by Marek Halter
Joseph nodded mechanically. He often had this debate with his brothers. Everyone in this house knew his point of view: Life deserved to be sustained, even in darkness and death, for it was a light given by God to man. It was a precious gift, the very sign of Yahweh’s power. Everything had to be done to sustain it. That certainly did not rule out the possibility that if one day man attained supreme purity, he might be able to rekindle life even when it seemed to have gone. The fact that Joseph had professed this opinion many times did not prevent Geouel from arguing.
“None of us has yet seen the miracle of resurrection with his own eyes,” he said now. “Those we care for and bring back to life haven’t died. We are only healers. We dispense love and compassion, within the narrow limits of the human heart and mind. Only Yahweh can perform miracles. This girl is mistaken. In her grief, she thinks you’re as powerful as the Lord. That’s blasphemy.”
This time, Joseph nodded with more conviction. Looking at Miriam’s face as she slept, he let a few moments pass, then said, “Yes, only God can perform miracles. But consider this, Brother Geouel. Why are we living in Beth Zabdai and not in the world, among other men? Why do we sustain life here, inside, and not outside, if not to make it stronger and richer? Deep in our hearts, we hope that we can become pure enough, loved enough by Yahweh, for the covenant he made with the descendants of Abraham to be completely fulfilled. Isn’t that why we observe Moses’ laws so strictly?”
“Yes, Master Joseph, but—”
“Which means, Geouel, that we hope, with all our souls, that one day Yahweh will use us to realize his miracles. Otherwise, we will have failed at being his choice and his joy. We will be a race that has disappointed him.”
Geouel tried to reply, but Joseph raised his hand commandingly. “You’re right about one thing, Geouel,” he went on. “It would be wrong to encourage Miriam’s illusions. She mustn’t believe that we can perform such miracles. But as a doctor, you’re wrong: She isn’t losing her mind. She’s suffering from an invisible wound that has left a gash as deep as a sword thrust. You shouldn’t think of the words she utters, the hopes she entertains, as insane, but wise; they soothe her wound as surely as any plaster and make it possible for her to expel the corruption from her body.”
WHEN Miriam awoke, she again started begging Joseph to bring Obadiah back to life.
This time, his answer was different.
“After you arrived, we said farewell to Obadiah’s body, according to custom. We wrapped it in the cloth of the dead and commended it to the light of Yahweh. His flesh is in the earth, where it will return to dust as the Lord intended when he made us mortal by the grace of his breath. He will still be among us in spirit. That is as it should be. Now you must think about your own health.”
Joseph’s voice was cold, with none of its usual gentleness. His face was inscrutable, and even his mouth appeared hard. Miriam stiffened. Geouel was watching her closely. Their eyes met and she sustained his gaze, before again looking to Joseph for help.
“In Magdala,” she said, her voice throbbing with anger, “you taught us that justice is the supreme good, the way to the light of goodness that Yahweh holds out to us. But where is justice when Obadiah dies and Barabbas doesn’t? He could easily have died, determined as he is to challenge Herod through bloodshed.”
Geouel emitted a groan. Joseph wondered, a little embarrassed, if his young companion was reacting to Miriam’s condemnation of Barabbas or to the mention of his own “teaching” among the women of Magdala.
With an authority that did not exclude the wish to provoke Geouel, he took Miriam’s hand.
“God decides,” he declared, regaining his customary gentleness. “No one else but God decides our destinies. Neither you, nor I, nor any other human. God decides miracles, punishments, and rewards. He decides on the life of Barabbas, and it is he who recalls Obadiah. Such is his will. We can treat the sick, relieve pain, cure illness. We can make life strong, beautiful, and powerful. We can make justice the rule that unites men. We can avoid using evil as our weapon. But death and the origin of life belong only to the Almighty. If you haven’t understood that from what you call my teaching, then my words must be clumsy and of little weight.”
These last words were spoken with an irony that was lost on Miriam. She had closed her eyes again while Joseph spoke. When he stopped, she took her hand from his and, without a word, turned in her bed and faced the wall.
