Testament (28 page)

I made every effort to treat the child as I did Yaqob or any of the others, when they arrived. But in some ways this made me less of a mother to all of them, for as I had learned not to show any joy in Yeshua, lest my husband perceive it or the Lord, so did I show little joy in the others, in the end no longer certain if I merely suppressed it, or had none. Nor did I profit in any way from this, since the child still held himself apart, and I would have done better simply to love each one according to its need. Yet the truth was that I always felt jealous for Yeshua in some way, and felt more allied to him than to the rest except the two girls, who at least seemed to take some part of me, while the boys were so clearly their father’s sons. Yeshua, it could be said, did take from me some of his features, and there was that side of him that was subtle and frail and almost feminine. But even in this he stood apart, for there was much in him that was entirely distinct, and seemed to have no provenance. Unlike me, for instance, he was fair-skinned and fair-haired, which had no mirror even in the brute who had fathered him, who was swarthy. For this I was always grateful, since I could not have borne to look into his face and see the reflection there of his sire.

Yaqob, from a young age, seeing this difference in his brother, seemed always to seek the way to make it small. It broke my heart to watch him, how he deferred to Yeshua as if to say, You see how I honour you, how I give you your proper place, which made me love him. But Yeshua was often cold with him and put him off, and soon enough they went their own ways. From the age of five, Yaqob began to accompany his father to work to learn his trade, which Yeshua had not, and so Yaqob understood that separate paths were laid out for them, and seemed to give in at last to the difference between them. I found a teacher for Yeshua then, though he was still young, to make it appear that as the eldest that was his lot.

Until that time I had still had a hold on him, for he was seldom far from the house. This was not to say that he ever came to me as children did to their mothers or even that he obeyed me, for the truth was I seldom had heart enough to reprimand him for anything or to ask any chore of him. Rather it was as if we shared some common darkness, like people in the corner of a room while others went about their business. I felt his presence like a weight on me—he would come, stand near, and immediately the air would seem laden with the heaviness of him though he was only a child. It was the most peculiar sensation, at once oppressive and somehow comforting, as if some mantle had been laid over me.

When he began his studies, however, a distance opened up between us. His teacher, a young man of the quarter named Tryphon who was anxious for students and so had not balked at Yeshua’s age, came to me not a month after Yeshua had begun his lessons and said, Your son has learned in a month what others do not in a year. I did not know what to make
of this and wondered if it was a scheme to gain a higher fee. But then he brought the boy before me and made him read to me from the Torah, which he did, though with reluctance.

Perhaps your son will be a famous scholar, Tryphon said to me.

But still I did not understand.

You see we are poor and of no consequence, I said.

But Tryphon would not be put off, saying that one of the greatest scholars of the city had been the son of a fishmonger, and so had shown that poverty was no obstacle.

I was left very troubled by Tryphon’s visit and did not know what course of action to take, for he had offered to tutor Yeshua privately at no extra fee in the hope that one day he would be remembered as the teacher of a great scholar. But I was frightened by the claims he had made. If false, they would only raise illusory hopes in the boy, and perhaps bring him to arrogance, and if true, they could not help but lead him into public scrutiny, and so to harm. For what good would greatness do to a bastard, who would then only be ridiculed and have his shame exposed to all, while the better course, as it seemed to me then, was to remain in every way unnoticed and to make no claim for oneself.

Thus, not long after Tryphon’s visit to me, I withdrew the boy from him entirely and placed him with one of the older teachers of the quarter, Zekaryah, who, deeming him too young to learn with his other charges, agreed however to allow him to run chores for him, and so learn by proximity. Tryphon was put out beyond measure at having the boy taken from him, and for many days came by my house and pleaded with me to reverse my decision. I might have done well in the end to give in to him, for Yeshua had grown fond of him,
and as it seemed to me afterwards, it was from this moment that he began to suppose I too was against him, and wished to thwart him. But at the time I believed I acted for his greater good. Some months later when I heard that Tryphon, having grown destitute, had left the city for Judea, I felt a relief as if an accuser had gone, though also that I had chosen a turning for Yeshua that now there was no going back from.

