No Lasting Burial (8 page)

“Maybe
it is the Romans you hear screaming.” Barabba’s face darkened with anger, but
his voice was steady.

“Maybe.”

“Go
with him!” Bar Cheleph cried out. His face bore that same fear that Koach felt.
As he always did, Bar Cheleph was lashing out before he could be hurt. “And
others with you! We’ll have fewer fish. And fewer mouths.”

“Be
quiet, son,” Zebadyah said.

Bar
Nahemyah was staring coldly at the corpse’s head, where it lay defiling the
earth near the priest’s feet. “I trust my own hands and anything I hold in
them,” he said. “I do not trust you, Barabba. I’ve fought my fight. I am done.”

“Go,
stranger.” Shimon bar Yonah lifted his head and faced the horseman, his voice
bitter, his shoulders hunched as with remembered pain.
“We are men who grieve, and this is all that is left of our home. We will not
leave it for you or anyone else.”

“Pray
the Romans don’t take it from you,” Barabba snapped.

“We
have little left for them,” Shimon said. “If they want it, let them try. But
you, leave us be, as you’ve been asked.”

Koach
stared at Shimon in wonder, never having heard his taciturn brother speak so
many words at once.

Barabba
wheeled his horse about in a cold fury. “Why are the rest of you silent?” he
cried. “Rise up! I call you, rise up! What is wrong with you? Maybe you are all
half-Roman or Roman-lovers.” Suddenly he caught sight of Koach, where he’d
shrunk back against his mother’s side. “There! That boy! What is wrong with his
arm? Why haven’t you cast him out? What kind of Hebrews are you?” His voice
rose in a shout. “He is probably a Roman’s child! A rape child!—”

“He
is
not
!” Rahel shrieked, and her small hand thrust Koach behind her.

“The
Outlaw is right!” Bar Cheleph cried. “God does not bless us or feed us. We are
starving! We have let such a boy live!”

“Starving!”
someone else shrieked. “We’re starving!”

“Stone
the boy!” He recognized Mordecai’s voice.

“Stone
the boy!” others shouted. “Stone the boy!”

It
was as though all the griefs and terrors of fourteen years had been poured into
a wineskin and sealed, and the wineskin had held them contained and out of
sight. But over the years, the skin had grown brittle, and now Barabba with his
words and his hurling of severed heads to their feet had dashed the skin
against the earth, and everything this town had refused to look at was gushing
out. It was gushing out ugly and sharp as vinegar. These angry faces no longer
seemed those of men and women whom Koach knew. They stared at him with dead
eyes and opening mouths, like the mouths of the dead.

Several
stooped to lift stones from the side of the street.

Koach
took a step back, blanching, but the stones did not fly. Not yet. Shimon stood
between Koach and the crowd, his body tensed. Some of them wavered. Bar
Nahemyah and Benayahu—the town’s
nagar
, the woodworker and repairer of
boats whose house stood by theirs—took their stand by Yonah’s son. Zebadyah
looked on in horror.

Rahel
gripped Koach’s good arm, her face rigid with fear. “If they throw,” she
whispered, “you run.”

“Amma
…” he whispered.

“You
run
, Koach. Your brother and I, they will not throw at
us
. They
will
not
.” There was a savage edge to her voice.

At
that moment, Barabba wheeled his horse, and his long knife rang from its
sheath. “I will take care of this for you,” he shouted, and kicked his heels
in. But even as his gelding sprang forward, Shimon tore the heavy fishing coat
from his shoulders and flung it over the animal’s head. The horse reared,
hooves striking the air. Cursing, Barabba fought for balance.

“Run,
Koach!” Rahel cried.

Koach
stumbled back, then fled, the slap of his sandalled
feet against the dry, packed earth before the synagogue. Someone grabbed for him
and missed; others sprang out of his way. Glancing over his shoulder, Koach
caught a glimpse of Barabba tearing the coat free and hurling it aside. A spray
of red in the air as his knife took Benayahu across the face; the
nagar
had tried to grab at the bridle, and now fell back with a gurgled cry. Zebadyah
was shouting, and there were screams, and Rahel stood before Barabba’s horse.

Then
a turn in the narrow streets hid the synagogue and the Outlaw from view, and
Koach panted as he ran. More screams—terrible screams—but he didn’t dare stop.
Panic beat an overpowering drumbeat in his chest, and in his ears he heard his
mother’s voice:
Run, Koach, run. Run. Run.

