The Book of Longings Page 7

  I glanced past him to the cave. Had God not brought me here?

  From behind my shoulder Lavi whispered, “We must leave now.” I’d forgotten his presence.

  I collected my thoughts. This man, Jesus, is a stonemason who walks to Sepphoris from Nazareth. He’s devout, coming here to pray before his labors.

  I looked skyward for the sun, noting the time, then slipped back into the trees, parting the blue shadows.

  xv.

  I found Yaltha in her room. She was my ally, my place of mooring, but when I attempted to tell her about Jesus and the longing I’d felt to speak to him, I was seized by an inexplicable diffidence. How could I explain, even to her, the pull I felt toward a complete stranger?

  Sensing my reserve, she said, “What is it, child?”

  “I found a cave in which to hide my bowl and my writings.”

  “I’m relieved to hear it. It’s none too soon. Earlier today I found Shipra rummaging among my things.”

  She looked at the cypress chest she’d brought from Alexandria. Soon after arriving she’d opened it for me, just as I’d opened my chest for her. Inside had been the sistrum, a beaded head scarf, a pouch of amulets and charms, and a wondrous pair of Egyptian scissors composed of two long bronze blades connected by a metal strip. Had she placed my treasures in the chest? Had Shipra discovered them? I felt a prick of panic, but she quickly retrieved the bundle of my scrolls from beneath a stack of clothing on a tripod stool—hidden in plain view—then withdrew my incantation bowl from beneath her sleeping mat.

  Taking the bowl from her, I peeled away the flax cloth, spying the red thread still coiled at the bottom, and my limbs went loose. It came to me then—I did know what to say to her about Jesus, but I was too frightened to confess it.

  The one text Father had forbidden me was the Song of Solomon, a poem of a woman and her lover. Naturally, therefore, I’d sought it out and read it four times. I’d read it with the same heat in my face and rippling in my thighs that I’d felt watching Jesus in the clearing. Fragments of the text lodged in me still and came back to me easily.

  Under the apple tree I awakened you . . .

  My beloved put his hand to the latch, and my heart was thrilled within me . . .

  Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it . . .

  * * *

  • • •

  I ISOLATED MYSELF in my room, tucking my scrolls and my bowl beneath my bed. I would have to hold my breath and pray they would be protected until I could return to the cave and bury them. They did at least seem safer here than in Yaltha’s room, where Shipra felt free to pry.

  Lavi brought me a bowl of grilled fish, lentils, and bread, but I couldn’t eat. While I’d been out, Mother had hung my betrothal robe on a peg in my room, a white tunic of fine linen with purple bands in the style of Roman women. Judas would’ve been enraged to see me in such traitorous garb. And what of Nathaniel—did my dress mean that he, like Antipas, was a Roman sympathizer? The thought of him precipitated a seizure of despair.

  Under the apple tree I awakened you.

  Remembering that I’d tucked three sheets of clean papyrus into the goatskin pouch, I pulled the bundle from beneath the bed and removed a vial of ink, a pen, and one of the empty papyri. Having no lock on my door, I sat with my back braced against it to bar anyone entering and spread the sheet before me on the tiles. My writing board was ash now.

  I didn’t know what I would write. Words engulfed me. Torrents and floodwaters. I couldn’t contain them, nor could I release them. But it wasn’t words that surged through me, it was longing. It was love of him.

  I dipped my pen. When you love, you remember everything. The way his eyes rested on me for the first time. The yarns he held in the market, fluttering now in hidden places in my body. The sound of his voice on my skin. The thought of him like a diving bird in my belly. I loved others—Yaltha, Judas, my parents, God, Lavi, Tabitha—but not in this way, not with ache and sweetness and flame. Not more than I loved words. Jesus had put his hand to the latch and I was flung open.

  I set it all down. I filled the papyrus.

