Mary of Nazareth (9 page)

“Cleanliness suits you, my boy,” Joachim said, gently. “You ought to be pleased.”

Obadiah made a face. “That's what Miriam says too. But none of you know what you're talking about. In towns, if we're like other boys, people aren't afraid of us, and they don't take pity on us either. Tomorrow, before I leave for Tarichea, I'll put on my
am ha'aretz
rags again, that's for sure.”

Joachim frowned. “Tarichea? What do you want to go there for?”

“To find out what Herod's mercenaries are up to—”

“But it's much too soon!”

“No,” Barabbas said. “It's been six days. I want to know what's going on in Tarichea. Obadiah will go there and keep his ears open. He's good at that kind of thing. He'll leave tomorrow with one of the fishermen.”

Joachim refrained from protesting. But his stomach felt tight with fear. The violence and hatred of the mercenaries had left as indelible a mark on his mind as on his body. But Barabbas was right. He himself would have given a lot to have news of his wife, Hannah. He would also have liked to know if the tax collectors, in revenge for his escape, had inflicted on Nazareth the suffering he had just evaded.

If that was the case, he would have to give himself up and go back to prison in Tarichea. But that was something he could not tell Barabbas, let alone Miriam.

“Don't go yet,” he said, squeezing Obadiah's small hands. “I think I promised you something when you were taking me away from the field of crosses, and I hate not keeping my promises.”

         

F
IVE
days later, leaning on Miriam's shoulder, Joachim was trying out the use of his legs when Obadiah appeared. He leaped out of the boat before it touched shore, his face transfigured with excitement.

“We're all that people are talking about!” he cried, before he had even had time to drink a cup of grape juice. “We're the one topic of conversation. ‘Barabbas saved some people from the cross.' ‘Barabbas humiliated Herod's mercenaries.' ‘Barabbas cocked a snook at the Romans…' Anyone would think you'd become the Messiah!”

There was more affection than mockery in Obadiah's laughter, but Barabbas remained serious. “What about the fishermen? Did they have any trouble?”

“Quite the contrary. They did as they said they would. They arrived in Tarichea with boats so full, the wind could hardly carry them. A truly miraculous catch. They were very angry at us for burning their boats and their market, just like the people of Tarichea. Everyone said we were ruffians, vandals, the shame of Galilee…Nice things like that. By the end of it, the mercenaries and the Romans were convinced we did it all by ourselves. Now, people are laughing behind their backs. Everyone's happy to have fooled them.”

This time, Barabbas relaxed, and Miriam stroked Obadiah's tangled hair.

“And did you manage to restrain yourself?” Barabbas asked, gently mocking. “Or did you tell everyone that you were the best friend of the great Barabbas?”

“There was no need.” Obadiah chuckled proudly. “They guessed anyway. I've never before had so much of what I wanted. I could have brought back a boatful.”

“And gotten yourself denounced!” Joachim snorted.

“Don't worry, Joachim! I can spot informers a mile away. No one knew where I was sleeping or when they were going to see me. But did you know you're famous, too? Everyone knows your story. Joachim of Nazareth, the man who dared to stick a spear in the belly of a tax collector and then escaped from the cross….”

“It wasn't the belly, it was the shoulder,” Joachim muttered testily. “And I don't think it's such a good thing that everyone's talking about me. What about news from Nazareth? Do you have any?”

Obadiah shook his head. “No, I didn't have time to go there….”

Joachim looked at Barabbas, then at Miriam. “I'm worried for them. The mercenaries don't know where to find us, but they know who to harm.”

“I could go,” Miriam said, “at least to see Mother and reassure her.”

“No, not you,” Obadiah protested. “Me. I'll go whenever you like.”

“Unless we all go together,” Barabbas said pensively. “Now that Joachim can walk, we can move about as we like.”

They all stared at him in astonishment.

“Isn't there anywhere safe in the village where we could stay?” he asked Joachim and Miriam.

Joachim shook his head. “No, no, it would be madness—”

“Yes, Father!” Miriam exclaimed. “Yossef and Halva will take us in without hesitation!”