He
ran. Gasping for breath, he leapt as far with each stride as he could, down the
slope of the land toward the sea. He began ducking through the narrower spaces
between houses. Behind him, hooves like battle-drums against the packed earth
of Kfar Nahum’s streets, and in his ears the rush and roar of his blood.
Without thought, Koach ran to where the small houses were packed thickest,
nearest the water where his mother and his brother and the surviving fishers
lived. Barabba bellowed somewhere behind him, but he ran on, panting. He had
the confused impression that if he could get to his mother’s house, he might
hide somewhere within. But already his sides burned, and he ran half hunched
over.

Then
he could see his mother’s house ahead, that small stone structure, its walls
whitened by the sea, and the hooves were louder behind him. He ran past the
last few houses, and the door to the house ahead of
him—the door of the last house before his mother’s, the
nagar
’s door, in
better repair than most—was thrown open. A girl stood there, one his own age, a girl with a strange face and a frightened
look.

“Inside!”
she cried. “Quickly!”

Koach
had only half a breath in which to make up his mind. Home was before him, but
he would be alone there, in an empty house, with a furious man and a blade
coming for him. He could hear the hoofbeats behind, just around the corner. He
didn’t trust others in the town, none but his mother and perhaps Shimon his
brother and perhaps Bar Nahemyah who was alone, as he was.

“Come
on!” the girl cried.

Something
in her eyes told him what he needed to know.

With
a gasp he flung himself toward the girl and her door.

The
girl caught Koach’s hand—her fingers so warm around his—and pulled him up
against her side and into the house; her other hand caught the latch of the
door and swung it shut against the sound of hooves. Her eyes were wide in the
soft dark. Koach could hear her breathing and his. He could also feel her body,
the softness of it, pressed to him. It made places low in his body heat in a
way that astonished him.

She
put her lips to his ear and whispered, “Come on. I’ll hide you.”

She
led him quickly across the atrium of her father’s house, beneath the open sky.
Koach looked at her in wonder. There were few young women in Kfar Nahum, and
few young men, but Koach did not remember having seen her before. There were
finger-shaped bruises just below her sleeve, as though someone had gripped her
arm hard enough to drag her across the atrium and fling her to the ground or
into a room. But at that moment, with Barabba’s hoofbeats still loud in his
ears, Koach barely noticed them. She had a strange face. Her eyes were wide
apart—too wide—but they were fierce with the fire of her heart, and for a
moment he found it difficult to look away from them.

She
did not look at him with the horror he was used to seeing in girls’ eyes.

She
pulled hard at his wrist. “Come on!” she whispered.

Outside,
the hoofbeats went still.

“God
of Hosts,” she whispered. She pulled him out of the atrium into one of the
small rooms along the wall, drew him in, and let the great rug that served for
a curtain fall closed across the door. Within, shards of light speared toward
the floor from a window long boarded up against the dead, in lines as sharp as
though a man had drawn them there. Koach could see motes of dust flashing into
existence as they drifted into the light, and then fading out of existence
again, each one lit up briefly with fire from the sun. Despite the terror in
his heart, it startled him; it was so beautiful. As the girl stepped through
the light and into the shadows behind it, Koach caught the briefest glimpse of
hair the color of rich earth.

A
clatter as his heel struck a pile of clay bowls.

“Hide!”
the girl gasped, and her small hands shoved him down
into a heap of bedding. She began reaching for blankets to pile over him.

“Why?”
Koach panted. “Why are you helping me?”

A
small scream, muffled against her closed lips. “Don’t ask questions!” she
whispered fiercely. “Hide!”

A horse’s whicker at the door. Koach
stiffened.

In
another moment, there was a hard rap against the wood, as if something blunt
had struck against it. The Outlaw’s sword-hilt, perhaps.

Another rap.

Then two more.

In
the moments that followed, Koach could hear his breathing like a wind over the
sea. He hadn’t known breathing could be so loud.

“Come
out! If you’re in there, boy, come out!” A pause.
“That’s how you want to die? Hiding? You come out, I’ll let you run.”

Shamed,
Koach began to get up, only to feel the girl’s hand pressing him back.

“Don’t,”
she whispered.

He
shook his head, tried to get up again.

Her
hands pinned his shoulders. “No, he won’t break the door.” Her mouth barely
made any sound, just the movement of her lips. “He won’t. He won’t defile
another’s house!”

There
was a harder pounding at the door, and a great crack. The girl’s face went
white. Koach peered past her, through the tiny gap between the rug and the
wall. He saw the outer door half fall to the side, the wood splintered about
its rusted bronze hinge.

