HIM, page 7
“I can do that, yes.” Mikael looked pleased.
Yosef looked at the Perisa. “Your… big… mouth.”
Yehushua leapt up onto the cart. “Let’s unload now, Abi.” The child was always bright and chirpy around Yosef. When other adults were around he tended to act younger than usual. The smile might have a mocking edge to it, as Yosef was never anything other than taciturn with him. Yosef nodded. Yehushua started to pass down the heavy sacks to him as if it were a game.
Maryam strode out carrying a pitcher. She passed Yosef who was staggering under a sack of barley. He said, “Bad news my dear. Your uncle is not well.”
Maryam poured water for Mikael, who drank it all in one long gurgling draft. She chuckled and poured him another. Yosef came back, smelling of straw and sweat. “I can’t go to Yerusalam,” she said mildly. “I’m with child again.”
Mikael passed her back the cup and his smile was tight, his eyes fond. “Good to see you well.”
“We are all well, thanks to you, Mikael. And to the Kohen Gadol. And God, of course.” Maryam took back the cup. “You have saved us many times over. Tell my aunt Tara and the man of God the most exalted Yoazar, how much we owe them. How we miss them.”
The servant said yes, deep voiced, nodding as if the funeral was already in progress.
The teacher began to dance with frustration. Mikael turned to him. “You heard what these good people bade me. There is nothing here for you.” Mikael lumbered towards the teacher, his hands curling. “Now, go on. Get away.”
The smile had not quite faded from the teacher’s face.
Mikael continued. “There is no one here to protect you. You are an exiled criminal. No one will care if you die.” There was fury in the servant’s face.
The expression on the teacher’s face almost said I’m sorry. He turned to go.
Mikael went back to unpacking and the cart was soon unloaded. Maryam cooked the newly delivered barley with dried herbs. And they ate, and learned that the Kohen Gadol had a fever and that he spoke with a roughened voice.
In the morning, Mikael refused food. “Save your sustenance. You will need it for yourselves.” He gathered up the reins of the mule. He paused, and then passed Yosef the reins, mule and cart.
“Keep these,” Mikael said, and turned, and walked back to Yerusalam.
The servant did not come back.
Yoazar must have died, but they could not be sure for there was no news and no food either. No more food would come.
Half a month later, Yosef held his head. “What will we do?”
The Cub produced a chisel that he had found in a corner of the house. Later he passed Yosef a hammer he had made from a rusty head found between houses, joined to a milky branch of cedar.
The Cub said, “We have a cart. We’ll collect water and firewood for the village, and then trade. We’ll go down to the valley and come back with more firewood.”
“We have no skills,” said Yosef.
“You must have faith, Abi. We can learn skills.”
The next day, the Cub and Yakob were down the slopes with the cart, shouting, “Firewood, firewood for sale or trade.” They came home with olives and some cheese.
The two eldest went out every day. Sometimes they snared a pigeon. Though he had caught it, the Cub refused to eat it.
Sometimes they worked in fields or went to ruined barns to salvage stones to repair the terrace walls. The brothers would come home torn, dusty, and exhausted.
The brothers had a great capacity for both play and work. It was fun to climb trees, glean fields, or offer to sweep and clean houses. They were demon gleaners especially of barley or wheat. That sometimes caused anger. The pair of them were so swift and so thorough that folk complained that they left nothing for others in need.
A large woman who hardly left her house lumbered into their byre. “There’s others what hunger. They leave nowt!”
“Ask the widow of Talemi,” said the Cub, firm faced. “She can’t glean. We always give a measure to her.” The barley they had gleaned, in old sacks in their little keep, was sometimes all their family had to eat.
Sometimes the house would explode with merriment, Maryam’s two eldest children running and chasing each other across its roof, down its ladder.
Maryam would look on in wonder, and try to find in herself any such capacity. Why run, laugh, where did the jokes come from?
