The Testament of Mariam

Home > Historical > The Testament of Mariam > Page 6
The Testament of Mariam Page 6

by Ann Swinfen


  Not temples, I want to say. Churches. They are called churches. And they are not for the worship of some new hybrid monster, a Christ-god. They are places for the worship of the one true God, but God purged of vengeance and cruelty. A new dispensation.

  ‘Your brother,’ I say clearly, keeping my eyes firmly closed, ‘is planning to buy a new yoke of oxen and a new plough. He wants to plough up the wheat fields and plant another vineyard. What do you think of that?’

  He takes the hint, and we turn to safer subjects.

  Once, I cannot remember how old I was, or whether it was before or after Melkha’s wedding, I had gone to my father’s workshop to call him to the midday meal. We ate only a light meal during the day—my mother’s goat’s cheese, bread, a handful of olives, with dried or fresh fruit: figs or apricots or melons. If he was absorbed in his work, my father would forget to come to the house and one of us would be sent to fetch him. As I stepped in out of the sunlight, I was part-blinded by the shadows within, but then my sight adjusted and I saw Ya’aqôb at work on the pole lathe, turning a chair leg, and Yoses and Yehûdes in a far corner, using a two-handled saw. Shim’ôn came in behind me, struggling to carry a ploughshare he had been sent to fetch from the blacksmith, who lived two streets away. It was almost too heavy for him to lift. The sharp edge had already cut his knees and blood was running down his legs. I reached out to help him, but he shouldered me aside. He was unwilling to be shamed before his father and brothers.

  Shim’ôn heaved the ploughshare on to the work bench between my father and Yeshûa, who ran his hand over the beautiful simple curves of the freshly forged iron.

  ‘Let us beat our swords into ploughshares,’ he said. There was a curious twist in his voice, which I did not understand, though I recognised the quotation.

  I saw my father look at him and smile his slow, gentle smile.

  ‘It is fine piece of work, all the finer when we have attached it to the plough.’

  I saw that the framework of a new plough, complete except for the iron blade, lay on the bench between them. I walked over and caressed the smooth new wood of the handles. It was pale as a newborn baby’s skin, creamy and sweet, with the heady scent of new wood. I put my nose close to it and sniffed, with my eyes closed. Shim’ôn laughed.

  ‘Mariam is always smelling things. You would think she was a dog!’

  I ignored him, stroking the wood. A new plough is a lovely object, before the shining new-forged iron turns cloudy and rusty, its edge dulled, and the wood of the frame becomes stained and discoloured from wind and rain and mud.

  Yeshûa began to secure the blade to the framework.

  ‘A plough is a worthy object, fine in the sight of the Lord,’ said my father.

  I sensed that he was picking up a subject they had already been discussing.

  Yeshûa did not lift his head.

  ‘I know it is. Truly, Father, I know that. And the work you do is fine in the sight of the Lord, blessed be his name, and blessed be the work of your hands.’

  ‘And yet you do not think it is for you?’

  Shim’ôn had wandered off to where my brothers were working at the saw-horse, and I do not think that any of them were listening, but I saw from the corner of my eye that Ya’aqôb had lifted his foot from the treadle of the lathe and held his chisel motionless in his hands before his chest. I had taken my hand from the plough when Yeshûa picked it up, and I began to fiddle with the coiled shavings which lay on the edge of the bench.

  ‘I do not know.’ My brother’s voice was strained and unhappy. ‘Perhaps I am being foolish. I should be content with the life I have been called to. But are not the exact words of Isaiah: They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.’

  He drew a long shuddering breath, like a man saved from near drowning. ‘Isn’t that a wonderful vision, Father? Wouldn’t it be a worthy aim in a man’s life, to work for such a world?’

  He put aside his work with shaking hands, and turned to my father with appeal in his eyes.

  My father laid his hand on his shoulder.

  ‘We all know times of discontent, my son, especially when we are young and growing to manhood. You are an excellent carpenter. You could become a fine craftsman. Give yourself time to grow into the peace of the good and simple things in life. If you want to argue the finer points of Isaiah, you must turn to the hazzan and other learned men, not a simple carpenter like your father.’

