The Book of Longings: A Novel (39 page)

“Yes, but I conceived a story in case I came upon him—I was relieved not to need it.”

“Please, tell us.”

She undraped a pouch from her shoulder and extracted a bronze bracelet carved with the head of a vulture. “I planned to show him my bracelet and say, ‘One of your servants may have left this behind in the healing sanctuary at Isis Medica. I’ve been sent to return it. Would you kindly let me speak with one of them?’”

Her story was shrewd—but it bore flaws Haran was too clever to miss. He would know Diodora was an attendant at Isis Medica. And look at her—she was the image of me.

“And when you spoke with the servant, what did you plan to say?” I asked.

She reached into the pouch once more and removed a small ostracon. “I planned to beg her, servant to servant, to deliver it to Yaltha. There’s a message on it to . . . to my mother.”

She lowered her eyes. The word
mother
hung in the air, golden and unmissable.

“You read and write?” I asked.

“My master taught me.”

She handed the ostracon to Yaltha, who read its six words aloud. “I beg you to come again. D.”

Out in the garden, I could see the last orange clamor of the sun. Haran would return home soon, yet we lit all the lamps and talked, even laughed. Yaltha asked her daughter about her work in the healing sanctuary and Diodora told of bleedings, sacred baths, and the intoxicating plants that induced dreams. “I’m one of only two attendants who write down the petitioners’ dreams when they wake. My master taught me to read and write so I could have this high position.” She amused us for a short while with accounts of the more preposterous dreams she’d recorded. “I take my dream recordings to the priest, who deciphers their meanings and prescribes cures. I know not how he does it.”

“And do these cures work?” I asked in bafflement.

“Oh yes, almost always.”

I glimpsed a movement in the garden and saw Lavi treading through the spiky palm shadows. Catching my eye, he lifted his forefinger to his lips and concealed himself behind the foliage near the open door.

“Do you live within the temple precinct?” Yaltha was asking.

“Since my master died when I was sixteen, I’ve had a bed in the temple domicile with the other attendants. I’m free now and make a small wage.”

We went on asking questions while she basked in the genuineness of our attention, but after a while she begged Yaltha for knowledge about the two years they’d spent together before being separated. My aunt told her stories about her fear of crocodiles, her favorite lullaby, how once she’d dumped a bowl of wheat flour on her head.

“You had a little wooden paddle doll,” Yaltha told her. “A brightly painted one I found in the market. You called her Mara.”

Diodora sat up very tall, her eyes widening. “Was her hair made of flax threads with an onyx bead on each end?”

“Yes, that was Mara.”

“I still have her! She’s all I have from my life before I was bought by my master. He said I arrived clutching her. I didn’t remember her name.” She shook her head. “Mara,” she repeated.

In this way, she took the bits and pieces Yaltha offered and began to piece them into a story of who she was. I’d stayed very quiet, listening—they seemed to inhabit a realm of their own. But after a while, Diodora noticed my reserve and said, “Ana. Tell me of yourself.”

I hesitated a moment before telling her about her family in Sepphoris—Father, Mother, and Judas—but said what I could, leaving out a great deal. I described Jesus and my heart pined so badly that I resorted to tales of Delilah standing in the water trough, just to have the relief of smiling.

Darkness came, and in that softening, Diodora turned to Yaltha. “When you told me who you were, I didn’t know if I should believe it. That you could be my mother . . . it seemed impossible. But I saw myself in you. Deep inside, I knew who you were. After I heard your confession, bile rose in me. I told myself, she left me once, now I will leave her, so I walked away. Then you called me daughter. You called out your love.” She went and knelt beside Yaltha’s chair. “I cannot forget that you left me. That knowledge will always remain in a corner of me, but I wish to let myself be loved.”

There was no time to ponder or rejoice in what she’d said. The door flew open. Haran stepped into the room. Behind him, the obsequious servant.

Yaltha, Diodora, and I stood and edged together, shoulders touching, as if to make a tiny fortress. “Since you didn’t knock, I assume you’ve come on a matter of urgency,” Yaltha said to Haran, sounding remarkably
restrained, but when I looked at her, she gave the impression of little bolts of lightning flashing around her head.

“I was told you received a visitor,” he said. His eyes were fixed on Diodora. He searched her face, curious, but as yet unseeing, and I realized that was all he knew—
a visitor
.

“Who are you?” he asked, coming to stand before her.

