He bent down and brushed my hair back from my forehead. He kissed me there.
"You smiling at me?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. "You spoke the truth," I said.
"What truth?"
"I'm too little to understand," I said.
He laughed. "You don't fool me," he said and he stood up and we walked down the hill together.
Chapter 21
The summer had been so good.
The second crop of figs was pulling down our old tree in the courtyard, and the olive pickers beating the branches in the orchards, and I felt a happiness I'd never known, and I knew that I felt it.
It was the beginning of time for me - from the last days in Alexandria to the coming to this place.
As the months passed, we finished all the repairs on our house so that it was near to perfect for all of our families - that of my uncles, Simon and Alphaeus and Cleopas, and for Joseph and my mother, and for me.
The Greek slave, Riba, who had come with Bruria gave birth to a child.
There was much whispering and fussing about this matter, even among the children, with Little Salome whispering to me, "She didn't hide in that tunnel from the robbers far enough, did she?"
But the night of the baby's birth, I heard it crying, and I heard Riba singing to it in Greek, and then Bruria was singing to it, and my aunts were laughing and singing together, with the lamps lighted, and it was a happy night.
Joseph woke up and took the baby into his arms.
"That's no Arab child," said my aunt Salome, "that's a Jewish boy and you know it."
"Who said it was an Arab child!" cried Riba. "I told you - ."
"Very well, very well," Joseph said quietly, as always, "we'll call him Ishmael. Does that make everyone happy?"
I liked the baby at once.
He had a good little chin and large black eyes. He didn't cry all the time like my aunt Salome's new baby, who fussed if you made a strange noise, and Little Salome loved to carry him around while his mother worked. And so there was Little Ishmael. Little John of Aunt Salome and Alphaeus was one of fifteen Johns in the village, along with seventeen Simons, and thirteen by the name of Judas, and more Marys than I had fingers on both hands - and these just in our kindred on this side of the hill.
But I go ahead of my story. These babies didn't come till winter.
Summer burned hot without the sea breeze of the coast, and bathing in the spring was great fun every night when we returned from Sepphoris, and the boys got into water fights with each other, while around the bend in the creek you could hear the girls laughing and talking amongst themselves. Upstream at the cistern cut in the rock where the women filled their jars there was much talking and laughing too, and my mother even sometimes came in the evening just to see the other women and walk with them.
As the summer wore on, there were weddings in the village, both of them long all-night celebrations at which it seemed everybody in Nazareth was drinking and dancing, the men dancing with the men wildly, and the women dancing with the women, and even the maidens, though they were fearful and stayed together always next to the canopy under which the bride sat, the bride covered in the most fine veils and shining gold bracelets.
Many in the village played the flutes; and several men the lyres and the women beat the tambourines over their heads, and old men hit the cymbals to make a steady time for the dancing. Even Old Justus was brought out and propped on pillows against the wall, and nodding, and smiling at the wedding, though the spit dripped down his chin and Old Sarah had to wipe it away.
The father of the bride sometimes did the wildest dance of joy, rocking and throwing up his arms, and turning fast in his brightly trimmed robes, and some of the people drank themselves drunk and their brothers or sons picked them up and took them into their houses without a whisper as was expected.
There was good food to eat, roasted lamb, and thick porridge of meat and lentils, and tears shed, and we little ones played out in the fields late, running and screaming and hooting and jumping, in the darkness, because nobody cared. I ran as far up into the forest as I dared to go and then up the hill and looked at the stars, and danced the way I'd seen the men dance.
More things happened that year than I can possibly tell.
There was one wedding of the rich farmer's daughter, Alexandra, a beauty, everyone said, and what a bride she was in her gold-threaded veils. When the canopy and the torches came to her door, everyone sang at the sight of her.
People came from other villages to share that feast, and when the Pharisees gathered to wish everyone well, and would not eat, the mother of Alexandra the beauty went and bowed to the ground to Rabbi Sherebiah and told him the food had been slaughtered and prepared as was perfect and clean, and if he would not partake of her food for this wedding of her daughter, she herself would not eat or drink at this wedding though it was her only daughter.
Rabbi Sherebiah called for his servant to bring him the water to wash his hands, as Pharisees always did that, washed their fingers right before they ate, even though they were clean, and then he ate from the banquet, holding up the morsel for all to see, and everyone cheered, and all the Pharisees did as he did, even Rabbi Jacimus, though Pharisees almost never dined with anyone but each other.
Then Rabbi Sherebiah danced in spite of his wooden leg, and all the men danced.
Our beloved Rabbi Berekhaiah came forward and danced a slow and wondrous dance that delighted all of us little ones who were his pupils. Moreover, after that his father-in-law, not to be outdone, had to dance, as did every old man in the village.
The mother of Alexandra went off to sit with the bride and the women and they were drinking happily that the Pharisees had come to the banquet.
Work went on.
Buildings went up in Sepphoris as if they were plants growing wild in a marsh. The burnt places were healed the way bruises are healed. The marketplace grew larger all the time, with more and more merchants there to sell to those furnishing their new houses. And there were laborers aplenty for us to hire for our work. And everyone called us the Egyptian Gang.
No one complained of our prices, and as Alphaeus and Simon directed the building of foundations and floors and new walls, Cleopas and Joseph were making the pretty banquet tables, and bookshelves, and Roman chairs we'd made in Alexandria.
I did learn to paint borders more cleverly than before. And even to paint some of the flowers and leaves, though pretty much I filled in what the skilled painters had outlined for us.
When we did stonework, it was of the richest kind, when matching the marble pavers took patience, and the plan took careful layout. We went to the village of Cana to do a floor there for a man who had come back from the Greek islands and wanted his library to be beautiful.