Читать книгу Danya - Anne McGivern - Страница 11

Acts of Vengeance

With hearts pounding, Father, Naomi, and I pushed through the throngs in the streets and made our way to Chuza’s house. My pale, heavily perspiring half-brother awaited us at his gate and hustled us into his courtyard. “I’m so relieved to see you unharmed! A messenger has just informed me that a mob is rioting on the Temple Mount.”

Father coughed, trying to catch his breath. “The Roman guard provoked it.”

“I told you not to go!” Chuza turned on his heel and hurried off to the Royal Palace.

Joanna brought us into the reception hall and sent a servant for water and fruit. Father rendered an account of the chaos on the Mount to Joanna while Naomi sat upright in her chair, gripping the seat as if to keep it from taking flight. I sat on a couch, but my legs shook uncontrollably.

What would the new king do? Would he understand that, by ordering the Roman guard onto the Mount, he had incited the mob? Would he restore order and round up the perpetrators and those who stoned the soldiers? Would he act justly by punishing the guilty and sparing the innocent?

We soon found out. The wind whipped through the Upper City, carrying in its lash the cries of war horses and the shrieks of their victims. The Roman cavalry was charging the Temple Mount. To block out the terrifying noises, I pushed my fingers into my ears. Judah’s words echoed in them. “Avenge this outrage! “Cleanse the Temple!” After the stoning, Judah would’ve stayed there and tried to rally more rebels to his cause, making himself a prime target for the charging cavalry. I pushed my fingers deeper into my ears and heard Tobiah’s words, “Come, your father needs you.” Tobiah’s gentle urging, though unwelcome at the time, may have saved my life. I wondered if the priest who saved us had taken his own advice and fled the Temple Mount himself.

Naomi and I ran to our bedroom, closed the door, latched the windows, and hid under a pile of blankets. When I closed my eyes, I saw the massacred: the heads of handsome young men smashed by horses’ hooves; the bare-shouldered women, now completely exposed by swords tearing at their clothing; the puppy-eyed boy, his severed head staring at his torso; heaps of hacked-off arms that would never again bathe babies or light the Sabbath candles.

The wails and screams of the cavalry’s victims punched through our barriers. Naomi’s teeth chattered. “So cold,” she said, over and over. I wrapped some blankets around her and brought her to Joanna, then huddled by myself, chanting prayers that I knew would not stop the massacre.

At nightfall, the cries ceased and Chuza returned. In a slow, controlled voice, as if he were dictating to a scribe, he described to us the merciless bloodbath on the Mount. With their swords and lances, the soldiers gored, beheaded, and disemboweled hundreds of people. With their horses, they trampled hundreds more. Panic-stricken Temple visitors stampeded to the gates, hoping to escape, but succeeded only in crushing the life from one another. No effort was made to distinguish the guilty from the innocent, or even the Jews from the Gentiles. Those who had no part in the madness were slaughtered along with those who had. The “crime” of being present on the Temple Mount this day had condemned two thousand souls to their deaths.

Sleep that night was impossible. The wailing of the innocent resounded in my ears: their pleas for mercy, their prayers to their God for deliverance, their sudden silences. Naomi called out to her mother in her restless dreams. I left the bedroom and roamed through the house touching its unfamiliar treasures. Oil lamps, left burning in the evening’s confusion, guided my footsteps. In a room next to the kitchen, four bronze thimbles lay on a long table. Joanna had needles in many lengths and thicknesses. Each one could pierce flesh as easily as a sword. Why had I been spared? I pricked my finger and imagined my blood, with the blood of so many others, oozing into the cracks between the stones on the Mount; martyr’s blood, now mortar for the stones that had not needed it.

I found a cabinet in which Chuza kept his pens and other writing materials. I dipped my pricked finger into the dried gummy powder in the inkwells and discovered that one was red. My blood mixed with the powder and made an ink. With it, I retouched the spots where Judah’s fingers had clutched my neck and considered the ink spots insignia of my revolutionary resolve.

