The Gospel of the Twin (4 page)

Chapter Five

Verse One

At twenty years of age, Jesus and I were skilled stone-cutters. Joseph, on the other hand, could hardly shape a decent block, and even then his corners were never sharp. When the services of my brother and I were contracted for, Jesus would bargain to get a common laborer's job—fetching water and stone, holding planks as they were sawed—for our father. The first time he did this, I questioned him.

“Why can't we just leave him home? I'd rather be away from him and, if anything, he slows us down.”

“He is still our father, Thomas. You know nothing makes him as irritable as being out of work. He is a proud man. Wouldn't you rather put up with him at the job site than come home in the evening and find he's been brooding all day?”

“No. That's ten hours at work but only maybe two hours at home.”

Jesus raised an eyebrow and made a slight frown, like a teacher suggesting disappointment in a student. “What are you forgetting, Thomas?”

I thought for a moment. “He's with Mother all day.” I realized how selfish I'd been, but I was relieved to think that Jesus was more concerned with Mother than with Joseph. We tried to keep these arrangements secret from him, but I suspect he must have known.

Occasionally, when things were slow, contractors could not hire both Jesus and me for the same job. That meant, of course, that they also could not hire Joseph.

Once, a man named Zebulun stopped me in the street as I was on my way home from the market. “Why are you here?” he asked. “I just left you to work at my house.”

“That was not I,” I said. “It's my twin brother. You're Zebulun, right? Jesus told me that he was to begin working for you today. Now I must take this flour and oil to our mother.”

“You lie,” he said. “I recognize you.”

“Take me to your house and you'll see.”

We arrived at Zebulun's home shortly, but Jesus was not there. “You liar! Do you not want to work?” Zebulun asked. “I'll tell others not to hire you, for you do not honor your duty.”

“Sir, my brother is not like other men,” I said. “He shall do the work he promised you, but sometimes he honors duties that other men do not know. If he is not about, then he has found a higher duty for the moment, or at least as it seems to him. Show me what you had him do, and I'll do the work until he returns.”

The truth was that Jesus sometimes wandered off on his own. It wasn't that he was easily distracted, but that he liked spending time alone. Usually, he never let this penchant for solitude interrupt his work, though, and I worried that maybe that day he had.

Just then we heard voices from the outside. We left the house to find Jesus by the man's back gate talking to beggars. “Away from here!” Zebulun yelled to the beggars. They stood, but Jesus gestured for them to sit.

Zebulun said to me, “So, you tell the truth. You have a twin, and he is not like others, for he attracts dogs that other men kick and scorn.” He turned to Jesus and said, “Why have you called these thieves to my gate?”

“They hunger,” said Jesus.

“So do thousands more,” Zebulun said. “You can spend your whole life feeding the hungry, and do you know what you'll get? Even more of them! Let them feed themselves.”

“I have flour and oil,” I said. “We can make bread for them.”

“My employer is right, Thomas,” said Jesus. “They should feed themselves, but bread is not enough.”

“But we have no other food,” I said.

“There is food for the body, and there is food for the soul,” Jesus said.

Zebulun laughed. “Not satisfied with empty bellies, are you? You have to feed empty souls, too? Ha!” He curled his face into mock curiosity. “How is this food for the soul prepared?”

Jesus talked to the man about many things: about the soul that dwells in the body as we dwell in our land, about how one can become lost in one's own land, about how one can give up one's land to invaders or roam about the land seeking nourishment from leaves and roots. As Jesus talked, Zebulun became quiet and serious and sat with the beggars. After a few minutes, he went into his house and returned with bread, figs, and olives for all. “You have fed our souls, young man,” he said. “Now I shall feed our bodies.”

When all had eaten and the beggars had thanked Zebulun and left, I helped Jesus with his work. We finished by sundown, and the man paid us handsomely. “How did you become so wise, young man?” Zebulun said to Jesus.

“What is wisdom?” Jesus asked. “Is it not finding what one already has?”

Jesus spoke almost constantly in this strange fashion. The more cryptic his words, the more his listeners seemed fascinated. Some came to our house to hear him, to try to understand what they believed to be his subtle wisdom, and they called him a prophet.

Others snarled and said he spoke in mere riddles and called him a trickster.

To me, his voice became like beautiful songs, and I called him a poet.

