Two from Galilee (8 page)
Authors: Marjorie Holmes
"How do you know?" Hannah cried again.
"She told me."
Hannah jerked upright. "Told
you?
I'm her mother. Why hasn't she spoken of this to me?" She began to shake with dry wild sobbing. "Am I then so poor a mother that my own daughter confides such matters to her father's ears instead of mine?"
"Perhaps she felt it would hurt you too much, knowing the high ambitions you have for her."
"And I'm right! She could have any man in Nazareth."
"Examine your conscience, Hannah. Is it truly your daughter's happiness that drives you, or only your pride?"
Hannah didn't answer. She had flung herself back upon the pillow and given herself over to the sobbing that ripped through the curtains, beating upon Mary who had crept from her own bed, past her sleeping sisters, and now stood at the little window staring up at the clouds that quilted the sky.
"Hush, you'll wake the children," Joachim ordered. His voice was stern, to keep at bay the assault upon his senses that her tears always made. "Hush now, be still." He patted the heaving shoulders, bony and sharp under the thin shift. "One further thing you must consider. Have you thought how it would be should we give Mary to someone like Cleophas? Surely we are far more humble in the sight of Reb Levi than the family of Jacob is to us. Do you think that once Mary and Cleophas were wed we'd be welcome in their fine house? Or the homes of their kinsmen?"
"Mary would never consider herself too good for us."
"As the wife of Cleophas she would belong to his family, not ours. And she would obey him. I've thought about this a long time, Hannah, and even if it weren't for Joseph I wouldn't give our daughter to anyone as spoiled as Cleophas. We would lose her. And we would lose her just as much if we gave her to Abner."
He waited for some reply, but she was too far gone in her grief. His reasons could not penetrate this damp devastating curtain she had thrown up between them, he thought angrily. Nonetheless, he drove stubbornly on. "If Abner succeeds as predicted, he would go to Jerusalem and Mary with him. Except for the annual pilgrimages we would never see her."
Ah, but it was no use. No use trying to talk to her when she became like this. He rose from her side and crept downstairs and outside to the ladder to mount to the roof, where his big feet paced up and down, up and down.
Mary could hear their dull thudding overhead, jarring the ceiling, quivering through her own flesh. Their tremors joined force with the sound of her mother's weeping. And it was as if she were being rent asunder between them. "Jahveh forgive me for bringing such strife into this house," she whispered. She reached out and pulled back the dry tangle of vines, the better to see the moon. It had risen late and was running, running, face half-averted, yet smiling at some secret within its own white burning heart. And the clouds pursued it, their effulgent veils trailing seductively across the mystery of its shining, or falling away like garments cast aside. And winking in and about and all around the lovely race were the stars.
Steady, singing night sounds came up to her; dew had stirred up the fragrance of the earth, the trees, the almond blossoms. She was dazed and shaken. It seemed to her incredible that there should be sorrow and dissension on such a night. It was too beautiful. God's world was simply too beautiful to countenance ugliness and agony, whether it be on the epic scale of Israel's prostration, or the sheer stabbing torments of the human heart.
And it seemed strangest of all that love could be the cause. Hatred, yes—it was hatred that accounted for the cruelties of Rome. But love! . . . Her parents loved her, both of them, just as she loved them. And she loved Joseph and he loved her. And yet in the strange contortions of human affairs, somehow this mixture of love had given birth to the anguish that now assailed them all.
Without realizing it, she still clutched the small towel that Joseph had dropped. Now she used it to wipe her wet eyes, and pressed it an instant against her mouth. Then she lifted it up in a little gesture of sacrifice. "Jahveh forgive me," she whispered again. "If it be thy will that I think no more of Joseph, let me know, and let me be resigned."
