Two from Galilee (2 page)

Joachim seemed not to hear. He was staring into the face of the sleeping infant. "As a ward of the Temple under the care of someone like Elizabeth she would receive so much that we can't give her. Who knows what high destiny God might have for her if we were only willing to make the sacrifice?"

Elizabeth.
The named rocked Hannah with an ancient torment. Elizabeth had always been so beautiful, so fortunate. Elizabeth, barren even longer than she had been, yes, poor thing, but who had so much else to compensate. How could he even suggest that they give up their only treasure to someone like Elizabeth?

As for sacrifice! What kind of God was it that gave and then snatched back? Did the Lord with his multitudes have half the need of this hot little weight she held as either of them? But she dared not voice such blasphemies. She spoke tactfully, to protect her interests. She did not dream that she spoke as a prophet.

"Truly this is a child of God," she said. "But surely the priests and women of the Temple could never love her as we do, not even my own sister. Nor raise her more righteously. Nor even find her a better husband." Hannah gazed at the flower face in a greedy awe, seeing its sweet promise, yet tasting already the inevitable loss. "She's going to be one of the most beautiful girls in Galilee; she'll have any man she wants."

Joachim yielded. His own spirit was eased. And as time went on it was hard to say which one more passionately adored the child. Yet now that Jahveh had relented he made up for lost time. Hannah was soon expecting again, and subtly, swiftly, Mary was drawn to the father. He would swing her to the ceiling when she came rushing to greet him with her explosion of dusky curls and huge ecstatic eyes. Or he would carry her about on his shoulders, talking to her in a whimsical way that amused Hannah, while filling her with a vague contempt. She was uneasy with the poet who dwelled so strangely in this man of silence or blunt country speech.

Sometimes he would lift Mary onto the back of the ox and let her ride as he plowed the rich if rocky fields. What a little goddess she was, pagan almost, garlanded with the wild cornflowers and narcissus that Joachim plucked and braided for her. How she laughed and sang and goaded the gentle beast by tickling its flanks with an olive branch. Hannah argued and scolded—it was unseemly in a girl child even if she didn't coine to harm! But Joachim only laughed. Though he yielded to his wife in most things, in this he had his way.

The second child was a boy, but their jubilation was shortlived. For he was weak, very weak. And after the long bout with fever when he was two they had to accept the burden of his blindness and his twisted limbs. Hannah did so with all the intensity of her nature. He was her heart. But now more than ever Mary became her pride.

It exasperated Hannah that there could be anyone who failed to appreciate not only Mary's striking beauty but her other remarkable qualities. She lived in a perpetual frenzy of comparison, choked and galled when her sisters-in-law boasted about their daughters. To Mary's embarrassment, Hannah had to surpass them, she could not hold her tongue. "Mother, please," Mary pleaded, "remember what the proverb says: Pride goeth before a fall."

It brought Hannah up short. But she retorted, "See that you remember that and never give us cause to hang our heads."

This morning, slapping the cakes onto the now glowing coals for breakfast, Hannah smiled a trifle guiltily to remember. As if Mary could ever cause them shame. For Mary was all the things she claimed and more, things that, maddeningly, you could not convey to outsiders. Even sweaty and laughing from play as a little girl, or grubby from toil, there had always been this queer delicacy of her person, this quality of gentleness, as if she were truly a king's child. She was patient and helpful with the younger children; her wit brightened the darkest days.

If she had faults they were but the kind that gave her flavor. A fierce allegiance to her father, sometimes shutting Hannah out. A tendency to dream over the spindle. And she was not content with the old songs and tales (this worried her mother most) but would make up songs and stories of her own. "If she were a boy she might have been another David or Solomon," said Joachim. But Hannah had small patience with such imaginings. A girl should never be anything but the mouthpiece of the truth.

The truth. Sternly Hannah examined her own concept of Mary. Even allowing for prejudice, surely if ever a daughter was well nigh perfect, that daughter was her own. And most of the village knew it. Certainly the young men knew it. Not one of Mary's cousins could claim such impressive suitors as had already approached Joachim.

