The Weeping Chamber Read online

  Chapter Fourteen

  The animals left behind fallen tables, the litter of empty money bowls, merchants searching for coins on the ground, empty stock pens, and near silence. In that silence the crowd watched a man lift high one final dove cage.

  Somehow, although the gesture was plainly symbolic, Yeshua did not appear theatrical as He released the latch on the cage.

  The dove burst skyward, its wings audible in the vast open area.

  Yeshua looked at the crowd and called out a text I recognized from Isaiah. “The Scriptures declare, ‘My temple will be called a place of prayer.’ ” He paused and surveyed the remaining merchants. “But you,” He called out again, “have turned it into a den of thieves!”

  Behind me, in the quiet that followed the man’s echoing words, I heard the tap-tap of a stick on stone. I turned my head to see the uncertain progress of a stooped and twisted cripple, his head covered with rags.

  “Heal me,” the man begged, weeping. “Oh, Lord, let me walk again.”

  “Where,” my blind beggar groaned as he heard the other man, “where is the prophet now? Point me to where He is and let me go.”

  All focus centered on the cripple, who was undaunted by the crowd with all its stares. I told myself my own rapt attention was intellectual curiosity. The rumors of miracles—could they be true?

  The blind beggar tried to pull himself from my grasp. I held tight. Somehow, this moment had dignity. Even at my most cynical and weary, I would find no humor in watching a blind beggar race against a cripple.

  With gentle grace, Yeshua moved to meet the crippled man. He took him by the hand and led him toward the inner courts of the temple.

  “Let me take you to Him,” I said to the blind beggar.

  I followed the crowd, guiding the beggar, who clutched my arm with hands that quivered in hope and excitement.

  Chapter Fifteen

  At the evening meal, Pascal was still dressed in the fine clothing he had worn during the day. Seraphine had tied her hair back, and it added a beauty to her face that surprised me and brought me some sadness, for it reminded me of the beauty of my own wife’s face.

  The wide assortment of food arrayed on the table before us looked no different from the table of the previous evening. Pascal’s hospitality was generous—partly because tradition demanded it of a host, partly because of his affection for me, and partly, I suspect with no cruelty, because he always wanted me to be keenly aware of his status and wealth.

  As with the night before, I remained quiet. Less from weariness than from shock. I had left the temple in a daze so profound that I did not remember the steep climb along the streets to Pascal’s mansion nor the details of giving my cloak to the servant who greeted me at the door.

  To this point in the meal, Pascal had made no mention of my earlier offer to sell my entire estate, nor had he questioned why I had not visited him during the day to discuss it further. While the matter was probably uppermost in his mind, Seraphine’s presence again kept us from talking business.

  “You drive Seraphine to tears,” Pascal said to break the long silence that had fallen around the table. I had yet to say a single word; their forced conversation had brought the meal this far. “Please, eat, drink. Seraphine’s beginning to think you have no respect for her efforts.”

  “Cripples walked,” I said, hardly a response that either might have expected. “Blind men saw.”

  There. I had said it aloud. I still could barely believe what my eyes had forced upon my mind. By speaking it, fully expecting wild crazed laughter as response, I had taken the first step toward accepting it.

  “What?” Pascal’s beard was soaked with grease, his mouth half full of bread. He gestured with the chicken leg in his hand, waving it to get Seraphine’s attention. “My cousin’s first words of the meal, and he sounds drunk. Yet I have not seen him taste any wine.”

  “Cripples walked,” I said. “Blind men saw. I was there.”

  **

  They had approached Him in the afternoon sunlight in the courtyard of the temple. He had spoken to them softly, one at a time. Then He had bent His face toward them, listening intently to their replies. Never before had I seen such compassion on a man’s face, such naked love for the weak, the ugly, the infirm.

  Then—and my body still trembled to think of it—He had laid His hands upon their afflicted limbs. And somehow, the stooped straightened, the crippled dropped their canes. At His command, the blind turned their faces to the sun and blinked at the light, tears streaming down their cheeks. Children had danced, singing hosannas that not even the temple authorities could silence, reaching for heaven with their souls, their sweet voices ringing off the high temple walls like the distant melody of angels.

  He had healed them.

  Nothing in my entire life had prepared me for this. It was as if I had seen objects fall up, not down.

  He had healed them.

  **

  “Come, come,” Pascal said. “Explain this nonsense.”

  “The prophet from Galilee. The one they say raised a man from the dead. At the temple today, He overturned the money tables, ran the thieving traders out of the market. He—”

  “Yes, yes,” Pascal said, grinning. He paused to drink deeply from his wine cup. His eyes shone in the flickering oil light. “I heard of that business. I wish I could have seen it! They tell me it was chaos. Men and beasts everywhere. I wonder if tomorrow the market will be shut down or if—”

  I slammed an open palm down on the table in sudden rage. “Listen to me!” I roared. “He . . . healed . . . them!”

