The Liars' Gospel (6 page)

It is the first day of Passover. This is the day, of course. She knows it down to her fingers’ ends. She has wondered how
she would feel, but like the impact of an anticipated blow, contemplating it in advance cannot reduce the pain. Pinchas, her
younger brother, knows it too. He has walked from S’de Raphael for the Passover feast. When he sees her, he makes a grimace
at her and rises from blowing the embers of the fire. He puts his arm around her shoulders. His wool jerkin is damp, moss-scented.
He pulls her close and says, “May your other sons live, Miryam! May they make you proud and bring you more grandchildren and
great-grandchildren.” He kisses the top of her head and she nestles against his shoulder, pressing her nose into that mushroomy
fabric. It feels safe here. Safe like family.

She sniffs and pulls away.

“Better get that fire going.”

He lets his hands fall to his sides.

“I still think about the ones Chava and I lost,” he says at last.

And she does too, and she understands. She still thinks often of her two that died, the little ones—lost at the pinnacle of
their sweetness and grace to a cough and a chill and the simple fact that she could not keep them here. And those that never
quickened, or that quickened but did not hold. She thinks of them and it is an ordinary sadness, the kind most parents share.
But this particular thing is different. Perhaps it is only different because there is anger in it too.

“It’ll be like this all day,” she says. “The cousins and the aunts and the nephews and their wives.”

Pinchas shakes his head.

“Never. Some of them will forget.”

“The others will tell them.” Then, “Iov will remind them.”

“Has he still got that gossiping tongue? Like a woman at the market.”

She smiles. “Still.”

“So he’ll tell them, and they’ll wish you that your other sons live.”

This is how life continues. Learning to bear the unbearable.

Through the family feast Gidon watches and is mindful and says nothing. The family ask about him. She says, “He was lost in
the mountains when the snow fell. He is staying here until he is well enough to make the journey home.” And they glance at
him, looking his rangy form up and down, seeing that he appears quite well, and they say nothing. It is Passover, when it
is especially meritorious to take in the stranger and the wanderer. Some of them remind her of what happened this time last
year, and some say nothing. She finds they cannot make it harder for her either way. At least they do not ask about her husband.
They are mostly concerned with tales of the soldiers still scouring the country for the last of the rebels from Yaffo. They
are coming nearer to Galilee because their search has not been fruitful farther south. The family shake their heads and worry.
They eat the unleavened bread and drink wine.

When she wakes the next morning, Gidon has completed his chores and has a soup bubbling on the fire. He is cutting some vegetables
for it—onions and leeks.

He smiles. “One who helps a widow,” he quotes, “isn’t his portion doubled or tripled under heaven? And she who gives succor
to an orphan will find herself blessed, and God will turn His face to her.”

She frowns. She thinks—I could tell him, and then he will know all my sorrow.

“I am not a widow,” she says. “As far as I know.”

Gidon’s hands stop working.

“He was angry with me. I disobeyed him too often. I was a stubborn wife, and people told him that I had disobeyed his wishes
in…a certain matter. He put me away,” she speaks quickly and quietly, “he took another wife and moved her to another village.
He gave me the
keritut,
the contract of divorce, and told me I was permitted to other men.”

She is not sorry he’s gone. Apart from the strength in his shoulders, she barely misses him. She wants her children close
to her and she wants her son back, and Yosef and his new young wife seem the least of her concerns.

Gidon says nothing. He knows she has told him a sad and lonely thing. Most women in her position would lie and say that the
husband was dead.

She heard that Yehoshuah preached a teaching which had never been heard before. Many of his teachings were not new. He told
them well, and with a force and skill that impressed the listeners, but the teachings themselves were as familiar to her as
her own skin.

