HIM, page 27
It was almost as though he always had been able to see; as if his whole past life had been altered.
The eklesia marched on, still streaming water.
The Tyropoean valley was theirs. Once the vanguard of their procession had passed under one bridge, Yoanna’s people would desert it, scampering up onto the high road and running ahead onto the the next bridge. The cheering, the waving, the singing never ceased. Yoanna’s cheeks seemed to swell, go more plump and red. You’ve done this, Maryam thought, you planned this all.
The roaring of the crowd came in waves, and made Maryam feel that it could lift her up off the ground and sweep her off to the highest tower on the Hasmonean palace.
People above them on the main road tapped each other’s arms and pointed. That’s him, that’s the man who raises the dead. Some raised eyebrows or thinned their lips in anger. Others shrugged: he doesn’t look much. People began to keep pace with them to get a better look.
Not all the noises were friendly. On the high road, yobs cupped hands around mouths and shouted insults, their eyes enraged. Men in white linen shook their heads or amused each other making monkey-like gestures. Others scowled, talking with each other earnestly and twiddling their beards. Some stupid kids were bouncing up and down as if crazy, mocking them.
But, around them, Maryam saw either elation bursting out of people’s faces or hollowed-eyed awe, perhaps even fear.
The Rock caught up to them, his face split like lightning by a smile, Shushan on his back. Yakob, Maryam, the Migdali clustered around them. The Migdali and Maryam for no other reason than to vent, howled and hugged each other, and all the family began to jump up and down in unison.
From somewhere, those bloody Kana’im began to shout, idiotically, “Hail the King of the Yehudai!” Yakob’s face was crossed by worry. A crowd of this size could mean trouble.
The general noise seemed to grow, become almost hysterical, bellowing something almost angrily at them. Perhaps the cry came from opponents?
Maryam couldn’t make the chant out at first. Hissssss eee awhah?
Hossshhh nyah?
“It’s not Common.” Maryam realized. “It’s liturgy.”
Hosi-ana?
She dug deep trying to remember where it might have come from in scripture. Maryam repeated it, shouting to Yakob, the Migdali leaning in. Yes, in the liturgy, Hosi-ana.
It was as if that focussed the cry. Thousands began to chant clearly over and over Hosi-ana! Hosi-ana! The hills of Yerusalam resounded with it. Maryam looked at Yakob, and her son was nearly in tears. “Hosnee yar?” he said. “What does it mean?” Yoanna joined them, leaning in to hear Maryam.
“It’s in one of the Mizmor.” She felt a chill run up her arm. “Only one. It means something like ‘help us’. It’s plural, a request. Please save us?”
Tears of confusion slipped down Yakob’s cheeks. “Save them? Save them from what?”
Even Maryam was shaken, partly by Yakob’s tears. She remembered him at ten, weeping at the sight of the Temple – perhaps that had not been timidity even then. Maybe Yakob could sense the Spirit move? Or something like?
The sound of the shouting slammed into her like a fist, made her jump, and she herself felt almost afraid. “I don’t know. Sickness? Their lives?” She thought of her own life. She blurted out a chuckle. “Everything?”
The Migdali seized Maryam’s wrist. “They understand. They just know.”
Maryam had to laugh in something like elation as well as terror. “Even we don’t understand! How can they?”
The Migdali pulled Maryam to her. “He will save us from God.”
The riverbed ended and opened up at the foot of the Mount.
The eklesia merged with the Pesach crowds – a wall of pilgrims lined up unmoving on the steps of the southern entrance. Some of the Calling Out were waiting for them, a river of them, perhaps originally to make sure the Son had a clear passage. But the press of people was too great and that channel had closed. The rest of the Calling Out surged forward to greet them.
The sheer noise and numbers bewildered Maryam and made her feet uncertain where the ground was. She stumbled, nearly twisting her ankle. The donkey danced backwards in fear, the Migdali wrestling with its reins. The little boy who had first shaded the Son joined them grinning, still balancing his palm frond on his thigh. They edged their way through people.
