Secret Magdalene (21 page)

When I open my eyes it is full dark. I still live and the sound of breathing is still behind me. Once more, I close my eyes.

I am awakened by a beetle. I have no fear of beetles, but neither can I remain still as one scurries past the corner of my mouth, hurries into my hair. I lift my chin on the instant, shaking my head back and forth, and lay it back down again. I have found patience in loss and despair. Yeshu is still here, just as he was. If he is asleep, he has slept sitting. His back is unbent, his head on his neck uplifted toward the rising sun. Where last night his face glowed in the light of its setting, now it glows in its rising. I look east into the return of the light. Where has the sun been all this while? Men have answered this question in so many ways, but where has it
truly
been? And what if it should never return? Is it foolish for men to see it as the face of God? Or to see God as Light? Oh, but by Isis! Is there no way to stop the voice in my head? Mariamne is nothing but questions. She will never be other than questions.

Though I have not eaten and I have not drunk, I feel no hunger, no thirst. Though I have run until I dropped, and though I have scraped the skin from my elbows and knees, abraded my cheek against the gritted crusts of salt, and then lay in this way for many hours now on the cold shore of a lifeless sea, I am empty of feeling. “Yeshu?” I say.

His answer is almost a whisper. “Yes, John?”

“John the Baptist will not be king.”

Yeshu says nothing but I know he is listening. I say, “He will die and those with him will be scattered.” Yeshu remains silent, but I am not discouraged. I am beyond discouragement. “John is not the One the Voice within me prophesies.”

“Who has told you this? Was this you or was it your Voice?” Yeshu’s voice is soft and sure, but in it is something I have not heard before.

“I have told me this. I do not need prophecy to see what there is to see.”

We are both silent again. I am no longer sure that I can lie here until I die. There are things that will not allow this. I have an itch on my inner thigh that becomes maddening. There is something that pokes into my stomach, a sharp stone or a stick. I reach under myself. The muscles of my back endure a strange sensation. I must move, or shout with irritation.

Now both Yeshu and I sit in the saline mudded sand, sand and mud and bitumen stuck to our feet and to our legs, and look at the coming sun. Vast flat cakes of ice-bright salt float on the surface of the briny sea, forming even as we watch. Across the salted waters, the tops of the mountains of Moab burn as they did on the day I first saw the settlement from Addai’s shoulder. Addai! Could I die and leave Addai? With the memory of Addai, feeling floods back into my heart. So much so a sound escapes me, and I look to Yeshu in hopes he has not heard me, and by so doing, catch such pain on his face that my own flees at the sight of it. His hands grip his knees. The morning is still cool, yet he is drenched in sweat. His skin is pale. His lips chapped and dry. It is as if he has been drained of blood. “Yeshu?”

“It is nothing, John. I have known it since my youth.”

“Known what? What do you know?”

“The pain inside my head. My eyes become full of broken light so that I cannot see as a man should see. When it comes, I can do nothing but wait until it leaves me. It always leaves me.”

I touch his wrist. The skin feels as cold as the scales of a fish. “How often does this come?”

Yeshu takes his time in answer, but he answers. “Often.”

I look at this man in surprise. He can live with this? I think of silent Helena who endures a pain that never leaves her, a pain that makes her shrink and creep and cleave close to Salome. I think of Addai and his broken arms, his broken hands, his jaw. I think of Seth who grieves that though his life is a search for gnosis, gnosis eludes him. I think of my own pain. Though not of the body as the day I fell into the city of the dead, it is surely pain. Do I endure as they? “You do not take
rosh
?”

Across the face of Yeshu there moves the ghost of a smile. “I have learned that once begun, there is no end to the taking of
rosh.
”

I think of Helena, even of Tata. Perhaps in this he is right.

Yeshu turns to me. Even the turning causes him agony. “You speak of John the Baptizer. You awaken from dreams of death and the first thing you speak of is John. Who else but you, new friend, could I tell that all this night I have thought of nothing but John? A man was killed hearing John. How shall things go that begin with death? Another man is killed by Rome for failing in his duty, because you and I went up to Jerusalem. Did you know? I know his very name, Acilius Marius. He gave no more offense to me or to you than to be at his post when we came for Addai.”

“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.

A
ll 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.

J
ohn 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.