Joseph looked at her, reached out his arm and stroked her shoulder. Then, with a fatherly gesture, he pulled the thick woolen blanket up over her. Geouel watched him as he did so.
He forced himself to be silent and still. He did not think that Miriam would speak to him again, but he wanted to make sure that she was breathing more easily.
When he was satisfied, he stood up and gestured to Geouel to follow him out of the room.
In the vestibule, as they were going back to the courtyard, they were suddenly surrounded by a group of handmaids on their way back from the washroom, laden with baskets of linen. Joseph stepped back into a recess, but Geouel kept straight on, forcing the handmaids to move aside with their heavy burdens. Despite the effort they had to make to give way to him, they made not the slightest protest, but instead avoided his eyes and bowed their heads respectfully.
Reaching the courtyard, Geouel turned to wait for Joseph, eyebrows raised in surprise. He pointed to the handmaids. “Couldn’t they have let you pass? They’re getting more and more insolent.”
Joseph concealed his irritation behind a smile. “The fact is, there are fewer and fewer of them, which means they’re overworked. And if they weren’t there, would you be prepared to wash our dirty linen at the time when you should be studying and praying?”
Geouel dismissed this thought with a grimace. When they had almost crossed the courtyard, he remarked, in a tone that was meant to be conciliatory, “Sometimes, listening to you, anyone would think you wouldn’t mind if women became rabbis!” He paused to give an amused little chuckle. “Such is God’s will. It’ll never be possible, and it’s mere pride to think otherwise and to expect of women that they will ever be able to rid themselves of what makes them women.”
Joseph hesitated before replying. He was worried about Miriam, and was not in the mood to smile at Geouel’s obstinacy.
“It is God’s will that we are born from both a man and woman. We emerge from a woman’s belly, don’t we? Why would the Lord want us to emerge from a cesspool?”
“That’s not what concerns me. Women are what they are: driven by the flesh, the absence of reason, and the weakness of pleasure. All of which makes them unsuited to attain the light of Yahweh. Isn’t that what is written in the Book?”
“I know, Geouel, that you and many of our brothers condemn my opinion. But neither you nor the others have yet answered my questions. Why should evil inhabit the container and not the seed? Why should we be more inclined to purity than those who give us life? When have you ever seen a source purer than the cave from which it springs?”
“We have answered you, with the words of the Book. They constantly divide woman from man and judge her unsuited for knowledge.”
They had gone over these arguments a thousand times. This kind of conversation led nowhere. Joseph made an irritable gesture, as if swatting a fly, and abstained from replying.
“I had the am ha’aretz’s body taken out of our graveyard,” Geouel said, through pursed lips. “They must have misunderstood your instructions. You know his grave can’t be with ours. The am ha’aretz aren’t entitled to be buried in consecrated ground.”
Joseph stopped dead and a shudder of revulsion went through his body. “You took him out of the ground?” he asked in a toneless voice. “You want to deny him a burial?”
Geouel shook his head. “Oh no!” he said, with an unpleasantly victorious smile. “Without a burial, he’d be damned. I don’t suppose he deserved that, did he? Even though the fact that he died while not much more than a child must mean tha
t God had no great plans for him. No, don’t worry. We put him back in the ground beside the road to Damascus. Where foreigners and thieves have their graves.”
Joseph could not say a word in reply. He was thinking of Miriam. It seemed suddenly as though everything he had said to her was a lie.
Geouel was perceptive enough to guess what he was thinking. “It might be better if you didn’t see that girl again,” he said. “Her health is not in danger, only her mind. She doesn’t need you anymore, and our brothers wouldn’t look too kindly on any further visits to the women’s quarters.”
CHAPTER 13
MIRIAM was listening to the comings and goings in the house, the murmurs of the women, sometimes even their laughter. The regular blows of the pestle reducing the grains of rye and barley to flour echoed through the walls, like the beating of a peaceful but powerful heart.
