Land of Silence

by Tessa Afshar

  Ethan told me how much money we would lose. “Your profit will be smaller. But,” he said, “I think it would be worth it. You might find new customers, establish a whole new trend. If you receive a greater number of orders than usual, you will make up the loss.”

  “Do you believe that is possible? Having increased custom, I mean.”

  “With the right seller, I believe it probable.”

  My shoulders drooped. Father would have no interest in establishing new customers. He had no patience for people these days. He certainly would have no motivation to reach a different clientele. “I don’t think my father will be able to do it.”

  Ethan smiled, his eyes lighting up. “We don’t need to bother him with this. In all Jerusalem, you shall not find a better dealer than your servant.” He bowed, Roman style. “Leave it to me. Flower-adorned towels will be the new rage in Judea this season.”

  Ezer and Jerusha laughed, and I found to my surprise that I was laughing with them. I had not even smiled since Joseph died.

  Ezer slapped Ethan on the back. “I would tell him off for being boastful, except that I believe he tells the truth. My son could sell sackcloth to a Roman lady on her way to dine with the new emperor, Tiberius. If anyone can make a success of your scheme, it is he.”

  If was not a word I dared to contemplate.

  FOUR

  Good people pass away;

  the godly often die before their time.

  ISAIAH 57:1, NLT

  THAT NIGHT MY SISTER, Joanna, came into my bed and wrapped her long gazelle limbs around me. “It was my birthday today and no one remembered,” she whispered. “I’m fourteen years old.”

  I groaned and turned to embrace her. “I am so sorry, beloved. I can’t believe I forgot.”

  She sniffed. In the faint light of the lamp that we always left lit through the night I saw her rub her eyes. Jews did not celebrate birthdays with gifts and lavish feasts the way our Roman conquerors did. But those who could afford it at least acknowledged such a day and commemorated it with a special meal and a gathering of family and close friends.

  I shoveled one more sin on the growing pile that weighed down my soul. Joanna had been forgotten in the shuffle of our grief. A grief I had brought upon our heads.

  Like a thousand times before, I looked back on that dark afternoon and imagined ways I could have prevented Joseph’s death. If I had not taken him to the hill. If I had delayed by one hour. If I had wiped his face. If I had come to his aid sooner, killed the bee faster. If I had brought him home before it grew too late. It was a useless game I played in my head every day, trying to change the outcome of that dreadful incident.

  The problem with death is its very irrevocability. Still, I could not help engaging in this painful exercise, thinking of ways to prevent Joseph from dying. I wondered if my parents did something similar. Were they held captive by their secret regrets as I was? If so, they kept their torment as hidden as I did mine. We all suffered. But we did not share the weight of our anguish with each other.

  The next morning I rose before Joanna to tell my mother about the birthday we had forgotten. Promptly, she burst into tears. Her weeping no longer tied my stomach into a knot. It had become too common a sight and I had grown accustomed to it, the way one grows used to the searing heat of the sun in the summer.

  “Shall I arrange a special meal for this evening?” I asked gently.

  Mother wiped at her eyes and nodded. “My head is in agony. You organize everything. And see if Ezer and his family can come. Joanna would enjoy that.”

  After arranging the details of the supper, I returned to the workshop and told the servants to begin the work of weaving plain towels. I found it a relief to hear the hum of their swift shuttles filling the chamber. Before long, we would have lengths of linen fit for towels and napkins in Herod’s own palace.

  I spent an hour with the foreman, coordinating the upcoming embroidery work, since my plan presented as much a new venture for him as it did for me. My mother, Joanna, and I would join in this effort; even my strict mother had no objections to the work of embroidering. We could bring the towels inside the house and work on them in the privacy of our chamber, which offered a respectable alternative to visiting the workshop.

  Over dinner that night I noticed Ethan staring at me with peculiar intensity. “What?” I whispered under my breath so only he could hear. Master Ezer was recounting the story of his last journey to Caesarea and everyone was listening to him with rapt attention, affording Ethan and me a veneer of privacy even though we were in public.