“You don't realize the danger, my girl.”

“I'm certain Yossef will be proud to help you. He knows how much he owes you. He loves you. Their house is quite a distance from the village anyway, at the far end of the valley. We can't be taken by surprise there.”

“We'll keep a lookout, Joachim,” Obadiah said. “On the way, I'll round up my friends. We'll all be there. You'll see, no one will be able to approach Yossef's house without our knowing it. Ask Miriam—we're the ones who keep guard on Barabbas's hiding places, so we know what to do.”

Miriam smiled at the memory of her welcome in Sepphoris, but Joachim could not be persuaded. His refusal disappointed Barabbas and marred Obadiah's joy.

         

I
T
was only in the evening, after a long silence, that Miriam said softly to her father, “I know you're very worried about Mother. You want to hold her in your arms, and so do I. Let's go to Yossef and Halva's house, even if it's only for a short time. Then we'll decide.”

“Decide what, Daughter? You know perfectly well I'll never be able to go back to my workshop and build another roof with Lysanias—if he's still alive, please God!”

“That's true,” Barabbas muttered. “Now you're in the same boat as me. Forget your roof, Joachim. There's something else that needs building now. The rebellion of the Galileans against Herod.”

“Is that all?”

“You heard Obadiah. Everyone's happy that we got the better of Herod's mercenaries and the vultures of the Sanhedrin. Look around you, Joachim. The inhabitants of this village all made an effort to cure you because you'd been on the cross, and they knew how unjust that was. The fisherman who helped us refused a gold purse. For him, it was enough to have fought at our side. These are signs. We showed the people of Galilee that the mercenaries are only fools. We must continue. And on a large scale, to overcome the people's fear!”

“Hold on a second. You're going to do all that with fifty companions and a few children, are you?”

“No. We're going to do all that by drawing in all those who can't stand it anymore. Showing them what we can do. We took you down from the cross, you and those other poor wretches. We can do it elsewhere, even in Jerusalem. We can harass the mercenaries. We can fight and show that we're winning….”

Joachim made a bitter grimace. “Barabbas, you're talking about a rebellion as if it's a fit of anger. Do you think that I, or the many others who think like me, have never thought about this?”

Barabbas smiled broadly. “You see, you just said it yourself: There are many others who can't stand Herod anymore.”

“Yes, I do know some, it's true. But don't think they'll follow you. They're wise men, not fools.”

“Your daughter turned to a fool to save you, Joachim, not to your wise friends.”

Joachim was starting to get annoyed. “If a rebellion isn't supported by the whole country, it only leads to wholesale slaughter. Herod can hit hard, and he can hit fast. The Sanhedrin is under his thumb and has the rabbis on its side. That makes it not quite as dangerous as Herod, but just as effective.”

“Always the same excuse,” Barabbas grumbled. “A coward's excuse.”

“Don't say such things! It takes as much courage to endure injustice as to fight in vain. And even if you managed to stir up Galilee, it wouldn't lead anywhere. You'd have to stir up Jerusalem, Judea, the whole of Israel.”

“Let's go, then, let's not waste any more time!”

“Barabbas isn't completely wrong, Father,” Miriam said calmly. “What's the point of waiting for the mercenaries to strike again? Or for the tax collectors to pay us another visit? Why always let ourselves be humiliated? What benefit can come of it?”

“Ah, so now you think like him, do you?”

“What he says is true. People are tired of submitting. And proud that you didn't let the tax collectors steal Houlda's candlestick. Your courage is an example to them.”

“An example as useless as a fit of anger, you ought to say.”

“Don't make yourself weaker than you are, Joachim.” Barabbas grunted. “Invite your wise men to your friend Yossef's house. Obadiah can take them the message. And let me talk to them. Where's the risk in that?”

Joachim looked at Miriam, who nodded.

“What's the point of almost dying on the cross, Father, if it serves no purpose? Simply to hide in Galilee, all our lives, for nothing! It is we who decide if we are powerless before the king. To believe that his mercenaries are always stronger than us is to give him a reason to despise us.”

