No Lasting Burial (21 page)

… a lame man healed …

… the fish, and the fish …

… and Bat Eleazar. Signs, these are signs …

… signs …

… he’s the
navi
…

… he must be the
navi
…

… no, he’s a witch. You heard how he babbles, and he
…

… said the dead are coming, the dead are coming. A
vision …

… end of our town, this is our last meal …

… over there with Hebel? Why is he with Hebel …

“Could
you … ?” Koach whispered.

“I
think so,” Yeshua murmured. He was staring at those feasting now, too. “But I
know why … why you didn’t ask. You have a worse injury. I know that injury.
It is mine also.”

“Your
bruises,” Koach whispered. He understood. Though this man had two arms, not
one, somehow he had suffered as Koach had.

“I
haven’t eaten with my kin in some time,” Yeshua said. “I tried to. After the desert, after that. I came back, slept one night
in my mother’s house, only one night before her neighbors lifted stones to
throw.” He looked down. “I miss that town, Natzeret. It is a small town, Koach,
so small. Much smaller than this one. It is …” He
swallowed. “It is lovely. There are olive trees and
one press that still works, and in the morning, in the beautiful morning, I
wake and I hear … the press creaking. And when the night
… when it’s night, I fall asleep to my father’s hammer, tapping, tapping in
his shop by the house. I miss that. Sometimes I am sleeping, in the lee
of some ridge, and I wake, suddenly, quickly, so that the world tilts as though
I’ve been spinning too fast, too fast, like a small child, all the stars around
me like the gulls. And I hear it. That tapping. It
sounds so real. I miss it. I miss it, Koach. He made beautiful things. I miss
hearing him work. Miss helping him. I miss the old midwife’s scowls and the way
the weaver’s children play stones in front of the well.” He rubbed his hand
quickly across his eyes. “Ah. I think I
will
eat.” He indicated the gathering
people with a small motion of his head. “You mustn’t hate them, Koach. The priest, the others.”

Koach
met Yeshua’s gaze, and then it seemed to him that this stranger who had healed
his mother was gazing not only
at
him but
into
him. As though
everything he had ever hidden, every secret place, every word he’d signed to
Tamar, every time he had tossed in his bed, every time he had dreamed of taking
her far across the sea to some new place—as though everything, everything, was
laid bare before this man.

“They
hate
me
,” Koach said.

“No.”
Yeshua gave a vehement shake of his head. “No, they don’t. They do not hate
you
.
Because they … they have
never
seen you. They look at you and see
only what they fear, only that.” Yeshua’s face twisted in pain; he closed his
eyes and put his forehead to Koach’s own, an uninvited yet comforting touch, as
though they had a shared history. The stranger whispered a word in Hebrew too
softly for Koach to hear. Then he said, “They do not hate
you
.”

“I’m
scared,” Koach whispered back, startling himself. But
now he’d spoken and the words could not be taken back. Tamar was dead. His
mother had almost died. His brother loathed him. There might be no one who
would really see him, ever again.

“We
are all scared,” Yeshua whispered. “Every one of us.
Maybe even the father in the desert. We could all lose so much, so much.”

Hearing
a footstep, Koach lifted his head and found the silent woman standing before
them, still in his father’s coat, which enveloped her small body like a winter blanket.
She held out a bowl of water cupped between her hands. Her eyes lifted for a
single instant; Koach saw the flash of them before she lowered them again. As
Yeshua looked on silently, Koach took the bowl unsteadily in his left hand,
felt the smooth clay against his fingers and palm.

“Thank
you,” he said.

The
water was cool and clear in his mouth.

The
young woman offered the bowl next to Yeshua, who took it and drank in slow
gulps, watching her over the rim. His eyes were not unkind. She blushed, which
surprised Koach, who had seen her perform a small seduction at that cookfire on
the shore earlier without any reddening of her face.

As
though flustered, the woman turned back to Koach. She made a small sound in her
throat, and from within the long coat, she brought out an article of wood and
placed it in Koach’s hand, lifting her fingers quickly so that her hand would
not brush his.

