The Galileans: A Novel of Mary Magdalene (5 page)

When Joseph arrived home that evening, he was greeted by the fragrant aroma of a fish broiling on the coals of the cooking hearth. And when he came into the kitchen, he saw that his mother was not alone. Mary was sitting on a low stool, watching the preparations for the evening meal and chattering all the while.

“Welcome to our home, Mary of Magdala.” He gave the formal greeting. “Peace be upon you.”

Mary’s eyes twinkled. “I am part Greek and bear a gift. Do you not fear me?”

Joseph knew her too well now to be surprised at her learning.
“Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes—
I fear the Greeks when bearing gifts,” he repeated, smiling. “No, I do not fear you.”

“Look at the fine fish Mary brought us,” his mother said proudly. “I have persuaded her to stay and help eat it.”

“Will you dance for us afterward?” Joseph asked.

Mary held up her hands in mock horror. “Do you want your neighbors to say you are entertaining a Jezebel? Besides, does not Hippocrates warn that a physician must always be careful of his dignity?”

“If I remember the aphorism right,” Joseph told her, “it was this:
‘The dignity of a physician requires that he should look healthy and as plump as nature intended him to be; for the common crowd consider those who are not of this excellent bodily condition to be unable to take care of others.’”

While his mother prepared dinner, Joseph took Mary to the small surgery where he treated the poor of the city. It was little more than a covered terrace with a closet for his medicines and instruments. Magdala was not large enough to support a
medicamentarius,
as an apothecary was called who compounded and dispensed medicines only upon the order of a physician, so Joseph gathered most of his own herbs and ground his own medicines, plus those of his preceptor. Fortunately, the hills of nearby Gilead were famous for healing plants, and the balm produced there was widely used by physicians everywhere.

Mary listened with intelligent interest while Joseph demonstrated the instruments and their uses. The bag he carried on his rounds was called the
nartik.
It contained the
izmel,
or scalpel, for incising abscesses; the trephine, a nail for letting blood; the
makdeijach,
a sharp pointed probe with which to explore wound tracks and other areas; the
misporayim,
a pair of scissors for cutting dressings or the sutures of horsehair sometimes used to close wounds; the
tarrad,
a speculum for exploring cavities; and the
kalbo,
a pair of forceps which had many uses.

On another shelf was the
kulcha,
for emptying the stomach in poisonings and for those suffering from overeating; the
gubtha,
a hollow catheter for cases of urinary stone or obstruction; and the
shel harophe,
the leather apron which was almost the uniform of the Jewish physician. In the corner stood the
kisei tani,
an iron box serving both as a desk table and as a place of safekeeping for precious medicines.

In the closet that served as a pharmacy and treatment room were the drugs:
borit,
a strong soap for washing inflamed skin, as well as the hands of the physician;
neter,
which was both a cleansing agent externally and a powerful kidney stimulant when taken internally;
tsri,
the healing balsam;
nehoth,
the gum of tragacanth; and
lott,
a powerful sedative made from opium. Next to them were various ointments labeled
ungentia: collyria
for washing infected eyes; and
pilulae
of various drugs, rolled into pellets of several sizes.

Below these another shelf was filled with jars of powdered poppy leaves for promoting sleep and relieving pain; the seeds of the
jusquiamus;
the
diachylon
plaster favored by Menecrates, personal physician to the Emperor Tiberius; the drug called “dragon’s blood,” because it was said to come from the blood of a dragon killed in combat with an elephant (although actually only the gum from an oriental plant); the preparation called
mithridaticum,
a favorite of the Emperor Pompey, and many others. At the end of the shelf was a pile of odd-looking roots. Joseph picked up one and handed it to Mary.

“Why, it looks like a man!” she exclaimed. “See? Here are the arms, and the legs, and body. What is it?”

“The root is called ‘mandragora.’ Some people claim that it is actually human and shrieks when pulled from the ground.” Joseph took down a bottle filled with dark fluid. “This is the wine of mandragora, made by soaking the powdered root in wine to extract the active drug. Some call it ‘lovers’ drink.’”

