Читать книгу Danya - Anne McGivern - Страница 9

My Brother’s Mansion in the Upper City

Chuza bowed to Father but did not embrace him. “I received your letter, though we hadn’t expected you so soon. I’m saddened that Nazareth is threatened, but my wife and I are pleased that you’ve chosen to take refuge with us.”

A dainty woman about twenty years old stepped into the courtyard and smiled warmly at my father. “We are honored that you have come, Father. Since your son and I were wed, I’ve prayed for this day.”

Chuza turned to me and said stiffly, “Shalom, sister. You are welcome here.”

Joanna embraced me tightly. “Chuza told me you were a strong, beautiful little girl, and I see you’re now a strong, beautiful woman. I’m so happy to finally meet you, my dear Danya.”

Joanna was the beautiful one. She had flawless light skin, perfectly arranged, honey-colored hair, and graceful eyebrows. “Delicate” seemed the best word for her features. I towered over her and felt awkward. When she reached out to Naomi, it was almost a relief to see that Joanna had an imperfection: ragged fingernails. “We’re delighted you’ve brought your pretty young friend with you. Shalom, Naomi,” said Joanna.

Chuza nodded at Naomi, then asked Father, “Where’s Lev?”

“With the Essenes,” said Father.

“Has he joined the monastery at Qumran?”

“We expect to hear from him soon.”

Apparently, Father didn’t want Chuza to know about Lev’s involvement with Judah and the raid. Naomi and I would have to guard our tongues.

Servants appeared to tend to the donkeys and our possessions. Father gave them strict instructions about handling the stone jars containing his scrolls. Then, because he had been exposed to corpses on our journey, he asked Chuza to accompany him to the house’s miqveh to purify himself. Watching the men leave, I was surprised at Chuza’s size. He was wider and shorter than Father. Lev and I had always thought of our older brother as tall and lean, like us, though probably taller because he was older.

Joanna led us into the house, and we met her little dog, Dodi. Naomi fussed over the animal, burying her fingers in her white, silky coat and accepting her watery kisses. I found Dodi unappealing. When I tried to pat her, she cringed pathetically and flapped her tail in an overanxious desire to please. She neither herded sheep, nor chased rodents from the grain bins, so what purpose did she serve? I thought of her as merely an ornament.

In the reception hall, a room three times the size of our house in Nazareth, I was afraid to sit on a chair or to lean on a delicately carved wooden table for fear of breaking them. The floor, though, entranced me with its black and bronze mosaic tiles arranged in a pattern of interlocking shapes. Naomi and I each picked out a single line and walked along it, our footsteps twisting and turning until we made ourselves dizzy. Joanna joined in our little dance on the tiles and laughed along with us.

Despite its high ceiling, the reception hall burst with fragrance. “I keep it full of jasmine,” Joanna told us, and only when I brushed against them did I notice the delicate, yellow-flowered branches planted in tall earthenware vases. I traced my finger along the pattern etched in muted red and brown lines on the vase’s surface. Joanna lightly touched my arm and said, “Careful, sister. That one is a favorite of your brother’s.”

The frescoes adorning the walls of the hall reminded me of the hillsides of Galilee. The grapevines in these paintings were almost as beautiful as the real vineyards they represented. I couldn’t imagine my father ever having lived in such splendor, and I wondered why he left this beautiful house for a two-room, dirt-floored village hut. He told Naomi he “could no longer live in Jerusalem as a good Jew.” But there must be many good Jews in Jerusalem.

Joanna gestured around her as she pivoted in a circle. “This hall is no longer large enough for our needs, so we intend to build a second one. We also need to add more ovens to the kitchen because we entertain a great deal. Did you know that Chuza has been appointed Chief Steward to the new ethnarch, Herod Archelaus?” She lowered her voice and chuckled. “Chuza acts more like a Roman every day. He would prefer a colonnaded courtyard in the center of the house, a real Roman peristyle, but we can’t do that without taking the whole house down and starting over.”

Such extravagance left us speechless. Joanna didn’t seem to be boasting but only explaining the way they lived, which made it all the more astonishing.

“Come along and let me show you the bath.” As we passed the stairway to the rooftop, Joanna hesitated and then said, “We’ll add a second story when we need the space for children.”

“How long have you been married?” Naomi asked.

“Five years,” Joanna said quietly.

“Oh, sorry,” said Naomi. For once she had enough sense to say nothing else.

