought.

I could see in her eyes there was more she wished to confide. “Tabitha,” I whispered. “What is it?”

“For most of the years I’ve been here, I’ve earned coins by weaving widows’ garments, a portion of which I give to Martha for my keep. With the rest of it, I bought a jar of spikenard.”

I wrinkled my forehead, wondering why she would buy such an expensive perfume, then remembered how we’d once dabbed it on each other’s foreheads and made a covenant of friendship.

“The scent held pleasant memories for me,” she said. “Yesterday, though, after Jesus spoke so kindly to me, I fetched it and anointed his feet. I wanted to thank him for what he’d said to me, and the spikenard was all I had.” She glanced behind her at the others, who couldn’t help but hear her. She lowered her voice. “What I did angered your brother. He chastised me, saying I should’ve sold the ointment and given the money to the poor.”

Judas, what happened to you?

“Did Jesus fault him?” I asked, knowing the answer.

“He told Judas to leave me alone, that I’d done a beautiful thing. He said it sharply, and Judas departed in a temper. Oh, Ana, I fear I’ve caused a rift between them.”

I covered her hands with mine. “The rift was already there.” It had, I realized, always been there, buried deep within their differing visions of how to establish God’s kingdom.

I returned to my plate, but I could no longer eat. I looked at Mary, Lazarus, and Martha. “Will you tell me now what troubles you? I know Jesus is in danger. Judas wrote of it in his letter. Tell me what you know.”

Lazarus shifted on the bench between his two sisters. He said, “Jesus has gained much fame, Ana. People believe him to be the Messiah, King of the Jews.”

“I heard of this while I was in Alexandria,” I said, almost relieved that he’d said nothing new. “It concerned me as well. Herod Antipas has spent his life trying to become King of the Jews. If word of this reaches him, he’ll retaliate.”

Silence. Discomfiture. None of them looked at me.

“What is it?” I demanded.

Mary nudged her brother. “Tell her. We should hold nothing back.”