The Priest's Madonna

by Hassinger, Amy

  “You are out of order,” said the chazzan, standing next to him on the bima. “Please.”

  “I have come to tell you that the Kingdom of God is here. You’ve all been waiting—you need wait no longer!”

  “Who are you to say that you speak in the Spirit of the Lord?” thundered a broad-shouldered man.

  “Why do you question me?” Yeshua responded.

  “You expect us to swallow what you’re saying? You, the son of Yosef the carpenter?”

  “You think I am a charlatan because you have not seen my miracles for yourselves.”

  Another voice spoke, low and gruff, “That’s right. We have people in need of healing here, among us, in your home country.”

  Another voice: “Why did you not heal your father, if God gave you such a gift? Why not your wife?”

  Several voices spoke at once now, some shouting. One finally emerged, the loudest: “Even if he can do such things, how do we know it’s God who has given him this power?”

  Then there came a great crash. Miryam rushed forward with the other women and children, and pressed her nose against the screen. Yeshua had thrown the chair from the bima, and it had splintered on the ground below him. The men closest to the platform were covering their heads; one had fallen to the ground and was being helped up by another.

  “I should have known this would happen here!” Yeshua roared. “I should have predicted you—the people of my own village—would receive me with hatred and loathing! But listen to me, Natzaret! In the days of Eliyahu, when the heavens gave no water for three and a half years, how many in Yisrael were made widows? How many starved? And yet God sent Eliyahu only to Zarephath in Sidon. In Sidon! And in the days of Elisha, when so many were lepers, how many were cleansed in Yisrael? Only one! Naaman the Syrian!”

  “What are you saying, Yeshua?” someone shouted. “That God has no love for his own people?”

  “When his people scorn his words, spoken to them in love, when they spit on his offering to them, how can he love them?”

  The men’s voices then erupted in rage, a roar so loud it seemed to shake the foundations of the synagogue, even the bedrock of the mountain. Women grabbed their children and ran downstairs, fleeing the chaos. Only Miryam and Yeshua’s mother remained. They watched the men rush toward the bima in one movement, like water filling a hole. Five of them scrambled up the steps to the pulpit and surrounded Yeshua, yelling and pushing. One of the men—broad-shouldered and the tallest of the five—wrapped his arms around Yeshua’s chest and pulled him toward the stairs while the others followed, still shouting. They were met at the base of the stairs by several of Yeshua’s followers. Andreas grabbed the legs of the broad-shouldered man in an effort to topple him, but another man pulled him off. Kefa fought with another man and Yakov and Yochanan tussled with three others. More men leapt into the center of the struggle until the whole grappling body of men resembled a great beast, thrashing in pain.

  The chazzan, still standing on the bima, shouted, “Stop! Stop! You are desecrating God’s holy day! You are desecrating Shabbat!” over and over, his voice breaking.

  Miryam began to wail and the noise raised several heads. But the broad-shouldered man was dragging Yeshua toward the door, helped by two others who held his feet and legs. Several followed, though most were still engaged in the fighting. Miryam and Yeshua’s mother rushed downstairs.

  The men dragged Yeshua to the escarpment just beyond the synagogue. Hundreds of feet below, past jagged, jutting rocks, a thin stream wound.

  “Noah! Let go of him!” screamed Yeshua’s mother.

  “Go home, Miryam,” one of them said. “You’ve been a good mother. Go home now.” He approached her, his arm extended, but she moved away. She was trembling.

  “He’s done nothing to deserve this death,” she called out again. “He is a son of this town, a son of his father, a son of God, like any of you! Let him go!”

  Yeshua struggled, but the broad-shouldered man called Noah held him too tightly.

  “He speaks of God’s love as if he alone knew what it was to be loved by God,” Noah said. “He is a blasphemer and should be killed!” He heaved Yeshua toward the cliff.

  “Don’t do it, Noah!” shouted a voice from behind Miryam. It was Yakov, Yeshua’s brother. “Do you want the mark of Cain on your forehead for the rest of your days? Yeshua is your brother, just as he is mine.”

