by Stant Litore
WHERE GOD TOUCHED THE WORLD
Tamar had spoken the truth. The Outlaw had returned to the synagogue to find grim and furious faces. By then, Rahel had been carried to the steps, her face white with pain. Another fisher’s wife knelt by her, pressing a warm cloth to Rahel’s hip and talking with her softly, Rahel’s dress drawn up about her waist. Shimon and Zebadyah stood with their backs to her, facing the oncoming hooves, and men and youths of their town stood beside them.
No one remembered later who hurled the first rock, but the stone was a large one and it smacked against Barabba’s left shoulder, nearly knocking him from his horse. Then there were many stones, the men and women before the synagogue stooping swiftly and then straightening to hurl the rocks with cries of rage. Barabba wheeled his horse in a circle, screaming curses on the town, calling them Roman-lovers and hiders of the misbegotten and unclean. The air filled with stones, hurled wildly. One struck the back of Bar Nahemyah’s head, and as the young man stumbled, stunned, Barabba rode at him in a rush. Leaning out, the Roman-killer caught him as he fell and hauled him up over his saddle.
“One recruit, at least, I’ll take from this ruined town!” Barabba shouted. He drove his knees into his horse’s sides. The steed screamed as rocks struck its flanks.
“Stop!” Zebadyah yelled to the others. “Stop! You’ll hit our own!”
Then the horse was galloping down the streets with screaming men and women rushing after, but Barabba was quickly out of their reach and riding hard along the shore like a leaf before a storm wind, with Bar Nahemyah stretched dazed and unmoving across his saddle, taken from them swiftly and without farewell.
When Koach heard of that, he said nothing for an hour. It was as though his brother had been torn from him.
Shimon carried Rahel back to his house, lifting her in his arms as though she were a child. He lay her in her bedding beneath the olive in the atrium and gave her wine to dull the pain. He shouted for Koach to bring water, and Koach carried it to him in a small bowl—because he could not manage a ewer with only one hand. Rahel was no longer pale; she was flushed with wine, but she looked so frail where she lay, her face twisted in pain, that Koach stumbled in shock, dropping the bowl and spilling the water. Shimon turned on him with a look of rage that was nearly feral. “You’re useless!” he roared. “Get out of here.”
Koach left the atrium with what dignity he could, blinking back hot tears. He had seen the whites around his brother’s eyes, knew it was fear and worry for his family that fed his brother’s anger, but the words hurt deeply nonetheless. He sought out one of the rooms along the outer wall of his mother’s house. Not the room in which he slept during the cold winter, but a quiet, unused room where he hid his secrets.
He sat with his back to the wall and shut his eyes. He could still feel Tamar’s kiss warm on his lips. After a while, he turned and slid out the loose stone at the bottom of the wall at his back, the one that concealed his secret place. It took a lot of work to slide the stone out one-handed, but he was practiced at it.
In the small, concealed space, he kept his carving knife. In another corner of the room lay pieces of driftwood like a pile of kindling, some as small as his thumb, others nearly the length of his arm. He took up one of the pieces now, a scrap the size of his hand. The wood had been cedar once, perhaps a tree on some mountain slope in White Cedars to the north, washed down the Tumbling Water to their sea. Koach clasped the wood securely between his knees and stared at it for a while, searching for the beauty in the heart of the driftwood. Then he found it, and began working the knife with his left hand, carving, cutting away the pieces that weren’t needed, working slowly, calming the beating of his heart. Losing himself in it. Ceasing for a few moments to think of Barabba and his rearing, terrifying horse, or of the girl with earth-dark hair who had hidden him and kissed him.
The carving was Koach’s secret, and it was his commerce, too. His creations might be unclean—in fact, in the Law, the Second of the Ten declared, You shall carve no image in wood or stone—but they were also beautiful. He had learned that, the evening Bar Cheleph had beaten him to the earth and taken from his hands the first carving Koach had ever made—a small, simple replica of a fish. He had seen Bar Cheleph’s eyes. Not just his hate but his desire for the object Koach held. The people of Kfar Nahum were a severe people, but they were also people of the sea. And that meant they were lovers of beauty, though compared to their Greek neighbors in other towns of the Galilee, they loved it quietly.
