As for Reuben, he was in the village every chance he got with Jason disputing this or that point of the law, but mostly hanging about in the vain hopes of catching a glimpse of his bride which was not to happen.
As for Shemayah, his shame was erased. A rich man, far richer than any in Nazareth, had done what a poor man might dream of doing, and those in between might never attempt. And this had been done swiftly and completely.
The first anyone heard of Shemayah was a week later when he heaved into our courtyard every single item or article of clothing that had ever belonged to his daughter, Avigail.
Oh, well, these precious things were in leather chests, and no worse for having come crashing through the lattice like so many missiles hurled at a besieged city.
As for myself, I was in torment.
I was as weary as a man who'd trudged for seven days without cease up a sheer mountain. I couldn't go to the grove to sleep. No, the grove was now tainted by my own blunders and I would never have that peace again, not without bringing forth fresh recriminations and scowls and scorn. The grove was forfeit.
And never had I so needed it. Never had I so needed to be alone, pleasing as it was to be amid such frank and innocent happiness.
I walked.
I walked at evening through the hills; I walked to Cana and back and walked as far as I could and sometimes made my way home under heavy darkness, my mantle wrapped tight around me, my fingers freezing. I didn't care how cold I was. I didn't care how tired I was. I had one purpose and that was to wear myself out so that I could sleep without dreams, and thereby somehow endure the pain I felt.
I could put no real finger on this pain. It wasn't that men whispered as to my having been alone with the girl; it wasn't that I would soon see her happily married. It wasn't even that I had wounded my brother, because in the healing of that wound, I felt his warm love for me and mine for him all the more keenly.
It was a terrible restlessness, a sense again that all that happened around me was somehow a sign to me.
At last one afternoon after the work of the day was done - the laying of a floor, in fact, which had hurt my knees about as badly as it ever did - I went to the House of the Essenes in Sepphoris, and let their gentle linen-clad men wash my feet as they did for any weary man who wandered in, and I let them give me a cold drink of water.
I sat in a small foyer near the courtyard watching them for a long time. I wasn't sure of the names of those who worked at this house. The Essenes had many such houses, though not of course for men such as myself, who lived only a few miles away, but for travelers in need of lodgings.
Did they know me, these young men, who had come from other communities of the Essenes? I didn't know. I searched the shifting groups of those who swept and cleaned and, even beyond, those reading in the small library. There were old ones here, old ones who no doubt knew everyone.
I didn't dare to shape a question in my mind. I only sat there, waiting. Waiting.
Finally one of the very old men, swaying as he made his way to me with one leg dragging and his right hand knotted on a stick, came and sat on the bench beside me.
"Yeshua bar Joseph," he said, "have you heard any word at all of late from your cousin?"
That was the answer to my question.
They didn't know where John bar Zechariah was, any more than we did.
I admitted that we'd had no word, and we talked then in quiet, the old man and I, about those who go off into the wilderness to pray, to be alone with the Lord, and what it must be like, those lonely nights under the stars with the howling desert wind. The old man himself did not know. I did not know. John's name was not spoken again, by either one of us.
At last, I went home, taking the longest routes, up this little hillock and down through that olive glade and up past the creek and through it and on until I was bone weary and glad to fall down by the fire, and could without effort look truly too forlorn for anyone to question me.
How many days passed?
I didn't count them. The rain visited us again in light and beautiful showers. A blessing for every blade of grass in the fields.
Shemayah was seen back at work, with the hands who'd gone ahead with the plowing when he himself had remained indoors refusing to give the simplest orders. I saw him one morning, barreling through the street and crashing into his own door as if to make war on his own household.
Days. Days of bracing cold, and gliding white clouds, and the earth vibrantly green all around us. Days of the ivy climbing the lattices once more, and days of happy designs and happy hopes. Little Cleopas and Little Mary would soon have a child, or so I was told, though of course I'd seen the evidence of it. And nothing new from Judea except that Pontius Pilate, the Governor, seemed to have settled in with only a few minor disputes with the Temple authorities.
One night after deliberately roaming until I could roam no more, my head teeming, I trudged in, well after supper, ate a piece of bread and pottage, and went to sleep. I felt my mother put a clean fresh-smelling blanket over me. With the water now so plentiful the house smelled of freshly washed wool. I kissed her hand before she withdrew. I went through the layers of dreams and softly into nothingness.
Suddenly I awoke. I'd been with someone who'd been weeping. Terrible weeping. The weeping of a man who can't weep. The suffocated and desperate weeping of someone who cannot bear to do it.
All was well in the room. The women sewed by the fire. My mother asked, "What is it?"
"Weeping," I said. "Someone crying."
"Not in this house," said James.
I pushed off the blanket. "Where is the marriage contract for Avigail?"
"What, safely in that chest, why do you ask?" said James. "What's the matter with you?"
This was not the golden chest of the Magi's gifts. This was the simple chest in which we kept our ink and our important papers.
I went to the chest, opened it, and took out the marriage contract. I rolled it up tight, slipped a loose scrap of soft leather around it, and went out.
A faint bit of rain had fallen earlier.
The streets were shimmering. Nazareth under the luminous Heavens looked like a town made of silver.
The door of Shemayah's house was open. The barest light escaped.
I went to the door. I pushed it back.
I heard him crying. I heard that awful choking sound, that bitter sound almost as if he were strangling in his pain.
He sat alone in a cheerless room. The coals had long ago died to ash. One lamp burnt there, on the floor, a little crockery lamp, and the oil was faintly scented - the only comfort at all here.
I shut the door, and came and sat beside him. He didn't look at me.