Mary of Nazareth

by Marek Halter

  Nevertheless, having first filled Miriam with enthusiasm, these lively exchanges had been saddening her irreparably. The more passionate and brilliant they were, the less they could conceal an insistent, nagging truth: Neither Rachel nor her friends had a solution to the problem of Herod’s tyranny. They did not know any way to unite the people of Israel into a single force. On the contrary, month after month, the news that reached Magdala indicated that the most defenseless—the peasants, the fishermen, those whose work barely ensured their survival—were the most apprehensive about the future.

  Without any other way out, despised by the rich people of Jerusalem and the priests of the Temple, they put their faith in orators and false prophets, who proliferated in the towns and villages. Bellowing their alarming speeches, in which threats alternated with the promise of supernatural happenings, these men claimed to be the prophets of a new era. Alas, there was little to choose among their prophecies. They all consisted of hate-filled harangues against humanity and unrestrained, apocalyptic visions full of the most hideous punishments. It seemed as if the only thing these prophets, with their pretensions to being pure, pious, and exemplary, really wanted was to add terror to the despair already felt by the people. They all denounced the ills afflicting Israel, but they appeared to have no interest in suggesting any remedies for those ills.

  In spite of the sweetness of life in Magdala, in spite of Mariamne’s infectious joy and Rachel’s tenderness, the more time passed, the more Miriam’s thoughts dwelled on the chaos and destruction abroad in the land. Her silences grew longer, and her nights were restless, spent endlessly going over the same ideas. The debates led by Rachel began to seem pointless to her, and her companions’ laughter unthinking.

  But wasn’t her own powerlessness a sin? Hadn’t she made a mistake? Instead of leading a life of luxury in this house, shouldn’t she have joined Barabbas and Mathias in a fight that was about something more than words? Each time she thought this, however, her reason retorted that she was just replacing one illusion with another. The choice of violence was, more than any other, the choice of the powerless. It meant behaving like the false prophets: adding pain to pain.

  But she couldn’t simply stay here and do nothing.

  A decision had lately been growing within her: to leave Magdala.

  She ought to rejoin her father, and make herself useful to her cousin Elisheba, in whose house Joachim and Hannah had found refuge. Or else go to Halva, on whom time and children must be a heavy burden indeed. Yes, that was what she ought to do: help life grow, instead of remaining here, where all this learning, fine as it was, faded under the impact of reality like smoke scattered on the wind.

  She had not yet dared tell Rachel or Mariamne that she was planning to leave. Rachel was away in the port of Caesarea, welcoming the arrival of her ships before they sailed off again to Antioch and Athens. Apart from the fabrics, the Persian spices, and the Cappadocian wood in which she traded, as had her late husband, this fleet was also supposed to be bringing back some books she had long been waiting for. In addition, today was Mariamne’s fifteenth birthday, and Miriam did not want to spoil her young friend’s celebrations. But from now on, she would be counting the days to her departure.

  “MIRIAM ! Miriam!”

  Mariamne’s calls jolted her from her thoughts.

  “Come in! The water’s so gentle!”

  She refused with a gesture of her hand.

  “Don’t be so serious,” Mariamne insisted. “Today isn’t just any day.”

  “I can’t swim….”

  “Don’t be afraid. I’ll teach you…Come on! It’s my birthday. Do it as a gift to me. Come in and swim with me.”

  Miriam had lost count of the number of times Mariamne had tried to persuade her to join her in the lake.

  “You already have my gift,” she replied, laughing.

  Mariamne snorted. “A piece of the Torah! I suppose you think that’s funny….”

  “It’s not just a ‘piece of the Torah,’ you silly thing. It’s a beautiful story, the story of Judith, who saved her people thanks to her courage and purity. I’m surprised you didn’t know it before. And I copied it out myself. You should be grateful.”

  Mariamne’s only response was to slip back into the water. With the ease of a naiad, she swam along the shore. Her naked body rippled gracefully against the green background of the lake.

