The Book of Longings: A Novel (47 page)

“How do you know this?” exclaimed Lazarus.

“I encountered him this morning in the Garden of Gethsemane. He confessed it to me.”

“May God strike him down,” Martha said with fierceness. No one refuted her. Not even I.

I watched their sharp, appalled expressions, how they struggled to comprehend. Mary of Magdala gave her head a shake, the amber light catching in her hair. She lifted her face to me, and I wondered if she knew why I’d not traveled with my husband through the villages and towns around Galilee as she’d done. Were the circumstances of my exile known among his followers? Was
I
known among them?

“It’s impossible that Judas would betray Jesus,” the Magdalene said. “He
loved
him. I traveled with the disciples for months. Judas was devoted to Jesus.”

I bristled. I may not have been there for Jesus’s ministry, but I knew my brother. I responded tersely. “I know very well that Judas loved Jesus; he loved him like a brother. But he hated Rome far more.”

A look crossed her face, something crestfallen, and my annoyance vanished. Even then I knew I’d snapped at her out of envy, resentful of the freedom she’d had to follow Jesus around the countryside, while I’d been trapped in Haran’s house.

“I shouldn’t have spoken harshly,” I told her. She smiled and the skin wrinkled around her eyes in that way that makes a woman beautiful.

There came another silence. My mother-in-law placed her hand on my arm, her fingers brushing past the bloodstain on the sleeve of Jesus’s cloak. She had aged deeply in the two years I’d been gone. Her hair was silvering and her face had begun to change into an old woman’s—the plump, sagging cheeks, eyelids slumped onto her lashes.

She rubbed my arm, meant to comfort, but her fingers woke the smells inside the cloak’s fabric. Sweat, cook smoke, wine, spikenard. The scents, so sudden and alive, unleashed a bitter pain inside me, and I understood that I’d spoken to them about Judas because I couldn’t bear to speak about Jesus. I feared it. I feared the power it had to unlock pain from common places.

There was so much, though, to be said, to be understood. I shifted, straightened. “I was on my way to the palace this morning when I came
upon Jesus in the street carrying the crossbeam. I know nothing about how he came to be condemned or why he wore those dreadful thorns on his head.” I looked at the women who’d climbed Golgotha with me. “Were any of you there when he was brought before Pilate?”

Mary of Magdala leaned toward me. “We were all there. When I arrived, a large crowd had already gathered on the pavement and Jesus was standing above us on the porch where the Roman governor pronounces his judgments. Pilate was questioning him, but from where I stood, it was impossible to hear what was said.”

“We could not hear him either,” said Salome. “Though for most of it Jesus remained silent, refusing to answer Pilate’s questions. You could tell this aggravated Pilate. Eventually he shouted for Jesus to be taken to Herod Antipas.”

At the mention of Antipas’s name, fear, then hate blazed up in me. Jesus and I had been forced apart for two years because of him. “Why would Pilate send Jesus to Antipas?” I asked.

Mary of Magdala said, “I heard some in the crowd say Pilate would prefer Antipas to pronounce the verdict and save him from blame in case people revolted and blood was shed. He could be recalled to Rome over an outcome like that. Better to wash his hands of it and let the tetrarch do it. We waited on the pavement to see what would happen, and sometime later, Jesus returned with the thorn crown on his head and a purple cape about his shoulders.”

Salome said, “It was awful, Ana. Antipas had costumed Jesus like that to mock him as King of the Jews. Pilate’s soldiers were bowing to him and laughing. I could see that he’d been flogged—he could hardly stand, but he kept his head lifted the whole time and didn’t flinch at their ridicule.” Her face was radiant with the urge to cry.

“Who condemned him to die—Antipas or Pilate?” asked Lazarus, clasping and unclasping his hands.

“It was Pilate,” said Mary of Magdala. “He addressed the crowd
saying it was the custom during Passover to release one prisoner. I cannot tell you how my hope leapt at this. I thought he intended to set Jesus free. Instead he asked the crowd who it should be, Jesus or someone else. We women had arrived at the palace separately, but by this time, we’d found one another and we shouted Jesus’s name as loudly as we could. But there were many followers present of a man named Barabbas, a Zealot held in Antonia’s Tower for insurrection. They screamed his name until that was all that could be heard.”

