Prologue
“The devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved...”
--Luke 8:12
John had been running for his life for two days. Though he was finally safe, he still could not shut his eyes. He rose to wash his hands and face countless times, but he kept returning to his straw mattress with the feeling of filth all over him. He expected to see images of blood, torture, or pain—anything dealing with what happened—but they never came. Instead, the only sensation was grime, the greatest weight from the smallest grit.
After several eternal hours, John at last surrendered to his insomnia and decided to sit in the dark of the common room until the sun came up. As John waited for a new day to arrive, his weary back propped against the cracking wall, he expected to weep, but his heart could not manage it all. He tried thinking of Joshua—nothing. He tried thinking of the nails—nothing. He tried thinking of blood and water puddling in separate pools on the ground—still nothing. John kept trying. The curtain tearing, the earthquake, the eclipse, the horrid screaming—nothing. He had to find something more removed. He turned his thoughts to Mary, and at once his heart unleashed the tears his eyes withheld all day, filling the cracks in the floor and forming tiny puddles of grief and sorrow.
Joshua had asked him to care for Mary—the dying wish of a beloved friend. John could feel his pulse beating through his fingers as he recalled the image of Joshua gasping for air as fluid filled his lungs. John wept in silence for—an hour? An eternity? He could not tell. He stood up from the floor and wiped his chapped eyes. John then walked over to Mary’s room, reasoning that his only comfort would come from bringing about hers.
Cracking open the door, a wave of suffering assailed John, as if all his sin were laid bare before the Lord. No, not before the Lord, where there might have been some measure of mercy; rather, John’s sins were exposed before the dark and empty void he always feared lay just beyond the veil of his consciousness. Hatred brought its full fury upon this room, forging it into more of a tomb than the one Joshua now occupied. John thought he caught glimpses of demons in the shadows out of the corner of his eye, but the dim light of a melted candlestick in the corner showed only a still and quiet, but awake, Mary lying on top of the blanket on her side. She was turned away from the candle, which cast a shadow over her face, but her eyes shimmered in the darkness, pouring out a devastation as hard as iron.
“M—” John stammered. They had not said a word to each other since he brought her home the last evening, and he did not know where to start. “Can—can I get you anything—” John began to ask, but he choked when he tried to use her name.
Mary did not respond; she did not even move. John stood and watched the woman glare like a statue at the wall, her soul slipping into space. Neither sadness nor grief sallowed her face; her cheeks were dry, and her breathing was regular. Mary had heaped the whole of her grief upon this room, and the entire house carried that burden for her. Whether the room had exercised mercy on Mary or Mary had fixed her wrath on an undeserving home, John could not tell, though he figured he should tread lightly and leave, lest both choose him as a target.
Mary said nothing as he exited. John considered leaving the door cracked so he could hear her if she called, but with even the slightest opening, the teeth of her agony gnawed at him, trying to rip and pull his soul into that void. John inched the door closed and sat again in the common room.
Dawn could come soon, and again John wondered if a new day would bring any comfort, but what little hope he had was grappled by the wrath of woe. If the sun saw yesterday what he had seen, it would not dare to shine again but ought to consider itself failed that, for all its brilliance and heat and power, it could not prevent this calamity. The sun’s shame should engulf it, as John’s pain had him, and it should for this ignominy hide itself forever.
No, there was no comfort in the sun, and even less in God, who was either powerless or loveless. This was the greatest evil—viler than all of Babylon, a more horrible sin than all of Rome could commit. And if that was the nature of God—either weak and not worth any offering of faith, or malevolent and not worth any offering of love—then John was done with Him. He would no longer worship a god no stronger than man; he would no longer sacrifice any lamb to cleanse his sins before a wicked god.
Mary’s door creaked open as the fire’s heat and John’s frail faith blew into the night-chilled room. He did not have to turn to know Mary was glowering at him, but he looked anyway to see what she meant by it. Once more, Mary’s face showed no emotion—no anger, no sorrow, no grief, not even fatigue. The room still felt everything on her behalf. This house had been a lover to her for so long, investing its soul into hers, that it, like Samson from the old Jewish legend, would make rubble of temples for her sake. And for this, Mary spurned her house, scouring every part of it.
The house wept tears of soap and mop water as John watched Mary, unable to muster his courage to approach her misery. With every scouring scrub of the floor, the echo of her cleaning grew louder, the room’s sweat thicker, and the sun’s light paler.
John finished baking and plating the matzoh, hoping Mary would break her fast. After setting it on the table, he knelt beside her and placed his arm on her shoulder. “Mother—” She jerked her head away and glared at him. John felt a small quake beneath his feet as he said the name, and he thought his eyes might sink into the back of his head from the force of Mary’s stare.
John had always been bullheaded, so he tried again. “Mary, it’s time to eat.” She wrenched away and pushed John off her shoulder. Her scowl drilled into his eyes as she resumed her scrubbing. John fell back on his heels as the entire home fixed its sorrowful rage on him, oppressing his will. No matter how much Mary maligned it, the house would love her and act on her behalf. John thought the floor would sink beneath him, opening a chasm that threatened to jettison his soul straight to Hades.
And so John gave up on Mary for the day and his appetite for the moment, deciding to cast the unleavened bread out the window for the birds. He could not eat without Mary; he could not sleep, nor leave her. But her weight was too much for him; this house would destroy his soul if it remained like this.
Nothing, then, was the only answer. He had to be patient; no one could remain in mourning forever, even for such a tragedy as this. It may take days, weeks, or months—maybe a lifetime—but she would eventually release the house, and him, from her despair. For Joshua, he thought, for Joshua he could endure that. He must endure that.
