Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt

  He knelt down and took me by the shoulders. He looked into my eyes.

  "He doesn't understand things himself," he said. "And when a man doesn't understand, he can't explain."

  "Joseph? Not understand?"

  "Yes, that's what I said. I said it for your ears only."

  "You understand?" I asked.

  "I try," he said. He raised his eyebrows and he smiled. "You know me. You know that I try. But Joseph's way is to wait, wait on the Lord himself. Joseph doesn't have to understand, because Joseph trusts in the Lord completely. There's something I can tell you and that you must remember. An angel has spoken to your mother. And angels have come to Joseph. But no angel has ever come to me."

  "And not to me, but..." I broke off. I wasn't going to say it—about Eleazer in Egypt, and about the rain stopping, and least of all about Cleopas himself in the Jordan River, and my hand on his back. Or about that night on the banks of the Jordan when I'd thought there were others there, all around me in the darkness.

  He was lost in his thoughts. He stood up and looked out over the fields at the mountains rising to the east and the west.

  "Tell me what happened!" I said. I kept my voice low. I pleaded. "Tell me everything."

  "Let's talk about the battles, and the rebellion, and these Kings of the House of Herod. It's easier," he said. He was still looking off.

  Then he looked down at me.

  "I cannot tell you what you want to know. I don't know everything either. If I try to tell you things, your father will put me out of the house for it. You know he will. And I can't bring that trouble to our house. You're what, eight years old now:

  "Not yet," I said. "But soon!"

  He smiled. "Yes, a man!" he said. "I see that. How could I not know you were a man? Listen to me, someday before I die, I'll tell you all I know. I promise you. ..." He went into his thoughts again.

  "What is it?"

  His face was full of shadows.

  "I will tell you this," he said. "Keep it in your heart. The day will come—." He shook his head. He looked away.

  "Speak, go on, I'm listening to you."

  When he turned back to me, he had a sharp smile again.

  "Now to Caesar Augustus," he said. "What does it matter who is collecting the taxes or catching the thieves? What does it matter who stands at the city gates? You saw the Temple. How can the Temple be rebuilt and purified if the Romans don't bring order to Jerusalem? Herod Archelaus gives the order for slaughter in the very Temple. The thieves and the rebels stand on the cloisters and shoot their arrows in the very Temple. I'd have a Roman peace, yes, a peace such as we had in Alexandria. I'll tell you something about the Romans. Their cup is full, and it's good to be ruled by one whose cup is full."

  I didn't answer him but I heard every word and remembered every word afterward.

  "What did they do to Simon, the rebel whom they caught?"

  "He was beheaded," said Cleopas. "He was let off easy, if you ask me. But then I didn't care that he burnt the two palaces of Herod. It's not that. . . it's all the rest of it, the lawlessness, the ruin."

  He looked at me.

  "Oh, you're too little to understand," he said.

  "How many times have you said that to me?" I asked.

  He laughed.

  "But I do understand," I said. "We don't have a Jewish King who can rule over all of us, not a Jewish King whom men love."

  He nodded. He looked around, at the sky, at the passing clouds.

  "Nothing for us really changes," he said.

  "I've heard this before."

  "You'll hear it again. Tomorrow, you'll come with me to Sepphoris and help with the painting of the walls we're finishing. It's easy work. I've drawn the lines. I'll mix the color. You just fill in. You'll be working just as you did in Alexandria. That's what we want. Isn't it? That and to love the Lord with our whole hearts and minds, and to know his Law."

  We walked back home together.

  I didn't tell him what was in my heart. I couldn't. I wanted to tell him about the strange dream I'd had but I couldn't. And if I couldn't tell my uncle Cleopas, then I couldn't tell anyone what I'd dreamed. I'd never be able to ask the Old Rabbi about the man with wings, or the visions I saw, that I'd seen the colonnades of the Temple in flames.

  And who would understand the night near the Jordan, the beings around me in the dark?

  We were almost down the hill. There was a woman singing in her garden, and little ones playing.

  I stopped.

  "Was is it?" he asked. "Come," he gestured with his hand.

  I didn't obey him.

  "Uncle," I said. "What was it, up there, that you were going to tell me? Tell me now."

  He looked at me and I looked at him.

  In a small voice I said, "I want to know."

  He was quiet, and a change came over him, a softening, and then he spoke in a low voice as he answered me.

  "You keep what I say in your heart," he said. "The day will come when you will have to give us the answers."

  We looked at each other, and I was the one to look away. / must give the answers!

  There came over me the remembrance of the Jordan River in the sunset, the fire in the water that was a beautiful fire, and the feeling of those others, those countless others all around me.

  And there came in a flash to me a feeling of understanding everything, everything!

  It was gone as soon as it had come. And I knew that I had let it go, this feeling. Yes, I had let it go.

  My uncle was still looking at me.

  He bent down and brushed my hair back from my forehead. He kissed me there.

