Mary of Nazareth (27 page)

“I believe you!” Mariamne immediately protested.

“You'd say anything to defend her,” Barabbas muttered.

“Don't argue over me,” Miriam said in a firm voice. She came and stood before Barabbas. “I know you're hurt, I know my refusal to be your wife has been a blow to your heart and your pride. And I also know that you love me as I love you. But I told you: I can't be your wife. The decision is mine and the Almighty's.”

“You keep contradicting yourself!” Barabbas cried. “How can anyone believe you?”

Miriam smiled and put the tip of her fingers to his lips to silence him. “Because that's how it is. If you love me, you'll believe me.”

Ignoring Barabbas's protests, she turned to Joachim. “You also doubt me, Father. And yet you love me more than all the people here put together. You must accept things as they are. There is a child in my belly. But I have not been defiled.”

Joachim shook his head and sighed. The others did not dare speak. A harder expression came into Miriam's. She took a few steps back, her eyes fixed on Joachim, and suddenly grabbed the bottom of her tunic with both hands and raised it to her knees.

“There is one proof, the simplest of all. Make sure that I'm still a maiden.”

Joachim opened his eyes wide and muttered something incomprehensible. By his side, Zechariah moaned. For the first time, Barabbas lowered his head.

“Do it,” Miriam insisted, “and then your minds will be at rest. I'm ready.”

It was as if they had all been slapped in the face.

“Of course, you can't do it yourself,” Miriam said, her voice glacial. “But Elisheba can….”

“No, no!”

“Ruth, then.”

Ruth turned away and took refuge at the far end of the room.

“It can't be Mariamne. Barabbas will say she's lying to protect me. Go to Nazareth and find a midwife. She'll certainly be able to tell you.”

She stopped, and in the silence the buzzing of flies was like the distant rumble of a storm.

“There's no shame in it, since you all doubt me.”

Joachim moved back, leaning on Zechariah's arm, and sat down on the bench that ran alongside the table.

“Let's suppose you are telling the truth,” he said, in a weary voice, looking at his daughter with a hint of compassion, as if looking at a sick person. “Do you know what happens to pregnant women without husbands?” He forced himself to say the words. “They're stoned to death. That's the law.” He placed his callused hands on the table. “First comes the rumor. It'll start in Nazareth and quickly spread through Galilee. People will say, ‘The daughter of Joachim the carpenter is carrying a stranger's child.' The shame of it will lead to the judgment. And the child you are expecting will never see the light of day.” Joachim looked around at the gathering. “And because we wanted to protect you, we'll all be cursed forever.”

“Are you afraid?” Miriam asked, her voice still glacial. “You could always denounce me.”

They all lowered their eyes, self-contempt bringing lumps to their throats. And in the strange silence that descended on the gathering like a curtain, Miriam went up to her father, kissed him on the forehead, as she had done earlier to young Yakov, and walked out of the room as calmly as she had come, leaving them all distraught.

A
LL
day, they avoided each other, fearing their own thoughts and one another's.

At twilight, Yossef broke the silence and unleashed the storm they had all been dreading. He came to Joachim and said, “Don't condemn your daughter. I told you my roof will always be her roof, my family her family. Miriam is at home here, and her child will live with my children, as my child. And if the day comes, after she has given birth, when the people of Nazareth ask her the name of her child's father, she will be able to say that we are betrothed and give mine.”

“Ah!” Barabbas cried. “So now it comes out!”

Yossef turned to him, his fist already raised. “Stop insulting her! She is greater than you!”

“A liar and a coward, that's what you are. Miriam is making it all up in order to protect you!”

Yossef leaped on Barabbas, and they both fell to the ground and rolled in the dust, roaring like wild animals. With some difficulty, Joachim managed to prize Barabbas's fingers from around Yossef's throat.

“No! No!”

Ruth and Mariamne ran to them and helped Joachim to separate them, while Zechariah and Elisheba looked on in horror.

On their feet again, wiping the dust from their torn tunics, Yossef and Barabbas stood looking at each other, shaking and breathless. Joachim seized their hands, but was unable to utter a word.

Yossef tore himself free and walked away, head bowed, trying to catch his breath. When he looked up again, he said, “My house is open to everyone. But not to those who refuse to hear the truth from Miriam's lips.”

F
ULL
of anger and doubt, Barabbas left Nazareth within the hour.

The next day, Zechariah tied his mule to the uncomfortable wagon that had brought them from Judea to Galilee, the wagon in which Hannah had been killed by the mercenaries. Elisheba climbed into it, weeping and protesting that there was no need for them to leave so soon. But Zechariah, who was still observing his vow of silence, ignored her complaints. Bridles and whip in hand, he waited for Joachim to make up his mind.

Joachim took three steps in one direction, two in another, his throat so tight that he felt as though he were breathing sand. He went up to Yossef, hit his chest with the flat of his hand, and said in a low voice, “Either you are guilty and God will forgive you, or you are a good, generous man and God will bless you.”

