Two from Galilee (3 page)

"I knew I'd trap you!" Deborah turned on her in triumph if not in sympathy. "Come now, Mary, you can't go hanging around after him when it's plain there'll never be anything between you."

"Why is it so plain?" Mary demanded. Her whole body ached from the weight of the cold jug. "Do you mean you've heard something I should know?" She had an almost superstitious faith in the powers of her cousin. Better even to face the worst than go on enduring this mystery.

"If you mean have I found out he's asked for someone else? No," Deborah admitted flatly. "There was nothing to that talk about Leah. I got it straight from Aaron who got it from Joseph's brother. Leah's father wanted the match and frankly Joseph's parents would have been relieved. But they yielded to his argument that he wasn't ready to marry. Not ready," she scoffed, "at twenty-one and past." Again she darted a tantalizing glance at Mary. "Though if he takes after his father he'll never be able to provide much for a wife. And he's never laid anything by for a marriage."

Mary bridled. "He's been helping his family. The household is swarming with younger ones to be fed. How could he save anything?"

"How you defend him. Well, I don't blame you," Deborah said disarmingly. "He's the most attractive youth in Nazareth. Even comelier than Cleophas in some ways." She gave a dramatic sigh. "The way he moves—and that voice, those eyes! Or maybe it's because he's kept himself from women that makes him seem so appealing. Whereas Cleophas—he's like the Greeks."

"Where there is money there is always more temptation."

"You can't put me off by defending Cleophas. It's plain you're mad for Joseph. But then so are a lot of girls. He'd have been married years ago and the father of a large family if they'd had their way. But you, Mary. . . ." Deborah regarded her cousin with wry resignation. No amount of maternal rivalry could alter her affection for Mary or her own curious pride in her. "You're the only one he's ever had eyes for. If he's not to have you I wouldn't be surprised if he never married."

"But that would be a disgrace," Mary protested. "And a disappointment to his family."

Deborah shifted her pitcher, here at the corner where their paths parted, and continued to hold Mary with her look of open envy, speaking these tart truths too obvious to quarrel with. "Anyway it's you who are far luckier than I am. It's a rare thing to be loved so steadfastly by such a man, whether you ever lie by his side in marriage or not."

"Thank you, Deborah." A great love for her cousin surged up in Mary. "That's a generous thing to say. But why," she pleaded, "why then is it so certain that this is not to be?"

Deborah shrugged impatiently. "Don't be a stupid donkey. Aunt Hannah, of course. Do you think she'd ever give you up to someone like Joseph after all her boasts about the grand matches you can make?"

She turned, graceful and catlike, and went her own way up the winding alley, while Mary stood hesitant, torn. Hannah would need the water, she ought to go straight home. But now more than before she was assailed by that high desperate resolution at the well. The conversation with Deborah had only made it more imperative.
She must see Joseph.
Not now, of course. It was too early to discuss so grave a matter. But perhaps if she just walked by his house, brushed however lightly against the worn stone doorstep, her nerves would be fortified for that later encounter, her hungering heart would be appeased.

Turning swiftly, as one driven, she headed for the short street where the carpenters plied their trade. Yet as she drew near her blood began to race and she regretted this rash compulsion that would only make her look brazen and foolish should any of his family be about. She wished desperately that she had veiled her face.

Then, as she plunged hastily along, she heard her name. "Mary!"

The voice rang out like a bell. And looking up she saw him just above her on the incline of ground behind the half-cave of the house. He leaped the fence and came striding toward her, impossibly tall in his rough dark sleeveless tunic, his astonished face alight.

"What are you doing here so early in the morning?"

"As you can see, I am on my way home from the well. I'm in a hurry. If you'll but let me pass. . . ."

"But I must know why Mary has taken the street of the joiners if she's in such a hurry? Her usual route is much quicker."

