According to Mary Magdalene (10 page)

II

I
t was the time after the great rains, the month in the spring when water leaped from hidden mountain springs and the land turned green. Mary had walked through the new grass growing in the meadows where thousands of sun-red anemones were in flower.

At the foot of the mountain, the ground was covered with golden crocuses. As she stopped to draw in their faint scent and harsh saffron, she could hear the streams racing down the mountain, and a little higher up the quiet murmur from the pools where the water rested before going on its way to the villages. The wells there would be filled and the people overjoyed.

She climbed a steep goat track that was so familiar, although she had never before seen any in these areas. Everything was familiar, the transparent air blue and quiet, the long lines of birds calling from the sky on their journey north, and the resident birds singing in the tops of the terebinths.

Setonius was following her like a shadow. He nodded, pleased when they came to the ledge by the pool. “Here below the cliff, you can't be seen from the mountains. Nor from the road, where the high trees hide you.”

He was afraid of Jewish rebels. But Mary said calmly that it was many years since the warriors of Judas the Galilean had been active in the mountains.

“You needn't worry.”

“I'll be back in few hours, and you have bread and cheese in your basket.”

Mary listened to his footsteps disappearing down the track and was glad of her solitude. She cupped her hands and slaked her thirst, took off her mantle and headcloth and lowered her whole head into the pool.

She washed her neck and arms and combed her fingers through her long flowing hair, then finally leaned back against the cliff wall to let the sun dry her.

Pink petals rained down on to her wet hair. She looked up and smiled at the young almond tree that had struck root in a crevice in the rock.

The tree was also familiar.

But there was pain in all this recognition. Her mother's voice—”For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land….”

They had ridden out of Tiberias early that morning, she and the gardener in their gray tunics and worn cloaks, over the backs of the donkeys great sacks of prickly twigs and dry branches. That had been Euphrosyne's idea.

“No sight is more common along the roads than an old man and an old woman collecting brushwood,” she had said.

She was right, as usual. No one had taken any notice of them, neither the Roman horsemen, nor the hurrying walkers on their important errands, nor the merchants in wagons drawn by donkeys on their way south to Alexandria or north to Damascus.

A good while before midday, they had found the turning and reached as far as Naomi's village. Mary had carried out her assignment and, unnoticed, had managed to hand over Euphrosyne's money bag to the poor peasant wife.

It had been at the meeting with Naomi that her mother's voice had caught up with her.

On the way home, Mary's donkey had injured a leg and begun to limp. Setonius had examined the creature but had been unable to do anything. That was when Mary had her idea.

“I'll stay here and wait in the mountains while you ride home and fetch another donkey.”

Setonius had been reluctant and said he could walk beside the injured donkey.

As Mary knew him so well, she had finally said that in spring she had always longed back to her childhood mountains and would really like to rest for a while by a stream.

She was now sitting there with her hands open to catch the petals raining down over her. She decided not to allow old memories to take shape, but would just remember with her eyes, ears, skin, and nose. Birdsong helped her, the water in the pool swirling around and splashing dew-fine moisture onto her face. For a long spell, she watched the quick lizards darting about on the cliff wall. She caught a scent, familiar and long forgotten.

Then she remembered that this was the smell of terebinths in the spring, and she thought it strange that she could have forgotten such an individual aroma.

She could hear the wild dogs barking up on the mountain, also a familiar sound.

Then, very slowly, she became aware that she was no longer alone. She turned her head and glanced over her shoulder. A man was standing there, smiling at her. She smiled back.

“I didn't frighten you?” he said.

She shook her head.

He spoke in Aramaic with a Galilean accent. He was Jewish, she could tell that, not only by the tufts on his cloak but also from the long curly hair and the gravity emanating from him. He was young, his smile like a child's. An innocent, she thought.

“I am Jesus of Nazareth,” he said. “I have been to see my
mother and am taking a shortcut across the mountain back to Capernaum.”

“Are you a fisherman?”