Yossef put his hand on Joachim's arm. “Come back, Joachim! Come back whenever you want.”

Joachim nodded. He walked past Miriam without looking at her and gripped the side of the wagon. Unnecessarily, he checked that the bench had been wiped clean of Hannah's blood, and finally climbed in and sat down. For the first time in his life, he looked like an old man.

He gave a start when he realized that Miriam had followed him and was standing quite close to him, beside the wagon. She took his hand, kissed it fervently, and buried her face in his callused palms.

“I love you. No daughter has ever had a better father than you.”

At that moment, Joachim, who had sat up, with his back straight and his chest out, hesitated, as if he might even be about to climb out of the wagon. But Zechariah whipped the mules' rumps, Elisheba wept loudly, and the wagon set off, the big wooden wheels rolling along the stony path with a rumbling sound that gradually faded.

Shyly and tenderly, Yossef put his hand on Miriam's shoulder. “I know Joachim. One day he'll come and play with his grandson.”

Miriam smiled at him gratefully, standing amid the children.

Ruth had come to her during the night. “Keep me with you, Miriam,” she had begged, the lines on her face accentuated by the flickering of the oil lamp. “Don't ask me to believe what I can't believe. Ask me only to love and support you. That's something I'll do as long as I have breath in my body, even if I don't understand.”

Now Miriam made a sign with her hand in the direction of her two friends. It was a strange, rather slow gesture, as if she had come back from a journey and was waving to them from a distance. For the first time, Ruth and Mariamne had a feeling they would often have in the long years to come: the sense that this young woman they thought they knew so well was a stranger to them.

CHAPTER 18

S
PRING
passed, and summer came and went. Miriam's belly grew round, and the people of Nazareth started to say that Yossef had such a big appetite that he was living with three women.

It was also said that he had thrown Joachim out of his house.

Poor Joachim, bless him! His life had been nothing but a series of misfortunes since the day he had defended old Houlda against the greed of the tax collectors.

In the synagogue, they whispered the word
thief.
They wondered why Yossef and Miriam needed two handmaids, one old and one young—and put the worst complexion on it.

A few women shrugged and said to the men, “Don't ask such stupid questions. Yossef has four sons and two daughters. That's why Miriam has two handmaids.”

But that did not convince anyone.

People recalled that Yossef was living in the house where Joachim had been born, and that Joachim had given it to him two decades earlier. Joachim, who was a generous man, had also taught him everything he knew, and passed on his own customers to him. But he had not given him his daughter. If he had known that she was expecting a child with Yossef, he would never have left Nazareth, where his Hannah was buried. Was that proof that Yossef had forced Miriam?

Perhaps.

Other tongues started wagging, saying that Barabbas had been seen fleeing the village one day in spring, his face bathed in tears. Could he have been Miriam's partner in sin?

Some asked, “And what about Miriam? Why do we never see her here?”

The answer was simple. She was hiding because she was guilty.

Soon, when Ruth came to buy cheese or milk, when Mariamne came for wool or bread, they were made to feel less and less welcome. By the end of summer, they were given only what they needed and no more.

Yossef went so far as to complain in the courtyard of the synagogue.

“Put your house in order,” he was told.

“What do you mean?”

The looks he was given in reply were more eloquent than all the words in the language of Israel.

“If we don't marry,” he said to Miriam on his return, “the day is not far off when they come here and stone us to death.”

“Are you afraid?” Miriam asked.

“Not for myself. But for you and the child. And for Ruth and Mariamne.”

They were not stoned to death, but he was given less and less work. By the first cold autumn days, his workshop was strangely empty.

It was then that the news reached them, carried from village to village by Herod's mercenaries. They would enter yards, knock at doors, and cry to all and sundry that Caesar Augustus, master of Rome and Israel, wanted to know the name of everyone who lived in his kingdom.

“Go to the village of your birth and register. You'll be given a leather token. By the first day of the month of Adar, whoever cannot show his token when he is asked to do so will be imprisoned.”

The news aroused both anger and confusion.

“I don't even know where I was born,” Ruth said.

“I was born in Bethlehem,” Yossef said. “A tiny village in Judea where King David was born. No one there even knows me!”

“And I'd have to go back to Magdala,” Mariamne said irritably. “This is one more measure by the Romans and Herod to keep their eyes on us. But they're so stupid. What's to stop people from forging the leather tokens? What's to stop people from registering in two or three villages, one after the other, if they want to?”

“It could be a trick,” Yossef said, cautiously. “There may be something else behind it that we don't know.”

Miriam placed her palms on her belly, which was already slowing her down. “Since we're no longer welcome here in Nazareth,” she said to Yossef, “why don't we go to your village while I can still travel? The child would be born there, and no one would take any notice. I'd say I'm your wife, and they'd think it was perfectly normal that I registered there.”

