HIM, page 8
“You will be blessed, Atha,” it said solemnly.
You think that will help?
The eyes had flowered with tears, but the pupils were now steady. Babatha said, looking straight at the Cub. “I hate you.”
Yosef said, “Now, now Atha. You don’t mean that.”
“I truly do,” said Babatha.
All along the zigzag road to Yerusalam, Maryam wondered if she had done the right thing.
She talked it back and forth with Yosef. “We could have taken Atha. We could have.”
Yosef was her rock. “That would have left Idra to take care of Yoses and Yudeh, and she has enough to do. Babatha will be fine with her brothers. She has already forgotten.”
Maryam knew. She will never forget. Maryam eyed the Cub and thought I hope you are worth it.
It was first light when they left, and everything was fog-coloured with a hint of gold. Small birds bobbed on the heads of plants, marking territory. Life was beautiful.
They had to go slightly north and east to Sepphoris, then take the road that arched round to Legio, where the great battle had been fought. As their cart bounced and rumbled, Maryam played the numbers game with the child and Yakob, adding and subtracting. It must have bored Avigayil, but she went along with it anyway for the sake of her younger brother.
How Avigayil cared for Yakob, protected him, never fought with him. That alone showed she was a woman inside. Little Yakob got to show off, piping up triumphantly with the answers, and wanted to jump and run. The cart threw him and he cut his forehead, and it was Avigayil who nursed him, kissed him, rocked him, and distracted him.
It was as if Maryam’s being were threads that hurt to unwind and re-stitch. Each time she called the child Avigayil, each time she thought of him as her, it pained and stretched and made her smile. Please God, reconcile her. Please God, give her back to me.
CHAPTER 10
OLD AT HEART
The sight of Yerusalam sucked all the breath out of her.
The four block towers of the Antonym fortress merged with the great walls of the Mount. In sunrise those walls were as orange as persimmons though pastel with morning smoke. Over the walls, Maryam could glimpse white marble edged with gold – Beth Yahu.
How long since she had stood here and took in all of the city in a single long look? It was as if little Maryam had tripped lightly out of this old carcass to play in the hills again. Home. She was home.
She turned to little Yakob, but his hand was jammed all the way into his mouth and his eyes were round with fear.
She said his name in worry, and cradled him up onto her hip.
Yosef said looking wistful. “It’s meant to intimidate, Maryam. We grew up here, made it our friend, to us it is homely. But it is meant to terrify just a bit.”
She looked at Avigayil, but the child seemed sullen and unmoved. Maryam wanted her oldest child to be leaping with joy as she herself felt too old and fat to leap.
The bridges tall as aqueducts stretched across the valley, white rough limestone keystoned into arches.
The child said quietly as if in pity. “They try so hard.”
The gate was guarded by Roman soldiers.
Maryam and Yosef had never seen that. This was new. Maryam thought of the Herods as Romans, or as good as, friends of emperors and educated in Rome. But Yehud with the Mount of the Temple was now formally a Roman province. Not a protectorate. Not an ally. A province, directly administered.
Two bored soldiers sat warming soup, their helmets off, their armour only leather. These were not Romans; these were Empire Boys, from places like Ephesus or the Nile Delta or Damascus.
It was still early, but it was a working day. Traders pressed against the gateway with their bulky camels, or droves of cattle for the yards, or their cords of wood stacked high on donkeys. Beasts or men snorted, honked or laughed. The traders played games with chips or slept in carts or walked on ahead of their comrades to make sure they had a stall. Maryam and Yosef waited an hour at least as the sun rose and the heat began to bear down.
“The Stoa will be empty by the time we get there.” Maryam fretted. They were going to leave the cart and mule at her mother’s house, but they had not been able to write a letter to tell her. Maryam had no idea what to expect. What if her mother was sick, or out of the house, and there was no one to stable them?
The soldiers stopped checking any passes, stopped noting down the flow of goods and waved people through. There was a surge of movement; Yosef was ready with the reins; the mule was not accustomed to such crowds. It snorted and stomped in dismay. Yosef had to whisper quietly in its ear. The soldiers kept rolling their hands from the wrists. “Go, go, go.”