  “Your birthday is two months after Joanna’s, isn’t it?”

  I shrugged my shoulder, not comprehending the significance.

  “You will turn seventeen, I believe.”

  I could feel the color leach out of my skin. Seventeen. The age I had been impatient to reach for over a year. The age when my betrothal would come to an end. The age of marriage. I pretended the roasted lamb in front of me held an indelible fascination and reached out to pick up a piece of bread. My fingers shook so hard that I dropped the bread. I lowered my hand to my lap with a quick motion.

  “Elianna?” I could feel the question in Ethan’s voice.

  “Yes?”

  “Will you look at me, please?”

  I forced myself to look up. A band of pain had started to pound on one side of my forehead and I squinted. Sweat broke out over my upper lip.

  “You don’t want to be married to me?” Ethan’s voice was steady and soothing.

  “Do you want to be married to me?”

  “Of course I do. Why do you think I have waited all this time? The question is you.”

  “Me?”

  “You don’t seem too eager.”

  “My brother . . .”

  He took a deep breath. “I know. We can wait a year if you wish. That’s what I wanted to say. That I am willing to wait.”

  I could not understand the relief his words brought me. Once I had found the waiting onerous. Offensive. Now it assuaged the panic that threatened to rise up and tear into me with its sharp teeth. Ethan had given me time, which meant I did not need to examine these strange responses for now.

  I did not know myself anymore. It was as if Joseph’s death had somehow entombed a part of me, and what remained was a stranger. I could only live from one day to the next. No dreams. No hopes. Then I realized that was not quite true, either. I had my father’s work. That remained the one place I allowed my dreams to live on and to grow.

  We finished the embroidery faster than I had estimated and Ethan turned his attention to finding new customers while we approached Father’s old patrons. My father visited with a handful of his customers himself and made good progress, but his interest waned rapidly. He had lost his enthusiasm for work, for people—for life itself, I sometimes thought.

  “Send Joel,” he said. “He will manage.” Joel was a young man in his employ who had on occasion dealt with customers in my father’s absence.

  I packed Joel off with sample towels and a rolled-up list of potential patrons. His palms were sweaty and his thin beard twitched as he pulled at it. He was unaccustomed to this much responsibility. But we had no alternative. If I had been a son, I could have gone myself. As a woman, I had to stay home and twist my hands and hope that Joel would find a way to overcome his inherent shyness and inexperience and sell my towels.

  To my surprise, Joel returned home to tell me that the towels were selling themselves.

  Within weeks, Ethan found us as many new buyers as we already had for the towels, doubling our custom with his efforts. We had to get busy embroidering the linen remaining in the workshop. The clamor for our new design wiped us out of every scrap of coarse linen in our possession. I tried to pay Ethan a portion of our profits, but he would have none of it.

  “This is business, Ethan. I may need your help for months yet. You cannot afford to give me your time without charging for it. If you refuse, I will stop asking for your help. And t
hen where shall we be?”

  The breath hissed out of Ethan’s nostrils. “You wish me to charge my own betrothed for a kindness? What manner of man do you think I am, Elianna?”

  “Not kindness. Commerce. I will not abuse our relationship. Look, thanks to you, we have more than sufficient profit. I can afford to pay what is fair. My father will agree with me, I have no doubt.”

  “Your father will agree that his daughter’s future husband should be paid for helping in her time of need?” Offense leaked out of him like a churning river.

  I knew him to be wrong in this matter. I could accept help once, but no more. If I allowed myself to become a charity in his eyes, he would soon lose respect for my family and me. I would turn into the burden he had to carry. “Take my offer or not, Ethan. I will not waver on this.”

  Without a word, Ethan turned around and left. I had never seen him this angry. I sank down on a chair. Had I offended him so badly that he would not return? My mouth went dry at the thought. I wanted to run after him and beg his forgiveness. I wanted to tell him that he could have whatever he wanted. Instead, I gritted my teeth and let him go.

