Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt Page 5

  "You come sit by me!" he said to me.

  I did it, sitting at his right hand, crossing my legs. We were all very close together. Little Salome sat on his left, watching everything he did.

  He was angry but not at anybody there. Suddenly he asked when we would get to Jerusalem? Did anybody remember we were going to Jerusalem? It frightened everyone.

  My aunt suddenly was very tired of it and threw up her hands. Little Salome went quiet also, just looking at her father.

  Cleopas looked around himself and he knew he had said something wrong. Then he seemed himself again, just like that. He picked up the cup of clean water and he drank it. He took a deep breath and looked at his wife. My aunt came nearer again. My mother moved beside her, and put her arm around her. My aunt needed to sleep, I could see it, but she couldn't do that now.

  The sauce was hot from the brazier. I was very hungry. The bread was warm too.

  It was time for the blessing. The first prayer we all said together in Jerusalem. I bowed my head. Zebedee, being the eldest, led us in the prayer in our family tongue, and the words were a little different to me. But it was still very good.

  Afterwards, my cousin John bar Zechariah stared at me as though he had something very important on his mind but he didn't say anything.

  At last we began dipping our bread. It was so good—not just a sauce but a thick pottage of lentils and soft cooked beans and pepper and spices. And there were plenty of dried figs to chew after the hot flavor of the pottage, and I loved it. I didn't think about anything except the food. And Cleopas was eating a little which made everyone happy.

  It was the first really good supper since we'd left Alexandria. And there was plenty of it. I ate until I almost couldn't eat anymore.

  Afterwards, Cleopas wanted to talk to me and made everyone leave us alone. Aunt Mary just made a quitting gesture again and moved away to rest for a moment, and then went to other chores with the clearing away, and Aunt Salome was tending to Little James and the other children. Little Salome was helping with Baby Esther and Little Zoker whom she loved so much.

  My mother came near to Cleopas.

  "Why, what are you going to say?" my mother asked him. She sat down on his left, not very close but close enough. "Why should we go away?" She said this in a kind way but she had something on her mind.

  "You go away," he told her. He sounded like he had drunk himself drunk but he hadn't. He had drunk less wine than anybody else. "Jesus, come in so you can hear me if I whisper in your ear."

  My mother refused to leave. "Don't you tempt him," my mother said.

  "And what do you mean by that?" Cleopas asked. "You think I've come to the Holy City of Jerusalem to tempt him?"

  Then he clutched at my arm. His fingers were burning.

  "I'm going to tell you something," he said to me. "You remember it. This goes in your heart with the Law, you hear me? When she told me the angel had come, I believed her. The angel had come to her! I believed."

  The angel—the angel who'd come in Nazareth. He'd come to her. That was what he'd said on the boat, wasn't it? But what did this mean?

  My mother stared at him. His face was wet and his eyes very big. I could feel the fever in him. I could see it.

  He went on.

  "I believed her," he said. "I am her brother, am I not? She was thirteen, betrothed to Joseph, and I tell you, she was never out of the sight of us outside of our house, never could there have been any chance of anyone being with her, you know what I'm saying to you, I mean a man. There was no chance, and I am her brother. Remember, I told you. I believed her." He lay back a little on the clothes bundled behind him. "A virgin child, a child in the service of the Temple of Jerusalem, to weave the great veil, with the other chosen ones, and then home under our eyes."

  He shivered. He looked at her. His eyes stayed on her. She turned away, and then moved away. But not very far. She stayed there with her back to us, close to our cousin Elizabeth.

  Elizabeth was watching Cleopas, and watching me. I didn't know whether she heard him or not.

  I didn't move. I looked down at Cleopas. His chest rose and fell with each rattling breath and again he shivered.

  My mind was working, collecting every bit of knowledge I had ever learned that could help me make sense of what he had said. It was the mind of a child who had grown up sleeping in a room with men and women in that same room and in other rooms open to it, and sleeping in the open courtyard with the men and women in the heat of summer, and living always close with them, and hearing and seeing many things. My mind was working and working. But I couldn't make sense of all he'd said.

  "You remember, what I said to you, that I believed!" he said.

  "But you're not really sure, are you?" I whispered.

  His eyes opened wide and a new expression came over him, as if he was waking from his fever.

  "And Joseph isn't either, is he?" I asked in the same whisper. "And that is why he never lies beside her."

  My words had come ahead of my thoughts. I was as surprised as he was by what I'd said. I felt chilled all over. Prickly all over. But I didn't try to change what I'd said.

  He rose up on his elbow, and his face was close to mine.

