by Marek Halter
She called to them and held out her arms. But only Libna approached, smiling timidly. Miriam caught her and lifted her up. “Don’t you recognize me?” she asked the others. “It’s me, Miriam.”
Before the children could reply, Joachim, still overcome with the emotion of this reunion, pointed to the plump woman and the priest, and said, a trifle abruptly, “This is my cousin Zechariah. Your poor mother, God rest her soul, and I stayed in his house. And this is his wife, Elisheba, holding Yossef’s new baby, Yehuda, may the Lord protect him….”
Miriam laughed. “So that’s it! Frail as she is, Halva couldn’t stop herself from having another child. But where is she? Still in bed? And Yossef?”
There was a brief silence. Joseph opened his mouth, but he was unable to utter a word. Zechariah, the priest, looked at his wife, who was fervently kissing the sleeping baby’s forehead.
“Well, what’s going on?” Miriam insisted, less confidently now. “Where are they?”
“I’m here.”
Yossef’s voice, coming from the workshop behind her, surprised her. She turned quickly, let out a cry of joy, put Libna down, and opened her arms for him to come to her. He walked toward her, passing Ruth and Mariamne without paying any attention to them. That was when Miriam saw that his eyes were red, and she felt a tightness in her chest.
“Yossef…Where’s Halva?” she stammered, already half knowing the answer.
Yossef swayed as he took the last steps. He gripped Miriam by the shoulders and held her to him to stifle the sobs that shook his chest.
“Yossef…,” Miriam said again.
“She died giving birth to the baby.”
“Oh no!”
“Seven days ago.”
“No! No! No!”
Miriam’s cries were so intense that they all bowed their heads, as if they had been hit.
“She was so happy when she knew you were coming,” Yossef said, shaking his head. “Lord Almighty, how excited she was! She kept repeating your name at every opportunity. ‘Miriam’s like a sister to me…I miss Miriam…At last Miriam’s coming back.’ And then…”
“No!” Miriam cried, stepping back, face raised to heaven. “Oh, God, no! Why Halva? Why my mother? You can’t do that.” She waved her fists and struck her stomach as if to rip out the pain that was gripping it. Then, suddenly, she beat Yossef on the chest. “And you!” she cried. “Why did you make her bear another child? You knew she wasn’t strong enough! You knew!”
Yossef did not even try to dodge the blows. He nodded, tears rolling down his cheeks. Mariamne and Ruth both rushed to pull Miriam off him, and Zechariah and Joachim grabbed Yossef by the arms.
“Come, girl, that’s enough!” Zechariah said, shocked.
“She’s right,” Yossef said. “She’s only saying the same things I keep telling myself.”
Elisheba had moved back to protect the children from Miriam’s rage. The baby had woken in her arms. “No one’s to blame,” she said, with a touch of reproach in her voice. “You know women always pay more than their due. It’s God’s will!”
“No!” Miriam cried, pulling herself free from Ruth’s grip. “It shouldn’t be that way! We shouldn’t accept a single death, especially not the death of a woman giving life!”
This time, the baby started crying. Elisheba, cradling him to her breast, went and took refuge on the steps of the house. Libna and Shimon were crying and clutching her tunic. Yakov, the eldest, held the young ones firmly by the hand and looked wide-eyed at Miriam. Shaken by choking sobs, Yossef crouched, his head between his arms.
Zechariah placed a hand on his shoulder and turned to Miriam. “Your words are meaningless, girl,” he said, making no attempt to conceal the reproach in his voice. “Yahweh knows what he’s doing. He judges, he gives, he takes away. He is the Almighty, Creator of all things. All we can do is obey.”
Miriam seemed not to hear him. “Where is she? Where is Halva?”
“Beside your mother,” Joachim said in a low voice. “Almost in the same plot.”
WHEN Miriam rushed to the graveyard in Nazareth, no one made any move to follow her. His face drawn with grief, Yossef watched her go until she was swallowed up in the shadows along the path, then, without a word, went and shut himself up in his workshop. At the same time, Elisheba pushed the children inside the house, trying to calm little Yehuda.