Barabba
stood with his hand still on the ruined door, his expression lethal. For a
moment, Koach’s heart clamored in his ears; he was sure the Outlaw would kick
the door the rest of the way open and come for him with knife or stone, tearing
aside the rugs to reveal the inner rooms, until Koach was found.

Yet
the girl had been right: even as the door broke, Barabba hesitated. To violate
the sanctity of another man’s house, a man of your own People, to stride in
boldly as though you owned the house and all within, that would invite the
wrath of holy God. That gave even Barabba pause.

The
Outlaw’s eyes burned. As Koach and the girl held their breath, Barabba visibly
struggled with himself. Then he turned partly away with a snarl. “Hide, then,
in the house of good men!” he called, his voice thick with a fury that had been
building perhaps for years, like a storm piling hot above the sea.

“Hide, little rat! But it doesn’t
matter how deep you burrow. One day soon, when we’ve thrown the Romans into the
sea, good men will rip you out of your hole, you and every heathen and every
hebel
and every unclean weakling, and drag you out to be stoned in the open before
the eyes of God. Hide and shiver.”

“He’s
right,” Koach whispered, barely moving his lips. “I’m not just
hebel
,
I’m a coward.” He was shaking. Too well he remembered the pain from Bar
Cheleph’s fists. Barabba would be worse.

“Shh!
He’ll
hear
you!”

But
he knew that he had to get up. Shimon his brother had stood before the Outlaw
without fear in his face. Koach had not been permitted to stand before the
other men in the synagogue; if he couldn’t stand like them now, or if Barabba
did burst in and this lovely girl who’d hidden him was hurt in his place …

Koach
took one of the girl’s hands in his, dislodging it from his shoulder. He opened
his mouth to call out to the Roman-killer, who still stood furious in the door.
The girl hissed in frustration, and then suddenly her small weight was pressed
down on him and her lips found his and they were warm and soft, and his heart
pounded in alarm. Any intent he might have had to call out or rise and stride
to the door washed away like sand on the tide. After moment, his lips parted
around her upper lip and he kissed her. His one good hand still clasped her
wrist captive, for he did not know either to let go or to put his arm around
her. It took his entire being just to manage the kiss. He did not even hear the
Outlaw’s boot strike the ruin of the door, or his steps retreating, or the
whicker of his horse as he reined it about, outside. Koach heard nothing but
his own heart and her soft breathing through her nose as her own lips parted
and the kiss became something new and different and overwhelming, something
much more than just a frustrated girl silencing him the only way she could
think of, something so warm and real and moist that it was painful.

“I’m
sorry,” he gasped when the kiss ended.

Silence
thickened between them.

Then
she whispered, “I’m not.”

Startled,
he looked into her eyes, which shone in the light from the window. There was a
look in them he had never seen before. It scared him and excited him.

“What
is your name?” he whispered.

“Tamar,”
she said. “Tamar bat Benayahu.”

“Bat
Benayahu,” he whispered. He had no idea what to say, or how to say it. So
instead he touched her face with his fingertips. “You are so graceful,” he
said.

She
shook her head. “No. I know that’s not true.” She looked pale. “I’m not … not what you said. Graceful.”

“You
are.”

Her
eyes glistened. Her voice dropped to nearly a whisper. “He keeps me shut in
here, mostly. Forbids me to step outside the door. Because I am ugly. Because …” She lowered her head so
that her hair hid her face. “My father is ashamed that no one has asked for
me.”

“You
are not ugly,” Koach whispered. “You are beautiful.”

She
shook her head sharply.

He
put his hands on her shoulders. “You are
beautiful
,” he said again. “Beautiful as the moon on the sea and the shells on the shore.”

“You
are kind,” she whispered, a catch in her voice. “I knew that. The last time
father let me out, I saw you walking with your mother. My father says terrible
things about you, and I know others do, too. I know that your arm is weak. But
you are Yonah’s son. They say that, too. And I—I’ve seen how you help her. Your mother. Her face—you can tell that she cries often.
You’re what she stays on her feet for. You’re not
hebel
. You’re kind.”

She
glanced up at him through her hair, and her eyes were wet. They caught at his
heart.

“Is
this what it’s like to be kissed?” she whispered. “You press your lips to a
boy’s, and your heart falls out? And suddenly you’re saying things you didn’t
mean to?”

“Yes,”
he whispered back. “Or … I don’t know. I haven’t kissed anyone before.” For
Koach, it wasn’t like his heart spilling from him in a rush of words. It was
more like all the words in the whole word getting stuck in your throat, and
being unable to get any of them out.

Suddenly
he remembered.

