"You said, 'Men scorn what they can't grasp. They suffer in their longing for it.'"
Silence from me.
He drew his left hand out of his robes and now he held my hand with both his hands.
"Why didn't you stay with us in the Temple?" he asked. "We begged you to do it." He sighed. "Think of what you might have done if you had remained in the Temple and studied; think of the boy you were! If only you'd devoted your life to what is written, think what you might have done. I took such delight in you, and we all did, and Old Berekhiah and Sherebiah from Nazareth, how they loved you and wanted you to stay. But what have you become! A carpenter - one of a gang of carpenters. Men who make floors, walls, benches, and tables."
Very slowly I tried to free my hand, but he wouldn't let me go. I moved slowly to his left and saw even more of the light spill down on his upturned face.
"The world swallowed you," he said bitterly. "You left the Temple and the world simply swallowed you. That's what the world does. It swallows everything. One woman's angel is another man's scornful tale. Grass grows over the ruins of villages until one can find nothing of them and trees sprout from the very stones where great houses, houses like this one, once stood. All these books are falling to pieces, aren't they? Look, see the bits of parchment all over my robes. The world swallows the Word of God. You should have stayed and studied Torah! What would your grandfather Joachim say if he knew what you've become?"
He sat back. He let me go. His lips curved into a sneer. He looked up at me though his gray brows were drawn down into a frown. He motioned for me to go away from him.
I stood there.
"Why does the world swallow the Word of God?" I asked. He couldn't hear the heat in my voice. "Why?" I asked. "Are we not a holy people, are we not to be a bright and shining light to the nations? Are we not to bring salvation to the whole world?"
"That is what we are!" he said. "Our Temple is the greatest Temple in the Empire. Who doesn't know this?"
"Our Temple is one of a thousand temples, my lord," I said.
Again came that flash, seemingly of memory, buried memory of some great agitated moment, but it was no memory. "A thousand temples throughout the world," I said, "and every day sacrifice is offered to a thousand gods from one end of the Empire to the other."
He glared at me.
I went on,
"All around us this happens, in the land of Israel this happens. It happens in Tyre, in Sidon, in Ashkelon; it happens in Caesarea Philippi; it happens in Tiberias. And in Antioch and in Corinth and in Rome and in the woods of the great north and in the wilds of Britannia." I took a slow breath. "Are we the light of the nations, my lord?" I demanded.
"What is all that to us!" he countered.
"What is all that? Egypt, Italy, Greece, Germania, Asia, what is all that? It's the world, my lord. That's what it is to us, it's the world to whom we are to be the light, we, our people!"
He was outraged. "What are you saying?"
"It's where I live, my lord," I said. "Not in the Temple, but in the world. And in the world, I learn what the world is and what the world will teach, and I am of the world. The world's made of wood and stone and iron, and I work in it. No, not in the Temple. In the world. And I study Torah; and I pray with the assembly; and on the feasts I go to Jerusalem to stand before the Lord - in the Temple - but this is in the world, all this. In the world. And when it is time for me to do what the Lord has sent me to do in this world, this world which belongs to Him, this world of wood and stone and iron and grass and air, He will reveal it to me. And what this carpenter shall yet build in this world on that day, the Lord knows, and the Lord shall reveal it."
He was speechless.
I took a step back from him. I turned and stared ahead of me. I saw the dust moving in the rays of the noon sunshine. Sparkling in lattices above bookshelves and bookshelves. I thought I saw images in the dust, things moving with purpose, things airy and immense yet guided and patient in their movement.
It seemed the room was filled with others, the beating of their hearts, but they were invisible hearts or not even hearts. Not hearts like my heart or his heart, of flesh and blood.
Leaves rattled at the windows and a cold draft crept across the shining floor. I felt removed and at the same time there, under his roof, standing before him, with my back to him, and I was drifting, yet anchored, and content to be so.
The anger washed out of me.
I turned and looked at him.
He was calm and wondering. He sat collected amid his robes. He sat peering at me as if from a great and safe distance.
When he spoke, it was a murmur.
"All these years," he said, "as I've watched you on the road to Jerusalem, I've wondered, 'What does he think? What does he know?' "
"Do you have an answer?"
"I have hope," he whispered.