The Book of Longings(124)

The knowledge that Jesus might’ve been saved at the end, but wasn’t, staggered me. If I’d been there . . . if I’d left my bed earlier . . . if I’d not delayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, I would’ve been there to fill the air with his name.

“It happened so fast,” Mary said, turning to me. “Pilate pointed his finger at Jesus and said, ‘Crucify him.’”

I closed my eyes to keep out the picture that tortured me most, but the image could move through walls and eyelids and every conceivable barrier, and I saw my beloved nailed to the Roman timbers, trying to lift himself up to take a sip of air.

Was this what it was like to grieve a husband?

A memory came to me, a small one, a foolish one. “Mary, do you remember when Judith traded Delilah for a bolt of cloth?”

“I remember it well,” said Mary. “I’d never seen you so distressed.”

I looked at the others, wanting them to understand. “You see, I had charge of the animals and Delilah was more than a goat; she was my pet.”

“Now she’s become my pet,” said Mary.

I felt a momentary elation—Delilah was still there and being pampered. “Judith hated the goat,” I said.

“I think what she hated was how much you loved it,” Salome added.

“It’s true Judith liked me only slightly better than Delilah, but for her to take the goat to Sepphoris and trade her without telling me—I’d not expected it. When I confronted her, she argued that the cloth she’d acquired was fine linen, better than she could weave, and that James had recently brought home a new, younger goat, making Delilah unnecessary.”

Everyone must have wondered why I was telling them this. They listened and nodded in an indulgent way. The aftermath of tragedy is strange, their expressions said. Her husband has just been crucified—let her say whatever peculiar thing she needs to say.

I continued, “Jesus arrived home the same day Judith traded the goat, after a long, exhausting trek from Capernaum, where he’d worked all week. He found me distraught. It was late afternoon and he’d not eaten, but he turned around and walked all the way to Sepphoris and bought Delilah back with the coins he’d earned that week.”

Mary’s eyes glittered. “He came through the gate carrying Delilah on his shoulders.”

“Yes, he did!” I exclaimed. “He brought her back to me.”

I could still see him, grinning as he strode toward me across the compound, Delilah bleating wildly, and the picture was as vivid to me as the one of him crucified. Leaning my head back, I breathed as deeply as I could. Overhead, a ragged blanket of clouds. The moon somewhere, hidden. The owl had flown away.

Mary said, “Tell them the rest of it.”

I hadn’t intended to say anything further, but I was glad to do as she said. “The following week, Judith dyed her new, fine linen and hung it in the courtyard to dry. I often allowed Delilah to leave the cramped animal pen and wander free in the courtyard as long as the compound gate was locked. I never dreamed she would eat Judith’s cloth. Delilah, however, ate every bit of it.”

Mary laughed. Then we all laughed. There was a vast relief in it, as if the air had grown more spacious. Was laughter grieving, too?

Martha poured the last of the wine into our cups. We were exhausted, devastated, wishing for the numbness of sleep, but we went on sitting there, reluctant to part, our togetherness like a refuge.



* * *



? ? ?

    IT WAS NEARING the midnight watch when a voice called from the gate. “It’s John, a disciple of Jesus.”

“John!” cried Mary of Magdala, leaping up to accompany Lazarus to the gate.

“What urgency could bring him here so late at night and on the Sabbath?” said Martha.

John stepped into the glow of our lamps and peered around the circle of faces, his eyes lingering on me, and I realized I’d seen him before. He’d been one of the four fishermen who’d traveled home with Jesus from Capernaum all those years ago and talked in the courtyard late into the night. Young, gangly, and beardless then, now he was a broad-shouldered man with thoughtful, deep-set eyes and a beard that curled under his chin.

Studying him closer, I realized I’d also seen him earlier today on Golgotha. He was the man who’d approached Jesus as he hung on the cross and who, like me, had been turned back by the soldiers. I offered him a sorrowful smile. He was the disciple who’d stayed.

He settled himself on the courtyard tiles while Martha muttered absently about the empty wineskins, finally setting a cup of water before her guest.

“What has brought you here?” asked Mary of Bethany.

His gaze shifted to me and his face turned grave. Wedged between Mary and Tabitha, I reached for their hands.

“Judas is dead,” John said. “He hanged himself from a tree.”





vii.


Shall I confess? Part of me had wished my brother dead. When Judas had turned Jesus over to the Temple guard, he’d breached some sacred boundary in me. I’d offered him that gesture of pity as he’d stood in the distance on Golgotha, but in the aftermath, it was mostly hatred I felt.

In those blank, bewildered moments, as Mary and Salome and the others waited for me to respond to the news of Judas’s death, it occurred to me that Jesus would attempt to love even the lost, murderous Judas. Once, when I’d ranted to him about some slight Judith had done to me and declared my loathing of her, he’d said, “I know, Ana. She is difficult. You don’t have to feel love for her. Only try to act with love.”