No Lasting Burial (9 page)

“Don’t
hit me anymore,” Koach whispered. “Don’t.”

“No
one is going to hit you. But put away your wood and your knife. This is a town
of Yehuda tribe, not a settlement of pig-eating Greeks, worshippers of wood and
stone.”

“The
fish—”

Bar Nahemyah glanced about, his lips in
a thin line.
“Bar Cheleph took it when he ran, I think.”

Koach
moaned softly. A terrible sense of loss.

“Be
thankful. It can curse his house instead of yours. What were you thinking,
making such a thing?”

“It
was beautiful.”

“So
is a blade, or a woman’s body. But there are times when it is evil to hold
one.”

Koach
didn’t understand. He groaned when Bar Nahemyah lifted him to his feet.

“Damn,”
Bar Nahemyah whispered. “You can’t stand, can you?”

Koach
tried, but the world seemed to tip; Bar Nahemyah caught him and lifted the boy
into his arms with a grunt. “I’d better take you to your mother,” he said
grimly, carrying the youth as he began walking through the grass toward the
houses, his body lean and wiry against Koach’s. “If your brother finds you
here, like this, he may kill Bar Cheleph. He is Yonah’s son.”

Rahel
had already been awake when Koach returned to his brother’s house. She’d
listened with fierce eyes as he told her what had happened and hissed through
her teeth at his bruises. Then she swept him into her arms and crushed him to
her. “My son! Oh my son. My son, my
son.”

She
cleaned his face with a damp cloth and lay him in his bedding, and for a while
she sat beside him singing to him softly, though her eyes burned dark with fury.

The
ruined outer door shut with a crack, and then Benayahu was gone. Koach let out
his breath. Now that the danger was past, he thought of Tamar. The bruise he’d
seen on her arm.

He
wished he had some way to warn her that her father knew she was gone from the
house and was searching for her. His own body felt sore with remembered blows,
and he thought:
Tamar and I are the same.

Except
that he had been beaten
once
, while she lived under her father’s roof
and might be beaten many times. Bitterness twined about his heart like a thorny
weed, and the hurt of it was far more cruel than
anything he had felt before.

People
often think that violence, though it causes pain, is something that can be
shrugged away, or healed, or walked away from afterward. But it isn’t. The
violence of a man’s fists on a boy’s body, or of a
man’s sex forced into a woman’s body or a girl’s, doesn’t just inflict pain. It
tears away another person’s security, their ownership of their own body, their
faith in their ability to direct and protect themselves. However briefly, they
become another’s property, another person’s thing to beat or destroy, and when
it is done, it is a long work, a fierce work, to
convince themselves entirely that they are their own again.

“He’s
gone.”

Koach
opened his eyes blearily. Tamar’s face was inches from his, her breath soft and
warm on his cheeks. It was pleasant.

She
straightened, smiling, and he rose to his elbow. His eyes were dry with sleep.
The exhaustion and adrenaline of this morning had been too much for him.

“He’s
gone, Koach,” she said again.

“Is
my mother all right?” The words rushed from him.

She
nodded. “She’s hurt, but others are helping her.” She saw his face and added
quickly: “Not badly hurt. The horse—its hoof struck her hip. The priest says
the bone is broken but he thinks she will heal. Seeing her struck—a mother of
Israel—it made everyone furious. When Barabba rode back to the synagogue and
saw it, even he looked ashamed. Then everyone started lifting stones; they were
going to kill him, Koach. They were going to try.”

“What
happened?” he breathed.

Her
eyes were bright. “They made him go away. Out along the north
track, toward Threshing. He was yelling and screaming over his shoulder.
I’ve never seen anyone look so angry, not even—” She blanched.

“Not
even your father,” Koach said softly.

She
gave a tight nod.

Koach
reached out to her with his left hand, gripped her arm just below the bruise,
but he let her go quickly when he saw her wince. She looked at him.

“He
shouldn’t do that to you.” His voice hoarse with emotion.

They
sat silently for a while. Then she whispered, “I have to get you out of here.
Before my father comes.”

“He
came while you were gone.”

She
flinched.

“Come
to my mother’s house,” Koach said suddenly.

“What?”
Her eyes widened. “But—I am my father’s. I’m not betrothed to your brother,
or—or you. I’d be stoned. Father would think I was in your bed, or Shimon’s.”

“You
hid me,” Koach said quickly. “I want to hide you, from whoever would hurt you.
I want to keep you safe.”

