Fifteen

'He looked so--pathetic--that I finally said, to put his mind at ease, 'It is all right, Joseph'--and he suddenly broke into an angry tirade that took me completely by surprise. 'All right!' he fairly screamed. 'Who has done this to you? How could anyone be so--so evil!'

"'Joseph, Joseph!' I cried, holding him by the shoulders, hoping to calm him down so that I could tell him the rest of the good news. 'Can you trust me? Can you trust the Lord?'

"He shook himself away from me and snarled, 'What does the Lord have to do with this? How can you even say such a thing! When I find out who it was, I will kill him! And I will find out, whether you tell me or not! You say six months? Then it must have happened on your way to Judea! Why did you not allow me to come with you? Why did you not have anyone? Where was this "protector" of yours, eh? A young, beautiful simple girl like you! What could one expect? I blame your parents! They should have tied you up, if they could keep you no other way until I arrived!' And he went on and on, not allowing me to say a word, becoming more and more incoherent.

"This--accusation--was so contrary to what I expected--to what had actually happened--that, I am sorry to say, as soon as he stopped for breath, I answered a bit scornfully, 'Nothing happened on the trip to Judea. I knew nothing would happen, and nothing did.'

"'You cannot mean it was someone here in Nazareth!' he cried.

"I tried to begin reasoning with him, and said, 'No one here in Nazareth was responsible for this,' but my tone made him even more furious.

"'Then if it was not someone in Nazareth,' he shouted, 'and it was not on the trip to Judea, would you kindly explain to me how it could have happened at all?'

"He grasped me roughly by the shoulders and looked straight into my eyes. 'I require an answer!' He almost shook me.

"Would you believe that it was not until that moment that I realized how it must appear to him? It had just never occurred to me that it would be seen as anything but something glorious, especially since Elizabeth had seen it that way. And I had been so anxious to come to Joseph and tell him everything and to have him rejoice with me at our wonderful fortune that--well in any case, when I became aware that it must look as if I had been assaulted, I felt such helpless pity for him that I almost wept, and said, 'Joseph, I ask you, as I asked you before, to pray over this, and I am sure you will receive light. You prayed before, remember, and the idea came to you to marry me to protect me--'

"And he suddenly screamed, 'How can I marry you now!' and actually did shake me. 'Especially after what we had agreed!'

I was trembling myself now, on my own account. As calmly as I could, I took his hands off my shoulders and held them, and simply looked at him with as kind a gaze as I was capable of. The poor man was suffering so much, and so understandably--and so needlessly! He looked as if he was torn between the desire to slap my face and to fold me into his arms and say that he loved me desperately--because he did, even then, I could see it! But it was as if he had been frozen. His hands, certainly, those huge, competent hands, were ice.

"After a very long while, I seemed to detect something of a thaw, and said, 'I can only ask you to trust, and that you will find that it is all right. You will understand then why I do not tell you now, but it is truly all right, Joseph. Truly. You will see. It is far, far more than all right! You will see! I know you will see! Trust me! And yes, trust the Lord, however strange this may seem. You will learn what it is--and you will, I am certain--and once you discover it, I will tell you all. Pray. And I will pray for you. Very hard. Trust and pray.'"

"Trust," Thomas repeated. Yes, indeed. Everything was built on trust--because in itself it was incredible. Impossible.

"He finally let his hands fall, and I let them go. He gave me a look--such a look! It was the very definition of despair!--and turned away, without a word, and went home. I went home myself, and spent the night in prayer, as well as the next day. I knew the Lord would finally work things out somehow, but he acted in such strange ways that I knew not what to expect. It would have been so much simpler if he had simply informed Joseph beforehand, but who am I to teach the Almighty what to do? Perhaps Joseph also had to pass some kind of test. If so, I knew he would.

"But a whole night and a whole day and another night went by, without any sign of him. I cannot say I was actually worried, because this was clearly the Lord's doing, and if anyone knew what he was doing, it was the Lord. Still, to say that I was concerned was to trivialize what I experienced.

"But the next morning, almost before it grew light, there was a soft knock on the door, and I flew to answer it; I had been waiting behind it, hoping and hoping. If you could have seen his exhausted, puzzled, hopeful, joyful, frightened, confident, loving face!

"He said, in a hesitant voice, 'I had what I think was a message last night that you are to be the mother of the Messiah--and that I am to be your husband.'

