"Are they taken away?" He meant the bodies of the boys.
"They are," Joseph said. "And the bloodied stones with them. All taken."
The Rabbi looked to Heaven and sighed. "They belong now to Azazel," he said.
"No, but they're gone," said Joseph. "And we come to see you. We know you're miserable. What do you want us to do? Shall we go to Nahom and the boy's mother?"
The Rabbi nodded. "Joseph, I want you to stay here and comfort me," he said, shaking his head, "but that's where you belong. Nahom has brothers in Judea. He should take his family and go. He'll never rest easy in this village again. Joseph, tell me, why did this happen?"
Jason roused himself with his usual fire. "One doesn't have to go to Athens and Rome to learn the things those boys did," he said. "Why can't they happen in Nazareth?"
"That's not my question," said the Rabbi, looking sharply at him. "I don't ask about what the boys did. We don't know what the boys did! There was no trial, no witnesses, no justice! I ask how could they stone those boys, that's what I ask. Where is the law, where is justice?"
One might have thought he despised his nephew from the manner in which he'd answered him, but in fact, the Rabbi loved Jason. The Rabbi's sons were dead. Jason kept the Rabbi young, and whenever Jason wasn't in Nazareth the Rabbi was distant and forgetful. As soon as Jason came through the door from some far-off place, with a sack of books over his shoulder, the Rabbi sprang to life, and sometimes in their fiery back-and-forth, the Rabbi seemed a boy in his passion.
"Ah, and what will they do," Jason asked, "when Yitra's father gets hold of the children who started this. And they were children, you know, those little boys who hang around the tavern, and they're gone, they were gone before the first stone flew through the air. Nahom can spend his life looking for those boys."
"Children," said my uncle Cleopas, "children who might not have even known what they saw. What, two young ones under the same blanket on a winter night?"
"It's over," said James. "What, are we to have the trial now that we didn't have before? It's finished."
"You're right," said the Rabbi. "But will you go to the mother and the father, will you do this for me? If I go, I'll weep too much and too long and I'll become angry. If Jason goes, he'll say strange things."
Jason laughed darkly. "Strange things. That this village is a miserable heap of dust? Yes, I would say such strange things."
"You do not have to live here, Jason," said James. "No one ever said Nazareth needed its own Greek philosopher. Go back to Alexandria, or Athens, or Rome, or wherever it is you're always running off to. Do we need your ruminations? We never did."
"James, be patient," said Joseph.
The Rabbi appealed to Joseph as if he hadn't even heard the argument.
"Go to them, Joseph, you and Yeshua, you always know the right words. Yeshua can calm anyone. Explain to Nahom that his son was a child himself and the Orphan, ah the poor Orphan."
We were about to take our leave when Jason came sidling forward and glared at me. I looked up.
"Be careful men don't say the same things of you, Yeshua," he said.
"What are you saying?" the Rabbi declared. He rose out of the chair.
"Never mind," said Joseph quietly. "It's nothing, only Jason in his grief for more things than one can know."
"What, you mean they don't say strange things about Yeshua?" said Jason, staring at Joseph, and then at me. "You know what they call you, my mute and immutable friend," he said to me. "They call you Yeshua, the Sinless."
I laughed, but I turned away so that it didn't seem that I laughed in his face. But I was actually laughing in his face. He went on talking, but I didn't hear him. I fell to watching his hands. He had beautiful smooth hands. And often when he went into a tirade or a long poem, I merely watched his hands. They made me think of birds.
The Rabbi suddenly grabbed at Jason's robe, and swung at him with his right hand as if to slap him. But then he fell back in his chair, and Jason flushed red. Now he was sorry, dreadfully sorry.
"Well, they talk, don't they?" Jason said, looking at me. "Where is your wife, Yeshua, where are your children?"
"I will not stand here and endure this a moment longer," said James. He pulled me toward the street by my arm. "You will not speak this way to my brother," he said to Jason. "Everyone knows what eats at you. You think we're fools? You can't bear it, can you? Avigail's refused you. Her father laughed you to scorn."
Joseph pushed James out of the room and past me. "Enough, my son. You take the bait every time with him."
Cleopas nodded to this.
The Rabbi slumped in his chair and put his head down on his parchments.
Joseph bent down and whispered to the Rabbi. I heard the consoling tone but not the words. Jason meantime was glaring at James as though James was now his personal enemy, and James was sneering at Jason.
"Is there not enough woe in this village for you?" Cleopas asked him calmly. "Why do you always play the Satan? You have to put my nephew Yeshua on trial because there was no trial for Yitra and the Orphan?"
"Sometimes I think," said Jason, "that I was born to say what others think yet no one will utter. I warn Yeshua, that's all." He dropped his voice to a whisper. "Doesn't his own kinswoman wait on his decision?"
"That's not true!" James declared. "That's the feverish idiocy of an envious mind! She refused you because you're mad, and why would a woman marry the wind, if she doesn't have to?"
Suddenly they were all talking at once, Jason, James, Cleopas, and even Joseph, and the Rabbi.
I went on down the street. The sky was blue and the town was empty. Nobody wanted to come out on account of what had happened. I walked on farther, but I could still hear them.
"Go write a letter to your epicurean friends in Rome," said James in a hard voice. "Tell them of the scandalous goings-on in the miserable hamlet where you're condemned to live. Write a satire, why not?"
He came after me.
Jason came after him, brushing past the older men who followed.
"I'll tell you this much if I do," said Jason furiously. "If I write anything of any value, there's only one man in this place who'll understand what I write and that's your brother, Yeshua."
"Jason, Jason . . ." I said. "Come now, why all this?"
"Well, if it wasn't this, it would be something else," said James. "Don't talk to him. Don't look at him. On a day such as this, he starts a quarrel. It's a bitter winter without rain, and Pontius Pilate threatens to put his ensigns in the Holy City. Yet he wants to fight about this."