When I heard voices in the still night air, I followed them to their source. Chuza and Father sat together on the bench in the courtyard, their backs to me as I stood in the doorway. I almost chose not to listen, fearing they would argue, and then, in addition to sleeplessness, the painful lump in my throat would return.

Chuza massaged his temples. “I promised Herod Archelaus we could find the ones responsible for the stoning, so that he could punish only the guilty. But he ordered out all the cavalry quartered in and around Jerusalem.”

“A stupid, brutal boy,” said Father. “Only twenty years old. Yet Rome thinks he can rule all of Judea, Samaria, and Idumea!”

“He wouldn’t listen to any of his advisors. He said he didn’t need our opinions, that he had his father’s example of how to control these lands.” Chuza imitated a lisping Archelaus. “‘I will teach the people that I, Herod Archelaus, am just as strong a leader as my father!’”

“Another ruler who thinks he can please Rome by murdering his own people,” said Father.

Chuza ran his fingers through his hair. “I had such hopes. This Herod was raised and educated in Rome. He should be wiser and should know how to treat his people”

“Being raised and educated in Rome doesn’t make a man civilized,” said Father.

This would start the fight. Chuza, who wanted to design his house around a Roman peristyle, would challenge Father’s criticism of Roman culture. I tensed and readied myself to leave.

But Chuza kept pulling on his hair. “I tried to prevent this, but I failed.” His voice began to crack. “Look what has happened. Thousands have died! I failed. I failed.” Then he wept.

I had never imagined so much as a tear welling in Chuza’s eyes, but here he was, wracked with shuddering sobs, nose running, gasping for breath.

“Not your failure, my son.” Father put his arm around Chuza’s heaving shoulders, and his son leaned into him. “How I wish you didn’t work for this tyrant. . . . But I know I drove you to it. What a jealous fool I was!”

Chuza dried his face with his sleeve then said quietly, “It’s no longer important, Father. That was many years ago.”

As I tiptoed off, they were still enfolded. That this most terrible day could produce harmony between my father and my brother seemed a miracle. The comfort of witnessing their embrace allowed me to finally fall asleep.

* * *

The Roman soldiers had heaped their victims onto carts and rolled their cargo through the Dung Gate into the Valley of Hinnon. There, in the area reserved for burning refuse, they had dumped the corpses. They had left the job of identifying and burying their slaughter to others.

Father insisted on going with Chuza to tend to the dead. As they were leaving I whispered to Father, “Will you look for Judah ben Hezekiah?” And, as an afterthought, “And the priest Tobiah?”

Chuza overheard me. “Judah ben Hezekiah? How would you know him? And why would you care what happens to him?” he said.

I weighed my words carefully. “He’s from Galilee. We all know of him.”

Chuza laughed. “Are you are one of those foolish Galileans who thinks that cutthroat is your Savior?”

“No, not my Savior,” I said, as evenly as I could. But I must have blushed.

“You fancy him then?” said Chuza. “I’ve heard that women find him attractive.”

I didn’t know if he was menacing or mocking me or just joking, so I stayed quiet and nudged myself closer to Father.

“Hush, Chuza,” Father said, good-naturedly. “How old do brothers have to be before they stop teasing their sisters?”

Chuza didn’t laugh. He frowned at me, and then they set off for the gruesome task that laid before them. My stomach stirred uneasily, as if some rodent were prowling about inside it.

* * *

Joanna sent servants all over the city to buy linen. While father and Chuza tended to the dead in their way, Naomi, Joanna, and I cut and stitched the linen into shrouds for those whose remains could be identified and claimed. These shrouds would cover the lucky ones, those for whom a proper Jewish burial could be arranged. Many victims of this slaughter would have to be buried in mass graves. Their bodies had been hacked or crushed beyond recognition, or they had no family left to identify and bury them.

At the end of a sad, tedious day of sewing, Joanna suggested that we meet Father and Chuza on their way home from their awful chore. Knowing they would be hot and very weary, she filled water jugs for us to carry to the Lower City plaza. There they would be able to rest and refresh themselves before the climb to the Upper City.

