The Book of Longings Read online

  Gripping my forearm, Chuza let their shouts grow fevered before he reached for my sleeve. I writhed and kicked. I was a fluttering moth, a hapless girl. My skirmish yielded nothing but jeers and laughter. He snatched the sheet of ivory from my coat and lifted it over his head. A roar erupted.

  “She is a thief, a blasphemer, and a fornicator!” Chuza cried. “What would you do with her?”

  “Stone her!” someone cried.

  The chant began, the dark prayer. Stone her. Stone her.

  I shut my eyes against the dazzling blur of anger. Their hearts are boulders and their heads are straw. They seemed to be not a multitude of persons, but a single creature, a behemoth feeding off their combined fury. They would stone me for all the wrongs ever done to them. They would stone me for God.

  Most often victims were dragged to a cliff outside the city and thrown off before being pelted, which lessened the laborious effort of having to throw so many stones—it was in some way more merciful, at least quicker—but I saw I would not be accorded that lenience. Men and women and children plucked stones from the ground. These stones, God’s most bountiful gift to Galilee. Some rushed into the building site, where the stones were larger and more deadly. I heard the sizzle of a rock fly over my head and fall behind me.

  Then the commotion and noise slowed, elongating, receding to some distant pinnacle, and in that strange slackening of time, I no longer cared to fight. I felt myself bending to my fate. I ached for the life I would never live, but I yearned even more to escape it.

  I sank onto the ground, making myself as small as I could, my arms and legs tucked beneath my chest and belly, my forehead pressed to the ground. I fashioned myself into a walnut shell. I would be broken apart and God could have the meat.

  A stone struck my hip in a sunburst of pain. Another fell beside my ear. I heard the stomp of sandals running toward me, then a voice glittering with indignation. “Cease your violence! Would you stone her on the word of this man?”

  The mob quieted, and I dared to raise my head. Jesus stood before them, his back to me. I stared at the bones in his shoulders. The way his hands were drawn into fists. How he’d planted himself between me and the stones.

  Chuza, though, was more fox than Father, more jackal than Antipas. He diverted the rabble from Jesus’s question. “She had the ivory. You saw it for yourself.”

  I felt life returning to me. “I did not steal it. It was a gift!” I exclaimed, getting to my feet.

  Jesus’s voice boomed. “I ask you again, who is this accuser whose word you take so easily?” When no one spoke, Jesus shouted even louder, “Answer me!”

  Knowing that anyone associated with Herod Antipas would be suspect to them, I called out, “He is Chuza, the steward of Herod Antipas,” which brought an eruption of mutterings.

  Someone shouted at Chuza, “Are you Herod Antipas’s sycophant?”

  “Do not ask who I am,” Chuza cried. “Ask who this man is. Who is he to speak for her? He has no standing here. Only her father, husband, or brother can speak for her. Is he one of these?”

  Jesus turned and looked at me, and I saw his anger in the set of his jaw. “I am Jesus ben Joseph,” he said, turning back to them. “I am neither father, brother, nor husband to her, but I will soon be her betrothed. I can testify she is no thief, or blasphemer, or fornicator.”

  My heart caught. I looked at him in confusion and strained to understand if what he’d just declared was his true intention or a shrewd means to save me. I could not tell. I remembered him in the cave, how he’d shared my breakfast, how he’d come to stand beside me when I’d poured out my shame, all that we’d made known to each other.

  There was a lull as the crowd deliberated whether to believe Jesus’s witness over Chuza’s. Jesus was one of them, and he’d pledged himself to be my upholder. Chuza was the minion of their despised tetrarch.

  The crowd’s ferocity was draining away—I could feel it leaving—yet they went on standing there, glaring, clutching stones in their fists.

  Jesus lifted out his palms to them. “Let the one who is without sin cast the next stone.”

  A moment passed, a tiny lifetime. I listened to the sound of dropping stones. They were like mountains moving.

  xxxiv.

