Testament

by Nino Ricci

  Though I was the eldest and had long been of marriageable age, I had no suitors. My sisters had inherited our mother’s beauty, and were both betrothed. But I was plain, like my father. It wasn’t true, however, that no one had ever asked for my hand—in the beginning there were several who had come, nervous young boys whom my father had rounded up from one place or another. They would stand near the smoking sheds and look at me while I worked, and I would pretend not to notice them. In the end I always found some reason to refuse them, which my doting father indulged, so that eventually the word went around that I had got only the worst of my mother, which was her wilfulness, and the men stopped coming. It wasn’t that I disliked these men—since I had hardly spoken a word with any of them, I couldn’t in fact feel one way or the other. Perhaps I was afraid that they’d grow tired of me, or that I’d be barren and they’d divorce me, and couldn’t bear the thought of such humiliations. But it was more than that—when I imagined myself as a mother or bride, it seemed a sort of death, though I didn’t hate these things and couldn’t say what other future it was I intended for myself, since there was none.

  After Yeshua came to us, however, the question of my marriage ceased to seem important. The first time my father invited him to our home I made the mistake at the start, from how my father deferred to him, of imagining him another suitor, though he was still haggard and thin then from his time in the desert. But Yeshua was nothing like the other men who had come. For one thing, he wasn’t a child—that was clear from the look of him and from his bearing, which was proud and erect, as if he knew his own mind. He came into our house entirely without pretension or affectation and at once made himself one of us, though our household was without distinction and we ourselves, because of my mother, somewhat outcast. My father offered him our good chair, a fine thing of leather and carved oak that had been a gift from a merchant my father had dealings with. But Yeshua refused it, saying he hadn’t come to our house to place himself above us.

  My father had met him outside the Tiberias gates, where he had been preaching. This was in the time just after the arrest of the prophet Yohanan, who, because he had spoken against Herod’s marriage to his brother’s wife, Herod had put away. During his travels my father had often passed Yohanan’s camp on the Jordan and had been taken with his teachings, and hearing Yeshua defending him and calling himself his disciple, he had been moved to invite him to our home. For several days then, since he had just come from the wilderness and had nowhere to keep himself, Yeshua stayed with us in Migdal, sleeping in our courtyard. But then we heard that the neighbours had begun to chatter because there were unmarried women in the house, and my father arranged a place for him with one of the fishermen he knew up the coast in Kefar Nahum.

  So attached had I already become to Yeshua by then that the day he left I shed tears and could hardly keep my mind on my work, certain I would never see him again, though he had promised to return. It was difficult to say what had so drawn me to him—not merely a girl’s infatuation with novelty, for all that my life had been sheltered until then. Rather it was as if a door had suddenly opened, or a passage been granted to a country you’d hoped might exist but had never quite dared to imagine. I could smell the air of this other place on him, feel the wind of it, see its different sunrise, and felt inside me the sudden sure thought that I must travel there with him. While he was with us, he had come to me one night on the beach, where I often walked before sleeping, and talked to me in such a way as no man had ever spoken to me before, as if every subject was permitted; and though I could hardly recall afterwards what it was that we had discussed, still it seemed to me then that he had reached inside me with his words to touch the inmost part of me.

  The day he left the mat where he had lain in our courtyard still lay on the ground when I came in from the smoking sheds, and I would have taken it then for my own simply to remember him by had it not seemed shameful to. But then the following week, when I had all but given up hope of his return, he suddenly appeared in the harbour one morning in the fishing boat of Shimon bar Jonah, to whom my father had entrusted him. My heart was so full at the sight of him that I ran out to greet him like a child, and I could see that Shimon was embarrassed for my sake. But Yeshua embraced me openly, the first time any man had ever done such a thing.

  You see, I’ve kept my promise, he said.

  He had Shimon tie up the boat and then invited my family and me to have breakfast with them on the beach, as the fishermen did. It was from that morning that Yeshua came to call Shimon the Rock, because he sat in such stony silence at the scandal of being there in the open with three unmarried women. That was how we thought in those days, the women as much as the men. But Yeshua came to change us all, even Shimon, whom the four winds couldn’t move when he had set his mind to a thing.

