Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt

  It was only a moment. Then I was myself.

  New voices sang from here and from there, and people who passed us were singing. I was happy with my eyes closed. The Lord shall reign forever," they sang, "even your Lord, O Zion, unto all generations. Praise to the Lord."

  I heard the voice of my aunt Mary of Cleopas. "I don't

  know where he is. He's out there over by the river singing with them, talking. They're shouting at each other one minute and the next singing."

  "Look to him!" whispered my mother.

  "But he's stronger now, I tell you. His fever's gone. He'll come back when he needs to lie down. If I go to him with the men he'll be angry. I'm not going. What's the use of going? What's the use of trying to tell him anything? When he needs to come, he'll come."

  "But we should see to him," said my mother.

  "Don't you know," said my aunt Salome to her, "that this is what he wants? If he's to die, let him die quarreling over kings and taxes, and over the Temple, and by the River Jordan, shouting to the Lord. Let him have his last strength."

  They were quiet.

  Their voices went low. Talk of common things. And then the worries, but I didn't want to hear it. Bandits everywhere, villages burning. Archelaus had gone to the sea to sail to Rome. If the Romans weren't on the march yet from Syria they soon would be. Weren't the signal fires telling them what happened? The whole city of Jerusalem was in a state of riot. I snuggled close to my mother. And my whole body was like a fist.

  "Enough," said my mother. "Nothing ever changes."

  Sleep. I went away in my half sleep.

  "Angels!" I said out loud. I opened my eyes. "But I didn't really see them."

  "You lie quiet," said my mother.

  I laughed to myself. She had seen an angel before I was born. An angel had told Joseph to bring us back, I had heard it said. And I had seen them. I had seen them but only for a moment. Less than a moment. They came in great numbers, numberless like the stars in their numbers, and I'd seen them for a moment. Hadn't I? What had they looked like? Let it go. This is not the most difficult part.

  I turned over, my head against the soft bedroll. Why hadn't I paid more attention to what they looked like? Why hadn't I held on to the sight of them, and not let them go? Because the truth of it was they were always there! You just had to be able to see them. It was like opening a wooden door, or pulling back a curtain. But the curtain was thick, and heavy. Maybe that's how it was with the curtain of the Holy of Holies—it was thick and heavy. And the curtain could fall down, closed, just like that.

  My mother had seen an angel who spoke to her, who must have stepped out of the numberless ones, who came towards her, said words to her, but what was the meaning of the words?

  I wanted to cry again, but I didn't. I was happy and sad. I was filled with feeling, as a cup can be of water. I was so full of it my body curled up under the covers, and I held tight to my mother's hand.

  She slipped her fingers out of mine.

  She lay down beside me. I almost dreamed.

  That's how to do it, I thought. Thoughts began to slide. That's how to do it, so that no one knows. And don't tell anyone ever. Don't ever tell, not even Little Salome or my mother. No. But Father in Heaven, I did do it, didn't I? And I will find out what happened in Bethlehem. I'll find out everything.

  They came again, so many of them but this time I only smiled and I didn't open my eyes. You can come, you aren't going to make me jump and wake up. No, you can come, even if there are so many of you there are no numbers for you. You come from the place where there are no numbers. You come from where there are no robbers, no fires, no man dying on a spear. You come, but you don't know what I know, do you? No, you don't know.

  And how do I know that?

  10

  WHAT WAS THE PEACE OF THAT NIGHT? HOW soon was it shattered?

  The next morning, the river valley was flooded with those fleeing the uprisings. We woke up to shouts and crying. The nearby villages were in flames. We packed up the donkeys and made our way north.

  First we went straight along the river, but soon the sight of flames and the sound of cries drove us far to the west, only to find fighting there and people running, their bundles and children under their arms.

  When we crossed the river, the other way, we found the same terrors. The road was crowded with the miserable and the weeping who told stories of bands of robbers, and would-be kings, swooping down upon them for livestock and gold, and even burning their villages for no good reason. My fear rose in me and became a thing always with me so that all happiness seemed finally to be a dream, even in the brightest sunlight.

  I lost count of the days, and the names of the towns and places we passed did not drop a hook into my mind. Again and again we were stopped by the bandits themselves. They

  forced their way into the crowds, shouting and cursing, and seeking to rob everyone.

  We huddled together and said nothing, and before dark, pitched our camp away from the settlements which were more often than not empty or burnt out.

  In one town we hid from them while they set fire to the houses around us. Little Salome started to cry and it was I who comforted her, I who had been crying so hard outside Jericho and now held her and told her we'd be home soon. Silas and Levi were in a passion that they couldn't fight the men who accosted us, and James repeated the stern warnings of his father to be silent, to do nothing in the face of their huge numbers.

  After all, these "rogues," the men said, carried swords and daggers. They killed at whim. They were "thirsty for blood." We were to give them no "provocation."

