Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt
Page 22
The whole courtyard was girded with fire, yet some of the Jews threw down their armor and ran into the fire, roaring and hollering, and some Romans ran in where they could, and other Romans came out with arms loaded with treasure. Temple treasure, sacred treasure, treasure of the Lord. The screams of the suffering people were more than I could stand.
"Lord in Heaven, have mercy on them," I cried. I was so afraid. I was shivering. I was shaking. All my fear came back to me and was worse than it had ever been. One fire after another filled my mind, as though each fire were ignited from the one before it until the blaze reached to the stars. Out of the depths, I cry unto thee, O Lord.
"Is that all you can do?" this strange creature asked me. He stood very close to me, handsome in his rich clothing, his blue eyes full of anger even though he smiled.
I put my hands to my face. I wouldn't look. I heard his voice in my ear:
"I'm watching you, angel child!" he said. "I'm waiting to see what you mean to do. So go on: walk like a child, eat like a child, play like a child, work like a child. But I'm watching. And I may not know the future, no, but I know this: your mother's a whore, your father's a liar, and the floors of your house are dirt. Your cause is lost, I know it's lost, it's lost every day and every hour, and you know it is. You think your little miracles will help these foolish people? I tell you, chaos rules. And I am its Prince."
I looked at him. I knew that if I wanted to, I could answer him. The words would come easily and they would tell me things I didn't know now; they would draw this knowledge out of my mind, as surely as the sound would come out of my mouth. Everything would be there before me, all the answers, all the whole span of Time. But no, it wasn't to happen. No, not this way or any other way. I said nothing. His misery hurt me. His darkening face hurt me. His fury hurt me.
I woke up without a sound. I lay in the dark room, covered in sweat and thirsting.
The lamp was the only light. It seemed everywhere there were moans. I didn't know where I was, this room, this place - and my head ached. It hurt so badly I couldn't bear it. My mother was near but with someone else.
Cleopas was praying in a whisper. I could hear a strange voice, a woman's voice. "If this goes on like this, you don't want her to come back..."
I closed my eyes. I dreamed. I saw the fields of wheat around Nazareth. I saw the flowering almond trees that we'd passed when we first came into the land. I saw the villages of white houses tumbling over the hills. Thin curling leaves flying in the gentle gusts of the wind. I dreamed of water. That creature wanted to come again, but I wouldn't let him come. No, not the world of palaces and ships, no. "Stop," I said. "I will not."
My mother said, "You're dreaming, I'm holding you. You're safe." Safe.
It was days and nights before I came to myself. I found that out afterwards.
And even then I slept most of the time. Only the wailing woke me, the wailing and the crying, and I knew then that someone had died.
When I opened my eyes, I saw my mother feeding Little Symeon who was under the covers, and propped against a blanket roll. Little Salome slept nearby, her face very damp. But she wasn't really too sick anymore.
My mother looked at me and smiled. But her face was white and sad, and she'd been crying, and I knew it, and I knew that one of the people moaning and crying in the far room was Cleopas. I heard it, that broken grown man crying that I'd seen and heard in the dream.
"Tell me!" I whispered. The fear came, a grip on my throat.
"The children are better," she said. "Don't you remember? I told you all this last night."
"No, I want to know who?"
She wouldn't answer me.
"Is it Aunt Mary?" I asked. I turned to look. Aunt Mary had been lying right next to me and she was gone.
My mother closed her eyes and groaned. I turned towards her and put my hand on her knee, but I don't think she felt it through her robe. She rocked back and forth.
When next I woke up, it was the funeral feast that was happening. It must have been. I could hear the music of flutes that cut the air like wooden knives.
Joseph was with me and he made me drink some soup. Little Salome was sitting straight up next to me, and she said with very wide eyes,
"Did you know my mother is dead?"
"I'm sorry for it," I said.
"And the baby too is dead because the baby was inside her."
"I'm sorry for it," I said.