  "Turn it around," he said. He struggled for breath. "He never touches her because he does believe. Don't you see? How could he touch her after such a thing?" He smiled, and then he laughed in that low laugh of his, but no one else heard it. "And you?" he went on. "Must you grow up before you fulfill the prophesies? Yes, you must. And must you be a child first before you are a man? Yes. How else?" His eyes changed as if he stopped seeing things in front of him. Again he struggled for breath. "So it was with King David. Anointed, and then sent back to the flocks, a shepherd boy, wasn't it? Until such time as Saul sent for him. Until such time as the Lord God sent for him! Don't you see, that's what confounds them all! That you must grow up like any other child! And half the time they don't know what to do with you! And yes, I am sure! And have always been sure!"

  He fell back again, tired, unable to go on, but his eyes never left me. He smiled and I heard his laughter.

  "Why do you laugh?" I asked.

  He shrugged. "I am still amused," he answered. "Yes, amused. Did /see an angel? No, I did not. Maybe if I had, I wouldn't laugh, but then maybe again I would laugh all the more. My laughter is the way I speak, don't you think? Remember that. Ah, listen to them down in the streets. Over there, over here. They want justice. Vengeance. Did you hear all that? Herod did this. Herod did that. They've stoned Archelaus's soldiers! What does it matter to me now? I would like to breathe without it hurting me for one quarter of an hour!"

  His hand came up, groping for me. He touched the back of my head, and I bent down and kissed his wet cheek.

  Make this pain go away.

  He drew in his breath, and then he appeared to drift and to sleep, and his chest began to rise and fall slowly and easily. I placed my hand on his chest and felt his heart. Strength for this little while. What harm is there in it?

  When I moved away, I wanted to go to the edge of the roof. I wanted to cry. What had I done? Maybe nothing. But I didn't think it was nothing. And the things he'd said to me— what did they mean? How was I to understand these things?

  I wanted the answers to questions, yes, but these words only made more questions, and my head hurt. I was afraid.

  I sat down and leaned against the low wall. I could barely see over it now. With all the families huddled so near, and so many backs to me and so much chatter and soft singing to children, I thought I was hidden.

  It was dark now and there was torchlight all over the city, and loud happy cries, and plenty of music. Cooking fires still, or maybe fires for warmth as it was a little colder. I was a little colder. I wanted to see what was going on below. Then I didn't. I didn't care.

  An angel had come to my mother, an angel. I was not Joseph's son.

  My aunt Mary caught me by surprise. She pulled me hard around to look at her. She
was crouching over me. Her face was full of glittering tears, and her voice was thick:

  "Can you cure him!" she asked.

  I was so surprised I didn't know what to say to her.

  My mother came down upon us and tried to pull her away. They stood over me, their robes brushing my face. Words were whispered. Angry words.

  "You can't ask this of him!" my mother whispered. "He's a little child and you know it!"

  Aunt Mary sobbed.

  What could I say to my aunt Mary? "I don't know!" I said. "I don't know!" I said again.

  Now I did cry. I drew my knees up and I crouched even closer to the wall. I wiped at my tears.

  They went away.

  The families close to us were settled down, the women having gotten the little ones to sleep. Down below a man played the pipe and another man sang. The sound was clear for a moment, and then gone in the hush.

  I couldn't see the stars for the mist. But the sight of all the torches of the city, tumbling uphill and downhill, and above all, the Temple rising like a mountain with its great fluttering torches drove every other thought from my mind.

  A good feeling came over me, that in the Temple I would pray to understand all these words—not only what my uncle had said to me, but all the other things I had heard.

  My mother came back.

  There was just room near the wall by me for my mother to kneel down and then to sink back on her heels.

  The torchlight hit her face as she looked towards the Temple.

  "Listen to me," she said.

  "I am," I answered. I answered in Greek without thinking.

  "What I have to say to you should have waited," she said. She spoke Greek as well.

  With the noise in the streets, with the low nighttime talk on the roof, I could still hear her.

  "But it can't wait now," she said. "My brother has seen to that. Would that he could suffer in silence. But it's never been his way to do anything in silence. So I say it. And you listen. Don't ask questions of me. Do as Joseph told you in that regard. But listen to what I say."

  "I am," I said again.

  "You're not the child of an angel," she said.

  I nodded.

  She turned towards me. The torchlight was in her eyes.

  I said nothing.

  "The angel said to me—that the power of the Lord would come over me," she said. "And so the shadow of the Lord came over me—I felt it—and then in time came the stirring of life inside me, and it was you."

  I said nothing.

  She looked down.

  The noise of the city was gone. The torchlight made her look beautiful to me. Beautiful perhaps as Sarah looked to Pharaoh, beautiful as Rachel to Jacob. My mother was beautiful. Modest, but beautiful, no matter how many veils she wore to hide it, no matter how she bowed her head or blushed.

  I wanted to be in her lap, in her arms, but I didn't move. It wasn't right to move or say a word.

  "And so it happened," she said, looking up again. "I have never been with a man, not then, not now, nor will I ever. I am consecrated to the Lord."