I was desperately searching for some scenario to explain her presence—something about Diodora being Pamphile’s sister who’d come regarding Lavi’s marriage. We shall never know if my fabrication might’ve convinced him, or if Yaltha, who was also readying to speak, might’ve distracted him, for just then Diodora pulled the vulture bracelet from her pouch and offered her clumsy story, too frightened to grasp that it made little sense now. “I’m an attendant at Isis Medica. One of your servants left this behind in the healing sanctuary at Isis Medica. I’ve been sent to return it.”

He glanced at the cups of wine and gestured toward Yaltha and me. “And are these the servants who left the bracelet?”

“No, no,” she sputtered. “I was only inquiring if they knew who it belonged to.”

Haran was looking at Yaltha now, a burning, triumphant look. His gaze returned to Diodora. He took a step closer to her. He said, “Chaya, I see you’re back from the dead.”

We stood motionless, as if blinded by an inexplicable burst of light. Even Haran did not move. The room was silent. There was only the smell of the oil lamp, a cold tingling in my arms, heat shoving through the courtyard door. I looked out toward the garden and saw Lavi’s crouched shadow.

It was Yaltha who broke the thrall. “Did you really think I would not seek out my daughter?”

“I thought you smarter and more prudent than to try,” he answered. “Now I shall ask
you
: Did you think I wouldn’t fulfill my promise to go to the Romans and have you arrested?”

Yaltha gave him no answer. She glared at him, defiant.

I, too, had a question, but I didn’t voice it: Would you like it known, Uncle, that you declared your niece dead, then sold her into slavery? The disgrace of it would cost him. He would be thrust into scandal, public shame, and banishment, and I saw that this was his deepest fear. I decided I would remind him of what was at stake, but delicately. I said, “Won’t you have mercy on a mother who only wants to know her daughter? We don’t care how Chaya came to belong to the priest at Isis Medica. That was long ago. We’ll say nothing of it to anyone. We care only that she is reunited with her mother.”

“I’m not so great a fool as to trust three women to hold their tongues and certainly not the three of you.”

I tried again. “We don’t wish to reveal your sins. Indeed, we’ll return to Galilee and you will be rid of us.”

“Would you leave me behind again?” Diodora cried, turning to her mother.

“No,” said Yaltha. “You would come with us.”

“But I don’t wish to go to Galilee.”

Oh Diodora, you are not helping.

Haran smiled. “I’ll grant that you’re clever, Ana, but you won’t persuade me.”

He was, I realized, driven as much by revenge as by his fear of disgrace.

“Besides, I’m afraid you’ll be unable to go anywhere. It has been reliably reported to me that you’ve committed a theft.”

Theft? I tried to make sense of what he’d said. Observing my confusion, he added. “It’s a crime to steal papyrus.”

I lifted my eyes to the servant in the doorway. I could hear Yaltha breathing, a quick raspy sound. Diodora cowered against her.

“Charge me, if you must,” Yaltha said. “But not Ana.”

He ignored her and went on speaking to me. “The punishment for
stealing in Alexandria can be as harsh as for murder. The Romans show little mercy, but I will do my best to have you spared the flogging and mutilation. I will plead for both of you to be exiled to western Nubia. There’s no return from there.”

I could hear nothing but the heartbeat in my head. It grew until the entire room pounded. My grip on the world loosened. I’d not been clever. I’d been reckless and full of hubris, thinking I could outwit my uncle . . . steal and deceive without consequence. I preferred to be flogged and mutilated seven times over rather than sent to this place of no return. I must be free to go back to Jesus.

I looked at my aunt, whose silence puzzled me—why didn’t she rail at him? But my voice, too, had disappeared into the dark of my throat. Fear sloshed in my belly. It seemed impossible that I’d fled Galilee to avoid arrest only to be charged in Egypt.

Haran was speaking to Diodora. “I will allow you to return to Isis Medica. But it’s on the condition that you never speak of this night, nor of your origins, nor of me and this house. And you will not attempt to seek out Yaltha and Ana. Give me your oath and you may go.” He waited.

Diodora’s eyes trailed to Yaltha, who nodded at her. “I give my oath,” she said.

“If you break it, I’ll learn of it and bring charges against you, as well,” he said. He believed her to be a fragile girl, one he could browbeat into obedience. Right then, I didn’t know if he’d appraised her rightly or wrongly. “Leave now,” he said. “My servant will see you out.”

