Mary of Nazareth

by Marek Halter

  But Miriam did not even lift the spoon.

  “You are staying, aren’t you?” Ruth asked, her voice as anxious as her face.

  Miriam looked at her in surprise. “Why are you so determined that I stay? There’s nothing for me here. That’s obvious.”

  Ruth sighed. “You’re a stubborn one. Master Joseph says so, that’s why. He asked me personally. He said, ‘She won’t want to stay, but you have to persuade her.’ You see, he loves you and wants only what’s best for you. There’s no one better than him!”

  “I came here so that he could treat Obadiah, and he did nothing.”

  “You really are mad, aren’t you? You know perfectly well the boy was dead! In fact, he’d been dead for a while. What could the master have done?”

  Miriam seemed not to hear this reproach. She had closed her eyes, and her lips were quivering again. “I don’t like this house,” she murmured. “I don’t like these men, and I don’t like these rules. I thought Joseph could teach me how to fight evil and suffering, but I won’t learn anything here because I’m a woman.”

  Ruth sighed and shook her head in disappointment.

  “Obadiah was an angel from heaven,” Miriam went on, in a voice that was both subdued and intense. “He should have been saved. There’s no justice, none at all! Barabbas shouldn’t have let him fight. I should have known how to look after him, and Joseph should have known how to bring him back to life. We’re all at fault. We don’t know how to bring about goodness and justice.”

  Ruth was starting to wonder if the master was wrong and Brother Geouel, alas, was right. This girl from Nazareth had not recovered. On the contrary, she had well and truly lost her mind.

  Miriam saw the doubt on Ruth’s face. The anger that had overwhelmed her in the last few hours came back, throbbing in her temples and throat. She stood up abruptly and stepped over the bench as if about to go.

  In the kitchen, the handmaids had stopped work and were watching them, on the lookout for a quarrel. Miriam had second thoughts. She bent toward Ruth and said, “You think I’m mad, don’t you?”

  Ruth blushed and looked away. “There’s no point in coming to a decision now. You can make up your mind tomorrow. Rest a while longer, and in the morning—”

  “In the morning, it’ll be another day, exactly the same as today. I’m not mad, and you’re too pleased with your own ignorance. I’m going to tell you who Obadiah was.”

  In a toneless voice, she recounted how she had met the young am ha’aretz in Sepphoris, how he had saved her father, Joachim, from the cross in Tarichea, and how Herod’s mercenaries had killed him and spared Barabbas.

  “Obviously, it was a mercenary who planted a spear in his chest. And, of course, it’s Herod who pays the mercenaries to bring suffering to the people. But we were the ones, all of us, who thrust Obadiah in front of that spear. Through our weakness. We tolerate those who humiliate us and don’t react. We’ve grown accustomed to living without justice, without love or respect for the weak. We do not refuse the burden of the evil that weighs on our necks. When an am ha’aretz dies for us, the evil is all the greater, the sin all the graver. Because no one thinks about him, no one cries vengeance. On the contrary, we all stoop a little lower in our indifference.”

  Miriam had raised her voice. Ruth had not expected this flood of words and looked at her openmouthed, as did the handmaids in the kitchen.

  “Where is goodness?” Miriam roared. “Here? In this house? No, I don’t see it anywhere. Am I blind? Where is the goodness generated by these men who are trying to be pure so that they can get onto the Island of the Blessed? The goodness they’re offering all of Yahweh’s people, where is it? I don’t see it.”

  Ruth stared at her in horror, with tears in her eyes. “You mustn’t talk like that! Not here, where they come in their hundreds to be relieved of pain by the master. Oh no, you mustn’t! There they are with their children, their old relatives, and every day the master has the door opened and lets them in. He does all he can for them. Often, he cures them. Sometimes, they die in his arms, but that’s how it is. The Almighty decides.”

  Miriam had heard this argument once too often. “The Almighty decides! But I say that what is unjust is unjust, and we shouldn’t simply bow our heads and accept it.” With an angry snort, she walked away.

  “Wait! Where are you going?”

