Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt (5 page)

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Authors: Anne Rice

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But our family had stopped speaking Greek to others, and was using only the Aramaic.
It wasn't until the third day that we finally saw our first view of the Holy City from the slope above it. We children jumped up and down with excitement. We were shouting. Joseph stood smiling. Ahead of us lay twists and turns in the road, but we could see it all before us—this sacred place which had been in our prayers and in our hearts and in our songs since we were born.
There were camps about the high walls with tents of all sizes, and cooking fires, and as we drew closer and closer, the crowds were so big that we hardly moved for hours at a time. People everywhere were speaking Aramaic now, though I still heard some Greek, and all of the men were on the lookout for those they knew, and here and there clasping hands and waving and calling out to friends.
For a long time, I couldn't see anything. I was in a crowd of the children, mingled with the men, my hand in Joseph's hand. I only knew we were moving little by little, and we were close to the walls.
Finally we passed through the open city gates.
Joseph reached down and caught me up under his arms, and put me on his shoulders and I saw the Temple clearly above the small city streets.
I felt sad that Little Salome couldn't see this, but then Cleopas said loudly he had to have her up with him on the donkey, and so Aunt Mary lifted her and she could now see too.

And look! We were in the Holy City of Jerusalem, and the Temple was right in front of us.

Now in Alexandria, I had, like any good Jewish boy, never let my eyes stray to the pagan temples. I had not looked up at the pagan statues. What were idols to a Jewish boy who was forbidden to make such things and held them to have no meaning? But I'd passed the temples and the processions with their music, looking only to the houses to which Joseph and I had to go, which seldom took us out of the Jewish quarter of the city anyway, and I suppose that the Great Synagogue was the grandest building that I had ever entered. And besides pagan temples were not for entering anyway. Even I knew that they were supposed to be the house of the pagan gods for whom they were named and put together.
But I knew of these temples, and somehow from the corner of my eye, I had taken their measure. I had taken a measure as well of the palaces of the rich, and had some idea of what any carpenter's son would call the scale of things.
And for the Temple of Jerusalem I had no measure at all. No words from Cleopas or Alphaeus or Joseph, or even Philo had made me ready for what I saw.
It was a building so big and so grand and so solid, a building so shining with gold and whiteness, a building stretching to the right and to the left so far that it swept out of my mind anything I'd ever seen in the rich city of Alexandria, and the wonders of Egypt passed away from me, and my breath was taken out of me. I was struck dumb.
Cleopas now had Little Symeon in his arms so he could see, and Little Salome was holding Baby Esther who was bellowing for no reason, and Aunt Mary was holding up Joses, and Alphaeus had my cousin Little James.

As for Big James, my brother, James who knew so much, James had seen it before, when he was very small and had come here with Joseph before I was ever born, even he

seemed amazed by it, and Joseph was quiet as if he had forgotten us and everyone around us.
My mother reached up and put her hand on my hip and I looked down at her and smiled. She was pretty to me as always, and shy with her veil drawn over most of her face, and clearly so happy that we were here at last and she looked up as I did to the Temple.
All through the crowd, and it was a great crowd of those shifting and moving and coming and going, there was this feeling of people falling quiet and still just to look at this Temple, trying to know its size, trying to take it in, trying perhaps to remember this moment because many of them were here from far away and long ago or for the first time.
I wanted to go on, to enter the Temple—I thought that's what we would do— but that was not to be.
We were pushing towards it but losing our sight of it, and dipping down into crooked and tight streets, the buildings seeming to close over our heads, people pressing against one another, and our men asking for the synagogue of the Galileans, where we were to lodge.
I knew Joseph was tired. After all, I was seven years old, and he'd been carrying me a long while. I asked him to put me down.
Cleopas was now very feverish, and yes, laughing with happiness. He asked for water. He said he wanted to bathe now, and Aunt Mary said he couldn't. The women said we had to get him to bed right away.
My aunt was almost in tears over him and Little Symeon started to cry so I picked him up but he was too heavy and James took him in his arms.

