Two from Galilee (23 page)

His mother snatched him from the embrace before his hands could discover what his eyes could not. "Hush, there will be no wedding."

"No wedding?" he said, bewildered. Then in a rush of understanding, "Well, but our cousin Deborah is to be married next week, that will be wedding enough."

"Hush, don't speak of weddings." Hannah made a grimace of pain. "Go away all of you, we have things to discuss." Abstractedly she went to the chest and began to finger its contents. "No wedding," she said piteously. "No happy procession, no torches, no music, no feast. After all our plans—that our daughter should only be led off with bowed head into a small crowded cave of a house where the dead have lain."

Joachim spoke up. "Let's not bemoan the matter of a wedding, rather let's be thankful that Joseph is willing to take our daughter as his wife."

"Father's right. What if I had been betrothed to someone else? Is it likely that another man would accept my story and have me as I am?"

"He's always loved you beyond all reason." On Hannah's lips it was an accusation. "He's simply unwilling to give you up."

"Surely you aren't saying that it would be better if Joseph were the kind of man who'd abandon me?"

"Listen to Mary," said Joachim. "Knowing that the child she carries is not his, then Joseph is indeed doing a noble thing."

"But Joseph believes!" The wonder of it rose up in Mary, lending a new radiance to her tense face. "He believes. He is not taking me out of kindness to spare me, or even because of his love for me. But only because at last he too believes." She gazed from one to the other, her whole being alive with it. "He knows now that this is not shame that has befallen me, but honor. That I am honored above all women.

"Joseph's house is nearly finished," she told them, "it lacks only a portion of the roof. We'll sleep there this night. And we'll go into his house together, not with bowed heads, Mother, but proudly, knowing how great a thing has befallen us. Both of us. For no matter what people are saying, they are wrong. This child that I carry is the child of no man, but as I told you in the beginning, the child of him who created us all. The child who is destined to be our deliverer."

In the silence they could hear the children still arguing, the shrill whine of their tops on the doorstone. Salome had begun the churning, there was the slosh of the coming butter in the skins. Esau passed by the window, leading the goats to the rain-filled trough. A rich scent of animal and earth came into the room. And it was all so homely and dear and familiar—how could she expect them to understand? How could she leave them even for Joseph? Yet he was coming, her dearest, her chosen one, who was also even as she, chosen by God. A great excitement of love and pain and wonder flamed up in her.

"What did your aunt have to say of all this?" Joachim asked.

"Elizabeth knew. For she cried out at sight of me that my womb was blest, and at that moment her own child leapt. The child that is likewise destined to be a great and holy man."

Elizabeth.
Hannah blanched. Her own sister then, who was older and wiser and intimate with godly things, accepted this. A part of her scoffed, a part of her fell prostrate almost in terror, wondering: Could it be? could it possibly be? "I wish it otherwise," she said. "I wish that God had chosen some other one."

"Then you believe?" Mary cried. "Mother, you do believe?"

"Would that I could." Hannah sat on the floor beside the chest, plucking fiercely away at the chaff—how it clung. "Would that I dared believe."

"Father? You didn't question this when I first told you."

"No," he said, "it was somehow easier then. Before I'd had time to think, to question, to reason."

"To listen to me," Hannah said.

"Yes, to reason and to listen to reason. And yet now that I have seen you—yes, Mary, it's easier for me to believe this marvel than to believe that you have sinned."

"Thank you, Father. If even one of you ceases to doubt, then my heart will be at rest."

Jealousy wrenched Hannah again. The old alliance, shutting her out; now this mystery. She could only grope blindly along its edges, like Esau. What was it, what was it? Would the door never be opened to her, the light come streaming through? No, no, she shrank back from it, her whole practical nature thrusting it away.

She could feel Mary's large beseeching eyes. "Oh, Mother, I beg you to try, for your own soul's peace."