"'I knew he would tell you!' I cried, and fell into his arms. He suddenly stiffened, and I almost drew back, wondering if he thought that I was being too--I know not, too forward--but after a time, he seemed to relax, and we remained together thus in silence--and in such bliss--for a long while.

"Finally, he held me out at arms length, looked into my eyes, and said, 'So it is true! I cannot believe it! How did it--what happened? Did you hear a voice also--or a something?'

"So I told him what I told you earlier. He looked inclined not to believe it, but of course, it was impossible for him not to believe, after what he had experienced himself." She laughed at the recollection. "Though I do not think he understood much more than the main idea, because I was far from what one might call coherent. Everything seemed to tumble out of me all at once. I finally had someone to whom I could tell what had happened, and I wanted to tell all of it, and I completely lost any sense of order or time, as one amazing thing after another simply had to be told. The poor man kept looking at me, at first trying to make head or tail of what I was saying, and then giving up, and letting me talk, with a kind of indulgent amusement on his face. He realized that this was the time to rejoice; understanding would come later.

"Well, we married immediately--and then had to confront the difficulty that I was already in my fourth month, and soon it would be obvious that I was going to have a child. Did we want the Messiah to have the reputation of being--what everyone would think he was? And if he was to save his people from their sins, how could he himself be thought to be a child of sin, even if everyone would believe that it was a very minor sin? You understand how it might seem."

"I do indeed," said Thomas. "What did you do?"

"Well," she continued, "as we talked, it occurred to us that it would also be difficult to convince anyone that the Prince prophesied to lead all of Israel would come from Galilee. The Judeans, I know from my relatives down there, consider us Galileans to be almost Gentiles. And then it occurred to us that it would be best if we moved to Bethlehem, so that Jesus--the angel, you remember, had said his name was to be Jesus--would be born there. Then the question of whether he was David's descendant or not would not even arise. Joseph had also heard rumors that the Emperor was thinking of having a census of the whole world, and we thought that if we were in Bethlehem when it occurred, then he would be registered as having come from Bethlehem, and not from some place like Nazareth in Galilee no one had ever heard of.

"But Joseph had a number of commissions to finish, and did not think he could simply abandon what he had promised--not to mention that it gave us enough money to move there and find a small place to live while he bought land and collected materials and built our house. But it did delay us for a considerable time.

"So I simply stayed inside during this interval. Neither of us had ever been what one would call 'sociable,' though we were not stand-offish, but my seclusion did not surprise anyone. At first, people understood that I was preparing the house because I had been away and did not have time before the marriage to do so, and then when we let word get out that we were going to move--as we had to do, if for no other reason than that Joseph was refusing new work--they thought I was busy preparing for that. And after a while, of course, they understood that I was as all women are apt to be a few months after marriage. The result, in any case, was that no one saw me, but it caused no stir.

One evening, we simply left. It was very late in my time, but Joseph could not finish any sooner. I told him not to worry about the journey, and he did not, since he had long suspected my 'condition,' and now understood why I was as I was.

The trip itself was uneventful, but it was clear when we arrived that the baby was due that very day; I was already experiencing the signs--which in my case were not painful at all--when we came in sight of Bethlehem. Joseph went to the inn and asked if they had private quarters; it was unthinkable for there to be a birth--and such a birth!--in the common room with everyone milling about. But they told him that there were no such accommodations available.

"He emerged with a frantic look on his face, and then as he turned away, he saw the stable by the side of the inn; it seemed secluded, and was practically empty, with only the inn's ox there. I went with him to look at it, and then we returned to the innkeeper together and asked if we could use the stable for a night or two until we could find a suitable place. The innkeeper took one look at me and understood all, and told us that he had no difficulty with that--and then with a magnanimous wave of his hand, that he would not even charge for the space.

"So then poor Joseph went into the stable and did a creditable job of cleaning it up. There were two rooms in it, and we put the ox and our little donkey in one, with a low door between them and us that they kept looking over. I had the illusion that they seemed to know that something momentous was about to happen. Joseph then spread clean straw upon the floor and made a bed of sorts in the corner. I was beginning my labor, and so I went and lay on the bed, while Joseph looked at me with a comical gaze of impotent distress.

"He asked if he should go now for the midwife, and I could not help but laugh at him--which I suppressed immediately, because his face flamed with embarrassment. So I told him,, quite calmly and matter-of-factly, that because of my 'condition,' I needed no midwife, that everything would be fine; that all he had to do was to heat some water over a fire to bathe the baby, and not to worry.

