The Secret Magdalene

  I will tell them. Or I will try.

  But from the very first word, my telling is confused, disjointed. In the space of no more than a moment or two, I think it futile. My words hold no color, no scent, no music, they are pale things, as pale and as eyeless as worms. But even as I stumble in the telling, awe sings in my veins, for nothing else in the whole of my life has compared to my journey out of the body of self and into the body of Glory. Not even the Passion of Osiris, which is a journey like no other.

  I have read Enoch. I have read Jubilees and Ezekiel and Daniel. I have read of Jacob’s ladder that reached to heaven. I know whoever wrote these things stood in the first Great Hall of the House of Glory. Just as John the Baptizer did, which is something I think I shall never say aloud, and why I know he is not the One. I know though their visions were terrifying and though they were beautiful and though they yearned for God with a torment of longing, all these stood apart; they did not go in. They did not learn they are as much in Glory and of Glory as Glory is. They did not see that they themselves are Glory. They did not learn they were not “caught up” by something apart and distinct from themselves, but rather they flew up on the wings of their own splendid Being. If they had learned such a wonderful thing, I know they would have said so. It would be in the books they wrote or that were written in their names. But it is not so written. To a Jew, the Invisible God is always above and apart. But I have seen with my own eyes that God is not above and apart. God is within and without. There is nothing that is not God.

  As Seth once said, “It is not that there is one God. It is that God is One.”

  At this, I feel a sudden heat, like sheet lightning in the veins. In this instant, I know why I have not spoken of it—this is why. I have thought no one would hear me. Or if they were to hear me, they should scorn the listening. But more, I did not want to know I knew and that I have known all along. I have tasted gnosis.

  I tell them that the Kingdom of God is a book, they might go there by the unrolling of a scroll. I tell them that the Kingdom of God is a mirror, they might go there by the refocusing of the eye. Even now, they stand in the Garden of Eden, and the only leaving they have ever done is a forgetting. I tell them that I have walked in the true home of the inner Nazorean and that it is more a home than any home they have ever known, full of such tenderness as to melt an obsidian heart. I prowl through my mind, seeking more ways to tell them the simple thing I know, but it is hopeless. Unless a man jumps in the sea, how shall he know to swim? And I suddenly see that of them all, even Seth who knows with the mind and yearns with the heart, it is the brother called Yehoshua who hears me. I see it by his skin, by the bones in his hands, the way his head fits on his neck, by the radiance that escapes his eyes. This is why I think of nothing but him. He too has looked upon Glory. I cannot express my relief. But I can cry. Even now that I am John the Less and am learned beyond most men, I am still a wonder at crying.

  I weep aloud to know I have not gone alone.

  Without a word, Yehoshua leans forward.

  He touches my forehead with the tip of one finger, and it is as if a mother has come to sing me to sleep. He traces the tear that rolls down my cheek, and it is as if a father has encircled me with his protective arm. I look into the brown of his eye. I smell the sun and the dust in his hair. I feel his touch though he has taken his hand away. I am helpless with the need to ask. So I do ask. “Are you the One?”

  His face is a wash of surprise. Then comes a flood of bewilderment, and then fear. He shuts his eyes, and with no movement other than this, he leaves me. But I have asked and I must know, I must know; and I do as I do with Eio, I follow him. I slip under his skin, curl like smoke through his nostrils, move through his blood, and the first thing I feel is pain. I am infused with such pain as I have never known, more than black Helena knows. It lies behind the ball of his eye and in the bone of his skull. It is unbearable. It is unutterable. I open my mouth to cry out, and all the while the Loud Voice rolls down on us as a great stone would roll from the top of a mountain. “AS I AM THE ANGEL SPEAKING TRUTH—THE ONE HAS COME AMONG YOU.”

