The Book of Longings(84)

Five hundred! I was in possession of fifteen hundred Herodian silver drachmae with no idea how that translated into Egyptian bronze. We needed the money to last up to a year, not just for rent, but for passage home.

“One hundred,” I said.

“Four hundred,” he countered.

“One hundred fifty and I will serve you as a scribe.”

“A scribe?” He snorted. “I have a scribe.”

“Does your scribe write Aramaic, Greek, Hebrew, and Latin . . . all four?” I asked.

“Does he create lettering and scripts so beautiful people attribute even greater import to the words?” said Yaltha.

“You do these things?” Haran said to me.

“I do.”

“All right. One hundred fifty bronze drachmae and your services as a scribe. I require nothing further except that neither of you leave this house.”

“You can’t mean to confine us here,” I said. This was a blow worse than the cost of his rent.

“If you require goods from the market, your guardian, as you call him, can do your bidding.”

He faced Yaltha. “As you know, charges of murder do not expire. If I learn that either of you have left the house or made inquiries about your daughter, I’ll make sure you’re arrested.” His face hardened. “Chaya’s family doesn’t want your meddling, and I won’t risk them suing me because of it.”

He clanged a tiny gong and a young woman, not Jewish, but a long-necked Egyptian with heavily lined eyes, appeared. “Show them to the women’s quarters and put their guardian with the servants,” Haran told her, then abruptly left us.

We followed behind her, listening to the shuffle of her sandals on the tile, watching her black hair swish back and forth. We were, it seemed, to be captives here.

“Does Haran not have a wife we could appeal to?” I whispered to Yaltha.

“She died before I left Alexandria. I don’t know if he took another,” she whispered back.

The servant girl stopped before a doorway. “You will reside here,” she said to us in broken Greek, then added, “He has no wife. No one lives beneath this roof but Haran and his servants.”

“What good ears you have,” I said.

“All servants have good ears,” she replied, and I saw Lavi grin.

“Where are Haran’s sons?” Yaltha asked.

“They manage his lands in the Nile Delta.” She motioned to Lavi and sauntered off, swaying hair, swaying hips. He gazed at her with parted lips, before fumbling after her.



* * *



? ? ?

MY SLEEPING CHAMBER was separated from Yaltha’s by a sitting room that opened onto a courtyard garden—a tiny forest of date palms. We stood in the doorway looking out at it.

“Haran doesn’t trust you,” I said. “He knows exactly why you’re here.”

“Yes. He knows.”

“But it’s strange, isn’t it, that he goes to such lengths to keep you from Chaya. Even confining us to the house. What harm would it be for you to see her? Perhaps there is some legal agreement with her family, but I wonder if he conceals Chaya from you only to punish you. Could his need for vengeance be as strong as that?”

“The rumors surrounding my husband’s death were a disgrace for him—his own sister believed to be a murderer. He lost business over it. He lost favor in the city. He was shamed. He never got over it, and he has never stopped blaming me. His need for revenge is bottomless.”

We stood there silent a few moments, and I thought I saw something come into her face, some awareness. She said, “What if Haran conceals Chaya not only out of vengeance, but to hide some wrongdoing of his own?”

My skin prickled. “What do you mean, Aunt?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “Time will tell us.”

Out in the center of the garden, a little pond overflowed with blue lotus. At least we have lodging here, I thought.

While Yaltha settled herself, I stepped outside and went to kneel beside the pond. As I examined the odd way the lotus grew from the mud at the bottom, I heard footsteps. Turning, I found Apion standing behind me. “I’m grateful,” he said. “You rescued me at your own expense.”

“I could do no less.”

He smiled. “So, niece of Haran, what is it you want from me?”

“Time will grant us an answer,” I said.





ii.


I spent my mornings in Haran’s small scriptorium making copies of his business records. “A fool possesses one copy,” he’d said. “A wise man, two.”

My uncle owned his father’s lucrative papyrus fields, the transactions of which were acutely boring—contracts, deeds, accounts, receipts. Mountainous piles of dullness. Fortunately, he still sat on the council of seventy-one elders that oversaw Jewish affairs in the city, which provided me with far more engaging documents. I copied a wonderful array of lurid complaints about pregnant widows, daughters-in-law found not to be virgins, husbands beating wives, wives deserting husbands. There was an oath from a woman charged with adultery who swore her innocence in such insistent terms it made me smile, and another from a rabbi’s wife claiming a male bath attendant had scalded her thighs with hot water. Most amazing of all was a daughter’s petition to give her own self in marriage rather than allow her father to do it. How dull Nazareth had been.