Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt Page 4

  "What would you do, Father?" Little Salome asked him. "If you saw an angel of the Lord with your own eyes in Nazareth?"

  "Just what my beloved sister did," he answered me. Obey the angel in everything he told me to do." And again came his low private laughing.

  A terrible anger came over my mother. She looked over at her brother. My aunt shook her head as if to say let it all go. This was her way with her husband.

  And usually it was my mother's way too, to let things go with her brother, but not this time.

  Little Salome saw all of this, this look of anger on my mother's face, something so surprising I didn't know what to make of it, and I looked up and saw that James too was there, watching, and I knew that he had heard it. I was very sorry to see this. I didn't know what to do. But Joseph sat quietly away from all of this just thinking to himself.

  I had a sense of something then, and why I'd never sensed it before I don't know. It was that Joseph put up with Cleopas but never really answered him. For him, he'd made this voyage over sea rather than land. And for him, he'd go to Jerusalem, even if there were trouble. But he never answered him. He never said anything to all Cleopas' laughing.

  And Cleopas laughed at everything. In the House of Prayer, he would laugh when he thought the stories of the prophets were funny. He would start to laugh very low and then the little children, such as myself, would start to laugh with him. He had laughed in that way at the story of Elijah. And when the Teacher had become angry, Cleopas had insisted that the story had parts that were funny. He had said that the Teacher ought to see that. And then all the men had begun to argue with the Teacher about the story of Elijah.

  My mother turned back to her mending. Her face became smooth. She had a piece of fine Egyptian cotton that she was mending. It was as if nothing had happened.

  The Shipmaster was hollering at the sailors, and it seemed they had no rest.

  I knew not to say another word.

  All around us was the sparkling sea, so blessed, and the boat rising and falling beneath us, sweetly carrying us along, and other families were singing, and we knew the hymns and we too picked it up, singing with all our hearts. . . .

  Never mind about the secrets.

  We were going to Jerusalem.

  4

  EVEN LITTLE SALOME AND I were weary of the tossing ship when we finally reached the small harbor of Jamnia. It was a port that only the pilgrims and the slow cargo ships used now, and we had to anchor far out on account of the shallows and the rocks.

  Little boats carried us in, the men dividing themselves to care for the women in one boat and the little ones in another. The waves were so rough I thought we would be pitched into the sea. But I loved it all the same.

  At last we were able to jump out and make our way through the foaming tide to the land.

  We all fell to our knees and kissed the ground that we'd reached the Holy Land safely, and we hurried inland, wet and shivering, to the town of Jamnia, which was quite a way from the coast, where we rested at the inn.

  It was crowded after the boat, a little upstairs room full of hay, but we were so happy to be there that it didn't matter at all to us. And I went to sleep listening to the men disputing with the other men, and voices hollering and laughing below and more and more pilgrims came in.

  The next day there were donkeys aplenty for sale for all of us pilgrims and we began our journey across the beautiful plain with its distant groves of trees, saying goodbye to the misty sea, and heading slowly towards the hills of Judea.

  Cleopas had to ride on the donkey, though he protested at first, and we made our way slowly, many of the other families in the great crowd passing us as we went, but we were all of us so happy to be in Israel that we didn't care to hurry, and Joseph said we had plenty of time to be in Jerusalem for the purification.

  When we put up at the next roadside inn, we made our beds in a large tent beside the building, and there were warnings from those traveling down to the sea that we shouldn't go on, that we should just go north right to Galilee. But Cleopas was by this time out of his head, and singing "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem" and every other song of the city he could remember.

  "Take me to the gates of the Temple and leave me there, a beggar, if you will!" he said to Joseph, "if you mean to go on to Galilee!"

  Joseph nodded and said we would go on to Jerusalem and to the Temple.

  But the women were growing afraid. They were afraid of what we would find in Jerusalem and afraid for Cleopas.

  His cough came and went but he was hot all the time, and thirsty and restless. And laughing, always laughing under his breath. He laughed at the little children, and the things other people said, and he looked at me and he laughed. And sometimes he was laughing just to himself, maybe remembering things.

  The next morning we began the hard slow climb into the hills. Our ship companions had long ago gone ahead, and we were with those who had come from many different places. I still heard Greek spoken around us as much as Aramaic. And even some Latin.

  But our family had stopped speaking Greek to others, and was using only the Aramaic.

  It wasn't until the third day that we finally saw our first view of the Holy City from the slope above it. We children jumped up and down with excitement. We were shouting. Joseph stood smiling. Ahead of us lay twists and turns in the road, but we could see it all before us—this sacred place which had been in our prayers and in our hearts and in our songs since we were born.

