I picked up the potsherd and started to cut again, fast, holding the measure perfectly still. Straight line.
"You will not ask for Avigail's hand, will you?" he asked.
"No, I will not," I answered, reaching for the next plank. "I'll never marry." I went on measuring.
"That's not what your brother James says," he answered.
"Jason, leave off," I said gently. "What James says is between him and me."
"He says you will marry her - yes, Avigail - and he will see to it. He says her father will accept you. He says money means nothing to Shemayah. He says you're the man her father won't - ."
"Leave off !" I said. I looked up at him. He was towering over me now as if he meant to threaten me.
"What is it?" I asked. "What's really inside you? Why won't you let this go?"
He came down on his knees, and sat back on his heels, so that we were eye to eye again. He was thoughtful and miserable, and when he talked his voice was hoarse.
"Do you know what Shemayah said about me when my uncle went to ask for Avigail? Do you know what that old man said to my uncle, even though he knew that I was behind the curtain, that I could hear?"
"Jason," I said softly.
"The old man said he could see what I was from a mile away. The old man sneered. He used a Greek word for it, the word they used for Yitra and the Orphan. . . ."
"Jason, can't you see through all this?" I asked. "The man's old, bitter. When Avigail's mother died, the man died. Only Avigail keeps him breathing and walking and talking, and complaining of his sore leg."
He was beside himself. He didn't hear me.
"My uncle pretended he didn't understand him, that wicked man! My uncle, you know, he is a master of formalities. He didn't acknowledge this insult. He simply rose and said, 'Well, then perhaps you'll consider . . .' And he never even told me what Shemayah had said, that he had said - ."
"Jason, Shemayah doesn't want to lose his daughter. She is all that the man has. Shemayah's the richest farmer in Nazareth and he might as well be a beggar at the foot of the hill. All he has is Avigail and he must give Avigail to someone in marriage sooner or later, and he's afraid. You come, in your fine linen and with your barbered hair, with your rings, and your gift for words in Greek and in Latin, and you make him afraid. Forgive him, Jason. Forgive him for the sake of your own heart."
He stood up. He paced.
"You don't even know what I'm talking about, do you?" he asked. "You don't understand what I'm trying to tell you!" he said. "I think one moment you understand, and the next I think you're an imbecile!"
"Jason, this place is too small for you," I said. "You wrestle with demons every day and every night in all you read, all you write, all you think, and probably in every dream you dream. Go to Jerusalem where there are men who want to talk about the world. Go to Alexandria again or Rhodes. You were happy on Rhodes. That was a good place for you, with plenty of philosophers. Maybe Rome is where you belong."
"Why should I go to any of those places?" he asked bitterly. "Why? Because you think that old man Shemayah was right?"
"No, I don't think so at all," I said.
"Well, let me tell you something, you know nothing of Rhodes or Rome or Athens, you know nothing of this world. And there comes a time when any man can be fed up with fine company, when he's tired of the taverns and the schools and the drunken banquets - when he wants to come home and walk under the trees his grandfather planted. I may not be an Essene in my heart, no, but I am a man."
"I know."
"You don't know."
"I wish I could give you what you need."
"And what is that, as if you knew!"
"My shoulder," I said. "My arms around you." I shrugged. "Kindness, that's all. I wish I could give it to you now."
He was amazed. Words boiled in him, and nothing came out of him. He turned this way and that, then back to me. "Oh, you had better not dare to do that," he whispered, staring down at me with narrow eyes. "They'd stone the both of us, if you did that, the way they stoned those boys." He moved towards the edge of the courtyard.
"In this winter," I said, "they very well might."
"You're a simpleton and a fool," he said. A whisper from the shadows.