Chapter 41
“Didn’t I always say . . . and now here it is . . .” stammered the old lady. Her lips were chalky white and rigid. “Here’s beggary because of your husband’s stupidity!”
Hanna was still mouthing incomprehensible, bitter words, but when Esther said that her breathing stopped, her face flushed and her eyes gleamed insanely. She raised both arms and turned straight towards the old lady. She screamed.
“So you think so too? Even you?” Haha! Now you’ve dropped the mask, you filthy fake. You’ve always praised the Master, but now you’ve shown just how abysmally rotten you are at heart. You slut! You fat heathen pig! Oy, oy, Esther, Esther . . . They want to curse the Master out of Yisrael. Do you know what that means? Do you know, you stupid women? Death! Death!”
She toppled into Esther’s arms, grasping her fleshy shoulders, buried her face in her clothes and sobbed and sobbed. Spasms shook her and she almost lost consciousness.
No one had ever seen Hanna weep. She was better known to laugh, to screech with laughter, and to shed tears of rage. But now she wept, wept, like a woman trampled, tormented, robbed of all she had. She wept as if her heart was broken, like a mother weeping for her child, who can see her loved one drowning in the waves and cannot help, only fling herself down on the shore, weep and tear her hair. Like one whose entire life overwhelms her, so that she may go down into Sheol leaving her body like a worn-out rag.
“We must save him!” she shrieked wildly, digging her fingers into the old lady’s shoulder. “We must tell him! He must get away! Oy, you love him, he’ll listen to you. He loves you. He cured you. Your sons, your husband . . . they’re his friends. Go after him, hurry at once, you know where he is, even though you won’t tell me. Tell him to go into theDecapolis. Or somewhere else, anywhere, into the hills of Hermon, to theLebanon, to a cave, to the forests, wherever Antipas can’t reach him. Oy vey, Adonai! Well, why haven’t you gone?”
Tears were streaming down her face. She was as she had never known that she could be or wanted to be – an anxious woman, worried, forgetful of herself.
Martha would have set out without a second thought to find the Master, but Esther was more sensible. Where would they go? The two of them couldn’t go running in every direction, to every point of the compass, to tell him news which might not even be true but just the wild imaginings of an obsessed, sick woman. After all, the Master was a clever man. And his friends were with him. One of them would know what to do.
She began to calm Hanna down, but nevertheless her heart too was distraught. Martha looked helplessly at the two of them and uttered a fervent silent prayer.
Janos Kodolanyi: I AM 