"I don't know, I don't know," Hannah said. "I only know that I'm wretched and afraid." She sprang up, began to give cryptic orders for the packing of the baskets, for she heard the commotion in the yard. Joseph had arrived. He had put off all semblance of mourning, she saw, shocked. He wore his best raiment of many stripes with a scarlet collar at his throat and a girdle to match. He was dressed as a bridegroom! Together he and Joachim loaded the ass that he had brought. They worked busily, passing few words. There was something touching about their earnest endeavors with Joseph so dressed.

The women too worked in haste and silence, a tension between them. "Are you sure you won't come down later, Mother, to eat a celebration meal with us?" Mary asked.

"It's too late. I've already ordered Salome to start the preparations for our own meal."

"Then goodbye. Though I'll see you often," Mary said.

"Yes, yes, it doesn't matter, we'll see each other often." Hannah kept her voice casual, turning her dry cheek for Mary's kiss. She watched them set off together, the tall youth in his gallant garb, her daughter beside him, walking heavily with her burden, yet her face that was upturned toward his enrapt.

Hannah clutched at her aching throat. She spoke sharply to the children as she plunged back into the house.

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I
CANT go," Hannah protested. "My head—it might as well be beaten with a mallet. Can't Salome stop the children's noise?"

"They're only excited about the wedding," Joachim told her, standing above her couch. "And Salome's still at her cousin's."

That's right, Salome had been there all day. She was elated about serving as one of the bridesmaids instead of Mary. Reluctantly, wrenched by the irony, Hannah had let her. After all, Salome would never have the joy of thus serving her own sister. ... No wedding for Mary. The stinging wound would give her no surcease. But it wasn't the wedding that mattered, she kept telling herself, it was what people were saying.

Hannah never showed her face at the well herself, but the stories came back. Her sisters-in-law were only too eager to tell her: That Mary had betrayed Joseph with a peddler from a passing caravan. That Cleophas had had his way with her—at least so he was hinting. That Mary and Joseph had been carrying on for years—Mary's plight had been the reason Joachim had consented to the betrothal. Not that the aunts believed the rumors, they claimed. In fact they were outraged, united in an effort to protect the family name.

And all the while they spoke Hannah could only sit frozen, for once in her life too stricken to reply. Well, she had it coming. How they must have resented her boasts, and how they gloated over her now. She could have almost laughed at her own situation if the sheer pain of it had not reduced her to a witless, enfeebled thing.

Then one day, to her own further grief, her spirits revived. It was the day Cora had come to invite Salome to attend the bride. "Since poor Mary is no longer eligible."

Something in her tone broke Hannah's defensive crust. "Don't speak so of your brother's daughter," she retorted. "Poor Mary, as you call her, is happier than any maid in Nazareth."

"Happy?" The aunt was plainly amused.

"Yes, happy," Hannah insisted. "In spite of all those evil lies. Happy in the knowledge of her own purity, her own wonderful marriage. Happy because Joseph is such a fine husband. And because. . . ." She knew that she spoke in frenzy and in folly, but she could not stop her own desperate tongue. "Cora, you're a good Jewish woman." She leaned nearer across the table where they sat pitting dates. "Actually a far more devout woman than I. Like your brother, you know that there are certain prophecies to be fulfilled. Mysteries—things that can't be explained."

Her mistake was evident at once. Cora stiffened. "Mysteries? What are you saying?"

"Yes, mysteries." Unable to retreat, Hannah blundered on. "Especially one."

There was a second of stunned silence. Then Cora said, "Hannah, you can't be serious. Or you are ill. This thing has gone hard with you, you've been under a strain, and you've been brave. But it's no secret that the whole business with Joseph has been a grave disappointment, and this—this later complication a cause for deep sorrow and yes, shame." Her voice was concerned. "And your kinsmen have supported you throughout. But I fear you'll find that support at an end if you go to such lengths as to imply ... as to claim. . . ."

"Why not?" Hannah demanded fiercely. "With Jahveh all things are possible. If the Messiah is to be born to a virgin why not my daughter as well as the next one?"

