The Book of Longings: A Novel (14 page)

The artisan was young, but I saw his talent. He filled the borders with braided leaves and here and there a pomegranate. He would sit back and tilt his head to study his work so that his cheek lay nearly on his shoulder, and when he drew my head, it tilted, too, but slightly. He sketched a garland of leaves in my hair and drop pearl earrings at my ears, none
of which I was wearing. A chimera of a smile played on my lips. My eyes bore the faint suggestion of something sensual.

For three days he worked while I sat, hours and hours, while all around us the endless tap, tap, tapping of mallets. On the fourth day, he sent a servant to inform Herod Antipas the sketch was completed. When the tetrarch arrived to inspect it, the hammering ceased and the workers shrank against the wall. The artisan, racked with nerves, sweating and fidgety, awaited judgment. Antipas circled the sketch with his fingers laced behind his back, looking from the sketch to me as if judging the likeness.

“You’ve captured her with precision,” he told the artisan.

He walked to where I sat on the stool and stood over me. There was a raw and frightening light in his face. He cupped his hand around my breast and squeezed hard. He said, “The beauty of your face makes me forget your lack of breasts.”

I looked up at him, at the girth of him, at the lust in his eyes, and I could barely see for the rage I felt, for the way it turned everything white and blinding. I sprang up, my hands lashing out. I shoved him once. Twice. My reaction was spontaneous, but not unconsidered. Even as he’d reached out to hurt me, even as the pain twisted in the little mound of flesh around my nipple, I told myself I would not sit there willing myself to be small and imperceptible as I had that day he’d smeared his thumb across my lips.

I shoved him a third time. He was like a stone, unmoved. I thought he would strike me. Instead he smiled, showing his pointy teeth. He leaned toward me. “So you’re a fighter. I’m fond of women who fight,” he whispered. “Especially in my bed.”

He strode away. No one spoke, and then all at once the workers let out small gasps and murmurs. With relief, the artisan acknowledged he had no more need of me.

Now they would mix the plaster and lay the bright tesserae, immortalizing me in a mosaic on which I hoped never to lay eyes. Phasaelis had
been kind to me and I would miss her, but I vowed when I left the palace this day, I would never return.

As I departed, Joanna waylaid me in the great hall. “Phasaelis wishes to see you.”

I went to her room, glad for the chance to tell my friend goodbye. She reclined at a low table, engaged in a game of knucklebones. Seeing me, she said, “I’ve had a meal prepared for us in the garden.”

I hesitated. I wished to be far away from Herod Antipas. “Just us, alone?”

She read my thought. “Don’t fear, Antipas would think it beneath him to dine with women.”

I was not so sure of it, not if it provided him an opportunity to grasp a breast, but I accepted her hospitality, not wanting to offend her.

The garden was a portico surrounded by Teashur trees, Babylon willows, and juniper bushes bowed over with pink flowers. Reclining on couches, we dipped our bread in common bowls, and I drank in the bright light. After so many hours in the dark frigidarium, the shock of it raised my spirits.

Phasaelis said, “Herod Antipas’s proclamation freeing Judas has made him faintly popular among the people. He even spared the life of Simon ben Gioras, though he kept him imprisoned. At least now his subjects don’t spit quite as far when they hear his name.” She laughed, and I thought how much I loved to see her snicker at her own wicked humor.

She went on. “The Romans, however, were unamused. Annius sent a legate from Caesarea to express his disapproval. I overheard Antipas trying to explain that such gestures were needed from time to time to keep the rabble in check. He sent Annius assurances that Judas would no longer be a threat.”

I didn’t want to think of Antipas, nor of Judas. Since returning, my brother had spent his time tending his wounds and gathering his strength. He’d spoken not a word to me since learning of the mosaic.

Phasaelis added, “But we both know, don’t we, that Judas is more of a threat now than before.”

“Yes,” I said. “Far more.”

I watched a white ibis pick at the ground, and I thought of the white sheet of ivory she’d sent to me, of its bold, exquisite script. “Do you remember the invitation you sent inviting me to leave my cage and come to yours? I’ve never seen a more beautiful tablet.”

“Ah, the ivory leaves. They’re the only ones of their kind in all of Galilee.”

“Where did you come upon them?”

