The Gospel of the Twin (26 page)

“Killed by whom?”

Mary just shook her head.

“Are Andrew and the others still at that house?”

“They were this morning.”

“Take me.”

“Mary, we should go now,” said Balkai. He stepped toward us and took Mary by the hand. “Thomas, I'm sorry about your brother, but it's not safe for Mary here. I understand that you want to find out more, but my advice for you and all your associates is to leave this city immediately. There's no predicting what these Romans might do next. They could decide to kill as many of us as they can while they have the chance.”

“I thank you, Balkai. I have to at least find our friends, though. Please, I just need Mary to take me to them.”

A look of complete exasperation came over Balkai. “Have you forgotten, Thomas, that you are Jesus' twin?” he said. “If the Romans who executed Jesus see you, they'll do the same to you just for being his brother.” He looked around as if soliciting help for his case. “You know how superstitious they are, Thomas, with all their gods and ghosts. Gods taking women. Men becoming gods. People going to Sheol and coming back. They're crazy, Thomas. They may think Jesus has come back from the grave. And they'll have to crucify him again.”

Mary pulled away from her brother and turned to me with her mouth agape and her eyes spread wide. “Thomas, we can do it!” She realized that she had yelled and lowered her voice. “We can do it. Listen—” She shook her head. “No. Later.” She pulled her family together. They appeared to have a disagreement. Balkai put his hands on his head and paced around for a moment. Mary hugged the others.

Balkai circled my way and looked me over as if he were buying a slave. “Please take care of her. Will you bring her home?”

I said that I would, although I was not clear about what was happening. After goodbyes, Mary's family left.

Something had changed in Mary's face. “Let's go to Andrew and the others.”

Verse Three

We stopped between a small house and a shed that held a few long abandoned chicken roosts. Mary told me to stay out of sight while she, Philip, and Thaddeus went into a house across the street. While sitting in the broken-down shed, I had time to make ten or twelve little people out of straw, as Jesus and I had once done for our sisters when we were young. I couldn't remember the trick we used to tie the head so that it would not lose its shape. I was so engrossed with making these dolls that I didn't notice Mary and Andrew until their feet entered my view. I looked up to see Andrew's face sag as if he had been ill for weeks.

“Come inside, Thomas.” Andrew's voice was thin. “James and John and a few of the others are here. We have something to discuss with you.” He sounded like a judge who hated to pronounce a harsh sentence.

Inside, the others were just as solemn: Mary, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Thaddeus, Matthew, and Simon the Zealot, who had joined us when Judas returned, and two or three others I cannot recall now. They looked at me as if I had been away for years—as if they doubted I was even really Thomas.

“Where is Peter?” I asked. “Is Judas really dead?”

They continued to study me. Did they hold me accountable for something? Did they blame me for Jesus' death because I'd left for Nazareth?

“We can't find Peter,” Andrew said. “Some here think that Peter . . . that he may have somehow been connected—”

“He killed Judas,” Simon said.

“You don't know that!” Andrew said.

“I saw the body,” Simon said. “He had been strangled.”

“He was hanging from a rope on a tree,” said Andrew.

“He had cuts on his body and blood on his clothes that did not come from the wounds of hanging,” said Simon. “None of you have the kind of experience I have. Judas had been in a fight and was dead before being hoisted up on the rope. The marks on his neck that killed him were not the same as the rope marks from hanging. He was strangled by a very powerful—”

“What do have you against my brother?” Andrew shouted.

“Stop it!” said Mary. Her face was streaked with tears. “None of this will resurrect Judas.” She turned to me and held out her hands. I took them in mine. “But resurrection, Thomas, is what we must talk about.”

The others shifted in their seats. Andrew and Simon glared at each other. Someone passed around a wineskin. I took a long draft. It was as if there was a box and they all knew what was inside, but each was unwilling to lift the lid for me.

“Do you know what they did with Jesus' body?” I asked.

