Song of the Magdalene (11 page)

No unwanted offers of marriage came, though I no longer went about the village in a way unseemly to a proper woman. I didn't know whether that was because Judith fended off matches, as she had promised to do, or whether no offers were extended. I suspected the latter. Certainly I was as beautiful a woman as any in our village, though I was taller than half the men. I felt the eyes of lust on me even as I walked to the mikvah once a month. But it was only lust, not admiration. My behavior was too strange, even if I didn't wander, even if I kept silent in the house of prayer these days.

And I did go to the house of prayer. Judith took me with her often. It seemed to please Father. He always said an approving word when we came home. The passing of time smoothed away the
worry that had come to Father's brow after my singing in the house of prayer that one time. The passing of time dulled the edge of that knife I had known since I realized my love for Abraham. I came to believe that the passing of time saw the death of all things, good and bad. I came to think of passions as vanities, illusive and transitory.

•  •  •

Time passed slowly. Toward the end of the bitter winds and cloudy weather the year I was sixteen, Abraham got sick. It was a colder year than most. We had gone out well bundled up, but a storm came and we were soaked by the time we got home. I spread our clothes before the fire and insisted on rubbing Abraham dry myself, though Hannah was mortified at my seeing his nakedness. She forbade me from tending to him, when she had never forbade me from anything before. But I ignored her, just as I ignored Judith.

I unwrapped Abraham as a woman would unwrap a child. It was easy to think of his body as a child's, for his limbs were as thin as a boy's and he had no power to object. Or, at least, he did not exercise that power. I exercised power — power over myself. I would not think of Abraham as a
man. I tended to him as a servant does. I did what I had to do. It was my job.

For I blamed myself for Abraham's fever. I knew the skies from my many days in the valley. I should have read their message. I should have tasted their moisture. But restlessness seized me. I needed to walk about and suck the clean cold air into my lungs. So I had taken Abraham out without the proper precautions. And now he shivered in my arms and his thin chest radiated unnatural heat.

The fever lasted three days before it broke. And even after that it kept coming back. Never so severely as at first, but still high, followed by racking chills. Abraham's skin grew taut, until the ribs of his chest could be counted with the eye. He coughed often, a deep wet cough from the center of his being. His eyes varied from shiny wet to listless dull. Even his hair lost its luster. I stayed at his side and anointed his head and feet with oils I had scented with the sweet calamus.

I couldn't tell him the scripture stories, for he knew them all much better than I. So I made up
stories to fend off boredom. I took him on boats through crocodile waters. We fed carob pods to hippopotamuses. We threw mimosa flowers into the air and storks caught them and flew away, leaving rainbow streaks in the sky.

I wouldn't leave his side.

The first night Hannah appealed to Father. She kneeled at his feet. “It isn't right. Please. Tell Miriam she cannot stay by his side through the night.” Her plea shocked us all. Hannah had never dared suggest action to Father before. She had never dared point out right and wrong to the man of the house.

Judith stood beside Hannah and wrung her hands. I waited to see if she, too, would join forces against me. My fists closed until my nails bit into my palms. I had to stay by Abraham. It was essential. I prepared for battle with a rising sense of desperation.

But Judith held her tongue. Oh kind Judith, oh true friend. She stayed silent against her better judgment. Her silence was fair and just — whether she knew this or not, I now did. For Hannah's words had brought me new realization.
It was not wrong for me to stay by Abraham's side through the night. No. I was not tending to Abraham as a servant, after all; I was tending to him as a woman to a man she loved. And it mattered not that the love was unrequited. I had fooled myself these past three years, the years since my last fit — the years since Judith had come to live with us. My passion for Abraham burned as hot as his fever. It had never stopped burning.

Father remained silent for a long moment.

Too long. Hannah's voice rose, betraying her internal battle against breaking into a wail. “If you allow this, it is your doing, not mine.” Fear scrabbled in her throat. “Not Abraham's.” She doubled over in paroxysms of coughing.

Hannah still walked the edge, always fearful of falling off. She feared Father casting her out as much as I feared Abraham rebuking me. I took Abraham's hot hands in mind and held them tight.