Almost as soon as John sat down, a knock at the door startled him. John did not have the stomach for sitting shiva, not now—maybe not ever. Mary could not; she behaved as if mourning could be cured by mopping, scrubbing the wood to its grain. John scrunched his face at the door, and then looked over to Mary, his contempt for the knock obvious.
Mary stopped cleaning and turned her head to John, motioning toward the door. Surely she didn’t want him to answer it? With another knock, she motioned again, and John stood and went to the threshold. As he opened the door, a woman’s eyes met his and stilled his tongue before he could protest.
The pale, somewhat aged, woman was quite wrongly dressed, with richer fabrics than any Jewish woman would ever dare to wear, with more than a few superfluous buttons and ornaments. She was appropriately covered, more so than many respectable women—even her neck was hidden by her collar—but any person wearing such clothes and jewelry would have been thought vain. Yet, seeing the face beneath her oversized hat, there was not the faintest conceit in her demeanor. Her eyes showed mercy and hope.
John had seen those eyes before: they were Joshua’s. He diverted his glance but found that he could not look away for long. Those eyes were not the same, John thought; they could not be. But still, they were. Their color, like Joshua’s, was indiscernible, changing with the light, but the same love poured from them, the same gravity; they filled one’s heart with humility. John stood mesmerized, much as he had three years before when he had first met Joshua by a lakeside not too far away and yet an eternity behind, and the woman slipped by him to set her feathered hat on a small counter in the corner.
Mary stared at the woman in shock, rising to her feet and backing herself into a corner, brush still in hand. John stared at Mary, seeing that she was anxious, even afraid, at this woman in her home. He tried to speak up as the woman put her coat down. “Miss, it’s not a good time,” he said as he attempted to motion her to the door.
“No!” Not having spoken in over a day, Mary had to cough to clear her throat. “No. This woman can stay.”
Mary and the guest stared at each other for a moment; the woman’s closed smile never broke. It had a sort of annoying softness to it, John thought, like she might ask him to dinner at the same time she pulled back his fingernail. She had an unsettling grin, not frightening, but far too glad for anyone, especially living near dreary Jerusalem. She was far too out of place, and seemed to take for granted some rather irregular customs. But more than that, John thought, she was altogether too jovial. Surely, this house would oppress her heart as it had his; the yoke of grief ought not to spare anyone.
“You seem surprised to see me,” the woman said.
John had known Mary and her family for half his life. He was sure he would have heard something about a woman like this. Mary’s posture eased somewhat, and she walked toward the woman, wrought with disbelief.
“Have I aged so much, dear, that you do not recognize me?” the woman asked.
Mary reached out and touched the woman’s face with uncertainty. As her fingers met the visitor’s eerily perfect skin, a rush came over Mary, as if a wave of relief had washed upon her. John could feel his soul breathe again, like a sudden burst of wind into a cave.
Mary gasped and retracted her hand. The visitor’s smile never wavered, and indeed seemed to grow. “Oh good. You remember.” The woman looked to John as if she expected something. He stared at her for an anxious moment. She cleared her throat and looked down, indicating the chair next to her.
“Oh.” John faltered and pulled out the seat for the lady.
“I’m here to tell you something, Mary,” the woman said as she seated herself and crossed her feet under her chair. John expected Mary to protest, but instead she pulled back her own chair and sat in silence, hanging her head and placing her hands on the table. Her motions, John observed, seemed almost involuntary.
The peculiar woman waited through the uncomfortable silence before speaking again. “You know, the last time I visited, you sang for me,” she said, her eyes lost in the ceiling. She brought her gaze downward, fixed on a bit of string, and began toying with it. “It was so beautiful. I was hoping...” She lifting her eyes back to Mary.
Mary kept her head still, but raised her eyes to meet the woman’s. She hesitated before replying, “I don’t think I’ll be singing for you today, Mashab.”
“Well that’s a shame, dear. It did cheer me so. Later perhaps, but the first things must come first, my child. Unlike last time, when I brought news, today I bring a story.” Her smile grew again but still showed no teeth. “About our son.”
The great emotions of the past few days had rendered John’s mind somewhat impaired. “I’m sorry,” he eked out. “Our son?”
“Oh no, dear,” Mashab said, indicating John. She nodded to Mary and clarified, “Our son.”
Mary decided to resolve John’s confusion. “John, kindly serve this woman some breakfast.” She then turned to Mashab. “What about him?”
“He has a friend whose tale you need to hear,” Mashab said, rubbing the string between her fingers.
“I know all his friends.” Mary’s head sank further into her chest, away from the ageless woman. “Their tales all end the same way as mine.”
Mashab’s smile relaxed somewhat, but did not break. “Even if I concede that, my child—and I do not—they all arrive at their end differently, and what is difficult for you may be unbearable to another.” She paused for a reaction, but Mary gave her none. “Some have lost a great deal, more even than you have.”
Mary lurched forward in her chair, slamming her hands on the table and glaring at Mashab. She raised her voice, “Who? Who could have lost more than I did?” Her eyes glistened with her first tear. “That was my son!”
“Our son,” Mashab retorted in a harsh but controlled whisper, at last breaking her smile. John glanced over his shoulder at the women sitting there, but at this point he knew better than to interfere with either of them. Mary relaxed her posture and let her shoulders slump. “But this person lost more still. His story is wrought with loss, in fact, more than any should have to bear, but such was his lot, for both good and ill.”
“How is that supposed to help me?”
“I did not say I was here to help you,” Mashab replied. “I said I was here to tell you a story.”