  Yeshûa nodded, and lowered his head again. I wished I could see his eyes. If I could see his eyes, I would know what he was thinking.

  ‘Yes, Father,’ he said quietly. Meekly. And yet I thought I could hear a note of despair in his voice.

  Did I really understand what he was feeling, child that I was? Could I have understood? My brother was very dear to me, and I knew every tone of his voice. Perhaps sometimes we underrate the understanding of children.

  The small figure of my sister Eskha appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Mother says you are all to come at once for the midday meal,’ she said importantly. ‘Otherwise, she will feed it to the goats.’

  Chapter Four

  Two months have passed since I received word of Ya’aqôb’s death, and my health has improved a little. What has not improved, I manage to conceal. I have become skilful at hiding the trembling of my hands and I have learned the trick of rising more slowly from bed or chair and steadying myself surreptitiously. I have learned also to hold my tongue, so that my son and his wife look relieved, and no doubt think my wild words of unknown uncles and murder were due to some passing fit brought on by the bad news from Judah.

  Today I have even persuaded them that I am strong enough to go to the market at Massilia, although Manilius has insisted that I ride instead of walking, and that I take our house slave Antiphoulos with me, to help with the heavy lifting. As I need one donkey for riding, we make quite a little procession: myself in the lead, riding sideways on the largest donkey (an uncomfortable posture, wrenching to the back, but the only one suitable for a woman of my years) and, following me, Antiphoulos, leading two further donkeys, almost invisible under their swaying loads.

  We have brought half a dozen wineskins of Manilius’s new wine (he does not use expensive amphorae for local sales), a basket of honey pots sealed with wax, another of preserved fruits, onions knotted together in ropes, a sack of cabbages, another of peas, and two chickens roped in a basket and protesting loudly. Antiphoulos, who is, I believe, quite an educated man, looks embarrassed to be party to such a rustic parade.

  Business is excellent and by early afternoon we have sold all the wine, both chickens, and most of the other goods. I notice that the slave looks restless, his eyes constantly turning away from the ships and toward the streets of the town. There is about him an air of suppressed excitement that intrigues me. He will not try to escape, I am certain of that. The risks are too great, the penalties too horrific. Besides, he has saved enough to buy his manumission before another year is out. What is it that keeps drawing his attention?

  ‘I can manage well enough without your help for I while,’ I say. ‘Do you wish to look around the town? You can meet me back here when the market closes.’

  His eyes light up. I am right. There is something afoot.

  ‘Thank you, domina.’ He presses his palms together and bows. ‘It shall be as you say.’

  I give a brisk nod and turn away, rearranging the last of the goods, but following him all the while out of the corner of my eye. He makes off swiftly for the road that leads north from the port. Before I lose him in the alleyways, I ask the neighbouring stallholder, a woman I have known for years, to watch my stall for me, and set off in Antiphoulos’s wake.

  He does not go far. Which is as well, for I might not have been able to keep up with him. Along the main street, then right and left into narrower alleyways, until he enters the crooked doorway of a smal
l house crouching amongst other small houses. A humble fisherman’s cottage, perhaps, or belonging to a small tradesman. But he did not knock at the door and wait. He merely pushed it open and slipped inside. I hesitate on the doorstep, uncertain whether to follow. My heart is beating irregularly at this foolish prank. What do I suppose that I am doing? Then I see, scratched in the whitewash of the wall, at ankle height so that you would be unlikely to notice it unless you were looking, the looped outline of the fish. Gently, I push open the door and step inside.

  It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim light cast by two small oil lamps at the far end of the room, which is windowless and, despite the cooler autumn weather, stuffy with the smell of poor and unwashed bodies. There is a considerable crowd inside, all kneeling on the beaten earth floor, except for one tall man clothed in a white robe, who stands near the lamps, with his hands clasped and his head bowed. I slip into the corner nearest the door and lower myself, with some difficulty, to my knees. Antiphoulos has vanished into the crowd.

  ‘Beloved brethren.’

  It is the tall man speaking, using koine, the colloquial Greek of the eastern Empire, which is also widely spoken here in Massilia, especially amongst the poor. ‘We are met together today in Christ Jesus’s name, to give thanks and praise to the Lord God.’

