The Priest's Madonna (20 page)

I had an urge to fling the kettle at his head. “You’d better leave,” I said. “Before I hurt you.”

This made him throw his head back and guffaw. “Oh, Marie,” he said, turning toward me. “How wonderful you are.”

I found this disarming to say the least, and rather than face his open affection, I turned to the fire, where the kettle was beginning to steam. I poured his coffee and served it to him with his bread. He thanked me, beaming as if I’d blessed him. “You haven’t answered my question,” I said.

“I have nothing to do with this woman. Is it my fault that she’s written to me?”

“It might be,” I said. “You might have encouraged it.”

“Why do you think I threw it in the fire?” he asked. “If I were attached to her, whoever she is, do you think I would have burned her letter?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know who she is.”

“I don’t really,” he insisted, his mouth full now with peach jam and bread. “Well, I’ve wagered a guess, but I can’t be sure.” He chuckled. “It’s as you say, Marie. She’s a lonely woman, certainly to be pitied, and unfortunately has attached her affection to a priest. It’s not an uncommon occurrence.” He twinkled his eyes at me.

“What do you mean?” I said, my anger rising once more. “Are you implying that I—?”

“No, no, Marie,” he said. “I was only teasing.”

“Don’t you dare put me in the same category as her.”

He took a sip of his coffee, then set the cup on the table. “I would never do such a thing.” The tone of his voice was sober now, genuine. “Really, Marie. Marinette. You are in no other category but your own.”

And despite my anger, I welcomed the sound of my nickname on his lips again.

It was the first time we had alluded to our mutual affection. Somehow, our reference to it—couched in innuendo as it was—freed us both. It alleviated my anxiety, for I saw that not only was Bérenger aware of my feelings, he did not discourage them. He had given me a kind of permission, then, permission to love him. And thereafter, he seemed able to let down his guard in my presence once again. He was also more sensitive to my anxiety. Now, before leaving, he would take my hand and hold it for a long moment while he said good-bye. “I’ll return in three days, Marinette. Take care of things while I’m gone.” Despite the seeming neutrality of his words, I heard these gentle farewells as declarations of love.

I am not sure why my oblique admission of love effected this change in him, for I was still a menace to his integrity as a priest. I had made no promise of stamping out my desire. Perhaps he saw how helpless I was in the face of my love for him and pitied me for it. Perhaps he simply decided he was tired of struggling against me. Whatever the reason, he grew tender with me once more—but his tenderness took on a new character. It could no longer be mistaken for brotherly teasing. I was older; we were both wiser. It was an intentional tenderness, expressed in all the subtle language of adult communication: gazes, courtesies in speech and gesture, words carefully chosen, and very occasional and fleeting well-placed touches—the elbow, the shoulder, the small of the back.

The perception of having won him made me glad, of course. I grew less desperate, less lonely, less fearful. But it was a mixed joy, for I regretted the difficulty he faced in loving me. I lay awake nights, punishing myself for tempting him, vowing to renounce his affection in the morning for his own good, all the while knowing I would do no such thing. It was the worst sort of hypocrisy, for while I felt his agony in temptation, I was not willing to relieve him of it. Yet I felt I could keep my private vow that we would remain proper, that our love, while unchaste in spirit, would never cause him to literally transgress.

Our interactions were changing, the way we spoke and moved informed still by the effort of restraint, but underpinned with a new trust in the strength of our mutual feeling. We remained chaste in every way, even more so than we had been, for we barely spoke. I cooked and cleaned; Bérenger worked and ate. It was as if we were at either end of a high wire and the faltering step of one would send the other tumbling into blackness. We exchanged only the necessary words, which were mainly his: the instructions on which linens to set out for Mass, which vase to dust, which pieces of mail to post. And though I knew he relished what I prepared for him, he rarely mentioned food—or hunger.

We knew now what we were entering into. It was what I had hoped for, though the reality proved both more thrilling and more mundane than what I had imagined in the soft light of my imagination. There would be no banns, no ceremony, no declaration—not even a private one—but it was to be a marriage. A silent marriage, relatively chaste, but one that would surge forward, nonetheless, the way marriages do: in dailiness, in the shared tasks that form a life. Above all, in shared meals, our sacrament.

