Second Touch (27 page)

118 The hut of Rabbi Ahava was one of the few semipermanent structures in the Valley of Mak’ob. It consisted of a single nine-by-nine-foot space cobbled together from the ruins of an abandoned Canaanite building. The bottom half of the house was stone wall. The top was a concoction of poles tied together for support and covered over with palm branches. The floor was packed dirt beneath a scrap of reed mat. Lily approached the hut quietly, not wanting to disturb the old man, and yet she had to speak with him! She hesitated as her shadow fell across the open threshold. A mezuzah was in place on the doorpost, as if this was a real home instead of the last refuge of a leper. She could hear Rabbi Ahava murmuring, as if he was speaking to someone within. And then his voice addressed her. “Well? Are you standing out in the hot sun all day?” “Rabbi, it’s Lily.” “How’s Isra’el? Baruch? Deborah?” “Am I disturbing?” “Yes.” “Should I come back?” “No. No. Studying. Welcome. And come sit at my threshold.”

She bowed slightly, approached, and sat down in the shade outside the doorway. Inside, sunlight seeped in through the thatch and cast a dappled pattern of light on the ravaged skin of the rabbi in contrast to the smooth lambskin scroll that lay open before him. “There’s water.” He indicated the jar and drinking gourd beside her. She dipped out ¬only a spoonful to drink, knowing how difficult it was for him to refill the container. And then he asked again, “Well?” Lily fought to control the emotions that had been pent up these days. “Deborah has given up. Jekuthiel is not coming back. She thinks he died on the road somewhere. So she’s stopped wanting to live.” The old man nodded once, indicating he had suspected as much. “Yes. The children?” “Little Baruch is the same. Feels her gloom. I ¬can’t make him smile. His cough grows more fierce ¬every day. ¬I’m afraid he’s dying.” “The baby?” “Isra’el thrives.” Softly the rabbi said, “Praise to Adonai.” “As long as Deborah lives, her body gives him milk. She’s melting away as he grows stronger. But ¬I’m afraid for him. Afraid! Oh, Rabbi! He’s so perfect! Untouched by our scourge! He’s smiling, Rabbi! Looks into his mama’s face and ¬doesn’t see . . . her wounds. He smiles at her. Smiles at me too. My heart will break if he dies! And if Deborah dies, he’ll die!” The rabbi answered in a distracted voice, as if something else was holding his attention. “You must speak to her about this. Tell her she must go on living for the sake of her children.” “I hoped you’d tell her,” Lily said anxiously. “Who am I? ¬I’m tsara. Just like her. But you. You’re the rabbi. You can order her to live.” He did not reply. His arm lifted, displaying fingers newly ulcerated. At this slight gesture the aroma of decay filled the air. Staring down at the scroll, he countered, “I ¬can’t add one minute to anyone’s life, dear girl.” Then, “Lily, do you know how many tsara’im we are in this Valley?” “No. Not exactly.” “Six hundred and twelve. Exactly.” “A lot of us.” “I have lived here seventeen years.” “A long time.” “Yes. A long time. A lot of people have come. Many times that number lie in the graveyard outside the Valley.” What was he getting at? Lily wondered. His voice was so sad. She attempted to comfort him. “Everyone loves you, Rabbi. Before you came they say there were no gardens planted inside King David’s fences. No Torah. No synagogue . . . even if the bema is a flat stone in the clearing, it’s still someplace for us. No one remembered Shabbat anymore before you came and reminded them.”