  Sometimes we walked late into the night, even as other pilgrims pitched camp, and the men quarreled, with Cleopas always in the middle of it. Aunt Mary said he was having a high time of it with so many new men to listen to his speeches.

  He didn't have any more fever.

  People didn't talk about it now.

  I stayed close to him to learn what he had to say. And he would not stop speaking his mind about King Herod Archelaus, no matter what Joseph said to him, and Alphaeus gave up too. Archelaus had sailed to Rome. The word was out. But so had others of Herod's children, "those who had been lucky enough to survive," said Cleopas. For it seemed the King had murdered five of his own sons as well as countless other helpless men over the thirty and more years of his reign.

  Joseph's brother Simon was quiet too, and so were his boys and girl, as they'd always been. They had no interest in these things. And neither had my mother.

  When we parted from Zebedee and my mother's dearest cousin, Mary Alexandra, there was much crying because "the three Marys" wouldn't be together again until the next Festival in Jerusalem and with things as they were, who knew when it would be safe to go?

  And Elizabeth, what about Elizabeth, they sobbed, alone in the world and Little John going to the Essenes, and though they had left her a long time ago back beyond Jericho, they cried about her all over again. They cried about people I didn't know, and then off they went on their beasts, Zebedee and his kindred, towards the Sea of Galilee, to Capernaum. I wanted to go to the Sea of Galilee too. I wanted to see it with all my heart.

  I missed the sea. That is, if I had a single thought of not being afraid, I missed the sea. Alexandria was a narrow piece of land between the Great Sea and the lake. You could always smell the water in Alexandria. You could always feel the cooling breeze. But we were inland, and the land was rocky and the paths hard. And there were sudden rains.

  These were the last of the lesser rains, said the men, who knew the seasons, and it was late for them, and in any ordinary time, they would have been good. But now there was no one thinking about the harvest or the crops, only of getting away from the rebellions and the troubles. And the rains made us huddle together under our cloaks, and they made us cold.

  The rains put the women in a terrible fear for Cleopas, but Cleopas didn't take sick. He no longer coughed at all.

  Those who passed us on the road
brought stories of more

  riots in Jerusalem. It was said the Roman soldiers were on the march from Syria, there was no question of it. Our men threw up their hands.

  As we went on, there were still many with us—pilgrims returning to towns in Galilee, and we began to climb into higher, green country and I liked this very much.

  Everywhere I turned there were forests of trees, and the sheep grazing on the slopes, and here at last we did see the farmers at work, just as if there were no wars at all.

  I would forget about bandits and trouble. Then out of nowhere, over the rise of the hill would come a pack of the riders, sending us all screaming. Sometimes the great number of homeless pilgrims was too much for them, and they rode off into the fields and around us and left us in peace. Other times they tormented the men who gave them nothing but humble answers as if the men were stupid when the men were not.

  Night after night, new men were at our dinner circle, some of them Galileans headed north to other villages, some of them our kindred but distant whom we really didn't know, and some of them refugees from the raids and the fire. The men sat around the fire and passed the wineskin and they argued and disputed and shouted at one another, and Little Salome and I both loved to listen to what they had to say.

  Rebel leaders had risen everywhere, said the men. There was Athronges, with his brothers, gathering forces, and on the rampage, and many going to him. And also in the north, Judas bar Ezekias, the Galilean.

  And not only were the Romans on the march, but they had been joined by the men of Arabia Petrea, and the Arabians were burning villages because they hated Herod and there was no Herod here to fight back and make order. And the Romans were doing what they could.

  All this encouraged us, and all who were around us, to move quickly towards Galilee even though we never knew where we might meet with these terrible forces.

  The men disputed wildly.

  "Yes, everybody talked about the evils of King Herod, what a tyrant and what a monster he was," said one of the men, "but look what happens to this nation in the blink of an eye! Must we have a tyrant to rule us?"

  "We could do well and good with the Roman governor of Syria," said Cleopas. "We don't need a Jewish King who isn't a Jew."

  "But who would be here, here in Judea and Samaria and Peraea and Galilee with the authority!" asked Alphaeus. "Would it be Roman officials?"

  "Better than the Herods," said Cleopas. And many others said the same thing.

  "And what if a Roman prefect comes marching into Judea with a statue of Caesar Augustus as the Son of God?"

  "But they wouldn't do that, they would never do that," said Cleopas. "In every city of the Empire, we're respected. We keep the Sabbath, we're not required to join in the army. They respect our ancestral Laws. I say better them than this family of madmen who plot against each other and slaughter their own blood!"

  The talk went on and on. I liked to fall asleep listening to it. It made me feel safe.

  "I'll tell you this much because this much I've seen," said my uncle Alphaeus. "When the Romans put down a riot, they kill the innocent with the bad."

  "But why do the innocent suffer?" James asked, James, my brother, who was now one of them, as if he had ever been anything else.