  I nodded.

  "You can't understand this . . . can you?" she asked. "You can't follow what I'm trying to tell you."

  "I do follow," I said. "I do see." Joseph wasn't my father, yes, I knew. I had never called Joseph Father. Yes, he was my father according to the Law, and married to my mother, but he wasn't my father. And she was so like a girl always, and the other women like her older sisters, I knew, yes, I knew. "Anything is possible with the Lord," I said. "The Lord made Adam from the dust. Adam didn't even have a mother. The Lord can make a child with no father." I shrugged.

  She shook her head. She wasn't like a girl now, but not like a woman either. She was soft and almost sad. When she spoke again, she didn't sound like herself.

  "No matter what anyone ever says to you in Nazareth," she said, "remember what's been said tonight."

  "People will say things . . . ?"

  She closed her eyes.

  "This is why you didn't want to go back there ... to Nazareth?" I asked.

  She gave a deep breath. She put her hand over her mouth. She was amazed. She took a deep breath, and she was gentle:

  "You haven't understood what I've said to you!" she whispered. She was hurt. I thought she might cry.

  No, Mamma, I do see, I understand," I said at once. I didn't want her to be hurt. "The Lord can do anything."

  She was disappointed, but then she looked at me and for my sake, she smiled.

  "Mamma," I said. I reached out for her.

  My head was pounding with thoughts. The sparrows, Eleazer dead in the street and rising living from the mat, too many other things, things slipping away in my mind, and my mind too full. And all Cleopas' words and what were they? You must grow up like any other child or was it Little David back to the flock until they called him? Don't let her be sad.

  "I see. I know," I said to her. I smiled a little smile I never gave to anyone but to her if it was giving. More a little sign than a giving. She had her smile for me. A little thing.

  And now, she shook off everything that had gone before, and she reached out for me.

  I went up on my knees, and she did too, and she held me tight to her.

  "It's enough for now," she said. "It's enough for you to have my word," she whispered in my ear.

  After a while, I got up with her and we went back to the family.

  I lay down on my bed of bundles, and she covered me, and under the stars, with the city singing, and Cleopas singing, I went sound asleep.

  After all, it was the farthest place to which I could go.

  5

  IN THE MORNING, we found the streets almost too crowded for us to move, but move we did, all of us, even the babies in the arms of the mothers, to the Temple.

  Cleopas was rested, and a little better, though very weak still and needing to be helped along the way.

  I rode on Joseph's shoulders, and Little Salome on Uncle Alphaeus, and we managed to hold hands, and to see wonderfully as the whole people carried us round the crooked lanes and under archways, until we came to the great open space before the huge stairs and the rising golden walls of the Temple.

  There we parted, the women and babies away from the men, moving slowly into the ritual baths, to bathe thoroughly before we would enter the Temple walls.

  Now this was not the sprinkling and cleansing for Passover. That had to be done in three stages, starting with the first sprinkling of the men within the Temple today.

  This was an overall cleansing that we would do because of our long journey from Egypt, and one that would prepare us to enter into the precincts of the Temple itself. And it was one which our families wanted, and the baths were there, and so we did it though it was not required in the Law.

  It took us a long time. The water was cold, and we were glad when we had our clothes on again and we could go back out into the light and rejoin the women, and Little Salome and I could see each other and link hands again.

  It seemed the crowds were growing, though how even more people could fit into this space I didn't know. People were chanting the Psalms in Hebrew. And some were praying with their eyes half closed. And others were merely talking to each other. And children were crying naturally as they always will do.

  Once more Joseph put me on his shoulders. And, nearly blinded by the light flashing off the Temple walls, we started the climb up the stairs.

  Now as we went up step by step everyone was as overcome by the size of the Temple as I was, and the whole crowd seemed to be praying out loud even if the words they were saying were not prayers.

  It seemed impossible that men could have built walls of this height, let alone decorated them with marble of such pure whiteness, and the voices were echoing off the walls, but as we reached the top and pressed slowly to get through the gates, I could see there were soldiers in the square below and some of them were on horseback.

  They weren't Roman soldiers; I didn't know what
they were. But the crowd didn't like them. I could see even at this great distance that people were raising fists to them, and the horses were dancing as horses do and I thought I saw stones flying through the air.

  I could hardly bear the slow pace of waiting. I think I wanted Joseph to push harder for us to get through the gate. He gave way so easily. And we did all have to keep together, and that included now Zebedee and his people, and also Elizabeth and Little John, and cousins whose names I didn't remember.

  At last we entered the gates, and to my surprise found ourselves in a huge tunnel. I could barely see the beautiful decorations all around us. The prayers of the people echoed off the roof and the walls. I joined in the prayers, but mostly I just looked around myself, and felt the breath taken out of me again, just as surely as when Eleazer had kicked me hard and I couldn't breathe.