Christ the Lord - Anne Rice [54]
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.
I knew how this had to begin, and so I told him how sorry I was for all I'd done that had made him so miserable. I confessed.
“I am so sorry, Shemayah,” I said.
His cries grew loud. They grew huge in the little room. But he had no words. He slumped forward. He rocked back and forth.
“Shemayah, I have here the contract for her marriage,” I said. “It's all done properly and right, and she'll be married to Reuben of Cana. It's here, Shemayah, it's written.”
He groped with his left hand, gently batting at the paper, gently pushing the contract away, and then he turned blindly to me, and I felt his heavy arm go around my neck. He wept on my shoulder.
18
IT WAS AN HOUR perhaps before I left him. I brought back the marriage contract and put it in the chest. No one noticed.
Jason was there, and the Rabbi—they were on their feet and so were most of my brothers—and they were all talking excitedly.
“Where have you been!” cried my mother, and then it seemed I was surrounded by anxious faces. There was the rustling of parchment, Jason shaking my shoulder.
“Jason, let me be tonight, please,” I said. “I'm sleepy, and I want nothing but to go to bed. Whatever it is, can't we talk about this tomorrow?”
“Oh, but you must hear this,” said my mother. “Little Mary,” she said. “Go, call Avigail.”
I started to ask what I must hear, what was so important that Avigail should be woken up and brought in, but they told me all at once in broken phrases.
“Letters,” said my mother. “Letters you must hear.”
“Letters,” said the Rabbi, “letters from Capernaum, from your cousin, John bar Zebedee, and from your sister, Little Salome.”
“The rider just brought the mail,” Jason declared. “I have a letter. My uncle has a letter. Letters have come to people up one side of the hill and down the other. Listen, you must hear all this. By tomorrow and the next day, all Galilee will know these things.”
I sank down in my usual corner.
Joseph was awake, seated straight against the wall, watching the others keenly.
“This news is from Jerusalem,” said Jason, “and the letter to my uncle, it's from Tiberias.”
Avigail, sleepy and concerned, had come into the room and sat down with Little Mary.
James held up his letter for me to see. “From John bar Zebedee, our cousin,” he said. “And this is for all of us . . . and for you.”
The Rabbi turned, and took the letter from James.
“Please, James,” he said, “may I read it because he is the one who's seen these things, your young cousin.”
James at once gave the letter over to him. Joses handed James the lamp and he held it high so the Rabbi could read by the light of it.
The letter was in Greek. The Rabbi hurried through the salutation:
“ ‘This I must make known to you all and you must give this word