He
couldn’t believe the words that were rushing from his heart to his lips, but
neither could he stop them. The urge to protect her, to do
something
,
rushed through him like wind and fire.

“I—You have to go.” She tugged the blankets from him, and Koach
got carefully to his feet. Tamar grasped him by his sleeve and led him quickly
through the atrium, glancing at him over her shoulder.

Koach
stopped by the outer door. “Wait—”

Her
eyes were round and dark.

“Thank
you,” Koach said after a moment. “For hiding me.”

He
could hear the beating of his heart.

“Go,”
she whispered. And unlatched the door. “Go.”

He
leaned in quickly and brushed his lips over her eyelid, everything in him
suddenly tender. He heard her breath catch. Then the battered door creaked
open, and her hand between his shoulder blades pushed him through. He stumbled
out, caught himself. The door rattled shut behind. He stood blinking in the sun
in the empty street, and in the direction of the synagogue there were many
voices shouting.

For
a moment he stood dazed. He stared at the cracks in Benayahu’s door, reluctant
to leave. Everything in him was a rush of feeling and want and hope and fear.
Then he recalled the danger to Tamar if she was caught with him, and he turned
and ran the few steps to his mother’s door.

Tamar
had spoken the truth. The Outlaw had returned to the synagogue to find grim and
furious faces. By then, Rahel had been carried to the steps, her face white
with pain. Another fisher’s wife knelt by her, pressing a warm cloth to Rahel’s
hip and talking with her softly, Rahel’s dress drawn up about her waist. Shimon
and Zebadyah stood with their backs to her, facing the oncoming hooves, and men
and youths of their town stood beside them.

No
one remembered later who hurled the first rock, but the stone was a large one
and it smacked against Barabba’s left shoulder, nearly knocking him from his
horse. Then there were many stones, the men and women before the synagogue
stooping swiftly and then straightening to hurl the rocks with cries of rage.
Barabba wheeled his horse in a circle, screaming curses on the town, calling
them Roman-lovers and hiders of the misbegotten and unclean. The air filled
with stones, hurled wildly. One struck the back of Bar Nahemyah’s head, and as
the young man stumbled, stunned, Barabba rode at him in a rush. Leaning out,
the Roman-killer caught him as he fell and hauled him up over his saddle.

“One
recruit, at least, I’ll take from this ruined town!” Barabba shouted. He drove
his knees into his horse’s sides. The steed screamed as rocks struck its
flanks.

“Stop!” Zebadyah yelled
to the others. “Stop! You’ll hit our own!”

Then
the horse was galloping down the streets with screaming men and women rushing
after, but Barabba was quickly out of their reach and riding hard along the
shore like a leaf before a storm wind, with Bar Nahemyah stretched dazed and
unmoving across his saddle, taken from them swiftly and without farewell.

When
Koach heard of that, he said nothing for an hour. It was as though his brother
had been torn from him.

Shimon
carried Rahel back to his house, lifting her in his arms as though she were a
child. He lay her in her bedding beneath the olive in
the atrium and gave her wine to dull the pain. He shouted for Koach to bring
water, and Koach carried it to him in a small bowl—because he could not manage
a ewer with only one hand. Rahel was no longer pale; she was flushed with wine,
but she looked so frail where she lay, her face twisted in pain, that Koach
stumbled in shock, dropping the bowl and spilling the water. Shimon turned on
him with a look of rage that was nearly feral. “You’re useless!” he roared.
“Get out of here.”

Koach
left the atrium with what dignity he could, blinking back hot tears. He had
seen the whites around his brother’s eyes, knew it was fear and worry for his
family that fed his brother’s anger, but the words hurt deeply nonetheless. He
sought out one of the rooms along the outer wall of his mother’s house. Not the
room in which he slept during the cold winter, but a quiet, unused room where
he hid his secrets.

He
sat with his back to the wall and shut his eyes. He could still feel Tamar’s
kiss warm on his lips. After a while, he turned and slid out the loose stone at
the bottom of the wall at his back, the one that concealed his secret place. It
took a lot of work to slide the stone out one-handed, but he was practiced at
it.

In
the small, concealed space, he kept his carving knife. In
another corner of the room lay pieces of driftwood like a pile of kindling,
some as small as his thumb, others nearly the length of his arm. He took
up one of the pieces now, a scrap the size of his hand. The wood had been cedar
once, perhaps a tree on some mountain slope in White Cedars to the north,
washed down the Tumbling Water to their sea. Koach clasped the wood securely
between his knees and stared at it for a while, searching for the beauty in the
heart of the driftwood. Then he found it, and began working the knife with his
left hand, carving, cutting away the pieces that weren’t needed, working
slowly, calming the beating of his heart. Losing himself in it. Ceasing for a few moments
to think of Barabba and his rearing, terrifying horse, or of the girl with
earth-dark hair who had hidden him and kissed him.

