Testament (33 page)

I could not have said how he spent the following years, or where he reached to, or what ideas formed in his head. In the first while I heard rumours of him, that he had gone up to Sidon or Damascus or even to Rome, though it was as likely that he had simply returned to his fisherman’s work at Sennabris. But then the time went by and I had no further news of him. So I thought he had passed away from the world, or found anonymity, or gone to make his fortune where he would not be burdened by his past. For my part, I had looked to settling my children, had married my daughters to men of good standing and found wives for my two elder sons, and it seemed that all had ended for the best, that I had made a place for my family and safeguarded our name. Though a widow, I was fortunate enough not to be among the poor, since the olive grove I had purchased still produced and my sons had work, one at home with me and two at Sepphoris and one at the new capital Tiberias, which after all had proceeded.

It was some years after Yeshua’s departure that we heard of the rise of the prophet Yohanan, who went among the Jews preaching justice for the common people and condemning every sort of hypocrisy. Once, returning from the Passover sacrifice at the temple, we came upon his camp along the Jordan, where his followers came to be purified and receive his blessing. At the time he had grown so favoured with people that a settlement had grown up around him the size of a town, the tents stretching away in every direction.
Because many of those who came, which included women as much as men, were given to ecstasies and possessions, there was a great moaning and ululation that rose up from the place, and surely those who stumbled upon it knowing nothing of Yohanan must have thought they had reached the very city of the damned.

Yaqob, when we reached the place, said, Will we be purified with the rest, for a number of those in our company had stopped by the river to be cleansed. But I said we had made our sacrifice at the temple, and so had our purity.

We might have gone on then, except that my son Ioses came to me quietly and said that Yeshua was among the acolytes who prayed with Yohanan by the river. I could hardly believe this was so. Nonetheless I followed him through the crowd to where Yohanan’s acolytes prayed in a mass at the riverbank. They were on their knees there in the shoals, a dozen or more, their hair hanging in coils and their skin darkened by the sun so that it was difficult to tell one from the next. Even from a distance, however, I made him out amidst the others, wearing like them the leather belt that marked Yohanan’s followers, though so changed in appearance from when he had been with us, gaunt and black-skinned and long-haired like the rest, that it amazed me Ioses had recognized him.

I had both Yaqob’s wife and the wife of my son Yihuda with me then, and also many of the townspeople of Notzerah with whom we had travelled and who had known Yeshua when he preached in the streets. So in that moment it seemed a shame to me to go to him, and let it be known to all that he was there, and then be met, as I thought, only with his rejection.

I said to Ioses, You are mistaken, and he did not gainsay me, nor did he speak to his brothers. And I comforted myself with the thought that I had acted rightly, since it would only have brought upheaval to us to have Yeshua in our lives again, when we had found peace and respectability.

While we stood there, a wealthy Judean arrived in his carriage and made a great show of passing through the crowd to reach Yohanan, people clearing a path for him because they could see he was a man of stature. When his slaves had set him down he emerged from his carriage in all his finery and said he had come to be cleansed. But Yohanan at once chastised him, and said that the servants who carried him were greater than he was.

You must come to God not in your carriage but on your knees, he said.

And taking a brand from a cooking fire nearby, he set it to the carriage’s curtains, which immediately went up in flames. It took only a moment before the entire carriage was burning in front of the man’s eyes, with no chance of saving it.

Those of us who stood watching were astonished to see this, and more astonished when the carriage’s owner, whether in true repentance or merely to save appearances, fell down on his knees before Yohanan. Yohanan, however, did not pay any further attention to him but simply returned to those who had preceded him and who still stood waiting to be cleansed. His actions impressed themselves deeply on the crowd, not least because of the pleasure we felt at seeing the man’s arrogance reduced. In the meanwhile the carriage continued to burn and the rich man to supplicate but Yohanan stayed oblivious, and even his acolytes, and Yeshua
among them, did not pause so much as a breath in their prayers, as if they were well used to Yohanan’s actions.

