by Ann Swinfen
‘I am not talking about what is good or bad for trade. It has nothing to do with fine buildings or convenience!’ my brother cried out, then drew a deep breath, and I heard the cloth tear a little more, as if his very clothes cried out in sympathy. ‘I’m talking about matters of the spirit. Myself, I care nothing for the petty religious rituals of the Pharisees, which are all form and no substance. But there are other things that are deeper, which touch the spirit of man, the soul . . .’
He broke off, and turned towards Yehûdâ, almost, it seemed, in exasperation with himself.
‘I cannot find the words! But to walk upon the bones of the dead . . . To desecrate their graves and scatter their remains, just in order to dig the foundations of a new customs office or warehouse, or even a brothel . . . Their souls have fled, I know, but these are the mortal remains of men and women like ourselves.’
‘They are ancient unmarked graves,’ Yehûdâ said hesitantly, apologetically. ‘The poor, buried in simple ground, not in ancestral burial caves.’
‘Does that not make it worse? The poor—unregarded in life, to be defiled even in death?’
‘I don’t know. Who are we to judge?’
‘It is a sacrilege,’ my brother said abruptly, and closed the subject, as he so often did, by turning his friend’s attention aside. ‘Come, I thought we were to go fishing in the river today. Do you want to come, Mariam?’
I wanted to go with them, for I would rather be with my brother Yeshûa than anywhere else in the world. And his friend Yehûdâ was handsome and kind. He never mocked me, or scorned me, or treated me like a clod of earth on his shoe, like Ya’aqôb and my other brothers. At that age I did not altogether understand their discussions, but I was tantalised by a sense that there was something there, something my mind reached out to, but could not quite grasp. I would have liked nothing better than to tag along after them to the river, like a hopeful puppy.
But I shook my head mournfully. I had not the freedom of my brothers and their friends. It seemed that the women and the girls of the village worked from the moment they rose before dawn until they laid their aching bones down when the blessed darkness gave them leave to sleep. Somehow the men always had shorter hours to labour, and when the heat of the sun was at its most fierce, or the early evening brought an end to their working day, they would sit under the fig trees or in the shade of the awnings on the roofs, and sleep or gossip or play complicated games on wooden boards with bone or pebble counters, games to which we, the lesser sex, were never admitted.
‘I have to grind corn in the quern today,’ I said fretfully. ‘And there are more figs to be picked and laid out on the roof to dry.’
The boys headed down the valley to the river, where they might fish for a while, but would certainly spend most of their time enjoying the delights of swimming naked in the cool water and gaining some relief from the merciless sun. I went away, dragging my feet through the dust so that it spurted up between my bare toes like water and flooded over my insteps, leaving them dyed a reddish brown. It reminded me of the Bedouin tribesmen who passed sometimes through the village with their camels and goods. They wore vivid colours, even when their clothes were a patchwork of rags, and they marked their faces and hands with dyed patterns, sometimes colouring their black hair an ugly orange-red with henna. As part of a woven garment or a rug, henna is a joyous colour, but matted in the tribesmen’s hair, it turned my stomach.
The houses in our village were not laid out like a Roman town, in straight, unforgiving lines. They were clustered two, three, even as many as six together, round a shared courtyard, with narrow lanes zigzagging between these clusters. Our house was one of four built around two sides of a courtyard that was roughly square, with the other two sides enclosed by low stone walls to stop the small children and animals straying. The houses were cubes built of stone held together by a mortar made of mud mixed with dung and straw, then plastered all over in brilliant white to shield the inside from the sun. We had few windows, but the doors, front and back, were left open most of the time to benefit from any breeze. Ours was one of the few houses to have an upper storey, for my father was a carpenter and builder and the house was a way of displaying his skill. Like all the others, though, we had a stairway leading up against one outside wall to the roof, which we used almost as much as the inside of the house.
