No Lasting Burial (6 page)

Afterward,
as they beached the boats and walked back to the town, each of the young men
spoke quietly to himself.

My
father died in a storm at sea,
one man whispered.

My
brother perished in his boat
, another said.

My
wife was drowned.

My
sisters were taken by the waves.

My
friend, my beautiful friend, perished in a fishing accident.

It
was easier that way.

All those whispers of fear and
forgetting.
Even a century later, travelers along that shore would claim that they could
hear those whispers on the wind among the tombs.

But
on the shore, Shimon still stood on the sand. He stood there throughout the
day, unmoving, thinking neither of food nor rest. Just
watching the sea. When the tide came up to his feet, he looked at the
water’s edge lapping his sandals and realized his throat was scorched with
thirst. Crouching, he cupped his hands in the water and lifted some to his
mouth, but he kept his eyes on the sea, like Gideon’s men drinking while
watching the far ridge for the coming of the dead in the old story.

Afterward
he walked above the tideline where the boats were moored. After the violence of
the previous night, many of these boats no longer had owners, and their nets
lay in them unused and unnoticed like dry leaves. Shimon stood among the
derelicts and watched the sun set on the water, a fire as though God had seen
that the land was defiled and had decided to burn it away and start anew.

Then
the sun was gone and it was dark and there were stars, and no moon rose. Yet,
by starlight, Shimon could see one boat coming back, a dark, low shape on the
water. No splash of the oars. Just drifting in on the tide.
Yet Shimon knew whose boat it was. The youths’ boats had all returned in the
late morning after giving their cargo to the sea, and no fishers had set out
with their nets this night. As the boat neared, Shimon could see that a single
figure sat on the bench, its hands in its lap. A dark
silhouette.

“Abba!”
he called softly. “Father!”

The
figure rose unsteadily to its feet, making the boat rock on the tide. Shimon
heard its low moan of longing and hunger, loud over the water.

After
a moment he covered his ears, his cheeks moist with tears or mist from the sea,
but he could still hear it, he could still see that boat sliding in.

Rahel’s
husband had been dead four nights when there came a knock at her door.

A
knock at the door, a strong fist, but the knocking was too urgent, as though
the man demanding entrance was uneasy, uncertain of himself. Rahel lifted her
face from where she knelt in the atrium with her husband’s
tallit
across
her knees and the baby sleeping in his basket beside her, and for a moment she
considered not answering.

Again the knocking, insistent.

She
pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, breathed deeply a moment, then
folded the prayer shawl carefully and rose to her feet, the
tallit
still
in her hand. She moved toward the door.

There
were too few of them left to ignore each other.

That, and she
couldn’t quite escape the candle-flicker of hope in her heart. She had seen her
husband’s corpse, had confronted him on the sands. It couldn’t be him at the
door.

And yet.

She
found that she was running. She leapt from the atrium into the antechamber at
the old door, and quickly tugged at the bolt. Unlatching the door and letting
it creak open, she found herself confronting the priest. Zebadyah’s face was
strained and pale—he hadn’t slept in several nights, perhaps—but his eyes were
hard with purpose

“
Shalom
,”
he said.

“
Shalom
,”
Rahel whispered.

They
stared at each other, one of those silences that are both uncomfortable to keep
and uncomfortable to break.
Shalom
had always been their traditional
greeting in Kfar Nahum, a wish for peace and a plea for peace. Not a Roman
peace, not
pax
or order, the absence of conflict. No,
Hebrew peace, wholeness, a community living and thriving together.

How
empty that wish now seemed.

“Do
you want to come in, Bar Yesse?” Rahel said at last. A week ago it would have
been unthinkable to her to open her door to a man who was not her husband when
no one else was home. But the pain in Zebadyah’s eyes called to her, and he was
at least a survival of her husband, in some small part. And the days were
brutal on her heart, alone in her house with her children. The house was
strange to her now, for it had too many empty and silent spaces.