  Mariamne’s very impudence was beautiful. Judith might well have been the same, Judith who had declared in front of everyone, “Listen to me! I am going to do something the memory of which will be handed down from generation to generation among our people.” And she had done it so well that God had saved the people of Israel from the tyranny of Holofernes the Babylonian.

  But who could be Judith today? A woman’s beauty, however extraordinary, would not assuage the demons at work in Herod’s palaces!

  Mariamne’s head suddenly broke the surface. She emerged from the water and leaped onto the shore. Before Miriam could react, she threw herself on her, growling like a wild animal.

  Yelling and laughing, they rolled on the grass, clasped together, fighting. With all her strength, Mariamne was trying to drag Miriam into the water, her naked body soaking her friend’s tunic.

  Out of breath, shaking with laughter, their fingers intertwined, they collapsed onto their backs. Miriam pulled Mariamne’s hand to her lips and kissed it. “You’re completely mad! Look at the state of my tunic!”

  “Serves you right. All you had to do was swim….”

  “I don’t like the water as much as you do. You know that.”

  “You’re too serious, that’s your trouble.”

  “It isn’t hard to be more serious than you!”

  “Come on! Nobody’s forcing you to be so silent. Or so sad. Always thinking about God knows what. You’ve been worse than ever lately. We used to have fun together…. You could be as cheerful asme, but you don’t want to….”

  Mariamne lifted herself on one elbow and placed her index finger on Miriam’s forehead.

  “You have a line forming between your eyebrows. Here! Some days I can see it first thing in the morning. Carry on like this, and you’ll soon have wrinkles, like an old woman.”

  Miriam did not reply. They were both silent for a moment. Mariamne grimaced and asked in an anxious whisper, “Are you angry?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You know how much I love you. I don’t want you to be sad because of my stupidity.”

  “I’m not sad,” Miriam replied, lowering her eyes. “What you’re saying is true. I am ‘Miriam the serious.’ Everyone knows that.”

  Mariamne rolled over onto her side, shivering in the breeze. With the suppleness of a young animal, she huddled in Miriam’s arms to warm herself up. “Yes, my mother’s friends do call you that. They’re wrong. They don’t know you the way I do. You are serious, but in a funny way. In fact, you don’t do anything like other people. Everything matters so much to you. You don’t even sleep and breathe like the rest of us.”

  Her eyes closed, happy to feel their bodies warming each other, Miriam did not reply.

  “And you don’t love me as much as I love you, I know that, too,” Mariamne went on. “When you leave, because you will leave this house, I’ll still love you. But I don’t know about you.”

  Miriam was startled. Had Mariamne guessed what she was thinking? But before she could reply, Mariamne sat up suddenly and squeezed her hand hard. “Listen!”

  The rumble of a wagon’s wheels could be heard from the vicinity of the house.

  “My mother’s back!”

  Mariamne leaped to her feet. Without worrying that she was still wet, she grabbed her tunic from where it was hanging on the branches of a tamarisk tree, slipped it on, and ran to meet her mother.

  THE handmaids were already helping Rachel down from the wagon. Covered with a thick green canvas roof, it required a team of four mules, which only the coachman Rekab, the only manservant in the house,
could drive.

  Mariamne rushed to her mother and kissed her effusively. “I knew you’d be back for my birthday!”

  Rachel was a little taller than her daughter. With age, her figure had become a little fuller, but this was concealed beneath a simple, elegant tunic with embroidered fringes. She responded tenderly to Mariamne’s greeting, but Miriam sensed that Rachel was troubled about something. She did not seem to be as happy to be back as she claimed she was.

  It was only later, after she had given her daughter a necklace of coral and glass beads from beyond Persia, and had made sure that the precious cases of books taken down from the wagon had been opened correctly, that she made a discreet sign to Miriam. She led her out onto a terrace overlooking the orchards that descended toward the lake. Protected from the wind, the balsam trees, apple trees from Sodom, and fig trees gave gentle shade. Rachel loved to relax here. She often chose this place for private conversations.

  “I didn’t want to spoil Mariamne’s pleasure. She’s such a child sometimes!”

