The Book of Longings

by Sue Monk Kidd

  “Pamphile?” I said.

  “The pretty Egyptian girl,” Yaltha offered. “The house servant.”

  I gave Lavi a knowing grin. “Go, fetch her and I’ll read.”

  He dashed toward the door, then stopped. “I wish you to read the story of Rachel, whose face was more beautiful than a thousand moons, how Jacob labored fourteen years to marry her.”

  iii.

  Yaltha sat in the elaborately carved chair in our sitting room, a perch she’d taken to occupying day in and day out, often with her eyes closed, her hands rubbing together in her lap while she wandered off somewhere in her thoughts.

  We’d been caged in Haran’s house through the spring and summer, unable to visit the great library, a temple, an obelisk, or even one of the little sphinxes that perched on the harbor wall. Yaltha hadn’t mentioned Chaya in weeks, but I guessed that was who she thought of while musing and fidgeting in the chair.

  “Aunt,” I said, unable to bear our helplessness any longer. “We came here to find Chaya. Let’s do so even if we defy Haran.”

  “First of all, child, that’s not our only purpose in being here. We also came to keep you from being tossed into Herod Antipas’s prison. If we stay long enough, we should at least succeed at that. As for Chaya . . .” She shook her head and the sad, remote look returned to her face. “That is harder than I thought.”

  “As long as we’re confined here, we’ll never find her,” I said.

  “Even if we were free to roam the city . . . without Haran to point us in Chaya’s direction, I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

  “We could ask about her in the markets, the synagogues. We could . . .” My words sounded pathetic even to me.

  “I know Haran, Ana. If we’re caught venturing beyond these walls, he will make good on his word and renew the charges against me. Sometimes I think he wants me to violate his terms so he can do just that. I will be the one imprisoned, and you and Lavi will be turned onto the street—where would you go? How would you receive word from Judas that it’s safe to return?”

  I went to sit on the leopard-skin rug at her feet, letting my cheek rest against her knee, and gazed sideways at a row of water lilies frescoed across the wall. I thought of the mud walls in Nazareth, the dirt floors, the mud-and-straw roof that had to be fortified against the rains. I’d never minded those humble things, but I couldn’t say I missed them either. What I missed was Mary and Salome stirring pots. My goat following me around the compound. And Jesus, always Jesus. Each morning, upon opening my eyes, it would break over me afresh that he was far away. I would imagine him rising from his mat and repeating the Shema, his prayer shawl draped about his shoulders as he wandered off into the hills to pray, and missing him would become so great that I, too, would rise, then lift my incantation bowl and sing the prayers inside it.

  Sophia, Breath of God, set my eyes on Egypt. Once the land of bondage, let it become the land of freedom. Deliver me to the place of papyri and ink. To the place I will be born.

  Knowing that we both prayed at the morning hour each day was like a tether binding us, but I lifted my bowl for another reason, too. I longed not only for him, but for myself. How, though, could anyone be born while quarantined in this house?

  As I sat there, staring at the lilies on the wall, an idea came to me. I sat up and looked at Yaltha. “If there’s any reference to Chaya in this house, it could be buried somewhere in Haran’s scriptorium. He has a large upright chest there. I don’t know what it contains, only that he takes care to keep it locked. I could try to search through it. If we aren’t free to leave, I can at least do that.”

  She didn’t respond, her countenance didn’t change, but I could tell she was listening.

  “Search for an adoption transaction,” she said. “Look for anything that might help us.”

  iv.

  The next morning when Thaddeus’s eyelids thickened and his chin dropped to his chest, I slipped into Haran’s study and searched for the key that unlocked the cabinet at the back of the scriptorium. I came upon it easily, poorly hidden in an alabaster jar on his desk.

  When I opened the cabinet, the doors screeched like lyre strings plucked wrongly, and I froze as Thaddeus roused a bit, then settled back to sleep. Hundreds of scrolls were stacked tightly into compartments, row after row, their round ends staring at me like a wall of unblinking eyes.