  Noah hesitated just long enough for Miryam to rush forward headfirst and butt him in the gut like a goat. Startled, he stumbled and released his grip on Yeshua. “Are you God’s arbiter,” Miryam screamed, “that you may presume to know his will, to know to whom he grants his favor? How can you call him a blasphemer, he who has put an end to the suffering of so many? What can you do but inflict suffering?” She spat at his feet and then ground the spittle into the dirt with her heel. “May you die one thousand deaths, each more painful than the last!”

  “Hark, the demoniac speaks!” said a man standing next to Noah. The others laughed.

  “Get gone, woman,” said Noah, pushing her aside. “You risk your life meddling in the affairs of men.”

  Meanwhile, Levi, one of the twelve who had just come running from the synagogue, clasped Yeshua to his chest and led him away from Noah and the cliff. Andreas, Shimon, and Yochanan came to stand beside Levi and Yeshua.

  Then the chazzan approached. He walked slowly, his head bowed, his fingers tangled in his beard. They waited. The group’s anger seemed to dissipate in the night air, making room for the deeper, graver sensation of shame.

  “You have behaved like children,” the chazzan said, his voice trembling with rage. “You have profaned God’s holy day, defiled our meeting place. Is this what he asks of you? I am ashamed, I am disgusted, I am heartbroken.”

  Noah stepped forward, addressing the chazzan. “Rabbi,” he began, “is it not Law that a blasphemer should be put to death?”

  “What is the blasphemy, please, Noah, that Yeshua has committed?”

  “You said yourself—desecrating Shabbat.”

  The chazzan sighed. “The destruction of property is not a true desecration of Shabbat, according to the Law. Nothing to deserve death. Though it does go against the spirit of the day, the spirit of peace.” He looked at Yeshua sternly, then turned back to Noah. “Your violence, Noah, also was out of place.”

  Noah breathed deeply, as if to control his anger. He raised his eyes toward the sky, where a single star shone against the black.

  The chazzan continued. “You must learn not to resort to force. Debate and disagreement is all well in God’s sight, for it is a way to come to know him better. But violence is an abomination. Make your offering, Noah, and pray for God’s forgiveness. And the rest of you.” The chazzan then turned to Yeshua. “Yeshua.”

  “Yes, Rabbi,” said Yeshua. He stepped forward.

  “You are a gifted teacher and healer, Yeshua. God has blessed you with many gifts. But how can you say that God does not love his people? I don’t wonder that Noah became so angry. You must respect the eternal love of God for Yisrael. You, too, should pray for forgiveness.”

  Yeshua bent his head. “Yes, Rabbi,” he said.

  “We have enough trouble from Rome,” said the chazzan. “Why do we make more among our own kind?” All were silent.

  Then Noah spoke once more. “Rabbi. I have a proposition. You say that Yeshua is a gifted healer. I don’t doubt it. But why won’t he perform a healing for us? Demonstrate his skill? Why doesn’t he simply heal this poor demoniac woman he travels with?”

  All eyes turned toward Miryam, who was standing close to Noah. She looked from man to man and then turned her head sharply to Yeshua. He stood in the center of the group. He looked weary and sallow, as if he needed a good meal and a good rest. She could see he wanted to make the attempt, if only to show them what he could do, but she also saw that he would fail. He was too tired. From behind him, she saw Yakov’s wife running toward them—and she thought of the ravaged roof, the fall
en ladder and upended bench, the branches and mud flaked on the floor.

  “Yeshua,” said the chazzan, “Noah makes an honest request.”

  Miryam watched as Yeshua turned to her and lifted his hands weakly toward the sky—but she could not stay to see him fail, nor could she face the rage of Yakov’s wife. She ran, following the edge of the cliff until she found a narrow goat path leading down the steep escarpment. She scrabbled down this path, grabbing at rocks and thorny brush to steady herself. She heard Yeshua’s voice calling her, and knew that he and the others would catch her if she did not hurry.

  She noticed a small opening in the rock, just behind a stubborn sapling growing out of the mountainside. She slithered into it. It opened into a spacious cave with enough room to stand in. It was cool and damp. She wrapped her cloak more tightly around her shoulders.

