The Brother's Keeper

by Tracy Groot

  He kept close to the houses as he headed for Annika’s place, the fifth and last one on the left of the commonyard. A row of houses flanked each side. The foregate opened to an alley, which led to a main street and the marketplace; the aftgate led to the garden patches and chicken houses of the homeowners, to the refuse pit, and to the back ridge beyond. Staying closer to the houses meant James walked in the shadow beneath the balcony of the upper rooms, homes built upon the lower houses. James skirted a man who stood on a chopping block, working to patch a hole beneath the balustrade. He gave the man a quick glance and a nod, and was relieved to earn barely the same in return.

  His steps slowed as he watched the busy, wonderfully normal commonyard. Smaller children played, some of them creating elaborate little villages with cast-off pieces of lumber and stone, broken pieces of pottery, and old bits of string. A trio of children squatted over tiny buildings, happily chattering and arguing. Ben and Hepsi sometimes came with Joses to the shop; they loved to take scraps from projects and create the same sort of villages. Jesus and James used to do it when they were children, playing at the foot of their father’s bench.

  Some women shook out carpets or beat them with a stick. Some gathered laundry from lines. Some pulled out laden dishes from the ovens or waited in turn to do it. Older children helped their mothers or minded smaller siblings. He watched a young girl, not more than eight or ten, upbraid a small child who had a telltale ring of brown about his mouth. At the same time she bounced a fretful baby in her arms; the baby reached futilely for a harried-looking woman at one of the ovens.

  A fig tree grew in a corner of the commonyard, its fruit belonging to a miserly man whose name James could not remember, second house on the right. Two common-use, dome-shaped ovens were in the center of the yard, next to a common grindstone. The harried mother waited with an impatient grace for another woman to remove a dish from one of the clay ovens. James had to stop suddenly when a man darted out of a doorway, chased by his wife, who shrieked over his mud-caked sandals. She retreated, her complaints disappearing with her into the house. The man gave James a rueful glance as he leaned against a balcony post to take off his sandals. James heard the sandals slap together behind him as he continued on.

  At the end of the walkway beneath the balcony, an older, heavier woman was snatching tunics from a laundry line strung up between Annika’s home and the foregate.

  Beyond Annika’s home, on the other side of the alley, was the home of Hananiah, a Pharisee who was a member of the local Sanhedrin and one of the synagogue leaders. James used to tease Annika to send Hananiah some of her honeycakes. She was a widow, he a widower. They had been neighbors forever and had exchanged enough good-natured insults over the years to make for a couple already. Why not make a match of it? Annika would always retort, “And why ruin such a nice arrangement? I like Hananiah too much to marry him.” Women seldom made sense to James, and Annika least of all. She seemed to enjoy not making sense.

  As he came closer to Annika’s, he realized that the woman taking laundry from the line was Annika herself. And how easy it was to imagine he was not here for Raziel at all.

  He sidled up to her and said into her ear, “Doing Hananiah’s laundry now? Why don’t you just wed the man? It’s not decent, Annika.”

  Annika turned, and on seeing his face she dropped the laundry into a basket and set her fists on her hips in surprise. She glanced about, though, and did not exclaim out loud as she might have.

  “Why, James ben Joseph, finally you show yourself at my doorstep,” she declared quietly, reaching up to give a gentle tug to his beard. Then she sniffed, and her face soured. “It appears I should be doing your wash. And what is this, wearing your beard so short? Are you turning Roman?”

  “God forbid, no. I like the style. Especially when I get to pick out fewer hyacinths.”

  “Hyacinths?”

  He enjoyed the perplexed look on her face, a look of disapproving surprise. Annika always looked as though people surprised her, and not for the good. But James liked that old familiar suspicion. It was a face any street merchant thought twice about cheating, and a face any beggar in Nazareth knew for a friend. Most beggars, that is—Annika could tell a fraud from across the street, and James once saw her drag a newcomer from an old-timer’s corner by his ear. “The fool forgot to change his fine sandals,” she had told James.

