She has faced law courts before. Usually, she hires a representative for the court or the hearing or wherever it is she must answer for her success, but it is she who constructs the arguments. Interruptions. All of it. Just a week and a half until Rosh Hashanah and she must set out on a long and tiring journey.

She sighs. “What are the accusations?”

“The Kadi of Jerusalem with his court requests that you attest to your loyalty to the Sublime Porte of Istanbul, in front of the court, and answer any questions that they may pose to you.”

Loyalty. To Istanbul. What could the accusations be? Usually, they come in with questions of customs duties, and her impeccable filing always helps, for she demands and keeps a receipt for every interaction. One of Papa’s legacies. But what is this?

The officers stand. And all of a sudden, they are tall, and their faces are solemn, and the swords at their sides are long and menacing.

“Collect some items of clothing, and you may bring one servant with you.”

She stands and stares. So here it is at last. She is strangely numb. Perhaps she has been waiting for this all of her life. She knew that it would end this way. Her own day of reckoning.

***

When Bilhah sees the young man of the chaburah standing at the work tent, she does not know what to think. She is tired from her night without sleep, and confused, as well. Papa is incarcerated in the prison. He is where he belongs, but the knowledge is an iron bar on her chest, and she does not know how to lift it.

He walks quickly over to her desk. Has he come to give her more words about the workings of the Almighty and His universe? And then she remembers, she had promised to find them a different work assignment, not the quarry in Tzidkiyahu’s cave.

He pulls his fingers through his thin beard.

“Please. My friends’ strength is failing. Every day we lift heavy axes and try to shatter stone. We pull boulders onto wagons. We cannot do it any longer.”

On her tongue is the question: Not even to bring the Final Redemption? But that would be callous and cruel, and she sees his distress.

“You are right. It is not fitting. But do you know why you are here?”

He hesitates. “There are many answers to that question. We are here, ultimately, because the Almighty decreed it.”

“And you are here because Castro assigned you to the quarry. And Castro assigned you to the quarry because he was under instruction from a certain Donna Leonora de Dabela from Tzfat.”

She taps her fingers on the desk. “Then may I suggest that we write a letter to this Donna Leonora and ask her to change her instructions?”

She looks up at his face. He looks away, and his expression is pensive.

“I do not know… if she would be persuadable.”

“Shall we try nonetheless?”

She dips her pen into ink and smooths out a new piece of parchment.

A frisson of anticipation. She has read this woman’s letters in Istanbul and here, in Jerusalem. But it is the first time she is writing to her. She knows the woman’s tone, the timbre of her writing. Forceful and direct, with a tiny poetic flourish here and there.

She reads out loud as she writes:

Regarding the group of elderly scholars and teachers who have arrived her from Tzfat. Although the instructions were to have them do physical work on the Wall of Jerusalem, the group is in much distress, for it suffers under the yoke of axe and stone.

Opposite her, the man shakes his head.

“I imagine her response. That suffering will bring the Redemption. That we all live in distress, for this is our state in exile.”

Bilhah raises her eyebrows. “If she writes that, she need take care. The authorities do not want to hear about the Redemption. They are afraid of an uprising, or worse.”

She reads it through again and bites her lip. “What would you have me write?”

“Ask her to be as a mother in her nation. One who has mercy on her children.”

Bilhah thinks for a minute and then pushes the parchment over to Eliyahu. “You write it.”

To her surprise, he does not hesitate. He writes at an angle and when she tilts her head, she can read.

It is known that you are a compassionate woman, who treats the children of the town of Tzfat as a mother who provides her children with food and shelter and healing. Extend your mercy to this poor group of men, many of them in the sunset of their lives. And in this way, the Almighty who is merciful will bestow His mercy upon you.

He puts down the pen and looks up. “What do you think?”

“I think that when you stop trying to fly off into the world of the spirit, you have a way with words.”

He is surprised. She relishes the look. But he recovers. “I am not the only one who runs away.”

She nods. “True. Perhaps that is how I see the proclivity in you.”

“Do you blame me?” he asks.

“No.” She hesitates. “That cave that you are working in. If I could, I would walk into it now, into a whole different world, and I would disappear.”

He brings his hand down on the desk with a bang. She jumps.

“Do not. I pray, do not think of this.”

“What is wrong?”