"They already buried her. They put her in the cave."
I didn't say anything.
My aunts came in, Salome and Esther, and they made Little Salome drink soup and lie down. Little Salome wouldn't stop asking about her mother. "Was she covered up?" she asked. "Did she look white?"
They told her to be quiet.
"Did she cry when she died?"
I slept.
When I woke up, the room was still full of children sleeping, and my older cousins were there, sick, too.
It wasn't until the next morning that I got up.
At first I thought no one was awake in the house.
I went out into the courtyard.
The air was warm, and the leaves on the fig tree were big. There were white flowers all over the vines, and the sky was very blue yet full of clean clouds that didn't mean rain.
I was so hungry I could have eaten anything. I'd never been so hungry ever that I knew.
There were voices coming from one of the rooms that Cleopas and his family used on the other side of the court. I went in and saw my mother and my uncle seated there on the floor, talking together, before a meal of bread and sauce. The window had only a thin veil. The light fell on their shoulders.
I sat down beside my mother.
"...and I'll take care of them, I'll gather them to me, and hold them to me, because I am their mother now, and they are my children." This is what she was saying to Cleopas. "You understand me? They are my children now. They are the brothers and sisters of Jesus and James. I can care for them. I want you to believe in me. Everyone has always treated me as if I were a girl. I'm not a girl. I'll care for all of them. We are all one family together."
Cleopas nodded but he had a faraway look.
He passed the bread to me, and whispered the blessing and I whispered it too. I gobbled the bread.
"No, not so fast," said my mother. "I mean it. You mustn't. And drink this." She gave me water. I wanted the bread.
My mother ran her hand over my hair. She kissed me. "You heard what I said to your uncle?"
"They're my brothers and sisters," I said, "as it's always been." I ate some more of the bread and sauce.
"That is enough," said my mother. She took all the bread and the sauce and got up and went out.
I sat there alone with my uncle. I drew up close to him.
His face was calm as if all the crying had gone away and left him empty.
He turned to me. He looked very serious.
"Do you think the Lord in Heaven had to take one of us?" he asked. "And when I was spared, he took her in my place?"
I was so surprised I could hardly breathe. I remembered all at once my prayer for him to live when he'd been praying in the Jordan River. I remember the power going out of me into him when I laid my hand on him as he sang in the river, and he hadn't even known.
I tried to say something but no words would come out.
What could I do but cry?
He gathered me in his arms, and rocked me. "Ah, my own," he said under his breath to me.
"O Lord of All Creation," he prayed, "you've restored me. It must have been for my good that I've known such bitterness ...we who live thank you, as I do now, the father will tell the children of your faithfulness."
For weeks we didn't go outside the courtyard.
My eyes hurt in the light. Cleopas and I painted some of the rooms with fresh whitewash. But those who had to work in Sepphoris went to work.
Finally all had recovered from the illness, even Little Esther for whom we'd feared the worst just because she was little. But I knew she was all right because she was screaming her lungs out.
Rabbi Sherebiah, the priest with the wooden leg, came into our house with the Water of Purification so that we could be sprinkled one time and then again in the following days. This water he made up with the ashes of the red heifer, which had been slain and burnt at the Temple in accordance with the Law to make the ashes for this, and with the living water from the stream beyond the synagogue at the end of the village.
With this Water of Purification, not only were we sprinkled but also the entire house, and all the cooking vessels and the jars that held food or water or wine. Everything was sprinkled. The mikvah was sprinkled.
We bathed in the mikvah after each sprinkling; and after sundown on the last day of the sprinkling all of us and our house were clean.
This was from the impurity we had taken on from the death of our aunt Mary under our roof. And it was a solemn thing to us, especially to Cleopas, who had recited the passage from the Book of Numbers which told of this cleansing and how it was to be done.
My mind was much captured by this ritual; I made up my mind that I wanted to see the slaughter of the red heifer with my own eyes someday in Jerusalem.