Old women, dazed young men, flushed girls, and ox-faced peasant men pressed in around them. Their faces looked both surprised and delighted and they reached for them. One woman pressed her face against the Son’s left foot, weeping, overcome.
Wild with breathless emotion, the crowd turned and began touching anyone who was with the Son – Maryam, Yakob, or the Rock with Shushan on his back. People shouted, “The Family of the Son!”
A woman with eyes wizened shut as if blasted by sunlight seized Maryam’s hand and kissed it. She looked so much like Idra back home that Maryam stroked her face. “That’s his Mum,” someone said. How did they know that?
Their progress stopped.
The Son stood on the donkey’s back. This was a trick for athletes, not someone who had never ridden before. But the beast stayed both firm and placid as he rose to his feet.
The crowd knew or guessed who this was. He emitted a piecing cry that muffled theirs. The eklesia at least fell silent though the roar of the holy day still battered back and forth up the alleyways and hillsides.
The Son gave them a new four-note tune that scanned: Hoseeeee AHHHH na. Hosi, Hosi Ana.
It was a beautiful tune. He sang it again, and rolled his hands, and tried to get them to sing it too. The people made the usual murmured ruffling sound when people are uncertain about notes and words.
“Sing out,” he cried. “You know the Lord can hear each one of you. You know the Lord sees you in each and every moment.” And he sang again, and added a new phrase.
Save us please, our Father in Heaven.
The song swelled, quoting from a Mizmor. The stone the builder threw away has become the cornerstone.
A lake of people extended placidly all the way to the mouth of the southern entrance, its staircase hewn out of rock. Towering overhead as if threatening to topple, the Royal Stoa occupied the entire Southern end of the Mount.
The Son began to grin. He got the merry, excited look he used to have with his gang back in Nazareth.
“We are going to the Temple. And all of you will get me there.” The grin got wider and suddenly he began to chirrup, a silly, loose-shouldered kind of song. “You’re going to carry me to the Temple.” He sang it several times. It did not catch on but people heard it. “You’re going to carry me to the Temple.”
And then he stepped off the donkey’s back, smiling, pleased, as if anticipating a joke. He stepped onto raised hands.
As if he weighed a whisper, he simply walked across the crowd as if it were the surface of Lake Tiberias. The crowd roared, hooted, ululated. Those on the Temple steps spun around in surprise. He stepped from one upturned palm to the other.
The roar of the crowd focused into the new song, rising and falling. Hosi-ana!
Then as if lightly disembarking from a boat, he stepped onto the first of the tunnel steps. Hand over his heart, he bowed to them all. The eklesia cheered, and the Son turned to climb the southern stairs.
The eklesia followed, one orderly step at a time.
Rut suddenly drooped, hanging from Maryam’s hand, a dragging weight. Maryam also felt weighed down. Yakob knelt and scooped up Rut. He began to sing to her the song “I’m going to carry you to the Temple.” She giggled and hid her face in his beard. The crowd moved in unison, one slow step at a time.
With Yakob’s help, Maryam finally got to the top of the stairs.
By then it was getting late. The Temple shone in the last of the sun, white and gold blazing, as if the spirit of God glowed out of it.
In the blue shadow of the Stoa steps, cast sideways over the Place of Gentiles, the Son was preaching.
Somehow as always his voice carried. Exhausted, Maryam fumbled for her bag, for her reeds, her inks. The Migdali took the tiny glassware out of Maryam’s shaking hand and pulled its stopper for her. The Migdali said, “Matt got here ahead of us. He’ll be getting this down, too.”
Maryam tried to listen and tame the rebellious parchment at the same time.
Someone shouted at the Son asking by whose authority he spoke. “By whose authority did Yehonnan the Anointer speak?” It was a clever answer and people chuckled. Yehonnan had been a Southerner, killed by a Northern king. Who here would dare say the Anointer had no authority? Though he anointed with water and not perfumed oils.
Maryam’s cut reed still had not taken the ink. She tapped it again in the glass, and began to write, though the ink had gone somewhat yellow.