  The room has gone still as stone. Yehoshua opens his eyes wide. There is nothing in his face, there seems no breath in his body, yet he looks at me as if it were I who had spoken, as if these words were mine. They are not mine! It is not me! I am not an angel! I do not speak as an angel! I know nothing! Are the others as surprised as I that the Voice comes now? Do they wonder it comes to the brothers, or are they stunned that I, Mariamne, would ask this Yehoshua of Galilee if he were the One? I look at Seth, but his mind is closed to me. Seth looks at Yehoshua. Jude does not smile nor does he move. In this moment I understand that Jude would do nothing other than his twin would wish him to do. In this moment if Yehoshua were to want me solaced or silenced, so it should be.

  It is now that all begin to hold me apart. The change is as delicate as the brush of a pale shadow on a pale wall, but Salome misses nothing. Already grown distant, from this time on, I rarely see her from day to day.

  It is as if I were missing a hand; I do not know what to do with myself. It is as if I were missing an eye; nothing looks as it did. I do not know what to feel. I have lost the friend of my youth. No one knows me. I no longer know myself. I am alone in the wilderness.

  Eio grunts when I come near, nudges my hand to see if I have brought her anything. Today I have brought her only me, but that is enough if I scratch her hide hard enough. Not knowing what to do, I wander off, and Eio follows, and by and by we find ourselves hidden among the date palms far up our nahal west of the settlement. For a time, how much time it is hard to say, I lie flat out on the sand in the shade of the largest tree, a smooth stone for a pillow, and stare up at the cliffs and the sky. I lie so still, a baby hyrax tests my sandals for taste. Another, negotiating a rock, falls off with a soft plop onto the sand and then waddles away. Eio stands over me, flapping her lips and nodding her head. I would laugh if there were laughter in me. Instead, I rise only to seat myself in my curved bowl of a rock. I get up. I wander from date palm to date palm, absently picking at bark. I unwrap Salome’s copy of the Book of Issa and look at it. I look at our game of green stone. I unwrap the three small figures we long ago found, Salome and I, and I smile to see what had once shocked me so. After so long in Alexandria, such natural things as breasts and delicate triangles of flesh no longer move me to embarrassed horror. I set them aside and pick up an unripened date fallen from a tree. I absently consider its design. If I were a god, would I have thought to create a date? I think to practice my tricks of magic. As it has been some while since I have done so, I am sure to fumble, so I begin with what I do best. In the purse at my side, Tata’s gift of long ago, I have, besides my word stones, a handful of olives. I will change an olive into a date and the date into a large stone and the large stone into whatever occurs to me when I get that far.

  But first, the olive.

  It goes well. The olive has become a date and the date become a stone and the stone become a clay pot! Two clay pots! Three! I would defy anyone to know how I do this—even I am impressed. I juggle the three pots. I am sure that Eio cannot believe her eyes. “You, donkey,” say I, “tell me, are you not confounded!”

  “Prophets always confound me, even more than magicians,” says a voice behind my back.

  One of my pots remains a pot in my hand, one falls like a pot onto the soft yellow sand, but the third smashes like a pot on a rock. Too late, a hyrax barks warning. I whirl in place. Standing beside Eio, who unlike the hyraxes has not uttered a single warning bray, is one of the redheaded brothers. Even without his words, I know immediately which this is. Yehoshua is alone. I am alone. We are both alone with Eio. I am disquieted, if for no other reason than some find such magic as I have displayed an offense against Yahweh. But there is more reason than this. In all my life I have seldom been alone with a strange male, and it helps but little that he knows me as John the Less.

  Yehoshua speaks again. “I have seen
Addai do something like this. I think you do it better.”

  I would thank him if I had use of my tongue. As it is I scramble to remember myself. I am a Maccabee, and I am a scholar. I have lived in the palace at Alexandria. I have been taught by the famous philosopher, Philo Judaeus, and the famous astronomer and magician, Joor, son of Sipa of Thebes. Also by the famous Apion. I can read and I can write, which is without doubt something this one cannot do since virtually no one in the entirety of Palestine can do either. I can speak a dozen languages well and this one speaks Aramaic with a Galilean accent. I wear white linen. He wears rough cloth, mended and patched. He has no sandals, no wallet, no cloak. Against Jewish Law, his dark red hair is long. His dark red beard is tangled. I have asked him if he is the One, and he has answered by a startled silence.

