Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt

  Now my cousin Elizabeth's eyes were fixed on me. Slowly she looked at Joseph and Mary, and then again at each and every one listening. "They beat Zechariah. They beat him because he would say nothing, and with one fine blow to his head, they killed him. Right before the Lord."

  We waited in silence as she went on.

  "Many saw what happened. But they didn't know the reason for it. Some of the priests knew. And they sent word to me. Our kinsmen were told, and they told other kinsmen and some came to the Essenes and told. And I was told."

  All were dazed by this terrible news. My mother leaned forward and put her head on the shoulder of Elizabeth, and Elizabeth held her. But then Elizabeth drew herself up, and so did my mother, and Elizabeth spoke on.

  "The kinsmen of Zechariah, all of them priests, saw to his burial with his ancestors," she said. "And do you think I have gone into the Temple since? Not till you came to Jerusalem. Not till the tyrant was dead, and gone to eternal fire. Not till the stories of Yeshua and John were forgotten, and what do we find when we go before the Lord?"

  No one dared to answer her.

  "He goes to the Essenes and soon. There he will be hidden. Now you take your leave of me and go on to Nazareth before more bandits come through here. I have nothing for them to take. I'm old and John is little, and they'll leave us in peace. But I won't see you again. No. And surely John is meant to hear the voice of the Lord. He is consecrated to the Lord, and the Essenes know that he is under the vow. And they will take care of him and he'll study until the time comes for him. Now you, you go."

  9

  HEROD'S SOLDIERS, the bandits, the man killed in the Temple, my cousin killed in the Temple, a priest killed searching for the whereabouts of a child, and my cousin was the child.

  Yeshua and John. Why was he foretold, and why were we linked, and behind it all was the great question: What had happened in Bethlehem? What had happened, and was it the thing that had made my family go to Egypt where I'd lived all my life?

  But I couldn't think now except in bursts of curiosity and fear. The fear became part of my thinking. The fear became part of the story. My cousin Zechariah, a priest with gray hairs, being kicked by the soldiers of Herod. And here we were in the village that was filled with the angry voices of those who'd been robbed by the bandits, and expected more of the same.

  We found our beasts still tethered on the outskirts. An old woman without teeth stood there laughing.

  "They tried to steal them!" she cried. "But the animals wouldn't move." She bowed her head and slapped her knees as she laughed. "They couldn't make them move." And an old man who was sitting in the dirt beside a small house was laughing too.

  "They stole my shawl," he cried out. "I said to them, 'Go on, brother, take it!' " He waved his hand and he laughed and laughed.

  We loaded our bundles quickly, put Cleopas firmly in place, and Aunt Mary in place, and then my mother took Elizabeth in her arms and they cried.

  Little John stood there staring at me.

  "We'll go around Jericho and on through the valley home," Joseph said to all of us.

  When my mother finally came, we set off.

  Little Salome and I went ahead with James, and some of the other cousins followed.

  Cleopas began to sing.

  "But who are the Essenes?" Little Salome asked me.

  "I don't know," I said. "I heard what you heard. How could I know?"

  James said: "They don't hold with the priesthood in the Temple. They believe they have the true priesthood. They are the descendants of Zadok. They wait until they can purify the Temple. They dress in white; they pray together. They live apart."

  "Are they good or are they bad?" Little Salome asked.

  "They're good enough for our kindred," said James. How can we know? There are Pharisees, there are the priests, there are the Essenes. We all say the prayer, 'Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is One.' "

  We murmured the prayer after him in Hebrew as he'd said it. We said it every day always in the morning when we rose and in the evening. I hardly thought about it. When we said it everything stopped, and we said it with a true heart.

  I didn't want to say anything about the things that troubled me. A bad feeling came over me that James knew all about it, and I didn't want to say anything with Little Salome there. My feelings grew darker and darker and the fear was there, very near.

  We were moving fast it seemed to me, down and down through the mountains, and the plain was spread out and beautiful in the sunlight with palm trees everywhere, even though smoke was still pouring up from the burnt places, and there were many houses on all sides. It wasn't hard to see that people everywhere were going on with what they had to do as if the bandits had never come.

  Bands of pilgrims passed us, some singing, and some were on horseback, and they had cheerful greetings for us.

  We drew near villages where children were playing, and we could smell the cooking food.

  "You see," said my mother, as if she knew my thoughts, "it will be this way all the way to Nazareth. These robbers, they come and they go, but we are who we are." She smiled at me and it seemed I'd never be afraid again.

  "Do they really fight for the freedom of the Holy Land?" Little Salome asked. She was looking to the men now for an answer, as we were somewhat drawn together.

  Cleopas laughed at the question. He rubbed her head.

  "Little daughter, if men want to fight, they find a reason," he said. "Men have been fighting for the freedom of the Holy Land by raiding the villages whenever they want to for hundreds of years."

  Joseph merely shook his head.

