by Anne Rice
As for the rest of Nazareth, people were hiding in the tunnels under their houses, said Old Sarah, and some had fled to caves in the hills.
"I'm too old to be crawling in a tunnel," said Old Sarah, "and they never kill old people. And let us pray they don't come back."
"There are thousands of them," said James, the one who had seen them from the rooftops.
"May I go up on the roof and see them?" I asked my mother.
"You go in to see Old Justus," said Old Sarah. "Old Justus is in bed, and can't move."
At once, we went into the house, Little Salome, James and I, and my two cousins of Alphaeus. We went through four rooms in a row before we found him. His bed was up off the floor, and there was a lamp burning there that gave off a perfume. Joseph was already with him, seated on a wooden stool by the bed.
Old Justus raised his hand, and tried to sit up on his bed but he couldn't. Joseph said our names to the old man but he only looked at me. Then he lay back on his bed, and I saw that he couldn't speak. He closed his eyes.
Old Justus we'd spoken of, yes, but he himself never wrote. He was older even than Old Sarah. He was her uncle. And kin to Joseph and to my mother, just as Old Sarah was. But again, how, I couldn't have told out as my mother could, as if it were a psalm.
Now there was the smell of food in the house—fresh baked bread and a meat pottage on the brazier. These things Old Sarah had prepared.
Even though it was bright sunlight, the men made us all go into the house. They closed up the doors, even the doors to the stable where the animals were—our beasts were the only ones—and the lamps were lighted, and we sat in the shadows. It was warm. I didn't mind it. The rugs were thick and soft, and the supper was my whole thought.
Oh, I wanted with all my heart to see the fields around, and the trees, and to run up and down the street, and see the people of the town, but all that would wait until the terrible troubles were gone.
Here we were safe together, and the women were busy, and the men were playing with the little ones, and the fire in the brazier had a pretty glow.
The women brought out dried figs, raisins in honey, and sweet dates, and spiced olives, and other fine things, which we'd brought all the way from Egypt in our bundles, and that with the thick meat pottage, full of lentils and lamb, true lamb, and the fresh bread, was a feast.
Joseph blessed the cups of wine as we drank, and we repeated the blessings:
"Oh Lord of the Universe, maker of vine from which we drink, maker of wheat for the bread we eat, we give you thanks that we are home safe at last, and keep us from evil, Amen."
If there was anyone else in the town, we didn't know it. Old Sarah said for us to have patience, and have faith in the Lord.
After the supper, Cleopas came to Aunt Sarah and took her in his arms, and kissed her hands, and she kissed his forehead.
"And what do you know," he asked, "about gods and goddesses who drink nectar and eat ambrosia?" he asked her. There was a little laughter from the other men.
"Look in the boxes of scrolls when you have the time for it, curious one," she said. "You think my father had no room there for Homer? Or for Plato? You think he never read to his children in the evening? Don't think you know what I know."
The other men came to Old Sarah one by one and kissed her hands and she received them.
It struck me that it was very late, their coming to her, and that none of them said a word of thanks to her for what she had done.
When my mother put me to bed in the room with the men, I asked her about this, how it was they didn't offer their thanks. She frowned and shook her head and said in a whisper that I mustn't speak of it. A woman had saved the lives of the men.
"But she has many gray hairs," I said.
"She's still a woman," my mother said, "and they are men."
In the night, I woke up crying.
For a time I didn't know where we were. I couldn't see anything. My mother was near me and so was my aunt Mary, and Bruria was talking to me. I came to know we were home. My teeth were chattering, but I wasn't cold. James came up close to me and told me that the Romans had moved on. They'd left soldiers to keep guard on the crucified, and put down any last bit of rebellion, but most of them had moved on.
He sounded very sure and strong. He lay beside me with his arm over me.
I wished it was daylight. I felt my fear would go away if it was daylight. I began to cry again.
My mother softly sang to me: "It is the Lord who gives salvation even unto Kings, it is the Lord who delivered even David from the hateful sword; Let our sons grow as plants grow, and let our daughters be cornerstones, polished as if they were the cornerstones of the palace . . . happy is that people, whose God is the Lord."
I drifted in dreams.
When daylight came I saw it under the door to the courtyard. The women were already up. I went out before anyone could stop me. The air was sweet and almost warm.
James came fast after me, and I ran up the ladder to the roof, and up the next ladder to the roof above that. We crawled to the edge and looked towards Sepphoris.
It was so far away that all I could see were the crosses, and it was as James had said. I couldn't count them. People were moving around the crosses. Others were coming and going on the road as people do and I saw wagons, and donkeys. The fire was out, though there was still smoke streaming up to the sky, and there was plenty of the city that wasn't burnt. But again it was hard to see.
