by Dara Horn
Very occasionally, every century or two, she saw glimmers of answers.
She remembered once, in Alexandria—or Aleppo?—she had a daughter who had refused to learn to read. “No other girls read, Mama,” the curly-headed child had whined. The girl was intelligent, Rachel had noticed. Even as an infant she had spoken quickly, singing songs, understanding every word. But now she was seven, and petulant. She had seen her friends’ older sisters painting their eyelids. “When I’m grown up, I’ll have a husband who can read letters and things. What’s wrong with that? Why can’t I be like the other girls?”
“Because the other girls are slaves,” Rachel told her. As they worked in the flour mill, Rachel kept drawing letters in the flour, never stopping until the girl repeated them back, her little voice rich with resentment. In the blink of an eye the girl was sixteen and married to a fat merchant who went back and forth to India. Under the wedding canopy, the girl, still a child, stuck her tongue out at Rachel before turning her kohl-eyed face toward the groom. Rachel would have laughed if she hadn’t been crying.
Years later, Rachel came back to the city—young once more, with her own merchant husband, veiled and pregnant and clutching the little wrist of her three-year-old boy. As they moved through the marketplace, her husband hurried them toward a busy stall, where a gray-haired woman wearing a widow’s scarf was furiously recording sales, a long line of customers before her. “She’s the one we need to meet,” Rachel’s husband told her, his voice an urgent whisper. “She handles every silk order for the entire province. And woe to anyone who writes her a bad contract! She’ll correct it until it drips with gall, and then forget about ever meeting her again.”
It took some time before Rachel and her pregnant belly made it through the crowds to the woman’s table. Behind tall piles of documents and coins, she saw the face she knew she would see, etched with age and framed with gray curls, her gnarled hands scribbling sense on scored parchment, a pillar of calm confidence crowning every letter. But what made Rachel shiver was the little girl at the old woman’s side. As the old woman amended detail after detail on the contract with a long gray quill, the girl tugged at her sleeve. “Grandma, this is boring,” she moaned. “I want to play with Miriam and her sisters. Please let me go!”
Rachel watched as the old woman signed her name, a wild wet flourish. Then, ignoring Rachel’s husband as he puffed his chest in front of her, she turned to the girl. “Dear one,” she said, “you are staying right here until you learn every word I’m writing. Then you’ll be free to go wherever you want, for as long as you live.”
Rachel breathed in, a sudden sublime harmony vibrating within her, attuned to the music of an unknown world. But then her little boy broke free from her grip. She whirled around and he was gone, lost in the crowd. And off she went chasing him, running after another reason for living.
Sometimes Rachel lay half-asleep and imagined her own death, the way it was described in the scrolls her father copied. She imagined being asked at the gates of the next world whether she had been honest in business, whether she had married, whether she had set time aside for studying holy writings, whether she had done good works. Her hundreds of children paraded before her like sheep herded by a shepherd, and she remembered all of them. She saw the children of those children, too, but she also saw the trees they planted, the houses they built, the machines they invented, the books they wrote, the people they taught or helped or healed—and also the people they betrayed or disappointed or ignored, the marriages they wrecked, the houses they burned, the people they killed or merely destroyed. No matter how good, how evil, or how indifferent her children’s lives had been, there was a stunning majesty in seeing it all, in looking back on their years and being able to judge them.
She wanted to be judged.
Then there were other reasons for living too, ones that mortals rarely thought of but that raged like fires in Rachel’s mind:
To correct mistakes.
To avoid regret.
To accept regret.
To change.
But none of these seemed possible either.
RACHEL AS A GIRL was a messenger. Her father was a scribe, and her mother had a market stall selling parchment and ink. She had no brothers, only sisters—so many of them that two were already married before she was even born. By the time she was born, her mother was old, and she was the last. It was good, being the last: her parents were tired, and needed her more than she needed them. Because her father did not trust the household slaves, and because she was the last, a scrap of a girl left like a bare bone at the bottom of a stewpot, she became her father’s messenger, running through the city between houses and cisterns, through markets and synagogues and pagan basilicas, between courtrooms and palaces and workshops and jails, a one-girl postal service delivering messages and scrolls her father had copied and written in Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek and Latin, depending on what his customers told him to do. And because she was the last, her father hadn’t cared when she sat at his side as he copied the scrolls and chanted them aloud, so she sat and watched and listened, matching letter with sound until the words rose from the parchments up into her mind. The fact that her parents let her run through the neighborhoods on her own like a boy gave her a reputation, and she was aware of the raised eyebrows that often followed her—and by the time she was sixteen, the leers of the Roman soldiers. Her mother knew that marrying her off wouldn’t be easy like it had been with her sisters, and frequently she expended her frustration and rage on Rachel herself. But her father relied on her and was in no hurry to be rid of her. As for Rachel, she enjoyed a trifold blessing that the other girls of Jerusalem could only dream of: no one cared where she went, no one asked where she had been, and no one noticed when she was gone.
