Mary of Nazareth

by Marek Halter

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  EPIGRAPH

  NOTE

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE

  THE YEAR 6 B.C.

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  PART TWO

  MIRIAM’S CHOICE

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  AND THAT WAS WHERE I BELIEVED MY BOOK ...

  THE GOSPEL OF MARY

  MONTHS LATER, I RETURNED TO WARSAW. . .

  ALSO BY MAREK HALTER

  FOOTNOTES

  COPYRIGHT

  Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus…The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will never end.

  —LUKE 1:30–33

  Who then is the parent?

  The mother and the child.

  —AVADANAS, Indian tales and fables

  Jesus is the most radiant figure in History. But although everyone now knows that he was a Jew, no one knows that his mother Mary was also a Jew.

  —DAVID BEN-GURION

  NOTE

  Historians now believe that the birth of Jesus may well date to the year 4 B.C., in other words, four years before the official calendar of the Christian era begins. The error has been attributed to a monk in the eleventh century.

  PROLOGUE

  NIGHT had fallen. All the doors and shutters in the village were closed, the noises of day swallowed by the darkness.

  Joachim the carpenter was sitting on his wool-padded stool, gripping the burrs wrapped in cloth with which he polished one delicately veined piece of wood after another. Once each piece was finished, he placed it carefully in a basket.

  These were gestures to which he was accustomed, made heavier now by sleepiness. From time to time he stopped, his eyelids closed, and his head drooped.

  On the other side of the hearth, his wife, Hannah, her face pink in the light from the dying embers, threw him a tender look, a smile crinkling her cheeks. She winked at her daughter Miriam, who was holding up a skein of wool for her. The child made a knowing face in response. Hannah’s agile fingers resumed pulling on the strands of wool, crossing them and twisting them at such a regular rhythm that they formed a single thread.

  They were startled to hear yells from outside, close to the house.

  Joachim stood up, neck and shoulders tensed, all sleepiness gone.

  They heard more yells, voices sharper than the clanking of metal, a sudden incongruous burst of laughter, a woman’s moan that ended in sobs.

  Miriam studied her mother’s face. Hannah, her fingers tight on the wool, turned to Joachim. Mother and daughter watched him as he put the piece of wood he had been working on into the basket, with a precise, careful gesture, and threw over it the handful of cloth-wrapped burrs.

  Outside, the cries grew in volume and intensity. The village’s one street was in an uproar. Oaths and curses could clearly be heard now through the doors and walls.

  Hannah put away her work in the cloth laid out on her lap and looked at Miriam. “Go upstairs,” she said in a low voice and, without further ado, took the skein from the girl’s outstretched arms. “Go upstairs,” she said again, her voice harsher now. “Hurry up!”

  Miriam walked from the hearth to the curtain that concealed a shadowy staircase. She pulled back the curtain, then stopped, unable to take her eyes off her father.

  Joachim was on his feet now, walking toward the door. He, too, stopped. The bar was down across the door and the single shutter. He had placed it there himself. The door was well blocked, he knew.

  But he also knew it was useless. It would not protect them. The people who were coming were not deterred by doors and shutters.

  The shouts were closer now, echoing between the walls of the storerooms and workshops.

  “Open up! Open up in the name of Herod, your king!”

  The words were uttered in bad Latin, and repeated in bad Hebrew. The voices, the accent, the way they yelled—it was all like a foreign language to the inhabitants of the village.

  It was always like this when Herod’s mercenaries arrived to spread terror and calamity through Nazareth. They preferred to come at night; nobody knew why.

  Sometimes they stayed for days on end. In summer, they would camp just outside the village. In winter, as the whim took them, they would throw whole families out of their houses and settle in. They would not leave until they had stolen, burned, destroyed, and killed. They would take their time, savoring the harm and suffering they caused.

  Occasionally, they would take prisoners away with them. Men, women, even children, who were seldom seen again, and after a while were assumed dead.

  Sometimes, the mercenaries left the village alone for months. A whole season. The youngest, the most carefree, almost forgot that they existed.

  The cries were echoing all around the house now. Miriam could hear the scraping of soles on the cobbles.

  Joachim felt his daughter’s eyes on his back. He turned and peered into the shadows. He was not angry to see that she was still there, but waved his hand urgently. “Quick, Miriam, upstairs! Be careful!”

  He made a face at her that might have been a smile. Miriam saw her mother press her hands to her mouth and look at her in dread. This time, she turned and set off up the stairs.

  She had to keep close to the wall to find her way in the dark, and made no attempt to avoid the steps that creaked. The soldiers were shouting so much, there was no risk they would hear her.

  They were banging so hard on the main door that the walls shook beneath Miriam’s hand as she opened the door leading out onto the terrace.

  From here, the hubbub of cries, commands, and moans melted into the darkness. Down below, in the main room, Joachim’s voice seemed surprisingly calm as he raised the bar and the door swung open on its hinges.

