Two from Galilee (4 page)

Mary gazed at her, shaken with temptation. Some carpenter. And while they were at it. . . . But no, wait. Take this matter up with her father. Then all would be well.

But now that she had stolen in to where Joachim was sprawled on the cushions for a slight rest after the midday meal, her confidence deserted her. He had roused up, bracing himself on his haunches, scowling as if he hadn't heard aright. He was very tired and sweaty and she saw that she had chosen a bad time.

"Wherefore?" he demanded. "Have you spoken to your mother?"

"No. I haven't dared. You know how she feels about Joseph, she's made it only too plain. For some reason she considers him and his family unworthy even to consider as . . ." Her voice shook, she plucked at the fringed shawl he had thrown across his eyes, curiously ashamed—"as possible relatives."

"No, now, it isn't that she finds them unworthy. It's just that when the time comes there are likelier candidates."

"Likelier in what ways? Surely you can't believe that how much a man owns or even the amount of his knowledge are what make for happiness. Better a dinner of herbs where love is than a fatted ox and hatred with it."

"Yes, yes, there's a proverb for everything. It is also written that children are to obey their parents, particularly to respect their mothers."

Mary let that pass. "You never went beyond the village school, Father, but you've studied, you're wise in the things that matter. You'll never own a camel or a fine house but you've given my mother more important things. Kindness and devotion and . . . love." Her voice broke. It was hard to name it like this in the cold glare of midday. "The kind of love that Joseph and only Joseph is prepared to give me."

Joachim smiled crookedly and locked his blunt fingers behind his head. "Mary speaks out of her youth and inexperience. Living together in peace and joy is not a matter of passions but of patience. It's like nurturing a seed that has been planted, often in unyielding ground—waiting and tending and wondering sometimes if love will ever sprout at all."

Mary said quickly, "Truly that is often the case when parents choose their children's mates. But when love is already full blown between two people the painful waiting is avoided."

"Now, now," he said, startled. Yawning, he turned his back, burrowing deeper into the cushions as if to escape this painful discussion. "Why are we speaking of such things? You are still a child and dear to us. And yes, still needed. There's plenty of time."

"Forgive me, Father, but I'm a child no longer. I haven't felt like a child for more than a year. My friends and cousins are betrothed and are being married, while I—for all my mother's foolish boasts, I'm forced to dangle like poor fruit on the vine."

"Poor fruit!" Thumping the pillows, he turned back to her, laughing, but stopped abruptly at the expression on her face.

"I am almost fourteen, Father," she said, "and I have become nubile this day."

"Truly?" He was astounded that she should confide in him. The news should have come from her mother. Embarrassed and touched, his eyes filmed. "Truly?" he muttered again, and passed his hand in a gesture of mute wonder and denial across his jaw. "It seems only yesterday that you were a babe in your mother's arms. Our firstborn," he reflected on the never-ending wonder. "And then riding the ox into the fields with me. Remember, Mary?" He stretched out a hand and awkwardly fondled her wrist. "Remember the little songs and games we used to play?"

"Yes, Father, I remember," she said, trying not to sound impatient. It was all so inconsequential and long ago; he must not think to divert her with such memories. Time was fleeing, he must rouse up and go back into the fields. "But about Joseph, please say that you will bid him join us, and what's more speak to Mother urging her to make him welcome here again."

He got up, grunting, and focused his attention on fastening the leather girdle at his waist. Why, he's stalling, she realized, dismayed. He's trying to think how to put me off without letting me know he's afraid of her too.

"You know we seldom have company except on the Sabbath Eve. And your mother has many children to cook for, Mary."

"Hospitality should not be confined to only one day of the week. Tell her that I will prepare the meal."

"And it's hard to cross her. Remember that she is your mother, to be honored as the commandment says."

"Is she not also your wife, and commanded to obey?"