  There were camps about the high walls with tents of all sizes, and cooking fires, and as we drew closer and closer, the crowds were so big that we hardly moved for hours at a time. People everywhere were speaking Aramaic now, though I still heard some Greek, and all of the men were on the lookout for those they knew, and here and there clasping hands and waving and calling out to friends.

  For a long time, I couldn't see anything. I was in a crowd of the children, mingled with the men, my hand in Joseph's hand. I only knew we were moving little by little, and we were close to the walls.

  Finally we passed through the open city gates.

  Joseph reached down and caught me up under his arms, and put me on his shoulders and I saw the Temple clearly above the small city streets.

  I felt sad that Little Salome couldn't see this, but then Cleopas said loudly he had to have her up with him on the donkey, and so Aunt Mary lifted her and she could now see too.

  And look! We were in the Holy City of Jerusalem, and the Temple was right in front of us.

  Now in Alexandria, I had, like any good Jewish boy, never let my eyes stray to the pagan temples. I had not looked up at the pagan statues. What were idols to a Jewish boy who was forbidden to make such things and held them to have no meaning? But I'd passed the temples and the processions with their music, looking only to the houses to which Joseph and I had to go, which seldom took us out of the Jewish quarter of the city anyway, and I suppose that the Great Synagogue was the grandest building that I had ever entered. And besides pagan temples were not for entering anyway. Even I knew that they were supposed to be the house of the pagan gods for whom they were named and put together.

  But I knew of these temples, and somehow from the corner of my eye, I had taken their measure. I had taken a measure as well of the palaces of the rich, and had some idea of what any carpenter's son would call the scale of things.

  And for the Temple of Jerusalem I had no measure at all. No words from Cleopas or Alphaeus or Joseph, or even Philo had made me ready for what I saw.

  It was a building so big and so grand and so solid, a building so shining with gold and whiteness, a building stretching to the right and to the left so far that it swept out of my mind anything I'd ever seen in the rich city of Alexandria, and the wonders of Egypt passed away from me, and my breath was taken out of me. I was struck dumb.

  Cleopas now had Little Symeon in his arms so he could see, and Little Salome was holding Baby Esther who was bellowing for no reason, and Aunt Mary was holdin
g up Joses, and Alphaeus had my cousin Little James.

  As for Big James, my brother, James who knew so much, James had seen it before, when he was very small and had come here with Joseph before I was ever born, even he

  seemed amazed by it, and Joseph was quiet as if he had forgotten us and everyone around us.

  My mother reached up and put her hand on my hip and I looked down at her and smiled. She was pretty to me as always, and shy with her veil drawn over most of her face, and clearly so happy that we were here at last and she looked up as I did to the Temple.

  All through the crowd, and it was a great crowd of those shifting and moving and coming and going, there was this feeling of people falling quiet and still just to look at this Temple, trying to know its size, trying to take it in, trying perhaps to remember this moment because many of them were here from far away and long ago or for the first time.

  I wanted to go on, to enter the Temple—I thought that's what we would do— but that was not to be.

  We were pushing towards it but losing our sight of it, and dipping down into crooked and tight streets, the buildings seeming to close over our heads, people pressing against one another, and our men asking for the synagogue of the Galileans, where we were to lodge.

  I knew Joseph was tired. After all, I was seven years old, and he'd been carrying me a long while. I asked him to put me down.

  Cleopas was now very feverish, and yes, laughing with happiness. He asked for water. He said he wanted to bathe now, and Aunt Mary said he couldn't. The women said we had to get him to bed right away.

  My aunt was almost in tears over him and Little Symeon started to cry so I picked him up but he was too heavy and James took him in his arms.

  And so it was through the crooked and narrow streets we went, streets that might have been in Alexandria, though

  they were much more crowded, Little Salome and I laughing that "the whole world was here," and everywhere there was fast talk, raised voices, people speaking Greek, even Hebrew, people speaking Hebrew, and some speaking Latin but not very many, and most Aramaic like us.

  When we reached the synagogue, a big building of three stories, the lodgings were full as everyone expected, but as we were turning away to look for the synagogue of the Alexandrians, my mother cried out to her cousins, Zebedee and his wife, and their children who were just coming in, and they all flocked to her with much embracing and kissing, and they wanted us very much to come up with them and share the space already made for them on the roof. Other cousins were already there waiting. Zebedee would see to it.

  Now the wife of Zebedee was Mary Alexandra, my mother's cousin, who was always called Mary same as my mother, and same as my aunt Mary who was married to my mother's brother, Cleopas. And when these three women hugged and kissed they cried out: "The Three Marys!" and this made them very happy, as if nothing else was going on.

  Joseph was busy paying the price, and we pushed our way with Zebedee and his clan, and Zebedee had brothers with wives and children, through the crowded courtyard where the donkeys were given over for care and feeding, and then we climbed the stairs, and then went up a ladder, the men carrying Cleopas who was laughing all the way in his low manner because he was ashamed.