The knowledge that Jesus might’ve been saved at the end, but wasn’t, staggered me. If I’d been there . . . if I’d left my bed earlier . . . if I’d not delayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, I would’ve been there to fill the air with his name.

“It happened so fast,” Mary said, turning to me. “Pilate pointed his finger at Jesus and said, ‘Crucify him.’”

I closed my eyes to keep out the picture that tortured me most, but the image could move through walls and eyelids and every conceivable barrier, and I saw my beloved nailed to the Roman timbers, trying to lift himself up to take a sip of air.

Was this what it was like to grieve a husband?

A memory came to me, a small one, a foolish one. “Mary, do you remember when Judith traded Delilah for a bolt of cloth?”

“I remember it well,” said Mary. “I’d never seen you so distressed.”

I looked at the others, wanting them to understand. “You see, I had charge of the animals and Delilah was more than a goat; she was my pet.”

“Now she’s become
my
pet,” said Mary.

I felt a momentary elation—Delilah was still there and being pampered. “Judith hated the goat,” I said.

“I think what she hated was how much you loved it,” Salome added.

“It’s true Judith liked me only slightly better than Delilah, but for her to take the goat to Sepphoris and trade her without telling me—I’d not expected it. When I confronted her, she argued that the cloth she’d
acquired was fine linen, better than she could weave, and that James had recently brought home a new, younger goat, making Delilah unnecessary.”

Everyone must have wondered why I was telling them this. They listened and nodded in an indulgent way.
The aftermath of tragedy is strange
, their expressions said.
Her husband has just been crucified—let her say whatever peculiar thing she needs to say.

I continued, “Jesus arrived home the same day Judith traded the goat, after a long, exhausting trek from Capernaum, where he’d worked all week. He found me distraught. It was late afternoon and he’d not eaten, but he turned around and walked all the way to Sepphoris and bought Delilah back with the coins he’d earned that week.”

Mary’s eyes glittered. “He came through the gate carrying Delilah on his shoulders.”

“Yes, he did!” I exclaimed. “He brought her back to me.”

I could still see him, grinning as he strode toward me across the compound, Delilah bleating wildly, and the picture was as vivid to me as the one of him crucified. Leaning my head back, I breathed as deeply as I could. Overhead, a ragged blanket of clouds. The moon somewhere, hidden. The owl had flown away.

Mary said, “Tell them the rest of it.”

I hadn’t intended to say anything further, but I was glad to do as she said. “The following week, Judith dyed her new, fine linen and hung it in the courtyard to dry. I often allowed Delilah to leave the cramped animal pen and wander free in the courtyard as long as the compound gate was locked. I never dreamed she would eat Judith’s cloth. Delilah, however, ate every bit of it.”

Mary laughed. Then we all laughed. There was a vast relief in it, as if the air had grown more spacious. Was laughter grieving, too?

Martha poured the last of the wine into our cups. We were exhausted, devastated, wishing for the numbness of sleep, but we went on sitting there, reluctant to part, our togetherness like a refuge.

I
T WAS NEARING
the midnight watch when a voice called from the gate. “It’s John, a disciple of Jesus.”

“
John!
” cried Mary of Magdala, leaping up to accompany Lazarus to the gate.

“What urgency could bring him here so late at night and on the Sabbath?” said Martha.

John stepped into the glow of our lamps and peered around the circle of faces, his eyes lingering on me, and I realized I’d seen him before. He’d been one of the four fishermen who’d traveled home with Jesus from Capernaum all those years ago and talked in the courtyard late into the night. Young, gangly, and beardless then, now he was a broad-shouldered man with thoughtful, deep-set eyes and a beard that curled under his chin.

Studying him closer, I realized I’d also seen him earlier today on Golgotha. He was the man who’d approached Jesus as he hung on the cross and who, like me, had been turned back by the soldiers. I offered him a sorrowful smile. He was the disciple who’d stayed.

He settled himself on the courtyard tiles while Martha muttered absently about the empty wineskins, finally setting a cup of water before her guest.

“What has brought you here?” asked Mary of Bethany.

His gaze shifted to me and his face turned grave. Wedged between Mary and Tabitha, I reached for their hands.

“Judas is dead,” John said. “He hanged himself from a tree.”

