Testament Read online

  Once when just a few of us were with him, and I the only woman, we were called to a hovel in the hills outside of Garaba where a young pagan girl was in the throes of childbirth. There was an obstruction and the child wouldn’t come and so the husband had sent for us, and should Yeshua not have been present, the girl would surely have been dead inside the hour. Even with his intervention there was so much blood from her and such screams that I held little hope she would live. As it was, Yeshua couldn’t save the infant, who was stillborn, but the girl survived. I, who stood by at every stage and mopped her blood and wiped her excrement, had never seen such a thing, nor did I think there were any men but Yeshua who would have done such work, even to save a life. I saw the sweat on him as he worked, and how he held the dead infant he had pulled from the girl, and I felt joined to him then in the very stench and mess of that place. It seemed then that what Yeshua taught us was that we could not divide things into clean and unclean and what could be kept and what cast out, but must take all as one, and see how it made us. Indeed, it hurt me that Yeshua had never taken me in to the lepers with him, that I might also understand in my bones how their flesh was my own.

  Of the hundreds who were now drawn to Yeshua on account of his cures, there were a good number who were eventually won over to his teachings, and understood in his power the sign of God’s grace. But many others went away still baffled by the things he said or disappointed because they’d wished him to cure things only God could undo such as blindness or barrenness. Nonetheless, Yeshua turned no one away, be they pagan or Jew, rich or poor, nor did he require that they follow him before he cured them. When on one occasion a woman arrived secretively who was rumoured to be of the royal family, we were all certain that Yeshua would send her away, because Yohanan still lay in chains. But he saw her as he saw everyone. Afterwards it was said that this was why Herod did not dare to lay a hand on him even though he grew great, not, however, out of thanks for his service but out of fear of his power.

  By now the number of those who counted themselves among Yeshua’s intimates had grown to such a level that we hardly knew from one day to the next how many would arrive to take their morning meal with us or to join us on the road. But one evening Yeshua called us all together at Kinneret, some two dozen of us or more, and after we’d had our meal on the beach he didn’t release us or even have us light our lamps, but kept us there as the darkness fell and the light from our fire dwindled. The evening wind had come up and brought with it a smell of woodsmoke and hyssop from the farms across the lake.

  Finally Yeshua said, Some of you have turned against me.

  None of us were prepared for this and we were at once thrown into confusion. Yaqob said, How do you mean, but Yeshua would only answer, The ones I’m referring to know what they’ve done. We sat waiting for some further word from him until the fire died and it was pitch-dark and we could hardly see the faces of our neighbours. Then Shimon said, If anyone here has betrayed you, I’ll surely kill him.

  There was a moment of fear then when it seemed that each of us imagined we had been the one to betray him, in some way we didn’t know. I couldn’t see Yeshua’s face and so wasn’t sure whether to take his silence as a sanction of Shimon’s threat. But then he asked, Since when have I taught you to kill, and we knew Shimon had misspoken.

  Even those who are against us must be granted forgiveness if they ask for it, Yeshua said, then waited in silence. But when those he referred to didn’t come forward, he still wouldn’t name them, saying only that they shouldn’t present themselves among his brothers and sisters, as he called us, if they had their daggers drawn for him.

  The following morning when we gathered for prayer it was only Kaleb and Pheroras from Kefar Nahum and Aram from Kinneret who hadn’t come. Though we knew now that they were the culprits, still Yeshua would say nothing against them, which however had the effect of making us imagine them guilty of every sort of crime. As it fell out, we were not so far from the truth—bit by bit we came to learn that the group of them, under Aram’s leadership, had made a pact with the brigand known as Hezron the Tyrian to deliver Yeshua’s followers to him for an attack on the Roman garrison at Kefar Nahum. Hezron kept an army in the mountains beyond Gush Halav, and was much reviled in our region for plundering the homes and farms of the innocent; for though he claimed his enemy was Rome and his cause was for the Jews, he brought more trouble to us and inflicted greater suffering than the Romans ever did. That Aram had thought to turn to Hezron’s purposes the followers of Yeshua showed contempt not only for Yeshua’s message but for the loyalty and sense of his followers.