The
carving was Koach’s secret, and it was his commerce, too. His creations might
be unclean—in fact, in the Law, the Second of the Ten declared,
You
shall carve no image in wood or stone
—but
they were also beautiful. He had learned that, the evening Bar Cheleph had
beaten him to the earth and taken from his hands the first carving Koach had
ever made—a small, simple replica of a fish. He had seen Bar Cheleph’s eyes.
Not just his hate but his desire for the object Koach held. The people of Kfar
Nahum were a severe people, but they were also people of the sea. And that
meant they were lovers of beauty, though compared to their Greek neighbors in
other towns of the Galilee, they loved it quietly.

Seeing
that, Koach had not cast aside his knife after carving that little, forbidden
fish. He had kept making things. He carved little boats. In time, the boats
even had oars and nets, delicate traceries of wood that took him days to
complete.

And
because Koach lived most of his hours alone in the house with his mother, he
listened. Whenever he heard his mother lamenting for some lack, he would slip
away quietly when she wasn’t looking, a wood-carving stowed within the long
coat he wore. He would go to knock softly on one of his neighbors’ doors. He
did this usually in the late evening, after the fishers went down to the sea,
and a fisherman’s wife would open the door at his knock.

After
the Romans’ raid on the village and the fires that had scorched the town, the
houses of Beth Tsaida were sparsely furnished and sparsely decorated, and even
what pottery the village had was simple and unadorned. Koach’s wood-carvings
were unique in all the town, the town’s one bit of
beauty. It was not difficult to barter them for things his mother needed—salt,
or oil for her lamp, or a bowl of dates or figs. Not difficult … as long as
he chose carefully which fishermen’s wives to approach. And as long as he bore
with patience the way they avoided any accidental touch, any brush of their
fingers against his. The way they avoided looking at his
right arm. They took the carving as often as not, and handed him the
little pouch of salt or the spare needle or the thimble of fine thread, but
they did not look him in the eyes. They did not speak his name. In fact, they
rarely spoke to him at all.

He
never went to Zebadyah’s door. And there were other doors he avoided, too. Doors where he would be greeted with a kick. Or where not even a love of beauty could turn the house’s occupants
from a strict observance of the Law.

Yet
Koach felt little shame as he whittled at the driftwood he held between his
knees. In a cruel world, a boy or a man must find beauty where he can, or hunt
after it until he does. Or else the hard edges of life will gut him as a man
guts a fish, and toss him wriggling to die in the sand.

The
day passed. Long ago, when Koach was small, the atrium of their house would
have been loud with his mother’s chickens, but those hens had long since been
eaten or bartered away. Now the house was quiet. A few times Koach heard Rahel
cry out in pain, and he peeked around the door of the small room. His mother
still lay beneath the olive tree, her face white. Shimon, tall as a bear,
brought her a fresh wineskin. Another time, there was a knock at the door to
their house. Koach heard the door open, a murmur of words, then heard it slam
shut. A few moments later, he heard his brother and his mother talking in low
voices. He could make out most of what was said.

“Who
was it?”

“The
nagar
.”

“How
is he?”

“He’ll
keep his eye.”

“God. Oh, God.”

“It’s
all right. It’s all right.”

Shimon
sounded numb again, the way he usually sounded. The rage that had leapt up like
fire taking a cedar was gone, and he stood in his ashes.

Silence
fell over the house.

Koach
slipped the half-carved wood and the knife back into their place in the wall.
Then he settled back, his lids heavy. The carving had brought him quiet without
bringing him peace: he couldn’t recall ever having felt so fatigued, so
overwhelmed. All of it was too much. The horseman’s fury, the fear for his
mother, the unexpected, impossible warmth of Tamar’s lips against his own, the
dread of her father’s barely restrained violence, the screams in the town, the
dead eyes of the townspeople as they lifted rocks from the dirt; the hoofbeats,
hoofbeats in his ears, in the earth beneath his feet, hooves louder and louder,
riding him down, riding him down, riding him …

He
woke to the slam of the door in the early dusk: his brother leaving to fish. It
took him a moment to breathe evenly again. As his heartbeat settled he stirred,
and realized there was a pillow beneath his head, a small, sewn square stuffed
with crow’s feathers. It was his mother’s pillow; she must have come while he
slept, despite her pain, and tucked it beneath his head. He hugged it to his
cheek with his good arm, overwhelmed with a sudden tenderness toward her. It
was a feeling he hadn’t experienced before—not a boy’s clear-hearted awe but a
man’s love for his mother, his acknowledgment of her sacrifices and her truth.

