Enchantress: A Novel of Rav Hisda's Daughter (56 page)

There was a lengthy silence among the other students until Adda asked, “But isn’t Pappa as worthy as Rav Hisda’s daughter?” It was true that Jewish Law required two witnesses, but it was also true that women were never accepted as witnesses except under extraordinary circumstances, such as confirming a death.

One way Rava’s students showed respect for him was that they never called me his wife, or by my name, but always “Rav Hisda’s daughter.” He, in turn, did the same. “Rav Hisda’s daughter, I am positive that she is trustworthy,” he replied. “But as for Pappa, though he is a fine scholar, I am not entirely certain about him.”

Pappa tried to hide his dismay at this critique of his character, but Rava must have noticed. For when Pappa quoted a Baraita that contradicted one of Rava’s teachings, Rava not only admitted his mistake but took the remarkable step of publicly announcing that his previous statement was in error.

Was it possible that by behaving differently with his students, my husband was starting to atone for the way he’d criticized Joseph?

 • • • 

When the month arrived for Tamar to give birth, Rava was spending nearly every waking moment with his students. Except for the day he learned of Joseph’s death, my husband had never openly displayed his grief. He rebuffed my attempts to talk about Joseph, and the glower people received if they mentioned his name would immediately silence them on the subject.

So I rarely mentioned our son either, though I thought about him often when confronted with Tamar’s growing belly. Pabak the Chaldean had warned I was fated to lose children to illness, but it gave me little consolation.

Our newest grandson’s brit milah was a bittersweet celebration. It was a lovely spring morning when we gathered in the garden for the ceremony, the scent of roses perfuming the air. Perhaps as recompense for her loss, Heaven had granted Tamar an easy birth and a child who bore an uncanny resemblance to Joseph as an infant. It was impossible to see him without tears filling my eyes.

When it came time to reveal the boy’s name, I held my breath, hoping I wouldn’t begin weeping when I heard them announce “Joseph.” But Tamar had not named him Joseph. She explained that the name was one he had wanted to give their next son, and to honor his wishes this boy would be called Rava. For a moment I was stunned, then I burst into tears along with nearly everyone else.

My husband had better control. He didn’t start crying until we were alone in bed that night. I put my arms around his shaking torso and asked gently, “Would it help to talk to me?”

“No,” he said fiercely. “The only thing that will help is seeing Zafnat in her grave.” Still, he didn’t push my arm away.

I’d already cried myself out with Tamar and the other women earlier. So I held him tightly until his tears subsided. I fell asleep imagining all the ways I could kill Zafnat.

 • • • 

It took King Shapur two more years to defeat the Arabs, by which time he’d earned the appellation Shapur of the Shoulders, after how he maimed them. Adurbad inquired meticulously, but no one knew what had happened to Zafnat. Ashmedai didn’t know where she was either, but he didn’t think she was dead. So I continued to send my ravens to scour the desert for her. Though they could only fly near caravans and oases, where food was available, surely Zafnat would show up at one of those eventually.

Rava was loath to accept that waiting for birds to find her was all we could do. Except for his breakdown after our grandson’s brit, Rava hid his pain and guilt over Joseph’s death. The weight of that burden and his frustration at Zafnat’s disappearance, coupled with his insistence on following the Purim custom of drinking so much wine a man couldn’t tell “cursed be Haman” from “blessed be Mordecai,” was surely the explanation for what he did on the holiday.

Like many women, I tolerated Purim for my husband’s and sons’ sakes, sending gifts and preparing a banquet for their guests. But when Rav Zeira showed up at our gate, belligerent and inebriated, I had a bad feeling that had nothing to do with dark magic. I made a hasty exit and left the men to their revelry.

I woke briefly when Rava flopped into bed, and I noted with relief that all was quiet downstairs. But before I fell asleep, a cat startled me by jumping on our bed. I tried to push her away, but she meowed plaintively until I got up and put on Solomon’s ring.

“A man’s body is on the floor downstairs,” the cat said.

I lit a lamp and dressed. “Take me to him.”

As expected, the floor was littered with men passed out in a drunken stupor. But the cat ignored them and went right for one lying in a puddle of wine. When I got closer, I nearly dropped the lamp. This wasn’t wine. It was blood, Zeira’s blood, and there was a bloody knife lying nearby. I felt for his pulse but couldn’t find it. Somebody had slit his throat.

THIRTY-FOUR

TWENTY-THIRD YEAR OF KING SHAPUR II’S REIGN
• 332 CE •

I
grabbed a jug of the hangover remedy
ispargus
, which our kitchen slaves had prepared earlier, and raced up the stairs. “Wake up, wake up,” I begged Rava. When he groaned and turned his back to me, I was desperate. I cast the fire spell on the already lit lamp and it flared brilliantly.

“What was that?” he bellowed.

I thrust the
ispargus
at him. “Drink up and listen. Rav Zeira is dead. It looks like someone killed him.”

Rava sobered up fast. Cursing under his breath, he staggered downstairs. I waited while he put his head on Zeira’s chest. “Get some bandages and poultice supplies. He might still be alive.”

I raced to the storeroom, trying to make as little noise as possible. Heaven forbid anyone should wake and discover this calamity. I had seen blood on Rava’s tunic while we were on the stairs, confirming my worst fears. When I got back, Rava was on his knees, praying with such rapt concentration that he didn’t see me. I searched for Zeira’s pulse again, and this time I felt it. I prepared the poultice and bandaged his neck, amazed that he’d survived such a mortal injury.

Pressing down to stanch the bleeding, I added my entreaties to Rava’s and waited for the Angel of Death to appear. I didn’t wait long. Rava’s appeals must have been at least partly effective, because Samael kept his distance, waiting until Heaven’s decision was made. I implored the angels to heal Zeira, not only for his sake, but for my husband’s too.