Yehush said, “Whoever believes in me does not believe in me only, but the one who sent me. I have come into the world as a light so that no one who believes in me should live in darkness.”
The kinship he was claiming with God worried Maryam. Had he been this bold before?
“If someone hears my words, but doesn’t keep them, I don’t judge that person. I didn’t come to judge the world but to save it.”
The eklesia roared like one great beast, and began to sing again, those three notes, Hosi-ana.
But Maryam soured. She didn’t want a milksop God who didn’t judge. She wanted a God who would avenge; who saw what was hidden, what Miltiades had done to her daughters and strike him sterile or blister his balls with cankers.
And along with the very next phrase came that God.
“There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words. The very words I have spoken will condemn them at the Last Day.”
And the cheers rose up. Yes! People’s faces were joyful because the Son promised them that God was always with them, knew them, saw their sufferings. The people yearned for that love, and that vindication.
They wanted revenge.
Maryam corrected herself. Call it justice.
Cold night did not disperse the Calling Out.
Some of the followers took off clothing and piled it in the place of Gentiles to make a fire. They looked as if they had been made anew, in a new Eden. The light from the clothes-fire flickered, red sparks swirled up into the sky. The singing swelled.
Yoanna stood. “I think this is going to go on all night.” Rut lay asleep across Maryam’s lap. “I’ll take her back,” said Yakob.
“I’ll show you the way,” said Yoanna, suddenly gentle and soft. She touched Yakob’s arm. “We’ll go together.” Yakob and Yoanna?
“I’m staying,” said Maryam.
“Ah, Ami, of course you are.” Yoanna chuckled and hugged her. Yoanna was being someone else again. People with many selves rule the world. Yoanna’s voice was warm and sleepy. Yakob left carrying Rut, cradling her as if he wished she were his daughter. The three of them were swallowed by the night.
Maryam stayed to join in the singing. Stray priests sucked their teeth with disapproval, but no matter. This was pure goodness. Unclothed, Andreas, BarTalemi, even giant Shemenolo had no fat under their skin. They were as lean as barked twigs. The fire was warm and sent up sparks as if moving stars.
Fully sixty of the eklesia spent all night in the empty Court of Gentiles, singing Hosni Ana or Happy Are or Our Father. Maryam pressed her cheek sleepily into the shoulder of Andreas, whom she did not even particularly like. She rolled to look up at the stars, and rested her head on the thigh of the giant Shem. He snored. The Migdali giggled and Maryam rolled next to her and the two of them sang, the Migdali trying to teach her Our Father. Maryam always got the words wrong.
“This is love,” said the Son. But there were no parables or preaching.
The sky greyed, and Shem the Canali volunteered that he knew the way back to the house where they were staying. There were still stars overhead, pale. They walked down the rough way that both was and was not a river, out through the Gate of Water, and all the way up along the Valley of Kidron, listening to the creek laugh. It must have been an hour’s walk, but Maryam’s mind was dimmed into chuckling forgetfulness.
She found her way to the roof of some house in which they were all staying, and in swelling dawn, she saw her son Yakob, protectively half-mooned in an arch around little Rut. Maryam joined them, sinking into sleep, hearing roosters, and singing a one-note whining song that in her mind was the sound of goodness.
CHAPTER 26
THERE WAS A BOY
The Son of Adam preached on the steps of the Stoa every day for a week.
The crowds were never again as huge but, still, some hundred gathered every day.
They were the old, the destitute, the scholars, and members of the old eklesia, most of them now camped out over the brows of the hills or staying in windowless rooms along the road.
The new songs became popular. The Son evidently loved singing them, swinging his arms with bunched fists, “The stone the Naggar threw away is now the cornerstone.” A new version of the tune umpitty-pumped cheerfully.
At night, they returned to the house across Kidron. It was not fashionable, but it was huge and comfortable, multi-roomed and multi-floored. Normally it housed some of Yoanna’s household staff and her uncle when he was in the city on business.