And so it was through the crooked and narrow streets we went, streets that might have been in Alexandria, though

they were much more crowded, Little Salome and I laughing that "the whole world
was
here," and everywhere there was fast talk, raised voices, people speaking Greek, even Hebrew, people
speaking
Hebrew, and some speaking Latin but not very many, and most Aramaic like us.
When we reached the synagogue, a big building of three stories, the lodgings were full as everyone expected, but as we were turning away to look for the synagogue of the Alexandrians, my mother cried out to her cousins, Zebedee and his wife, and their children who were just coming in, and they all flocked to her with much embracing and kissing, and they wanted us very much to come up with them and share the space already made for them on the roof. Other cousins were already there waiting. Zebedee would see to it.
Now the wife of Zebedee was Mary Alexandra, my mother's cousin, who was always called Mary same as my mother, and same as my aunt Mary who was married to my mother's brother, Cleopas. And when these three women hugged and kissed they cried out: "The Three Marys!" and this made them very happy, as if nothing else was going on.
Joseph was busy paying the price, and we pushed our way with Zebedee and his clan, and Zebedee had brothers with wives and children, through the crowded courtyard where the donkeys were given over for care and feeding, and then we climbed the stairs, and then went up a ladder, the men carrying Cleopas who was laughing all the way in his low manner because he was ashamed.
On the roof, a swarm of kindred greeted us.
Standing out from all the rest was an old woman who reached out for my mother as my mother called her name.
"Elizabeth." And this name I knew well. And that of her son John.

My mother fell into this woman's arms. There was much crying and hugging as I was brought to her, and to her son, a boy of my age who never spoke a word.

Now as I said, I knew of Cousin Elizabeth, and I knew of many of the others because my mother had written many letters home from Egypt and received many from Judea and from Galilee too. I'd often been with her when she'd gone to the scribe of our district to dictate these letters. And when she had received letters, they had been much read and reread, and so the names had stories to them which I also knew.
I was much taken by Elizabeth as she had a very slow and pretty manner to her, and I thought her face pleasing in a way I couldn't put into words to myself. I often felt this way about old people, that the lines in their faces were very worth study, and that their eyes were bright in the folds of their skin.
But as I am trying to tell you this story from the point of view of the child that I was, I will leave it at that.
My cousin John, too, had about him this same manner as his mother, though he made me think of my own brother James. In fact, the two of them marked each other, just as I might have expected. John had the look of a boy of James' age, though he wasn't, and John's hair was very long.
John and Elizabeth were clothed in white garments that were very clean.
I knew from my mother and her talk of her cousin that John had been dedicated from his birth to the Lord. He would never cut his hair, and he would never share in the wine of supper.
All this I saw in a matter of moments, because there were greetings and tears and hugs, and commotion all around.

The roof couldn't hold any more people. Joseph was finding cousins, and as Joseph and Mary were cousins themselves of each other, that meant happiness for both of them, and at the same time, Cleopas was fussing that he wouldn't drink the water his wife had brought, and Little Symeon was crying, and then Baby Esther began to cry and Simon her father picked her up.

Zebedee and his wife were making room for our blanket to be put down, and then Little Salome tried to hold Little Esther. And Little Zoker got loose and tried to run. Little Mary was also wailing—and all in all so much happening around me—that it was hard to pay much attention to any one thing.
Before anyone knew it, I had grabbed Little Salome's hand and tugged her away, slipping under this person and that, and stepping over this person and that, and we were at the edge of the roof.
There was a little wall there, just high enough so we couldn't fall—.
I could see the Temple again! The crowded roofs of the city lay all in front of it, rising and dipping on the hills and coming up to the Temple's mighty walls.
There was music coming from the streets below, and I could hear people singing, and the smoke of cooking fires smelled good, and everywhere people chattered, below and on the roofs and it became like a holy chant.
"Our Temple," said Little Salome proudly to me, and I nodded. "The Lord who made Heaven and Earth dwells in the Temple," she said.
"The Lord is everywhere," I answered.
She looked at me.
"But He's in the Temple!" she said. "I know that the Lord is everywhere. But for now we should talk of his being in the Temple. We are here to go to the Temple."
"Yes," I said. I looked at the Temple.