“Tiberius sent a parcel of them to Antipas some months ago. I took one of them for myself.”

“And did you write the invitation yourself?”

“Are you surprised that I write?”

“Only at the power of your script. Where did you learn it?”

“When I first arrived in Galilee, I spoke only Arabic, but I couldn’t read or write it. I missed my father terribly despite him sending me away—it was always in my mind to return to him. I set out to learn Greek so I could write to him. It was your father who taught me.”

My father.
The revelation cut through me.

“Did he teach you, also?” she asked.

“No. But he brought me inks and papyrus from time to time.” That sounded self-pitying and meager. I wanted to believe that teaching her Greek was what had softened Father to my own desire to read and write, why he’d given in to my pleadings despite Mother’s disapproval, why he’d hired Titus as my tutor, but it didn’t change the envy that had surfaced from some old, deep place.

Then, as if we’d conjured him, my father was limping toward us on the portico. His feet dragged as if shackled. His eyes were cast down. Phasaelis, too, studied him. Something was wrong. I sat up and waited for what would come.

“May I speak freely?” he asked Phasaelis. When she nodded, he eased onto the couch beside me, grunting like an old man, and up close, I saw that it was not only sadness on his face, but a quiet infuriation. He looked plundered, as if he’d lost the thing dearest to him.

He said, “Nathaniel recovered from the fever sickness, but it left him weakened. It is my burden to tell you, Ana, he died this day while walking in his date grove.”

I said nothing.

“I know the betrothal was a yoke for you,” he continued. “But now your condition is worse. You will be treated as a widow.” He shook his head. “Yours is a stigma we will all bear.”

In the curve of my ear I heard the rush of wings. I saw the ibis lift away.

In the aftermath of Nathaniel’s death I was required to wear a robe the color of ash and go about with bare feet. Mother put dust on my head and fed me the bread of affliction and complained that I did not cry with loud and bitter wails or rend my clothes.

I was a fifteen-year-old widow. I was free.
Free, free, free!
I would not enter the chuppah with despair and dread over what my husband would do to me. The cloth of virginity would not be placed beneath my hips and paraded around afterward for witnesses to inspect. Instead, when the seven days of mourning ended, I would beg Father to let me resume my writing. I would go to the cave and dig up the incantation bowl and the goatskins stuffed with my scrolls.

At night when I lay still in my bed, the knowledge of these things would break over me and I would laugh deep into my pillow. I assured myself the curse I’d written played no part in Nathaniel’s dying, but still, my jubilation often brought on bouts of guilt. I rebuked myself for rejoicing in his death, I truly did, but I would not have wished him back.

O blessed widowhood.

At his burial, I walked with his sister, Zophar, and his two daughters at the forefront of a throng of mourners, as we accompanied Nathaniel’s body to the family’s cave. His linen shroud had been poorly wrapped and when he was carried to the cave entrance, the hem of it snagged on a thornbush. It necessitated a laborious effort to extricate him. It gave the impression of Nathaniel fighting his interment, and it struck me as comical. I pressed my lips together, but the smile broke through, and I saw Nathaniel’s daughter, Marta, not much younger than I, glare at me with hatred.

Afterward at the funeral banquet, remorseful that she’d observed my amusement, I said, “I’m sorry you’ve lost your father.”

“But you are not sorry you lost your betrothed,” she snapped and turned away. I ate the roasted lamb and drank the wine, unconcerned that I’d made an enemy.

On the first day of mourning, Mother found a tablet at her door inscribed in Judas’s hand. Not able to read it herself, she sought me out and thrust the message at me. “What does it say?”

My eyes flowed over his terse script.

I can remain no longer in my father’s house. He has no wish for me here, and while Simon ben Gioras is imprisoned, the Zealots have need of a leader. I will do what I can to rally their spirits. I pray you will not blame me for departing. I do what I must. I bid you well, your son, Judas

Then, set apart at the bottom . . .

Ana, you did your best for me. Be wary of Herod Antipas. With Nathaniel gone, may you be free.

I read it aloud to her.

She walked away, leaving the tablet in my hands.

