HIM, page 2
Yosef’s breath smelled of the meat that was caught between his teeth, and of a dental abscess. On days when he didn’t ritually bathe for the Temple, a stink as sharp as a dagger thrust itself out of his armpits.
Holding his breath, Yoazar said, “We are deeply saddened by your troubles.”
Yosef was silent, cradling his belly as if proud of it. Two miracle births, thought Yoazar.
Yosef rejected wine, even much watered. Yoazar made a point of filling a pitcher of water from his little fountain. “As fresh as the rain. It is such a luxury when someone doesn’t have to go fetch it. And it means this house has living water for the miq’va.”
Yoazar hoped for a good response – Yosef was famously exact on purification for priests in the Temple.
But Yosef’s lips turned inward and his beard bristled. He was a smart man, and no smart man should ever be utterly discarded. Yoazar looked in the man’s black eyes and saw loneliness. Swallows screeched at each other over the water.
Yoazar poured him a cup. “A very interesting point you raised. You point out that in Eden, the animals are paired, but Adam not, and that what he envies is the companionship.”
Yosef’s pudding face was unmoved.
So Yoazar kept talking. “The point being that marriage was created for companionship. Not reproduction.”
“Exactly so. Creatures without death, why would they need to reproduce? How would they reproduce? Do you think angels copulate?” Yosef’s lip curled.
He hates sex, Yoazar thought. Some men are not male. “So. Marriage existed before Hawa disobeyed. It existed for companionship. Have I understood, Yosef?”
The man eyed him suspiciously. “If you understood, you would agree with me.”
“Maybe I do. At least in part. Yosef, I can’t do anything about the exile. It could have been worse, but Nazareth – there’s nothing there. Though there are worse things than living among simple people in the hills.”
Yosef chin was tilted upwards, as if to pour tears back into his eyes. “There’s nothing worse than being in exile from the Temple. Though of course if God was in Eden it is clear He cannot be only in the Temple. He is a God who covers the whole world.”
The man is a quagmire of original ideas.
“I will do what I can to make your life easier there. I will send you food, things to read. But you must help me out. Maryam, my wife’s niece, she’s confused, she’s with child. Would you marry her? For companionship?”
Like the lions of Eden.
“You want her in exile too,” said Yosef.
“I want her protected.” Though I can’t see you protecting anyone. “To be fair, a man of God should know how she says the child came about.”
There the Kohen Gadol paused. He could not bring himself to state such an offensive thing. “You know the heathen Egyptians, their goddess Isis? A god whispers in her ear and she magically conceives a child. Without a father.”
Something happened in Yosef’s face, a wide-eyed settling that Yoazar recognized as sympathy.
“You are a learned man, Yosef, a kind one. Maryam needs that. And, as I say, we will make sure that you both are comfortable. We’ll ease the exile in any way we can. There would be no question of your having to labour in the fields. You’ll have food. We will send scriptures and tracts. Sadly, of course, we cannot exchange letters or visit. It is exile. It will be hard. I’m sorry.”
On balance Yoazar thought that Yosef had been won over by the promise of not having to work. And the reading.
Maryam’s mother Avigayil was packing.
The forecourt was laid out with wooden ladles, sandals and two dusty pots. On the stones, Avigayil folded clothes and tablecloths, shaking her head. Throughout the packing she had hardly blinked, but stared as if her very eyes had gone pale from shock.
Maryam was counting plates – some of their fine Greek tableware – and knives.
“Oh, Maryam, Maryam.”
Maryam gave her a quick hug. “Ami. Everything comes with a cost. Feel the child, Ami. No. Feel my stomach. This child comes from God. This child will be something – it is not for me to say. This exile is welcome to me, Ami. It will give me a chance to pray, to contemplate, to study.”
“You talk like a man,” said her mother.
Maryam’s face wobbled as if shaking off a fly. “Tuh. Married to Yosef, I will have to BE a man. Oh, Ami! Come, come. For me that’s good.”