There was no answer. The stars continued to dance and blaze in a fashion at once friendly and remote. There was naught but the dry rattle of the vines in the breeze, the soughing and gentle threshing of the palms and the olive trees beyond. Sometimes, when she was very young, she had felt such an intensity of communion with the unknown, inconceivable presence, that it had seemed to her that she had actually heard it speak. "Mary . . . Mary! . . ." Even at times as if a majestic yet infinitely tender hand had touched her hair, her cheek. Enthralled, eager, innocent, she had rushed to confide these experiences to Hannah, who only looked dismayed.
"Don't be deceived," her mother had warned. "You have an unusually vivid imagination. See that you learn to discern between that which is only pretense or a dream."
Yes, to distinguish the true from the false. To know the actuality from the dream. Yet when the first breath one drew in the morning belonged to God, when no morsel was eaten without first asking his blessing, when it was he who ruled not only the universe but the smallest fragment of your life—how was it possible that he did not draw literally close to you at times? Flow in and through and around you, making you even more fully one with him? And that he did not move you so deeply in so doing that you felt his almighty hand upon you, heard the impossible voice speak?
She could not express it. There were no words in which to make this mystery plain. But dumbly, blindly, beautifully, the unreasonable conviction remained. Jahveh did love and communicate with his children. Perhaps only the very young children who were sufficiently pure and simple to be receptive to his touch. Those who were not yet corrupted by the emotions that beset us as we grow older—jealousy and worry and selfishness. And the desires that lashed her even now as she stood by the sill, striving for peace.
Joseph.
Joseph.
. . . But beyond the whitewashed walls her mother wept, and overhead her father paced. . . . She longed to be as a little child again, untouched by the pains of her womanhood. She longed with a sharp nostalgia for the blessed peace of the presence of God. "Thy will be done," she whispered one final time. "In this matter of Joseph, let me only obey."
All was stillness now. She could no longer hear her father's footfalls or her mother's sobs. A lizard scurried up the walls. Somewhere in the cupboard a mouse gnawed. Yet the sounds only accented the quiet of the sleeping house. She could almost hear her own blood pounding as she waited, searching the stars. Her feet on the bare floor were chilled; she was shaking. She knew that she should creep back into bed; yet it seemed that if she but remained here long enough the voice would speak. Only this time God would address her not as a child but as a woman grown.
"Marriages are truly made in heaven. Long before you were conceived, or Joseph son of Jacob, you two were one. This love that you feel for each other is not of your doing but mine. No one shall put you asunder, neither father nor mother nor neighbor nor friend. Go now to your bed and rest."
No . . . the words, however clear, were born of her own desperate longing.
And yet as she turned away a great new peace not unmixed with joy enveloped her. Her trembling ceased. Drawing the body of her little sister up against her to warm herself, Mary fell asleep.
T
IMNA'S foot paused on the treadle. She cocked her white head the better to hear her son's song. One of the many that had rung through the house since the night he had come loping down the hill, his face almost as bright as the torch that had led him home. She and his father, uneasily waiting, had known both relief and dismay at his expression, so plainly did it signal the course that they would now be forced to take.
"What about the loom?" Jacob had tried to forestall what he secretly dreaded. "Did you fix it?"
"The loom?" Joseph laughed, clapping one hand to his brow. "Nobody mentioned it and I forgot to ask."
"And how is Hannah?" Timna had probed, with apprehension.
"She's well and she asked for you. In fact, she was the liveliest of the lot. You were wrong about her, Mother. All she wants is her daughter's happiness."
"Ah, now now now," Jacob protested. He jutted his plump weak lip. "Surely matters aren't suddenly so changed at Joachim's that they are forced to cast out nets?"
Timna recoiled at his tactlessness, but Joseph was too elated to take offense. "Forced? They wouldn't dare, the nets would break." He was smiling in triumph. "They're just good humble people even as we are, who respect their daughter's wishes. Oh, Father, don't make me wait," he said earnestly after a minute. "I know, that other Jacob, the one you're named for, had to wait fourteen years for his Rachel. But I—I'm afraid I'm not that strong. Forget your fears and your pride and speak to Joachim for me before it's too late."