She herself had taught him the famous story of Rabbi Hillel. A man came to the two great rabbis, Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Shammai,
and made of each of them the same request: “Teach me the whole of the Torah while I stand on one leg.” Rabbi Shammai chased
him off with a broom. But Rabbi Hillel said: “Stand on one leg and I will teach you.” And the man stood on one leg. And Rabbi
Hillel said: “That which is hateful to you, do not do to other people. That is the whole of the law: all the rest is commentary.
Go and learn.”

When Yehoshuah said, “Treat others as you hope they’d treat you,” it was not a new teaching. Rabbi Hillel was an old man when
Yehoshuah was born.

But he taught a new thing, one of the women from Kfar Nachum told her. He said that if a man divorces his wife and takes another,
it is the same as adultery. This saying was popular among women. They passed it one to another. Every village had some woman
whose husband had put her away, scraping a living in her old age on the goats and land their marriage contract made him give
her, with no rest for her aching bones even though she had borne him sons and daughters.

She wondered if this was a secret message for her, a sign that he thought of her still. But he did not send word to her. He
did not speak about Yosef. He talked of having another father, spoke of God as his father. And she thought: he wants me to
go to him again. Surely this means he wants to see me.

It is a curious thing, the growth of trust between two people. When two strangers meet, there is no trust. They may fear one
another. They do not know if one is a spy, or a traitor, or a thief. There is no dramatic moment which marks the transition
from mistrust to trust. Like the approach of summer, it walks a little farther on every day, so that when we come to notice
it, it has already occurred. Suddenly one notices that, yes, this is a person whom I would have watch over my flocks, my children,
my secrets.

She is moved by the softness of Gidon’s features. His beard has hardly begun to come in, just a few patches of fuzz like a
mountain dog in molt. His eyelashes are long, and his smell is the sweet thick scent of a young man in whom the sap is just
rising. His elbows and knees are sharp, his shoulders are stiff. There is a wanting in him, and not yet an understanding of
what he wants. Her son was just so when he was twenty. His tender eyes were just so. The way he holds the cup of warm liquid,
cradling it close to him, rubbing his knuckles in the cold, he was just like this boy.

Her heart comes close to him. She says nothing more of her husband. For a long time, he says nothing more of her son. He works.
They bank the fire down after the evening meal and talk of what could be done with the western field next year.

She went to Yehoshuah the winter before Gidon arrived in Natzaret. It was not such a harsh winter, there was no snow. She
had heard that he had a mighty crowd of followers with him, perhaps five hundred people traveling in a great convoy. They
were circling near to Natzaret, not half a day’s journey, and she left the littlest children with Shimon’s wife and wrapped
woolen robes around her and borrowed a mule from Rahav and went to see her son.

It had been many a year, she thought, since she had last made such a journey alone. A young woman would never travel so unprotected.
But there was a fierce freedom to it. Who could rob her now? What would they take from her? She had water, and hard bread,
and a bag of apples. She kept to the main roads. She told her sons where she had gone and when to expect her return.

She ruminated as she rode. There was such an anger in her heart, she hadn’t known it was there until she was alone on her
mule, riding the iron-hard miles. She had never been a bad mother, never truly a bad wife. She’d cared for her children—she
flexed her stiff fingers, reminding herself how much it had cost her to care—had made loaves of bread and meal cakes and soups
and roasted meat and dried fruits, had washed the children and kept them free from disease, had lain with her husband even
when she was tired or unwilling because these are the duties of a wife and a mother. She had vanished into it and not accounted
it a loss. This is who she was: a mother.

And this child could not pay her the duties of a son? Not to visit her in glory with his mighty crowd of men? Not to give
her a place at his table? Not to write to her or send word to her after all she had done? From the first red scored line that
had popped open across her belly when she grew big with him to the last bowl of soup she had made for him before he vanished,
was all of this nothing?

Her soul grew bitter as the miles passed and when she arrived at the encampment—there was no mistaking it, five hundred travelers
make smell and noise and smoke—she felt as tough and unyielding as the frozen earth.

“Where is the tent of Yehoshuah of Natzaret?” she said to a Roman hanger-on with fine clothes.