  It was not long afterwards that Yeshua began his meetings in Kefar Nahum. In the beginning there was just a handful of us who attended—our family in Migdal, which was to say, however, mainly my father and me, since my sisters’ betrothed were quick to forbid them; then Ribqah, who I invited and who came against her father’s wishes; then Shimon and his brother Andreas and a few of those that Shimon knew in Kefar Nahum, including Yaqob bar Zabdi and his brother Yohanan. We’d meet on the beach or in Shimon’s house or in our own and discuss Yeshua’s teachings, and Yeshua always encouraged us to ask him questions or even to contradict him. Many of us were alarmed at this, not least the women, since we had always been taught to hold our tongues, and indeed often enough we didn’t know at all how to respond to him, because his ideas flew in the face of what we had heard in the assembly house or from our elders. For myself, who had been raised a Jew yet had never dared to ask what a Jew was or what was our teaching on such a thing or another, it was a revelation to me that these matters could be put to the question at all, and required a mind to piece them together.

  That Yeshua kept us women with him made him many enemies and caused much dissension even within our following. More than once it happened that some young man who had heard him preaching in the streets and been moved to attend one of our meetings instantly fled at the sight of Ribqah and me; and even Shimon, at first, seemed on the verge of bolting at every minute, barely able to settle himself and sometimes rising to pace so that the meeting could hardly go on for the distraction he made. But Yeshua, though he listened patiently to every argument, didn’t relent. When the men argued that women were of weaker mind than men, Yeshua replied that it would be wrong therefore to exclude them from his teaching, when they must have greater need of it; when they argued that they were more given to evil, Yeshua said it was exactly those given to evil who concerned him. So he confounded the men’s arguments and left them without a response, though so strong was their resistance to our presence that they seemed to feel cheated by Yeshua’s logic.

  Then one evening Shimon said, You’re saying that the women are like us fishermen and peasants. No one bothers with us because they think we’re nothing, and that’s why you’ve come to us. And Yeshua agreed that Shimon had understood him.

  That was an important moment for us—once Shimon had been won over the other men, who looked to him for leadership, grew more accepting. For Shimon, the evening marked the beginning of his great loyalty to Yeshua, and he always seemed to carry with him afterwards the small shame of that first doubt he had shown. As for Ribqah and me, our relief was unbounded, since every day we had feared expulsion—that would have been the worst thing, to have the door opened to us, then be turned away. Later people said that we women clung to Yeshua as we did only because he indulged us and showed us respect above our station. But that was not the case. Rather we stayed with him for this, that he let us see it was no sin to.

  It seemed all of us in that first time of coming together had such moments of understanding when a difficult thing, an impossible notion, grew suddenly simple and plain like a knot that had unravelled. In the assembly houses we heard only of laws we couldn’t keep or couldn’t und
erstand—how we women, for instance, must bow our heads and cover our lips and spend half our lives behind closed doors, though we weren’t the princesses of Judea who could afford such luxuries but must daily work alongside the men. But Yeshua didn’t come to us citing this law or that to beat us with, or invoking our ancestors to make us feel insufficient. Rather he made it seem that we ourselves were a beginning, and could see things anew.

  Not long after we had settled the controversy of the women, another arose that proved to be my own test. One evening, while we were meeting at Shimon’s house in Kefar Nahum, it happened that Yeshua’s mother and one of his brothers appeared at the gate from their town of Notzerah. Shimon’s wife Shua came to us and announced them, saying that they had heard of Yeshua’s presence in Kefar Nahum and had come to fetch him home. But Yeshua refused to see them. Shua, a timid woman, was so taken aback at this—as were we all—that she couldn’t bring herself to confront them.

  Miryam, Yeshua said to me, because I was closest to him, go to the gate and send them away.

  But what shall I tell them, I said.

  Tell them I’m already home, and so there’s no need to fetch me.