  Jesus remained beside me until Chuza slunk away and the mob disbanded. I was shaken by the savagery of the crowd and my bare escape from death, and he seemed reluctant to leave me to myself.

  He gazed at the diminishing light. “I will walk with you as far as your house.”

  “Were you injured?” he asked as we set out. Though my hip throbbed from the single stone that had struck me, I shook my head.

  His declaration that I would soon be his betrothed was like a fire in my head. I wanted to ask what he’d meant, whether his admission had been sincere or was calculated to win over the crowd, but I was afraid of his answer.

  Quiet fell. The city floated in a soupy twilight, his face half in shadow. The silence lasted only moments, but I thought I might choke on it. In an effort to breathe, I recounted the unexpurgated story of the mosaic, how I’d agreed to sit for it in order to save my brother, Judas. When I told him of Antipas’s lust, of his intent to make me his concubine, and described my panicked escape to the building site, I saw the anger flare again at his jaw. I confessed that the sheet of ivory, which was back again in my sleeve, had perhaps been more taken than given. I wanted him to know the truth, but I had the sense that my chatter was making matters worse, entirely worse. He listened. He asked no questions.

  Upon reaching the gate of our palatial house, I stared at my feet. It was excruciating to look at him. Finally, lifting my face, I said, “I doubt I’ll see you again, but please know I will always be grateful for what you did. I would be dead if not for you.”

  His forehead wrinkled and I saw disappointment in his eyes. “When I told the crowd we would soon be betrothed, I didn’t mean to assume your answer,” he said. “I overstepped in an effort to assert my authority with them. I accept your refusal. We shall part well, as friends.”

  “But I didn’t think . . . I didn’t think you meant the betrothal seriously,” I said. “We walked all this way and you said nothing.”

  He smiled. “We walked all this way with you talking.”

  I laughed, but my face burned, and I was glad for the gathering darkness.

  “I’m required to marry,” he said. “All Jewish men are. The Talmud does not sanction a man without a wife.”

  “Are you saying you’re required to marry, therefore you’ll settle on me?”

  “No, I’m trying to say men are required to marry, but I often see things differently than others. It may be that for some men it’s better not to marry. I thought that was true of me. Before my father died, he wanted to arrange a betrothal for me, but I couldn’t agree to it.”

  I stared at him, bewildered. “Are you saying you’re not meant for marriage, but it’s a duty you must endure?”

  “No, only listen.”

  I would not. “Why would it be required for some not to marry? Why would you be among a group such as that?”

  “Ana, hear me. There are men who are summoned to something even more pressing than marriage. They’re called to go about the country as prophets or preachers, and they must be willing to give up everything. They must leave their families behind for the sake of bringing God’s kingdom—they cannot give themselves to both. Wouldn’t it be better to never marry than to abandon their wives and children?”

  “You believe you’re one of these? A prophet or a preacher?”

  He turned his face from me. “I don’t know.” I watched him press the tips of his thumb and forefinger between his brows and squeeze. “Since I was a boy of twelve I’ve felt I might have some purpose in God’s mind, but that seems less likely to me now. I’ve had no sign. God has not spoken to me. Since my father died, it has
been pressed on me anew that I’m the eldest son. My mother, sister, and brothers depend on me. It would be difficult to leave them with little provision.” He faced me again. “I’ve wrestled with it, and more and more I think the calling I sensed was more in my own mind than in God’s.”

  “You are sure?” I said. Because I was not.

  “I cannot know for certain, but for now God is silent on the matter, and I’ve come to believe I can’t forsake my family and leave them to fend for themselves. The truth of these things has set me free to think of marriage.”

  “You think of me like the fulfillment of a duty, then?”

  “I’m compelled by duty, yes; I won’t deny it. But I would not speak of a betrothal to you if I weren’t also compelled by what’s in my heart.”

  And what’s in your heart, I wanted to ask, but the question was brash and dangerous and I sensed that what lay there was a difficult puzzle—a jumble of God, destiny, duty, and love that couldn’t be solved, much less explained.

