No Lasting Burial (20 page)

Once
he reached the tomb Shimon did his work quickly, for that place forced memories
on him that he did not want. He lifted the girl’s shrouded body and slid her
feet first into the empty shelf to the left of his father’s. The sunlight in
the entrance to the
kokh
was pale, but the dimness of the tomb was not
creepy or unnerving, only quiet. This was a place where the wind did not enter,
a place where no
shedim
shrieked or whispered or demanded entrance to
the human mind and body. Shimon slid the girl into the hole in the wall, onto
the long stone shelf inside the hill, until only her hair was visible.

In
this very tomb, Shimon’s brother had been born; here, Shimon as a youth had
held and comforted his mother as she bled from the birth. Everything that
defined their family was here. The birth. Their father’s body. And now this girl Tamar had a place on
these cold stone shelves. Shimon gazed down at her contorted, still face. In
the synagogue, Zebadyah had said once that God spoke a word, a secret word,
into the ear of each child at the moment of its birth. And that this word,
which each of them forgot as children but remembered when they had grown into
men and women—though perhaps they had to spend many nights listening for it
before they heard it again, spoken anew—this word was God’s hope for their
lives. Shimon wondered what word had been spoken into this girl’s ear. Surely that word, that hope, had not been that she would be beaten
by her father or devoured by the dead. Shimon thought the word must have been
his brother’s name. If the dead had not come to Kfar Nahum that night, if their
father had not died, if the town had not been destroyed, if the corpses had not
been dumped into the sea, if Koach had been born with two strong arms like a
man, then he and this girl would have been together. Shimon had heard it in his
brother’s voice.

But
whatever word God had spoken into Tamar’s ear, she would never hear again. And
whatever word he had spoken into Koach’s ear, hearing it now would only bring
his brother the sharp misery of joys glimpsed and gone.

All
his heart a growl of grief, Shimon stepped toward the door of the tomb.
Hesitating, he glanced at the shelf in the wall on which his father lay. He
wrestled with himself, part of him longing to go to the shelf and pull his
father’s body free of it and see his face. He imagined unwrapping the burial
linens, imagined hesitating before peeling free the final layer, fearful of
seeing those eyes open but unliving, fearful of hearing again that terrible
moan. But no, the face within would be still and shriveled tightly to the bone,
preserved like the mummies of Kemet, though not so well. His father’s eyes
would be closed. The Greek pig-eaters placed coins on the eyes of their dead,
to pay the boatman to ferry their souls over the last river; the Hebrews
brought to their dead only spices and song. At his father’s burial, Shimon had
had neither. He had stood shaking and silent while his mother sang the Words of
Going, the memory of his father’s lurching over the shore still fresh and
vicious in his heart.

Shimon
stared helplessly at that shelf. Out of some chasm in his heart, rage welled
up, hot as fever, until he shook with it. Rage at his father for leaving him
standing on that shore, leaving him alone to care for his mother and his infant
sibling. Rage at that other father in heaven who had turned his back when the
Romans descended on their town. When the dead came down from
the hills. When the dead devoured or blighted the fish beneath the sea. His father who had left them all like children outside the walls of
a house, to eat what scraps they could find. Rage at both his fathers,
who had proven too weak or too disinterested to help. And neither of them had
been there to tell him that he was man enough to handle what would come, or to
teach him how to.

And,
finally, rage at the newcomer, the fish-caller who spoke so glibly and easily
of fathers, and who thought that filling the nets could erase the pain and
death-cries of a People as easily as an incoming wave might erase footsteps in
the sand.

Shimon
turned and strode from the tomb, breathing hard. Outside, the day was aging
fast and God’s sky was empty but for a crane winging slowly northeast toward
the high ridges of Ramat ha-Golan. A slight breeze stirred the grasses on the
hill, but Shimon did not fear it. He gazed down at the town at the sea’s edge
and saw it suddenly as he had never seen it before: a cluster of ill-organized
stone houses about a tall synagogue, but with no wall, no shelter from the wind
or from strangers out of the hills. Vulnerable to the dead
and the living alike. Zebadyah was right. They should cast this man out.
And Kana too. They should wall everything out,
forever. They had lost too much. Let them cling to what little they had left,
though it be only rags, though it be only empty nets.
When had anyone outside the small atriums of their houses ever cared for them?
The Romans preyed on them—though now from a distance. Barabba would prey on
them, in his own way. Threshing and Rich Garden and Tower pretended they did
not exist. Maybe they
didn’t
exist; maybe the apparent survivors of Kfar
Nahum were only ghosts,
shedim
without bodies, but too recently dead to
realize it.

