HIM, page 10
The Cub’s words were slow, low. “I can help you keep your workshop going.”
“I can make new sons.” The tekton went back to hammering.
“Are they starting work tomorrow?” The hammering got louder. “I can bring in my little brother to help as well. We could use our cart to make deliveries.”
The hammer slipped and skittered into Platon’s thigh. “Shit!” he shouted. He turned to Yehushua. “You think you can take his place?” He advanced, the hammer in his shaking fist.
Yehushua stayed calm. “I’m saying that God loved your son. God didn’t want him dead, and doesn’t want you to suffer.” Something welled up in him. It forced its way out through the lower edge of his eyes. “God loves you. He wants you and your son to be together.”
The builder held him with his gaze. “Did God want him to grow up, to marry, to have sons?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t he?” A snarl.
“Because that would not be just. No, no, hold, hold.” Yehushua held up his hands to ward off the raised hammer. “Other people die of that sickness every day. Yes, God could have come crashing into Nazareth, to save one or two. Would that be just? To do that only for you?”
Platon took one step nearer. Yehushua stepped back, but kept talking. “Do you deny that God is just? How could he save your son from the sickness but not someone else’s son? How is God to pick and choose who survives?”
The sinews of the leather face tightened. The sun turned. Swallows darted overhead. There were blocks of stone, gums and resins hardening, nails and saws rusting.
The Cub: “I want to work and learn – nothing else.”
The lips went thin, the face clenched, made of stone no longer. “I cannot call you by his name.”
“Shorten it. I will change my name, I will tell everyone. Call me Yehush.”
Babatha stomped out of Idra’s house, hugging her blankets.
Idra followed with the two little boys. Yosef made hearty male sounds at them. Babatha slumped into the cart, fists pushed up into her cheeks. Idra said it had been no trouble, that Norah and Atha had played together. But?
“And the boys? Did she help with the boys?” Maryam asked.
Idra looked into her friend’s eyes. “She said nowt to them. Didn’t hug ’em, nor feed ’em. Acted like they weren’t there basically.”
Babatha was angry.
Maryam spent that morning trying to make it up to her. She promised Babatha that she would make her a new dress (how and with what?) and the girl just sighed. Babatha liked to help cook, but Maryam realized they had left the city in a hurry and had not bought back with them the delicacies they had promised.
All they had for dinner was stale bread. They could soak it with water and fry it in oil. That was unlikely to cheer up anyone.
Maryam went to Yosef, who was snoring, woke him up, and told him to watch the two babies. Then she took Babatha’s hand. “Come on Honey Bee, let’s walk.” She wanted to take her daughter to the lookout. “I don’t want to walk past the well,” said Babatha. “I’m tired.”
So Maryam picked her up and carried her. For a time Babatha was jiggled like a half empty sack.
They got to the north slope and looked out. Sometimes there was just a hint of ocean to the west, a grey light under the horizon clouds.
Babatha asked almost inaudibly, “What was the Temple like?”
So Maryam described it, the block of white, as white as the sun, with a panel of gold like sunset, the hot square, the hotter people, the vast cool arcade of the Stoa. She said nothing about what the Cub had said, or the way the priests were confounded. She made it sound as if the Cub had said almost nothing at all. They had seen the enemy and he had asked questions, so they had fled.
“You are my only real daughter,” Maryam told her.
“It didn’t change her, did it?”
It was humiliating that a six year-old understood that Maryam had gone with high and foolish hopes that Avigayil would come back. That Maryam had even left Babatha behind, when she might have gone with them. But Maryam had wanted to get Avi to the Temple; she thought it meant Avi had accepted being a girl.
Maryam finally admitted it. “No. And I don’t think she’s going to.”
“I won’t change,” said Babatha, and Maryam laughed tremulously, and kissed her.
But it also felt like the angry six-year-old had made some kind of deal.
They got back. Yosef was awake and reading to Yoses and Yudeh, who was elated because Idra had given him a wonderful present – a whole purple onion. They would have bread and fried onion for supper.