  None of us knew what to make of this. Until that moment Yeshua had never spoken to us of his family, nor had any of us thought it our place to ask after it. But I couldn’t imagine what crime they had committed to bring out such contempt in him. I went to the gate and his mother and brother stood waiting there completely silent, his mother in a shawl so that her face was barely visible and his brother slightly behind her. The brother was perhaps a few years Yeshua’s junior, but was broad-shouldered and dark-skinned and rough and didn’t resemble him in the least. His mother, however, was clearly his flesh and blood—there was that same fineness of features, and also a bearing that they shared, as if they had descended from princes. So strong was the sense of her presence, of some force that she carried with her, that I couldn’t bring myself to address her.

  We’ve come all the way from Notzerah, she said. We want only a word with him.

  But I told her he wouldn’t see them. Because she didn’t reply, I felt compelled to add, He won’t give a reason. He says he’s already home.

  She looked at me then and asked, Are you his wife, and I said, He has no wife, but felt a deep shame at the question, I couldn’t have said why.

  We stood a long moment in silence. It was growing dark and I could hardly make out their expressions. I asked them where they would spend the night and the brother, who hadn’t spoken until then, said they had already taken a place at the caravansary at the edge of town.

  If I could offer a bed, I said.

  But his mother said, There’s no need. And they set off into the dusk.

  The incident affected me deeply. I didn’t see them again, but later heard that they left promptly at dawn the following morning. Afterwards people said they had come for Yeshua because they’d heard he was preaching in the streets and had assumed he’d gone mad. But that was not what I had seen in his mother. I couldn’t say what I’d seen, perhaps only a mother’s sadness. But it was more than that, it was some kind of knowledge she had, and I couldn’t look at Yeshua afterwards without seeing his mother’s face, the sense of futility in it when I’d told her he wouldn’t come.

  When we questioned Yeshua about the incident he grew angry with us. Why do you trouble me over this, he said. It was the first time we had seen him this way, and many of us were frightened.

  Yaqob said, But the law tells us to honour our mother and father.

  The law also tells us that a man leaves his mother and father, Yeshua said.

  But that is to marry.

  And so I’ve married you, Yeshua said. Now my followers are my family.

  Afterwards, when the group of us spoke privately, it was clear that none of us had been able to follow Yeshua’s meaning. But most of the others had so put their trust in Yeshua by now that they ascribed their confusion to their own ignorance, even Shimon and my own father. I was very disturbed by this—I thought that if they had seen his mother as I had, they wouldn’t so easily accept his argument. Also, I couldn’t think what it meant to be his family, if I had to choose then between him and my own, which I could never do. There were my sisters, for instance, whose betrothed had forbidden them to follow Yeshua; and there was my mother. I didn’t believe Yeshua could make her abandon her ways when so many other inducements had failed, though she had never said a word against him.

  So sharp was my fear that I would be called on at some moment to make a choice that for a time I ceased to attend our meetings, making one excuse or another and even trying in various ways to keep my father from them, terrified that he might one day reject us for Yeshua. My father was surely confused by this, for I didn’t explain my reasons and indeed couldn’t bring myself to say anything to him against Yeshua, since I knew his loyalty to him and still retained the greater part of my own. But one evening while I was walking on the beach Yeshua suddenly appeared beside me, saying he had spotted me from the fishing boat of Yohanan and Yaqob and come over to me, though I couldn’t see the boat near the shore.

  Have you chosen to leave us, Yeshua said, and I was instantly put off balance by his candour. I began to protest, but as I couldn’t lie to him said, I’m only a woman, what difference could it make if I stayed or left. But I was at once ashamed to have said this, since it went against what he’d taught us.

  He told me a story then of a shepherd who left behind ninety-nine sheep to go searching for one that was lost. Surely the ninety-nine are more important than the one, I said. But he answered, Wouldn’t the shepherd who gave up on the one also give up on the others, when the time came. I couldn’t follow his argument and fell silent, and so we kept walking along the shore until we were quite far from the village. A cloud passed across the face of the moon and for several minutes I couldn’t make him out at all in the dark, could only hear his breathing beside me and the sound of his footsteps.