“Rahel!” Zebadyah cried.
“Rahel!” Forgetting in his panic that her name was not
his to use or to call, he sprang through the door, hardly noticing that he’d
hurled Koach aside. There was only the terrible thought of Bat Eleazar—of
Rahel, oh Rahel—lying cold as stone in her house, as cold as his own dead wife
so many long years before. His breath heaved; he had run through the ruined
outskirts and past the tanner’s shop and through the square of the synagogue,
where some sat with baskets and were gutting fish, unaware of any shadow of the
dead. Rahel, Rahel, beautiful Rahel. He had wanted only to keep her safe, to
honor his lost brother, to … to hold her. To think that
she might be gone. Worse, that she might come
back
. That she
might rise to rend those about her with her teeth and nails. No. Not Rahel. Not
her. God of our fathers, not her.

He
rushed into her atrium and stopped short, for he could see Rahel bat Eleazar
bending over a cookfire and prodding fish on the coals, calm and focused, as
though she had never known pain. The air was rich with the smell of fried
musht, mingled with the herbs from the scented fire. Rahel glanced up at him,
and her eyes were full of life. So full of life.

“You
are alive,” he whispered. “Alive.”

“Of
course I am alive,” she said, and straightened. There were others around them,
other people in the atrium, but Zebadyah hardly noticed. He could see nothing
but her face. She should have been shaken with fever, or dead, or—or worse.

After
Yakob had led off his search party for Benayahu, Zebadyah had gone out to the
old altar, the all but abandoned altar. There he had thrown himself to the
ground and wet the soil with his tears, praying for a consolation that did not
come. Natan El had found him there and had gasped out a story of Rahel bat
Eleazar bitten by the dead. Zebadyah had found himself on his feet and running,
running into the town.

And
now she stood before him as full of life as when she had been young and he had
been young, as when he had first seen her laughing as she walked alongside his
brother. She was alive, she was alive. With a hoarse cry of joy, joy that
wrenched everything in him, he leapt forward and seized her arms and pulled her
to him, crushing her, his mouth finding hers, the heat and softness of her
against him. So, so alive.

She
stiffened. Then her hands beat at his shoulders, and he let her go. He took a
step back and nearly fell, dizzied. She stood staring at him, a few strands of
hair across her face, her cheeks flushed, her eyes wide with alarm. “Bar
Yesse!” she gasped.

“Get
away from her!”

The
shout came from the door. The whelp, Hebel, stood there, his eyes cold with
fury—looking so strangely, in that moment, like Zebadyah’s brother Yonah. But
the priest felt neither unease nor anger. He was too overwhelmed. He opened his
mouth to apologize to Rahel, but only laughter came out. And then he fell on
his rump and sat there in the middle of her house, laughing, his eyes squeezed
shut, as though he were a small boy again.

“Zebadyah.” That was an old
voice, a rasping voice. “I don’t think I have heard you laugh in a long time.”

Zebadyah
looked up. For the first time, he took note of the others in the house. The men and women preparing for a meal. The boat people, crouched back against one wall as though to
communicate that they were no threat. The witch from
Natzeret. And beside him—standing beside him—his
father. Yesse.

Standing.

“Abba,”
Zebadyah whispered. “Abba.”

Yesse
walked slowly over and knelt beside Zebadyah, putting his arms around his son,
pressing his lips to his hair. Zebadyah wanted to weep, but could not; so many
mornings he had crouched beside his reclining father, holding him, comforting
him, and always he had longed to be the one comforted, the one guided, the one
fathered. Always he had felt his aloneness and his inadequacy, his guilt for
hiding beneath the boats while his father was maimed.

Now
his father was back. Consoling him. Lending
him his strength.

It
was as though the sky had fallen into the sea and the sea had become the sky.
He was spinning, falling. He clutched at his father’s arm. “Abba,” he moaned,
“help me to my feet.”