  When the ink was dry, I rolled it up and slid it into the bundle beneath the bed. The air in the room felt dangerous. My writings could not remain in the house much longer.

  xvi.

  At midafternoon Mother strode into my room. She glanced toward my bed, where my bowl and writings were concealed, then away. She clicked her teeth at the sight of my betrothal dress in a crumpled pile on the floor. That she didn’t chastise me should have forewarned me something awful was coming.

  “Dearest Ana,” she said. Her voice dripped nectar. That, too, was an ominous sign. “Nathaniel’s sister, Zopher, is here to see you.”

  “No one told me of a visit.”

  “I thought it better to surprise you. You will treat her with deference, won’t you?”

  The hairs on my neck debated whether to stand up. “Why would I not?”

  “She has come to inspect you for afflictions of the skin and other blemishes. You shouldn’t worry, she’ll be quick about it.”

  I didn’t know such an indignity was possible.

  “It’s only to satisfy the contract,” Mother went on. “Nathaniel must be given a guarantee by one of his own relatives that your body meets the terms he set forth.”

  Blindness, lameness, afflictions of skin, infertility, lack of modesty, disobedience, or other repulsions.

  She eyed me with circumspection, waiting for my reaction. Insults caught in my throat. Obscenities I couldn’t have dreamed of until Yaltha. I swallowed them. I could not risk losing my freedom to walk in the hills.

  “As you wish,” I said.

  She didn’t look entirely convinced. “You will submit gracefully?”

  I nodded.

  To inspect me as if I were donkey teeth! If I’d known of this, I could’ve given myself a brilliant red rash using gopher pitch. I could’ve washed my hair with garlic and onion juice. I could’ve presented her with any number of repulsions.

  The woman greeted me kindly, but without smiling. She was small like her brother, with the same pouched eyes and vinegary face. I’d hoped Mother might leave us, but she posted herself beside my bed.

  “Remove your clothing,” Zopher said.

  I hesitated, then drew my tunic over my head and stood before them in my undergarment. Zopher lifted my arms, bending close to study my skin as if it was some inscrutable piece of writing. She examined my face and neck, my knees and ankles, behind my ears and between my toes.

  “Now your undergarment,” she said.

  I looked at her, then at Mother. “Please, I cannot.”

  “Remove it,” Mother said. The nectar had been sucked from her voice.

  I stood naked before them, sick with humiliation while Zopher walked a circle around me, scrutinizing my backside, my breasts, the patch between my legs. Mother looked away; she at least did me that small courtesy.

  I bore my stare into the woman. I wish you dead. I wish your brother dead.

  “What is this?” Zopher inquired, pointing at the black dot of a mole on my nipple. It had been all but forgotten to me, but I wanted to bend and kiss it, this magnificent imperfection. “I believe it to be leprosy,” I told her.

  Her hand snapped back.

  “It’s no such thing,” Mother cried. “It’s nothing at all.” She looked at me. A dagger flew out of her eyes.

  I hurried to ameliorate her. “Forgive me. I was trying to soothe my unease over my nakedness, that’s all.”

  “Dress yourself,” Zopher said. “I will report to my brother that your body is acceptable.”

  Mother’s sigh was like a squall of wind.

  * * *

  • • •

  DARK CAME AND THE MOON did not appear. I lay down, but without sleep. I revisited all the thi
ngs Yaltha had said about her marriage, how she’d rid herself of Ruebel, and I felt hope leak back into me. Making certain to hear the plow of Father’s snores behind his door, I slipped down the stairs to his study, where I pilfered a pen, a vial of ink, and one of the small clay tablets he used for mundane correspondence. Tucking them into my sleeve, I hurried back to my room and closed the door.

  Yaltha had asked God to take Ruebel’s life if he must as the just price for his cruelty, and he’d deserved his fate, but I wouldn’t go so far as that. Death curses were common in Galilee, so prevalent it was a miracle the population had not died off entirely, but I didn’t really wish Nathaniel dead. I only wanted him removed from my life.