Laughter could occupy Yakob’s whole face. “So the ladder fell and both of us were still up the tree!”
“I kept shouting, and old Ezra came hobbling by and looked up and said, ‘What strange birds in the tree.’ And walked on. I’m saying. Sir, sir, please, the ladder!”
Sometimes the boys would wrestle, spurting with laughter, and they’d roll over and lie next to each other, panting, catching their breath, laughing again, and then one of them would suddenly lunge and the tussle would start rolling again. Maryam caught herself musing on the natural violence of boys.
And then remember.
Yosef would sit in the byre with his back to the missing wall so light would fall on his scrolls. But the light was no longer enough for him to read. His eyes were bad. They even looked swollen and sometimes something shivered deep inside them.
The Cub would ask him, “Abi, how are you?”
“Who am I if I cannot read?”
The Cub started coming back while there was enough light and time to read the scriptures aloud for Yosef. Yehushua found himself performing the book of Doniel, included in The Ketuvim, part written in the Common Tongue.
“Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.”
The child stopped. His face went still; his smile was small and hard; the sharp little nose looked like it would peck at the text. “So. People rise from death and live forever.”
Yosef waved both his hands. “No, no, no, no, we talked about that. It is one of those anomalies. This book, it’s a late addition, they almost didn’t include it. There is no point getting too precise over this point or that point. The scriptures are,” he paused. “Sometimes wrong.”
Saying that was one reason Yosef was in exile.
“People die,” said Yosef. “Believe it. They stay in the ground, dead. That, that passage. It’s something someone put in. Just once. I can’t think why. Nowhere else in all of The Miq’ra does it say anything else like that at all. Nowhere else in all of the scriptures.”
“Except for Yesha’ayahu.” The Cub quoted. “Your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise. O Dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy!”
Yosef blinked, face slack. He had just been out-quoted.
The child’s eyes were focused somewhere else. “It’s a prophecy. It is not true now. But it will be.”
Maryam came upon Yosef, hiding on the blind side of the house, hunched and covering his face.
“Are you ill?” she said and he turned his head.
“What is it?” she asked and pulled his hands away and there was a snail-trail of tears down his face.
“I’m useless!” he sputtered.
“No, no,” Maryam said, and she meant it in her heart, though her head was thinking I know what you mean.
“All I can do is quote or preach and even then no one listens or cares. You’ll star-har-ve.”
She hugged him.
“Our boys,” he said, burying his face in her shoulder. “Our little girl.” He made a heaving sound as he surrendered to grief.
“Hush. We’ll be fine.”
He calmed, straightened up, and wiped his face. “I’ve got to think of something.”
Yosef did. He had the idea of using the cart and the mule to carry people back and forth to Sepphoris.
The men of the village jerked with scorn at first. “We got feet. We can bloody walk,” they said with sneering smiles.
“And you carry everything on your backs? You, Platon, you have to wait for them to come to you for your stone. I could take it to them direct for you. And your women would love not to have to carry water or cloth or firewood.”
“How much it cost then?”
“Food. Bread if you have it, but onions, dried fruit, a dove’s egg. Something.”
“How do we get back?”
Yosef glanced at them, batted his eyelids as a way of disguising that he thought they were stupid. “I just drive back and forth all day. You wait and I’ll be along.”
“It beats walking,” one of them said.
And it did. Wives, children, menstruating women wanting a miq’va, deliveries – sometimes they just asked Yosef to collect something for them. He was an errand boy, a child-minder, a man to drive, but a certain light came into his eyes.
It was a soft and sleepy look that Maryam recognized as relief and gratitude – it made Yosef look kindly, rather than puffed out with indignation. He found he could joke with people as he drove them. The sun burned him the honey colour of the inside of pine bark. With little food (sometimes he didn’t eat so the children could) and lots of activity all day, he somehow merged with someone else. He went from fat to thin over the course of a year or two.