  On the roof, a swarm of kindred greeted us.

  Standing out from all the rest was an old woman who reached out for my mother as my mother called her name.

  "Elizabeth." And this name I knew well. And that of her son John.

  My mother fell into this woman's arms. There was much crying and hugging as I was brought to her, and to her son, a boy of my age who never spoke a word.

  Now as I said, I knew of Cousin Elizabeth, and I knew of many of the others because my mother had written many letters home from Egypt and received many from Judea and from Galilee too. I'd often been with her when she'd gone to the scribe of our district to dictate these letters. And when she had received letters, they had been much read and reread, and so the names had stories to them which I also knew.

  I was much taken by Elizabeth as she had a very slow and pretty manner to her, and I thought her face pleasing in a way I couldn't put into words to myself. I often felt this way about old people, that the lines in their faces were very worth study, and that their eyes were bright in the folds of their skin.

  But as I am trying to tell you this story from the point of view of the child that I was, I will leave it at that.

  My cousin John, too, had about him this same manner as his mother, though he made me think of my own brother James. In fact, the two of them marked each other, just as I might have expected. John had the look of a boy of James' age, though he wasn't, and John's hair was very long.

  John and Elizabeth were clothed in white garments that were very clean.

  I knew from my mother and her talk of her cousin that John had been dedicated from his birth to the Lord. He would never cut his hair, and he would never share in the wine of supper.

  All this I saw in a matter of moments, because there were greetings and tears and hugs, and commotion all around.

  The roof couldn't hold any more people. Joseph was finding cousins, and as Joseph and Mary were cousins themselves of each other, that meant happiness for both of them, and at the same time, Cleopas was fussing that he wouldn't drink the water his wife had brought, and Little Symeon was crying, and then Baby Esther began to cry and Simon her father picked her up.

  Zebedee and his wife were making room for our blanket to be put down, and then Little Salome tried to hold Little Esther. And Little Zoker got loose and tried to run. Little Mary was also wailing—and all in all so much happening around me—that it was hard to pay much attention to any one thing.

  Before anyone knew it, I had grabbed Little Salome's hand and tugged her away, slipping under this person and that, and stepping over this person and that, and we were at the edge of the roof.

  There was a little wall there, just high enough so we couldn't fall—.

  I could see the Temple again! The crowded roofs of the city lay all in front of it, rising and dipping on the hills and coming up to the Temple's mighty walls.

  There was music coming from the streets below, and I could hear people singing, and the smoke of cooking fires smelled good, and everywhere people chattered, below and on the roofs and it became like a holy chant.

  "Our Temple," said Little Salome proudly to me, and I nodded. "The Lord who made Heaven and Earth dwells in the Temple," she said.

  "The Lord is everywhere," I answered.

  She looked at me.

  "But He's in the Temple!" she said. "I know that the Lord is everywhere. But for now we should talk of his being in the Temple. We are here to go to the Temple."

  "Yes," I said. I looked at the Temple.

  "To dwell with his people, He's in the Temple," she said.

  "Yes," I said. "And . . . everywhere." I looked only at the Temple.

  "Why do you say that?" she asked.

  I shrugged my shoulders. "You know that it's true. The Lord is with us, you and me, right now. The Lord is always with us."

  She laughed and so did I.

  The cooking fires made a mist in front of us, and all the noise was like a mist of another kind. It made my thoughts clearer. God is everywhere and God is in the Temple.

  Tomorrow we would go to it. Tomorrow we would stand in the court inside its walls. Tomorrow, and then the men would go for the first sprinkling of the purification of the blood of the red heifer in preparation for the Feast of Passover which we would all eat together in Jerusalem to celebrate our coming out of Egypt long, long ago. I would be with the children and the women. But James would be with the men. We would watch from our place, but we would all be within the walls of the Temple. Nearer to the altar where the lambs of Passover would be sacrificed. Closer to the Sanctuary into which only the High Priest would go.

  We had known about the Temple ever since we had known about anything. We had known about the Law ever since we had known anything. We had been
taught at home by Joseph, and Alphaeus and Cleopas and then in school by the Teacher. We knew the Law by heart.

  I felt a quiet inside myself in all the noise of Jerusalem. Little Salome seemed to feel that way too. We stood close to each other without talking or moving, and all the talking and laughter and crying babies, and even the music didn't touch us for a little while.

  Joseph came up to us, and guided us back to the family.

  The women were just coming back with food they'd bought. It was time for everyone to gather and time for prayer.

  For the first time I saw worry in Joseph's face as he watched Cleopas.

  Cleopas still fought with his wife over the water, not wanting to take it.

  I turned and looked at him, and I knew right away he didn't know what he was doing. He wasn't right in the head.