Land of Silence

by Tessa Afshar

  Ethan pulled on one of my curls peeping below my scarf. “Her feet have not touched the ground from the moment she heard. Best of all is seeing Daniel smile from one poky ear to the other. It has been a long time since I have seen my brother so happy.”

  After Ethan and Viriato left, I sat in the courtyard, lazily tending the herbs growing in large clay pots. In the stillness of the sunset hours it occurred to me that Ethan had never overcome his distaste for accepting money from me. He had merely come up with a different way of getting his own way. He was far more complex than I had understood, more patient and persistent. I hardly knew whether to laugh or be vexed. He refused to take my money, yet he did not hesitate to give every spare coin he had—what he considered mine as well as his—to save a man’s life from slavery and death. It dawned on me that I was betrothed to an extraordinary man whose sense of honor, generosity, and mercy surpassed that of anyone I had ever known.

  I choked on that thought. Ethan deserved a much better woman than me for his wife.

  We turned our attention to the last large bundle of wool that had been delivered to our workshop late the previous summer. It was now spring, and this would be our final major undertaking before orders of fresh wool and flax started to come in. The sales from our store of wool would have to carry us into midsummer, when the new wool and flax could be processed for sale. We were running behind, never having managed to catch up after losing over two months in our busiest season.

  Viriato was with me the day we went to examine the wool in the storehouse. According to our records, this was fine wool from Syrian sheep whose soft fleece and broad tails were held in high esteem by Jews, Romans, and Greeks alike. I touched a fleece lying on top of a large bundle and frowned. It was coarser than I expected, the color not quite white, lacking the brightness and delicacy such grade of wool should have. I pulled out another fleece from under the pile and found it the same. Then another and another.

  I thought perhaps I was mistaken. “What do you think?” I asked Viriato.

  “Middle range, at best.”

  “It’s meant to be the highest quality, equal to Tarentine sheep.” The sheep of Tarentum were famed for their shiny, soft fleeces. Legend had it they were hand-fed, kept clean, and coddled, even brought into the house like babies every night.

  Viriato pulled his fingers through his beard. “Not this pile, in any case.” With swift movements, he went through fleece after fleece, pulling them randomly and examining them in the light. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, mistress. These are good for blankets. Carpets, maybe, if you were in that business. No fine tunics in this bunch. Your aristocratic ladies are going to run the other way at the first touch.”

  I sank on a high pile of fleeces, my head starting to pound. The difference between what we could make from blankets and the income from fine artisan wool fit for elegant clothing was too enormous to contemplate. I needed to find out how much my father had paid for this shipment. Perhaps he had come by it more cheaply than I assumed.

  I found him in his room with the door closed. In spite of the half-empty cup of wine resting on the table, he managed to locate the parchments related to the purchase with alacrity. We bent over the scroll, scanning the details. The fleeces had come from a new source, the name of the merchant unfamiliar to me. My father understood the numbers sooner than I and pushed the scroll away with trembling fingers. I jumped as he smashed his hand on the wooden table.

  “I should have examined the fleeces before I made payment.”

  The delivery would have arrived mere weeks after Joseph’s death, while we remained deep in mourning. I thought of my father then, a ghost of himself, unable to focus, barely able to think. “It’s not your fault,” I said as gently as I could. “We’ll work something out.”

  He drank the wine in his cup to the dregs. “You don’t understand. Sums don’t come easily to you. The loss here. It is incalculable.”

  “Can we return the fleeces?”

  He gave a bleak laugh. “No chance. These people are new to me. They were cheaper than the merchants I regularly work with, so I decided to give them a try. When I placed the order, I had nothing to lose. I figured once the fleeces were delivered, if their quality did not match the price, I would return them and refuse to pay. But I was in such a fog last summer that I simply paid them without examining the quality of the stock.”

  The silence stretched. No obvious solutions presented themselves to my mind. “So . . . blankets, then?”

