Levi’s mother had changed into a long dress made of sackcloth. Levi had never seen her so pale and shaky, even when she had been ill. Her eyes looked empty, as if she herself were dead, but he also noticed that they darted at any sound.
Part of Levi wanted to leave the room, to not have to look at Chavivi lying there. He wished he could go to the stable and just curl into a ball. He would pray this had been a bad dream, and when he awakened, his little brother would be teasing him to play, flashing that pretend look of fright when Levi would chase him.
His father was speaking quietly to his mother, and when the sun was fully up, he helped her stand.
“Please, I don’t want the baby left alone even for an instant,” she said.
“I understand. I will carry him, and Levi will help you up the stairs.”
“I am too unsteady, and he is too small.”
“Then I will take the baby up and Levi will wait with him while I return for you. Can you do that, Levi?”
He nodded, though it was the last thing in the world he wanted to do.
It appeared to the boy that his father was trying to be strong. He gently lifted the body and slowly made his way out to the steps, nodding that Levi should follow. His mother guided him out and waited at the bottom.
When his father reached the roof, he asked Levi to slide a wooden bench over, where he would lay the baby. But when it was in place it seemed his father was reluctant to release the body. He stood there, lips quivering and pressed tight, eyes filling. Finally his breath rushed from his nose and he cradled Chavivi close to his chest and began weeping again.
Levi wanted to comfort his father, but what could he say? He reached to touch his father’s arm, and the man sat heavily on the bench, head bowed over the infant, rocking and sobbing. Levi wanted to suggest that his father fetch his mother, but when he opened his mouth, everything that had assaulted his every sense had conspired to strike him dumb.
Suddenly his mother appeared, accompanied by the local rabbi. Levi’s father immediately stood and gently laid the baby on the bench, then wiped his tears.
“Rabbi,” he said, “thank you for coming.”
“Of course, of course.” He stood among the family before the slain child, hands clasped before him, bowing from the waist and praying softly.
“Thank you,” Mary whispered.
“I know it does not assuage your grief to know you are not alone. Three other families in this very village have suffered.”
“Who?” she said.
The rabbi named them, and Mary clutched her sackcloth to her neck, trembling afresh. “That’s not the worst of it,” he added. “Nearly two dozen more in Bethlehem and its environs.”
Levi’s mother looked as if she might collapse, and both the rabbi and her husband reached for her. Soon the rabbi began discussing details of the day, telling Levi’s parents that everyone would have to exhibit patience and understanding. The visits to the homes of the grieving would take longer than normal, due to the number. Some of the parents may not be able to pay their respects to the others.
“I will visit them all,” Mary said.
“Are you sure?” Alphaeus said. “They would understand if you did not.”
“I will go if someone will stay with Chavivi.”
“Of course.”
“And the procession to the graves,” the rabbi said, “will be corporate. The mothers will lead the way, carrying their own if they are able, and we will have a brief ceremony at each tomb.”
Levi’s family’s tomb was rough-hewn out of a cliff some one hundred or so cubits from the stable. Most other families had made similar arrangements.
“I will be back in due time,” the rabbi said.
“I’ll go with you,” Alphaeus said, glancing at Levi with a look that told him to take care of his mother. Levi nodded, still entirely unable to speak.
The rabbi cupped Levi’s face in his hands and gave him a look of pity so painful that the boy could hardly stand it. He had so many questions, so many charges, such unsatisfied anger and vengeance that he felt he could split in two. And yet he could not even talk.
Levi found a chair for his mother, and when she opened her arms to him he sat in her lap. She wrapped one arm around him and held him close, as if desperate to not let him go. She laid her free hand on the baby’s little belly and stared at the white bundle.
About an hour later, people began arriving, making their way up the steps and hesitantly approaching. All cooed sympathy and whispered their horrified regrets. Mary merely nodded to each, saying nothing, and Levi could only imitate her.
Presently Levi’s father returned with one flautist and one mourner. They immediately began wailing and playing, and he explained that while he had hoped for two of each, “There simply weren’t enough to go around. And, Mary, no one is available to go to Jerusalem in my place today.”
“Then you must go. I will be all right.”
“I couldn’t.”
“Alphaeus, everyone will understand. You have no choice. The wagon and the steeds are rented—”
“He will refund—”
“But the Damascus traders will not. Your business will surely be ruined.”
Levi thought his father wanted to argue, but he fell silent. It must be true. To miss a scheduled shipment for any reason was a breach that could not be fixed. Levi had been along before when his father dealt with the traders. Everything seemed to favor them. It was, his father always said, a seller’s market. If he did not purchase the agreed-upon stock of raw goods, his business would fail. As it was, the tannery provided only enough income to keep the family alive.
“I will speak to the rabbi about it,” Alphaeus said at last, his shoulders drooping.
He asked Levi to accompany his mother to the homes of the other grieving families, and the boy wondered how she could endure it. To think that the king of all the land, the King of the Jews, had done this to his own people was more than Levi could take in. Was the man at war with his own kingdom? It made no sense.
