Second Touch (38 page)

Mary searched Lily’s eyes and found her soul. “Give Yeshua this from me, will you?” Folding Lily in an embrace, Mary kissed her on both cheeks. “Yes. Give him a kiss from me.”

The Sadducee cohen, Eli ben Sholom, came to Simon just after sunrise. With him was Simon’s friend, Melchior, and the moneylending Pharisee, Judah of Bethsaida. The three lined up on the edge of the pit, looking down at him. “He looks even worse this morning,” the priest remarked. “Notice his ears, the loss of his eyebrows, and the beginnings of a second spot on his left hand.” The commentary began without any greeting of Simon, as if he were a caged animal in a stock pen. “You try sleeping in a stone pit,” Simon muttered. Then, recollecting that the support of these three men represented his best chance of escape, he gritted his teeth and said politely, “Good morning to you all. Thank you for coming to check on me. A little like Dani’el in the den of lions, eh? ¬I’m still here, still alive.” There was no responding chuckle at his wit. “Eli,” Simon said to the priest, “I’ve always had the greatest respect for your impartiality and integrity. I know you ¬don’t want to be part of any miscarriage of justice. Surely you can see that what I have is not ¬really tsara’at, not at all. I have a fine medicine that will have me cured in no time. If I could just be allowed to go home.” “We’ve already been to your home,” Eli said scornfully. “You know the clothing and the dwelling of a suspected tsara must be examined for traces of the disease.” “My . . . house?” “What we found there was worse than just tsara,” Judah interjected. “Magical books of pagan sorcerers!” “Medical texts ¬only, I assure—” “Evil, forbidden potions!” Judah corrected. “Oil! Health-giving medicine—” “Heathen practices!” Eli summarized. “Of course we destroyed it all. Burned scrolls, potions, and notes!” “Burned it all?” Simon wailed, and yet he was overwhelmed with gratitude at the foresight Jerusha had shown. At his wife’s insistence he had scrubbed out the chalk marks on the floor of his study. If Eli had found those, Simon would be stoned for practicing witchcraft! “Judah!” Simon appealed, recovering a little from the multiple shocks. “Brother Pharisee. How can you let this Sadducee priest lord it over me this way?” “Where is the money you borrowed from me?” Judah said coldly. “I want it back.” “You know I ¬can’t repay it until after the next vintage is sold!” “Where is it?” “I . . . I ¬don’t have it.”

“And where did you spend it? Did you invest it in your business as you claimed?” Simon’s head drooped. “I needed it to buy the seeds for my medicine,” he explained. “So on top of sorcery you took my money on false pretenses? And you were leaving the country?” “Only for a short—” “Bah!” Judah snorted. “Do what you want with him,” he said to Eli. “It ¬doesn’t matter if he’s tsara or not. I want a judgment for the full amount I loaned him, even if it costs him his business and his house.” “Judah!” Simon appealed, but the moneylender turned his back and stalked away. “Melchior?” Simon pleaded with his best friend. “Do something! You said you’d always stand by me. Help me!” “I think,” Melchior said slowly, deliberately, “I think this is the last time I can speak with you. You are a dead man: chedel. Tsara. Deceit with your brothers? Lying to your friends? Claiming high status of purity while living with defilement, and then carrying that corruption into the synagogue? How wicked were you long before that? How evil must you be for El Olam to do this to you?” Scooping a handful of dust from the ground, Melchior threw it into the pit on top of Simon’s head. “I will grieve for you,” he said, turning his back. “Melchior!” Simon called after him. Bright white spots rimmed with red stood out on Simon’s forehead and cheeks. Simon’s right hand and right foot cramped and turned inward as if all the emotion coursing through his body made the tsara’at even more powerful. “It’s a curse,” Simon protested to Eli. “Yeshua of Nazareth laid a curse on me! He should be in this pit, not me!” “Even if that were so,” Eli noted, “it ¬doesn’t change the fact that you are tsara, you are chedel, you are baza. No matter who you blame, you are afflicted, despised, rejected . . . and one of the walking dead. In fact, there is no doubt about the outcome of your case. If you agree to banishment to the wilderness now, you can be let out of the pit immediately.” Out of the pit. At least it was something. “Yes,” Simon agreed. “Banish me.”