“Well, then. Do you know how many lived here the first day I entered?” “No, Rabbi.” “I’ll tell you then. Six hundred and twelve souls were alive when I first arrived in the Valley of Mak’ob.” “The same as now.” “Yes. The same as always. The number has never changed. I’ve been puzzling over it for some time. One dies in the night, and the next morning another straggler enters the Valley. Two die in the afternoon, and by nightfall two more exiles beg refuge. In all my years, in all these years, it’s always been the same. Six hundred and twelve of us living in a state of perpetual dying. What do you think of it, child?” Curious. Terrible. As if the cup of Mak’ob never emptied. Pour suffering out and there was always more to fill it. She shrugged. “I ¬don’t know.” “Six hundred and twelve of us. Always. Different faces. Yes. But always the same number of tsara’im in this place. The records show—” he tapped a stick on the parchment—“it has never varied. Always the same number.” Back in the cave, Lily thought, three were in danger of perishing right now. Those three were far more important to her than unknown hundreds. “Will you speak to Deborah?” she reiterated. He stroked his beard and did not reply to her question. “Jekuthiel left four months ago. And that evening his place was taken by a woman from Joppa. That very day.” “Is he coming back? Can you give Deborah any hope?” “The baby was born to Deborah and on that same morning Cantor perished. Six hundred and twelve.” “Yes. Yes.” A chill coursed through Lily. “One who is living seems to take the place of another who has died or gone away. Does it mean something, Rabbi?” “Everything means something.” The old man sighed and shook his head. “But what? There are 613 laws in Torah. We who are gathered in this place, waiting in sorrow, are 612—not thirteen—twelve. Incomplete. The same number as the word covenant. Waiting for one more to arrive here and join us so our number will be fulfilled like the commands of Torah. I’ve tried to reason it out. Make it fit some pattern. What’s it mean? Who can say?” “Where’s Jekuthiel, Rabbi? Why did you send him Outside?” “Some months ago there was a rumor of a prophet, a wild man. Name of Yochanan the Baptizer. Preaching and baptizing for the forgiveness of sins at the Jordan in the wilderness. Some said he could be the one we are looking for.” “Messiah?” Rabbi Ahava shrugged. It was as unclear to him as it was to Lily. “I sent Jekuthiel Outside to seek the answer. To see if this Yochanan is the Man of Sorrows the prophet Isaias wrote about . . . rejected by the world . . . like us. To see if Yochanan is the One we’ve been waiting for.” “Jekuthiel’s been gone so long. He promised by the feast of Shavuot, he’d be back. He promised Deborah. But he ¬didn’t come back.”

“I no longer believe Jekuthiel will return to Mak’ob.” “He’s dead then.” “The Eternal One knows.” “But what about Deborah? Without him she won’t survive. What can I do to make her want to live again? Rabbi! I ¬don’t have any family but them! Nobody. They’re my family. And little Baruch! No joy in him. You’ve seen it all before. With others. The despair kills them. Time’s running out!” The old man did not have an answer. “We must think about the ¬only one among us who ¬isn’t sick. Put his welfare before our own.” “The baby!” “Baby Isra’el will perish if he stays in our camp. He’ll sicken and die,” the rabbi said bluntly. “What can we do?” Lily asked in despair. “I’ll pray. I’ll fast. It’ll come to me. We’ll reason together. Discover what must be.”

Jekuthiel spoke less and less as time went by. Peniel noticed the leper no longer had breath for both talking and trudging along the dusty paths. It was now either one or the other. Perhaps it was just as well. The shouted complaints of Amos and Gideon more than made up for Jekuthiel’s lack of conversation. The three beggars got along like a cat and a dog and a pigeon, Amos kindly pointed out. Peniel felt like the pigeon. He wished he could fly away. “This trail! Much steeper than the other.” “Should’ve taken the other fork!” “Should’ve gone by way of Ephraim. Good begging around Ephraim! Treat beggars good there!” Because of the danger to Peniel from the Temple authorities and the universally harsh public treatment of lepers, the journeyers kept off the paved Roman highways. What remained to them were rutted tracks, little better than trails, through the canyons and weeds. Such villages as had once existed along these roads were decayed and largely abandoned in favor of more profitable locations. It made travel safer but more troublesome for food and water. “Got any figs left?” Amos asked. Peniel left Jekuthiel against a boulder in the shade and plucked three of the remaining figs from the depth of his pouch. “Take them,” he said to the dwarf and Gideon. “No, thanks,” Amos returned. “I’ll eat anything! As long as it’s not figs.” “What I ¬wouldn’t give for a nice, hot loaf of bread,” Gideon mused aloud. “You know Reuven, the baker by Damascus Gate? Has a son with a club foot, he does. Every Sabbath he passes out bread to cripples.” Peniel’s stomach rumbled. “Skewer of lamb chunks’d go nice right now.” Amos rubbed his chin, as if wiping away imaginary grease. “How’d you figure on feeding us out here, anyway?”

