Two from Galilee (15 page)

"Perhaps," she said. "Perhaps I am mad. At first I thought so. How can it be? I asked myself that I am the chosen one? How can it be? There are fairer girls in Israel, and certainly purer ones. Girls whose only wish has been to serve in the Temple, to fast and pray. No, there had to be some mistake, I told myself. Yes, I have been very close to God—especially in childhood; there were times when I felt sure he spoke to me. But it is human love that I have longed for as I grew older." She had been staring into the darkness. Now she lifted her eyes to meet his. "Flesh and blood love, Joseph, Your hands, your arms, your lips, your body close to me even as it is close to me now."

Again she paused, as if in a struggle to find the words that would make it clear to him. Or to herself. At last, drawing a deep painful breath, she went on. "So that when it happened, when the angel of the Lord God himself came unto me and told me that I was to be the one, the chosen one—the one whose body was to carry the Christ Child instead . . ." She made a little gesture of imploring. "I could not believe it! I
dared
not believe it, Joseph. I was dazed. I told myself it must surely have been a dream. Or madness.

"But then gradually it came to pass, what the angel had foretold. My body has been changing. It is not fitting that I describe these changes but they are happening, Joseph. They are real. Even my mother confirms them—that I must surely be with child. And it can only be the child of—that other, the holy one himself, since I have known no other man. Not even you, Joseph, my husband. Not even
you."

He stood frozen, uncomprehending. The lance had only stunned him as yet, it had not pierced his breast. He could thrust it almost impatiently aside. He said, in a voice that sounded puzzled and astonished, and yet somehow everyday: "The chosen one, my beloved? The Christ who has been expected so long? The Messiah whom so many people, good honest people, have believed themselves to be?"

"You don't believe," she gasped. Her eyes were stricken, she pressed one hand against her mouth to still its trembling. "For all your reading of the Scriptures, your voice in the synagogue, and those discussions you have with my father—you don't believe!"

"Mary, I do believe," he heard himself assuring her gravely. "God will keep his promise. The Christ will come to us one day."

"But not now? Not to us in our time, in our town, to us and our neighbors. Not to you and me. No, no, this great event is something that will happen far away, to other people.
That
will make it credible. And safe."

"Mary, you're right," he said quickly. "It isn't safe to trust ourselves too much to such beliefs. You've seen them yourself, the Zealots and false prophets being whipped down like dogs on the streets. You've heard them crying on the cross." His voice caught. "As for the women who've imagined themselves to be the chosen ones, as you say. . . ."

"I know. I know all too well. They're laughed to scorn, or become the butt of scandal. No, no, people won't have it—any evidence that God will keep his promise. Not if it's personal. Personal involvement in God's plan is too terrible, it costs too dearly." She took a step nearer him, her eyes were burning in the white leaf-shadowed oval of her face. "But isn't the test of faith suffering and sacrifice? A willingness to give up everything, if need be, Joseph, for what we claim to believe?"

Everything? To give up
everything?
He felt faint. His Mary, even his Mary—to deliver her unto this miracle that he, like all good Jews, had prayed for? The thought was staggering. He could not accept it. If it must happen let it happen elsewhere, as she said. Let this honor fall upon some other woman whose body was not already pledged to a man who loved her beyond all reason. Better even than life itself. Or yes, even more than God.

And now the shaft of the spear that had struck him down so unexpectedly out of the night plunged deep, deep, as if in punishment. ... 7
am with child
. , . the child of Jahveh, himself. Even he of Joseph's lifelong covenant. God the victor. God—he saw it now—the rival.

Rage smote him. And fear and a wild pleading rejection. He rebelled with all his being. He would not have it. Let it not be, let it not be! Yet, "I am with child," she had said. And if this were truly the case and not some fevered confusion of the mind, if this were a mortal child, then she had betrayed him. And the betrayal of God was more tolerable than the thought of her unfaithfulness.