So much for Yosef’s fear of being caught as an exile.
Back as if through time into Yerusalam’s noise, the smoke, the smell of cess pits, the bleating of goats, shouts, cries, running boys, men outside doorways talking and nodding, the neighbour women walking and chatting together as they cleaned their ears with knitting needles.
The smells and sounds rolled out and over Maryam as a solid ball of memory. In a gasp she remembered the taste of her mother’s cooking, the taunts of other children, the feeling of being different and alone among girls prettier and more powerful than herself, the death of Daddy, the bleak white sunlight through pearly clouds on the day of his funeral, the remaking of dresses in daylight on the roof, the panels that screened from neighbours, the lovely woman (what was her name?) who came to call every day or so, rich and lonely. She had a pet monkey on a leash. Silbo was his name. How could Maryam have forgotten Silbo? She’d loved Silbo. Maryam had a bird in a cage; it sang; one day it escaped and she was heartbroken. Then they found it dead. There was a pageant and she had played Esta and everyone said how well she recited.
But Maryam had forgotten the way to her mother’s house.
The narrow streets – stone foundations, mud brick, flat roofs, passageways the width of a single man, blank walls all the same. On the left, there the conical towers of the Hasmonean palace. On the right, higher up the slope, ranged the banks of columns that distinguished Herod’s palace, now the Roman Praetorium. Somewhere here in the jumble was her old house.
“It was two corners from the house of the Kohen Gadol,” said Yosef. So they asked directions to that complex, now the house of Caiaphas. From its corner they picked their way.
The gate had roses in the shape of wheels moulded into its metal – her heart leapt as soon as she saw them. How could she forget her own gate? She hammered on it and waited, and she couldn’t breathe, hopping up and down on one foot. There was a sly touch – Avigayil had taken her hand.
The gate groaned open, swung by Mikael. Mikael, their old friend.
He recognized them at once, cried their names, and pulled them in. And he recognized the mule. “Ah! My old friend.” He put his hand to the mule’s nose, and the mule snorted as its brain worked its way back to whatever association it had with him.
“Let me tell my lady, she will be overjoyed.”
“What are you doing here?” Maryam asked. “Are you working here?”
Mikael spoke walking backwards. “Tara came to live with your mother for a time, but that lady – well, she lives with her son now.” Some deep trouble shadowed his face.
He shouted, “My lady. Your daughter is here! My lady!” Then breaking off, lower voiced, waving to them. “Go up go up, she’s in the main room, I’ll stable. She will be overjoyed.”
Maryam’s mother came out of her door, unchanged by twelve years living alone. She glided down the steps, smooth hipped, and seized Maryam’s hand. “Oh my daughter, my daughter. Oh!” She put her hand over her heart. “Don’t stand there, let me hold you!”
Maryam hugged her mother knowing she herself would smell of sweat and dust from the road, and of Nazaredai smoke. Mother Avi pulled back and looked at her daughter, who wondered: had Mama always looked so wise and elegant? Young Maryam had thought her a fool.
“I might not have recognized you,” her mother said, swinging Maryam’s hand. Her eyes searched Maryam’s face. “You looked so dignified.”
“We are the same age now,” Maryam joked. Her mother’s eyes searched her face.
“It’s been hard hasn’t it?”
Maryam didn’t know. Had it? Her mother’s smile broadened. “And is this handsome man Yosef?”
As if she had never wept over the marriage, Maryam’s mother gave tall skinny Yosef a hug, and laughed heartily. She pulled back, eyes sparkling and Maryam saw: she thinks Nazareth has been good for us.
Maryam stepped back, still on the steps. “And this is Avigayil,” she said proudly, her hands twirling the child’s hair.
The child said with eyes as black as basalt, “My name is Yehushua.”
There was another reason to visit her mother.
For seventy years, the house had had a miq’va. Just the thought of this luxury made Maryam wilt inside. Yosef stopped outside the curtain that screened the basement chamber. The Cub looked at him, questioning.