Not now, when there was fighting, no. But someday when it would be peaceful and we could go there. The slaughter of the red heifer and the burning of the heifer, along with her skin and her flesh and her blood and her dung, to make these ashes of purification - what a sight it must be, I thought. There was so much to see at the Temple. And the Temple was now in the midst of fighting.
That was the only way I could remember it, full of dead bodies and people screaming, and that man killed before my eyes, and that soldier who on his horse had come in my memory to look like a horse and a man put together, with his long spear full of blood. That and then the fiery battle I'd seen in the dream, the strange dream. However could I have dreamed such a dream?
But that was far away, all of that.
It was peaceful here as we went through the purification.
Never in Alexandria could I remember such a thing being done, this sprinkling, and only dimly did I remember the death of a little child there, the infant son of my uncle Alphaeus. But here in the Land, it was the custom to do these things according to the Law. And everyone was happy to do it.
But I knew that my uncles had not waited on this ritual to go to work in Sepphoris. They could not have done that. Some of them had been working there all during the time of illness. And the women had been going out to the vegetable garden when they had to do it. I didn't ask any questions about it. I knew that we did what we could. And I trusted in what my uncles and Joseph said to do. People did what they could do.
Now, after that time, and not very long after at all, before I was even going out of the house yet, my uncles got into a big dispute.
There was so much work in Sepphoris that they could choose among the hardest jobs, and the jobs they most liked, and the jobs which most used all the skills of the family. But Joseph, upon whom everyone relied, would not charge any different for any one job over another. The uncles didn't think that was right, and neither did some of the other carpenters in Sepphoris. The uncles wanted double for the jobs of skill, and the other carpenters were for this, and Joseph would not charge this.
Finally, all of them went up the hill to Rabbi Berekhaiah, even though they wanted to see Rabbi Jacimus, the strictest Pharisee.
"We need a Pharisee to settle this," my uncle Cleopas had said. And everyone had agreed. Even Joseph. But no one was going to ask the younger Rabbi before asking the older Rabbi.
Rabbi Berekhaiah at once said to go to Rabbi Jacimus, the Pharisee, and do what he said to do.
We little boys couldn't crowd in and as it grew warmer and warmer outside, we went on home.
They were gone a long time, and when they came down they were all in good spirits. It seemed that Rabbi Jacimus had won the day with this argument: that if they charged double for the skilled jobs, they could let the boys go to school for a full half day. And Joseph had agreed to this!
We clapped our hands! This was wonderful news. James and I looked at each other. Even our cousins, Silas and Levi, were happy. Little Symeon was happy and he hardly knew what this was about.
We were to receive more education. And the house was to receive higher wages.
My mother was very pleased.
We had good wine with supper that night, and by the light of the lamps, Joseph read us one of the Greek stories we loved, from the scrolls we'd brought back from Alexandria, The Tale of Tobit.
Now everyone gathered round for this story, even the women, because we all enjoyed so much to hear of the angel coming to Tobias, the son of Tobit, and this angel, "in disguise," telling Tobias of cures he might work with the innards of the fish that tried to swallow his foot, and of how he must marry the young girl Sarah, daughter of Raguel, and of Tobias answering that wasn't it true that Sarah had had seven husbands already and each of them killed on the wedding night by a demon?
We roared with laughter as Joseph read this part in Tobias' innocent voice. And then Joseph became the angel Raphael again, "Now you listen to me and don't you worry about this demon!" On Joseph read in the voice of the angel, that Tobias would be wed to Sarah that very night and all he had to do was put the liver and heart of the dead fish on the fire in the wedding chamber and the smell would drive off the demon forever! "And who else do you think such a smell would drive off!" Cleopas asked. Even my mother was laughing.
Joseph went on as the helpful angel Raphael, his words in a rush. "Now before you get into your bed, stand and pray, asking that safety and mercy be granted you. Don't be afraid, the girl's set apart for you from before the beginning of the world, you'll save her, she'll go with you, I assume you'll have children and they will be brothers and sisters, and say no more to it." Again we were laughing so hard we could hardly keep from crying.
