"Why should I go to any of those places?" he asked bitterly. "Why? Because you think that old man Shemayah was right?"
"No, I don't think so at all," I said.
"Well, let me tell you something, you know nothing of Rhodes or Rome or Athens, you know nothing of this world. And there comes a time when any man can be fed up with fine company, when he's tired of the taverns and the schools and the drunken banquets - when he wants to come home and walk under the trees his grandfather planted. I may not be an Essene in my heart, no, but I am a man."
"I know."
"You don't know."
"I wish I could give you what you need."
"And what is that, as if you knew!"
"My shoulder," I said. "My arms around you." I shrugged. "Kindness, that's all. I wish I could give it to you now."
He was amazed. Words boiled in him, and nothing came out of him. He turned this way and that, then back to me. "Oh, you had better not dare to do that," he whispered, staring down at me with narrow eyes. "They'd stone the both of us, if you did that, the way they stoned those boys." He moved towards the edge of the courtyard.
"In this winter," I said, "they very well might."
"You're a simpleton and a fool," he said. A whisper from the shadows.
"You know Scripture better than your uncle, don't you?" I looked at him, a dim figure now, against the lattice. Specks of light in his eyes.
"What has that to do with you and me and this?" he demanded.
"Think on it," I suggested. " 'Be kind to the stranger in your land for you were once a stranger in the land of Egypt.' " I shrugged. " 'And you know what it means to be a stranger.'. . . So tell me, how are we to treat the stranger in ourselves?"
The door of the house opened and Jason slipped back against the lattice, startled and shaken.
It was only James.
"What's the matter with you tonight?" he demanded of Jason. "Why are you hovering about in your linen robes? What's the matter? You look like you've lost your mind."
My heart shrank.
Jason snorted with contempt.
"Well, it's nothing a carpenter can fix," he said. "I'll tell you that much." And then he went off, up the hill.
James made some soft derisive sound. "Why do you tolerate him, why do you let him come into this courtyard and carry on as if this was a public marketplace?"
I went back to work. I said,
"You like him a lot better than you let on."
"I want to talk to you," James said.
"Not now, if you'll forgive me. I have these lines to draw. I told the others I'd do it. I sent them home."
"I know what you did," he said. "You think you are the head of this family?"
"No, James, I don't." I continued with my work.
"Now is when I choose to talk to you," he said. "Now, when the women are quiet, and the little ones are out of the way. I've come out here to talk to you, and for that reason alone."
He walked back and forth in front of the planks. I laid the planks side by side by side. Lines straight.
"James, the town's asleep. I'm almost asleep. I want to go to bed."
I drew the next line as carefully as I could. Good enough. I reached for the last plank. I stopped for a moment and rubbed my hands together. I hadn't realized it until now but my fingers were almost rigid with cold.
"Yeshua," James said in a low voice, "the time has come and you can avoid it no longer. You will marry," he said. "There is no reason any longer for you to put it off."
I looked up at him.
"I don't follow you, James."
"Don't you? Besides, where, where in all the prophecies does it say that you won't marry?" His voice was harsh. He spoke with uncommon slowness. "Whoever declared that you should not take a wife?"
I looked down again, careful to do this slowly, to move slowly so that he felt in no way more challenged than he already was.
I finished the last line. I looked over the planks. Then slowly I stood up. The pain in my knees was intense, and I bent to rub the left and then the right.
He stood with his arms folded, in a cold anger, far removed from Jason's hot currents. But in his own way, he was even angrier, and I looked past it as best I could.
"James, I will never marry," I said. "It's time we stopped this dance. It's time we put an end to it altogether. It troubles you . . . and you alone."
He put out his hand as he so often did and held my arm just tight enough for it to be painful and he didn't move.
"It does not trouble me alone," he said. "You try my patience to the limit, you do."
"I don't mean to do that," I said. "I'm tired."
"You're tired? You?" His cheeks flushed. The light of the lantern made shadows in his eyes. "The men and the women of this house have come together on it," he said. "They all say that it is time you married, and I say that you will."
"Not your father," I said. "You won't tell me that your father says so. And not my mother, because I know she would not. And if the others have come together, it's because you brought them together. And yes, I'm tired, James, and I want to go in now. I'm very tired."
I pulled loose from him as slowly as I could, and I picked up the lantern and moved towards the stable. All was done there, the beasts were fed, the place was swept and clean. Every harness was on its hook. The air was warm from the beasts. I liked it. For a moment I let it warm me.
I came back out into the yard. He had snuffed the other lantern and he stood fidgeting in the darkness and then he followed me into the house.
The family had gone to bed. Only Joseph remained by the brazier and he was asleep. His face was smooth and youthful in sleep. I loved the faces of old men; I loved their waxen purity, the way the flesh melted over their bones. I loved the distinct shapes of their eyes beneath their lids.
As I sank down by the coals and began to warm my hands, my mother came in and she stood beside James.
"Not you, too, Mother," I said.
James paced as Jason had paced. "Stubborn, proud," he said under his breath.
"No, my son," my mother said to me. "But you must know something now."
"Then tell me, Mother," I said. The warmth felt delicious to my stiffened fingers. I loved the glitter of the fire right beneath the thick gray ash of the coals.
"James, will you leave us, please?" asked my mother.
He hesitated, then he nodded respectfully, almost bowing in his respect, and he went out. Only with my mother was he that way, unfailingly gentle. He drove his wife often enough to the brink.