  He leaned heavily against the back of his chair. “Or we can spin and dye the wool and sell it to carpet merchants as yarn.”

  “Which brings more coin?”

  He threw his hands up in the air. “Who can tell? Blankets, if you could sell them. But people can make their own blankets at home. What can we create that would tempt them to purchase from us at a decent price? At least with the yarn, we make something.”

  I stayed awake late into the night, thinking about what my father had said. If we wanted our customers to buy blankets from us, we had to offer them a unique product, one they could not create at home. I crawled out of bed as quietly as I could so as not to disturb Joanna.

  She stirred. “Elianna?”

  “Go back to sleep, beloved.”

  She sat up. Like me, she was a light sleeper and, once awake, had a difficult time falling asleep again. “What’s wrong?”

  “The wool is only good for blankets.” I found my design materials, lit another lamp, and sat cross-legged on the carpet, trying to think of something that would tempt the rich and elegant in Judea.

  It was like staring into a lightless cave. There wasn’t even the ghost of an idea.

  “Why don’t you embroider them as you did the towels?”

  “Blankets are too thick for that. It won’t work.”

  The emptiness of my mind felt like a tomb. I could not think of a single clever idea. Not one.

  Lord, I began, then stopped. I had not been able to pray since Joseph’s death. I waded through the prayers of my parents with respectful silence and visited the Temple, going in as far as the second court, where women were allowed. I participated in the Jewish feasts regularly. I stood when I was supposed to stand, spoke when I was supposed to speak, fell on my knees when I was supposed to fall on my knees. I ate the right foods and avoided the wrong ones. I tithed the herbs and vegetables I grew in the garden.

  But I did not pray.

  The Pharisees taught that righteousness depended upon our perfect pursuit of the Law. If we performed our duty, God would bless us. If we failed, he would remove his hand of care and protection from us. Our faith revolved around a simple legal transaction. We could not be right with God if we did not fulfill our end of that transaction.

  And I had lost all right to God’s favor when I destroyed my brother and shattered my father’s and mother’s hearts by doing so.

  Every time I tried to pray, the distant echo of Zakkai the Pharisee’s words would tumble back into my mind. How could the Lord forgive my sin? Why would he care what I wanted? How could he look past my shame to bless me with an answer to my prayers? The stain of my guilt would not wash off.

  I fidgeted with the parchment and beat the end of the stylus against my forehead. Spreading my fingers on the floor, I stabbed the carpet peeking through between each finger with the sharp end of the stylus as fast as I could without piercing my flesh. I held my breath and managed to count to sixty-one before I had to release it. I must have wasted a good hour on useless activity to keep myself awake. Nothing.

  Lord, I began again. I need your help. Not for me. But for my family. Please, Lord. Don’t turn your face from me. My family is innocent of my wrongs. For their sake, show me a way.

  I looked up. And there was Ethan’s tapestry twinkling faintly in the weak light of my lamp. I frowned and fetched it down from the wall. With delicate care, I examined it first one way, then another.

  “You want to make blankets with that pattern?” Joanna asked, her vo
ice sleepy.

  “Not possible. It’s too complex. You couldn’t create something this intricate with midgrade wool. Besides, it would have taken the weaver months to complete a work of this quality. Even if we had the artisans, we couldn’t sell them. They would be too expensive.”

  “What then?”

  “I was thinking we could use a simple pattern—just a border, say, at the top. And dye the wool in beautiful colors. It would be much cheaper than an embroidered bedcover. Yet still attractive and warm.” I drew a few designs until I was satisfied. Crawling into my bed a few hours later, I fell asleep before I had a chance to exhale.

  Showing my designs to Ethan and Viriato the next day, I stood at tense attention, waiting for their opinion. Viriato shrugged. “Not my area of expertise. I know nothing about stars and flowers.”

  But Ethan nodded. “I can sell these. They are attractive and uncommon. The warmth of a blanket with the loveliness of a woven bedcover. How much will each one cost to produce, wages included?”