  If we married, I would always look over my shoulder for God.

  “I’m unsuited for you,” I said. “Certainly you know this.” I couldn’t think why I would try to discourage him, except to test his resolve. “I don’t just refer to my family’s wealth and ties to Herod Antipas, but to myself. You said you’re not like other men. Well, I’m not like other women—you’ve said so yourself. I have ambitions as men do. I’m racked with longings. I’m selfish and willful and sometimes deceitful. I rebel. I’m easy to anger. I doubt the ways of God. I’m an outsider everywhere I go. People look on me with derision.”

  “I know all of this,” he said.

  “And you would still have me?”

  “The question is whether you will have me.”

  I heard Sophia sigh into the wind—Here, Ana, here it is. And despite all that Jesus had just said, all his prevarication and provisos, the most curious feeling came over me, that I was always meant to arrive at this moment.

  I said, “I will have you.”

  xxxv.

  Having no father or elder brother, Jesus bore the responsibility of arranging his own betrothal. He promised to return in the morning to speak with my father, a pledge that rendered me almost impervious to the anger I encountered when I entered the house. In retaliation for my refusal to be his concubine, the tetrarch had demoted Father from head scribe and counselor to a mere scribe among many other mere scribes. It was a dazzling fall from favor. Father was livid with me.

  I couldn’t feel bad for him. His willingness to hand me over, first to Nathaniel, then to Herod Antipas, had severed the last tie that bound me to him. I knew somehow he would find a way to ingratiate himself to Antipas once again and recover his position. I would be proven right about that.

  As Father berated me that night, Mother paced back and forth, interrupting him with outbursts of fury. They didn’t even know yet that the good citizens of Sepphoris had nearly stoned me to death for reasons of thievery, fornication, and blasphemy. I decided to let them discover this on their own.

  “Do you think of no one but yourself?” Mother shrieked. “Why do you persist in these shameful acts of disobedience?”

  “Would you rather I’d become Herod Antipas’s concubine?” I asked, genuinely shocked. “Would that not be an act even more shameful?”

  “I would rather you had—” She cut herself off, leaving the rest unspoken but hanging conspicuously in the air. I would rather you had never been born.

  * * *

  • • •

  A PALACE COURIER arrived the following morning before Father broke his fast. I was perched on the balcony awaiting Jesus’s arrival when Lavi ushered the messenger into Father’s study. Had Father struck some deal with Herod Antipas during the night? Would I be dragged off to become his concubine after all? Where was Jesus?

  Their meeting was short. I stepped away from the rail as Father emerged. When the courier departed, his voice drifted up to me. “I know you’re there, Ana.”

  I peered down. He looked defeated, his posture slumping toward the floor.

  He said, “Last evening, I sent a message imploring Herod to set aside your refusal and take you for his concubine anyway, hoping the humiliation you’d caused him might have subsided. His response has just arrived. He ridiculed me for thinking he would condescend to have you in his palace after you were nearly stoned on the street. You might have told me of this and saved me from further disgrace.” He shook his head in disbelief. “A stoning? The city will be set against us even more. You have ruined us.”

  Had I dared, I would’ve asked if he cared at all that I’d endured a harrowing escape from death. I would’ve told him it was Chuza he should blame for the stoning, not me. But I held my tongue.

  He walked back toward his study, a man utterly vanquished, then stopped midway. Without turning, he spoke. “I do give thanks you were unharmed. I’m told it was a builder who prevented your death.”

  “Yes, his name is Jesus.”

  “And he spoke to the crowd of becoming your betrothed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you welcome that, Ana?”

  “I would, Father. With all my heart.”

  When Jesus arrived soon afterward, Father wrote and signed a contract of betrothal without consulting Mother. Jesus would pay the humble bride price of thirty shekels and would feed, clothe, and shelter my aunt, who would accompany me. There would be no betrothal ceremony. The wedding would be a simple transfer from my father’s house to my husband’s in thirty days, on the third of Nisan, the shortest time allowed.