  Ruth had grabbed her tunic and was holding her back. Miriam tried to break free, but the old woman’s grip was firm.

  “I’m going to the graveyard, to see Obadiah! I’m sure no one has gone there to mourn him!”

  “Wait, please wait!”

  Miriam was puzzled by the supplication in Ruth’s voice. She stopped struggling, and let Ruth take her hands in her own rough, worn fingers.

  “The boy isn’t in the graveyard.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The brothers wouldn’t allow it. The am ha’aretz aren’t—”

  “God Almighty! It’s not possible.”

  “Have no fear. He’s in the ground, but—”

  “Joseph would never have allowed that!”

  “It’s not him. I swear it! It isn’t him, don’t think that! He didn’t know…”

  With a yell, Miriam broke free from Ruth’s grip. “Obadiah is dead, but he’s only an am ha’aretz! Who cares whether he lived or not? May God curse you all!”

  Miriam rushed out, leaving the words echoing beneath the vaults.

  Ruth closed her eyes and hit the table with the flat of her hand. She began weeping: hot, scalding tears. She should have run after Miriam. The girl may have been full of anger, but she was right, and Ruth knew it. She had seen it in Master Joseph’s eyes when he had asked for her help. He, too, knew Miriam was right. He, too, feared her anger.

  BY nightfall, it was the one topic of conversation among the handmaids. They asked a thousand questions of Ruth, who became more and more sullen and refused to answer. The girl from Nazareth, they said, had taken advantage of the comings and goings of the sick in the main courtyard to leave the house and go to the little burial ground, a mere two or three hundred paces away. There, she had asked where the body of the young am ha’aretz had been laid to rest. She had found the place, and now she was mourning him, tearing her tunic and covering her hair with ashes and earth.

  Returning from the fields, the inhabitants of Beth Zabdai, surprised by the violent fervor of these laments and prayers over a grave that was not even in sacred ground, had stopped some distance away to watch her. They, too, were probably wondering if she was mad.

  All she was doing was performing the prescribed rituals for the seven days of mourning. But she was doing it with such devotion that all those who saw her and listened to her felt shivers down their backs, as if the pain of death had gotten into their bones.

  No one stayed long. Many lowered their eyes and discreetly moved away. Some came up to her and joined her in a short prayer. Then they shook their heads sadly and left, silent and abashed.

  THEIR work over, Ruth and a few of the handmaids climbed up onto the roof as night was falling.

  Miriam was some distance from the house, but she could still be seen by the grave. It did not take a lot of imagination to think of her there, silent, prostrate, dirty, and alone.

  When she had heard what was happening outside, Ruth had asked if the master had tried to bring Miriam back to the house. The handmaids had looked at her in surprise. Why would the master have contravened the rules? The door would stay closed. A woman in mourning, sullied in body and mind, could hardly be admitted when the brothers were already purified after their baths and their evening meal.

  Yes, Ruth knew that. All the same, she kept thinking of how insistent Joseph had been when he had asked her to keep an eye on Miriam. It had been such an unusual request that she could not help remembering the exact words he had used. “Don’t let her get away. She’ll be in a terrible rage, and she’s very strong. She’s no ordinary girl and she can turn her strength against h
erself. Keep a close watch on her, if you can….”

  He had not needed to add, “Because I can’t.” There was no point. Ruth had understood.

  For some reason she did not know, and which she would make no attempt to discover, this girl from Nazareth was dear to the master’s heart. That was something the brothers would never accept. They condemned him in advance. Geouel, who considered himself the wisest and most inflexible of the brothers, and the most beloved by God, would use it as the opportunity for a scene or even an expulsion. He did not like the master. Everyone knew it, felt it, and Ruth had sometimes seen Joseph fear it.

  But Joseph of Arimathea had already given her, Ruth, so much, it was right that she should give something in return. He had turned to her, hinting at how worried he was and how much he needed her support.

  Now, standing on the roof of the house in the deepening twilight, Ruth could not escape the feeling that she had failed.

