The Book of Longings Page 12

  At night when I lay still in my bed, the knowledge of these things would break over me and I would laugh deep into my pillow. I assured myself the curse I’d written played no part in Nathaniel’s dying, but still, my jubilation often brought on bouts of guilt. I rebuked myself for rejoicing in his death, I truly did, but I would not have wished him back.

  O blessed widowhood.

  At his burial, I walked with his sister, Zophar, and his two daughters at the forefront of a throng of mourners, as we accompanied Nathaniel’s body to the family’s cave. His linen shroud had been poorly wrapped and when he was carried to the cave entrance, the hem of it snagged on a thornbush. It necessitated a laborious effort to extricate him. It gave the impression of Nathaniel fighting his interment, and it struck me as comical. I pressed my lips together, but the smile broke through, and I saw Nathaniel’s daughter, Marta, not much younger than I, glare at me with hatred.

  Afterward at the funeral banquet, remorseful that she’d observed my amusement, I said, “I’m sorry you’ve lost your father.”

  “But you are not sorry you lost your betrothed,” she snapped and turned away. I ate the roasted lamb and drank the wine, unconcerned that I’d made an enemy.

  xxix.

  On the first day of mourning, Mother found a tablet at her door inscribed in Judas’s hand. Not able to read it herself, she sought me out and thrust the message at me. “What does it say?”

  My eyes flowed over his terse script.

  I can remain no longer in my father’s house. He has no wish for me here, and while Simon ben Gioras is imprisoned, the Zealots have need of a leader. I will do what I can to rally their spirits. I pray you will not blame me for departing. I do what I must. I bid you well, your son, Judas

  Then, set apart at the bottom . . .

  Ana, you did your best for me. Be wary of Herod Antipas. With Nathaniel gone, may you be free.

  I read it aloud to her.

  She walked away, leaving the tablet in my hands.

  * * *

  • • •

  THAT SAME DAY MOTHER dismissed the spinners and weavers who’d spent the past two weeks creating garments for my dowry. I watched as she folded the tunics, robes, shifts, girdles, and head scarves and stacked them in the chest of cedar that had once held my writings. Atop the clothes she placed the bridal dress, smoothing her hands over it before closing the lid. Her eyes were wellsprings. Her lower lip trembled. I couldn’t determine whether her sorrow was over Nathaniel’s death or Judas’s departure.

  I regretted my brother leaving, but I felt no anguish over it. I’d expected it, and he’d made peace with me in his note. I stood there trying to look impassive, but Mother sensed my gladness over Nathaniel, how it made a small brightness on my skin. “You think you’ve escaped a great misfortune,” she said. “But your tribulation has only begun. Few men, if any, will want you now.”

  This she thought to be a tribulation?

  Her misery had been so great since learning of Nathaniel’s death, it was a miracle she hadn’t shaved her head and dressed in sackcloth. Father, too, had gone about withdrawn and glum, not over the loss of his friend, but over the forfeiture of their bargain and the land he would never own.

  Feeling pity for Mother, I said, “I know men are reluctant to marry a widow, but I can only be counted as one by the strictest of interpretations. I’m a girl whose betrothed has died, that’s all.”

  She was on her knees beside the chest. She got to her feet and lifted one brow, always a poor sign. “Even of those girls, men say, ‘Do not cook in a pot in which your neighbor has cooked.’”

  I flushed. “Nathaniel did not cook in my pot!”

  “Last evening at the banquet Nathaniel’s own daughter, Marta, was heard to say you’d lain with her father in his house.”

  “But that’s a falsehood.”

  I minded little if betrothed couples lay together. It happened often enough; some men even claimed it was their right to lay with the woman to whom they were already legally bound. What I minded was the lie.

