Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt

  "Well, why an angel would come to Joseph and tell him to come home through all the bloodshed and the terrors, but you just made sense of it, didn't you?"

  She looked to Joseph.

  He was smiling, but I think he was smiling because he hadn't thought of this before. And she had the bright eyes of a child, the trust of a child, my mother.

  "Yes," he said. "Now it does seem that way. It was our journey through the wilderness."

  My uncle Simon had been asleep on his mat, his head on his elbow, but he rose up now and said in a sleepy voice, "I think Jews can make sense of anything."

  Silas laughed hard at that.

  "No," said my mother, "it's true. It's a matter of seeing it. I remember, in Bethlehem, when I was asking the Lord, 'How, how . . . ?' and then—."

  She looked at me, and ran her hand over my hair as she often did. I liked it as always, but I didn't cuddle close to her. I was too big for that.

  "What happened in Bethlehem?" I asked. I blushed. I'd forgotten Joseph's order to me not to ask. I felt a sharp pain all through me. "I'm sorry that I said it," I whispered.

  My mother looked at me, and I could see she knew that I was feeling bad. She looked at Joseph and then at me.

  No one said a word.

  My brother James had a hard look on his face as he stared at me.

  "You were born there, you know that," said my mother, "in Bethlehem. The town was crowded." She spoke haltingly, looking at Joseph and then at me as she went on. "It was full of people that night, Bethlehem, and we couldn't find a place to stay—it was Cleopas and Joseph and James and I, and— the innkeeper put us in the stable. It was in the cave beside the place. It was good to be in there, because it was warm, and God had sent a snow."

  "A snow!" I said. "I want to see snow."

  "Well, maybe someday you will, " she said.

  No one said a word. I looked at her. She wanted to go on. I knew she did. And she knew how much I wanted her to go on.

  She started to talk again.

  "You were born there in the stable," she said calmly. "And I wrapped you up and put you in the manger."

  Everyone laughed the usual gentle family laugh.

  "In the manger? The hay for the donkeys?" This was the secret of Bethlehem?

  "Yes," said my mother, "and there you lay, probably in a softer bed than any newborn in Bethlehem that night. And the beasts kept us very warm, while the tenants froze in the rooms above."

  Again, the family laughter.

  The memory made them all happy, except for James. James looked almost dark. His thoughts were far away. He'd been by my reckoning maybe seven years old when this took place, the age I was now. How could I know what he thought?

  He looked at me. Our eyes met, and something passed between us. He looked away.

  I wanted my mother to tell me more.

  But they had begun to talk of other things—of the good early rains, of the reports of peace coming from Judea, of the hope that we might go up to Jerusalem for the coming Passover if things continued to go well.

  I got up and went out.

  It was dark and chilly but it felt good after the close warmth of the house.

  That couldn't be the whole story of Bethlehem! That couldn't be all that happened. My mind could not put all the pieces together, the questions, the moments and words spoken, and doubts.

  I remembered my terrible dream. I remembered the winged man, and the mean things that he said. In the dream, they hadn't hurt me. But now they stung me.

  Oh, if only I could talk to someone, but there was no one, no one to whom I could tell what was in my heart, and there never would be!

  I heard steps behind me, soft, dragging steps, and then I felt a hand on my shoulder. I heard a breathing that I knew was from Old Sarah.

  "You come inside, Jesus bar Joseph," she said, "it's too cold out here for you to be standing and looking at the stars."

  I turned around and did what she said because she told me to, but I didn't want to. I went with her inside the house. And back to the warm gathering of the family and this time

  I lay down like my uncles with my head on my arm and looked at the low brazier with its burning coals.

  The little ones started fussing. My mother got up to tend to them, and then called for Joseph to help.

  My uncles went off to bed in their rooms. Aunt Esther was in the other part of the house, with Baby Esther, who was howling as always.

  Only Old Sarah sat on her bench because she was too old to sit on the floor, and James was there, and James was looking at me, and the fire was in both his eyes.

  "What is it?" I asked him. "What's this thing you want to say?" I asked. But I said it low.

  "What was that?" asked Old Sarah. She stood up. "Was that Old Justus?" she asked. She went off into the other room. It wasn't anything really bad. It was only Old Justus coughing because his throat was so weak that he couldn't swallow.

  James and I were alone.

  "Say it to me," I said.

  "Men said they saw things," James said. "When you were born, they saw things."

  "What?"

  He looked away. He was angry, and hard.

  At age twelve, a boy can take on the yoke of the Law. He was past that now.

  "Men claimed to see things," he said. "But I can tell you what I saw, myself, with my eyes."

  I waited.

  His eyes came back to me, and his look was sharp.