  “She’s going to spend the night outside,” she murmured, her fists pressed to her chest.

  Those around her shrugged. Although they did not dare say it out loud, they were all thinking that it might do the girl some good, calm her down. A night in the open air had never killed anyone. The people who brought the sick to the house often slept in the surrounding area. Some had carpets or blankets that they stretched over poles to make a kind of tent. Others were content with a tree or a low wall as shelter from the wind. The girl from Nazareth could do the same. Even though it was sad to see her in such exaggerated mourning for an am ha’aretz boy.

  But Ruth knew that nothing was simple with this Miriam. The other handmaids had not seen her eyes, her anger, up close. They had not had her rebellious words addressed directly to them. Words more wounding than blows.

  You just had to look at her, there by the grave, a small, prostrate figure, to know that she would do nothing to protect herself in the night from the cold, or the dogs that wandered in the darkness in search of carrion, or even evil men prowling for prey.

  She might even be insane enough to set off for Galilee, with nothing but the moon to light her way. At the risk of becoming even more lost than she already was, her stomach half empty, her brain on fire.

  RUTH told no one of these thoughts. But her mind was made up. She could do nothing, though, until the women had finished their meal and retired to their bedchambers.

  She endured this wait impatiently, barely touching her own platter. She prayed in silence, without moving her lips, but appealing to the Almighty from the bottom of her heart for his indulgence, his understanding, his blessing. As long as Miriam didn’t leave the burial ground!

  She pretended to go to bed like her companions. Once in her bedchamber, she quickly tied her blanket around her waist. Without a sound, she walked back along the pitch-black corridors to the kitchen. Earlier, she had discreetly prepared a bundle containing a few biscuits and a gourd of goat’s milk. She knew the place so well that she did not waste too much time in finding it.

  Groping her way along the walls with her fingertips, she reached the large storeroom behind the kitchen. There was a hatch in the storeroom wall, through which grain was unloaded from outside into a large tub. That avoided a lot of to-and-froing in the courtyard and preserved the tranquil atmosphere of the house.

  Stumbling a little as she went, she finally found the low wall surrounding the tub. Awkwardly, she climbed over it, and her feet sank into the grain. She panicked, feeling as though it might bury her, and searched desperately for the hatch. At last, her fingers found the wooden shutter and the metal lock, which could only be worked from the inside.

  She sighed with relief, then fumbled a little while opening the lock, which had not even been touched in months. It seemed to her that she was making so much noise, she could easily wake everyone in the women’s quarters.

  The hinges creaked at last, and the hatch was open. Her heart beating fit to burst, Ruth breathed in a lungful of air. She must have been mad, she thought. What would happen to her when they found out what she had done? Because they would find out. Nothing in this house ever remained a secret. And never, in all the years she had lived here, had she been so disobedient.

  Horrified at her own daring, she slid her torso through the hatch. The opening was just big enough for her. After the absolute darkness, the light of the half-moon seemed almost unreal, but so harsh that she could make out the smallest details of her surroundings.

  The hatch proved to be farther from the ground than Ruth had anticipated. She was no longer as supple or agile as she had once been. Clenching her jaws, short of breath, she grasped the edge of the wall and tipped forward. The hatch snapped shut and she collapsed on the ground, letting out a little cry as she did so.

  She had fallen in a position so grotesque that, at any another time, she would have laughed about it. Luckily, the blanket firmly tied around her waist had cushioned the impact, and the path was deserted.

  She got to her feet, cursing. The bundle had rolled under her; the biscuits had broken and scattered on the ground. She gathered a few pieces that did not seem soiled, then moved away from the house toward the path leading to the village.

  She was surrounded by shadows and strange noises. As if they were alive, the things around her—the trees, the stones on the path—subtly changed shape as she advanced. Ruth knew that it was the effect of the moonlight, but she was no longer accustomed to the illusions of the night. She had lost count of the years since she had last walked like this, at the hour when the demons played with you.

  She murmured the name of the Almighty, called for his forgiveness and begged him once again to keep the girl from Nazareth by the grave of the am ha’aretz.