Babatha helped cook, acting strangely. She was chirpy, jumpy, talking too loudly. “We’re making bread! We’re making a banquet for the King. Look, Mummy. I’m making the bread!”
“You are a clever girl.”
“The boys are just reading scripture.”
To Maryam it felt as if the house had come unanchored and was spinning in a current. Where had the eldest gone? What was it up to? Why did Yosef look so big and sprawled, relieved to be home? Barking out that deep-voiced laugh of his that meant he was happy.
Babatha made a show of serving each of them a spoonful of bread and onion, and still the Cub had not come home. Maryam didn’t want Babatha to see that she was worried about it, or was thinking about it. She wanted Babatha to feel that she was important. “Look, Father. The bread will be all crisp.”
The onions only slightly burnt were bitter and sweet at the same time. She was able to tell Babatha, “This is delicious, Honey Bee.”
“Oh, my little girl, she cooks so beautifully,” said Yosef. He so evidently meant it, that Babatha laughed. And Maryam felt anguish that Yosef could make Babatha laugh when she could not.
The Cub came back at sunset, covered in limestone dust.
It dropped down onto a rug with a sigh. Maryam demanded, “Where have you been?” The Cub told the family that it was going to work for the builder, “As an apprentice.”
The effect on Maryam was like tearing a ligament. A small sensation, a jink in the flesh, or a light chime of pain that you hope will fade. But the pain settles in and doesn’t go.
“You can do it for a while,” Maryam said. She dropped a bowl of cold bread in front of it. She didn’t want the Cub to be the focus of anything. She just wanted the Cub to be still and silent, and to have done nothing noteworthy.
The Cub appraised her. “Platon will give us food, all of us. And I learn a trade.”
The child was going to keep them. Maryam wished she had a stew of wildfowl and a bowl of pomegranates and figs, to show the Cub: See, we can eat without you.
“What kind of work will you do?” Yosef asked him, man to man.
You should be doing the Lord’s work.
The Cub enthused; it was learning how to cut stone, they had a saw for stone; it was two ended, and they both could pull and push it. “You can come too, Yakob.” The Cub’s face was often kind when it looked at Yakob. No wonder – Yakob was nobody’s rival. “You can train to be a tekton too.”
Yakob, still ashamed of crying in the Temple, smiled briefly, gratefully.
“Both of you can be peasants.” Maryam surprised herself. Had she actually said that? “Everyone. Babatha is the person who made the food. Let us all praise Atha. Babatha, yes!”
And Yosef chortled merrily, almost as if he was drunk, which he couldn’t be, there was no wine. “Ah! My daughter and my boys. There can be no richer man than me to have such fine children.”
He meant it. The children knew he meant it. They knew he thought of the Cub as his son.
She, Maryam didn’t think she had fine children. She had children who were poor, malnourished, and looked down on. And one child who ploughed all the rest of them under the soil and would overturn the sky to get its own way.
Babatha sang a little song, rocking her head from side to side. “I’m cleaning plates. I’m cleaning bowls.” Her six year-old daughter sang a worksong and that made Maryam want to cry.
Maryam remembered the shadow of fire.
She had been entrusted, and she had failed. We took you to Yerusalam to show you God, and instead you turn away from God. There would be no prophecy or miracles or teaching.
That night Maryam kept flinging herself about the bed and or puffing herself up like blankets, and kept commanding herself to sleep. But sleep didn’t come.
Yosef turned over. “What is it, Maryam?”
“What are we to do?”
“About what?”
“This idea of working for that ignorant man.”
Yosef went very still. She could smell onions, his beard, and his narrow unwashed body. “The boy just wants to help. I think it’s a good idea.”
“The Cub has turned its back on God.”
He stroked her hand. “No, no my dear, not at all. He hasn’t, no.”
She went into the children’s room. There was a lamp burning in case the children cried and she saw the Cub folded on the floor. She bent over it and seized the bare arm. “You,” she said. “Up. We have to talk.”
