Apprentice (45 page)

But Rami reported that Abba had become more subdued in his arguments, even though his continued returns to the villa made it evident that Choran was still barren. Rami thought Abba had finally made peace with their disparate fates, but I couldn't shake a sense of impending menace.

Everyone would say that it was merely my pregnancy making me anxious, so I kept my fears to myself. Still, unless he was sleeping, I kept Chama in constant view at home. And I insisted that a slave bring him with me to synagogue and to the villa when I had to work on
kasa d'charasha
there. Of course Chama couldn't accompany me to install the bowls, but otherwise he remained in my presence.

But despite all my precautions, I was jerked out of bed early one morning by the sound of his nurse screaming, “Chama! Don't move. Stay where you are.”

Rami was faster than me and bolted downstairs while I was struggling to put on a tunic. When I reached the courtyard, I could only stare, stunned, at the scene before me.

Chama and his nurse stood paralyzed, gaping at a large black snake that was staring back at them from the woodpile. The nurse was terrified,
but Chama seemed fascinated. He took a few steps toward the snake, his hand pointing at the strange creature.

Everything happened so fast that I couldn't believe my eyes. Just as the snake lunged to strike, Rami dashed out and lifted Chama off the ground. But my husband wasn't quite fast enough; the snake bit his leg.

I don't remember exactly what happened next. The courtyard was in chaos, with slaves screaming, Chama crying, and Ukva yelling at someone to fetch a doctor. As for me, I must have fainted, for the next thing I knew I was lying in bed and Mother was wiping my face with a damp cloth.

“Rami.” I struggled to sit up. “Where's Rami? And what happened to Chama?”

“Chama is well.” Then Mother's face clouded, and she leaned over to hug me. “I am so sorry,” she murmured. “We could not find a pregnant white donkey in all of Sura, and Tabita used all her forty-day-old urine on a scorpion sting last week. I boiled leeks for him as soon as I arrived, but I fear I was not in time.”

I burst into tears. “Take me to him. I must see him.”

I could hear male voices chanting psalms in the direction we headed, which was Pushbi's old room. I pushed my way past my brothers to the bed and sighed in relief.

Rami was still alive. Mother's leeks had helped him.

His breathing was labored, but his eyes flickered open when he heard my voice. He tried to reach for me, but his arms shook and fell back on his chest. I took his trembling hands in mine and lay my head on his shoulder, listening to his heartbeat.

“Don't speak, my love,” I whispered as he tried to talk. “Use your strength to fight the poison.”

Desperately I prayed that my husband should be worthy of a miracle, that the Heavenly Court should judge him favorably and spare his life. I drew hope from hearing Father's prayers, along with Pinchas's and Mari's. Surely if anyone could storm Heaven and send the Angel of Death away, it would be these pious men.

“Hear my prayer, O Merciful One, don't make my son an orphan,” I begged. “Don't leave me a widow before I'm twenty.”

But black-snake venom worked swifter than our prayers. Soon Rami was unable to squeeze my hands back when I squeezed his. His breathing slowed, and then failed. But even after I could no longer hear his heart
beating, I refused to lift my head and step away. Surely if I kept listening, I would hear it start beating again any moment.

Eventually Mother gently pulled my hand from Rami's. “Come, Daughter,” she said softly. “The men must prepare the body.”

“No,” I wailed. Rami was my husband, not “the body.”

Mother and my sisters-in-law led me back to my room, and Achti, probably hoping that Chama's presence would soothe my cries, placed my son on my lap. But my sobs continued unabated as I rocked back and forth, Chama crushed to my breast, until someone announced that it was time for the burial. Then, pretending I needed a few moments alone to compose myself, I removed one of Rami's tunics from his storage chest and hid it in mine.

The only thing that stayed in my mind from the funeral was the agony of watching as Rami's shrouded body was lowered into the grave and then slowly covered with earth. Achti told me later that I had sunk to my knees so close to the edge that she feared I was going to fall, or throw myself, in.

