The Book of Longings: A Novel (38 page)

Yaltha stood transfixed. Her eyes moved over her daughter as if she were not flesh and bone, but air and apparition, a visage she’d half dreamed. I saw her lip quiver ever so slightly, the commotion of a bee’s wing. Then she threw back her shoulders, as I’d seen her do a hundred times. Seconds passed, ceaseless seconds
.

Give her an answer, Aunt.

“I wish to speak with you,” Yaltha said. “May we find a place to sit?”

Uncertainty wrinkled Diodora’s face. “I’m only an attendant,” she said and took a step backward.

“Do you also serve in the healing sanctuary?” Yaltha asked.

“That’s where I attend most often. Today, I was required here.” She picked up the cloth and wrung it out in the bowl. “Have I attended you there in the past? Do you wish to seek another cure?”

“No, I didn’t come for healing.” Later I would think Yaltha was wrong about that.

“If you have no need of me then . . . I’m tasked with removing the offerings. I must see to it.” She hurried away, disappearing through the door at the back.

“I didn’t think she could be so beautiful,” Yaltha said. “Beautiful and grown and very much like you.”

“She’s also puzzled,” I said. “I’m afraid we made her ill at ease.” I moved close to my aunt. “Are you going to tell her?”

“I’m trying to find a way.”

The door opened and Diodora emerged carrying two large empty baskets. She slackened her pace when she saw we were still there, the two peculiar strangers. Without acknowledging us, she knelt and began placing the Isis figures into a basket.

I lowered myself beside her and picked up one of the crudely fashioned carvings. Up close, I saw it was Isis cradling her newborn son. Diodora cast a sideways glance at me, but said nothing. I helped her fill both baskets. In my soul, I was a Jew, but I closed my fingers around the statuette.
Sophia
, I whispered to myself, calling the figure by the name I loved.

When all the offerings had been gathered, Diodora rose and looked at Yaltha. “If you wish to speak with me, you may do so on the portico of the birth house.”

T
HE BIRTH HOUSE
was a shrine to honor the motherhood of Isis. The small columned building sat near the courtyard, which was still and quiet now, the dancing women gone.

Diodora led us to a cluster of benches on the portico and sat facing us, her hands clasped tightly and her eyes shifting from Yaltha to me. She must have known that something momentous was about to occur—it seemed perched in the air over our heads like a bird about to swoop. A hundred birds.

“My heart is full,” Yaltha told her. “So full it’s difficult for me to speak.”

Diodora tipped her head to the side. “How is it that you know my name?”

Yaltha smiled. “I once knew you by another name. Chaya. It means life.”

“I’m sorry, lady, I do not know you or the name Chaya.”

“It’s a long, difficult story. All I ask is that you allow me to tell it to you.” We sat a moment with the rustling in the air, and then Yaltha said, “I’ve come over a great distance to tell you that I’m your mother.”

Diodora touched her hand to the gully between her breasts, just that small gesture, and I felt an unbearable tenderness come over me. For Diodora and Yaltha and the years stolen from them, but also for myself and Susanna.
My
lost daughter.

“And this is Ana, your cousin,” Yaltha said.

My throat thickened. I smiled at her, then mirrored her gesture, placing my hand to my breasts.

She sat terrifyingly still, her face as unreadable as the alphabet ash we’d created in the oven. I could not imagine myself hearing such a thing as she’d just heard. If she lashed out in mistrust or grief or anger, I wouldn’t have blamed her. I almost preferred such reactions to this strange, inscrutable quiet.

Yaltha continued in measured sentences, sparing Diodora nothing as she relayed the details of Ruebel’s death, the murder accusations against her, and her eight-year exile with the Therapeutae. She said, “The Jewish council decreed if I left the Therapeutae’s precincts for any reason, I would be given a hundred strokes by cane, mutilated, and exiled to Nubia.”

This I’d never heard. Where was Nubia? Mutilated how? I slid closer to her on the bench.

When she’d finished the entire story, Diodora said, “If what you say is true and I am your daughter, where then was I?” Her voiced sounded small, but her face was like an ember.

Yaltha reached for Diodora’s hand, which she quickly drew back.

“Oh, child, you were little more than two years old when I was sent away. Haran swore to keep you well and safe in his household. I wrote letters to him, inquiring of you, but they went unanswered.”