“You could perhaps say so,” he said, smiling again, a smile so light and swift she might have been mistaken if the light had not remained in the air between them.

“I am Mary from Magdala,” she said. “But I live in Tiberias with my stepmother, and I have been carrying out an errand for her in a village near here.”

“You are a Jewess.”

It was a statement. She nodded and he went on. “Your eyes are innocent.”

She pushed her fair hair off her face and met his eyes. “The blue color is deceptive,” she said. “I have been a whore in a house of pleasure in the City of Sin. I was recently the Roman tribune's concubine. He died, so I was free and able to make an excursion into the mountains.”

Then she bit her tongue, her head whirling. Why did I say that? He will want to go now.

But he did not leave. He came closer and sat down on the rock beside her.

“Don't you understand? I am unclean,” she said, a sharper note in her voice.

He threw back his head and laughed. “Your eyes don't deceive me. You're as innocent as a child.”

Surprised, Mary told him that was just what she had thought about him the first moment she had seen him, that he was like a child.

He laughed again, took a bowl out of his knapsack, filled it with water and drank. She looked over the brim of the bowl straight into his eyes, light, transparent. Gray?

Then he put the bowl down and, astonishingly, said, “Why do people harbor so much guilt?”

“Probably because they are so wicked. And that in its turn is probably because they are nearly always afraid.”

He said nothing, as if waiting for her to go on.

In the end, he said, “But you're not afraid?”

“That's perhaps because the worst has already happened to me.”

The silence was longer this time.

He did not take his eyes off her, and she thought she had never met such a serious person before. There was no way to twist words into simple truths with him. Every nuance was weighed up.

“I think people are most afraid of being rejected,” she said, her gaze unwavering. “I have never belonged….”

“Not even as a child?”

“No. If you have yellow hair and blue eyes in a small Jewish village…”

She was suddenly miserable, an old, long-forgotten grief paining her and her voice gruff as she went on. “I was unclean even as a five-year-old.”

He did not console her. She felt she had to tell him the whole story, but at that moment she was seized with a strange certainty. He already knows. He feels it all.

It was unreasonable, but she was quite sure.

She suddenly felt cold and pulling her mantle around her, she said, “Tell me about yourself.”

“I haven't much to tell. But nor have I ever felt I belonged.”

“But you are Jewish!”

“Yes, I had the very best conditions. I was the eldest son and was born to take over my father's workshop. He was a carpenter, an ordinary man whom I never really knew. And yet he spent a lot of time on me. He taught me his skills, step by step. And I learned the scriptures from him. The Torah filled my ears. I know it all, but the beautiful words have never really fastened in my heart.”

“And your mother? What was she like?”

“She is strong. But there was always an unease in her eyes when she looked at me. She didn't like me being alone, that I didn't play like other children, but went about on my own.”

His smile was slightly melancholy as he went on.

“When Father died, I wasn't able to grieve as I should have done. Mother and my brothers and sisters reproached me, but I overcame that with no harm. Instead of doing my duty as the eldest son, I asked my brother to take over the workshop. I said goodbye to my family and started wandering south toward the deserts.”

“That was brave.”

“I didn't see it like that. I was obeying the voice of God, which had always spoken to me. I didn't realize it was God's voice selecting me out, or that others couldn't hear him—until the cold nights beneath the stars in the deserts of Judea. That was why they needed so many laws. I've just been back home, trying to get Mother to understand.”

“Did she?”

“She said she'd always known I was a strange child and that I had to go my own way. But she's worried about me, that I might go mad.”

Mary dared a question. “How can you be so sure it's the voice of God you hear?”

“Because I know it so well.”

How childish he is, she thought.

“Yes,” he said. “You've no idea how much is required of you to be like a child.”

“I probably have some idea,” she said, and she put her hand in his.

The simple touch raced through her body, and her desire lit up in her eyes. She took his head between her hands, held it quite still, and kissed his mouth. And what had to happen happened; her desire lit his.

“I have never been close to a woman,” he said.

