How many days passed?
I didn't count them. The rain visited us again in light and beautiful showers. A blessing for every blade of grass in the fields.
Shemayah was seen back at work, with the hands who'd gone ahead with the plowing when he himself had remained indoors refusing to give the simplest orders. I saw him one morning, barreling through the street and crashing into his own door as if to make war on his own household.
Days. Days of bracing cold, and gliding white clouds, and the earth vibrantly green all around us. Days of the ivy climbing the lattices once more, and days of happy designs and happy hopes. Little Cleopas and Little Mary would soon have a child, or so I was told, though of course I'd seen the evidence of it. And nothing new from Judea except that Pontius Pilate, the Governor, seemed to have settled in with only a few minor disputes with the Temple authorities.
One night after deliberately roaming until I could roam no more, my head teeming, I trudged in, well after supper, ate a piece of bread and pottage, and went to sleep. I felt my mother put a clean fresh-smelling blanket over me. With the water now so plentiful the house smelled of freshly washed wool. I kissed her hand before she withdrew. I went through the layers of dreams and softly into nothingness.
Suddenly I awoke. I'd been with someone who'd been weeping. Terrible weeping. The weeping of a man who can't weep. The suffocated and desperate weeping of someone who cannot bear to do it.
All was well in the room. The women sewed by the fire. My mother asked, "What is it?"
"Weeping," I said. "Someone crying."
"Not in this house," said James.
I pushed off the blanket. "Where is the marriage contract for Avigail?"
"What, safely in that chest, why do you ask?" said James. "What's the matter with you?"
This was not the golden chest of the Magi's gifts. This was the simple chest in which we kept our ink and our important papers.
I went to the chest, opened it, and took out the marriage contract. I rolled it up tight, slipped a loose scrap of soft leather around it, and went out.
A faint bit of rain had fallen earlier.
The streets were shimmering. Nazareth under the luminous Heavens looked like a town made of silver.
The door of Shemayah's house was open. The barest light escaped.
I went to the door. I pushed it back.
I heard him crying. I heard that awful choking sound, that bitter sound almost as if he were strangling in his pain.
He sat alone in a cheerless room. The coals had long ago died to ash. One lamp burnt there, on the floor, a little crockery lamp, and the oil was faintly scented - the only comfort at all here.
I shut the door, and came and sat beside him. He didn't look at me.
I knew how this had to begin, and so I told him how sorry I was for all I'd done that had made him so miserable. I confessed.
"I am so sorry, Shemayah," I said.
His cries grew loud. They grew huge in the little room. But he had no words. He slumped forward. He rocked back and forth.
"Shemayah, I have here the contract for her marriage," I said. "It's all done properly and right, and she'll be married to Reuben of Cana. It's here, Shemayah, it's written."
He groped with his left hand, gently batting at the paper, gently pushing the contract away, and then he turned blindly to me, and I felt his heavy arm go around my neck. He wept on my shoulder.
Chapter Eighteen
IT WAS AN HOUR perhaps before I left him. I brought back the marriage contract and put it in the chest. No one noticed.
Jason was there, and the Rabbi - they were on their feet and so were most of my brothers - and they were all talking excitedly.
"Where have you been!" cried my mother, and then it seemed I was surrounded by anxious faces. There was the rustling of parchment, Jason shaking my shoulder.
"Jason, let me be tonight, please," I said. "I'm sleepy, and I want nothing but to go to bed. Whatever it is, can't we talk about this tomorrow?"