Zebadyah’s
face became stern. “I have come to offer you my home.”

“I
don’t understand.”

“You
were my brother’s wife.”

Her
eyes burned and she blinked quickly. It would be unbearable, weeping when her
door was open and her face visible to the street.

“Now
you are alone and you have a son—”

“I
have two sons.” Rahel’s throat tightened. Such had been her grief that she’d
had little time to fear, either for herself or Koach. Now all the fears came
rushing in.

“You
were my brother’s wife, now his widow. You have a son who is too young for the
boats. When a man dies and his sons are not old enough to feed his house, the
Law tells us his brother’s duty is to take his wife and provide for her, and to
take her gladly to his bed to give her more sons in his brother’s name, so that
his brother’s line might not die out from our land. All my life I have kept the
Law. I will not fail to keep it now.” His voice turned gentle. “I had not
planned to seek a second wife, but if I had, I could not have hoped to find one
lovelier. My brother chose well.”

“No,”
Rahel whispered. “This can’t be.”

Zebadyah’s
face darkened. “Don’t make this harder than it is, woman. I grieve for him,
too. But the winter is on us, and there isn’t much time.”

Rahel
shook her head and began to swing the door shut, but Zebadyah blocked it with
his hand and leaned into it, holding it open against her. She took a step back,
but he followed, and then his hands were gripping her arms just below the
shoulders, firmly. An echo of her husband’s strength.
She gazed up at his face with wide eyes. She felt small and caught—by him, by
the Law, by her bereavement. As though it were not his hands
that held her but God’s, pitiless and demanding. God’s hands that
demanded that she live a certain way, fulfill commitments that were made before
her grandmothers’ grandmothers were born, and always without any sure promise
from God beneath her feet, only shifting sand, pulled out from under her by the
vanishing tide.

“I
will treat you and Shimon well, and Cheleph’s son also,” he said quietly. “I
loved Yonah. I will not let his widow starve alone in this house.”

“What
about the baby?” She just managed to get the words out.

Pain in his eyes. “You know what
has to be done.”

“No.”

“We
will talk about it later. Come to my house. There are witnesses there already.
You will eat well tonight, and you will have a warm bed.”

“Your
bed,” she choked.

He
gave a small nod.

“And my son? Will you have
someone just take him out to the midden, leave him there? To
die?” Her voice rose, shrill.

He
was quiet a moment and she tried to twist away, but he held her fast.

“We
tried to follow only those parts of the Law that were easy. And look what
happened. You have duties, Rahel, even as I do.”

“Don’t
call me that.” Her heart beat a panic drum against her breast.

“I
am trying to help, woman! You are my responsibility—I am trying to help.” He
pulled her to him quickly and kissed her. She stiffened as his mouth covered
hers. Warm and moist and so different from Yonah’s.
The kiss was rough yet there was something tentative in it, as though he were a
man never completely sure of himself. For a heartbeat or two she permitted it,
still in shock. Then her stomach turned and she shoved her hands against his
chest, turning her head away. “No,” she gasped.

“Rahel,”
Zebadyah said quietly.

“I
was his, and I will die his,” she said.

“
Rahel
.”

“You
will call me Bat Eleazar. You have no right to my name.” She tried to pull away
but he held her. Her eyes went dark with fury. She was shaking, though she
didn’t know it.
“I will wall my door against you and starve first.” Her
voice rose in pitch. The panic was not so much that he would touch her, but
that he would take from her the memories of Yonah and of her life here, in this
house. The thought of sleeping beneath his roof was almost worse than the
thought of sleeping in his arms. She drew back into the shadow beneath the arch
leading to the atrium. From his basket by the olive press, her infant began to
cry.

“Please
go,” Rahel said.

Zebadyah
glanced in the direction of the cries, and seeing the hard purpose in his face,
Rahel went white. “This is your brother’s son,” she pleaded, her voice low and
intense.