  I told him my calculation. He gave me a wry glance. “Have you checked that with your father?”

  “I was waiting for your opinion.”

  Ethan nodded. “Ask. This is worth pursuing.”

  To my surprise, Father showed more interest in this project than he had in anything since Joseph died. I think the recognition of his mistake came as a hard knock—the realization that he could lose everything if he continued his careless approach.

  Viriato gave me a few helpful suggestions about processing the wool so that it would produce as fine a yarn as possible given its grade. To my relief, the resulting yarn was soft to the touch, yielding a cozy, warm fabric.

  I chose three initial designs for the weavers. In the first, we dyed the yarn a delicate sky blue, using indigo and plant ash. Then we wove a pattern of white waves into the top of the blankets. Wool absorbs color better than linen, and the blue of the blankets, highlighted as it was with white waves, though simple, was surprisingly appealing.

  For our second design we used madder on the blankets. Madder is hard to work with and requires several immersions in the dye vats in order to get exactly the right hue. My father had a talent for working with different shades of red and managed to coax a glorious deep red out of the madder, no easy accomplishment. Since Romans were especially fond of the deeper shades of red, I knew this design would do well with our Gentile clientele. For the border of the red blankets, I had designed a flame pattern, blue at the center, cleverly flowing into orange and fading into yellow at the tips.

  My favorite design was a midnight-blue blanket with a border of five-pointed stars woven in bleached white wool. We splurged and embroidered tiny stars, made of real gold thread, at the centers—a star within each star. In lamplight, the stars stood out and twinkled as though we had captured a fistful of celestial matter and sprinkled it on fabric.

  As we turned our attention to selling the new merchandise, we discovered unexpected depths of talent in Viriato. In addition to being an impressive source of useful information about processing wool, he showed prodigious aptitude for sales. I had expected that his height and girth and scarred visage might turn customers away. But Viriato could display an overwhelming charm when he chose.

  I once caught him talking about chariot racing with a Roman official. You would have thought he had spent a lifetime racing chariots in the Panhellenic Games. For all I knew, perhaps he had. Viriato did not speak of his life at home very often.

  The depth of his knowledge about horses and racing impressed not only me, but also the Roman. As he conversed, Viriato absentmindedly caressed the man’s horse, spoke a few words of praise about its gloss and condition, diagnosed a minor problem with its shoe, and won the horse and master over in the course of a few moments. By the time they were finished, the Roman official had placed a large order for blankets for his wife and daughters—and for his horses. He had also placed a sizable bet over an upcoming chariot race. Viriato won.

  With women, he became gentle and funny. After a particularly heavy rain, a portion of the road outside our house turned into a huge muddy puddle. I saw Viriato take off his crisp woolen cloak and lay it on the mud for an elegant lady to step on so that she would not get any dirt on her dainty shoes. She purchased more fabric than she could use in two years.

  My father and Viriato sold our whole stock of ready blankets within one week, and we spent the next month spinning and weaving and dyeing the last bit of fleece we had left over. The demand for the blankets proved so enthusiastic that I barely managed to keep one sample of each design for our own home.

  Because of the exorbitant cost of the fleeces, the profit margin for each blanket was small, but we had sold so many that we managed to pay all our expenses, taxes included, and still have enough left to order supplies for the following season. My father returned to his original supplier of wool, but he added ten talents of medium-grade fleece to our usual order of fine wool. This time, he paid a fair price for them, which would more than double our profits for next season’s sale of blankets.

  “Work on some new designs,” he told me as he handed over a copy of the order. It was the closest he had come to showing me his approval since last summer. My heart warmed with hope. I thought perhaps he had begun to forgive me.

  How great an anguish is hope! For when it disappoints, it ruptures old wounds and gouges out new ones, so that you are left worse off than when you began.

  SEVEN

  I cry out to God Most High,

  to God who fulfills his purpose for me.