  Alphaeus reached out to gather Little Salome up to him.

  "You don't worry," he said. "Once it was Cyrus the King who watched over us, now it's Augustus Caesar. We don't care, because the Lord in Heaven is the only King we know in our hearts, and what man thinks he is King here on Earth, we don't care."

  "But David was King of Israel," I said. "David was King, and Solomon after him. And King Josiah, he was a great King of Israel. We've known this for as long as we've known anything. And we're the House of David, and the Lord said to David, 'I will make you reign over Israel forever.' Isn't that so?"

  "Forever ..." Alphaeus said. "But who is to judge the ways of the Lord? The Lord will keep his promise to David in the Lord's way."

  He looked away as he spoke. We were in the valley now. The crowd of those coming out of the mountains was large. We pressed together. "Forever . . . what is forever in the mind of the Lord?" he said. "A thousand years is nothing but a moment to the Lord."

  "A King will come?" I asked.

  Joseph turned and looked at me.

  "The Lord keeps his promises to Israel," said Alphaeus, "but how and when and in what way we don't know."

  "Do angels come only in Israel?" Little Salome asked.

  "No," said Joseph. "They come anywhere and everywhere and whenever they want."

  "Why did we have to go to Egypt?" asked Little Salome. 'Why did King Herod's men—."

  "This is no time to tell you," said Joseph.

  My mother spoke up. "There will come a time, a time to tell you everything slowly so that you understand. But now is not that time."

  I knew they would say this, or words like it. But there had been a chance, and I was glad that Little Salome had spoken up. I didn't know where my older cousins, Silas and Justus, had gone, or any of the others, or what they thought of what Elizabeth had said. Maybe those older boys knew things, surely they knew things. Maybe Silas knew.

  I dropped back slowly in the press of the family, until I was walking close to my uncle Cleopas on the donkey.

  Cleopas had heard us talking, I was sure of it. Had anyone made me promise not to ask him questions? I didn't think so.

  "I pray I live to tell you things," said Cleopas.

  But no sooner had he spoken these words, than Joseph stepped back beside him, and began to walk with us and he said quickly:

  "I pray you live
to let me tell my child what I will." He was gentle but he meant it. "Enough questions. Enough talk of the bad things of long ago. We're out of Jerusalem. We're away from the troubles. We have good daylight and we can go far before making our camps."

  "I wanted to go into Jericho!" cried Little Salome. "Couldn't we go into Jericho for a little while? I want to see the palace of Herod where they burned it."

  "We want to see Jericho!" cried Little Symeon.

  Suddenly all the children around us took up the cry, even children of new pilgrims who were with us, and I started to laugh at the way in which Joseph smiled.

  "You listen to me," Joseph said. "We will bathe tonight in the River Jordan! The River Jordan! We'll wash our bodies and our clothes in it for the first time! And then we'll sleep out in the valley under the stars!"

  "The River Jordan!" Everyone was shouting it with great excitement.

  Joseph was telling the tale of the leper who'd come to the Prophet Elisha and been told to bathe in the River Jordan and how he would be cleansed. And Cleopas began a story of how Joshua had crossed the Jordan, and then Alphaeus was telling James another story, and I went from story to story as we moved on.

  Zebedee and his people caught up with us, whom we hadn't seen since we'd left Elizabeth, and he too had a tale of the Jordan River, and Zebedee's wife, Mary, who was my mother's cousin, Mary Alexandra, but always called Mary, soon began to sing, "Blessed be all those who fear the Lord; that walk in his ways!"

  She had a sweet high voice. We sang with her.

  "For you will eat the labor of your hands; and you will be happy and all will be well!"

  We were such a large clan that we moved slowly, with many stops for the women to take their ease, and for Little Esther to be wrapped in fresh swaddling clothes. My aunt Mary was sick, for certain, but my mother said it was good news, a baby coming, and I stopped worrying about it. And Cleopas had to come down off the donkey many times to cover his feet, as they say, which meant to find a private place to relieve himself away from the road.

  He was weak and my mother went with him, holding his arm, which made him angry, but he needed the help, and she wouldn't let the men do it. She said, "This is my brother," and she went with him alone.

  He did it so many times that he told us the funny story from Scripture of the time King Saul was warring with young David, fearing young David because he knew that David was to be King. King Saul went into a cave to cover his feet, and his enemy David was in there, and might have killed him. But did David do it? God forbid. David crept up to Saul in the darkness of the cave as Saul relieved himself, a man off guard, and David cut a tassel from Saul's kingly robe, a tassel like no other man wore.

  And hours later, in hope of making peace with King Saul, David sent this tassel to him, to let him know that he, David, might have slain King Saul, but would David have slain an anointed King? God forbid.

  We all loved the stories of David and Saul. Even Silas and Levi who were usually bored with stories came up to listen as Cleopas told these tales. Cleopas was speaking in Greek all the while, and we were all very used to it, and liked it, though nobody said so.