  She was there.

  Ruth did not see her at first. She was indistinguishable from the bushes that dotted the burial ground between meager graves devoid of stones or any sign indicating the name of the dead person they housed. Then Miriam swayed slightly, and the moon illumined her torn tunic and loose hair heavy with earth.

  Ruth waited until her breath had resumed its normal rhythm before approaching her. Her heart was beating so loudly, she felt sure that Miriam was going to hear her.

  But Miriam did not seem to realize that there was someone near her. Ruth held back her desire to take her in her arms.

  “It’s me, Ruth,” she murmured.

  “If you’ve come here to ask me to go inside, you’d do better to go back to bed.”

  Miriam’s tone was so sharp that Ruth took a step back. “I didn’t think you’d heard me,” she whispered.

  “If you’ve come to mourn Obadiah with me, you’re very welcome. Otherwise, you can leave.”

  Ruth untied the blanket from around her waist, laid it down on the ground, took off the gourd of milk, and crouched. “No, I haven’t come to make you go back inside. Even if I wanted to, it wouldn’t be possible. The door is closed for the night. I also have to wait until tomorrow. If they let me in again.”

  She waited for Miriam to react, but as not a word passed her lips, she went on, “I’ve brought some milk and a blanket. Dawn’s going to be cold. I also had some biscuits, but I fell and they broke.”

  She could smile about it now. But Miriam said, without turning her head, “I don’t need your food. I’m fasting.”

  “Drinking milk isn’t forbidden when you’re in mourning. Nor is having a blanket. And in your state, it’s stupid to fast.”

  Again, Miriam did not reply. The silence around them was full of chattering and scraping, the rustle of the wind and the chirring of insects. Ruth sat down on the ground and tried to find a reasonably comfortable position.

  She was afraid. She couldn’t help it. Knowing that there were all these graves around her, all these dead people who had not been blessed by the rabbis, terrified her. She hardly dared turn her head, for fear of seeing a monster loom over her. The very thought of it gave her gooseflesh. You had to be Miriam not to tremble with fear in the midst of this silence filled with noise.

&nb
sp; “I don’t know if I’ve come to mourn with you,” she sighed. “I don’t like mourning. But I couldn’t leave you all on your own outside.”

  She hoped that Miriam was going to ask her why, but no question came. To break the silence, she said, almost mechanically, “At least drink a little milk. It’ll give you the strength to wait for morning. And also to fight the cold…”

  She did not finish her sentence. Now that she had heard the clear, harsh voice of Miriam, her advice seemed pointless and even slightly ridiculous. This girl knew what she wanted, and did it. She didn’t need any sermons.

  Ruth clenched her teeth and her fists, listening for sounds within the silence. Time passed. Neither of them moved, and the muscles of their thighs and lower back went numb. Every now and again, Miriam’s lips moved, as if she were murmuring a prayer. Or words. Unless it was an effect of the moonlight through the leaves of the big acacia that stood over them.

  Suddenly, Ruth seized the corners of the blanket, opened it out, and spread it over Miriam’s legs and her own. Miriam did not protest, did not remove it. That persuaded Ruth to speak.

  “I came because I had to. Because of Master Joseph. To tell you something. You say the master is unjust, but it isn’t true.”

  She looked at her hands lying quite flat on the coarse wool over her legs. On either side of her face, her white hair shone like silver in the moonlight.

  “I had a husband. He worked in leather. With a single goatskin, he was capable of making a two-bushel gourd so perfect not a single drop of water leaked in the summer sun. He was a simple, gentle man. His name was Joshua. My mother chose him for me without my knowledge. I’d just reached the marriageable age. Fourteen, perhaps fifteen. When I saw Joshua for the first time, I knew I could love him the way a woman is supposed to love her husband. For eighteen years, we were happy and unhappy. We had three daughters. Two died before they were four months old. The third one grew tall and beautiful. Then she died too. That’s when I started hating mourning. But I still had my Joshua, and I thought we would have another child. We were still young enough, and we knew what to do.”