The plaza was almost empty. People were keeping to their houses, hiding or mourning. A fig tree, hanging over the last stairway leading down to the plaza, shaded us as we sat under it and waited there with our water jugs. Soldiers milled around, eyeing with suspicion each person who crossed the plaza. “I hate their sandals,” said Naomi. “Why do they have to wind those straps all the way up to their knees? They look silly. The straps must tug at the hair on their legs!”

We smiled behind our hands until we noticed one of the soldiers staring at us. “That looks like the one from Jericho,” Naomi whispered. “The one who shoved your father down.”

“It can’t be. They all look alike with their helmets on.” But my palms began to sweat.

Father and Chuza trudged towards us, looking like corpses themselves. Their tunics were stained with dirt and blood. Their mantles, which protected them from the impurities of their work, were still tied across their noses and mouths.

We rose and lifted the water jugs as they drew closer to our stairway. But at that moment, the soldier Naomi had pointed out strode over to Father and yanked on his arm. “Stop and remove your head covering,” he ordered.

Father pulled his mantle down from his face. The soldier scrutinized him, then drew his short sword and pointed it at Father’s throat. “This old man here,” he said to the soldier with him, “told me that Judah ben Hezekiah didn’t burn the palace at Jericho. The only way he could have known that is if he were a conspirator of Judah’s.”

Chuza tore off his own face covering. “I am the chief steward of Herod Archelaus. Put your sword down and release this innocent man. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The soldier then pointed to us. He said to his companion, “He travels with those two young women over there. Probably spies. I saw them all at Jericho, hanging around after the rebels had destroyed it.”

“I command you to release this man,” shouted Chuza. “He is my father. He has no affiliation with Judah ben Hezekiah!”

The soldier kept his sword on Father’s throat. “Herod Archelaus has ordered us to root out all the rebels. He didn’t exclude the fathers of minor palace officials.”

Chuza lowered his voice and filled each word with menace. “Herod Archelaus is the Roman appointed governor of all of Judea, including the ground you are standing on. Release my father or Herod will hear about this directly from me.”

The second soldier grabbed Chuza from behind and, pushing his thick forearm against his throat, choked off his speech. Father turned his head to say something to us. As he did, the young soldier drew the tip of his sword across Father’s neck and raised a thin line of blood on it.

To the soldiers, Father said, “These women have nothing to do with our business here. They’re just women. They’re not capable of revolution.” To us he called sternly, “Go. Now. Get our supper prepared, women.”

“Your father is trying to protect us,” said Joanna. “And himself and Chuza. The soldiers know they are in the wrong, but they need to save face. They’ll release Micah and Chuza if we leave.”

I stiffened and stood my ground. Joanna and Naomi put down the water jugs and dragged me up the first flight of stairs. At the top, I pulled away from them and turned around to watch. The second soldier still held Chuza but had loosened his grip. I heard my brother entreat and threaten the soldiers. “He’s a harmless old man. I have power and money. Release him and you will be richly rewarded. Harm him and you will pay with your lives!”

“We’ll see who has power and who’ll pay with his life,” jeered the soldier holding him, squeezing his arm against Chuza’s throat and silencing him again.

Father shouted a second time. “Women, go!”

Joanna and Naomi started up the next flight of stairs, but I didn’t. This time I would not fail to help my father. I took three steps down the stairway and then heard the soldier holding my father declare, “You are guilty of inciting revolt against Rome. I should have done this in Jericho, but now I do know better, old man.”

With that he slit my father’s throat.

The other soldier released Chuza who threw himself on Father’s lifeless body and wept. The murderer called to me, “Here’s woman’s work for you: make him a shroud.” Then the two butchers walked away laughing.

I stumbled down the stairway and ran to my father and brother, but Chuza pushed me away fiercely. “So you do associate with Judah ben Hezekiah,” he hissed. “Go. Go make a shroud.”

