The Galileans: A Novel of Mary Magdalene (4 page)

Joseph recognized the touch of a master, even though the fingers of the lyre maker were pudgy and short. Mary had learned her lessons well, he thought, for she, too, possessed the same loving touch upon the strings. “I am not a musician,” he confessed. “But the tones have a fullness and a resonance I never heard before.”

“Exactly. And do you know why?”

“No. I know nothing of music.”

“Plato warned against trying to separate the soul from the body,” Demetrius told him. “Music is food for the soul, and when the soul is healthy, so usually is the body.”

“I have noticed how grief and sadness can bring on sickness,” Joseph admitted. “Some believe that the same demons—”

“Demons! Bah!” Demetrius spat eloquently into the grass at his feet. “The demons that possess man are born within himself, children of his own desires. Me, I drink too much wine when I can get it, which isn’t often. And I eat too much when I can afford it, which is practically never. But I am happy, and so this blubber-fat body of mine runs as smoothly as a water clock. Can you say as much?”

Joseph smiled and shook his head. “Do you think I should put down the
izmel,
as we Jews call the scalpel, for the lyre and the trumpet?”

“You might do as much good,” Demetrius acknowledged. “But we were speaking of citharas.” He plucked the strings again and a profusion of melody filled the garden. “The answer to the rich tone of this instrument lies in the body,” he explained. “See how beautifully arched the sounding boards are, and the workmanship in these thin pieces forming the sides of the sound chest. The stupid musicians of Rome think of nothing save the size of the instrument and the loudness of the noise it makes. They even have citharas as large as carriages—that probably sound like carriage wheels, too.” He laid down the instrument. “But I weary you with this talk of music. It is one of the penalties of growing old. Soon I shall be like Aristoxenus of Taras, who said some three or four hundred years ago,
‘Since the theaters have become completely barbarized, and since music has become utterly ruined and vulgar—we, being but a few, will recall to our minds, sitting by ourselves, what music used to be.’

“We who look to the past are not always out of step with the present, though,” Demetrius continued his lecture. “It was this same Aristoxenus who gave us our knowledge of harmony.” He plucked a string, stopped its vibration by thrusting his fingers between the strings, then plucked another exactly an octave lower. “Listen well, young man. The answer to the mystery of the universe may well lie in the vibrations of these strands of lowly gut. . . .”

There was a commotion in the street outside and Mary ran in, plucking the shawl from her head so that her hair tumbled in a glorious torrent of living copper about her shoulders. In her excitement she did not see Joseph. “Demetrius!” she cried. “I brought Simon. He has been hurt.”

Several people followed Mary into the garden. The tall musician, Hadja, was supporting a veritable giant of a man in the garb of a fisherman, whose occupation would have been betrayed, anyway, by the strong odor that accompanied him. The big man’s face was white and he carried his right arm in a rude sling. Behind them was another man, slender and dark-haired, also in the garb of a fisherman.

When Joseph ran to hold Simon’s arm while they eased him down on the bench beside Demetrius, Mary saw him for the first time. “I just came from your house, Joseph,” she cried in astonishment. “Your mother said you would not be back until evening.”

“I sent for him,” Demetrius explained, “to thank him for bringing you safely home last night.”

Mary tossed her head. “I am not a child any longer. I could have come home by myself.” Then she smiled. “But it was nice of you, Joseph, and I did enjoy the ride on the mule.”

“What was the disturbance about this time, Simon?” Demetrius asked. “You Galileans are always first in the fighting. And I suppose John, the son of Zebedee, here, was in it, too.”

“Some Greeks were arguing that the Jews will not rule the world when the Messiah comes,” Simon explained. “We broke a few heads, but one of them had a club. You are the only sensible Greek I ever saw, Demetrius.”

“Because I know better than to argue with you, my friend,” the lyre maker said complacently. “Now sit still and let Joseph examine this arm of yours.”