Shall I confess? Part of me had wished my brother dead. When Judas had turned Jesus over to the Temple guard, he’d breached some sacred
boundary in me. I’d offered him that gesture of pity as he’d stood in the distance on Golgotha, but in the aftermath, it was mostly hatred I felt.

In those blank, bewildered moments, as Mary and Salome and the others waited for me to respond to the news of Judas’s death, it occurred to me that Jesus would attempt to love even the lost, murderous Judas. Once, when I’d ranted to him about some slight Judith had done to me and declared my loathing of her, he’d said, “I know, Ana. She is difficult. You don’t have to feel love for her. Only try to
act
with love.”

But he was Jesus, and I was Ana. I wasn’t ready to let go of my animosity toward Judas. I would do so in time, but right now it saved me. It left less room inside for pain.

The silence went on too long. No one seemed to know what to say. At last, Mary of Bethany said, “Oh, Ana. This day is a desolation for you. First, your husband, now your brother.”

Something about these words caused a flash of indignation. As if Jesus and Judas could be mentioned in the same sentence, as if the loss I felt over them could be compared—but she meant well, I knew that. I stood and smiled at them. “Your presence has been my only solace this day, but I’m overcome now with weariness and will retire to sleep.” I bent and kissed Mary and Salome. Tabitha rose and followed me.

I curled onto the mat in Tabitha’s room, but could find no sleep. Hearing me toss about, my friend began to play her lyre, hoping to draw me into sleep. As the music moved through the darkness, grief rose in me. For my beloved, but also for my brother. Not for the Judas who betrayed Jesus, but for the boy who pined for his parents, who endured our father’s rejection, who took me with him when he walked in the Galilean hills, and who always took my part. I mourned the Judas who gave my bracelet to the injured laborer, who burned Nathaniel’s date grove, who resisted Rome.
Those
were the Judases I loved. For them, I buried my face in the crook of my arm and cried.

When I woke the following morning, the sky was white with sun. Tabitha’s mat was empty and the smell of baking bread floated everywhere. I sat up, surprised at the lateness, forgetting for a single, blissful moment the ruin of the previous day, and then all of it returned, winding itself around my ribs until I could barely breathe. Once again, I wished for my aunt. I could hear the women out in the courtyard, their soft, droning voices, but it was Yaltha I wanted.

I stood at the doorway, trying to imagine what she would say to me if she were here. Several minutes passed before I allowed myself to remember that night in Alexandria when Lavi brought news of John the Immerser’s beheading and I’d been overwhelmed with the fear of losing Jesus. “All shall be well,” Yaltha had told me, and when I’d recoiled at how trite and superficial that sounded, she’d said, “I don’t mean that life won’t bring you tragedy. I only mean you will be well in spite of it. There’s a place in you that is inviolate. You’ll find your way there, when you need to. And you’ll know then what I speak of.”

I pulled on Jesus’s cloak and stepped outside. My feet were tender from walking barefoot on the stones of Golgotha.

Lavi squatted near the oven, packing his travel pouch. I watched him layer bread, salted fish, and waterskins inside it. With all that had happened, I’d forgotten he was leaving. The ship we’d arrived on would sail back to Alexandria in three days. In order to be on it, Lavi would set out for Joppa early tomorrow morning. The realization jarred me.

Mary, Salome, Martha, Mary of Bethany, Tabitha, and Mary of Magdala were gathered in the shade near the wall overlooking the valley. Even though the Sabbath would not end until sunset, Tabitha appeared to be mending something and Martha was kneading dough. I doubted Tabitha cared about the Sabbath law forbidding work, but Martha seemed devout about these things. When I joined them, sitting on the
warm ground beside my mother-in-law, Martha said, “Yes, I know. I’m committing a sin, but I find consolation in baking bread.”

I wanted to say,
If I had ink and papyrus, I would gladly sin along with you
. Instead, I gave her my most commiserative smile.

Peering at Tabitha, I saw that she was sewing my sandal.

Mary said, “We’ll return to the tomb tomorrow after first light to finish anointing Jesus. Mary and Martha have provided us with aloe, cloves, mint, and frankincense.”

I’d said what felt like my final goodbye to Jesus the day before when I’d kissed his cheeks in the tomb. It unsettled me to think of repeating the wrenching process of leaving him again, but I nodded.