T
HAT SAME DAY
M
OTHER
dismissed the spinners and weavers who’d spent the past two weeks creating garments for my dowry. I watched as she folded the tunics, robes, shifts, girdles, and head scarves and stacked them in the chest of cedar that had once held my writings. Atop the clothes she placed the bridal dress, smoothing her hands over it before closing the lid. Her eyes were wellsprings. Her lower lip trembled. I couldn’t determine whether her sorrow was over Nathaniel’s death or Judas’s departure.

I regretted my brother leaving, but I felt no anguish over it. I’d expected it, and he’d made peace with me in his note. I stood there trying to look impassive, but Mother sensed my gladness over Nathaniel, how it made a small brightness on my skin. “You think you’ve escaped a great misfortune,” she said. “But your tribulation has only begun. Few men, if any, will want you now.”

This
she thought to be a tribulation?

Her misery had been so great since learning of Nathaniel’s death, it was a miracle she hadn’t shaved her head and dressed in sackcloth. Father, too, had gone about withdrawn and glum, not over the loss of his friend, but over the forfeiture of their bargain and the land he would never own.

Feeling pity for Mother, I said, “I know men are reluctant to marry a
widow, but I can only be counted as one by the strictest of interpretations. I’m a girl whose betrothed has died, that’s all.”

She was on her knees beside the chest. She got to her feet and lifted one brow, always a poor sign. “Even of
those
girls, men say, ‘Do not cook in a pot in which your neighbor has cooked.’”

I flushed. “Nathaniel did not cook in my pot!”

“Last evening at the banquet Nathaniel’s own daughter, Marta, was heard to say you’d lain with her father in his house.”

“But that’s a falsehood.”

I minded little if betrothed couples lay together. It happened often enough; some men even claimed it was their right to lay with the woman to whom they were already legally bound. What I minded was the lie.

Mother laughed, a throat rattle of condescension. “If you had not despised Nathaniel so thoroughly, I might believe the girl’s words to be true. But it doesn’t matter what I think, only what others believe. The gossipmongers saw you roaming all over the city, even beyond the walls. Your father was stupid to permit it. Even after I confined you again to the house, you slipped out. I myself heard people talk of your roving. The men and women of Sepphoris have spent weeks speculating over your virginity, and now this girl, Marta, has thrown a log on their fire.”

I waved my hand at her. “Let them think what they will.”

Anger seared across her face, then fell away bit by bit in little crumbles. In the sullen gray light of my room, her shoulders sagged, her eyes closed; she seemed very tired. “Don’t be unwitting, Ana. Being a widow is deterrent enough, but if you’re also thought to be defiled . . .” Her voice trailed off into the doom and gloom of having a husbandless daughter.

I thought of Jesus then, that day in the cave, rain-soaked hair, the crook of his grin, the ragged portion of bread he offered, the things he said while the storm raged. It caused a tipping over in my stomach. But perhaps he would not have me now either.

“Husbands may be loathsome creatures,” she was saying, “but they’re necessary. Without their protection, women are easily mistreated. Widows can even be cast out. The young ones resort to harlotry; the old ones, to beggary.”

Like Sophocles, my mother was capable of tragic sweeps of imagination.

“Father will not cast me out,” I told her. “He takes care of Yaltha, who’s a widow—do you think he would not take care of me, his daughter?”

“He won’t always be here. He, too, will die and what will happen to you then? You cannot inherit.”

“If Father dies, you will be a widow as well. Who will care for
you
? You cannot inherit either.”

She sighed. “My care will fall to Judas.”

“And you think he would not provide for me? Or for Yaltha?”

“I don’t think he will be able to provide for
any
of us,” she answered. “He does nothing but seek trouble. Who can say what means Judas will have? Your fool of a father has disclaimed him. He went so far as to write his disownment into a contract. Now on his death, this house and everything in it will go to his brother, Haran.”

It took a moment to grasp the magnitude of what she was saying. Haran had cast out Yaltha once. He wouldn’t hesitate to cast her out again, along with me and Mother. A wave of fear passed through me. Our lives and fates left to men. This world, this God-forsaken world.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Yaltha standing in the doorway. Had she heard? Mother spied her as well and left us. As my aunt stepped inside, I took a mocking tone; I didn’t wish her to see how Mother’s words had disturbed me. “It seems the entire populace has picked over the state of my virginity like a flock of scavengers and has determined it’s missing. I’ve become a mamzer.”