The Book of Longings(90)

“She poisoned no one,” I said indignantly.

“What’s her daughter’s name?” he inquired.

“Chaya,” I told him. “She was two years old when my aunt last saw her.”

He squinted, tapping his fingers against his temple as if to dislodge some memory. “That name,” he muttered more to himself than to me. “I know I’ve seen it written somewhere.”

My eyes flared wide. Was it too much to think he knew of her? He’d presided over the scriptorium and its contents for nine years. He knew more about Haran’s business than anyone. I wanted to go over and tap the other side of his head, but I remained waiting.

He got up and walked in a circle about the room and had started a second loop when he stopped. “Oh,” he said. A look passed over his face. Dismay, I thought. “Come with me.”

We slipped into Haran’s study, where Thaddeus retrieved a locked wooden box that sat unobtrusively on a low shelf. It was painted on top with an image of the falcon-winged Goddess Nephthys, guardian of the dead, a detail Thaddeus kindly provided. He produced a key from a peg beneath Haran’s desk and slipped it into a keyhole, then lifted the lid to reveal a cluster of scrolls, perhaps ten or twelve of them. “This is where Haran conceals documents he wishes to keep secret.”

He sorted through the scrolls. “Soon after I began working for Haran, he had me make copies of all the scrolls in the box. If I remember rightly, there’s a death notice in here of a girl named Chaya. Hers was an unusual name; it remained with me.”

The blood left my head. “She’s dead?”

I sank down into Haran’s grand chair, taking a slow breath as Thaddeus opened a papyrus on the table before me.

    To the Royal Scribe of the Metropolis from Haran ben Philip Levias of the Jewish Council.

I attest that Chaya, daughter of my sister, Yaltha, died in the month of Epeiph of the 32nd year of the Emperor Augustus Caesar. As her guardian and kinsman, I request that her name be entered among those who have died. She is not default in the payment of taxes being the age of two years at the time of her death.



I read the notation twice, then pushed it back to Thaddeus, who perused it quickly. He said, “The laws do not require notification of the death of a child, only of an adult male who is taxable. It’s done, but rarely. I recall thinking it odd.”

Chaya is dead. I tried to picture myself standing before Yaltha, saying the words, but even in my imagination, I couldn’t say them.

He replaced the scroll and locked the box. “I’m sorry, but it’s best to know the truth.”

So shocked was I, so choked with dread at passing on this horrific news, I wasn’t at all sure knowing was best. Right then, I preferred to go on living in uncertainty, imagining Chaya alive somewhere.



* * *



? ? ?

I FOUND YALTHA walking about the garden. I watched her from the doorway for a while, then strode toward her, trying to steady myself.

As we sat at the edge of the pond, I told her about the death notification. She looked at the sky, where there was not a bird or a cloud, then dropped her chin to her chest as a sob broke from her lips. I wrapped my arms about her caved-in shoulders, and we sat like that for a long time, quiet and dazed, listening to the garden. Birds chirping, the rustle of lizards, a tiny zephyr in the palms.





ix.


Days passed in which Yaltha sat and stared into the garden through the open door of the sitting room. I woke one night to check on her and there she was, gazing out at the dark. I didn’t disturb her. She was grieving in her own way.

I returned to bed, where sleep came and with it a dream.

A great wind rises. The air fills with scrolls. They fly about me like white and brown birds. Looking up, I see the falcon Goddess Nephthys streak across the sky.

I woke with the dream still in my body, filling me with lightness, and what came into my mind was the wooden box in which Haran stored his secret documents. It was as if in my dream Nephthys had escaped from her confinement on the lid, as if the box had been thrown open and all the scrolls set free.

I lay very still and tried to remember everything about those moments when Thaddeus showed me the box—the key, the creak in the lid as he lifted it, the cluster of scrolls inside, reading the death notice twice. Then, in my memory, I heard Thaddeus say, The laws do not require notification of the death of a child, only of an adult male who is taxable. It’s done, but rarely. I recall thinking it odd.

The statement had seemed irrelevant at the time, but I wondered now why my uncle had taken the extra precaution of declaring Chaya dead if it wasn’t required. Why had it been so important to record it? And something else came back to me: she’d only been two when she’d died. Was it not strange that her life had ended so soon after Yaltha had been sent away?

I bolted up.

I was waiting in the scriptorium when Thaddeus arrived. “I must look once more inside the locked box in Haran’s study,” I told him.

He shook his head. “But you’ve seen the death notice. What more is there?”

I thought better than to tell him about the dream or my feeling that something was amiss. I said, “My uncle has already left to conduct his business in the city. It will be safe enough.”

“It’s not Haran I’m worried about, but his personal servant, the one with the shorn head.” I knew which one he meant. He was said to grovel before Haran, as well as snoop for him—anything to ingratiate himself.