Interview Recording #059 Subjects: Berenice (wife of Simeon) & Joanna (wife of Matthias)
[start recording]
Ok, let’s start at the beginning. How old was Zechariah when this all happened?
“Oh God, what were they, like 60 when he was born?”
“He was something like 65, she was 55. Or 56, I can’t remember.”
“Anyway, it was such a shame. Good people like that should have babies. It wasn’t right. So many other mangy kids running around the streets, and then here you have a priest and a daughter of a priest who don’t have any. It just wasn’t right. We were all so sad for them.”
“Not right at all.”
“I mean, here you have just the most perfect parents anyone could dream of. Zechariah was a good man – followed the law to the last letter. Good-looking man in his day too, so I’m told. My mother always said what a fine couple they were. Elizabeth was just the nicest person you ever met. She made the most delicious lamb.”
“Best in the village.”
“So then of course we were all very happy when we finally heard the news.”
“Overjoyed.”
“Auntie kept it a secret for a long time. We didn’t hardly even know but for a few months before the baby came. It was all hush-hush, and then wow, a baby was coming! We didn’t hardly have time to do all the ceremonies and the gatherings and everything. It was such a big event, I wish we’d had more time to prepare. You know, these things take time to plan.”
“You did such a good job with it. I was there.”
“I did my best, given the obvious restraints. Well, then the day finally came, and of course it was a boy, so we were all so happy. A woman without a son is a sad thing. Especially since she was already so old to begin with. A woman like that needs a son to care for her. And then of course there’s the priesthood. Ever since they were married, everyone imagined them churning out a fine line of priests. You could just imagine them with a line of little priests walking behind them. As he was getting older, everyone thought what a shame it was that Zechariah wasn’t going to have any sons. He taught in the schools, you know. Really fine man.”
“Best teacher we had in that school.”
“So, everyone was so excited that they finally got a boy. Just one of those few moments when life is as it should be, you know? But I guess the first thing that started off strange was the whole name thing. Do you know about that?”
No, please tell me.
“Well, John isn’t exactly a family name. I mean the meaning is nice and good, but it’s not exactly what someone from our community calls a baby. You may not know much about our community, but it’s just not a proper name for us. We have a certain heritage and dignity and it’s important for us to keep certain things inside.
So, when this name – ‘John’ – comes out, we were all quite shocked. I mean, it’s like something the fishermen call their sons. Do you know what I mean?”
“Strange name.”
“So, I think that boy had it in from the beginning that he was going to be a bit odd. But then, the whole thing happened with Zechariah being able to speak again, which was just the most bizarre thing you’ve ever seen in your life. We all thought someone had put some kind of hex on him or something, or the devil himself had taken hold of him for some unknown reason. Nothing anyone could tell, he had always been a good man and all as far as we knew. But anyway, it was like a miracle, so we never made a fuss about his name after that.”
“Not after that.”
“No, I mean it is a very unusual name to give a priest’s son, but I never brought it up again. It was a very odd name, but you know, it’s not the kind of thing you tell a child’s mother. And she was so proud of that boy.”
“So proud.”
“We all knew he was going to be a special boy, what with coming along after such a long time and being born into that family and the whole thing with Zechariah. She did everything for that boy. You never saw such a nervous mother, doting over him like she was a 16-year-old girl with her first baby. Of course, Elizabeth had taken care of so many babies over the years, but she was something else with that baby. She would hardly take him outside at first, so nervous she was. You know, come to think of it, maybe that’s where the trouble started.”
What trouble?
“Oh, I don’t want to say ‘trouble’. He was just a different kind of child. So, Zechariah died when John was about five or six, wasn’t it?”
“He was six, I remember.”
“Elizabeth had moved in with us so that we could help take care of them. She would send John to the boys school every day. But, pretty soon, the priest would send reports back that he wasn’t behaving, or causing trouble in the class.”
“And then there was the first time…”
“Oh yes, the first time he went missing we were all in a tizzy. We looked around for him for a full day and could never find him. Elizabeth nearly died that very day. We searched everywhere and called everyone we knew to help find him. Just as we were getting ready to send out some men to look in the town, in walks this young fellow, as confident as he can be, as if the whole village wasn’t in a mess about where he had been. He just walks up to Elizabeth, after getting a few wallops from a few of us, and she takes him into a room and that was that. It never was discussed again.”