We left shortly afterwards. I was careful to keep my family from the shore lest another of them recognize their brother. But no one further picked him out. On the road there was a good deal of talk of what Yohanan had done, though as much, it seemed, from titillation as from understanding, for many had heard of his madness and were pleased now to say they had witnessed it with their own eyes. But for my part, I began to see in Yohanan’s actions my own reproof. For while he had shown to us how meaningless were the pomp and opinions of this world, and the airs we made for ourselves, I had denied my own son for fear of opinion.

For many weeks afterwards I could not suppress the memory of what I had done, so that it seemed the shame of having shunned Yeshua was greater by far than any that might have come from having gone to him. And the restlessness I had felt as a young woman in Alexandria began to return to me, for I saw how my mind had been open then but had grown complacent, and how I thought only of my position now, just as Yeshua had once accused me, when before I had cared more for truth. Indeed it seemed that since Yeshua had gone from me I had put from my mind all thoughts except those of the marriage of my daughters and sons, and that the doorway he had opened for me had been closed. I thought of Artimidorus, how he had given over the coins I had paid him so that they might be flung to the earth—I remembered how my blood had quickened in that instant and I had felt alive, for it was as if he had put a knife through the very fabric of things. So it had been seeing Yohanan give fire to the rich man’s carriage. It seemed fitting to me now that Yeshua
had taken up with him, for he and Artimidorus were of a piece, set on their minds’ trajectories, caring nothing for our petty hierarchies and rules.

I was established in the world and had reached the point where I might simply have rested and found comfort. Yet even now the trouble that had marked my life would not leave me, for my conscience would not be still until I had made peace with my son. Sometimes in these days, though I could hardly call up his face any longer, I thought of the man who had fathered him, and what had become of him, and what he might make of the child he had forced on me. Likely some war had carried him off or old age, though I could not say I regretted if God had cleared him from the earth. And yet I thought I would not have traded my son away for any price, though I hated how he had come to me, nor, after all, could I have done without the trouble he had given me, for that had been my life.

Only some months after we had passed Yohanan on the Jordan we had word he had been arrested by Herod for denouncing his marriage to his brother’s wife. Of Yohanan’s acolytes, it was said that some had been killed for resisting Herod’s men and the rest had dispersed, fleeing into the desert. I was desperate then to hear word of Yeshua, but short of taking to the road and scouring the Judean wilderness, I did not know what path lay open to me. For weeks then I could not sleep for the thought of how I had passed him by, and for wondering if I might not have recalled him to us then, and so saved his life. But just when I thought I could not go on for the uncertainty, one of my sons, Shimon, who worked at the capital, brought me hope, saying he had passed someone resembling his brother preaching outside the Tiberias gates.

Shimon lived at Ammathus then, to be near his work, and I went to stay at his home to see if I might catch sight of the man and know if he was my son. But for many days we had no further news of him, nor indeed did he appear again at the gates of Tiberias. Then one day at his work, Shimon heard talk of a teacher by the name of Yeshua who had recently set himself up in Kefar Nahum, and who preached without charge in the assembly house there to all who were ready to hear him.

I said to Shimon, I will go ahead to see if he is the one. For the truth was I did not have the courage to go to him plainly and so wished to hide myself in the crowd to see what had become of him.

There was a boat out of Tiberias for Kefar Nahum, which collected goods at the tollhouse there. I asked among the other passengers about the teacher Yeshua but none had heard of him. Then I asked what word there was in Tiberias on the fate of Yohanan and was told that surely he would soon be set free, because the people loved him and Herod would not long risk their displeasure. I was somewhat comforted by this, for it seemed Herod had arrested him merely to show his authority, and would not trouble himself to pursue his acolytes.

I had never been to Kefar Nahum and was surprised by its harbour, nearly as large as that of Tiberias, with several breakwaters and piers. But the town itself appeared crude and poor, the streets unpaved and the houses all crowded up against the lakefront. The fishing boats were just coming in then with the night’s catch, and there was a good deal of activity all along the water and an overwhelming stench of fish. It was a town of workers and of work, I
saw, though also, as I heard, free from pagans, for Jews had settled it.