After a long pause, Andrew spoke. “It's in the trash pit. I saw them put it on a cart with a few others and take it there.”

“Can we get it?”

“They guard it, Thomas. They pay people to catch stray dogs and bring them there to eat the pile of bodies. You cannot imagine how many they execute each day. They're monsters, and even worse are our people who collude with them.”

“Let's get back to our plan,” Mary said.

“Plan?” I asked.

“Dearest Thomas, Jesus is dead, but again he is not. His vision lives in us, and we owe it to him to continue.”

“This is crazy!” said Philip. “You'll make fools of us all. This isn't Greece, where they believe in such nonsense.”

Mary spun her face toward Philip. Her eyes widened and her lips parted as if she were about to speak to him. Philip looked down at the floor. Mary turned back to me and slid the back of her hand across my cheek. “Many of his followers have left, but some are gathered just outside of town, too shocked to believe their dreams are over. Some new followers have joined them. They saw or heard about Jesus' disruption at the Temple, and he inspired them. Hearing he had been executed even seemed to give them more inspiration. Some of that spirit is being picked up by the older followers.”

“I can't believe this,” said Philip.

“Silence!” said Matthew. He gave Philip a fierce look and inflated his chest like Peter used to do when he wanted to intimidate someone.

Mary kissed my hand. Tears fell down her cheeks. “We, too―those of us here― were in shock. We tried to keep all the followers here and convince them that we could continue. We brought all we could gather to this house and spoke to them. Andrew addressed them and gave a moving plea to continue in Jesus' name, just as he would have wished. Matthew spoke, comparing Jesus to Moses and reminding them that after Moses' death, our people continued on their mission to reclaim their homeland. I led them in song, but they just didn't respond with any enthusiasm. We—those of us sitting here with you—didn't think we had the charm, the spiritual power, to keep the movement going. When you saw me leaving today, I had abandoned all hope. I had lost my husband, my true love, Thomas, and the hope that Jesus gave us for a new life. I didn't really want to return to Magdala with my family. I didn't want to go anywhere or do anything. I could just walk the streets of the city where Judas and Jesus died. Thomas, I comforted myself with the thought that I could at least make a living as a whore.”

She took a deep breath and looked around the room. “I think everyone else here felt the same loss of purpose.” Some of the others nodded. Mary wiped her eyes and cheeks, then placed both her wet hands on the sides of my face and moved in close to me. I thought I could hear the breath of the others quickening. Mary was about to open the box.

“Mary,” I said, “I'm not Jesus. I don't have that charm or spiritual power either. I—”

“Shhhh,” she said, and placed her tiny hand upon my lips. “Thomas, that's not quite what we're asking you to do. Dearest Thomas, to keep Jesus' spirit alive, to keep this movement growing, to give you and me and these others the hope that they have not made all these sacrifices and done all this work in vain, that Jesus did not make the ultimate sacrifice in vain, they need a miracle. Think of how they reacted to Jesus' miracles—to Lazarus' resurrection.”

Mary pressed my face until it hurt. Her voice sharpened to a whistle, as when the wind tightens through an alley.

“My precious Thomas,” she said. “You are Jesus' twin. Even those of us who know you well have often had a difficult time telling the two of you apart. If these followers believe Jesus has returned to them from the grave, can you imagine their zeal?”

Chapter Thirty

Verse One

I ran into Andrew in Byzantium, where he had been preaching “the Way,” as he called it, for years. He was a natural at adapting Jesus' teachings, or what had become of those teachings, to local beliefs. If cleansing ceremonies and ritual meals appealed most to the people we encountered, then he would make those rites central to their way of following our movement.

If death and resurrection resonated within them, as it did for the Greeks, then he would minimize ritual and emphasize rebirth.

Andrew accompanied me on one of my trips to India. The variety of world views and cosmologies he found in India fascinated him, and he delighted in the challenge of creating nuanced versions of “the Way” to fit each new group.