CHAPTER 5

T
HEY
had taken a long, roundabout route along the foot of Mount Tabor, avoiding the more frequented paths and bypassing Nazareth. Now it was agreed that Miriam would go ahead to inform Halva and Yossef.

On the winding path, lined with acacias and carob trees, leading to the crest of the hill, she walked so quickly that her feet barely touched the ground. As she approached the summit, there were more gaps in the hedges, and she saw the citron orchards, the little vineyard, and the two great plane trees surrounding Yossef's house. Without her even being aware of it, her face lit up in a broad smile.

Hearing bleating, she looked up. A flock of sheep and lambs was wandering in the field overlooking the path. She was about to turn away and run to the house when she glimpsed a figure amid the caper shrubs and the broom. She recognized the bright tunic, with its pretty blue and ocher embroidery, and the mane of wavy hair. “Halva! Halva!” she cried.

Startled, Halva stopped dead, and shaded her eyes from the sun to make out who this person could be who was running toward her.

“Miriam…God Almighty! Miriam!” She burst into both laughter and tears. “You're alive!”

“So is my father…We saved him.”

“I know, Yossef told me. He heard about it in the synagogue, but I didn't dare believe it!”

“It's wonderful to see you!”

There were cries from beneath their feet. Halva broke free of Miriam. “Shimon, my little angel, you're not jealous of Miriam, are you?”

The little boy, barely two years old, fell silent and stared at Miriam openmouthed, with an extremely serious expression on his face. Suddenly, his big, sparkling brown eyes opened wide, and he held out his arms, babbling urgently.

“I think he recognizes me, don't you?” Miriam cried in delight. She laughed and bent down to pick him up. When she straightened up, she saw Halva looking pale and unsteady, with her hand over her mouth. “Halva! What's the matter?”

Breathing heavily, Halva tried to smile, and leaned on Miriam's shoulder. “It's nothing,” she said in a toneless voice. “A dizzy spell. It'll pass.”

“Are you ill?”

“No, no!” Halva regained her breath, and gently massaged her temples. “It's happened a few times since Libna was born. Don't worry. Come, let's go tell Yossef! He'll jump for joy when he sees you.”

         

T
HE
reunion continued the rest of that beautiful day. Yossef did not have the patience to wait for Joachim. As soon as he saw his friend's tall figure coming along the path, he rushed to him, and hugged and kissed him, thanking the Almighty between his tears and laughter.

He was hardly less effusive in greeting Barabbas and Obadiah. Of course, they could all stay in his house, he cried as they came into the yard. There was plenty of room for everyone. Hadn't he followed Joachim's advice and built a secluded, almost secret room behind his workshop? They could put mats on the floor in there for Joachim and his companions. Miriam could sleep in the children's room.

They sat down around a table in the gentle shade of the plane trees that protected the house on the hottest days.

“There's no danger here,” Yossef said. “No one will ever suspect you're in my house. And anyway, there are no mercenaries in Nazareth anymore.”

Helped by Miriam, who swore that she was not at all tired, Halva brought drink and enough food to satisfy their appetites, which had been sharpened by the long walk. Obadiah attacked the drink eagerly but merely nibbled at the food. Knowing how impatient Joachim and Miriam were, he offered to go, as discreetly as possible, and tell Hannah that they had arrived. Joachim gave him instructions on how to get to the workshop and the house without being seen by the neighbors, and once the boy had set off, running like a fox, Yossef continued with his account of what had been happening in the village.

As was to be expected, the tax collectors had returned to Nazareth after Joachim's arrest.

“Would you believe it, Joachim? The one you wounded was there. He had his arm in a sling, but even so, it had only taken him four days to recover!”

“I'm really useless, aren't I?” Joachim said, amused. “My aim obviously wasn't as true as I thought!”

Yossef and Barabbas laughed. “That's for sure!”

This time, the tax collectors had been accompanied by three Roman officers and a cohort of mercenaries. They had behaved roughly, but no worse than usual.

