prayer or curse, a gust of wind, the bleat of a goat or the bark of a dog. Why are the cocks not crowing, he muttered to himself, and repeated the question anxiously, as if the cocks, crowing might be the last hope of salvation. Then the sky began to change. Pink tinges and streaks gradually, almost imperceptibly crept into the violet on the belly of the clouds, until finally it turned red, then was gone, and without warning the sky exploded into light, many shafts of gold that pierced clouds no longer small but now formidable, enormous barges that hoisted blazing sails and plied a sky that had at last been liberated. Joseph's fear subsided, his eyes widened in astonishment and wonder, and with good reason, for he alone was witnessing this spectacle. In a loud voice he praised the Lord of all creation for the eternal majesty of the heavens, whose ineffable splendors leave men struggling with simple words of gratitude, Thanks be to You, O Lord, for this and for that and for that. As he spoke, the tumult of life, whether summoned by his voice or rushing through a door that had carelessly been left open, invaded the space previously occupied by silence, leaving it scarcely any room, a patch here and there, such as those tiny marshes that the murmuring forests engulf and hide from view. The sun rose and spread its light, a vision of unbearable beauty, two enormous hands sending into flight a shimmering bird of paradise that opened its great tail with a thousand iridescent eyes, causing a nameless bird nearby to burst into song. A gust of wind hit Joseph in the face, caught his beard and tunic, eddied around him like a tiny whirlwind moving across a desert, unless he was imagining things and this was nothing more than the blood rushing to his head, a shiver going up his spine like a tongue of fire and stirring a quite different urge.
Moving as if inside a swirling column of air, Joseph went into the house and shut the door behind him. He paused for a moment, waiting for his eyes to become accustomed to the dark. The lamp cast scarcely any light. Wide awake, Mary lay on her back, listening, staring into space, as if waiting. Joseph quietly approached and slowly drew back the sheet. She averted her eyes, began to lift the hem of her tunic, and 110 sooner had she pulled it to her navel than he was on top of her, his own tunic hitched to his waist. Mary's legs now were open, perhaps they had opened by themselves as she dreamed and she did not close them out of this sudden lassitude, or else from the premonition of a married woman who knows her duty. God, who is omnipresent, was there but, pure spirit that He is, was unable to see how Joseph's flesh touched Mary's, how his flesh penetrated her flesh as had been ordained, and perhaps He was not even there when the holy seed of Joseph poured into the holy womb of Mary, both holy, being the fountain and chalice of life. For in truth, there are things God Himself does not understand, even though He created them. Out in the yard, God could hear neither the gasp that escaped Joseph's lips as he came nor the low moan Mary was unable to suppress. Joseph rested on his wife's body no more than a minute, and perhaps less. Pulling down her tunic and drawing up the sheet, she covered her face with her arm. Joseph stood in the middle of the room, raised his hands, and, looking up at the ceiling, gave the most heartfelt thanksgiving of all, which is reserved for men, I thank You, Almighty God, King of the Universe, for not having made me a woman. By then, God must have already abandoned the yard, for the walls did not shake or cave in, nor did the ground part. All that could be heard was Mary saying, in that submissive voice one expects from women, Thanks be to You, O Lord, for having made me according to Your will. Now, there is no difference between these words and those spoken to the angel Gabriel, for clearly anyone who could say, Behold the handmaiden of the Lord, do with me as You will, might just as easily have said, instead, this prayer. Then the wife of the carpenter Joseph got up from her mat, rolled it up together with that of her husband, and folded the sheet they shared in common.
...
JOSEPH AND MARY LIVED IN A VILLAGE CALLED NAZARETH, a place of little importance and with few inhabitants, in the region of Galilee. Their house was no different from the others, a lopsided cube made of bricks and clay and as poor as poor could be. No striking examples of imaginative architecture to be found here. To save on material, the house had been built into a hillside, which formed the rear wall and allowed easy access to the flat roof, which also served as a terrace. Joseph, as we know, was a carpenter by trade and fairly capable, although he had neither the skill nor the talent for jobs that required fine workmanship. This criticism should not be taken too seriously, for one needs time to gain experience and acquire skills, and we must not forget that Joseph is barely in his twenties and lives in a place with few resources and even fewer opportunities. Nor should a man be measured simply on the basis of his professional ability. For all his youth, this Joseph is one of the most honest and pious men of Nazareth, assiduous in attending the synagogue and prompt in carrying out his duties, and while he may not be endowed with any special powers of eloquence, he can argue and make astute observations, especially when given a chance to use some apt image or metaphor related to his work, carpentry. He does not possess, however, what one might call a creative imagination, and during his brief life will never come up with a memorable parable to be handed down to posterity, let alone one of those brilliant conceits so clearly expressed that there is nothing more to say yet so obscure and ambiguous that they intrigue scholars for years to come.
