Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt

  Then he went quiet.

  The whole night was quiet, except for his breathing, and the crunch under his feet as he tried to get his footing.

  The woman let out a cry, more like a choke, as if she couldn't help it.

  At that the man laughed and he headed right towards my father and my uncles, and they took hold of him. It was one big shape of darkness taking over another great lump of darkness. The night was full of soft, but loud sounds.

  Off they went up the hill, all of them, and it did seem now that there were a lot of them, maybe Alphaeus' two sons, too, because it was so quick and there were so many of those sounds. I knew what the sounds were. They were beating him.

  And he had stopped his cursing and raging. And from everyone else nothing except the women shushing the hurt one.

  They were gone!

  I don't know why I didn't move.

  I started to run after them.

  I heard my brother James say:

  "No."

  The woman sobbed softly:

  "A widow alone, I tell you, alone with my servant girl, and my husband not dead two weeks, and they come down on me like locusts, I tell you. What am I to do? Where am I to go? They burnt my house. They took everything. They broke what little I had. This is the dregs, I tell you. And my son believes they fight for our freedom. I tell you, all the filth is rising, and Archelaus is in Rome, and slaves killing their masters and all the world in flames." She went on and on.

  I couldn't see anything. I listened for the sounds of the men. I heard nothing. I felt my skin all over.

  "What are they doing with him?" I asked James. I could barely see him. A little bit of light in his eye.

  Down below, in the valley, the fire burned but its great flames were finished.

  "Say nothing," he said. "Go back to your bed."

  "My house," said the woman, her voice full of hurt, "my farm, my poor girl, Riba—if they caught her, she's dead. There were too many of them. She's dead, she's dead, she's dead."

  The women comforted her the way they comforted us when we were sad. They made sounds, more than they spoke.

  "Go back to your bed," said James again to me.

  He was my older brother. I had to do what he said. And Little Salome was crying a little, half asleep.

  I went to her and hushed her and kissed her. She curled her fingers around mine, and I knew she was sleeping again.

  I lay awake until the men returned.

  Cleopas lay beside me as before. Little Symeon and Judas were sleeping all this time as if nothing had happened. Little children like that, once they fall into deep sleep, nothing wakes them up. All was quiet. Even the women weren't making much noise.

  Cleopas began to whisper in Hebrew. I could not make it out, what he said. The other men were whispering too.

  The women were all talking in such low voices they might have been praying.

  I prayed too.

  I couldn't think of the poor girl, down there where the house was burnt. I prayed for her without thinking about her. And somehow I went to sleep.

  11

  WHEN I WOKE UP, I saw the blue sky and the trees before I said anything.

  Nazareth in this land—of trees and fields.

  I stood up, said the morning prayers with my arms outstretched.

  "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is One,

  "And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might."

  I was happy.

  Then I remembered the night.

  They were just coming back from the woman's house, or so the women told me. The woman was with us, and here also came the maidservant, not dead, and with her proper veil and tunic and robe, who was crying and in the arms of Cleopas who brought her up the slope.

  The woman cried out and ran to her.

  The men had bundles of belongings from the house below. And a heifer also they brought up, a big slow-walking heifer with frightened eyes which they led with a rope.

  They spoke Greek together, the maid and the woman, and hugged each other. When the woman talked to the other

  women, she spoke our tongue. The women crowded around these two newcomers and hugged them and comforted them and kissed them.

  Bruria was the name of this woman, and the servant, Riba, was like a daughter to Bruria. And Bruria was offering prayers of thanks that Riba had been spared.

  Finally we joined the crowd of people on the road and headed towards Nazareth.

  I learned from the talk that the bandits had taken everything that Bruria had— fine silks and plate, grain, wineskins, and whatever they could carry, and burnt out the whole place. Not even the olive groves were left unburnt. But they hadn't found what was hidden in the tunnel under the house. So Bruria had her gold now with her, all that had been left to her by her husband. And Riba had hidden in the tunnel, which the bandits didn't find.

  As we walked on towards Nazareth, I learned they would now be with us, these two.

  There was more news on the road, too.

  Not only Jericho had been burnt but another palace of Herod, the palace at Amathace. And the Romans could not stop the Arabians from their rampaging. They were burning village after village.

  But the men of last night's attack had been common drunkards, said Bruria, and so did Riba, who had barely made it to the tunnel alive, and both women were crying as we walked on.

  A tunnel under a house. I had never seen a tunnel under a house.

  "There is no King, there is no peace," said Bruria, who was the daughter of Hezekiah, son of Caleb, and she told off all the names of her family going back, and the names of her husband's family.

  Even the men listened to her. There were nods and murmurs at this name and that name. The men didn't look at her, or at the maidservant, but they walked close to the women, and they were quiet, and they listened.