  She regarded James’ face and seemed to decide she did not like what she saw. “What troubles you, lad?” she asked softly. Any illusion of normality drifted away at the concern in her eyes. No, it was not a normal visit. Nothing was normal anymore.

  “I need to speak to a guest of yours,” he said in a low tone. He could not help but throw a glance at Hananiah’s home.

  “Would this be the guest who cannot leave because it is Sabbath?” Annika murmured back. She flicked a glance at Hananiah’s home as well and pulled a towel off the line.

  “It would.”

  “He is in the back room. Nathanael will be surprised to find he is not gone.”

  James had started for the doorway but stopped. “Nathanael is not here?”

  Annika turned from her laundry line. “No. Should he be?”

  “He . . . left a bit early. There was a . . . confrontation.”

  Annika drew herself up. She was the only woman James knew who could look down on a person though she was shorter than everyone. “What confrontation? What did you do to my Nathanael?”

  Why did everyone take the side of the apprentice? His own family took his side by doing nothing while James steeped in a pot of herbs. Of course, he deserved it, but . . .

  “Your Nathanael,” he said in her face but pressed his lips together and drew back. “Talk to him later. It is nearly sundown.” He ducked into her doorway to avoid more words. He kissed the mezuzah and paused at the threshold to gaze at a kitchen as familiar to James as his own workroom. Raziel, yes . . . but this kitchen . . .

  The old oak table beneath the window that looked on the commonyard . . . how many times had he sat at this table, with or without a brother or sister, for a meal or a treat or for prayers or news of the land? How easy it was to imagine old Simeon, Annika’s husband gone these few years, seated at the table, mending a harness or sorting grain for Annika. Reading Torah from the old leather scrolls, rocking in the gentle rhythm of worship, arms wrapped with old, cracked-leather tefillin. Gentle Simeon, with that warm, crooked smile.

  The table was set for Sabbath. Upon a white linen tablecloth, small dishes held mashed olives and dried fish and oil and salt. There was a platter of dried fruit and a dish with roasted new barley and one of Annika’s famous spiced nut pies. Candleholders held ivory wax candles, waiting to be lit by the woman of the household. Two Sabbath cruses filled with oil, wicks trimmed, also waited. James’ fingertips brushed the tabletop, and he looked to the corner of the room. . . . His expectancy faded when he did not see the scrolls. Of course they would not be there. They would have gone to the household’s only son, Judah, who lived a few miles away in Sepphoris. Simeon, Simeon, with your crooked smile. How you are missed.

  Raziel, yes . . . but the cupboard on the right, next to shelves recessed in the stone wall. How many times had Annika whisked from there a spiced nut pie or one of her honeycakes when James came to visit? It was a cupboard his own father, Joseph, had built. James had always suspected they had given him the business during a lean time; they had no need for a cupboard, with as many built-in shelves as their home had. The top recessed shelf was not even used. Annika would be mortified at the layer of dust it held. She wasn’t tall enough to see.

  James looked past the cupboard to the sleeping rooms in the rear. A short stone passage led to a curtained doorway.

  Stomach lurching, he started for the curtain. Wild thoughts flickered. Did Jesus ever heal someone with fearsome gut pain? Had James really worn this smelly tunic around Keturah? What was Jesus thinking, to make his younger brother confront one of the most famous leaders of the Zealot f
actions?

  He trailed his fingers on the nicks carved in the limestone on either side of the passage, nicks marking the growth of children. The nicks on the right were for Annika’s children, and for the children of Joseph. First were the nicks for Judah, Annika’s son, reaching to James’ present height. Then came the marks for their daughter, Leah—tragically, they stopped waist high. Leah died when she was five. Then began the nicks for Joseph’s tribe, starting with Jesus, ending with Jorah at the end of the passage.

  Nicks dotted the other side of the passage as well, varying in height. James did not know to whom these nicks belonged. Some of the marks were fresh.

  He stopped at the doorway, his jaws clenched like his gut. Quietly he said, “Raziel?”