By the middle of the morning, just less than eight hours after the killings, the entire village gathered for the procession to the tombs. Levi had never seen anything so ghastly. Four mothers staggered along the paths, each with a lifeless child in her arms, leading husbands and other children, relatives, friends, and dozens of neighbors. A flautist and a mourner had been assigned each family, and they accompanied the somber parade, the flutes emitting a mournful dirge as the mourners added high-pitched wails that echoed off the hills and turned the heads of curious sheep and goats.
The entire gathering stopped at each tomb as the fathers laid their babies inside and the mothers surrounded the bodies with piles of aromatic herbs and spice. Village men helped the fathers wall the graves shut while the rest of the family arranged a neat pile of stones of remembrance.
The rabbi spoke briefly at each site and prayed, “May the prayers and the entreaties of all the people of Israel be received before their Father who is in heaven.”
It had been agreed that under the circumstances the traditional funeral meal, the bread and wine of mourning, would be held at the synagogue rather than at the individual houses. Levi was struck that not one citizen of the village seemed unaffected by the massacre. Even his friends, who normally romped and played after Shabbat services, now sat motionless and appeared stunned. None seemed to know what to say to him and so said nothing, for which he was grateful.
When the family made its way home, Levi trudged along barely listening to his parents. The rabbi had determined that Alphaeus was free to go to Jerusalem, and his mother wanted him to take Levi along. Alphaeus insisted that Levi should stay at home with his mother.
“He needs to be with you,” she said urgently. “And I need to be alone.”
“Are you sure you will be all right?”
“Alphaeus, I will never be all right again. But do not condescend to me. I expect even more visitors, those who were not able to get here in time.”
r /> “I should be here for that,” he said.
“We have already decided that you are going. And now I’m saying I want you to take the boy.”
Levi’s father looked away and shook his head, as if frustrated but knowing that he should not force his will on her, especially now. “I have actually had in mind that I might exact some revenge at the palace,” he said.
“Don’t speak like that,” she said. “This is hard enough. That is not our way.”
“Is that why you want me to take Levi? So I will not act on my impulses?”
“I can only pray so.”
Knowing he had no say in the matter, still Levi was torn. He wanted to be near his mother, to comfort her and to have her comfort him. But he also wanted to be as far from the scene of the murder as he could. On the other hand, that meant visiting the very city where the evil king lived. Levi no longer had any interest in seeing the grand palace. He once had been enamored of its splendor and had not fully understood why his parents so loathed the king. They didn’t seem the jealous type, so although his father groused that the king lived high and mighty on the purses of his subjects, he thought it went deeper than simply the money.
But Levi would never look at the palace the same again. From then on it would represent only evil and bloodshed.
BY THE MIDDLE of the afternoon the horse-drawn wagon his father had hired for the day rumbled to the outskirts of Jerusalem and connected with the Damascus traders who had set up their wares in a huge clearing. Levi had always been fascinated by the foreigners and their camels and caravans and hard-selling ways.
He had finally found his voice but was grateful his father seemed in no more mood to talk than he did. Occasionally he noticed the man weeping as he drove. Levi couldn’t imagine having any more tears to shed, yet he felt as if he were crying on the inside.
“Stay right here,” his father said, climbing down to find his contact. Slaves mingled nearby, waiting to be assigned to load various wagons. Levi was stunned to see his father speak briefly with the trader and then simply pay him, pointing out the wagon where the hides were to be loaded. The last two times Levi had accompanied his father he had enjoyed the bantering and negotiating. Both times voices were raised, arms waved about, and his father had pretended to give up in disgust and return to the wagon without buying. Then the trader would run up and make one last concession that finally sealed the deal—then trudge away muttering that he had made no money.
Now it was obvious that his father was in no mood to quibble, and the worldly trader—who had always seemed so cold to Levi—actually put his hand on his father’s shoulder and seemed to speak softly. There was no mistaking Alphaeus’s mourning garb, and surely the traders had heard all that had taken place.
The slaves loaded the wagon high with hides, and Levi’s father carefully watched, being sure he got the number and quality he had paid for.
The trader approached. “And your wife?”
“She is deeply wounded, of course.”
“Of course.” The man turned to a group of slaves and clicked his fingers. One approached and the man whispered in his ear. The slave returned presently with a bolt of linen. “Please,” the man said to Levi’s father. “A gift for her.”
“You are too kind.”
The trader turned to Levi with a sad smile. “And for you, little one? A trinket perhaps?”
Levi had in his pocket the prutahs with which he had planned to buy something for Chavivi. He held them out to the man.
“No, no. A gift and my sympathies.” And he dug from his sack a small carved camel.
“Thank the man, Levi.”
Then both Alphaeus and the trader had to pay the tax collector. That Levi had never understood. Everyone despised the collector, and he seemed to do nothing for the privilege of exacting a tax on both buyer and seller. His father had to pay a tax on everything he bought, on the horses that pulled the wagon, and on each axle. But when the man tried to charge a tax on the bolt of linen, Alphaeus said, “It was a gift.”