  NAZARETH

  17–27 CE

  i.

  The day I entered Jesus’s house, his family stood in a silent clump in the courtyard, watching as Lavi led the cart containing me, my aunt, and our belongings through the gate. There were four of them—two men besides Jesus, and two women, one of whom rested her hand across her nearly imperceptible pregnant belly.

  “Do they think we have the spaciousness of a palace?” I heard the pregnant one say.

  To my mind, we’d brought a bare handful of possessions. I’d packed the plainest of my clothes, one ordinary silver headband, my copper mirror, an ornamental brass comb, two red woolen rugs, undyed bed coverings, my incantation bowl, and most precious of all, my cedar chest. Inside it were my scrolls, reed pens, a sharpening knife, two vials of ink, and the ivory sheet that had nearly gotten me stoned. The clean papyri my father had obtained for me were gone—I’d exhausted them during the brief writing frenzy that had commenced soon after retrieving my possessions from the cave. Yaltha had brought even less than I: three tunics, her bed mat, the sistrum, and the Egyptian scissors.

  Still, we were a spectacle. Over my protests Father had sent us off in a cart drawn by a royally bedecked horse from Herod Antipas’s stable. I’m sure he wanted to impress the Nazarenes, to remind them that Jesus was wedding far above his standing. I offered my new family a smile, hoping to endear myself, but a cart lined with fine woolen rugs, pulled by an imperial horse led by a servant, did nothing to help my cause. Jesus had met us on the village outskirts and even he’d frowned before greeting us.

  To worsen matters, Father had also forbidden the wedding under his roof. It was customary for the chuppah to be in the bride’s house, but he feared annoying Antipas by hosting a marriage the tetrarch was certain to resent. Nor did Father want village peasants in his house. His refusal to host Jesus and his family must have been a terrible insult to them. And who knew what tales might have reached them of my fornicating, thieving, and blasphemy?

  I let my eyes drift about the little compound. Three small dwellings were cobbled together within the enclosure, built from stacked stones and held together with mud. I counted five or six rooms opening onto the courtyard. A ladder led to the rooftops, which were covered with reed bundles and packed mud, and I wondered if Yaltha and I would be able t
o sit up there and share our secrets.

  I quickly scanned the courtyard. An oven strewn with pots and utensils, firewood, dung pile, mortar and pestle, loom. There was a sun-cooked vegetable garden and a little stable with four chickens, two sheep, and a goat. A single olive tree. I took it all in. This is where I’ll live. I tried not to feel the shock that undulated through me.

  His family huddled in the shade of the lone tree. I wondered where Jesus’s sister was, the one from the market—the yarn spinner. His mother wore a colorless tunic and a pale yellow head scarf with wisps of dark hair escaping the edges. I guessed her to be near the age of my mother, but she was far more frayed by her years. Her face, so like her son’s, was well worn from chores and childbearing. She had a slight rounding in her shoulders, and the corners of her mouth had begun to droop slightly, but I thought how lovely she looked standing there with the sun filtering through the leaves, coins of light on her shoulders. Jesus’s confession to me in the cave slipped into my thoughts. In Nazareth some say I’m Mary’s son, not Joseph’s. They say I was born from my mother’s fornication. Others say my father is Joseph, but that I was illicitly conceived before my parents married.

  “Welcome, Ana,” she said, coming to embrace me. “My daughter Salome was married only a few weeks ago and lives now in Besara. One daughter has gone and another has come.” There was a plaintive note beneath her smile, and it occurred to me that not only had her daughter left, but her husband had died only six months before.

  The two men were Jesus’s brothers, James, nineteen, and Simon, seventeen, both dark skinned and thick haired like Jesus, with the same short beards and posture—the wide stance, arms crossed—but their eyes had none of the passion and depth Jesus’s did. The pregnant woman with the prickly tongue was Judith, married to James, whose age, I would discover, was fifteen, the same as mine. They looked at me with mute stares.