Daughter of Cana Read online

  “I’ll go for the physician. Where does he live?”

  “Um . . .” Thoughts scrambled in my head. “Three houses down the road, the house with the yellow courtyard gate. His name is Nahum.”

  “I will return soon.” He stepped toward the door, then hesitated. “Do you need anything? Are you all right? Is Yagil?”

  I rested my hand on the boy’s head. “We are well. While you get the doctor, I’ll prepare something to break our fast. And, Jude?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You didn’t answer me—why are you here?”

  A familiar softness settled around his mouth, a sign that he was about to smile. “I came to check on the boy.”

  “Good. I really don’t care why you’ve come, but I thank Adonai that you have.”

  He flashed me a grin, then left the house and hurried down the street.

  Propped on his pillows, Abba narrowed his eyes at the bowl of gruel in my hand. “So tell me more about the young man in my house this morning. This Jude ben Joseph.”

  I moved the bowl closer to his mouth. “Jude was at the wedding. You gave me permission to go with him to Capernaum to find Thomas.”

  Abba took a grudging sip of the gruel, then made a face. “That is horrible.”

  “It’s supposed to be good for you.”

  “Of course it is. Otherwise no one would eat it.” He took another sip, then pushed the bowl away. “I am not hungry. Give it to Yagil. Surely he needs gruel more than I do.”

  “He won’t eat it.”

  Abba laughed. “Smart boy, that one.” He turned back to me. “So, you know Jude because he went with you to find Thomas?”

  “That’s right. Remember, both you and Aunt Dinah approved of it.”

  “We approved of a two-day trip, but you were gone a month.”

  “Yes, Abba, but we were not alone. A woman joined us in Tiberias, and after that we traveled with many people.”

  “Did he behave like a righteous man?”

  “He is a good man. You would have approved of his behavior.”

  “Yet he does not follow his brother.”

  I shook my head. “None of Yeshua’s brothers follow him.”

  “That is significant.” Abba lifted a warning finger. “When a man’s family will not support what he does—”

  “I know, Abba. I said the same thing to Thomas.”

  “Yet your brother did not come home.”

  “No.” I set aside the bowl of gruel. “Are you sure you’re feeling better? The doctor said the bump on your head could be serious.”

  “I am feeling as well as a man my age ought to feel—which is not so good. What is it Solomon said? ‘The glory of young men is their strength, and the splendor of old men is gray hair.’ That’s all I have, Tasmin—and gray hair is good for nothing but making a man look old.”

  “Abba, you shouldn’t—”

  “I should, daughter, and some things I should have done long ago. You and your brother became close after your mother died and I approved, since you had been through so much together. But now you are of an age when you ought to take a husband and bear children, yet you keep longing for Thomas.”

  “Not so much now. I have come to see that he is not willing to come home. Not yet, at least.” I lifted my chin. “And why shouldn’t I miss him? He’s my brother. My best friend.”

  “It is time you found another friend. I am old, daughter, and growing older by the day. Soon I will go the way of my fathers, and you will be left with nothing but this house, the grove, and this child, who is not even yours.”

  “Thomas will return . . . eventually.” I smiled with a confidence I did not feel. “This Yeshua will disappear, just like John the Immerser and the false prophets of our past. When that happens, Thomas will come home because he will realize he belongs in Cana.”

  Abba did not speak for a moment, then he shook his head. “I am afraid I will not live long enough to see my son again. So I must know what is in your heart. What do you think about this Jude ben Joseph? You say he is a righteous man. Could you marry him?”

  Stunned by the question, I stammered as my heart did an odd flip. “I—I have not thought about it.”

  “Then think, daughter. Think.”

  I closed my eyes and leaned back in my chair as Abba’s words danced in the air. Could I marry Jude? He was a good man, strong and protective, and as practical as Thomas, in his way. He was concerned about his business and wise about his work. He had been gentle with me and the boy, and courteous to Joanna and Susanna and Ziv. And even though he disagreed with Yeshua, he had not railed against his brother, had not cursed him or exploded in raging frustration. My heart warmed whenever I saw him. But while he was a good man, I still could not marry him. How to explain that to Abba?

