The Book of Longings(85)

I wrote on the most beautiful papyri I’d ever beheld, white, close-grained, polished sheets, and I learned how to gum them together to create rolls twice as long as I was tall. Haran’s other scribe was an elderly man named Thaddeus who had sprigs of white hair in his ears and ink stains on his fingertips, and who fell asleep each day holding his pen.

Emboldened by his naps, I abandoned my work as well and resumed writing my stories of the matriarchs while he slept. I didn’t fear Haran’s sudden appearance, for he spent his days flitting about the city, if not attending council meetings, then business at the synagogue or Greek games at the amphitheater, and when he was home, we stayed clear of him, taking meals in our quarters. It was only necessary that I produce slightly more copies than slow, snoring Thaddeus. In this way, I composed the stories of Judith, Ruth, Miriam, Deborah, and Jezebel. I tucked the scrolls inside a large stone jar in my room, adding them to the others.

I spent the afternoons in our guest quarters, idling endlessly and fretting for my beloved, whom I pictured wandering about Galilee speaking openly with lepers and harlots and mamzers of every sort, calling for the mighty to be brought low, all of this in the presence of Antipas’s spies.

In order to distract myself from my fears, I started filling the time by reading my stories to Yaltha and Lavi. Yaltha had grown increasingly quiet and morose since our arrival, downcast, it seemed, over our inability to seek Chaya, and I hoped my stories might lift her from her misery as well. They did seem to cheer her, but it was Lavi who reveled most in them.

He appeared unexpectedly one day at our door. “May I bring Pamphile to hear your stories?” he said.

I thought at first he’d asked because of the flair I gave to my readings. In my effort to draw Yaltha out, I’d made little performances out of them, not dancing the stories as Tabitha used to do, but enlivening them with actions and dramatic articulations. My rendition of Judith slicing off the head of Holofernes had brought gasps from Lavi and Yaltha both.

“Pamphile?” I said.

“The pretty Egyptian girl,” Yaltha offered. “The house servant.”

I gave Lavi a knowing grin. “Go, fetch her and I’ll read.”

He dashed toward the door, then stopped. “I wish you to read the story of Rachel, whose face was more beautiful than a thousand moons, how Jacob labored fourteen years to marry her.”





iii.


Yaltha sat in the elaborately carved chair in our sitting room, a perch she’d taken to occupying day in and day out, often with her eyes closed, her hands rubbing together in her lap while she wandered off somewhere in her thoughts.

We’d been caged in Haran’s house through the spring and summer, unable to visit the great library, a temple, an obelisk, or even one of the little sphinxes that perched on the harbor wall. Yaltha hadn’t mentioned Chaya in weeks, but I guessed that was who she thought of while musing and fidgeting in the chair.

“Aunt,” I said, unable to bear our helplessness any longer. “We came here to find Chaya. Let’s do so even if we defy Haran.”

“First of all, child, that’s not our only purpose in being here. We also came to keep you from being tossed into Herod Antipas’s prison. If we stay long enough, we should at least succeed at that. As for Chaya . . .” She shook her head and the sad, remote look returned to her face. “That is harder than I thought.”

“As long as we’re confined here, we’ll never find her,” I said.

“Even if we were free to roam the city . . . without Haran to point us in Chaya’s direction, I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“We could ask about her in the markets, the synagogues. We could . . .” My words sounded pathetic even to me.

“I know Haran, Ana. If we’re caught venturing beyond these walls, he will make good on his word and renew the charges against me. Sometimes I think he wants me to violate his terms so he can do just that. I will be the one imprisoned, and you and Lavi will be turned onto the street—where would you go? How would you receive word from Judas that it’s safe to return?”

I went to sit on the leopard-skin rug at her feet, letting my cheek rest against her knee, and gazed sideways at a row of water lilies frescoed across the wall. I thought of the mud walls in Nazareth, the dirt floors, the mud-and-straw roof that had to be fortified against the rains. I’d never minded those humble things, but I couldn’t say I missed them either. What I missed was Mary and Salome stirring pots. My goat following me around the compound. And Jesus, always Jesus. Each morning, upon opening my eyes, it would break over me afresh that he was far away. I would imagine him rising from his mat and repeating the Shema, his prayer shawl draped about his shoulders as he wandered off into the hills to pray, and missing him would become so great that I, too, would rise, then lift my incantation bowl and sing the prayers inside it.


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.



Knowing that we both prayed at the morning hour each day was like a tether binding us, but I lifted my bowl for another reason, too. I longed not only for him, but for myself. How, though, could anyone be born while quarantined in this house?

As I sat there, staring at the lilies on the wall, an idea came to me. I sat up and looked at Yaltha. “If there’s any reference to Chaya in this house, it could be buried somewhere in Haran’s scriptorium. He has a large upright chest there. I don’t know what it contains, only that he takes care to keep it locked. I could try to search through it. If we aren’t free to leave, I can at least do that.”