  Mother laughed, a throat rattle of condescension. “If you had not despised Nathaniel so thoroughly, I might believe the girl’s words to be true. But it doesn’t matter what I think, only what others believe. The gossipmongers saw you roaming all over the city, even beyond the walls. Your father was stupid to permit it. Even after I confined you again to the house, you slipped out. I myself heard people talk of your roving. The men and women of Sepphoris have spent weeks speculating over your virginity, and now this girl, Marta, has thrown a log on their fire.”

  I waved my hand at her. “Let them think what they will.”

  Anger seared across her face, then fell away bit by bit in little crumbles. In the sullen gray light of my room, her shoulders sagged, her eyes closed; she seemed very tired. “Don’t be unwitting, Ana. Being a widow is deterrent enough, but if you’re also thought to be defiled . . .” Her voice trailed off into the doom and gloom of having a husbandless daughter.

  I thought of Jesus then, that day in the cave, rain-soaked hair, the crook of his grin, the ragged portion of bread he offered, the things he said while the storm raged. It caused a tipping over in my stomach. But perhaps he would not have me now either.

  “Husbands may be loathsome creatures,” she was saying, “but they’re necessary. Without their protection, women are easily mistreated. Widows can even be cast out. The young ones resort to harlotry; the old ones, to beggary.”

  Like Sophocles, my mother was capable of tragic sweeps of imagination.

  “Father will not cast me out,” I told her. “He takes care of Yaltha, who’s a widow—do you think he would not take care of me, his daughter?”

  “He won’t always be here. He, too, will die and what will happen to you then? You cannot inherit.”

  “If Father dies, you will be a widow as well. Who will care for you? You cannot inherit either.”

  She sighed. “My care will fall to Judas.”

  “And you think he would not provide for me? Or for Yaltha?”

  “I don’t think he will be able to provide for any of us,” she answered. “He does nothing but seek trouble. Who can say what means Judas will have? Your fool of a father has disclaimed him. He went so far as to write his disownment into a contract. Now on his death, this house and everything in it will go to his brother, Haran.”

  It took a moment to grasp the magnitude of what she was saying. Haran had cast out Yaltha once. He wouldn’t hesitate to cast her out again, along with me and Mother. A wave of fear passed through me. Our lives and fates left to men. This world, this God-forsaken world.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Yaltha standing in the doorway. Had she heard? Mother spied her as well and left us. As my aunt stepped inside, I took a mocking tone; I didn’t wish her to see how Mother’s words had disturbed me. “It seems the entire populace has picked over the state of my virginity like a flock of scavengers and has determined it’s missing. I’ve become a mamzer.”

  Mamzers were of all varieties—bastards, harlots, adulterers, fornicators, thieves, necromancers, beggars, lepers, divorced women, cast-out widows, the unclean, the destitute, those possessed of devils, Gentiles—all of them shunned accordingly.

  Yaltha wove her fingers through mine. “I’ve been without a husband for many years. I will not mislead you, child—you will live even further on the outskirts now. I’ve spent my life there. I know the uncertainty Hadar spoke about. And now that Haran will inherit the house, our fates are threatened even more. But we shall be all right, you and I.”

  “Will we, Aunt?”

  She tightened the hitch of her fingers. “The day you met Nathaniel in the market you returned home bereft, and that night I came to your room. I told you your moment would come.”

  I’d thought Nathaniel’s death would be that moment, a portal I could step through an
d find some measure of freedom, but now it seemed his dying would only leave me scorned and my future would leave me destitute.

  Seeing my dejection, Yaltha added, “Your moment will come because you’ll make it come.”

  Even though my window was boarded over until the spring, I went and stood before it. Cold air seeped around the wood panel. I felt incapable of making any moment come that would change my circumstance for the better. The longing of my heart was for a man I scarcely knew. It was buried with my bowl and my writings. God, too, was hidden from me now.

  Behind me, Yaltha spoke: “I told you how I came to be rid of my husband, Ruebel, but not how I came to marry him.”