Seeing that, Koach had not cast aside his knife after carving that little, forbidden fish. He had kept making things. He carved little boats. In time, the boats even had oars and nets, delicate traceries of wood that took him days to complete.
And because Koach lived most of his hours alone in the house with his mother, he listened. Whenever he heard his mother lamenting for some lack, he would slip away quietly when she wasn’t looking, a wood-carving stowed within the long coat he wore. He would go to knock softly on one of his neighbors’ doors. He did this usually in the late evening, after the fishers went down to the sea, and a fisherman’s wife would open the door at his knock.
After the Romans’ raid on the village and the fires that had scorched the town, the houses of Beth Tsaida were sparsely furnished and sparsely decorated, and even what pottery the village had was simple and unadorned. Koach’s wood-carvings were unique in all the town, the town’s one bit of beauty. It was not difficult to barter them for things his mother needed—salt, or oil for her lamp, or a bowl of dates or figs. Not difficult … as long as he chose carefully which fishermen’s wives to approach. And as long as he bore with patience the way they avoided any accidental touch, any brush of their fingers against his. The way they avoided looking at his right arm. They took the carving as often as not, and handed him the little pouch of salt or the spare needle or the thimble of fine thread, but they did not look him in the eyes. They did not speak his name. In fact, they rarely spoke to him at all.
He never went to Zebadyah’s door. And there were other doors he avoided, too. Doors where he would be greeted with a kick. Or where not even a love of beauty could turn the house’s occupants from a strict observance of the Law.
Yet Koach felt little shame as he whittled at the driftwood he held between his knees. In a cruel world, a boy or a man must find beauty where he can, or hunt after it until he does. Or else the hard edges of life will gut him as a man guts a fish, and toss him wriggling to die in the sand.
The day passed. Long ago, when Koach was small, the atrium of their house would have been loud with his mother’s chickens, but those hens had long since been eaten or bartered away. Now the house was quiet. A few times Koach heard Rahel cry out in pain, and he peeked around the door of the small room. His mother still lay beneath the olive tree, her face white. Shimon, tall as a bear, brought her a fresh wineskin. Another time, there was a knock at the door to their house. Koach heard the door open, a murmur of words, then heard it slam shut. A few moments later, he heard his brother and his mother talking in low voices. He could make out most of what was said.
“Who was it?”
“The nagar.”
“How is he?”
“He’ll keep his eye.”
“God. Oh, God.”
“It’s all right. It’s all right.”
Shimon sounded numb again, the way he usually sounded. The rage that had leapt up like fire taking a cedar was gone, and he stood in his ashes.
Silence fell over the house.
Koach slipped the half-carved wood and the knife back into their place in the wall. Then he settled back, his lids heavy. The carving had brought him quiet without bringing him peace: he couldn’t recall ever having felt so fatigued, so overwhelmed. All of it was too much. The horseman’s fury, the fear for his mother, the unexpected, impossible warmth of Tamar’s lips against his own, the dread of her father’s barely restrained violence, the screams in the town, the dead eyes of the townspeople as they lifted ro
cks from the dirt; the hoofbeats, hoofbeats in his ears, in the earth beneath his feet, hooves louder and louder, riding him down, riding him down, riding him …
He woke to the slam of the door in the early dusk: his brother leaving to fish. It took him a moment to breathe evenly again. As his heartbeat settled he stirred, and realized there was a pillow beneath his head, a small, sewn square stuffed with crow’s feathers. It was his mother’s pillow; she must have come while he slept, despite her pain, and tucked it beneath his head. He hugged it to his cheek with his good arm, overwhelmed with a sudden tenderness toward her. It was a feeling he hadn’t experienced before—not a boy’s clear-hearted awe but a man’s love for his mother, his acknowledgment of her sacrifices and her truth.
