Читать книгу Danya - Anne McGivern - Страница 7

Preparations for Flight

Returning to the village quivering with rage at myself, at Lev, even at The Holy One, I stubbed my toes on the very rocks and roots I’d avoided earlier. I’d been left behind, certainly by Lev and perhaps by The Holy One as well. Did I lack the courage to answer His call? Or had I not been chosen because I was a girl? But The Holy One knew that I was different from the other girls. I was smarter, faster, and stronger. I wasn’t meant for the small life of a village woman. I was capable of so much more!

Nazareth was still asleep as I ran through it. Pressing my ear to the door covering of our two-room house, I listened with relief to the sound of Father’s fitful snoring. I tiptoed to my mat in the back room, lay down, and curled myself around my newly hatched resentment, as if it were an eaglet fallen from the nest and needed my protection to stay alive.

Father’s habit was to rise before me for prayer and study and then to rouse me to prepare our breakfast. But this morning, as I was still pretending to sleep, loud voices in the courtyard outside our doorway disturbed us both.

“Wake up, Micah!”

“We are in grave danger.”

“You’re the rosh ha-knesset. You must do something.”

“It’s time for action, not reflection!”

Father hated to be pulled away from his studies. I heard him sigh loudly, and the parchment scrolls crinkle as he rolled them up. The shouting outside grew more insistent. Quickly, I put on my own tunic and folded up my mat. As I emerged from my room, Father was plodding to the doorway to face five agitated men.

“What’s all this shouting about?” he said distractedly. He rubbed at the ache that resided in his hip.

Aaron, one of Father’s pupils, spoke first. “Some shepherds have just awakened the whole village with their shouting about a band of fifty men they saw fleeing from Sepphoris. These men lugged heavy sacks, though what those sacks contained or who the men were, the shepherds couldn’t say. But they were sure that Judah ben Hezekiah led them.”

“Judah ben Hezekiah?” Father smoothed his long, unruly beard with his ink-stained fingers. “They’re certain it was he?”

“They said they would swear so on the Torah,” said Aaron.

Father straightened up and spoke with uncharacteristic force. “Gather all the information you can. Speak to everyone. The whole village must assemble. This very evening.”

After the men left, Father asked me where Lev was. I shrugged and busied myself with the breakfast preparations, practicing the lie—not really a lie—that I would tell if he or anyone asked me about the raid. “I’m only a girl. How could I know anything?”

And why would I know anything? After all, girls learned only domestic skills, and these were taught by women. Most boys hardly spoke to their sisters, unless it was to order them around. But my brother was different. Our mother had died when we were very young; Lev was four and I was two. With our older half-brother Chuza living in Jerusalem, and our father often absorbed by his teaching and the village’s knesset affairs, Lev and I were frequently left to ourselves as we grew up. My brother taught me the lessons boys learned: how to throw a sling, pin a wrestling opponent, debate the lessons of the Torah, and keep an accounting of money. He shared with me the knowledge of the world beyond our little village that he was able to gather. As long as I had finished my chores, Father allowed me to observe when he instructed Lev and the other boys in reading and writing; but it was Lev, in private, who showed me how to form the letters on a wax tablet and to read the words of the Torah from the scrolls. We had always kept each other’s secrets. I loved him fiercely.

As it turned out, I wasn’t called upon to lie. A ripe apricot lasted longer than a secret in our village. By late afternoon, everyone knew the names of the three young men from Nazareth who had joined Judah’s band. Also the six from the town of Japha, the two from Gaba, and the three from Besara. Everyone had also learned that Judah and his followers had looted Sepphoris’s treasury and arsenal and killed five of its guards during the raid.

In the evening, we gathered in the village’s common area around the olive and wine presses, the same place where we met twice a week to pray, trade, and conduct village business. Our knesset had twelve elected leaders, including Father. Usually our assembly was a happy time, but today fear and anger furrowed the faces of my people. The men, smelling of freshly tilled earth and the sheep and goats they tended, clustered in the center. The women clumped silently on the fringes, clutching their young children tightly and ordering their older ones to stay near them.