Yosef thin was a different person. He didn’t seem to bristle. He had huge wounded eyes that made him look like a slaughtered animal but when he smiled, those eyes took on the shape of smiles too. How can the slit of the eyes turn upward? But they did, and that alone was enough to make the women, who loved to go to Sepphoris, trust this sweet-faced man to drive them.
But they said to each other with pride, “He’s a Levite, you know.”
“Yeah. But he’s not proud is he?”
And the wives would say. “He’s a lovely man, and I won’t hear a word against him.”
And the men would shake their heads. “No one was saying a word against him. You’re bold enough now but you said nowt when he first come here.”
“I didn’t know him then, did I?”
“His wife’s a weird one though.”
“Aye. It’s what comes of educating women.”
“Their lad’s a right little bugger.”
“Haha! Into everything.”
“But work? Tiny little thing, but you see him go repair the terraces. He goes right at it.”
“Aye. He’s good un.”
“But as weird looking as his Mum.”
“Leave them alone, them folk in the South, they threw them out without a shekel.”
“Just as well they come here then. With us.” The villagers were rather proud of their own kindness.
Almost imperceptibly, Nazareth had become home.
Death came to Yoazar in his own bed, next to his wife.
He couldn’t breathe. He tried hauling in air but nothing happened. It felt as if his lungs were full of gravel. He kicked and waved and couldn’t speak; his wife wouldn’t rouse. He realized he had not much time and so much wanted to see her. He whined and kicked and she spun, angry at first, then said his name, and he used the last air in his throat saying, “My God.”
Then his life tumbled like a wall, separating into constituents; his youth running in the streets, playing wheel-spin.
His friends Zika and Sayah, then that saucy little thing Elis, always Elis, and his three sons, and the placing of the domed hat on his head, and the sacred, simple mysteries but then slipping back into his own lovely courtyard.
His birds. His fountain. His three lumbering sons.
And then how strange. Walking to him out of the mist of memory as parts of his mind were blown out like lamps, from the light that was left, still alive with light, came Maryam’s child, the weird one, glowing, holding out a hand.
CHAPTER 9
OF THE EARTH AS WELL AS THE STARS
At twelve a girl was mature.
A boy had to wait until he was thirteen. At twelve the Cub announced: “I want to go to the Temple.”
Maryam paused, and then took the child’s chin in her hand. “You want to do that? You know you could not go beyond the Woman’s Court.”
The child looked away, muttered something. Maryam couldn’t quite hear but she was sure the eldest had said. “Men can go there too.”
“That’s true, both can go, but my child. Eh? Look at me. You – you – will never be able to go into the Temple itself. You know that. Look at me. It would be ritually unclean.”
In the dimmest of voices, the child said, “I’m not bleeding yet.”
Over her porridge, Babatha looked up, as still as an animal in hiding.
“It’s nothing to do with a woman’s blood.” Maryam took both the child’s hands in hers. It was such sadness, having to explain. “You…” her voice broke apart in a mingled chuckle and half sob. “Us. They don’t let us in.”
Maryam glanced at Babatha. You too, daughter. You might as well know this now.
The child’s face looked closed as if mouth and eyes were doors. “I need to go.”
Maryam relented, and dropped the hands. “Then we will go. At twelve. The age of a girl. That means you go as a girl.”
The child whispered. “I need to go to the Temple.”
Maryam and Yosef discussed it. The Romans had ruled Yehud for the last two years and the two Herods had no jurisdiction there. Not only had Yoazar died, but also some of the judges who had exiled Yosef.
Yosef stroked his beard. “It’s probably safe to go. Nobody remembers us now. Are they going to have records at the gates? Are they going to ask is that Yosef the Levite who was exiled? What will we do with Yakob?”
Maryam shrugged. “Take him too? He’s not an infant. The babies we can leave with neighbours.”
There was a stirring in the corner.
“The Temple,” said Yosef, and his eyes went out of focus, as if he were already seeing it on the hill.