  Ethan was one of the most levelheaded men I knew. Even his anger was leashed under an iron band of control. But lately, I had come to see that there was a deeper well of emotion in him than I had realized. We had been dealing together as adults for some time now. I had ceased to perceive him through my childish haze of adoration. I saw him as a woman sees a man. He was not perfect. He was not beyond anger and resentment. Hardship and sorrow hurt him much more deeply than he allowed others to see.

  And I had wounded his pride.

  Better his pride than my place in his heart, I thought. He would get over his pride, no matter how much it smarted now. I was not so sure I could find my way back into his affections once he turned from me.

  Master Ezer came that same night and closeted himself with my father in private. I sat stiff and unmoving in my chamber, chewing my nails. Were they discussing how to break the betrothal agreement? Had Ethan sent his father to free himself from me, once and for all?

  I ran downstairs as soon as I spied Master Ezer leaving our house. My father was just emerging from the dining room. He seemed gray and smaller than I remembered.

  “Did he break off the betrothal?” I asked, my voice trembling.

  “What? No.”

  I leaned against the wall for a moment. Then, wishing my father peace, I hastened back up the stairs to cry with relief.

  Whatever passed between Master Ezer and my father, I never knew. But after that, Ethan gave us his help for a share of the profit. The lower the profit, the lower his pay. He never came himself to collect his coin. He sent a servant or his younger brother.

  I was careful not to refer to the money when we were together. I suspected that his father had forced his hand, and that Ethan had not acquiesced willingly. Pulsing beneath the surface of his calm exterior, Ethan had a deep vein of resentment about the whole situation.

  Lambs were born, plentiful and healthy that year, and everywhere herd owners celebrated their good fortune with such enthusiasm that the sound of their merrymaking kept us awake late into the night for weeks. I had been born the same month as the new lambs and my birthday came and went with considerably less remark than the advent of the new flocks.

  Under different circumstances, we would have been planning my wedding feast. My mother brought up the matter with me once. I explained that I could not face marriage while she and Father needed me so much. She did not try to argue. We both knew that Father still relied on my help. He had not recovered from Joseph’s death as we had hoped and seemed to live under a veil of malaise that never lifted. His interest in the world of the living remained marginal at best.

  We could not expect Ethan to let me continue to work for my family once I married. As his wife, my time and talent belonged to him. I should be helping his business flourish, building a legacy fit for any sons and daughters God chose to give us.

  “Is Ethan willing to wait?” my mother asked.

  “Yes. He is probably relieved, if you think about it. He seems so set on having an older bride.”

  My mother gave a wan smile. “He is a good man. He loves you, Elianna.”

  “He is a good man,” I said, keeping my opinion to myself about whether he loved me or not. Ethan felt protective of me. He cared for me. But he had never given me reason to believe that he loved me with any serious attachment.

  The months had tumbled one into another in a blur of grief-washed activity. It was winter. We had already spun the fine-grade flax delivered to the workshop in late summer, which I had had to store at the time. I now turned my focus to dyeing the fine linen yarn, producing beautiful shades of blue, red, and a pleasing green hue, which I, along with the help of our dye master, had developed.

  Ethan and Master Ezer had been an invaluable resource to me, answering my many questions with inexhaustible patience. They visited with my father regularly and always lingered with me afterward to ensure I did not feel overwhelmed with the many new tasks before me. Between them, they knew as much about fabrics and the process of dyeing them as my own father, who had three generations of knowledge running through his veins.

  If Ethan felt any discomfort about finding his betrothed more involved in a textile workshop than in the affairs of the household, he never betrayed it. From his manner you would have thought all the women of Judea spent their time developing new shades of dye.

  I felt safe sharing my ideas with him. He would listen with his habitual silent intensity, as if nothing in the world could be so important as one of my new schemes. I lived for those rare moments when his light eyes would sparkle with approval. “This . . . this design is worthy of a princess. Well done, Elianna.” I clung to his approval the way a blind man clings to a guiding hand.