Diodora frowned, rolling her eyes to the top of a column crowned with a woman’s head. After a moment she said, “If you were sent to the Therapeutae when I was two and remained there eight years . . . I would’ve been ten when you left them. Why didn’t you come for me then?” Her fingers moved in her lap as if counting. “Where have you been the last sixteen years?”

As Yaltha struggled for words, I spoke. “She has been in Galilee. She’s been with me. But it’s not as you think. She didn’t regain her freedom when you were ten, but she was banished once again, this time to her brother in Sepphoris. She had hoped to reclaim you and bring you with her, but—”

“Haran told me he’d given you out for adoption and he would not reveal your whereabouts,” Yaltha said. “I left then—I felt I had no choice. I thought you were cared for, that you had a family. I had no knowledge Haran had sold you to the priest until I returned to Egypt over a year ago to search for you.”

Diodora shook her head almost violently. “I was told my father was a man named Choiak from a village somewhere in the south, that he sold me out of destitution.”

Yaltha placed her hand on Diodora’s and once again Diodora yanked it away. “It was Haran who sold you. Ana has seen the document of sale, in which he disguised himself as a poor camel keeper named Choiak. I
didn’t forget you, Diodora. I longed for you every day. I returned to find you, though even now my brother threatens to revive the old charges of murder if I should seek you out. I ask your forgiveness for leaving. I ask your forgiveness for not coming sooner.”

Diodora dropped her head onto her knees and wept, and we could do nothing but let her. Yaltha stood and hovered over her. I didn’t know whether Diodora was grieved or comforted. I didn’t know whether she was lost or found.

When she ceased weeping, Yaltha asked her, “Was he kind to you, your master?”

“He was kind. I do not know if he loved me, but he never raised his hand or his voice to me. When he died, I grieved for him.”

Yaltha closed her eyes and blew out a little breath.

I had no intention of saying anything, yet I thought of my parents and Susanna, whom I’d lost, and of Jesus, my family in Nazareth, Judas, and Tabitha, who were all so far away, and I felt no assurance that any of them would be restored to me. I said, “Let us be more than cousins. Let us be sisters. The three of us will be a family.”

Light was falling in bright bands across the colonnade, and she squinted up at me and said nothing. I felt I’d said a foolish thing, that I’d trespassed somehow. At that moment, someone called her name from a distance, singing it. “Diodooora . . . Diodooora.”

She leapt up. “I’ve neglected my duties.” She wiped her face with the sleeve of her tunic, then pulled on her tight, stoic mask.

“I don’t know when I can come again,” Yaltha said. “Haran returns from his travels tomorrow and as I said, he forbids us to leave his house. We will find a way somehow.”

“I do not think you should return,” she said. She walked away, leaving us there on the portico of the birth house.

Yaltha called out to her, “Daughter, I love you.”

The following day in the scriptorium in Haran’s house, I listened to Lavi read from the
Iliad
in starts and stops, finding it difficult to stay focused. My mind wandered to Diodora and to the things spoken in the birth house. I kept seeing her walk away from us.

“What will we do?” I’d asked Yaltha during the long walk from Isis Medica back to Haran’s.

“We’ll wait,” she’d replied.

With effort I turned my attention back to Lavi as he faltered over a word. When I attempted to prompt him, he held up his hand. “It will come to me.” It took an entire minute. “Ship!” he cried, beaming.

He was in a happy, though somewhat nervous mood. Earlier that morning a courier had arrived with news that he’d been granted the position at the library. His apprenticeship would begin on the first day of the following week.

“I’ve made a vow to finish reading Achilles’s adventures before my employment,” he said, lowering the codex. “My Greek is not yet perfected.”

“Don’t be concerned, Lavi. You read Greek quite well. But yes, finish the poem—you must find out who prevails, Achilles or Hector.”

He seemed to bask in my praise, sitting up taller. “Tomorrow I will go to Pamphile’s father to ask for a settlement of marriage.”

“Oh, Lavi, I’m glad for you.” His nervousness, I realized, was not merely about his reading skill. “When do you hope to wed?”

“There’s no betrothal period here as there is in Galilee. Once her father and I draw up the settlement and sign it before witnesses, Pamphile and I are considered married. She gave me a portion of her wages and I purchased a shabti box as a gift for him. I will not ask for a bride price. I hope these things will be enough to conclude the contract tomorrow.”

