Chapter One
I was seven years old. What do you know when you’re seven years old?
All my life, or so I thought, we’d been in the city of Alexandria,
in the Street of the Carpenters, with the other Galileans, and
sooner or later we were going home.
Late afternoon. We were playing, my gang against his, and when he
ran at me again, bully that he was, bigger than me, and catching me
off balance, I felt the power go out of me as I shouted: “You’ll
never get where you’re going.”
He fell down white in the sandy earth, and they all crowded around
him. The sun was hot and my chest was heaving as I looked at him. He
was so limp.
In the snap of two fingers everyone drew back. It seemed the whole
street went quiet except for the carpenters’ hammers. I’d never
heard such a quiet.
“He’s dead!” Little Joseph said. And then they all took it up. “He’s
dead, he’s dead, he’s dead.”
I knew it was true. He was a bundle of arms and legs in the beaten
dust.
And I was empty. The power had taken everything with it, all gone.
His mother came out of the house, and her scream went up the walls
into a howl. From everywhere the women came running.
My mother lifted me off my feet. She carried me down the street and
through the courtyard and into the dark of our house. All my cousins
crowded in with us, and James, my big brother, pulled the curtain
shut. He turned his back on the light. He said:
“Jesus did it. He killed him.” He was afraid.
“Don’t you say such a thing!” said my mother. She clutched me so
close to her, I could scarcely breathe.
Big Joseph woke up.
Now Big Joseph was my father, because he was married to my mother,
but I’d never called him Father. I’d been taught to call him Joseph.
I didn’t know why.
He’d been asleep on the mat. We’d worked all day on a job in Philo’s
house, and he and the rest of the men had lain down in the heat of
the afternoon to sleep. He climbed to his feet.
“What’s that shouting outside?” he asked. “What’s happened?”
He looked to James. James was his eldest son. James was the son of a
wife who had died before Joseph married my mother.
James said it again.
“Jesus killed Eleazer. Jesus cursed him and he fell down dead.”
Joseph stared at me, his face still blank from sleep. There was more
and more shouting in the street. He rose to his feet, and ran his
hands back through his thick curly hair.
My little cousins were slipping through the door one by one and
crowding around us.
My mother was trembling. “He couldn’t have done it,” she said. “He
wouldn’t do such a thing.”
“I saw it,” said James. “I saw it when he made the sparrows out of
clay on the Sabbath. The teacher told him he shouldn’t do such
things on the Sabbath. Jesus looked at the birds and they turned
into real birds. They flew away. You saw it too. He killed Eleazer,
Mother, I saw it.”
My cousins made a ring of white faces in the shadows: Little Joses,
Judas, and Little Symeon and Salome, watching anxiously, afraid of
being sent out. Salome was my age, and my dearest and closest.
Salome was like my sister.
Then in came my mother’s brother Cleopas, always the talker, who was
the father of these cousins, except for Big Silas who came in now, a
boy older than James. He went into the corner, and then came his
brother, Justus, and both wanted to see what was going on.
“Joseph, they’re all out there,” said Cleopas, “Jonathan bar Zakkai,
and his brothers, they’re saying Jesus killed their boy. They’re
envious that we got that job at Philo’s house, they’re envious that
we got the other job before that, they’re envious that we’re getting
more and more jobs, they’re so sure they do things better than we
do-.”
“Is the boy dead?” Joseph said. “Or is the boy alive?”
Salome shot forward and whispered in my ear. “Just make him come
alive, Jesus, the way you made the birds come alive!”
Little Symeon was giggling. He was too little to know what was going
on. Little Judas knew, but he was quiet.
“Stop,” said James, the little boss of the children. “Salome, be
quiet.”
I could hear them shouting in the street. I heard other noises.
Stones were hitting the walls of the house. My mother started to
cry.
“You dare do that!” shouted my uncle Cleopas and he rushed back out
through the door. Joseph went after him.
I wriggled out of my mother’s grasp and darted out before she could
catch me, and past my uncle and Joseph and right into the crowd as
they were all waving and hollering and shaking their fists. I went
so fast, they didn’t even see me. I was like a fish in the river. I
moved in and out through people who were shouting over my head until
I got to Eleazer’s house.
The women all had their backs to the door, and they didn’t see me as
I went around the edge of the room.