Father reached for Hannah's hands at the same moment. He pulled her to her feet. “It is my doing.” He turned and looked at me with misery
in his eyes. I knew then that he understood. My wonderful, unlikely father. He had always understood, even when he proclaimed he didn't, even when he wished he didn't. He comforted Hannah and Judith now, but all he could do for me was let me be.

Those three nights I crooned to Abraham in his restless sleep. Only when the fever finally passed did I retreat to my own bed mat. But whenever the fever returned, I took up my station by his side.

Whether the illness broke Abraham's spirit or the illness brought him to his senses, I didn't know — but the illness surely changed Abraham. For now he spoke to me and Hannah and Father in front of Judith. And when she played her flute for him, he thanked her.

In full spring, Abraham's cough ended and one day he begged me to take him to the valley to see the lilies. Hannah was against the idea, but Judith took my side. Abraham had to have the pleasure of the lilies this year. He deserved it.

The valley was muddy that day, but the winds were warm already. “It is a perfect day, Abraham,'
I found myself saying over and over, “a perfect day.” I was so happy to be out of the house finally, I could almost have sung my pleasure.

“Miriam, let's stop here.”

“In the middle of the mud?”

“I'm tired. Do you care if you get muddy?”

I smiled and lifted Abraham down to the ground. His body was so light, I thought of a child again — light as it had been the very first time I'd lifted him. I marveled at the deception of our bodies.

I sat beside him, comfortable and easy. Not a worry crossed my mind. The fit took me totally by surprise. As the air around me flashed bright, I thought if only I could grab myself and pin myself down, I could keep it from happening. I screamed silently inside my head. I deafened myself.

The next thing I felt was Abraham's right hand, stroking my hair in jerky moves. My head rested on his left arm and we lay side by side in the mud. I looked at his face. He was looking off in the distance. Then he caught my eye and smiled.

Abraham had the sweetest smile of anyone I ever knew. His teeth were white, for Hannah rubbed them with salt every day, just as she did her own. There was mud in his beard. I thought of what a struggle it must have been for him in his weakened state to get to me and maneuver me onto his arm like this. I took his right hand and inspected it.

Abraham laughed. “No teeth marks. Your fourth demon seems milder than the earlier ones. Your mouth didn't foam.”

His laugh was open and genuine. His laugh was everything good in the world. And before I knew what I would do, I was kissing his mouth, and he was kissing mine. The fierce purity of our passions knotted us together on the Creator's earth. And I discovered, oh thanks be to everything holy, that all my doubts and fears were ungrounded, for Abraham had no trouble loving me.

We went home hours later covered with mud. Hannah and Judith met us and I saw the question in Judith's eyes. I looked at her and wanted to shout with joy. Instead, I smiled. She hesitated, visibly struggling with her own confusion and
fears. Then she smiled back. Hannah saw our exchange. But she didn't join in the smiling. I kissed her cheek.

The three of us washed clothes that day, while Abraham slept in the pillows. From our rooftop I imagined I could hear the waterfalls on the northern part of the River Jordan. I showered in those cascades, washed new before the Creator by the rush of water over stone. I stepped into the silent spring air, clean and ready.

The fever returned that night. This time it came and stayed. Some days it would be mild, only Abraham's forehead would be warm. But on other days his hands were hot, and on the worst days even his feet were hot. I took over his full care from Hannah then. She didn't argue with me. For now Judith and Father had aligned themselves with me. Consummation made as valid a marriage by Talmudic Law as any contract or exchange of goods. And Father couldn't begrudge the fact that Abraham and I had not asked for his blessing — for it was obvious that a situation such as ours rendered foolish that formality.

I was the one to bathe Abraham and feed him
now. He seemed to grow smaller before my eyes. His body curled. His eyes, that cool blue, now burned from deep hollows. Yet he smiled at me often. At night we slept side by side and he whispered the canticles in my ear. And, yes, his cheeks were as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers. And, yes, his mouth was most sweet, yea, he was altogether lovely.

I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine: he feedeth among the lilies.