To my right the houses of Nazareth went up the hill one against another, and to the left they went down. No one was on all the roofs we saw, but we could see mats and blankets here and there and all around the village the green fields and the forests of thick trees. So many trees.
When I came down, Joseph was waiting, and he took us both sternly by the shoulders and said, "Who told you that you could do this? Don't you go up there again."
We nodded. James blushed, and there passed between them a quick look, James ashamed, and Joseph forgiving him.
"It was my doing," I said. "I ran up."
"And you won't do it again," said Joseph, "because what if they come back?"
I nodded.
"What did you see?" Joseph asked.
"It's quiet," said James. "They're finished. People are taking away the bodies of the dead. There are villages that were burnt."
"I didn't see the villages," I said.
"They were out there, little places, near the city."
Joseph shook his head, and took James with him to work.
Old Sarah sat, bundled up against the open air, under the old bones of the fig tree. The leaves were big and green. She was at her sewing, but mostly pulling out threads.
An old man came to the gate, nodded and moved on. Women passed with their baskets, and I heard children.
I stood listening, and I heard the cooing of the pigeons again, and I thought I could hear the leaves moving, and a woman singing.
"What are you dreaming?" asked Old Sarah.
In Alexandria there had been people—people everywhere, and always we were with each other, crowded and eating and working and playing and sleeping crowded together, and there had never been this . . . this quiet.
I wanted to sing. I thought of my uncle Cleopas and the way that he would sing all of a sudden. And I wanted to sing.
A little boy came to the entrance to the courtyard, and then another behind him, and I said to them, Come in.
"Yes, you come in now, Toda, and you too, Mattai," said Old Sarah. "This is my nephew, Jesus bar Joseph."
At once Little Symeon came out from behind the curtain of the doorway, and so did Little Judas.
"I can run to the top of the hill faster than anyone," said the boy Mattai.
Toda told him they had to get back to work.
"The market's open again. Have you seen the market?" Toda asked.
"No, where is it?"
"You go," said Old Sarah.
The town was coming back to life.
13
THE MARKETPLACE was only a gathering at the foot of the hill. People threw up canopies and laid their goods out on blankets, and women sold the vegetables from their gardens that they didn't need. A peddler was there with some goods, including some silver plate. And another peddler had linen to sell, and lots of dyed yarn, as well as trinkets of all kinds, and some cups of limestone and even one or two small bound books.
I met more friends, but the mothers were keeping the children close. And James came to look for me quick enough.
The town grew busier and busier. Women passed on their way to market, and old men and women were out in the courtyards, and some men were coming and going from the fields.
But people were worried, and they spoke of the woes of Sepphoris in hushed voices, and no one was at ease except perhaps those of us who were little and could forget about it for a little while.
When I got back home, I saw new children in the courtyard come to play with Little Salome and the others, but most of the family was hard at work.
It was our job to take stock of the repairs that had to be
done, and we climbed up first to see the roof of mud and branches, and where the holes had to be fixed, and then to pass through each room to be sure of its mud plaster, and how the floors on the upper stories were holding up. There was much white painting to be done where the plaster had gone gray or black. And on the walls of the lower rooms in the flood of light from the open doorways, I could see the traces of fine painted borders in different colors and designs that had once been very beautiful, no doubt.
Joseph and Cleopas talked about repainting all of this, and I'd seen them do this work in Alexandria with great speed. I wasn't old enough to do it, to keep a long strip of green border perfectly straight.
But there was much I could do with them now.
The cribs in the stable needed repairing, and the frames of the lattices for the vines on the front of the courtyard had to be rebuilt as I'd seen when I first came.
But what most surprised me was to discover the huge cisterns which the house had, both of them holding much rainwater even though they needed to be patched.
And then the final discovery was the big mikvah that had been cut into the stone beneath the house many many years ago.
Now the mikvah was a pool for purification, which I hadn't seen in Egypt, and it had steps leading down to its very bottom so that a man could walk all the way under the surface of the water and come back up again without ever bowing his head. It had only half as much water as it ought to have had, this pool, and there were many places where its walls were flaking or blackened and needed work. Joseph said we would bail out the water, and replaster the entire bath. The water from this pool was piped from one of the cisterns. And thanks to the heavy rains, the cisterns were full.
It was Old Sarahs grandfather who had built this pool, we were told, when he settled in Nazareth. This had been his house for him and his seven sons, and Joseph knew their names, every one, but I couldn't remember them, or all those who came down from them—only that my mother's father was descended from them, and also Joseph's mother's father, and so on it went with these stories. I was eager for us to get to work.
Brooms were at work everywhere by late afternoon; the women were beating the dust from rugs; and Cleopas went with the women to market to buy fresh food for supper, and the oven in the courtyard was working all day.