  “He who touches the earth and it melts,” she whispered, then listened to her voice resound.

  She climbed onto a flat stone close to the wall and curled her knees into her chest. She would not sleep. When the dawn light penetrated the darkness in the cave, she would crawl out into the open air again and hike down the mountain to meet Yeshua and the twelve on their way out of Natzaret.

  Chapter Five

  I MOURNED THE loss of Bérenger. I had grown accustomed to the delicious anticipation I felt before each meal, knowing I would be near him, and now the days stretched on joylessly, one more tedious than the next. The future seemed to promise only monotony, an infinitude of chores: chopping vegetables, plucking chickens, gathering eggs, cleaning out the chicken coop, scrubbing surfaces and chasing interminably after dust, folding and hanging clothing and linens, milking Geneviève day and night, gathering wood for the hearth. The unending work! It took so much labor simply to exist! And without Bérenger, existence seemed thin and beside the point.

  I was not alone. The whole village missed him—his affability, his broad smile, his generosity. We were cruel to each of the visiting priests who were sent to us. Parents kept their children from catechism class; people boycotted Mass. The fall that had seemed so blessed, so full of promise, became a dismal winter. Fed by the village’s new obsession—the identity of the tattler who had gotten Bérenger suspended—gossip flared like a forest fire, demolishing every reputation in its path.

  Mother still would not absolve Father of guilt. She was sullen in his presence. When he tried to make a joke, she glared, and when he touched her hip affectionately, she swatted him. Finally, after a few weeks of this behavior, my father could take no more. “Here, Isabelle,” he said, thrusting a paper in her face. “Maybe this will convince you of my innocence.” It was a petition protesting Bérenger’s suspension. His was the first signature. “Bring this around the village,” he said. “Get as many people as you can. We’ll show it to the mayor.”

  “What can the mayor do?” retorted my mother. But she picked it up and weighed it in her hands, as if it were an attractive fruit she was considering at market.

  The next day, Mother began circulating the petition. She brought it first to Mesdames Gautier and Paul, who agreed to help her collect signatures. A week later, armed with more than a hundred names, they presented the petition to Mayor Laporte. The mayor, duly impressed, stamped it with his seal and sent it to the bishop, accompanied by a letter of his own.

  It was a lonely time for me. Michelle and Joseph had moved to Carcassonne a few weeks after their wedding. I began to visit Mme Laporte more frequently. If she was busy, she let me into the library, where I happily ensconced myself among her books. Bijou, her cat, kept me company. With a hunger born of isolation and small-minded provincialism, I read Zola, Voltaire, Hugo, Flaubert, and Stendhal, wondering at the expanse of knowledge, the breadth of life—both imaginary and real—beyond our little village. I read Darwin’s Origin of Species, and was shocked and bewildered by the implications of his assertions. I read Renan’s Life of Jesus in one afternoon, thrilled by his illicit ideas about the humanity of Christ. To his lights, Christ was not the messiah, not God, but a radical visionary, a man who believed in the possibility of achieving the ideal. And he was fallible; he had preached about the imminent end of the world, and time had proven him wrong. Renan’s courage became my new standard. I vowed to imitate his daring, to honor my own thirst for truth over doctrine, and in doing so, grew more disdainful, more distant from the Church. It was just as well that Bérenger had gone, I told myself. He was too old-fashioned, too doctrinaire. How could I ever have imagined we could love one another?

  As my reading and my knowledge deepened, I found it hard to leave Madame’s library and return to our small, crumbling house, where the wind blew through the widening cracks in the walls with greater and greater force. As I worked, my mind journeyed—to Paris, where women carried poodles like purses. To Brazil, where men penetrated the wild Amazon in slow-moving barges, scouring the overhanging branches for a new species of monkey. To the American West, where land stretched on—plain, river, mountain, enormous sky—where herds of buffalo thundered across open spaces. My old longings to explore and see the world returned full force as my life in Rennes—my loneliness, my ceaseless chores—began to seem unbearable.

