The Gospel of the Twin (16 page)

“As we move about, so moves the empire. For what is an empire? Is it the soil within territorial borders? Is it the force of a throne armed by swords and chariots? Is it a mass of people who happen to dwell in an area? Or, is it the people united by a spirit?” More cheers, applause, and shouts of “The people!” and “A spirit!” It was amplified this time by most of the population of Nazareth, who had sat down simply out of curiosity but were soon caught up in Jesus' spell. I saw them sidling in the back, trying to look nonchalant, talking in hushed voices to their companions, probably saying, “It's that Jesus. Hasn't he been gone? Wonder what he's carrying on about this time.” Soon, though, they moved closer and joined in on the exuberance. I knew most of them, of course, and was happy to see that they were so welcoming of Jesus.

“A uniting spirit, one that holds a people together as the parts of our bodies are held by sinews. But this holding-together is more than mere strings of flesh. It is a harmony, an attunement that runs deeper than the marrow of our bones. It runs through the depth of the body and through the breath in the throat and joins the body to the very air and earth that give it life.”

He continued about “the depths of things” and “the body of God,” and more than ever before, his speech became like a song, with its own distinct elements of tone and rhyme and rhythm. I felt vibrations, as when a chorus sings in a marble amphitheater. He was as masterful as the singing poets of Anatolia who hold audiences in their power for hours with just the sounds flowing from their mouths. Jesus' words lost their sense for me, or else made a higher sense that needed no attention but instead seeped in like rain into a garden. I saw the others swaying. We were all charmed like the serpents who dance to music that I saw later in India.

Mary stood. She was at the very front, where all could see her. She held her arms above her head as if supporting a falling roof. She began to rock slowly, first from side to side, then in a figure-eight pattern. She dropped her arms and flattened out her palms to look as though she were pushing herself up from the ground.

Andrew stood and rocked. Then Philip. In fives and sixes, others joined in until we looked like rows of grain succumbing to gentle breezes.

I moved from the crowd and nearer to Jesus to get a better look at the event. I wanted to remain fully in the experience, yet witness the whole as well, which is not really possible. Once, years later, I spent a week at the home of a philosopher in Alexandria. Much of our discussion was about the elusive nature of experience, and he pointed out that, even though the same world is available to us all, we are each shackled to one inescapable perspective on that world. Once we attempt to extract ourselves from our perspective to try to get a new view of it, we add another sort of experience to the original experience, like a layer of oil placed on a watery surface. As you peer down through the oil, the water no longer looks natural.

I asked him if he thought that God was beyond this predicament. He said that if so, then we can have no understanding of God and, worse, God can have no understanding of us.

As I struggled to stay in the euphoria of Jesus' voice, I noticed some movement in the crowd. It parted slightly in the center, the way stalks of wheat lean away from each other, then fall back when an animal walks through a field. In the front, Peter and Andrew stepped aside, James carried his child, and Mother emerged.

James handed the child to Jesus, who kissed and rocked it and continued to recite his poetry. Mother took her place in front of Jesus and threw open her arms. The crowd parted again, and out came the Zebedee brothers, carrying Joseph on a berth of sheets tied across two staffs. They rested one end of the berth on the ground and stood it upright beside Mother.

The sermon and the swaying and the occasional outburst of cheering and crying lasted much of the day. Finally, this body of God dispersed to bake bread, feed sheep, and carry on in two empires, one of sorrow and one of hope.

Chapter Twenty

Verse One

“You look even more like Jesus than the last time I last saw you,” said Leah. “I hope your travels were interesting.”

Joseph was back in bed, my family was inside, and most of our Nazarene neighbors had returned home. The followers were settling down for a night in barns, under trees, and wherever they could find a few unoccupied grassy spots. I was about to join Jesus and the rest of my family when Leah surprised me.

“Yes,” I said. “We've had some strange experiences.” This was not how I imagined my reunion with her. I'd planned to go to her house and knock on the door. She would open it, flour on her hands and her dove-colored hair twisting about like grape vines. She would gasp and throw her slender arms around my neck, saying, “Oh Thomas, oh Thomas, I feared for you so!”

“We had some strange experiences today,” she said, one corner of her mouth twisting up in a sly suggestion of a smile. “I'm not sure what they signified.”