  I guessed—correctly, it would turn out—that I’d discovered his personal archives. Were they arranged by subject, year, language, alphabet, or some mysterious means known only to Haran? With a glance at Thaddeus, I slid out three scrolls from the top left compartment and closed the cabinet without locking it. The first one was a certification in Latin of Haran’s Roman citizenship. The second implored a man named Andromachos to return Haran’s black female donkey that had been stolen from his stable. The third was his will, leaving all of his properties and wealth to his oldest son.

  Each morning thereafter, I retrieved the key and removed a handful of scrolls. Thaddeus’s naps typically lasted slightly less than an hour, but fearing he might wake precipitously, I allowed myself only half that time to read, making certain to mark the outside of each document I’d completed with a small dot of ink. Long manuscripts of philosophy were mixed with letters, invitations, commemorations, and horoscopes. Nothing, it seemed, was left unrecorded. If a wee beetle ate a single leaf off a papyrus plant in his field, he wrote a lament that required the sacrifice of three plants. My progress was slow. At the end of two months, I’d read through only half the documents.

  “Did you find anything of interest today?” Yaltha asked one afternoon when I returned to our rooms. Always the same question. Of all the emotions, hope was the most mysterious. It grew like the blue lotus, snaking up from muddy hearts, beautiful while it lasted.

  I shook my head. Always the same answer.

  “Beginning tomorrow I’ll go with you to the scriptorium,” she said. “Together, we can go through the scrolls much faster.”

  This surprised, pleased, and troubled me. “What if Thaddeus wakes and finds you poring over Haran’s documents? It’s one thing for him to find me with an unauthorized scroll—I can claim I have it by mistake, that it was misplaced. But you—he could go straight to Haran.”

  “Thaddeus won’t be a concern.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we will serve him one of my special drinks.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I ARRIVED IN THE SCRIPTORIUM the following morning with cakes and beer, a drink the Egyptians consumed at all hours as if it were water or wine.

  I set a cup before Thaddeus. “We deserve refreshment, don’t you think?”

  He tilted his head, uncertain. “I don’t know if Haran would—”

  “I’m sure he won’t mind, but if so, I’ll tell him it was I who arranged it. You’ve been kind to me, and I wish to repay you, that’s all.”

  He smiled then and lifted his cup, and I felt a paroxysm of guilt. He had been kind, always treating my mistakes with patience and showing me how to repair errors by cleaning dribbles of ink with a bitter fermented liquid. I suspected he knew that I pilfered papyrus for my own purposes, yet he said nothing. And how did I repay him? I deceived him with a draft Yaltha had concocted with the aid of Pamphile and a sedative distilled from the lotus flower.

  His oblivion was quick and miraculous. I dumped out the beer in my own cup through the window in Haran’s study, and when my aunt appeared, I already had the cabinet unlocked. We unraveled scroll after scroll, securing them with reading spools, and read side by side at my desk. Yaltha was an uncommonly noisy reader. She made constant vibrating sounds, hmms, ooos, and acks, suggesting she’d stumbled upon some stupefaction or frustration.

  We read through a dozen or so scrolls, unable to find any mention of Chaya. Yaltha left at the close of an hour—that was all the time we thought we
could risk. Thaddeus, however, went on sleeping. I began to stare at his inert form to be sure he was breathing. His breaths seemed shallow and too far apart, and I was vastly relieved when he woke, bleary, yawning, his hair splashed up on one side of his head. He and I both pretended, as usual, not to notice that he’d been indisposed.

  Later, finding Yaltha back in our rooms, I said, “You and Pamphile must restrain yourselves when dousing his drink. Half the measure will do.”

  “Do you think him suspicious of the beer?”

  “No, I think him well rested.”

  v.

  On a spring day, midway through the month the Egyptians called Phamenoth, Yaltha and I were sitting beside the pond, she reading Homer’s Odyssey, which was copied onto a thick codex, one of the more precious texts in Haran’s library. I’d brought it to her with Thaddeus’s permission, hoping it would fill her afternoons and distract her mind from Chaya.