For the six days of mourning that followed, I was enveloped in a fog where there were no colors, only gray, and even my favorite foods were as unappealing as mud. Throughout shiva, those first seven days of most intense mourning, I sat on the floor in a corner, holding Chama, with a few women around me. There I watched as Ukva received the distinguished visitors—Rav Huna, Rav Nachman, and of course Rav Sheshet, Rami's old teacher, among them.

None of these great men greeted me, although a few knelt to tell Chama what a brave man his father was or what a fine scholar he'd been. In their eyes I scarcely counted as a mourner. Bitter bile rose in my throat as I realized what they must be thinking—I was still young and fertile and would soon find a new husband, while Ukva had lost his one, irreplaceable brother.

All that week Chama kept asking about his father, where he was and when he was coming home, which only increased my sorrow. It fell to Achti and his nurse to provide my son with what should have been a mother's comfort. This was probably for the best. During shiva, I was too bereft to think about the future, but when Pazi and Tazi were taking their leave on that seventh day, the pained looks and lengthy embraces they gave me made me understand what I had forgotten.

Unless I was willing to remain a widow in Ukva's house until Chama grew up, I would have to leave him for Ukva and Achti to raise. Chama was Rami's child, and as such he belonged to Rami's family. I, now Rami's widow, no longer did. The enormity of my loss threatened to crush me. First the beloved husband of my youth and now my firstborn, my son. Eventually I would have to give up the baby I carried, and then I would have nothing left of Rami at all. I was completely and utterly bereft.

According to Jewish tradition, after shiva was over, the rest of sheloshim, the first thirty days of mourning, was supposed to be a period of lesser grief. The mourner could now bathe, launder his clothes, wear shoes and tefillin, and resume work and marital relations. I did none of those things, however, for I rarely left my bed. I could not bear living without Rami and Chama, yet that is what I was expected to do.

I had lost track of the days when Achti entered my room and in a shaking voice announced that Mother had come for me.

“No.” I began to cry. “I can't leave.” But I knew I couldn't stay either.

“You're not well,” Achti insisted. “We can't take care of you here like Mother and Shayla can.”

Then Mother and Achti were helping me up, and to my shame I found that I was too weak to walk more than a few steps. Achti had to call Zahra and another slave to carry me downstairs and help me into the litter that Mother had sent for me.

“Please, let me give Chama one last hug,” I pleaded. But my son was napping, and I was only able to drop a quick kiss on his plump cheek before we were separated.

Visions of my sweet little sleeping boy flooded my mind, and I wept all the way home. Mother stroked my hair and said such noncommittal things as “There, there” and “You mustn't cry so hard, it's not good for your baby.”

Mother must have made special arrangements for my privacy, for despite the villa's large number of inhabitants, no one met the litter except Shayla and my childhood nurse. Once inside, no one watched as I was helped upstairs to my old
kiton
, where a table with several steaming dishes was set up.

With a disapproving face, Nurse stripped me of my torn mourner's clothes. Then she bathed me with soft linens dipped in warm water, making a special effort on my matted hair. When I was dry, Nurse helped me into a clean linen gown, sat me down at the table, and proceeded to feed
me as if I were a sick child. At bedtime she said nothing when I took out Rami's tunic and cried myself to sleep holding it to my face and breathing in his scent.

I thought of Chama constantly, imagining what he was doing and worrying about how terrible and frightening it must be for him to abruptly lose both mother and father. I was told that he needed time to become accustomed to his bewildering new situation, and that my visits would only inflict afresh the pain of separation. So I stayed away.

Mother allowed me a week of relative solitude and then gently, but firmly, declared that I should join her and my sisters-in-law at synagogue on Shabbat. Having neither the will nor the strength to resist, I went with them. I mouthed the prayers along with the others, although I had no reason to believe that Heaven would look favorably on me.

But when services were finished, I was surrounded by women whose gestures and words conveyed their empathy for my grief. For unlike my female relatives, whose years at Father's villa had seldom been marred by death, most women at synagogue had lost husbands or children, and some had lost both. Their eyes told me that they knew my suffering, that I was not alone.