Her uncle was an old man but, unburdened by wife, children, or worries he somehow gave a youthful effect – wistful, slightly lost, and kind. “Oh, so many new names.” His mouth did a thin sideways downturn when Yoanna wondered aloud if Maryam and her family could sleep in his room. “Maybe that would better with the little one.”
“I’d have to move my things,” he said blinking. Yoanna laughed. “Don’t worry Uncle, you’ll keep your room.” She adored him. She sat next to him on the same dining couch all through dinner, with an arm through his. “When I was twelve, when I was sixteen, this man saved my life.” Even the Migdali looked on her with kind eyes then.
The first few nights in the house had an air of congratulation. The progress had worked – word had spread. The preaching at the Temple was still a success, relatively. The Stoa was for commerce not the spirit, but there was a reasonable attendance. Shem, Shushan, Andreas and many others who were staying elsewhere would crowd into the house for dinner and there were many stories from the road. A sandal stuck in the mud at Yarden that washed up clean on the opposite shore. A pigeon that had plopped on someone’s hair. Smoke and laughter and lamplight.
Yoanna lowered herself onto Maryam’s couch. “Ami,” she said warmly. She asked about the day’s teaching.
Maryam was thoughtful. “He keeps saying he’s going to die.”
Yoanna gave her head a quick shake and swallowed her wine. “That won’t happen.”
He is God. You are not.
Yoanna held up a hand. “I’ve talked to the Kohen Gadol. If there is any kind of trouble they’ll just exile him for a few years. You’ve seen what’s happening here.” Her eyes glowed. “People in all the schools love him. He’s uniting the Beni Yisrael, but more than that he’s uniting us with all the peoples, the Sidonai, Greeks, Canalai all joining in the worship.”
You do not have the Holy Spirit. I don’t either. “He raised the dead. That is not of this world.”
“The Kingdom of Heaven will be the worship of the true God here.”
Maryam was firm. “You haven’t heard him. He keeps saying he’s going to be killed.”
Yoanna’s nose went sideways and she sniffed. “He needs to stop saying that.” She stood up and went to talk to the Son. The Son turned his face up at her but his smile looked blurred. Then he pressed his hands together and looked at Yoanna earnestly as she spoke.
The Migdali stood next to Maryam, put a hand on her shoulder, and said, “Yoanna’s got another plan. That one always does.” Maryam had no answer.
The day after that, Maryam woke late.
Her hip hurt. She had not slept during the night and so had drifted off to sleep as dawn rose. She needed help down the external staircase from the upper floor.
It would soon be Seder and she worried about how they would be able to observe it. Today was the day to select the lamb and if Yoanna did not provide, none of them had any money for it. Finally in the afternoon, Maryam swung her bad leg down the valley road and back up – so far, so hot – to get to the Place of Gentiles.
There she found the crowd divided and shouting. Stall-owners from the Stoa were raising their fists, and shaking whips or cudgels at the eklesia.
Maryam recognized Kana’im among them. They bounced up and down into each other’s arms, smiles fierce, eyes wild. “He’s done it!” one of them shouted.
Mattit-yahu ducked and weaved his way towards Maryam.
“Trouble,” she said.
He only nodded, and with his back shielding his scroll, unrolled the clips and indicated she should read it. The Yehush-saids were full of insults, calling people thieves and robbers. The Son had said the Temple itself was infested with snakes.
“He tried to drive them out,” Matt murmured.
“Who?”
“The market people selling doves. Or scrolls.”
The Son kept getting wilder. “Was he talking about dying again?” Maryam asked. Matt just nodded yes.
Every part of Maryam felt weary, but the ache really did settle in her hands. “I’ve stopped writing down such things.”
Matt continued muttering, “Afterwards – he took a whip to them. A whip! He’s never hurt anyone before. He said afterwards. ‘They are not here to worship. Why should they live when I will die?’”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know. He said he wanted to be alone.”
Maryam scanned the crowd, her heart aching. Her child really did think he was going to be killed. Shemenolo was standing between two merchants and young men she knew to be Kana’im. The Rock was keeping the two sides apart.