* * *

In the funeral procession, Naomi, Joanna, and I walked behind the flute players and in front of the litter bearing the body of my father. I put one foot in front of the other, as I had the day we left Nazareth. Fleeing my home was an easy journey compared to this one. Naomi’s wails overpowered the plaintive tones of the reeds. She rubbed dust in her hair and rent her clothing, something I, too, should have done, but those symbols of mourning couldn’t begin to express my grief. I wanted to throw myself down and beat my head against the paving stones.

Many, many other funeral processions passed and crisscrossed ours, heading to the cemeteries outside the city walls. Jerusalem was burying its beloved dead, and the lamentations from its streets and plazas rose on the hot dusty air all the way to the heavens. Our long walk brought us to the kokhim of Father’s family, a tomb cut into the rocky slope of the Kidron Valley. Father’s body would join the bones of his father, his father’s father, and those of many of his ancestors. In this holy necropolis in the Kidron Valley, we believed that the just ones awaited the Messiah, who would one day descend from the Mount of Olives to enter the Temple. On His way, the Savior would raise the dead He passed there. Father and I believed this, anyway. I doubted that Chuza did, since he wasn’t religious.

The stone seal of the tomb had been rolled back and secured with a wooden wedge. Lowering my head, I descended a few stairs and entered the cave. The men bearing Father’s body followed. When I moved aside to make room for them, my foot bumped against an ossuary on the floor. I shuddered. Flesh decomposed in a year, and, in another twelve moons, we would return to this place and seal Father’s bones into one of these stone containers.

The sweet scents of nard oil and myrrh, with which Joanna had anointed Father’s body last night, permeated the small room. The men slid him off the litter and into a kokh carved into the wall, hitting his head against the rock. I winced, even though I knew he felt no pain. I longed to crawl into that niche and share the aromatic darkness with him, to smooth his hair, to close his wounds, and to feel the embrace of his strong arm around me.

Chuza wept and tore at the sleeves of his tunic. At he did this, he scowled at me. To appease him, I tore a hole in my mantle. I dared not anger Chuza.

A thin strain of chanted prayer ended our formalities in the chamber.

May His great name be blessed forever and to all eternity. Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted, extolled and honored, adored and lauded be the name of The Holy One, blessed be He, beyond all the blessings and hymns, praises and consolations that are ever spoken in the world; and say Amen.

We climbed out of the crypt, and Chuza removed the wedge. The stone rolled along in its groove and settled with a thud across the entrance, sealing Father into the cool vault with his ancestors. I had never felt so alone in all of my thirteen years of life.

As we processed back to Chuza’s house, I recalled some verses Father had once made me commit to memory. One rainy afternoon, I had been inside the house spinning wool while Father copied these writings onto a new scroll. He called me over to read them aloud to him.

The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them. In the eyes of the foolish, they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be a disaster; their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace. For though in the sight of others they were punished, their hope is full of immortality.

“Always remember this, Danya,” Father had said. “Do not see death with ‘the eyes of the foolish.’” I knew I shouldn’t see his death through such eyes, but my foolish eyes kept weeping, and nothing could stop them.

At Chuza’s house, visitors who were impatient to offer their condolences and return to their other business awaited us. Quickly, we washed and ate the bread of mourning. Naomi went straight to our bedroom then, knowing that Chuza didn’t want her with the family. Chuza probably didn’t want me, either, but my absence would’ve been an impropriety, so I was tolerated. But I knew none of these people. They couldn’t be any consolation to me.

I sat in a corner and tugged on the silk tunic Joanna had loaned me. The sleeves didn’t cover my arms completely, which embarrassed me in front of these beautiful, elegantly dressed guests. At Chuza’s order, Joanna had also provided me with a veil, something I thought I would hate wearing. But the dark veil proved a blessing. Behind it, I felt removed from this event, as if I were watching from a distance. I could pretend I was not sitting shiva but was at home in Nazareth, lazily surfacing from sleep. A pitcher of fresh goat’s milk sat on the table, and Father and Lev were saying that the blackberries would soon ripen. . . .