  Once, he told me that I had more talent than any man he had ever met. I worked all the harder to win those rare words of approbation from him, knowing I would never have them from my father.

  Colors dominated my world. While the quality of our fabrics remained a key focus, their unique color palettes would ultimately win us our select clientele. So I learned everything I could about dyes.

  The roots of the madder plant produced numerous shades of red, but in order to make madder colorfast, the fabric needed to be treated with a mordant. Each dye master had his own secret recipe for assorted mordants. Because our house was so close to my father’s workshop, he forbade the use of truly putrid materials, such as old urine, which was both cheap and popular. Instead, he preferred substances like iron salts. These produced softer, more demure shades of red, which our workshop specialized in creating.

  To make our green dye, we first used a special indigo solution. This produced a celestial blue color; then we immersed the blue yarn into a second bath, this one made of a yellow dye extracted from weld. The resulting green, a misty, dark, leafy hue, had a luscious sheen that drew the eye and captured the attention. I knew it would become popular as soon as I saw the yarn drying in the sun.

  In spite of the cramped, often malodorous process of coloring fabrics, I loved visiting the dye room in my father’s workshop. Although many weavers dyed their fabrics before the process of spinning and weaving began, in my father’s workshop we did most of our dyeing after we completed spinning the yarn. This produced a more uniform color, which translated into better fabrics. One of the reasons my father’s customers sought his wares year after year had to do with the intangible quality of everything that came out of his stores. Whether linen or wool, we produced some of the finest textiles in all of Judea.

  Our workers washed the large deliveries of fresh wool in the famous spring of Fuller’s Field so that the oil could be leached out of the fleece properly. But the majority of the remaining process took place in the workshop itself, which was surprisingly humble in size. There were nine cement-lined vats against two walls and a narrow stone bench against another where I often sat to oversee th
e process. A large stone cistern for rinsing completed the furniture in the simple chamber.

  For me, this became the magical room. Nothing was as it appeared. Dyes went into the vats looking one color, and yarns emerged to dry into a different hue. Only experience and careful planning could give you the result you wanted. Using dyes required an internal knowing, almost a kind of faith. You created them not by the evidence of your eyes, but blindly, by the knowledge of your materials, and by the feeling in your gut.

  I spent day upon day learning and creating, living in a world of my imaginings. I dreamt of colors and textures. Of beauty. And when dreams of death came, as they invariably did, I taught myself in the wakeful, shivering hours following their onslaught, to think instead of formulas and solutions, of vats of indigo and madder, of new shades and heart-stopping colors. I hid in a cave made of glorious creations. And I forced myself to forget what I had lost.

  FIVE

  The LORD will keep you from all evil;

  he will keep your life.

  The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in

  from this time on and forevermore.

  PSALM 121:7-8, NRSV

  ETHAN HAD LEFT on an important purchasing trip just before my birthday, taking no one but a trusted servant, and I had not seen him for two months. His father, having grown tired of seasickness and the inconveniences of travel, trusted Ethan to do most of their purchasing now.

  I knew him to be brilliant at this work. He managed continually to discover better sources of unique dyes and had an infallible sense of what would become popular. His father’s business thrived as a result of his acumen. But I could not help worrying for him when he was gone. Travel, even in the civilized Roman Empire, was a dangerous undertaking. Unpredictable storms, ruthless bandits, violent sickness—anything could happen when you were far from home on a vulnerable ship or a deserted road.

  He walked into the workshop unannounced early one afternoon. The workers were in the garden, eating their noonday meal, and I alone remained indoors, distracted by a new crack in one of the vats. My delight in seeing him after so long an absence made me forget everything and I ran to him, forcing myself to stop a mere breath away. I could not suppress my smile, which must have flashed with the stunned joy of a drunk poet discovering a jar full of free aged wine.