Our meals went this way: Bérenger sat at the table and spread his napkin on his lap. I poured his wine. He sipped, nodded. I set the food before him—a soup or stew, a hunk of bread, a meat, a salad, a cheese—and then sat across the table from him, listening as I ate for Bérenger’s soft, involuntary groans of satisfaction and the scrape of his spoon against the bowl.

When Miryam arrived at the camp after leaving Shimon’s house, most of the men and women were asleep, the men in the open air, the women in their tent—woolen cloths draped over branches and tied to stakes in the ground. The fire still burned. Yehudah squatted by it, poking at the embers with a long stick. Miryam nodded to him and moved toward the tent, ducking to enter.

He called to her, “Where is Yeshua?” He was standing, the stick hanging from his hand.

Miryam walked closer to him so as not to wake the women. “At Shimon’s. I left early.”

He nodded, his eyes on her. It was unusual to leave a dinner early, but it had been unusual for her to go in the first place. They had all long ago given up notions of what was usual.

“Come,” he said instead. “Stand by the fire.”

She did not trust him. She trusted none of the men, except for Yeshua. Many of them were young and unmarried and inclined to look on the women lustfully. She had heard one of them joking one night, “They cook and clean for us, do everything a wife does. Why not do a wife’s duty in bed, too?” There had been scattered laughter.

One night, before Yeshua had healed her, before any of the other women joined their group, a man had come to her, his face covered by a cloth. He had feverishly touched her, as if she were a whore. “Keep quiet,” he said, “I won’t hurt you.”

She had been sleeping deeply—a rare occurrence—and so woke only partly at first. She believed herself to be dreaming still, and allowed him to touch her, allowed herself to feel his hands against her body.

As the stranger began to undress her, she awoke fully.
This should not be happening,
she thought. Keeping her eyes on his neck, she moved forward as if to kiss him and instead bit the flesh at his collarbone, as if she were biting into a leg of lamb. All the while she thought,
This must not happen.

The man screamed a curse and recoiled, his hand to his neck. She had broken the skin; blood-metal was on her tongue. He struck her across the face. She fell back and when she looked up again, he had gone. There were noises from the others then, voices, a flint struck against a stone. Footsteps approached her.

Levi spoke, “Miryam?”

“Yes,” she responded, her heart beating.

“Are you all right? We heard a sound.”

“Yes. I’m fine,” she said. “I heard it, too. It frightened me.”

“It’s all right,” he said. “We’re keeping watch now. You can go back to sleep.”

She looked now at Yehudah and wondered if he might have been the man. His fingers were long and slim, as the man’s had been. Yehudah’s whole body was slim. He stood and stepped like a heron, carefully lifting his long legs, as if afraid he might step in goat dung.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Come closer,” he said. “I don’t want to yell.”

She did, warily. She stood opposite him, the fire between them. His face was streaked, as if he’d been crying.

“I’m worried, Miryam,” he said. He looked into the fire. In his eyes, the flames pitched and soared.

She didn’t respond. She was not prepared or willing to accept the stumblings toward intimacy that the other men occasionally made with her. They saw her closeness with Yeshua—unorthodox, improper—and thought she should be their intimate as well, should listen to them, hold them. But she would not be passed from man to man as if she were a loaf of bread.

“I’m worried,” he continued. “People are noticing now. They’re gathering in great crowds. They’re ready to drop everything and follow us.”

“Pardon me,” Miryam responded. “But isn’t that good news?”

“Yes, of course,” he said impatiently. “But Yeshua needs to
lead
them, not just talk to them. They’ll only grow, these crowds, the closer we get to Yerushalayim. He has to steer them in the right direction, otherwise they’ll overpower him and we’ll lose everything, all the progress we’ve made.”

Miryam watched the fire. Yehudah’s voice was loud, too loud for the night. “How should he steer them? Isn’t healing them, teaching them, enough?”

“You’ve seen how the soldiers stand at the edges of the crowd, keeping watch. If Yeshua doesn’t take control, they will.”