I looked deep into my breast to try to find those words within me, but could not. We were two hatchlings from a single egg, but one soon flies and the other falls to the ground. Who can explain why they differ?

*

When James was about twenty-eight years old, he left home to live in Jerusalem. I was happy to see him go. He had become increasingly ill-tempered, starting political discussions but becoming furious with anyone else's opinion. I suppose he was right to be impatient with the fatalism of most of our fellow villagers.

Our father was both pleased and worried. He'd encouraged James to be studious, and was happy that his son wanted to be close to the Temple. Joseph believed that the Temple should lead our nation, but he also said that the leaders had lost their piety. The Lord would restore things by and by, he said, but for now, we could only pay our taxes, cause no trouble, and wait for the Lord to rebuild his house.

James argued that our people suffered not from impiety but impurity. He was angry at the Romans not so much for being invaders as for being Gentiles. “They cover our land like boils,” James said. “As long as they walk our ground, we are like lepers of the spirit.”

“We are not the lepers, James,” I said. “The Temple cult collaborators whom you admire so much—they're the afflicted ones. They're the traitors.”

“Those you call collaborators,” said James, “are our only protection for our Jewish identity. Were it not for the Temple, you ignorant Galilean, you would now be wearing a tunic and carrying Tiberius' shield.”

“Is Tiberius' shield worse than the Temple's coins?” I asked. James leapt from his chair to strike me, but Joseph, for whom age had been most unkind and now walked with a cane, reached out to stop him and fell.

Jesus helped our father back to his chair. “Fools!” Jesus said. “You think you can instruct each other when you have misled yourselves! You are more interested in bickering than in seeking the truth. Perhaps our father is right. Nothing can be done if I am to rely upon you to do it.”

“Forgive me, oh my wise brother,” I said, “oh my king who thinks he knows all that is best for people. You can rely upon me. Tell me what is to be done. Just tell me. Who are you today? Amos? Isaiah?”

I'm sure I hurt Jesus' feelings, but when I was caught up in a moment of anger, the very confidence I often admired in him seemed more like sheer smugness.

“Watch me now, and you will know,” said Jesus, but then he said no more and went out into the night. When he returned the next morning, James had already left.

Chapter Six

Verse One

One of my mother's many cousins was being wed in Cana to a man who owned a sizable fig farm. This would make her the wealthiest member of the family, and the wedding was sure to be the most extravagant we had ever witnessed. Jesus and I accompanied our mother and our younger brothers and sisters to the festivities. Judas and his family also came. The wedding house was four times as large as our sorry shack, and splendidly decorated: wool drapes embroidered with dancing sheep-eyed girls, feather-pillowed chairs with yellow silk tassels, and polished oil lamps hand-tooled with stars and diamonds.

Food was abundant—spicy roasted goat; fish marinated in honey wine; date and almond-stuffed chicken; and sticky sweetmeats that I could not identify but could not eat enough of. Musicians played and children ran about twirling ribbons.

Jesus, Judas, and I filled our plates and sat outside with men who were our distant relations. Most were dressed in peasant linen like ours, but a few wore fine cotton. I had never eaten with anyone having the slightest measure of wealth. One of the cotton men lacked front teeth—knocked out by a blow, he said, from the butt of a centurion's sword when he had refused to bow. Another said that his son had joined a group that followed some militant leader by the Jordan River. He had not seen his son for three years and feared him captured and enslaved in some fashion by the Romans.

Judas pointed to a woman in the doorway. “Who's the one with the long hair and striped dress?”

“She is Mary from Magdala,” said one of the men. “She's a friend of the bridegroom's family.”

“I should have known,” said Judas. “Too beautiful to be from our family.”

A ruckus started inside. We squeezed through the door and saw the married couple's respective fathers yelling into each other's red faces, spit forming at the corners of their mouths. Their wives waved their arms around, poked out their necks, and screeched like cranes. The poor bride squatted and wept into her hands. The bridegroom paced behind her and shook his head as if he heard something rattling inside it.

Most of the guests stood in nervous silence, but some began to get excited. “That's a lie!” some yelled. “Disgraceful,” said others.

We asked our mother what was the matter. “They have run out of wine,” she said. “The families are blaming each other for ruining the ceremony.”

Judas and I found the affair hilarious, but Jesus looked grim, and I knew he was about to get involved. Before I could try to restrain him, he stepped up to the fathers. “Gentlemen,” he said, “why do you fight at this celebration? We have what we need right here.” He reached for a cup of water and offered it to the groom.