"'I must trust,' he said with a touch of bitterness. We had spoken of trust often and often in these months. I simply smiled and answered, 'Of course.'

I must say, it was very hard work. Joseph asked me gently if if the pain was very bad, and I answered, panting, 'There is no pain, Joseph. It is hard work, but I am used to hard work.' I asked if I could grasp his arm to give me leverage--and partly, I must confess, to give him the idea that he was helping, and he held it out to me with a look of radiant joy on is face. Finally, I told him to be ready to take the baby when he emerged.

"You should have seen his face as he held the Son of God, the offspring of the Supreme Being, in his hands! I was completely exhausted, but his expression alone was enough to revive me. And the child! So--ordinary! Well, you have seen him. At first glance so ordinary, and yet--one knows, somehow. But I was startled by how ordinary it all was.

"Joseph said, 'I thought there was to be blood,' and I answered, 'Not in this case, Joseph.' There was no blood at all, though he was of course completely soaked.

--And then there was the cord. I could not help it, I laughed aloud at his panic; he had no idea what to do."

"He would not have been the only one," said Thomas. He seemed to have heard that some such thing was part of birth, but he had no idea what it was. He thought it had something to do with one's navel, but that was the extent of his knowledge.

"I told him to cut it, and he put Jesus in his left hand and took out his knife--and then I realized that I had better show him where and tie the cord myself, so I asked him to bring him to me. After I tied the cord, I handed him back, and he took him over to the warm water and cleaned hm up pretty well for a man. He brought him back, and I wrapped him in his little blanket, and fed him. Joseph looked on with an expression of bliss at the sight. He never tired of watching me feed Jesus; it was more of a wonder to him than Jesus himself, it seemed.

"Then I gave him back to Joseph, who put him in the manger, which he had filled with soft hay, and I slept while Joseph--and Jesus, he told me afterwards, kept watch.

"A little before dawn, I woke and saw Joseph look out the entrance of the stable to a brilliant star on the eastern horizon. He rose and went to the doorway, and said to the sky, 'So it is really true, then.' I understood. Even when one sees, it is hard to believe, somehow.

"'That is some comfort,' said Thomas, 'if even he had difficulty.'

"It is one of the reasons I am telling you this. You will, I am certain, see wonders; but your mind will always be telling you reasons why they are coincidence, or natural events that we do not yet understand--anything but that a divine presence is announcing a transformation of the whole world. You will have to change your whole way of thinking and looking at things, and it will not be easy."

"I can see that." He was even now thinking that, though she clearly believed everything she had been telling him, she had been carried away by some kind of delusion provoked by extraordinary circumstances. How could it be that pain and suffering would disappear, even among animals and the natural world? What lamb would ever lie down with a lion? And what lion could bring itself not to eat the poor thing?

"Toward dawn," she was saying, "some shepherds arrived, with the story that they had seen a vision of angels as they were out in the fields, telling them that the Messiah and their Master had been born in Bethlehem--which was about an hour's walk away for them--and that as a sign of this they would find an infant lying in a manger; and then, they said, the angels chanted songs giving glory to God.

"They said that they discussed what they had seen for quite a while and then decided that they had probably been told to come and see for themselves. And of course as soon as they saw Jesus in the manger, they were convinced that something great had happened, and went away and told everyone they met about it. No one believed them, of course; they thought that they had had a bit too much wine to warm themselves during the night, because it was quite cold, though the stable was comfortable enough with the little fire Joseph had made.

"We stayed in the stable for the next two days, while Joseph went out to find some place that would take us in while he bought land and began to build our own house. It would be difficult, starting over from nothing, but a carpenter can always find something to do, and his work on the house turned out to be a good advertisement of his skill.

"Then, a month after Jesus was born, I said that we should go up to Jerusalem to present him to the Master in the Temple, and for me to be purified. 'Present him!' exclaimed Joseph. 'He is the Master, is he not? And if there is anyone who does not need purification, it is you!' He was, of course, nervous about making Jesus known to the King.

"But I answered that while that might be true, it would be wise to keep up appearances; we did not want people to talk, and they would talk if we seemed to be disobeying the Law; and he could see that I had reason, and reluctantly agreed. It was true that King Herod certainly would not take kindly to a hint that a rival had been born practically under his nose.

"But I mentioned that there was nothing extraordinary for anyone to notice about us, and in any case when we arrived at the Temple, no one would know where we had come from, and so he acquiesced.

