Secret Magdalene (22 page)

Hearing this I think a madness comes over him, more than any madness he has known before. I know a madness has come over Salome. By the times and by the stars, she claims that these, and others like them, would rise up, and by rising, God will make of John a king. This is not what Seth taught us of John. This is not what John taught us of himself in the quiet times. What is it that John does now? Of what god does he speak? I know the people who hear him assume it is Yahweh, but is it?

On this day, Tata would have me wash Eio who smells of camel dung. This is not surprising, as she has rolled in camel dung. So I too am on the banks of the Jordan, though Eio and I stand away from the dozens or so gathered around John and Simon Magus and Helena of Tyre. I pour river water over Eio’s back from one of Tata’s water jugs, scrub her reeking hide with salty mud and rough barley stems. Within the space of no time we are soaked to the skin, she loudly complaining, me wringing out the sleeves of my tunic. John, who has been shouting, now shouts louder to be heard over Eio.

“Near at hand is the end of the world! And the Last Days! And the judgment of immortal God for such as are both called and chosen! First inexorable wrath shall fall on Rome—”

I am not listening, but I am looking. Not at John and not at Eio but out over the stinking sea. And there comes a something, a very dot of a something, up from the south. I squint but still I cannot make it out. Is it an animal, one so fierce it would show itself before men in the heat of the day? Or one so ill it does not care? Is it a man? I am curious, a bit puzzled. No one walks the shores of the dead waters, and never as this one seems to, coming up out of the wastes that lie to the south of us. For a month, there have been no Roman patrol boats, and only a few small ships bearing Arabian spices. What or who could this be?

I stand straight and shade my eyes. Eio, no longer watered and scrubbed, no longer brays, but walks off to sample muck and river reeds. To my left, John yells about himself as “a voice of he who cries in the wilderness,” and with that part of my mind that hears him, I think this last a thrilling thing to say—Isaiah is a book of many thrilling things—but with the rest of my mind, I am intent on the speck. And of a sudden, I know; of a sudden I see—it is Yehoshua! By the goddess, Yeshu has come back!

Dripping with watered camel dung, I would run toward him, but somehow I know I must not. I would shout out that he has come, but somehow I do not. There is that within me that sees Yeshu is changed, that he comes as he would come, without fuss. And there is more than this. Whatever it is he brings, goes before him as clouds before a storm, as heat before a fire. Even if I would look away, I could not look away.

It is now that John, in search of his next flight of winged words glances beyond his flock. He too sees who comes. He starts. He steps forward. He points. “Behold!” he shouts as he points, “Behold the Lamb of God!”

Each man and each woman turn as one, every eye seeking this lamb, and no eye faster than Simon the Magician’s. I cannot stop myself, I touch the mind of Salome. How does she bear to hear her beloved greet Yehoshua in this way? What can it mean? She does not know what it means, and not knowing cuts her down to the bone.

Yeshu is by now less than a stadion away, his face shining as the morning sun over Jerusalem, shining as Tata told me my face shone when I awoke from Glory. If I did not know better, I should think him somehow larger. We all stand in perfect silence as Yeshu walks toward us. We all of us watch every move he makes, even Eio who has lifted her head from the river reeds. She has turned where she stands so that she faces him, silently dripping, silently chewing.

He is closer now, and closer, and as he comes, the light that shines forth from his face is more than the sun. It is the light of all the stars that Joor of Thebes has taught me are also suns, also worlds. Yeshu looks at me—at
me
! There is no movement of his mouth, no movement of his eyes, yet I know that he smiles in his heart to see me. As for my heart, it beats as the heart of a bird, so fast I might fly away. I do not question how this has come to be, this feeling for Yeshu, this joy. It is enough to feel it.

Yeshu turns his attention from me to John of the River. “Come, cousin,” he says, and for once his voice rings from riverbank to riverbank, and from cliff to cliff. “Bathe with me in your river. We will wash away the dust of the wilderness.” And with that, Yeshu walks past John and past Simon Magus and past the astonished people, and straight into the water. He does not stop until it reaches his chin. A moment later, John laughs, throws up his arms, and plunges in.