Bruria sat in the courtyard crying for her son who'd gone off with the rebels to Sepphoris. She believed that he was probably dead. We all knew this meant perhaps that he'd been nailed to one of the crosses on the road, but we didn't talk about this. No one was going to go down to Sepphoris, not yet. We worked in quiet.
By nightfall, the house had been divided up amongst the families: Alphaeus and his wife, and his two sons to one set of rooms, and Cleopas and Aunt Mary to their rooms with their little ones, and Joseph, my mother and James and I to others, though our rooms ran into Aunt Mary's rooms, and we had Old Sarah and Old Justus as well. Uncle Simon and Aunt Esther and Baby Esther had their rooms near the stable in the middle of the house.
Bruria and her slave Riba had their own room.
Then there was an old serving woman, a thin silent woman, named Ide, whom I hadn't seen the day before. She took care of Old Justus and Old Sarah, and she slept on the floor in their room. I didn't know for sure whether this woman could talk.
Again, our supper was very rich with the stew from the
night before, and the hot bread from the oven and more of the sweet figs and dates. Everyone was talking at once about what had to be done to the house and to the courtyard, and how eager they were to get out to the garden beyond the town, and see how it was there, and to see others, whom they had not yet seen.
We were lying back, taking our ease, not talking much, doing nothing, when a man came into the room from the courtyard. Joseph was on his feet at once. When he came back from the door, shutting it against the chill, he said:
"The Roman legions are gone out of Galilee. Only a small number of men are left with Herod's men to keep the peace until Archelaus comes home."
"Thanks be to the Lord on High," Cleopas said, and then everyone was saying it in one way or another. "And those who were crucified? Have they all been taken down?"
Everyone knew it could take two days or more for a man to die on a cross.
"I don't know," said Joseph.
Old Sarah bowed her head from her stool and chanted in Hebrew.
"The last of the soldiers passed on the main road over an hour ago," said Joseph.
"Pray they never have to come back," my mother said.
"A crucified man should be taken down before sunset!" said Cleopas. "It is a shameful thing, and it's been days since these men—."
"Cleopas, leave it," said Alphaeus. "We are here and we are alive!"
Cleopas was about to speak when my mother reached out and laid her hand on his knee.
"Please, brother," she said. "There are Jews in Sepphoris who know their duty. Leave it alone."
No one spoke after that. I didn't want to be sleepy, but I was.
When we went to bed, it was very strange to me to be in a room alone without Symeon and Joses, and the babies as well.
I'd always been with the women and the little ones. But the little ones were with their mothers. And my mother was with Old Sarah, and Old Justus, and Bruria and her slave, even though they had a separate room. I missed Little Salome. I even missed Baby Esther who woke up to start crying and only stopped when she went to sleep.
I felt very grown-up to be with Joseph and James, but I still asked Joseph if I could snuggle against him, and he said yes, that I could.
"If I wake up crying," I asked, "will you put me with my mother?"
"Is that what you want me to do," he asked, "to put you with your mother? You are little to be in here with us, but you're seven years old and you understand things. You will be eight years old soon. What do you want? You can be with your mother if you want."
I didn't answer. I turned over and closed my eyes.
I slept through the night.
14
IT WASN'T UNTIL THE THIRD DAY that we were allowed to roam far and wide. By that time Cleopas had been down the road a piece, and come back, and said that all the bodies were taken down, and that the city was in order again, the market was open, and with a laugh, he said, too, they needed carpenters to rebuild what was burnt.
"We have enough here to do," said Joseph. "They'll be building in Sepphoris from now until years from now after we're all laid to rest." And we did have a great deal to do, bailing out the mikvah first of all which took us children to get down into the cold water, and to hand up the jars to the men. And then the replastering had to be done, and when that was finished, we would do the walls of the house.
I was happy because we could go outside the village, and I went as soon as I could out into the woods. I saw children, lots of them, and I wanted to talk to them, but
first I wanted to walk in the open and climb the slopes under the trees.
Alexandria had been a city of great wonders as everyone was always saying, with its festivals and its processions and its splendid temples and palaces, and houses such as Philo's house with its marble floors. But here was the green grass.
It smelled good to me, better than any perfume, and when I passed under the branches of the trees, the ground became soft. A little wind was coming from down in the valley that I could see, and it caught the trees almost one at a time. I loved the rustling of the leaves above me. I walked on up the slope until I was out in the grass again, where the grass was thick, and there I lay down. It was damp there, because it had rained in the night, but it was good. I looked off towards the village. I could see men and women working in the vegetable gardens, and beyond that the farmers in the fields. People were picking weeds out of the earth. That's what it looked like to me.