As for Mary's talents, these are even less apparent, but no more than we might expect of a sixteen-year-old girl who, although married, is still a baby, as it were, for even in those days people used such expressions. Notwithstanding her frail appearance, she works as hard as all the other women, carding, spinning, and weaving cloth, baking the family bread each morning, fetching water from the well and then carrying it up the steep slope, a large pitcher balanced on her head and another on her hip. In the late afternoon she sets off through the byways and fields of the Lord, gathering wood and cutting stubble and filling an extra basket with cow's dung and the thistles and briers that thrive on the upper slopes of Nazareth, the best thing God could ever have devised for lighting a fire or braiding a crown. It would have been easier to load everything onto a donkey's back, but Joseph needs the beast to carry his lumber. Mary goes barefoot to the well, goes barefoot into the fields, in clothes that are forever getting soiled and torn and that constantly need washing and mending, because new clothes are reserved for her husband, women like Mary making do with very little. When she attends the synagogue, she enters by the side door, as the law requires of women, and even if she finds thirty other women there, or all the women of Nazareth, or even the entire female population of Galilee, they must wait until at least ten men arrive for the service, in which the women will participate only passively. Unlike Joseph her husband, Mary is neither upright nor pious, but she is not to blame for this, the blame lies with the language she speaks if not with the men who invented it, because that language has no feminine form for the words upright and pious.
Now one fine day, four weeks after that unforgettable morning when the clouds in the sky turned a mysterious violet, Joseph happened to be at home. The sun was about to set and he was sitting on the floor, eating his food with his fingers, as was then the custom, while Mary stood waiting for him to finish before having her own supper. Neither spoke, for he had nothing to say and she was unable to express what was on her mind. Suddenly a beggar appeared at the gate outside, a rare occurrence in this village, where people were so poor, a fact unlikely to have escaped the begging fraternity, which had a nose for places where there were pickings, and that was certainly not the case here. Nevertheless Mary ladled into a bowl a good portion of the lentils with chopped onions and mashed chickpeas set aside for her own supper, and took it out to the beggar, who sat on the ground. She did not need her husband's spoken permission, he merely nodded, for as everyone knows those were times when words were few and a simple thumbs down or up was enough to condemn a man to death or save him, as in the arenas of ancient Rome. The sunset, although quite different, was spectacular, too, with its myriad wisps of cloud scattered through the sky, rose-colored, mother-of-pearl, salmon-pink, cherry, adjectives used here on earth so that we may understand one another, for none of these colors, as far as we know, have names in heaven. The beggar must have gone without food for three days to have scraped and licked his bowl clean so quickly, and back he comes to return the bowl and express his gratitude. Mary, opening the door, finds him standing there, but somehow he looks broader and taller than before. So it must be true that there is a great difference between going hungry and just having eaten, for this man's face and eyes are glowing, his tattered clothes flap in a strange wind, blurring her vision so that his rags take on the appearance of rich raiment, a sight that must be seen to be believed. Mary put out her hands to receive the earthenware bowl, which, through some extraordinary optical illusion, perhaps due to the light of the sky, was transformed into a vessel of the purest gold. And, as the bowl passed from his hands into hers, the beggar said in resonant tones, because even the poor man's voice had changed, May the Lord bless you, good woman, and give you all the children your husband desires, and may He also protect you from my sad fate, for, alas, I have nowhere to rest my head in this wretched world. Mary held the bowl in cupped hands, one chalice held by another, as if waiting for the beggar to fill it, which is what he did. Without warning he bent down and gathered a handful of earth and, raising his arm, allowed it to trickle through his fingers while reciting in a low voice, Earth to
