Secret Magdalene (37 page)

S
urprisingly, I have come to care for Eleazar. For all that he prattles, and for all that he primps, he is a sweet soul, and harmless. But Eleazar is also ill, and I can do nothing. If only Tata were here, but she is gone with Addai to the wilderness. Or if Salome knew of other than poisons, odd mixtures of odd plants and odd animals that cause odd reactions for odd reasons, all the secret concoctions of Sabaz.

With no one looking, twice I did as Yeshu does: I lay hands on Eleazar. But to heal in this way, the person one heals must believe one
can
heal. Not only did I not believe, neither did Eleazar, though he was happy to have me try. We ended up laughing, or I did. Eleazar ended his laughter with a fit of coughing and a visit to the chamber of relief.

He worries me. In his sputum, there are bright red spots of blood. If I worry, Eleazar worries twice as much, staring in horror at his own blood. He staggers back to bed, throws himself on his pillows as if at any moment he might die. But whether he is dying or no, Salome says blood cannot be a good thing to find in one’s mouth; it indicates ill humor in the lungs. I press my ear against the bony chest of my cousin-brother, and listen. It sounds as wind caught in a cave.

Meanwhile, I cannot keep Martha out of her brother’s sick room. When first she came, I thought it a sister’s tender regard. Now I know she comes from a strict sense of duty. I once believed the son of Pinhas ben Yohai broken to the Law, but Eleazar is too impetuous and excitable to be cowed by commandments. It is Martha who lives by the Law. Martha is twice the Law. My sister-cousin has rules even the rabbis or the Poor have yet to think to impose on their fellow man. Yeshu’s brother, Jacob, old Camel Knees himself, would have trouble meeting this one’s standards of correct behavior before a judgmental god. Martha begins to fascinate me. She teaches me that though I might fret at what it means to be female, there are those who take a terrible pride in it. She is still a virgin, not having had her first menses, yet she is a woman. And if God has decreed, as men claim, that a woman must cook and a woman must weave and a woman must bear all the burdens of a house, and none of its pleasures, then Martha will cook and she will weave and she will bear such burdens without pleasure as would make Eio bite. There is nothing of “woman’s work” in which Martha does not excel. There is nothing expected of a woman that Martha does not do and then uphold as if a kingdom depended on it. Where then is the man who would wed her? I have seen no sign of him. Could it be that though men might demand a woman be more precious than rubies, they do not enjoy living with such a woman?

Seth has no answer for this. What does he know of women when the women he knows are girls who have lived half their lives as boys, a companion who was once a slave as well as a
zonah,
and a mother who is yet a queen, and who builds palaces for kings?

Where some months back I would sit on one side of the woman Sarah, while her daughter Perpetua sat on the other, now I sit by the head of Eleazar while Martha takes her place by his feet. He is slowed by his illness but not silenced. He babbles of a horse he hopes Father will buy him. He gabbles of how he shall make sure his slaves take care of this horse. Peeling an orange for Eleazar, whose fondness for oranges is as excessive as his sister’s sense of duty, I idly reach out to Martha, idly enter her, and for a moment, there is…nothing. It is as if she were empty of sensation, of thought, even of self. How odd. I reach further and further, and then suddenly I pull back as if I were scorpion stung. What terrible black chaos is this? I cannot describe the hatred. How she loathes me. How she loathes Salome. Never in all my life, not with Caiaphas and not with Izates and not with Simon Peter himself, have I known such abhorrence of my person. I catch her eye, and there is nothing there. It is as empty of feeling, other than pious rectitude, as ever. Does she know how she hates me? It seems she allows herself only to know that she disdains me. But what have I done to cause such hatred? What has Salome done? And then, as clearly as dawn in the wilderness, I know. We left Father’s house and his protection. We have not taken husbands, nor have we taken helpless refuge with brothers or uncles. What men would make of us seems not what we are. In short, we have not followed the Law. For this, my cousin cannot forgive us.

If I were Martha, the daughter of Pinhas ben Yohai, and she were me, perhaps I too could not forgive such things. Poor Martha. But if she detests me now, how much more if she knew my pity?

I
write long letters to Philo Judaeus and to Addai and to Tata, knowing there is always someone who will deliver what it is I write, eventually. I wait for Salome’s strength to return. I read to her from the new work of Philo, which was inscribed to us. In the afternoons, now that Nicodemus has gone back to his own home in Bethphage some four stadia from here, I spend an hour with Father as a loving daughter would with a loving father, albeit a learned daughter who therefore speaks to him of things that cause him wonder. I do not tell him of my time in the wilderness, or in Samaria, or in Galilee, or in Gaulanitis, but I do tell him of Egypt. He tells me how his glass factory fares, exceedingly well; how his ships sail, only three mishaps in eight years; how goes his position among his peers, he is risen not only in age but also in stature, being appointed to a small group who petition Tiberius personally. It startles me. My father’s name is known to the emperor Tiberius.

Though times continue unsettled, and as Nicodemus has said, grow more unsettled so that here and there it amounts to hysteria, Josephus remains a fortunate man. He tells me of his life in Bethany. That Naomi continues empty-headed and empty of womb, that Rachel continues a widow and not a wife, and in neither does he find good company. He misses my mother, Hokhmah, as he would miss a limb. He longs to return to Jerusalem where he came as a young man from the town of Arimathaea to seek his fortune, but brigands become more menacing rather than less, and this in spite of Rome’s increasing presence. He tells me without telling me that he fills with pride at what I have become, but that he would give half of all he owns to have me his son. I tell him without telling him that I understand. I see also there has come a certain darkness in Father, a certain aimlessness. Where once he would fill his days with business and with the importance of his position, now that he has business and importance to spare, it seems there is more time to fill and less that satisfies.