She wanted to get up, join the handmaids, and help them with their work. She did not feel tired anymore. She was weak, of course, but only because she had eaten very little in the last few days. Her anger, though, had not abated.
She refused to accept the words Joseph had spoken. The mere thought of Obadiah’s body in the ground brought a pang to her heart, and she had to clench her fists not to cry out.
In addition, her mind was still clear enough for her to know that she was not welcome in this community. She had seen it in the eyes of the brother who always came with Joseph. The sensible thing to do would be to gather her strength and willpower, leave Beth Zabdai, and do what she had already decided to do back in Magdala: join her father.
But this thought rekindled her anger. To leave this house and Damascus meant abandoning Obadiah for good, bidding his soul farewell, perhaps even starting to forget him.
“Are you really awake this time?”
Startled, Miriam turned. A woman of indeterminate age was standing near her bed. Her hair was as white as snow, and there were hundreds of fine wrinkles around her lips and eyelids. But her skin looked as fresh as a young woman’s, and her very clear eyes sparkled with intelligence—and perhaps a touch of cunning.
“Awake and very angry, I see,” she continued, coming closer.
Miriam sat up in bed, speechless with surprise. She was not sure if the unknown woman was mocking her or being kind.
The woman also seemed uncertain. She looked at Miriam, her eyebrows arched, her lips rounded in a pout. “Being angry on an empty stomach isn’t a good idea.”
Miriam stood up too quickly. She felt dizzy, and had to sit down again and put both hands on the bed to stop herself from falling.
“Just as I was saying,” the woman said. “It’s time you stopped sleeping and started eating.”
Behind her, the handmaids were crowding into the doorway, burning with curiosity. Drawing on her reserves of pride, Miriam jutted out her chin and forced a smile. “I feel fine. I’m getting up. I’d like to thank you all for—”
“I should think so too! As if we didn’t already have enough to do without having a stuck-up little thing like you moaning in our ears.”
Miriam opened her mouth to apologize, but the tenderness on the unknown woman’s face made it clear there was no point.
“My name’s Ruth,” the woman said. “And you don’t feel fine, not yet anyway.”
She took her under the arms and helped her to her feet. In spite of this support, Miriam swayed.
“Well, it really is time we got you better, my girl,” Ruth said.
“I just have to get used to—”
Ruth signaled with her eyes for one of the handmaids to come and help. “Stop talking nonsense. I’m going to feed you, and you’ll like it. No one turns her nose up at our cooking, it’s far too good!”
LATER, as Miriam was nibbling at a buckwheat pancake filled with goat’s cheese, which she dipped in a platter of barley boiled in vegetable juice, Ruth said, “This house isn’t like other houses. You have to learn the rules.”
“There’s no point. I’m leaving tomorrow. I’m going to see my father.”
Frowning, Ruth asked Miriam where her father lived. When Miriam told her that she was from Nazareth, in the mountains of Galilee, Ruth pulled a face. “That’s a long way for a girl on her own….”
She stroked Miriam’s forehead and ran her worn fingers through her hair. Moved by this unexpected gesture, Miriam quivered with pleasure. It was a long time since a woman had last stroked her with such motherly tenderness.
“Get that idea out of your head, my girl,” Ruth resumed, gently. “You’re not leaving here tomorrow. The master has ordered that you stay here. We all obey him and you must obey him too.”
“The master?”
“Master Joseph of Arimathea. Who else would be the master here?”
Miriam did not reply. She knew that was what they called Joseph. Even in Magdala, some of the women had used that title for him as a mark of respect. But obviously here, in Beth Zabdai, Joseph was a different man than the one she had met in Nazareth, the one who had taken her to Rachel’s house.
“I have to go to the graveyard, to see where Obadiah is buried,” she said. “I have to say prayers for him and bid him farewell.”
Ruth looked surprised, and then worried. “No, you can’t. You’re in no fit state to fast. You have to eat…the master says so!” She spoke quickly, her cheeks flushed.