  "These men came. To the house in Bethlehem. We'd been in Bethlehem for a while. We'd found good lodgings. My father was tending to his affairs, finding our kindred, all of that. And then in the night, these men came. They were wise men, from the East, maybe from Persia. They were the men who read the stars and believe in magic, and advise the Kings of Persia as to what they should do and not do on account of the signs. They had servants with them. They were rich men, beautifully robed. They came asking to see you. They knelt in front of you. They brought gifts. They called you a King."

  I was too surprised to speak.

  "They said they had seen this great star in the Heavens," he said, "and they had followed that star to the house where we were. You were in a crib. And they laid their gifts before you."

  I didn't dare to ask him anything.

  "Everyone in Bethlehem saw those magi come, and their servants with them. They rode camels, those men. They spoke with authority. They bowed before you. And then they went away. It was the end of their journey, and they were satisfied."

  I knew he was telling me the truth. No lie would ever pass the lips of my brother James.

  And I knew that he knew I had caused that boy in Egypt to die, and that I'd brought him back to life. And he'd seen me bring clay sparrows to life, a thing I hardly remembered.

  A King. Son of David, Son of David, Son of David.

  The women were coming in now. And my older cousins had wandered in from where I didn't know.

  My aunt Salome picked up the last of the bread and scraps from supper.

  Old Sarah had taken her place on the bench.

  "Pray that child sleeps till morning," said Old Sarah.

  "Don't fret," said Aunt Salome. "Riba sleeps with one eye open for all of them."

  "A blessing," said my mother, "that sweet girl."

  "Poor Bruria would not be alive if it were not for that girl. That girl tends to her as if she were a child. Poor Bruria ..."

  "Poor Bruria..."

  And so on it went.

  My mother told me to go to bed.

  The next day James wouldn't look at me. It was not a surprise. He hardly ever looked at me. And as the days passed, he never did.

  The winter months grew colder and colder.

  When it came time for the Feast of Lights, we had many lamps burning in our house, and from the rooftops one could see big fires from all the villages, and in our streets, the men danced with torches just as they would have if they had gone to Jerusalem.

  On the morning at the end of the eighth day, a
s the Feast was ending, and I was sleeping, I heard shouts from outside. Soon everyone in the room was up and running.

  Before I could ask what it was, I went with them.

  The early morning light was perfectly gray. And the Lord had sent a snow!

  All of Nazareth was beautifully covered with it, and it came down in big flakes, and the children ran out to gather the flakes as if they were leaves, but the flakes melted away.

  Joseph looked at me with a secret smile, as everyone else went out into the silent snowfall.

  "You prayed for a snow?" he asked. "Well, you have a snow."

  "No!" I said. "I didn't do it. Did I?"

  "Be careful what you pray for!" he whispered. "You understand?" His smile grew bigger, and he led me out to feel the snowflakes for myself. His laughter and happiness made me feel all right.

  But James, who stood by himself, under the roof that jutted out over the courtyard stones, stared at me; and when Joseph went off, he crept up, and whispered in my ear:

  "Why don't you pray for gold to drop from Heaven!"

  I felt my face on fire.

  But he was gone with the others. And we were almost never, never alone.

  Later that day—the eight days of the Feast of Lights had ended at dawn—I sought out the grove of trees, the only place in the whole creation where I could be alone. The snow was thick. I wore heavy wool around my feet with thick sandals, but the wool was wet by the time I got there and I was very cold. I couldn't stay long under the trees, but I stood there, thinking to myself and looking at the wonder of the snow covering the fields and making them look so very beautiful like a woman dressed in her finest robes.

  How fresh, how clean it all looked.

  I prayed. Father in Heaven, tell me what you want of me. Tell me what all these things mean? Everything has a story to it. And what is the story of all this?

  I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, I saw the heavens had given us more snow, and it was making a veil over Nazareth. Slowly as I watched, the village disappeared. Yet I knew it was there.

  "Father in Heaven, I won't pray for snow, Father in Heaven, I will never pray for what is not your will. Father in Heaven, I won't pray for this one to live or that one to die, oh, no, never for that one to die, and never, never will I try even to make it rain or stop rain, or to make it snow, never until I understand what it means, all of it. ..." And there my prayer ran out into flashing memories, and the snow caught my eyes as I looked up into the trees and the snow came down softly on me as if it were kissing me.

  I was hidden in the snow, I was hidden and safe, even from myself.

  Far away someone called my name.

  I woke from my prayer, I woke from the stillness, and the softness of the snow, and I ran down the hill, waving, and calling, and heading for the warm firelight and the family all around it.

  22

  MY FIRST YEAR in the Promised Land came to an end as it had commenced: with the opening of the New Year for Israel.

  Herod Archelaus and the Roman soldiers from Syria had made peace in Judea—at least enough peace—for us to pass through the land of Herod Archelaus, through the Jordan Valley, and up into the hill country to Jerusalem for the Feast of Passover.