They thought it over for a day or two.

Ruth said eagerly, “There's no point in discussing this: I'm going with you. You'll need someone to take care of Yossef's children. And of you, too, when the time comes for you to give birth. And if they don't remember Yossef in Bethlehem, who can say I wasn't born there?”

Miriam agreed. “We'll say you're my aunt.”

Mariamne also wanted to stay with them until the child was born. On the other hand, if she did not go back to Magdala, where they must be expecting her for the census, she would put her mother in a difficult position: The Romans did not like her, and had their eyes on her.

“You'll be more useful to me if you go back to Magdala than if you come with me to Judea,” Miriam said. “In the spring, when the roads become practicable again, I'll join you with the child, if Rachel doesn't mind. Her house would be the perfect place for him to grow up in and learn what a new king needs to know.”

Reluctantly, Mariamne yielded. Several times, she asked Miriam to assure her that they would meet again in Magdala.

“You mustn't doubt it,” Miriam said. “Any more than you should doubt the rest of it.”

         

I
T
was snowing when they came in sight of Bethlehem. A bitingly cold wind was blowing, but Yossef had made a tarpaulin and even a stand for a brazier, which turned the wagon into a comfortable mobile tent. They huddled there with the children, like a little pack in its lair. Sometimes, the roads were so bumpy that they were sent rolling, one on top of the other. The children laughed until they cried, especially the youngest, Yehuda, who saw it as a wonderful game.

Miriam was close to her labor. Occasionally, she would clench her teeth and grip Ruth's wrist. Whenever that happened, Ruth would call out to Yossef to stop the mules. But as she had not yet given birth by the time they entered the curved main street of Bethlehem, Miriam said, “Let's go straight to the census, before the child is born.”

Ruth and Yossef protested. It was dangerous for her and the child. They could easily wait a week or two, until he was born. The Romans would still be there.

“No,” Miriam said. “When he's born, I don't want him to have anything to do with the Romans or the mercenaries. I don't even want them to lay eyes on him.”

         

T
HE
census was taking place in front of a big square house that the Roman officers had requisitioned, having thrown out the owners.

The decurions sat outside at tables, in the heat of two big fires. Other officers, their spears in their hands, watched over the line of people waiting in the wind.

When the people of Bethlehem saw Miriam standing there with her big belly, leaning on Yossef and Ruth, and the children shivering behind them, they said, “Don't stay here. Go in front, we're in no hurry.”

When they reached the table, one of the decurions looked them up and down. He saw Miriam's big belly beneath her thick cloak, grimaced, and jutted his chin out at Yossef. “Name and age?”

“Yossef. I'd say I'm about thirty-five. Perhaps forty.”

The decurion wrote it down on the papyrus scroll. His fingers were numb from the cold, and the ink did not flow freely. He had to write in large letters.

Miriam saw that he was using the Latin language, translating the name Yossef as Joseph.

“What about you?” the decurion asked. “Name and father's name?”

“Miriam, daughter of Joachim. I'm twenty years old. Perhaps more, perhaps less.”

“Miriam,” the decurion said. “That doesn't exist in the language of Rome. As of today, your name is Mary.”

He wrote it down, then pointed his stylus at Miriam's belly. “And what are you going to call that one?”

“Yeshua.”

The decurion looked at her, uncomprehending.

“Yeshua,” she repeated.

“That name doesn't exist!” he grunted, blowing on his fingers.

Miriam leaned over and said in Greek, “Iesous. That means the man who saves.”

The man laughed nervously. “So you speak Greek, do you?”

He wrote:
Jesus, son of Joseph and Mary. Age: zero.

He looked at Ruth. “What about you?”

“Ruth. I have no idea of my age. You decide for yourself.”

That made the decurion smile. “I'll write that you're a hundred, but you don't look it.”

Then it was the turn of the children.

“My name is Yakov,” Yossef's eldest child said proudly. “He's my father, my mother's name was Halva, and I'm nearly ten.”

The decurion sighed, no longer smiling. “Your name is James.”

And so it was that in those days they all changed names for the future.

Mariamne became Mary—Mary Magdalene.

Hannah became Anne.

Halva became Alba.

Elisheba became Elizabeth.

Yakov became James.

Shimon became Simon.

Yehuda became Judas.

Zechariah became Zachary.

Geouel became George.

Rekab became Roland.

And so on for all the names used by the people of Israel.

Only Barabbas's name was not changed. First, because he refused to present himself before the Romans. And second, because, in the Aramaic language that everyone spoke in those days in the kingdom of Israel, Barabbas meant “son of the father.” That was the name given to children whose mothers could not name the fathers. It was the name of those who had no name.

But the Romans did not know that.

Nor did they know that the name of Mary's son, to whom she gave birth eleven days later in an abandoned farm near Bethlehem, this Yeshua whom the decurion had named Jesus because that was the closest to it in sound, meant “savior.”