Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt

Page 9

"My brother," said my mother, "I'm going mad!"
I was shaking so hard I feared to get up, but I did get up and I took Joseph's hand.
He led me out of the house. The whole family stood on the prow of the hill, even the women except for my mother, and gathered all around were others in the night who'd spilled out of the village.
The clouds over the plain below were boiling with fire. The air was hot and cold, and people were talking loudly as they might at Festival, and the children were running in circles and dancing and rushing to look again at the fire. I huddled close to Joseph.
"He's very little still," said my mother. She stood behind me.
"He should see," said Joseph.
It was a great growing, licking blaze, and suddenly a wall of flame rose up, so fierce, and it seemed to reach for the stars of Heaven. I turned my head. I couldn't look at it. I went into wild crying. The cries came out of me like knots in a rope being pulled out one after another. Against my eyes I saw the flickering. I couldn't get away from it. The smell of the smoke filled me. My mother was trying to lift me and I didn't mean to fight her, but I was fighting her, and then Joseph had hold of me, and said my name over and over.
"We're far away from it!" he said. "We're safe from it. Listen to me!"
I couldn't stop until he crushed me against his chest, and I couldn't twist or turn there.
He walked fast with me back into the house.
I couldn't stop my cries. They hurt my chest. They hurt my heart.
We sank down on the floor, and my cousin Elizabeth took my face and held it. I saw her eyes just in front of me.
"Listen to what I say to you, my child," she said. "Stop crying. Do you think the angel of the Lord would have come to your father, Joseph, and told him to bring you home if you weren't safe? Who is to say what are the purposes of the Lord? Now, stop your cries and trust in the Lord. Lie against your mother's breast, here, and stop your crying. Let your mother hold you. You are in the hands of God."
"Angel of the Lord," I whispered. "Angel of the Lord."
"Yes," said Joseph, "and the angel of the Lord will be with us until we reach Nazareth."
My mother took me.
"We are passing through this," she said. Her voice was low and sweet in my ear. "We are passing through this, and we'll be home soon, in our own house. We will eat the figs of our own tree, and the grapes of our own garden. In our own oven we'll bake our daily bread," she said to me as we settled down beside Cleopas once again. I sobbed against her neck. She stroked my back.
"That's right," said Cleopas very near to me.
I wrapped my fingers around my mother's neck. I took deeper and deeper breaths.
"We'll be in Nazareth," said Cleopas, "and no one, I promise you, my little one, no one will ever look for you there."
I was drowsy, so very drowsy all at once. But what did he mean, Cleopas, that no one would look for me? Who was looking for me? I didn't want to sleep. I wanted to ask him what he meant by those words, look for me, who was looking for me? What did all the strange stories mean? What did it mean what my mother had said about the angel coming to her? In all this misery and woe, I had forgotten about what she'd said on the rooftop in Jerusalem, the strange words she'd spoken. And Elizabeth had just said that an angel came to Joseph. Joseph hadn't said an angel came to him.
It seemed for a moment as I was sliding deeper and deeper into sweet rest that it was all connected. I ought to make something of it. Yes! Angels. An angel had come before and an angel had come again, and an angel was here. I knew that, didn't I? No. But then I felt purely drowsy, and I felt so safe.
My mother was singing to me in Hebrew, and Cleopas was singing with her. He was better now, much better, though he still coughed. But my aunt Mary did not feel well, though no one was worried about her.
And tomorrow we would leave this terrible place. We would leave my cousins here, the strange solemn boy John, who said so little and looked at me so much, and our beloved Elizabeth, his mother, and we'd go on to the refuge of Nazareth.
Chapter 8
Right after the coming of the light, men on horseback came on a "rampage" through the village.
We left our little circle in which all had only just begun to listen to our cousin Elizabeth, and crowded into the back room of the house together.
Cleopas had never moved from there, as he had coughed very badly in the night and was feverish again. He lay smiling in his usual way, his eyes wet as he stared up at the low roof over our heads.