“Who are you to ask?”

“I am his mother,” she said.

The first they know of it is that the long barn is on fire. The barn at the edge of the village, the first one you come to
if you’re walking from the south. There are cries in the street of “fire, fire” and Miryam runs out like everyone else, carrying
her bucket, ready to be part of a chain down to the river. It has been dry these past few weeks—a stray cinder from a careless
fire could have set the barn ablaze.

They begin to run down the hill to the barn, barefooted mostly on the chalk-dry baked earth. Calling to one another that they
should make for the river to bring water. And they see the crested plumes and the glittering spears and they hear the sound
of the phalanx. And they are afraid.

It is only a scouting party, ten men with a guide who speaks the native language. Rome does not send its finest and best to
seek out a small village sixty-five miles from Jerusalem. But even a scouting party brings with it the authority of those
who sent it, the invisible chain stretching back from these ten to the centurions garrisoned at the capital, and from there
to the Prefect, and from there to the Emperor himself. If these men are not satisfied, others will come. If those are not
satisfied, more men will come. Eventually Rome will have its answer, or the place will be reduced to a bloody smear upon smoldering
earth.

This is why they have burned the barn. It is not your barn, they are saying. It is ours. Rome owns you.

They come to a halt in the town square. The people gather there too. There is nothing to do now about the barn or the stores
that will be lost.

The leader of the soldiers makes a brief statement. The people of the village do not understand the language. Some of them,
those who go to the larger cities to trade, have learned a few words, but this speech is fast and complex.

They know the translator. He is a man who works for the tax overseer in Galilee. They have seen him often. He never brings
good news. It is no surprise to see him now with the Roman soldiers; he has come before with mercenaries to exact his payments.

This time, he attempts to pretend that he is their friend. The Romans do not understand what he is saying, the people do not
understand what the Romans have said. There is no way to be sure that he is even communicating the true message.

“They’ve brought me here,” he says, “because they’re looking for people who fled Yaffo. In the uprising a few months ago,
I know you heard about it. Now, I’ve tried to reason with them, tried to persuade them. You’re good people, you pay your taxes
on time, you don’t make trouble. But they’ve heard the rumor that a boy from Yaffo is living in the village now. A new boy.
And I’m sure you don’t want to harbor known criminals, not in a quiet place like Natzaret! So my best advice is, hand him
over. They’ll take him away and ask him questions and leave you alone. You might even have time to save some of the”—he inclines
his head faintly towards the barn—“some of it, perhaps.”

They look around at one another. Gidon is not there, he is in the hills with the new lambs, he will be there for a day or
two probably. Miryam wonders if any of them will speak.

“He is living with me,” she says, loudly and suddenly, surprising even herself a little. “But he is not the man you’re seeking.”

The tax collector smiles. The gold ring glitters on his thumb.

“Mother Miryam, I would never have thought it of you! Well, hand him over and we’ll be on our way.”

Miryam sees her brother Shmuel shift in the crowd. He would go and get the boy now, she realizes. He would mount a pony and
gallop into the hills to find him and give him to the Romans.

“No,” she says, “he is not the man you want.”

Shmuel’s body stiffens. He tries to catch her eye, to mouth something to her.

“We’ll have to judge that ourselves, Mother Miryam.”

“No,” she says.

And something in the atmosphere turns. Perhaps it is that one of the soldiers fingers his spear, not understanding the conversation
but hearing something in her tone.

The lead soldier bends to whisper a word or two in the tax collector’s ear. The man nods.

“If you can’t produce him, Mother Miryam,” he says, and his voice is hard now, “we will take you instead. For questioning.”

She tightens the muscles in her stomach. She will need to lie.

When she came in to see him, she found she was singing a song under her breath. It was a psalm, set to a tune the goat herders
sing. She used to sing it to Yehoshuah when he was a tiny baby and perhaps some part of her thought that it would turn him
back to the child he was, and he would remember how he used to need her.