"Aren't the streets of Nazareth free for the choosing?" she said, mimicking his courtly tones if not the smile behind them. "And isn't Joseph forgetting his manners to waylay a maiden like this and risk being seen talking to her on a public street?"  She spoke sharply, to belie the terrible pounding in her breast. She had not planned it like this; she felt startled, stricken.

But when he said her name again—softly, softly, like a slow caress—something went very still within her, and she lifted her eyes to meet his.

"You're right," she said. "My friend has guessed my motive, though it's not very gallant of him to force me to admit it. I came by his house because my heart was sore for a sight of it, since it has been so long since I've seen Joseph himself."

"Mary." He said it again, his clear gray shining eyes still fixed on hers. He reached out and took the jug from her shoulders and drew her into the shelter of a clump of almond trees. The ground was strewn with their white petals, and a few more coasted down. Mary watched him place the jar on the ground-it was tipsy and she worried lest some of the water spill out.

"Wherefore?" she demanded, beyond pride. Her hands, still damp and cold from clutching the vessel, were pressed tightly together. "Wherefore is it that you no longer find reason to come by my house, Joseph ben Jacob? Why do you always disappear after the services at the synagogue without a word to the family of Joachim?"

He plucked a blossom from the tree, studied it a second, then handed it to her. "Surely the family of Joachim feels no loss."

"I do." The words hung vibrant between them, yet it was as if words were superfluous. What she said or did not say had little to do, actually, with this charged atmosphere between them. She rolled the bloom between her fingers, crushing it. "I miss you, Joseph. I miss you so much."

He turned and gave the tree a violent shake, as if deliberately to withdraw from the spell in which they both were caught. His tone changed too. "You're not a little girl any more, Mary, that I should carve you dolls to play with, or sit picking out the nutmeats for your mouth." He began brushing the new cascade of petals from his shoulders. "You're not a child to be taken up in my arms and carried about."

"I wasn't a child then," she told him gravely. "I was nearly twelve. I have never forgotten. From that moment until this I have never forgotten what it was like to be held in Joseph's arms."

He drew a deep breath and dragged his gaze back to hers. And now in amazement she saw his suffering. She remembered Deborah's words, congratulating her on Joseph's faithfulness— which if it were not to be fulfilled could only mean his grief.

"Forgive me," she whispered. "Believe me, the last thing on earth I want is to hurt you, Joseph."

The muscles in his throat tightened. He said, "I know that, Mary. But if your courage in speaking to me as you have is painful, it's nothing compared to the joy your words have also given me."

"Then why?" she implored again. "Why do you avoid my house?"

"I haven't slept," he said wearily. "Not in weeks."

"Truly?" she said. "That's a pity. But you haven't answered my question. Why is the sight of me and my people so distasteful that you turn from us as if we had some dread disease?"

"It's too early in the morning to be so cruel, Mary. You know very well why I'm trying to dwell on other things. The son of Jacob is not welcome in the house of Joachim."

"Your lack of sleep must have affected your mind that you should think such a thing. Come tonight," she invited before she could even consider. "Come to eat the evening meal with my father so that I may prove how foolish your words are."

He gasped and so did she, but there was no retreat. And a radiance came into his lean brown face that was indeed ravaged from lack of sleep. He laughed. "Does your mother know of this?"

"My father will inform her. He'll send one of the children down to confirm the invitation this afternoon. Or come himself."

"You seem very sure of this."

"My father loves me."

"I'll count the hours," he told her. The faint ironic twinkle had returned to his eyes. "If you're sure I won't encounter any representatives of the family of Abner or Cleophas presenting their case for Mary's hand?"

She started, but held her ground. "If Abner and Cleophas want me enough to goad their fathers into pleading their cause then let Joseph—whose sleep is so strangely disturbed, he claims—let him want me enough to bestir his father to enter the picture before it is too
late!"

