The Book of Longings(126)

Now, with him gone, my home was on a hillside in Egypt. It was Yaltha and Diodora. It was the Therapeutae. Where else could I write with abandon? Where but there could I tend a library and animals both? Where else could I live by the utterances of my own heart?

I breathed in, and it felt like a small homecoming.

Across the courtyard, I saw Lavi securing the opening of his travel pouch with a leather strap. The fear of disappointing Mary, of hurting her, of missing her, hurtled through me.

She called to me, “Ana, what is the matter?”

I walked back and sat beside her. She said, “You do not mean to return to Nazareth, do you?”

I shook my head. “I will return to Egypt to live out my days with my aunt. There’s a community there of spiritual seekers and philosophers. I will live among them.”

I said it gently, but without apology, then I waited for what she would say.

She spoke with her lips close to my ear. “Go in peace, Ana, for you were born for this.”

Those ten words were her greatest gift to me.

“Tell us about this place where you’ll live,” said Salome.

I felt barely composed, astonished suddenly that I would be leaving so quickly, and I was anxious to alert Lavi and begin packing my own provisions, but I did my best to enlighten them about the Therapeutae, the community that danced and sang all night every forty-ninth day. I described the stone huts scattered across a hillside, the lake at its foot, the cliffs at the top, and beyond them, the sea. I told them about the holy room where I’d written my own texts and preserved them in codices, the library I was trying to restore, the song to Sophia I’d written and sung. I talked on and on, and I felt the longing in me for home.

“Take me with you,” a voice said.

We all turned and looked at Tabitha. I wondered if she’d spoken in jest, but she stared at me with utmost seriousness. I didn’t know how to answer.

“Tabitha!” Martha admonished. “You’ve been like a daughter to us all these years, yet on a whim you want to abandon us for a place unknown to you?”

“I do not know how to explain it,” Tabitha said. “I feel like I, too, am meant to be there.” Her voice was thickening, syllables starting to blunt and fall away. She looked slightly frantic to make her realization understood.

“But you can’t just leave,” said Martha.

“Why can’t she?” I asked. The question arrested Martha.

I looked at Tabitha. “If you’re serious about going, you must know that life within the Therapeutae is not only singing and dancing. There’s work, fasting, study, and prayer.” I didn’t mention Haran and the Jewish militia who’d sought to arrest me. “You must also possess a desire for God,” I told her. “Otherwise you won’t be admitted. I would be wrong not to tell you these things.”

“I wouldn’t mind finding God in this place,” Tabitha said, calmer now, her words intact again. “Could I not seek him in music?”

Skepsis would welcome her; I was sure of it. She would admit her based on that last question Tabitha had posed. And if not, she’d admit her for me. “I can think of no reason you can’t come with us,” I said.

“Do you have money for the ship’s passage?” asked Martha. Practical Martha.

Tabitha’s eyes widened. “I used all the money I had to buy the spikenard.”

I calculated quickly in my head. “I’m sorry, Tabitha, I only have enough drachmae for Lavi’s passage and my own.” Why hadn’t I thought about this before I encouraged her?

Martha made a noise, a little harrumph that sounded like triumph. “Well, it’s fortunate, then, that I have the money.” She smiled at me. “I don’t know why she can’t just leave if she chooses.”

My sandal lay in Tabitha’s lap, repaired and ready for the long walk to Joppa. She handed it to me, then rose and embraced Martha. “If I had more spikenard, I would bathe your feet,” Tabitha told her.



* * *



? ? ?

THE NEXT MORNING, Lavi, Tabitha, and I slipped from the house before dawn, while the others still slept. At the gate, I looked back, thinking of Mary. “Let’s not say goodbye,” she’d told me the evening before. “We shall surely see one another again.” She’d said this without artifice, with a believing hope so earnest, I thought it might be true. We would, though, never see each other again.

The moon was at its ebb, no more than a faint, curving crust of light. As we followed the path into the Hinnom Valley, Tabitha began to hum, unable to hide her joy. She had tied her lyre onto her back, where its curled arms peeked over her shoulders like a pair of wings. The happiness of home-going was in me, too, but it was lodged beside my sorrow. This was the land of my husband and my daughter. Their bones would always be here. Every step away from them was a pain in my heart.

Walking along Jerusalem’s eastern wall, I begged the darkness to last until we passed the Roman hill where Jesus had died, but the light broke just as we approached, a sudden, harrowing brightness. I let myself take one last glimpse of Golgotha. Then I turned my gaze toward the hillsides in the distance where Jesus was buried, where the women would come soon to wrap him in sweet spices.





LAKE MAREOTIS, EGYPT


    30–60 CE