"Lord in Heaven, have mercy on them," I cried. I was so afraid. I was shivering. I was shaking. All my fear came back to me and was worse than it had ever been. One fire after another filled my mind, as though each fire were ignited from the one before it until the blaze reached to the stars. Out of the depths, I cry unto thee, O Lord.
"Is that all you can do?" this strange creature asked me. He stood very close to me, handsome in his rich clothing, his blue eyes full of anger even though he smiled.
I put my hands to my face. I wouldn't look. I heard his voice in my ear:
"I'm watching you, angel child!" he said. "I'm waiting to see what you mean to do. So go on: walk like a child, eat like a child, play like a child, work like a child. But I'm watching. And I may not know the future, no, but I know this: your mother's a whore, your father's a liar, and the floors of your house are dirt. Your cause is lost, I know it's lost, it's lost every day and every hour, and you know it is. You think your little miracles will help these foolish people? I tell you, chaos rules. And I am its Prince."
I looked at him. I knew that if I wanted to, I could answer him. The words would come easily and they would tell me things I didn't know now; they would draw this knowledge out of my mind, as surely as the sound would come out of my mouth. Everything would be there before me, all the answers, all the whole span of Time. But no, it wasn't to happen. No, not this way or any other way. I said nothing. His misery hurt me. His darkening face hurt me. His fury hurt me.
I woke up without a sound. I lay in the dark room, covered in sweat and thirsting.
The lamp was the only light. It seemed everywhere there were moans. I didn't know where I was, this room, this place - and my head ached. It hurt so badly I couldn't bear it. My mother was near but with someone else.
Cleopas was praying in a whisper. I could hear a strange voice, a woman's voice. "If this goes on like this, you don't want her to come back..."
I closed my eyes. I dreamed. I saw the fields of wheat around Nazareth. I saw the flowering almond trees that we'd passed when we first came into the land. I saw the villages of white houses tumbling over the hills. Thin curling leaves flying in the gentle gusts of the wind. I dreamed of water. That creature wanted to come again, but I wouldn't let him come. No, not the world of palaces and ships, no. "Stop," I said. "I will not."
My mother said, "You're dreaming, I'm holding you. You're safe." Safe.
It was days and nights before I came to myself. I found that out afterwards.
And even then I slept most of the time. Only the wailing woke me, the wailing and the crying, and I knew then that someone had died.
When I opened my eyes, I saw my mother feeding Little Symeon who was under the covers, and propped against a blanket roll. Little Salome slept nearby, her face very damp. But she wasn't really too sick anymore.
My mother looked at me and smiled. But her face was white and sad, and she'd been crying, and I knew it, and I knew that one of the people moaning and crying in the far room was Cleopas. I heard it, that broken grown man crying that I'd seen and heard in the dream.
"Tell me!" I whispered. The fear came, a grip on my throat.
"The children are better," she said. "Don't you remember? I told you all this last night."
"No, I want to know who?"
She wouldn't answer me.
"Is it Aunt Mary?" I asked. I turned to look. Aunt Mary had been lying right next to me and she was gone.
My mother closed her eyes and groaned. I turned towards her and put my hand on her knee, but I don't think she felt it through her robe. She rocked back and forth.
When next I woke up, it was the funeral feast that was happening. It must have been. I could hear the music of flutes that cut the air like wooden knives.
Joseph was with me and he made me drink some soup. Little Salome was sitting straight up next to me, and she said with very wide eyes,
"Did you know my mother is dead?"
"I'm sorry for it," I said.
"And the baby too is dead because the baby was inside her."
"I'm sorry for it," I said.
"They already buried her. They put her in the cave."
I didn't say anything.
My aunts came in, Salome and Esther, and they made Little Salome drink soup and lie down. Little Salome wouldn't stop asking about her mother. "Was she covered up?" she asked. "Did she look white?"
