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My eyes went back to the closest thing I could see before me: the little creatures moving, ru
I was not sorry for it. I felt no sadness. My hand lay on top of the blades of grass, and the creatures moved beneath it faster and faster, until their world was all fluttering without a sound that I could hear.
The earth was a bed under me. The cries of the birds were a song. They streaked across the sky above me so fast I could barely see them. Sparrows. And then beside me, I saw right in front of me tiny flowers growing in the grass, so very little I hadn’t noticed them before, flowers with white petals and yellow hearts.
The breeze grew strong and the branches above me moved with it. Leaves came down in a shower, a silent rain.
But a man was coming. He came out of the grove of trees down the hill, and made his way up towards me.
It was Joseph, with his head bowed as he walked up the slope. His robe and its tassels blew in the breeze, and he was thi
I knew I should get up out of respect for him, but I felt so good here on the sweet grass and that humming was going on as if I was doing it, all through me, and I only looked at him as he came.
I didn’t have sense enough to know it, but these moments on the grass under the tree had been the first time in my whole life that I’d ever been alone.
I only knew that this peace was broken, and had to be broken. What was time that I could spend it here staring until the world lost all its hard edges? Finally, I climbed to my feet, and I felt as if I was waking up from deep sleep.
“I know,” he said to me sadly. “It’s just a little village, not very much at all in this world, and nothing to rival the great Alexandria, nothing, and you’ve probably thought a hundred times of your friend, Philo, and all your friends, and everything we left behind. I know. I know.”
I couldn’t answer. I tried. I wanted to tell him how I saw it, how soft and sweet it was, and how all of it was so good to me, and searching for the words I didn’t have yet, I didn’t speak quickly enough.
“But you see,” he said, “nobody will ever look for you here. You’re hidden, and that’s how you’ll remain.”
Hidden.
“But why must I—?”
“No,” he said. “No questions now. There will come a time. But listen. You must never tell people things.” He stopped and looked at me to make sure I understood him. “You mustn’t talk about what you hear at our fire. Never do you talk outside your house to anyone. You mustn’t talk about where we’ve been or why, and you keep your questions in your heart, and when you’re old enough, I’ll tell you what you need to know.”
I didn’t say a word.
He took my hand. We walked back towards the village. We came to a little garden marked off with small stones, and near to a few trees. The plot was overgrown with weeds. But the trees were good. A great big tree stood by it, and the tree was full of knuckles and knots.
“My grandfather’s grandfather planted this olive tree,” Joseph said. “And there, you see that tree, that’s the pomegranate, and wait till you see it come into bloom. It’ll be covered with red blossoms.”
He walked up and down looking at the garden plot. The others on the hill were neat and full of plantings.
“We’ll harrow this tomorrow for the women,” he said. “It’s not too late to plant a few vines, grapes, cucumbers, and plant some other things. We’ll see what Old Sarah says.”
He looked at me. “Are you sad?” he asked.
“No,” I said quickly. “I like it!” I wanted so badly to find words, words like those in the Psalms.
He picked me up and he kissed me on both cheeks and he walked with me back home. He didn’t believe me. He thought I was saying it to be kind. I wanted to run through the woods and climb the hills. I wanted to do all the things I’d never done in Alexandria. But we had our work waiting for us when we reached the courtyard, and more and more people were coming to pay their respects.
Chapter 15
Old Sarah said we were a whirlwind. Alphaeus with his sons, Levi and Silas, had the roof completely repaired in no time, and so well done that we could jump up and down on it, just to be sure. Our neighbors uphill to the right were happy about this, as they had a door out to this roof, and we welcomed them to use it as they had in the old days, to spread out their blankets in summer. There was plenty of roof left for us on the main part of the house and to the left side that looked out over the lower house downhill, and the houses in back which went down a slope as well.
There were women on the rooftops seated with their sewing and babies playing and every roof had a parapet like the ones in Jerusalem so that children would not fall. Some people even had plants in pots on their roofs, small fruit trees and plants I didn’t know. But I loved to be up there and look out over the valley.
The winter cold was almost gone. A chill lingered, and I didn’t like it but I knew the warm air was coming soon.
Cleopas and Little Joses, his eldest, who was still small, and Little Justus, a little older and very clever, though he was Simon’s younger son, did the plastering of the mikvah with the waterproof plaster that we knew how to mix up from what we could get from the villages here. And soon the pool was white and ready for water from the cistern. There was a tiny drain in the bottom of the mikvah through which some water would be passing out at all times, and this would make it living water which the Law required for purification.
“It’s living water because of that tiny drain?” Little Salome asked. “That makes it like the stream?”
“Yes,” said Cleopas, her father. “The water moves. It’s living. Enough.”
The afternoon we finished refilling the pool we all gathered around it. It was bright and clear but cold. In the light of the lamps, it looked very fine.
Joseph and I rebuilt the frames for all the vines against the house and along the front of the courtyard, handling the green vines as carefully as we could so as not to break them too much. Some were lost and it was bad, but most of the vines were saved, and we tied up the thick parts with new rope.
James had set to work repairing the benches, taking what was good of some and putting it with what was good of others, to make a few that were sound.
Neighbors came to talk at the courtyard wall, men of few words who were on their way to work in the fields, or women who could stay for a while, with their market baskets, mostly the friends of Old Sarah, but seldom women as old as she was, and other boys came to help. James soon had a friend named Levi, who was kin to us, son of our cousins who owned farmland and rich olive groves, and Little Salome, near the end of the first few days, had a flock of little girls her own age to bring into the house for whispering and squealing and gathering together.
The women had more work to do than they ever had in Alexandria where they could buy fresh bread and even pottage and vegetables every day. Here they were up early to bake the bread and no one brought the water here. They had to go to the spring outside the village and bring it back. And on top of that they were cleaning the upstairs rooms for which we had no use as yet, and scrubbing the benches as soon as James was finished with them, and mopping the courtyard, and sweeping the dirt floors inside.