“You’ll have no friends. No one to talk to. No family nearby. And Yerusalam, Yerusalam will be forbidden to you. How can you get close to God when you can’t visit the Temple?”
This was getting repetitive. “God is everywhere, Ami.”
Avigayil’s cheeks wattled back and forth. “No, no, no Maryam, God rests only in the Temple. When the Temple of Solomon was destroyed the glory of God was seen moving towards the Mount of Olives.”
Maryam stopped folding floor cloths. “Ami. Why would God need to go to the Mount of Olives?”
“It’s obvious. It’s the second highest mountain and so is closer to Heaven.”
It was all Maryam could do to stop rolling her eyes. “Ami, could you go through my dresses for me? You know I have no taste. You pick those that you want me to wear. And whenever I wear them I can think – Ami picked these for me. After all, I no longer have to dress to get a husband.”
“Oh, Maryam!”
“And practical things too for a rural life. Ropes, towels, hammers, lamps. I rely on you, Ami.” Maryam gave her mother another hug that steered her towards the staircase. “You are my good practical mother. Give the rest of my things to Rut and Eenie, or to the poor.”
“You won’t be allowed to write to me!” Maryam’s mother had clenched her two shaking hands together and had begun to cry.
“Ami. I have nothing to say!” Maryam’s smile felt like the wings of a dove ascending. Her mother laboured her way up the external staircase, hand on the wall.
A cart rumbled into the courtyard, bearing Yosef and his goods. The cart had been loaned by Yoazar who had also sent his servant Mikael to drive it. It was nearly empty, except for the scrolls of The Miq’ra.
Maryam shook her head. “Ah, Yosef, Yosef.”
He’d brought no furniture. Not one table, no dining couches. Did he eat on the floor?
“I’m not one of these women who care about such things. But…” Maryam had to laugh. “We have been told the house is empty. We’ll need something on which to serve food, something to sit on, and something to cook with. Bedding. And it’s all got to get into that cart.”
But Maryam admired him – Yosef added up. He was whole – lazy, obsessive, observant of the Temple purity laws and otherwise unwashed, but he cared about scripture. Only scripture maybe. There were worse things.
Yoazar’s servant spoke with a voice like boulders rolling down a hill. “My master has furniture. What do you need?”
Everything.
Maryam had to list them. “Dining couches. A central table. Folding tables. My aunt has already sent us hangings for doorways. Bedding. Amphorae, a cauldron.”
Yosef hung his head, nibbling his beard.
They unloaded what little was in the cart; a few cushions and old clothes and Yosef’s scrolls. And his Shabbat lamp, in the old style made of fine black clay. His fingers trembled with worry over the delicacy of the parchment and papyrus. Then the cart thundered its way back out of the gate.
Avigayil came back with the dresses. “Good day to you, Yosef barLevi.” She sounded as if she had a toothache.
It’s what you said to strangers. It was funny how much Yosef dismayed Maryam’s mother. The reverse of the desirable son-in-law: poor, smelly, ugly, no prospects and in exile for being too wrong-headed to be tolerated.
“Ami! These are beautiful! My blue embroidery on blue. I don’t suppose we have any smocks and aprons to spare? I will be making my own bread.”
“You’ll dress like a servant.”
“There, there, Ami. Aprons and work clothes, please.”
“Not even a dowry. With child. No one knowing who the father is.” Avigayil start to sob. “Marrying him.” Her mother waved a horrified hand in Yosef’s direction.
It was such an insulting way to talk about your son-in-law that Maryam could not stop herself chuckling. “Ami-dear. Your mouth! Work clothes, Ami. Something that I can stain with soup.”
Off went Avigayil heaving with sobs. She had to lean on the door lintel to keep herself upright.
Then Yosef began to sob too.
Perfect. There was perfection in how far this was from anything those two wanted.
Maryam had kept talking to Aunt Tara for weeks about how clever and original Yosef’s teaching was. An intelligent woman would have understood after three sentences beginning with the word “Yosef”. Yoazar thought it was his idea too. They all felt brilliantly clever. She patted her tablecloths flat as if they were her family’s heads.