After a few moments, he stepped softly from the room and found his mother beneath the olive, asleep with her mouth open, her face still flushed. He watched her breathe for a few moments, his heart in turmoil. She had been hurt today, because of him. Because he was useless. Because he was hebel.
Though he couldn’t have said why, he walked quietly to the stone steps in the opposite wall that led up to the rooftop. The stones were cool beneath his feet; he hadn’t spared a moment to put on sandals. Once up there, he glanced first to Benayahu’s house. The nagar’s house was separated from his mother’s only by the narrowest of alleys, and its roof was lower, so that he could see into a part of the atrium and into the small rooms on the far side of the house if the rugs that covered the doors of those rooms were drawn aside. The few he could see into now were empty.
He sighed and turned toward the sea. There was a breeze against his face, but only a light one. Boats were setting out on the water. His brother was out there, he knew. And Yakob the priest’s son and many others. All young men of Beth Tsaida who’d had their bar ‘onshin in the synagogue and had learned to handle the oar and the net. All but he.
“I want to be of use.” A whispered prayer. “To my family. To Tamar. To someone.” It had always seemed to him as though the night he was born God had turned his back on him and on the town, had walked away across the water and never looked back and never returned. Now God seemed far away, hardly relevant. But who else was there to talk to?
Suddenly he heard footsteps approaching, a man’s steps, heavy though muffled and slow, as if he were trying to be silent. The man came through the narrow clutter of fishermen’s houses until he passed by Benayahu’s. Koach slipped to the edge of the roof, lay down on his belly, and peered over it, his heart racing.
The man was Zebadyah bar Yesse.
The priest stopped before Rahel’s door, close enough that Koach could have spat on him. The boy covered his mouth and nose with his hand to hide the sound of his breathing.
The priest stood before the door for a while. Then he called out Rahel’s name in a low voice that he clearly hoped wouldn’t carry.
There was no answer.
“Bat Eleazar,” Zebadyah called again, just above a whisper, and he gave the door a tentative rap with his hand, just enough that someone inside might hear it.
“Bat Eleazar … Rahel, come to your door. Please. We need to talk about your son. And we need to do so now, while others sleep. Please.”
The door rattled quietly and then swung half open. The pale oval of Rahel’s face appeared in the dark. Her eyes were dilated and black.
“I am grateful for what you did today, kohen,” she said. “But I know you are no friend of my son’s.” There was a quality to her voice that made Koach realize, with a start, that his mother had been weeping.
For a moment, heat flickered in Zebadyah’s eyes. Then he sighed. “I am tired,” he said. “That man left those heads on our soil. Yakob has taken them up the hill to bury, but Bar Cheleph and I have been all day washing the uncleanness from our earth.” His gaze was direct. “I stood by your sons because we cannot allow our town to be trampled ever again by outsiders.” He nearly spat the word. “But we must talk. You know what your son has been doing.” His voice sank to a whisper. “Those—those images.”
“It is the only thing that makes him happy,” Rahel said. “The only thing that makes him feel useful.”
Koach blinked back moisture from his eyes.
“It has to stop,” the priest said. “It has to … Look, I do not think as Barabba does, not any longer. Your son is a good boy, and you love him; I can see that …”
“Then let my son have his bar ‘onshin!”
“I can’t!” Zebadyah cried. “I am thinking only of what is best for the town.”
A soft hiss of breath. “I am thinking of what is best for my son.”
The priest glanced about quickly, as though concerned that the rising of his voice might have drawn listeners. “Take him, then,” he said, his voice trembling with the effort of holding back what he felt. “You, Shimon, your crippled boy. Take him from the town. I will send goods with you, what I can. You can go to Rich Garden or Threshing.” His face clenched in pain, as though it were a great sacrifice to wrench these words from his heart. “Find some new home. But the boy cannot stay here.”
“He is Yonah’s son.” Her voice fierce.
“I know!” Zebadyah cried, with a sharp gesture of his hands. Rahel shrank back into the doorway. A few faces peered through the windows of nearby houses. “I know! Do you think I do what I do lightly? You damned, unreasonable … woman! Is your son more important than every life in this town? Would you imperil us all with your grief, your pride? He cannot stay here; I have overlooked him for too long because I loved my brother, because I love you.” He nearly shouted the last, and then stopped abruptly, as if shocked at what he’d said.