I made my way reluctantly to the corn mill shared by all four households, which stood in one corner of the courtyard, not far from the bread oven. Now that I was a big, strong girl of eight, I had to do my share of grinding corn for bread, an endless, thankless task that made my arms ache and my head pound from the heat. Hours every day were spent by the women and girls of the village grinding corn, and however hard we worked, the flour was gobbled up by the bread ovens, and the bread by the men and children, who seemed to have little care for our weariness and labour. Ya’aqôb often spoke of the perpetual torments after death which would be endured by those who failed to keep the Law or were imperfect in their observances towards Yahweh, but it sometimes seemed to me—as it seemed to me that day, with the sun setting fire to my hair and the boys away in the blessed cool of the water—that the torment was already here and now. I said a quick, apologetic prayer inside my head for my impious thoughts, as I tipped more corn from the sack into the hole at the top of the grindstone and with the end of my little finger cleared the groove where the ground flour trickled out.
‘Why are you standing there, staring into the hills, Mariam?’
It was my mother. She must have been watching me from the doorway of our house, where she had been sitting at the loom, and had come up silently behind me on bare feet. She tapped me now sharply on the shoulder, as though she thought I was lost too far away in my dream world to hear her. I had jumped at the sound of her voice, but did not turn round.
‘I have ground all this,’ I said defensively, pointing to the bowl of flour and shrugging her fingers from my shoulder. The flour looked less than it had a minute ago. ‘My arms are hurting and I was resting them.’
‘There is no time for resting,’ she said grimly, ‘when there is such a large family to feed.’ She was great with another child, which I think she did not want. ‘If your father worked more quickly, instead of lingering over every spin of the lathe and stroke of the plane, we might have means enough to employ a servant girl.’
‘But why can the boys go swimming and fishing when I have to labour in the sun?’ I whined. I did not like her criticism of my father, whose work was beautiful, but I had complaints of my own today.
‘Because they are boys, and the Lord made a different world for men and for women,’ she said sharply. ‘You must learn to accept it, Mariam. I want that bowl full before you stop, and then there are the figs to pick.’
‘I know,’ I snapped. ‘And then the best must be chosen and laid out on mats to dry, and the rest put by to eat now. Surely there must be more work for me to do afterwards?’
For that, I got a sharp clip on the ear, and ground the rest of the grain through hot, bitter tears.
My mother continued to watch me, her most troublesome daughter, from the shadow of the doorway, where she had set up her loom to gain the benefit of the daylight but also some protection from the heat. Her hands moved automatically, throwing the shuttle, tamping down the weft threads with the heddle rod, tying in new colours as the pattern demanded. She could perform these tasks, practised since girlhood, while her mind was filled with other things. I knew that the unborn child, the unwanted child, stirred and kicked against the cramped position forced on it, as she sat cross-legged. This would be the tenth child she had borne, and eight still living. Only one lost, soon after birth, another son two years younger than I. Yeshûa, Ya’aqôb, Yehûdes, Yoses, Melkha, Shim’ôn, Mariam, Eskha. She was only thirty-five. She could be fruitful for another fifteen years. Perpetual mother. She laid her forehead against the tight fabric on the loom and closed her eyes. I heard her whisper, Please, Lord, no more after this.
‘Mariam!’ she called sharply across the courtyard. ‘Have you not finished that grinding? I need the flour for this evening’s bread dough. It’s time to begin preparing the meal, and I’ve not finished half the weaving I planned to do.’
I stooped and picked up the bowl of flour and the nearly empty sack of grain. You cannot blame that on me, I thought, full of self-pity. I began to trudge across the courtyard toward the house, dragging the sack through the dust behind me.
‘You may leave the figs until tomorrow,’ my mother said. ‘Go and fetch Yeshûa home, and don’t linger.’
Glad of the brief respite, I galloped down through the olive orchard in the direction of the river, but when I caught sight of the two friends, I slithered to a halt and squatted down behind an ancient trunk. I could not go on, for they lay naked on the lush grass of the river bank as the sun dried them. If I climbed back up the hill, they might see me. I was too embarrassed to move. They had put aside their fishing rods, for the fish were hiding amongst the rushes, away from the glare of the sunlight, and they had caught nothing. I knew they had not really expected to, for fishing was merely an excuse to escape for a few hours and enjoy the cool of the water, away from any work their fathers might set them.