  We went to sit among the bed pillows, which only a short time ago had been plump with my laughter. Settling herself, she said, “On the fifteenth of Ab, the Jewish girls in Alexandria, the ones who were not yet betrothed, the ones with little appeal, went into the vineyards during the grape harvest and danced for the men in need of brides. We went late in the day before the sun set, all of us wearing white dresses and bells sewn on our sandals, and the men would be there, waiting. You should’ve seen us—we were scared, clinging to one another’s hands. We carried drums and danced in a single line that moved like a serpent through the vines.”

  She paused in the telling and I could see it clearly—the sky singed red, the girls twittering with apprehension, the sway of white dresses, the long, serpentine dance.

  As she resumed her story, her eyes seemed to darken at the edges. “I danced each year for three years until finally someone chose me. Ruebel.”

  I wanted to cry, not for myself, but for her. “How would a girl know she was chosen?”

  “The man would come and ask her name. Sometimes he would go to her father that very night and the contract would be drawn.”

  “Could she refuse?”

  “Yes, but it was rare. She would not risk displeasing her father.”

  “You didn’t refuse,” I said. This both captivated and dismayed me. How different her life might have been.

  “No, I didn’t refuse. I didn’t have the courage.” She smiled at me. “We make our moments, Ana, or we do not.”

  Later, alone in my room, the house deep in slumber, I removed the white marriage dress from the chest and with the snipping knife, I cut the hem and the sleeves into long tatters. I slipped it on and crept from the house. The air caused cold scintillas of flesh to rise on my arms. I mounted the ladder to the roof and climbed like a night vine, the shreds of my dress fluttering. A small wind stirred the dark, and I thought of Sophia, the very breath of God in the world, and I whispered to her, “Come, lodge in me, and I will love you with all my heart and mind and soul.”

  Then, on the roof, as close to the sky as I could get, I danced. My body was a reed pen. It spoke the words I couldn’t write: I dance not for men to choose me. Nor for God. I dance for Sophia. I dance for myself.

  xxx.

  When the seven days of mourning ended, I walked through the center of Sepphoris with my parents and aunt to synagogue. Father had been reluctant for us to appear in public so soon—rumors about my missing virginity blanketed the city like rotted manna, but Mother believed a demonstration of my devoutness would soften the vitriol toward me. “We must show the entire population we bear no shame,” she said. “Otherwise they’ll believe the worst.”

  I can’t imagine why Father went along with such stupid reasoning.

  It was a clear, cool day, the air oiled with the smell of olives, everyone in their woolen cloaks. It didn’t seem like the kind of day trouble would find us; nevertheless Father had ordered Antipas’s soldier to traipse behind us. Yaltha didn’t usually come with us to synagogue, which was a relief to my parents as well as my aunt, but here she was today, adhered to my side.

  We walked without speaking, as if holding our breath. We wore no splendor; even Mother was clad in her simplest dress. “Keep your head bowed low,” she’d told me when we first set out, but I found now I couldn’t do it. I walked with my chin lifted and my shoulders back, the tiny sun perched over me trying very hard to shine.

  As we neared the synagogue, the street grew crowded. Spotting our subdued little entourage and then me in particular, the people halted their progress, clumped together, and stared. A swell of muttering rose up. Yaltha leaned close to me. “Fear nothing,” she said.

  “She’s the one who laughed at the death of her betrothed, Nathaniel ben Hananiah,” someone shouted.

  Then another voice that sounded vaguely familiar cried, “Harlot!”

  We kept walking. I kept my eyes straight ahead as if not hearing. Fear nothing.

  “She’s possessed by devils.”

  “She’s a fornicator!”

  The soldier waded into the crowd, scattering it, but like some dark slippery creature, it re-formed on the other side of the street. People spit as I passed. I smelled the shame streaming off my parents. Yaltha took my hand as the familiar voice came again, “The girl is a harlot!” This time I turned and found the accuser, the round, bulbous face. Tabitha’s mother.

  xxxi.