Peniel had not figured on feeding them at all, had not thought past the necessity of getting to wherever Yeshua was. Since he had never lived outside the circumference of Jerusalem, Peniel had no concept of distance. He’d heard pilgrims speak of a five-day journey from Caesarea on the seacoast or of a week’s travel to reach Capernaum, but Peniel had not thought about the practical side of needing to eat ¬every day. “Well?” Amos queried. “Did you bring us out here to starve? Why’d we leave Yerushalayim, anyway? What good’s it do to go wandering around looking for Messiah if we die before we find him? If it ¬doesn’t get better soon, believe me, it’ll get worse!” “I’ve got an idea,” Gideon suggested. “Just over the hill is Tappuah. Let’s leave the leper here and go there and beg. Then we can buy food, come back, and share it.” Amos muttered, “With our luck? Don’t sell the skin of a bear that’s still in the forest.” “Shut up.” Gideon glared threateningly at the little man. How did Gideon know the location and name of the next village? Peniel mused. Why ¬wasn’t the cripple leading this journey if he knew so much? Maybe because Gideon would ¬only have himself to blame for whatever went wrong. Peniel discovered the others looking at him, waiting for a decision. “We’ll do it that way,” he concluded. “Jekuthiel will wait here, and we’ll bring back supplies.”

The last of a pair of pigeons had gone into the pot a day earlier. Deborah needed fresh meat to keep up her strength. Today Lily would make the Hawk earn his keep. On this outing Lily allowed ¬only Baruch to accompany her. It was late afternoon, past the heat of midday. The lengthening shadows within the Valley encouraged quarry animals to be more active and birds flew home toward nests. Another path wound across a cliff face in a narrower part of the Valley. It was steeper than the main route and not one Lily had ¬ever before attempted without Cantor. Lily had previously marked where pigeons roosted in crannies on the rock face of the gorge. She had also seen rabbit droppings along the track. Trying to remember exactly what Cantor would say and do, she cautioned Baruch to keep well back. They must not flush the quarry too soon. The duo made their way out of the Valley and into the more constricted part of the canyon. The hunt took longer than Lily hoped, carrying them farther away from the settlement. Soon they struggled painstakingly around boulders too big to climb over. Lily had to help Baruch past the tougher spots. The wind was rising. Funneled by the ravine, the breeze ruffled the Hawk’s feathers and Lily’s nerves. Though never voiced aloud, in Lily’s mind was a lingering concern that the Hawk would sometime leave her fist, never to return. As Lily and Hawk played or hunted amid the groves and vineyards, she could