  “It’s good that she’s so determined to keep the innocence of youth.”

  Rachel nodded and looked out, beyond the fragrant rushes and papyrus on the edges of the water, to where the smooth surface of the lake was dotted with the sails of fishing boats. Her face had clouded over.

  “Everything’s going badly, even more than we imagine here. Caesarea is buzzing with rumors. It’s said that Herod has had his two sons, Alexander and Aristobulus, murdered.” She hesitated, then lowered her voice. “Everyone in the place is scared. He’s so afraid of being poisoned that he kills and imprisons people on the slightest suspicions. His best servants and his commanding officers have been tortured. They confess to all kinds of things to save their lives, but their lies just make the king even madder.”

  She recounted how the king’s sister, Salome, and his brother, Pheroas, suspected by many of wanting to seize power, had gone to earth in one of the fortresses of Judea. Filled with hatred for his family and the Jewish people, Herod had taken up with a Lacedaemonian named Eurycles. A man of prodigious deceit and limitless greed, Eurycles had insinuated himself into the court by presenting Herod with luxurious gifts, all of which he had stolen in Greece. With a mixture of craven flattery and vicious slander, he’d laid the trap that led the king to murder his sons.

  “I caught a glimpse of him in the harbor, where he was flaunting himself in a chariot that glittered with gold,” Rachel went on, disgustedly. “He’s servile arrogance personified. It’s easy to imagine the kind of vile acts he gets up to. But that’s not the worst of it. No one would care if the king and his family killed each other, if the whole arrogant bunch weren’t dragging us down with them. Herod and all those swarming around him are human only in appearance. The vices of power have made them rotten to the core.”

  She sighed wearily.

  “I no longer know what the Lord wants of us…Even what we’re doing here seems pointless to me! What’s the use of the books I’ve brought with me? All those bookcases in the house? The things we learn, the things we discuss? Not so long ago, I was convinced that cultivating our minds would help us change the course of this world. I told myself, We women should change. Then we might be able to curb the folly of men. I don’t believe that now. As soon as I leave Magdala, as soon as I spend a day in the streets of Tarichea, I get the feeling we’re becoming more and more learned and more and more useless.”

  “You can’t say that, Mother!” Mariamne cried, behind her. “Not you….”

  “Oh, were you there?”

  “Yes, and I heard everything. Though I notice you always reserve these serious conversations for Miriam.”

  She came closer, eyes full of reproach, and lifted the necklace that hung on her chest. “I was coming to show you how well it suited me. But I suppose that seems quite futile to you.”

  “On the contrary, Mariamne. Why else would I have given it to you? And it’s true, it suits you perfectly….”

  Mariamne dismissed the compliment with an aggressive gesture of her hand. “You’re becoming like Miriam. Austere, obsessed with Herod. But you’re not entitled to have doubts. Didn’t you used to tell the women who came here, ‘As long as a single man or woman can be found who defends knowledge and reason, and remembers the wisdom of the ancients, he or she would save the world and the souls of humans before the judgment of God’?”

  “You have a good memory,” Rachel said, smiling.

  “I have an excellent memory. And contrary to what you think, I always listen to you carefully.”

  Rachel reached out her hand to stroke her cheek, but Mariamne pulled her head away. Rachel grimaced and lowered her eyes wearily.

  “You speak with all the passion of youth. But everything around us seems so ugly to me.”

  “You’re completely wrong,” Mariamne said, becoming heated. “First of all, age has nothing to do with it. Miriam is only two years older than me. Both of you have forgotten how to look at beauty. And yet it exists.”

  Angrily, Mariamne pointed out the splendor surrounding them.

  “What could be more beautiful than this lake, these hills, the flowers on the apple tree? Galilee is beautiful. We are beautiful. You, Miriam, our friends…. The Almighty has given us this beauty. Why would he want us to ignore it? On the contrary, we should feed on the joy and happiness he gives us, not just the horrors of Herod! He’s only a king, and he’ll die soon. One day, he’ll be forgotten. But the things the books in this house say will only disappear if we no longer want to keep them alive.”