  THE soldiers’ torches were like a red wave in the darkness. Heart pounding, Miriam resisted the desire to approach the low wall and watch the scene. It was easy enough to guess what was happening. Cries echoed through the house below her. She heard her father’s protests, her mother’s moans, the mercenaries ordering them to be quiet.

  She ran to the other end of the long terrace overlooking the workshop, avoiding the jumble of objects that cluttered it: baskets, sacks containing old pieces of wood, sawdust, badly baked bricks, jars, logs, and sheepskins. Her father had thrown all these things here, due to lack of space in the storeroom.

  In a corner was a heap of rough-hewn logs that seemed to have been thrown there so casually that they were in danger of collapsing. But the heap was there for show only. The hiding place Joachim had built for his daughter was surely the finest, the cleverest thing he had ever constructed in his life.

  In among the heaped logs, which were so heavy they needed at least two men to lift them, were a number of thin planks of carob wood, made to look as if they had been jammed there when the logs had subsided.

  But the plank at the side of the pile could be pushed to open a trapdoor, cleverly camouflaged to look like a normal piece of wood, gouged by tools and eroded by bad weather.

  Beneath it, skillfully dug within the heap of logs, which had in fact been carefully fixed into place, was a hollow big enough for an adult to lie down in it.

 
Only Miriam, her mother, and Joachim knew about this hiding place. None of their friends or neighbors was aware of its existence. It would have been too risky. Herod’s mercenaries had ways to make men and women confess what they thought they could always keep silent.

  Her hand on the plank, Miriam was about to work the mechanism when she froze. Despite the growing din in the street and the house, she sensed a presence close to her.

  She turned her head sharply. There was a flash of something light, a piece of fabric, which then vanished. She peered into the shadows behind the barrels of brine where olives were left to soak, aware that she could not stand here for too long.

  “Who’s there?” she whispered.

  No answer. From below came Joachim’s muted voice, stating, in response to the angry cries of one of the soldiers, that there had never been any boys in this house. The Almighty had never given him any.

  “Don’t lie!” the mercenary screamed, his accent making the syllables seem to tumble over one another. “There are always boys in a Jewish house.”

  Miriam had to hurry. They would be coming up before long.

  Had she really seen something or was it her imagination?

  Holding her breath, she walked forward. And bumped into him. He jumped like a cat pouncing.

  A tall thin boy, from what she could see in the dim torchlight filtering up from the street. Bright eyes, skin taut over the bones of his face.

  “Who are you?” she whispered in surprise.

  If he was afraid, he did not show it. He grabbed hold of Miriam’s tunic by the sleeve and, without a word, dragged her to where the darkness was at its thickest. The tunic ripped. Miriam let herself be drawn down into a crouching position next to him.

  “You fool!” he said, in a curt, serious voice. “You’ll get me caught!”

  “Let go, you’re hurting me.”

  “You idiot!” he growled.

  But he let go of her arm, and huddled against the low wall.

  Miriam half stood up and moved away. If he thought he could escape the soldiers by hiding here, he was as stupid as he was rough.

  “Is it you they’re looking for?” she asked.

  He did not reply. There was no point.

  “It’s because of you they’re destroying everything,” she said.

  This time it was not a question. But he still said nothing. Miriam peered over the barrels. The mercenaries would come up here and find him. They would not listen to reason. They would think her parents had been trying to hide this idiot, and the family would be doomed. She already saw Herod’s soldiers beating her mother and father.

  “So you think they won’t see you behind there! You’re going to get us all arrested!”

  “Be quiet! Get out of here, damn it!”

  This was no time to argue. “Don’t be so stupid. Come on, quick! There’s just time before they come up!”

  She hoped he would not be too obstinate. Without waiting for him, she ran to the heap of logs. Of course, he did not follow her. She looked toward the door of the terrace. Below, her mother’s protests could be heard above the noise of objects being smashed.

  “Hurry up! I beg you!”

  She pushed the plank and the trapdoor opened. At last he had understood and was standing behind her, although still inclined to argue.

  “What is this?”

  “What do you think? Get in, it’ll be big enough.”

  “But you—”

  Without answering, she pushed him with all her strength into the hiding place. With a certain satisfaction, she heard him bang his head and curse. Then she lowered the trapdoor, taking care not to make any noise. She tilted the plank to block the mechanism that would have made it possible to open the door from the inside. “This way, we won’t run any risk because of him!” She did not know him, did not even know his name. But she did not need to know any more to guess that he was someone who did exactly what he wanted.

  She crouched behind the barrels just as the mercenaries came up onto the terrace, waving their torches.

  THEY were pushing Joachim before them. Four soldiers in leather breastplates, carrying swords. The plumes on their helmets shook each time they moved.

  They moved their torches about to throw light on the clutter of the terrace. One of them hit Joachim on the back with the pommel of his sword, forcing him to bend. It was a pointless gesture, more humiliating than painful. But the mercenaries liked to show how cruel they were.

  “Now this is what I call a good place to hide!” their leader cried in bad Hebrew.

  Surprised, Joachim did not reply. He looked embarrassed.

  The officer, who was watching his reaction closely, laughed. “Yes, of course! Someone’s hiding here!”