  The question of Rome had often been put to Yeshua, since Galileans hated any fetter and couldn’t bear that Herod was Rome’s vassal. But Yeshua always said to people, Didn’t even the Maccabees, who were our liberators, rule as tyrants when they gained power, and end in disgrace; and didn’t even Solomon, our greatest king, collect taxes for his own pleasure, and thus plant the seeds of revolt. So he said that one oppressor replaced another, on and on, and if it wasn’t the Persians it was the Greeks, and if not the Greeks then our own saviours, so that we might go on killing our oppressors until the end of days, and still be oppressed. Thus he didn’t support those who called themselves rebels, or the shedding of blood, since it wasn’t by killing that we could come to freedom, he said, but only by cherishing life.

  The fact was, however, that Aram had gone to Hezron not because he followed the rebels or believed in their cause but merely for revenge against Yeshua, having taken offence the times Yeshua had reprimanded him. It came out now that Aram had long been a scoundrel, an idler and a prodigal who was a huge burden to his family and who had been recruited to us by his cousin Thomas merely in the hope that he might be reformed. We saw now how far he remained from fulfilling that hope, and in fact the instant his plot was uncovered, he went about denouncing Yeshua and spreading lies about him. Over the matter of the lepers, for instance, he claimed he had witnessed Yeshua’s sorcery in curing them; and beyond this he tried to raise people’s fears by saying the lepers now flocked from Arbela to seek Yeshua out, and would soon pollute the whole of the countryside. Much of the time he went around half-demented with wine and invented every sort of thing. But still Yeshua would say nothing against him, nor would it ever have crossed his mind to turn him in to the authorities.

  It was largely on Aram’s account, however, that we came to the matter of the twelve. It had become clear that with so many who now wished to be among Yeshua’s intimates there was always the danger that those who couldn’t be trusted would insert themselves among us. Thus one morning Yeshua picked twelve of the men who were closest to him, like the twelve tribes of old Israel, he said, and named them his special messengers. Those who were left out felt slighted, and wondered why he had chosen Shimon’s brother Andreas above them when he was simple, or Matthaios, who was a toll collector, or Thomas, who had brought us Aram; and indeed I myself was guilty in this, not for my own sake, since Yeshua had made clear that we women would all remain with him even though we were not named among the twelve, but for my father’s. It was my father, after all, who had been the first to accept Yeshua, and who had found him his home, and I saw how it hurt him now not to be among the chosen. I was afraid he had been rejected on my mother’s account. But Yeshua, seeing my distress, didn’t reprove me as he might have, but came to comfort me, saying it was because he loved my father most that he had excluded him.

  He’s a merchant and can’t afford enemies like the rest, he said. The others have only the fish to look after.

  There were several of the men, however, who came to him unhappy at being excluded with whom he was harsh, accusing them of thinking only of their own glory. He asked them how many rowers fit in a boat before it sinks; and so it was with him, that a dozen men would help him while fifty only hinder, and each must be happy with the lot he’d drawn. The whole matter left him angry with us, not only because of the grumblings of those who were excluded but because a
few of those who’d been chosen went so far as to boast of the fact and to lord it over the others. Then almost immediately it happened that two of the twelve were lost—one of them, Salman from Kefar Nahum, was drowned during a storm on the lake, while the other, a young man from Judea named Yishai, grew frightened at the ill omen of Salman’s death and returned to Judea to his family. But Yeshua refused to fill these places from among those he’d rejected, saying none of them had shown themselves worthy.

  In the midst of these troubles the rumour came to us that the prophet Yohanan had been condemned for treason and taken down to the fortress at Macherus. This was at the end of a long killing spree on Herod’s part when dozens of his enemies had been dispatched, and we were afraid that Yohanan would be added to the lot, and had been moved to Macherus so the thing could be done in secret. By chance it occurred that a few of Hezron the Tyrian’s men were captured around the same time; and this worked to our detriment, for when Aram learned of their arrests he began to fear that they would betray him. Such was the working of his mind that he imagined to protect himself by levelling his own accusations in turn. So he began to go about the countryside publicizing that Yeshua had been Yohanan’s acolyte and saying his treasons far exceeded Yohanan’s, no doubt believing he might thus barter Yeshua’s life for his own should he be accused.

