But Tata surprised me. Turning from her work, which was mixing up a hideous potage of medicines and aromatics, she stopped stirring and stared at me. “Are you more Mariamne than John, you ask me this?” The smell of whatever she stirred was strong enough to water my eyes, her glare strong enough to water my knees, yet I nodded, yes, I ask it.
This was her answer: “Just as Salome is not more Salome than Simon, you are not more Mariamne than John. You are both as singular as the moon. As John of the River said, you are as men, for there are not many women who can rise above their sex.”
“I have a man’s mind, Tata,” I said half in hope and half in despair, “but is my body weak and foolish and vain and driven by the lusts of the flesh?”
Tata put down her spoon. She flicked a speck of muck from her hand. Her eyes slid to the left, then to the right. “There is no man to hear me, so I can say to you, Mariamne, in whose throat lives the Loud Voice, rare as riches in my mother’s house, rare as pity in the house of my father, do you not know who you are? Have you not understood? You are free of your sex. Though you might feel the sexual desire of the female, yet you are free. This is a great thing! This is a miraculous thing! Rejoice in this, Mariamne. Treasure your freedom.” Tata took up her spoon once more, once more began stirring. “Not by my will was this done, but by yours. In Salome, it has been an effort of will that astounds me. In you, it seems a suppleness of mind. This too astounds me. Now go away before I make a mess of this. As you would be a philosopher, on the life of the rarest Addai, I would be a contriver of medicines.”
I lie here now and think of what Tata has said. I ask myself, is Yeshu as most men? Does he think as most men think? He too is as singular as the moon. But in this one thing on which all other things rest, is he as multiple as the ant? I recall the treatment of his mother, the pallid Mary. By this I would answer yes. I recall his treatment of his sisters. By this, I would answer no. If I should ever show him the truth of who I am…But he knows Torah. In Deuteronomy it says, “A woman shall not wear any garment that pertains to a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for whosoever does these things is an abomination in the sight of the Lord your God.” I am an abomination in the sight of his God. I would not be an abomination in his eyes.
There is movement outside my tent. I cease in my unspoken chatter, and listen. It comes again. Yea Balaam! Is it a wolf? I reach for my knife. I sit up, fling aside the flap of my tent, and there, looming out of the black of the night, is Yeshu. I am too dumbstruck to think of a single word. Not so Yeshu. He would laugh right out, but I see him check his laughter for fear of waking other than me.
He glances over at Salome’s tent. “He is asleep,” he says. “Put down your knife and come away before we wake him. I have need to talk with you.”
On the instant, I drop my tent flap. I struggle out of my sleeping clothes and into the usual robe of John the Less. I find John’s toga and his head cloth, and when I am thoroughly clothed in all these things, I come away.
The moon seems to me a coin. It sits like a coin in a purse of stars, and on it is stamped the face of a man. King or emperor or god or even messiah, I cannot tell. But the face has eyes, and the eyes look down on Yeshu and on me, who have arrived by their curious light at my secret place. I see Yeshu has already busied himself in the sand and the rock of my nahal. He has made a small fire. He has made a place to rest himself during the night.
I sit with my knees tucked against my chest and my chin on my knees. My hands are clasped round my ankles. I am alight with expectation. What does he think to share with me?
Yeshu reclines in the sand across the fire from me. His left leg is stretched out before him, his right leg drawn up. With a casualness I have seen before, he scratches. By Horus, we are certainly males here. We are equals in gender. I find I would not change this. Not for all the lusts of the male, or the female. But as I look at him, lit from below by fire and from above by the face on the coin of the moon, I see a whole man lit with more than these feeble things. I see Glory come from the inside.
Yeshu stops his scratching, sits up. “John, I must speak with someone. And I know that someone is you.”
I say nothing. I am not here to say anything. I am here to listen.