  “You are right, Abba—Jude is a righteous man.”

  My father crossed his hands atop his blanket. “So whom should I visit? His father is dead, no?”

  “And his mother travels with Yeshua.”

  “Who then?”

  “No one.” I lifted my hands. “You asked if I could marry him, but I do not think Jude wants a wife. None of his brothers are married, probably because they are working hard at their business. So promise me you will say nothing to anyone.”

  Concern mingled with confusion in Abba’s eyes as he struggled to sit up. The effort made him cough, a persistent barking sound that lasted for several minutes. He brought his hand up to cover his mouth, and when the coughing stopped, he wiped his hand on his tunic.

  I felt a sudden chill when I saw that his hand left a blood-tinged spot on the fabric.

  “I will not live forever, daughter,” Abba said, speaking slowly. “As the dust returns to the ground it came from, so the spirit returns to God who gave it. But before I return to HaShem, I would like to know you will not be left alone.”

  “Abba . . . I don’t want you to worry about me.” I closed my eyes, wishing I could give my father the assurance he wanted. Still, if it would please him to believe I would marry Jude someday, why not tell him I would be willing? Better Jude than some man I did not know.

  Better yet that Thomas would come home.

  “I would be willing to marry Jude ben Joseph,” I finally said. “If he is willing to take me as his bride. So put your mind at rest, Abba—I will not spend the rest of my life alone.”

  Abba smiled and patted my hand. “All will be well, daughter. You must have faith in the future.”

  “Faith?” I nearly choked on the word but was grateful for an opportunity to change the subject. “Yeshua often talks about faith. One day two blind men were behind him, crying out for mercy. He asked them if they believed he could heal them. When they said yes, he said, ‘According to your faith, let it be done for you.’”

  “And?” Abba whispered. “Did they see?”

  “They did. But I had to wonder if they were truly blind or if Yeshua’s men had asked them to pretend for the sake of the crowd.”

  Abba sighed, a frown puckering the skin between his eyes into fine wrinkles. “What has happened to you? I have never known you to be so . . . distrusting. Did he perform any healing you did not doubt?”

  Yes. With only a touch of his hand, he healed my boy’s cloven tongue and enabled him to speak. I also saw him cast a demon out of a young girl, a demon who knew things the girl could never have known.

  But surely I had missed something, because such things simply could not happen.

  “I would doubt any man who did what only HaShem could do.” I kept my voice light, not wanting to enter in to a debate. “I would especially mistrust him if he stole a girl’s twin brother away.”

  “Tasmin.” Abba’s voice held a note halfway between reproach and entreaty. “Faith is believing that HaShem is willing and able to do the impossible. When asked to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham had faith that Adonai would spare his son. Moses had faith that HaShem would lead His people out of Egypt. Noah had faith enough to build an ark to save his family from the fl
ood. Faith has always been what Adonai asks of us.”

  “I believe in HaShem,” I answered, smoothing the covers over my father’s chest. “And, like Thomas, I believe HaShem will soon send a messiah king to deliver us from the Roman oppression. But I do not believe Yeshua is that king.” I kissed the top of his head. “Sleep well, Abba. I will see you in the morning.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Jude

  The merchant did not want an ordinary cedar bed. Once I explained that the only brother capable of completing the detailed carving refused to come home, the merchant was sympathetic but adamant.

  “Every family has at least one wayward sheep,” he said, smiling, “but I have promised my wife an exceptional gift, and a slightly unusual bed will not suffice. And of course I would like my deposit returned, because I will have to go to Jerusalem or Tiberias to find the craftsman I need.”

  “I would be happy to return your deposit,” I said, opening my empty hands, “but I have spent it on cedar and sandalwood. I would gladly make you something else, if you would consider that an acceptable exchange.”