We could hear screams and the braying of the lambs and the screech of the birds. "They're stealing everything," said my cousin Mary Alexandra. The other women told her to be quiet, and her husband Zebedee patted her arm.
Once Silas tried to get up to go to the curtain, but his father ordered him to go to the far corner with a firm gesture.
Even the little ones who were always excited by everything were quiet.
Aunt Esther, Simon's wife, had Baby Esther in her arms, and every time the baby started to cry, she gave her the breast.
I wasn't afraid now, and I didn't know why. I stood among the women with the other children, except for James who stood beside his father. James was really not a child anymore, I thought to myself, looking at him. Had we stayed in Jerusalem, had there been no rebellion, James would have gone into the Sanctuary of the Sons of Israel with Silas and Levi and with all the men.
But I was interrupted in this thought by the sudden fear that gripped everyone, and the feel of my mother's fingers closing around my upper arm.
Strangers were in the front room. Little Salome crushed up against me and I hugged her tight as my mother hugged me.
Then the curtain was ripped off the door. I was blinded and blinked, struggling to see. My mother gripped me very tight. No one spoke a word, and no one moved. I knew we were to be quiet and to do nothing. Everyone knew it, even the very littlest ones knew it. The babies cried but it was soft and it had nothing to do with these men who had torn the curtain away.
There were three or four of them, black against the daylight, big rough figures, with rags tied around their legs under the lashings of their sandals. One wore animal skins and another a gleaming helmet. The light hit their swords and their daggers. They had rags around their wrists.
"Well, look here," said the man with the helmet. He spoke in Greek. "What do we have here? Half the village."
"Come on, everything!" said another forcing his way towards us. He too spoke Greek. His voice was ugly. "I mean it, every denarius you have, all of you, now. Your gold or your silver. You women, your bracelets, take them off. We'll cut you open for what you swallowed if you don't give up what you've got!"
No one moved. The women did nothing.
Little Salome began to cry. I held her so tight I must have hurt her. But no one answered the men.
"We're fighting for freedom for our land," said one of the men. More Greek. "You stupid fools, don't you know what's happening in Israel?"
He stepped towards us and flashed his dagger at us, glaring into the face of Alphaeus, then Simon, then Joseph. But the men said nothing.
No one moved. No one spoke.
"Did you hear me? I'll cut your throats one by one, starting with the children!" said the man, stepping back.
One of the others kicked at our well-bound bundles, another lifting a blanket and letting it fall.
Very softly in Hebrew, Joseph spoke.
"I can't understand you. What do you want us to do? We are people of peace. I can't understand you."
Very softly in Hebrew, Alphaeus said: "Please do not harm our innocent children and our women. Do not let it be said of you that you shed innocent blood."
Now it was the turn of the men to be still as stone, and finally one of them turned away.
"Oh, you stupid worthless peasants," he said in Greek. "You miserable ignorant filth."
"They've never seen any money in their lives," said the other. "There's nothing in this place but old clothes and stinking babies. You pitiful wretches. Eat your dirt in peace."
"Yes, grovel while we fight for your freedom," said another.
They turned and went out with heavy steps, kicking baskets and bedrolls out of their way.
We waited. I felt my mother's hands on my shoulders. I could see James, and he looked so much like Joseph, it was a wonder I never saw it before.
Finally the cries and the noise were over.
Joseph spoke. "Remember this," he said. He looked from James to me and to Little Joses, and to my cousins who stared up at him, and to John who stood beside his mother. "Remember. Never lift your hand to defend yourself or to strike. Be patient. If you must speak, be simple."
We nodded. We knew what had happened. All of us knew. Little Salome was sniffling. And all at once, my aunt Mary, who had been feeling so sick, broke into crying, and turned and sat down beside Cleopas, who was still staring up as he had been before. He looked like he was already dead. But he wasn't dead.
