The Book of Longings(15)

I sprang up, Yaltha trailing behind me with the lamp. I knelt over the chest, the slick of light coming to rest above my head, and lifted out armfuls of scrolls. They clattered across the floor.

“Sadly, you cannot remove all of them,” Yaltha said. “It would raise suspicion. Your parents expect to find the chest full. If it’s not, they will turn the house over, searching.” She produced two goatskin pouches from the girdle inside her robe. “Take only the number of scrolls that will fit inside these skins.” Her gaze bore down.

“I suppose I must leave behind my palette and writing board and most of my inks?”

She kissed my forehead. “Hurry.”

I selected my corpus of lost stories, leaving the rest behind. I arranged them in the pouches, which still carried the faint stink of an animal pen, wedging the thirteen scrolls into tight honeycombs inside the bags. Into the last one, I managed to slip two vials of ink, two reed pens, and three sheets of clean papyrus. I wrapped the goatskins in a faded purple robe and tied it with a leather thong. I placed the bundle into Yaltha’s arms.

“Wait,” I said. “Take my incantation bowl, too. I fear they will find it here.” Leaving the red thread in place, I quickly redraped the bowl in flax and added it to the bundle.

Yaltha said, “I’ll hide it in my room, but it may not be safe there very long either.”

As I’d stuffed my writings into the goatskins, an idea had formed in my mind, one designed to gain me freedom from my room. I tried now to put it into words. “Tomorrow when my parents come, I will behave like a repentant daughter. I will confess I’ve been disobedient and stubborn. I will plead for forgiveness. I will be like one of those professional mourners who pretend grief and wail at the graves of strangers.”

She studied me a moment. “Take care you don’t weep too much. A river of tears will make them wary. A trickle will be believed.”

I opened the door to be sure Shipra was still asleep and watched Yaltha creep past her with my precious belongings. My aunt had made her freedom. I would make mine.





viii.


They came late in the morning. They came bearing smugness, stern faces, and a betrothal contract freshly inked. I met them with smudges of twilight beneath my eyes and acts of guile and obsequiousness. I kissed my father’s hand. I embraced my mother. I begged them to pardon my defiance, pleading shock and immaturity. I cast down my eyes, willing tears—please come—but I was dry as the desert. Only Satan knows how hard I tried to squeeze them out. I pictured every grief I could think of. Yaltha beaten, battered, and sent away. Nathaniel spreading my legs. A life without inks and pens. The scrolls in the chest becoming a conflagration in the courtyard. And nothing, not a drop. What a failure I should be as a professional mourner.

My father lifted the contract and read it to me.


I, Nathaniel ben Hananiah of Sepphoris, betroth Ana, daughter of Matthias ben Philip Levias of Alexandria, on the 3rd day of Tishri and cause us to enter an inchoate marriage according to Rabbinic law.

I shall pay to her father 2,000 denarii and 200 talents of split dates from the first fruits of my orchard. I pledge to feed, clothe, and shelter her along with her aunt. In exchange, her guardianship shall pass into my hand on the day she is transferred to my house, where she will perform all the duties of wifehood.

This contract cannot be broken except by death or by divorce for Ana’s blindness, lameness, afflictions of skin, infertility, lack of modesty, disobedience, or other repulsions or displeasures so deemed by myself.

She shall enter my house four months hence on the 3rd of Shebat.



He held the contract out before me so I could witness the words myself. They were followed by Nathaniel’s signature in large brutish letters, as if slashed onto the parchment. Then my father’s name in bold imperial slants. Last, Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai, my father’s instrument, his signature so small and cramped I could glimpse the shame of his collusion.

“We are waiting to hear you acknowledge your consent,” Mother said, cocking her eyebrow, the crook of a warning.

I lowered my eyes. Clasped my hands to my breast. A small tremble of my chin. There. I was the compliant and docile daughter. “I give it,” I said. Then, wondering if they might be inclined to change their minds about the contents of my writing chest, added, “With all my heart.”

They did not change their minds. Shipra arrived with one of the soldiers who’d escorted us to the market. Mother went to my writing chest and threw back the lid. Her head vacillated back and forth as she took in the contents. “For all the time you spent writing, I should think you would have more to show for it.”

I felt a twinge of trepidation on the back of my neck.

“You will not partake in any more of this nonsense,” Mother said. “You are betrothed now. We expect you to put all of this out of your mind.” She dropped the lid. A resounding thud.

Father ordered the soldier to remove the chest to the courtyard. I watched as he hefted it onto his shoulder. Once again I tried to summon tears from the dust clefts in my eyelids, but my relief at having salvaged my most ardent work was too great. Mother watched me, lifting her brow once more, this time in curiosity. She was not easily fooled, my mother.

After Yaltha had left me the night before, I’d spent the wan hours thinking of where to hide the purple bundle—my scrolls were at risk here in the house under Mother’s nose. I’d pictured the caves on the hillsides that surrounded the valley, the places I’d explored with Judas as a girl. For centuries, those caves had been burying places not just for people, but for family valuables and forbidden texts. In order to hide my scrolls in one, though, I would have to secure Father’s permission to walk among the hills. It was an unusual request.