The Book of Longings: A Novel (34 page)

She nodded without smiling.

Yaltha frowned. I had no trouble reading her face:
I understand you wish to secure her loyalty, but will there be money for such a promise?
Other than the sum I’d set aside for our return, there were only enough drachmae to pay Haran’s rent for four more months, no more.

When Pamphile had departed, Yaltha’s spoon thudded against her bowl. I, myself, could find no appetite. I lay back once more upon the earth, closed my eyes, and searched for his face. I could not find it.

I pressed five drachmae into Lavi’s palm. “Go to the market and purchase a travel pouch made of wool, one that will hold my scrolls.” I led him to the stone jar in my sleeping chamber, pulled out the scrolls one by one, and spread them across my bed. “As you see, our old leather pouch is no longer large enough.”

His eyes moved over my stockpile.

“There are twenty-seven of them,” I said.

Afternoon light was falling from the small window, pale green from the palms. I stared at the scrolls, at years and years of begging and scrounging for the privilege of writing—every word, every ink stroke hard-won and precious, and I felt something flood through me. I don’t know if I would call it pride. It was more of a simple awareness that somehow I’d done this. I felt amazed suddenly. Twenty-seven scrolls.

During the year we’d been here, I’d completed my narratives of the matriarchs in the Bible, and also written an account of Chaya, the lost daughter, and Yaltha, the searching mother. I took it to my aunt before the ink had fully dried. Upon reading it, she said, “Chaya is lost, but her story isn’t,” and I felt that my words were a balm for her. I re-created the verses of grief for Susanna that I’d written on the potsherds I’d left behind in Nazareth. I couldn’t remember all of them, but enough to satisfy me. I wrote the tale of my friendship with Phasaelis and her escape from Antipas, and finally of the household in Nazareth.

Lavi looked up from the pile of stories. “Does the new pouch mean we’ll be traveling soon?”

“I’m still awaiting the letter telling me it’s safe to enter Galilee. I wish to be ready when it comes.”

I was in need of a larger pouch, it’s true, but my motive in sending Lavi into the city was also ulterior. I was considering how to broach the matter when he said, “I wish to marry Pamphile.”

I blinked at him, startled. “And does Pamphile wish to be your wife?”

“We would marry tomorrow if we could, but I have no means to care for her. I will have to find employment here in Alexandria, for she will not leave Egypt.”

He meant to remain here? I felt the bottom dropping from my stomach.

“And when I find work,” he said, “I’ll make a request of her father. We can’t get a license without his sanction. He’s a vinedresser in the village of Dionysias. I don’t know if he would give his consent to a foreigner.”

“I can’t imagine her father would refuse you. I’ll write a commendation for you, if you think that would help.”

“Yes, thank you,” he said.

“I need to know—will you still return to Galilee with us? Yaltha and I cannot travel alone; it’s too dangerous.”

“I won’t abandon you, Ana,” he said.

Relief flowed through me, then pleasure. I didn’t think he’d ever addressed me as Ana, not even after I’d pronounced him to be a free man. It seemed not just an act of friendship, but a quiet declaration of his autonomy.

“Don’t worry, I’ll find the money for your passage back to Alexandria,” I said, but the words had scarcely left me before I realized I had the money already. Letter or no letter from Judas, we had no choice but to leave when the money was depleted. We could simply depart earlier,
before
I was required to pay the last month’s rent. The surplus would pay Lavi’s passage.

“Now, go quickly to the market,” I said. “Go to the one near the harbor.”

“That is not the closest, nor the largest. It would be better—”

“Lavi, this is most important. I need you to also go to the harbor. Look for a ship from Caesarea. Seek out those who arrive on it—merchants, seamen, anyone. I wish for news of Antipas. It’s possible he’s no longer even alive. If he’s ill or dead, we can return to Galilee with peace of mind.”

I
PACED ABOUT OUR QUARTE
RS
while Yaltha read, pausing now and then to offer some commentary on Odysseus, who exasperated her by taking ten years to get home to his wife after the Trojan War. She was no less annoyed with Penelope, who waited for him. I felt a remote kinship with Penelope. I knew a great deal about waiting for men.