“I know. I did it.”

“What do you mean?”

He picks up a pen and puts his finger on the nib, so that black ink spreads onto his skin. “After… my wife died in childbed. And then the baby, too. That is what I did. I ran away, to a cave.”

She stares.

“At the time I told myself that this was the way I could still hear my wife’s voice. In the silence. And yes, that was part of it. But there was something more.”

“What?” Her voice is quiet.

“When you are alone, you are forced to keep yourself alive. If I did not get up and climb out of the cave and climb up to the stream and hold my leather flask over the spring, then—”

“What?”

“Then I would grow more and more thirsty. And then grow ill. And then die.”

She nods.

“If I did not tend the wheat, and collect the grains, and plant and pick and cook, then I would wither away. Every single day, every single day, I had to show myself that life is worth living. That even though it is painful, I will choose to do this.”

“But you ran away from people.”

“I thought that if I sink into my aloneness, face it every moment of every day, then I would find peace in it, and maybe even something more. But it was like having a jagged rock for a heart, and you never really learn to live with this.”

She does not know how they reached this place in conversation, it does not make sense. But she is pulled in, nonetheless.

“So, what happened?”

“You saw the elderly man from our chaburah? He found me. It is a long story. But he persuaded me that people are good, people can help. That we are not meant to be alone.”

She fingers the cat charm tied around her wrist. She learned this habit in the palace. Despite herself.

He leans back on his chair and folds his arms.

“I thank you for the letter. For helping me.” He closes his eyes and nods gently. “I will pray for you.”

“For what?”

“For you to find healing from your father.”

“Pray? But it is the Almighty who gave me this father.”

“How can you trust Him? How? He has given the world into the hands of the dominion of evil. A memshelet zadon.”

They are silent for a long time. She wishes he would just go away, and stop playing with her soul.

“Before we are each born, Hashem sends a malach, a messenger that makes us swear: do not be a rasha, be a tzaddik.

“The imprint of that oath is in each of our hearts. He leaves the world to the aching crevice, the abyss of choice, but He puts there messengers and messages. He places an oath on our hearts, he wants us to choose good, not just for ourselves, but for all of us, for the people around us, for all of His children.

“That is the Almighty’s will. Not cruelty. Not violence.” His forehead creases in a question. “Do you pray?”

She gives a bitter laugh. “Only when I have no choice.”

He laughs. “You always have a choice.”

When was the last time she had prayed? When she had stepped down the damp, stone stairs into the prison. Protect me. Save me. Protect me. Ana Hashem, hoshia na.

“Probably, you pray when you realize that things are out of your hands. And for you, it seems, a woman who is accustomed to writing and recording and doing and shaping and working and running, there is a lot you can do before you need to come on to prayer. But you need not wait quite so long. You can pray even as you run, even as you lift your pen to write a letter.”

“Why should I?”

“You turn to Hashem now, because you are desperate. But He doesn’t only want our desperation. He wants our love.”

“How can I love Him, after all He has done to me?”

“Because He has not only done things to you, but also for you.

“We do not know why and how we suffer.”

She looks at him, sharply. His voice is saturated with pain, and she does not know what to say or think. This man has suffered. No parents. No wife. No child.

“Because no matter how bad things are, they change. Someone comes. Something happens. What looked like a wall is filled with cracks and then you wake up one day and you see glints of golden sunlight escaping the cracks in the wall. And you realize, there is morning. There is warmth. There is light. And first, it is a thing outside of you, something you seek.

“You run outside and follow the sun as it climbs in the sky, hoping to find that one patch of warmth. But eventually you realize that when you wake in the morning, you do not need to search so desperately for that one patch of warmth, because you are not quite so cold. The ice that flows instead of blood has thawed, just a little.

“At least,—” he whispers, “this is what happened for me.”

She is on the verge of asking him, How? When? But she does not want to lose the echo of his words as they hang in the air.

“What is your name?” He asks suddenly. “For my prayers.”

“Bilhah. Bilhah bat Sarah.”

He repeats it. “Bilhah bat Sarah.” He nods, then closes his eyes, considering. “Let us talk more, Bilhah. Tomorrow?”

She blinks. What exactly does he want from her? But she nods, nonetheless. As he turns away, she notices a shy smile playing on his lips.

to be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 832)