The Book of Longings(13)

She pressed a finger to her lips and cracked open the door to reveal my mother’s servant slumped on her stool, her head drooped to her chest and a web of spittle woven at the corner of her mouth.

“I brewed a cup of hot wine steeped with myrrh and passionflower, which Lavi was happy to serve her,” Yaltha said, closing the door and beaming a little. “I would’ve come sooner, but it took longer than I thought for the drink to overtake the old camel.”

We sat on the edge of the bed and gripped each other’s hands. Her bones were sycamore twigs. “They cannot betroth me to him,” I said. “You cannot let them.”

She reached for the lamp and held it between us. “Ana, look at me. I would do anything for you, but I cannot stop them.”

When I closed my eyes, there were blurs of light like stars falling.

It couldn’t be happenstance that the memory had resurfaced in my sleep the same night I was locked in my room, doomed to marriage. Surely the story I’d translated of the Egyptian girl forced into an abhorrent marriage was a message urging me to be resolute. Aseneth had been merciless in her resistance. I, too, would be merciless.

And my face inside that tiny sun! Even if my parents married me to the repugnant Nathaniel ben Hananiah, I would not be his; I would still be Ana. The vision was a promise, was it not, that the light in me would not be extinguished. The largeness in me would not shrink away. I would yet become visible in this world. My heart tumbled a little at the revelation.

“I think, though, I could persuade your parents of one thing,” Yaltha was saying. “It would not be a remedy, but it would be a consolation. When you marry, I will go with you to your husband’s house.”

“Do you think Nathaniel ben Hananiah would permit it?”

“He won’t like having a widow to feed and clothe and take up space, but I will convince my brother to write the arrangement into your betrothal contract. It won’t be difficult. He and Hadar will dance on the roof at the mention of being rid of me.”

In my fourteen years I’d never had a true and constant friend, only Judas, and I felt a momentary elation. “Oh, Aunt, we will be like Naomi and Ruth in the Scriptures. Where I go, you will go.”

Yaltha had kept her pledge not to speak of her past, but now that she’d bound herself to me, I wondered if she might reveal her secret.

“I know Father has sworn you to silence,” I said. “But we are joined now. Don’t withhold yourself from me. Tell me why you came here to Sepphoris.”

The bone-kindling inside her hand grew hot. “All right, Ana. I will tell you the story, and your parents will not hear of it.”

“Never,” I said.

“I was married to a man named Ruebel. He was a soldier in the Jewish militia charged with protecting Roman rule in Alexandria. I bore him two sons, both of whom died before a year of age. It embittered him. Since he could not punish God with his fists, he punished me. I spent my days bruised, swollen, and in dread. On the Sabbath he rested from his cruelties and thought himself virtuous.”

I hadn’t expected this. It rent something in me. I wanted to ask if Ruebel had been responsible for the drooping of her eye, but remained quiet.

She said, “He fell ill one day and died. It was so abrupt and vile a death, it set loose the tongues of Alexandria. His friends claimed I poisoned him in revenge for his beatings.”

“Did you?” I blurted. “I wouldn’t blame you.”

She took my chin in her hand. “Remember when I told you that in your heart there is a holy of holies, and in this room dwells your secret longing? Well, my longing was to be free of him. I begged God to grant me this, to take Ruebel’s life if he must as the just price for his transgressions. I inscribed the prayer on my incantation bowl and sang it every day. If God were a wife, she would have acted sooner. It took a year for him to take mercy on me.”

“You didn’t kill your husband; God did,” I said, relieved, but vaguely disappointed, too.

“Yes, but his death was brought about by my prayer. It’s why I cautioned you to take care what you wrote in your bowl. When the longing of one’s heart is inked into words and offered as a prayer, that’s when it springs to life in God’s mind.”

Does it? “Earlier tonight, I sent my bowl across the room with my foot,” I said.

She smiled. Her face looked ancient and somehow beautiful. “Ana, your betrothal has stolen your hope. Return to your longing. It will teach you everything.”

Her words seemed to release a raw power in the air around us.

“Be patient, child,” she continued. “Your moment will come, and when it does, you must seize it with all the bravery you can find.”

She went on describing the rumors that had circulated about her in Alexandria, stories that grew so dire she was arrested by the Romans, whose punishments were well known for their brutality. “Our oldest brother, Haran, is on the Jewish council in Alexandria and he struck a deal with the Romans to allow the council to determine my fate. They sent me away to the Therapeutae.”

“Therapeutae?” I repeated, feeling how thick the word was on my tongue. “What is it?”

“It’s a community of Jews. Philosophers, mostly. Like me, like you, they come from educated and affluent families with servants to chew their food and haul their dung, yet they gave up their comforts to live in little stone houses on an isolated hillside near Alexandria.”