In the courtyard, the day was taking its leave. Lavi’s knock, when it finally came, landed with faint, rapid thuds. When I opened the door, he didn’t smile. He looked clenched and wary.

I hadn’t
really
expected to learn that we were free of Antipas—what was the chance the tetrarch had died in the course of a year? But I hadn’t imagined the intelligence Lavi gathered might be adverse.

He removed a generously sized pouch of gray wool from his shoulder and handed it to me. “The price was three drachmae.”

As he settled cross-legged on the floor, I poured him a cup of Theban wine. Yaltha closed the codex, marking her place with a leather cord. The lamplight flickered and snapped.

“You have news?” I said.

He looked away, the hoods pulled low over his eyes. “When I got to the harbor, I went up and down the moorings. There were ships from Antioch and Rome, but none from Caesarea. I could see three ships beyond the lighthouse approaching, one with crimson on its sail, so I waited. As I thought, it was the Roman cargo ship from Caesarea. It carried some Jewish pilgrims returning from Passover in Jerusalem, but they wouldn’t speak with me. A Roman soldier chased me—”

“
Lavi
,” I said. “What did you learn?”

He looked into his lap and continued. “One of the men on board didn’t appear as rich as the rest. I followed him. When we were safely from the docks, I offered him the other two drachmae in exchange for news. He was eager to take them.”

“Did he have word of Antipas?” I asked.

“The tetrarch is alive . . . and grows worse in his ways.”

I sighed, but the news was not unexpected. I retrieved the wine jug and refilled Lavi’s cup.

“There’s more,” he said. “The prophet that Judas and your husband followed . . . the one Antipas imprisoned . . .”

“Yes, John the Immerser—what about him?”

“Antipas executed him. He cut off the Immerser’s head.”

His words collected in my ears and lay there, puddles of nonsense. For a minute, I didn’t move or speak. I heard Yaltha talking to me, but I was far away, standing in the Jordan River with John’s hands lowering me beneath the water. Light on the river bottom. A floor of pebbles. The silent floating. John’s muffled voice calling,
Rise to newness of life.

Beheaded.
I looked at Lavi, a sick churning inside me. “The servant you spoke with—is he certain of this?”

“He said the whole country spoke of the prophet’s death.”

Some truths seemed insoluble, stones that couldn’t be swallowed.

“They say Antipas’s wife, Herodias, was behind it,” Lavi added. “Her daughter performed a dance that pleased Antipas so much he promised whatever she asked. At her mother’s urging, she asked for John’s head.”

I covered my mouth with my hand. The reward for a beautiful dance: a man’s severed head.

Lavi watched me, his expression grave. He said, “The servant also spoke about another prophet who was going about Galilee, preaching.”

I felt my heart scurry up into my throat.

“He heard the prophet preach to a great multitude on a hillside outside Capernaum. He spoke of it with awe. He said the prophet lashed out at hypocrites and proclaimed it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to come into the kingdom of God. He blessed the poor, the meek, the outcast, and the merciful. He preached love, saying if a soldier forces you to carry his pack one mile, carry it two, and if you’re struck on one cheek, turn the other one. This servant said the prophet’s following is even greater than the Immerser’s, that people spoke of him as a Messiah. As King of the Jews.” With that, Lavi fell quiet.

I fell quiet, too. The wooden door onto the courtyard was flung wide onto the Egyptian night. I listened to wind shake the palm fronds. The dark, tumbling world.

As Yaltha parted the veils that encircled my bed, I shut my eyes, feigning sleep. It was past the midnight hour.

“I know you’re awake, Ana. We will talk now.” She carried a beeswax candle, the light flickering under her chin and onto the bony ledge over
her eyes. She rested the holder on the floor and the choking sweetness of the wax filled my nostrils. As she squeezed beside me onto the pillows, I turned on my side, away from her.

Since Lavi’s news seven days ago, I’d been unable to speak of John’s gruesome death or of my terror that his fate would become my husband’s. I couldn’t eat. I’d slept little, and when I did, I dreamed of dead messiahs and broken threads. Jesus on the hillside, sowing his revolution—that was a good thing, and I couldn’t help but feel pride in him. The purpose that had burned in him for so long was finally being realized, yet I was filled with a deep and immutable dread.

At first, Yaltha left me to my silence, believing I needed time alone, but now here she was, her head on my pillow.

