"Go to them, Joseph, you and Yeshua, you always know the right words. Yeshua can calm anyone. Explain to Nahom that his son was a child himself and the Orphan, ah the poor Orphan."
We were about to take our leave when Jason came sidling forward and glared at me. I looked up.
"Be careful men don't say the same things of you, Yeshua," he said.
"What are you saying?" the Rabbi declared. He rose out of the chair.
"Never mind," said Joseph quietly. "It's nothing, only Jason in his grief for more things than one can know."
"What, you mean they don't say strange things about Yeshua?" said Jason, staring at Joseph, and then at me. "You know what they call you, my mute and immutable friend," he said to me. "They call you Yeshua, the Sinless."
I laughed, but I turned away so that it didn't seem that I laughed in his face. But I was actually laughing in his face. He went on talking, but I didn't hear him. I fell to watching his hands. He had beautiful smooth hands. And often when he went into a tirade or a long poem, I merely watched his hands. They made me think of birds.
The Rabbi suddenly grabbed at Jason's robe, and swung at him with his right hand as if to slap him. But then he fell back in his chair, and Jason flushed red. Now he was sorry, dreadfully sorry.
"Well, they talk, don't they?" Jason said, looking at me. "Where is your wife, Yeshua, where are your children?"
"I will not stand here and endure this a moment longer," said James. He pulled me toward the street by my arm. "You will not speak this way to my brother," he said to Jason. "Everyone knows what eats at you. You think we're fools? You can't bear it, can you? Avigail's refused you. Her father laughed you to scorn."
Joseph pushed James out of the room and past me. "Enough, my son. You take the bait every time with him."
Cleopas nodded to this.
The Rabbi slumped in his chair and put his head down on his parchments.
Joseph bent down and whispered to the Rabbi. I heard the consoling tone but not the words. Jason meantime was glaring at James as though James was now his personal enemy, and James was sneering at Jason.
"Is there not enough woe in this village for you?" Cleopas asked him calmly. "Why do you always play the Satan? You have to put my nephew Yeshua on trial because there was no trial for Yitra and the Orphan?"
"Sometimes I think," said Jason, "that I was born to say what others think yet no one will utter. I warn Yeshua, that's all." He dropped his voice to a whisper. "Doesn't his own kinswoman wait on his decision?"
"That's not true!" James declared. "That's the feverish idiocy of an envious mind! She refused you because you're mad, and why would a woman marry the wind, if she doesn't have to?"
Suddenly they were all talking at once, Jason, James, Cleopas, and even Joseph, and the Rabbi.
I went on down the street. The sky was blue and the town was empty. Nobody wanted to come out on account of what had happened. I walked on farther, but I could still hear them.
"Go write a letter to your epicurean friends in Rome," said James in a hard voice. "Tell them of the scandalous goings-on in the miserable hamlet where you're condemned to live. Write a satire, why not?"
He came after me.
Jason came after him, brushing past the older men who followed.
"I'll tell you this much if I do," said Jason furiously. "If I write anything of any value, there's only one man in this place who'll understand what I write and that's your brother, Yeshua."
"Jason, Jason . . ." I said. "Come now, why all this?"
"Well, if it wasn't this, it would be something else," said James. "Don't talk to him. Don't look at him. On a day such as this, he starts a quarrel. It's a bitter winter without rain, and Pontius Pilate threatens to put his ensigns in the Holy City. Yet he wants to fight about this."
"You think that's a joke," Jason railed. "Those ensigns? I tell you those soldiers are marching on Jerusalem right now and they will put those ensigns in the Temple itself if they want to. It's come to that."
"Stop, we do not know any such thing," said Joseph. "We wait on news of Pontius Pilate as we wait on the rain. An end to this, both of you."
"Go back to your uncle," said James. "Why do you follow us and bother us? No one else in Nazareth will talk to you. Go back. Your uncle needs you now. Aren't there pages to be written, to report these hideous goings-on, to somebody? Or is this country lawless as the brigands who live in the hills? What, we just put them in a cave and nothing is recorded of how they died? Go back to your work."
Joseph now gave James a stern look that silenced him, and sent him on ahead with his head bowed.
We went on our way, after him, but Jason followed.