“Come,” she said.

At first she had to help him, teach his hands to find her body. But soon, gently and pliably, they were able to seek each other and find what they were seeking.

Afterward, he rolled over on to his back and laughed. “I hadn't understood this.”

“That there is so much joy in your body?”

He closed his eyes and did not answer.

Mary stroked his face. She could see he was older than she had thought, and weary. He fell asleep, but Mary soon had to wake him.

“I'm sorry, but we can't sleep together here. My servant will soon be back to fetch me.”

Then she remembered the basket of fresh bread and soft cheese, and she said they were probably hungry.

They exchanged few words as they broke bread and drank of the fresh water from the stream. When they heard Setonius' donkeys clattering along the goat track up the mountain, he said, “I can be found in Capernaum.”

She replied as she had to. “I shall come.”

The next moment he had disappeared.

M
ary did not get to bed in Antioch until the morning, and yet she was rested and full of light when she woke.

But when she was eating, her head cleared. She would have to watch her tongue when she met the apostles and their scribe.

It turned out to be easier than she had thought. Simon Peter began with a question: “I was wondering about what you said when you met Jesus on your excursion to Galilee. Did your stepmother allow a young girl to wander in the mountains on her own?”

Mary could afford a broad smile. Now she knew where she had him.

“Of course not. I had a servant with me, our old gardener. And we were on donkeys. As we approached the steepest mountain, we heard a stream and decided to ride on up for a while, rest by the water, wash off the dust and have something to eat. We had bread and cheese in a basket. While I was sitting there by the stream, he appeared, a young man walking from his parents' home in Nazareth to Capernaum. He sat down beside me and we started talking.”

Simon interrupted her. “He drove the demons out of you.”

“Did Jesus say that?”

Paul noticed her flush of anger again. Simon's eyes wavered
as he replied. “I don't know. That was what was generally said among the disciples.”

Mary turned to Paul. “You see how the myths already flourished even when he was alive. I was not possessed by any demons. I was happy because of the spring, the flowering fields.”

Then she went on.

“We talked about the ordinary things people talk about when they meet. Last night, I tried to remember what we said. It struck me that it was the only time I ever heard him talk about himself, about growing up in Nazareth, and his family.”

She noticed Paul signalling to his young scribe, and continued on.

“He said that even as a child he felt he was a stranger in the village. He had been different, a loner. His mother had worried about him and it wasn't until his father died and he left his family to wander in the deserts of Judea that he understood in what way he was different from others. The others never heard God speak.

“He said he had always pondered over why people needed so many laws and regulations. Now he had understood.

“You know how often he was critical of the scribes and the men of the law. The last time I met him, in a vision after his death, he said it again. ‘Write no laws on what I have revealed to you.”

Peter was uneasy now, and Paul raised objections. “You can't build new teaching without any structure or system.”

“Maybe so,” said Mary, hesitating, but then continuing her line of thought. “But we turn all reality into a system, even what is invisible. And as we are Jews, it becomes a Jewish system, based on laws and the hundreds of interpretations of them.”

“Write that down,” Paul said to Marcus.

Then Simon took over. “Why did he leave his family?”

“He said he was obeying the voice of God.”

“What did he do in the desert of Judea?”

“I don't know. He was taciturn when he told me.”

“And you asked no questions?”

“I asked him how he could be so sure it was God speaking in him. He smiled and said he had always known it.”

“You told him about yourself?”

“I thought I would tell him about my father being crucified and my family killed by Roman soldiers. Then an incredible thing happened. I met his eyes and knew that he knew.”

She went on, herself amazed at the memory. “At that moment I just accepted it, and never gave a thought to how strange it was.

“Then a little later, Setonius, my servant, interrupted our conversation by the stream. We had to return to Tiberias before darkness fell. When Jesus said farewell, he asked me to come and see him in Capernaum. Then we parted.”

“You didn't know who he was?”

“No. He said he was Jesus of Nazareth. And I had never heard of the new prophet.”