  Our clandestine hours in the scriptorium had lasted through the fall and winter. After the first month, Yaltha limited her visits to once a week in order to ward off any suspicions Thaddeus might have—there was only so much beer we could bring him. Our efforts had also been slowed when Haran suffered a stomach ailment and did not leave the house for several weeks. Nevertheless, we’d recently finished perusing every scroll in the locked chest. We knew more about Haran’s personal dealings than we cared to. Thaddeus was fat with beer. And we’d discovered nothing that suggested Chaya had ever existed.

  I lay back in the grasses and stared at shredded bits of cloud and wondered why Judas hadn’t written to me. It normally took three months for a courier to bring a letter from Galilee. We’d been in Alexandria for twelve. Had Judas hired an unreliable courier? Or perhaps something calamitous had happened to the courier along the way. It seemed possible Antipas had given up his search for me long ago. I dug my fingernails into the soft pad of my thumbs. Why had Jesus not sent for me?

  On the day my husband told me he would take up his ministry, he’d leaned his forehead against mine and closed his eyes. I tried now to picture it . . . to picture him. Already his features had dimmed a little in my mind. It terrified me, this slow disappearing.

  Pamphile stepped into the courtyard, bringing our supper. “Would you prefer to eat here in the garden?”

  I sat up, the image of Jesus scattering, leaving me with a sudden, sharp aloneness.

  “Let’s eat here,” Yaltha said, setting aside her book.

  “Has there been a letter today?” I asked Pamphile. She’d agreed to alert me to the arrival of a courier, but even so, I queried her about it daily.

  “I’m sorry, no.” She gave me an inquisitive look. “This letter must be very important.”

  “My brother promised to send word when it’s safe for us to return to Galilee.”

  Pamphile stopped abruptly, wobbling her tray. “Would Lavi return with you?”

  “We couldn’t travel without his protection.” I realized too late that I’d spoken without thinking. Lavi had lost his heart to her, but it seemed she’d lost hers to him as well. If she knew the letter meant Lavi’s departure, would she conceal it from me? Could I trust her?

  She poured wine into Yaltha’s cup, then mine, and handed us bowls of lentil and garlic stew. “If Lavi returns with me,” I said, “I’ll make certain he has money to buy passage back to Alexandria.”

  She nodded without smiling.

  Yaltha frowned. I had no trouble reading her face: I understand you wish to secure her loyalty, but will there be money for such a promise? Other than the sum I’d set aside for our return, there were only enough drachmae to pay Haran’s rent for four more months, no more.

  When Pamphile had departed, Yaltha’s spoon thudded against her bowl. I, myself, could find no appetite. I lay back once more upon the earth, closed my eyes, and searched for his face. I could not find it.

  vi.

  I pressed five drachmae into Lavi’s palm. “Go to the market and purchase a travel pouch made of wool, one that will hold my scrolls.” I led him to the stone jar in my sleeping chamber, pulled out the scrolls one by one, and spread them across my bed. “As you see, our old leather pouch is no longer large enough.”

  His eyes moved over my stockpile.

  “There are twenty-seven of them,” I said.

  Afternoon light was falling from the small window, pale green from the palms. I stared at the scrolls, at years and years of begging and scrounging for the privilege of writing—every word, every ink stroke hard-won and precious, and I felt something flood through me. I don’t know if I would call it pride. It was more of a simple awareness that somehow I’d done this. I felt amazed suddenly. Twenty-seven scrolls.

  During the year we’d been here, I’d completed my narratives of the matriarchs in the Bible, and also written an account of Chaya, the lost daughter, and Yaltha, the searching mother. I took it to my aunt before the ink had fully dried. Upon reading it, she said, “Chaya is lost, but her story isn’t,” and I felt that my words were a balm for her. I re-created the verses of grief for Susanna that I’d written on the potsherds I’d left behind in Nazareth. I couldn’t remember all of them, but enough to satisfy me. I wrote the tale of my friendship with Phasaelis and her escape from Antipas, and finally of the household in Nazareth.

