Two from Galilee (28 page)

Inside there was the mealy smell of oats and the tang of the animals tethered in the semidarkness. The fire outside guided their footsteps, past the dark shapes of stolid oxen and cattle or the forms of small patient donkeys, knees locked, already asleep. At last, at the far end, groping about, Joseph found what he sensed to be a vacant stall. Hands shaking, he got his lamp lighted and held it high. The place was indeed vacant, with one lone manger, a number of tools strewn about, and much clean straw. A kind of storage room. But the straw in the manger was old and rancid. Hanging the lamp in a niche, Joseph cleaned the manger out and pitched the straw aside. Then, working swiftly, he gathered up armloads of the clean dry rustling straw and spread it in the manger. Upon it, to save time, he flung down his own cloak.

Then, turning to Mary, he held out his arms. "I'm sorry, my dearest," he muttered as she slid down. "It's the best I can do."

"Thank God," she moaned softly. "Oh, Joseph, thank God for it and for you." She leaned against him, her forehead cold with sweat. Then in little gasping steps she moved toward the place where at last she could lie down. "You must go and fetch a midwife," she panted. "It may be hours before the baby comes, but I must have a woman by my side."

"Yes. I should have thought of that before, I should have inquired at the inn." Again the shock of his appalling ineptitude. Fool, fool. Now he would have to leave her alone and go plunging back into the night.

"Don't worry, I'll be all right." She touched his stricken face. "The pain has stopped altogether," she said, surprised. "Perhaps I can sleep a little."

"I'll not be long, I promise. I'll find someone. Sleep, my darling, it's been such a terrible day for you. Sleep and rest."

Leaving the lamp behind, he set forth, feeling his way frantically along the stalls. Idiot, blunderer! A stable, among oxen and asses and not even a woman with her. All this warning and I didn't even have the wits to ask about a midwife.

"Joseph!" He halted, frozen, just as he was almost to the opening where the herdsmen moved about before their fire.
"Joooo-seph!"
It was a scream too horrifying to believe. He whirled and ran.

She was sitting upright, her legs dangling over the stall, gnawing her fists, the tears streaming down her face. "Joseph, don't go, don't leave me! Joseph, it's unbearable, I can't stand it."

"Mary, Mary." He cradled her in his arms, crooning to her and rocking her until the hideous convulsion ceased. Oh, God, he thought. You God. You
God—
if you are a god who performed this miracle—why are you doing this to my beloved?

"I'm sorry," she whispered at length. "Only I got so frightened when it began again and I was alone." She pushed back her tangled hair. "What will we do?" she cried. "You know the ancient taboo; it is not fitting for a man to gaze upon a woman in childbirth."

"Yes," he agreed, beside himself. "And even if it were not so, I know nothing of what to do to help you, my beloved."

"Go and fetch some water," she said. "Some hot water if you can get it. We will need it. Go to those herdsmen at the door and see if they can give us some. But don't be long," she begged. "Go no further even to fetch a midwife."

"I'll send one of them for one," he said. But even as he ran he heard her moaning, and knew that the cruel thing that tore at a woman's body to bring forth young was stretching forth its claws again.

The herdsmen who were strumming their lutes or sprawled about drinking wine reared up as he burst into the circle of light. "Help me," he said. "Have you any hot water left from your meal? In heaven's name help us, my wife is far gone in childbirth and she needs water and a midwife."

"My friend, the water we can share with you," one of them said, "but there are no midwives among us." There was laughter, but it stopped as they saw Joseph's face. A man rose, tall and dignified in his striped robes, and lifted a steaming pot from the coals. "There is also some barley soup, it is nourishing and still hot. Perhaps that will be of some comfort to your wife. Here, I'll carry it for you and light your way. Meanwhile. . . ." He kicked one of the slumbering boys. "You, Joab, rise up and go into Bethlehem and see if you can find a midwife."