  Thomas was the first to get wind of these things and quickly came to warn us.

  Yeshua said, Should I run like a criminal then, and seem to confirm his charges.

  He assured us that as he had always kept himself within the law he had nothing to fear; and it was true that whenever his enemies had tried to lure him into treason he had outsmarted them. But we knew that Herod would find the way to accuse him if he had a mind to.

  In the end, because Shimon and some of the others implored him, Yeshua agreed to leave us for a time and go up into Tyre, beyond Herod’s borders, in the hope of cutting short Aram’s accusations. He agreed to this more for our sake than his own, lest Aram’s charges bring the rest of us into risk, and said he would go openly and not by cover of night. Shimon wouldn’t hear of his going alone and so at once arranged to accompany him, enlisting also Yaqob and Yohanan, though they would be sorely missed from their father’s boats and Shimon himself must leave his work to a brother who was simple-minded and to sons who were still children.

  For my part, I was filled with foreboding over the journey, because I was afraid it would change things among us in some irrevocable way. Already we were so different from how we had been in the beginning, and there were the crowds now, and the sick, and Yeshua’s enemies who wished him harm, and each of these seemed a fence that kept me from the man who had first walked with me by the lake. When Yeshua had chosen the twelve, he had promised to keep me always at his side; but how, as a woman, could I hope to keep pace with him. I envied Shimon and the others for being men, but in my pride also thought that they couldn’t fathom Yeshua as I did, and that Yeshua too had understood this.

  On the day of his departure I didn’t cry as I had when he’d left our home months before, nor did I take it hard that it was Ribqah’s hand he held at the end and not my own. We were at the house of Shimon and he said to me, Look after your sister, and indeed it was Ribqah who shed tears, for since Yeshua had come her father hadn’t dared to lay a hand on her, but with him gone who could say. Then he set off, and there were people who’d heard of his departure who were waiting for him at the gate. I saw him differently then, watching him pass through the crowd—for a moment I didn’t know who he was, or how I had dared to speak to him, or whether I had dreamed the times when he’d walked with me by the lake. I was a girl then, I thought, a child. Yet only a season had passed since he’d come, hardly time enough even for barley to ripen.

  During the time that Yeshua was away there was a group of us that met in my father’s house in Migdal. Some of the women came, and those of the twelve who remained. But without Yeshua we seemed lost, as if nothing of what he’d taught us had stayed with us. Many times there were arguments, and the simplest matters eluded our understanding, so that even things that had been settled now seemed unclear again. Philip, who hadn’t been with us in our earliest days, brought up again the question of having women among us—how was it, he said, that the women were allowed to stay with the twelve when there were men who had been turned away. None of us knew how to answer this, not even those who had been there when Yeshua had first taught us. Afterwards Ribqah was afraid we would be forced to leave the group, but it was my mother who calmed her, saying that Yeshua would put the men in their place when he returned.

  With each day that passed, however, it seemed to me less likely that he’d return at all. I began to fear that God had betrayed us—why had he forced Yeshua out to Tyre, to those who had no use for him, when we here who depended on him felt his lack hourly. But my greater fear was this: that over time even our own need for him would pass. Already I could see us returning to what we’d been before—the men went out for their fishing; my father tended to his business. My own place was back in the smoking sheds, and day by day I felt something fading from me, until I began to see my life ahead of me as if Yeshua had never come to it. It was possible, I saw, to return to the old ways, even when the truth had been laid out before you, since what was familiar was always lying in wait to reclaim you.