It was too much. It was beyond his comprehension. He had worked hard that day and he realized suddenly that he was very tired. He said, his tongue feeling dry and heavy in his mouth, "What we believe, Mary, which of us knows what it is that he truly believes? Our land, our whole land is filled with sacrifice and suffering while it awaits this miracle it thinks it will accept and believe. Yet does Israel really want its own deliverance?" he demanded on a note of desperation. "Isn't it possible that we glory in our suffering? The suffering that binds us together as a people? Don't we rejoice in licking our wounds?"

He paused. Her eyes were intent upon him. When she did not answer he plunged on, diverting his desperation, focusing it upon this thing. "Maybe persecution has become dear to us— the whip of the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the yoke of Rome. So that we'd be lost without it. That's why, though we weep and beat our breasts at the scourgings and the crucifixions, how honest are we being? Isn't it possible that we're in league with them, privately relieved that once again our hopes are being put to death?"

"Oh, Joseph, Joseph," she said softly, out of her own desperation, "don't talk about Israel. Talk about us. I am going to bear a child! A child of flesh and blood. And if you cast me out. . . ."

"Cast you out?" A moan escaped him. For the shaft stirred in him deeply, bloodily now.
"Cast you out?"
he groaned again.

"Yes." She moved closer, young and small and pale with fear. "Divorce me for adultery. They will stone me in the streets, Joseph. You know the penalty."

He said, unable to keep out the bitterness, "Surely the God who has chosen you for such an honor would not let such a fate befall you."

"Joseph, have pity upon me!" Her hands were locked at her breasts in an attitude of unutterable supplication. She was at his mercy, this chosen child of God, this honored bride of the most holy enemy. And he was rocked by it, destroyed by the very power he had over her, her and the fruit of her outraged womb. He was unmanned, her tears dissolved him, so that his own eyes were dim as he folded her quietly against him, stroking her hair with his long work-scarred hands.

"Hush. Hush, hush little Mary, I love you. I love you! And so long as I live no harm shall come to you." Thus he gentled her, while his own soul threshed and strove against the invading spear. Presently, when she lay still against his heart he asked, "What does your mother say of this?"

"My mother is frantic. She can't believe that I'm without sin. She—forgive me my beloved, but she fears that it's Joseph's child I carry."

He moaned again, through clenched teeth. Would that it were! Would that he had taken her as his own weeks ago.

"She wants me to go away for a while. To visit my Aunt Elizabeth at a little town near Jerusalem. She thinks it may very well be a mistake, that I'm simply overwrought. That perhaps if I rest there a while. . . ."

"And your father?"

"Joachim believes," she told him. "He doesn't question my story. To appease my mother he's agreed that I make the journey, but he knows that what I have said is true. The time is upon us. The Christ is surely coming. And I, his daughter, am to bear the holy child that is to be our deliverer and saviour."

Joseph reeled through the darkness. He carried no torch, and when an approaching light threw trees and doorsteps into grotesque shapes, he turned and plunged into the sheltering bowels of dark little alleys. Alleys that would hide him in his blind agony.

He had been composed, parting with Mary. He had walked erect, carefully, like a man determined not to reveal his drunkenness. But once out of sight he staggered, stumbled, not caring whether or not he fell. Longing to fall and hurt himself in some manner so monstrous that he could feel no other pain. For the spear now ripped and bore viciously deeper, burning and tearing.
I can't stand it;
he thought. Surely God would spare enough mercy to lead him over a precipice, or to a well in which to drown.

Mercy.
The thought of a merciful God was so absurd that he laughed aloud.

No, no, he was being a fool. He was not drunk but perhaps he should be. He needed wine, strong wine to soothe his shocked nerves, numb the agony a little, let him sleep . . . sleep . . . and perhaps awake to discover that it was only one of those nightmares wherein Mary, his Mary, had just been carried, white and still, into a burial cave. He ran wildly after the mourners, pleading and weeping, but nobody turned even to allow him to join the procession. Into the cave they carried her precious body, and left her alone in the darkness and firmly sealed the entrance with a rock.