Zebadyah
turned his face back to her. The gentleness was gone from him and his eyes had
become hard as small stones. “Ezra cast even the wives, the heathen wives, over
the wall,” he said quietly. “What is unclean, what isn’t whole—we must cast
that out of our homes, out of our hearts.”

Zebadyah
thrust her to the side firmly and made to step by her, but she caught at his
arm and threw her small body back between him and the atrium and her son.

His
face darkened. “Step aside, woman,” he growled.

“Get
out!” she cried. “Get away from my son!”

He
struck her.

Her
vision white, she felt the wall against her back. Her head rang. She dug her
fingers against the wall, desperate to stay upright. Panic in her heart like
cattle breaking through long grass, trampling it, crushing everything in their
way. Yonah had never,
never
struck her.

Her
vision cleared.

Zebadyah
stood silent, hesitating, as if startled by his own violence.

The
baby’s cries broke her panic. She screamed and leapt at him, but the priest
caught her wrists and held her as she kicked at him, still with that look of
dawning horror on his face.

“
What
is going on?”

A young man’s shout.

The
priest had left the outer door open. Shimon stood there, his face full of
thunder—looking suddenly very like his father. Yakob, the priest’s son, stood
beside him on the doorstep, his face shocked.

“Shimon!” Rahel cried, almost faint with relief.

Zebadyah
released her quickly, as though his hands burned. He looked at his son and
nephew, and his face darkened slowly with shame. “Bar Yonah,” he said, his
voice a little hoarse, “I need to make sure your family is provided for.”

Shimon’s
eyes were cold. They took everything in: the screaming baby in the atrium, the
bruise developing over Rahel’s cheekbone, the priest’s slightly hunched stance.
“They will be,” he said quietly. “Your son and I have reached an agreement. I
am taking my father’s boat out tonight, to fish where he cannot. Yakob will
help me, for a while.” He glanced at Rahel. “I’ll be able to feed us, mother. I
am sure of it.”

For
a moment, no one moved. Rahel drew in a sobbing breath, looked at her son
carefully, and at Yakob. She saw in their eyes that Shimon had known she would
not accept the protection of Yakob’s father. Shimon had
known
this. He
had done this—taken on this responsibility—for her, and to honor his father.
Knowing what it meant. Shimon’s
bar
‘onshin had come and gone; in announcing
his intent to feed the house of his father, he claimed that house and all
within it. What was to be done with his brother, what was to be done with his
father’s widow—this was all up to him now, and to no other. Rahel’s breast
warmed with pride and gratitude. Shimon was his father’s son. He was
her
son.

Rahel
straightened, smoothed down her garments, grateful none of them were torn. She
wanted to touch her face where it hurt and burned, but she did not. Her hands
were shaking, and she clutched her skirt until they were still. She stood with
dignity, and though her voice quivered, it was not weak. She faced the priest.
“God will provide for my sons and for me, Bar Yesse.”

He
glanced back at her, his eyes full of so many things that he must have wanted
to say and couldn’t. Then he looked at her son, and Shimon met the priest’s
gaze with quiet resolve. It was as though a weathered old tree were facing a
tall rock.

The
priest looked away first. “It is your house, Bar Yonah,” Zebadyah said quietly.
His shoulders tensed. Then he stepped past him to the door, Yakob moving aside
to let him past.

Rahel’s
heartbeat did not slow until the sound of the priest’s footsteps, and then his
son’s after him, had faded in the street. Not until she held the baby in her
arms, holding in tears that she would not shed where her son could see. Not
until she felt the cool cloth against her cheek and Shimon’s words soft by her
ear, promising that he would care for her and for his crippled brother both,
whatever might come. That she would never be hungry. That she would never need
to go to the priest if she didn’t wish it. That she was his mother and he loved
her. And then she did cry, and it was a long time before she was done.

