see who has power and who’ll pay with his life,” jeered the soldier holding him, squeezing his arm against Chuza’s throat and silencing him again.
Father shouted a second time. “Women, go!”
Joanna and Naomi started up the next flight of stairs, but I didn’t. This time I would not fail to help my father. I took three steps down the stairway and then heard the soldier holding my father declare, “You are guilty of inciting revolt against Rome. I should have done this in Jericho, but now I do know better, old man.”
With that he slit my father’s throat.
The other soldier released Chuza who threw himself on Father’s lifeless body and wept. The murderer called to me, “Here’s woman’s work for you: make him a shroud.” Then the two butchers walked away laughing.
I stumbled down the stairway and ran to my father and brother, but Chuza pushed me away fiercely. “So you do associate with Judah ben Hezekiah,” he hissed. “Go. Go make a shroud.”
* * *
In the funeral procession, Naomi, Joanna, and I walked behind the flute players and in front of the litter bearing the body of my father. I put one foot in front of the other, as I had the day we left Nazareth. Fleeing my home was an easy journey compared to this one. Naomi’s wails overpowered the plaintive tones of the reeds. She rubbed dust in her hair and rent her clothing, something I, too, should have done, but those symbols of mourning couldn’t begin to express my grief. I wanted to throw myself down and beat my head against the paving stones.
Many, many other funeral processions passed and crisscrossed ours, heading to the cemeteries outside the city walls. Jerusalem was burying its beloved dead, and the lamentations from its streets and plazas rose on the hot dusty air all the way to the heavens. Our long walk brought us to the kokhim of Father’s family, a tomb cut into the rocky slope of the Kidron Valley. Father’s body would join the bones of his father, his father’s father, and those of many of his ancestors. In this holy necropolis in the Kidron Valley, we believed that the just ones awaited the Messiah, who would one day descend from the Mount of Olives to enter the Temple. On His way, the Savior would raise the dead He passed there. Father and I believed this, anyway. I doubted that Chuza did, since he wasn’t religious.
The stone seal of the tomb had been rolled back and secured with a wooden wedge. Lowering my head, I descended a few stairs and entered the cave. The men bearing Father’s body followed. When I moved aside to make room for them, my foot bumped against an ossuary on the floor. I shuddered. Flesh decomposed in a year, and, in another twelve moons, we would return to this place and seal Father’s bones into one of these stone containers.
The sweet scents of nard oil and myrrh, with which Joanna had anointed Father’s body last night, permeated the small room. The men slid him off the litter and into a kokh carved into the wall, hitting his head against the rock. I winced, even though I knew he felt no pain. I longed to crawl into that niche and share the aromatic darkness with him, to smooth his hair, to close his wounds, and to feel the embrace of his strong arm around me.
Chuza wept and tore at the sleeves of his tunic. At he did this, he scowled at me. To appease him, I tore a hole in my mantle. I dared not anger Chuza.
A thin strain of chanted prayer ended our formalities in the chamber.
May His great name be blessed forever and to all eternity. Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted, extolled and honored, adored and lauded be the name of The Holy One, blessed be He, beyond all the blessings and hymns, praises and consolations that are ever spoken in the world; and say Amen.
We climbed out of the crypt, and Chuza removed the wedge. The stone rolled along in its groove and settled with a thud across the entrance, sealing Father into the cool vault with his ancestors. I had never felt so alone in all of my thirteen years of life.
As we processed back to Chuza’s house, I recalled some verses Father had once made me commit to memory. One rainy afternoon, I had been inside the house spinning wool while Father copied these writings onto a new scroll. He called me over to read them aloud to him.
The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them. In the eyes of the foolish, they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be a disaster; their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace. For though in the sight of others they were punished, their hope is full of immortality.
“Always remember this, Danya,” Father had said. “Do not see death with ‘the eyes of the foolish.’” I knew I shouldn’t see his death through such eyes, but my foolish eyes kept weeping, and nothing could stop them.
At Chuza’s house, visitors who were impatient to offer their condolences and return to their other business awaited us. Quickly, we washed and ate the bread of mourning. Naomi went straight to our bedroom then, knowing that Chuza didn’t want her with the family. Chuza probably didn’t want me, either, but my absence would’ve been an impropriety, so I was tolerated. But I knew none of these people. They couldn’t be any consolation to me.
I sat in a corner and tugged on the silk tunic Joanna had loaned me. The sleeves didn’t cover my arms completely, which embarrassed me in front of these beautiful, elegantly dressed guests. At Chuza’s order, Joanna had also provided me with a veil, something I thought I would hate wearing. But the dark veil proved a blessing. Behind it, I felt removed from this event, as if I were watching from a distance. I could pretend I was not sitting shiva but was at home in Nazareth, lazily surfacing from sleep. A pitcher of fresh goat’s milk sat on the table, and Father and Lev were saying that the blackberries would soon ripen. . . .
Joanna interrupted my dreaming to introduce me to an older man on her arm. “Danya, this is Efron, my father.” The eyebrows on Efron’s small copper face flew up onto his forehead and laugh lines jumped out from the corners of his mouth. His nose curved like the handle of a water jug. But even at this solemn moment, he couldn’t compose his face into a truly sad expression.
“My dear Danya,” he said, plopping onto the bench next to me. “I am so very, very sorry for you. I am sorry for me, too, because I didn’t have the honor of meeting your most righteous father. Just today I’ve returned from a long business trip and heard the terrible news. Joanna’s mother, Yona, sends her deepest sympathy as well. She couldn’t accompany me here today because of her illness.”
“Thank you,” I said. His sweet, kind speech did offer me a bit of solace. People who didn’t know my father had missed something. Joanna hadn’t mentioned that her mother was ill, but we’d only been in Jerusalem for five days, though it seemed like years.
Efron and I sat in silence for some time. I was comfortable with him and pleased to have someone with me among all those strangers. Then, attempting to distract me, Efron asked, “Who do you think are the best-dressed men here?”
I surveyed the twenty or so people in the reception hall and pointed out two men whose silk pantaloons were the color of olive leaves. Silver pins bunched and clasped their sleeveless tunics at the shoulders.
“You have a good eye,” said Efron. “Those men are my customers. Very wealthy Phoenicians. They come to my shop twice a year to purchase my silk.”
Watching his daughter with her visitors, Efron’s eyes danced. “Joanna is my prize. I chose her name, Greek not Hebrew, because it sounds more fashionable. I’ve worked my whole life to help her rise in Jerusalem society, and look at her today: she certainly looks like an aristocrat! She has wonderful posture. Straight as a Roman column,