All at once we children rushed to the doors of the little house. People were pouring out into the street. They were in a fury against the robbers. Women were chasing after fluttering birds and I saw the body of a man lying in the very middle of all that was going on, and he was staring up at the sky the same way that Cleopas had stared, but with blood streaming from his mouth. He was like our dead man in the Temple.
No soul in him.
People were going around him, and nobody wept for him, and nobody knelt beside him.
Finally two men with a rope came and they looped it over him and under his arms and they dragged him away.
"He was one of them," said James. "Don't look at him."
"But who killed him?" I asked. "And what will they do with him?" In the light of the day it was not so frightening as it had been in the night. But I knew, even at this moment, that the darkness of the night would come. And it would be very frightening again. I knew the fear was waiting. The fear was something new. The fear was terrible. I didn't feel it but I remembered it, and I knew it would come back. It would never go away.
"They'll bury him," said James. "His dead body can't be left unburied. It's an offense to the Lord in Heaven. They'll put him in a cave or in the earth. It doesn't matter."
We were told to go inside.
The room had been cleared, the floor swept and beautiful rugs had been put down, rugs covered with flowers woven in the wool. We were told to sit down and be still and listen because Elizabeth wanted to talk to us before we left to go on.
I remembered now that we had been gathered for this purpose before, but the rugs had not been unbound yet when the first horsemen had come.
Now as if nothing had happened, as if no one had died in the street we went on.
We made a big thick, crowded circle. The babies were quiet enough for Elizabeth to be heard. I sat before Joseph, my legs crossed, as were his, and Little Salome was right by me, leaning back against her mother. Cleopas was still in the other room.
"I'll make my words quick," Elizabeth said. When I'd awakened this morning, she'd been talking of grandfathers and grandmothers, and who had married who and gone to what village. I couldn't remember all those names. Both the women and the men had been repeating what she'd been telling, in order to remember it.
Now, she shook her head before she began and she lifted her hands. I saw her gray hairs under the edge of her veil, running through her darker hair.
"This is what I must tell you, what I never put in a letter to you. When I die, which will be soon - and no, don't say that it won't. I know that it will. I know the signs. When I die, John will go to live with our kindred among the Essenes."
All at once there was fussing and crying out. Even Cleopas appeared in the door, huddled over, with his hand around his chest.
"No, why in the world have you made such a decision!" he said. "To send that child to people who don't even worship in the Temple! And John, the son of a priest! And you married all your life to a priest, and Zechariah, the son of a priest, and before him?"
Cleopas limped, holding his stomach, until he reached the circle and then dropped to his knees, my mother right there to help him and pull his robe free, and straighten it around him. On he went. "And you would send John, whose mother is of the House of David, and whose father is of the House of Aaron, to live with the Essenes? The Essenes? These people who think they know better than all the rest of us what is good and what is bad, and who is righteous and what the Lord demands?"
"And who do you think the Essenes are!" said Elizabeth in a low voice. She was patient but wanted to be understood. "Are they not from the Children of Abraham? Are they not of the House of David and the House of Aaron, and from all the Tribes of Israel? Are they not pious? Are they not zealous for the Law? I'm telling you, they will take him out in the wilderness and there they'll educate him and care for him. And he, the child himself, wants this and he has reason."
My cousin John was looking at me. Why? Why not at his mother as everyone else was, when they were not looking at him? His face didn't show much. He stared at me and I could see only a calmness in him. He didn't look like a little boy. He looked like a little man. He sat opposite his mother, and he wore a plain white tunic of far better wool than mine, or any of ours, and over that a robe of the same fine weave. And these things I'd seen before but not thought of, and now as I took them in, I felt a great wondering about him, but Cleopas was talking and I had to follow his words.
"The Essenes," Cleopas said. "Will none of you speak up for this boy before he becomes the son of men who don't stand before the Lord at the appointed times? Am I the only man here with a voice? Elizabeth, on the heads of our grandparents, I swear this must not - ."