That meant that she had been present today with the other curious Nazarenes, but I hadn't seen her.

“Neither am I,” I said. She was even more beautiful than I remembered, with dark, calf's eyes and lips rounded like a lyre. “How is your family? Baruch and Judas and I used to get into so much mischief when we were kids.”

“My brother is dead. Romans. Same as my husband.”

“I'm sorry.” I wasn't really. All I heard was that she had no husband.

“I consider them both heroes, but for every one of our heroes, there's a legion of Roman soldiers.” She looked off into the distance, as if expecting her dead brother and husband to return. “This is why Jesus' sermon, or was it a song?, was so meaningful to me. I had given up on any kind of resistance but hadn't thought of a spiritual one.” She looked back at me. I wanted to see love in her eyes, but I'm not sure I could have recognized it had it been there. “I saw you today, but it wasn't the right time to talk.”

I wanted to hug her, but it just didn't seem the right time for that either. “Who was your husband?”

“Ravid. You remember him―Samuel the baker's son?”

“Yes. He was a good fellow.” I'd barely known him. He was always baking, even when he was young, while the rest of us were running around pulling childish pranks. Perhaps Leah favored the quiet type.

“We were married for only three months when he and Baruch decided to join some rebels in Upper Galilee. Two weeks after they left, a messenger came to tell us that the Romans had captured most of the rebel band—I don't know how many—and executed them all.” She crossed her arms and squeezed as if trying to hold something in her chest. She relaxed and sighed. “Now, tell me about you. Have you a wife?”

I had the urge to say that I had married a beautiful woman from Magdala whose family sold exotic fabrics that they brought from India, where they journeyed once a year, and that she had bore me a handsome son with a purple birthmark in the shape of a ram on the back of his neck which meant, according to a priest, that he will be a great leader one day and that they are waiting for me in Magdala where my wife, Bayla, who has long black hair as shiny as the jewels in King Solomon's crown—no, that glistens like the Jordan in the moonlight―is caring for her ailing mother, which is why my beautiful Bayla is not with me. All I managed, though, was, “No,” before an old Nazarene (funny—probably none of those “old” men was nearly as old as I am now), I think he was called Asa, interrupted us, “Where have you heard such things as you spoke of in that speech of yours? Surely not in the scriptures. Nothing you say is supported by them.”

“Sir, you are confused about who I am.”

“I know you.” Another elder had walked up. I remembered that he was a weaver. “You are the son of Joseph the Judean and Mary. Have you been polluted by Greeks?”

“Maybe Egyptians,” said a third old man. They stood shoulder to shoulder. I would not have been surprised had they produced lances and charged me.

“He is not Jesus,” Leah said. “He is Thomas, the twin.”

The old men, some of whom had clucked their tongues when Jesus spoke earlier, ignored her and attacked me with questions. “Who is the emperor of your empire? Did you anoint yourself to step in to rule when the Romans are gone? Do you not think that the Romans will execute you in front of your mother's eyes on beams hewn by your own father? Do you believe your own nonsense? The Lord may strike you down before the Romans do for uttering such blasphemies—‘the Lord coils within us like a worm' and ‘drink the Lord like wine'! What did you mean by ‘hand out the Lord like breaking bread'? They say you heal the sick—is this a demon's power? Why do you associate with the unclean?”

I was more entertained than annoyed by these old men. They considered themselves the keepers of tradition, so I could understand why Jesus' metaphors would sound peculiar to them. But did they have to take such offense? I had decided to let them continue to think I was Jesus so I could enjoy more of their taunts when Leah pointed to the other side of the street.

“Look!” she said. “There's Jesus. I
told
you this was the twin!”

Jesus was being accosted by a similar contingent of old, self-appointed scriptural authorities. I was about to leave to join forces with him when Leah took my hand. “You don't have to stand here and be abused.” What to me was merely an amusing encounter had angered her and, as she led me away, I saw a red-faced Peter standing beside Jesus and looking eager to snap the old men's necks. I heard Jesus say something about a debt to the older generation.