Sometimes she carried scrolls to the Temple. Not to the sanctuary itself, the colossal building that towered over the city and shimmered with plates of silver and gold, the House of God that contained the innermost room at the center of the world, the Holy of Holies—the sanctum sanctorum, as the Romans called it when they tried to put a statue of their emperor inside it. Only the high priest could enter that room, once a year. Rachel didn’t go to the inner court either, where the priests offered their sacrifices each day, or even to the women’s court just beyond it, except on festivals when she lined up with her mother and sisters to bow before God. For her deliveries, Rachel never made it past the outer court, but that was close enough. Up the stone steps, she would pass through the gates and colonnades and already be there, seeing the priests in their vestments washing their bare feet in the water channels, the bound animals ready for the priest’s knives on their necks, the golden bowls of water and meal and wine and grain offerings filled to overflowing, the thick haze of incense entering her body through her nose, infusing her with divine power. The priests themselves were part of the scenery, their elaborate robes and silent gestures making them seem less like people than like living Temple tools, knives and firepans with faces. Young priests would take her father’s scrolls from her in the outer court and turn quickly away. They never looked her in the eye, never even touched her hands, lest her impurity infect them. Not once had any of them spoken to her. Until one day when a priest stood in the corner of the outer court, as if waiting for someone, someone other than her. She saw him out of the corner of her eye, noticing how his eyes followed her as she hurried toward the gate. She was used to this, and kept walking.
“Wait, Daughter of Azaria. I have a message for your father.”
She turned. The young priest in his white vestments stood before her, holding a tightly rolled scroll. She looked down and presented her hands, waiting to feel parchment on skin. When no parchment fell, she raised her eyes and saw the priest looking right at her.
“The message comes with a question,” he said. “You are to deliver the question to your father as well.”
He was young, she noticed, not much older than she, with a sparse black beard and, most strange, eye
s that were nearly green, as if borrowed from someone else’s face. “The high priest asked about one of the scrolls delivered for the New Year’s public readings,” he said. He spoke in a monotone, as if reciting a text. But his eyes remained on her. “In the story about Abraham’s attempt to sacrifice Isaac,” he continued, “there appeared to be a line removed. There was a dark area at the bottom of the column. The story still seemed complete, so it’s possible it was merely water damage or a darker patch of parchment. But the high priest wanted to know if there was an error.”
Rachel looked down at her bare dirty feet, horrified. Her father’s project of adjusting scrolls—it was part of his work, making sense of all the dozens of existing versions of every chapter and verse—had lately become bolder, more inventive. It was as if her father, growing older, no longer cared about his livelihood as much as he cared about his own sense of truth. This was the first time she had dared to make a change, the only time. She never dreamed she would be caught.
“My father made the error,” she said softly. “But I—I—I corrected it.” She was shocked to hear her own voice. Later she would imagine over and over again how things might have gone differently if she had been just the slightest bit older and smarter, if she hadn’t answered him, or if she had lied—how that tiny change in that single moment might have altered everything that followed. But she hadn’t yet learned how to lie.
“You corrected it?”
It was unnerving, this young man watching her. She glanced around, suddenly fearful. They were behind the main row of merchants and moneychangers in the outer court. No one noticed them. Her father had taught her to be cautious with everyone, especially priests. Her father was not terribly fond of priests.
“Please, please don’t tell anyone,” she begged, trying to keep her voice low. “My father will kill me. Please, please don’t tell.”
The young priest was silent for a moment. She looked down at his feet, clean hairy skin beside her dirty toes. “What was the error?” he asked. His voice was light, friendly, she noticed, like a curious child’s.
She still didn’t dare to raise her face to his. “My father doesn’t like the ending to that story,” she said. Her voice shook, but she could not stop herself. “He thinks having Abraham attempt to kill the child was a mistake, maybe a mistake made by an earlier scribe. He wanted Abraham to change his mind.”
“If only,” the priest said.
Now she looked up. To her astonishment, he was smiling, his face crinkled into a laugh. “So what was the error?” he asked again.
She stared at him. Was he testing her? If he was surprised that she knew how to read, he didn’t show it. “It wasn’t an error. He just added a few words, that’s all,” she said quickly. “Right after ‘And Abraham stretched forth his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son,’ and right before ‘And then an angel of the Lord called to him.’ In between, he wrote, ‘And then Abraham turned the knife toward his own throat.’ ”
The priest looked at her, his mouth slightly open. “That’s—that’s beautiful,” he stammered.
Rachel lowered her eyes. “I erased it.”
“What?”