“They just wanted to enjoy telling us you were going to die on the cross,” Yossef said, squeezing Joachim's shoulder. “They repeated it so many times, everyone ended up believing it. Your poor Hannah was in floods of tears, moaning that the Almighty had abandoned her, that she'd lost her husband and daughter!”

He grimaced at the memory. Hannah's despair had been so extreme that Halva had stayed with her for a few days, but she had been unable to console or reassure her. They had even feared that Hannah would lose her mind.

Yossef turned to Miriam. “But I knew you'd manage somehow to prove those vultures wrong. The only thing that worried me was that the mercenaries might guess you'd left the village to rescue your father.”

“Hah!” Barabbas snorted contemptuously. “The Romans and the mercenaries are so sure of their strength, they don't have any imagination. Besides, they don't even understand our language.”

“That may be true of them,” Yossef said. “But the tax collectors are clever. They may despise our Galilean accent, but their ears are as sharp as their hands are greedy. That's why I went to the synagogue and told everyone to keep their mouths shut. But you know how it is, Joachim. There are always people who can't be trusted.”

The one good thing that had come out of this misfortune was that the tax collectors' hunger for revenge had merely increased the villagers' anger and overcome their differences of opinion.

“They bled us white,” Yossef said with a sigh. “We have barely enough left to keep us going until the next harvest.”

The tax collectors had taken away all they could, emptying the cellars and haylofts of all the sacks and jars they found, and ordering the mercenaries to pile the carts so high that the mules could barely pull them.

“They turned this house completely upside down, searching for money I don't have. I'd only just finished putting together two small chests for the children's clothes. So, of course, they took them. They even took the figs Halva had just picked! They were probably rotten by the time they got to Jerusalem, but they wanted to take everything. Just for the pleasure of humiliating us.” Yossef sighed, but with a sardonic wink. “They didn't get our flocks, though. We'd already sent some of the boys into the forest with the animals.”

“And weren't those idiots surprised to find them gone?” Barabbas asked.

“Of course they were! But we said we'd had enough and had decided not to keep livestock anymore. Since they always took it away from us, what was the point? One of the tax collectors said, ‘You're lying, as usual. Your livestock's in the forest, I'm sure of it.' Someone answered, ‘Well, go into the forest and find it. Be careful, though: the Almighty may have turned our animals into lions!' ”

Joachim and Barabbas laughed in approval.

Yossef shook his head. “We really cursed them, I can tell you. And then imagine how happy we were when we found out that Miriam and Joachim had succeeded. Knowing you were alive and well made our hearts feel light again. Even the rabbis, who see every misfortune as a punishment from the Almighty, didn't think he'd have approved of something as horrible as that!”

Carried away by the emotion of the situation, his eyes clouded with tears, Yossef suddenly stood up and took Barabbas by the shoulders. “May the Lord bless you, my boy! You've made us happy and proud. That's something we really needed.”

He was about to hug and kiss Miriam, but shyness held him back. Instead, he took her hands and kissed them tenderly.

“You, too, Miriam, you, too! How proud of you Halva and I are!”

Laughing happily, Halva took Miriam by the waist and drew her inside the house, where the two youngest children, made edgy by all this unaccustomed excitement, were starting to cry.

“You see what a state my Yossef is in?” she whispered, delighted. “Look at him; he's redder than a carob flower! When he gets emotional, he's the most tenderhearted man in God's creation. As gentle as a lamb. But so shy! So shy!”

Miriam placed her cheek against her friend's. “You don't know how good it is to see the two of you again. And I can't wait to see my mother. I didn't think I would hurt her so much when I left.”

With little Shimon clutching at her tunic, Halva bent over the cradle to lift up Libna, who was crying with hunger and impatience. “Oh, as soon as she sees you and your father, she'll forget her—” She broke off abruptly. Her cheeks had turned white, her eyes closed, and she gasped for breath.

Miriam quickly took the baby from her arms. “Are you all right?”

Halva took a deep breath. “Don't worry. They're just dizzy spells. They always take me by surprise….”

“Rest for a while. I'll see to the children.”

“Oh, no, come on!” Halva said, making an effort to smile. “You must be a lot more tired than I am, after walking all day.”