  He will send from heaven and save me;

  he will put to shame him who tramples on me.

  PSALM 57:2-3

  ONE LATE MORNING Keziah came running into the workshop. “Master Viriato asks you to please come, mistress,” she huffed out, trying to catch her breath. How Viriato had managed to earn the title master within weeks of entrenching himself in our home, I have no idea. I found myself wanting to call him by that appellation myself more than once. It suited him far better than former slave to a cinnabar mine.

  I arched an eyebrow. “What does Viriato want?”

  “He has brought a beautiful Roman lady to meet you. I think she is someone important.”

  “I see. Thank you.” I rushed back to the house, wondering why Viriato had asked for me rather than my father, who dealt with customers. The servant girl had not exaggerated the lady’s allure. She was no older than I, but much taller, with a figure to make a sculptor’s heart sing. Her dark-golden hair looped around her shapely head in artful braids and tucks, winking with jeweled combs. Clad in an exquisite blue stola and a darker palla, she seemed to me the epitome of Roman elegance. Viriato stood to one side in silent respect as the woman examined a wall hanging, one of my father’s treasures imported all the way from India.

  “My lady, you are most welcome,” I said to the back of her head. “I am Elianna, daughter of Benjamin. Do you wish me to fetch my father for you?”

  The lady turned, her face wreathed in a wide smile. “Viriato tells me you are the one I should see.”

  Viriato bowed. “Lady Claudia, allow me to present to you Mistress Elianna. Lady Claudia is wife to Titus Flavius Lepidus of Rome, mistress.”

  I had never heard of Titus Flavius Lepidus. But it seemed clear, even to my untutored eyes, that Claudia was a lady of some consequence. I wondered what the likes of her was doing in Jerusalem, moldering in our unfavorable weather and troubled politics. I bowed my head, lost for words.

  Claudia seemed to sense my confusion. “Did you design those charming blankets? And the towels with the delicate embroidery?”

  “Yes, my lady.” I found myself flustered by her compliments. Since I rarely dealt with customers, I did not have opportunity to see their response to my designs firsthand.

  “I have purchased a dozen of each and sent a large bundle home for my mother and sisters. You have a unique talent for making ordinary things beautiful. Tell me, Elianna, daughter of Benjamin, do y
ou have other designs that might interest me?”

  “I have a number of freshly dyed fabrics that might suit your needs, my lady. If you like, I can design embroidery for each piece.”

  The large hazel eyes sparkled. “That sounds lovely.”

  I spent the whole hour before noon showing fabrics and sketching designs for our new patron. For the first time, I felt that a client had come for the sole purpose of seeing my creations. Not my father’s. Mine. This sophisticated woman who had no doubt traveled through some of the most splendid parts of the empire was interested in my ideas. I could hardly keep myself from grinning like a fool.

  Once we started speaking of flowers and leaves and designs, Viriato slipped out. I noticed him wiping his brow with a handkerchief.

  The lady Claudia caught my scrutiny and smiled. “He knows his wool, and has great charm, but for all his girth and strength, I think talk of fashion reduces him to a trembling lamb.”

  We looked at each other and burst out laughing. I sensed an odd affinity for her, this highborn Roman woman whose world and mine could never touch. I found myself wishing she could be my friend. A strange and untenable thought for a Jewish girl. I had no liking for Romans in general. They had conquered our land and were hard on us. Daily, they squeezed us with their unjustified taxes and the force of their cruel army. But that day I began to learn that you could dislike a whole nation and still grow fond of the individuals in it.

  Time sprinted ahead. A year passed. For the first time I noticed gray sprinkled at my father’s temples and wrinkles at the corners of my mother’s eyes. Joanna celebrated her fifteenth birthday and I turned eighteen. And yet oddly, nothing changed. It was as if we were trapped in ice, slowly suffocating. I continued to work in the workshop. My father sank deeper into his drink, and Mother grew more retiring, suffering from headaches and tears that came with unreasoning regularity.