Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt

  But my mind was on the groves of trees here and there, and far away, and the blue of the sky.

  I lost myself. I felt loose. I felt my skin. It was as if I was humming and the humming filled my ears, but I wasn't humming. And it was so sweet. It was the way I felt sometimes before I went to sleep. I wasn't drowsy. I wasn't sleeping. I lay still on the grass and I heard little tiny creatures around me in the grass. I even saw the flutter of little wings. I looked right before me, and there was a world of them, these tiny creatures, so very tiny, tumbling over the pieces of grass.

  I let my eyes move slowly towards the trees. They had the wind in them again and were dancing back and forth. The leaves of the trees looked silver in the sunlight, and they never stopped moving even when the breeze died away.

  My eyes went back to the closest thing I could see before me: the little creatures moving, running so fast over the broken bits of earth. It came to me that in lying down as I had done I had crushed some of these creatures, perhaps many many of them, and the longer I looked at them, the more little creatures I saw. Theirs was the world of the grass. That's all they knew. And what was I, coming to lie down here, feeling

  the softness of the grass and loving the smell of it, and robbing so many little creatures of life?

  I was not sorry for it. I felt no sadness. My hand lay on top of the blades of grass, and the creatures moved beneath it faster and faster, until their world was all fluttering without a sound that I could hear.

  The earth was a bed under me. The cries of the birds were a song. They streaked across the sky above me so fast I could barely see them. Sparrows. And then beside me, I saw right in front of me tiny flowers growing in the grass, so very little I hadn't noticed them before, flowers with white petals and yellow hearts.

  The breeze grew strong and the branches above me moved with it. Leaves came down in a shower, a silent rain.

  But a man was coming. He came out of the grove of trees down the hill, and made his way up towards me.

  It was Joseph, with his head bowed as he walked up the slope. His robe and its tassels blew in the breeze, and he was thinner than when we'd left Alexandria. Perhaps all of us were that way.

  I knew I should get up out of respect for him, but I felt so good here on the sweet grass and that humming was going on as if I was doing it, all through me, and I only looked at him as he came.

  I didn't have sense enough to know it, but these moments on the grass under the tree had been the first time in my whole life that I'd ever been alone.

  I only knew that this peace was broken, and had to be broken. What was time that I could spend it here staring until the world lost all its hard edges? Finally, I climbed to my feet, and I felt as if I was waking up from deep sleep.

  "I know," he said to me sadly. "It's just a little village, not very much at all in this world, and nothing to rival the great

  Alexandria, nothing, and you've probably thought a hundred times of your friend, Philo, and all your friends, and everything we left behind. I know. I know."

  I couldn't answer. I tried. I wanted to tell him how I saw it, how soft and sweet it was, and how all of it was so good to me, and searching for the words I didn't have yet, I didn't speak quickly enough.

  "But you see," he said, "nobody will ever look for you here. You're hidden, and that's how you'll remain."

  Hidden.

  "But why must I—?"

  "No," he said. "No questions now. There will come a time. But listen. You must never tell people things." He stopped and looked at me to make sure I understood him. "You mustn't talk about what you hear at our fire. Never do you talk outside your house to anyone. You mustn't talk about where we've been or why, and you keep your questions in your heart, and when you're old enough, I'll tell you what you need to know."

  I didn't say a word.

  He took my hand. We walked back towards the village. We came to a little garden marked off with small stones, and near to a few trees. The plot was overgrown with weeds. But the trees were good. A great big tree stood by it, and the tree was full of knuckles and knots.

  "My grandfather's grandfather planted this olive tree," Joseph said. "And there, you see that tree, that's the pomegranate, and wait till you see it come into bloom. It'll be covered with red blossoms."

  He walked up and down looking at the garden plot. The others on the hill were neat and full of plantings.

  "We'll harrow this tomorrow for the women," he said.

  "It's not too late to plant a few vines, grapes, cucumbers, and plant some other things. We'll see what Old Sarah says."

  He looked at me. "Are you sad?" he asked.

  "No," I said quickly. "I like it!" I wanted so badly to find words, words like those in the Psalms.

  He picked me up and he kissed me on both cheeks and he walked with me back home. He didn't believe me. He thought I was saying it to be kind. I wanted to run through the woods and climb the hills. I wanted to do all the things I'd never done in Alexandria. But we had our work waiting for us when we reached the courtyard, and more and more people were coming to pay their respects.

  15

  OLD SARAH SAID we were a whirlwind. Alphaeus with his sons, Levi and Silas, had the roof completely repaired in no time, and so well done that we could jump up and down on it, just to be sure. Our neighbors uphill to the right were happy about this, as they had a door out to this roof, and we welcomed them to use it as they had in the old days, to spread out their blankets in summer. There was plenty of roof left for us on the main part of the house and to the left side that looked out over the lower house downhill, and the houses in back which went down a slope as well.

