The Priest's Madonna (25 page)

Anger and shame rushed through her. Their assumptions shrank her. She wanted to sling their pity into the dust like a soiled cloak from her back. Yet she could not deny her feelings; she felt envy overtaking her despite herself.

From the road they heard a woman crying. She wept in the same way, over and over: a sustained wail dissolving into descending sobs. They watched the road as the sound neared and saw Marta with her arms around the shoulders of a smaller woman whose face was hidden by her shawl. Yeshua moved quickly toward them. He knelt before the weeping woman and she fell into his arms. Her wails rose in pitch and intensity. “Where were you?” she screamed between her sobs. “Where were you?”

Yeshua held her to his chest, which she knocked at feebly with her palm. He grimaced and then began to weep, his sobs coming like bleats. Alarmed, the men by the plane tree began to walk toward the three mourners.

“I am here now,” Yeshua said. “I am here.”

It would be easy to be jealous. But how could she keep such a tight grip on her heart when daily she saw how vast an expanse his roamed? He suffered, always. Each death, each injury affected him as if it were his own. Even the trampled body of a baby starling inspired some small lament. It was as if the blood of all creatures, all living things, thrummed through his veins. It amazed her that he didn’t weep incessantly, feeling all that he felt. It amazed her that he could teach and heal, that he could even walk, with all the grief he carried in his heart.

After a time, he stood, lifting Miryam of Beit Aniyah to stand with him. Followed by Marta, then by the disciples, and then the women, Yeshua led a procession up the road toward the hill where the tomb was. Miryam, having exorcised herself of jealousy, went prayerfully, filled with anticipation. She knew Yeshua was planning to raise a man from the dead, a thing that she had never seen with her own eyes. It was said that in Kfar Nahum, before she had been with him, Yeshua had revived a young girl a few moments after she had died. But this Elazar had been dead for days now. He had already been washed and oiled with nard and myrrh, had already been laid in his tomb.

Had it been a month earlier, she might have doubted Yeshua’s ability to carry it off. But lately something had transpired in her, the orientation of her mind had somehow shifted. He could do it, she knew—but that was a minor fact now, of little importance. The miracles themselves were almost beside the point. Yes, they mattered, and mattered greatly to those who were healed, but the simple fact of this person’s cure or that person’s exorcism was less important than his presence, his example: the love he bore in his bones for every person, the poor and leprous alike, even the Shom ronim. The same love that caused him to weep at the sight of a woman’s grief was what gave him the power to bring back what that woman had lost.

The tomb was one of several on the hillside, and, like the others, it had been cut into the rock and covered with a large boulder, painted white. On top of the boulder towered a few cairns of small stones, left there by mourners. Elazar, it appeared, had been well loved, for the cairns were tall.

Yeshua knelt before the tomb for several minutes murmuring a prayer. Marta and her sister stood by and Miryam and the other women watched them. Some of the men ventured near the edge of the road to see if they could glimpse the towers of Yerushalayim. They were close to the city now, only two miles off.

Finally Yeshua stood and, brushing off his robes, asked for help in rolling the stone away from the tomb. Marta, afraid now, protested. “Rabbi, it’s been four days. There will be an odor.”

But Yeshua, with the help of Kefa and Toma, leaned into the boulder. All three of them pushed and heaved and finally, as the men roared, the heavy stone budged and lumbered aside, and the maw of the vault gaped before them.

The stench came like a sudden blow. Miryam gasped, then retched. Covering her mouth, she stumbled to the far side of the road and vomited. Kefa and Toma did the same. They all three returned to see Yeshua, his cloak pulled over his nose, ducking into the vault. Miryam stifled her urge to call out to him, to tell him not to go inside. Miryam of Beit Aniyah squatted by the entrance to the vault, peering after him.

“How can he stand it?” murmured Yochanah.

A few moments later, Yeshua emerged alone. “Kefa,” he said, beckoning. “He can’t yet walk.”

Kefa, horror in his eyes, took a breath and followed. Another moment passed and then the two of them emerged once more, this time bearing a corpse between them—Yeshua at the feet and Kefa, the strongest among them, carrying the head and shoulders.