Father and the other knesset leaders stood on an elevated stone platform in the middle of the knot of men. Father looked tall and distinguished up there. On level ground, he was a handbreadth shorter than Lev and me. The assembly opened with the shema‘, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” Conversation faded as the prayers continued. “Graciously favor us, our Father, with understanding from Thee, and discernment and insight out of Thy Torah. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, gracious bestower of understanding. Behold our afflictions—”

“Our afflictions,” shouted tiny Samuel, who was perched atop the olive press. “We’re here to discuss our afflictions.”

Namir screamed and shook his fist at the knesset leaders. “Yes, get to the point—the afflictions Rome will send our way when they find their capital city has been looted!”

Ze’ev, Samuel’s father, rattled his walking stick at my father. “This is your fault, Micah.” His voice quavered with age and fury. “You incited your son and those boys with your Lord’s Kingdom blather!”

Aaron’s father stood up on the bench where Ze’ev sat. “You even taught your girl to read, you fool. You’re supposed to teach Torah, not revolution!”

A stone landed near Father. Several women standing near me backed away. More accusations were flung at Father, and the space between the women and me widened. I stared at them and turned up my nose, but a little voice within me cried, “Mama, Papa.” My fear of losing Father, buried in a cave deep within my heart, sprang out from its confinement. But at that moment, my friends Naomi and Miryam and their mothers pushed through the cold circle enlarging around me and grasped my hands.

Father held up his arms and shouted, “Enough!” The strength of his voice surprised me. His eyes burned with intensity. “I have never counseled violence. You know that I oppose it.”

The denouncements faded. Though Lev often complained that Father’s scholarship was useless, most of the villagers respected him for it. Father’s learning, which he had brought with him from Jerusalem many years ago, gave him power in our little world.

The men then turned on each other and argued about the attack. Our neighbor Amos raised his arms in praise of it. “Away with the Roman infidels and their Jewish allies!” he declared.

“The Romans steal our land; they tax us into poverty; they worship false gods,” cried Oron. “It’s time we drove them out. These brave rebels are showing us the way.”

Another leader of the knesset quoted the prophet Isaiah. “I will contend with those who contend with you, and I will save your children.”

“Silence.” Father’s voice rose above all the others. “We haven’t assembled to debate the wisdom of this attack. It has happened, and, though we don’t know when or in what way, there will be retaliation. We must decide how to protect our people and property from Roman vengeance.”

The assembly dragged on into the night, but after much wrangling, decisions were made. Most people agreed that it was best to flee and seek safety elsewhere, taking their valuables and animals with them. Since it was so close to the harvest, some people insisted on staying behind to bring it in. They would store or sell the flax, barley, and wheat and then they, too, would flee. In the meantime, the Jebel Qafzeh caves south of the village would be provisioned as hiding places for them.

Back in our house after the meeting, Father fell asleep sitting upright on our dining bench. I laid a barley loaf, olives, and dates on the table and kissed the shock of thick white hair that crowned his head. “Supper is ready, Father.”

At mealtimes, Father was usually quiet and distracted by his own thoughts. “What mysteries is he unraveling, what truths is he formulating?” Lev would whisper, and then make me laugh by imitating Father’s faraway gaze and his laborious chewing of food.

But tonight Father fixed his eyes on me throughout our meal, studying me as if I were a difficult text. His attentiveness made me anxious. I worried that he might know of my attempt to follow Lev and that I would be punished for it.

When we finished eating, Father said, “I’m going to take you to Jerusalem, Danya. You’ll stay there with your brother Chuza until it’s safe for you to return to Nazareth.”

Father rarely spoke the name of his son Chuza, the only child of his first marriage. Five lonely years after the death of his first wife, Chuza’s mother, Father married Nahara, the woman who became the mother of Lev and me. My half-brother Chuza had gone off to Jerusalem when I was very young, so I hardly knew him.

Lev had the courage to fight for our people. I must be brave enough to tell Father I wanted to do the same. With my eyes down, but my voice firm, I said, “No. Not to Chuza’s. I want to go with Lev. To join his group.”

“That’s no place for you, daughter.”

Heat flamed up my neck and onto my face. “It may be The Holy One’s will for me.These men are heroes, Papa. They will free our people. I want to do that, too.”

He tugged at his beard. “They’re not heroes. And armed revolt won’t liberate us.”

“If I can’t go to Lev, I’ll wait here for him. He’ll come back for me.”