  Then one day the word came to us that Yeshua had been seen crossing back to Galilee at Gush Halav. Not much more than a month had passed since he’d gone yet I had missed him as if he vanished from the earth, and could hardly call up the image of him in my mind. Aram had come to his senses by then, and seen how he only brought risk to himself with his accusations, and so it appeared that Yeshua had timed his homecoming well. But rather than the joy I had imagined, I felt a strange misgiving when I heard of his return, fearing every sort of thing, that he had changed or no longer loved us or that I had been mistaken in him in some way and must now see the truth.

  It was the end of the summer and a busy time for us, but my father called me from work the instant he’d got word and said we must make our way to Kefar Nahum to be there to greet Yeshua when he arrived. He had one of the labourers prepare our boat, then filled it with fish and provisions so that we might get ready a feast at the house of Shimon. But when we arrived at Kefar Nahum there was a large crowd already awaiting Yeshua at the gates. My father wanted to find the way to include them in the feast but I discouraged him.

  There are too many, I said. And how will we know his followers from those who are merely taking advantage.

  That isn’t how Yeshua would have us think, my father said, but still he deferred to me, for which I was ashamed, since I knew it was only that I wished to have Yeshua alone with us, free from the crowds. It was my punishment that in the end I caused my father to be shamed along with me, though he had seen the matter rightly, because when Yeshua arrived and heard that food had been prepared, he promptly reprimanded us for not having given it out among the sick who awaited him. That was the greeting that we had from him, then, and no feast at all, for when he had finished with the sick, he said he was tired from his journey and sent us on our way.

  I couldn’t have borne the humiliation of this and the coldness with which he greeted us, which indeed confirmed my every fear, had it not been clear to me at once that he was not himself. At first I imagined that some calamity had befallen him along the road. But I’d noticed the fourth who accompanied Shimon and the others as if he’d made himself one of them. His look set him apart—he wasn’t solid like we Galileans, but small-boned and thin and his skin as dark as an Arab’s, almost black. Several times Yeshua spoke to him as he went about tending to the sick, but in a manner I hardly recognized—it was the manner of city people, who smiled and raised their voices, but behind every word seemed to hide a dozen that went unspoken.

  By the following morning it was clear that along with the stranger had come an evil influence. We awoke to the news of the prophet Yohanan’s death—in Migdal the word
came through at dawn, out of Tiberias. My father and I immediately set out for Kefar Nahum, to find a large crowd had already gathered there at Shimon’s gate to await some word from Yeshua. A wail of mourning had gone up, but though there was much bitterness among people, there was no disorder.

  While we were waiting, however, I saw the stranger approaching from the far gates, which led out to the Roman camp, and not long afterwards a contingent of soldiers arrived. I didn’t know what to make of this except that he was a spy who had been sent to us and had called the soldiers in the hope of provoking a riot, so that Yeshua might be arrested as the cause of it. If that was the case, he hadn’t reckoned that the garrison’s commander, Ventidius, a Sidonian who had lived among us for many years, was one of those whom Yeshua had won over. Thus his soldiers held back and didn’t disturb our mourning, and when Yeshua emerged to address the crowd, Ventidius at once took the chance to express his own outrage at Herod’s crime.

  Yeshua had already begun his own mourning and came to us with his robe torn and his head blackened. At the sight of him the crowd was instantly silenced. He did not mince his words then, but spoke openly of Yohanan’s death, comparing him to the ancient prophets who, like him, had been persecuted by their leaders and had seen their warnings ignored. Then he told us of the years he had spent with Yohanan in the desert—there were many, he said, who had called Yohanan a madman, and he’d had the look of one, but his madness had been that of truth, which had the appearance of madness to those who had never heard it spoken before.

  When Yeshua had finished he retreated to return to his mourning, and the crowd gradually dispersed. Those of us who were with the twelve gathered outside Shimon’s gate then. I thought the stranger would drift away with the crowd, but instead he inserted himself among us, and prevailed upon Yohanan to introduce him. He gave himself out as Yihuda from Qiryat, in the Negeb of Judea. But when Philip asked how many days’ journey his town was from Kefar Nahum, he couldn’t tell us.