  He clears his throat. ‘Our Father . . .’

  The prayer is taken up by those around me, who kneel devoutly, with raised hands, palm to palm, and bowed heads. I do not speak, or pray, or bow my head. Instead, I look around the room. It was crudely whitewashed some time ago, the whitewash is flaking off, showing the rough timber-and-daub walls beneath. There are no chairs or benches, as their were in our village kenîshtâ. The lamps are standing on a small table and, hanging above it, nailed to the wall, is a rough wooden cross. It has not even the grace of a craftsman’s work. It is merely two pieces of unfinished wood, tied together, where they intersect, with knotted strips of hide. The ends of the hide hang down and stir in the air set in motion by so many bodies. They look like the strips of skin hanging from the back of a man who has been flayed near to death.

  The cross, the strips of skin, the muttering voices, the crowded bodies—I feel my stomach heave and the bitter taste of gall in my mouth. I half crawl to the door, claw it open, and escape. Even the air of the alleyway, choked as it is with rubbish, seems clear after the suffocating atmosphere of the room. Back in the marketplace I thank my neighbour for her kindness, close my eyes and breathe in wonderfully the salt, fishy smell of the sea.

  On the journey back to the farm, I say nothing to Antiphoulos of where he has been. And nothing in his manner indicates that he saw me in the church of the Christ cult. I wonder how long he has been a believer. Once we reach home I excuse myself from the evening meal, pleading weariness and a headache, and go to my room. There, instead of retiring to bed, I sit beside the window which looks south, out to sea, and try to regain some calmness of mind. I should never have followed Antiphoulos, never entered the building, never raised my eyes to that grotesque and macabre thing that the Christ cult has taken as an object of worship, a graven image. I am filled suddenly with a fierce anger and sense of betrayal.

  There is bright moonlight tonight. It flows in through the window, distorting the natural shapes of the objects in the room, falling upon my clenched hands on the windowsill. On my left hand, between thumb and index finger, it illuminates a small silver scar, the shape of a crescent moon.

  Another of my earliest memories—it must have been around the time Yeshûa rescued me from the goat shed and persuaded me to make my peace with Ya’aqôb: I am standing in the doorway of my father’s workshop. There is a soft swishing sound, like the sound of the wind in the leaves of the olive orchard. It is my father smoothing a table top made of cedar wood, using a damp cloth and the finest sand brought from the beaches of Phoenicia, a place I have never seen. I love the sound of the word Phoe-ni-ci-a, the way it whispers with promises, and I love the rhythmic sound of my father’s hands on the wood. I watch the fine gold sawdust dance in a shaft of sunlight and make a kind of glow about his head. He looks up and sees me and smiles his slow, thoughtful smile, but his hands never cease their work. I take a step inside and stroke the wood with my finger. It is as silky as my own cheek, but still he smoothes it, his body rocking back and forth, back and forth, like a Pharisee at prayer.

  My father was a stonemason and builder as well as a carpenter, but it was wood he loved. Always quiet and undemonstrative, he poured all his passion into the work of his hands. Soon after this he began giving me small off-cuts of wood to play with, and he let me sand them smooth, showing me how to work with the grain. By the time I was five years old I could name them all: olive wood with its close grain and greenish ripples like waves; oak, hardening with age and mighty enough for the floors of great stone public buildings in Jerusalem and Caesarea; pliant willow, for baskets and hurdles; scented cedar for clothes chests, to drive away moths, cedar from Lebanon for the Temple in Jerusalem; prized sycamore, proof against worms and—when properly cured—as hard as iron; apple wood and pear wood with their sweet smell, apt for simple village furniture; modest beech for spoons and kitchen stirring sticks; precious ebony to make fine caskets for the rich.

  When he decided I could be trusted, he let me use his tools, and although I was clumsy in so many ways, the tools seemed to fit naturally into my hands and my hands to know how to use them. I did not make furniture or door frames or ploughs, like the men of my family, but I had an aptitude for carving. At first I carved small animals, though the hazzan disapproved when he heard of it. I suppose he regarded them as impious, like graven images. Later, I learned the skill of making fine joints. I still remember my pride when I made my first box and the lid fitted sweetly, after much labour. I learned to inlay woods of different colours and grains to make patterns.

