The Book of Longings(45)

Had I dared, I would’ve asked if he cared at all that I’d endured a harrowing escape from death. I would’ve told him it was Chuza he should blame for the stoning, not me. But I held my tongue.

He walked back toward his study, a man utterly vanquished, then stopped midway. Without turning, he spoke. “I do give thanks you were unharmed. I’m told it was a builder who prevented your death.”

“Yes, his name is Jesus.”

“And he spoke to the crowd of becoming your betrothed?”

“Yes.”

“Would you welcome that, Ana?”

“I would, Father. With all my heart.”

When Jesus arrived soon afterward, Father wrote and signed a contract of betrothal without consulting Mother. Jesus would pay the humble bride price of thirty shekels and would feed, clothe, and shelter my aunt, who would accompany me. There would be no betrothal ceremony. The wedding would be a simple transfer from my father’s house to my husband’s in thirty days, on the third of Nisan, the shortest time allowed.





NAZARETH


    17–27 CE





i.

The day I entered Jesus’s house, his family stood in a silent clump in the courtyard, watching as Lavi led the cart containing me, my aunt, and our belongings through the gate. There were four of them—two men besides Jesus, and two women, one of whom rested her hand across her nearly imperceptible pregnant belly.

“Do they think we have the spaciousness of a palace?” I heard the pregnant one say.

To my mind, we’d brought a bare handful of possessions. I’d packed the plainest of my clothes, one ordinary silver headband, my copper mirror, an ornamental brass comb, two red woolen rugs, undyed bed coverings, my incantation bowl, and most precious of all, my cedar chest. Inside it were my scrolls, reed pens, a sharpening knife, two vials of ink, and the ivory sheet that had nearly gotten me stoned. The clean papyri my father had obtained for me were gone—I’d exhausted them during the brief writing frenzy that had commenced soon after retrieving my possessions from the cave. Yaltha had brought even less than I: three tunics, her bed mat, the sistrum, and the Egyptian scissors.

Still, we were a spectacle. Over my protests Father had sent us off in a cart drawn by a royally bedecked horse from Herod Antipas’s stable. I’m sure he wanted to impress the Nazarenes, to remind them that Jesus was wedding far above his standing. I offered my new family a smile, hoping to endear myself, but a cart lined with fine woolen rugs, pulled by an imperial horse led by a servant, did nothing to help my cause. Jesus had met us on the village outskirts and even he’d frowned before greeting us.

To worsen matters, Father had also forbidden the wedding under his roof. It was customary for the chuppah to be in the bride’s house, but he feared annoying Antipas by hosting a marriage the tetrarch was certain to resent. Nor did Father want village peasants in his house. His refusal to host Jesus and his family must have been a terrible insult to them. And who knew what tales might have reached them of my fornicating, thieving, and blasphemy?

I let my eyes drift about the little compound. Three small dwellings were cobbled together within the enclosure, built from stacked stones and held together with mud. I counted five or six rooms opening onto the courtyard. A ladder led to the rooftops, which were covered with reed bundles and packed mud, and I wondered if Yaltha and I would be able to sit up there and share our secrets.

I quickly scanned the courtyard. An oven strewn with pots and utensils, firewood, dung pile, mortar and pestle, loom. There was a sun-cooked vegetable garden and a little stable with four chickens, two sheep, and a goat. A single olive tree. I took it all in. This is where I’ll live. I tried not to feel the shock that undulated through me.

His family huddled in the shade of the lone tree. I wondered where Jesus’s sister was, the one from the market—the yarn spinner. His mother wore a colorless tunic and a pale yellow head scarf with wisps of dark hair escaping the edges. I guessed her to be near the age of my mother, but she was far more frayed by her years. Her face, so like her son’s, was well worn from chores and childbearing. She had a slight rounding in her shoulders, and the corners of her mouth had begun to droop slightly, but I thought how lovely she looked standing there with the sun filtering through the leaves, coins of light on her shoulders. Jesus’s confession to me in the cave slipped into my thoughts. 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.

“Welcome, Ana,” she said, coming to embrace me. “My daughter Salome was married only a few weeks ago and lives now in Besara. One daughter has gone and another has come.” There was a plaintive note beneath her smile, and it occurred to me that not only had her daughter left, but her husband had died only six months before.

The two men were Jesus’s brothers, James, nineteen, and Simon, seventeen, both dark skinned and thick haired like Jesus, with the same short beards and posture—the wide stance, arms crossed—but their eyes had none of the passion and depth Jesus’s did. The pregnant woman with the prickly tongue was Judith, married to James, whose age, I would discover, was fifteen, the same as mine. They looked at me with mute stares.

Yaltha removed her bridle. “One would think a two-headed sheep had arrived in your midst!”