I moved towards the stones.
Once again, James pulled me back, but this time more gently than before. "Please, Yeshua," he whispered.
I stayed where I was.
I looked at them, the two, lying there as if they were children asleep, amid the heap of stones, and not enough blood between them, really, not enough blood for the Angel of Death even to stop and turn and take notice of them.
Chapter Three
WE CAME TO THE RABBI'S HOUSE. The doors were open. Jason stood in the far corner against the racks of books, his arms folded. Old Rabbi Jacimus sat hunched over his desk, his elbows on the parchment, his head covered.
He rocked back and forth and he prayed or read, it was impossible to know. Perhaps he didn't know.
" 'Don't be angry with men because we are nothing,' " he whispered. " 'And don't take account of what we do; for what are we?' "
I stood quietly beside Joseph and James, waiting and listening. Cleopas stood behind us.
" 'For behold, by Your will we enter this world, and we don't go out of it by our will; who has ever said to his father and mother, "Beget us." And who goes into the realm of Death saying, "Receive us"? What strength do we have, Lord, to bear Your anger? What are we that we can bear Your justice?' "
He turned; he realized we were there, and then he sat back and sighed and turned a little towards us but went on with his praying. " 'Shelter us in Your grace, and in Your mercy give help to us.' "
Joseph repeated these words softly.
Jason looked for a moment as if all this was beyond his endurance, but there was a wistful softness to his eyes that I'd seldom seen in him. He was a beautiful man with dark hair, always finely dressed, and on the Sabbath his linen robes often gave off the faint scent of frankincense.
The Rabbi, who had been a man in his prime when I'd first come home to Nazareth, was now slightly crippled by his age, and his hair was as white as that of Joseph or my uncles. He looked at us as if we couldn't see him, as if we didn't stand waiting on him, as if he were merely looking from some safe place at us and wondering, and then he said sleepily,
"Are they taken away?" He meant the bodies of the boys.
"They are," Joseph said. "And the bloodied stones with them. All taken."
The Rabbi looked to Heaven and sighed. "They belong now to Azazel," he said.
"No, but they're gone," said Joseph. "And we come to see you. We know you're miserable. What do you want us to do? Shall we go to Nahom and the boy's mother?"
The Rabbi nodded. "Joseph, I want you to stay here and comfort me," he said, shaking his head, "but that's where you belong. Nahom has brothers in Judea. He should take his family and go. He'll never rest easy in this village again. Joseph, tell me, why did this happen?"
Jason roused himself with his usual fire. "One doesn't have to go to Athens and Rome to learn the things those boys did," he said. "Why can't they happen in Nazareth?"
"That's not my question," said the Rabbi, looking sharply at him. "I don't ask about what the boys did. We don't know what the boys did! There was no trial, no witnesses, no justice! I ask how could they stone those boys, that's what I ask. Where is the law, where is justice?"
One might have thought he despised his nephew from the manner in which he'd answered him, but in fact, the Rabbi loved Jason. The Rabbi's sons were dead. Jason kept the Rabbi young, and whenever Jason wasn't in Nazareth the Rabbi was distant and forgetful. As soon as Jason came through the door from some far-off place, with a sack of books over his shoulder, the Rabbi sprang to life, and sometimes in their fiery back-and-forth, the Rabbi seemed a boy in his passion.
"Ah, and what will they do," Jason asked, "when Yitra's father gets hold of the children who started this. And they were children, you know, those little boys who hang around the tavern, and they're gone, they were gone before the first stone flew through the air. Nahom can spend his life looking for those boys."
"Children," said my uncle Cleopas, "children who might not have even known what they saw. What, two young ones under the same blanket on a winter night?"
"It's over," said James. "What, are we to have the trial now that we didn't have before? It's finished."
"You're right," said the Rabbi. "But will you go to the mother and the father, will you do this for me? If I go, I'll weep too much and too long and I'll become angry. If Jason goes, he'll say strange things."
Jason laughed darkly. "Strange things. That this village is a miserable heap of dust? Yes, I would say such strange things."
"You do not have to live here, Jason," said James. "No one ever said Nazareth needed its own Greek philosopher. Go back to Alexandria, or Athens, or Rome, or wherever it is you're always running off to. Do we need your ruminations? We never did."
"James, be patient," said Joseph.
The Rabbi appealed to Joseph as if he hadn't even heard the argument.