The Book of Longings(81)

When we finally dispersed from beneath the tree, I pulled Judas aside, into the storeroom, and told him about trading Mother’s jewelry for coins. He made no grimace of disapproval—my brother had stolen plenty from the rich to fund his sedition.

“I’m certain Apion will consent to take me and Lavi to Alexandria for a bribe of two thousand drachmae,” I said. “If so, that will leave us with three thousand. Jesus needs a patron to finance his ministry. I wish to divide the remaining money between myself and him. The amount could fund his work for months, perhaps the entire time I’m away. I want you to safeguard his portion, Judas, and you must never tell him where it came from. Promise me.”

He balked a little. “How will I explain it? He will press me to know his patron.”

“Tell him it’s someone in Tiberias. Tell him Joanna sent the coins out of gratitude for our part in saving her mistress. Tell him it’s anonymous. I don’t care, only don’t reveal my part in it.”

“He’s my friend, Ana. I believe in what he’s doing. Jesus is our best hope to find freedom from Rome. I don’t wish to start out lying to him.”

“I hate lying to him, too, but I fear he won’t take the money otherwise.”

“I’ll do as you ask, but let it be known, when it comes to you, I’m too indulgent.”

“One more thing, then,” I said. “You must write to me. Set aside some of the coins to purchase parchments and hire messengers. Send me news of Jesus and summon me as soon as it’s safe to return. Swear it.”

He hugged me to him. “I swear it.”





xxxii.


I dug my incantation bowl from the bottom of the cedar chest, where it had lain neglected and fallow for years. It was the size of a dough bowl, too large for my travel pouch, but I would not leave it behind. Nor my scrolls. When the silver coins were emptied from the large pouch, I would slip the bowl and the scrolls into it. Until then I would carry them in my arms.

I gazed at the wool sack of potsherds on which I’d penned the verses of grief for Susanna. They would have to stay behind.

The afternoon had given way to evening dark. Out in the courtyard, hushed voices. From the doorway, I could see Jesus and his family. In the sky, one lone star, a puncture of light.

“Your wife has acted recklessly,” I heard James say. “Now she will bring Antipas’s soldiers to our door.”

“What are we to say to them?” Simon said.

Jesus clasped a hand on each of their shoulders—that way he had of reminding them they were all brothers. “Tell them the woman they seek no longer lives here. Tell them she has left me and gone away with her brother; we don’t know where.”

“You would have us lie to them?” James asked.

Jesus’s suggestion that they prevaricate about my whereabouts surprised me, too.

Mary had been standing on the periphery, but she stepped before James and Simon. “What Jesus would have you do is help him preserve the life of his wife,” she said sharply. “You will do as he asks of you!”

“We must do as our conscience requires,” said Simon.

Salome made a whimpering sound. A sigh, a cry? I couldn’t tell.

“Let us drink some wine and talk together,” Jesus said.

I closed the door. In the stillness, a great heaviness came over me. I lit the lamps. Jesus would be back soon. Hurriedly, I cleansed my face and hands, donned a clean white garment, and smoothed my hair with oil fragrant with cloves.

Yaltha’s words returned to me: You have your destiny, too. They stirred the old longings in me, the terrible need for my own life.

I reopened my chest and retrieved the last of the oven ink, half-full and thick with gum, then pulled a reed pen from my travel pouch. Cross-writing in quick, tiny letters between the lines of my old prayer, I wrote a new prayer inside my incantation bowl.


Sophia, Breath of God, set my eyes on Egypt. Once the land of bondage, let it become the land of freedom. Deliver me to the place of papyri and ink. To the place I will be born.





xxxiii.


I woke before daybreak with my head burrowed in the crook of Jesus’s neck. His beard brushed my forehead. Heat radiated from his skin with the scent of wine and salt. I didn’t move. I lay in the dark and drank him in.

The light came slow and limping, never fully arriving. Overhead, thunder—a splintering sound, then another and another, the sky timbers cracking. Jesus stirred, making a soft, droning noise with his lips. I thought he would get up then and pray.

Instead, he said, “Little Thunder, is that you I hear?” And he laughed.

I forced a lilt into my voice, teasing him back. “It’s me, Beloved. I’m roaring at the thought of leaving you behind.”

He turned on his side to face me and I felt that he saw deep inside me. He said, “I bless the largeness in you, Ana.”

“And I bless yours,” I told him.

Then he rose and, opening the door, stared toward the valley with the same deep, pure gaze he’d cast on me. I went to stand beside him and looked in the same direction as he, and it seemed for an instant I saw the world as he did, orphaned and broken and staggeringly beautiful, a thing to be held and put back right.

Parting was fully upon us now. I wished with all my being that we might have gone on together.