Father stood and walked over to the doorway. He pushed back its covering and stared out at the darkness. “It breaks my heart that your brother has joined this violent movement. Lev may never come back; I may have lost another son.”

I blinked hard to keep my tears from spilling over. “He will come back someday, Papa. I know it.”

Father left the doorway and sat next to me. Gently, he lifted my chin until my eyes met his gaze. “And if he does, I will be here to shelter him. I’m needed here. I plan to return to Nazareth once you’re settled in Jerusalem. You’ll see Lev when it’s safe for both of you here.”

I knew my father was being kind and protective. But scalding tears erupted from my eyes at the prospect of having to live in a strange city with a half-brother I barely knew. I slammed my wooden plate on the table and broke it in two. “Chuza is a Roman collaborator, and you know it. That’s why we don’t see him anymore, isn’t it?”

Father enclosed my work-roughened hands in his. “Chuza is an important man in Jerusalem. He can protect you, and that’s what matters now. I can’t risk losing you, too, my little light.”

I bit the insides of my cheeks until I tasted blood. “I never get my way, Papa.”

Father kissed my right palm and then my left. His tenderness drained the heat from me. “This is your way, Danya. You don’t see it now, but you will. If you are searching for the Holy One’s will, the first step is to stay alive.”

* * *

Quickly, our villagers began to scatter like mustard seeds, flying with the wind from Galilee to wherever they had family or the possibility of work. Some went to other regions of the land of Judah, like Judea or Idumea. Others set out for Phoenicia or Syria or cities like Scythopolis that had large Jewish communities. Father planned that we would make the five-day journey to Jerusalem with a group of thirteen others from our village. Most of us hoped to return to Nazareth someday, but we had no idea when that would be.

The handful that chose to stay in the village believed they would prosper by harvesting their own fields and those of their absent neighbors. Our neighbor Amos and his wife elected to do this. Amos was already deeply in debt, as were many other men, and he feared losing his land if he were not there to bring in this harvest. I overheard Father and Amos speaking in low voices in the courtyard at night.

“I’ll manage your orchard and garden, Micah,” said Amos. “But I must ask a favor of you in return.”

“Certainly.”

“Take my daughter, Naomi, to Jerusalem with you.”

My father was silent a long time. “My son son Chuza will be under no obligation to support her, so I can’t promise I will be able to find a good situation for her there.”

“I know you’ll do what you can. But, if necessary—”Amos stopped to blow his nose. “She can be sold. Better my daughter be a slave in Jerusalem than raped or murdered by Roman soldiers here.”

I bit on my tunic to keep from crying out. Slaves in Jewish households served for seven years unless bought back by their relatives. Though Naomi’s parents were vigorous, hard-working people, they had little chance of gathering up enough money to buy her back from slavery. Naomi might have to stay in Jerusalem for seven years!

Our friend Miryam was fleeing to Egypt with her parents, her husband Yosef, their new baby Yeshua, and Yosef’s two sons from his first marriage. People tried to convince Yosef not to go so far, but he believed his family would not be safe anywhere in the land of Judah. Though there were jobs for talented carpenters in our own country, Yosef remained resolute about going to Egypt, insisting that he had had a dream instructing him to go there.

During that week following the raid on Sepphoris, Miryam, Naomi, and I spent many backbreaking hours at the grindstone milling the grain we’d need for our journeys. Our families had shared this grindstone, and the courtyard it sat in, all our lives. None of us had sisters, so we often eased the tedium of our grinding, spinning, and weaving chores by working together. Miryam was the older sister I wished I had; Naomi the younger one I rejoiced I didn’t.

Being the smallest and youngest, Naomi had only to feed the kernels of grain into the mill and pour the ground meal into sacks. Miryam and I performed the actual grinding. Together we trudged in a circle, our arms straining against the weight of the heavy topstone as we pushed against the handle bolted to it. It was like wading through ankle-deep mud.

“Look at me. My hands are shaking,” said Naomi. “I’m spilling the grain all over. Do you know I may have to be a servant in some stranger’s house? Can you imagine that? My father says I may have to stay in Jerusalem for a long time. That it may not be safe here for me for several years. I could be an old woman before I see Nazareth again!” She bent over and hobbled around like some of the crones who congregated around the village well, then she tripped and fell down. She laughed at herself, her giggle fluttering around in her throat, then escaping and flickering about like a hummingbird. Annoying as her chatter was, her laughter lightened our hearts.

