The Book of Longings(29)
“I mind my family’s hunger more.”
“It falls on you to feed your sister and brothers?”
“And mother,” he added.
He did not say wife.
He spread his damp cloak on the ground and gestured for me to sit. As I did so, I looked at Lavi, who appeared to sleep. Jesus sat down at a discreet distance, cross-legged, facing the cave opening. For a long interval we watched the rain and the wild, untethered sky without speaking. The nearness of him, his breathing, the way everything I felt inhabited me—I found rapture in these things, in this being together in the lonely place, and all around the thundering world.
He broke the silence by asking about my family. I told him my father had come from Alexandria to serve Herod Antipas as head scribe and counselor, that my mother was the daughter of a cloth merchant in Jerusalem. I confessed I would be beset with loneliness if not for my aunt. I didn’t mention that my brother was a fugitive or that the disagreeable man he’d seen with me in the market was now my betrothed. I wanted so badly to tell him my writings were buried not far from where he sat, that I was a student, an ink maker, a composer of words, a collector of forgotten stories, but I kept these things inside, too.
“What brought you outside of the city on the day the rains begin?” he wanted to know.
I could not say You, the reason is you. “I walk often in the hills,” I told him. “This morning I was impetuous, believing the rains would not arrive so soon.” It was at least a partial truth. “And you? Did you come here to pray? If so, I fear I’ve kept you from it.”
“I don’t mind. I doubt God does either. Lately, I’ve been poor company for him. I bring him nothing but questions and doubts.”
I thought of my conversation with Yaltha on the roof and the doubts about God that had assailed me ever since. “I don’t think doubts are wrong if they are honest,” I said quietly.
He turned his face to mine and his eyes felt different on me. Was it a revelation to him that a girl would presume to instruct a devout Jewish man on the vagaries of devotion? Had he caught a glimpse of me, Ana, the girl at the bottom of the incantation bowl?
His belly groaned. He pulled a pouch from the pocket in his sleeve and removed a flatbread. He broke it into three even pieces and offered a portion to me and the other to Lavi, who had woken.
“You would break bread with a woman and a Gentile?” I said.
“With friends,” he answered, offering me his uneven grin. I allowed myself to smile back and felt something tacit pass between us. The first tiny sprout of our belonging.
We ate our bread. I remember the taste of barley and peasantry in my mouth. The sadness that came to me as the rain lessened.
He walked to the opening and looked at the sky. “The foreman at the quarry will be hiring laborers soon. I must go.”
“May this meeting not be our last,” I said.
“May God will it yet again.”
I watched him hurry away through the balsam grove.
I would never tell him that our meeting in the cave that day was not by chance. I would not reveal I’d seen him there once before as he’d prayed. To the very end I would let him believe God’s hand was in our meeting. Who’s to say? Yaltha’s words remain with me—how can we know the ways of God?
xxiv.
I entered the palace bedecked and perfumed, henna vines on my arms, kohl beneath my eyes, ivory bracelets on my wrists, and silver anklets at my feet. On my head, I wore a gold leaf coronet that was woven intricately into the braids of my hair. My betrothal dress was adorned with twenty-four ornaments, every precious stone commanded by Scripture. Mother had hired the finest seamstress in Sepphoris to sew the gems along the purple bands on my neck and sleeves. I was laden down and sweating like a donkey.
We mounted the steps to Herod Antipas’s great hall beneath a wind-ravaged canopy held aloft by four servants who strained to keep it from flying away. My betrothal ceremony had arrived on a day full of rain and drear. I followed behind my parents, stumbling up the wide stone stairs, holding on to Yaltha’s arm. My aunt had seen to it that I drank a full cup of undiluted wine before setting out, which had caused the edges of things to grow furred and my distress to shrink into something small and mewling.
Two days ago, when Lavi and I had returned from the cave, Mother had met us at the gate with typical fury. Poor Lavi was sent straight to the rooftop to scour away the plenitude of bird droppings. She restricted me again to my room, warning my aunt to keep her distance. Undeterred, Yaltha came to me late in the nights with cups of wine and dates and listened to my tale of meeting Jesus. I’d found no rest since seeing him, and whenever I fell asleep, I dreamed of him coming through the rain.
In the great hall, torches were mounted on the columns, and the walls were lavishly frescoed with fruits and flowers and twisting ropes. A mosaic covered a vast portion of the floor—tiny bits of white marble, black pumice, and blue glass arranged into magnificent creatures. Fishes, dolphins, whales, and sea dragons. Looking down, I saw that I stood upon a large fish swallowing a small one. I could almost feel its tail swish. I tried hard not to be awed, but it was impossible. Wined and dazed, I moved across the mosaics as if walking upon water. Only later would it occur to me that Herod Antipas, a Jew, had broken God’s second commandment with a flamboyance that drew my breath. He’d made a sea of graven images. Father had once said our tetrarch was schooled in Rome and spent years gorging on the city. Now he imitated that world within his palace, a hidden shrine to Rome that the devout, common Jew would never see.