I went first to the assembly house, putting up the hood of my cloak to disguise myself, but found it deserted. So I asked in the streets after the teacher Yeshua and some who knew of him said I might find him in the boats on the lake, for it seemed he still earned his keep that way, while others directed me to the house of a certain Shimon bar Yonah where he stayed, but where I dared not present myself. Still others laughed at me and asked had I also come looking for heaven, which was all he preached of. So I understood he was well known in the town but also that people mocked him as they had in Notzerah.

At midday I returned to the assembly house. It was a large building for the town and the only one that bore any adornments. The teacher of the town was there, an old man by the name of Gioras, along with a handful of his charges whom he had brought to sweep the floors for sabbath prayer. When I asked after Yeshua, he said it was true he had given him a place there in the assembly house so that he might teach his followers. But they were only a handful, he said, and often they met at the house where he stayed. Of his teachings, he would say only that he spoke too often in riddles.

So people do not understand him and think him wise, he said. But I am afraid he misleads them.

When I emerged from the assembly house there were three women from the town of Korazin waiting at the door, who like myself had come in search of Yeshua. Except the man they spoke of seemed to bear no relation to the one I knew as my son. They described him as Yohanan’s successor though I had seen him there in the desert with Yohanan’s
followers and he had seemed the least of them, lost among the pack without distinction.

He has come out of the desert to lead us, one of the women said. He cares nothing for the rich but only for the destitute and the poor, like the prophets.

I did not know what to make of these things, for every person I spoke to gave a different report. I was troubled by that of the teacher Gioras, since he had seemed in every way sensible and without guile, but also by the exaggerations of the three women, for it would go hard with Yeshua if he presented himself as a prophet and was found to be false. It seemed the sheerest recklessness to me, that he presented himself as Yohanan’s successor when Yohanan lay in peril of his life.

As the sabbath was coming on, I had to make haste to reach Ammathus before dusk. So I departed from Kefar Nahum without any sight of my son and with no comprehension of his plight. From Ammathus, when the sabbath had passed, I immediately returned to my home so that Yaqob and I might confer, for of my children he was the only one with some understanding of his brother.

Yaqob said, There’s no sin in being a teacher, to mean we should leave him to his task.

But how could I say to him, Your brother is false, for surely it was a crime and a sin to preach to the Jews, yet be an outcast.

It happened then that some merchants of Notzerah, returning from the kingdom of Philip, saw Yeshua preaching in the streets in one of the towns on the lake. So they must have said to themselves, Is that not the son of Miryam of our town, who used to trouble us and now calls himself a prophet. And when
they came back to Notzerah they began to spread stories about him, and to say he preached only to women, and took them as his wives. Because I was held in some respect in the town, there was no one who would repeat these rumours to my face. But this only worsened the matter, since it was my children then who needed to hear them and my sons’ wives who were the ones to say to their husbands, Should not your mother rein him in, for the sake of our name.

I might have told them that I hardly cared any more for our name, for the little joy it had ever given me and the great costs I had paid to maintain it. But the truth was that I could not rest now until I saw him, and so was glad of the excuse to go to him. By then every sort of rumour had spread—that he was a rebel and preached revolt, or that he could not bear those of greater authority than himself, or that he preached contradictions like a madman, and one day praised a man and the next condemned him. Indeed, I myself might have begun to fear for his sanity, for surely it was madness that as a bastard he had set himself up as a holy man of the Jews. Yet my fear was deeper than this, that as always he merely followed his will, and would admit no impediment to it.

Nonetheless I set out for Kefar Nahum with Yaqob one morning to see if we might exchange some word with him. To Yaqob I said, We will invite him home in celebration as our lost brother and son, and so be able to judge the state of his mind. But the truth was I did not know what I would say to him when I saw him. Surely I did not intend to ask him to come back to Notzerah, given the cloud under which he had left the place, nor did I think he could bear such a thing. Yet short of returning to us or at least abandoning his mission, I did not know what it was that he could grant me.