As Miryam and I continued pushing the grinding stone, Naomi continued babbling. “But at least I’m going to Jerusalem, not Egypt. Miryam, where did Yosef get such an idea? Egypt may be safe, but it’s foreign. Are there any Jews there? You won’t know the language. Who will you talk to?”

“Maybe Miryam won’t be able to talk all the time,” I said. “You should try it yourself sometime.” Miryam gave the back of my leg a little kick, and I turned around to her and rolled my eyes.

Naomi didn’t stop to take a breath. “I always thought Miryam should’ve married Lev. He’s sooo good-looking. Those eyes of his: they burn right through you. And those full, pouty lips: dreamy. He was in love with you, Miryam, I’m sure of it. But after all, maybe you are better off. Having a bandit for a husband would be worse than having one who drags you off to Egypt.”

“And you’ll be lucky to find a husband who doesn’t divorce you in a day,” I said.

“So you’re complimenting me on my husband?” Miryam asked. “Why, thank you!” Her wit sweetened, rather than stung like mine did.

“Yes. No,” said Naomi. “I mean, yes, it’s good you married Yosef after all, I guess. Is that what I mean?”

I squeezed the bar harder. “Do you ever know what you’re saying, Naomi? You should have to listen to yourself, so you’d know how annoying you are. And, by the way, Lev is not a bandit!”

“Then what is he? Look at all the trouble he and his friends have caused us. My mother says . . .”

“I don’t care what your mother says!” Naomi’s dark bushy hair was two times the size of her tiny face. It looked like the top of a terebinth tree. I had an urge to pull it and dropped my hands from the grindstone handle to do just that.

Miryam grunted with the sudden burden of having to push the heavy stone herself. “Ouch! Danya, you need to tell me when you’re going to stop.” She rubbed the fingers of her right hand with her left, and her high forehead creased in pain.

“Sorry, Miryam.” I placed my callused hands back on the grindstone’s handle. Pulling Naomi’s hair would be a waste of time, anyway. It wouldn’t shut her mouth.

Miryam picked up the thread of our conversation. “Our family will be all right in Egypt. Yosef will find work there. And I’ll be occupied with our three little boys to tend.”

Miryam’s absence would be a great loss to me. She was the gentle yet strong friend I’d always relied on. “How I wish I could go to Egypt with you, Miryam! I’m afraid of living in Jerusalem.”

“What are you afraid of?” asked Miryam.

“Afraid that Chuza and his wife Joanna won’t like me. Afraid that I’ll be useless there. They already have servants. What will I do all day?” I wished I could have voiced my deeper fears. Not what would I do in Jerusalem, but what was my purpose anywhere? Was there something wrong with me that The Holy One hadn’t chosen me for the task I’d thought was mine?

“If you don’t have to work, you’ll get to read,” Miryam pointed out. “You’re so blessed, Danya. The only girl in Nazareth who can read and write and now you’ll have time to do both. And you’ll see some strange and wonderful people and things in Jerusalem. When we’re old women, sitting in this courtyard on warm evenings, you’ll entertain us with fabulous stories of your days in Jerusalem.”

“Oh, the Temple! The Temple! I have always wanted to see the Temple,” interrupted Naomi. “To see if it’s as beautiful as people say. And I’m dying to see your brother Chuza. Is he handsome like Lev?”

Miryam gave me a little kick to remind me to be patient.

“I forget what he looks like. He left Nazareth when I was four years old.” I remembered very little about Chuza except that he would argue bitterly with Father. How strange memory is: though I couldn’t remember Chuza’s face, I recalled the hoarse timbre of his voice and the image of a scab on his clenched fist.

“I wonder what Chuza’s wife is like? You told me that Joanna is a silk merchant’s daughter, so she must have gorgeous clothes. Please don’t read all day, Danya. Go to the shops with me.”

I sighed loudly, vainly hoping Naomi would realize it was time to stop talking. “We won’t have money to shop, Naomi.”

“But we still can look. I hear there are stalls selling things from all over the world! Jewels and spices and leathers and linen and silk. Oh, maybe Joanna’s father would give us a really good price on some silk.”