  "You smiling at me?" he asked.

  "Yes," I said. "You spoke the truth," I said. "What truth?"

  "I'm too little to understand," I said. He laughed. "You don't fool me," he said and he stood up and we walked down the hill together.

  21

  THE SUMMER had been so good.

  The second crop of figs was pulling down our old tree in the courtyard, and the olive pickers beating the branches in the orchards, and I felt a happiness I'd never known, and I knew that I felt it.

  It was the beginning of time for me—from the last days in Alexandria to the coming to this place.

  As the months passed, we finished all the repairs on our house so that it was near to perfect for all of our families— that of my uncles, Simon and Alphaeus and Cleopas, and for Joseph and my mother, and for me.

  The Greek slave, Riba, who had come with Bruria gave birth to a child.

  There was much whispering and fussing about this matter, even among the children, with Little Salome whispering to me, "She didn't hide in that tunnel from the robbers far enough, did she?"

  But the night of the baby's birth, I heard it crying, and I heard Riba singing to it in Greek, and then Bruria was singing to it, and my aunts were laughing and singing together, with the lamps lighted, and it was a happy night.

  Joseph woke up and took the baby into his arms.

  "That's no Arab child," said my aunt Salome, "that's a Jewish boy and you know it."

  "Who said it was an Arab child!" cried Riba. "I told you—.

  "Very well, very well," Joseph said quietly, as always, "we'll call him Ishmael. Does that make everyone happy?"

  I liked the baby at once.

  He had a good little chin and large black eyes. He didn't cry all the time like my aunt Salome's new baby, who fussed if you made a strange noise, and Little Salome loved to carry him around while his mother worked. And so there was Little Ishmael. Little John of Aunt Salome and Alphaeus was one of fifteen Johns in die village, along with seventeen Simons, and thirteen by the name of Judas, and more Marys than I had fingers on both hands—and these just in our kindred on this side of the hill.

  But I go ahead of my story. These babies didn't come till winter.

  Summer burned hot without the sea breeze of the coast, and bathing in the spring was great fun every night when we returned from Sepp
horis, and the boys got into water fights with each other, while around the bend in the creek you could hear the girls laughing and talking amongst themselves. Upstream at the cistern cut in the rock where the women filled their jars there was much talking and laughing too, and my mother even sometimes came in the evening just to see the other women and walk with them.

  As the summer wore on, there were weddings in the village, both of them long all-night celebrations at which it seemed everybody in Nazareth was drinking and dancing, the men dancing with the men wildly, and the women danc-

  ing with the women, and even the maidens, though they were fearful and stayed together always next to the canopy under which the bride sat, the bride covered in the most fine veils and shining gold bracelets.

  Many in the village played the flutes; and several men the lyres and the women beat the tambourines over their heads, and old men hit the cymbals to make a steady time for the dancing. Even Old Justus was brought out and propped on pillows against the wall, and nodding, and smiling at the wedding, though the spit dripped down his chin and Old Sarah had to wipe it away.

  The father of the bride sometimes did the wildest dance of joy, rocking and throwing up his arms, and turning fast in his brightly trimmed robes, and some of the people drank themselves drunk and their brothers or sons picked them up and took them into their houses without a whisper as was expected.

  There was good food to eat, roasted lamb, and thick porridge of meat and lentils, and tears shed, and we little ones played out in the fields late, running and screaming and hooting and jumping, in the darkness, because nobody cared. I ran as far up into the forest as I dared to go and then up the hill and looked at the stars, and danced the way I'd seen the men dance.

  More things happened that year than I can possibly tell.

  There was one wedding of the rich farmer's daughter, Alexandra, a beauty, everyone said, and what a bride she was in her gold-threaded veils. When the canopy and the torches came to her door, everyone sang at the sight of her.

  People came from other villages to share that feast, and when the Pharisees gathered to wish everyone well, and would not eat, the mother of Alexandra the beauty went and bowed to the ground to Rabbi Sherebiah and told him the food had been slaughtered and prepared as was perfect and clean, and if he would not partake of her food for this wedding of her daughter, she herself would not eat or drink at this wedding though it was her only daughter.

  Rabbi Sherebiah called for his servant to bring him the water to wash his hands, as Pharisees always did that, washed their fingers right before they ate, even though they were clean, and then he ate from the banquet, holding up the morsel for all to see, and everyone cheered, and all the Pharisees did as he did, even Rabbi Jacimus, though Pharisees almost never dined with anyone but each other.

  Then Rabbi Sherebiah danced in spite of his wooden leg, and all the men danced.

  Our beloved Rabbi Berekhaiah came forward and danced a slow and wondrous dance that delighted all of us little ones who were his pupils. Moreover, after that his father-in-law, not to be outdone, had to dance, as did every old man in the village.

  The mother of Alexandra went off to sit with the bride and the women and they were drinking happily that the Pharisees had come to the banquet.

