The Book of Longings(96)

Most afternoons, Yaltha and I had scampered about Alexandria, roaming the markets, gaping at the Caesareum, the gymnasium, and the splendors along the harbor, and returning twice to the library. We’d visited every Isis temple in the city but one, Chaya’s. Again and again I’d asked my aunt why she avoided it and each time she’d answered the same: I’m not yet ready. The last time I’d pestered her about it, she’d bitten off the answer and spit it at me. I’d not asked again. Ever since, I’d carried remnants of hurt, confusion, and exasperation.

The wagtail flew. The garden stilled. Hearing footsteps, I turned to find Apion approaching through the palms.

“I’ve come to forewarn you,” he said. “A message arrived this day from Haran. He returns early. I expect him in two days.”

I looked up at the sky, the moonless, starless night. “Thank you for informing me,” I said without expression.

When he departed, I raced to Yaltha’s bedchamber with my anger spilling over. I burst upon her without a knock. “Chaya is just across the city, yet all this time has passed and you’ve not gone to her. Now Apion has informed me Haran will be back in two days. I thought Chaya was the reason you came to Egypt! Why do you avoid her?”

She gathered her night shawl about her neck. “Come here, Ana. Sit down. I know you’ve struggled to understand my delay. I’m sorry. I can only tell you that on the day we spoke to Apollonios . . . even before we departed the library courtyard, I became possessed by the fear that Chaya may not want to be found. Why would an Egyptian woman who serves Isis want to be claimed by the Jewish mother who abandoned her? I became afraid she’d reject me. Or worse, reject herself.”

I’d thought of my aunt as invincible, impervious—someone assailed by life, but somehow unmaimed by it—but I saw her suddenly as a person of flaws and bruises like myself. There was an odd relief in it.

“I didn’t realize,” I said. “I shouldn’t have judged you.”

“It’s all right, Ana. I’ve judged me, too. It isn’t as if this worry hadn’t crossed my mind earlier, but I’ve never let it fully settle on me until now. I suppose my own need to find Chaya and make right what I’d done by leaving her didn’t allow me to consider that she might turn me away. I fear losing her all over again.” She paused. The candlelight wavered in an unknown breath of wind, and when she spoke again, I caught the same wavering in her voice. “I didn’t consider the need she might have . . . to remain as she is.”

I started to speak, but stopped myself.

“Go ahead,” she said. “Speak your mind.”

“I was going to repeat what you said to me, that resisting a fear only emboldens it.”

She smiled. “Yes, I resisted my fear, too.”

“What will you do? There’s little time left.”

Outside the rain had started again. We listened to it for a while. Finally she said, “I can’t know if Chaya wants to be found or how finding her might change either of us, but it’s the truth that matters, isn’t it?” She leaned over and blew out the candle. “Tomorrow we’ll go to Isis Medica.”





xvi.


I stood naked on the limestone slab in the bathing room, shivering as Pamphile poured unheated water over my torso, arms, and legs. “Do you delight in torturing me?” I said, my skin rising up in tiny bumps of protest. I did truly appreciate the Egyptians’ conveniences, their bathing rooms and miraculous stone-seat privies with water running beneath to flush the waste—but how hard was it to heat the bathwater?

Setting down the pitcher, Pamphile handed me a drying towel. “You Galileans have little forbearance,” she said, grinning.

“Forbearance is all we do have,” I retorted.

Back in my chamber, freshly scrubbed and flesh tingling, I donned the new black tunic I’d bought in the market, tying it snugly under my breasts with a green ribbon, then draped a red linen mantle about my shoulders. I would wear it despite the heat outside, which was atrocious. At Pamphile’s insistence, I allowed her to line my eyes with a green pigment, then wrap my braid into a little tower on top of my head.

“You could pass for an Alexandrian woman,” she said, leaning back to take me in. The notion seemed to please her enormously.

Alexandrian. After Pamphile left, I turned the word over and over in my head.

Stepping into the sitting room, I heard Yaltha in her chamber, singing as she dressed.

When she finally stepped into the sitting room, my breath caught. She wore her new tunic, as well, cerulean like the sea, and I saw that Pamphile had tended my aunt, too, for she had streaks of black paint beneath her eyes, and her graying hair was freshly plaited and fastened in intricate coils. She looked like one of the lion-headed Goddesses painted on the wall in the library.

“Shall we go and find my daughter?” she said.



* * *



? ? ?

ISIS MEDICA APPEARED in the Royal Quarter near the harbor like an island unto itself. Catching my first glimpse of it from a distance, I slowed my steps to take in a complex array of walls, tall pylons, and rooftops. It was more expansive than I’d imagined.

Yaltha pointed. “See the pediment of that large building over there? That’s the main temple to Isis. The smaller ones are minor temples to other divinities.” She squinted, trying to make sense of the maze. “Over there—that’s the healing sanctuary where Chaya attends, and behind it, not visible, is the medical school. People come from as far as Rome and Macedonia to find cures here.”