The groom stared at the cup, then looked to the bride, who nodded. He drank. Jesus continued: “Is wine not a life blood? We drink, and the blood is strengthened.” He then offered the cup to the bride, and she drank. Jesus said, “And does water not also nourish the blood? Marriage is not a joining of only the flesh, but also of the blood and of the spirit. Even as I speak, even as this water flows past your lips, your spirits are flowing together. You, woman, are the life moving through your husband's veins and you, Nathanael, are the pulse in your wife's throat. Put your hand to her neck, and feel yourself flow in a new body.”

The father of the bride was pleased. “You have given us a finer wine than any before,” he said, “and you have spoken better than the priest.” He then sent servants to nearby farms to purchase any wine they had in storage.

All the guests marveled at how Jesus had diffused the tension and put everyone back into a celebratory mood. They whispered together and glanced at him as he passed. Several people mistook me for Jesus―a common occurrence, of course―and some praised me for the speech. One woman—I can't remember her name or even if she gave it—asked me to explain it to her. “Walk with me through the orchard,” she said, “and instruct me about the ways of love and flesh.”

I was quite happy to do so, even if it meant failing to correct her error, at least for a while. As soon as we were behind the fig trees, she took me by the shoulders. Her hands were strong. She had obviously spent more of her time outside in the fields than inside in the kitchen.

“I was told you are from Nazareth,” she said. The outer points of her eyes curved upward, an effect that Egyptian and Persian whores produce with pigments. “How did a young Nazarene become so wise?” Her half-smile told me that wisdom was not all she wanted from me. At least that's what I hoped.

“What is wisdom?” she asked.
Be enigmatic,
I thought. “Is it not what you already have?”

She placed my hand upon her throat. “Tell me, what do I have?”

My hand felt scorching hot on her neck. For an instant, I saw Leah's face and could do nothing but shake with desire. I struggled to formulate a response, probably something to do with blood and life and longing, when she lifted my hand from her throat and inserted my index finger between her lips and gave it a soft bite. Nausea hit me; I thought I would piss on myself. My vision blurred, and I could not tell if the figure at the end of the row of trees was a person or one of those dream images that appear as you begin to swoon.

“Thomas!” It was Jesus, waving his arm high above his head like a stupid child. “There you are!”

The woman drew away as she looked at my brother and back at me in confusion. She might have figured out that I was the wrong man, but hadn't she just witnessed Jesus' colossal naïveté? Hadn't she seen his inability to sense what was happening, to see what
should
happen, between a man and a woman alone in an orchard? Could she really want him? She didn't stay around long enough for me to find out, for she ran through the orchard, leaving me to decide whether explaining to my brother the true ways of the flesh would do any good.

“You're missing out on all the fun,” Jesus said. “I want you to make some new friends.”

“I was making a friend.”

“Why did she run away? I'm sure she'll be back when she hears that the servants are returning soon with more wine.”

As we walked back to the house, Judas and Mary from Magdala approached. Mary said to Jesus, “Your words rang in my ears like bells. Are they from scripture?”

“The scripture we need is that which is written upon the hearts of the bride and groom,” Jesus said.

“How do we read what is on the heart?” asked Mary.

“Reading the heart is like learning to read another tongue,” said Jesus. “You must first forget and start anew, as if you were a child.”

“I must start anew,” said Mary.

“Then come, sit, and talk with us,” Jesus said.

Any other young man would have given me a signal to leave them alone, but not Jesus. I hoped he would, so I could spoil his little moment as he had mine. Instead, we conversed with Mary for the rest of the day. She was a strong woman unafraid to speak her mind. She would not bring children into a world ruined by a savage government, she said.

“I agree,” said Judas. “So we must destroy that government.”

“You dwell too much on the governments of Earth and men and kings,” said Jesus. “What about a government of the spirit?”

“I ache for that government,” said Mary. “There is no bondage worse than the oppression of the soul.”

“Then we are of one mind,” said Jesus.

Jesus and I left the conversation briefly for food, while Judas remained with Mary. I kept my eye out for the fig orchard woman, but no luck. When we returned, Mary had cut a lock of her hair and woven it into a bracelet that she tied to Judas' wrist.

On the way home, Judas said, “I am in love, and I wish to marry.”

“Blessed are you!” said Jesus. “But first we have work to do.”