I have never seen a more surprised people than those who have come to hear John. I do not think a single one of them has ever heard a prophet laugh, nor wishes to. But oh, he laughs now! He and his cousin Yeshu’a laugh in the water as if they were yet boys, and I stand on the bank of the river and I am as one with Salome. Her envy is every bit as green as mine.

John is louder than ever in his enthusiasm. Up to his chin in the water of the river, his gray beard floating before him as a child’s feeding cloth would float, his loincloth coming loose under the water, he holds on to his small bit of goatskin, and he shouts, “Where have you been, Yeshu’a, son of my mother’s sister? What have you done with yourself, Yehoshua of the Nazorean? You come as one who has had his fill of strange foods, as one whose eyes have been opened with strange sights. What have you eaten? What have you seen?”

Yeshu is splashing near John and the dust of his wandering comes free from his person, coats the skin of the water. I see him swallow river water, but it only makes him laugh. Yeshu is full of laughter; there seems nothing else in him but laughter, laughter loud as John’s laugh, as loud as thunder. “You would hear, John? You would know? I shall tell you! I saw the Spirit descend like the whitest of doves with wings as white as linen, wings as white as clouds! I felt it land full on my head! On my head, John! And in that moment I ate of the Spirit as I would eat fistfuls of honey. I feasted on meaning. You would behold? You would see the Lamb of God?” Yeshu spins in the water, and shining drops of the Jordan shoot from his red hair and from his red beard as stars shoot in the sky. “We are all the Lamb of God!”

Shouting as John shouts, and all the while spitting out water, Yeshu in his great joyous laughter looks toward the shore where the people stand aghast and agape, each one listening to the ravings of this second wild man. But this one they think spouts nonsense. Yeshu knows they think this, and it makes him laugh all the louder. “Hear me, Lambs of God! There is not one of you to whom God would not say you are my beloved sons and my beloved daughters and I am well pleased with you!”

Simon Magus gapes with the rest. Does he hear nonsense? I do not know. All I know is that I do not hear Yeshu spout nonsense. I have heard such words before. I hear it when the Voice speaks, when Glory rang in my head like a great bell. I look at Yeshu in his splashing and his shouting and his stars of bright water and his delightful foolishness, and if I could stretch my skin to smile wider, I would.

Yeshu waves his arms, he kicks his legs; sheets of bright water spray those who stand too near. As John pointed at him, he points at me. “And there stands a true Lamb of God. There is my friend whom all call John the Less! Come, friend! Be baptized by the Baptizer. As you seem already half drowned, come! Drown yourself further!”

All stare now at John the Less, at Eio washed clean of dung—at
me.
My smile turns down into horror. Bathe with them? Jump into the river with them? My eye catches the eye of John. He knows my horror. I catch the eye of Salome. She and Helena know my horror more than John. If I should become wet as John, as Yeshu, all should see what I am. If John’s loincloth threatens to drift away from his maleness, my tunic would cling to me, would show the female body it forever hides. Mariamne would be exposed. Yeshu is splashing water over his head. His hair and his beard run with the Jordan. His laughing mouth is full of the Jordan. Still he calls, “What keeps you, John? Jump in!”

At that, I simply spin on my naked heel and run. Not as I ran weeks before, but it is fast enough and close to blind enough. I run for the safety of Tata’s tent. And then I remember Eio. By the moon, I cannot leave Eio behind! So I turn back, grab her by her halter lead, and once again run away. Eio is more than good to me; for once she trots along as fast as I need her to.

The laughter as we leave is as the buzzing of bees.

It makes me run all the faster.

Tata fusses from place to place, and I watch Addai as he watches her. How should it feel to have a man gaze on me as Addai gazes on Tata? I have told them what has happened at the river, that Yeshu has come back a changed man. Tata says she will wait and see this for herself. Rhoda, who knows who I am and knows my true name, offers me food as if I were male. I take it as if I were male. By now, this has simply become what is. I sit with Addai until the sun goes down, until Tata is forced to shoo me away, and then I am off to my own tent, moving carefully so that I might not be seen. I would not be seen by anyone, anyone at all.