After
a few moments, he stepped softly from the room and found his mother beneath the
olive, asleep with her mouth open, her face still flushed. He watched her
breathe for a few moments, his heart in turmoil. She had been hurt today,
because of him. Because he was useless. Because he was
hebel.

Though
he couldn’t have said why, he walked quietly to the stone steps in the opposite
wall that led up to the rooftop. The stones were cool beneath his feet; he
hadn’t spared a moment to put on sandals. Once up there, he glanced first to
Benayahu’s house. The
nagar
’s house was separated from his mother’s only
by the narrowest of alleys, and its roof was lower, so that he could see into a
part of the atrium and into the small rooms on the far side of the house if the
rugs that covered the doors of those rooms were drawn aside. The few he could
see into now were empty.

He
sighed and turned toward the sea. There was a breeze against his face, but only
a light one. Boats were setting out on the water. His brother was out there, he
knew. And Yakob the priest’s son and many others. All
young men of Beth Tsaida who’d had their
bar ‘onshin
in the synagogue
and had learned to handle the oar and the net. All but he.

“I
want to be of use.” A whispered prayer. “To my family. To Tamar. To someone.” It had always seemed to him as though the night
he was born God had turned his back on him and on the town, had walked away
across the water and never looked back and never returned. Now
God seemed far away, hardly relevant. But who else was there to talk to?

Suddenly
he heard footsteps approaching, a man’s steps, heavy though muffled and slow,
as if he were trying to be silent. The man came through the narrow clutter of
fishermen’s houses until he passed by Benayahu’s. Koach slipped to the edge of
the roof, lay down on his belly, and peered over it, his heart racing.

The
man was Zebadyah bar Yesse.

The
priest stopped before Rahel’s door, close enough that Koach could have spat on
him. The boy covered his mouth and nose with his hand to hide the sound of his
breathing.

The
priest stood before the door for a while. Then he called out Rahel’s name in a
low voice that he clearly hoped wouldn’t carry.

There
was no answer.

“Bat
Eleazar,” Zebadyah called again, just above a whisper, and he gave the door a
tentative rap with his hand, just enough that someone inside might hear it.

“Bat
Eleazar … Rahel, come to your door. Please. We need to talk about your son.
And we need to do so now, while others sleep. Please.”

The
door rattled quietly and then swung half open. The pale oval of Rahel’s face
appeared in the dark. Her eyes were dilated and black.

“I
am grateful for what you did today,
kohen
,” she said. “But I know you
are no friend of my son’s.” There was a quality to her voice that made Koach
realize, with a start, that his mother had been
weeping.

For
a moment, heat flickered in Zebadyah’s eyes. Then he sighed. “I am tired,” he
said. “That man left those heads on our soil. Yakob has taken them up the hill
to bury, but Bar Cheleph and I have been all day washing the uncleanness from
our earth.” His gaze was direct. “I stood by your sons because we cannot allow
our town to be trampled ever again by outsiders.” He nearly spat the word. “But
we must talk. You know what your son has been doing.” His voice sank to a whisper.
“Those—those
images
.”

“It
is the only thing that makes him happy,” Rahel said. “The only thing that makes
him feel useful.”

Koach
blinked back moisture from his eyes.

“It
has to stop,” the priest said. “It has to … Look, I do not think as Barabba
does, not any longer. Your son is a good boy, and you love him; I can see that
…”

“Then
let my son have his
bar ‘onshin
!”

“I
can’t
!” Zebadyah cried. “I am thinking only of what is best for the
town.”

A soft hiss of breath. “
I
am
thinking of what is best for my son.”

The
priest glanced about quickly, as though concerned that the rising of his voice
might have drawn listeners. “Take him, then,” he said, his voice trembling with
the effort of holding back what he felt. “You, Shimon, your
crippled boy. Take him from the town. I will send goods with you, what I
can. You can go to Rich Garden or Threshing.” His face clenched in pain, as
though it were a great sacrifice to wrench these words from his heart. “Find
some new home. But the boy cannot stay here.”