The Book of Longings(39)

When I reached the city gate, I looked toward Nazareth. The valley floors ran wild with coriander, dill, and mustard, and already workers were making their way to building sites in the city. I wondered if I might find Jesus praying at the cave. I’d timed my trip well for seeing him. The sun’s pink fingers were still wrapped around the clouds.

It was close to the end of Shebat, when the almond trees blossomed. The wakeful tree, we called it. Midway down the hill, I smelled its rich brown scent, and winding farther, I came upon the tree itself, its canopy lush with white flowers. I stepped beneath it, thinking of the marriage canopy I’d escaped, of my dance on the rooftop, that choosing of myself. I plucked one of the small white flowers and tucked it over my ear.

Jesus stood at the cave entrance with his fringed cloak pulled over his head and his arms lifted in prayer. Drawing near, I placed my tool and pouch on a rock and waited. My heart pounded. For a moment it was as if everything that had come before did not matter.

His prayer was whispered, but over and over again I heard him address God as Abba, Father. When he finished, he pulled his cloak back around his shoulders. I walked toward him with my chin set, with no falter in my step. I didn’t recognize myself, the young woman with the almond blossom in her hair.

I called out, “Shelama. I fear I’ve intruded upon you.”

He paused, taking me in. Then came the smile. “We are on level pegging then. When we met before, I was the one who intruded on you.”

I feared he might leave—there was no rain to detain him this time. A little intoxicated by my audacity, I said, “Please be kind enough to share my meal. I don’t wish to eat alone.”

Last time he’d proved to be a man who interpreted the law liberally, open-minded about interacting with women and Gentiles, but an unbetrothed man and woman alone on a hillside without a chaperone was a forbidding matter. The Pharisees, those who prayed loudly only to be heard and wore phylacteries twice as large as normal, would think it a reason to throw stones at us. Even those less pious might say such a meeting bound the man to ask the girl’s father for a betrothal contract. I watched him waver for several moments before he accepted.

We sat in a puddle of sunlight near the cave mouth and broke bread, wrapping it about small hunks of cheese. We nibbled the dates and spit the pits and talked haltingly of small, heedless things. Throughout, he lifted his hand to shield his face from the glare and glanced toward the path through the balsam grove. When a long and awful silence fell over us, I made up my mind. I would speak as I wished to speak. Say what I wanted to say.

“You call God Father?” I asked. Referring to God in that way was not unheard-of, but it was unusual.

After pausing, perhaps out of surprise, he said, “The practice is new to me. When my father died, I felt his absence like a wound. One night in my grief, I heard God say to me, ‘I will be your father now.’”

“God speaks to you?”

He stifled a grin. “Only in my thoughts.”

“I’ve just observed my own time of mourning,” I said. “My betrothed died five weeks ago.” I refused to lower my eyes, but I kept the gladness from reaching them.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Am I right to think he was the rich man in the market?”

“Yes, Nathaniel ben Hananiah. I was made to go to the market that day by my parents. It was the first time I’d ever seen Nathaniel. You must have witnessed my revulsion for him. I regret I showed no subtlety, but a betrothal to him felt like dying. I was given no choice.”

Silence, but this time it lit upon us like something winged. He watched my face. The earth hummed. I saw his body sigh and the last of his inhibitions fall away.

“You’ve suffered much,” he said, and it seemed he spoke of more than my betrothal.

I got to my feet and stepped into the shadow that edged the cave opening. I’d been deceitful with him before and I didn’t wish to be so again. I would have him know the worst. “I cannot be unfair to you,” I said. “You should know with whom you speak. Since Nathaniel’s death, I’ve become a scourge to my family. In Sepphoris, I’m a pariah. It’s falsely rumored that I’m a fornicator. And because I’m the daughter of Herod Antipas’s chief scribe and counselor, it has become a grand and notorious scandal. When I leave our house, people cross the road to avoid me. They spit at my feet. They shout ‘harlot.’”

I wanted to protest my innocence further, but couldn’t bring myself to do so. I waited to see if he would withdraw, but he rose, coming to stand with me in the thin shade, his expression unchanged.

“The ways of people can be cruel,” he said. Then, quieter, “You’re not alone in this suffering.”

Not alone. I met his eyes, trying to understand his meaning, and I saw again how everything floated there.

He said, “You should know with whom you speak as well. I am also a mamzer. In Nazareth some say I’m Mary’s son, not Joseph’s. They say I was born from my mother’s fornication. Others say my father is Joseph, but that I was illicitly conceived before my parents married. I’ve lived all twenty years of my life with this stigma.”

My lips parted, not in surprise at what he’d said, but that he’d chosen to divulge it to me.

“You’re shunned still?” I asked.

“As a boy I wasn’t allowed in synagogue school until my father went and pleaded with the rabbi. When he was alive, he shielded me from gossip and slights. Now that he’s gone, it’s made worse. I believe it’s why I can find no work in Nazareth.” He’d been rubbing the hem of his sleeve between his fingers as he talked, and he let go now, straightening. “But that is as it is. I only mean to say I know the pain you speak of.”