Hannah tallied them up: Abner, whose family traced their lineage to the first high priest of The Land, but who supported themselves as sandal makers. Abner—tall, gaunt, sweet-natured but rather remote, forever poring over his books. His parents had scraped up the money to send him to Jerusalem for study. He aspired to be a priest and serve in the Temple and it seemed likely he would succeed. Hannah could not but be tempted as she visualized Mary living near its splendors, her days heightened by its constant procession of holy and important people.

And Cleophas. Son of Reb Levi, a town elder and its richest citizen. He dealt in silks and spices and fine stuffs which most of Nazareth was too poor except to admire. He was forever sending Cleophas on trips to K'far Nahum and Sidon. Joachim's relatives buzzed that the family dealt with agents of Herod, although Hannah marked that up to jealousy. Certainly Cleophas was a handsome if somewhat wild and arrogant boy, and he doted on Mary. Sought her out at the grape treadings and sheep shearings and dancing at wedding feasts. Hannah's blood quickened as she thought of the fine house of stone and cedarwood of which Mary might one day be mistress, the gems and elegant fabrics that would surely enhance her loveliness.

Joachim had put both fathers off when they sounded him out last year. Not wishing to admit that Mary was not yet nubile he had said merely in his brusque, authoritative way: "We need her. There's plenty of time."

Yes, time. Plenty of time even now, Hannah reassured herself. For she had wearied already of thinking of suitors—she could feel one of her headaches coming on. No, she would not allow herself to think of others. Especially not one.

Yet Joseph's tall splendid body seemed to invade the tiny room. His sea-gray eyes seemed to haunt her, demanding, insistent. And so she must cope with him. Jacob, his father, was also of the stock of Jesse, she had to admit, but poor, and a wine-bibber, it was rumored. A squat, merry, loquacious little man who sang and joked as he mended the carts of passing travelers, leaving the shop that adjoined their mean little cave of a house pretty much to his eldest son.

Unlike his father, Joseph was rather sober, albeit he had a quick smile and a radiance about the eyes very pleasant to behold. Called forward to read the Scriptures on the Sabbath, he came on a light, quick, pounding tread that seemed to stir all the girls seated in the gallery. Even Hannah felt his strong masculinity throughout her whole spare yet vital being. She did not miss the little tremor that ran through them, the unconscious leaning forward. All but Mary who sat locked in her quiet poise, betrayed only by the half-smile on her lips, the fixed and shining look in her great eyes.

He was older than Mary by some six years. He should have long since taken a wife. But that he'd been waiting for her daughter Hannah knew with a helpless sense of dismay and stubborn rejection. Many times over the years he'd come by the house on unnecessary errands—to deliver a yoke that Joachim could have picked up himself, to bring an offering of his mother's fig cakes, to mend a trough. And he invariably lingered with Mary. Pictures plagued her: Joseph patiently picking out nut-meats and popping them into Mary's innocent mouth. Fourteen-year-old Joseph hoisting the basket of olives to his own shoulder as she struggled up from the common orchard behind the town. And once when unexpected clouds had sent down an avalanche he had picked her up and carried her bodily across the swirling waters.

Hannah would never forget their laughter or the look of his streaming face as he set her down on her own doorstep. And though Mary had been scarcely eleven then and he almost eighteen, Hannah had felt a sense of dark outrage.

"Never let such a thing happen again," she had said severely. "What would people think?"

"That it was pouring and the streets were such a torrent that I might have been swept away and drowned."

"Swept away indeed!" Swept away . . . and away . . . into youth and longing and dreaming and foolishness and the mistakes that were forever waiting to overtake those who imagined themselves in love.

But she had guarded Mary well. She had made it plain in many ways not only to Joseph himself but his parents—yes, and the soft-hearted Joachim—that a match was out of the question. They had not had the effrontery to ask. But until Joseph had settled on another girl and the banns were announced Hannah would not rest easy.

Mary, their Mary, was meant for a finer fate than toiling and bearing children for a poor young carpenter.