The bathtub, which ranked its own room, was supplied with water from its own cistern. Joanna ordered a servant to warm some water and fill the tub for us. “Miryam’s never going to believe this,” Naomi whispered to me.

As we passed the hallway that led down to the purification pool, Joanna said sheepishly, “You should know that we are not very religious, not like your father, anyway. Chuza hardly ever uses the miqveh, though he wants people to think he does.”

In Nazareth, there was one miqveh for all the men of the village and one for all the women. As we wandered through Chuza’s house, I began to understand how distasteful he must have found our two-room, dirt-floored home in our village. Most of Chuza’s childhood had been spent in this home in Jerusalem. It was only after his mother had died that Father and he had moved to Nazareth where they had to share a well, an olive press, a miqveh, and almost everything else of value with several hundred people. For the first time, I realized we were poor and I felt embarrassed about it. I also felt a surge of resentment towards Father for having chosen the life that he had when we could have had this. I began to view Chuza’s sudden departure from Nazareth and his return to Jerusalem in a new light.

Joanna led us on to the bedroom Naomi and I would share. It was large enough for a family. Joanna said, “Enjoy your bath and then we’ll dine.”

Naomi protested. “But we haven’t seen your rooms. Or your clothes.”

“Tomorrow,” promised Joanna. “You can try on anything you like. My clothes will look prettier on you girls than they do on me.”

Prettier on Naomi maybe, but not on me. Naomi and Joanna were both tiny. Though Joanna had lighter, straighter hair, the two of them could have passed for sisters. Joanna’s clothes would be too tight across my shoulders and hang immodestly far above my ankles. But it was generous of her to offer to share.

After Joanna left, Naomi poked around the room until she found a hand mirror, something we had heard about but never seen before. She held it up to her face and patted her bushy hair. “My mother tells me I have beautiful hair. Do you think so?” Naomi did have a perfect nose, slightly dipped at the end, and large sparkling brown eyes well accented by dark eyebrows that were neither too thick nor too thin. “You are pretty, Naomi. Your mother’s right about that. Let me look now.”

Naomi held the mirror up for me. I frowned at my eyebrows. They were so long and thick that now I would worry about them growing together. I put my finger on the little dent in my chin, an impression like my mother’s.

Naomi turned the mirror back to herself. “My mother says that I’m pretty, but that you’re striking, Danya,”

“Let’s hope that your mother’s right about us,” I laughed.

Naomi and I flopped onto sleeping platforms heaped with soft cushions and blankets. How lovely it would be to sleep here, rather than wrapped in a dusty woolen cloak on the ground. Peristyle or no, it didn’t matter to me: Chuza’s home was the loveliest place I had ever been in. And Joanna, even though she was more like Naomi than me, could not be kinder. I had missed something by not having a sister.

* * *

That night Joanna and Chuza served us a lavish dinner, though Joanna apologized for its simplicity. “If only we had known you would arrive today,” she kept saying.

“Hush, wife,” Chuza said. “Our guests understand.” He ignored the women after that and conversed only with Father. Once I heard him remark, unfavorably I felt, that I didn’t resemble my mother.

Their dining room was furnished with couches, in the Roman fashion, but Father requested a stool and sat erect as the rest of us reclined. This unfamiliar position resulted in bits of our food slipping to the floor, but Dodi cleaned up after us. Joanna laughed with Naomi each time the dog darted after a dropped delicacy.

We ate foods we rarely indulged in, such as hen’s eggs and apricot cakes. Joanna said that the salted fish, served whole on a copper platter, was a delicacy, but I found it as distasteful as the fish we had at home. She extravagantly praised the walnuts we contributed to the feast. We had carried them all the way from Galilee, knowing they were scarce in Judea. Chuza helped himself to a third helping of the fish and asked Father, “How long will you be staying in Jerusalem?”

“The women, until it’s safe for them to return. I need to get back to Nazareth as soon as I can. To see that those who stayed behind get out safely. I’ll be here only long enough only to rest and to visit the Temple.”

Chuza frowned. “Better only to rest. Don’t go to the Temple.”

“Don’t go to the Temple! Why not?”

“There is great unrest in Jerusalem these days. Since it’s Passover, huge crowds throng the Temple’s courtyards. Crowds can be dangerous. Our Roman occupiers do not like crowds.”