“We’ll do it,” said Maryam and felt a little tickle start to grow.
They would take the cart and the mule, and if they travelled hard they would only need to spend one night on the road. The more Maryam thought about it, the more joyful she became.
She told the eldest that they were going. She was expecting the child to hop up and down and wave its arms, shout out loud, like she wanted to herself.
The Cub looked calm and solemn. “Good,” was all it said.
“I was thinking. It’s a longer way around. We’ll be coming in on the Caesarea road, but we could go around the Mount and go in from the south, up through the walls, into the Royal Stoa. It’s a huge building, built by Herod.”
“I know what the Stoa is,” the Cub said in a soft voice.
“Where all the commerce happens, all the trade, and many of the scholars too. You could talk to the scholars there. Your father could buy new scrolls.” Maryam’s eyes tried to push kindness at the child. You wouldn’t have to go to the Court of Women.
The Cub seemed determined to be unimpressed. “If you like. I thought we could leave the mule by the fountain of Yisrael but it would be good to see a bit more of the city.”
Maryam knelt in front of the child took its hands, and stroked them. “Do you know who Huldah was?”
“Oh, Ami,” the child pulled back its hands.
“Huldah was a prophet, a woman prophet. You can be a woman and a prophet. There is a gate named after her, her tomb is right there in front of the entrance to the Temple Mount.”
The child was disengaging, standing up, moving back. “Yes, yes, and Nodiah, ooh Avigayil and Deborah – there was even a neviah called Maryam! Just for you.” And the child pushed Maryam’s nose, giggled, and then ran out.
Impudent.
Then from her corner, Babatha said. “I’m going too.”
Maryam spun around. “Oh Atha. I wish you could come too.”
“I’m going,” Babatha announced.
Maryam understood and stroked the child’s cheek. “Of course you want to go, I know that. But what will happen to Yoses and little Yudeh while we are away? You’ll be staying with Idra and with Nohra. Won’t you like that?”
“I always have to take care of the babies.”
This will be a fight. Dear God, please, not another fighting child.
Maryam sighed, stood up, tried to play with Babatha’s hair. “That is what us women do.”
Babatha tossed her head. “It’s not fair. Just because she’s older, she gets to go. She says she’s a girl when it gets her what she wants.”
How old is this child? Six? What will she be like?
Maryam tried to keep her voice sweet. “You’ll go when you’re twelve.”
“No. I won’t. I know we won’t go. You’ll take Yakob and then when it’s my turn you won’t.”
“I am trying…” A tremor of anger that Maryam did not want to show had to be quelled, and she knelt to look into her little girl’s eyes. “Babatha. I am hoping by going on this trip as a girl that the Cub will accept she is a girl. I’m hoping this will help.”
Babatha pulled in her lips and looked down. “She gets everything she wants by being crazy.”
The day of the departure, they found Babatha in the cart, hidden under a blanket next to the breadbasket.
Yosef pulled it back and affected a hearty laugh. “What have I found here? What have I found here?” He picked her up and kissed her cheek. “Ho ho ho. Look Maryam, I have found a little dove in the food. Oh, what a good meal she will make.”
Babatha both pushed and stroked Yosef’s cheek, and was almost laughing fondly and almost crying as well. “Let me go, Daddy, please let me go.”
Maryam’s heart was strummed like a lyre. She was denying her daughter something on the grounds that she was a girl. She knew what that would feel like. She closed her eyes, and then half hid them.
Yosef hoisted Babatha up, and she knew what was coming then. Maryam could her hear wailing. “I want to go! Please Daddy let me go. Please! No! No!”
Yosef would be hoisting her over the side of the cart to pass down to Idra. Maryam could hear Idra chuckle. “Come now, babe. Come now, darling.”
Babatha’s voice broke, screaming. “No-ho-ho.” Maryam opened her eyes and saw the Cub looking down at its sister
