Secret Magdalene (42 page)

Dositheus sighs to hear this, saying, “By this, I have given man his innocence. I have given him the Good as his home.”

“It seems to me,” replies Seth, “as it did to Parmenides of Elea, that the very thoughts of man and of woman
are
the world, and if there is evil in it, it is
our
evil, and if there is goodness, it is
our
goodness. I maintain there is no battle between Good and Evil that is outside the self. There is only a mastery of the
eidolon,
or smaller self, that leads to Knowing. I believe gnosis is the door to the Kingdom of God, which is the immeasurable Age, or Aeon, of Truth. And it is neither good nor evil, but all things, and felt as love.”

I see Yeshu lift an eye at this. I see him regard my teacher Seth, and I allow myself the slightest step beyond his skull. As I admire Seth, Yeshu admires Seth, and how this pleases me! But Dositheus, who has heard all this before, leaps before Seth can draw breath for more of the same. “Just so. Just so. Any day now, sir, I shall finish my book, which I think to call,
On the Origin of the World.
I pray you will read it.”

“Dositheus! I should read anything you have written, for yours is a worthy and admirable mind. But, on this, wrong.”

And so it goes. And so it goes. This is not a new conversation. Seth and Dositheus once talked like this endlessly. But lately, Seth’s heart is not so engaged in such things, nor is his mind. Lately, he has taken to listening to Yeshu, and talking to him, and though Yeshu does not know the half of what Dositheus knows, and not a fifth of what Seth knows, he knows what neither of them know: Yeshu knows Glory. Yeshu has opened the door to the Kingdom. By this alone, Yeshu might be the Perfected Man. And by this, Seth, who follows no one, and would follow no one, follows him.

Since John died, the simple sadness of Dositheus is become dread. This saddens me.

Seth touches Yeshu’s shoulder. “Yeshu, what say you? Do you agree with Dositheus the world is a creation of the male Demiurge, who is the chief Archon of Evil, and who does not know his mother, Sophia? Or would you say it was the reflection of Source, which has no gender, and is neither Good nor Evil but endlessly creative?”

Here it is. Dositheus believes the world a thing of a flawed god’s evil making, into which we are fallen. Seth believes the world entirely what man would make of it, and a place of magical intent. If Yeshu does not agree with Dositheus, will he have lost him? Beside me, Addai stirs. He knows where this goes. He too fears the loss of his old friend from his days in Sepphoris and his travels with Jael, a friend older by far than any other. Waiting for Yeshu’s answer, I think, but what if Yeshu does not agree with Seth?

Yeshu does not move. I know he values Dositheus and listens attentively to his ideas of Dark forces and forces of Light, and helpless fallen humanity caught as the playthings of malevolent darkness. For all his cleverness with the Pharisee and with the Poor, Yeshu is no politician, he must answer truthfully.

This is his answer, one that those who clamor for health or for safety never hear. “I would say that all things must be weighed against the heart. I would say that if I look into my own heart, I see that the Mother and the Father’s world is a reflection of man who is a reflection of the Parents and is therefore beautiful even to its most inward parts. To see with the eyes of Glory is to be enchanted. Each thing, animate or inanimate, glows with the force of its own unique perfection, unfolding with the genius inherent in all that is. I would say that it is only man’s not knowing his source that is evil, for by his fearful ignorance he does evil.”

Dositheus, who has been holding his breath, lets it out slowly. He is relieved; there is room here for maneuvering. But I see also this: Dositheus thinks himself into a place of true sorrow and despair. Step by step, and thought by mournful thought, he takes himself into a tortuous ravine of the mind where all is hopeless and all are helpless and all are beset by ravenous evil. And I think he would not think any of these things if, even for only one brief instant, he could know Yeshu’s Kingdom of God. For then Glory would fill him with love for this world, and for all that it contained.