The youth rose, yawning and surly. It was plain he had drunk too much and considered this a joke. There was no time to argue, he must get back to Mary. Carrying the water and followed by the tall shepherd with the soup, Joseph led the way.

The smothered cries from within the little cubicle halted both of them. "Thank you, my friend," Joseph said grimly, and motioned him aside. "If we need anything further we'll call you."

He stole back in, stood where she lay writhing. He had known that women suffered, had heard his own mother on nights when the younger ones were born. But this was Mary, his Mary, and the thing that tortured her clawed into the dark pit of his own bowels even though it was not his child that she struggled to bring forth. Perhaps the anguish would be less if it
were
his child. Thus he stood while the sweat poured down his contorted face. No man must see a woman in childbirth, that he knew. Yet he could not leave her. And perhaps this was his further punishment for whatever sins he had committed, both in loving her so much and in failing her. That he must stand helplessly by while she cried out in her travail.

"Joseph . . . oh . . .
Joseph."
It came from between her clenched teeth. He could barely hear her, and he fell to his knees beside her, let her grip his hands and pull upon him, pull with all her strength. And dazedly, in their mutual agony, it seemed to him that something was being uprooted within him. Self. The last vestige of self. Was this then the meaning of love? To die to self in order to be reborn for the beloved. To spare her. Dear God in heaven to spare her! To share it. To more than share it, to take it into his own body and bear it for her, and in the process to die and to be reborn.

"Yes, my dearest, my best beloved?"

"If I die in this, if it destroys me utterly, you must know one thing. I did not sin. You are the only man I have ever loved."

"Hush, my blessed, hush." That this could be uppermost in her mind at such a time seemed to him unutterably pathetic. And that he could have doubted unendurable. "I know how pure you are. God forgive me for doubting even for a minute. I was the one who sinned." He stroked her matted hair, plucked wisps of straw from it. His voice was choked. "And you won't die. God would not allow it."

She relaxed a little against his shoulder, lay back dozing. The pain had given her respite and his words had comforted her.

Easing her back upon the crackling bed, Joseph rose and swiftly began unloading the donkey. He would need a basin, bowls, linens, so many things. The midwife must come! But whether she did or not, he must be ready. And he knew that the donkey must also be desperately tired and hungry and must be cared for.

Pouring a little of the hot water into a basin, he washed his hands. Then he took a dipper of the soup to Mary, and lifting her carefully once again, persuaded her to sip a little, for it had been hours since they had eaten. "You will need your strength, my darling."

"Yes," she whispered, "for the child. I'll need every ounce of strength for bringing it forth. And attending to it." She drank the entire ladle and bade him have some too. "And you, Joseph, you too will need your strength before this night is done." She lay back, considering. "The midwife—have you sent for her?"

He nodded. "Surely she will be here soon."

"Yes, surely." She was speaking half to reassure herself, half to keep him from worrying. "I wish it could be my mother," she said wistfully. "Although I'm sorry I cried out so for her in the beginning. It was silly and childish, for I am a child no more, I'm a woman. With a woman's job to do."

"Would to God that your mother could be with you." The heat of his words caused her to lift her head. They regarded each other, facing the truth. "Or some woman. I can't leave you, Mary. And if the midwife doesn't come—I'm but a man, without knowledge of these things."

"Don't be afraid." She gripped his hand. "We're forgetting something. That this is God's child and God will not abandon us. Weak and human as we are, God has chosen us to be his servants. Surely he will help us."

God's child. She was right. Ignorant and inexperienced though they were, God would not fail them. God would let nothing happen to his own child, nor to her who delivered it.

"I must think," Mary said. "While I am still clear-headed I must instruct you. You must build a fire and keep the swaddling clothes warm. And the water hot. There must be warm water for bathing the baby. And a knife, you must dip it in very hot water before cutting the cord. I have learned that it drives away evil spirits that might harm the child."

"A knife?" Joseph gasped.