An uncomfortable silence. The woman at her door, the priest outside it.
Zebadyah breathed, “I am sorry.”
“I am your brother’s wife,” Rahel said coldly. “Not yours. And you have no authority within the walls of this house.”
Zebadyah’s voice was muted now, pleading. “Bat Eleazar, just listen to me.”
“I am done listening.”
“He is broken, unclean, and he carves images in defiance of everything we believe in, everything we are. He has to go. It is God’s Law.”
“If God had had a mother, his Law might have been less cruel.”
“Blasphemy,” Zebadyah gasped, drawing back a step, a hand raised as though her words were something physical that he could ward away. “I can’t … I can’t hear this!”
“Then don’t.” Rahel’s voice was sharp and it began to carry; Koach could see doors of nearby houses cracked open. His mother’s voice was fire; Koach was certain that if she had addressed him in that tone, he would have withered like a vine in the sun’s heat.
“This is my husband’s house,” Rahel hissed. “My husband’s. The first man of this town. The man who stood against the Romans when you would not. A man who gave his life. So that my son could be born in a Hebrew town. And how dare you come to his door and talk to me of God? My husband knew God. Do you? Was it God who told you to hide shaking by the boats? The night they beat and crippled your father, the night my husband died, was it God who told you to bow and scrape before our heathen masters? Was it?”
Zebadyah went pale. Utterly pale. “Remember yourself, woman,” he rasped.
But she shut the door on him.
For a few moments Zebadyah stood very still. “I paid for my sins,” he whispered at last. “I pay for them every night. Every night until I die.”
Then it seemed to occur to him that he was speaking merely to a door of wood, and not to Rahel or to her dead husband. He turned and walked away with his head bowed. A few faces watched the priest from nearby doors. Zebadyah strode by without looking at them. Then the doors shut again, closing each family once more within the hungry gloom of its own house.
Koach was breathing hard, as though he had run to the kokhim and back. He just lay there on the roof, trying to take in all he had heard. No one had ever spoken to him of his father’s death, or been willing to. His moth
er looked sad when he was mentioned. Shimon’s face just went cold and hard. Koach only knew his father’s name because everyone in town spoke it reverently when they addressed his brother. Bar Yonah, they said, Bar Yonah, as though Yonah had been some hero out of old stories, whose death had left a hole not only in Koach’s life, but in Kfar Nahum itself. Koach tried to imagine him, a man he’d never seen, standing with a fishing spear in his hand, or an oar, or a knife, as Roman soldiers or the lurching dead came at him.
Koach suddenly wanted to run down the steps into the atrium to his mother and demand stories from her. Stories of Yonah that might tell him who his father had been, and who he might be. But sounds from the nagar’s house broke the moment, snapping his thoughts like kindling. He froze, listening: the murmur of a voice in anger and a faint sound like a sob.
He got to his feet and returned to the edge of the roof facing that house, and looked down into it. The rug over one of the far rooms had been drawn aside, and there was a light, a small candle burning on a table. Tamar was sitting on the floor beside it, hugging herself and rocking back and forth. Her head was down, her hair covering her face, but Koach could see that she was shaking and that she was naked to the waist. He blushed hotly for just a moment, but the tingling in his loins disappeared as quickly as it came, for everything about the way Tamar held her body spoke of terrible pain. Koach had the impulse to leave the roof and go unbar the door of his house, slip out into the street and run to Benayahu’s door and knock and call out to her, make sure she was all right. But just at that moment, a dark shape cut off the candelight, and he knew that a man was standing between the candle and the door. His voice was raised harshly, but his words were muffled by the room he stood in, and Koach couldn’t be sure what was said. After a moment there was movement against the light and a quiet crack, as of a hand striking flesh, and a small, strangled sob. Koach sucked in his breath. He was beating her, and the crack of his hand sounded again. And again. And again. Koach’s hand became a fist.