“No, no, this is right. We are going to the Temple. For this we should purify. Go with your mother.”
Maryam scrubbed herself all over before immersing herself, easing herself down the big steps into the water.
“Come, Child, you will feel clean inside and out.” But the child fought against disrobing.
“It’s the Law,” said Maryam wrestling with it.
“Only since Antigonus,” said the Child, which was of course true. In dismay Maryam stopped. The child submerged itself, but clothed, and without washing first as women often had to.
Maryam rose out of the water feeling as though she was streaming stars behind her.
Outside Yosef smiled and nodded a bit too much, as he held the curtain up for Yakob, then ducked to enter. He yowled when the water touched him as if its touch was icy and painful. Maryam and her child both laughed. “Ah now you learn Abi. People do more with water than just drink it.”
“Only for my God,” responded Yosef. They all laughed as a family.
To enter the Temple Mount from the south they had to walk the valley mile along the western wall, under the great bridge.
They passed by the steps and arches that led to the western end of the royal porch, and then though other guarded gates. The great bridge loomed over them; birds flew under it.
Yakob started to grizzle. By the time they stood in the vast southern plaza, he was plainly going to cry. All of it towered – the sweep of steps, the high white wall and all along the southern summit, the Stoa with its giant red pillars meant to balance the fortress of Mark Anthony on the north.
Yakob gave a little wail. The older child knelt. “Hey, Bro,” the Cub said. “You have to help me. I can’t go in there by myself.”
“Come see the tomb of Huldah,” said Maryam.
“It’s not where she’s really buried,” said the Cub with thumping certainty. “It’s just a box of stone. It’s good that she’s honoured.”
“I used to come here, always, to feel her strength.”
The Cub said, “You needed to. I don’t.”
Ooooh, there were times. Without another word to Maryam, the Cub eased Yakob forward and led him towards the steps. Unwillingly, Maryam followed.
The steps lead to a tunnel, itself a concourse of steps up through the banked wall and the living limestone. There was a cool gasp of shadow. The stone was swept clean but it still smelled a little bit of urine – here of all places. Maryam shook her head as she struggled to catch up to her children. The hollowed-out staircase boomed with the echoes of many voices and the deafening hubbub of the Stoa above. The elder child carried Yakob, who still looked cowed, and kept his solemn eyes fixed on Maryam. At nine years old, Yakob sucked his thumb.
They came up in blinding sunlight, in the wide Concourse of the Gentiles, the hot pavement that separated the Beth Yahu from the Stoa, where Maryam had promised priests would be.
They ducked inside it out of the heat. The Stoa was one huge concourse with four rows of pillars forming three long aisles of stalls. It was the longest building in the world and the middle aisle was particularly tall, with a high vaulted wooden ceiling. Each of the pillars would take three big men to hug.
The Stoa had been the pride of Herod the Great, and was still a primary source of tariffs. The stalls sold rugs, spices, doves, scrolls, gold, and jewels. Nobody remotely thought of it as being part of the Beth Yahu, though it was on the Mount.
The noise, the cool shade, the blasts of warm air, the cries, the talk, and the smells of piled spices and frying breads slammed into them. It finally was all too much for Yakob, who howled and kicked in protest. The eldest put him down and he ran to hide his face in Maryam’s skirts.
Maryam said, “Now, now, you are too big a boy to be frightened.” Yakob pulled back, mouth pushed sideways out of shame. He both wiped and hid his face with the crook of his elbow.
The older child leaned forward on its knees and said, “Yakob. Go with Aba and look at the scrolls. There are so many wonderful scrolls.” Yosef looked a bit relieved – he thought of scrolls as some people thought of sweet honey or wine. Yosef led Yakob away. To Maryam’s surprise, the elder child took her hand and began to pull, striding forward with determination.
“Do you know where you are going?”
“To the priests.”
Maryam tried to stop. “They used to gather right here on the steps.”