So it seemed there was no help for it. Though his father had fussed and hedged and put it off for days, in the end he washed himself and donned fresh clothing and submitted to Timna's trimming of his wild cascade of beard. Watching that squat figure go trudging off, Timna's breast ached. Compared to many men he had so little to offer, this dear sorry jocund husband. She was afraid that he would be half-brash, half-apologetic and try to cover his lacks with a joke. And that this would not set well with Mary's parents. Also, despite their own lack of wealth, they managed somehow to convey an air of superiority.
Thanks to Joseph's own savings, Jacob would be able to provide the marriage portion of fifty dinars as the Law required, and little more. For the sake of appearances they would draw out the bargaining; but if Jacob's suit was agreeable then the arrangements should not take long. Yet Timna shared her husband's concern. Baffled and privately hurt by Hannah's long aloofness, now it seemed to her incomprehensible that Hannah should suddenly have so changed.
And yet it seemed equally improbable that Joseph could make such a grave mistake. It had been only this past year that he himself had seemed to be resigned, however grimly, to losing Mary. An abdication, in fact, of all women that was grievous in one still so young and vital. But something had bestirred him now. And while Timna rejoiced, she had also been building defenses against the hour when the cruel blow might fall once more.
Yet when Jacob came bouncing back down the hill he had brought the hoped for news: Joseph was acceptable! The terms would be worked out later. Let the wine be poured, let the family celebrate. And Joseph's songs gladdened the air above the brisk rapping of the hammer and the rhythmic music of the plane, the saws. He carried the children about on his shoulders, his sea-gray eyes shone.
"After the betrothal I'll start building our house. That other cave just beyond the one you use for storage would be a perfect spot. An extra room in case of storm—I could build our house above it. We'd still be near the shop but we'd be alone. . . ."
Alone.
In a house that would be a credit to his darling. He would hew the stones out of the hillside himself and fashion its furnishings. Already he had begun wresting a few stubborn stumps from the fields and hauling them home to be sawed into boards. He was dazed by the wonder and awe of what had befallen: She was to be his, after all. To come unto him as his wife to protect and provide for—and to love.
How could he wait? How could he bear it when he had already waited so long? Yet each step must be taken decorously and in order. The announcement in the synagogue this Sabbath, followed by the receiving of well-wishers that afternoon. The betrothal in the middle of the month on the fourth day of the week. The betrothal, which meant that they were man and wife before the world, linked by law if not yet in the flesh. According to the customs of Galilee, that final union must await the formal wedding, which could be all of a year later, although Joseph was already determined that it must not be that long.
His senses surged blindly ahead toward that blessed hour when he could with honor carry her into his house. How could he endure the interminable months that must lie between the betrothal and the wedding? Yet there was so much to be done. Therein would lie his salvation: the house to be gouged out of the earth and cut into building blocks, the wood to be lovingly carved and joined into the things they would use together-benches, cupboards, a cradle. . . . His hands trembled. He whistled and sang to express and yet to still the mingled glory and fear of his own good fortune. It seemed, at times, almost too much. And yet paradoxically there drove through him the old intense conviction: God had never meant otherwise. God moved in mysterious ways.
Mary awoke that Sabbath morning with a sense of something tremendous impending. What? She could not, for a moment, remember. Then the sweet knowledge smote her: this day Joseph would stand beside her, publicly revealed as her chosen husband.
Not that the village did not suspect. There had been rumors almost from the hour when Joachim had sought the rabbi at such an unlikely time for the ceremonial killing of the duck. Her cousins and others had accosted her with it the following morning. And throughout the negotiations speculation whetted the appetite of the little town. Joseph and Mary! Evidently there was to be a match. But why? How was it that Joseph had suddenly emerged as a suitor, cutting out his astounded rivals? And what of Hannah? the women asked, particularly Mary's aunts. Bursting with curiosity, they had hastened to see her, only to be met with the news that Hannah had taken to her chamber with so severe a headache that she couldn't see anyone.