sorry,” said Naomi. For once she had enough sense to say nothing else.
The bathtub, which ranked its own room, was supplied with water from its own cistern. Joanna ordered a servant to warm some water and fill the tub for us. “Miryam’s never going to believe this,” Naomi whispered to me.
As we passed the hallway that led down to the purification pool, Joanna said sheepishly, “You should know that we are not very religious, not like your father, anyway. Chuza hardly ever uses the miqveh, though he wants people to think he does.”
In Nazareth, there was one miqveh for all the men of the village and one for all the women. As we wandered through Chuza’s house, I began to understand how distasteful he must have found our two-room, dirt-floored home in our village. Most of Chuza’s childhood had been spent in this home in Jerusalem. It was only after his mother had died that Father and he had moved to Nazareth where they had to share a well, an olive press, a miqveh, and almost everything else of value with several hundred people. For the first time, I realized we were poor and I felt embarrassed about it. I also felt a surge of resentment towards Father for having chosen the life that he had when we could have had this. I began to view Chuza’s sudden departure from Nazareth and his return to Jerusalem in a new light.
Joanna led us on to the bedroom Naomi and I would share. It was large enough for a family. Joanna said, “Enjoy your bath and then we’ll dine.”
Naomi protested. “But we haven’t seen your rooms. Or your clothes.”
“Tomorrow,” promised Joanna. “You can try on anything you like. My clothes will look prettier on you girls than they do on me.”
Prettier on Naomi maybe, but not on me. Naomi and Joanna were both tiny. Though Joanna had lighter, straighter hair, the two of them could have passed for sisters. Joanna’s clothes would be too tight across my shoulders and hang immodestly far above my ankles. But it was generous of her to offer to share.
After Joanna left, Naomi poked around the room until she found a hand mirror, something we had heard about but never seen before. She held it up to her face and patted her bushy hair. “My mother tells me I have beautiful hair. Do you think so?” Naomi did have a perfect nose, slightly dipped at the end, and large sparkling brown eyes well accented by dark eyebrows that were neither too thick nor too thin. “You are pretty, Naomi. Your mother’s right about that. Let me look now.”
Naomi held the mirror up for me. I frowned at my eyebrows. They were so long and thick that now I would worry about them growing together. I put my finger on the little dent in my chin, an impression like my mother’s.
Naomi turned the mirror back to herself. “My mother says that I’m pretty, but that you’re striking, Danya,”
“Let’s hope that your mother’s right about us,” I laughed.
Naomi and I flopped onto sleeping platforms heaped with soft cushions and blankets. How lovely it would be to sleep here, rather than wrapped in a dusty woolen cloak on the ground. Peristyle or no, it didn’t matter to me: Chuza’s home was the loveliest place I had ever been in. And Joanna, even though she was more like Naomi than me, could not be kinder. I had missed something by not having a sister.
* * *
That night Joanna and Chuza served us a lavish dinner, though Joanna apologized for its simplicity. “If only we had known you would arrive today,” she kept saying.
“Hush, wife,” Chuza said. “Our guests understand.” He ignored the women after that and conversed only with Father. Once I heard him remark, unfavorably I felt, that I didn’t resemble my mother.
Their dining room was furnished with couches, in the Roman fashion, but Father requested a stool and sat erect as the rest of us reclined. This unfamiliar position resulted in bits of our food slipping to the floor, but Dodi cleaned up after us. Joanna laughed with Naomi each time the dog darted after a dropped delicacy.
We ate foods we rarely indulged in, such as hen’s eggs and apricot cakes. Joanna said that the salted fish, served whole on a copper platter, was a delicacy, but I found it as distasteful as the fish we had at home. She extravagantly praised the walnuts we contributed to the feast. We had carried them all the way from Galilee, knowing they were scarce in Judea. Chuza helped himself to a third helping of the fish and asked Father, “How long will you be staying in Jerusalem?”
“The women, until it’s safe for them to return. I need to get back to Nazareth as soon as I can. To see that those who stayed behind get out safely. I’ll be here only long enough only to rest and to visit the Temple.”
Chuza frowned. “Better only to rest. Don’t go to the Temple.”
“Don’t go to the Temple! Why not?”
“There is great unrest in Jerusalem these days. Since it’s Passover, huge crowds throng the Temple’s courtyards. Crowds can be dangerous. Our Roman occupiers do not like crowds.”
Father pulled a bone from his teeth and said calmly, “The Temple is the earthly dwelling place of the Divine Presence. We can’t be harmed there.”
Chuza fixed his small but intelligent eyes on Father. “Because of the unrest, Roman soldiers may be sent to help the Levites keep order on the the Mount.”
Father looked up from his fish. “Roman soldiers on the Mount? Surely you’re mistaken. Herod Archelaus is a Jew. He wouldn’t permit the Temple Mount to be defiled in that way. Jerusalem is full of rumors.”
“My information is reliable,” Chuza said.
Father slammed his right hand on the table. “You may work for Rome, but you are first of all a Jew: how can you permit pagan soldiers on our most holy site?”
Chuza pawed at his beard, trimmed, Roman-style close to his full face. Joanna tried to change the subject. “Try this,” she said, offering us a serving plate with yellow wedges on it. “A trader from the East sold me this fruit, called a lemon. Its juice is supposed to improve the flavor of salted fish.”
Obediently, we squeezed the lemon over our fish.
In the silence that followed, Joanna, Naomi, and I looked from father to son, our hands clenched in our laps. My throat hurt, as if I had swallowed an underchewed lump of goat meat. I had forgotten how often I used to feel this way when Chuza lived with us. The tension between them, lurking in the background from the moment Chuza had greeted Father in the courtyard, now sprang from its weak confines.
“I have no voice in this matter,” Chuza said, breathing quickly, in and out.
We finished our meal in silence, and then Father said, “We leave for the Temple Mount at dawn.”
Chuza slammed both of his hands down on the table and pushed himself up from his couch. Scowling, at last bearing a resemblance to both Father and Lev, he stormed out of the room. Joanna shrugged her shoulders. Even in Jerusalem, I thought, salted fish is salted fish. Lemon juice cannot remove its bitterness.
We rose early the next morning, having barely slept anyway, and met Father for breakfast. Joanna, obeying her husband’s orders, would not accompany us; nevertheless, she wanted to make sure we were well fed before setting out. Warm wheat loaves and freshly ground hummus dispatched the lingering foulness of last night’s salted fish. A platter of perfectly ripened melon slices sweetened our anticipation of the glorious day