"To dwell with his people, He's in the Temple," she said.

"Yes," I said. "And . . . everywhere." I looked only at the Temple.
"Why do you say that?" she asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. "You know that it's true. The Lord is with us, you and me, right now. The Lord is always with us."
She laughed and so did I.
The cooking fires made a mist in front of us, and all the noise was like a mist of another kind. It made my thoughts clearer. Go
d is everywhere and God is in the
Temple.
Tomorrow we would go to it. Tomorrow we would stand in the court inside its walls. Tomorrow, and then the men would go for the first sprinkling of the purification of the blood of the red heifer in preparation for the Feast of Passover which we would all eat together in Jerusalem to celebrate our coming out of Egypt long, long ago. I would be with the children and the women. But James would be with the men. We would watch from our place, but we would all be within the walls of the Temple. Nearer to the altar where the lambs of Passover would be sacrificed. Closer to the Sanctuary into which only the High Priest would go.
We had known about the Temple ever since we had known about anything. We had known about the Law ever since we had known anything. We had been taught at home by Joseph, and Alphaeus and Cleopas and then in school by the Teacher. We knew the Law by heart.
I felt a quiet inside myself in all the noise of Jerusalem. Little Salome seemed to feel that way too. We stood close to each other without talking or moving, and all the talking and laughter and crying babies, and even the music didn't touch us for a little while.
Joseph came up to us, and guided us back to the family.

The women were just coming back with food they'd bought. It was time for everyone to gather and time for prayer.

For the first time I saw worry in Joseph's face as he watched Cleopas.
Cleopas still fought with his wife over the water, not wanting to take it.
I turned and looked at him, and I knew right away he didn't know what he was doing. He wasn't right in the head.
"You come sit by me!" he said to me.
I did it, sitting at his right hand, crossing my legs. We were all very close together. Little Salome sat on his left, watching everything he did.
He was angry but not at anybody there. Suddenly he asked when we would get to Jerusalem? Did anybody remember we were going to Jerusalem? It frightened everyone.
My aunt suddenly was very tired of it and threw up her hands. Little Salome went quiet also, just looking at her father.
Cleopas looked around himself and he knew he had said something wrong. Then he seemed himself again, just like that. He picked up the cup of clean water and he drank it. He took a deep breath and looked at his wife. My aunt came nearer again. My mother moved beside her, and put her arm around her. My aunt needed to sleep, I could see it, but she couldn't do that now.
The sauce was hot from the brazier. I was very hungry. The bread was warm too.
It was time for the blessing. The first prayer we all said together in Jerusalem. I bowed my head. Zebedee, being the eldest, led us in the prayer in our family tongue, and the words were a little different to me. But it was still very good.

Afterwards, my cousin John bar Zechariah stared at me as though he had something very important on his mind but he didn't say anything.

At last we began dipping our bread. It was so good—not just a sauce but a thick pottage of lentils and soft cooked beans and pepper and spices. And there were plenty of dried figs to chew after the hot flavor of the pottage, and I loved it. I didn't think about anything except the food. And Cleopas was eating a little which made everyone happy.
It was the first really good supper since we'd left Alexandria. And there was plenty of it. I ate until I almost couldn't eat anymore.
Afterwards, Cleopas wanted to talk to me and made everyone leave us alone. Aunt Mary just made a quitting gesture again and moved away to rest for a moment, and then went to other chores with the clearing away, and Aunt Salome was tending to Little James and the other children. Little Salome was helping with Baby Esther and Little Zoker whom she loved so much.

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