Joanna interrupted my dreaming to introduce me to an older man on her arm. “Danya, this is Efron, my father.” The eyebrows on Efron’s small copper face flew up onto his forehead and laugh lines jumped out from the corners of his mouth. His nose curved like the handle of a water jug. But even at this solemn moment, he couldn’t compose his face into a truly sad expression.

“My dear Danya,” he said, plopping onto the bench next to me. “I am so very, very sorry for you. I am sorry for me, too, because I didn’t have the honor of meeting your most righteous father. Just today I’ve returned from a long business trip and heard the terrible news. Joanna’s mother, Yona, sends her deepest sympathy as well. She couldn’t accompany me here today because of her illness.”

“Thank you,” I said. His sweet, kind speech did offer me a bit of solace. People who didn’t know my father had missed something. Joanna hadn’t mentioned that her mother was ill, but we’d only been in Jerusalem for five days, though it seemed like years.

Efron and I sat in silence for some time. I was comfortable with him and pleased to have someone with me among all those strangers. Then, attempting to distract me, Efron asked, “Who do you think are the best-dressed men here?”

I surveyed the twenty or so people in the reception hall and pointed out two men whose silk pantaloons were the color of olive leaves. Silver pins bunched and clasped their sleeveless tunics at the shoulders.

“You have a good eye,” said Efron. “Those men are my customers. Very wealthy Phoenicians. They come to my shop twice a year to purchase my silk.”

Watching his daughter with her visitors, Efron’s eyes danced. “Joanna is my prize. I chose her name, Greek not Hebrew, because it sounds more fashionable. I’ve worked my whole life to help her rise in Jerusalem society, and look at her today: she certainly looks like an aristocrat! She has wonderful posture. Straight as a Roman column, even when she was a little girl. Ha, ha!” He bounced a little on the bench.

When later his eye snagged on Chuza, he frowned. “Chuza and I have little in common except for Joanna. Oh, and I’m not very religious either. When your brother talks to me, he looks around for someone more important. Except when he needs money! Ha, ha, then he pays attention to me!” He bounced again. “Oh, here he comes now.”

“Efron, so good of you to come,” said Chuza. “If Yona needs you to attend her, I hope you won’t feel obliged to remain longer.”

“That means I’m dismissed,” Efron whispered to me as Chuza left us.

“I wish you could stay,” I said.

He patted my hands. “Come by my shop when you feel up to it, and I’ll have some tunics and mantles made for you.” He winked. “And I’ll only charge Chuza double what I should!”

I was alone again in my corner. The afternoon wore on and on, lonelier and lonelier for me. Just days ago, I’d lived in a village where I knew everyone and was protected by my loving father and brother. Now I resided in a city, among strangers, where death struck senselessly and changed lives in an instant. Chuza and I didn’t know each other. I didn’t love him, and he didn’t love me. Yet, since I no longer had a father, I was the legal property of my elder half-brother. Chuza now had the power to determine the rest of my life. He had the right to decide where and how I would live, when and whom I would marry. The rodent, some demon form, crept about inside my stomach.

From time to time, Joanna briefly joined me in my corner. But Chuza would always summon her back to their guests. I noted that Joanna had to be very careful with everything she said and did in Chuza’s presence. My brother’s sudden angers frightened me, as did his coldness towards Naomi. The rodent’s claws pinched as it prowled. Dodi jumped into my lap, and I leaned over her and placed her little panting body under my veil. With my face buried in her fur, I wept. She whined along with my soft sobs. I thought that no one could hear our strange animal dirge.

“I apologize for disturbing you, but are you ill? Can I help you?” I looked up—and up—at the man I recognized from the Temple Mount. The priest Tobiah, who had saved us. A dark bruise stained one side of his lean face, and his nose was swollen. Tobiah must have been caught up in the mob’s frenzy on the Mount. But he had survived. Maybe Judah had too.

“You’re not disturbing me,” I said, wiping my nose with the edge of my sleeve, hidden beneath my veil. The light through the windows was fading, and the lamps had not yet been lit. The reception room held only the two us and, at the far end, Chuza and a man wearing a toga.