Though the words of the ceremony and the attention of the crowd were directed at him, Simon was barely listening. He felt dull, ¬every sense muffled, as if his sight, his hearing, and his thoughts were all wrapped in heavy cloth. He found it difficult to breathe. “Simon ben Zeraim,” the cohen Eli intoned, “According to the Law of Mosheh, you’ve been examined.” His head bare, Simon was ringed by clumps of the curious, the openly hostile, and the wary. Former friends, old enemies, and total strangers were all grouped around him outside the limits of Capernaum in the middle

of the Damascus Road. Their hands were filled with rocks, pebbles, and gravel. “You are found to have tsara’at.” Simon’s right hand was now so drawn as to be almost useless. The back of his left was completely inflamed, the sore covering ¬everything from wrist to knuckles. There were seeming scorched marks on his forehead and behind both ears. One of his earlobes was twice the thickness of the other. Chaulmoogra oil had failed. “You must from this moment on cover your face, from your upper lip down to your beard. As a mark that you’re tsara, you must wear torn clothing.” At a nod from Eli the two synagogue stewards stepped toward Simon. Each grasped a shoulder and lapel of his robe. Simon did not resist. They ripped downward. In the noise of the rending fabric Simon heard the tearing apart of his entire life. The action left two drooping folds of cloth hanging across Simon’s chest. Then each attendant clutched a sleeve and rent the seams up to the armpit. The sign of mourning, as old as Job. Grief for loss, for affliction, for being smitten by God. Only Simon mourned for himself; it was his own life that was forfeit. The robe was fine linen, woven by Jerusha’s own hands. Strange how Simon had never valued it before. Now it was both a worthless rag—and the ¬only thing he was allowed to wear. “You must call, ‘Unclean! Unclean’ to give a warning to any you approach or who approach you.”75 The Pharisee, whose whole life had been structured by the demands of purity and a proper regard for keeping kosher, winced. “You may not live in any walled city. If you’re found there you’ll be stoned to death. You may beg at the city gates, but you may not live where you’ll contaminate others. In fact, anyone may stone you to drive you away and no guilt attaches to them.” Staring at the priest, Simon asked. “Then I’ll live . . . where?” “There’re ¬only two places where you may not be stoned out of the way of decent people,” Eli said grudgingly, as if the exceptions were too merciful for a leper. “You may live in a graveyard. Since graveyards are already unclean, your kind may live there unmolested.” His kind. Simon refused to accept the connection. His kind were scholars and leaders, righteous and upright—not outcasts, the permanently defiled, the dregs of society. “Where else?” he cried in anguish. “There’s one place in the wilderness set aside for your kind,” Eli allowed. “It’s known as the Valley of Mak’ob.” Mak’ob . . . anguish. “You’re accursed. From now on, unless you’re healed and present yourself to the Temple to prove it, you’re chadel, ‘rejected,’ and chedel, the ‘walking

dead.’ Go away, dead man! We drive you away from us!” A shower of gravel rained down on Simon’s head. Most of the crowd were no longer murderously angry. They flung the prescribed stones ¬underhanded, symbolically casting Simon out. But some wanted to emphasize their rejection of him. They wanted the onlookers to know the seriousness of the decree and that no exception would be made for former friendship. The stone that struck Simon on the cheek was tossed hard and straight, aimed to injure. So was the one that hit him on the crippled hand. One was thrown by Melchior; the other by Judah. Nor were theirs the ¬only missiles hurled with brutal force. Simon stumbled away, pelting toward the graveyard as the closest temporary refuge from the storm of hatred and cruelty.

27 The hut was uncomfortably warm from the fire blazing on the hearth. Peniel was tied to a pole supporting the roof in the center of the one-room shack. “Yell if you want,” Eglon offered as Peniel shouted for help. “Won’t do any good. Way out here? Nearest village deserted. All traipsed off to see that charlatan friend of yours. ’Course, ¬every time you irritate me, you pay me a drop of blood.” As Peniel watched in horror, Eglon yanked Peniel’s hand up and nonchalantly sliced a four-inch-long cut across Peniel’s palm. “Now, that’s just to prove ¬I’m serious,” the guard captain said. “Next time I might cut your ear off or . . .” The tip of the dagger danced mere inches from Peniel’s right eye. “He never ¬really opened your eyes, did he?” “Of course he—” “Alek!” Across the hut Alek plucked a burning brand from the fire and thrust it into Amos’ face. The dwarf shrieked and writhed in his bonds. The stench of burning hair from Amos’ beard filled the hovel. Alek stepped back. “Wouldn’t that be sweet?” Eglon pondered aloud. “Two blind beggars. One big and one small. Make quite a scene I should think.” “Quite a scene!” Alek chortled. “Maybe Herod Antipas’d keep you around for sport,” Eglon said. “Dress you alike and have you perform for his guests. Now, consider your next answer carefully. ’Stead of speaking lies for a trickster who never ¬really opened anybody’s eyes, ¬don’t you think it’d be smart to oblige me, ’cause I ¬really can make people blind! I’ve done it before. Makes me kind of a god, eh?” “Kind of a god!” Gideon was trussed up in another corner. His arms and legs, though loosely bound, were pressed tightly together. Horror was stamped on his face. “So?” Eglon persisted. “He never opened your eyes, did he?” “He—”