  I found myself half standing, looking down the table at Pascal and Seraphine. They stared back at me with their mouths open wide. Pascal had wanted to treat the entire matter as a trivial joke, yet he had no understanding that merely thinking of what I had seen was enough to make me feel as if I were swaying on the edge of the world. How could it be that a man healed cripples and blind men by touching them? It defied my common sense of how the world worked, the one strength I had learned to use as my foundation for life.

  He had healed them.

  I wanted to weep in my confusion. Slowly, the emotion that had driven me to my feet drained away.

  I sat.

  “Forgive me,” I said. “This day has been a strain.”

  Like the well-mannered hosts they were, my cousin and his wife continued the conversation politely, as if my outburst had not occurred.

  “So, you were in the temple today,” Pascal said after some small talk, nodding with a smile of cultivated interest.

  “Pascal,” I said, hardly trusting my voice, “I saw the prophet touch them. He healed them. Had you been there, you would be just as afraid as I am.”

  “Afraid?” It was probably the first time he had heard me admit fear.

  “It is not rational,” I said. “That He could touch a cripple and cause him to walk is not rational. If I had not been there, I wouldn’t believe it. And, frankly, I don’t expect you to believe it from me. But I saw it. He healed them.”

  I could not get my mind away from that one thought. He had healed them.

  “Well,” Pascal said, “in philosophical terms, I agree with you. Men are notoriously fickle and will only believe what they want to believe. Were I an ignorant peasant with little hope beyond far-fetched stories, I would desperately want to believe you. And so my belief would be certain. But I am not a peasant. I have carved my own comfortable place in the world. My range of experiences and education does not put me in a position where I need to clutch at desperate hope. So, no—and do not take this as an insult—I don’t believe you.”

  “I don’t want to believe it myself,” I said. “Because then I would have to accept that there are things beyond my understanding.”

  “Exactly.” Pascal took a fried locust, regarded it briefly with satisfaction, and popped it into his mouth. “Dear cousin, let me comfort you.”

  I waited for him to finish chewing. He washed his mouthful
down with more wine.

  “You see,” he said. “Rumors of this man and His so-called wonders have come to us for nearly three years. We are not provincials, willing to accept any type of hearsay. Everything He has done can be explained easily if you realize He is just another messianic fraud. It is simple to ‘heal’ a cripple who was never crippled in the first place. Bring in strangers on canes, wave your hand, and send them on their way—healed. And well paid, of course.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Why go to all that trouble?”

  “Influence. Once you have a great enough following, you have power. Whatever He did in the temple today was showmanship timed to impress the pilgrims at Passover. Most of them come from small towns far away and are ready to believe anything as a miracle.”

  Pascal shook his head. “This Lazarus. All he had to do was sneak into a tomb and wait there until called forth a few days later. Those who believe a dead man walked again are fools who deserve to lose whatever money they spend on His cause.”

  “I haven’t heard the prophet ask for money,” I said.

  “Once He has power, the money will follow. Any man shrewd enough to be as patient as He appears to be knows that.” Pascal smiled. “You see, this Nazarene might have following outside of Jerusalem, but here in the city, among those who count, He is nothing.”

  Pascal set down his well-gnawed chicken bone and stared at me. “Consider this a mild warning,” he said. “Any man who wishes to do business in Jerusalem must consider his own reputation. One who is linked to the rebel will find few to support him. Even those who might wish to do business with him would face pressure from others to shun the follower.”

  I understood. It was far from a mild warning. Pascal was telling me that he would not be able to involve himself with me or my business if I did something as foolhardy as publicly joining the throng at Yeshua’s feet.

  Pascal dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “As I told you yesterday, that man is in danger. Trust me; I know this from those who count. The matter will be taken care of shortly.”

  So it was that Pascal told me about Caiaphas.

  **

  Later, alone with my thoughts in the guest chamber, I desperately wanted to believe Pascal—that Yeshua was a magician, a fraud, a messianic imposter like dozens who had tried the same before Him. It was easier to not believe than to believe.

  Yet . . .

  There was the blind old beggar whom I had guided to the prophet. Because I had seen the same blind beggar before in the temple plaza, I doubted he was an actor hired by Yeshua. And when I left the old man this afternoon, his eyes were no longer milky with cataracts but shiny with tears of joy.

  I lay down on the bed but did not expect to sleep. For the eighteen months since the fire in my warehouse, that luxury had been denied me—except in short stretches when my body’s needs overcame my sorrow and horror. The most impoverished peasants slept deeply while I, with all my gold, could not buy a single night’s sleep.

  It was an irony that had long since failed to amuse me.

  As the lonely wakeful hours passed, my mind kept returning to the prophet and the people I had seen Him heal.

  What if Pascal was wrong? What if—against everything rational—this man truly could heal the afflicted? It would skew my entire view of the world.

  It took a long while for another thought to push its way to the surface, probably because for too many months I had believed there could be no solution for my problems.

  If this man truly had the power to heal—in some way I could not fathom—He could heal my daughter’s legs.

  And if there was hope for her, was there then hope for me?

  Hope was something that had become so foreign that I barely recognized it. When it arrived at that moment, shining a light where darkness had reigned so long, I began to weep.

