The Dovekeepers (59 page)

The women who joined in this way of life believed that few were closer to Shechinah than the
kedeshah.
They embraced the feminine aspect of God, the Dwelling, the deep place where inspiration abided, for in the written words of God, compassion and knowledge were always female. This is why the lilies grew in my mother’s garden and why she was allowed knowledge of Hebrew and Greek and could converse with any man.

When the priests came to visit, I was sent from the house, and I would go into the garden. Among the hedges, there grew the white blooms of the henna flower that turned a mysterious, sacred shade of red when prepared as a dye. I often spent my time beside a small fountain fashioned of blue and white ceramic tiles. I was not pleased to be sent from my mother, but I occupied myself, a skill learned by children who must sometimes act older than their age. The water lilies rested on plump green pads that trailed pale, fleshy tendrils below them in the waters of the fountain. Birds came to drink, offering their songs in return for quenching their thirst. My mother had told me to be silent, and I did as she asked. I practiced until I could sit so still I became invisible to the birds that fluttered down from the pine trees. Often they would alight on my shoulders and on my knees. I could feel their nimble hearts beating as they sang in sheer gratitude for the shade and comfort of our garden.

Once, when I was little more than four, I was sent out for several hours in the burning-hot sun. I was so angry to have been cast out of our chamber into the brutal heat of noon that I threw myself into
the fountain. The ceramic tiles were cool and slippery on my feet. In my childish fury, I leapt without thinking of the consequences. The instant I did, the heat of the day disappeared. I held my breath as I went under. With the green water all around me, I immediately felt I had found a home. This was the element I was meant for. The world itself spun upside down, and yet it seemed more mine than any other place. I wanted to close my eyes and drift forever. I saw bubbles formed of my own breath. All at once someone grabbed for me roughly. The priest ripped me out of the water. He shook me and told me that little girls who played with water drowned and that no one would feel sorry for me if this should be my fate.

But I hadn’t drowned, and I looked up at him, defiant and dripping with water. I could feel a new power within me, one that gave me the courage to glare at this holy man. I could see my mother’s glance focused on me in a strange manner, her gaze lingering on my drenched form from the doorway where she stood. Her hair was loose, and she was wearing only a white shawl wrapped around her naked body. The henna tattoos swirling across her throat and breasts and arms were drawn in honeyed patterns, as if she were a flower rather than a woman.

Not long after my dive into the fountain, my mother took me to the Nile. It was here, on the shore of the mightiest river, that Moses had inscribed God’s name upon gold, throwing it into the waters, begging the Almighty to allow the Exodus of our people to begin. It was a long journey to undertake, but my mother insisted we must go. Our servants brought us there in a cart pulled by donkeys. A tent was lifted over our heads to protect our skins from burning as we traveled. We set off in the middle of the night so that the voyage would be cooler. We rested during the heat of the next day, then set off once again. As I dozed I listened to the wheels of our cart and the drone of our servants speaking to each other in Greek, the language we all spoke publicly, whether we were Jews or Egyptians, pagans or Greeks. Our donkeys were white and well
brushed, their gait even and quick. We had fruit in a basket to eat whenever we were hungry, along with cakes made of dates and figs. I wondered if I were a princess, and my mother a queen. The air gleamed with heat, but the closer we drew to the river, the cooler the breeze became.

Morning was rising, and people were already busy in the working world around us. The mass of life was noisy on the road to the river, the air scented with cinnamon and cardamom. There were pepper trees and date palms that were taller than any I’d seen before. I felt a shimmer of excitement, and great satisfaction at being alone with my mother. For once I did not have to share her. She allowed me to play with the two golden amulets she wore at her throat, and the serpent key that gleamed in the sunlight.

My mother wore a white tunic and sandals. She had oiled and braided her own hair and mine, as she would have had we been attending a ritual to make an offering. As we drew even nearer to the river, the hour was still early, the sky pink. There was the rich scent of mud and lilies. Women had brought baskets of laundry to wash and then dry on the banks, and men were setting out in narrow, flat-bottomed wooden fishing boats, their oars turning as they called to one another, their woven nets flashing through the air as they tossed them out for their catch.

My mother leaned down to whisper that we had arrived at our destination. She told me that, if water was indeed my element, I must learn to swim with my eyes open. I must control it or it would control me. To take charge of a substance so powerful, one had to give in to it first, become one with it, then triumph. We went through the reeds, though they were sharp as they slapped against us, leaving little crisscross serrations on our legs in a pattern of X’s. I saw herons and storks fishing for their breakfasts. Our feet sank in the mud, and as we went deeper our tunics flowed out around us.

The Nile always grew fat after the full moon in summer, its water a great gift in a time of brutal heat. I could feel how refreshing
and sweet it was. I had never known the sense of true delight, how intense pleasure coursed through your body slowly, and then, suddenly, in a rush of sensation. All at once you possessed the river, as it possessed you in turn. I had the sense that I belonged to these waters and always had.

“Now we’ll discover who you will be,” my mother said to me, eager to see what her daughter might become.