The
stone steps leading to her roof were cold under her bare feet, but for once
Rahel didn’t mind that; the shock of sensation each time she set her foot
carefully down—so carefully, because she was sore, and carrying her child in
her arms—reminded her she was alive.

It
was after dark now; the first panic of Zebadyah’s visit had dulled, to be
replaced with a throng of small, sharp fears, each of them nipping at her like
wolves harrying deer. She felt that each step might send her body crashing to
her knees in fatigue, yet her mind was fiercely wakeful. In any case, she
couldn’t bear finding a place to sleep in her open atrium or in the small
winter rooms around the inner walls of her house. The house was too empty; the
family they had once shared it with had not survived the night of the dead.
Shimon had succeeded in scrubbing most of the blood out of the walls, but Rahel
thought she could still smell it. And Shimon had also boarded up the
outward-looking windows of their house, which made it worse. She understood why
he had done it; many had died that night because the dead had climbed through
open windows. Other houses throughout the town were boarding up, too. But in
seasons past, she had often leaned out of those windows and talked with the
town’s other women as they passed by. Now those other women were gone, no one
left to sit
shiva
with her and mourn with her for her husband, and even
her windows were gone. This no longer felt like her home.

Only
the rooftop felt the same.

Reaching
it, she stood still for a few moments, just breathing. The wind from the sea
was chill against her face, but she didn’t fear the
shedim
. Let them
come. What more could they take from her?

She
gazed out at that sea, where she could see the white chop of the waves and a
few dark shapes rocking on them: the boats moving out to gather the night’s
fish. They looked so few, so few. Only a week before, the boats had set out
like a flock of great birds, fast over the water. Now she could count only ten.
In one of them was her older son, setting out with Yakob and young Yohanna in
his father’s boat, on the sea without him for the first time. Tears burned her
eyes. She blinked them back and made her way to the little bed of cushions
Yonah had made for her during the early months of her pregnancy, knowing how
much she loved the open air and the sky and the scent of the sea.

Her
infant stirred slightly as she settled with a groan and a sharp ache where she
had torn in birthing him, but she held him close and drew the shawl in which
she’d wrapped him up over his head until he fell asleep again. She held him to
her, kissing the top of his head with the softest brush of her lips, again and
again. She smelled baby, and she smelled her husband, for the shawl she’d
swaddled him in was Yonah’s
tallit
. It was wrong, perhaps terribly wrong,
to swaddle a baby in a prayer shawl, but the cloth carried Yonah’s scent and
her heart knew the shawl would protect her son, as Yonah himself would if he
were here.

Her
heart beat a little faster. She tried to think of whether Yonah would have
lifted this child into his hands and accepted him as his own son, if he’d
lived. She felt certain he would have. Yes, she was certain of it. The man who
had held her after that storm on the sea would never have turned away any life
that came from her body.

She
glanced out at the sea again, its wind in her hair, and could not remember ever
having felt so alone. “What do I do?” she whispered, pressing her nose to the
tallit
.
“What do I do?”

But
her husband was not there to answer her. There was only her, making decisions
to stand between her children and the hungry grave. Shimon would bring home
fish, and perhaps … perhaps he would not grow to resent her for not going
to the priest’s bed, for risking her children in the winter.

It
was not too late, she knew. She could run from the house, up the street, knock
on the door of Zebadyah’s house, endure the staring
eyes of the few other surviving women from the windows and rooftops of their
own homes. She could give herself to him, undress for him, and whisper after he
lay in her, “Please, feed my sons.” Many women of her People had done so
before.

But
her belly twisted at the thought, and her face throbbed where her husband’s
brother had struck her. She clutched her baby closer, shivering.

She
didn’t know if Shimon would be able to bring enough food for the three of them.
She didn’t know if Zebadyah would be harsh with her, if she went to him, if he
would often strike her. But she knew he would never feed
both
her sons.
He would not take her second son into his house.

