The Book of Longings(77)

“I had thought it would require weeks, but after only a few days I’m ready to finalize the sale of the house. I will leave for Caesarea in five days in order to take passage on the next merchant ship.” He fixed his eyes on the bag strapped across Lavi’s chest. “Shall we complete our business?”

“I will return in five days with my aunt, arriving early in the morning. You will be paid then, not before.”

His lips curled. “Five days, then.”





xxx.


As Lavi and I drew close to the compound, the aroma of roasting lamb filled my nostrils. “Jesus is home,” I said.

“How can you know this?”

“Smell the air, Lavi. A fatted lamb!”

It would require a considerable event, such as the homecoming of her son, for Mary to trade for something as expensive as a lamb.

“How do you know the scent is not from some other courtyard?” Lavi said.

I quickened my pace. “I know. I just know.”

I reached the gate winded and flushed. Yaltha was sitting near the courtyard oven, where Mary, Salome, Judith, and Berenice were busy turning the lamb on a spit. I went to my aunt, kneeling down to embrace her. “Your husband is home,” she said. “He arrived last evening. I didn’t tell him about your father, but I explained your absence before James had a chance to give his account of it.”

“I will go to him,” I said. “Where is he?”

“He has been in the workshop all morning. But first, did you persuade Apion?”

“He was persuaded not by me, but by one thousand drachmae.”

“A thousand . . . How did you come by such riches?”

“It’s a long story, and not one I wish overheard. It will keep.”

The women had scarcely greeted me, but as I ran toward the workshop, Judith called out, “If you’d heeded James’s commandment not to leave, you would’ve been here to greet your husband.”

Her tongue was a pestilence. “His commandment? Did James receive it on a stone tablet? Did God speak to him from a burning bush?”

Judith huffed, and I caught sight of Salome swallowing her laugh.



* * *



? ? ?

JESUS SET DOWN the cross-saw he was sharpening. I’d not seen him for more than five months and he looked like a stranger. His hair hung long about his shoulders. His skin was darker and razed by desert winds, all the edges of his face severe. He seemed so much older than his thirty years.

“You’ve been gone too long,” I said, letting my hands rest on his chest. I wanted to feel him, the flesh of him. “And you’re too thin. Is that why Mary has a banquet in the making?”

He kissed my forehead. He said nothing about my red scarf. His only words: “I’ve missed you, Little Thunder.”

We sat down on the workbench. “Yaltha said you were in Sepphoris,” he said. “Tell me all that has happened since I’ve been gone.”

I described Lavi’s unexpected appearance. “He brought me news,” I said. “My father is dead.”

“I’m sorry, Ana. I know what it’s like to lose a father.”

“Mine was nothing like your father,” I said. “When Nazareth treated you as a mamzer, your father protected you. Mine tried to make me the tetrarch’s concubine.”

“Is there nothing good you can say of him?”

Jesus’s capacity for mercy baffled me. I didn’t know if I could give up the wrongs my father had done, the way I hauled them around like an ossuary of precious old bones. Jesus made it seem as if one could just lay them down.

“I can say one thing for him,” I said. “One thing. My father sometimes provided me with tutors, papyri, and ink. He begrudgingly indulged my writing. This, more than anything, made me who I am.”

I’d known this simple truth, but putting it into words gave it an unexpected potency. I felt tears start. Finally, tears for my father. Jesus pressed me to him, burying my nose in his tunic, and I smelled the Jordan River flowing beneath his skin.

I removed my scarf and dried my face with it, unloosing my hair, and then went on, wanting to get through the rest of my telling. I spoke of my visit to Sepphoris, what it was like to be inside the house again, of Apion and his agreement to take Yaltha to Alexandria. There were things I didn’t mention—the jewelry, the coins, the lies. When I relayed the news Lavi had brought from the palace, I held back any mention of my ivory sheet and the kitchen steward.

There was, though, information I couldn’t withhold. I hesitated a moment before telling him. “Herodias seeks to have John arrested.”

“John has already been arrested,” he said. “Herod Antipas’s soldiers came for him two weeks ago while he was baptizing at Aenon near Salim. He was taken to the fortress at Machaerus and imprisoned. I don’t think Antipas will set him free.”

My hand went to my mouth. “Will they arrest his disciples?”

He was forever telling me to consider the lilies in the fields, which were never anxious and yet God took care of them. I didn’t wish to hear it. “Don’t tell me not to worry. I’m alarmed for you.”

“John’s disciples have scattered, Ana. I don’t believe they’re looking for us. When John was apprehended, I fled into the Judean desert along with Simon and Andrew, the fishermen, and two others, Philip and Nathanael. We hid there for a week. Even when journeying here to Nazareth, I cut through Samaria to avoid Aenon. I’m being watchful.”