“No offense!” Yeshu has made me angry. “He is a Roman, a soldier. Perhaps he hurt Addai. Perhaps he broke his hands! Perhaps he deserved his death.”
“Even so. Even so.” Yeshu would take my hand, and I would pull away for fear he would feel its softness, but I do not. He raises his broken eyes to mine. “I am in danger, John the Less. Once I believed God would kill or have killed. How did I believe such a thing?”
I do not think Yeshu expects an answer. I could not answer if he did.
“All my life I have known my cousin as head of the Nazorean. In my youth, I thought him almost a god. Think of it, to walk as a youth with John of Kefar Imi, who was at that time called Zadok the Righteous One, who walked with Judas the Galilean. What boy would not worship him?”
So John of the River was the mysterious priest who did not die when the Romans caught and killed Judas of Galilee! And young as he was at the time, younger than I am now, Yeshu was one of those who rose against Rome. No doubt his twin rose with him, as did all his brothers and cousins and friends. These men know what it is to strike out at the Romans. These men know what it will be to walk into Jerusalem proclaiming John as king. And I understand yet again that there is Nazorean and there is the inner Nazorean. The inner Nazorean, the Few, are fewer than even Seth thinks. The Few are Seth of Damascus and now perhaps only myself. I have learned the teachings of one who stands alone. All the rest, even Salome, believe in war. They believe in being chosen. They believe in the coming of kings.
Yeshu yet holds my hand. His grip grows tighter and tighter. “I have never questioned John and I do not question him now. But I question the way of things, the how of things. I question what is done and what will be done in the name of God. I sicken myself with my questioning. I grow ill with my doubts.”
I understand this as I understand cold and hunger. I too sicken myself with questions. Socrates taught that one should question everything, but Socrates was condemned to die for his questions! And now my questions become as hemlock to me. My hand aching in his, I listen to Yeshu. I watch the sweat ooze from his skin, run in rivulets into his beard. I think of the pain in his head. I wonder what he sees through broken light but cannot imagine it.
“I do not welcome the doubt. I would banish the questions. I would be the man I was before the dreams. John! How do you live with the things you see?”
But I do not see things. I do not dream as he dreams. For all that I have walked in Glory, I do not walk there now. For all that I have seen the Passion of Osiris, I do not see it now. The voices come, the voices go. Once it was that I died and while dead flew up in splendid unspeakable urtom. This is all. Being witness to Glory does not change the whole person, for I am as foolish as I have always been. I am as reckless and as thoughtless. I have no answers for him and I tell him so. I loose my hand before it would break, and I tell him that I cannot help, I cannot even understand what it is he dreams or what he sees. What does he see?
Yeshu is looking toward the mountains. In this instant, the sun blazes forth, and Yeshu turns full toward me, “Why is it that I speak with you as I speak with no man, not even Jude who is my truly beloved brother. Why do I tell you such things?”
I quail inside. I tell Yeshu nothing. He knows little of me, and what he knows is not truly so. It suddenly occurs that I cheat him of his trust, that he offers me what I do not give him, what I cannot give him. For how can I give that which would drive him away? But if I cannot give him the gift of who I truly am, perhaps I can give him the gift of what I truly think. “Perhaps you come to me because I am as you in this way. I have nothing but questions. And all the answers I learn, pose me more.”
I see hope of a smile in Yeshu’s shattered eyes, though it is gone before it forms. He says, “Then I will tell you a further thing. I have sat all this night to know that you do not harm yourself, and now that I am assured you will not, I must leave you.”
I thought I could not be surprised. But I am surprised. “Leave me? Where do you go?”
“That I can only know when I get there. But you will do this for me, John, you will go back to the settlement, and you will live until I return.”
“When? When will you return?”
“Tell no one, not even Jude, for I would not have them search for me.”
And with that he stands. He stands as if he felt no pain, as if his sight were as mine. I stand with him, but I cannot do as he does. My legs are shot through with aches and creaks and weaknesses. I reach for him to keep from falling, and when I am firm and standing, he walks away. Not back from whence we came the day before, but farther south, the way I would have gone because there is nothing there.
It is only now that I realize that Yeshu carries no wallet, no water skin, no head cloth, no sandals; his bare feet crunch in the crusted salt and salted rock. I have the sense to say nothing. I stand and I watch him for so long as he remains in sight. A stadion away, he passes a small pillar of salt, and then another shaped like a crouching figure that Salome once called Lot’s wife, then three grouped together which she named the Three Sages, and I note that after a time, shimmering in mirage, he turns toward the west. There is a way up the cliffs somewhere near where he turns, a track made by wild things, and it leads to the top of the cliffs where there begins more of nothing, miles and miles of nothing. But on the way toward nothing, the track passes close by a series of caves, and in one of these caves we had found our little women; our limestone and reeded women with staring white and black eyes, and uplifted breasts, and tiny black vulvas exposed without shame.
When I can see him no longer, I turn north and begin the long walk back.
All around is fret over Yeshu—where is he, what does he do? Jude calms them all, saying even as a boy his brother was wont to disappear from time to time.
All now growl and mutter that John the Baptizer would be King of the Israelites. But as usual, none can agree on how to make him king. None can think what best to do; especially now that John is in mortal danger from Rome.
I am no part of this; though none of it passes me by. I sit by Addai, I read to him, I perform the magic he taught me, as well as a few tricks I devise on my own. I talk with Tata, watch her make pots. I notice that Stephen, the man Yeshu would not leave behind, finds a place for himself in the wilderness keeping accounts for the Poor. I collect the thick white blood of my poppy seedpods. I tend my balsam and my carob trees. I care for Eio. I wait for Yeshu to return. And I watch as all the others wait as well. On this all agree: when Yeshu comes back, he will know what to do, and then it will be done.
John goes often to the very northernmost point of the Salted Sea, there to stand on the banks of the Jordan as it empties sweet into salt, and to shout at those who, in their search for the Baptizer, have found him. There is much danger in this, for any of the people who come seeking his teaching could be sent by the Temple priests, any could be agents of Rome. But just as there is no stopping the people, there is no stopping John. Though there is a curtailing him; with much maneuvering by the Nazoreans he now strays no farther from the settlement than this.
As for me, I avoid listening to John. I have heard enough of his teaching, which cannot also be said of Salome, who seems never to get enough. It is an accepted thing for people to see Simon Magus, John’s favored disciple, wherever they see John. And whenever they see John, the excitement grows, for these days he speaks of the Climax of the Ages, howls that it is upon the whole of the earth, that his people are the Holy Nation and that they must lead the way or be destroyed by the fury of a betrayed God. He tells them there is yet hope, there is salvation. He tells them that if they follow their divine destiny there comes final deliverance for the faithful.
Hearing this I think a madness comes over him, more than any madness he has known before. I know a madness has come over Salome. By the times and by the stars, she claims that these, and others like them, would rise up, and by rising, God will make of John a king. This is not what Seth taught us of John. This is not what Jo
hn taught us of himself in the quiet times. What is it that John does now? Of what god does he speak? I know the people who hear him assume it is Yahweh, but is it?
On this day, Tata would have me wash Eio who smells of camel dung. This is not surprising, as she has rolled in camel dung. So I too am on the banks of the Jordan, though Eio and I stand away from the dozens or so gathered around John and Simon Magus and Helena of Tyre. I pour river water over Eio’s back from one of Tata’s water jugs, scrub her reeking hide with salty mud and rough barley stems. Within the space of no time we are soaked to the skin, she loudly complaining, me wringing out the sleeves of my tunic. John, who has been shouting, now shouts louder to be heard over Eio.
“Near at hand is the end of the world! And the Last Days! And the judgment of immortal God for such as are both called and chosen! First inexorable wrath shall fall on Rome—”
I am not listening, but I am looking. Not at John and not at Eio but out over the stinking sea. And there comes a something, a very dot of a something, up from the south. I squint but still I cannot make it out. Is it an animal, one so fierce it would show itself before men in the heat of the day? Or one so ill it does not care? Is it a man? I am curious, a bit puzzled. No one walks the shores of the dead waters, and never as this one seems to, coming up out of the wastes that lie to the south of us. For a month, there have been no Roman patrol boats, and only a few small ships bearing Arabian spices. What or who could this be?
I stand straight and shade my eyes. Eio, no longer watered and scrubbed, no longer brays, but walks off to sample muck and river reeds. To my left, John yells about himself as “a voice of he who cries in the wilderness,” and with that part of my mind that hears him, I think this last a thrilling thing to say—Isaiah is a book of many thrilling things—but with the rest of my mind, I am intent on the speck. And of a sudden, I know; of a sudden I see—it is Yehoshua! By the goddess, Yeshu has come back!
Dripping with watered camel dung, I would run toward him, but somehow I know I must not. I would shout out that he has come, but somehow I do not. There is that within me that sees Yeshu is changed, that he comes as he would come, without fuss. And there is more than this. Whatever it is he brings, goes before him as clouds before a storm, as heat before a fire. Even if I would look away, I could not look away.
It is now that John, in search of his next flight of winged words glances beyond his flock. He too sees who comes. He starts. He steps forward. He points. “Behold!” he shouts as he points, “Behold the Lamb of God!”
Each man and each woman turn as one, every eye seeking this lamb, and no eye faster than Simon the Magician’s. I cannot stop myself, I touch the mind of Salome. How does she bear to hear her beloved greet Yehoshua in this way? What can it mean? She does not know what it means, and not knowing cuts her down to the bone.
Yeshu is by now less than a stadion away, his face shining as the morning sun over Jerusalem, shining as Tata told me my face shone when I awoke from Glory. If I did not know better, I should think him somehow larger. We all stand in perfect silence as Yeshu walks toward us. We all of us watch every move he makes, even Eio who has lifted her head from the river reeds. She has turned where she stands so that she faces him, silently dripping, silently chewing.
He is closer now, and closer, and as he comes, the light that shines forth from his face is more than the sun. It is the light of all the stars that Joor of Thebes has taught me are also suns, also worlds. Yeshu looks at me—at me! There is no movement of his mouth, no movement of his eyes, yet I know that he smiles in his heart to see me. As for my heart, it beats as the heart of a bird, so fast I might fly away. I do not question how this has come to be, this feeling for Yeshu, this joy. It is enough to feel it.
Yeshu turns his attention from me to John of the River. “Come, cousin,” he says, and for once his voice rings from riverbank to riverbank, and from cliff to cliff. “Bathe with me in your river. We will wash away the dust of the wilderness.” And with that, Yeshu walks past John and past Simon Magus and past the astonished people, and straight into the water. He does not stop until it reaches his chin. A moment later, John laughs, throws up his arms, and plunges in.
I have never seen a more surprised people than those who have come to hear John. I do not think a single one of them has ever heard a prophet laugh, nor wishes to. But oh, he laughs now! He and his cousin Yeshu’a laugh in the water as if they were yet boys, and I stand on the bank of the river and I am as one with Salome. Her envy is every bit as green as mine.
John is louder than ever in his enthusiasm. Up to his chin in the water of the river, his gray beard floating before him as a child’s feeding cloth would float, his loincloth coming loose under the water, he holds on to his small bit of goatskin, and he shouts, “Where have you been, Yeshu’a, son of my mother’s sister? What have you done with yourself, Yehoshua of the Nazorean? You come as one who has had his fill of strange foods, as one whose eyes have been opened with strange sights. What have you eaten? What have you seen?”
Yeshu is splashing near John and the dust of his wandering comes free from his person, coats the skin of the water. I see him swallow river water, but it only makes him laugh. Yeshu is full of laughter; there seems nothing else in him but laughter, laughter loud as John’s laugh, as loud as thunder. “You would hear, John? You would know? I shall tell you! I saw the Spirit descend like the whitest of doves with wings as white as linen, wings as white as clouds! I felt it land full on my head! On my head, John! And in that moment I ate of the Spirit as I would eat fistfuls of honey. I feasted on meaning. You would behold? You would see the Lamb of God?” Yeshu spins in the water, and shining drops of the Jordan shoot from his red hair and from his red beard as stars shoot in the sky. “We are all the Lamb of God!”
Shouting as John shouts, and all the while spitting out water, Yeshu in his great joyous laughter looks toward the shore where the people stand aghast and agape, each one listening to the ravings of this second wild man. But this one they think spouts nonsense. Yeshu knows they think this, and it makes him laugh all the louder. “Hear me, Lambs of God! There is not one of you to whom God would not say you are my beloved sons and my beloved daughters and I am well pleased with you!”
Simon Magus gapes with the rest. Does he hear nonsense? I do not know. All I know is that I do not hear Yeshu spout nonsense. I have heard such words before. I hear it when the Voice speaks, when Glory rang in my head like a great bell. I look at Yeshu in his splashing and his shouting and his stars of bright water and his delightful foolishness, and if I could stretch my skin to smile wider, I would.
Yeshu waves his arms, he kicks his legs; sheets of bright water spray those who stand too near. As John pointed at him, he points at me. “And there stands a true Lamb of God. There is my friend whom all call John the Less! Come, friend! Be baptized by the Baptizer. As you seem already half drowned, come! Drown yourself further!”
All stare now at John the Less, at Eio washed clean of dung—at me. My smile turns down into horror. Bathe with them? Jump into the river with them? My eye catches the eye of John. He knows my horror. I catch the eye of Salome. She and Helena know my horror more than John. If I should become wet as John, as Yeshu, all should see what I am. If John’s loincloth threatens to drift away from his maleness, my tunic would cling to me, would show the female body it forever hides. Mariamne would be exposed. Yeshu is splashing water over his head. His hair and his beard run with the Jordan. His laughing mouth is full of the Jordan. Still he calls, “What keeps you, John? Jump in!”
At that, I simply spin on my naked heel and run. Not as I ran weeks before, but it is fast enough and close to blind enough. I run for the safety of Tata’s tent. And then I remember Eio. By the moon, I cannot leave Eio behind! So I turn back, grab her by her halter lead, and once again run away. Eio is more than good to me; for once she trots along as fast as I need her to.
The laughter as we leave is as the buzzing of bees.
It makes me run all th
e faster.
Tata fusses from place to place, and I watch Addai as he watches her. How should it feel to have a man gaze on me as Addai gazes on Tata? I have told them what has happened at the river, that Yeshu has come back a changed man. Tata says she will wait and see this for herself. Rhoda, who knows who I am and knows my true name, offers me food as if I were male. I take it as if I were male. By now, this has simply become what is. I sit with Addai until the sun goes down, until Tata is forced to shoo me away, and then I am off to my own tent, moving carefully so that I might not be seen. I would not be seen by anyone, anyone at all.
I lie in my bed and I am quiet, but I am not asleep. Outside the night sings and things of the dark I know to be far away seem close. Through the skins of my tent and of hers, I hear Salome’s breathing and know that she dreams and that she is restless in her dreaming. I do not know what troubles her, but I know what troubles me. I am uneasy because of Yeshu. I am uneasy because I do not yet understand what it is I feel, or if I will come to understand it. I have not loved Salome’s love for John of the River, nor have I been best pleased to see her change for him. Is this then what will happen to me? Is this the nature of women? If such a thing can come over Salome, it can come over me who am not half so willful or half as clever.
Out of the hearing of Addai, I earlier had asked Tata if what I feel is what any woman feels? In this thing, I asked her, am I more Mariamne than John the Less?
Asking, I could already hear her answer. She would say that men and women cannot help themselves; there is nothing they do that is not, at bottom, sexual. Tata will remind me that any zonah with a cup of sense knows this.