Mary of Nazareth (24 page)

“Actually, I made fun of his dream,” Elisheba said. “I didn't believe it at all! ‘Look at us, my poor old Zechariah,' I said. ‘It was a nice dream, but now that your eyes are wide open, you're going to forget it.' I mean, how could I ever have imagined he was still capable of such a fine performance?”

Elisheba's laugher rang out loud and clear. Then she thought better of it, and peered at Yossef and Joachim to make sure they were not shocked by this irrepressible gaiety of hers.

But Joachim was encouraging. “You're right to be jolly. At sad times, an event like this gladdens the heart.”

Elisheba stroked her belly as if it were already swollen.

Ruth, who had remained distant during all this excitement, asked dubiously, “Are you sure?”

“Shouldn't a woman know when she's expecting a child?”

“A woman can sometimes be wrong, and take her dreams for reality. Especially when it comes to things like that.”

“I know what God has commanded me!” Zechariah said indignantly.

Miriam, gently intervening, put her hand on Ruth's shoulder. “Of course she's pregnant.”

Ruth blushed in embarrassment. “I'm stupid, forgive me. I come from a place where people are often ill or mad. If you listen to them, heaven is overcrowded with angels, and the land of Israel is swarming with genuine prophets. It's probably made me a bit too suspicious about everything.”

At any other time, Joachim and Yossef would have smiled at this.

         

L
ATER,
Mariamne asked Miriam, “Do you want me to stay with you for a while? I don't know anything about children, but I can still make myself useful. I know my mother wouldn't refuse. We'll send Rekab back with a message for her. She'll understand.”

“I don't need you to help with the children. But for the sake of my morale, and to be able to talk about things I can only talk about with you, yes, I would like you to stay. You have some books from Rachel's library with you. You can read them to me.”

Mariamne blushed with pleasure. “Your friend Halva was like a sister to you. But we're like sisters too, aren't we? Even if we're not as alike as we used to be, now that your hair is short.”

So it was that Yossef's house came back to life. The multitude of daily chores kept all of them busy, and distracted them from their grief. Zechariah and Elisheba's joy in their imminent parenthood helped to lighten the mood. It was like a new start, a convalescence.

After one moon, it was confirmed that Elisheba was indeed pregnant. She often went up to Miriam and said, “You know something? The child in my belly already loves you! I can feel him moving about whenever I'm close to you. It's as if he's clapping his hands.”

This greatly irritated Ruth, who still found it hard to accept this miraculous birth. Elisheba's belly had hardly grown, she pointed out. For the moment, the child was probably nothing but a little ball no bigger than a fist.

“That's what I think too,” Elisheba would reply with satisfaction. “A little fist that punches when I least expect it.”

“Well,” Ruth would sigh, raising her eyes to heaven, “if he's like this after one or two moons, what will he be like when he's standing upright?”

         

N
OT
long after this, Miriam got into the habit of leaving the house at dawn, before the children were up. In the half-light between night and day, she would take the descending path that led through the forest to Sepphoris and wander aimlessly.

By the time the sun started to appear, she would be back, and would cross the courtyard lost in thought.

Mariamne and Ruth noticed that she was becoming more and more silent, and even a little distant. It was only once the day's work was done that she listened to the others' chatter. Mariamne still read to Miriam while the children were taking their nap, but she gradually seemed to lose interest, even though it was something she herself had asked for.

One evening, as they were finishing the kneading of the dough for the next day's bread, Mariamne asked, “Don't you feel exhausted, always going out for a walk in the morning the way you do? You get up so early, you're going to tire yourself out.”

Miriam smiled. The question seemed to amuse her. “No, I don't feel exhausted. But I can see you're intrigued. You'd really like to know why I go off like that almost every morning.”

Mariamne blushed and lowered her eyes.

“Don't be embarrassed. It's quite normal to be curious.”

“Yes, I am curious. Especially about you.”

They cut the dough in silence and rolled it into balls. As they shaped the last one, Miriam stopped.

“When I'm out walking like that,” she said in a low voice, “I feel Obadiah's presence. He's as close to me as if he were still alive. I need his visits the way I need to breathe and eat. Thanks to him, everything becomes lighter. Life isn't so painful anymore….”

Mariamne stared at her in silence.

“Do you think I'm a little mad?”

“No.”

“That's because you love me. Ruth also hates me to talk about Obadiah. She's convinced I'm going out of my mind. But because she loves me, she won't say it.”

“No, I assure you. I don't think you're mad.”

“Then how do you explain the fact that I still feel Obadiah's presence?”

“I can't explain it,” Mariamne said, frankly. “I don't understand it. And what you don't understand you can't explain. But just because you don't understand something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Isn't that what we learned in Magdala from reading those Greeks my mother likes so much?”

Miriam reached out her flour-stained hands and lightly touched Mariamne's cheek. “Do you see why I need you to stay with me? So that you can tell me such things, which calm me down. Because I do often wonder if I'm going mad.”

“When Zechariah claimed he'd seen an angel, no one wondered if he was mad!” Mariamne protested. Then she added, mischievously, “But perhaps without that angel, no one would have believed he'd made a child with Elisheba.”

“Mariamne!” In spite of her scolding tone, Miriam was amused.

Covering her mouth with her flour-whitened hands, Mariamne started to giggle, and this time her impish laughter set Miriam laughing too.

Ruth appeared in the doorway, with little Yehuda in her arms. “At last!” she exclaimed. “A little laughter in this house where even the children are serious! It's good to hear.”

         

A
FEW
days later, as Miriam was out walking less than a mile from Nazareth, Barabbas suddenly appeared beneath a big sycamore.

The sun was barely up. Miriam recognized his slender body, his thick goatskin tunic, his hair. Nothing about him had changed. She would have picked him out among a thousand men. She slowed down and stopped some distance from him. In the uncertain light of dawn, she could barely make out his features.