I witnessed Andrew's most adept use of this talent in the court of Gondophares, king of the Parthians. They practiced the Persian religion of Zarathushtra which, unlike the Indian religions, had one almighty god, along with minor figures such as Mithra, who was a sort of sacrificed demigod about whom they had many stories. The priests were continuously tending to some ongoing rituals, in which they combined bright metals and multicolored minerals and examined them with intense interest.

Gondophares and his priests, with whom we conversed in Greek, found little of interest in what we said about Jesus until the discussion turned to what “the Way” promised for the future. I was about to speak of my people's yearning for a messiah who would rebuild Israel, and how Jesus had entirely transformed that notion, when Andrew jumped in. He had listened intently to the Parthians as they told of a great battle in which Soshayan (or something like that), whose name means “savior,” swooped down from the heavens to cleanse the Earth, defeat the Evil One, and bring about rebirth to all.

“That is one of Jesus' names!” Andrew said. “When he returned from the dead, he told us that we should call him Soshayan, because he was to go to the heavenly home of God, but would come back someday to transform the world.”

Andrew continued with this improvisation for much of the afternoon, embellishing it with details about angels and plagues and wars. The priests were impressed, and Gondophares had us stay in his court for months to advise his priests. We were given clothes similar to those of the priests, so, in a sense, Andrew and I became priests of the Parthian Way.

We were given all the luxuries the Parthians could offer: delectable sweetmeats that looked like cubes of lamb fat but were sweeter than crystallized honey; a beverage called homa, somewhat like wine but not as sweet, which they made from the leaves of a local plant which caused the imbiber to have visions (I saw winged chariots swirling out of the sea and giant purple chickens scratching at the Jerusalem Temple); and whores who visited us each night in twos and threes. They were covered in perfumed oils and their braided hair hung to the floor. I thanked Gondophares for these delights, but made the mistake of mentioning that his whores, while exceptional, should be sent to India to learn further skills. He said
humph
and excused himself for a conference with his advisors.

Andrew was so eager to continue spreading this new version of “the Way” that, after we left Gondophares, Andrew returned to India while I returned home. He left a week before I did, perhaps seeing some danger that I was too blinded to detect. I should have trusted his insight, I suppose, and gone with him. I never saw him again, but I heard years later that he had been teaching in Anatolia and Greece.

Far from Gondophares' palace and near the edge of his kingdom, I was attacked by what I took to be robbers. The little Parthian I understood was useless to me, but one of the robbers spoke Greek. His speech was labored and garbled—he had obviously tried to memorize a message and had not fared well. He said something about “polluting the fire” and the “face of an imposter and insulter.” They inhaled smoke from a burning paste in a reed and then stripped me and tied me belly-down to stakes in the ground and chanted and sang what sounded much like one of the songs I'd heard from their whores. Then the four of them took turns raping me. As one took me, the others laughed and spat upon me.

At that moment, I decided that if the Lord lived, he cared not a fig for me. They cut me from the thongs that held me to the stakes and rolled me onto my back. I was sure that they would then cut my throat, at which point I welcomed death. Instead, three knelt upon me while one gouged out my eye and mangled my face. I focused on the knife with my spare eye—it had a curved blade and a black hilt with a man's turbaned head, perhaps of their god, carved into it.

In later years, after I'd adopted the practice of meditation, that was the image that enabled my most intense focus. He then sliced off my left nipple and shoved the eye into the wound, which bled surprisingly little. By then I was numbed to pain, and tried to surmise the significance of this mutilation. Was my heart looking out to the world? Was my sight as useless as my nipple? The meaning escaped me, although I did not seriously contemplate it after that day.

I was more concerned with who had sent the assailants and what their spoken message was supposed to mean. I knew that fire was sacred to the Persian and Parthian religions. Perhaps one of the priests resented the changes Andrew and I had introduced, or maybe Gondophares had great pride in the abilities of his whores and resented what he took as my insult to their talents. But who in Parthia would know me to be an imposter?