"Or even more than the next one?" Cora asked with asperity. Then she laughed outright. "Hannah, Hannah, your reputation as a proud mother is well known. But I warn you that to go so far as to claim that your child has been chosen above all others is too much. It won't make people feel more kindly toward you, and it certainly won't make things easier for Mary and Joseph."

For this Hannah had no reply. She was wild with frustration, riddled with regret. Yet it was too late to make amends. She could only plead, half-defiantly, "Say nothing of this, I pray you. I know what I know," she insisted, "but you're right, it would be hopeless to try to persuade others of such a thing."

The sister-in-law arose to depart, tall, unctuous and triumphant. "Don't worry, it's the last tale I'd care to spread abroad about my niece."

Her tone was so patient and yet so scathing that Hannah couldn't bear it. And what if Cora did yield to the temptation to whisper what Hannah had been so mad as to claim? Yet she would almost have run barefoot in the streets proclaiming that selfsame thing: "My child is innocent, my child could not sin. She is privy to some blessed thing."

Could it be
as she claimed?
Could it be?
No, no, haven't I learned, even yet, the bitter consequences of such fanatic pride? . . . And Hannah covered her face and wept at the irony. That she would try to force others to believe that which she herself dared not believe. . . .

"I can't go," Hannah said that night of Deborah's wedding. "I can't, it's too much to ask."

"You must," Joachim ordered. "Already we've hidden our heads too long. To absent ourselves from the marriage of my own sister's child would be only to confirm the wildest stories. If you truly love Mary you won't make her lot harder by giving people more to gossip about."

Hannah dragged herself from the couch. The room swayed, she had to clutch the windowsill for support. "If she had been an obedient loving daughter we would never have come to such a pass."

"Hannah, what's done is done and there's no going back. Come now, put on your brightest raiment, it will make you feel better."

She staggered to the clothes chest, resenting him and his willingness to subject them both to the coming ordeal. He loomed behind her in his bright robes, both her deliverer and her enemy, almost as he had seemed that night so long ago when he had carried her into her own bridal chamber. She fought away the memory—that hour of breaking. But though the body might be broken, the spirit never.

"I'll make ready and go," she said. "Not for Mary's sake or to still the gossips but for you, my husband. Because obviously it will please you to witness my suffering on this night when your sister's child is being wed instead of our own."

If the blow struck home he gave no sign. "Then make haste."

Hannah shivered, bathing in the brackish water that had grown cold with waiting, then fumbling about for her clothes. How drab and poor they would appear before the finery of the others. She stood a moment, feeling baffled and defensive, feeling afresh her ignorance of the subtleties of draperies and stoles. It hadn't mattered before; spare and almost boyish as she was she had spurned such trappings as more suited to the dull matrons of Nazareth. And then there had been Mary, so exquisite an adornment in herself.

Hannah set her teeth. She crept, on impulse, into the adjoining chamber and took up the mirror of polished metal. She saw, in a kind of fascination, her own bony cheeks and haunted eyes. She drove Mary's forgotten comb through her hair; it was no use, she could not comb beauty into herself, and some of the gray strands clung to the teeth like a desecration. She turned to the case of cosmetics. All girls kept these scented pots of color. Sneering faintly at herself, yet with a trembling sense of performing some rite, Hannah scrubbed roses into her wrinkled skin. How grotesque she looked; like a gaudy ghost going to some festival of the damned. Yet she felt that she must so sustain herself or her sick and quaking limbs would not carry her forth at all.

There now, she was ready. It was the best she could do, and no one would pay attention to her, anyway. All eyes would be focused upon the bride, and the proud family of the bride.

Her husband looked at her with great tenderness and pity when she came down, but said nothing. The children were filled with their own excitement. They had been dashing back and forth all day, carrying flowers, stuffing themselves; now they reported that their aunt's house was already bursting with guests and the courtyard overflowing. "Hurry, hurry, or we won't be able to see the bridegroom knock!"