  Here, in my own hidden world with Eio, it suddenly seems a great foolishness to think I ever thought him anything of the sort.

  I do not reach into him for I have not forgotten what it felt to do so. Could a perfected man feel as dark as this? I think not. But one thing that helps me now is that I sense he has a small fear of me. I am used to the fear of others. But this one’s fear is unlike any I have ever felt. It seems not so much a fear of my being unlike, as it is fear of my being too like.

  By thinking all this, I recover my wit. I will repel him with foreign erudition. He will then go away and leave me to my sorrowful self. “As for prophets,” I say to him in my loftiest voice, “remember what the Greek Aeschylus wrote: ‘And, truly, what of good ever have prophets brought to men? Craft of many words, only through evil your message speaks. Seers bring terror, so to keep men afraid.’”

  Yehoshua is looking at my sanctuary of sand and palm and rock, and seeing this, I see also that the three unchaste figures lie where I have left them. Quickly, I pop them into the pot I still hold in my hand. But instead of retreating, he seats himself in my bowl of stone. Seated he says, “Do you believe that?” And when I say nothing, he asks again, more firmly this time. “Do you believe that prophecy is an evil craft meant to keep men afraid?”

  I look at him and find I have no idea. Do I believe it? I have not listened to what I have said. I have only quoted the playwright Aeschylus because his were the first words that came to mind about prophets. But has this Zealot really asked such a thing of me? Men such as this man do not question prophecy. They live by it. Therefore, as this could not be a question, it must be a challenge. I am alone here. He is a stranger. He stands between me and the path down to the settlement. I answer, “I do not know.”

  To which the Galilean then says, “But if what this Greek says is true and this is all there is of prophecy, is God then mute?”

  Again, I answer that I do not know. It is a difficult thing, measuring dismissal against civility. But it is as if I had said nothing. This one persists.

  “If God is mute, can we still assume he concerns himself with us? And if God remains mute, how do we know he exists? And what then of prophets? If God is mute, are they charlatans?”

  By now, I barely look at him, but I admit I do listen. How could I not? This kind of thing is to me as rain to the grasses.

  “Is my cousin John what some say he is, a deceiver? Even with such a death as you once died, are you?”

  This is interesting. More, it is surprising. What kind of a man is this to pose such knotty questions? He sounds a lawyer, yet I know he is no scribe. I see I have made a mistake. He is not repelled by erudition, not even the erudition of a Greek. He is not repelled by incivility. Not only is he not repelled; his being here is no accident. He has not stumbled on me in this isolated place—he has sought me out.

  “Are you afraid of me, John?”

  Yes! I hiss to myself. Yes, I am afraid of you. What is it about you that makes me afraid? How would you harm me? I know there is a confusion in you, a whirlwind of contrary feeling that blows you every which way as a blizzard blows sand. You are not an Addai with the most settled of hearts. You are not a Seth with the most composed of minds. You are not a Simon Magus with her talent and her comforting conceit. Or even a Tata with her strength and her pride. Who are you? “No. Why should I be afraid of you?”

  In answer, he leaps from his place on the curved stone, saying, “Because I am afraid of you. Men who fear each other are a danger to each other.”

  Even though by his leaping he has startled me through and through, I hold my ground. Is this honesty? In the world as it is, a dark place where the mind of man is hobbled by fear and awed by unquestioned and dreadful Powers and therefore ruled by priests, where a place like the Great Library at Alexandria is as a small lamp in a cave of utter blackness, I do not have the freedom to be honest—many would do more than shun or banish me, I should be stoned. Other than with Salome, I have never been truly honest, and even with Salome, lately I have kept my own counsel. With Father, I hid my interests and my opinions. With Tata and Addai and Seth, I do not hide my opinions, but I hide my feelings. With all others, I hide my sex as well as my origins and opinions and feelings. I am not what I seem and I envy this man his honesty. And I admire it. Or is he clever? Do I walk into a trap? Once more I lie, saying, “I am no danger to you.”