A
moment later, they were standing together. He faced his father, looking into
those eyes old and gray as the voices of cranes over the water. His hand
trembled where he held his father’s arm. He tried to say with his eyes the
words he had never voiced to Yesse, words of regret for that night.

I’m
sorry.

The
skin around Yesse’s eyes crinkled.
I know.

Drawing
in a slow, shuddering breath, Zebadyah glanced about him,
saw the pale and hungry faces of those gathered in the house: fishermen and a
few of their wives, and boat people, and the bruised face of the stranger from
Natzeret. This house was now filled with just such an assembly as he’d feared:
a mingling of the clean and unclean, a collapse in the order he’d so carefully
shored up against storm and wind, and no wall of fire or stone to hold it back.

Yet—

“I
should thank you,” he said, and found it difficult to swallow. He didn’t know
whether to laugh or weep or rage. Perhaps he was asleep and didn’t know it;
perhaps he was lost in the dream country. The world had stopped making sense.

Yeshua’s
face shone with sweat. “You will see greater things than these,” he said. His
voice was sad.

Zebadyah
gazed at his face, trying to understand. His father’s hand was strong on his
shoulder. He choked back fresh tears, a tightness in
his throat, and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. This sudden joy in
him was running out at his eyes. Prophet or madman, he didn’t know, couldn’t
know. But he had his father back. He turned his head at a sound and saw,
through bleary eyes, Hebel still standing by the door, the boy’s face white
with wrath.

Koach
didn’t even notice the people gathered behind him on the doorstep. He felt he
could tear down a wall, even one-handed, even weak, he was so angry. When the
priest turned his face toward him and Koach saw his eyes wet with tears, it was
too much. The priest
dared
affront his mother. That hateful old man who
had denied him his
bar ‘onshin
, whose son had beaten him in the
street—he
dared
. He would
not
feel sympathy for this man.

“This
is my brother’s house,” Koach said, his voice loud in the atrium. “And you are
an uninvited guest.”

Yesse
frowned, and Zebadyah turned, his face flushed—though whether with anger or
embarrassment, Koach didn’t know.

“Koach!” His mother rose
to her feet. Her face was flushed, too, but her eyes flashed. Her tone cut
through Koach’s anger like a boat’s keel through water, parting it.

“Bar
Yesse,” Rahel said, her voice cool though her face betrayed how shaken she was,
“has done me no lasting harm. If I were to see my own father here, and strong,
I would be wild with joy, as well. He is the
kohen
of our village and
deserves your respect.”

“How
can you say that?” Koach cried. “He hates us.”

“Koach!”

“He
does! He always has. He acts as though he is the father of this house, but he
is not!”

His
mother straightened, and there was such fire in her eyes that he fell silent.

“Koach,”
she said, her voice sharp, “we have all said hateful
things, and many of us have
done
hateful things. Because we are hungry,
and we are tired, and none of us have slept well in many years. But there are
fish, and we are sitting to eat. And we have this chance to make things right
again.” She glanced down, and for a moment her hands trembled as though she
were fighting to hold in some tempest of emotion. Koach suddenly burned with
shame, though he couldn’t have said why.

“Help
me make things right,” she said.

“Amma,”
Koach whispered.

Rahel
turned to Zebadyah, her tone tightly controlled. “Bar Yesse, I would ask you to
atone for the insult to me by accepting my sons’ hospitality and sitting at our
fire for a while with your father.”

Koach
bit his lip, hard, to keep from opening his mouth and letting out the harsh
words in his heart. He certainly didn’t intend any hospitality to the priest—or
to
any
of these people. His mother needed rest, and he … he needed
time to breathe, privacy, a chance to retreat to his secret place and think.
His hand itched to hold his carving knife. Finding beauty within the wood, he
would find also some way to cope with the strangeness and the horrors and the
joy of this day.

Rahel
said, “Will you sit at my sons’ fire, you and all these others, Zebadyah bar
Yesse? It has been a long time since Kfar Nahum sat together.”

Zebadyah
stood as though struck—so long this house had been barred against him. But
Yesse took his arm and drew him to the cushions that lay about the olive tree.
“My son accepts, and so do I, Bat Eleazar. I have missed my grandson’s house,
and my daughter-in-law’s cooking.” And Yesse sat, seeming a little sore from
age, but otherwise as able as any other man, as though his hip had never been
twisted, his dignity never assaulted by Romans or the dead.