T
wo men have found us. Both are clearly Pharisee, though the Pharisee are not many in Galilee, nor are they strong. Almost swifter than thought, Jude is risen from his place on the shore of the sea, his curved blade in his hand, though it is a knife unseen if one is not looking. No mystery why, for though one man bears the marks of a once terrible disease of the skin, the other has certainly come for mischief. But Yeshu rises to make welcome these Pharisee, saying, “What would you have of me?”

I hear the sighs of Simeon and of Jude, even of Addai. I sigh as well. Yeshu is forever doing such things, which means we forever find ourselves in many a strange and dangerous place.

So it is that an hour later we are in the house of Simon the Leper, a man in the salt fish trade in the town of Taricheae. And so it is that Yeshu and Jude, Addai and Seth and I sit in the Jewish fashion on Simon’s stone terrace as servants hold umbrellas over our heads so that we might not feel the slight rain.

There is, as usual, danger here. And Yeshu, as usual, knows this, but he plays with his fate as he plays with such as Jacob the Just. But no moment has passed that Jude takes his hand from his robe. Nor does Addai, and by this I am suffused with pity, for I know that he could not well wield the knife he carries. As for Seth, his eyes miss nothing, and if there is not a knife hidden somewhere about his person, I should be most surprised.

Simon the Leper of Taricheae, and his friend, the ill-willed Phabi of Nain, have fed us and have talked with Yeshu and, over the course of this long afternoon, have not yet found a single thing to condemn him for. We all of us know this is why Yeshu has been invited into the house of these Pharisee, just as he is often invited into the houses of certain Poor. Though no sect means him more harm than another sect, all would protect themselves. They would find him out, and who could blame them? With the death of John, Herod Antipas has become most irritable on the subject of the Anointed One, the Mashiah. Poor Herod must surely have thought that by his killing of this particular “king,” the subject of kings would fade as dye fades, but it has not. It grows darker by the day. If I were the son of the great Herod, or his wife, Herodias, I would be secretly shaking my fist at Yahweh.

But now we sit quietly and sip the wine we have been given, which is as vinegar to the wine Father would serve. And as we do, Phabi of Nain turns to Yeshu and asks if Yehoshua the Nazorean is as John was, why does he eat meat? And Simon the Leper asks if Yeshu is as John was, why does he drink strong drink? And Yeshu tells them he is not as John was; he is as he
is,
but, as usual, they listen only to half of what they hear, and hear only half of that.

Certainly Phabi hears nothing until there comes a commotion at the far end of Simon the Leper’s street. Jude is, as ever, first on his feet, and I am not far behind him, so that now we are both leaning over the low railing of worked stone on Simon’s terrace looking down on the street below. Around the side of a house as large as Simon’s house come two huge slaves, each bearing a silver tray, and on each tray, the petals of roses. In all our travels I have yet to see anything like this. Who comes?

Behind the slaves scattering rose petals, stride two more enormous slaves who call out from side to side and up to the second story and to the third, “It is she who comes among you! All those who would know their fortunes! Come out! Come out!”

I am now as alert as Jude. What fortune-teller is as rich as this one must be? To own such slaves? To squander roses in this way? And what sort of fortune-teller is announced at the top of a slave’s voice?

I am not the only one so interested and so curious. Out from their doors come the wives of Taricheae, and out come the husbands. And out come the very young and the very old. For a teller of fortunes, rich or poor, is always a thing of great excitement. Who would not hear of themselves? Beguiled by the litter of “She Who Comes Among Us,” there seem as many on the wet street below Simon’s terrace as would be on a feast day.

And suddenly, I am as alert as Salome at mention of Pythagoras, for it seems that I might finally see the sorceress of the Pool of Siloam. It
must
be she, because Addai, also hanging over the wall of the terrace so that he might see, fair shouts, “Megas of Ephesus! How Tata shall rue that she misses this!” And I think, even Salome as she is now will rue that she misses this, for there was not a day of our childhood we did not wonder at this Megas, once mentioned by Ananias at Father’s table. Is she not a woman who did not then, and does not now, live through a man?