  Cleopas told us the marvelous story of how Saul, when the Lord ceased to speak to him, went to the Soothsayer of Endor, to beg her to summon from Sheol the spirit of the dead Prophet Samuel, to tell Saul his fate. There was to be a great battle on the next morning, and Saul, who no longer found favor with the Lord, was desperate, and sought out a woman who could talk to the dead. Now this was forbidden by Saul's own orders, along with all soothsaying. But such a woman was found.

  And out of the Earth by her power came the spirit of the Prophet asking, "Why have you disturbed my rest?" Then he foretold that Saul's enemies would defeat Israel, and that Saul and his sons would all die.

  "And what happened then?" asked Cleopas, looking around at all of us.

  "She made him sit down and eat a meal for his strength," said Silas.

  "And that's what we'd like to do right now." Everyone laughed.

  "I tell you, we will not eat or drink until we reach the river," cried Cleopas.

  And so we pushed on.

  And to the river we finally came.

  Beyond the tall grass, it was red with the light of the sun that was almost gone away.

  Many people were bathing in the river. People streamed down to the banks from all directions, and others had made camps nearby. We could hear the singing coming from everywhere, and songs blended into songs.

  We ran into the water and the water came up to our knees. We washed our bodies and our clothes. We were singing and shouting. The cool air did not bother us, and we were soon warm and the water felt warm.

  Cleopas came down from the back of the beast and walked into the river. He threw up his hands. He sang aloud so all could hear him.

  "Praise to the Lord, Praise to the Lord, my soul, sing! While I live I will praise the Lord; I'll sing praises unto my God while I have any life in me; Put no trust in princes, nor in others, in whom there's no help; the breath of your men goes out of them; they return to the earth; in that very day their thoughts are gone, gone!"

  All began to sing with him:

  "Happy is the one that has the Lord of Jacob for his help!"

  The whole river was full of singing, and those on the banks began to sing.

  I'd never seen my uncle as he was now, looking up at the red sky, and with his arms up, and his face so full of his prayers. All the cleverness was gone from him. All the anger was gone. He didn't care about the people. He didn't sing for the people. He sang and sang without looking at anyone. He looked up at the sky, and I looked at it, at the sky darkening

  with ribbons of red from the dying sun, and the first of the bright stars.

  I moved through the water as I sang, and when I reached him, I put my arm up around his back, and felt him shivering under his robe that was trailing in the water.

  He didn't even know I was there.

  Stay with me. Lord, Father in Heaven, let him stay with us. Father in Heaven, I ask this! Is this too much? If I cannot have answers to my questions, let me have this man for a little while, for as long as you will.

  I was weak. I needed to hold on to him or I would have fallen. Something happened. It happened quickly and then slowly. There was no more river, no more dark sky and no more of the singing, but all around me there were others and there were so many others that no one could count them; they were beyond the grains of sand in the desert or in the sea. Please, please, with me, please, but if he has to die, so be it—. I reached out with both arms. I reached up. I knew, just for a moment, a tiny moment, the answer to everything, and I worried about nothing, but that moment vanished, and all these countless others went upward away from me, away from where I could see them and feel them.

  Darkness. Stillness. People laughing and talking as they do late at night.

  I opened my eyes. Something fled away from me, like the water washing away on a beach, just being pulled back, so big and strong you can't stop it. Gone, whatever it was. Gone.

  I was afraid. But I was dry and wrapped up and it was soft here, soft and close and dark. The stars were sprinkled all over the sky. People still sang and there were lights moving everywhere, lights of lanterns and candles and fires by the tents. I was covered up and warm and my mother had her arm over me.

  "What did I do?" I asked.

  "You fell down in the river, you were tired, you were praying and you were tired. There were so many people, and you were praying and you cried out to the Lord. You're here now, and you go to sleep. I put you to bed. You close your eyes now, and when you wake in the morning, you'll eat and you'll be strong. It's all too much, and you're little but not little enough, and you're a big boy, but not big enough."

  "But we're here and we're home," I said. "And something happened."

  "No," she said. She meant it. She didn't understand. She smiled. I could see that in the firelight, and I could feel the heat of the fire. She told the tr
uth as she always did. I looked over and saw James fast asleep, and beside him Zebedee's little brothers, and so many others, I didn't know all their names. Little Symeon was asleep bundled up against Little Judas. Little Joseph was snoring.

  Mary, the wife of Zebedee, was talking to Mary, the wife of Cleopas, in a fast, worried manner but I couldn't hear her words. They were friends, now, I could see that, and Mary, the Egyptian, the wife of Cleopas, was gesturing and making pictures with her hands. Mary of Zebedee was nodding.

  I closed my eyes. The others, the great crowd of others, so sweet, like the blanket, like the wind with the smell of the river. Were they here? Something stirred in me, knowledge as clear as if a voice was speaking: this is not the most difficult part.