"Why didn't you stay with us in the Temple?" he asked. "We begged you to do it." He sighed. "Think of what you might have done if you had remained in the Temple and studied; think of the boy you were! If only you'd devoted your life to what is written, think what you might have done. I took such delight in you, and we all did, and Old Berekhiah and Sherebiah from Nazareth, how they loved you and wanted you to stay. But what have you become! A carpenter - one of a gang of carpenters. Men who make floors, walls, benches, and tables."
Very slowly I tried to free my hand, but he wouldn't let me go. I moved slowly to his left and saw even more of the light spill down on his upturned face.
"The world swallowed you," he said bitterly. "You left the Temple and the world simply swallowed you. That's what the world does. It swallows everything. One woman's angel is another man's scornful tale. Grass grows over the ruins of villages until one can find nothing of them and trees sprout from the very stones where great houses, houses like this one, once stood. All these books are falling to pieces, aren't they? Look, see the bits of parchment all over my robes. The world swallows the Word of God. You should have stayed and studied Torah! What would your grandfather Joachim say if he knew what you've become?"
He sat back. He let me go. His lips curved into a sneer. He looked up at me though his gray brows were drawn down into a frown. He motioned for me to go away from him.
I stood there.
"Why does the world swallow the Word of God?" I asked. He couldn't hear the heat in my voice. "Why?" I asked. "Are we not a holy people, are we not to be a bright and shining light to the nations? Are we not to bring salvation to the whole world?"
"That is what we are!" he said. "Our Temple is the greatest Temple in the Empire. Who doesn't know this?"
"Our Temple is one of a thousand temples, my lord," I said.
Again came that flash, seemingly of memory, buried memory of some great agitated moment, but it was no memory. "A thousand temples throughout the world," I said, "and every day sacrifice is offered to a thousand gods from one end of the Empire to the other."
He glared at me.
I went on,
"All around us this happens, in the land of Israel this happens. It happens in Tyre, in Sidon, in Ashkelon; it happens in Caesarea Philippi; it happens in Tiberias. And in Antioch and in Corinth and in Rome and in the woods of the great north and in the wilds of Britannia." I took a slow breath. "Are we the light of the nations, my lord?" I demanded.
"What is all that to us!" he countered.
"What is all that? Egypt, Italy, Greece, Germania, Asia, what is all that? It's the world, my lord. That's what it is to us, it's the world to whom we are to be the light, we, our people!"
He was outraged. "What are you saying?"
"It's where I live, my lord," I said. "Not in the Temple, but in the world. And in the world, I learn what the world is and what the world will teach, and I am of the world. The world's made of wood and stone and iron, and I work in it. No, not in the Temple. In the world. And I study Torah; and I pray with the assembly; and on the feasts I go to Jerusalem to stand before the Lord - in the Temple - but this is in the world, all this. In the world. And when it is time for me to do what the Lord has sent me to do in this world, this world which belongs to Him, this world of wood and stone and iron and grass and air, He will reveal it to me. And what this carpenter shall yet build in this world on that day, the Lord knows, and the Lord shall reveal it."
He was speechless.
I took a step back from him. I turned and stared ahead of me. I saw the dust moving in the rays of the noon sunshine. Sparkling in lattices above bookshelves and bookshelves. I thought I saw images in the dust, things moving with purpose, things airy and immense yet guided and patient in their movement.
It seemed the room was filled with others, the beating of their hearts, but they were invisible hearts or not even hearts. Not hearts like my heart or his heart, of flesh and blood.
Leaves rattled at the windows and a cold draft crept across the shining floor. I felt removed and at the same time there, under his roof, standing before him, with my back to him, and I was drifting, yet anchored, and content to be so.
The anger washed out of me.
I turned and looked at him.
He was calm and wondering. He sat collected amid his robes. He sat peering at me as if from a great and safe distance.
When he spoke, it was a murmur.
"All these years," he said, "as I've watched you on the road to Jerusalem, I've wondered, 'What does he think? What does he know?' "
"Do you have an answer?"
"I have hope," he whispered.
I thought about this, and then slowly I nodded.
"I'll write the letter this afternoon," he said. "I have a student here to take the dictation for me. The letter will reach my cousins in Sepphoris this evening. They are widows. They're kind. They'll welcome her."
I bowed and placed my fingers together to show my thanks and my respect. I started to go.
"Come back in three days," he said. "I'll have an answer from them or from someone else. I'll have it in hand. And I'll go with you to see Shemayah on this matter. And if you see the girl herself, you will tell her that all her family - we are all asking after her."
"Thank you, my lord," I said.
I walked fast on the road to Sepphoris.
I wanted to be with my brothers, I wanted to be at work. I wanted to be laying stones one after another, and pouring the grout and smoothing the boards and hammering the nails. I wanted anything but to be with a man with a clever tongue.
But what had he said that my own brothers hadn't said in their own way, or that Jason hadn't said? Oh, he'd been full of privilege and riches and the arrogant power that he held to help Avigail.
But they were asking me the same questions. They were all saying the same things.
I didn't want to go over it in my mind. I didn't want to go over the things he'd said or what I'd seen or felt. And most especially I didn't want to ponder what I'd said to him.
But as I reached the city with all its engulfing voices, its wondrous pounding and clattering and chatter, a thought came to me.
The thought was fresh and like the conversation I'd had.
I'd been looking all this while for signs that rain would come, hadn't I? I'd been looking at the sky, and at the distant trees, and feeling the wind, and the chill of the wind, and hoping to catch just a kiss of moisture on my face.
But maybe I was seeing signs of something else altogether different. Something was indeed coming. It had to be. Here, all around me, were the signals of its approach. It was a building, a pressure, a series of signals of something inevitable - something like the rain for which we'd all prayed, yet something vastly beyond the rain - and something that would take the decades of my life, yes, the years reckoned in feasts and new moons, and even the hours and the minutes - even every single second I'd ever lived - and make use of it.