  The tablet was no bigger than the palm of my hand. Its smallness forced me to shrink my letters, which caused the fervency inside them to strain at the ink.

  Let the powers above look with disfavor upon my betrothal. Visit a pestilence upon it. Let it be broken by whatever means God chooses. Unbind me from Nathaniel ben Hananiah. May it be so.

  I tell you, there are times when words are so glad to be set free they laugh out loud and prance across their tablets and inside their scrolls. So it was with the words I wrote. They reveled till dawn.

  xvii.

  I went in search of Lavi, hoping we might slip away quietly and return to the cave, but Mother had taken him off to the market. Posting myself on the balcony, I waited for their return.

  When I was a child, I sometimes woke from sleep knowing things before they occurred: Judas will take me to the aqueduct; Shipra will roast a lamb; Mother will suffer a headache; Father will bring me ink dyes from the palace; my tutor will be late. Shortly before Yaltha arrived, I woke certain that a stranger would come into our lives. These glimmers would manifest as I clambered up from the dregs of sleep. Before I opened my eyes, they were there, silent and pure and clear, like pieces of blown glass, and I would wait to see if they would happen. They always happened.

  Sometimes my pre-sights were not about events, but snatches of an image that floated behind my eyes. Once, a shofar appeared and that same day we heard it being blown to announce the Festival of Weeks.

  I wasn’t granted these mysteries often, and with the exception of Yaltha’s arrival and the appearance of the ink dyes, they were revelations of the most mundane and useless kind. Why would I need to be informed of the meal Shipra cooked, or the delay of my tutor, or that a ram horn would be blown? There had been no presentiment of my incantation bowl or my betrothal. I’d had no hint of Jesus, the burning of my writings, or the cave.

  For nearly a year I’d been free of these premonitions, and happily so, but as I waited there on the balcony, an image appeared in my mind with vividness: a tongue, pink and grotesque. I shook my head to clear it away. Another inane visage, I told myself, but the strangeness of it disturbed me.

  When finally Mother returned, she looked flushed and excited. She sent Lavi to the storeroom lugging a basket of vegetables, then swept past me into her quarters.

  I caught up with Lavi in the courtyard. “Mother is out of sorts.”

  He studied the ground, his hands, the crescents of dirt beneath his nails.

  “Lavi?”

  “We came upon the girl who visits you.”

  “Tabitha? What about her?”

  “Please do not make me speak of it. Not to you. Please.” He took several steps backward, gauging my response, then fled.

  I hurried to Mother’s room, fearing she would turn me away, but she allowed me in. She was white-faced.

  “Lavi said you saw Tabitha. Has something happened?”

  She strode to her storage chest, the one into which Tabitha and I had pried, and for one irrational moment I wondered if Mother had simply discovered our interloping.

  She said, “I can’t see how to avoid telling you. You will learn of it anyway. The city is already brimming with talk. Her poor father—”

  “Please. Just tell me.”

  “I came upon Tabitha on the street near the synagogue. She was making a terrible commotion, wailing and tearing at her hair, crying out that one of Herod’s soldiers had forced her to lie with him.”

  I tried to comprehend. Forced her to lie . . .

  “Tabitha was raped?” came a voice from behind us, and I turned to see Yaltha standing in the open doorway.

  “Must you use the vulgar term?” Mother said. She looked implacable standing there, arms crossed, morning shadows blossoming around her shoulders. Was this what mattered to her? The indelicacy of the word?

  A pressure started in my chest. I opened my mouth and heard a strange howl fill the room. My aunt came and placed her arms about me and no one uttered a sound. Even Mother thought better than to reprimand me.

  “I don’t understand why—”

  Mother interrupted. “Who can say why she stood on the street like that and cried out news of her defilement to every passerby? And she did so using the same crude word as your aunt. She bellowed the soldier’s name and spit and swore curses in the vilest language.”