They told her to be quiet.
"Did she cry when she died?"
I slept.
When I woke up, the room was still full of children sleeping, and my older cousins were there, sick, too.
It wasn't until the next morning that I got up.
At first I thought no one was awake in the house.
I went out into the courtyard.
The air was warm, and the leaves on the fig tree were big. There were white flowers all over the vines, and the sky was very blue yet full of clean clouds that didn't mean rain.
I was so hungry I could have eaten anything. I'd never been so hungry ever that I knew.
There were voices coming from one of the rooms that Cleopas and his family used on the other side of the court. I went in and saw my mother and my uncle seated there on the floor, talking together, before a meal of bread and sauce. The window had only a thin veil. The light fell on their shoulders.
I sat down beside my mother.
"...and I'll take care of them, I'll gather them to me, and hold them to me, because I am their mother now, and they are my children." This is what she was saying to Cleopas. "You understand me? They are my children now. They are the brothers and sisters of Jesus and James. I can care for them. I want you to believe in me. Everyone has always treated me as if I were a girl. I'm not a girl. I'll care for all of them. We are all one family together."
Cleopas nodded but he had a faraway look.
He passed the bread to me, and whispered the blessing and I whispered it too. I gobbled the bread.
"No, not so fast," said my mother. "I mean it. You mustn't. And drink this." She gave me water. I wanted the bread.
My mother ran her hand over my hair. She kissed me. "You heard what I said to your uncle?"
"They're my brothers and sisters," I said, "as it's always been." I ate some more of the bread and sauce.
"That is enough," said my mother. She took all the bread and the sauce and got up and went out.
I sat there alone with my uncle. I drew up close to him.
His face was calm as if all the crying had gone away and left him empty.
He turned to me. He looked very serious.
"Do you think the Lord in Heaven had to take one of us?" he asked. "And when I was spared, he took her in my place?"
I was so surprised I could hardly breathe. I remembered all at once my prayer for him to live when he'd been praying in the Jordan River. I remember the power going out of me into him when I laid my hand on him as he sang in the river, and he hadn't even known.
I tried to say something but no words would come out.
What could I do but cry?
He gathered me in his arms, and rocked me. "Ah, my own," he said under his breath to me.
"O Lord of All Creation," he prayed, "you've restored me. It must have been for my good that I've known such bitterness ...we who live thank you, as I do now, the father will tell the children of your faithfulness."
For weeks we didn't go outside the courtyard.
My eyes hurt in the light. Cleopas and I painted some of the rooms with fresh whitewash. But those who had to work in Sepphoris went to work.
Finally all had recovered from the illness, even Little Esther for whom we'd feared the worst just because she was little. But I knew she was all right because she was screaming her lungs out.
Rabbi Sherebiah, the priest with the wooden leg, came into our house with the Water of Purification so that we could be sprinkled one time and then again in the following days. This water he made up with the ashes of the red heifer, which had been slain and burnt at the Temple in accordance with the Law to make the ashes for this, and with the living water from the stream beyond the synagogue at the end of the village.
With this Water of Purification, not only were we sprinkled but also the entire house, and all the cooking vessels and the jars that held food or water or wine. Everything was sprinkled. The mikvah was sprinkled.
We bathed in the mikvah after each sprinkling; and after sundown on the last day of the sprinkling all of us and our house were clean.
This was from the impurity we had taken on from the death of our aunt Mary under our roof. And it was a solemn thing to us, especially to Cleopas, who had recited the passage from the Book of Numbers which told of this cleansing and how it was to be done.
My mind was much captured by this ritual; I made up my mind that I wanted to see the slaughter of the red heifer with my own eyes someday in Jerusalem.
Not now, when there was fighting, no. But someday when it would be peaceful and we could go there. The slaughter of the red heifer and the burning of the heifer, along with her skin and her flesh and her blood and her dung, to make these ashes of purification - what a sight it must be, I thought. There was so much to see at the Temple. And the Temple was now in the midst of fighting.