The tip of the knife touched Peniel’s eyelid, pressed in slightly. “Maybe you think he can fix you up again, eh? Care to chance it? Care to chance it for your friend as well? Alek?” The flames singed all the hair off one side of Amos’ face as the dwarf screamed and pleaded for Peniel to make them stop! When Alek removed the torch, the dwarf’s cheek was angry red, blistered, and swollen. “Just say it,” Eglon encouraged. “He never healed you, did he?” Blind again! To walk again in a world without colors, without forms. What if he had to live the rest of his life on the memory of what he had lost? Peniel whimpered. “He never . . . healed me. It was a lie.” Alek crowed. “Ho, ho! Hee!” “There now,” Eglon said in mock sympathy. “Wasn’t so hard, was it? Don’t expect him to do any more tricks for you now, do you? No?” Peniel’s head hung down on his chest. He stared at the gray earth of the floor of the hut. Tears welled up and dripped soundlessly into his lap. Yeshua had given the gift of sight. And to keep the gift, Peniel had denied the gift giver! “Now here’s what we do,” Eglon said, wrenching Peniel’s chin up. “You and me, we’re going to Yeshua, see? You’re going to send him word you want to talk to him alone. Just him and you . . . and me. Now we already know you’re a coward, ¬don’t we?” “Cow—ward! Cow—ward!” Alek mocked. “But just in case you think you’ll warn him somehow, Alek here is staying with your friends. Anything goes wrong—anything at all—your friends die. Maybe I let Alek play with them first, though. Roast dwarf over a slow fire. Tasty, eh?” “Tasty!”

The road from Magdala to Shunem passed well away from Herod Antipas’ capital of Tiberias, then dodged through hilly country on the east side of Mount Tabor. Without the child to carry or the goat to lead, Lily made faster time. Her ¬only delays were when she saw approaching travelers to whom she gave the full width of the track. Lily did not want to be stoned or driven away when she was this close to the Healer. Could it be? she mused. Was it possible El Olam interested Himself in the lives of chadel after all? Was restoration of humanness something Messiah could and would perform? Or would He, like all the others outside the Valley, turn and shun and reject those Inside? ¬I’m praying again, Tender-Mercied One. You brought the baby to a good place, to be sheltered and loved. If you have any compassion remaining, please ¬don’t let me be hurt again. The baby is safe. I can go back to the Valley and die among friends. But if this Healer ¬can’t or won’t heal me, then stop me from going to him now. I ¬don’t think I can bear another disappointment. I’d just die out here instead. So please, you who can be kind, keep me from having to live with any more regret. Lily was so deep in her thoughts and prayers that some time passed without

her noticing the absence of Hawk’s bell. So he was off hunting by himself? Lily had neglected him lately she knew. She shared her meager meals with him, but his training exercises had been overlooked entirely. Lily whistled shrilly, the way Cantor taught her, then stood perfectly still, listening. Nothing. Not the faintest tinkling penetrated the rustle of the leaves on the olive trees lining the road. Lily felt faint. She put out her hand to steady herself and touched the cold roughness of the stone wall. Was this the way her petition was answered? An enormous joke, taking away her one remaining prop, her final connection to Cantor? ¬I’m praying again, O God of the Helpless . . . What was the use? Her eyesight was full of dust and blurred with self-pitying tears. Her vision was so bad that ¬only by screwing up her face could she see into the distance. At the extreme range of her sight a tiny black dot bobbed on the horizon. Something small and dark, well away to the southeast, rose above the olive branches where they gestured to the sky, rising and falling on the wind. “Hawk?” she breathed. Then louder, “Hawk!” Lily ran, stumbled, jerked upright, and ran on. It was him; it had to be. The path snaked down a hillside and into a ravine. Lily’s heart pounded as her feet carried her down the slope, and she lost sight of the bird on the breeze. She held her breath until she thought her chest would explode, just as she reached the top of the opposite wall of the canyon. It was still there! The fluttering, diving, reappearing spot in the distance. Lily signaled again and again, but Hawk did not return. Always beyond reach, yet always within sight, Hawk drew Lily on. The road forked. The main branch continued toward Shunem, toward Messiah, toward hope and healing. The other offshoot turned east, toward the Jordan. The message from Mary weighed heavily on Lily’s mind. What if Yeshua pushed on before Lily could get to him? What if she was too late? She could not continue whistling and running at the same time. In the same moment she abandoned calling to Hawk, she also discarded the route to Shunem. Lily felt she had to catch up with the bird before nightfall or he’d be lost forever.