I heard them mount their fine horses and trot away. After a minute or two, when I was sure they were gone, I stood to continue my journey. I was dazed but could walk. Two days later, I found a physician (or at least the villagers considered him one) who washed out my eye socket and dressed it with a balm as we sat in a shed that contained his knives, saws, and hooked tools as well as chicken roosts and a goat tied to a stake.

I had removed the eye from my chest, wrapped it in a cloth, and placed it in my pouch, planning to retain it as a keepsake. I showed it to the physician, thinking he would find it interesting. Instead, he slapped it from my hand and began to pray. He was an Arab, and he probably belonged to one of the primitive groups from Arabia that believes in demons and all manner of superstition. A bony, gray dog rose from the shadows, picked up my eye in its teeth, and raced from the shed. I think that dog would have made a good companion.

Verse Two

Through the night and the next day, Mary led us with a confidence and enthusiasm I had before witnessed only in Jesus, and only on his best days. Andrew and I contributed to the plans, but she was clearly the source of everyone's energy, bustling about, encouraging people on how valuable they were, telling them that Jesus had often told her how much he valued their dedication, and saying, “You are the strong arm of the body of the Lord” and “You are a prince in the empire of the Lord.”

She sent Philip and Thaddeus every hour or so to give carefully worded, cryptic messages to the group waiting at the edge of the city that something grand was about to be revealed. “The revelation is upon us,” she told them to say.

She sent Matthew and Simon the Zealot to find any of Jesus' followers who might be lingering in the city and, without alarming them, to get the lingerers to join the others outside by telling them, “Come to the great return. You are needed.”

The same sweet voice that got all of them to do her bidding reassured me through that sleepless night and restless day that only I could keep the empire of the Lord alive.

By nightfall, we were ready.

Just as we left the house, I became nauseated. Someone had found me a pure white cloak that covered my tunic, and I feared I would vomit on it. Mary's voice, like a cool cloth on my brow, restored my composure, and we eight or nine walked in silence across town without drawing any notice from police or soldiers.

The crowd had moved out of tents and from under olive trees to gather on the slope of a hill only a furlong or more from the house outside the walls of the city where the inner circle stayed. The full moon was low in the sky. Stars crowded the purple heavens.

The cloak was gathered closely about my face as Mary escorted me to the crest of the hill. The crowd hushed. I hoped for a sign—a dog baying at the fat moon or a screech owl peeling an eerie cry. But the night was soundless. I looked up at the moon and I spread out my arms, and Mary slid the cloak from my head and shoulders, swirled it over her head, and snapped it, as if to rid it of debris.

The word “Master” rolled up the hillside from the hundreds of mouths.

Verse Three

All I remember of that evening are the voices of the followers repeating, chant-like, each of my brother's favored phrases as I uttered them; the feeling that the night was hurling along, eager to press its historical seal; and the sight of Mary and Andrew and James and John nodding like rabbis in prayer, looking to each other as if to say, “It is happening—it is happening now!” The moonlight reflected upon a lake of faces, each one an image of hope and pain and resignation and trust and despair all at once, and for a short while I thought I felt what Jesus many times must have felt.

But I knew that his appearance before the crowd was effortless and guileless, while mine was strained and contrived. I spoke about the body of the Lord and empire and depths and tried to plait these threads into a rope that could bind us together into something coherent. My attempt at artful weaving was unnecessary.

All they needed was the likeness of my brother and his words. I strung some of those words into the semblance of a song and led them on a march. They pranced behind me like randy goats as we circumambulated the hill seven times, as our ancestors had when they paraded around the ancient Jericho and toppled its walls with trumpets and song.

The symbolism was lost upon no one. Without any cue, men made trumpet noises, and the children yelled, “Walls fall down! Down!” At the completion of the final circuit, the crowd erupted into a joyous, triumphant cry to the heavens, as if Joshua had destroyed the Romans and a son of David was again sitting on the throne.

The reverie provided just the cover I needed to escape unnoticed. I said nothing to the others as I slipped into the night and out of Judea.