  The smile had returned to Rachel’s face. A tender, slightly mocking smile, but one that revealed her pleasure and surprise. “Well, I see my daughter has been growing in reason and wisdom, and I didn’t even realize it.”

  “Of course not, since you still think of me as a child!”

  Again, Rachel reached out her hand to stroke her daughter’s face. This time, Mariamne did not evade her. In fact, she even slipped into her mother’s arms.

  “I promise I shan’t treat you as a child ever again,” Rachel said.

  With an impish laugh, Mariamne freed herself. “But don’t expect me to become serious like Miriam. That’s something I’ll never be.” She turned and announced, as if to underline what she had just said, “I’m going to change my tunic. This one doesn’t match this necklace at all.”

  She walked quickly away. When she had disappeared inside the house, Rachel shook her head. “That’s how daughters get older and become strangers to you. But who knows? She may be right.”

  “She is right,” Miriam said. “Beauty does exist, and God certainly doesn’t want us to forget it. It’s a good thing, a wonderful thing, that creatures like Mariamne exist. And she’s also right when she says I’m too serious! I’d like to—”

  She broke off. She was trying to find a way to tell Rachel that she wanted to leave her house and either go back to Nazareth or join her father. Birds passed above their heads, chirping noisily, and she looked up to watch their flight. From the other side of the house came the sound of Mariamne laughing with the handmaids, the rolling of the wagon being put away. Before Miriam could resume speaking, Rachel took her by the wrist and led her down below the terrace and into the orchards.

  “There’s something else I wanted to tell you before Mariamne interrupted us,” she said in an urgent voice. She took a sheet of parchment from the little pouch in the belt of her tunic. “I’ve had a letter from Joseph of Arimathea. He won’t be able to come here anymore because these visits are causing a scandal in his community. The new brothers who’ve joined recently to study medicine with him are demanding that he distance himself from us ‘women.’…He doesn’t say it, but I think we can see Giora’s hand in this. He’s probably afraid of Joseph’s influence over the Essenes. He and his disciples in Gamala have an intense hatred of women.”

  “Not only women,” Miriam said indignantly. “The am ha’aretz, foreigners, and the sick, too! The fact is, Giora hates the weak and only
respects force and violence. He isn’t a pleasant man, and in my opinion, he isn’t even a wise man. I met him in Nazareth, with my father, Joseph of Arimathea, and Barabbas. He didn’t agree with anyone except himself….”

  Rachel nodded, amused. “That’s another thing I wanted to talk to you about: Barabbas. His name was on everyone’s lips in Caesarea and Tarichea, and on the road coming back.”

  Miriam felt a shiver down her back, and she stiffened.

  Sensing her anxiety, Rachel shook her head. “No, I’m not bringing bad news—on the contrary. They say he’s raised a band of more than five or six hundred brigands. And that he’s formed an alliance with another bandit—”

  “Mathias, I’m sure,” Miriam said.

  “I didn’t find out his name, but the two of them have gathered about a thousand fighters. It’s said they’ve routed the cavalry two or three times, taking advantage of the fact that Herod, in his madness, has imprisoned his own generals.”

  Miriam smiled. More than she would have liked to admit, she was relieved, happy, and even envious.

  “Yes,” Rachel said, responding to her smile, “it’s nice to hear that. Of course, there are people in Caesarea and Tarichea, and even in Sepphoris, who fear for their own riches. They bandy words like ‘brigand’ and ‘ruffian,’ and call Barabbas ‘the henchman of terror.’ But I was told that the good villagers of Galilee pray for him. And that he always finds a hiding place among them when he needs to. That’s good….” She fell silent, staring into the distance.

  “I’m leaving,” Miriam declared suddenly.

  “Are you going to join him?” Rachel immediately asked. “Yes, of course. I suspected as much as soon as I heard the news.”

  “I’d already decided to leave before I heard any of this. I wanted to wait for your return, and for Mariamne’s birthday.”

  “She’ll be sad without you.”

  “We’ll see each other again.”