The Book of Longings(32)

“Keep out of God’s sight,” Mother cautioned me. As if in getting a glimpse of me on the roof, God would be reminded of my wrongdoings and strike me down with sickness, too. Part of me wished for it. My guilt and sorrow over Judas was so grave, I wondered if my going to the roof wasn’t really an attempt to contract the fever and die in order to escape my distress. The day after my disastrous betrothal ceremony, Judas left for the palace-fortress in Machaerus. Father announced his departure at the evening meal, then forbade Judas’s name to be spoken again in his house.

The war between my parents inhabited the house like a silent, prowling creature. Whenever Father left the room, my mother would walk to the threshold and spit on the place his foot had last fallen. She believed the fever would be God’s retribution upon Antipas and Father. She waited for the Lord to smite them dead. She waited to no avail.

Then one afternoon, a messenger arrived. We were seated on the couches in the reception hall, taking our midday meal, nothing more than dried fish and bread since Mother forbade Shipra and Lavi to venture out to the market. Nor would she allow the messenger into the house, ordering Lavi to receive his message at the door. When he returned, he cast a look at me I couldn’t quite read.

“Well, what is it?” Mother said.

“It is news from the house of Nathaniel ben Hananiah. He has fallen victim to the fever.”

My heart fluttered strangely. Then came an upwelling of relief and hope and gladness. I stared into my lap, afraid my feelings would blossom into my face.

Glancing sideways at Mother, I watched her plunge her elbows onto the tripod table and drop her head into her hands. Father’s face looked pale and grim. With a colluding glance at Yaltha, I rose from my couch and climbed the stairs to my room, closing the door behind me. I would have danced, except for the guilt I felt over my happiness.

When the same messenger arrived two weeks later with news that Nathaniel had survived, I wept into my pillow.

Ever since the conversation with my aunt that had provoked my doubts, my old understanding of God had begun to fray. Now questions roiled inside me. Had God intervened to spare Nathaniel, ensuring my marriage to him, or was his recovery merely a matter of luck and resilience? Had God caused my aunt’s fever in order to chastise her, as my mother said? And when she, too, was restored, did it mean she’d repented? And Judas—had God willed him to be imprisoned by Herod Antipas? Why had he failed to save Tabitha?

I could no longer believe in the God of punishments and rescues.

When I was nine, I discovered God’s secret name: I Am Who I Am. I thought it was the truest, most wondrous name I’d ever heard. When my father overheard me speak it aloud, he shook my shoulders and forbade me to say the name ever again, for it was too holy to be uttered. I did not stop thinking of it, though, and during those days when I questioned God’s nature, I repeated the name over and over. I Am Who I Am.





xxvi.


Phasaelis summoned me to the palace on the fourth of Tebet, unaware it was the fifteenth anniversary of my birth. A soldier had arrived at our gate well before noon bearing her message written in Greek on a sheet of ivory hammered so thin it was like a peel of milk. I’d never seen a missive written on ivory. I took it in my hands. Light quivered on the black script, every word taut and perfect—and my old longing was ripped open. Oh, to write again . . . and on such a tablet!

    4th of Tebet

Ana, I hope you have survived the fever and the confinement of these long and woeful weeks. I bid your presence at the palace. If you deem it safe, leave your cage this day and come to mine. We shall take the Roman baths and resume our friendship.

Phasaelis



A shiver ran through me. Leave your cage. It had been a month and a half since the sickness had first appeared in the city. Only yesterday we’d heard of a child who’d become newly infected, but the disease seemed to be taking its leave. The funerary processions had nearly ceased, the market had reopened, Father had resumed his business, and Yaltha, though still delicate, had left her bed.

It was Friday—Sabbath would begin that evening. Nevertheless, Mother, her eyes full of jealousy, gave me permission to visit the palace.



* * *



? ? ?

THE MOSAIC OF SEA CREATURES on the floor in the great hall was even more glorious in daylight. Phasaelis’s silver-haired attendant, Joanna, left me staring at it while she went to seek her mistress. I had the feeling once again of standing on fishes, of waves moving beneath my feet, of the world reeling toward something I couldn’t see.

“My husband’s enthrallment with Roman mosaics has no beginning and no end,” Phasaelis said. I’d not seen her enter. I smoothed the folds of my pale yellow tunic and touched the amber bead at my neck, struck, as I’d been before, by the sight of her. She wore a brilliant blue robe and a string of pearls across her forehead. Her toenails were painted with camphire.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, letting my eyes sweep once more across the sea floor.

“Soon we will not have a tile left that hasn’t been turned into an animal, a bird, or a fish.”

“Does it concern the tetrarch that he’s violating the Jewish law against graven images?” I don’t know what made me ask such a thing. Maybe it came from my own brush with fear when I’d drawn the image of myself inside my incantation bowl. Whatever prompted it, my question was ill-thought.