  She’d misunderstood me—I wasn’t wondering why Tabitha shouted her outrage on the street. I was glad she accused her rapist. What I didn’t understand was why such horrors happened at all. Why did men inflict these atrocities? I wiped my face with my sleeve. Through my shock, I pictured Tabitha on the first day of her renewed visits when I’d been rude to her. My father says my mind is weak, and my tongue, weaker, she’d told me then. It seemed now her tongue was not weak, but the fiercest part of her.

  Mother, however, was not done rebuking her. “It wasn’t enough that she made a show of cursing the soldier; she cursed her father for trying to seal her lips. She cursed those who passed by and closed their ears to her. She was distraught, and I’m sorry for her, but she shamed herself. She brought dishonor to her father and to her betrothed, who will surely divorce her now.”

  The air crackled around Yaltha’s head. “You are blind and stupid, Hadar.”

  Mother, unused to being spoken to in that manner, narrowed her eyes and jutted out her chin.

  “The shame is not Tabitha’s!” Yaltha practically roared. “It belongs to the one who raped her.”

  Mother hissed back, “A man is what he is. His lust can be greater than himself.”

  “Then he should cut off his seed sacs and become a eunuch!” Yaltha said.

  “Leave my quarters,” Mother ordered, but Yaltha didn’t budge.

  “Where is Tabitha now?” I asked. “I’ll go to her.”

  “You most certainly will not,” Mother said. “Her father came and dragged her home. I forbid you to see her.”

  * * *

  • • •

  THE REST OF THE DAY unfolded with unbearable ordinariness. Mother kept me sequestered in her room while she and Shipra paraded out bolts of cloth, threads, and a ridiculous array of baubles for my dowry and talked with endless banality about preparations for the betrothal ceremony. I could scarcely hear them for the screaming in my head.

  That night in my room, I lay atop the coverings on my bed and drew my knees up, fashioning myself into a little ball.

  Everything I knew about rape I’d learned from the Scriptures. There was an unnamed concubine raped and murdered and her body cut into pieces. There was Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, who was raped by Shechem. Tamar, the daughter of King David, raped by her half brother. These women were among the ones I meant to write about one day, and now there was Tabitha, not a forgotten figure in a text, but a girl who sang while she plaited my hair. Who would avenge her?

  No one had avenged the unnamed concubine. Jacob did not seek vengeance on Shechem. King David did not punish his son.

  Fury welled in me until I could no longer keep myself small.

  I left my bed and crept to Yaltha’s room. I lay down on the floor next to her sleeping mat. I didn’t know if she was awake. I whispered,
“Aunt?”

  She rolled on her side to face me. In the dark her eyes gleamed bluish white. I said, “When morning comes, we must go and find Tabitha.”

  xviii.

  A servant, an old man with a deformed arm, met Yaltha, Lavi, and me at the gate. “My aunt and I have come to pay respects to Tabitha,” I told him.

  He studied us. “Her mother has ordered that no one should see her.”

  Yaltha spoke in a commanding voice. “Go and tell her mother this is the daughter of Matthias, head scribe to Herod Antipas and the overseer of her husband. Tell her he would be offended if his daughter were refused.”

  The servant shuffled back to the house and returned minutes later to open the gate. “Only the girl,” he said.

  Yaltha nodded at me. “Lavi and I will wait for you here.”

  Their house wasn’t as splendid as ours, but like those of most palace officials, it had at least one upper room and two courtyards. Tabitha’s mother, a large woman with a bulbous face, led me to a closed door at the back of the house. “My daughter is not well. You may visit her for only a few minutes,” she said, and, thankfully, left me to enter alone. Turning the latch, I felt the drumbeat start in my chest.

  Tabitha huddled on a mat in the corner. At the sight of me, she turned her face to the wall. I stood there a moment adjusting to the thick, dim light and the uncertainty of what to do.