“To avoid a fear emboldens it,” she said.

I said nothing.

“All shall be well, child.”

I reared up then. “Will it? You cannot know that! How can you know that?”

“Oh, Ana,
Ana
. When I tell you all shall be well, I don’t mean that life won’t bring you tragedy. Life will be life. I only mean you will be well in spite of it. All shall be well,
no matter what
.”

“If Antipas kills my husband as he did John, I cannot imagine I will be
well
.”

“If Antipas kills him, you’ll be devastated and grief-stricken, but there’s a place in you that is inviolate—it’s the surest part of you, a piece of Sophia herself. You’ll find your way there, when you need to. And you’ll know then what I speak of.”

I laid my head against her arm, sinewy and tough like herself. I couldn’t grasp what she was saying. I fell into a dreamless sleep, a black chute that had no bottom, and when I woke, my aunt was still there.

A
S WE TOOK OUR BREA
KFAST
the following morning, Yaltha said, “We must talk about this plan of yours to return to Galilee.” She dipped her bread into the honey and pushed it into her mouth, dribbling the nectar onto her chin, and I felt my appetite return. I tore a chunk from the wheat loaf.

She said, “You fear for Jesus’s safety—I fear for yours.”

A slate of brightness had formed beside us on the floor. I gazed at it, wishing some magic scribble of light would appear telling me what to do. Returning was dangerous, perhaps as much now as when I’d first fled, but my need to see Jesus had become urgent and insurmountable.

“If there’s a chance Jesus is in danger,” I said, “I want to see him before it’s too late.”

She leaned forward, her eyes softening. “If you return to him now, I’m afraid it would make Antipas more inclined to snatch Jesus as well.”

I hadn’t considered this. “You think my presence might endanger him further?”

She didn’t answer, but looked at me and lifted her brows. “Don’t you?”

I’d not shown up in the scriptorium all week, but I appeared that morning resolved to carry on for now in Alexandria. I slid onto the stool at my desk, which, I noticed, had been cleaned, the yellow wood gleaming, smelling of citrus oil.

“You’ve been missed,” Thaddeus commented from across the room.

I smiled at him and set to work copying a petition from a woman who asked for the tax on her grain stocks to be reduced, something about her crops failing to receive irrigation from the year’s flood—a
most lackluster entreaty. I was glad, though, to give my mind something to contemplate besides my own worries, and as the morning passed, I became lost in the mindless, rhythmic movement of my hand as it formed letters and words.

Thaddeus stayed awake, perhaps a little animated by my return. Near noon, catching me glance at him over my shoulder, he said, “May I inquire, Ana—what was it that you and your aunt were searching for in the scrolls?”

I stared at him dumbly. Heat shot through me. “You knew?”

“I enjoyed my sleep, and I thank you for it, but I did wake now and then, if only barely.”

How much had he actually seen? It crossed my mind to tell him that Yaltha had been in need of tasks to fill her time and was assisting me with my work, nothing more, but the words reached the precipice of my tongue and stalled. I didn’t want to lie to him anymore.

I said, “I took the key that unlocks the cabinet. We read the scrolls inside it hoping to find some record of Yaltha’s daughter.”

He stroked his chin, and for an awful moment, I thought he might go straight to Haran. I jumped up, forcing myself to speak calmly. “I’m sorry for our deceit. I didn’t wish to involve you in what we were doing in case we were discovered. Please, if you could forgive me . . .”

“It’s all right, Ana. I have no grudge against you or your aunt.”

I felt myself unclench a little. “You won’t report this to Haran?”

“Goodness, no. He’s been no friend to me. He pays me little, then complains of my work, which I find so tedious I take naps to escape it. Your presence, though, has brought a certain . . . liveliness.” He smiled. “Now, what record were you seeking?”

“We sought anything that might tell us where her daughter could be. Haran gave her out for adoption.”

Neither Thaddeus nor any of the servants had been in Haran’s employ back then—Yaltha had been careful to inquire about this when we’d first arrived. I asked if he’d heard the rumors about my aunt.

He nodded. “It was said she poisoned her husband and Haran sent her to the Therapeutae in order to save her from arrest.”

“She poisoned no one,” I said indignantly.