Both were on their feet now, their glances locked. Joachim sighed heavily. "Mary, Mary—is this matter of such consequence to you that you would come between mother and father to achieve your ends?"

She didn't answer for a second. Unconsciously her hands had come together in a fierce attitude of supplication. She said, "I love both of you, Father, it grieves me to think of hurting either of you. But as you have just reminded me, you and I have been close from the time I was a little girl. While women—two women, alike as we are in our bodies, there is often a great difference in how we feel. If I were to speak out there would be a clashing of swords. There is often a clashing in the air even when I keep my peace," she said regretfully. "But with you I can speak freely."

The words were true, yet she recognized their element of blandishment. "Joseph and I love each other, Father, and it is not a thing sprung up overnight. It has been growing between us for years. But I also love you. And if you tell me to put him out of my heart I will speak of him no more. But if you understand even a little bit how it is with me, then you will at least open your mind and try to see his qualities before you order me to cast him aside."

Joachim stood pondering. The column of sunlight that had slanted through the room was beginning to recede. There was the shrill sound of children's voices coming from the yard. A stray dog seemed to have joined the games. They could hear it barking in a gay frenzy. "I have no objection to Joseph," he said finally. "He is a fine young man. No doubt he would be a good husband. But I have been able to give your mother very little, and she has always taken such pride in you. To make what seems such a poor match for our eldest—I needn't tell you, it would be a sorry blow for her."

"And is my mother's pride of more value to you than my whole life's happiness?"

He shook his head. He drew his hand once more in a gesture of defeat and weariness across his mouth. "It is a hard bargain you drive, Mary. Your way with words is a trap and a snare. But I will do this much for you. I will send Esau down to ask Joseph to come up tonight, and I will tell Hannah to bring forth the best wine."

"Oh, Father, Father!" She flung herself against his chest. "And could we have meat for a change? Could we prepare a kid?"

"Don't press your advantage, we can't spare a kid even if the rabbi would kill it for us."

"A fowl then? Say a duck whose blood has already been drawn, at the market?"

"No, no, no. A fish perhaps, if the peddlers have brought in any that are fit to eat." He thrust her roughly yet amiably aside. "Go now and look after your brothers and sisters, they are quarreling. Quarreling is something that has always sickened me."

Thrusting back his shoulders, Joachim tramped off to find his wife.

Contents
-
Prev
/
Next

IT was Joachim who went plodding down the cobbled streets. A great irritability goaded him, together with other emotions he found it hard to sort out. Yet this was no errand for a blind child, as Hannah had made plain. "You must be out of your mind to suggest such a thing!" And he sensed her consternation that their son, sightless and halt, should come groping into the inferior house of Jacob on such a mission. Well then, Joachim had retorted, he'd go himself.

Hannah's protest that this would only lend more significance to what could otherwise be passed off as merely an invitation to discuss a loom, simply made firmer his determination. Just when the loom had entered the discussion he didn't recall, except that Hannah, seeing he was not to be dissuaded, had cleverly worked it in.

"Certainly we can't have Jacob thinking we're so hard put to find suitors for Mary that we would go making advances to any young man. Least of all his son!"

He had refrained from the arguments that sprang to his lips. He had long ago learned that the best way to handle his acrimonious little mate was to let her seem to have her way. Let her prate and scold, he thought with a kind of grudging admiration. So long as he did not stoop to contending with her, he retained his stature as a man and his will prevailed.

Joachim stomped along, his dry red beard bristling in the sun, dreading his mission, yet feeling an irascible satisfaction in it too. He had a private sympathy for Joseph; he too had been forced to leave the village school at an early age to support his mother and sisters. And though Joachim had been a slow scholar, he loved learning. In a secret part of himself he fancied he'd have made a good rabbi, and had suffered the scorn of his family by poring over the few books he owned.

