When Maryam’s father first came to visit her in the night, the dim light of the fire glowing behind his silhouette as he drew back the ruddy cloth that hung across her door frame, she didn’t know him from an angel and could honestly not guess what he wanted as he crept under her blanket and began to rub his rough hands over her body. And she could not guess what he wanted as he dragged his body over top of hers, pushing open her legs with his knees while his mouth, still reeking with black wine, sought out her lips and the curves of her slender neck.
But Maryam’s mother, Hannah, was a shrewd one, and thoughts of a solution began to coil and uncoil in her mind the first time she saw Maryam, up before dawn to fetch a jug of water from the river, kneeling down in the long rushes and vomiting into the current. Joseph, Maryam’s betrothed, though he might have been no brighter than the wood he pounded endlessly with his hammer, was at least employed steadily; and anyhow he was devout and gentle and was all in all a decent man… but how poor Joseph’s countenance would cloud when he came for the nissu'in and espied his bride to be waddling up with an already swollen belly.
“Well,” said Joachim, Maryam’s father, cackling over a flagon as Hannah dropped a bowl of food before him on the table, “why don’t we tell the boy that the Yahweh put that baby in her belly and the child to be born is one that the prophets spoke of? That holy fool won’t dare turn her out then! ” And Hannah, not for the first time, and not for the last, wondered what it would be like to stick a knife into her husband’s eye and then watch him thrashing about, blinded and howling in agony, on the dirt floor.
* * *
Later that same week, with young Maryam in tow, Hannah went up to see her cousin, Elisheva, who was married to the priest Zechariah and thus had some sway in local matters. Elisheva herself had just taken pregnant and was resting at home under a shaded canopy, eating cured olives from a large bowl and spitting the pits out into the dust. “Listen,” she said to Hannah, after she had heard the entirety of the story, you wouldn’t be the first woman to pour a vial of poison in her husband’s supper… and he by no means would be the first husband to deserve it, but let us deal with the matter at hand…let me have a look at you my lass…”
Elisheva ushered Maryam over and began to inspect her. She touched Maryam’s lips and her belly and cupped her breasts and gave them a squeeze. “I believe I know someone who can help you,” she said, “but it is essential that you go there as soon as possible or the treatment will not work. One the baby has established itself in the womb it is almost impossible to dislodge it without causing a permanent injury to the mother.”
And so Hannah and Maryam went down to see the old crone who dealt with these matters; walking, then resting and eating what little they carried with them, for two days; winding their way through the high rock faces at the edge of the desert, creeping from shade to shade until they came to the small oasis when the old woman lived. And the crone came out from her ramshackle hut to greet them and she too inspected Maryam and then took the piece of silver that Elisheva had provided as payment in her grizzled paw and instructed Hannah to make herself peaceful and to walk down by the stream while Maryam was given the cure. And with this the crone took Maryam by the hand and led her into the darkened hut.
* * *
Maryam lay down on the crone’s cot and the old woman pulled Maryam’s dress up over her belly and began to caress the girl’s vagina, softening it and making it wet.
“It feels nice.” Said Maryam.
“You will like it less before we’re done.” The crone snapped.
The hut, as far as Maryam could see from the odd shafts of light streaming down through the fabric was a filled with a tangle of bones, both animal and human, stacked into each other round the nest of filthy rags in with she imagined the old woman slept. And there above her dangled bouquet after bouquet of drying herbs, their heads down and the colours of their blooms fading and they reminded Maryam slightly of the corpses that the Romans hung occasionally in the square of her town. The crone, meanwhile, satisfied that Maryam was ready, clattered through her collection of bones until she discovered the object she desired: a large copper coin with its centre punched out, thus to form a ring. The crone moved into a patch of light in the centre of the room and held the ring up proudly for Maryam to observe.
“This,” she said, “is going inside of you now.”
* * *
At first the ring wasn’t too painful. Maryam could feel it inside of her pushing against her womb and it was a discomfort, but one she thought she could get used to. After this, though, the contractions started and after this she began to bleed. Maryam cried as the waves of pain moved through her guts and the crone, meanwhile, prepared a wad of dried leaves in her mortar and then pushed the wad into the girl’s mouth. After a little while the pain got better and the girl drifted into swoon. When she woke again she could feel that the ring was out and she was wrapped up in a blanket, her mother beside her, stroking her hair.
“We’ll have to stay her for some time,” said Hannah, “until you are able to travel again, but it seems that there were no complications and you’re going to be fine.”
The old crone, meanwhile, gathered up the bloody rags she had used in the operation and went down to wash them in the stream, singing an nearly tuneless song to herself as the blood mingled into the water and vanished into the current.
* * *
And so in the end, Joseph had his wife and, despite the untimely passing of the father of the bride, the wedding was a happy occasion and the couple had a son, whom they named Jacob, and Jacob became a carpenter and he tried to live, as well as he could, by the laws of Moses.
But in time, like all things, the laws of Moses became obscure and people lost interest in them. Swayed more perhaps by the many paths in life afforded through worship of the Roman gods and by the ease of access to the public sphere provided by acquiescence to all the principles of the Pax Romana, people began to turn their backs on the archaic and untenable religions of their forbearers, and, in the long run, no one much lamented the disappearance of the old ways.
No comments:
Post a Comment