  The merchant frowned and stroked his beard. “A pergola,” he finally said. “Something to give us shade in the garden. My wife saw a pergola in Rome and has been asking for one ever since.”

  Though I had no idea what a pergola was, I bowed in relief. “If you can provide a sketch, we will construct the most beautiful pergola in Nazareth,” I promised. “My brothers and I will be at your home on the first day of the week, ready to begin the work.”

  The merchant smiled. “All except for the wayward sheep?”

  “Yes. All but him.”

  So my brothers and I began the work at the merchant’s house, putting our minds and hands to the first job we had undertaken together in weeks. While I hammered beams into place and worked the bow-and-strap drill, I realized how deeply Yeshua’s defection had affected us. As a team of five, we could have completed the pergola in six days. But with only four to do the work, the merchant’s project would take at least seven. Not only were we lacking a skilled pair of hands, we missed our brother’s company.

  We had been quietly mourning the loss of our elder brother and mother without even realizing it. The house seemed empty without them. Ima’s absence was palpable, a void not even my sisters could fill when they visited.

  As for Yeshua, as irritated as we were by his stubborn refusal to take our advice, I had to admit that he had often served as the heart and soul of our family. When our father died, Yeshua stood in the synagogue and spoke of the impact a righteous father could have on a son. With tears in his eyes, he talked about the great faith and piety our father had always demonstrated, and how he loved our mother respectfully and deeply over the years. “When tested,” Yeshua had said, sweeping his audience with a piercing glance, “Joseph listened to the voice of the Lord and obeyed. But he gave God more than obedience: he loved Adonai his God with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his mind. He also loved his neighbor as himself.”

  I had other memories of Yeshua—how we used to giggle when his voice changed from the high tones of youth to the deeper voice of a man. How we stared at him in awe when the seedling hairs on his chin sprouted into the beginnings of a beard. How we heard Ima make gentle tsking sounds when a growth spurt rendered his tunic too short for modesty.

  And after our father’s death, we went to Yeshua with our questions about HaShem, women, and righteous behavior. He would sit and listen as we struggled to string words together. He would nod, finger his growing beard, and provide an answer we had never considered.

  He rejoiced with our sisters and their husbands when he held his newborn nieces in his rugged hands. Whenever Ima seemed lonely, he would walk with her in the cool of the day, listening as she shared whatever was heavy on her heart and mind.

  Yes, we were irritated with Yeshua for leaving the family when there was important work to be done. I began to understand what Tasmin meant when she said her brother’s absence had left a hole in her life.

  Yeshua’s departure created an abyss in our family.

  When we returned home after a long day of work on the merchant’s pergola, we would pull food from the baskets Damaris had been kind enough to leave at the house. We would rip off chunks of dry bread with our teeth, not caring about our manners because there were no women to remind us of the proper way to eat and drink. We would snack on figs and grapes, carve huge slabs of goat cheese, and eat nuts by the handful, gorging ourselves until we could barely roll into our beds.

  And while we lay there, all four of us in the same stuffy bedchamber, I wondered what it would be like to have a woman to restore civility to the house, to implore us to bathe and eat properly, to trim our hair and check the looking brass to see whether or not we had food between our teeth.

  A woman to sleep with . . . to hold when I felt lonely, to share my happiness and disappointment, to lie with in the hope of creating a family of our own.

  What would it be like to have a wife?

  We finished the merchant’s pergola during the harvest season, just before Sukkot. We received his wife’s gracious compliments, then went home, grateful to have satisfied a debt and done a good job. Now that the work was done, we looked forward to the Feast of Tabernacles, one of the most festive occasions of the year. Soon we would begin our pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where with thousands of other visitors we would build makeshift structures and remember the days when our desert-dwelling forefathers lived in temporary shelters.

  That night, just after we crawled into our unadorned bachelor beds, I spoke into the darkness. “Which of you has given thought to taking a wife?”