In the evenings I talk with Seth as I have always done, of philosophy and of poetry and of my dreams of a school in Alexandria. And he listens as he has always done. It is as if that terrible moment above the village of Bethsaida had never been. I tell him I shall teach what I have learned from him, what it is he has made of the inner Nazorean, and from which will bloom thoughts as sweet as Tata’s roses. Is it too much to hope he might wish to teach as well?

Seth laughs, saying that Socrates would call my school a “Thinkery.” Socrates would call me a Great Sausage bloated with Bamboozle. Seth tells me that when Aristophanes wrote a play about Socrates so that all might mock him, Socrates sat in the theater and laughed. The Holy Socrates laughed and laughed.

I do not laugh, but I have found a smile.

In this way, Mariamne grows into her new skin. And it seems that as Job once survived his grievous afflictions, I will survive mine.

I
have spent the whole of the night in the room of Eleazar. Throughout this night, he has coughed. There is more blood in his sputum, more fever in his limbs. Now and again, Martha has entered the room, laid her hand on the brow of her brother, then left again. It is now the first hour of the morning. The servants and the slaves have been awake for hours, preparing Father’s house for the day ahead. The large black guard dogs are already locked in their kennels from their night of patrolling the grounds, for these days the rich and the privileged cannot be too careful. I close my eyes, almost slip away into sleep, but again comes Martha. Fully dressed, fully awake—does she come or does she go? She leans yet again over a fretful Eleazar, fevered and sleepless, and she speaks to him.

By what she says, I learn that Yehoshua the Nazorean has come to Father’s house.

I shake my sleepy head, rub my eyes. I do not understand. How can this be? Has Seth invited him? Does he look for me? I cannot think he looks for me.

My heart leaps from my makeshift bed before I do.

The new Mariamne, she who would be as Cleopatra, jumps after her heart, dresses hurriedly, and is now hiding behind a row of potted roses in Father’s south garden. Before me is the gate leading out to the road to Bethany proper, behind me the large airy room where Eleazar lies, and behind that the hot rooms and the cold rooms and the bathing pools. Beyond the gate, lies the road, and from the road comes the sound of many people, their voices drawing near Father’s south gate. My heart thrums as the strings of a lute thrum. My mind cannot grasp what it hears. My eyes cannot make sense of what they see.

It is true. Yehoshua comes—and he does not come alone.

As Jude and I once walked with Yeshu so that with Eio we were four, now Yeshu is followed as John the Baptizer was followed. A great crowd spreads out in his wake. I see not only Jude the Faithful, but Simon Peter and Andrew and Thecla. The Sons of Thunder and the sons of the Sons, all of these mingle with persons I have never before seen. My spirits rise at the sight of Dositheus who converses with Yeshu as they pass my place of hiding, and sink as I search for Addai and for Tata. Would Tata show her face here? By Law, Father could seize her on the instant. Among the women walks faint Mary, the mother of so many. And now there passes the men who lately followed Eleazar the Bandit, cunning Timaeus and bold Saul of Ephraim.

All this becomes more and more surprising, and all the more puzzling, and by the moment more terrifying.

There is a slight movement behind me, and I know without looking that Salome is come near. I know she too stands and stares. She places her hand on my arm, urges me away so we might not be caught out, perhaps not as spies, but worse, as afraid.

“Why is he come here?” I whisper as I turn away.

“Martha sought him. Martha heard he was near and went out from this house before first light to find him.”

“But why?”

“So that he might save her brother.”

“Save him?”

“From death. Martha fears Eleazar will die.”

Once again I wrong another, for I had thought Martha heartless in her Law.

I crouch in the shadows of Eleazar’s room so that I might not be seen, and I tremble. But my cousin has raised himself from his bed in febrile excitement at seeing the man second only to the dead Baptizer. Full lit in the morning sun, Eleazar stands wrapped in his own rumpled bedding, his tousled hair every which way on his large head. One could almost warm oneself in the heat given off by his body. Outside his door, Father’s entire household is in an uproar, while the cause of this uproar, Martha, poses in inscrutable silence near Eleazar, but I know her triumph. She has caused this new prophet to come to us. She has called him, and he is here.

Yeshu steps into the room. Behind him, there is of course Jude, and behind Jude—Addai! Addai is here. My heart melts with love at the sight of him in his humble robe, more humble than any one follower of Yeshu, more humble than Yeshu himself. As ever his face is as flat and as wide as the moon, and his feet are as bare as the feet of Diogenes. Sandalless in Father’s house, whatever shall Father do! But my heart would escape from my chest at the sight of Yeshu. His face, his red hair, his hands, his eyes, their light unbroken. I die with longing to know the friend of my heart once more.

Jude places himself in the doorway, meaning all others must remain in the south garden, which is barely big enough to contain them all. Over Jude’s shoulder, I see the look on Simon Peter’s face. He would push himself forward. But as he cannot, he makes do with pushing away those as curious and eager as he, calling out, “As he is dead, have pity for Lazarus!” Simon Peter, ever the rooster and always of Galilee, pronounces Eleazar as “Lazarus.”