The Book of Longings(62)

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THE NEXT WEEK, Jesus didn’t arrive home from Magdala before sunset as he always did. Dusk came, then dark, and he didn’t appear. I stood in the doorway and watched the gate, glad for the fullness of the moon. Mary and Salome delayed the Sabbath meal and sat with James and Simon in a little clump beneath the olive tree.

When he appeared, I disregarded my confinement and ran to him. He bore a heavy sack on his back. “I’m sorry to be delayed,” he said. “I detoured to Einot Amitai to the vessel workshop at the chalkstone cave.”

The road there was known to be populated with lepers and brigands, but when his mother admonished him about the danger, he lifted his hand to stop her, and without further comment he strode toward our room, where he poured the contents of his sack into a magical heap outside the door.

Potsherds! Stone potsherds.

I laughed at the sight. I kissed his hands and cheeks, then chastised him. “Your mother is right. You shouldn’t have traveled such dangerous country for me.”

“Little Thunder, it wasn’t for you,” he teased. “I brought the shards for you to write on in order to save my mother’s pots.”





xviii.


As the end of my confinement neared, I began to dream of going back to Jerusalem.

A woman was required to present a sacrificial offering at the Temple. If she had the means, she purchased a lamb. If she was needy, she offered two turtledoves. The poor, pilloried dove mothers. They bore a certain stigma, but I didn’t mind becoming one of them. I had no interest in the size of my sacrifice or whether the priest pronounced me clean, unclean, or hopelessly squalid. What I wished for was a respite from the compound—the walls that shrank like figs in the sun, the quiet hostilities, the unchanging daily-ness. Traveling to Jerusalem during the dull month of Elul would be more placid than Passover and a welcome reprieve before returning to my chores. I imagined it daily. Jesus and I would stay again with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. I would revel in seeing Tabitha. We would go to the Pool of Siloam, where I would bid Jesus to lift the paralytics into the water. At the Temple, we would purchase two turtledoves. I would try to leave the lambs alone.

The thought of these things filled me with elation, but they were not my true intent. I meant to trade my silver headband, copper mirror, brass comb, even my precious ivory sheet for papyri and inks.



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“ONLY A WEEK REMAINS before my captivity ends,” I whispered to Jesus. “Yet you haven’t spoken of going to the Temple. I will need to make my sacrifice.”

We were reclined on the roof, where I, too, had begun to sleep in order to escape the heat, spreading my bed mat an acceptable distance from his. The entire family, except Yaltha, had taken to sleeping up here. Gazing across the mud thatch, I could see their bodies lined up under the stars.

I waited. Had Jesus heard my question? Voices traveled easily up here—even now I heard Judith at the far end of the roof murmuring to her children, trying to settle them.

“Jesus?” I whispered, louder.

He edged closer so we could keep our voices low. “We cannot go to Jerusalem, Ana. The journey is five days at a quick pace, and five days back. I’m unable to leave my labors for so long. I’ve become one of the head builders of the synagogue.”

I didn’t want him to hear my disappointment. I lay back without responding and looked up into the night, where the moon was just brandishing her forehead.

He said, “You can make your offering to the rabbi here instead. It’s sometimes done that way.”

“It’s just that . . . I hoped—” Hearing the quiver in my throat, I stopped.

“Tell me. What do you hope?”

“I hope for everything.”

After a pause, I heard him say, “Yes, I hope for everything, too.”

I didn’t ask what he meant, nor did he ask me. He knew what my everything was. And I knew his.

Soon I heard his breath deepen into sleep.

An image swam into my mind and floated there: Jesus is at the gate. He’s wearing his travel cloak, a bag strapped over his shoulder. I am there, too, my face full of sorrow.

My eyes broke open. I turned and looked at him with sudden sadness. The rooftop was quiet, the night showering down its heat. I heard a creature of some kind—a wolf, perhaps a jackal—howl in the distance, then the animals restless in the stable. I didn’t sleep, but lay there remembering the admission Jesus had made the night he asked me to become his betrothed. Since I was a boy of twelve I’ve felt I might have some purpose in God’s mind, but that seems less likely to me now. I’ve had no sign.

The sign would come.

His everything.



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EIGHTY DAYS AFTER the birth and death of Susanna, I purchased two turtledoves from a farmer and carried them to the closest thing we had to a rabbi in Nazareth, a learned man who owned the village oil press and who stood there trying to look practiced at pronouncing women clean. He’d been feeding the donkey that turned the grinding stone when I arrived. I was accompanied by Simon and Yaltha; Jesus was not expected home from Magdala for four days.

The rabbi clutched a handful of straw in one hand as he received the doves, which flapped wildly in the little cage. He seemed uncertain whether he was required to quote the Torah in his pronouncement, which occasioned a fascinating blend of Scripture and invention.