At last, Joachim could contain himself no longer. He followed his daughter at a distance, and the others went with him. But at the entrance to the graveyard, Ruth gripped Mariamne’s wrist to hold her back. Rekab came to a halt behind them. Zechariah was advancing determinedly behind Joachim. But they, too, stopped dead a dozen paces from the loose earth that covered Hannah and Halva.
Miriam remained in the graveyard until twilight. According to tradition, anyone who visited a grave was supposed to place a small white stone on it as a mark of his visit. Miriam, though, took dozens of stones from the sack placed for that purpose a few paces away and covered the grave with them until it was a blinding white in the winter sun. When she had none left, she went back to the sack and started over again.
Zechariah tried to protest, but Joachim silenced him with a glance. Zechariah shook his head and sighed.
During all this time, Miriam kept speaking, or rather, her lips kept moving, although no one could hear a word. Later, Ruth told them that Miriam was not really saying anything. She had done the same over Obadiah’s grave in Beth Zabdai, she said.
“It’s her way of conversing with the dead. We others aren’t capable.” Casting a glance at Zechariah, who was rolling his eyes with disgust, she added, a little testily, “In Beth Zabdai, Master Joseph of Arimathea never expressed any surprise and never reproached her. Nor did he ever say she was mad. And when it comes to madness, you wouldn’t believe the things he’s seen! If there’s anyone who knows about sickness, of the mind as well as the body, it’s him! And I can tell you this, too: If there’s a woman he admires and considers the equal of a man, young as she is, it’s Miriam. He said it often enough to the brothers, who were as surprised as you are, Zechariah: She’s different than the others, he’d say, and we mustn’t expect her to behave like everyone else.”
“She’s right to rebel against so many deaths,” Mariamne said softly. “Since Obadiah died, she’s done a lot of mourning! So have all of you. I wish I could say something to tell you all how sorry I am.”
But to their surprise, when Miriam returned to Yossef’s house that evening, she appeared to have calmed down. “I asked Mother to forgive me for all the pain I caused her,” she said to Joachim. “I know she missed me and would have liked me to be with her. I told her why I hadn’t been able to give her that joy. Perhaps where she is, under the eternal wing of the Almighty, she’ll understand.”
“You have nothing to blame yourself for,” Joachim said, his eyes bright with emotion. “None of this is your fault; it’s all mine. If I’d been able to control myself, if I hadn’t gone mad, killed a mercenary and wounded a tax collector, your mother would be here now, alive and well, and our life would be quite different.”
Miriam stroked his beard and kissed him. “If I have nothing to blame myself for, then you are even purer than me,” she said tenderly. “You have always acted in the name of justice. That day was no different than any other day of your life.”
They all bowed their heads again when they heard these words. This time it was not Miriam’s anger that impressed them, but her confidence. Even Zechariah made no objection and bowed his head. But they would have been hard put to explain where she got this newfound strength from.
THAT evening, immediately after kissing her father good night, Miriam went to see Yossef in the workshop. He looked frightened when she appeared in the doorway.
She walked up to him, took his hands, and bowed. “Please forgive me. I’m sorry about what I said earlier. I was unfair. I know how much Halva loved being your wife and how much she liked having children.”
Yossef shook his
head, unable to make a single sound.
Miriam smiled gently. “My master, Joseph of Arimathea, often reproached me for these fits of anger. He was right.”
The lightness of her tone calmed Yossef. He got his breath back and wiped his eyes with a cloth that was lying on the workbench.
“You didn’t say anything that was untrue. We both knew that another birth could kill her. Why couldn’t we have abstained?”
Miriam’s smile widened. “For the best of reasons, Yossef. Because you loved each other. And because that love had to create a life as beautiful and good as itself.”
Yossef looked at her with a mixture of gratitude and surprise, as if this idea had never crossed his mind.
“When I stood over Halva’s grave,” Miriam went on, “I promised her I wouldn’t abandon her children. Starting today, if you want me to, I’ll take care of them as if they were my own.”
