The clouds above had shifted. The sound of beating wings filled my ears. I stared forward and saw across John's face the shadow of a dove moving upwards - and then I saw the bird itself rising into a great opening of deep blue sky, and I heard a whisper against my ears, a whisper that penetrated the sound of the wings, as though a pair of lips had touched both ears at the same time, and faint as it was, soft and secretive as it was, it seemed the edge of an immense echo.
This is my Son, this is my beloved.
All the riverbank had gone quiet.
Then noise. The old familiar noise. Shouts and cries, and exclamations, those sounds so mingled in my mind and soul with the stoning of Yitra and the mob around Avigail - the noise of triumphant young men, the endless broken crying of pilgrims - I heard them all around me, the excited beat and cry of voices intermingling with one another, answering one another, growing louder and louder as they vied with one another.
I stared upward at the great endless stretch of blue and I saw the dove flying higher and higher. It became a tiny thing, a speck in the shimmer of the drenching sunlight.
I staggered backwards. I almost lost my balance. I stared at Joseph. I saw his gray eyes fixed on me, saw the faint smile on his lips, and saw in the same instant my mother's face, impassive and still faintly sad, lovingly sad, as she stood beside him.
"It is You!" said John bar Zechariah again.
I didn't answer.
The chorus of the crowd rose.
I turned and went up the far bank, tramping through the weeds, moving faster and faster. I stopped and glanced back once. I saw Joseph again, held tenderly in the arms of the toll collector who stared at me wildly. Joseph's face was collected and wistful and over the gulf between us he nodded. I saw my brothers, I saw all of my kindred there, I saw Shemayah, I saw Avigail. I saw the small figure of Silent Hannah.
I saw them all, and I saw them particularly - the smooth innocence of the very old, eyes gleaming beneath the heavy folds of skin; the sudden break from weariness in those in their prime, who stood poised between condemnation and wonder; the frank excitement of the children who begged for their parents to explain to them what had happened - and interwoven with all, the busy, the concerned, the worn, the confused, each and every one touching another.
Never had I beheld them all in this way, each anchored to concern yet wedded to the one to the left and the one to the right, and all tossing as if not in sand but by the sea on rolling waves.
I turned and looked down at John, who'd turned to stare up at me. He opened his mouth to speak but said nothing.
I turned away from him. For one second the sunshine sparkling in the stiff branches of a shifting tree held me frozen. If trees and blowing grass could talk, they were talking to me.
And they were talking of silence.
On and on I walked, my mind filled only with the sound of my own feet, moving through reeds and marsh and then to the rocky dry ground, and on and on, my sandals slapping the road, and then the bare earth where there was no road.
I had now to be alone, to go where no one could find me or question me. Not now. I had to seek the solitude that all my life had been denied me.
I had to seek it beyond hamlet or town or camp. I had to seek it where there was nothing but the burnt sand, and the searing wind, and the highest cliffs of the land. I had to seek it as if it was nowhere and as if it contained nothing - when in fact it was the palm of the hand that held me.
Chapter Twenty-One
VOICES. THEY WOULDN'T STOP.
I'd passed the last little settlement days ago. I'd drunk my last deep draught of water there.
I didn't know where I was now, only that it was cold, and the only true sound was the wind howling as it swept down into the wadi. I clung to the cliff and made my way upwards. The light was dying fast. That's why it was so cold.
And the voices wouldn't stop, all the arguments, all the calculations, all the predications, all the pondering, and on and on, and on.
The wearier I became the louder they became.
In a small cave I lay, out of the bite of the wind, and drew my robe tightly around me. The thirst was gone. The hunger was gone. So that meant it had been many days because they'd hurt for many days and that much was now finished. Light-headed, empty, I craved all things and no one thing. My lips split and the skin flaked from them. My hands were burnt red; my eyes ached whether opened or closed.
But the voices would not stop, and slowly, rolling over on my back, I looked beyond the entrance of the cave at the stars - just as I'd always done, musing at the sheer cloudless clarity of it over the sandy wastes, the thing we call magnificence.
And then the remembering came, driving away the random voices of censure, the remembering . . . of every single solitary thing I'd ever done in this, my earthly existence.
It was not a sequence. It did not have the order of words written on parchment from one side of the column to the other, and then back again and again and again. Yet it was unfolding.
And sparkling in the density were the moments of pain - of loss, of fear, of sudden regret, of grief, of discomforting and tormented amazement.
Pain, like the stars themselves, each moment with its own infinitesimal shape and magnitude. All of those memories drew themselves around me as if composing a great garment that was my life, a garment that wrapped itself around and around and over and under until it encased me like my skin, completely.
Sometime before morning, I understood something. That I could without the slightest effort hold any and all of these moments in my mind; that they coexisted, these varied and tiny and countless agonies. Little agonies.
When the morning came and the bitter wind died in the glare, I walked on, letting these countless moments come, letting my mind fling them in my own eyes and at my own heart, like the sand that burnt my eyes, and burnt my lips. I went on remembering.
In the night I awoke. Was this my own voice reciting what was written? " 'And every secret thing shall be opened, and every dark place illuminated.' "
Dear God, no, do not let them know this, do not let them know the great accumulation of all of this, this agony and joy, this misery, this solace, this reaching, this gouging pain, this . . .
But they will know, each and every one of them will know. They will know because what you are remembering is what has happened to each and every one of them. Did you think this was more or less for you? Did you think - ?
And when they are called to account, when they stand naked before God and every incident and utterance is laid bare - you, you will know all of it with each and every one of them!
I knelt in the sand.
Is this possible, Lord, to be with each of them when he or she comes to know? To be there for every single cry of anguish? For the grief-stricken remembrance of every incomplete joy?