“I have been tormented with anger and with bitter tears, made frantic with calamity and desperate with injustice. Everywhere I looked, everything I saw, seemed full of rage and of fear. And I was moved to pity by all I saw, and to terror, and my terrible pity moved me to rail against what I thought was unjust and to raise a hand against those who oppressed what I deemed the piteous. In truth, the world has seemed a bitter place; its taste has been the taste of gall. I have also pitied me grievously, John, wept tears and ground my teeth for the helpless, hopeless, thing that I am. I rent my clothes and tore at my hair at the death of my father. As for my mother, my grief for that most worthy of women broke my heart.”
Caught up as I am, still I think, Mary, how is she lost?
“It was this man to whom dreams came, dreams of such confusion I would shout myself awake, strike out at shadows, soak my bed with sweat. I tell you this so that you might know the man who walked out into the desert. I was as Moses in my walking, but I was as a fool in my understanding. And there on the high place, I stood as this fool, and I raged as a fool rages, and I shook my fist at the God of my people.” Yeshu shudders as he sits, then leans closer in his need to be heard. “If I am to speak more, new friend, I am to speak blasphemy. Do I trust you to hear me?”
I do hear him. His blasphemy will not trouble me. But I see that it will trouble him, down to the nerve and down to the bone.
“Is there any wonder that the man I was, craven with fear and inflated with pride, would make a god like Yahweh? This is the way of men, afraid before life, tormented by pain they cannot escape, and desires they cannot appease. Would the god of these not also be a god of rage and fear and jealousy and desires he cannot appease?” Yeshu opens his palms to me. I do not look away. “What can I say that you do not know beforehand? Knowing it shall never leave me as it has never left you. What is there to tell you of it?”
I writhe inside. He thinks so much more of me than I think of myself.
“I walked deep into the desert until I could walk no more. When I could no longer walk, I crawled. And when I could no longer crawl, I lay on my back under the sun and stared deep into its terrible eye until I was gone blind. Until I was tormented by hunger, and worse, by thirst. Until I was sure I would go entirely mad and cry out as David cried out: ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax; it is melted within me.’”
I am staring at his face now, captivated by its changing shape.
“These things I did. These things happened to me. Or perhaps I happened to them. There came a time I could not have told the difference, and I have not relearned it. And there I lay under the burning sun and the freezing night as a woman might lie to give birth. I was as a woman in the agony of my labor. In that time and in that place, I knew what it was to be woman and I pitied her for it, and I loved her for it, and I labored mightily as a woman labors.”
I thrill to these words. But I do not move.
“But I did not die. Nor more than you died. Or is it that I have died to myself and have been reborn? It does not matter. Death does not matter. It is nothing. It is illusion. I know. I know because a moment came like no other, a moment that was of no time and no place. But it did not come as Ezekial by the river. No four-faced monsters or Great Wheel of the stars, or great swords. A voice did not shout out revilements. To me, when I had been laid on the ground, when I had been drowned and buffeted and burnt, only then it came, as a perfect white dove.”
Yeshu reaches out once. He touches the back of my hand with the tip of his forefinger. Once, no more than once, and for only the briefest of moments. If I had not had my eyes o
pen, I should not have known the truth of it.
“I say to you, John, it came as the deep soft sweetness that comes over a man when he looks into the eyes of his beloved. In that moment, the jealous and vengeful Yahweh left me. And in that same endless boundless moment, the Father entered.”
Now it is I who lean forward. Now it is I who listen to a man tell of Glory. I am certain he will tell it so much better than I. Joor would say that Yeshu was like Pharaoh, the divine cobra springs from his brow. If Seth or Philo could only hear, they would say Yeshu has gnosis.
“I became unbusied with myself, unbusied with that which has so concerned me. I came to rest in he who is at rest. There, on a high place, I know that the covenants made by men are worthless. I know there is nothing demanded of us. I have looked into the eternal eye of All That Is and know there is nothing to be done but to walk in the Father’s Sight. From that moment to this, I have not ceased looking into his Eye.”
This last surprises me—more, it touches the fear that lives within me. It frightens me for I do know whereof he speaks, all save the very last. When my life came back to me, I came back to myself. I was my mortal self, my eidolon again, somehow more, yet still Mariamne, daughter of the Jew Josephus. I put away the Large and became small once more. Who has Yeshu come back to? Or has Yeshu come back at all? Does he remain in his Daemon; see as his Daemon sees?