“Stop it, stop it, stop it!” I said. “You’ve given me a headache.”

“Fortunately, we’ve finished,” said Miryam, giving the grindstone handle one last shove. “We have more than enough barley for our journeys.” Miryam frowned in pain as she rubbed her aching palms.

I remembered what Lev had said once about Miryam as he was trying to talk himself out of his love for her. “She has red, rough hands and looks very ordinary, like any other girl in this village. Her front teeth are crooked, and her hair has hardly any curl. And yet, when she smiles and laughs, her eyes shine. And she is just so beautiful!”

At that moment Miryam turned her smile on Naomi and me. “I have something to give you before we’re separated. Come this way.” She led us up the same path I had run along in the quiet moonlight only a few nights before, up to the top of the Nazareth ridge. Today the hillsides were full of our villagers who were hastily picking any ripened fruit from their orchards and vines to carry away with them. Goats bleated, children cried, and people called to one another. We climbed up to the ridge’s highest point, the same spot where I’d so recently experienced such bitter disappointment.

“I want to tell you a story,” Miryam said, sitting down and wedging us together between two tall rocks. “Remember last year when my parents wanted me to marry Yosef? I’d seen him only once and I hadn’t even met his two little boys. Deep down, I was anxious and confused about everything. Should I follow my parents’ wishes and marry Yosef? But what if I never came to love him? Could I be a good mother to his children? What does The Holy One want me to do? What is my place in His plan?”

Naomi said, “I never worry about things like that.”

“Of course not,” I snapped.

“Why should I?” Naomi challenged.

“Stop, you two,” Miryam said, and continued her story. “One wet, dark afternoon I came up here. I sat right where we are now. I prayed. I cried. I begged Adonai to give me a sign, to tell me what I should do. Then I stopped crying and just waited for an answer. Suddenly, the most amazing thing happened: a strong light broke through the clouds right over the valley below. It began moving quickly towards me.”

Like my dust towers, I thought.

“Were you scared?” said Naomi. “I would’ve run away!”

“I was afraid so I hid behind these rocks. Then the light swept right to here . . . and stopped. It seemed to be waiting for me to say or do something.”

Naomi interrupted, “I definitely would’ve run away at that point. Did you?”

“No. Although I didn’t know what it wanted, I trusted it. It waited. It shimmered. It grew brighter and lovelier. It seemed to be inviting me in, pulling me into itself. It was so beautiful! I have no words to explain how it drew me to it. After some time—I can’t say how long—I stepped into it. I said ‘Yes.’ That was all: just ‘Yes.’ Then it filled me with its brightness, and I felt myself glowing.”

We were all silent until Naomi whispered, “Maybe the light was an angel. Did it smell? I hear angels smell like baking bread.”

Miryam laughed. “No, it didn’t smell. I don’t know what an angel looks like, but this light that swirled around inside and around me was full of color—flaming orange and bright green and deep violet and sunrise pink. And full of sound, too. Babies laughing. Water lapping the shore. Doves cooing. It was full of life and so, so lovely. Then, gently, slowly, the light swept back to the cloud it had come from and disappeared.”

“Were you sad when it left?” said Naomi.

“No, I was happy! My fears were gone. A peace settled upon my heart, a certainty that The Holy One cared for me and for all of our people, each one of us. And I knew that I was pleasing in His eyes. And I knew I should marry Yosef.”

A bitter taste, as if I had sucked on the rim of a metal pot, puckered my mouth. The dust clouds had not swept me up. They had swirled off to the caves of Arbel without me.

“I was hoping that, coming to this same spot and hearing what happened to me, maybe you two could feel the peace that settled on me here. Of course we’re all anxious, but I think that the light’s message was that Adonai loves us, each one of us. I know He will be with each of us on every step of our journeys. The psalm says, ‘I sought the Lord, and He answered me, and delivered me from all my fears.’ Pray with me, will you?”

Naomi laughed that ridiculous giggle of hers. “Delivered from all my fears sounds good. I’ll give it a try.”

To please Miryam, I prayed with them, though my prayer brought me no peace. I left the Nazareth ridge in anger and confusion. Miryam had sought answers, just as I had, and The Holy One had sent her a sign. She was pleasing to Him, even though she was a girl. He had a plan for her. She had been given the very blessing I had sought but been denied.