The young physician knelt beside the injured man and gently felt his upper arm, where the trouble seemed to be. Simon flinched even from the light pressure of skilled fingers upon the arm, but not before Joseph had detected a slight grating of splintered bones rubbing against each other.

“Can you make it whole?” Simon asked anxiously. “A fisherman has need of strong arms.” The fishing establishment of Zebedee and his sons at Capernaum was a large one, and well known along the entire populous shore of the lake. Simon, Joseph thought, must be associated with them, for he seemed to be more than simply a fisherman.

“‘Healing comes from the Most High!”
Joseph said quietly. “I will do my best to set the bone straight, but the rest is in the hands of the Lord.”

“Simon is a very good man,” Mary said confidently. “The Lord is sure to favor him.”

From his pouch Joseph measured out a dose of dried poppy leaves and mixed them in wine. Simon drank the mixture with a grimace. While he waited for the drug to take effect, Joseph began to prepare his bandages. Mary was sent to tear long strips of cloth from a winding sheet, while he trimmed short sections of the thin wood used to make the sounding boards of the musical instruments for splints. Water was also set to boiling in a pot over a brazier, and into it Joseph stirred flour to make a thick starch paste.

Demetrius watched the preparations with interest, and when Joseph sent for a chair with a high back and placed on top of it a folded napkin, the old musician could contain his curiosity no longer. “Why do you need the chair, Joseph?” he asked.

“The bar at the top will fix the shoulder and upper arm,” Joseph explained as he seated Simon sideways on the chair, with his injured arm hanging over the back and the pad under the armpit. “Then a pull can be applied to the lower arm with weights while the bones are set properly and bandaged into place.”

“And the flour?”

“Bandages moistened in starch harden when they dry, helping to hold the broken fragments in place and protecting the arm from further injury.”

“By Diana!” the lyre maker exclaimed. “That is ingenious. Did you invent it?”

“You should study the medicine of the Greeks as well as their music,” Joseph reminded him with a smile. “Hippocrates and other physicians were using methods like this nearly five hundred years ago. No doubt you remember what Idomeneus said to Nestor in the Homeric poems?”

“You may hoist me on my own spear, young man,” Demetrius said triumphantly. “But that at least I know.” He declaimed sonorously:

A surgeon’s skill our wounds to heal,

Is worth more than armies to the Public weal.

The poppy had exerted its effect by now, hastened by the wine in which Joseph had mixed it, and the lines of pain were almost gone from Simon’s face. He only winced a little as Joseph carefully removed the sling and showed Mary how to hold the lower arm so that the elbow was bent at an exact right angle. Next he wrapped a scarf around the elbow and arm, leaving the ends long, and attached to them a small pot from the kitchen. This was allowed to hang with its weight pulling upon the lower portion of the arm, and therefore upon the end of the broken bone.

Into the pot Joseph next poured sand slowly, increasing the weight very gradually. From time to time as the pull increased, he touched the upper arm gently in the region of the fracture, feeling with the sensitive fingers of the bonesetter for the positions of the broken ends. When finally he could detect no overriding of the fragments—the pull of the muscles being now overcome by the weight of the kettle and the sand—he gently pushed and adjusted the broken parts until they were in line with each other. To the amazement of the onlookers, Simon suffered next to no pain during this manipulation, for the steady pull on the arm kept the bones apart and in line with each other, so that no jagged ends cut into the flesh.

Now Joseph began to apply the bandage which must do the important job of holding the bone in place until it could heal. First the upper arm was wrapped in soft wool, and over it strips of thin wood were placed parallel to the bone as splints. Over this he wrapped turn after turn of the moist starched bandage, laying each one on carefully so that it was not twisted, rolled, or folded. At the shoulder he carried several turns around Simon’s body and beneath the opposite armpit to hold the bandage in place, before continuing around the elbow and down the arm as far as the wrist. Thus the entire elbow joint was covered except the lowermost portion, where the ends of the scarf were attached to the small kettle furnishing the weight.