He
searched her face a moment, and then glanced down. It was a wooden horse, warm
from her touch. Rougher than the one he’d carved over many weeks for Tamar.
He’d made this one to practice. He must have left it in one of the long pouches
sewn inside the coat.

His
chest constricted. “Thank you,” he whispered again.

Knowing
the carving to be his, she must have meant its return to comfort him. Yet it
made him think of Tamar. He dropped the carving carefully back into her palm.
“But you keep it. Someone should have it.”

“Cast
it away,” Zebadyah called. “Or throw it into the fire.” The priest had turned
where he sat, his back to the other guests, legs crossed, hands on his knees.
His beard tumbled down his chest. He had begun to recover from his shock, but
his eyes were anxious. Yesse beside him chewed gingerly on a bite of fish,
watchful.

Koach
bit back the words he wanted to say. “It’s a gift to her.”

Yeshua
set down the clay bowl. “May I see it?” he asked.

The
silent woman took a quick step back. For the second time, it occurred to Koach
that this might be the first day since she was a small girl that she had been
given a gift. In the past few hours she had been given a coat, fish to eat, and
a wood-carving, a small thing of large beauty for one whose life held none—with
nothing expected in return. It might break her to give it back. He wished he
could understand the emotions, wild and dark, that he saw in her eyes. He
wished that she could speak.

“It’s
all right,” he whispered.

Yeshua
held out his hand, with that quiet intensity in his eyes.

The
woman’s eyes were wet, and she hesitated. Then she placed the carving in the
stranger’s hand and jerked her fingers back quickly, fear in her eyes. Perhaps
she’d been beaten in the past for an unwanted touch.

Yeshua
lifted the wooden horse, looked at it closely. Then he walked away along the
wall of the atrium, as though he’d forgotten them. Koach watched him,
bewildered. He was so
strange
.

Zebadyah
rose to his feet, but Rahel murmured without looking up, “He, too, is my guest,
Bar Yesse.”

“We
are open to the sky,” Zebadyah said, his tone urgent. “What we do here, God can
see. You, stranger. You have given me back my father,
and I don’t know what you are, if you are a
navi
or a witch, if it is
prophecy and vision that make you shake like a twig, or
shedim
from the
lord of flies. But that is an idol you hold in your hand, one touched by a heathen
slut—”

“She
is no heathen,” Koach said sharply. “And—”

“She
has spoken no word of Aramaic, no word of Hebrew.”

“She
doesn’t
speak. At all.” The fury from before
came back up, scorching. “Can’t you see she is suffering and alone?”

Zebadyah
reddened. “How dare you speak. You
who made that
thing
of wood. You who insult my brother’s memory—”

“Bar
Yesse!” Rahel cried.

“Son,”
Yesse said.

“I
will not see our town distracted by small gods!” Zebadyah’s voice rose, thick
with contempt. “Gods you can hold in your
hand
, rather than a God who
can’t be held, who will not come at our call, for we come at his. That!”—he
threw his hand out toward the stranger and the wooden horse he held—“That is an
evil, a distraction you shape with your hand. A crack in the
wall, while the dead press against the stones. That is not safe, it is
not
useful
!”

Yeshua
turned on the priest, his eyes hot, the wooden horse clutched in his hand, his
voice loud and quick. “The father who made you may not find
you
useful—or you—or you—” He took them all in with a sweep of his hand. “Of what
use
are any of you to the Holy One who shaped the earth and filled the seas? But I
have been in the desert and I … I believe this: there has never been a day
when the father has not found you beautiful.”

There
was silence. Even Koach was taken aback at the hardness in the stranger’s
voice.

Yeshua
turned the horse over a few times in his hand, peering down at it. His face was
troubled.

“I
think it is possible,” he murmured, “to keep every letter of the written Law
yet fail to live a lawful life. And maybe it is possible to yearn, even to
yearn for the father’s heart and yet … yet miss him entirely.”

“Bar
Yosef …” Zebadyah began.

“Sit,
my son,” Yesse said behind him. “Eat. Our town has been unclean a long time,
and the cleansing of it can wait until after we eat. Tonight we are guests in
Bar Yonah’s house. I’ll hear no shouting in my son’s house.”