  "Judas bar Ezekias—he's the rebel," the woman said. "Old Herod had him in prison. But he didn't execute him, which he should have done. Now he's stirring up the young men. He's set up court in Sepphoris. He's raided the armory there. He rules from there, but the Romans are already on the march from Syria. I weep for Sepphoris. All those who don't want to die should flee from Sepphoris."

  Now I knew the name of the city, Sepphoris. I knew that was where my mother had been born, that her father Joachim had been a scribe, and his wife, Anna, my grandmother, had been born there, too. They had come to Nazareth only when my mother had been betrothed to Joseph, who with his brothers lived in the house of Old Sarah and Old Justus, who were kindred of my mother and Joachim and Anna, as well as Joseph, too. Part of the house had been given over to Joachim and Anna and my mother, as it was a big house which had in it many rooms for families to live on one large courtyard, and it was there that they lived until they went to Bethlehem where I was born.

  When I thought about it, it came clear to me that I didn't know parts of the story. I did know that Joseph and my mother had been married in Bethany, in the house of Elizabeth and Zechariah, and that house was near to Jerusalem. But Elizabeth and her son John didn't live there now.

  No, they had gone into hiding, as my cousin Elizabeth had told us.

  And when I thought of this, all the questions came back to me.

  But I was too eager to see Nazareth to think of all this just now. It hurt too much to think of all this. And the land around me was so beautiful. I knew that word from the Psalms and when I looked at this land I knew what the word meant.

  Old Sarah and Old Justus were waiting in Nazareth. We'd written to them. We'd told them we were coming home. Old Sarah was the aunt of my grandmother Anna. And the aunt of one of Joseph's people, but I couldn't trace it all back.

  The land was greener and greener as we moved on. And when there came a light rain we didn't even stop.

  We'd listened to her letters many times, and she thought to name all of the children when she wrote to us, and she knew by now we were coming home.

  T
he men were not talking much, but Bruria and Riba talked on and on, and the men listened, or so I thought. Finally Bruria said she would confess her worst sorrow. She couldn't keep it inside. Bruria's son had run off to join the rebels in Sepphoris! His name was Caleb, and Caleb might as well be dead, said Bruria. She had no hope of seeing him again.

  The men said nothing. They only nodded.

  "Who would bother with Nazareth?" Cleopas said under his breath.

  "It will be good," said Joseph. "I know it."

  And the sun moved high in the sky. And the clouds were clean and like the sails of ships, and there were women in the fields.

  We'd been walking up and up into the hills for a long time when we came to a small village that was broken down and empty. The grass was high. The roofs had fallen in. People had gone from here a long time ago. Nothing was burnt. Most of the people on the road walked on.

  But all our kindred stopped here.

  Cleopas and Joseph led us past the broken buildings.

  We found a small spring coming out of the rock, and water filling a big basin surrounded by heavy, leafy trees. It was a beautiful thing to behold.

  We made a camp, and my mother said we'd stay the night and go on to Nazareth in the morning.

  The men went alone to the spring to bathe, and the women brought fresh robes for them. We waited. Then the women took all of us little ones, and we bathed and dressed the same. The women had a tunic and robe, each, for Bruria and Riba.

  The water had been cold, but everyone had laughed and had fun, and the clean clothes smelled good. They even smelled like Egypt.

  "Why can't we go on to Nazareth?" I asked. "It's early in the day."

  "The men want to rest," said my mother. "And it looks like rain again. If it rains we'll go into the old buildings. If not, we stay here."

  The men were not themselves. I hadn't thought much about it until now. But they had been quiet all day.

  With all the troubles, we changed every day. And we had to make do with what we found. But this time the men were different. Even Cleopas was quiet. He sat with his back to the bark of a tree, looking out over the hills, and he didn't seem to see the people passing down on the road, going on to Galilee. But when I looked to Joseph as I always did at such times, he was steady. He had taken out a little book to read, a bound book with cut pages, and he was whispering to himself. The letters in the book were Greek.

  "What is it?" I asked him.

  "Samuel," he answered. "About David," he said.

  I listened as he read. David had been fighting, and he

  wanted a drink of water from the well of his enemies, and when the water was brought to him, David couldn't drink it, because men had put themselves in great danger to get the water. Men might have died in the getting of it for David.

  Joseph got up after he was finished, and told Cleopas to come with him.

  The women and the children were all gathered around Bruria and Riba, and they talked on and on of the many things that had happened in the country.

  Joseph and Cleopas, and Alphaeus, and his two sons, and James—they all asked for Bruria to come and talk to them.