The Cub kept its eyes closed. “I have to sleep.”
“So do your brothers and sister. I don’t want to wake them.”
Still unmoving, still eyes closed. “Then go back to bed and talk in the morning.”
Maryam felt helpless. “You will get off that floor and we will go down and we will talk.”
The Cub said nothing at all. Very well, we do talk and they all wake up and hear it. Maryam said, “You are not going to work for that man.”
“I am,” the Cub said, nestling back into the crook of its arm. Maryam shook the child awake again.
“You’ll work with your father if you want to be a peasant.”
“There is no other life for me,” said the child.
“There is the life of the spirit.”
Babatha stirred. “Mommy?”
Maryam said, “Go back to sleep, Honey Bee. Your big sister wants to have a discussion now, here.”
The Cub said, “Everyone has a life of the spirit. Especially Platon.”
“Him?”
“Have you not even seen the beauty of the things he makes?”
“And what could you make, eh? What were you put in this world to do? Saw stone? I don’t know what you were put on Earth to do, but it was not that. It was to do something for God. You said you could destroy the Temple. You are worried about destroying religion as it is.” Something welled up in her like magma, something subterranean, so fierce she had to whisper it.
“Break the Temple then.” Her words sizzled in the air. “Break it if that was what God put you on this Earth to do. Maybe it needs to be done.”
The Cub opened up a snake-like eye. “I see. Destroy the Yehudai so your ambition can thrive.”
Maryam was stunned for a moment. “What a horrible thing to say. Your ambitions.”
“My ambition is to be a tekton. And to sleep.” With that the child appeared to will itself to genuine sleep, a sleep so profound that no words or shaking could rouse it.
But the rest of the household was roused. Babatha started to cry, Yudeh the infant to howl and cough. Yakob was eating his own fist again. Yosef stumbled in looking befuddled. “It’s as well, no harm,” her husband murmured, patting her arm, thinking her distress was for her other children. “You rest, wife. Please my dear. I’ll calm them down.” And Maryam knew she was done then, that she’d best leave Yosef to get them all asleep.
The Cub had won, again.
In the morning, Maryam pressed her cheek against Babatha’s.
She whispered, “I am so sorry Honey Bee. I’m so sorry I woke you up.” She squeezed her tightly, but she knew what she really meant was that she was sorry for what she was going to do now.
“Your sister. The man she is working for is not a good man. I don’t think she realizes that. You and me. We have to protect her. I’m sorry it has to be us, you, but I don’t want to leave you alone again. So you and I are both going to watch over your sister.”
Babatha’s eyes were so solemn. Disappointed?
“I know your sister is a problem for you, for all of us. I’m so sorry that we can’t just stay here and play and have fun. You deserve fun, Honey Bee.” Maryam stroked the hair out of Babatha’s eyes.
Then she took her daughter’s hand and walked to the house of the tekton.
The Cub had spirited frail Yakob away just at dawn light. Again the thought: The child is possessed.
And so we go, back to the house of Death.
At the man’s own gate, Maryam attacked Platon. “What do you want with my child?”
The tekton’s lip curled in way that showed broken teeth. “Gah. You’re both mad as dogs. Take him back with you.”
She held out a hand towards the child, her fingers fanned wide apart. “Come. Come. You heard him. He doesn’t want you.”
The Cub stood with its arms folded. “I’m staying.”
“What do you think you can learn from him? How to be ignorant? How to be cruel?”
The tekton muttered under his breath. “Stuck-up Sadducai bitch.”
Maryam turned towards him, chin thrust out. “We’re not Sadducai. They are a different school.”
“Tuh!” Like a tall building, Platon was rocked by scorn.
She stepped right up in front of him. “This is a little girl. I know what she says she is. She says she’s a boy. She’s not. A little girl will not be a tekton. She will never be your apprentice.” Maryam chuckled in fury. “She’s coming home.”