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T
HE pink light was claiming the sky. The very breath of God was tinted as mists drifted down from the hills, across the fields, blurring groves and vineyards. Foliage sparkled with last night's storm and petals gemmed the streets. In all the little houses people were stirring, and the singing that always signaled the beginning of a good day in Nazareth joined that of the birds. There was the smell of bread baking. And passing the big public oven dug near the well for the use of the poor, Mary could feel the heat of the coals as the crone Mehitabel slapped her loaves upon them.

"Mary!" Other girls carrying jugs or skins or leading livestock to drink at the trough, cried out to her. And it was as she had expected. Her cousin Deborah, who missed nothing, pounced on her secret and made it news. Above the creak of rope and bucket, the slosh of water being poured into pitchers and jars, the mooing and blatting of sheep and cattle, the ripple of it ran through the crowd. "Mary's a woman now!" Offering a mixture of congratulation and commiseration, they made room for her nearer the head of the line. Old Mehitabel joined them, her cackle splitting the bright fruit of the morning. "I say it's just the beginning of a woman's misery. A heavy price to pay, I say, because Mother Eve ate an
apple.
Now if it had been a pomegranate or a melon! . . ."

The women laughed. They could see a joke. For wasn't their entire existence based on a proud if almost ludicrous anomaly? Here were the Jews, God's chosen people—yet none had known such bitter hardships. And their land for generations had been occupied by heathens to whom they must pay tribute, but whom they would not deign to touch. There was something crudely cleansing about Mehitabel's audacity.

Another voice spoke up. "But nobody's really a woman until she's lost her maidenhood. When that happens let us know, that's when we'll celebrate!"

Mary flushed. You must be thick-skinned to be a Galilean woman. You must not mind these jokes. Modesty quarreled constantly with this brash discussion of the state they seemed to value above all else. The coming to bed with a man, the loving and begetting. But how could she blame them when her own thoughts could dwell on little else? Cleophas, Abner, the others, but above all, Joseph. Adored as a child, dreamed of as she grew older, scarcely daring to hope. Her friend, yes, but perhaps her friend too long. One day she had summoned the courage to ask him, "Why haven't you ever been betrothed?"

"Can't you guess?" he smiled. "I'm waiting for you, little Mary."

After that it was their secret, almost too precious to discuss. Yet a baffling change had come over him these past months; he avoided her, she never heard his voice except in the synagogue. Wherefore? she thought in mystified desolation. Why,
why?
Had she done something to offend him? Or was he bowing to Hannah's snubbing, too proud to beg for what he thought he could not win? Heartsick at the prospect, Mary swung the bucket over the worn stone lip of the well and drew it up. Or had he changed his mind? The prospect was staggering. Could it be that Joseph had at last found somebody else?

Hoisting the moist weight of her jug to her head, she fell into step with Deborah, who had shooed her little sister ahead so that they could talk as they climbed the hill. The child was plainly disgruntled, and although Mary felt sorry for her she was grateful. She was anxious to question Deborah, whose high white forehead and long elegant nose seemed almost to sprout antennae, so alert was she to all the latest gossip. Deborah would have heard.

But Deborah was also vastly filled with herself, and today she babbled of Aaron, her betrothed. He was just back from Magdala and had brought her a cashmere shawl. "And he's ordering a chest made for me, of the finest camphorwood."

Mary swallowed. "Who's making it?"

"Now wouldn't you like to know? Who else but Joseph? Aaron wouldn't trust anybody else." She moved along with the grace of a mountain cat. Her cool alert yellow eyes toyed with Mary, seeking her reaction. Then she rushed back to Aaron, the stone house he was going to have ready in the fall, what an importunate lover he was getting to be.

How she runs on, Mary thought, with a kind of pitying impatience. How she exaggerates. And she thought of Aaron, pudgy and slow-witted, despite his high good humor and his generosity. People loved and despised him vaguely, including Deborah herself.

She said with a shade too much enthusiasm, "Aaron will make a splendid husband. You're lucky your parents chose such a good man for you. As for the chest," she blurted, "when is Joseph starting? You'll want to see how it's coming, won't you? Let's go together to the shop."