"Mary!" He would sometimes waken himself with his furious beating against it, or one of his brothers would shake him back to consciousness.

Joseph. Joseph, you idiot, it's only a dream. But he must have wine and there were no shops open and no friends to whom he could turn in this state.
Cleophas.
He came to a dead halt. Cleo-phas would be glad to share a jug with him, to laugh, to boast. . . . What would it reveal, that genial, arrogant face? Nothing.
Nothing.
Yet he knew that he dared not risk it. That he was indeed doomed if he went tracking down an evil that he feared so much he dared not even name it.

He did not trust himself. He knew that for the moment he was not quite sane.

But wine. Strong wine. Some of the wine his father kept hidden. Soft fat breasts of wine to suck on in secret, perhaps to ease the knowledge that he was but a sorry noisy little failure of a man upon whom other men, and sometimes even his wife, looked down.

Joseph groped into the dark little shop. Crouching, he fumbled around behind the boards, seeking the soft leathery touch of the skins. A loose plank came crashing down upon his foot and for an instant he sickened before the astounding physical pain.

"Joseph?" There was a stirring behind the drapery. He saw a small eye of light approaching. His mother stood in the doorway, her hair in a thick braid, a saucer of oil in hand. "Joseph, is that you?"

"Yes, Mother, it's only me. Go back to bed."

"Where have you been?" she said. "It's very late."

"Mother, am I a child that you should lie awake counting the hours till I come in?" He arose guiltily, trying not to wince at the excruciating hurting of the flesh.

"A child is a child to his mother until the day of his marriage," Timna said. "Surely you haven't been with Mary until this hour?"

"No, I've been walking." He turned his head aside as his mother drew nearer with her lifted lamp. He realized that he must be dirty and disheveled; he had crashed against bushes and trees in his wandering. "I didn't feel like sleeping, I've been walking in the hills."

"It's dangerous to go about so in the night." Her voice was troubled. "Joseph, is something wrong? Did you and Mary quarrel?"

"No! No, please—go back to bed."

"My son, I can see that there is something wrong. Is
Mary angry with you? Is that it?"

"No, no," he said. "She's tired, that's all. She's going away for a little while." His own words startled him, as they also startled his mother. Until this moment he had scarcely comprehended this facet of all that Mary had told him.

"Going away?" Dazedly, Timna set down the lamp. "Within three months of her wedding?"

"Yes. Yes," he said hastily, "her parents think it best. She's going to visit an aunt in Judah, in the little town of Ain-Karem, I think she said. It's somewhere near Jerusalem."

"But why? With all the preparations, I should think she'd be needed here. Joseph, tell me. . . ." She came a step nearer and her gentle, frank blue eyes searched his. "You haven't done anything to offend her? As her betrothed husband surely you have treated her with respect?"

She regretted the words, so great was the anguish that came into her son's face. "Of course. How can you ask such a thing?"

"I'm sorry. Forgive me." She flung the braid back from her shoulder; quietly she wiped a bit of spilled oil from the base of the lamp. He was right, how could she? He was a man grown, he was not a child to be questioned by his mother. She was ashamed of her wakefulness and her lack of discretion. Yet his quick denial disturbed her. He had always loved Mary, and men were importunate. If he had overstepped the bounds of propriety he had been foolish, yes, but it was no sin. Certainly not enough to pack a child off on a journey that would keep her away from him.

That Hannah! The old antagonism flared up in Timna, the baffled knowledge that the house of Joachim considered itself a cut above her own. It was beyond her understanding, for she knew that the match was even. Lovely and desirable though Mary was, she was no finer than Joseph. And this trip, with its inference that she might not be safe much longer in the same city with him seemed to Timna cruelly unjust.

"I . . . it's just that I can't see why in the world Mary would want to leave at such a time. Or why her parents should let her go!"

"They think it's been too much for her," he said defensively. "All the preparations. They think she needs the rest." Then he said an astonishing thing. "You mustn't think evil of her."