Zebadyah
kept silent, his face drawn with old pain. But he did not sit.

Yeshua
walked back to the young woman and pressed the wooden horse into her hands; she
took it and backed away.

“Bury
it in the sand, if you will,” he said. “You do not need it. You do not need it,
talitha
.”

As
Yeshua stepped away from the woman, his face went white. For a terrible moment
he stood completely still. Then, with a hoarse cry, he clutched at his ears, at
his head.

“Bar
Yosef?” Koach cried.

Others
leapt to their feet, staring in horror or confusion. Rahel stood, too, her face
lined with worry. Their shadows appeared long before their feet, with the
approaching Sabbath.

It
was a long moment before Yeshua spoke. When he did his voice was thick. “Just
stop … just stop screaming … stop …”

“Witch,”
Zebadyah whispered. Yesse took his son’s hand, squeezing his fingers.

Rahel
was at the stranger’s side in a moment, her fingers all but touching his
shoulder, though he was neither husband nor kin to her.

“Water! Get him water,
amma!” Koach said to her.

Yeshua
stretched out one hand as though to push them all away. “No,” he gasped. “I am
all right … It is just sometimes … sometimes too much …”

His
gaze fixed on the young woman who still held that wood-carving.

 “You are the loudest,” he said.  “The screaming in your
heart … without pause. What … what hurt you so?” He drew in air,
his chest heaving. Then he staggered toward the silent woman. The whites of her
eyes showed, as though in a moment she might turn and run from the house.

There
was a desperate look in Yeshua’s eyes.

“Don’t
hurt her!” Koach cried.

“It
might
hurt,
talitha
,” Yeshua said. “It might. You lost this, and
it may hurt, coming back.”

Talitha
, he’d called
her again.

Little girl, little daughter.

He
reached for her, and she stood, trembling, as he touched her hair. Koach stood
tensed, unsure what to do. Rahel’s eyes were watchful. All their eyes were
watchful.

Stepping
near to the young woman, Yeshua bent his head and did a shocking thing. He
pressed his lips to the woman’s throat, gently.

The
touch was intimate and familiar and unsettling. Not because he appeared to
want
her, but because he was treating her as the very closest of his kin, as though
anyone who looked up into his face with such naked need might
be
his
kin. No one spoke. All of them—those seated at their meal, those standing—all
of them just watched the stranger, this man who stepped over their People’s
traditions and their boundaries as simply and without regret as though these
were only lines drawn in the sand.

Yeshua
straightened and looked at the woman’s eyes a moment; she gazed up at him in
shock. Her lips parted; she released a sound like a sigh, like something
leaving the body. She began to tremble.

Koach
saw her take a breath. He went still, seized with sudden, fierce premonition.

She
was shaking.

She
sang a high, wavering note.

Her
eyes shone with tears.

“It’s
all right,” Yeshua said softly. His own eyes shone. “It’s all right. The
Sabbath Bride, she is here, even just outside the door. Will you welcome her in
for us,
talitha
?”

She
lifted her voice higher, and her eyes filled with tears. Other eyes moistened
around her. She began to weep as she sang, and she laughed helplessly.

“Come!”
Yeshua cried, spinning to face the others, his arms out, his hair wild about
his face. “Have the waters worn away your hearts and your lives like Iyobh’s
stones? Does she need to sing alone?” He took the girl’s hand and lifted it
high, and he held out his right hand to Rahel, who stood nearest. “Take my
hand,” he said softly, and with wondering eyes, she did. “Everyone,
please. Sing.”

He
lifted his voice in Hebrew, strong Hebrew words out of a desert so deep in
their past. Then Rahel began to sing, too, her voice thin at first, then
stronger. Old Yesse stepped near, staring at the young woman; Rahel reached for
his hand, and without even seeming to notice, he took her small fingers in a
firm grip that belied his age. And as if that one touch poured water from a
cistern, they all began to sing, some taking hands, some not. The song was an
ancient psalm and one they had heard recited in the synagogue, though without
music. Dawid himself might once have stood at the entrance to the Cave of
Adullam and sang that psalm to the morning air in that voice of his that had
charmed the land’s women and its men and even the six-winged angels of heaven.