Zekaryah, because he did not teach the boy, did not notice anything remarkable in him, and indeed, as I had report, there were few who emerged from Zekaryah’s lessons with any semblance of learning. Then once Yeshua returned home from him with his legs covered in welts. When I pressed him, he confessed that Zekaryah had beaten him because he had dared to lay his hands on the Torah. Thus I understood that the reading he had learned under Tryphon had no outlet, and felt ashamed that I had taken him from him. I would even have procured for him then a copy of the holy scriptures, had I thought it possible for a woman to do such a thing. But instead I went out into the city to a market near the Museum where they sold every manner of manuscript, and there I purchased some crumbling scrolls for Yeshua of I knew not what, making him conceal them in an empty water jar in our courtyard so that no one should wonder at them. It was only later that it occurred to me they would be in Latin or Greek, and hence foreign to him. But he seemed to make his way through them, and so must have learned the rudiments of those scripts in his brief time with Tryphon.

Then, when he had been with Zekaryah for a year, he came to me and said, with contempt, it seemed to me, You waste your money in sending me to him. But because of his tone I felt hardened towards him.

You say so because you are wilful and don’t know how to be a Jew, I said.

But he answered me, It’s you who say I’m a Jew, and I struck him then, in anger, I imagined, though in fact because of my fear that he had somehow seen through to the truth.

The following day he did not go to his lesson. I did not give much thought to the matter, considering it merely a moment of childish pride. But after three days he still had not gone, nor had he exchanged any word with me, but only sat in our courtyard playing listlessly with some of his brothers or scrawling letters in the earth with a stick. Even this I would have borne except that it seemed he had ceased to take his meals—I did not notice at first, because he had always moved like a shadow among us, but then I saw how he held himself back at our supper. He was not yet eight then, and I believed that like any child he must weaken and seek my sympathy. But day after day he stayed in the courtyard, until the other children began to avoid him, not knowing what to make of him there, and day after day he seemed to grow more rigid in his fast. He would sit with us at our supper, so that Yehoceph should not remark on him, but his hand would not go to the bowl.

I grew frightened then, wondering at his wilfulness, for there seemed something monstrous in it. Also I saw how powerless I was in the face of it—it appeared he had understood by then that Yehoceph had no say in the raising of him, and so that it was only a woman against him in the end.

When a week had gone by and still he had not given up his fast, I went to him and said, You shall not return to Zekaryah.

Then what teacher will I have, he said at once.

I had given no thought to the matter and was surprised, after the week we had endured, that it would be the thing uppermost in his mind.

If you wish another teacher, we’ll search for one.

There’s one that I know, he said. A Greek.

Surely he said this to spite me, so that I might have it on my lips to say, But you are a Jew, and choke on the words.

How can you know these things when you’re a child, I said.

From Tryphon.

And I had the sense he had somehow managed the entire contest between us so that it should lead exactly to this moment, that he should put Tryphon’s name, and my guilt, before me, and so have his way.

The following day I went to discharge him from Zekaryah, who appeared happy to be rid of him.

He’s full of pride and undisciplined, he said to me. You would best apprentice him to a trade or no good will come of him.

I could have struck him at this, the fool, so much did my anger rise.

I will be seeking another teacher for him, I said, at which he was silenced.

So it was that my own defiance came to the aid of Yeshua’s cause, since I could not bear that he should end up again with some ignorant Jew who whipped him at the sign of any intelligence.

You shall have your teacher, I said to him, which however he seemed simply to accept as his due.