But eidolon or Daemon, agony now replaces his joy.
“He set his Eye on me, John; he wrote truths in my heart. He ended my wandering so I might stand unshaken in the glow of perfect light, forever, where no darkness is, forever, where peace is, forever. He showed me that I am this as much as he is this. That I am God as he is God. He showed me that I AM. He told me my name and my name is Man and my name is Woman and I am All That Is. And so are we each of us, every man, woman, child, every Jew and Gentile. I have learned that I and my Father are One. There is no man and no woman who are not this, and who cannot know this.”
I do not move and I make no sound, but I cry with the unutterable truth of it, the bliss of it. There is no one who is alone and no one who is not beloved! And yet there is no one here save Salome and Seth who can understand this, and even they do not yet know. When I tried to speak of it, they heard nothing, though they listened with the whole of their hearing. Though Socrates and Pythagoras and Philo and Buddha speak in the clearest of ways, who hears them?
Yeshu smiles at me, and his smile is sad. “And yet my people are afraid. As I was. And what they fear most is the god they have made. As I did. The prophets of my people fear the god of their hearts, and shout their fear into the ears of all who can be made to listen. As John of the River does. Fear and anger is our god.”
Yeshu grips my wrist. I do not move.
“I would have them know that not fear, but love, is god. I would have them see that all their hate and their fear is ignorance. If all should know, the world would be as the Kingdom of God! It is the Kingdom of God if they would but look! There are none God loves more than he loves the all! There are no people chosen, for all are chosen! I would have them see they are not different than God, or separate from God, or need to placate God, or please him or fear him, that they are God, and of God, and in God. I would show them the Kingdom of God does not come; it is.”
Yeshu looks at me, and his face is as ashes. My wrist burns under his hand.
“How do I tell other men this? What I can tell you so easily, knowing that you hear me, how shall I tell those who cannot hear me?”
Who is this man? No one has taught him these things. He knows nothing of the Egyptians, nothing of Pythagoras, nothing of Socrates who taught that there is no evil save ignorance. He knows nothing of Philo, perhaps not even of Seth. His life has been nothing but loss and the Law, nothing but toil and knives. Yet he has seen these things for himself; he names them himself. He amazes me. For Father and Father’s friends, what is Law but the hope that Yahweh be pleased by a man’s action and reward him with a good life? Or at least not punish him with a bad one. But if what Yeshu has seen is true, of what use the Law?
It is as if Yeshu has heard me. “What need we of Law when we are full of grace, and being full of grace would do no harm?” He lets loose of my wrist. And still I do not move. “As the Father sends me forth, how do I teach this?”
It is only now that I speak. “To find the Father and Maker of all is hard, and having found him, it is impossible to utter him. This was said by the god of Seth, who was Socrates.” Yeshu laughs. It is good to hear him laugh. “Seth teaches that all men and all women are angels of light clothed in the cloth of self but do not know it. Not knowing is the dark in the center of the soul. Seth says it is the heart of gnosis to know it, that merely to know this one simple truth is to be set free. Ignorance is all there is of Evil.”
Yeshu’s eyes glow with pleasure at this. “Seth is a great teacher. I would be such a teacher.”
I think of Diogenes, who owned nothing and lived in a great jar at the gate of a temple, and who wrote that teaching such mysteries “is a hard road to follow, filled with darkness and gloom, but if an initiate leads you on the way, it becomes brighter than the radiance of the sun.” Who would be the initiate to lead Yeshu who has walked with God? Could he think it would be me?
Yeshu sees all this in my face. He must, for he says, “You once asked if I were the One. Do you know your asking caused me to walk out into the desert, to live or to die? Am I the One? I would answer now: we are all the One. How do I keep what I have seen and what I am to myself? How would I not help those who stumble and those who cry out? How could I not hope to raise their sight so they too might walk in the sight of the Father? Therefore, tell me John, how shall I do what I must now do? Who shall walk with me?”