“No, that’s not a good decision! You’re young, you’ll be starting a family of your own soon.”
“Don’t speak for me. I know what I’m saying and what I’m committing myself to.”
“No,” Yossef said again. “You don’t realize. Four sons and two daughters! That’s a lot of work! You’re not used to it. It cost Halva her health. I don’t want you to ruin yours.”
“Nonsense! Do you think you can manage on your own?”
“Elisheba is helping me.”
“She’s not a young woman. She won’t be able to do it for much longer. And she was never Halva’s friend.”
“One day, when the time is right, I’ll find a widow in Nazareth.”
“If it’s a wife you want, that’s another matter,” Miriam said, a little curtly. “But in the meantime, let me help you. I’m not alone: I have Ruth with me. She can do the work of two. I even told her we’d be helping Halva before we came here.”
This time, Yossef agreed. “Yes,” he said, closing his eyes shyly, “she would have liked you to take care of the children.”
When she learned about it, Ruth approved Miriam’s proposition unreservedly. “As long as you and Yossef want me, I’ll help you.”
Joachim seemed content, his mind at rest for the first time in days. He would work with Yossef in the workshop. Together, they would get enough work to feed this large family.
“This is life as Yahweh wills it,” Zechariah said, sententiously. “He leads us between death and birth to make us more humble and more just.”
But Joachim would not let him continue in this tone. Overjoyed at Miriam’s decision, he said, “Zechariah has some good news to announce. His modesty prevented him from doing so during these days of mourning. So, I’ll be the one to tell you: On the way to Nazareth, Elisheba discovered that she was pregnant. Who would have believed it?”
“I certainly wouldn’t,” Elisheba said pleasantly. “Yes, by the will of Yahweh, I am with child. May the Almighty be blessed a thousand times for this gift! At my age!”
Elisheba, who must have been twice the age of Mariamne and Miriam, looked radiant and unable to conceal her pride. The young girls looked at her in astonishment.
“You have good reason to be surprised. Who would have thought it possible?”
“Everything is possible if God extends his hand over us. Praise be to the Lord a thousand times!”
“Yes, everything’s possible. I have been as sterile as a field of stones during all these years when a woman should be having children….” She chuckled, and winked at Ruth. “And it all came to us in a dream.”
“It’s true,” Zechariah said, with the greatest seriousness. “It was an angel from God who urged me to make this child. An angel who declared: ‘It’s the will of God, you will be a father.’ I was full of pride, and protested that it was impossible. ‘You’re not so old, Zechariah. And your Elisheba is almost young compared with Abraham’s Sarah. They were older than you two, much older.’ ”
“Actually, I made fun of his dream,” Elisheba said. “I didn’t believe it at all! ‘Look at us, my poor old Zechariah,’ I said. ‘It was a nice dream, but now that your eyes are wide open, you’re going to forget it.’ I mean, how could I ever have imagined he was still capable of such a fine performance?”
Elisheba’s laugher rang out loud and clear. Then she thought better of it, and peered at Yossef and Joachim to make sure they were not shocked by this irrepressible gaiety of hers.
But Joachim was encouraging. “You’re right to be jolly. At sad times, an event like this gladdens the heart.”
Elisheba stroked her belly as if it were already swollen.
Ruth, who had remained distant during all this excitement, asked dubiously, “Are you sure?”
“Shouldn’t a woman know when she’s expecting a child?”
“A woman can sometimes be wrong, and take her dreams for reality. Especially when it comes to things like that.”
“I know what God has commanded me!” Zechariah said indignantly.
Miriam, gently intervening, put her hand on Ruth’s shoulder. “Of course she’s pregnant.”
Ruth blushed in embarrassment. “I’m stupid, forgive me. I come from a place where people are often ill or mad. If you listen to them, heaven is overcrowded with angels, and the land of Israel is swarming with genuine prophets. It’s probably made me a bit too suspicious about everything.”
At any other time, Joachim and Yossef would have smiled at this.