  He heard a scraping, perhaps the legs of a chair against the hard earthen floor. Then the flap was pulled aside, and James had his answer to the absence of Simeon’s scrolls. Raziel held one, and beyond him James could see the others on the bed in the corner. A large cruse of oil, especially for Sabbath use and probably freshly lit, sat in a small recess in the stone wall. Strange, the rustle of emotions James felt all at once: anger that Raziel had overstepped himself, violating the memory of Simeon by daring to handle scrolls that had belonged to him; a certain comfort that they were being used; a further comfort that this Zealot leader was righteous enough to wear the tefillin—his own, James noted, not Simeon’s—and read the Law and the Prophets.

  Yes, it was strange to see this sect leader as a guest at Annika’s house, reading the scrolls of her dead husband, but stranger still was Raziel’s greeting.

  “It is you,” Raziel breathed.

  Momentarily speechless, James glared at him. What was this? Raziel looked at him much the way some of the seekers did, with a mix of awe and respect. It could not be that this Raziel was just another seeker. It could not be! Not after his words this morning. Then why this horrible greeting? Why this eerie look?

  It disappeared as quickly as it had come. Raziel covered for it by stepping aside and gesturing widely, with good grace, to the room. “Please, be you welcomed.”

  James would sooner brawl with the man than be treated by him with such continued respect. Feeling every inch of the awkwardness now sweeping through him, he kissed the mezuzah posted inside the doorway and entered the room.

  The room was divided by a curtain wall. On the left, on the other side of the curtain, was Annika’s room. On this side of the curtain, a bed stood in the corner, with a chair next to it. A rolled-up pallet lay against the wall near the bed, with a collapsible three-legged chair against the pallet. A bundle lay near the pallet . . . the wooden object on top identified it as Nathanael’s. James went to the bundle and picked up the crude ball-in-a-cage puzzle and turned it over in his hands. Truth to tell, James’ first ball-in-a-cage, at the age of six, was better than this. It was evident Nathanael had not spent much time with his woodworker uncle. But still, despite cuts too deep or not deep enough, the lad showed promise.

  “I could not leave at sundown because of Sabbath,” Raziel said quietly behind him. “This you know already.”

  James replaced the puzzle. “You should have left right away once you remembered the Sabbath.” James turned to him. “I doubt your face is as well-known as your name.”

  Raziel pursed his lips, studying James. Finally, he said, “I was instructed not to leave until dark. Why are you here? You had to know I would keep hidden until it was safe to leave.”

  James took the collapsible chair and folded it out. Joseph had made the chair, by the look of it. The ends had been rounded in the smooth scallops so reminiscent of the hand of Joseph. Thick leather, stiff and in need of a good coat of oil, made the seat. He planted the chair a formal distance from the chair near the bed, then sat, folding his arms over his stomach.

  “I need answers,” he said to the Zealot.

  Raziel went to the other chair and faced it toward James. He reverently laid the scroll on the bed next to the others and unwound his tefillin. He removed his blue-striped prayer shawl, wrapped the tefillin in it, and placed the bundle on the bed near the scrolls.

  “Those are Simeon’s scrolls,” James commented as he gazed at the old familiar books. He owed to Simeon some sort of protest, however mild.

  Raziel nodded as he sat, arranging the folds of his outer robe around him. “Beautifully done. An honor to read them.” He added, “Annika asked me if I wanted to.”

  “My brother Simon wants to be a scribe.” The thought escaped into words, and James wished for them back. He shifted in his seat. Raziel did not seem to notice his discomfort.

  “Annika tells me that Simeon used to tutor your Simon with these scrolls,” Raziel said with a fond look at the books.

  That surprised James. “But Simeon died four, five years ago. I thought Simon wanted to be a scribe only because—” James cut himself off. “I am not here to discuss Simon. I’m here for answers.”

  Raziel lifted his shoulders along with his hands. “To give answers, I need questions.”

  “Why are you here? You did not come to bring my mother a scarf. What nonsense was that?” It felt good to demand. It felt good to be in control again.