  He asked if it was because he’d sent his mother away that I’d left him, and when I agreed that it was, he said I couldn’t know what had passed between him and his mother.

  But you were angry with us, I said. You encourage us to question you, then grow angry when we do.

  He said, You’re right to reprimand me, and then explained what he had meant when he had called us his family. He used the example of Ribqah, whose father Urijah was little better than an animal and suffered her to attend our meetings only because he was afraid she would accuse him before the elders of the abuses he had committed against her. Yeshua seemed to know these things though he could hardly have learned them from Ribqah, who even to me spoke of them only in the most veiled terms.

  If Ribqah goes against her father in following me, he said, surely you don’t believe her to be sinning, and I agreed that I did not.

  Her father is a godless man, I said.

  But still he’s her father.

  He doesn’t act like a father to her.

  And so Ribqah is justified in defying him.

  Yes.

  And we who love her and accept her, aren’t we more her family than her father will ever be?

  When the argument was put to me in this way, I saw at once that Yeshua was right. Yet still I resisted him.

  Is your mother godless then like Ribqah’s father, I said.

  No, not godless. But she tries to keep me from God’s work. I was silent and he added, as if he knew my thoughts, You mustn’t think I would ask the same sacrifices of my followers as I ask of myself.

  My own mother is a heathen, I said. Surely one day you’ll ask me to leave her.

  It’s true that sometimes we have to make a choice. But I’m not the one who’ll ask you to choose.

  Who, then.

  The moon was out again. We were near the outskirts of Kinneret and fishing boats were visible in the moonlight as they set out from the harbour for the night’s fishing. I wondered what the men in the boats would say, to see a man and a woman wa
lking alone on the beach in the night as we were. I myself could hardly believe it was so.

  You needn’t fear for your mother, Yeshua said. There are many ways to worship.

  But there’s only one God.

  Yes, but perhaps he has many faces. Don’t think it’s our mission to close people out. Our mission is to include them. To find the way to include them.

  In the end, even though I hadn’t understood him, I agreed that I would begin to attend our meetings again. Then somehow it came to me what he’d meant, not as a single phrase I could have put into words but as a feeling that washed over me. It occurred to me, for instance, how in all the years we had lived in Migdal, the teacher in the town, Sapphias, had never once so much as exchanged a greeting with my mother while Yeshua had joked with her and broken bread and chosen her home, whose threshold Sapphias would never deign to cross, as the seat of his mission in the town. I had never blamed Sapphias for his actions, for I’d always believed he did merely what the law required. But now I saw things differently. I understood that for Sapphias the law was a wall; while for Yeshua, it was a gateway. That was what he’d meant when he’d said he wasn’t the one who would make us choose—it was we who had to choose, who stood before the gate and had to open it. Somehow I hadn’t understood this simple thing, that choice was exactly what couldn’t be forced on me, for whatever was forced wasn’t a choice.

  These were the things that we learned from Yeshua, things that weren’t taught in the assembly house even to the men and that finally couldn’t be taught at all in the way we understood teaching, but could only be discovered in oneself. Later, when he was with the crowds, people often said his meaning was unclear, or twisted his words and held them against him. But for those who had ears to hear, as he said to us, his message was plain enough. He spoke often of God’s kingdom, and people imagined he meant to make himself king of Israel, or that the end of days was at hand, or that we must wait until death for the kingdom to come to us. But those who listened could see that the kingdom was neither one thing nor the other, not a place outside of us that we must travel to like some far province or city but rather inside us in the way we looked at things, and so always there for us to bring forth. When will the kingdom come, people asked him, and he always replied, It’s here. He said, Look at the trees or the birds or the lake. Look at the wildflowers that come up in the spring. The wildflowers don’t feed us, people said. They don’t pay our taxes. But they hadn’t understood. Even those closest to him didn’t always understand, and I among them, but that was our own hard-headedness, because no one before had ever said to us, Open your eyes and see.