The Book of Longings(42)

I broke into a run.





xxxiii.


On the street I pulled my mantle over my head and walked briskly, staying beneath the roofed sidewalks along the cardo, looking behind me for Chuza and now and then entering a small shop in hopes of avoiding him. It was the day before the Sabbath and the city was thronged with people. I tried my best to disappear among them.

I thought of hiding myself in the cave, a shelter no one but Jesus and Lavi knew about, but I could not sleep or eat there, nor would Jesus come at this hour. He would be at the building site for the theater on the northern slope. The realization halted me, as if a hand had been laid on my shoulder. I heard Yaltha’s voice float up: Your moment will come, and when it does, you must seize it with all the bravery you can find. . . . Your moment will come because you’ll make it come.

I turned toward the northern slope.

The building site was a commotion of pounding mallets and pluming limestone dust. I stood on the street and stared at two-wheeled carts lurching through the bustle, wooden cranes and hoists lifting unhewn stones, men stirring mortar with long staves. I hadn’t expected so many workers. I spotted him finally near the top of the ridge, bent over a stone, smoothing it with a trowel.

The sun was dipping toward the valley and the shadow from a nearby scaffold fell across his back, forming a tiny ladder. The poet’s words began to sing in me of their own accord. Under the apple tree I awakened you . . . Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it . . .

Around me, the street was busy with vendors peddling tools, bolts of cheap flax, butchered animals, and stews for the workers, a second-rate bazaar compared to the market in the basilica. I found a spot beside a vegetable stall where I could wait for the day’s labor to end.

The sun slid deeper into the valley and my spirits thinned with the slippage of light. Lost in my brooding, I jumped at the sound of a ram’s horn being blown. Abruptly, the hammering ceased and the men began to put away their tools. They streamed up the hill onto the street, Jesus among them, his cheeks and forehead dusted with stone powder.

A man shouted, “Seize her!”

Jesus turned toward the cry, and then I, too, reeled about. Chuza stood on the sidewalk a short distance from me, pointing. “Seize her!” he cried again. “She has stolen from my master.”

Workers, vendors, shoppers, passersby stopped. The street muted.

I drew back into the market stall. Yet he followed me into the baskets of onions and chickpeas. He was an old man, but he was strong. Grabbing my wrist, he dragged me into the crowd, into their stares and spit and invective.

Hemmed in by a host of angered people, I was struck with fear like a slash of lightning moving from the crown of my head, down my back, along my legs, to the nubs of my toes. I looked at the sky, the breath gone from me.

Chuza lifted his voice. “I charge her with thievery and blasphemy. She stole a precious sheet of ivory from my master, and she sat for an artisan while he made a graven image of her face.”

I closed my eyes and felt the heaviness of my lashes. “I have stolen nothing.”

Ignoring me, he spoke to the crowd. “If there’s no ivory in the pocket of her sleeve, I will be satisfied she’s not a thief. Either way, she cannot deny the graven image made of her face.”

A woman pushed her way through the swarm of people. “She’s the daughter of Matthias, head scribe to Herod Antipas, and known to be a fornicator.”

I called out again in protest, but my denial was swallowed by the black odium that boiled out of their hearts.

“Show us your pocket!” a man yelled. One by one, they took up the petition.

Gripping my forearm, Chuza let their shouts grow fevered before he reached for my sleeve. I writhed and kicked. I was a fluttering moth, a hapless girl. My skirmish yielded nothing but jeers and laughter. He snatched the sheet of ivory from my coat and lifted it over his head. A roar erupted.

“She is a thief, a blasphemer, and a fornicator!” Chuza cried. “What would you do with her?”

“Stone her!” someone cried.

The chant began, the dark prayer. Stone her. Stone her.

I shut my eyes against the dazzling blur of anger. Their hearts are boulders and their heads are straw. They seemed to be not a multitude of persons, but a single creature, a behemoth feeding off their combined fury. They would stone me for all the wrongs ever done to them. They would stone me for God.

Most often victims were dragged to a cliff outside the city and thrown off before being pelted, which lessened the laborious effort of having to throw so many stones—it was in some way more merciful, at least quicker—but I saw I would not be accorded that lenience. Men and women and children plucked stones from the ground. These stones, God’s most bountiful gift to Galilee. Some rushed into the building site, where the stones were larger and more deadly. I heard the sizzle of a rock fly over my head and fall behind me.

Then the commotion and noise slowed, elongating, receding to some distant pinnacle, and in that strange slackening of time, I no longer cared to fight. I felt myself bending to my fate. I ached for the life I would never live, but I yearned even more to escape it.

I sank onto the ground, making myself as small as I could, my arms and legs tucked beneath my chest and belly, my forehead pressed to the ground. I fashioned myself into a walnut shell. I would be broken apart and God could have the meat.