  To myself I was an older child since that sorrowful and frightening journey on the very same path to Nazareth. I knew many new words to think in my head about what I'd seen. And I loved it when we were in the open country. I loved the smiling and the laughter. And I loved the bathing in the Jordan River again.

  Many other villagers had joined the men of our family, many wives had come along, and a great flock of young maidens under the eye of fathers and mothers, and all of my new friends from the village, most of them my kindred, and some not.

  The little rains had been good this year, everyone said, and for a long time the land was green.

  Old Sarah made the journey with us and she rode the back of the donkey, and it was good to have her. We crowded around her. My mother came also, but Aunt Esther and Aunt Salome stayed behind to tend to the little ones and Little Salome remained with them.

  Bruria, our refugee, came with us, and so did the Greek slave girl Riba, with her newborn in a sling, tending to everyone.

  Now I should say one reason that Joseph brought Bruria was in the hope that when we passed the site of her farm Bruria would want to reclaim it. Bruria had many of her papers, which had been recovered from the burnt place, and surely, said Joseph, there were people there who knew it was her property.

  But Bruria had no desire to do this. She wanted nothing. She worked as a woman in sleep, helping but wanting nothing for herself. And Joseph told us apart from her that we must never judge her or be unkind to her. If she wanted to remain with us forever, she could. We had all been strangers once in the Land of Egypt.

  No one minded at all, and my mother said so. Riba was a joy to the women, said my aunt Salome. She was modest as a Jewish woman, and clean and helpful, and did as we all did in everything.

  We had come to love Riba and Bruria. And when Bruria passed the site of her old farm and did not care, we were sad for her. That was her land and she ought to have it.

  Now with us too on the road came the Pharisees, all in a group with their beasts for the women and the old men to ride, and their household. And there were other households from Nazareth as well, and from many other villages who joined the procession.

  Our kindred from Capernaum, the fishermen and their wives and sons met us too—these were Zebedee, the beloved cousin of my mother and his wife, Mary Alexandra who was my mother's cousin, too, and both distantly cousins of Joseph, and many others, some of whom I remembered, some not.

  Soon there was no end of people on the road, talking and singing the Psalms as we'd done that first day in Jerusalem so long ago. We sang those sweetest Psalms called the Psalms of Praise.

  When we started to climb up from the Jordan towards the Holy City, through the steep mountains, I felt the old fear. I wanted my mother and I didn't want anyone to know it. It had been a long time since I'd had the bad dreams, but they came back. I slept close to Old Sarah when I could, and if I woke up crying, her voice would make the dream go away. I knew that James woke up at these times, and I didn't want for him to know this. I wanted to be strong, and with the men now.

  It was not a hard journey; it was good to see the villages being rebuilt which had suffered fire; the city of Jericho was being rebuilt and all around it the beautiful date palms and the great forests of balsam were doing well.

  Now the balsam was a tree that grew nowhere else in the world but here, and its perfume sold for a great deal, and the Romans were a big market for it.

  The sun was shining on all this when I saw it this time, and before Jericho had been a city of the night in flames and made me cry in terror. Of course we had to see the foundations of the new palace and how the carpenters were proceeding. My uncles inspected everything from the piles of masonry on the site to the framing and the clearing of the land for the new rooms that would be built for Archelaus.

  Now right after Jericho we came to the village where we'd left our cousin Elizabeth and Little John.

  My mother was troubled as we approached, and so were Zebedee and his wife. It had been a long time since anyone had received a letter from Elizabeth.

  When we arrived, we found the little house where we'd stayed shuttered and vacant. I thought my mother was going to suffer a terrible blow, and it did come but not as bad as I had feared.

  Distant kindred there soon came to tell us that Elizabeth, wife of Zechariah the priest, had suffered a fall only a month before, and she'd been taken up to Bethany near Jerusalem. She could no longer speak, they told us, or move very much, and Little John had gone on to live with the Essenes in the desert. Several of the Essenes had come to take him out with them to a place near the edge of the mountains just above the Dead Sea.

  Finally we had come up through the long winding mountain passes, to the Mount of Olives, from which
we could see, over the Kidron Valley, the Holy City lying before us. There rose the white walls of the Temple, with its great trimmings of gold, and all the little houses spilling up and down the hills around it.

  Everyone cried for joy and gave thanks at the sight of it. But the fear got a grip on me, and I didn't tell anyone. Joseph lifted me up but I was too big now to be on his shoulders. Some of the children were trying to squeeze to the front of the crowd. I didn't want to go.

  Fear rose in me like a sickness in my throat, from which I couldn't escape. It didn't matter that there was the sun in the sky. I didn't see it. I didn't see anything but darkness. I think Old Sarah knew because she drew me close to her. I loved the smell of her wool robe, and the soft touch of her hand.