“Are there brothers watching over his grave?” Miriam said. “If not, I have to go myself. I’m the only person Obadiah has to see him on his way.”
“Don’t worry. The men of this house do their duty. It is not for us women to do it in their place. You must eat.”
The noise of the pestles echoed behind her, silencing them for a moment. The women’s refectory was a long room with a low ceiling. Sacks and baskets of fruit and dried vegetables were lined up along the sides, as well as what looked like benches with holes in them to support jars of oil. The door at the far end, which was wide open, led to the kitchen, where the oven was kept constantly stoked.
A few handmaids were grinding grain for flour on a stone with the help of an olive-wood mallet, while four women were kneading and stretching pastry for biscuits. From time to time, they raised their heads and glanced curiously at Miriam.
Mournful but satisfied, Miriam had nearly finished her platter. Ruth hastened to refill it. “You’re much too thin. We have to fill you out again if you want men to like you.”
It was said affectionately, the way such things were always said by an older to a younger woman. Ruth was taken aback by Miriam’s reaction: the stiffening of her body, the glaring look, the ferocity of her tone.
“How can we want men to look at us when we know how much the men who live here hate us?”
Ruth threw a cautious glance toward the kitchen. “The Essene brothers don’t hate us. They fear us.”
“Fear us? Why?”
“They fear what makes us women. Our wombs and our blood.”
This was something that Miriam knew only too well. She had had the opportunity to discuss it many times in Magdala, with Rachel’s companions.
“We are the way God wanted us to be, and that should be enough.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Ruth said. “But for the men in this house, it takes us away from the path that leads to reach the Island of the Blessed. That’s what matters more than anything else in the world to them: reaching the Island of the Blessed.”
Miriam looked at her, uncomprehending. She had never heard of this island.
“It’s not for me to explain,” Ruth said, embarrassed. “It’s too complicated, and I’d only say something stupid. We don’t receive any teaching here. We sometimes hear the brothers talking among themselves, we pick up a few words here and there, and that’s it. The one thing we know is that we have to follow the rules of the house. That’s all that matters. Thanks to the rules, the brothers purify themselves so that they can gain admittance to the island. The first rule is to stay in the part of the house reserved for us. We can go into the courtya
rds, but the rest of the house is out of bounds. Then, it’s forbidden to speak to a brother if he hasn’t spoken to us first. We have to bathe before baking bread, which happens every day before dawn….”
The chores consisted of preparing semolina soup and making biscuits filled with cheese twice a day, washing the brothers’ clothes, and making sure their linen loincloths and tunics were immaculately white.
“Another thing: we mustn’t spoil anything. Not the food, not the clothes. As far as the food is concerned, we must cook only what’s needed, neither too much nor too little. The ordinary clothes, the brown work tunics, the brothers don’t throw away, even if they’re full of holes. They only part with them when they’re in tatters. Which is not too bad, because it means less work for us.”
The advice continued. The most important thing of all was that they were not allowed to go near the brothers’ refectory. It was a sacred place, reserved for men. To the Essenes, meals were like prayers. Eating and drinking were a gift of the Almighty, and in return for this gift they had to love him. So, before each meal, the brothers took off their coarse brown tunics, put on white linen loincloths, and bathed in absolutely pure water to wash away the stains of life.
“Of course, I’ve never seen them do that,” Ruth whispered, with a wink. “But you can’t be here as long as I have without picking up a few things. The bathing is really important. After they’ve bathed, the master blesses the food, and they eat, all sitting at the same table. Then they put on their ordinary clothes again, and we have to wash the tunics they’ve been wearing for the meal. When it snows, the water in their bath may be freezing, but they don’t care. The well they draw it from is in the house itself. Our well, where we get the water for cooking and washing, is outside. As you see, there’s plenty of work to do. You’ll soon fit in.”
Miriam silently pushed away her platter.
“Eat!” Ruth said immediately. “Eat more, even if you don’t feel like it. You have to get your strength back.”