Tobiah clasped his clean hands. They bore no calluses from the plow or the hammer. Scholar’s hands, like my father’s. “Permit me to . . . um, I know you are Micah’s daughter. . . . I am Tobiah.”

He looked over my head as he spoke. My face was shrouded by a veil, and, though I thought of lifting it, I dared not. Tobiah continued, “Your father’s death is a great sadness to me. Please accept my deepest sympathy. Micah was the best teacher I ever had.” Tobiah bowed. I thought I saw gray hair encircling a bald spot on top of his head. He began to walk away.

“Wait. I want to thank you for helping us escape the Temple Mount. And would you please tell me about my father? Tell me what you know about his life in Jerusalem.”

Tobiah stroked his unfashionably long beard. “Your father taught at the beth ha-midrash on the Temple Mount. He knew the Torah in such depth that many who studied with him became doctors of the Law. Chuza studied there as well, though not with your father, and, as you know, he has chosen not to serve in the high priesthood.”

Finally, someone who could prop the door open. I had so many questions to ask him. “Why did my father leave Jerusalem and go to Nazareth?”

Tobiah shook his head and turned his palms up. “That was the question we all asked. I know that corruption within the Temple leadership disturbed him greatly. His efforts to root it out failed. But it was more than that. Micah used to teach that we as a people would free ourselves from oppression not by warfare or accommodation, but by becoming more pious and righteous. He came to believe that communal village living was the way to attain such holiness. Other rabbis also taught this, but Micah was the only teacher I knew who actually tried this. After his wife died, he just took off to Nazareth.”

“Why Nazareth?”

“‘Because it is nowhere,’ your father told me.” Tobiah’s smile was kind, more than a polite formality.

The strident voices of Chuza and the Roman abruptly stopped our conversation.

“That soldier was ‘only doing his duty?’” shouted Chuza. “He murders my father, and his punishment is to be transferred to another province?”

“I did all I could, my friend,” said the Roman. He avoided Chuza’s eyes and concentrated on the creased folds in the front of his toga. “The new ethnarch wants all his subjects to know that no one is above the law, not even the family members of high officials.”

“Lucius, my father adhered more strictly to the law, every law, than any man who ever lived.”

“So you’ve told me, and I believe you. But some powerful people do not. Archelaus’s spies have linked your father to Judah ben Hezekiah.”

Chuza pushed out his words one at a time. “Father strongly disapproved of Judah. He opposed all violence!”

“Nevertheless, eyewitnesses say they saw your father and your sister with him,” countered Lucius. “I’m sorry, my friend. There’s nothing more I can do.”

“After everything I’ve done for you,” growled Chuza.

Lucius looked sternly at Chuza. “The truth is that it was all I could do to keep Archelaus from removing you from your position. Maybe someday you’ll see that you do owe me your gratitude. I would advise you to hold onto your friends and make more of them if you want to maintain your position.” The Roman’s leather boots flapped on the tiles as he stomped out of the house.

Chuza folded himself into a chair, then changed his mind and headed over to my corner. I thought he was coming to commiserate with me because we would have no justice for the murder of our father. Even a man as important as Chuza was subject to a higher power’s fickle will. I wanted to console him.

But Chuza was breathing heavily, and the vein in his forehead bulged. With its sharp nails, the rodent demon scratched at the pit of my stomach. Chuza pointed his finger at my veiled face. “You whore!” he said. “You and your ridiculous revolutionary notions. Father has paid for them with his life. And now you’ve dragged me into it as well. Curse you!” He raised his arm.

I flinched from the blow to come, but Tobiah intervened and stayed Chuza’s hand. “Your grief is so great that it clouds your judgment, Chuza. A cruel, ambitious soldier killed your righteous father. No one else is responsible.”

Chuza wrenched his arm from Tobiah’s grasp and pointed again. His finger touched my veil this time. “You, Danya. You had something to do with this.”

The demon slashed and ripped inside me.