  Work went on.

  Buildings went up in Sepphoris as if they were plants growing wild in a marsh. The burnt places were healed the way bruises are healed. The marketplace grew larger all the time, with more and more merchants there to sell to those furnishing their new houses. And there were laborers aplenty for us to hire for our work. And everyone called us the Egyptian Gang.

  No one complained of our prices, and as Alphaeus and Simon directed the building of foundations and floors and new walls, Cleopas and Joseph were making the pretty banquet tables, and bookshelves, and Roman chairs we'd made in Alexandria.

  I did learn to paint borders more cleverly than before. And even to paint some of the flowers and leaves, though pretty much I filled in what the skilled painters had outlined for us.

  When we did stonework, it was of the richest kind, when matching the marble pavers took patience, and the plan took careful layout. We went to the village of Cana to do a floor there for a man who had come back from the Greek islands and wanted his library to be beautiful.

  People came to hire us from other places as well. A merchant from Capernaum asked us to come there, and I really did want us to go because we would be near the Sea of Galilee if we went, but Joseph said those journeys were yet to come when the building stopped in Sepphoris.

  And we took a lot of jobs home with us to Nazareth to be finished, especially the job of making couches or inlaid tables, and we learned of the best silversmiths and enamelers in Sepphoris and went to them for their finishing of the pieces.

  If there was any bad thing, other than the talk of the soldiers chasing the rebels in Judea—which did go on without cease—it was that Little Salome and I couldn't be together much anymore at all.

  She was busy all the time now with the women, much more so than she'd been in Alexandria, and it seemed to me that for all the work we had, and the money coming into our purses, that the women had a harder lot.

  Food they had bought aplenty in Alexandria, but here they grew the vegetables, and had to pick them from the garden; and whereas one could always buy hot bread in Alexandria in the bakers' street, they baked all their bread here, after grinding the wheat themselves very early every morning.

  Whenever I tried to talk to Little Salome, she put me off, and more and more she used the same voice to me that the women used to the children. She had grown up overnight, and was always tending to a baby. It was either Baby Esther who was beginning to keep quiet now and then for the first time, or the baby of some woman who had come to visit Old Sarah. This was no more the child who had whispered and laughed with me in Alexandria, or even the little girl who cried on the trip north from Jerusalem. She went to school with us now and then—there were a few young girls in the school who sat apart from the boys—but she was impatient with it, and wanted to get home to work, she said. Cleopas told her she had to learn to read and write Hebrew, but she didn't care for it.

  I missed her.

  Now what the women liked to do, however, was weaving, and when they set up their looms in the courtyard in the warm months, it caused talk from one end of Nazareth to the other.

  It seemed that the women of this place used a loom with one pole to it, and one crosspiece at which they had to stand. But we had brought back from Alexandria bigger looms, with two sliding crosspieces, at which the woman could sit, and the women of the village all came to see this.

  A woman could sit at this loom, as I said, which indeed, my mother did, and a woman could go much faster with her work, as my mother did, and make cloth to be sold in the marketplace, which my mother did—when she had time, that is, from Little Symeon and Little Judas with the help of Little Salome.

  But my mother loved weaving. Her days of weaving the temple veils with the eighty-four young girls chosen for this, housed in Jerusalem, had given her great speed and skill, and she turned out cloth that was of the quality of the best in the marketplace, and she knew how to dye cloth as well, even to work in purple.

  Now it was explained to us that those girls had been chosen to make the Temple veils because all things for the Temple had to be made by those in a state of purity. And only girls beneath the age of twelve were certain to be pure, and those chosen had a tradition, and my mother's family was part of it. But my mother didn't talk much of those days in Jerusalem. Only to say the veil had been very big and very elaborate, and two a year had to be made.

  It was this veil that covered the entrance to the Holy of Holies: the place where the Lord himself was present.

  No woman ever went to the Holy of Holies: only the High Priest. And so my mother had loved her work on the veil, and that the work of her hands had gone there.

  Many women of the village came to talk to my
mother and watch her with this loom. It was different after she began weaving in the open courtyard. She had more friends. Our kindred who had not come to talk were now coming often.

  And ever after that summer they would call on her, and some of the young girls who did not have little ones underfoot would come to hold the babies on their knees. This was good for my mother because she was fearful.

  In a village like Nazareth, all the women know everything. How cannot really be explained. But that is the way it is, and the way it was. And she almost surely knew of the hard questions put to Joseph when I was taken into the school. And it hurt her.

  I knew this because I knew every little move of her face, of her eyes and her lips, and I could see it. I could see her fearfulness of other women.

  Of men, she had no fear, because no good man was going to look at her or talk to her or in any way disturb her. That was the way of the village. A man did not talk to a married woman unless he was her very near kin and even then, he never sought her out alone, unless he was her brother. So she had no real fear of men. But of women? She had been afraid, until the days of the loom, and the women coming to learn from her.