Having, by the arrangement of the tools, gained time to brace himself, he looked up.
He said, “You’re shivering. Come into the house and I’ll rouse the fire.”
She preferred the workshop. The little house that adjoined it, in which once or twice she had, with her father and mother, on formal visits eaten little sweet cakes from Hilliel’s shop and drunk wine, had the inexplicable pathos of a place where a man lived alone. It had always been, on those occasions, clean and tidy, but the scent of over-cooked food had hung about. And once—whenever she recalled that visit, her heart moved and melted—Joseph had procured from somewhere a bunch of the white, sweetly scented lilies that she loved; and he’d shoved them into a jar of indescribable ugliness, so narrow-necked that the lilies were pressed together, stiffly crowded, and coloured ochre, orange, red and a peculiarly sharp yellow.
She said, “I’m not cold, and it is lighter here.” That was true, the workshop faced west and the last, level rays of the sun—the sun which had risen this morning on a seemingly ordinary day, and was now about to set at the end of a day that had seen the miracle, the germinal birth of a whole new world—shone in at the wide door.
“Sit then, please,” Joseph said, and he brought forward the plain stool on which, sometimes when he was tired, he sat at the workbench. As he carried it he brushed his hard work-hardened hand across it to remove any dust or sawdust.
“Now,” he said, and, moving backwards, perched himself at the end of the workbench which was already in shadow.
“Tell me. You look troubled.” She would be troubled, if she had come to tell him what he suspected, for she had the tenderest heart in the
world,She said, falteringly, “It’s a very hard thing to say. So hard to put into words.. ..”
She looked so pale, he thought. Despite the errand he attributed to her in his mind his heart moved towards her; he Wanted to make things easier for her.
“If it’s anything to do with me,” he said, stoutly, ‘out with it. I’ve taken a few knocks in my time. One more won’t floor me.
She said, “Joseph, today I saw an angel…”
It was still light enough, even where he sat, for her to see his face, shocked, then incredulous and presently frankly appalled. She told him everything, as though by adding detail to detail she could overcome his disbelief. When she mentioned the sack she had carried he turned his head, she looked in the same direction and saw the bag standing there, in the corner. But that proved nothing. She had no proof. She had a fantastic story which must either be taken on trust or rejected, and even as she talked, even as she described the angel, she could see Joseph rejecting it. She could also, in her mind’s eye, see herself facing the women at the watering place.
She ended, “I’m not lying, Joseph, I am not mad and I was not dreaming. It happened, everything, just as I have told you. And it was prophesied that a virgin should bear a child who would be our Messiah. I don’t know why I should have been chosen—I’m as confounded as you arc; but the angel said I had been; he called me blessed amongst women.”
She stopped speaking and in the dim, sweet-scented workshop there was silence which stretched on and on until at last Joseph said, as though someone had him by the throat, choking him:
“It is written that the Messiah should be of the house of David. I can trace my lineage back to Solomon. But if you are, as you say, already with child, I am not its father and my lineage has nothing to do with it.”
She said, “He will need an earthly father, too.”
No truer word was ever spoken, Joseph thought; and wondered that she could speak with such gentle detachment. What about her need for a husband? Why wasn’t she weeping and tearing her hair ?
He could not rid his mind of the memory of the donkey-boy, young, handsome, an obvious young rogue. Horrible, almost impossible to think of, but this was an evening of impossibilities. Suppose that on this Spring morning … But then, how could she know, so soon, that she was pregnant? A moon must run its course before.any woman could be certain.
But maybe she didn’t know that. Maybe she didn’t know anything of such matters. Her life had been very sheltered. He had heard of girls so innocent that they thought babies were begotten by kisses. Such girls were rare, but they did exist, and Anne’s daughter might well be one of them.
Remembering the boy’s shining eyes and white teeth, he thought, magnanimously, that he could forgive a kiss or two. Yet how out of character that seemed! And so did the concoction of such an elaborate and impious story.
“Did he touch you?” he asked abruptly.
“No. He stood under the awning and spoke to me. He said his name was Gabriel.” Her voice took on an awed, remembering tone.
“He was almost too beautiful to look at, and he had a lily in his hand. He told me another thing too. He said that my cousin Elisabeth had been pregnant for six months and she is well over child-bearing age.”
This piece of evidence, susceptible to proof, carried less weight with Joseph than it might have done, since he had never seen Elisabeth. He said:
“I mean the donkey-boy.”
“Yes. He hit me. By accident he said, and I believed him. But not on the head, if that is what you are thinking. Here under my arm.” Then the full implication of the question struck her and she lifted her head a little and spoke in a different voice.
“The boy,” she said, ‘was a young lout, ill-treating his donkey. But if I had so far lost all respect for myself and my family and yo , Joseph, do you really think that I am wicked enough to tell a story involving holy things? Or stupid enough to tell a story so difficult to believe? Think how much easier it would have been to have torn my
clothes and run screaming that I had been assaulted. Then I should have been sure of sympathy, and everybody would have believed me. I don’t think you do.” She looked at his face, wrenched with indecision and misery, and felt sorry for him.
“I cannot blame you,” she said, more gently.
“You saw no angel. And I, who did, still find it difficult to believe. I know that the coming of the Messiah has been foretold, hoped for, prayed for—and never more than now; but all day I have asked myself—Why met Yet, when you come to think of it, God has made strange choices before, Jacob and David, quite ordinary until they were chosen. Now I am chosen. I vow to you, Joseph that everything happened exactly as I have told you.”
She longed for him to say, “I believe you.” She waited. And because he loved her he wanted to say the comforting words for which he knew she was waiting; but the whole matter was too great, too solemn to be thus easily accepted. He couldn’t say that he did not believe, he wouldn’t say that he disbelieved; so he sat dumb, looking puzzled and wretched.
She thought—I have failed. And with that thought another came. Isaiah, in his prophecy of the Messiah, had used the words, “He is despised and rejected of men.” The rejection had begun here, tonight, in this wood-scented workshop. The first to reject him was the man who might have been a father to him. She unclenched her hands and folded her arms across her body, protectively. Not rejected by me, she thought. It is hard to believe but I know it is true, and if I must I will manage alone, and still think myself blessed, despite all the ridicule and the scorn and the pointing fingers.
Again Joseph wondered that she should be so calm. If what she said about her condition was true—however it had come about—unless he stood by her she was in a sorry plight indeed. Anne and Joachim loved her, but their very love would be the measure of their shock and horror. In them, as in him, doubt would war with faith, credulity with incredulity–-He said, pitifully, “I don’t know what to think. I need a little time to think things over.”
She stood up then, and her veil slipped back from her hair, which, freed of the confinement, loosened itself and caught the last rays of the sun and made a halo about her pale, calm face.
She said, “I came, hoping that God, having chosen me, would have given you a sign, or that you would have faith enough to believe without a sign. I was mistaken. But there is no need to fret or be unhappy. If it is God’s will that this child should have an earthly father, one will be found. It may be that he needs none. My father is another who can trace his lineage from David I Good night, Joseph.”