I cannot avoid looking into his eyes. And there I find my answer. Yes. He thinks it will be me. In a heartbeat, there comes a trembling in all my limbs. There comes a heat, which rises up from the base of my spine and spreads out into my blood as floodwaters fill the lotus delta of Egypt. I hold on to my senses as I would hold Eio on her rope, for fear they might plunge away from me, run where I would not go. More than a memory comes, more than a reliving. I could once again know Glory—or would if I would allow it. But I do not allow it. I am not Yeshu. I cannot hold God in my hand as he does; I cannot be God in my mind, and still breathe and stand and continue in my being. But I can remember Glory and know that Yeshu now lives in the Kingdom of God, which is Daemon, with the Father who is the Mother who is All That Is. This man appears as a shepherd among lambs, and this man stands forth as a lion, and I know him by his word. Yeshu is the One who comes.
My own voice rings forth as the Loud Voice: “I will walk with you, Yehoshua the Nazorean.”
Hearing this, sorrow comes down over Yeshu’s face as the shadow of a blade might come down over a neck. “This thing we will do will break our hearts.”
“I know,” I say.
I am not a fool. I do know.
THE TENTH SCROLL
Separate Paths
The days pass, one on the other, and still Yeshu hides himself away in my nahal. I hear much complaint of this as I go about the settlement, contentedly doing one thing and another and knowing what I know. It is not John of the River who complains. John walks and talks with Simon Magus and with Helena of Tyre and with the sons and the grandsons of Judas of Galilee. He preaches at the southernmost point of his beloved Jordan, waiting out Yeshu as patiently as my poppy field awaits the changing of the seasons. Nor does Simeon complain. Simeon keeps to his wife, for it seems he loves the sour Bernice more than a man is wise to love a wife. Jude also does not complain for he has settled himself at the foot of the path up to the nahal, and seems likely to stay there until Yeshu once more appears, or until he, Jude, starves to death. Not that he will. Miryam and Maacah daily bring Yeshu and Jude their meals. Jude allows his sisters to pass and he allows me to pass, but we are all he allows to pass.
If I am not about Yeshu’s business, I sit with Add
ai as he suns himself near the potteries, while Tata fashions bilbil after bilbil, curious little jugs to fill with rosh. Dositheus sits often with us, elaborating by the hour on all he has seen and heard in Egypt. He tells Tata that there are scribes and such who take rosh so that they might ride Ezekial’s chariot and see what Ezekial saw; he says the Greeks call it opion and the ancients of Sumer called it hul gil, which means “joy plant.” At this, Addai would have raised his hands if he could. If he could, he would have laughed. But he can only whisper, “I would that my daughter had known joy, and if not joy, then rosh.”
These few are those who know peace as they wait for Yeshu.
But the many, led by Old Camel Knees, Jacob the bald brother of Yeshu, stomp about the settlement with iron in their eyes and bile on their lips. It is the month of Tishrei. The fast of Yom Kippur, the Sabbath of Sabbaths, is only days away. Up in Jerusalem, the high priest of the Temple will soon plead with YHVH to reconcile himself with his Holy Nation. These grumblers are saying it has been the month of Tishrei for many days now and where is Yeshu? As leader, when shall he command them to make John king?
I do all I can to avoid them.
It is not always possible.
On this day, Jacob and Simon Peter and Andrew and a handful of others, among them Essene from En-geddi, stand in the courtyard of the small sundial that I must cross if I am to feed Eio. They all shave their heads, and swear to continue to do so until the rightful king is on his throne. The blue of their skulls shines under the sun like a row of Tata’s glazed pots.
As I pass, keeping myself small, Menahem, the son of Simon, stands with these men, trying to appear as they do: righteous and fearsome. He succeeds in appearing an anxious, overgrown, bearded child. As kin to Seth who keeps his chin clean, John the Less also keeps his chin clean. As does Simon Magus. Or so, thank the stars, it is assumed by all these bearded men. For the fifth or so time, I hear Simon Peter saying as if it were the first time, “If John would cause the people to rise, Succoth is surely the time to appear before them. Why does Yeshu keep us waiting?”