And laying his hands on each one, he healed them.
— Luke 4:38
Consumption found me, unsuspecting, on my twelfth
birthday. That morning my father granted my wish and took
me boating on the open sea despite the winter cold and my
mother's protests. I was willful, even as a girl.
I rushed toward my fate in a dart across the water. My
father's dark reed boat cut through the chilled air as he
pounded a mallet on a wooden block. The oarsmen strained
to keep pace. I saw my father smiling and felt proud to be
so much like him.
The wind in my hair and the flutter inside me made me
lurch from my place and run to chase the waves. Leaning
out of the boat for a whitecap, I lost my balance and fell
overboard.
It was a sea of melted snow. Two oarsmen dove to save me,
and after a few minutes of reaching for oars, clinging to
ropes that were hoisting us up, we were rescued. But my
shivering started right away and would not stop. After I
spent weeks in a dark room beneath blankets heated by warm
stones, the doctor told my parents what I am sure they
already knew.
All of my father's money could not buy back my health. I
survived, and recovered for the most part, but in cold
weather I rattled from the wet congestion that welled up
inside me. If I grew agitated or afraid, it was almost
impossible to breathe. For years afterward, my strength
would come and go. The doctors prescribed sailing in the
open air as a way to balance my humors and soothe me. This
remedy helped to quiet my hacking on warm summer days, but
the benefits never lasted long.
Finally, after I was married, my illness threatened to
defeat me. The only way I managed to keep up with my
husband's pace was by resting for long months at our home
in Sepphoris. His demanding life took us there several
times each year, although Herod Antipas, the Tetrarch of
Galilee and my husband's superior, had moved the seat of
his government from Sepphoris to Tiberias. Both cities
were essential to the life of the province. Both had been
rebuilt in the Roman style, during Antipas's early years
in power.
He did it to please the Romans. He always imagined that if
he ruled his small northern territory to their liking, one
day they would place him in charge of far larger regions.
Fortunately, Antipas preferred the new capital and my
husband preferred the old, in part because it kept him
away from court for a good part of the year. Tiberias was
exciting to Antipas. Aside from my husband's sensible urge
to avoid the tetrarch as much as possible, he and I both
favored Sepphoris for sentimental reasons. It is the city
where I was raised and where Chuza and I first met.
During one of our seasons at home, we planned an evening
at the theater with Manaen, Chuza's young colleague. I was
glad to have my husband seen with the young captain of the
guard. Manaen had grown up with the tetrarch, although he
was nearly half his age, and was favored at court. Lately
Antipas had asked my husband to teach Manaen about
accounting and agriculture, essential for a young man's
promotion.
I wanted to make a good impression and so commissioned a
pottery vase as a memento of our evening, to impress upon
Manaen that my husband approved of him. On the morning of
our engagement I went to the garden to see that the glaze
had fully dried in the sun.
An unexpected coolness in the air sent a chill across my
shoulders, and I began to cough. As my handkerchief became
speckled with blood, I felt Chuza's hands lifting me
up. "Keep breathing," he said. He behaved like a general
at such times."Lift your head off your chest." The
rosebushes tilted sideways as Strabo, my chief gardener,
and two house servants lifted me and carried me
indoors."Don't call the doctor," I shouted at
Chuza. "Please, just stay with me."
He followed the servants to my rooms, and once I was
settled on my couch, he sat near me. When I was able to
breathe quietly, he lay down beside me. He always wanted
to stay very close after one of my attacks. They were
among the few things in life that could frighten him.
I looked at his face, so near to mine. His hair, thick as
a bear's coat, showed the first receding signs of age. His
jaw had lost none of its square features. To feel his
broad chest against me filled me with loneliness. We
seldom touched anymore. He seemed afraid that I might
shatter and break.
"Chuza," I whispered.
For a time we lay quietly together.
"Tell me about when we first met."
He answered in a low voice. "It's been seventeen years
this spring." My husband always remembered anniversaries
better than I did. "I was supposed to be on my way to
Corinth, delivering a shipment of gold bound for Rome. But
the winds had shifted and we could not sail. It was one of
the first warm nights in March. I walked to the colonnade
and discovered that everyone in Sepphoris had the same
idea. That is when I first saw you." He kissed my nose, as
he used to do when we were young and first getting to know
each other.