I walked to Thaddeus’s desk and gathered up a stack of papyrus sheets, the costliest and finest in Egypt. “You may offer him these as well. It seems an appropriate gift from a librarian of the great library.”

He hesitated. “Are you sure? Will they be missed?”

“Haran has more papyrus than exists in all of Sepphoris and Jerusalem combined. He won’t miss these few sheets.”

As I thrust them into his arms, there was a shuffling at the door. The servant who did Haran’s bidding was standing there.

“Our master has just returned,” he said, his eyes traveling to the papyri.

“Does he have need of me?” I asked, more haughtily than I should have.

“He asked me to inform the household of his return, that is all.”

Once again we were in captivity.

W
AITING WAS AN INSUFF
ERABLE ENDEAVOR
.
One sat, one dithered, one stirred a pot of questions. I fretted over whether we should accept Diodora’s rejection or find a way to return to Isis Medica. I pressed Yaltha to set a course, but she persisted in her waiting, saying if the pot was tended long enough, the answer would bubble to the surface. A week passed, however, and we seemed no closer to resolving the matter.

Then one day with the sun dangling low above the rooftops, Pamphile broke in upon Yaltha and me in the sitting room, breathless from hurrying. “A visitor has arrived asking for you,” she said. I imagined it was the long-awaited courier bearing a letter from Judas—
Come home, Ana. Jesus bids you to come home
—and my heart began to thump.

“She waits for you both in the atrium,” Pamphile added.

I knew then who it was. Yaltha nodded at me. She knew, as well.

“Where’s Haran?” Yaltha asked.

“He has been away all afternoon,” Pamphile answered. “He hasn’t yet returned.”

“Bring the visitor to us here and say nothing of her presence to anyone but Lavi.”

“My husband hasn’t returned either.” She let the word
husband
slide slowly from her tongue. The marriage settlement had been signed as Lavi had hoped.

“Be certain to alert him when he arrives. Ask him to wait in the garden out of sight. When our visitor leaves, we’ll need him to slip her out through the servant quarters.”

“Who is she?” Pamphile asked, alarm appearing on her face.

“There’s no time to explain,” Yaltha said and waved her hand impatiently. “Tell Lavi it’s Chaya. He’ll know. Now, hurry.”

Yaltha opened the door onto the garden, allowing hot air to invade the room. I watched her preparing herself, smoothing her tunic, taking deep, concentrated breaths. I poured three cups of wine.

Diodora hesitated at the threshold, peering inside before she entered. She wore a rough-weave brown mantle about her white tunic and had pinned back her hair with two silver ornaments. Her eyes were painted with malachite.

“I didn’t know if I’d see you again,” Yaltha said.

When Diodora stepped inside, I quickly closed the door, which had an iron lock on the inside and on the outside, but we had no key to secure it. I reminded myself that Haran had not come to our rooms in all the time we’d been here. Why would he do so now?

Standing in the middle of the room, Diodora looked thin and childlike. Did she know how dangerous this was? Yet there was a beautiful irony in her being here; the girl he’d gone to such lengths to be rid of was in his house, beneath his roof, under his nose. It was a revenge so hidden and precise, I wanted to laugh. I offered her the cup of wine, but she refused it. I took mine and drank it in four swallows.

As Yaltha seated herself, I gave Diodora the bench and settled on the floor, where I could look into the garden to watch for Lavi.

“The news you brought me was a great shock,” she said. “I have thought of nothing else.”

“Neither have I,” said Yaltha. “I’m sorry I thrust so much on you at once. I’m not known for subtlety. My delicate side wore away many years ago.”

Diodora smiled. It was the first time we’d seen her do so and it was like a little dawn had broken over the room. “I was glad at first that you stayed away from Isis Medica as I asked, but then . . .”

When she said nothing further, Yaltha responded, “I wanted to go back if only to see you from afar, but I felt I should honor your wishes. I’m happy you’ve come.”

“I remembered what you said about your brother confining you here. Even if you decided to ignore my wishes, I didn’t know if it would be possible for you to leave. So, I’ve come to you.”

“Weren’t you concerned you might encounter Haran?” I asked.