  My mother, however, did not approve of a girl learning what was exclusively a man’s trade, although I am sure neither my father nor I ever supposed I would practise it. She must have persuaded him, a man with five sons to follow him, to exclude me from the workshop. By the time I was twelve or so, I found there was no room for me in the workshop, my brothers crowding me out, my father apologetically shaking his head at me.

  The injury to my hand happened one day when I was working alone in my father’s workshop, before I was excluded. I do not now remember why I was alone. Probably it was very early in the morning, for I would sometimes steal in there before it became busy and swarming with all my brothers. I am working on the carving of a box lid, using a mallet and a very fine chisel to cut the pattern of grapes and a trailing vine. It is a complex shape and I want to impress my father with my skill. For the very delicate tracery I lay aside the mallet and grip the wood with my left hand, while gouging out the pattern with the chisel in my right. Suddenly the chisel slips, and instead of meeting wood, cuts deep into the flesh of my left hand.

  I let out a shriek. There seems to be blood everywhere. It wells up and flows over my hand, the chisel, the box lid, the work bench. It forms pools and rivers in the carved wood. It stains the front of my tunic and puddles in the sawdust between my toes. I can hear my voice screaming and screaming as though it is separate from me, an animal in pain.

  Yet I do not feel the pain at first, only horror and cold squeezing my chest and the warmth of the blood flowing over my hand. I drop the chisel and the lid on the floor and grip my left wrist with my right hand. Then my brothers Yoses and Yeshûa are there, gaping at me. Yoses recovers first, shrugging and walking away to the far side of the workshop.

  ‘The child should not be playing with men’s tools,’ he says. ‘Perhaps this will teach her a lesson.’

  Yeshûa takes my bleeding hand in both his, covering the wound with his palm. The blood oozes up between his fingers, but I realise I have stopped screaming.

  ‘It will be better now.’

  He releases my hand and holds up his own left hand for me to see. There, on the
warm brown skin, between index finger and thumb, is a small silver scar, curved like a new moon.

  ‘See,’ he says. ‘We all pay the penalty for our craft.’

  Why have I never noticed this scar before? I look down at my hand. The bleeding has suddenly stopped, and I can see that the chunk cut out of the flesh of my hand is in the same place as his scar. It is only then that the pain starts.

  Mariam sits beneath the vine arbour, her eyes closed and her hands loosely clasped in her lap. Although she seems to be asleep, her hands twitch convulsively from time to time. Julia sits on the ground at her feet. When her mother was not looking, she picked a large bunch of grapes and is cradling them in the lap of her tunic, with her back to the house. She thinks of offering one to her grandmother, but does not want to wake her. Instead, she eats the grapes, one by one, bursting them between her teeth and spitting the seeds as far as she can in the direction of the terrace wall.

  Each time I hit the wall, I will have a lucky day. Grandmother Mariam sleeps a lot lately. She always used to be working, or going into the village, or down to Massilia. Now she sits for most of the day. None of my friends have a grandmother like Mariam. She is . . . exotic.

  Julia tries out the new word, tastes it on her tongue and smiles. She loves the sound of new words. Exotic. Mariam’s skin is a warm golden shade, even in winter, and her hair is a rich black, almost blue, like the feather of a raven if you tilt it against the sunlight. Even now that she is an old woman, her hair is black, with just two small wings of white above her ears. Julia squints up at her grandmother. Mariam’s lips move silently, as if she is talking to herself, and her eyes flicker beneath her lids, surely she cannot be asleep? Julia was proud when Mariam told her that she had inherited her grandmother’s unusual blue eyes. She felt singled out from her brothers, and from her father and uncle. Unlike her parents, she is not worried when Mariam is overheard speaking to someone called Yeshûa, who is not there, for Mariam told her about Yeshûa a long time ago. Yeshûa was her brother and lived in the faraway land where she was born. Julia was never told to keep this a secret, but somehow she knew she should not mention the name.

 

‹ Prev