And even on the nights when fever ruled him, we were lovers in the dark. Those nights were like precious jewels, each one glittering with a perfect brilliance.

Two weeks passed and Abraham faded day by day. I knew he was dying. We all knew, though we didn't speak of it. Our lovemaking now was kisses on palms, breath on cheeks.

One night before Abraham slept, he insisted I dance for him. Father and Judith and Hannah slept. The moon was rich and moonlight flooded in from the window, lighting more brightly than
our oil lamp alone ever could. I held my arms out to both sides and swirled around Abraham again and again.

“You are like a
magdal,”
he said. “You are tall like the tower our town Magdala was named after. My beautiful Miriam.”

I smiled and lay down beside the man I cherished.

“With your arms out like that, it was as though you flew. As though you were an angel.” Abraham took my hand. “Miriam, can I choose the name?”

I pressed his hand to my cheek. I kissed the pulse of his wrist. Of course he would have realized my blood had not come that month, even though it was only a few days late. Of course he knew my rhythms. Abraham's body might fail him, but his mind never would. His heart never would.

“Tell me,” I whispered. Would our child be named Elon, after the oak, or Tamar, after the palm tree? Or would we have Rachel, a ewe, or Akbor, a mouse? I thought of the doves in the terebinth that shaded Mother's grave. Would we
have Yona, a dove? Or maybe Zeitan, an olive, for Father and his generous olive grove? I tensed with anticipation.

“Isaac.”

A biblical name. Of course. It was the name the Abraham of the scriptures had given to his son, the Abraham whose obedience to the Creator had been so tested.
Isaac
meant “laughter.” Yes, my Abraham had chosen well. We would have a son, of course. A child Abraham would never see. My son and my husband were losing each other. They would never share laughter. The pain was savage.

I kissed Abraham on the mouth and his breath filled me. It was his final breath.

•  •  •

In the morning Hannah and I prepared his body for burial. Those who touch the dead are unclean, yet that uncleanliness is good, for they say it comes from charity. I knew this was true now. I anointed Abraham's head and feet. I washed his body tenderly. But I did not do these duties out of love. I did them out of charity. The body that we buried was not Abraham. It was
meaningless flesh and blood. Abraham was the spirit that had given my life direction and form since I was ten years old. Abraham was the father of the child within me. Abraham had given me his last breath and I would carry it inside for the rest of my life.

Though I was tall, I was not, in fact, a
magdal
— a tower. I was thin. And my thinness meant that my rounded belly showed early, even at the start of summer. I wore loose black shifts, but eyes settled on my belly when I went to the well. Those eyes knew.

Father knew, too. At first he looked at me with incredulity, then a sadness settled on him. He spoke to me of Abraham only once, the day the letter returned. Hannah blanched the instant she saw it. Father explained that he had sent word to Daniel of Abraham's death. But the letter returned unopened. Hannah put her face in her hands and sobbed. I fed the letter to the fire and hugged Hannah from behind, resting my cheek between her shoulders blades, crooning, crooning.

The silence that had swallowed Abraham now swallowed Daniel, as well. And Father would have it swallow Isaac, for he never spoke to me of the baby within me. I knew he thought about the blessing of a public marriage. I knew he wished that Abraham had placed the ring on my finger and spoken the words, “I take you as my wife according to the Laws of Moses and Israel.” Father would have served as witness, and surely some neighbor man would have served as well. We could have been married before the eyes of the village. That's what Father regretted — that the village hadn't been forced to recognize the legitimacy of our union. I heard him say those very words to Judith. Perhaps he knew that lack would be dangerous. Perhaps he had forebodings.

We would have had a public marriage, Abraham and I, for Isaac's sake, so that our son would be called the son of Abraham, instead of the son of Miriam, like some bastard. But Abraham had died before I'd even had the confidence to truly believe Isaac lived within me.

But, really, I didn't care how Isaac would be called. He'd be Father's heir. He'd have a secure
place in Magdala, no matter what. And I didn't care what the villagers would think of me. I fully believed that their opinions didn't matter. All that mattered was that Abraham and I had the Creator's blessing on our union. Of that I was sure. For no baby was conceived out of greater love than Isaac.