  They went off towards a grove of trees that were moving in the wind in a way I liked to watch.

  Their voices were small but I could hear some of it.

  "No, but you lost your farm. No, but you .. . And everything that you owned..."

  "I tell you, you have a right..." Its ransom.

  Ransom.

  And the woman with her hands up, shaking her head, left them. "I will not!" she called out.

  They all came back and lay down, and became quiet again. Joseph was thinking. He was worried. Then he became steady.

  People passed on the road without even seeing us. Horsemen passed.

  And after the meal, when everyone slept, I thought about the man in the darkness, the drunken man.

  I knew they'd killed him. But I didn't say so to myself. I just knew it. And I knew why they'd killed him. I knew what he meant to do to the woman. And I knew that the men had washed and put on new garments according to the Law, and they wouldn't be clean until sundown. That's why they didn't go on to Nazareth on this day. They wanted to be clean to go home.

  But could they ever be clean of such a thing? How to wash away the blood of a man, and what do you do with the money he had, the money he stole, the money soaked in blood?

  12

  AT LAST WE'D REACHED THE TOP of the hill.

  Only a great valley spread out in front of us, and what a sight of olive trees and blowing fields it was. It seemed a glad land.

  But the great devil, the fire, was burning again, big and far away, and the smoke went up to Heaven, to the white clouds. My teeth chattered. The fear came up in me, and I pushed it back down.

  "It's Sepphoris," my mother cried, and so did the other women. The men cried out the same. And our prayers went up, as we looked but didn't move.

  "But where is Nazareth?" Little Salome cried. "Is it burning too?"

  "No," said my mother. My mother bent down and she pointed.

  "There is Nazareth," she said, and I followed her pointing to see a village laid out on a hill. White houses, some on top of others, and the trees very thick and to the right and the left other soft slopes and gentle valleys, and far beyond other villages scarcely visible under the brightness of the sky. Beyond was the great fire.

  "Well, what do we do?" asked Cleopas. "We hide in the hills because Sepphoris is gone up, or we go home? I say we go home!"

  "Don't be so hasty," said Joseph. "Perhaps we should remain here. I don't know."

  "What, from you?" asked his brother Alphaeus. "I thought you knew the Lord would take care of us, and now we're less than an hour from home. If those thieves come riding this way, I'd rather be hiding under the house in Nazareth than up in these hills."

  "We have tunnels?" I asked quickly, not meaning to interrupt the men.

  "Yes, we have tunnels. Everyone in Nazareth has tunnels. We all have them. They're old and need to be repaired but they are there. And these murdering bandits are everywhere we go."

  "It's Judas bar Ezekias," said Uncle Alphaeus. "He's probably finished with Sepphoris and on the move."

  Bruria began to cry for her son, and Riba with her. And my mother to say hopeful things.

  Joseph thought this over and then he said:

  "Yes, the Lord will take care of us, you're right. And we'll go. I don't see anything bad happening in Nazareth, and nothing between here and there."

  We followed the road down into the soft valley, soon passing between groves of fruit trees and even bigger stands of olive trees, and past the best fields I'd ever seen. We walked slowly as ever and we children were not allowed to run ahead.

  I was so eager to see Nazareth and so filled with happiness at the land around us that I wanted to sing, but no one was singing. I sang in my heart. "Praise the Lord, who covered the Heavens with clouds, who prepared the rain for the Earth, who made the grass to grow upon the mountains."

  The road was rocky and uneven, but the wind was gentle. I saw trees full of flowers, and little towers way back away on the small rises, but there was no one in the fields.

  There was no one anywhere.

  And there were no sheep grazing, and no cattle.

  Joseph said for us to walk faster, and we did our best to hurry, but it wasn't easy with my aunt Mary, who was now sick, as though the woes had passed from Cleopas to her. We pulled at the donkeys, and took turns carrying Little Symeon, who fussed and cried for his mother, no matter what we did.

  Finally we were climbing the slope to Nazareth! I begged to run ahead, and so did James in the same voice, but Joseph said no.

  In Nazareth, we found an empty town.

  One great lane leading uphill with little lanes that went off one side and the other, and white houses, some with two and three stories, and many with open courtyards, and all lying quiet and empty as if no one lived there at all.

  "Let's
hurry," said Joseph, and his face was dark.

  "But what's happening up there to make everyone hide like this!" Cleopas said in a low voice.

  "Don't talk. Come," said Alphaeus.

  "Where are they hiding?" Little Salome asked.

  "In the tunnels, they have to be in the tunnels," said my cousin Silas. His father told him to be quiet.

  "Let me go up on the highest roof," said James. "Let me look."

  "Go on," said Joseph, "but keep low, don't let anyone see you, and come right back to us."