“Why?”

“They say because it strengthens love. Or maybe it got the name because disappointed lovers have been known to use it to bring on the sleep of forgetfulness. But the wine of mandragora is mainly used for relieving pain during surgery and in nervous afflictions.”

“When the drug is used to bring on sleep,” she asked, “do they ever wake up again?”

“Not always, but a very large dose is required to cause death.”

Mary shivered. “You said mandragora was used for nervous afflictions. I only faint when I am excited. Would it help to prevent the attacks?”

“It should,” Joseph agreed at once. “Let me give you a small bottle of mandragora wine to take home tonight. You can try a few doses when you are going to dance. It might keep off the attacks altogether.”

The fish was perfectly cooked and the meal was gay, for Mary was as intelligent and witty as she was beautiful. Much of the time Joseph forgot to eat for looking at her. Afterward, he walked with her across the city to the Street of the Greeks.

“I love your mother, Joseph,” she told him as they stood before her house. “And you are very sweet, too.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek, then was gone.

Joseph’s mother did not miss the warm light in his eyes when he returned, still a little dazed by that feathery kiss. “Mary is very beautiful, Joseph,” she observed. “And her father was a Jew. Even if she was adopted by a Greek, she was brought up in the religion of our people.”

“Why does it make any difference whether she is Jew or Greek?” he asked, but his mother changed the subject.

“She told me about the miracle you performed in healing Simon the fisherman.”

“I only set the arm. The Most High must still heal it.”

“But without your setting, the Most High would have let it heal crookedly,” she observed with unanswerable logic. “The fish came from the establishment of Zebedee, so Mary has important friends. He is the richest fish merchant on the lake.”

Joseph was beginning to get the import of this rambling conversation. “But she sings and dances in the streets,” he reminded her with mock disapproval.

“Did not David the king, whose blood flows in your veins, sing and dance in honor of the Most High?” she demanded heatedly.

“Some call her a Jezebel and accuse her of
abodah zarah.”

“Some women envy all girls with beauty and speak evil of them,” his mother said with a sniff. “Mary has spirit and would make a fine wife for a bright young man. She likes you, Joseph; you should court her.”

“There will be plenty of time yet to speak of marriage,” he said more soberly then. “Today Alexander Lysimachus promised to take me in two months before the judges at Jerusalem. He thinks I am ready to be certified as
rophe uman.”

“Aie!” his mother cried in delight. “My son will be a ‘skilled physician.’” The title was conferred by duly appointed judges only upon those apprentices who had finished the prescribed period and were certified by their preceptors as able to practice in their own right. “Now you can forget all that foolishness about going to Alexandria,” she added.

Joseph did not argue the point. He knew he had learned everything that Alexander Lysimachus could teach him and was probably as skilled as any physician in Judea or Galilee, perhaps in all of the province of Syria itself. But his studies in the works of the Greek philosophers and physicians had served to show him how small actually was the knowledge of even such eminent physicians among the Jews as his preceptor. The great Hippocrates, Diocles of Carystus, the famous Alexandrians, Herophilus, and Erasistratus—all had gone beyond the simple concepts of disease as a punishment from God or the effects of possession by demons. And Asclepiades of Bithynia had even dared to state categorically that, since the body was composed of disconnected atoms in constant movement, health was dependent upon the orderly movement of these minute particles, while disease resulted from a standstill of the atoms, or violent clashes between them. His principle of
contrario contrariis
in treatment had earned him the favor of kings. More than once in his own experience, too, Joseph had felt that the derisive advice of “
Medice, cura te ipsum
[Physician, heal thyself],” was more truth than criticism.

Simon the fisherman improved so rapidly that soon Joseph could find no excuse to hold him in Magdala. As he left the house one morning, having promised that Simon could return to Capernaum following tomorrow’s dressing, Mary came out carrying a lyre. “I am delivering this to the Street of the Dove Sellers,” she said. “May I walk with you?”