That was the only way I could remember it, full of dead bodies and people screaming, and that man killed before my eyes, and that soldier who on his horse had come in my memory to look like a horse and a man put together, with his long spear full of blood. That and then the fiery battle I'd seen in the dream, the strange dream. However could I have dreamed such a dream?
But that was far away, all of that.
It was peaceful here as we went through the purification.
Never in Alexandria could I remember such a thing being done, this sprinkling, and only dimly did I remember the death of a little child there, the infant son of my uncle Alphaeus. But here in the Land, it was the custom to do these things according to the Law. And everyone was happy to do it.
But I knew that my uncles had not waited on this ritual to go to work in Sepphoris. They could not have done that. Some of them had been working there all during the time of illness. And the women had been going out to the vegetable garden when they had to do it. I didn't ask any questions about it. I knew that we did what we could. And I trusted in what my uncles and Joseph said to do. People did what they could do.
Now, after that time, and not very long after at all, before I was even going out of the house yet, my uncles got into a big dispute.
There was so much work in Sepphoris that they could choose among the hardest jobs, and the jobs they most liked, and the jobs which most used all the skills of the family. But Joseph, upon whom everyone relied, would not charge any different for any one job over another. The uncles didn't think that was right, and neither did some of the other carpenters in Sepphoris. The uncles wanted double for the jobs of skill, and the other carpenters were for this, and Joseph would not charge this.
Finally, all of them went up the hill to Rabbi Berekhaiah, even though they wanted to see Rabbi Jacimus, the strictest Pharisee.
"We need a Pharisee to settle this," my uncle Cleopas had said. And everyone had agreed. Even Joseph. But no one was going to ask the younger Rabbi before asking the older Rabbi.
Rabbi Berekhaiah at once said to go to Rabbi Jacimus, the Pharisee, and do what he said to do.
We little boys couldn't crowd in and as it grew warmer and warmer outside, we went on home.
They were gone a long time, and when they came down they were all in good spirits. It seemed that Rabbi Jacimus had won the day with this argument: that if they charged double for the skilled jobs, they could let the boys go to school for a full half day. And Joseph had agreed to this!
We clapped our hands! This was wonderful news. James and I looked at each other. Even our cousins, Silas and Levi, were happy. Little Symeon was happy and he hardly knew what this was about.
We were to receive more education. And the house was to receive higher wages.
My mother was very pleased.
We had good wine with supper that night, and by the light of the lamps, Joseph read us one of the Greek stories we loved, from the scrolls we'd brought back from Alexandria, The Tale of Tobit.
Now everyone gathered round for this story, even the women, because we all enjoyed so much to hear of the angel coming to Tobias, the son of Tobit, and this angel, "in disguise," telling Tobias of cures he might work with the innards of the fish that tried to swallow his foot, and of how he must marry the young girl Sarah, daughter of Raguel, and of Tobias answering that wasn't it true that Sarah had had seven husbands already and each of them killed on the wedding night by a demon?
We roared with laughter as Joseph read this part in Tobias' innocent voice. And then Joseph became the angel Raphael again, "Now you listen to me and don't you worry about this demon!" On Joseph read in the voice of the angel, that Tobias would be wed to Sarah that very night and all he had to do was put the liver and heart of the dead fish on the fire in the wedding chamber and the smell would drive off the demon forever! "And who else do you think such a smell would drive off!" Cleopas asked. Even my mother was laughing.
Joseph went on as the helpful angel Raphael, his words in a rush. "Now before you get into your bed, stand and pray, asking that safety and mercy be granted you. Don't be afraid, the girl's set apart for you from before the beginning of the world, you'll save her, she'll go with you, I assume you'll have children and they will be brothers and sisters, and say no more to it." Again we were laughing so hard we could hardly keep from crying.