He did not move. He must have seen her coming from a distance. Perhaps he had been intrigued by this woman with her short hair, and had not recognized her immediately.

Neither said a word. They stood looking at each other, at a distance of more than thirty paces, both unsure how to make the first move or what to say.

Suddenly, unable to sustain her gaze a moment longer, Barabbas turned away. He went around the sycamore, climbed over a small stone wall, and walked away. He had a pronounced limp and kept his hand flat on his left thigh to steady himself.

Miriam remembered the wound he had received on the shore of the Lake of Gennesaret. She remembered him in the boat, carrying Obadiah in his arms. She remembered their violent quarrel in the desert on the road to Damascus. She remembered him with his leg bleeding, screaming in rage against her and against everything, as the daylight revealed Obadiah's lifeless body.

That day, after she had abandoned him, Barabbas must have walked for hours with that bleeding wound before getting any care.

She had wiped these memories from her mind, as she had almost wiped Barabbas from her mind. Now she felt both compassion and remorse.

All the same, she was starting to feel sorry that she had met him again. She hated the fact that he had appeared to her, so close to Nazareth and to Yossef's house. Without knowing why, she was afraid that seeing him and talking to him would mean she would no longer have Obadiah's presence near her.

These thoughts were absurd, inexplicable. Just as inexplicable as the fact that she had been hearing Obadiah's voice whispering to her for months now. All the same, Mariamne was right. It didn't really matter if you understood. The soul saw what the eyes were unable to. And wasn't Barabbas one of those people who only wanted to see with their eyes?

She turned around and went back to the house much earlier than usual.

Toward midday, she went to Joachim and said, “Barabbas is here. I saw him this morning.”

Joachim looked closely at her, but her face seemed expressionless. “I know,” he said. “He was here some time ago. He helped me a lot after your mother died, may God rest her soul. He had to leave Nazareth for a while, but he was planning to return. He has some things to tell you.”

         

T
WO
days passed. Miriam avoided any mention of Barabbas. Neither Joachim nor Yossef spoke his name.

At dawn on the third day, he appeared to her as she was walking away from the house. He was standing on the path, waiting for her. This time, she understood from his bearing that he wanted to talk to her. She stopped a few paces from him and looked into his eyes.

The day had only just risen. The dim light made his face look hollow, without in any way altering the gentleness of his expression. He made an embarrassed gesture with his hand. “It's me,” he said, awkwardly. “You should recognize me. I've changed less than you have.”

She could not help smiling.

Encouraged by her smile, he went on, “It's not only your hair that's changed, it's the whole of you. That's obvious straightaway. I've been wanting to talk to you for a long time.”

Still she said nothing, but she did nothing to discourage him either. In spite of everything she had thought about him, she was happy to see him, to know that he was alive, and he could see that in her face.

“I've changed too,” he said. “I know now that you were right.”

She nodded.

“You're not very talkative,” he said anxiously. “Are you still angry with me?”

“No. I'm happy to see that you're alive.”

He massaged his leg. “I've never forgotten him. Not a day goes by that I don't think of him. I was nearly crippled.”

She slowly bowed her head. “That wound is there to remind you of Obadiah. He made sure that I don't spend a day without him either.”

Barabbas frowned. He was about to ask her what she meant by that, but in the end he did not dare.

“I was sorry to hear about your mother,” he said. “I suggested to Joachim that we should punish the mercenaries who killed her, but he refused.”

“He was right.”

Barabbas shrugged his shoulders. “It's true we can't kill them all. There's only one man we must have done with, and that's Herod. The others can find their way to hell all by themselves….”

She neither objected nor agreed.

“I've changed,” he said again, his voice harder now. “But I haven't forgotten that Israel still has to be freed. I'm still the same when it comes to that, and will be for as long as I live. I'll never change.”

“I thought as much. That's good.”

He seemed relieved at these words.

“We and the Zealots pulled off a few things together. Herod keeps putting up Roman eagles on the Temple and the synagogues, and we pull them down. Or when there are too many hungry people in a village, we plunder the legions' reserves. But we don't go in for big battles anymore! Which doesn't mean I've changed my mind. We really have to resolve what to do. Before Israel is entirely destroyed.”

“I haven't forgotten anything either. But from Joseph of Arimathea I learned the power of life. Only life can generate life. We have to hold life in one hand and justice in the other. That's what will save us. It's more difficult than fighting with spears and swords, but it's the only way there will ever be justice in our land.”

She spoke very calmly, in a low voice. In the rising light, Barabbas looked closely at her. Perhaps he was more impressed by her determination than he would have liked to admit.

They fell silent for a moment. Then Barabbas smiled broadly, and his teeth flashed. “I've also been thinking about life,” he said in a rush, his voice quavering a little. “I've been to see Joachim and told him I want you as my wife.”

Miriam gave a start of surprise.

“I've been thinking about it for a long time,” Barabbas went on hurriedly. “I know we don't always see eye to eye. But no other woman in the world is your equal, and I don't want anyone else.”

Miriam lowered her eyes, suddenly intimidated. “And what did my father say?”

Barabbas gave a tense little laugh. “That he consents. And that you should too.”

She looked up, gave Barabbas the tenderest look that she could, and shook her head. “No, I can't.”

Barabbas stiffened, then nervously rubbed his thigh. “You can't?” he whispered, barely knowing what he was saying.

“If I had to take a man as a husband, yes, it would be you. I've known that for a long time. Since the day I found you on the terrace of our house trying to get away from the mercenaries.”

“Well, then?”

“I'll never be the wife of any man. That, too, I've known for a long time.”

“Why? That's stupid. You can't say something like that. All women have husbands!”