LATER, Mariamne asked Miriam, “Do you want me to stay with you for a while? I don’t know anything about children, but I can still make myself useful. I know my mother wouldn’t refuse. We’ll send Rekab back with a message for her. She’ll understand.”
“I don’t need you to help with the children. But for the sake of my morale, and to be able to talk about things I can only talk about with you, yes, I would like you to stay. You have some books from Rachel’s library with you. You can read them to me.”
Mariamne blushed with pleasure. “Your friend Halva was like a sister to you. But we’re like sisters too, aren’t we? Even if we’re not as alike as we used to be, now that your hair is short.”
So it was that Yossef’s house came back to life. The multitude of daily chores kept all of them busy, and distracted them from their grief. Zechariah and Elisheba’s joy in their imminent parenthood helped to lighten the mood. It was like a new start, a convalescence.
After one moon, it was confirmed that Elisheba was indeed pregnant. She often went up to Miriam and said, “You know something? The child in my belly already loves you! I can feel him moving about whenever I’m close to you. It’s as if he’s clapping his hands.”
This greatly irritated Ruth, who still found it hard to accept this miraculous birth. Elisheba’s belly had hardly grown, she pointed out. For the moment, the child was probably nothing but a little ball no bigger than a fist.
“That’s what I think too,” Elisheba would reply with satisfaction. “A little fist that punches when I least expect it.”
“Well,” Ruth would sigh, raising her eyes to heaven, “if he’s like this after one or two moons, what will he be like when he’s standing upright?”
NOT long after this, Miriam got into the habit of leaving the house at dawn, before the children were up. In the half-light between night and day, she would take the descending path that led through the forest to Sepphoris and wander aimlessly.
By the time the sun started to appear, she would be back, and would cross the courtyard lost in thought.
Mariamne and Ruth noticed that she was becoming more and more silent, and even a little distant. It was only once the day’s work was done that she listened to the others’ chatter. Mariamne still read to Miriam while the children were taking their nap, but she gradually seemed to lose interest, even though it was something she herself had asked for.
One evening, as they were finishing the kneading of the dough for the next day’s bread, Mariamne asked, “Don’t you feel exhausted, always going out for a walk in the morning the way you do? You get up so ear
ly, you’re going to tire yourself out.”
Miriam smiled. The question seemed to amuse her. “No, I don’t feel exhausted. But I can see you’re intrigued. You’d really like to know why I go off like that almost every morning.”
Mariamne blushed and lowered her eyes.
“Don’t be embarrassed. It’s quite normal to be curious.”
“Yes, I am curious. Especially about you.”
They cut the dough in silence and rolled it into balls. As they shaped the last one, Miriam stopped.
“When I’m out walking like that,” she said in a low voice, “I feel Obadiah’s presence. He’s as close to me as if he were still alive. I need his visits the way I need to breathe and eat. Thanks to him, everything becomes lighter. Life isn’t so painful anymore….”
Mariamne stared at her in silence.
“Do you think I’m a little mad?”
“No.”
“That’s because you love me. Ruth also hates me to talk about Obadiah. She’s convinced I’m going out of my mind. But because she loves me, she won’t say it.”
“No, I assure you. I don’t think you’re mad.”
“Then how do you explain the fact that I still feel Obadiah’s presence?”
“I can’t explain it,” Mariamne said, frankly. “I don’t understand it. And what you don’t understand you can’t explain. But just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Isn’t that what we learned in Magdala from reading those Greeks my mother likes so much?”
Miriam reached out her flour-stained hands and lightly touched Mariamne’s cheek. “Do you see why I need you to stay with me? So that you can tell me such things, which calm me down. Because I do often wonder if I’m going mad.”
“When Zechariah claimed he’d seen an angel, no one wondered if he was mad!” Mariamne protested. Then she added, mischievously, “But perhaps without that angel, no one would have believed he’d made a child with Elisheba.”
“Mariamne!” In spite of her scolding tone, Miriam was amused.
Covering her mouth with her flour-whitened hands, Mariamne started to giggle, and this time her impish laughter set Miriam laughing too.