Rahel
took charge, as though she were a queen in a palace of Shushan and not a
fisher’s wife. She knew all the names of those who had stepped into her house,
all but the boat people, and she demanded theirs. Then she recruited helpers
and seated others, and soon more fish were roasting, and a few women were
helping her grind bread while others poured water for the ritual washing to the
elbows before a meal. With a start, Koach realized the silent woman was among
them, still clothed in his father’s coat, its hem sweeping along the ground at
her feet. She had already washed her hands and arms, for they were clean, and
she sat down to grind bread as though she were any other woman of Kfar Nahum, dipping
her finger into the meal and lifting some to her mouth as she worked. Rahel
gave her a cool look but let her be; when there is an entire community to feed,
a woman doesn’t turn down help. Mordecai’s sister and Natan El’s wife carried
platters and bowls around the circle that the seated guests formed. Yeshua
stood alone, to the side, and for the moment none bothered him. The scent of
food demanded the attention of those who’d been starving far more than any
miracle of healing could. Zebadyah sat by his father, his face dappled by
shadows and sun through the leaves of the olive, and his eyes were dazed. Yesse
gripped his son’s shoulder and leaned in to speak into his ear.

The
bustle had sprung up so swiftly, Koach was left standing by the door. His stomach
snarled at the scent of fish, but he ignored it. He couldn’t join them at the
meal, couldn’t bear to be around so many people, his heart naked to their eyes.
Breathing raggedly, he leaned back against the wall and lifted his hand to his
face; he could smell death on his skin. Tamar’s death.

Abruptly,
he realized he wasn’t alone. Yeshua was leaning on the wall beside him.

“Why
don’t you eat?” Koach said. “You are a guest.”

“Eat,”
the man whispered. His eyes were a little glassy in a face that shone with sweat.
“How can I eat?”

Koach
wet his lips, not understanding. The man unnerved him, and the grief was so
sharp in Koach’s chest that he wanted no company. But this man had helped his
mother, had … healed her. Brought her back. He
blinked quickly against the moistening of his eyes.

“Your
hands are shaking,” he said.

Yeshua
lifted his hands to look at them; his fingers were trembling. He was very pale.
“There’s a door, Koach,” he whispered. “A door. I’m
doing too much. Too much, too fast. Not ready, not ready
for it yet, whatever is coming. I have to … have to be able to stand in
that door, see what he sees, first.”

“What
are you talking about?”

“But
how can I stand there?” His voice low. “I heard him,
heard
him weeping in the desert. Like all the world weeping,
such terrible cries. Tore at my heart.” He shut his
eyes, the shaking in his hands worse. “How can I stand in that door, in that
light, stand to see what makes him weep? Isn’t the moaning in my ears enough?
How can I bear any more? I can’t, I can’t bear it.”

His
shoulders shook and, startled, Koach realized Yeshua was sobbing. The man let
no tears leak from under his eyelids. He let no sound break from his lips. He
just shook. Koach stood awkwardly, unsure what to do. He was accustomed to his
mother’s comfort and to the indifference or hostility of others to his own
pain, but he was not used to standing by another.

Except Tamar.

Except her.

The
stranger drew in a ragged breath. “I am grateful to you,” he said, opening his
eyes.

Koach
shook his head.

“You
are the only one here, Koach, the only one who has made no demand on me. None. Though I hear your screams, too, and they are loud,
they are loud, they are loud. But the others, their eyes.
Prophet. Witch. Heal my grandfather. Heal Israel. Bury
the Romans. You … you make me a guest in your brother’s house. You didn’t
even bring me your arm, though you saw a lame man stand on his feet.”

Koach
went still. He had been so furious—at the priest, at Bar Cheleph, at the town
and himself for letting Tamar suffer and die—and in such panic and then
delirious relief over his mother, that he had not even considered that the
stranger might … might straighten and strengthen his arm. He stared at the
man in shock.

Koach
glanced down at his right arm, concealed in its thick woolen sleeve. No, not
concealed. He could never conceal it. Instinctively, he glanced at the people
eating. Some of them kept looking up from their fish and watching Yeshua and
himself by the door. Others were talking together in low voices. He listened to
their talk for a moment, caught bits of it: