The Secret Magdalene

  To my horror, Yehoshua notices. “Come, John. We are done with the women. Now you will meet my brothers and my cousins and my friends.”

  Eio and I following, Yehoshua pushes his way through a confusion of goats. Lifting a sharply divided hoof from off my foot, I walk toward these brothers and friends alone. Beyond the goats and the tents and the women and children and chickens under the acacia trees, the sheer yellow cliff rises into the thin blue sky. Here at the foot of the cliff there is a shallow cave, wide enough and deep enough to provide needed shade from the relentless sun. Yehoshua walks toward this cave, and when we come near, I can make out the shapes of those inside. It seems all within are seated, that they face outward and watch us come. But not until we too are in the cave can I see that it is the brother Jacob who leans forward, that it is he who has quickly covered the ground before him with a cloth. Before the cloth settles, I see the lines he has drawn in the dirt. It is not one of Salome’s problems in geometry, but what it is, I do not know. Is it a map?

  All I can do if I have walked into a trap is turn and run straight into a herd of goats, for as Eio and I have followed Yehoshua, the goats have followed us. I keep my face straight and my wits sharp. I do not look at the cloth on the ground. I look at Jacob’s head. By the stars, he has shaved himself bald! Why? Meanwhile, all but one looks up at me, and the one who does not look is Jude. Jude keeps his gaze on his twin. I feel into him for only a moment. Jude thinks me an effete, a youth of no substance, no heat, no blood. For Yehoshua’s sake, Jude will allow me small room in this world, but grudgingly. Of the thirteen we find in this cave, in one way or the other, I know six. There are the two brothers from Capharnaum, Andrew and Simon Peter. There are Yehoshua’s four brothers, the newly shaven Jacob (who is spoken of as Jacob the Just), Jude, Simon, and finally the youngest brother, Joses. Of the remaining seven, there are two I have never seen before, but know from an awed Tata that they are men of fame, or ill fame to such as Father. I would not stare, but I am struck with the wonder of it. These are the sons of the woman under the tree, the sour Salome, sprung from the loins of Tata’s champion, Judas the Galilean, the famous bandit who came out of the hills to lead a revolt against the taxes of Rome. These are Simon and Jacob bar Judas!

  Simon and Jacob were with their father Judas on that day in Galilee; they were with their father’s friend, Zadok the Righteous One. When the Roman general Varus caught the father and killed him, he did not catch the sons, nor did he catch the mysterious Zadok, who with Judas became heroes to a whole people.

  As for the others who sit farther back, Yehoshua introduces these as the three sons of Jacob bar Judas: young James of Salome’s age, the younger Jair, and the even younger Zoker, who could not be above ten years. The fourth is the son of Simon bar Judas, and named Menahem. I hear this one think John the Less should stay in his place. If he should say it aloud, I would not dispute him. The last of the five is a huge man, larger than Peter, with a nose as hooked as an Arab’s; this one is Yehoshua’s cousin, Simeon the Zealot.

  Yehoshua puts his hand on my shoulder, urges me forward. “I have brought the young one who has taken my heart.”

  Jacob the Just keeps himself between the cloth he has placed on the ground, and me. Alone of them all, Simon of Capharnaum stands and walks toward me. For the third time in my life, he thrusts his face in my face. “Have I not seen you before?”

  “Of course you have seen him before, Simon Peter, my rock,” Yehoshua answers for me. “Do not bully. This is John the Less, kin to Seth of Damascus. It is my intention that he join us.”

  On the instant, all are as alert as a vixen with kits. “Join us?” snaps Peter. “How should he join us? He has no—”

  Yehoshua places a hand on his arm. “Join us in conversation, Peter. What else could I mean?” His eyes are bright with mischief. “Simon bar Judas? Jacob bar Judas? Can my two Sons of Thunder think of nothing worthy to discuss?”

  They stare up at him, anxious and eager to understand. The mood of Yehoshua matters to them, that much is obvious. I can hear them trying to think of something worthy to discuss, by which I know that though they are men of violence, they are yet simple men, and sweet in nature.

  “Or perhaps I interrupt something?”

  Jacob the Just speaks now. “I have no stomach for this, Yeshu’a. We have waited for you. Where have you been? There is serious business up in Jerusalem.”

  “I know.”

  “You know? And yet—?”

  “And yet I have time to talk of other things. We shall have a skinful of all this soon enough, for there is ever a surfeit of serious business.”

  Jacob half rises. “This is why we ourselves must be serious.”

  Yehoshua holds up his hand, which stops Jacob in his rising. “Do you think God is forever serious?”

  “God? There is nothing more serious than God.”

  Yehoshua smiles on his brother. It is a tender smile. Even Jacob must feel it as tender. “There is nothing less serious than God. Consider the ass.” He pulls on Eio’s ear. “God could not have been serious when he devised the ass.”

  He has made them laugh. This man has the gift his cousin John has; he makes the way smooth with laughter. It is as if air is let out of a bladder, all laugh, even Jacob with his red lips and his bald blue head.

  Yehoshua rubs Eio’s cheek and she shuts her unfaithful eyes in bliss. “Take comfort, Jacob. What is to be done will be done. And as there may be some here we cannot trust, which means nothing can begin until the setting of the sun, it is useless to continue so serious while the sun yet shines. Jude?”

  Jude reacts almost before he hears his name, his hand clasped to the hilt of his knife.

  “Come with John and me. We will return to this serious business when we have eaten. And you!” Yehoshua means Eio. “You come too.”

  Eio moves as if I had bid her. And Jude is up off the ground and by Yehoshua’s side while he still speaks. As for me, if I have walked into the lion’s den, now I am about to walk out. It is good to be alive, though I should not have thought so earlier in this day when life felt nothing but pointless. As we four, the look-alike brothers and Eio and I, turn to walk away, I glance back just once. The others have returned to that which is drawn in the dirt, all except Simon Peter. He stares straight at me, and the look on his face could turn flesh to salt.

  Yehoshua lies in the bowl of warm rock that is usually mine. From it he can see back down the path as far as the carob trees. Above the tops of the trees, there is the sky and the sea and the mountains. Under the simmering sun, they all seem as one. Jude has taken the soft sand under the largest date palm that would be Salome’s if she were here. I sit, leaning back on Eio.

  “This is a good place,” says Yehoshua. “Do you remember where we would sit, Jude, when we were boys?”

  Jude has closed his eyes. He lies on his back, his arms crooked under his head, and all the while the knife at his belt glints in the sun. He looks asleep, but he could not be for he nods, yes, he remembers.

  I must listen carefully. Yehoshua’s accent is so thick, he speaks so softly, and Eio’s belly rumbles so loudly. “My brothers and sisters and I once lived on a hill and from our hill we could look down on the Plain of Jezreel where so many battles from scripture were fought. We would pretend it was we who had fought them, making swords of sticks and knives of shale, we fought valiantly and we died gallantly. Remember, Jude?”

  With another nod, Jude remembers.

  “From our hill we could see another far hill and on that hill stood Sepphoris, Herod’s city of marble. At night, we would watch as the hundreds of palace lights were lit. I would imagine being the man who lit those lights. I would imagine being the man they were lit for. How endless the distance from our darkness to Herod’s great palace of fire. When we were older and our sticks and our stones replaced by the tools of a trade, we still sat on our hill talking of the world in the shadow of Herod’s lights. Did you do this, John?”

  Caught out
struggling to hear, I have no answer.

  “Between you and your brother, Simon, what talk there must have been! Seth has told me of you. I think you were what I as a youth might have wished to be.” I see that Jude opens his eyes at this. “What trade did your father follow?”

  “My father was a maker and merchant of glass.” Long ago it was decided that I would not change who my father was or what he did, all that should be changed is that he and my family were dead at Roman hands. “I was a merchant’s son. Seth and Addai raised my brother and me, and though we have learned much, we learned no trade.”

  From his place in the sand, Jude grunts.

  Yehoshua cocks an eye at his brother. “Pay no heed. Jude has always found it hard to know how a man might live without a trade.”

  Once again, Jude grunts.

  “How he lives with himself, that is.”

  I watch this performance with much interest. All my life I have known the thoughts of others by hearing them, but this one knows his brother’s words from grunts and shrugs and glares. Does Jude speak at all? Is he mute? I lie back against Eio and share her flies. The mood I awoke with is gone; the irritation I have lived with since Egypt is gone, which means I feel fit to argue. Live without a trade? I cannot imagine living with one. I am a philosopher; I am select of the earth. It is enough that I have learned to tend my trees and my poppies.

  Because Jude is mute and perhaps also deaf, I say this, “Tell him I live easily with myself, for there is more to the world than a trade.”

  “Oh, I have often told him this, especially now that neither of us follows our own. We were once carpenters working for our uncle, the builder Cleopas. We worked on much in Sepphoris, the very theater itself. We built the stage building, and what a splendid stage building it was. The back wall alone had doors and openings enough to satisfy the busiest playwright. Is this not true, Jude?” Jude makes no sound, but Yehoshua seems satisfied that his brother agrees the stage building was splendid and the back wall satisfying. “Old Camel Knees demands we shun the ways of those he claims walk in the footsteps of Roman or Greek—”

  “Old Camel Knees?”

  “Our brother, the lately bald Jacob. Since childhood, Jacob has exceeded all others in zeal for the Law, his knees are a camel’s knees for praying. Now he goes shaven until the Temple is once again God’s. But I cannot shun the theater. Did Jude and I not provide the stage building?”

  I know this theater in Sepphoris. Years ago, Father had business there, and how I begged to go along, and how surprised I was when he agreed to take Tata and me. Now I know that to take Tata was the entire point.

  Yehoshua has gone silent. Jude seems asleep. I too am silent, but I know Yehoshua’s mind teems with ideas and with questions, that his nerves thrill to them. There is something he wants to ask of me. This is why he found me this morning, why I have met his family, why he is here now. But he does not know how to ask, where to begin, and I cannot help him for I am as confused as he. It is as if I have known him all my life, yet I know him not at all. He does not know my real name. He wants to question me but is afraid of my answers. Yehoshua of Galilee does not know his way.

  How could I have thought him the Perfected Man of the Nazorean? He is more than most men; he has wit and he has humor, but perfected? I smile into Eio’s mane of soft brown bristles. I am almost drifting away to sleep, when Yehoshua’s voice comes again, and I begin to hear the music in it.

  “When we were young, my brothers and I, we were poor, without influence, and filled with anger. Being young and angry, we asked angry questions. Being Nazoreans, we asked these questions: if God is the King of the Israelites, how is it that we are answerable to an earthly king? If the Israelites must have an earthly king, why a son of the Arabian Herod who is not of us? We would stare at the towers and arches and porches of Herod’s palace and ask how it was that a few men were rich beyond need and many men poor beyond pity?” Here Jude growls, and it is nothing if not unnerving, though it proves he is not deaf. “Simeon’s father, our uncle Cleopas would ask the wisest question of all, why do ten priests or more stand between a man and God?” Yehoshua lowers his gaze. He has been looking out over the Sea of Salt as if he were looking out over Herod’s palace. Now, he looks at me. “In time I discovered that all our questions had the same answer, these things were so because we allowed them to be so. Men of resignation had made all this. The fearful poor, resigned to their poverty, made this. The wealthy, who would not lose their wealth, made this. The priests, eager to keep their lucrative place at Temple, made this. All these have made evil run smoothly. But as I was young and not yet resigned, I had only one choice, only one path to follow—”

  Listening, Jude becomes rigid in his place.

  “And I have followed it ever since. I would not allow these things to be so. Even if men must die, they shall not be so.”

  I look at him; I do not lower my eyes. “You are Sicarii. You keep the company of Sicarii. Is your cousin John a daggerman?”

  For a moment, I think Yehoshua will not answer, but I am wrong. “Though I did once, I no longer know John. Is he madman or priest or king?” Yehoshua turns his face from me, and from his twin. “But I have had such dreams.” His hand clutches at his robe, twists the cloth. “Shall I tell you them? Will you hear me? You confuse me, John the Less. I am confused by you.” I am silent. I can only listen, as Jude is doing. “But know that I have had such strange thoughts, and I have had such strange feelings, and once, just before coming here, I saw something. What I saw was beyond thought and beyond form and when it came, it spoke aloud as Job’s Voice from the Whirlwind. My mind flew away at the sound of it. It terrifies me yet. Tell me, as I know you have walked with God, is it common, these thoughts? Is it common to see and to hear such things? They do not seem common. No other before you talks of them. No other knows them as you know them.”

  Is it common? Have others seen what I have seen, but do not speak? Have I walked with God? Or does every man hear his own god? For Jews, it seems one man’s god has became the god of a tribe, and then he has become the god of a whole people, and now he thinks to become the God of gods—or his people think to make him so. I shudder. Yea Balaam! I have no answers, I have only questions. This is my trade. I am by trade a questioner!

  Yehoshua’s voice has risen from a whisper to almost a shout. “Not since Moses has a man seen him face to face. No one speaks as you do. Not even the prophets. For the prophets do not know God. They know only what they say are God’s wrathful demands, and they are afraid. Are they all like Moses? Are they all like John? Have they been to the mountaintop, but not to the Promised Land?”

  Yehoshua falters. Does he suddenly hear himself and, hearing, stumble at the sound? Has he been speaking blasphemy? I reach into him. He wonders if I am a spirit, an unclean thing? He wonders if he dallies with a demon. The cords in his neck work as if he would choke, and when comes at last his voice, it is a great half-strangled “Enough!” Though Yehoshua shouts at himself, I flinch. “All this can wait. The hour comes to be about my business.”

  He leaps up and once again I am startled. He has broken open the moment; it is smashed as my juggled pot.

  Jude is also on his feet. Eio struggles up under me and I lose my balance, but Jude has caught at my arm and I do not fall. He is not gentle. There is in his eyes some of what I see in Simon Peter’s eyes.

  Just as he did hours ago, Yehoshua strides down the path.

  “Stay here. Do not follow Yeshu.” So saying, Jude strides off after him.

  My mouth drops open. Jude speaks!

  Of course I do not stay.

  Before I am John the Less, I am Mariamne. What business do they speak of? I would discover this because it is my nature to do so.

  I know another way into the settlement. Not by going back down the nahal, but by climbing farther up. In moments, I am back in the tunnels I have not seen since the night Seth and Salome, Helena of Tyre and Dositheus and I, set out for Egypt. I have no light, but a
ll I need do is go down. Long ago, Addai instructed us to follow any tunnel that goes down.

  How much can a day hold? Coming up by way of the steep and narrow stairs from the circular room where first I met John the Baptizer, I stop in the shadow of the tower doorway. There is a confusion of shouting; I do not understand what I hear. It is all bathed in the hard white light of noon; I do not understand what I see. At the far end of the long room stands John of the River, and beside him Simon Magus, pale as the moon. Near Salome, cowers Helena, her face covered with her head cloth. Near an inner wall are Dositheus and several men of the Nazorean. The hem of Dositheus’s clothing is stained red. Near John and Simon Magus there are women: Mary’s daughters, and Joanna, wife of Chuza, among them. I see even Dinah of the Way, a woman I have not seen for many years. Why is she here? Why are there women in the meeting room claimed by the elders of the Poor? And why do they lean over something that does not move? What is it they look on? A bundle? Tumbled baskets? An animal, sick or dying, perhaps already dead? Looking on are Yehoshua’s brothers and Yehoshua’s friends and Yehoshua’s cousins. What is happening?

  Perhaps I can understand what occurs if I can understand the shouting.

  “All will go!” shouts one in the center of the long room. “Suicide!” shouts another. “If all else are cowards, I will do what needs be done!” shouts a third, and this third man is Simon Peter of Capharnaum. He breaks from the crowd with two others, and then his brother Andrew appears among them with four more, and these eight run straight at the door I stand in. I clamp myself to the stone of the tower wall. All eyes follow their flight, meaning all eyes turn in my direction. In this single instant, my gaze locks with Salome’s. There is horror in her eyes, and when she sees me, there is pity, a terrible pity. I understand her horror but not her pity.

  At this moment, Seth steps forward. He fills the doorway these eight would use. If they would pass, they must run him down. He will be trampled and I will be trampled because I have already stepped out in front of him, but for the ringing voice of command that now sounds out over all else: “Stop!”