He made way for her beside him, with the mule carrying his equipment following them. “I shall be sorry to see Simon leave tomorrow,” he told her. “For then I shall have no excuse to visit the house of Demetrius.”

“But you can come to see us whenever you wish.”

“If I come without being called, people will say I am paying court to you.”

“No one has ever paid court to me, Joseph,” she said softly, and then her voice grew bitter. “The young men are afraid because their mothers call me Jezebel. Why is it a sin to want to be happy?” she demanded fiercely.

“My mother does not think you are a Jezebel.”

“I know.” She put her hand on his, and her fingers were warm and very much alive as they curled about his own. “She is sweet like you, Joseph, and I love her.”

“I am going before the judges in about two months to become
rophe urnan,”
he told her.

“Joseph!” she cried, her eyes shining. “That is wonderful!” Then her face grew sad. “But you will go to Jerusalem then; Magdala will be too small for you.”

“My mother thinks I should marry and start practicing medicine for myself. She has already picked out the girl.” Mary did not look at him, but he saw her lips soften in a smile.

“She is a very lovely girl named Mary of Magdala,” he added.

“Don’t you have anything to say about the matter?” she asked demurely, her eyes twinkling.

They were crossing a little park and at the moment were screened from view by a clump of trees. Joseph pulled her around to face him. “You know I love you very much, Mary,” he said.

“As much as Philodemus loved Xantho in the song?”

“That much and more,” he said quickly.

“‘Too soon the music ends,’”
she sang softly, her eyes shining.
“‘Again, again repeat the sad sweet strain.’
But you don’t know me at all, Joseph. I am vain and forgetful.”

“And very beautiful . . .”

“Greedy and thoughtless . . .”

“And lovable . . .”

She stamped her foot in mock anger. “Will you let me finish? I am telling you that I am not the kind of a wife you deserve. I would embarrass you, and people would talk about me.”

“What would all that matter when we loved each other?” He drew her close. “Is it because you don’t love me that you argue against me, Mary?”

“Oh, I do love you, Joseph,” she said then, all in a rush. “I do. I do. But I love Demetrius, too, and he comes first.”

“Demetrius himself told me he thought you might be happier married to the right man.”

“He was only trying to protect me.” Suddenly she clung to him and he held her there, asking nothing more, content to savor the sweetness of having her in his arms. When she lifted her face from his chest, he kissed her and found the sweetness of her mouth mixed with the salt of her tears. Finally, she pushed him away and wiped her eyes upon the sleeve of his robe. “We must be sensible, Joseph,” she said firmly. “I can’t possibly marry you. Not for a long time.”

“But why?”

“It’s a long story, but you deserve to hear it. Years ago Demetrius was the director of the Alexandrian Theater and the most famous musician in the empire. He loved a girl named Althea and trained her to be the leading actress there. She was his mistress, and he adored her, so he could not believe she would be untrue to him. But she took up with a rich Roman and tried to get rid of Demetrius by telling her lover that he was the leader in a plot against the Romans. Demetrius barely escaped with his life and a little money by joining a caravan going to Damascus, but some thieves robbed him in Capernaum and left him for dead in the lake. Simon found him and nursed him back to health. Since he had no money, Demetrius set up a shop for making lyres here in Magdala, but he lives only to return to Alexandria.”

“Would it be safe for him to go back?”

“Yes. Althea’s lover was really plotting to make himself ruler of the city and both of them were executed, but it was too late to help Demetrius. From what Simon tells me, he was about to kill himself when I came to him. Since then I have been his whole life. He taught me everything I know, Joseph, and he lives only for the time when he can make me the most famous actress and dancer in Alexandria. It will be his revenge upon Althea.”

“But Demetrius loves you enough to want your happiness, Mary.”

“Don’t you see?” she pleaded. “I have to do this for Demetrius, but I want it, too. Kings have deserted queens for women of the theater. What girl wouldn’t long to be as important as a queen?”

“But suppose you are not an instant success?” he objected. “How would all of you live in Alexandria?”

“Demetrius says I am more talented than Althea was and that I will only need to sing and dance before the director of the theater to be accepted immediately.”