He particularly loved the Scriptures that spoke with such certainty of the coming of the Messiah. He would come, he would come in all his glory! Perhaps even in Joachim's lifetime. The dream made tolerable this life of toil when you were only robbed for your sweat in taxes. It had even appeased those first raw years of his youth when he had suffered such torments over the unattainable Abigail.

A faint amusement came into his blue inscrutable eyes.
Abigail.
And those distant days when he had believed it would be better to be strung up by his heels by the Romans than never to have her. ... He remembered the undulant roll of her hips going down to the well; how he would rise up from the shamed bliss of his dreams to watch from the half-moon of his window. And her eyes, round and moist and lush with secrets. The color of ripe grapes, he recalled with a sweet start. Purple, like the grapes they had once tramped together, joyously, both a little drunken from the wine.

Would he have had the courage to kiss her otherwise? . . . The kissing had made it worse. The kissing and the clutching, those few stolen times together. It had seemed that he could not endure it when it was announced that she was being betrothed to a rich landowner.

Joachim remembered only too vividly that stunning pain. Though he wished not to. Not on this fumbling errand to appease and gratify Mary . . No, now, he had been a dutiful son, loyal, patient, and innately cheerful. Striving to banish all thoughts of Abigail when he had journeyed to Bethlehem with his people and returned, a man betrothed. Bound to a wild little Judean who had become, withal, so dear to him.

Well, but he must set his mind to the business at hand. Banging somewhat imperiously on the door with the heel of his hand, he stooped and thrust his big shoulders into the shop of Jacob the carpenter. There seemed to be no one about, and he felt again that plaguing irritation. Hannah was right; he was on a fool's mission. Humor Mary if you must, but remember that Jacob's son must not be encouraged.

Sunlight flooded the room, painting stripes of light and shadow across the implements which hung from beams or lay in corners. Some were quite dusty as if long unclaimed, others but half-finished. Joachim ran critical palms over the handles of a plow. The workmanship was good but the metal share was bent. It was a common, almost fond plaint of farmers that if you depended on Jacob your fields would soon be fit for only the crows. He'd rather waste his time on elaborately carved chests and tables for which there was small market. Those who adhered strictly to the Law considered them pagan. ("Thou shalt make no graven image.") Most Galileans were notoriously lax when it came to the Law, but this impiety of Jacob's only further irked the more strait-laced Joachim. Or Jacob would spend hours on the cart of some traveler, who might joke and share the wineskins with him, but never come this way again.

The place smelled of sawdust and chips and curly yellow shavings. Impatiently Joachim sifted its mealy dust through his fingers. Some people could afford to laze the afternoon away, but he had work to do. He was about to leave when he heard the commotion. The shouting and laughter and the frenzied squawking of a hen. In a minute the curtains that led into the adjoining cave parted and the shop became a wild flurry of feathers, children, and flying chips. In hot pursuit of them all was the object of his quest.

Joseph had been laughing when he plunged in, but at sight of Mary's father he sobered. His pleasant face flushed. "Forgive me." He threw back his shoulders, almost imperceptibly his cleft chin jutted. "I'm afraid we didn't hear you enter. As you see we're trying to catch the hen." The bird had flown to a beam just over Joachim's head, where she was scolding them in frenzied clucks. "It was given my father for mending an axle," Joseph said. "Since it's my sister's birthday, Mother intends to make it into a stew."

Joachim cringed in his own bones at the youth's embarrassment. Explanations always troubled him. "A birthday celebration, ha?" he said overheartily. Relief quarreled with his vexation at failing Mary, now that he had come. "Well, no matter, since I've only come about a loom. My wife would have you look at the old one to see if it's beyond repair. And we had thought. . . ." He cleared his throat, "Perhaps you'd prefer to come late in the day and be our guest for the evening meal. But no matter," he added hastily, "perhaps another time."

The joy in Joseph's eyes was almost too much to countenance. Joachim looked up. The distraught bird above him was flapping her wings, raining dust down on his tunic. Joachim grabbed her.