Yehûdâ rolled over and sat up, leaning back on his elbows and squinting against the reflection of the sun on the water. There was the shadow of a fish half emerging from the clump of reeds opposite, but I could see he was too sluggish with water and sun to throw out his line.
‘Yeshûa?’ He turned and looked down at my brother’s back, which shone like polished bronze, with a scattering of drops amongst the fine hairs.
Yeshûa lay with his head on his folded arms, his face turned away, and did not answer. He had fallen asleep.
‘Hey!’ Yehûdâ poked him in the ribs and Yeshûa grunted.
‘Wake up. I want to talk to you.’
Yeshûa groaned and rolled over, shading his eyes with his arm.
‘What?’
‘My father wants me to marry.’
‘Ah.’ Serious indeed. Yeshûa sat up and wrapped his arms around his knees. ‘Why so soon?’
They were twenty now, and it was the custom to wait longer, until a man had some goods put by, had established himself amongst the men of the community, then he would take a much younger wife. They were both boys still, living in their fathers’ houses, subject to the government of their parents.
‘I wouldn’t have minded marrying your sister Melkha,’ said Yehûdâ thoughtfully, ‘if she were not already betrothed. She’s beautiful and biddable.’
Hearing this, I stuck out my lower lip. I was tired of hearing Melkha praised for her beauty.
‘She would have been married by now,’ said my brother, ‘for she’s nearly fourteen, but the merchant Adamas has been away in Egypt. As soon as he returns, they will be wed.’
‘My father has someone in mind, the daughter of a merchant from Tiberias.’ Yehûdâ’s voice was glum.
Yeshûa made a face at the name of the city.
‘He’s in haste, then?’
‘Ever since he was ill last winter, he’s worried about securing an heir. It’s the penalty of being an only child. How fortunate you are, there are so many of you!’
Yeshûa laughed. ‘Not so fortunate when food is short or the latest baby cries all night! You don’t want this marriage, then?’
‘No! I want my freedom! At least for a while longer. I have seen so little of the world. This village. A few visits to Sepphoris and Scythopolis and Tiberias. That one time we went with our fathers to Jerusalem to our make our bâr mitzvâh oath. I want . . .’ he hesitated, ‘I want to see something of the world before I am trapped.’
‘Yes. I understand. Sometimes I want to . . .’ My brother broke off.
‘What?’
‘I want to see the world too, outside this little village. But I promised my parents.’
‘You mean, after what happened that time in Jerusalem?’
‘Yes. But I can’t get it out of my head. What I was saying earlier, about the poor.’
‘The poor? I don’t understand.’ Yehûdâ turned towards him.
‘Their unmarked graves. Their lives of terrible labour and hardship. Their cold. Their hunger. Their despair. Ending in nothingness. Somehow it has to change.’
‘And how do you think that can happen? Do you think you can do anything about it? Change the world? A village lad from the Galilee?’
Yeshûa had been sitting forward, his arms clasped desperately about his knees. Now I saw his shoulders sag, his whole body go limp. Then he shook himself and leaned back on his arms.
‘Probably not. As for your father,’ my brother said, ‘I think the solution is simple.’
Yehûdâ brightened. ‘You think so?’
‘Tell your father you want to learn his business better before you marry and settle down. Suggest that you accompany some of his caravans to Arabia and Egypt. Isn’t he sending one into Macedonia this autumn? There’s your chance.’
‘Yes . . . yes! You’re right. I can be the dutiful, conscientious son, and put off marriage yet awhile. As long as he hasn’t made a commitment to this betrothal. Perhaps I could be betrothed to your little sister Mariam. She’ll not be marriageable for years yet.’
I put my hands over my mouth to stifle my gasp of astonishment.