  There were women on the rooftops seated with their sewing and babies playing and every roof had a parapet like the ones in Jerusalem so that children would not fall. Some people even had plants in pots on their roofs, small fruit trees and plants I didn't know. But I loved to be up there and look out over the valley.

  The winter cold was almost gone. A chill lingered, and I didn't like it but I knew the warm air was coming soon.

  Cleopas and Little Joses, his eldest, who was still small, and Little Justus, a little older and very clever, though he was Simon's younger son, did the plastering of the mikvah with

  the waterproof plaster that we knew how to mix up from what we could get from the villages here. And soon the pool was white and ready for water from the cistern. There was a tiny drain in the bottom of the mikvah through which some water would be passing out at all times, and this would make it living water which the Law required for purification.

  "It's living water because of that tiny drain?" Little Salome asked. "That makes it like the stream?"

  "Yes," said Cleopas, her father. "The water moves. It's living. Enough."

  The afternoon we finished refilling the pool we all gathered around it. It was bright and clear but cold. In the light of the lamps, it looked very fine.

  Joseph and I rebuilt the frames for all the vines against the house and along the front of the courtyard, handling the green vines as carefully as we could so as not to break them too much. Some were lost and it was bad, but most of the vines were saved, and we tied up the thick parts with new rope.

  James had set to work repairing the benches, taking what was good of some and putting it with what was good of others, to make a few that were sound.

  Neighbors came to talk at the courtyard wall, men of few words who were on their way to work in the fields, or women who could stay for a while, with their market baskets, mostly the friends of Old Sarah, but seldom women as old as she was, and other boys came to help. James soon had a friend named Levi, who was kin to us, son of our cousins who owned farmland and rich olive groves, and Little Salome, near the end of the first few days, had a flock of little girls her own age to bring into the house for whispering and squealing and gathering together.

  The women had more work to do than they ever had in Alexandria where they could buy fresh bread and even pottage and veget
ables every day. Here they were up early to bake the bread and no one brought the water here. They had to go to the spring outside the village and bring it back. And on top of that they were cleaning the upstairs rooms for which we had no use as yet, and scrubbing the benches as soon as James was finished with them, and mopping the courtyard, and sweeping the dirt floors inside.

  The dirt floors were no different than those in Alexandria except that they were beaten harder and there wasn't so much dust. And the rugs here were much better, thicker and softer. When we lay down for the evening meal, with rugs and cushions, we felt good.

  Finally, the Sabbath was upon us. It came so quick. But the women were ready, with all the food prepared ahead of time, and it was a feast of dried fish that had been plumped in wine and then roasted, together with dates, nuts I'd never tasted before, and fresh fruit from the farmland around us, as well as plenty of olives and other splendid things.

  All this was set out, and then the Sabbath lamp was lighted to welcome the Sabbath into the house. This was the duty of my mother, and she spoke the prayer in a soft voice as she put the wick to the lamp.

  We said our prayers of thanksgiving for our safe homecoming, and began our study, all together, singing, and talking and happy that it was our first Sabbath in our home.

  I thought of what Joseph had said to Philo, as we studied. The Sabbath makes scholars of us all. It made philosophers of us all. I didn't know for sure what a philosopher was, but I'd heard the word before—and I connected it with scholars and those who studied the Law. The Teacher in Alexandria once said Philo was a philosopher. Yes.

  And now we were all scholars and philosophers—in this big room, all dusted and clean, with everyone fresh from washing, going deep into the mikvah and putting on fresh clean clothes afterwards, all this before the sunset, and Joseph reading by the lamplight, and the smell of the pure beaten olive oil of the lamp so sweet.

  Why, we even had scrolls, like Philo did, though not as many, no, not as many. But some, and how many I didn't know for sure, because they came from chests in the house for which Joseph and Old Sarah kept the keys.

  And even some scrolls were hidden, buried down in the tunnel, to which we children hadn't been allowed yet to go. If the house should be raided by the bandits, if it should burn, and it made me shiver to think of it, these scrolls would be saved.

  Understand, I wanted to see the tunnel! But the men said that the tunnel needed repairing and no little ones were to go down there.

  Now, Joseph had taken out and laid down some scrolls before the Sabbath began. Some of these were very old and cracking at the edges. But all were good.

  "And now, we don't read from the Greek anymore," Joseph said, looking all around him, taking us all in. "We read only the Hebrew here in the Holy Land, and do I have to tell anyone why?"

  We all laughed.

  "But what shall I do with the book we love so much, which is in the Greek?" He held up the scroll. We knew it was The Book of Jonah. We clapped, and begged for him to read it.

  He laughed. He loved nothing better than to have us gathered around him to listen, and we hadn't had a chance for this for so long.

  "Tell me what I should do," he said. "Read it to you in the Greek, or tell it to you in our tongue."

