I went to sit on the leopard-skin rug at her feet, letting my cheek rest against her knee, and gazed sideways at a row of water lilies frescoed across the wall. I thought of the mud walls in Nazareth, the dirt floors, the mud-and-straw roof that had to be fortified against the rains. I’d never minded those humble things, but I couldn’t say I missed them either. What I missed was Mary and Salome stirring pots. My goat following me around the compound. And Jesus, always Jesus. Each morning, upon opening my eyes, it would break over me afresh that he was far away. I would imagine him rising from his mat and repeating the Shema, his prayer shawl draped about his shoulders as he wandered off into the hills to pray, and missing him would become so great that I, too, would rise, then lift my incantation bowl and sing the prayers inside it.
Sophia, Breath of God, set my eyes on Egypt. Once the land of bondage, let it become the land of freedom. Deliver me to the place of papyri and ink. To the place I will be born.
Knowing that we both prayed at the morning hour each day was like a tether binding us, but I lifted my bowl for another reason, too. I longed not only for him, but for myself. How, though, could anyone be born while quarantined in this house?
As I sat there, staring at the lilies on the wall, an idea came to me. I sat up and looked at Yaltha. “If there’s any reference to Chaya in this house, it could be buried somewhere in Haran’s scriptorium. He has a large upright chest there. I don’t know what it contains, only that he takes care to keep it locked. I could try to search through it. If we aren’t free to leave, I can at least do that.”
She didn’t respond, her countenance didn’t change, but I could tell she was listening.
“Search for an adoption transaction,” she said. “Look for anything that might help us.”
iv.
The next morning when Thaddeus’s eyelids thickened and his chin dropped to his chest, I slipped into Haran’s study and searched for the key that unlocked the cabinet at the back of the scriptorium. I came upon it easily, poorly hidden in an alabaster jar on his desk.
When I opened the cabinet, the doors screeched like lyre strings plucked wrongly, and I froze as Thaddeus roused a bit, then settled back to sleep. Hundreds of scrolls were stacked tightly into compartments, row after row, their round ends staring at me like a wall of unblinking eyes.
I guessed—correctly, it would turn out—that I’d discovered his personal archives. Were they arranged by subject, year, language, alphabet, or some mysterious means known only to Haran? With a glance at Thaddeus, I slid out three scrolls from the top left compartment and closed the cabinet without locking it. The first one was a certification in Latin of Haran’s Roman citizenship. The second implored a man named Andromachos to return Haran’s black female donkey that had been stolen from his stable. The third was his will, leaving all of his properties and wealth to his oldest son.
Each morning thereafter, I retrieved the key and removed a handful of scrolls. Thaddeus’s naps typically lasted slightly less than an hour, but fearing he might wake precipitously, I allowed myself only half that time to read, making certain to mark the outside of each document I’d completed with a small dot of ink. Long manuscripts of philosophy were mixed with letters, invitations, commemorations, and horoscopes. Nothing, it seemed, was left unrecorded. If a wee beetle ate a single leaf off a papyrus plant in his field, he wrote a lament that required the sacrifice of three plants. My progress was slow. At the end of two months, I’d read through only half the documents.
“Did you find anything of interest today?” Yaltha asked one afternoon when I returned to our rooms. Always the same question. Of all the emotions, hope was the most mysterious. It grew like the blue lotus, snaking up from muddy hearts, beautiful while it lasted.
I shook my head. Always the same answer.
“Beginning tomorrow I’ll go with you to the scriptorium,” she said. “Together, we can go through