I began attending synagogue daily, and before the week was out, an older woman named Alista asked if I could do her a favor, one that would also earn me some coins. As fate would have it, there were two funerals that afternoon, each of which was of such prominence that its procession necessitated more than the usual number of professional keening women.

“You want me to cry as we accompany the corpse to the cemetery?” I asked in surprise.

“You shouldn't find it difficult,” Alista replied. “And you would be doing the deceased's family a great service.”

“What do I need to do?” Consoling the bereaved was a mitzvah, one of the few I could perform in my situation.

“Just come with me. Food will be provided.”

Unsure what to expect, I followed Alista to a large home near Tabita's. A considerable number of people had already gathered. We stood with several other women in plain dress, aloof from the crowd, and after two more joined us, we were escorted inside, where food and wine awaited. I ate little, but my companions consumed their meal with gusto.

No sooner had they finished than a commotion in the courtyard signaled
that the corpse was being carried out. Immediately the keeners took their place at its head and began to weep and wail with such sorrow that my tears began to flow along with theirs. I recalled Rami's perfect smile and Chama's chubby little limbs, and I winced from the knowledge that my unborn child would be taken from me as well. All the way to the cemetery I sobbed out the bitter grief that I'd felt unable to display at my father's.

Our job as professional mourners completed, we were thanked, handed a purse of coins, and sent on our way. But before we parted, I told Alista that she could depend on me whenever another keener was needed.

I suspected that my family disapproved, but they did nothing to prevent me from assisting Alista. This was my secret vice, the way I could continue to bewail my own tragedy, to pour out the pain I felt whenever I thought of my husband and our son, both lost to me forever. Jewish Law said that mourning for anyone but one's parents ended when sheloshim was complete, thirty days after the funeral. But I had found a sanctioned way to maintain my bereavement. As a professional keener, I could scream and howl as loudly as I wanted. Nobody would look at me askance. In truth, the more fuss I made, the better I performed my job and the more funerals I was hired for.

The bad fortune that made amulet and
kasa d'charasha
patrons fearful of employing me had brought me a new vocation.

But fate made this profession no more secure than my previous one. If it had been winter, I could have hidden my growing belly under a heavy cloak, but the thin linen tunics of summer made my pregnancy apparent to even a casual observer. When Tammuz was less than a week away, Alista informed me that it was not appropriate for a woman in my condition to appear at so public an event as a funeral.

But I was not ready to put away my grief. Though it might cause me more pain than pleasure, on the morning of Tiragan I climbed a knoll overlooking the canal where Achti had taken us the year before. Ha-Elohim! Had it only been a year since Chama and I so innocently played in the water together?

I craned my neck to observe the road, desperate for a glimpse of my son. I wasn't sure they'd come this year; perhaps Achti would take them to a different canal. So many women and children, could I have missed them? No, there they were—Achti, Zahra, and the two boys. Chama had
grown since I'd seen him, and through my tears I had to admit that he appeared happy, splashing Yehezkel in the shallows and running around waving the ribbons at his wrist. He ran easily now, no more wobbly toddler steps for him.

Careful not to be seen, I watched and wept until it was time to eat. Then I descended and found Nurse waiting for me. On the way home, she gently scolded me for running off by myself, as I had done when I was a girl, but she never mentioned where I'd been or what I'd been doing there.

When the festival of Tammuz arrived, Nurse accompanied me to Ezekiel's tomb, where I joined the mob of sobbing, moaning women as they mourned the young shepherd's untimely death. I spent the entire day there, crying in empathy with the ancient goddess who'd lost her beloved as abruptly as I'd lost mine. Most women shook their heads sadly when they caught a glimpse of my pregnant silhouette, but a few burst into fresh tears of compassion. I wept without restraint, well aware that this was my last opportunity to display my grief so openly.

And if the Heavenly Court denied me a miracle during childbirth because of this idolatry, so much the better.

I continued to attend synagogue, and was shocked one Shabbat to see Achti and Ukva there, for their home was too far away to walk here on Shabbat. To my mingled relief and disappointment, they had not brought the boys with them.