"Yes, it must be done. You must do all this if the midwife isn't here. And the cord must be tied securely with dried gut. I put a piece, together with the knife, in a little parcel, just in case the birth should occur somewhere unexpectedly. And the salt for rubbing the child is with it."

Joseph's head was beginning to whirl. All these things, these human physical things—would it come to that, actually? Despite all else, her swollen body and now the pangs of labor—even so, it seemed to him blindly, somewhere within his being, beyond even the area of thought, that this which had begun as a miracle would conclude as a miracle. Not so much to spare them, Mary her suffering or him his incredible tasks, but simply because God's son must come forth in a manner more fitting than to be hurled from a woman's bloody flanks.

He gazed about. These lowly surroundings—the oxen and sheep, the little donkey braying piteously for its food, the smell of dung and hay, the cold rock walls glinting in the light of the fire that finally, in desperation, he was able to coax in the pit he had dug beneath a chink he had noticed when they first came in—this humble setting which was the best that he, Joseph, could provide—even so, he thought and prayed, wiping his face in relief as at last the acrid smoke began to rise—even so, God's own angels would surely fill the place at the last and lift up Mary and draw from her loins the blessed being without blood or further agony.

The dung and straw and such sticks as he could scrape together, began to blaze, lighting up the chamber. And through the chink in the wall he could see one brilliant star, fixed and new. As if the Lord himself had set it there to watch over them. The smoke obscured it, but when the wind shifted, there it was, sparkling.

The night wore on. Joseph fed and
bedded down the donkey, tended the fire, and hovered over Mary. Now and then he
dozed and dreamed and sprang up wildly, guilty and sick with alarm whenever she began her fearful moaning. "Help me! Help me, Joseph. Oh—God—help me!" Yet he could not help her. Even though he grasped her hands as she commanded, and pulled upon them until it seemed that he would literally tear her in two, yet he could not help her to bring it forth and stop her agony. And God, the God that she called upon in her anguish, as women had always called upon him, heard her not.

And his face ran sweat and his heart became black within him. And he remembered his mother crying thus pitifully in childbirth while his father paced the fields and wept. And he wondered at the God who could thus betray his own creatures, and what kind of a so-called god it was who decreed such torture even in the bringing forth of his own son.

"You—God!" his spirit challenged. "You—
God.
Where is your miracle now?"

The pain was the only reality. The pain had become her master and the god she served. Beyond the pain lay the dim world of the stable. The firelight that threw flickering shadows across the rough rock walls. The steaming kettle, the vaguely sensed shapes of sleeping beasts in neighboring stalls. And sometimes very far away, sometimes seeming close, the rumble of male voices in the yard. And the presence of Joseph was a part of that strange small homely world that surrounded her private universe of pain. She was conscious of him moving about, bending above her, supporting her, and suffering for her so that she fought to still her cries. But she could not. Pain was her lover, her husband, her master, her god, smiling, insistent, forcing the outcries from her with whip and kiss and brutal embrace and mailed fist and chain. Yet she must remember that this was no demon that was the author of her torment, but the bloody grip of God.

And she thought of the beasts being led to be slaughtered at the cold marble tables of the Temple. They were moaning now, moving closer in their condemned files, moaning plaintively— or was it only the low mooing of the cattle in the next stall?

"Joseph, forgive me!" For it was not the cattle that she heard but the brute moans and bellowings that came from her own cracked and bitten lips.

"It's all right, cry if it helps."

The hooves of the poor doomed cattle drove on, over her, crushing her in their path, yet she sought to reassure them: Never fear, sweet cattle, I will bring forth a new kind of offering to Jehovah so that one day you will go bawling to the knife no more. . . . And she sought to reassure the child: Never fear, sweet child, let me not frighten you with my screams. Come forth, come forth in triumph out of suffering.

Suffering! A tremendous excitement filled her along with the agony. There was some secret here, if she were not so weary she would understand it—the secret of suffering. Truly to know the Lord God you must go down into the pit with him, be burned at his fires. . . .