  At that moment, I realized what I had kept hidden from myself the entire journey here—I desperately wanted not to die alone, far away from my family.

  Chapter Sixteen

  My dearest love,

  I promised I would write to you as if I were courting you again. I have been speaking to you from my heart. I cannot continue honestly without admitting to the mistresses who drove us apart over the years.

  My first mistress, of course, was ambition. Now, as I contemplate what a man’s life is worth, I see the futility of pursuing power and wealth. When I am gone, those accomplishments will be divided and fought over by other men who also vainly pursue the emptiness. They will also someday feel the disappointment of discovering that all they have managed to grasp is a meaningless bubble on the waves of an eternal tide.

  What is worth more than gold?

  Your love, freely given. The love of our sweet daughter instead of the legacy of horror that is her inheritance. And, more than anything, the life of our son.

  I have failed you all. Now I understand too clearly how my actions have hurt you, how the pain continues to mold you. Truly, the stones a man casts send ripples through time; the spirit of a man and the love that he gave, or did not give, continue in his children and their children long after his wealth and power have disappeared.

  Perhaps this is something I have known all along but could not admit to myself. For as I look back, I see how the empty promise of that first mistress led me to seek solace in the arms of a second.

  Let us not pretend she did not exist. Let us not pretend I did not serve her willingly. Let us not pretend she was not my escape.

  It is not possible that this second mistress was a woman, for no other could have competed with your beauty and charm. If you still had some affection for me, you could easily have banished such a temptation from my life.

  But the solace of wine is like none other. A mistress who calls like a Siren and punishes like a banshee. But in the arms of this mistress, cares disappear, and in the glow of well-being the spirit seems to become full where it was empty.

  That you kept our household in some semblance of order during my months of constant drink is a testimony to your strength. I would ask your forgiveness if I thought I deserved it. I would pursue redemption if I thought it possible.

  What stands between us is the fire.

  You have never blamed me aloud, but I always know it is there. The night of the fire, you think I could have done more. You are right in blaming me, yet also wrong. The truth of that evening is why I am now in Jerusalem, fleeing you.

  Yet today, my love, I go forth with small hope when yesterday I saw nothing but good-bye.

  I make this promise.

  If, somehow, through this ridiculous hope that I clutch as fiercely as breath itself, I find a way to give our daughter back her legs, I will return to you. I will read these letters aloud to you myself. You will hear the truth about the fire from me, not a servant who delivers these letters with word that I am out of your life, never to return.

  Then, and only then, will I get on my knees and beg you to allow us to begin anew.

  Your Simeon

  Chapter Seventeen

  I did not go early into the countryside as I had on previous days. I intended to seek solace in another way and had even begun to hope that I might not sell my estate to Pascal.

  So it was that I found myself walking directly to the temple, hoping the prophet might return.

  Broken clouds sent shadows drifting across the great plaza at the south end of the temple. A quickening breeze promised rain later. I felt the chill and pulled my cloak tighter around my body.

  Although it was early and the monstrous temple gates were still closed, as many as two hundred people had already gathered in the plaza, standing in clusters as they gossiped or alone as they set up assorted wares on blankets to sell to pilgrims later in the day. Still, because of the vastness of the plaza, it seemed empty.

  At a distance, I had no difficulty picking out the one person I could recognize. The blind beggar I had met the day before. Except he was no longer blind.

  I knew he would not re
cognize me; I had led him close to Yeshua and, before his vision returned, had retreated to lose myself in the temple crowd.

  I watched him for several minutes without approaching.

  Other ragged beggars—crippled, blind, old—had begun to take their regular positions near the temple gates, armed with canes and bowls. Soon, when the thousands upon thousands of pilgrims streamed into the plaza, the beggars’ clamor and wailing would add to the general din of temple activities.

  My beggar—I smiled faintly when I realized I thought of him in this manner—walked from one to another, stooping as he talked to each. His back was to me, and I was too far away to clearly see his actions, but I could guess them by the excitement he left behind each time he moved to another beggar.

  I walked closer and confirmed my guess. The man I had given gold to the day before was now handing it to the other beggars.

  I stood in front of him.

  He flicked his eyes up and down my body. Briefly, I wondered if he recognized me. Perhaps he had not been blind and was indeed a part of a trick by Yeshua.

  Then I decided his interest might be from the joy of registering as many tiny details as he could. He took in my luxurious clothing and my expensive cloak. His eyes stopped briefly on the scar of my face. Other men might have grown their beards longer to cover such a reminder. I would not.

  “Shalom,” I said.

  He recognized—or pretended to recognize—my voice. “It is you! Yesterday’s rescuer!”

  I nodded.

  He reached out and clasped my right hand, shaking it vigorously. In those close quarters, I did not smell the unwashed odor that had clung to him the day before. His clothes were not expensive but new. And he had trimmed his beard.

  “I cannot thank you enough,” he said. “You led me to the Messiah.”

  Uncomfortable, I pried my hand loose. “I see you are dispensing money as if you are Solomon himself.”