The man went by the name Artimidorus. It was Yeshua who led me to him, taking me to a quarter inside the Neapolis that I had not seen before, ramshackle and poor, the streets a maze of narrow lanes so that I did not know how Yeshua could remember his way among them. Even still when we came to the house I was certain he was mistaken, for I could not believe that a teacher and a Greek could live in such poverty and filth, or that Yeshua, knowing this, would have brought me to him. The house was merely a mess of tiny rooms, each with its own family, it seemed, and in the courtyard the stink of an open latrine and of animals who wandered freely amidst the ragged infants there. It was to the smallest and, it appeared, the most squalid room that Yeshua led me, with the merest opening to let in air and light.

I was ready to turn then and retreat from the place, but Yeshua held his ground.

It is Artimidorus, he said, pulling aside a bit of tattered curtain that covered the door.

Then the man was there before us, stooping out through the doorway and blinking at the light. I had never seen the like of him, wretched and lank and black as charred wood, an Ethiopian, with just a rag for a cloak that he had draped haphazardly around himself to cover his nakedness. Yet he held himself with a dignity.

My young Yeshua, he said, in Aramaic, which disarmed me.

Perhaps we have mistaken our way, I said. We are searching for Artimidorus the teacher.

So you have found him.

He did nothing then in the way of welcoming us, which somehow made it seem that I was the one who was
mistaken in my perception of him. In my confusion I did not turn and leave him as I might have, but said, I wish a teacher for my son.

I think it’s your son who wishes the teacher, he said.

He turned then to wash himself as if he had finished with me, though nothing had been settled.

You may leave him with me now if you wish, he said finally.

I was at a loss. I had imagined Yeshua would lead me to some palace and the teacher demand a king’s ransom, and I should be forced on that account to deny him. But this man defied every expectation.

You have not told me your fee, I said.

What was the sum you paid his last teacher.

I named it, a denarius each month.

Then I shall have the same, Artimidorus said.

So it appeared I had contracted with him, against my better judgement. Yet I saw from Yeshua’s look that he was determined to stay with him.

But how shall I pay you.

How was it with his former teacher.

I was made to pay a month in advance, I said.

Then so it shall be with me.

Yet he did not come to me then to take his fee but kept on with his private affairs, rummaging through a sack he had taken from his house to pull a scrap of hardened bread from it, a crust of which he broke off for Yeshua and the rest kept for himself. In the end, I was the one who had practically to force the payment on him. But when he had taken my coins he did not put them away for safekeeping but did the strangest thing, crossing the courtyard and handing them over to one
of the children there. The child, an infant, not understanding their value, immediately scattered them on the ground.

In an instant the child’s mother had scrambled from her house to collect them, glancing fearfully at Artimidorus, who however paid her no mind.

In the future, Artimidorus said, you may give the fee directly to your son, so that he might purchase some texts with it.

I did not know what possessed me to abandon Yeshua to this man, who might well have been mad and could have intended I knew not what. But I had understood at least this in him, that he cared nothing for the thoughts of this world, and it was that that drew me to him, and made me imagine Yeshua safe with him. At any rate, since he showed no interest in his fee, I could not have kept Yeshua from him even had I wished to, for I was certain he would have left me rather than be barred again from following his own inclinations.

Even so, it fell out that he was as good as lost to me once he’d been taken on by Artimidorus, since he was often many days away from his bed now, accompanying Artimidorus on his wanderings. For as I soon learned, Artimidorus had no home, so that it was a miracle we’d found him that day as we had, but rather wandered from place to place, sleeping in whatever hovel was offered to him. For this reason he was in fact quite well known, being seen in every quarter, though he was seldom among the other scholars and teachers at the Museum, whom he mocked. There were many who indeed took him for a madman, because he said all manner of things and hurled insults even at the highest officials. But there were also others, I was told, who considered him a brilliant teacher.

From Yeshua himself, however, I learned almost nothing of Artimidorus. If I should ask, What philosophy does he teach, or, Does he turn you from our God, he answered always in the briefest way, and the least instructive. Of his philosophy, he said only that he taught contempt for worldly glory, and of the Jewish god, he said that they did not speak of him, either for good or ill.