  "How are soldiers to tell who is innocent or guilty when

  they come down on a mob in a city, or on a village?" said a stranger, a Jew from Galilee. "You can be swept up like that by them. I'm telling you when they come, you get out of the way. They don't have time to listen to you tell them you've done nothing. It's one swarm of locusts after another, the thieves first and the soldiers second."

  "And these men, these great warriors of old," Cleopas said, "these new kings of Israel rising up out of slavery all around us, these sudden anointed leaders, where will they take this land except into more and more misery?"

  My aunt Mary, the Egyptian, cried out.

  I opened my eyes and sat up.

  My aunt Mary rose up suddenly from among the women and came over to them, her hands shaking, her eyes streaming with tears. I could see her tears in the firelight.

  "Stop it, don't say any more," she shouted. "We came out of Egypt to listen to this? We came from Alexandria to make our way through the Jordan Valley in fear and terror of these fools, and when it's quiet and we're almost home, you frighten the children with all your shouting, all, all your prophesies, you don't know the will of the Lord, you don't know anything! We could get home tomorrow and find Nazareth's been burnt to the ground."

  Tomorrow. Nazareth. In this beautiful land?

  Two of the other women caught hold of her and took her away from the men. Cleopas shrugged his shoulders. The other men went on talking but in quieter voices.

  Cleopas shook his head, and drank his wine.

  I got up and went close to James, who was looking into the fire as he often did.

  "We're going to be in Nazareth that soon?" I asked.

  "Perhaps," he said. "We're close."

  "But what if it is all burned?" 1 asked.

  "Don't be frightened," said Joseph in a low voice. "It won't be burnt up. I know it won't. You go back to sleep."

  Alphaeus and Cleopas looked at him. Some of the men were whispering their night prayers, heading for their beds under the sky.

  "How are we to know the will of the Lord?" Cleopas said in a mutter, looking away. "The Lord wanted us to leave beautiful Alexandria for this, the Lord wanted us—." He stopped because Joseph had turned away.

  "What's happened to us so far?" Alphaeus asked.

  Cleopas was angry and spoke low. Joseph looked at him the whole time.

  Cleopas couldn't find his words.

  "What's happened?" Alphaeus asked. "Now, tell me, Cleopas. What's happened?"

  They were all watching Cleopas.

  "Nothing has happened to us," Cleopas whispered. "We have been through it."

  Everyone was satisfied. That was the answer they had wanted.

  When I lay down, Joseph brought the blanket up over me. The ground under me was cool, and I could smell the grass. I could smell the sweet smell of the trees not far off. We were all scattered over the slope of the hill, some under the trees, and some in the open as I was.

  Little Judas and Symeon snuggled up next to me, without even waking up.

  I looked up at the stars. I'd never seen the stars like this in Alexandria, so clear, so many like dust, like sand, like all the words I'd learned and sung.

  All the men had left the fire. The fire had gone out. All the better could I see the stars, and I didn't really want to go to sleep. I never wanted to sleep.

  Far off people shouted. I heard screams. It was down the hill. I could barely hear the voices crying out down there, and then turning, I saw flames way off from us down there, and I hated the way they shivered, the flames, but the men didn't get up. No one moved. We were in darkness. Nothing changed in our camp, and it was the same for all those camped near us. I heard horses down there in the little valley.

  Cleopas lay down beside me.

  "Nothing changes," he said.

  "How can you say that?" I asked. "Everywhere we go it's changing."

  I wanted badly for the screams to die away. And they almost did. More flames. I was afraid of the flames.

  There was a song of screams coming closer and closer. It was one woman screaming. I thought it would stop, but it didn't stop. And with it I could hear feet running, faint and then loud, stomping feet.

  A man's voice rose in the dark, crying out terrible words, words I knew were hateful and mean as he flung them out, over the woman's screams.

  In Greek he called the woman a harlot, he said he would kill her when he caught her, and terrible oaths came from him, terrible words I'd never heard spoken before.

  Our men rose up. I rose up.

  All at once the woman's steps were right near us, pounding up the slope. She was breathing hard and couldn't scream anymore. The distant fire showed nothing yet.

&nbs
p; Cleopas rushed forward, and so did Joseph, and the other men, and I saw through the dark that they reached out for the woman as soon as she appeared, arms waving, against the fiery sky. They brought her down to the ground, and pushed her behind them into the blankets. They stood still. I heard her breathing, and her coughing and sobbing, and the

  women hushing her as if she was a little child, and pulling her away.

  I was on my feet, and James was right behind me.

  Against the faraway flames, I saw the man rise up and stop. He was a big black shape like the rocks around us. He was drunk. I could smell the wine on him. I could see him wag his head.

  In an evil voice, he called out to the woman, in vile names, names I knew only from now and then in the marketplace, and names I knew were never to be said.