They laid the lifeless body on the ground before the tomb. The
soudarion
still swathed its head and face, and strips of linen bound the hands and feet. Miryam of Beit Aniyah knelt and touched the arm. She looked questioningly at Yeshua.

“Unwind the linens,” he said.

Miryam of Beit Aniyah began with his hand. Her own trembled. Marta came forward and began to unwrap the other hand. The skin was dusted with white, like bread that had begun to mold. The sisters wiped the hands with the linen.

Next, they unwound the cloths from the feet and finally moved to the corpse’s head. Marta lifted it off the ground while her sister took off the
soudarion.

Elazar had been a young man. His skin, though gray, was unlined. The same dusting of white that had appeared on the hands and feet had formed here, too, on the nostrils and eyelids and, spottily, across the cheeks. Miryam willed back another wave of nausea.

“Elazar,” said Yeshua, speaking as if to awaken a sleeping child. “Elazar. Your sisters have need of you.”

The eyelids fluttered.

“Oh!” gasped Marta, jumping away.

The eyes opened and stared, gradually quickening into alertness. They blinked and rolled, settling on Miryam of Beit Aniyah, who was kissing the hand she held again and again, little gurgles of laughter erupting from her throat.

Miryam stood closer. She had witnessed the births of her three sisters, so she knew something of the amazement and joy that accompany the entry of a soul into the world. This was not altogether different. Elazar blinked and stared, as a newborn did, and he seemed just as helpless and weak. He moved his mouth soundlessly. He seemed unable to lift his limbs or his head. All that indicated he was alive again were his moving eyes—a thinned blue, like lakewater.

Marta was kissing Yeshua’s sandals. “Thank you,” she wept. “Thank you.” Kefa knelt first in awe, and seeing him, each member of their group followed his lead until they all knelt, their heads bowed, before the spectacle of this awakened corpse. Yeshua said a prayer of gratitude, as he did before and after every miracle he performed—and Miryam could hear the elation in his voice, and the pride.

It took some time before Elazar was able to talk, and even longer before he could stand, so they spent the afternoon there by the tomb, waiting until they could all descend the hill and enter the town once again. The men hummed with excitement. They spoke of the miracle as a victory and anticipated how triumphant they would appear, entering Beit Aniyah led by Yeshua and Elazar. “Everyone will come running to see!” shouted Andreas.

“Anyone who doubts the coming end now,” roared Kefa, “will be powerless before this! Praise God!”

“And when we enter Yerushalayim,” added Levi, “with Elazar at our side, who will be able to stop us? We’ll part the crowds like Mosheh himself at the Red Sea!”

“Elazar will not be going to Yerushalayim!” snapped Miryam of Beit Aniyah. She had lifted Elazar’s head and shoulders onto her lap and was cradling him there while Marta hummed a meandering melody and oiled his feet with the aloes that had been left in the tomb. “You can forget that idea. He’ll be resting at home with us.”

She was strikingly beautiful, it was true. Her dark eyes and wide cheekbones seemed animal in their wildness. How different she was from her sister! Marta was so measured, so reasonable, while Miryam of Beit Aniyah seemed to be all rapture and fire. What had their other sister been like? Had she been as beautiful as her sister Miryam or as passionate? Had she been as conscientious as Marta? Had Yeshua loved her?

Miryam looked away from the reunited family. Yeshua had gone off to pray. Yochanah and Shoshannah were in search of water. Shlomit was sitting alone, smiling bewilderedly, as she usually did, over the rumpled and scattered group. Miryam was filled inexplicably with sadness. She was tired now, thirsty and hungry.

She should have been glad: there was much to celebrate. Soon they would be in Yerushalayim. She hoped to find her family there. Yeshua was spreading his good news; people were receiving him with joy. The men were pulsing with anticipation, expecting the imminent arrival of the Kingdom, the restoration of justice and peace in the land. And, of course, this latest miracle. But she felt empty, full of gloom. Elazar’s resurrection, the animation of a dead thing—it was unnatural, even horrible. He had been at peace and now he was awake again, and would once again be assailed by the battery of desires and aversions that made up a mind, a life. She could not celebrate it; she did not understand it. The expansiveness she’d felt only an hour before had left her. She was her small self again, her grasping, craving self—free of demons, perhaps, but just as defenseless. “All flesh is grass,” she whispered. She walked uphill past the tomb, watching her feet cough dust into the air each time she set them down.