Chuza did call his doctors soon enough. They advised me to
stay home,rest and spend time in the sun.Sun to brown my
arms like a farmer's wife, home to starve me of the latest
gossip.
My husband sent to Antioch for his brother, Cyrus, one of
the finest doctors in their native city. Within hours of
his arrival I was lying in my bed, hugging a beaker of
some gritty concoction of his, trying everything I knew to
avoid the smoldering prod he held near me. Cyrus believed
that cauterizing was the best treatment for my ailment.
He seemed to think he could roast my congestion to a
powder. I let him try. It may have helped. I did seem to
improve for a time, but I had learned not to trust my
reprieves. There was no reason to expect a cure.
Several days later, after a few glasses of the herbal brew
that was part of Cyrus's treatment, I felt surprisingly
healthy. Octavia, my maidservant, who sat with me in my
rooms that morning, paused from her mending to make a
suggestion. She could see that I was stronger than I had
been in some time.
"There is a caravan from the East passing through town,"
she said. Her eyebrows spread across her forehead, dark as
a black-bird's wings. Arched in that way, they warned me
that Octavia had plans for us. It was pointless to argue,
she was as confident about her opinions as anyone. She had
not been born to be a servant — it was only her father's
gambling that had ruined her future. He sold her to pay
off his debts.
We set out to hunt for peppercorns and perhaps a jewelry
box covered with tiny mirrors like the one Antipas's wife,
Herodias, owned. By early afternoon we were walking along
the alleys between the stalls in Sepphoris. Silvery cranes
squawked at us from their cages, the bitter scent of
leather wafted from the sandal maker's shop, sacks of
black tea opened to my touch and I rolled the crisp leaves
between my fingers.
At first the rumbling behind me sounded like exotic
drumming. Caravans are filled with foreign music. But the
sound grew louder and moved closer until I realized it was
the noise of the crowd. People were stampeding behind a
man with spindle legs who tottered through the alley. He
was old, but he moved like a baby taking his first steps.
I had seen him before; it took me a moment to place him.
The crippled beggar, we had passed him at the city gate.
Somehow, he was walking toward me. A mob crushed around
him. "Zorah is cured!" they shrieked. "The healer from
Nazareth saved him."
Octavia broke through the crowd and pulled me away from
the stalls.
"Where are we going?" I asked, but I could not hear above
the roar. Past the tiny yellow flowers that framed the
main road, Octavia led and I followed. When we reached a
grassy hillside, I looked down at the crowd shambling onto
the slope below us like wounded animals. The stronger
carried the maimed on their backs. It was as if half the
world were coming there to die.
I recognized one woman. She had recently been healed, I'd
been told. We all know one another's business in the
Galilee. For eight years this woman was possessed by
demons. She often lapsed into fits and fell on the ground,
her body rigid as a corpse.
She wore a fine woolen cloak colored by the most expensive
shellfish dye. Our paths rarely crossed. She was a devout
Jew. "Good woman," she called to me. "Jesus can help you,
he helped me."
I looked into her eyes and saw no pain in them. She was
cured of her illness. I could tell by the way she walked,
upright and strong rather than bent in anticipation.She
pointed my way down the hill toward the healer. We
approached him, and he turned as if he heard someone
calling his name. He looked directly at me.
From a distance all I could see was his dark hair and his
long, narrow features. There was such compassion in his
manner that I could not take my eyes from him.
I went a few steps closer for a better view. His hair
curled as gently as a baby's. His lips were longer than
any I'd ever noticed. His eyes were as dark as the pool
where Narcissus first discovered his own beauty. I knew
that this man would listen to me and understand.
Something held me back. It was too sudden — I was not sure
what might happen if I got close to him. What if he
refused me in front of all those people? What if I was the
unlucky one who got worse, not better, because of him?
Pulling away, I rushed toward the road, shouting for my
man-servant, Phineas. He found me quickly and led me to my
litter. I hid there with the curtains drawn shut and
ordered Octavia to walk very close by until we were well
outside the city. He would have healed me that very day, I
am certain. If only I had trusted him. The heart is a
timid hunter when it does not yet know what it seeks.