Concentrating on my prayers, I lost track of time. Only when Zeira moaned and I opened my eyes did I realize it was almost dawn and Samael was gone. Rava was still lost in prayer, so I didn’t interrupt him. Zeira was breathing now, and when I replaced his bandage with a clean one, I saw that the bleeding had stopped.

It was a miracle.

That was the excuse Rav Zeira gave the following Purim when he declined Rava’s invitation. “Not every time does a miracle occur.”

 • • • 

Rava and I never mentioned the incident to anyone, nor did Zeira make a claim against him in court, yet it seemed to be no secret. Over a year later Queen Ifra asked if it was true that Rava had slit Zeira’s throat and then resurrected him. I mumbled something about Zeira being injured at Purim and having to bandage him, but the shrewd look she gave me made it clear she thought I was merely being modest.

The popularity of Rava’s sermons grew to where he was now speaking before large crowds nearly every Shabbat, expounding biblical passages to support rabbinic teachings that made the Torah the focus of Judaism now that the Holy Temple was gone. There was one awkward occasion when he and Rav Zeira were both at the same synagogue on Sukkot, but Rava relinquished the lectern rather than contest Zeira.

Some congregants were disappointed, which explains the vehemence of their reaction to Zeira’s words when he discoursed on which Jews may marry which other Jews. “A convert is permitted to marry a
mamzer
,” he declared. A
mamzer
was the child of a union prohibited by the Torah—for example, one born from adultery or incest—who was forbidden to marry an Israelite.

At first there were just annoyed murmurs from the congregation, but they got louder and more irate until the next thing I knew people were shouting at Rav Zeira and pelting him with etrogs.

Rava rolled his eyes in disbelief. “How can anyone teach publicly on such a subject in a place where converts are so common?” Then he made his way through the angry crowd to the lectern Zeira had abandoned.

My husband held up his hands for quiet and said in resonant, soothing tones, “A convert is permitted to marry the daughter of a
kohen
.” Hearing this, people cheered and some rewarded him with their silks.

But when he added, “And a convert is also permitted to marry a
mamzer
,” an infuriated voice called out, “You have just ruined your first statement.”

Rava was ready for this. “I have done what is better for you,” he replied. “If you wish, you can marry this one, or if you wish, you can marry that one. For the Law is that a convert is permitted both a
mamzer
and the daughter of a
kohen
.”

The congregation did not want him to leave, so he spoke longer about the laws of marriage, concluding with, “Why is it written in Bereshit that Pharaoh treated Avram well on account of his wife Sarah? This is to teach that you should honor your wives so that you too will gain wealth.”

Later, as we walked home, he said, “Men of Machoza desire to become rich, so hopefully they will come to treat their wives better after hearing this.”

 • • • 

As Rava’s lectures became renowned, more
amei-ha’aretz
attended them. I encouraged him in this, for it was evident to me that the Holy Temple would never be rebuilt with the Notzrim ruling Eretz Israel, and thus our people could survive only by adopting the Rabbis’ practices. Yet other rabbis disagreed. When their wives dined with me, several reported that their husbands’ colleagues—never their own husbands, of course—condemned Rava’s efforts to bring rabbinic teachings to the uneducated masses.

Some complained even when Rava tried to do good for the community. He heard that Rav Shila was interpreting the final verse in Ecclesiastes, “Elohim will call on everyone to account for good and bad,” to mean that a man might be punished for doing a good deed as well as a bad one. According to Shila, men should not give charity to a woman at her home, because doing so in such a private place would bring her under suspicion.

Rava and I were outraged, as this would prevent many poor women from receiving charity. So Rava expounded that the verse should apply instead to a man who sent meat to his wife on Sixth Day afternoon, because if the forbidden sinews had not been removed, she might not have sufficient time to perform the complicated task before Shabbat began.

His enemies immediately attacked him for sending such meat to me. This forced him to justify his action by explaining that I was expert at the procedure, which implied that most women were not. Thus Rava’s own conduct indeed proved Shila’s exegesis that a man might be chastised for doing good. By trying to help poor women receive charity more easily, Rava was vilified for suggesting that most women were either ignorant or sinners.

 • • • 

For the entire ten years following Joseph’s death, I refused to accept that Zafnat had escaped my grasp. I kept my birds searching and my
charasha
skills sharp. I could always tell when Hannah was invoking the angels as she inscribed her amulets or bowls, as well as when Rava and Chama were practicing their esoteric studies. I made it a point to occasionally light lamps or extinguish them with the spells Mother had taught me, and once a year, on the anniversary of Joseph’s birth, I conjured up a small meal for Rava and Chama.

When I visited Ifra, I took pride in revealing to her the palace’s secret cabinets and hidden passages. I earned her gratitude when I discovered a narrow corridor off the women’s quarters with spy holes into the throne room and the king’s private consultation chambers. Ifra promptly began supplying Shapur with all sorts of information she gleaned from overheard conversations, particularly those of courtiers waiting to speak with him. She rewarded me by sharing anything that affected our people.

Which is why she had me listen as she tried to mollify her angry son.

“I know you are great friends with his wife, but I cannot ignore Rava’s insolence,” Shapur declared. “He must be punished.”

My insides curdled to hear the king’s decree.

“He didn’t mean to kill the man,” Ifra pleaded. “You should be pleased he ordered lashes for that vile Jew who seduced a Persian girl with no intent to marry her.”

“I must disregard my personal opinion.” Shapur’s voice was firm. “The rabbis are expressly forbidden to try capital cases. Rava should have sent the seducer to a Persian court. But, no, he judged the case himself and now the man is dead.”