set aside this fear. Outside the settlement, the wildness of the place and untamed nature of the breeze transferred to her hunting partner. Then Lily knew fearsome anxiety. Unlike the human inhabitants of Mak’ob, the Hawk remained by choice. He was perfectly capable of soaring up and out of their lives forever. He was her ¬only remaining link to Cantor, the surviving member of her now never-to-be family. The thought of losing this creature in whose noble bearing and watchful eyes she recalled Cantor’s presence was agonizing. She very nearly remarked to Baruch that conditions were too dangerous. Lily could make it sound as if she was worried about the hazardous ascent. Yet Lily knew Deborah was depending on her to be the provider for their little clan. Deborah often remarked what incredible grace the Almighty showed in letting them have the Hawk in Mak’ob. He would not take that grace away on a whim, she said. But what of the grace that gave Cantor to Lily and then took him away? The wind, though not fierce here on the trail, could be heard howling on top of the ravine. If you’re listening, O Aloof One, hear me, Lily prayed. Not today, not today. A rabbit darted out from beneath the next boulder before Lily had her feet solidly back on the path. Shouting. “Ho!” to let the Hawk know of the quarry, she made an awkward cast, more sideways than upward. Like a twig in a rushing stream the bird was swirled away downwind, away from the rabbit and away from Lily. Terrified that her worst fear had just become reality, Lily whistled frantically. She spilled the pouch of reward bits on the ground while trying to lift her glove to call for the Hawk’s return. In the confusion she had taken her eyes off the darting raptor. Where had he gone? Was he even now above the heights, tasting new freedom and vaulting into an unfettered sky? “There he is,” Baruch said, pointing across the canyon toward the opposite rim. Would he refuse the command to return? Would this faithful companion choose today to be incurably disobedient? Lily spotted the Hawk just as he dove out of sight into some brush. She whistled again. Did her signal carry far enough to reach the bird’s hearing? Had he already decided to part company forever? It would be too dangerous for her and Baruch to retrace their steps when it grew dark. In any case, there was no point in remaining on the opposite shore of a quarter-mile-wide river of air. Tomorrow Lily’d go in search of the Hawk, climbing laboriously up the other side of the ravine. Tonight she’d have to tell Deborah that there was no meat . . . and no longer an easy way of providing any. And tonight Lily would surrender the last bit of her connection to Cantor, say an aching last good-bye. “He’ll be back,” Baruch remarked with assurance.

Nothing further was said on the long hike back to the settlement. Lily’s grief was so palpable that even her youthful companion respected the silence.

Jekuthiel remained outside the town as the other three approached it. The tiny village of Tappuah was midway between Shechem and Bethel. At one time it had been an important commercial center, provincial capital of one of King Solomon’s administrative districts. The presence there of copper ore, used in the manufacture of bronze tools, had enhanced the fortunes of Tappuah, but the ore was played out. Now the village was a sleepy hamlet, home, from Peniel’s vantage point, to a dozen families, three donkeys, a score of chickens, and one very obnoxious yapping dog. “This place is proof that four times a year the poor are bad off. Summer. Winter. Fall. And spring,” Amos said scornfully. “They may beg from us!” “A coin or two,” Gideon assured him. “We’ll get something, I promise you.” “If your promise was a bridge, I ¬wouldn’t cross over.” “It looks safe enough,” Peniel observed. “No soldiers about.” “No,” Gideon noted. “No, I ¬don’t see any either.” In the center of Tappuah was the one structure large enough to be its synagogue. It was toward that building that Gideon led the way, showing more confidence than Peniel was used to seeing in his companion. Just as the beggars reached the bottom of the slope four men emerged onto the porch of the synagogue. Sunlight glinted off bronze helmets. Soldiers! Peniel dropped to his belly, clutching the spiny base of a seven-branched sagebush. Amos almost disappeared into a badger hole. Gideon dropped to his knees behind a boulder. “Thank Adonai they came out just then,” Peniel breathed. “We might’ve walked right into them.” “Sure might,” Gideon drawled. “When they leave we’ll sneak back up the hill,” Peniel suggested. “Still no food,” Gideon pointed out. “What do you expect me to do?” Peniel snapped. “Put my head in a noose so you can have supper?” “No,” Gideon responded. “But I can go. After all, you’re the man with the price on his head. Amos and I can still go in and beg while you wait here . . . or go on back to the . . . to your friend.” “Not me,” Amos protested. “I ¬don’t care for soldiers either. You know that. They like to drop me headfirst into rain barrels or make bets on how far they can toss me. I’ll stay here too.” “Suit yourself,” Gideon replied scornfully. “But if I do all the work, I get more than one share of the food.” Gideon waited ¬only until the soldiers had moved from the synagogue steps to what appeared to be an outdoor market of canvas-covered stalls. Rising from the ground and dusting himself off, he limped confidently toward the town. Gideon whacked the yapping dog with his crutch when it snarled at him before he turned brazenly into the marketplace.