When it was finished, Demetrius waddled over and touched the white cast. “By Diana!” he cried. “It stiffens already. To be able to relieve suffering like this is better than either philosophy or music, Joseph. I am properly humbled.”

But it was John, the son of Zebedee, who gave the young physician a real accolade for his work when he said quietly, “It was well said by Jesus, the son of Sirach:

Show the physician due honor, in view of your need for him,

His works will never end,

And from him peace spreads over the face of the earth.

Joseph stopped at the doorway leading into the garden of Demetrius when he came the next morning to visit his patient, unwilling to interrupt the beautiful and peaceful scene before him by making his presence known. Simon was sitting on a bench overlooking the smooth mirror of the lake below, where the fishing boats with their multicolored sails were already abroad. Mary sat on the grass at his feet, with the morning sunlight turning her unbound hair into a coppery cascade. She touched the lyre in her hands with skilled fingers, and her voice filled the garden with a paean of praise from the poet who had loved this beautiful region around the lake, a part of the Song of Solomon!

The voice of my beloved!

Behold, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills.

My beloved is like a gazelle, or a young stag.

Behold, there he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice.

My beloved speaks and says to me:

“Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away;

for lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.

The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.

The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance.

Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

O my dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the covert of the cliff,

let me see your face, let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet,
and your face is comely.”

“Beautiful!” Joseph cried from the doorway, unable to remain silent.

Mary jumped to her feet. “Joseph of Galilee!” she cried indignantly. “What do you mean creeping up on us?”

“The song was too beautiful to interrupt,” Joseph explained.

“The leech is right, Mary.” Simon smiled fondly at her. “It was a lucky day when I found you weeping on the streets of Capernaum.”

The girl’s face sobered. “But mainly for me.” She shivered a little, although it was not cold. “I was only twelve years old, Joseph, but already I had known what it was to be beaten without reason and to be stripped naked for men to set a price upon me. Simon was the first person who had ever been kind to me in my whole life,” she added fiercely. “Do you wonder that I love him and Demetrius better than anyone else in the world?”

Joseph bent to examine Simon’s arm. The bandage, he found, had dried into a stiff cast that held the arm firmly, and the swelling had already subsided noticeably.

“Truly,” the fisherman said, “if anyone had told me yesterday there would be so little pain today, I would have branded him a liar. It is well written in the Book of Ecclesiasticus,
‘If you are taken ill, offer prayers to God and place yourself under the care of a physician.’”

“Not all physicians would have treated you so well as Joseph did,” Mary interposed. “Most people say he is better than his master, Alexander Lysimachus.”

“How do you know so much?” Joseph asked with a smile.

“I go everywhere and keep my eyes open.” Mary tossed her head. “Besides, men have no secrets from a woman.”

“So you call yourself a woman now.” Demetrius had come into the garden while they were talking. “Soon you will be eying young men and then there will be no more singing in the house of Demetrius.”

Mary ran to him and put her smooth cheek against his grizzled one. “You know I would never leave you!” she cried, and Joseph was amazed to see tears in her eyes, so quickly had her volatile emotions changed.

Demetrius squeezed her shoulder. “I was only jesting,” he soothed. “Someday you will marry a rich man who will make old Demetrius the keeper of his wine cellar. Then I can die happy.” He turned to Joseph. “The Street of the Greeks is buzzing with the miracle you performed upon Simon’s arm, young man. Soon the whole town will know of it, if Mary has her way.”

“I was just telling him that he is better than Alexander Lysimachus,” Mary said. “But he is too modest to admit it.”

Joseph could stay no longer, but as he went about the city visiting the sick, his thoughts were full of Mary’s gaiety, her beauty, and the way her mood could change from happy to sad and back again in an instant, like a child. He had seen no signs of prosperity in the house of Demetrius, but he had found there something more important, a quality often lacking in the homes of the rich where he went with his leeches: the happiness of people who loved unreservedly.