  James snorted. “Are you thinking about it?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Joses cleared his throat. “I was waiting on Yeshua. He should take a wife first, then I might think about it. But since he seemed in no hurry to marry—”

  “Yeshua will never marry. Not now,” James said, a note of finality in his voice. “He is on a path to destruction.”

  “Then it’s up to you,” Joses said. “You are the second-born.”

  James made a gurgling sound deep in his throat. “A bridegroom must have money for a dowry. And it would be nice to have a father who could negotiate those arrangements.”

  I knew what we were all thinking, though no one said it. Yeshua could have made those arrangements for us, but he was gone.

  “Since we have no father,” Simeon said, his voice heavy with resignation, “you should speak for all of us, James. Because I think Jude has found himself a bride.”

  “Truly?” A note of envy filled Joses’s voice. “You have someone in mind?”

  I folded my hands across my chest as Tasmin’s image drifted across the back of my eyelids. She had been much in my thoughts of late—many times, as we worked at the merchant’s house, I had imagined I was building a pergola for her, a place where she could sit in the shade and relax with her father and Yagil. Perhaps even with me.

  “I might,” I said, smiling at the image in my mind.

  With a little encouragement, I would have confessed Tasmin’s name to my brothers, but at that moment a sound startled us. My nerves tensed as I sat up and Joses lit the lamp. James threw off his blanket and stood, ready to investigate.

  “The door,” I said. “Someone’s in the house.”

  The tension in the air evaporated when Yeshua’s figure filled the doorway, his face shadowed by the flickering lamplight.

  “Yeshua?” Simeon gaped at him. “What are you doing here?”

  “Can a man not visit his brothers?” Yeshua came into the room, sighed, and dropped the leather pack he carried. While removing his cloak, he sniffed the air and frowned. “Brothers, how long has it been since you washed?”

  James’s smile deepened into laughter. “You should talk. You smell of weeds and sand and donkey.”

  Yeshua chuckled, then sank to his bed, which had not been occupied in months.

  “Where�
��s Ima?” I asked. “Did she not arrive with you?”

  “She and the other women are staying with Damaris,” Yeshua said. “Our mother did not want them to be alone in an unfamiliar town.”

  I understood Ima’s reasoning, but it did not seem right for all of us to be here without her.

  “So why have you come home?” James lifted a brow. “Are you here to stay?”

  Hope lifted my spirits. “You’ve come to do the carving for us?”

  Yeshua shook his head. “We are only passing through. The other men have gone on to Jerusalem, but I wanted to see you—all of you.”

  Swallowing the hurt that had risen in my throat, I looked at Joses, whose face did not make me want to scream in frustration.

  “Where are you going next?” Simeon rolled onto his side. “Back up to Galilee? Perhaps to Tiberias for an audience with Antipas?”

  Yeshua must have missed Simeon’s sarcasm, because he shook his head. “The Feast of Tabernacles approaches, so I wanted to come home. Some in Judea are planning to take my life.”

  James caught my eye and lifted a brow—so Yeshua knew he was in trouble. Why, then, did he continue down this perilous path?

  “If you want to win people to your cause,” Simeon went on, “you should go to Judea, so your public can see the works you are doing. No one who wants to be well known does everything in secret. If you are doing these things, show yourself to the world! Why remain hidden in Galilee? And why do you heal people and tell them to keep quiet?”

  Yeshua leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and gave Simeon a weary smile. “My time has not yet come, but your time is always at hand. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that its works are evil. All of you go to the Feast. I’m not going, for my time hasn’t yet fully come.”

  I looked at James again, then blew out a breath. “Well, go or stay, Yeshua, do what you will. We are leaving for Jerusalem on the morrow.”

  Yeshua smiled. “Then we should all get some sleep.”

  Joses blew out the lamp, and darkness flooded the room. A moment later I heard the sound of deep breaths from Yeshua’s bed and knew he had succumbed to weariness.