“Go,” Yaltha told her. “I’ll come to you when I can.”

She hugged her mother, then stepped through the doorway without looking back.

Haran strode across the room and yanked the door to the courtyard closed. He slid the horizontal bolt into the post and locked it with a key tied to a cord around his tunic. When he turned to us, his face had mellowed some, not from lack of resolve, it seemed, but from weariness. He
said, “You’ll be confined here tonight. In the morning, I’ll hand you over to the Romans. It’s regrettable it came to this.”

He left, closing the main door behind him. The outside bolt slid into place with a soft thud. The key turned.

I
RAN TO THE
COURTYARD DOOR
and knocked, gently at first, then louder. “Lavi is in the garden,” I told Yaltha. “He’s been hiding there.” I called out through the thick, impenetrable door, “Lavi . . . Lavi?”

No sound returned. I went on beckoning him for several moments, slapping my palm against the wood, absorbing the sharp stings. Finally, I gave up. Maybe Haran had ensnared him, too. Crossing the room, I shook the handle on the main door, as if I could wrest it free of its hinges.

I paced. My mind was whirling. The windows in our sleeping rooms were too high and too narrow to climb through, and calling for help seemed useless. “We have to find a way out,” I said. “I will not go to Nubia.”

“Conserve your strength,” Yaltha said. “You will need it.”

I slid onto the floor beside her with my back against her knees. I looked from one locked door to the other, a sense of futility gathering in me. “Will the Romans really punish us merely on the word of Haran?” I asked.

Her hand came to rest on my shoulder. “It seems Haran means to swear his case to the Roman court instead of the Jewish one, so I’m unsure, but I suppose he’ll set forth witnesses,” she said. “Ruebel’s old friends from the militia will be eager to say I poisoned him. Tell me, who saw you take the papyri?”

“Haran’s obnoxious servant.”

“Him.” She made a grunt of disgust. “He will take pleasure in bearing witness against you.”

“But we will deny their accusations.”

“If we’re allowed to speak, yes. We won’t give up hope, Ana, but neither should we allow our hope to be false. Haran has Roman citizenship, as well as the ear of the Roman prefect of Alexandria. He commands an important business and is one of the highest-ranking members of the Jewish council. I, on the other hand, am a fugitive and you are a foreigner.”

My eyes began to burn.

“There’s also the possibility my brother could bribe the court authorities.”

I lowered my head to my knees. Fugitive. Foreigner.

Tap, tap.

We looked in unison at the courtyard door. Then came the clatter of a key.

The key pegs found the pins in the lock and Pamphile stepped inside, followed by Lavi, who held up an iron key tied with a piece of identifying parchment.

I threw my arms around each of them. “How did you come upon the key?” I asked, keeping my voice low.

“Haran has two for each door,” Pamphile said. “The extra ones are kept in a pouch that hangs on a wall in his study. Lavi was able to read the labels.” She beamed at him.

“You heard Haran’s threats?” I asked him.

“Yes, every word.”

I turned to Yaltha. “Where will we go?”

“I know of only one place where Haran wouldn’t trespass,” she said. “We’ll go to the Therapeutae. Their precinct is sacred among the Jews. We’ll be safe there.”

“They’ll take us in?”

“I spent eight years there. They’ll give us a haven.”

Since the moment Haran had locked us in, the world had pitched side to side like a ship, but I felt it settle now into an immense rightness.

“The community sits on the shore of Lake Mareotis,” Yaltha said. “It will take us nearly four hours to walk the distance. Perhaps longer in the darkness—we’ll have to carry a lamp.”

“I’ll see you there safely,” Lavi said.

Yaltha gazed at him—a frown, a twist to her mouth. “Lavi, you can’t continue to stay in Haran’s house either.”

Pamphile looked like the ground had opened beneath her. “He cannot leave here.”

“He’ll be in danger if he stays,” Yaltha said. “Haran will naturally assume Lavi helped us escape.”

“Then I will leave, too,” she said. “He’s my husband now.”

I touched her arm. “Please, Pamphile, we need you to remain here at least a while longer. I’m still awaiting the letter that will tell me it’s safe to return to Galilee. I can’t bear to think it would come and I wouldn’t know of it. I need you to watch for it and when it arrives, to see that it gets to us. It’s selfish of me to ask this of you, but I beg you. Please.”