  He barked out orders, and his men set about searching the place, overturning everything. Again, Joachim assured them that there was no one hiding in his house.

  The officer laughed again. “Yes, someone came into your house! You’re lying, but for a Jew you’re a bad liar.”

  Suddenly, there were two almost simultaneous cries. A cry of surprise from one of the soldiers, and a cry of pain as the soldier pulled Miriam out by her hair.

  Joachim also cried out, and tried to move forward to protect his daughter. The officer grabbed his tunic and pulled him back.

  “That’s my daughter!” Joachim protested. “My daughter, Miriam!”

  The soldiers shone their torches in Miriam’s eyes, blinding her. Her chin was quivering with fear. Everyone was looking at her, including her father, who was furious that she was not in the hiding place. Jaws clenched, she pushed away the hand holding her hair. To her surprise, the soldier relaxed his fingers with a certain gentleness.

  “That’s my daughter,” Joachim said again, imploringly.

  “Be silent!” the officer screamed. He turned to Miriam. “What were you doing there?”

  “Hiding,” Miriam said, her voice shaking more than she would have liked.

  The officer was pleased to see her fear. “Why hide?” he asked.

  She glanced over to where they were holding her father. “My parents make me. They’re afraid of you.”

  The soldiers laughed.

  “Did you think we wouldn’t find you behind those barrels?” the officer said mockingly.

  Miriam shrugged.

  “She’s a child, officer,” Joachim cried, his voice firmer now. “She hasn’t done anything.”

  “If she hasn’t done anything, why were you so afraid we’d find her?”

  There was an embarrassed silence.

  Then Miriam replied, “My father was afraid because he’s heard that Herod’s soldiers kill even women and children. He’s also heard that you take them away to the king’s palace and they’re never seen again.”

  The officer laughed, startling Miriam, and the mercenaries laughed in imitation. Then the officer grew serious again. He seized Miriam by the shoulder and stared at her intensely.

  “You may be right, little girl. But we only touch those who disobey the will of the king. Are you quite sure you haven’t done anything wrong?”

  Miriam held his gaze, her features motionless, her eyebrows raised uncomprehendingly, as if the mercenary had said something absurd.

  “How could I do anything to the king? I’m only a child. He doesn’t even know I exist.”

  Again, the soldiers laughed. The officer pushed Miriam so that she fell into her father’s arms. Joachim hugged her so tightly she could hardly breathe.

  “Your daughter is a crafty little devil, carpenter,” the officer said. “You should keep an eye on her. Hiding her on the terrace isn’t such a good idea. The boys we’re chasing are dangerous. They even kill your people when they’re afraid.”

  HANNAH, guarded by some of the mercenaries, was waiting at the foot of the staircase as they came down. She hugged her daughter and stammered a prayer to the Almighty.

  The officer issued a warning. A gang of young brigands had tried to seize the tax collector’s villa, l
ooking, once again, to rob the king. They would be caught and punished. Everyone knew how. And all those who helped them would suffer the same fate. No mercy would be shown.

  When the soldiers had finally gone, Joachim hastened to bar the door. There was a loud crackling from the hearth. The mercenaries had not merely overturned the furniture, they had also thrown Joachim’s work on the fire. The pieces of wood he had fashioned so carefully now burned brightly, adding to the dim light from the oil lamps.

  Miriam ran to the fire, crouched, and tried to remove the pieces of wood with the help of an iron poker. It was too late.

  Her father put his hand on her shoulder. “There’s nothing there to save,” he said softly. “It doesn’t matter. What I made once, I can make again.”

  Miriam’s face was blurred with tears.

  “At least they didn’t touch the workshop,” Joachim sighed. “I don’t know what held them back.”

  As Miriam was getting to her feet, her mother asked, “How did they manage to find you? God Almighty, did they discover the hiding place?”

  “No,” Joachim said. “She wasn’t there, she was behind the barrels.”

  “Why?”

  Miriam looked at them. Their faces were still gray with fear, their eyes overbright, their features drawn at the thought of what might have happened. She thought of the boy hiding upstairs, in her place. She could have told her father about him. But not her mother.

  “I thought they were going to hurt you,” she murmured, “and I didn’t want to stay up there all alone while they did that.”

  It was only a half lie. Hannah drew her close, wetting her temples with her tears and kisses. “Oh, my poor girl! You’re mad.”

  Joachim set one of the stools on its legs and smiled slightly. “She stood up well to the officer. Our daughter is a brave girl, and that’s a fact.”

  Miriam moved away from her mother, her cheeks flushing pink from the compliment. Joachim’s eyes were full of pride, and almost happy.

  “Help us to tidy up,” he said, “and then go to bed. We shan’t have any more trouble tonight.”

  THE yells of the mercenaries did in fact cease. They had not found what they were looking for. In fact, they very rarely did, and this frustration often drove them as crazy as wild animals. When that happened, they slaughtered and destroyed without discrimination or pity. That night, however, they simply left the village, exhausted and sleepy, and went back to the legion’s camp two miles from Nazareth.