Platon looked up suddenly as if struck by a question, his eyebrows raised, “So it’s the Law that a builder can’t be a girl?” His smile looked like a dagger with two points. “Weren’t expecting that, were you?” Then he turned his back to her. “That’s cause you think I’m stupid.”
Years ago on the road outside Neapolis near an inn Maryam had seen some creature stride out wearing men’s clothes, short hair. The creature had made herself enormously fat as a disguise – fatness in men can make breasts.
The miracle birth was going to end up a freak, one of those few poor women in men’s dress limping through life and offering male gestures, short hair, pleading eyes and a thin mean mouth.
And no prophecy.
The Cub moved forward to pick up a metal-toothed bow-saw so that both he and little Yakob could use it.
“What are you doing?” The builder said to the Cub, and flicked a finger towards the back wall of his byre and said in a voice full of bile, “Hang that one up. Come back with the shorter saw.”
The child, so small for its age, wobbled off carrying the long two-handed saw.
Maryam and Babatha stood to witness. The Cub listened to the tekton tell it how stone could be sawed, and then tried to make a small cut.
“No, send-you-to-the-bottom-of-the-sea-to-be-eaten-by-fish. Shit! You’ll wreck the cut. You idiot!” The tekton strode forward, hands raised, then glanced at Maryam.
And stopped.
He would have hit the child. Aha, you see? Maryam knew that this man was dangerous. She was not wrong. Maryam shook Babatha’s hand. “I told you, Honey Bee.”
The Cub started to saw stone. White dust coated its face, and it pumped back and forth, back and forth. Maryam saw what the Cub wanted. It wanted to be strong like a man though it was not a man, to grow shoulders like a man.
“It’s not working,” said Babatha. “Can we go? I’m hungry.”
“Go home. Get away from my gate,” said the tekton.
The Cub walked out to her and said softly, “Ami, we will both be home tonight as always. I’ll bring food.”
“Do you really think you were born to chip away at stone or grind table legs?” Her smile was grim.
“I think we were meant to eat,” said the Cub. “I think we’re meant to work. I’m learning how to split stone and make beams of basalt. And the double rows of arches that hold up the beams.”
“You’re learning how to be beaten by a brute.”
The Cub was looking at her very intently. “Maybe I need to learn how that feels. If I am to understand all men.”
Maryam leaned forward to look into its face, and she kept her voice low. “You have a birthright beyond the wealth of nations. It is not yours to squander.”
The Cub spoke without the lips moving, its eyes sympathetic, and the words precise. “You are right, but it is utterly beyond you and anything you understand.” The child turned away.
“You do not turn your back on your mother.”
The Cub turned and walked into the courtyard backwards, facing her. “You who know who I am. Do you think I cannot see in both directions at once?”
The child closed the gate so she could not see. Maryam did not move. Eventually Yosef came with the cart. “Please come, Maryam. The day is nearly done. Our boys will be safe. Please come. Please?”
Maryam had been standing most of the day and was made of frail flesh. Yosef caught her as she sagged and he guided her back to the cart.
“Glad she’s not my wife!” The tekton called. “She’d drive an angel to despair.”
The cart rocked and wobbled its way home. I don’t know why you would listen to me, God of Yisrael. I don’t know why you gave me this burden to bear. But I need you to help me bear it. I need your help just to live and go on.
It was foolishness, desperation to pray for yourself. You prayed to God for the preservation of his people, to reinforce the covenant, for perhaps a good harvest, or to placate his rage. Why, why would God listen to you?
Then why come crashing into my life, God?
Why send me the child and then leave me unaided? Yes, I am asking your help, God. Help with your child that you planted in me.
The light through her eyelids was red, full of the blood of life. Light filtered through her blood, into her flesh.
And an answer.
This will not pass. It will go on. You must endure.
The cart rocked to a stop. Maryam opened her eyes and there was her life; the house that was missing one wall; the children; the meals to be cooked and the clothes to repair. It would not change, or change only slowly and she would ache for it one day when it was gone.
