Song of the Magdalene (14 page)

In that box, as well, were two treasures. One was the flute Judith had given me. I found it sewn in a fold in my cloak. In my daze I had left Magdala without belongings, but for the sack Hannah pressed upon me, in which the dress she had woven lay folded. I had no desire for objects. But when I discovered the flute in my cloak, my hands held it reverently. I didn't play it. But I kept it, clean and silent.

The other treasure was a very soft and wide skin belt that could crumple in the hand to the size of a pomegranate, that fruit that the cheeks of the beloved were compared to in the
Song of Songs,
that fruit that Abraham enjoyed so much, that Abraham had fed to me with such painstaking care, seed by seed.

I'd bought the belt in a shop in Dor only a
month after my arrival here. It was my comrade of sorts; it secured my secrets. I bought it immediately after my dreams began.

At first I didn't know what my dreams were about, I only knew I screamed and Rachel had to shake me that first time till I stopped. I was soaked in sweat and I couldn't catch my breath for many minutes. My head pounded with blood. My hands tingled with fear. I looked around, frantic to figure out where I was. And by the time I had, all memory of the dream had vanished. In the morning I put on my veil and went to the street of shops and bought the belt. That night I smoothed it flat over my mouth and tied it tight behind my head before I slept. In the dead of night I woke, my screams muffled in the belt. Every night thereafter I woke, silenced behind the belt.

After a while I could remember the dreams. They all started out in a different activity, but they all ended the same. I would be walking someplace beautiful I didn't recognize, or milling grain in happy anticipation of a feast whose purpose I didn't know, or embroidering a cloth for a person I'd never met. I would always be happy
and always be busy and always be looking forward to something good, something new and wonderful and unknown. Then a man would come and invite me away. I knew I shouldn't go, but I couldn't help it. He needed me to come. His need was urgent. And when I went to him, he became Jacob. He threw me down and raised a rock and smashed my hands, one then the other, crushed every bone until they were bloody stumps. Then he raised the rock again to smash my feet, but I had already awoken myself with my screams.

I felt my hands, the length of each finger, over and over and over. I assured myself they were still useful. My womanly virtue persisted as long as my fingers were whole, as long as they could still do woolwork. I stared at the oil lamp, burning feebly in the closed night air of Uncle's home, and thought of nothing. Eventually sleep recaptured me.

I learned after a few months that I could take the skin belt off my mouth after a dream, for the dream never returned again in the same night. It was a small kindness, that.

I went to the house of prayer often. I wore a
veil and I dressed in black, as I had since Abraham's death. But I was a noticeable figure, all the same. Eyes followed me. It didn't take long before the offers of marriage came. I told Uncle I was barren. Father had suggested something of the sort to him, though I believed Father had managed to keep from lying outright. And so Uncle fended off the suitors and I kept my day full, between work and the house of prayer.

Rachel's eyes turned inquisitive at my revelation of being barren. There was only one way a woman could know such a thing. Rachel wanted to ask about the man who used to be in my life. She fingered my black shift and looked sly. There was no reason for a widow to go live with her mother's relatives. If I had been married, why wasn't I living now with people I cared about? With my husband's relatives or my own father? And why did I wear no ring? I could see Rachel's mouth grow dry with desire to ask. Had her eyes shown the slightest hint of sympathy, I might have confided in her. I longed for the confidences of women. I missed Judith's sensible strength that gave such force to her love. I missed Hannah's thin, quick fingers that knew how to ease
pain. But Rachel's eyes were cold and cunning. It was curiosity born of the chance that maybe she could have power against me. Maybe she could discredit me and be rid of me. So I stayed aloof and found excuses to leave the house whenever she came to me with that expectant look on her face. Perhaps I cheated us both. But the risk was too great to take.