I went right into the dark room, where they’d laid him on the mat.
His mother was there leaning on her sister and sobbing.
There was only one lamp, very weak.
Eleazer was pale with his arms at his sides, same soiled tunic, and
the soles of his feet very black. He was dead. His mouth was open
and his white teeth showed over his lip.
The Greek physician came in-he was really a Jew-and he knelt down,
and he looked at Eleazer and he shook his head.
Then he saw me and said:
“Out.”
His mother turned and she saw it was me and she screamed.
I bent over him:
“Wake up, Eleazer,” I said. “Wake up now.”
I reached out and laid my hand on his forehead.
The power went out. My eyes closed. I was dizzy. But I heard him
draw in his breath.
His mother screamed over and over and it hurt my ears. Her sister
screamed. All the women were screaming.
I fell back on the floor. I was weak. The Greek physician was
staring down at me. I was sick. The room was dim. Other people had
rushed in.
Eleazer came up, and he was up all knees and fists before anyone
could get to him, and he set on me and punched me and hit me, and
knocked my head back against the ground, and kicked me again and
again:
“Son of David, Son of David!” he shouted, mocking me, “Son of David,
Son of David!” kicking me in the face, and in the ribs, until his
father grabbed him around the waist and picked him up in the air.
I ached all over, couldn’t breathe.
“Son of David!” Eleazer kept shouting.
Someone lifted me and carried me out of the house and into the crowd
in the street. I was still gasping. I hurt all over. It seemed the
whole street was screaming, worse than before, and someone said the
Teacher was coming, and my uncle Cleopas was yelling in Greek at
Jonathan, Eleazer’s father, and Jonathan was yelling back, and
Eleazer was shouting, “Son of David, Son of David!”
I was in Joseph’s arms. He was trying to move, but the crowd
wouldn’t let him. Cleopas was pushing at Eleazer’s father. Eleazer’s
father was trying to get at Cleopas, but other men took hold of his
arms. I heard Eleazer shouting far away.
There was the Teacher declaring: “That child’s not dead, you hush
up, Eleazer, who said he was dead? Eleazer, stop shouting! Whoever
could think this child is dead?”
“Brought him back to life, that’s what he did,” said one of theirs.
We were in our courtyard, the entire crowd had pushed in with us, my
uncle and Eleazer’s people still screaming at each other, and the
Teacher demanding order.
Now my uncles, Alphaeus and Simon, had come. These were Joseph’s
brothers. And they’d just woken up. They put up their hands against
the crowd. Their mouths were hard and their eyes were big.
My aunts, Salome and Esther and Mary, were there, with all the
cousins running and jumping as if this were a festival, except for
Silas and Justus and James who stood with the men.
Then I couldn’t see anymore.
I was in my mother’s arms, and she had taken me into the front room.
It was dark. Aunt Esther and Aunt Salome came in with her. I could
hear stones hitting the house again. The Teacher raised his voice in
Greek.
“There’s blood on your face!” my mother whispered. “Your eye,
there’s blood. Your face is cut!” She was crying. “Oh, look what’s
happened to you,” she said. She spoke in Aramaic, our tongue which
we didn’t speak very much.
“I’m not hurt,” I said. I meant to say it didn’t matter. Again my
cousins pressed close, Salome smiling as if to say she knew I could
bring him back to life, and I took her hand and squeezed it.
But there was James with his hard look.
The Teacher came into the room backwards with his hands up. Someone
ripped the curtain away and the light was very bright. Joseph and
his brothers came in. And so did Cleopas. All of us had to move to
make room.
“You’re talking about Joseph and Cleopas and Alphaeus, what do you
mean drive them out!” said the Teacher to the whole crowd. “They’ve
been with us for seven years!”
The angry family of Eleazer came almost into the room. The father
himself did come into the room.
“Yes, seven years and why don’t they go back to Galilee, all of
them!” Eleazer’s father shouted. “Seven years is too long! That boy
is possessed of a demon and I tell you my son was dead!”
“Are you complaining that he’s alive now! What’s the matter with
you!” demanded my uncle Cleopas.
(Continues…)
Knopf
Copyright © 2005
Anne Rice
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-375-41201-8
Excerpted from Christ the Lord
by Anne Rice
Copyright © 2005 by Anne Rice.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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