I sank under, my eyes open. I would have blinked had my mother not told me to be vigilant. I trusted her and always did as she said. I made certain to keep my eyes wide. Because of this I saw a vision I would carry with me for my entire life. There was a fish as large as a man. He was luminous in the murky dark. He was enormous, a creature who needed neither breath nor earth, as I did, and yet I had no fear of him. Rather, tenderness rose inside me. I felt he was my beloved. I reached out, and he ventured close enough for me to run my hand over his cold, silvery scales.

I arose from the river with a sense of joy, but also with a melancholy I had not known before. It is not usual for a child to feel such sadness when nothing has changed and the world around is still the same. Yet I had a sense of extreme loss.

When I told my mother about the fish, she said I had seen my destiny. She didn’t seem at all surprised.

“Did he bite you?” she asked.

I shook my head. The fish had seemed very kind.

“Well, he will,” my mother told me. “Here is the riddle of love: Everything it gives to you, it takes away.”

I did not know what this meant, though I knew the world was a dangerous place for a woman. Still, I did not understand how a person whose element was water could stay away from fish.

THEY SAY
that a woman who practices magic is a witch, and that every witch derives her power from the earth. There was a great
seer who advised that, should a man hold a witch in the air, he could then cut off her powers, thereby making her helpless. But such an attempt would have no effect on me. My strength came from water, my talents buoyed by the river. On the day I swam in the Nile and saw my fate in the ink blue depths, my mother told me that I would have powers of my own, as she did. But there was a warning she gave to me as well: If I were ever to journey too far from the water, I would lose my power and my life. I must keep my head and not give in to desire, for desire is what causes women to drown.

IN THE DESERT,
the air burns. Breathe and it flames inside you, for it is strong as iron, as unrelenting as the swirling dust that rises in a storm. Our water comes from the rain, and from aqueducts long ago built by Herod’s slaves, wide ceramic tubes which carry the rushing waters of the
nechalim
to us when they fill with sudden streams in the winter months. Still, it is not enough for me. The desert is overtaking me, my strength is dwindling. In water I float, but in the dry inferno of this wilderness, I can barely catch my breath. I dream of rivers and of silver fish. There are those who say our people themselves are like the fish in the sea, nourished by the waters of knowledge that flow from the Torah, and that is why we can survive in such a harsh and brutal land.

I often wake from sleep with a gasp, drowning in the pools of white light that break through the sky each morning. Women carrying new lives within them are especially susceptible to heat. I have felt so afflicted three other times. Once in Jerusalem when I was only thirteen, barely a woman myself. Twice on the Iron Mountain, which was little more than exile to me. And now here, again, in the place where I have found my destiny.

At night I go to the cisterns, led there by the scent of water. To me, this odor is more pungent than myrrh or frankincense. The
single thing that can rival it is the fragrance of the white lily that can only be found in Alexandria. People say that I can call down the rain and that water is drawn to me, but they’re wrong. It is I who am in pursuit of water, as I have always been. When I dream, I dream of the Nile on that pink morning, and of my mother, whom I have not seen in so long she would no longer recognize me, if she has not already gone on to the World-to-Come.

The stars are reflected from within the black water in the cistern. I find comfort in the omen I glean from this: light in the darkness, truth when it seems there is none. This is the only place where I can be myself, the girl who fell into the fountain, the one who was not afraid of monsters, nor of deep water, nor of drowning. I walk down the hundred stone steps, the granite cool against my feet. I know where love will take me, for on the day we traveled to the Nile, my mother told me that it would bring me to ruin and that anyone I dared to love would be drawn down with me. But even as she spoke she knew, I had no choice but to follow my destiny.

I pause on the edge of the cistern, where the stones have been covered with fine plaster. The white plaster dust clings to my flesh. I watch the shimmer of the heat over the water. It is said that the spirit of God hovers over the water, as it did on the first day of creation. I stand before the glory of what He has created. I remove my cloak, my sandals, my tunic. Other women purify themselves in the
mikvah,
but I need deeper waters. I dive in.

Some people say that this, the largest of the cisterns built by Herod’s stonemasons, is bottomless, and if we ever see the floor of this well, we will also see our doom. This pool is deep, but it is not endless. I know that for certain. All things end. I often dive to reach the depths, then keep myself from rising back up by holding on to the rocks piled at the foundation. They are sleek against my hand, smoothed by the endless lapping of the water against stone. I keep my eyes open even though the water is black. There are no
fish, no flashes of light, but when I surface, my cousin Eleazar will be waiting.

It was he I saw in the water of the Nile when I spied the fish beside me.

From the beginning until now, that alone has never changed. He is my fate.

THE SOLDIERS
of the Tenth Legion were led through the wilderness by Flavius Silva, the procurator of all Judea, the newly appointed Roman governor. The troops raised a dust storm so enormous it could surely be seen as far away as the Iron Mountain, where I spent so many years in the company of a husband who was twice my age and knew I did not love him, yet he still protected me. He never mistreated me, though he had the stony aloofness of many of the fierce people of Moab, along with a surprising tenderness with his children. His name was Sa’adallos, though I never called him that. If I had, I might have loved him in return. I might have been in Petra instead of at this fortress when the Romans arrived. I might have been walking through that red city with its miraculous carved columns of elephants and camels, enjoying its pool, rumored to be the size of a lake, and the gardens that hang from cliffs, causing men to look upon the mountainsides with awe, amazed to see date trees where in another country there would be only clouds.