She took up her jar then and fled. A vast astonishment lent wings to her feet as she flew up the cobbled steeps. It was as if she had been carried boldly over unthinkable crests, and was soaring now to forbidden and joyous heights. She wanted to laugh, to shout. To join in the singing that now rang out from countless courtyards: "The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork. . . ." Joseph! she thought. His handiwork—that strong high forehead, those serious shining sea-gray eyes, that sensitive mouth.

Her womanhood arose in her and flowed from her, not as something submissive and weak, but as a force, a release. Joseph was still her beloved, he had always been. And now the time was come when all things might be achieved. For she was a woman at last, truly a woman, and she would take things in her hands, however untried, and make it all come about. She was not even afraid of Hannah, who would resist, of course and make things difficult. But who would yield to her husband because she must.

Not once did it occur to Mary that Joachim might offer resistance of his own.

Her father stared at her from under his rough red brows. His heavy face was troubled. "Here, this night? To break bread with us?"

Mary nodded. Until now it had seemed so simple, even inevitable, such had been the urgency of her desire. Several times during the morning she had been tempted to speak of it to her mother. For to her surprise, Hannah had not been angry about the long time it had taken her to fetch the water. And there had been a precious harmony between them, grinding the flour. A curious new feeling of unity as their hands moved in the familiar rhythms on the mill, pulling the handle back and forth.

Before, the rasp of the stones had often seemed to her like the very air that hovered sometimes between her and Hannah-gritty. Yet this morning the millstones had made a kind of homely music as they ground the grain, and they smiled at each other through the little haze of dust from their mutual task. And when Mary spilled the meal, rising too abruptly to dump the fine soft cone into the bin, her mother had said only, "Don't worry, we can grind more. A woman's hands do tremble somewhat at this time of the month."

Oh, Mother, Mother, that is not the only reason my hands tremble. These hands touched those of Joseph this morning. He loves me—I know it, I know it, but he's too proud to humble himself before us. He fears your rejection. Oh, Mother, so bright and full of vigor, in many ways so dear—don't give him cause to avoid and deny me any longer! . . . But Hannah's very patience stayed the words. Mary could not bear to spoil this rare mood that sifted so exquisitely through her reverie.

And again, threading the loom, the smell of her mother's flesh bending over her as Mary's fingers fumbled for the strands— a dry, faintly acrid yet tingling scent of herbs and curds and vinegar that exuded from her wrinkled skin—this together with the heat of her mother's quick breath, stirred her to an almost insupportable need to speak. To tell her, in desperate tones if necessary, how
late!y her whole being was like a parched field thirsting for a sight of Joseph. . . .

Surely you were young once, Mother, surely you've felt the heat of the blood, the terrible longing. You're vividly alive in every bone and sinew, you've mated and borne children. Though desire seemed preposterous between her parents, nonetheless her imagined argument rushed on: If ever you have loved anyone, love Joseph too. Make it known to my father that you won't oppose his taking me to be his wife. . . .

"You
are
clumsy this morning," Hannah fretted, retrieving the dropped shuttle and deftly correcting the mismatched threads. But she brushed a rough little bird-claw hand over the bowed head. "You'd better lie down a while, I'll put Salome to the weaving."

Her kindness unnerved Mary. "No, no, I feel all right. Only the love I feel for you and—and for others, seems very close to the surface today. I want to laugh and to cry over nothing. The spilled flour, the tangled threads, I want there to be harmony in all things. When two people grind the flour that makes the bread of life together—they should never be pulling against each other instead. And the loom, the patterns interwoven on the loom-"

Puzzled, Hannah saw that Mary's eyes were luminous and wet. "If only lives could themselves weave smoothly in and out, joining and strengthening each other instead of so often tangling and breaking apart."

Her mother gave a short uncomfortable laugh. "Truly I do think you should lie down and rest," she said. And she turned and gave a brisk, comical little kick to the loom. "This old loom belonged to your father's mother. I'll never forget the miserable hours I struggled over it when I lived with them. Perhaps it would be well to be rid of it, have some carpenter build us a new one. Then you and your sisters will have less cause to weep over tangled threads."