“I stained it with water until it wasn’t legible anymore. I was hoping no one would notice.” Stupid, she now realized. How could anyone not notice?
“But why?”
She glanced around the courtyard again. Boys in white were escorting dozens of sheep and rams to the inner court, shouting as they prodded the animals with sticks, the youngest boys focused on collecting dung.
“I liked the story better the other way, when Abraham tried to go ahead with it,” she said softly. “It was easier to believe.”
The young priest, too, she saw, checked the courtyard, making sure no one saw how long they had been standing there. No one did. “Why is that easier to believe?” he asked. “Wouldn’t most parents give up their own lives for their children?”
No one had ever asked Rachel an intellectual question before; people only spoke to her to issue demands. The priest’s question was like hearing her own thoughts in someone else’s voice. The thrill of it welled within her body as she watched him. But now he was waiting for her answer. She considered, debating with herself as she thought of her own parents: her worn mother who openly resented having yet another unmarried daughter at home, her father who was done caring about his household and cared only about the stories he copied, in scroll after scroll. “I think parents actually look for reasons to give up on their children,” she said. “I don’t blame them, either. They’ve done enough.” She glanced around the courtyard once more, listening to the shouts of the Roman soldiers down below the retaining wall, and said, “Sometimes I wonder if God feels the same way about us.” Suddenly the import of what she had done clouded her mind. “Please, please don’t tell anyone,” she begged him again. “My father will kill me.”
The young man was silent for a moment. Finally he asked, “What is your name?”
“Daughter of Azaria,” she said.
He snorted, an awkward noise that erupted from his young nose. How strange, she thought, to hear a priest snort. She wondered: Did priests also do all the other things mortals do? Did they yawn, piss, fart? She knew they did, but she still found it difficult to believe. “I know you’re Daughter of Azaria,” the young priest said. “Everyone knows you’re Daughter of Azaria. The priests all say it like an incantation. ‘Give this to Daughter of Azaria.’ ‘Send for Daughter of Azaria.’ ‘Wait for Daughter of Azaria.’ You’re like one of the heavenly host. But what’s your name?”
For the first time in a man’s presence, Rachel sensed an odd solidity rising within her, a pillar of unexpected strength. A moment passed before she recognized it: pride. She looked down again, not wanting him to see her smile. “My name is Rachel,” she said softly. “Rachel, daughter of Azaria.” Then she added, “Who wants to know?”
“Me. Elazar, son of Hanania.”
She drew in her breath. Hanania was the high priest, the only person who could enter the Holy of Holies, the person on whom the redemption of the people depended. This snorting boy was his son? She stared at his barely-grown beard, his odd green eyes, his smile. It was impossible to believe. “Does that mean you’ll be the high priest one day?”
Elazar laughed. So priests laughed too, she thought. Then they surely pissed and yawned and farted as well. “Probably not,” he said. “I have three older brothers, so if someone from our family were appointed again, it’s not likely to be me. And I’m also not fit for service, honestly. Not particularly pure, if you know what I mean.”
Rachel didn’t know what he meant, but she saw that the sleeves of his robe were stained with something brown. Mud, maybe, or dried animal blood. “It must be difficult to wear white all the time,” she said.
“Very difficult,” he replied, then lowered his voice. Even his lowered voice seemed to contain a laugh. “Sometimes I sneak out of the Temple. Not sometimes—often. Every three days or so, I realize that I just can’t bear the smell. I need to get away.”
This alarmed her. Did priests even exist outside the Temple? Who was this snorting, laughing priest who needed to get away? “What do you mean, sneak out?”
“I leave the priests’ quarters, without anyone knowing I’ve left,” he said. “If I walk through the streets around the Temple mount, people recognize me, even in different robes. So I’ve found another way. I take the water tunnel. I come out a bit wet on the other end, but it’s worth it.”
Rachel couldn’t suppress a grin. A boy priest who sneaked out of the Temple—through a water tunnel? Surely he was joking. “Isn’t it hard to squeeze through there?”
“I don’t take the Canaanite tunnel. I take the wider one.”
She dared to look at his face, trying to judge if he was serious. “The Babylonian tunnel,” she said.
Elazar smiled. “The Babylonians didn’t dig that tunnel.”
His smile disarmed her. “Of course they did,” she said.
“Everyone knows that.” She hesitated, glancing down again at her bare and dirty feet. In her house, among the sages, some of the sages’ wives liked to share their opinions, to report what they knew, to challenge the men. Her mother did it often. This was different, Rachel knew. She had already said far too much, and to a stranger. But she saw his eyes on hers, and felt a sudden urge welling within her. Her voice flowed like water. “My father says that’s the one thing we have to thank the Babylonians for,” she continued. “They burned the first Temple and destroyed the city six hundred years ago, but at least they carved out a water tunnel through the mountain to put out the fires.”