By now, not only Jude, but myself, Seth, Simon and his fellow Pharisee, even Yeshu, have leaned forward so that each might see down into the street a story below us.

Comes a harsh intake of breath from my left, and I hear Phabi hiss to Simon, “By the hat of Zeus, brother! It
is
Megas! I would know her slaves and her litter anywhere. How dare the harlot to show her person here this day!”

Below us, the entire procession comes to a halt under the terrace of the house of Simon, and it does this because the way becomes too difficult. All of Taricheae seems here. No one yet sees the sorceress. For all we know, behind her curtain, she softens her skin with bean meal, or scratches her belly, or is in deep communion with the gods, or her pick of the goddesses.

Her slaves shout out as those who called the wares of Ananias in Alexandria. “You or you! Yes,
you
with the limp. Would you hear what my mistress might say? Or you? You look like you could use a shekel or two. Seek your fortune through the lady! And you there! A sorry specimen like you needs all the help he can get. Or you, you are surely a farmer! What else would a farmer know, but which of these maidens to plow?” Oh! Much blushing and barking. Oh! How the Pharisee whose house we grace bristle with horror. Speaking of such things, openly, before Adonai and everyone! Meanwhile, the litter is set down in the middle of the street, its bearers standing near to keep the curious from harming litter or occupant. And still the shouter shouts, “Come forth! Come forth! For the price of a trinket, whisper your question in the ear of Megas, and hear the answer she gives you!”

At this, so many come forth, the slaves must line them up, first come, first serviced. As for me—the very one once thought a prophet—it takes all of my strength not to run through Simon’s house and down into the street so that I too might find my place in line. Think if Megas can truly tell the future! Think of all that I would ask her. Having long since silenced my own voices, I would ask her of Yeshu. I would ask her of Salome. I would ask her of Addai and of Seth and of Tata. I would ask her even of me. What is to become of us all? For surely we cannot be forever walking the roads of Galilee? We should become as Inanna, who was as Isis is, the Queen of Heaven, and who once lived in the Tree of the World with a dragon at her feet and a bird in the branches above her; until the man Gilgamesh cut it down. Inanna was doomed then to wander, saying, “The bird has its nesting place, but I, my young are dispersed. The fish lies in calm waters, but I, my resting place exists not. The dog kneels at the threshold, but I, I have no threshold.”

The first of those who would whisper their secret desires and their secret questions into the ear of the sorceress kneel next to her litter on that side which faces the street. But on the side that faces the door of Simon, the cloth is moved slowly away, so that I see clearly and more clearly the face of the harlot. This is more than enough to hold my eye, but I am riveted by what she does next. As I look down, she looks up. She seems looking for something. But it is not Simon the Leper she seeks, nor any friend of Simon’s. Her searching gaze has come to rest on Jude and on Yeshu. Immediately her face goes soft with grief and with yearning. On the instant, it seems she forgets herself, forgets she would tell fortunes in the streets of such as Taricheae. Megas the Sorceress, known from Antioch to Gaza, steps down from her litter as Megas, the splendid whore—for she
is
splendid: tall and slender, proud of bone and of breast and of bearing—looks neither to the right nor to the left, does not cover her head or her face, but slips past the worried slave who would protect her and into the street door of Simon the Leper. And before I can think more of this, she stands on his terrace.

Yeshu is like Salome, who once showed surprise at nothing, no matter that she might feel it. He does not speak, nor does he move, not even when the woman Megas throws herself on her knees before him without pause or error of choice. Nor does he speak, nor does he move, when she takes hold of his feet and kisses them. Or when she looks full in his face, and he sees the tears that flow from her rueful eyes. Her tears flow through the crushed pearl and black antimony of her face paint; they wash over her cheeks and her chin as the rain once washed over the stones before the House of Thecla, no less a whore than this one for the taking of five husbands.