  Again we clapped our hands, all of us so happy. We loved the way Joseph told the story of Jonah. And he had never really read it in the Greek without putting down the book and telling most of it because he loved it so much.

  At once, he went into the story with spirit—the Lord called the Prophet Jonah, the Lord told him to preach to Nineveh, "that great city!" said Joseph, and we all said it with him. But what did Jonah do? He tried to run from the Lord. Can anyone run from the Lord?

  Down to the sea, he went and onto a ship to a foreign land. But a great storm overtook the little vessel. And all the Gentiles prayed to their gods to save them, but on raged the rain and the thunder and the dark clouds.

  Then came the storm at sea, and the men cast lots to see the one who was the cause of it and the lot fell on Jonah, and where was Jonah? Fast asleep in the bottom of the ship. " 'What are you doing, Stranger, snoring in the bottom of this ship?' " Joseph said as he put on the face of the angry Captain. We laughed and clapped as he went on.

  "And what did Jonah? Why, he told them he feared the Lord God of All Creation, and that they should cast him into the sea because he had run from the Lord and the Lord was angry, but did they do it, no. They rowed hard to bring the ship to land and—?"

  We all cried, "The great storm went on."

  "And they prayed unto the Lord, in fear of him, but what did they do?"

  "They threw Jonah into the sea!"

  Joseph grew grave, and narrowed his eyes.

  "And the men feared the Lord and they sacrificed to him, and down in the depths of the sea, the Lord had made a great fish to—"

  "Swallow up Jonah!" we cried.

  "And he was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale!"

  We grew quiet. And all together, as Joseph led us, we repeated Jonah's prayer to the Lord to save him, as we all knew it, in our tongue, as well as we knew it in Greek, and even the men were saying it with us and the women,

  "... I went down deep to the very bottoms of the mountains; the earth like a prison enclosed me. Yet you have brought up my life from corruption. O Lord my God."

  I closed my eyes as we said it,

  "When my soul was weak I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you, into your holy Temple. . . ."

  I thought of the Temple. I thought not of the crowds inside it and the man dying on the spear, but of the great mass of shining limestone in the sun, with all its gold, and the songs of the faithful rising as if they were waves lapping as I'd seen the waves of the sea lapping over over and over as our ship drifted at anchor, waves without end. . . .

  I was so deep in my thoughts, so deep in remembering the water lapping at the boat, and remembering the singing rising and falling, that when I looked up they had all gone on with the tale.

  Jonah did now as the Lord commanded him. He went to "that great city of Nineveh," and he cried out: "Forty days and the city of Nineveh shall be destroyed!"

  "All the people believed in the Lord!" said Joseph, raising his eyebrows. "They fasted, they put on sackcloth from the greatest among them to the least. Even the King stood up from his throne and covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in ashes!"

  He put out his hands as if to say: Behold.

  "The King!" he repeated and we nodded. "And a proclamation went out that no one, not man nor beast, herd or

  flock, must even taste a morsel, or drink a drop of water. And all of them, man and beast, were to be covered in sackcloth, and cry out to the Lord."

  He stopped. He drew himself up. "Who can know if the Lord will turn and repent of his anger?"

  He opened his hands for us to answer:

  "And the Lord did repent of his anger," we said all together, "and Nineveh found grace with the Lord!"

  Joseph waited, then he asked:

  "But who was unhappy? Who was angry? Who stomped out of the city gates in a fit of temper!"

  "Jonah!" we cried.

  " 'Was this not the very thing I knew would happen?' " cried Jonah. " 'When I was in my own country! Was this not why I ran away on a ship to Tarshish?' "

  As we laughed, Joseph held up his finger as he always did for patience, and softly he went on in the voice of the Prophet. " 'I knew that you were a gracious God, merciful, and slow to anger, of great kindness, and repenting of anger, did I not?' "

  We all nodded.

  " 'Now!' " Joseph went on as Jonah drawing himself up with great pride, " 'take my life, take it from me!' " He threw up his hands. " 'For it's better that I die than to live!' "

  Laughter all around.

  "Right by the gates of Nineveh, Jonah sat down. He was so tired and so angry that he sat right there. And made himself a booth with what he could and sat under it in the
shade, just thinking, what may happen, what may happen yet. . .

  "And the Lord had a design. The Lord made a great vine to grow up out of the ground and over Jonah so that it sheltered him as he sat there with his lip jutting out, and the shade of that vine made him very content.

  "And so the night passed and the Prophet slept under that vine . . . and who knows? Perhaps the desert winds weren't too cold under that vine. What do you think?

  "But before the morning came, the Lord made a worm, yes, an evil worm that ate the vine and the vine withered away."

  He paused. He lifted his finger. "And the sun rose, and the Lord did make a strong wind, yes, we know it, a strong wind to blow against Jonah, and the sun beat down on his head.