Verse Two

Leah's house was a bit larger than ours but no better furnished. Her mother and grandmother busied themselves preparing food while I made a minor repair to the wobbly table. The original nail had been replaced with one too small. I wedged in a sliver of wood and promised to fix it properly the next day.

“Things fall apart when no men are around,” Leah said. Her daughter, who looked about a year and a half old, scratched at the floor with a stick. “Of course, men do their share of damage as well.”

“I know I've done mine.” I said this without thinking, something of a self-effacing joke, but what if she asked what sort damage I had done? Would I confess that I'd had my cousin killed? Would she consider my sharing a horrid secret, admitting the searing guilt, to be a chord binding our hearts?

Leah's mother placed a bowl of figs on the table. “Did you come home because of your father?” she asked.

“We were on the way home when we heard that he had fallen ill.” I wondered if that question was a test to see if I would answer that I had convinced Jesus and the others to come here for a variety of false reasons and that it was just so that I could be with her daughter.

“It's good that you are here. Your mother has your brothers and sisters, but you and Jesus are the lamps in her heart. Now she can spend the rest of her years happy.” She returned to the kitchen before she could see what I imagined was a look of guilt on my face. Leah saw it.

“You must do what you must do, Thomas,” Leah said. “There's nothing to regret about that.”

I resisted the urge to ask her to accompany me on our mad wanderings, although I was sure she would have agreed to come. “You are right. I have to follow my brother. I feel that my life would have no meaning without him. My mother would not understand, but her life would also lose its meaning if Jesus didn't complete his work. And he needs me. I feel a great responsibility to him, to our people.”

“Your mother understands,” Leah said. “Would she want you to forsake your sense of duty? You have found a purpose, Thomas. That's to be envied. Most of our people move through their lives looking for nothing more than the end.”

We supped that evening on bread and lentils. The grandmother kept placing figs on my plate. Either she thought of them as special treats for a guest or just wanted to get rid of them. Leah's mother asked me about the towns I had visited.
This might be a good and convenient way
, I thought,
of inviting Leah to come with me when I leave with Jesus in a week or a month or maybe a year
.

As I recounted our travels without mentioning the danger, the most forgettable hamlets, even those smaller than Nazareth, sounded to Leah's mother like exotic kingdoms. Her eyes swelled with wonder and she asked bizarre questions—“How do the people walk? Do they eat trees?”—and wanted details—“How large are their houses? Do they dye their garments?”

When I mentioned visiting Jerusalem as a boy, she was so awed that her expression looked like terror. Other Nazarenes had been there, so she must have heard descriptions before, but she insisted that I narrate the journey several times, and with each telling, I embellished elements of the story. I told her of the foreign merchants who were a head taller, two heads taller, than any Galilean; that they sold talking birds that recited Torah, and food that never spoils and cooks itself on command; about the cacophony of the many tongues of the hagglers, some of whom spoke three of four languages at the very same time, and some whose languages consisted only of whistles or screams as if they were in great pain; of the Temple, with its walls made of pure silver and gold, and its altar cut from a single slab of the finest marble—a colossal jewel that emitted a hum like locusts; of its mysterious priests who wore masks to make them look like lions, eagles, dragons, and monsters that I couldn't even describe; and that the women of Jerusalem took baths in asses' milk and in the juice of an Ethiopian fruit that gave them longevity, most of them living well beyond a hundred years, and some beyond two hundred.

She stared agape as I stacked up these ridiculous tales. Then she seemed to snap from a trance and grabbed my wrist. “Thomas, will you and Jesus take your followers there?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Take me!” she said loudly enough to startle the grandmother into upsetting the fig bowl. “Take me wherever you go! Leah, you can look after your grandmother, can't you? Thomas, when do we leave?”

Nausea hit my stomach like a mallet. Leah's soft eyes were upon me. Was she angry that I had excited her mother enough for her to want to go away? I hadn't even said that I was going anywhere, Jerusalem included. Did Leah want to go with me? Had that possibility been destroyed now that Leah's mother had invited herself? What answer did Leah want me to give her mother? I should have asked Leah to come earlier so that her mother would have heard the invitation and wouldn't have inserted herself. How could the old woman be so selfish? Couldn't she see that Leah and I were in—actually, I couldn't say what it was.

“Of course you can come. We deny no one.” What else could I say?