Miriam gently cradled Libna, who twisted her curls in her tiny fingers, and drew Shimon to her with a caress. “Let me help you, then,” she insisted, anxiously. “Go and have a rest. You're so pale, it's frightening.”

Reluctantly, Halva yielded. She went and lay down on a bed in an alcove at the far end of the room, and watched as Miriam prepared Libna's wheat cereal and made some biscuits for Shimon and Yossef, who was two years older. The oldest boy, the placid Yakov, helped as best he could. After they had eaten, she played with them, so openly and tenderly that the children, as trusting as if they had been with their mother, forgot their whims and anxieties.

         

O
UTSIDE,
Yossef was still telling Barabbas and Joachim, in his monotonous, softly passionate voice, how the news of their exploit had been brought to the synagogue by an ink merchant.

At first, many had doubted that it was true. There were so many rumors of things that people wanted to be true and that turned out to be false. But the following day, and the day after that, other merchants, coming from Cana and Sepphoris, had confirmed that the brigand Barabbas had indeed set fire to Tarichea and freed a number of prisoners from the field of crosses, including Joachim.

Everyone had sighed with relief, even those who had already started mourning for Joachim. Joy had quickly turned to a feeling of victory.

“If you entered Nazareth this evening, Joachim, the whole village would give you a hero's welcome,” Yossef said. “They've forgotten how they protested when Miriam said she was going to ask for Barabbas's help in saving you!”

Joachim frowned. “We must be careful. This is when things could start getting dangerous for Nazareth.”

Barabbas nodded. “That's what I find strange. It's been several days since we gave the Romans in Tarichea a kick up the backside. The mercenaries should be here by now, causing havoc in the village.”

“I think there's a perfectly simple explanation for that,” Yossef said. “They say Herod is so ill, he's going off his head. Apparently, his palace is worse than a nest of snakes. His sons, his sister, his brother, his mother-in-law, the servants…there isn't a single one of them who doesn't want to hasten his death and take his place. They're all seething with hatred. Both palaces, the Antonia palace in Jerusalem, and the one in Caesarea, are in a state of chaos. The Roman officers aren't prepared to keep backing this degenerate family. If that madman Herod survives his illness and learns that they acted without his consent, they won't be long for this world. Our king is mad, but he's the master of everything in Israel, from the smallest grain of wheat to the ungodly laws that come out of the Sanhedrin. We poor people of Galilee fear his mercenaries and his vultures. But they fear him as much as we do. So, while he's ill and can't give orders, they're all trapped in his shadow.”

“That's a piece of news that does my heart good!” Barabbas cried. “And it makes me think I'm right to want—”

He could not continue, because just then loud cries and the sound of footsteps made them all rise from the benches. It was Hannah, rushing toward them beneath the plane trees, her hands raised above her head.

“Joachim! God Almighty! Blessed is the Lord! You're there, I can see you! And to think I refused to believe this boy….”

Joachim welcomed his wife into his arms. Hannah hugged him as tightly as she could, the tears streaming into her mouth. “Yes, it's really you!” she stammered. “You're not a demon. I recognize your smell! Oh, my husband, did they hurt you?”

Joachim was about to reply when Hannah broke away, her eyes and mouth wide open, her face convulsed with panic.

“Where's Miriam? Isn't she with you? Is she dead?”

“No, Mother! I'm here.”

Hannah turned and saw Miriam running from the doorway of the house.

“My mad daughter!” she cried. You gave me such a fright!”

Overwhelmed by all this accumulated emotion, Hannah was having difficulty breathing, and seemed too weak to stroke their faces or touch their beloved eyes. For a moment, it looked as though she were about to faint, but then she recovered, and they all laughed.

Obadiah, who had been following her at a distance, scratched his head, ruffling his unkempt hair even more. “You know what?” he said to Barabbas. “She nearly alerted the whole village when I told her Miriam was here with Joachim. She just wouldn't believe me. She thought I was spying for the mercenaries. I was luring her into a trap, she said, things like that. Impossible to shut her up without losing my temper. What a good thing Miriam isn't like her!”