The only person who was getting what she wanted was Maryam.
On the road, Yosef walked stoutly beside the mule.
His chest was puffed out as if he was guiding the cart and protecting Maryam. Mikael was actually guarding them – a big, broad-shouldered brute whom her uncle trusted.
Within a league, Yosef’s soft feet were blistered. Maryam got down from the cart to let him ride.
“Just. Just for a while. We’ll keep swapping,” he said, ashamed. “How can your feet stand it?”
“I had to walk to market every day.” Maryam sauntered. As a young female person, Maryam had scandalized her family by insisting on walking over the hills unattended.
Yoazar’s man halted the mule and glared at Yosef. “The lady is with child.” Mikael looked ready to throw Yosef down.
Maryam’s laughter was bird-like. “Let him be, poor man.” She held Mikael with her eyes. “He’s not up to any of this.” The servant shook his head. Maryam clucked at the mule. “Come on. Sooner we get going, the sooner we arrive.” Maryam began to lead them. “Nothing will hurt this child.”
CHAPTER 3
PARTHENOGENESIS
It wasn’t as if Nazareth was on top of a mountain range.
Just a hill, quite hot when they arrived. The village was a day’s walk from the lake – the ocean itself was almost as close. Trees survived only near houses or along the terraces where people watered them. Tamarisk, olives, a few dusty palms looking like brokeback old men.
Other than that, white dust and white stones with sharp edges. The track wound its zigzag way up through terraces growing mostly barley. The walled steps looked like a staircase for a god.
Their house of exile, owned by another cousin who rented out the land, had been abandoned for a few years. There was no courtyard or outer wall, and most of the lower floor was a kind of byre with only three walls, entirely open on one side. It was a barn.
“All this light,” said Maryam and gestured to the missing wall. “In summer you’ll be able to read until sunset.”
The floor was exposed bedrock, bare but for the floury dust and grey straw. The stove was good, enclosed in a cone of fieldstone. No chimney, but the cone merged with the wall and belched the smoke outside the house. Instead of an external staircase only an internal ladder led to the two upstairs rooms. There was no cistern and the village well was many houses away. If there had ever been a store of firewood or charcoal, it had all been taken.
Mikael helped them clear the old hay and sweep the floors. Rats scurried out of the straw. Only when it was clean did Maryam begin to unpack the food.
“We have the cheese. We have the olives. We have the bread.” Tara had also packed limestone jars of flour, salted meat, salted fish and an amphora of oil. “Tonight we can eat cold.”
In winter, they would have to abandon the byre except for cooking. It was too open to the hillside wind. The upstairs rooms were small enough to be lined with the tapestries that Tara had given them. Those rooms would be warm.
That night Mikael ate with them, and then unbidden unrolled his blanket onto the floor of the byre.
Maryam and Yosef went to bed as the last of the sun sank. They had some oil for lamps, but they didn’t want to waste it. They fumbled up the ladder in the very last of the light. Yosef paused half in and half out of the upper story.
“I’ll be a very good father,” he said. “I like children.”
“I’m sure you will be.”
“I would be happy if we had more children.”
“Oh. Well, we’ll have to have sex to do that.”
He looked agonized, glanced downstairs, whispered. “We could do something else.”
“Could we. What would that be?”
He squirmed, pulled himself up, spoke in a voice like the wind. “I could give you the seed.”
Maryam burst out laughing. “Oh, Yosef.”
“I mean not that. I make it and then. Hand it to you.”
That just made Maryam laugh more. The series of images it presented to her. “Well, that’s a possibility, yes.”
“I will take very good care of the baby.”
She believed that – he sounded so solemn. And she mustn’t be cruel or hard. She looked at his poor round perplexed face, as boggled-eyed as a frog and found that she was fond of it.
“I know you will,” she said. “Thank you.” She cupped his hairy chin in her hand and pointed to his room and then to hers. He looked relieved, which made her laugh more. Yosef made her laugh.
There was another exile living within walking distance.