“Your
father—your father is hurt,” Koach gasped.

She
gave him a wild look.

“I
don’t think he’s hurt badly. But Barabba was striking at people by the
synagogue.”

She
glanced at the broken door, and her eyes held terror and dread. “I have to find
out what’s happening.”

He
grabbed her arm, but she shook her head.

“Wait
here. Quietly. I won’t be here to hush you,” she
added, blushing.

“If
I shout, will you kiss me again?”

“I
might,” she whispered after a moment.

Her
face was a deep red now, and Koach felt a flash of anger at her father. How
could he have told her she was ugly? He cupped his hand behind her neck and
drew her face to his, quickly, before he could change his mind, and kissed her,
open-mouthed and anxious.

When
the kiss ended, she rushed to her feet and darted across the atrium, swift as a
deer. Koach sat dazed.

Then
she was gone.

Koach
lay beneath the wool bedding, which smelled like Tamar—a scent of sawdust and
wood and clear water and long-held fear that seeps
into the skin so deeply that it becomes a scent, too. The warmth of her lips
remained with him, new and bewildering, as though God had touched him and
changed something inside him, forever. He didn’t know
what
had changed.
He only knew that he was not the same youth he had been an hour earlier.

He
wanted to know her, know everything about her. Did she climb to her roof
sometimes and gaze at the moon over the sea, as he did? Did she like to sing
softly in the evening? Did she have a secret place, a place God had shared only
with her, where she went to think? He wanted to listen to her talk of herself,
as no one had ever done with him, and he wanted to kiss her again.

There
was a shout at the broken door, and Koach tensed. He’d heard no hoofbeats. Wood
creaked as the remains of the door were yanked open. Then
steps and loud breathing. He peered out at the atrium from under the
corner of his blanket. A thin, wiry man with a dark shock of beard was moving
quickly from one room to the next, glancing through the inner doors. Benayahu. He held one hand clutched to his right eye, and
there was blood seeping through his fingers. A gash opened his cheek below his
hand and it gaped red and dark in the dim light. His mouth was curved in a
snarl of rage, his face flushed; the way he moved, the aggression and violence
latent in his body, made Koach hold his breath.

“Tamar!”
her father roared. “Tamar!”

When
there was no answer, he made a low feral sound—a sound Koach had never heard a
man make before—and he stooped over a basket in the atrium and tore out a
cloth, pressing it to his face. He swayed on his feet a moment. Then he glanced
across the atrium at the small chamber where Koach lay. Koach drew the blanket
entirely over his head, tried to make himself as small as possible beneath it,
and lay very still.

Benayahu
strode near, seized the rug over the door, and tore it aside, letting in a
flood of sunlight. He stood there looking in, breathing hard.

Koach
didn’t move, didn’t dare breathe. He began to count silently.

He
made it to four.

Then
the
nagar
’s breath hissed out between his teeth. He let the rug fall
back.

Benayahu
strode to another room without speaking. Koach heard the flapping sound of
another rug pulled aside. Then another. When Benayahu
stepped back into the atrium, Koach shivered at his glimpse of his face. He had
seen such a face before. He remembered the way Bar Cheleph had stood over him
in the grasses, beating him. In a dull horror he remembered the bruises he’d
seen on Tamar’s arm
.
He swallowed and lay very still, hardly daring to
breathe.

He
remembered the small carving he’d made, a fish, torn from his hand, though he’d
tried desperately to hold onto it. And the scent of the grasses, the way a few
wild blades had brushed his face as he shielded his head with his good arm. The
sharp, violent pain that came with each blow of Bar Cheleph’s feet. The shouts of “
Hebel
!
Hebel
!
Hebel
!”

And
that terrible moment when he wondered if he was going to die, if Bar Cheleph
and the other young men were going to beat him to death there on the tideline.

Then
Bar Cheleph’s strangled yell.

The
blows stopped.

Startled voices, then running feet. Running away from him.

Koach
lay still. His back and left side were one dull burn of pain.

A
hand on his shoulder made him tense. He was rolled onto his back. He found Bar
Nahemyah’s face above his, stern but concerned. The shofar hung about the man’s
neck, and the knuckles on his right hand were bloodied.

“On
your feet, Bar Yonah,” he said.

Koach
just looked at him, dazed, trying to breathe.

“I
said get up. Yonah would have been ashamed of you. He would have wanted you to
fight.”

Bar
Nahemyah grasped Koach’s arms and pulled him up until he was sitting. Then he
took a closer look. “God of our fathers, your face is a mess,” he muttered.