The Cub said over its shoulder, “Priests are always where the money is.” It stopped, turned and went over what Maryam was to say. “If they ask, you say my name is Yehushua and I am thirteen years old.” The sunlight, the stones seemed as white as bone.
Priests, scribes, scholars, old men – call them what you will – sat at the far eastern end of the market where they were wise for tips.
As an especial service they tested boys who were coming of age and needed to enter religious discussion.
As they approached the men, the Cub began to grin. Its long, slightly buck teeth flashed against the sunburnt skin and there was a shining of something beautiful and daring – and rather merry.
Maryam recognized one of the priests – Eyanaphon. Older now, but still trim, with a firm thin mouth and narrow eyes and the look of something about to pounce. His beauty had become feral. Maryam needed to say, “Not with that one. He knows us.” But she couldn’t speak.
Some lad was dutifully reciting the Ten Commandments. The Cub turned sideways to get around him. “Such knowledge,” it said, a grin in its voice.
The other boy said, “You know more, I suppose?” Maryam knew at once the kind of child this was – plump, shiny-haired, the well-fed child of Kohanim. She’d grown up with boys like this one.
“Yes,” said her child and sat down.
“You are out of order, interrupting,” said one of those priests as round as the boy. Maryam was sure that scholar and the reciting boy were cousins.
“Come, come,” said Eyanaphon, with a smile, looking almost benign – calm but physically uncomfortable. He was leaning backwards while propped up by one elbow. The forearm was held upright and at an awkward angle. He had to jerk his whole body to move, and he winced as he did so. “This is an informal discussion. A celebration, even. All can talk. You ARE of an age?”
“Oh yes,” said her child, its smile and eyes unclouded. “Some would say that I am late in coming.”
“You look very young,” said Eyanaphon.
“So do you,” said the Cub.
Eyanaphon said, “You are the first to say that in some time.” He laughed, but did not move his head. His other hand was draped, as if broken over one knee. Nothing about him moved, hardly even his lips when he spoke. Maryam had a sudden thought: is he paralysed?
“You are old at heart,” said the Cub and inclined its head.
Which was rude enough. This child, this Cub. No one has ever told it to mind its mouth.
“So,” said the younger fatter priest. “What is your favourite part of The Miq’ra?”
The child smiled, enjoying this as if it were the opening play in a game. “It is not for me to pick and choose.”
“The Ten Commandments,” said the other boy, who wanted to be the centre again.
“You’re a good boy,” said the young priest. “That is a fine focus for attention and you know it by heart. If you obey those commandments, it will not matter what you can recite.”
“Come, come,” urged Eyanaphon. “We all have favourite passages.” The Cub had already intrigued the Sadduci.
The Cub paused, then said, “And what you hate, do not do to anyone.”
Tovi! Maryam’s eyes bulged. Tovi was not part of The Miq’ra.
“What do you hate?” asked the other teacher, his mouth still irritated and eyes glimmering.
The Cub’s eyes were firm on his. “Valuing what is written above what is lived.”
Eyanaphon said quietly. “But what is written IS the Law. Do you value the breaking of the Law?”
The Cub’s shoulders rose, the smile widened. For a moment Maryam feared it was going to chuckle. “How could anyone say they value that?” The smile was serene. “The God of Yisrael knows when the Law has been broken, and knows the Law better than any man. And will punish.”
Eyanaphon then said. “Tovi is not part of The Miq’ra. Some of the Essenai read him, those in the desert.” He leaned forward. “You’ve been exposed to radical influences. But you don’t live in the desert and the Essenai have no sons. You seem to value the folk tradition, what people say over what is written. Are you a Perisa?”
The Cub, still serene, said. “I have no idea what that is.”
Maryam was relieved that Yosef had decided to avoid teaching about all controversial sects.
Eyanaphon was absolutely still. It was like watching a statue talk. “They are popular in the North. And there are many here in Yerusalam. They want the Law to change like water, flow downhill. Like the people do.”
The other priests chuckled and shifted and scratched and sweated. There was about Eyanaphon something as refined as poison.