“A gift from a trader? That’s a laugh.”
“It’s true, sir, please, and I have no more money.”15
“Then that is between you and the trader. Someone has to pay the tax on the linen.”
The trader rushed over and told Alphaeus to pull out. He screamed at the tax collector gesturing and pointing. “I will pay the tax, but you, sir, are scum!”
As his father carefully maneuvered the wagon around to head back home, Levi saw the high temple towers in the distance. “I wonder what the Levite choir sang today.”
“I told you yesterday,” Alphaeus said. “On the fourth day it’s Psalm Ninety-four.”
“Can we go hear them?”
“And leave your mother alone another minute longer?”
“Of course not, Father. I’m sorry, you’re right.”
“They would have already sung today anyway.”
“All right.”
“You have memorized that psalm already, have you not?”
“Probably.”
“Probably? Either you have or you haven’t, Levi.”
“I should have. How does it begin?”
“‘O Lord God, to whom vengeance belongs—O God, to whom vengeance belongs, shine forth!’”
“I think I know some of it. ‘Rise up, O Judge of the earth; render punishment to the proud. Lord, how long will the wicked, how long will the wicked triumph? They utter speech, and speak insolent things; all the workers of iniquity boast in themselves. They break in pieces Your people, O Lord, and afflict Your heritage. They slay the widow and the stranger, and murder the fatherless. Yet they say, “The Lord does not see, nor does the God of Jacob understand.” ’
“I think that’s all I know.”
“That will be a good one for you when you begin reading again.” Levi nodded. But something troubled him from deep within. For the first time in his life he wasn’t sure himself whether the Lord really saw or understood. How could He allow such evil to befall Levi’s family? Did He not care that Herod had broken his family into pieces?
FOUR
By the time Levi and his father had traveled all the way back to their own village and had unloaded the hides at the tannery, it was well after dark. Alphaeus’s fellow craftsmen and one of his apprentices assured him that they would carry his workload the best they could for the next thirty days while he mourned and cared for his wife.
The lack of sleep caught up with Levi on the short walk home. With all the emotions raging inside, he was aware of an exhaustion that went far past any fatigue he could ever remember. He dreaded returning to the little home and the patch of dirt that had been his and Chavivi’s world. Would anything there ever interest him again?
He missed his mother and was eager to see her, but what could he say or do? He fingered the carved camel in his pocket and decided he would show it to her and tell her the surprising story of the kind trader. She had seen these men in action over the years. She would be as astounded as he had been to see another side to the man.
When they arrived home, it was clear that someone had helped Levi’s mother light the large, high torches that illuminated the stable. There stood two horses, three donkeys, even two camels Levi didn’t recognize. Inside the house were relatives, some he remembered, some he had never met, and some distant friends who had not been able to reach the village before the burials and the mourning bread meal.
His mother buried herself in Alphaeus’s embrace, and Levi sensed she was eager for the family to be alone again. The mourners kept rising and bowing to the family until everyone had done this seven times. The professional mourner and flautist were back, wailing and playing, and Levi knew the memory of this dreadfulness would haunt him the rest of his life.
The friends and relatives were kind enough, but their concerned and sorrowful looks helped nothing. His baby brother had been massacred almost before his eyes, and there was simply nothing anyone could say or do to change that.
His mother seemed to be striving to be hospitable while sleepwalking through this unspeakable tragedy. Levi got the impression that if she allowed herself, she would scream and wail like the professional mourner. Only she would mean it.
Would he ever see her smile again? Would he himself ever find anything amusing or even pleasing? He could not imagine it.
When everyone finally took their leave, Levi and his parents just sat as if unable to move. His mother spoke in a flat, quiet tone, as if any effort was more than she could manage. “I would like you to sleep with us tonight, Levi.”
“Do I have to?”
“Levi!” his father scolded. “Of course you will do whatever your mother suggests.”
“Yes, I’m sorry.”
“I just want you close,” she said softly.
“All right, Mother.”
“Have you eaten, Mary?” Levi’s father said.
She shook her head. “I couldn’t.”
“You should.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“I’m not either, but I know I must. For the sake of all of us. Is there any bread left?”
She nodded. “Levi, did you eat your treat?”
“No, I wasn’t hungry either. But I am now.”
His father fetched the round loaf and broke off large chunks for each of them. Alphaeus seemed to slump wearily as he ate.
“Are we not to wash before eating?” Levi said.
His father held up a hand and finished swallowing. “Not while we are in mourning.”
“I will be in mourning forever,” Levi said.
“It feels that way to me right now too,” his father said. “Mary, please try to eat.”
She held her piece in one hand and shook her head. “Perhaps later.”
“You need strength, dear.”
“I need Chavivi ben Alphaeus,” she said. “You must pray God will be my comfort, because I am at the end of myself.” And suddenly Levi was no longer hungry either.