Once I woke from a dream to find Rachel sitting beside me, watching, her eyes like a jackal's in the dim light of the lamp. I rolled on my side and waited till she returned to her own bed mat. I told myself there was no crime in bad dreams. She could use them for nothing. Still, I began a regimen of barley soaked in curdled milk and a spoonful of honey before I went to sleep. Anything to stay the severity of those dreams. I don't know whether those remedies helped or if it was simply the effect of time, but by my second winter in Uncle's home, though the dreams still came, I suffered less from them, because after a dream I fell asleep almost immediately.

Or perhaps it was the mercy of the Creator that reduced my suffering. For I was not proud in asking Him for mercy.

I went to the house of prayer more and more often, sometimes twice in a day. Once when I was walking there, panic overcame me. It was as though I had lost something, something important, something precious. My arms ached to hold that something. I walked ever faster, letting my eyes search the side alleys. I ran. I had to find it or disaster would strike. But then the panic left and I knew again that Isaac was dead. I knew he lay quiet in the shallow grave beside his father. I walked slowly once again.

This house of prayer, though I felt compelled to go there, was not a place of pleasure for me. I never went when the Levites were there. I didn't want to hear singing. I went at odd hours. I stood in the rear, and listened to the silence, and thought. When song is gone, when words are gone, all that remains are tears and silence. But I was dry as the land. So silence was my altar.

The house of prayer was a small place of worship, smaller than the house of prayer in Magdala. I liked its smallness. I wanted the world to be small and dark and safe. When I was outside the house of prayer, my breath was lost in the vastness of the world. But when I stood inside, I
could almost believe my breath had substance again. I could almost hear it reverberate.

Though the house of prayer had become my private place, it was, in fact, the most public of places. Everyone in town came here not just to worship, but to exchange information. And try though I might to come when others were less likely to be around, I found myself inevitably passing through the doorway as a group was passing in the other direction. Once I became a familiar sight, they no longer ceased their talk as we passed. I came to hear snatches of conversation, snatches that gradually tantalized me.

My life until that point had been like a closed fist. I knew my home, my family, my Abraham. I wasn't part of the gossip at the well in Magdala. I had heard when Herod Antipas built Tiberias so near to Magdala, yes; still the news meant little to me in my family world then. Now in Dor I had no real home. So the larger world crept up on me, sneakily, loosening my fingers, seeking my palm.

Dor was a coastal town brimming with Romans and Greeks, energized with the sound of drachmas exchanging hands. The spirit of the town was diverse. The pagans had their gods; the
Jews had another. But everyone met amicably over trade. Or, if not amicably, profitably. This I learned from the talk at the well.

I changed my habits: I now went to the well when the most people would be there, just so I could hear more talk. I learned there that Dor's successful Jewish merchants called themselves by pagan names like Phillip and Andrew. I saw Uncle's aspirations in calling himself Thaddaeus. And I knew very well that he'd never realize those aspirations — for his business acumen was dull. The women talked of exotic foods in the marketplace, too. I never went to the market, of course. The hall of prostitutes was bound to be near there. But my own eyes witnessed the horses that the non-Hebrews rode, magnificent creatures, so much taller than the donkey of every Jewish household. Yes, Dor was a place of ambition and excitement.

But it was a place of discontent, as well. News passed from mouth to mouth, like shared bread. The Romans' demands for taxes had grown intolerable. There was a land tax payable in produce or money. There was an income tax. There was a poll tax for everyone but children and the
aged. And there was a custom duty tax on imports from each Roman province. Those who tried to avoid paying were imprisoned or flogged by the Roman military.

David, the tax collector for my section of Dor, was hated. He was a Jew; he held our history heavy within his heart, like the rest of us. He knew that before the Romans there were the Greeks, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Egyptians. Our invaders went back so far — perhaps forever. History had taught us over and over that periods of self-rule came to an end. Though the pagans who walked the streets of Dor lived in peace with the people of Israel today, David knew, like the rest of us, that such cooperation was transitory. So he had to know that working for the Romans now could come to no good end. Yet David bid for the job of tax collector. The highest bidder got the job and earned our hatred. The other bidders were forgiven and accepted back as though they had never strayed.

