The Book of Longings(28)

“We should go back,” Lavi said. “Now.” He’d brought a small rolled canopy of thatched palm to protect us if the rains began. I watched as he unfurled it. I had an awful feeling inside, something sad and sodden like the sky.

He was right, we should leave—once the rains began, they would not let up, perhaps for hours. I pulled my mantle over my head, then lifted my eyes toward the balsam grove, and there he was, moving through the trees. He stepped quickly, glancing upward, his tunic a smear of white in the murky light. Drops of rain began to fall. They splatted on the limestone, the treetops, the hard-shell earth, sending up the smell of fertility. As he broke into a run, I stepped back into the shadows. Lavi, seeing him, tensed, setting his jaw.

I said, “He’s of no danger to us. He’s known to me.”

“And did you have a dream of his coming, too?”

Within seconds, the rain became a swarm of locusts, thick and deafening. Jesus bolted into the cave as if coming up out of the sea, his clothes dripping, his hair hanging in dark wet tendrils on his cheeks. His leather belt jangled with tools.

Seeing us, he started. “May I share your refuge or would you have me seek shelter elsewhere?”

“The hillsides belong to everyone,” I answered, pulling the mantle back from my head. “Even if that were not true, I wouldn’t be so cruel as to send you back into the rainstorm.”

Recognition broke across his face. His eyes drifted to my feet. “You are no longer lame?”

I smiled at him. “No. And you, I trust, were not arrested by Herod Antipas’s soldier.”

His smile was a broad, crooked arrangement on his face. “No, I was faster than he was.”

Thunder cracked over our heads. Whenever the sky quaked, women uttered a blessing: Lord preserve me from the wrath of Lilith. But I could never bring myself to say it. I would whisper instead, Lord, bless the roaring, and that was what rose now to my lips.

He greeted Lavi. “Shelama.”

Lavi muttered the greeting back, then moved some distance away to the cave wall, where he sank onto his haunches. His surliness surprised me. He was piqued that I’d lied about the hyena, that I’d spoken to a strange man, that I’d dragged him here at all.

“He’s my servant,” I said, then immediately regretted drawing attention to the difference in our stations. “His name is Lavi,” I added, hoping to sound less supercilious. “I am Ana.”

“I’m Jesus ben Joseph,” he replied, and a disturbance of some kind passed over his face. I didn’t know if it was because I’d appeared arrogant, or due to the oddity that we should meet again, or something in the utterance of his name.

“I’m glad our paths crossed,” I said. “I’ve wished to thank you for your kindness in the market. You weren’t rewarded very well for it. I hope your head wasn’t hurt badly.”

“It was little more than a scratch.” He smiled and rubbed his forehead. Tiny droplets sheened his brow. He dried them with his cloak, then rubbed the wool over his hair, leaving the locks askew, sprigs everywhere. He looked boyish, and I felt the same hot whirring in my breast as before.

He stepped deeper into the cave, away from the mist and nearer to where I stood.

“You’re a stonemason?” I asked.

He touched the awl that dangled from his belt. “My father was a carpenter and a stonemason. I took up his trade.” Grief flared in his face, and I guessed that speaking the name Joseph moments ago had caused the shadow to enter his eyes. It was for his father he’d prayed the Kaddish that day.

“Did you think me to be a yarn sorter?” he asked, quick to cover his sadness with wit.

“You did seem adept at it.” My tone was teasing, and I saw a ripple of the smile I’d observed earlier.

“I go with my sister Salome to the market when there’s no work of my own to be had. I’ve become an expert with yarn from too much practice. My brothers even more so—they’re the ones who usually accompany her. We don’t let her cross the valley alone.”

“You come from Nazareth, then?”

“Yes, I make door lintels, roof beams, and furniture, but my work doesn’t rival my father’s—there have been few commissions for me there since he died. I’m compelled to come to Sepphoris now to be hired as one of Herod Antipas’s laborers.”

How was it he spoke so freely? I was female, a stranger, the daughter of a wealthy Roman sympathizer, yet he didn’t hold himself apart.

His eyes swept over the cave. “I sometimes stop to pray here on my way. It’s a lonely place . . . except today.” He laughed, the soaring sound I’d heard in the market, and it caused me to laugh as well.

“Do you labor on Herod Antipas’s amphitheater?” I asked.

“I cut stone for it in the quarry. When quotas are reached and hiring ceases, I travel to Capernaum and join a band of fishermen on the Sea of Galilee and sell my portion of the catch.”

“You are many things, then. A carpenter, a stonemason, a yarn sorter, and a fisherman.”

“I’m all of those,” he said. “But I belong to none of them.”

I wondered if, like me, he possessed a longing for something forbidden to him, but I didn’t ask, for fear of probing too far. Instead I thought of Judas and said, “You don’t mind working for Antipas?”