“I never brought it up.”
“It started happening over and over again until we finally all just stopped worrying about it. Where’s John? Not here? Oh well, supper’s ready. You know, it was like he was floating around sometimes.”
“Very strange.”
“But this is all just the beginning. After that is where the real trouble in school started. I don’t know too much of what all went on, but there was all sorts of fuss going on with the priests who were teaching him. They would walk around grumbling ‘What kind of boy is this’? He fell behind in a lot of his classes, and wasn’t anywhere near the other boys of age. You could tell in his eyes that he just wasn’t all there.”
“He was an odd one.”
“All this is second-hand now, so I don’t know if you want to write this down or not, but I overheard some of the priests talking about him one day. He was causing a big fuss, asking too many questions – you know how that can be? One day, I remember he came back from school and he was all black and blue from something he probably said to Rabbi Shammai that just made him lose it. He came walking back to this house, went back with his mother again and we didn’t see him for three days.”
“We all went up to Elizabeth, asking her what was going on, but you know how mothers like that are. She just shut us all up. There was to be no talking about that kind of thing. She acted like nothing was happening. I mean imagine that – that lady was the daughter of a priest, the husband of a priest, and should have been the mother of a priest. I would have been going batty inside if I was her.”
“Such a shame.”
“But instead, here she was with this boy who wandered off for days at a time, eating God-knows what, and was failing at school, being so disrespectful all the time. But it was such a shame how it all happened.”
How what happened?
Well, Elizabeth finally died – she was an old woman as you know, but she held on for a long time. John kept living with us through that time. I thought out of respect for his mother he would straighten out, but he had the same routine. Simeon tried to keep tabs on him more and gave him some beatings whenever he went off. When you are responsible for a boy like that, you can’t just have him leave all the time.”
“He seemed like he was starting to mind more, at least for a time.”
“Well, eventually it came time when all the other boys were going to be consecrated as priests. About a month or two before the consecration ceremony, John goes missing again as usual. But this time he never came back. Only Elizabeth ever knew where he went off to, so none of us knew where to look. The ceremony came and went and he never showed up. Simeon said that Rabbi Shammai said it was better off that way, anyway. Word had gotten to the high priest about John and it wasn’t looking good for him.”
That was the last you heard of him?
“Yes it was. Of course every once in a while some boy would come back from wandering around with ghost stories about seeing him out there in the desert, but they were just trying to scare the other kids.”
“None of us believed it.”
“Then of course all hell broke loose.”
What do you mean?
“Reports start coming in about this crazy man out in the wilderness. Of course the first time we heard it, we all kept our mouths shut. Imagine the embarrassment. I only thank God that Elizabeth wasn’t there to hear about it.”
“Such a shame.”
“Then the reports start getting more and more frequent, and then everyone starts talking about it. Then all of a sudden, someone comes back and says, ‘It’s John, It’s John’, like none of us didn’t know what was going on. We basically had to go into hiding during that time. Didn’t really come out of the house. Just heard the stories coming in.”
“Terrible things.”
“I had to stop listening after a while. That boy was trouble from the time he was born. We tried to do right by him and to honor Zechariah and Elizabeth, but some things just can’t be helped, I suppose.”
What kind of stories were they?
“It’s not really proper for me to say. It wasn’t just what people were saying about him, it was who was saying it. I know times are tough, but we try to keep a certain level of pride in our community. The type of people who were coming about talking about this ‘holy man’ out in the desert was just shameful.”
“Such a shame.”
“They are just not the kind of people you want to hear talking about someone from your community. Well, he was creating such a fuss it was really getting to be a problem. Then the stories started to rev up when he started getting all political. Someone said he was in jail, another one said he was dead.”
But you never saw him again?
“Oh, God no. What, you thought one of us would just wander out there? I’d like to see him come near these parts too. What a walloping he would get.”
“Such a shame.”
Ok, anything else you want to say?
“No, that’s about all there is. I’d like to say that we’ve recovered from the scandal, but people still talk. They say things under their breath, you know. I don’t know what went wrong with that boy, but he sure made a fine mess of things around here. I’d give his ear a nice twist if I saw him now.”
“Such a shame.”
Thank you for your time, ladies.
[end of recording]