He insisted on being called Raba, Great One. Like Yosef, he was famous for his learning, wild ideas and a tendency to indignation. Unlike Yosef, he actually had followers, other Perisayya from places south of Yerusalam. It was a long way for them to travel.
A village boy was sent to call on Yosef, a skinny lad of about twelve years. He gawped at the exiles, couldn’t speak, and finally gabbled out, “Rabuli says come visit him.” Then he turned to run.
Though pregnant, Maryam lunged after him and seized his arm. “Where does your master live, boy? What’s your name? Speak up. Your name?”
He stammered it out.
Maryam said, “Yehushua. Fine.” God preserves. “Yehushua. Sit, have some water and some bread. Then go calmly and tell the teacher that we will be happy to pay respects.”
No time of invitation – this teacher she suspected, simply wanted someone to attend upon him. “Tell him we will visit tomorrow morning.”
After the boy left, she muttered: “I wonder if anyone else calls him Rabuli?”
The next morning, Maryam and Yosef visited.
They found the gate to the Raba’s house open and walked into his courtyard and waited. This house did have all of its walls and the courtyard was walled too, shutting out any breeze. The sun rose until it was too hot to wait any longer, and they went home.
They went back in the evening of the same day and waited outside the house, looking at its closed doors and its two narrow windows. No one moved past them to see if they were there.
“It’s getting dark,” murmured Yosef. They got back home with no food and went straight to bed.
Yosef said, “I think I remember who he is now. Achaikos the Perisa. I don’t understand how they can be the ones to argue for more flexible interpretation and then be the ones who never stop quoting rules. Ones that, frankly, they’ve made up.”
“How strange to invite us and just leave us standing there.”
“Oh, we will have done something wrong when we arrived. What we wore, the hour, the day. I have no patience.”
A flash of steel. Maryam liked that.
The boy Yehushua came again. This time Yosef strode out to meet him. “Please tell this teacher that my wife is expecting a child. It is difficult, even dangerous, for her to visit. Especially to stand waiting in the hot sun. We look forward to meeting. But perhaps after the birth of the child.”
The boy looked down, embarrassed perhaps at talk of pregnancy. Maryam found herself stroking his head.
They had to live here, find a way. Maryam asked, “Who is your father, child?”
“His name’s Platon.” A Greek name. “He’s a tekton.” Greek word. A builder.
“There’s work here?”
The boy shook his head. “In Sepphoris. Or there was. He got in a fight.” The boy sighed. Maybe fights were a problem.
Sepphoris, the new town only an hour’s walk away. About six years before it had been burnt in the revolt. Now, lots of rebuilding to be done. Herod had moved in a new population, Greek-speakers but devout. Their new houses were all said to have ritual baths. Maryam was relieved – the boy’s family would be prosperous.
“How do people worship here?”
“My father built a meeting house. It’s stone. He made a carving of the Ark of the Covenant.”
“He’s a talented man,” said Maryam.
The boy almost sniggered. “He calls himself a Naggar.” In the Common Tongue Naggar meant Learned Man, or a skilled man so it was used for craftsman as well.
The boy nodded at the scrolls. “You’re a Naggar too. A real one.”
The Nazaredai only knew that Maryam and Yosef were some kind of criminals who had displeased the powerful.
The couple had no money to buy firewood, olives or smiles. There was no reason to interact with them.
Maryam felt mean but she couldn’t help but think that these people were not really Beni Yisrael.
At the well, she would greet them in a way that she was sure would have got at least a polite response back home. These women pulled their headscarves across their faces, as if she were a man behaving improperly. They would fall silent when she approached. Or, worse, sometimes they started to run all at once, sandals flapping, sounding like startled birds taking wing. Yehudai women would have been ashamed to be both so timid and so rude.
The food here was different. Tiny black fish were bent into a circle and stuck on frameworks of twigs to bake in the sun. Covered with flies. It would be like eating smelly shoes held together by bones.
Their bread was unleavened, flat, translucent. They left it to dry on the same bare rock that their animals walked over.