Now and then I'd see David at the house of prayer. Once I walked up behind him as he prayed. I moved on flat feet, with no attempt to conceal the sound of flesh on stone. Yet I felt
stealthy. I had the sensation of stalking. My skin prickled. I was going to ask him if he came to beg for the Creator's forgiveness. I was going to ask him what the source of desperation was in his life, for his acts were the acts of a desperate man. I waited for his prayer to end, when suddenly he turned and looked at me before I had a chance to open my mouth. He walked quickly past me, out of the house of prayer.

An enormous tension released inside me. I sank to the floor, as though my bones had turned to water. What had taken hold of me? I had almost talked to this stranger. I looked around. No one had seen. I stood up and smoothed my clothing with both hands. I touched the edges of my veil. No hair escaped from under it. I was a proper woman. I must behave always as a proper woman. Oh, yes, Hannah was right to have all her extra private laws about what colors to ban and how to wear veils. Nothing was more important than appearing proper, than drawing no attention.

At the well I blended in with the other women. I kept my eyes lowered and listened
closely. I heard the history of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Palestine. When Pilate first came to Jerusalem, he brought troops carrying army standards with images of the Roman gods. Pilate knew nothing about the Judeans he was sent to rule. He had never heard of our Second Commandment, which forbade false images of the Creator. Either that, or he knew very well precisely what he was doing — he planned every insult. Our people rebelled. They offered their necks to the Roman swords, preferring to die than to see our laws disdained.

Oh, how I wished I could have seen those crowds. I'd have cheered for the men. And, maybe, given how foolish I was four years ago, when Pilate caused that rebellion, maybe I'd have offered my own neck, joining with the men where women never tread.

Pilate relented and finally removed the religious standards. But that didn't mean he'd learned anything. He was biding his time. Until just months ago, when he confiscated money from the Temple in Jerusalem. No pagan should have touched the sacred money. Again crowds
gathered in that holy city, crowds of valiant Jews. Pilate sent his soldiers in with weapons concealed in their garments. At an agreed upon signal, they drew their swords and massacred everyone. The Jews of Jerusalem were decimated.

Fear radiated out from Jerusalem to every city and village. Anger followed. Even here in peaceful Dor the word on everyone's lips was
freedom.
People were willing to leave much to Rome as long as they had freedom to follow the laws of our ancestors. But the Romans were too stupid or too mean or both. They denied us what they could so easily have allowed. In some villages our people couldn't even buy meats slaughtered properly, so they ate only bread and vegetables and fruits.

Initially the higher taxes were to blame for Father and Judith's not visiting me. For as desperation increased, highway robbery became almost a daily occurrence. No one traveled without multiple guards, and then only when absolutely necessary. Later it was the talk of rebellion that kept them away. The Romans took to stopping groups of travelers and turning them back in an
effort to quell trouble before it began. I missed Father and Judith and Hannah terribly. I had my own private reason for wanting Pilate's downfall.

And so the talk in Dor was ever more important to me. The men's words turned to whispers now. I'd pretend to be tired and rest on the steps of the house of prayer, close to a huddle of men. But they whispered so softly, I couldn't hear them anymore, no matter how hard I strained. I knew they talked of revolt.

My dreams turned to my own kind of personal revolt. After my nightmare each night, new and marvelous dreams came. I dreamed of Jerusalem, a city I had never seen. Abraham came to me. He spoke quietly, with the words of the fifth canticle:

I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.

I arose eagerly and walked the streets of Jerusalem without a veil and without fear. Abraham
walked with me. He was not tall or beautiful or straight in anyone's eyes but mine. He was my wonderful Abraham. He told the crowds that the scriptures spoke not of our history, but of the here and now, of how we, the people known as Israel, must live today. He said the lessons were there if only we would heed them. He said Pontius Pilate was a fool. He said Herod Antipas was no one's true leader. He said we must care for one another, the infirm and the whole, side by side.