“If only I could afford it,” he said, ‘you should have a white pony with red harness.”
�I�d much rather have Micah’s donkey, who is already my friend. I give him crusts and cabbage leaves, and though he is so roughly treated, he’s very gentle. Please, if you really think I need a donkey, let it be that one.”
Joseph had given in hastily because he was afraid that she was about to cry—and in all the time he had known her he had never once known her to use tears as a weapon as so many women did. Actually she had been on the brink of tears, thinking of the hopelessness of it all. Micah would buy another donkey, younger, stronger, which soon, from ill-usage, would be as lame and dejected looking as this one. You couldn’t save them all.
And then, for the first time, her mind touched upon the other side of those direful prophecies. He can, she thought. He will be God, all-powerful, and at the same time He’ll be human. He’ll know about pain and being hurt, about bruises and stripes. And when all the prophecies have been fulfilled and He emerges in glory, He’ll do something for humble, helpless things. If necessary, she thought. I shall ask Him: I shall say-Please do this for me, your mother.. ..
It didn’t do to pursue such thoughts, they made her feel frightened and dizzy.
“I shall take some tools,” Joseph was saying.
“You never know. Most people have a job for a carpenter and never get around to sending for him. I could shore up a beam or respoke a wheel in return for a night’s lodging, maybe.” For with them, as with hundreds of other Jews, ready money was short. In the country a good deal of trade was still being done by a system of barter and many families had difficulty in gathering enough coined money to meet the demands of the tax-gatherers.
As well as the tools they would carry food of the kind that would not spoil by keeping. The task of providing this was taken out of Mary’s hands by Anne who in the last few days before the departure never visited without bringing some offering. A smoked mutton ham, a great jar of pickled eggs, a cheese the size of a mill-stone; dried figs, raisins and dates, a string of salted fish; a huge honey-cake…. “At least you shan’t starve, you wilful girl!” she said, beginning to cry again. Then mopping her eyes with the edge of her veil she said, “And what, pray tell me, is this that I hear about that ass of Micah’s? Is it true? On that very first day Joseph said you should have a donkey to ride. Does he call that bit of carrion a donkey?”
“I chose it,” Mary said.
“And it is now not a bit lame; there’s gloss on its coat too. It will get me to Bethlehem.”
“I no longer understand you,” Anne said.
“I reared you well and you were always meek and amenable. Now you are very headstrong. Rushing off to Bethlehem, without the slightest need. At such a moment, too! And on a broken-down donkey.. ..” She began to cry again.
This was all such a far cry from annunciation on the hill-top, from the moment of ecstasy in Elisabeth’s garden, that one human mind could hardly be expected to contain, to deal with it all. Should I, Mary wondered, have taken my mother into full confidence from the first? But
I knew then that she would think I was mad, and if I told her now she would think the same.This predicament and the discomfort it causes me is part of the price I must pay.
She said, “I want to see Bethlehem because it was Joseph’s birthplace and a place of importance in our history. You yourself told me that first children are often as much as two weeks late. The donkey is sound now. Can you not take comfort in the thought that I may go, and be back?”
“It is possible, I suppose. But I wanted you to be with me, in your own room, being looked after.”
“Then my uncles, Dan and Asher, would have had to look for lodging elsewhere. Are you sure …” Anne, the provider, could surely be diverted by any question concerning food, ‘that in giving us so much to take with us; you have not depleted your stores?”
“I never—as you should know,” Anne said, instantly diverted, ‘take one mutton leg from the chimney without putting another one in. And the same with the cheese, before the ripe one is eaten another is ready. For the lesser things I still have time in plenty. They haven’t so far to come.”
“Still, they’ll be hungry and happy to taste your cooking again,” Mary said swiftly, for at the word ‘far’ Anne’s eyes had filled anew. But her distress did not prevent her from being practical.
“You may be right about getting back to have the baby here; but don’t, for pity’s sake, forget to take the baby’s things. And don’t be brave. Oh, I know I’ve brought you up not to make a fuss of an ache or a pain, but there are times when a woman can be too brave. At the first sign of a pain, make for a respectable house with a decent woman in it. I shall hope and pray that you’re not taken on the road, but if you are …” She fumbled in her dress and pulled out a little bag.
“Twenty sestertii,” she said, producing her horde with justifiable pride.
“Enough to pay for your lodging and the services of a good midwife.”
Overcome, Mary said, “You are the best mother in the world!” and as though the praise had in some manner restored her to herself, Anne said, almost in her old sharp way:
“I only hope that your child will never bring you as much grief as you have me, just lately.”
They set out at first light on the appointed morning. Mary rode on the donkey which also carried two bags, one of food-the jar of eggs had been left in the house, one of clothing, everything the baby would need and one change of linen for each of them. Joseph shouldered his bag of tools. To him Micah’s old donkey resembled a careful housewife’s bowl, once broken and mended with strips of linen soaked in flour-and-water paste. It might look all right, but the flaws were there, and under stress it was likely to collapse.
It worried him, and he worried that he should be worried. It showed such a lamentable lack of faith. There was no need for anxiety, he told himself, again and again. It has been foretold that the Messiah should be born in Bethlehem, and there he would be born, even if the old donkey fell dead.
When he thought such a thought he would enjoy a feeling of relief, but the carefree moments never lasted. God will provide, he’d think, and I do believe that; but through me. I’m responsible; I was chosen. After all, he’d think, every pious Jew believes that Jehovah sent the ravens to feed Elijah, and could do the same any day, yet we work for our daily bread. And I believe that Jehovah will bring us to Bethlehem, but I must act and think as an ordinary, prudent man in my circumstances would do. And then, there he’d be, worrying away again.
After a while, when the donkey flagged, Joseph added the bag of food and then the bag of clothing to his own load; and that moment, which might have been one of recrimination, was sweetened by a laughing reference to Anne’s sharp remark about Mary’s two donkeys. Then on a long, uphill stretch Mary said she would walk for a bit and when Joseph protested she said, “Walking is good for women in my state. Remember that one of my grandmothers was a desert woman, and when the desert people are on the move between two wells they dare not stop and risk disaster to all because a woman is about to have a baby. She walks to the last moment, bears her child, swaddles it and walks on.”
“And sometimes dies,” Joseph said sombrely.
That was another thing that worried him. The sacred writings told of
an immaculate conception, a virgin birth, but theysaid no word about what happened to the mother. There were times, horrible almost unbearable times, when he felt that death in childbed must be the logical end. Was it possible to visualise a woman, the ostensible wife of a carpenter, going about her household tasks, with complete right to call herself the Mother of God? It wasn’t possible, and the only alternative was death; and whenever Joseph thought of that he plunged deep into the pit of premature bereavement. He loved her now, with a love that was completely different from the love he had felt for the pretty young girl who had caught his eye, and most surprisingly consented to marry him. These celibate months had taught him something that very few men ever guessed, or imagined, however dimly. He loved Mary as a person, not as a woman, as a companion, not as a bedfellow. And he had come to understand, grudging his own understanding, why she had been chosen; beautiful, kind, gentle, intelligent, witty at times, knowing when to speak and when to remain silent… Mary said, “I am not going to die, Joseph; on that score put your mind at rest. This will be an ordinary human baby and God will know that he needs a mother to suckle him and rear him. I shan’t die until I see him come into his kingdom. I shall be an old woman, with grey hair and nobbly knuckles, and very probably a sharp tongue, like my mother’s.”