D
ESPITE MY WARINESS with Bérenger, I might have shared with him the new information I’d learned from the mayor if Michelle had not arrived the next night from Carcassonne with a very real, pressing drama of her own.

Over the few years that Michelle had spent in Carcassonne, she had written regularly, telling us of the mundane details of her life: how content she and Joseph were, how Joseph was succeeding at his job, how she was happy to be keeping house, shopping in the fine shops there, working on her dolls, which she sold at market every week, and which modestly augmented their income. We were all satisfied to know Michelle was happy. So you may imagine our surprise at seeing her standing on our doorstep, her eyes red, her hair and dress wet from the rain, and a bulge at her belly. Mother exclaimed in horror and brought her directly to the fireplace, where she stripped off her wet clothes, wrapped her in a blanket, and brought her some hot brandy.

Michelle sipped the brandy and told us what had happened. Joseph worked so hard, but was plagued with a bitter and ungrateful boss who took pleasure in humiliating him and often did not pay him when his salary was due. Michelle, having already lost one baby, was ready to give up on Carcassonne and move back home, where they knew Joseph could at least find work at the factory. But Joseph had refused—he felt it would be a worse humiliation and he could not bear it. He believed things would improve. Finally, after months of arguing and suffering with the fear that this next baby would be lost as well, Michelle had left on her own—run away in the middle of the day while Joseph was at work. She had walked up the hill from Couiza in the rain.

My mother was furious with her—“If you were so worried about losing your child, you never would have climbed that hill!”—and setting up a cot by the fire, she ordered her to bed. She kept the fire going all night and all the next day, going from the kitchen to Michelle’s side, bringing her tonics and brandy, oiling her belly, until she was convinced Michelle was well. And she was; Michelle had always been a healthy girl.

Joseph came the morning after Michelle, pounding on the door, and when he saw her lying on the cot by the fire, he fell on his knees beside her and wept. No measure of comfort from any of us would stop his crying. It was not until Michelle stood up and began to walk all around the house, lifting her arms and her knees in a series of calisthenics to demonstrate her health, that he stopped sobbing and stood, begging her to stop for she was endangering the baby’s life. Then he embraced her and asked her forgiveness. They would move back to Rennes-le-Château, he agreed. It was madness, their life in Carcassonne. He would be glad to be away from his despotic boss, glad to be back among their families, glad to raise their child in such a beautiful place, among such kind and loving people. My mother wept to see them reconciled, and my father stood outside and shouted at the top of his lungs, “I’m going to be a grandfather!” while Claude shyly placed his hand on Michelle’s belly to feel the baby kick.

Michelle and Joseph moved in with Joseph’s family, and Joseph found a job as a supervisor at the factory. He left every morning with the rest of the men, making the trek downhill, their dinners wrapped in handkerchiefs.

Michelle’s pregnancy affected me deeply. I had grown comfortable with the notion of chastity and its attendant state of childless-ness. Or, perhaps more truthfully, I had never truly considered the prospect of bearing a child. Maternity did not tug at my apron, like it seemed to for so many girls.

Watching Michelle, however, as she grew bigger and more immobile, awakened me to a new sense of expectation, the anticipation of a sure and unprecedented joy. I felt, as I hadn’t before, the close interweave of my family, our dependence on one another, not just for practicalities (meals, income, the innumerable chores) but for hope, for sustenance of the spirit. As I helped my mother and Michelle sew tiny dresses and knit booties for the layette, as I watched Claude carve from cast-off pieces of chestnut and oak little rattles, boats, and toy animals, and my father fashion a beautiful wickerwork cradle, I understood for the first time how basic and essential the birth of a child was. I felt my heart softening for this baby, even before I saw him, and as it softened, my increasingly solipsistic world enlarged. There was more, then: something beyond my own tortured faith, beyond the search after the Austrian’s elusive and as yet mythical book, beyond even the fluctuating gradients of my intimacy with Bérenger and the moods they inspired. I was not born to be a mother. But an aunt: this title I could cherish.