"But as soon as we entered the inner courtyard with our two pigeons, an old man, a kind of prophet, came up and made a huge fuss over Jesus as the prophesied Savior, fulfilling Joseph's worst fears; and several other people also came to see him and made dangerous remarks.

"But of course, King Herod was not one to frequent such places as the Temple, and also no one knew where we were from; and apparently there were things similar to this happening among various fanatics from time to time, so no one of any consequence took notice, and we were able to return to Bethlehem without incident.

"It took several months to have the house ready, but finally we moved in and life seemed to be settling down. Nothing came of what was said in the Temple or of the stir the shepherds made, and Joseph and I thought it was all for the best, given the kind of man King Herod was. The star was still there, steadily higher rising earlier and earlier in the night, but no one, of course, thought it had anything to do with us. We were simply a new family that had moved in.

"But when Jesus was a year and a half old, suddenly some sages appeared out of nowhere, arriving nearly at midnight, long after Jesus had gone to bed, but while we were still awake, discussing something or other. They were looking up at the sky, where the star was now directly overhead. They knocked, waking Jesus, and as we hastened to open to them, they took one look at me, with Jesus in my arms, fell to their knees at the sight of him.

"We immediately invited them in, hoping that none of the neighbors had noticed their gesture, and they explained that over a year ago they had seen the star in the east, and after discussing it at length as clearly a portent, they had pored over their books and come to the conclusion that the King of the Jewish People had been born. Their sources indicated that he would be the salvation, somehow, of the whole world; and so they had decided to come and pay him homage.

"We did not know quite what to say. They were a bit taken aback when they saw nothing but an ordinary house, with no one but a carpenter as its master, and not even a slave to answer the door. For a brief few moments, they said, they thought that they might have made a mistake, but they had made inquiries in Jerusalem--which made Joseph flinch--and learned that the Messiah was to come from Bethlehem. They then found that no one else had been born in Bethlehem at the precise time that seemed indicated by the star (it is a small town, after all); and as they inquired further, they heard people telling of the fantastic tale that the shepherds had spread (which had already acquired all sorts of embellishments), but they were told not to believe a word of it.

"They looked around a bit, as Joseph told them that they were welcome to stay the night, and as I wondered how we could fit the three of them and all their servants in our tiny house, and to our relief they insisted on not troubling us. We were about to tell them that it would perhaps be wise not to return through Jerusalem, when one of them informed us that they had already been advised to use a different route. They had perhaps seen through the King's eagerness to find out where Jesus was, since his reputation was rather widespread, and his tale that he wished to come and give him homage himself stank to heaven.

"And then, as they left, they opened the chests they were carrying and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, asking us to be sure to tell him what they had done once he was old enough to remember it. 'And we are certain,' they said, 'that he will favor us when he comes into his kingdom.' And then they went away.

"The neighbors, of course, all crowded around, asking what they wanted, and we told them that they were looking for someone and had made some inquiries of us, and apparently found out what they wanted to know, because they had left. Everyone was curious as to what they were asking about, but we made non-committal responses.

"And, in fact, that very night, Joseph woke me and said that he had had another dream, and was told to leave immediately for Egypt, because King Herod was going to try to kill Jesus. As we hurriedly gathered our things together, I remembered my brother, who had gone to live in Alexandria, and would probably take us in, at least for a while. 'It will not have to be for long,' he answered, pointing to the gifts we had--providentially--just received. We were suddenly quite wealthy. 'I should have had more trust,' he remarked.

"So once again we left, and faced the prospect of starting over for the second time. We were able to use the gift money to find a suitable house after staying with my relatives only a day or two--where Jesus made the acquaintance of his cousin James, almost the same age--and hire a language teacher and someone to instruct Joseph in Egyptian carpentry, which it seemed was rather different from what we practice here.

"Well, to finish out the story, we remained in Egypt for two years, when word came that Herod had died, and Joseph had still another dream telling us to go back to the land of my ancestors. So we said goodbye to our new friends and relatives, and Jesus to James, and returned, planning to return to our house in Bethlehem, using our money to buy it back.

"But when we heard that Herod's son had taken over from his father, and that he was as bad as the first Herod if not worse, we thought it better to stay out of Judea altogether, and return to Galilee and Nazareth, where Joseph and I were already known, and so we would not have to begin life over once more.

"The people welcomed us back, of course, and we were able to buy back our old house, using the last of the gift money, and settled in quite comfortably.