My brother laughed. ‘I fear you would not find her biddable!’
‘Or beautiful.’
‘Oh, she may surprise us yet. But I’m sure my family is not well-born or rich enough to satisfy Shim’ôn of Keriyoth! You must look elsewhere.’
‘How much easier life was when we were boys, studying in the beth ha-sefer with the hazzan—in those days it seemed our childhood would never end. You were always the cleverest, our golden boy,’ Yehûdâ teased, poking my brother in the ribs again. ‘Forever poring over ancient scrolls, still reading when the rest of us were released to play.’
Yeshûa shrugged and swatted away the flies that were beginning to be drawn to the warm scent of their skin.
‘It was never a burden, I loved my studies. Even now, I study when I can be spared from my father’s work. Hebrew, Greek, Latin.’
‘Not I! I’ve put away such boyish things.’
‘Boyish? I think not.’ Yeshûa smiled, ‘It’s a kind of escape . . . from making window frames and kneading troughs, or mending table legs.’ There was a note of desolate yearning in his voice. I had not realised he disliked his work as a carpenter.
‘By the way,’ he went on, ‘Mariam is a promising young scholar. She can read and write in four languages now.’
I was both pleased and angry to hear him tell Yehûdâ this, for my lessons were a secret between the two of us.
‘Mariam? A girl may be taught to read the Book. But anything else? Surely that is not permitted.’
‘Ya’aqôb would probably agree, so I’d be glad if you did not tell him. With every passing year, he becomes more obsessed with the ancient Law, but I think . . . Could there not be another way? A kinder way than the Law? A better way to live in harmony? It’s what I was trying to say before, about the way we live our lives. There is something awry in the world. There are so many forbidden things, but little about love and kindness. The Law says we should not kill, but should we not go further? Should we not refrain from anger? Without ang
er, men would live in peace, there would be no wars, no killing.’
Yehûdâ patted him on the shoulder and laughed, but kindly.
‘You’re too much the dreamer, Yeshûa. Look about you at the world, with a man’s eyes. That’s a child’s belief. You’ll never change men’s nature. If others injure us, we will react with anger. Strike me, and I will strike back. Come along, it’s nearly time for the evening meal.’
They knotted on their loincloths and pulled their tunics over their heads. The sun was slipping down in the west, the grass cool and damp under their feet with evening dew. They gathered up their useless rods and, with their arms thrown carelessly around each other’s shoulders, climbed the hill back to the village. Keeping my distance, I followed them. I had not understood everything Yeshûa had said, but I had seen how passionate he was. He wanted somehow to change things, to make life better for the poor. Or to stop wars. I thought that was what he meant. But, like Yehûdâ, I did not see how it could be done.
Even then, I wanted to be part of their company, to share that easy companionship. I was not close to my sisters. Melkha, six years older and betrothed, already thought of herself as a grown woman. She was all that a daughter should be, in our mother’s eyes: beautiful, skilled, hard-working. Only I knew that she could be spiteful when she was sure our parents and older brothers were not looking. Sometimes she would spoil my work, for the pleasure of seeing me scolded. I had learned long before that her word would always be believed before mine. Eskha, at three years old, was too young to be a companion. There were other girls of my age in the village. I met them at the well or when we beat the clothes clean on the banks of the river, but my secret studies with my brother somehow divided me from them. I thought their chatter stupid. I was arrogant and wilful. And I was lonely.
Yeshûa had little time to spend with me, and besides he was near enough a man grown now. How could he find pleasure in the company of a child? I had no illusions on that score and treasured every moment he gave me. I was fearful too that he might leave the village. There was a restlessness about him lately. Sometimes his temper was short, as it never used to be, and I watched him furtively for any sign that he might be planning to go off, as other young men in the village had done, to Sepphoris or Jerusalem, to seek his fortune. I feared he would not want to spend the rest of his life working with our father. When the new baby was born, then he might think the house had grown too crowded at last, and make that his excuse to leave.