“What are you suggesting, Yehudah?”

“I’m suggesting rising up, Miryam,” he said, raising the stick toward the sky. “It’s time to move forward, take action. Or at least start putting the idea in people’s minds. Otherwise we’ll never get anywhere.”

“You want him to lead the people into rebellion?”

“Yes!” he shouted at the sky. “Rebellion! Revolution! Pry the dirty Roman fingers from our land!”

“Shhh,” she said.

“We’re wasting time, all this puttering around with miracles and teaching. We need to organize, to march—we need to unite against our common enemy!”

“You don’t want people to be healed?”

“No, no. Of course I do. It’s not that. But that healing—that has nothing to do with our message. It’s just a way to get people to listen.”

Miryam continued to watch the fire.

“Listen, Miryam,” he said. He stepped around the fire and took her arm roughly. “Yeshua’s changed. Can’t you see it? He’s losing focus. He gets distracted too easily. He used to talk like he had the voice of God thundering in his ear. But he’s grown quieter now, sadder. Sometimes I wonder whether God has left him.”

She wrenched her arm from his grasp. It had been him, she knew it now. She recognized the feel of his hand. “And if he has, you’re prepared to leave him, too?” she said. Her voice was indignant, as if she herself had never doubted. But Yehudah’s doubt was so ugly, so self-concerned, she found her own dwindling.

Yehudah smiled ironically and shook his head. “I forgot who I was talking to,” he said. He pursed his mouth with disgust. “Why do you let him come to you, Miryam? A well-bred woman like you? A
chazzan
’s daughter?”

She fixed him with a stern glare. “It’s none of your business what I choose to do.”

“Aren’t the sins of all Yisrael our business? That’s what we’re about here, is it not? Saving Yisrael from her sins? We’re all accountable to each other.”

“You are in no position to judge my sins, Yehudah. Pull the log from your own eye.”

“Ah, she quotes him, even. A true disciple.” He tossed a twig into the fire; they watched it flare in a thin line. “He won’t marry you, you know. He told me himself. A wife would get in the way of his ministry, he said.”

“I’m not looking for a husband. I have no need of a husband. I have a Rabbi.” She grieved a little, speaking these words. She would die unmarried, childless, alone. It was not what she had planned.

“A woman is either a wife or a whore, Miryam. I see you’ve made your choice.” He walked away, toward the trees on the edge of the clearing.

Miryam watched him go, still feeling the grip of his hand on her arm. There was so much ugliness. She squatted in front of the fire, resting her chin on her knees. The mind was unfailingly ugly—the contortions it made in order to conform to the desires, the rationales it erected. Yehudah was jealous. It was a scent, like the wine on his breath. He was jealous of Yeshua’s gifts, of his growing fame. Of her. She could not condemn him—she was just the same. Shame washed over her at the thought of the woman who’d kissed Yeshua’s feet. Ugliness, hatred, were too much in the way.

Yehudah, she knew, loved Yeshua, perhaps more than the others. When he listened to Yeshua speak, his eyes grew ardent with admiration and belief. When Yeshua was gone, it was Yehudah who wanted to dwell on his words, to mince each sentence like a leek and taste the sounds on his own tongue. Yet while he loved Yeshua’s ideas, he despised his humanity. He had no room in his heart for the imperfections that make up a person, for the weaknesses, the pain, for the stumbling, the falls, the dead ends that accompany a great trek. He required Yeshua to be perfect and humble; he demanded he love them as fully as God, but could not abide his need to be loved in return.

The fire popped as a log broke and fell into the ash. Miryam brushed a cinder from her robe. The problem with Yehudah was that since he did not tolerate weakness, he could not love any man on earth. He could only love God. But God had made man, in full knowledge of his shortcomings, and he had pronounced him good. To call man evil was to contradict God’s own judgment, to denounce his creation. To hate a man, any man, was to hate God.

Miryam stood, overcome with a sudden longing for Yeshua. She wanted to thank him, to tell him how she loved him. She lifted her arms to the sky, beheld the brilliant moon and the stars scattered like seeds, and sang softly,