Father pulled a bone from his teeth and said calmly, “The Temple is the earthly dwelling place of the Divine Presence. We can’t be harmed there.”

Chuza fixed his small but intelligent eyes on Father. “Because of the unrest, Roman soldiers may be sent to help the Levites keep order on the the Mount.”

Father looked up from his fish. “Roman soldiers on the Mount? Surely you’re mistaken. Herod Archelaus is a Jew. He wouldn’t permit the Temple Mount to be defiled in that way. Jerusalem is full of rumors.”

“My information is reliable,” Chuza said.

Father slammed his right hand on the table. “You may work for Rome, but you are first of all a Jew: how can you permit pagan soldiers on our most holy site?”

Chuza pawed at his beard, trimmed, Roman-style close to his full face. Joanna tried to change the subject. “Try this,” she said, offering us a serving plate with yellow wedges on it. “A trader from the East sold me this fruit, called a lemon. Its juice is supposed to improve the flavor of salted fish.”

Obediently, we squeezed the lemon over our fish.

In the silence that followed, Joanna, Naomi, and I looked from father to son, our hands clenched in our laps. My throat hurt, as if I had swallowed an underchewed lump of goat meat. I had forgotten how often I used to feel this way when Chuza lived with us. The tension between them, lurking in the background from the moment Chuza had greeted Father in the courtyard, now sprang from its weak confines.

“I have no voice in this matter,” Chuza said, breathing quickly, in and out.

We finished our meal in silence, and then Father said, “We leave for the Temple Mount at dawn.”

Chuza slammed both of his hands down on the table and pushed himself up from his couch. Scowling, at last bearing a resemblance to both Father and Lev, he stormed out of the room. Joanna shrugged her shoulders. Even in Jerusalem, I thought, salted fish is salted fish. Lemon juice cannot remove its bitterness.

We rose early the next morning, having barely slept anyway, and met Father for breakfast. Joanna, obeying her husband’s orders, would not accompany us; nevertheless, she wanted to make sure we were well fed before setting out. Warm wheat loaves and freshly ground hummus dispatched the lingering foulness of last night’s salted fish. A platter of perfectly ripened melon slices sweetened our anticipation of the glorious day awaiting us.

Suddenly, Chuza appeared in the doorway to the dining room. He pulled up a stool, sat next to Father, and waited until his breathing evened out before speaking. “I am only Herod Archelaus’s steward. I manage his estates. I have no influence over any of his other affairs.”

“But surely he confides in you,” said Father.

“Yes. And that’s why I’m begging you not to go to the Temple for the next few days. Wait until the Passover pilgrims leave the city. Then you can go and offer sacrifice and pray in the Temple all you wish. The protests will have died down. The Temple Mount will be peaceful once again.”

Father stiffened. “What protests?”

Chuza whisked a fly from the fruit with the back of his hand. “Protests over some executions that took place a year ago.”

“Who was executed?” asked Father.

Chuza poured water for Father and spoke reassuringly. “Two foolish teachers, believing King Herod, Archelaus’s father, had died, incited their students to tear down a meaningless symbol over the Temple gate. Herod, though very sick at the time, was nevertheless well enough to order that the teachers and their students be burnt alive.”

The melon in my mouth soured. Even in remote Galilee we had heard tales of the late king’s brutality, but I hadn’t imagined Herod capable of such an atrocity.

“The golden eagle is not ‘meaningless,’” Father said quietly. “It’s the official emblem of Roman imperial authority.”

“We Jews are not forced to worship that image, just to tolerate it,” argued Chuza. “In Jerusalem we have to accommodate to Rome. We don’t have the luxury of living in a remote village that Rome cares nothing about.”

Father’s voice rose again. “The Roman eagle, mounted over the great gate of the Temple, mocks the power of The Holy One.”

“The Holy One is all-powerful, of course,” said Chuza. “He can’t be mocked by a golden eagle. It’s a reasonable accommodation to Rome to let their symbol stand. By permitting them their silly bird, we’re able to run our Temple without their interference. Usually. Not today.”

“The anniversary of this martyrdom is all the more reason to visit the Temple Mount today, then. We must honor the brave men who died trying to purify it,” said Father.

Chuza threw up his hands in disgust. “I see there’s no convincing you, as usual. Go to the Temple, then, but go yourself. I will not permit you to take the women!”

Father turned to Naomi and me. “You may come with me or stay here, as you wish.” He proceeded through the doorway and out to the courtyard.