  Lavi looked up from the pile of stories. “Does the new pouch mean we’ll be traveling soon?”

  “I’m still awaiting the letter telling me it’s safe to enter Galilee. I wish to be ready when it comes.”

  I was in need of a larger pouch, it’s true, but my motive in sending Lavi into the city was also ulterior. I was considering how to broach the matter when he said, “I wish to marry Pamphile.”

  I blinked at him, startled. “And does Pamphile wish to be your wife?”

  “We would marry tomorrow if we could, but I have no means to care for her. I will have to find employment here in Alexandria, for she will not leave Egypt.”

  He meant to remain here? I felt the bottom dropping from my stomach.

  “And when I find work,” he said, “I’ll make a request of her father. We can’t get a license without his sanction. He’s a vinedresser in the village of Dionysias. I don’t know if he would give his consent to a foreigner.”

  “I can’t imagine her father would refuse you. I’ll write a commendation for you, if you think that would help.”

  “Yes, thank you,” he said.

  “I need to know—will you still return to Galilee with us? Yaltha and I cannot travel alone; it’s too dangerous.”

  “I won’t abandon you, Ana,” he said.

  Relief flowed through me, then pleasure. I didn’t think he’d ever addressed me as Ana, not even after I’d pronounced him to be a free man. It seemed not just an act of friendship, but a quiet declaration of his autonomy.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll find the money for your passage back to Alexandria,” I said, but the words had scarcely left me before I realized I had the money already. Letter or no letter from Judas, we had no choice but to leave when the money was depleted. We could simply depart earlier, before I was required to pay the last month’s rent. The surplus would pay Lavi’s passage.

  “Now, go quickly to the market,” I said. “Go to the one near the harbor.”

  “That is not the closest, nor the largest. It would be better—”

  “Lavi, this is most important. I need you to also go to the harbor. Look for a ship from Caesarea. Seek out those who arrive on it—merchants, seamen, anyone. I wish for news of Antipas. It’s possible he’s no longer even alive. If he’s ill or dead, we can return to Galilee with peace of mind.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I PACED ABOUT OUR QUARTERS while Yaltha read, pausing now and then to offer some commentary on Odysseus, who exasperated her by taking ten years to get home to his wife after the Trojan War. She was no less annoyed
with Penelope, who waited for him. I felt a remote kinship with Penelope. I knew a great deal about waiting for men.

  In the courtyard, the day was taking its leave. Lavi’s knock, when it finally came, landed with faint, rapid thuds. When I opened the door, he didn’t smile. He looked clenched and wary.

  I hadn’t really expected to learn that we were free of Antipas—what was the chance the tetrarch had died in the course of a year? But I hadn’t imagined the intelligence Lavi gathered might be adverse.

  He removed a generously sized pouch of gray wool from his shoulder and handed it to me. “The price was three drachmae.”

  As he settled cross-legged on the floor, I poured him a cup of Theban wine. Yaltha closed the codex, marking her place with a leather cord. The lamplight flickered and snapped.

  “You have news?” I said.

  He looked away, the hoods pulled low over his eyes. “When I got to the harbor, I went up and down the moorings. There were ships from Antioch and Rome, but none from Caesarea. I could see three ships beyond the lighthouse approaching, one with crimson on its sail, so I waited. As I thought, it was the Roman cargo ship from Caesarea. It carried some Jewish pilgrims returning from Passover in Jerusalem, but they wouldn’t speak with me. A Roman soldier chased me—”

  “Lavi,” I said. “What did you learn?”

  He looked into his lap and continued. “One of the men on board didn’t appear as rich as the rest. I followed him. When we were safely from the docks, I offered him the other two drachmae in exchange for news. He was eager to take them.”

  “Did he have word of Antipas?” I asked.