  I waited three weeks before approaching Father. I was patient and, yes, sly. I continued to wear my grim, gray dress, though it was no longer required, and when Father was about, I made myself downcast and dutiful. I rubbed my eyes with bitter herbs, a speck of horseradish or tansy, turning them red rimmed and watery. I poured oil on his feet while swearing my purity and bemoaning the stigma brought upon my family. I served him honeyed fruit. I called him blessed.

  Finally, on a day Father appeared amiable, at an hour Mother was nowhere near, I knelt before him. “I will understand if you refuse me, Father, but I beg you to let me return to my writing and my studies while I wait and hope for another betrothal. I only wish to keep occupied so I’m not consumed with dismay at the sad state I’m in.”

  He smiled, pleased with my humility. “I’ll grant you two hours each morning to read and write, but no more. The rest of the day, you will do as your mother wishes.”

  As I bent to kiss his foot, I drew back and wrinkled my nose at the smell of his freshly made sandal. It caused him to laugh. He placed his hand on my head, and I saw that he felt at least something for me, something between pity and affection. He said, “I will bring you some clean papyri from the palace.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I REMOVED MY MOURNING DRESS, immersed myself in the mikvah, and donned a tunic without pattern or dye and an old tanned coat. I wove a single white ribbon into my braid and covered my head with a scarf that was once as blue as the sky, but now washed of its color.

  It was shortly past daybreak when I set out to the cave, slipping through the back gate with a small digging tool and a large pouch strapped to my back containing bread, cheese, and dates. I’d determined not to be without my writings and my bowl any longer. I would hide them in Lavi’s quarters if I must, but I would have them near me, and surely soon I could blend them among the new scrolls I would write and my parents would not suspect I’d saved them from being burned. My mind overflowed with new narratives I would compose, beginning with those of Tamar, Dinah, and the unnamed concubine.

  I had ventured out without Lavi or concern for what vicious tongues would say. Everything had already been said. Shipra returned each day from the market eager to impart the tales she’d heard of my depravity, and when Mother or I went out, people of our own standing hurled imaginative insults. The kinder ones merely turned away from us on the street.

  When I reached the city gate, I looked toward Nazareth. The valley floors ran wild with coriander, dill, and mustard, and already workers were making their way to building sites in the city. I wondered if I might find Jesus praying at the cave. I’d timed my trip well for seeing him. The sun’s pink fingers were still wrapped around the clouds.

  It was close to the end of Shebat, when the almond trees blosso
med. The wakeful tree, we called it. Midway down the hill, I smelled its rich brown scent, and winding farther, I came upon the tree itself, its canopy lush with white flowers. I stepped beneath it, thinking of the marriage canopy I’d escaped, of my dance on the rooftop, that choosing of myself. I plucked one of the small white flowers and tucked it over my ear.

  Jesus stood at the cave entrance with his fringed cloak pulled over his head and his arms lifted in prayer. Drawing near, I placed my tool and pouch on a rock and waited. My heart pounded. For a moment it was as if everything that had come before did not matter.

  His prayer was whispered, but over and over again I heard him address God as Abba, Father. When he finished, he pulled his cloak back around his shoulders. I walked toward him with my chin set, with no falter in my step. I didn’t recognize myself, the young woman with the almond blossom in her hair.

  I called out, “Shelama. I fear I’ve intruded upon you.”

  He paused, taking me in. Then came the smile. “We are on level pegging then. When we met before, I was the one who intruded on you.”

  I feared he might leave—there was no rain to detain him this time. A little intoxicated by my audacity, I said, “Please be kind enough to share my meal. I don’t wish to eat alone.”

  Last time he’d proved to be a man who interpreted the law liberally, open-minded about interacting with women and Gentiles, but an unbetrothed man and woman alone on a hillside without a chaperone was a forbidding matter. The Pharisees, those who prayed loudly only to be heard and wore phylacteries twice as large as normal, would think it a reason to throw stones at us. Even those less pious might say such a meeting bound the man to ask the girl’s father for a betrothal contract. I watched him waver for several moments before he accepted.