  His reply is as swift as his leap. “I have never met a man more dangerous, even as you are a youth. Would you know where the danger lies?”

  Here, I must respond honestly because I must know his answer. “Yes, I would know this.”

  “The danger lies in being known. I think you might know me.”

  “I do not know you.”

  “I think you do. As I know you.”

  He is right. This is a danger to me. It must be, else why am I now more afraid of him than ever? He turns away, walking toward the small seeping spring where Eio is sucking in water and making a tremendous racket as she does so. He clucks his tongue. On the instant she follows him. Eio, who obeys no one but me and Addai, obeys him. They are now both at the head of the path that twists and turns down through the rocks of the nahal toward the settlement below. Over his shoulder, Yehoshua calls, “As you know me and I you, come meet my sisters and my brothers.”

  I put down the pot and come away.

  THE EIGHTH SCROLL

  The Fourth Man

  I hear the women before I see them.

  There is a great commotion near a small grove of thorn acacias, much louder than the busy assembly of collared doves and babbler birds who live among these thorns. Eio’s ears flicker at such tumult, her stump of a tail twitches.

  In this blistering heat, the family of Yehoshua has set up its tents on stony ground between the yellow cliffs and the wilderness gardens. As we come closer, the women change from colorful mirage to colorful Galileans.

  “This, John, is my aunt Martha,” says Yehoshua. Martha, who makes much of this noise, has a goiter, a great bag hanging under her chin. Small children and chickens underfoot, she shrieks at a tall red-faced girl who chases a small red-faced boy, and the bag swings on her neck as a full udder swings on a trotting goat. “And that is my sister Maacah,” says Yehoshua of the tall girl.

  Maacah reminds me of Salome when we were young, and I am instantly charmed, though as a youth of substance, I do no more than glance her way. Yehoshua has now come to the acacia trees. Seated on a shaded mat of woven reeds is a woman spinning wool; she seems frail in all her parts. Around her, gather all others that are female. These do not spin, but prepare food.

  Yehoshua points from one to another. “These are Babata, wife of my brother Joses; Bernice, wife of my cousin Simeon; Veronica, wife of my brother Jude; and Miryam, also my sister.”

  I acknowledge the wives of Simeon and Joses and Jude, as well as this second sister, though they, of course, cannot look me, an unrelated male, full in the face. I take note that the wife of Jude holds a suckling babe. I note also there is a last woman seated alone, far under the deepest shade of the bristling trees, and that Yehoshua, seeing her, merely nods in her direction, saying only, “Salome, daughter of Zebedee, the mother of Ja
cob and Simon.” The mother of Simon and Jacob must hear him, but she does not look up. It is as deliberate a thing as I have ever seen.

  It is only now that he comes to the frail woman who spins, and at whom he also nods, though he does not smile. “And this is Mary.”

  And so I meet his mother.

  Mary seems a bloodless thing, too tired to do other than briefly lift her eyes to mine. The eyes are as faded by the years as her mantle is faded by the sun, but I see she was once comely. Under her head cloth, her hair, though shot with gray, is black. The red hair in two of her sons does not come from the mother, and it does not come from his cousin John. All those I have seen of his family are dark of hair and eye. I wonder, Where is the father? And why is this mother of so many mentioned last among women?

  “Mother, this is John the Less, the young man I have taken as a friend.”

  Swiftly working fibers through her hands, Mary inclines her head, and while I am acknowledging her with great courtesy, as befits a youth meeting the mother of a friend, I catch the eye of the youngest sister, Miryam. I am not more than five years above her age. I am well bred and well spoken. I am unmarried. Miryam flushes from round forehead to round bosom, and so do I. Before she can lower her glance, I suddenly understand what it is to be thought a man.