  But Raziel was not to be ordered into an explanation. A strange expression crossed his features. By his squint, it seemed Raziel was trying to decide something. James felt picked over like a bowl of grain by that look.

  For all the world, Raziel from Kerioth looked like a sage, with the scrolls on the bed beside him and the contemplative look on his face. The gray in his beard and the clench of his eyebrows, the purse of his lips and the wrinkles at his eyes . . . he was no longer young and not yet old. In some ways he reminded James of Joseph, but for the color of his eyes. James was used to eyes the deep-brown cast of oak bark. Nathanael’s eyes were light amber, Raziel’s were the color of an unripe olive, gray-green. The unusual color, and the glint of light therein, only reinforced his reputation as a fanatic.

  The way the look now flickered away from his own gaze made James sure that Raziel was hiding something. The notion made James’ back even stiffer.

  “You know who I am,” Raziel began. “Of all people, I can understand what you and your family have to endure—”

  “That is a lie!” James shouted, then quickly lowered his voice. “That is a lie. You did not travel all the way from Kerioth for that. We want to know why you are here. Your devoted follower Avi was at our doorstep not one week ago. My brother Joses tells me one of the disciples of Jesus is a Zealot from Kerioth. And now Raziel himself shows up. What are you plotting? Just how do you intend to use Jesus?”

  By the subtle change on Raziel’s face, either James had given Raziel information he did not have, or Raziel realized James had come to proper conclusions. Satisfied, James folded his arms and sat back. But it wasn’t enough to make Raziel speak.

  James rose from the seat and began to pace, arms folded, eyes ever on Raziel. “You are planning something. This Judas is in on it with you, but what you do not know is that you are making a big mistake. We know Jesus better than you both. Let me save you a lot of trouble, and probably your own crucifixion. Jesus will never proclaim himself.” James stopped to emphasize it with a glare. “Never.” He began stalking again, hardly a thought for his boiling belly. “You put lives at risk by being here. Stop whatever you are planning, now. Go back to Kerioth, and take your Judas with you. Go ahead and carry out your rebellion—but leave Jesus out of it. I don’t want his name even whispered with yours.”

  “What have you decided about your brother?”

  James’ stomach plunged, and he lost his pacing rhythm. “What do you mean, what have I decided? It does not have a single thing to do with what I decide.”

  “It has everything to do with it.” Raziel’s eyes narrowed. “You are miserable because you have not decided, for or against him.”

  Rage rippled through James. What did this stranger know of him? Raziel was suddenly behaving strangely. He had his hand on his chest; h
e was looking down at it, gasping, blinking rapidly. Was his heart failing? Alarmed, James snapped, “Are you all right? Raziel?”

  The man shook his head as if to clear it. Then it was as if it had never happened. In fact, his intensity doubled. He raised his eyes, and with his hard new stare came sharpness to his tone. “You are miserable, boy, because you have not decided. You have taken the coward’s way.” His chin lifted. “Pick a side, James. Fight from there.”

  Before James knew it, he had lunged across the distance between himself and Raziel. Should he seize him by his robes and hurl him against a wall? Beat him bloody?

  Raziel rose to meet his fury, gazing calmly into James’ eyes. “I will not be bullied by your anger. You are acting like a child.”

  That should have been the spark to set ablaze the wrath, but instead it quelled his anger. Joseph . . . he could only think of his father. He could only think of the boundaries his father had set when he lived, boundaries James had known since childhood. Boundaries that, as a child, he would not breach lest he earn himself an appointment with a switch; boundaries, as an adult, he would not breach lest he dishonor his parents. Joseph would never have tolerated the rage James allowed. And this Raziel . . . somehow, he reminded him of Joseph.

  James gulped a breath.

  Raziel’s nod was slight, and he took his seat again. James, after a moment, went back to his own. But he would not look at Raziel.

  “You are not like other Zealots,” James grumbled, reaching over to take the ball-in-a-cage puzzle. He turned it over, watching the crudely carved ball tumble back and forth.