As
though hearing her thoughts, the infant stirred and began to cry. She lifted
him to her breast. Seeing the way he kneaded her flesh with only one hand while
the other hung lifeless at his side, Rahel closed her eyes, forbidding herself
tears. A feeling of warm sleep stole over her as often happened when the baby
fed. For a while her fear for him pierced through it.

Yet
somewhere between one breath and the next, she slipped into the dream country.
And it was water, all water, dark waves covering all the
world and nowhere any shore. It closed over her, taking away sound and light.
Then she flailed about and found herself facing Yonah, her husband’s face stern
yet his eyes turning gentle when he saw her, as they always had.

She
had wedded Yonah when she was fourteen, had wanted to believe he would be a
shelter and a strong place for her in this uneasy world. Once, when she was
still young, he had rowed her out onto the water, uncaring that the sea was for
fishermen, not their wives. That one night, he had gone without nets or spear,
just rowing out with his wife until they were far from shore and no other boats
could be seen dark on the water. The waves rolled them with a motion that was
soothing and sure. There he made love to her, while the stars moved slowly
across the sky. She remembered the sound of his breathing, his face above hers,
his touch. Afterward, a storm had fallen on the sea. He bound her to the row
bench, then cast his coat over her, while she watched
the surge and growl of the sea and the heavy dark of the sky with wide eyes.
She watched her husband fight the waves, and the sea tossed them and spun them.
Water came over the gunwale and tried to slam her from the boat, but her
husband’s ropes held her fast.

Then
the sea was quiet, as suddenly as though the storm had been a candle snuffed
out. The clouds broke open, revealing the moon. Yonah cut his wife loose from
the bench even as she sobbed and gasped in great gulps of air no longer laden
with water. She shivered with cold as he clutched her to him, tearing away his
soaked tunic and then tearing away hers, so that her body and his were pressed
naked to each other, and she could feel the fire in him and his heart loud
against hers, as when they had made love. His rough hands rubbed life into her
arms and back. She shook and clung to him and sobbed, and heard him sobbing in
her ear, too.

The
moon had set while they made love, before the tempest; but now there was a moon
in the sky. The storm had lasted all of a day and it was now the next night, the
Sabbath night, and as they warmed each other, Yonah started to murmur the words
of a song in her ear, words he might sing to greet the Sabbath Bride as she
came over the water.

Though
the fig tree does not flower,

And
no grapes are on the vines …

Rahel
woke with a start, her infant asleep at her breast. She heard shouting in the
distance. Blinking quickly, she looked about and her first impression was that
the sea was on fire. But as her eyes focused, she realized that men had built a
great blaze on the shore among the wrack left by the outgoing tide. She could
see their shapes dark against the glow of it, and hear their voices, most of
them indistinct but one calling louder than the rest and carrying to her on the
sea wind.

Zebadyah.

He
was reciting passages from the Grief of Ezra. Catching the words, she shivered
and clutched her infant tightly. She watched with wide eyes as the men on the
sands tossed items into the flames, and she heard the roar and rush of the fire
as it fed. She couldn’t see what they were burning, but she could guess.

The remains of the Roman tents. Any clothing of
Greek weave or any ornaments from other towns that the Romans had looted from
their homes, or any they had left. Anything that was not Hebrew. Anything that
was unclean, or broken, or suspect. Anything that might tempt
God to look away from the town when the dead lurched near.

They
were cleansing Kfar Nahum.

Perhaps
it was only that she had just risen out of the waters of sleep. Perhaps it was
only the stress and anguish of the past few days. Whatever the reason, Rahel
had a vivid, brutal vision of Zebadyah lifting her infant up and casting his
small, wailing body into the flames.

She
shivered. Pressing her lips to the baby’s head, she whispered, “It’s all right.
It’s all right.”

But
she could not look away from those flames, or from the dark silhouette of the
priest standing so near them, nor shut her ears against Zebadyah’s harsh,
grieving cries. And she did not sleep again that night.