  My visits with Mme Laporte were no longer secret—my mother knew. I had told her on a whim one afternoon when she asked me where I was going, and to my surprise, she did not object. She simply asked me why, and when I told her that Madame knew a great deal about history and I liked reading her books, she nodded gravely. She approved of study. As long as I completed my chores, she said, I could spend my free time how I liked. I was almost eighteen, after all. But the gossips minded. “Why do you spend your time shut up inside that castle, a pretty girl like you?” Mme Baptiste once asked me from her window as I walked by.

  I shrugged. “What else is there to do?”

  Others were of the same opinion as Mme Baptiste. They had long ago learned to tolerate Mme Laporte’s eccentricities, but were reluctant to accept a developing eccentric in one of their own children.

  Then a strange thing happened. Gérard, who had disappeared so suddenly from Michelle’s life, reappeared in mine. He stopped me one afternoon as I was walking to the château. I greeted him, intent on moving on—I was still embarrassed by the scene I’d witnessed the summer before.

  “Where are you off to, then?” he asked.

  “To see Mme Laporte.”

  “Why?” he asked. “Don’t you know she’s a Jew?”

  This startled me, for two reasons. Michelle and I had entertained the thought that Madame might be Jewish when we first became fascinated with her, but I had not thought of it since then, and had not imagined our idle fantasies to be true. Secondly, Gérard pronounced the word Jew with alarming distaste. I’d grown protective of Madame. She was an anomaly, a learned woman with a formidable intellect, and therefore precious. I knew her mind threatened people; it did me, on occasion. But her intelligence and her gentleness seemed to me to be qualities more deserving of emulation than derision. Whenever people so much as wondered about her in my presence, I defended her snappishly.

  “Jesus was a Jew,” I countered. And I continued on my way.

  That was a new idea for me, gleaned from Renan. I had never before thought of Jesus as Jewish, nor had the Church given me any reason to think he was. As the Church presented him, Jesus was the anti-Jew, born Jewish but in his life transcending, even rejecting, his birth. The implication was always that to be Jewish was shameful, wrong. When Jesus rebuked the Pharisees, he was not merely rebuking their hypocrisy, their slavish attendance to the letter rather than the spirit of the law, he was rebuking their identity—or so it seemed, according to what I had been taught. The title Jew, in my mind, and in the minds of most of my fellow Catholics, equaled Pharisee, which, through the language of the New Testament and the story of Christ’s passion, translated as traitor or enemy.

  But I understood the Pharisees to be different from the Israelites, the ancient Hebrews that we read about in the Old Testa
ment. The Israelites were recognized as our ancestors, a people to revere and cherish, the founders of our faith. It was a contradictory position, for while the Jews before the time of Christ were depicted as honorable, after his arrival they transformed into evil-doers, godkillers—in the worst language I heard from the pulpit—or, at best, ignorant, misguided fools who knew not what they did. I wish I could say I objected to this attitude from the beginning, but I did not. I knew no better.

  But: Gérard. After that day he first spoke to me, he appeared more frequently—passing me on the street or walking by our house when I happened to be outside, as he had with Michelle. Each day he greeted me and then stood in place, waiting for me to say something. I was not as skilled as Michelle at conversation, nor did I have the advantage of liking Gérard, so our interactions were always strange and uncomfortable. I could not figure out what he wanted from me. He couldn’t be courting me—he was far too handsome and had long had his pick of the girls in the village, from whom, as Michelle had told me, he had sampled widely. What’s more, it was clear that a more unlikely pair could not be found. It was not that I was ugly—my skin was smooth and my figure appealing. Inspired by an engraving I’d found in one of Madame’s books, I had taken to wearing my thick hair swept back in a loose topknot, which caused it to puff about my face. My mother thought it excessive, and it undoubtedly served to cement the notions people were forming about my eccentricity, but I thought it flattered me.

  Gérard evidently thought so, too, for he complimented me on it. “It brings out your pretty eyes,” he said. I did not thank him; I thought he was teasing me. But he went on complimenting me day after day—on my dress, my hair, my face, and even, backhandedly, my intelligence. “You read too much,” he said. “Girls shouldn’t be as smart as you.” Soon it became clear that despite the obvious foolishness of the match, Gérard was indeed courting me. Claude gloated.