I lie in my bed and I am quiet, but I am not asleep. Outside the night sings and things of the dark I know to be far away seem close. Through the skins of my tent and of hers, I hear Salome’s breathing and know that she dreams and that she is restless in her dreaming. I do not know what troubles her, but I know what troubles me. I am uneasy because of Yeshu. I am uneasy because I do not yet understand what it is I feel, or if I will come to understand it. I have not loved Salome’s love for John of the River, nor have I been best pleased to see her change for him. Is this then what will happen to me? Is this the nature of women? If such a thing can come over Salome, it can come over me who am not half so willful or half as clever.

Out of the hearing of Addai, I earlier had asked Tata if what I feel is what any woman feels? In this thing, I asked her, am I more Mariamne than John the Less?

Asking, I could already hear her answer. She would say that men and women cannot help themselves; there is nothing they do that is not, at bottom, sexual. Tata will remind me that any
zonah
with a cup of sense knows this.

But Tata surprised me. Turning from her work, which was mixing up a hideous potage of medicines and aromatics, she stopped stirring and stared at me. “Are you more Mariamne than John, you ask me this?” The smell of whatever she stirred was strong enough to water my eyes, her glare strong enough to water my knees, yet I nodded, yes, I ask it.

This was her answer: “Just as Salome is not more Salome than Simon, you are not more Mariamne than John. You are both as singular as the moon. As John of the River said, you are as men, for there are not many women who can rise above their sex.”

“I have a man’s mind, Tata,” I said half in hope and half in despair, “but is my body weak and foolish and vain and driven by the lusts of the flesh?”

Tata put down her spoon. She flicked a speck of muck from her hand. Her eyes slid to the left, then to the right. “There is no man to hear me, so I can say to you, Mariamne, in whose throat lives the Loud Voice, rare as riches in my mother’s house, rare as pity in the house of my father, do you not
know
who you are? Have you not understood? You are free of your sex. Though you might feel the sexual desire of the female, yet you are free. This is a great thing! This is a miraculous thing! Rejoice in this, Mariamne. Treasure your freedom.” Tata took up her spoon once more, once more began stirring. “Not by my will was this done, but by yours. In Salome, it has been an effort of will that astounds me. In you, it seems a suppleness of mind. This too astounds me. Now go away before I make a mess of this. As you would be a philosopher, on the life of the rarest Addai, I would be a contriver of medicines.”

I lie here now and think of what Tata has said. I ask myself, is Yeshu as most men? Does he think as most men think? He too is as singular as the moon. But in this one thing on which all other things rest, is he as multiple as the ant? I recall the treatment of his mother, the pallid Mary. By this I would answer yes. I recall his treatment of his sisters. By this, I would answer no. If I should ever show him the truth of who I am…But he knows Torah. In Deuteronomy it says, “A woman shall not wear any garment that pertains to a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for whosoever does these things is an abomination in the sight of the Lord your God.” I am an abomination in the sight of his God. I would not be an abomination in his eyes.

There is movement outside my tent. I cease in my unspoken chatter, and listen. It comes again.
Yea Balaam!
Is it a wolf? I reach for my knife. I sit up, fling aside the flap of my tent, and there, looming out of the black of the night, is Yeshu. I am too dumbstruck to think of a single word. Not so Yeshu. He would laugh right out, but I see him check his laughter for fear of waking other than me.

He glances over at Salome’s tent. “He is asleep,” he says. “Put down your knife and come away before we wake him. I have need to talk with you.”

On the instant, I drop my tent flap. I struggle out of my sleeping clothes and into the usual robe of John the Less. I find John’s toga and his head cloth, and when I am thoroughly clothed in all these things, I come away.

The moon seems to me a coin. It sits like a coin in a purse of stars, and on it is stamped the face of a man. King or emperor or god or even messiah, I cannot tell. But the face has eyes, and the eyes look down on Yeshu and on me, who have arrived by their curious light at my secret place. I see Yeshu has already busied himself in the sand and the rock of my
nahal.
He has made a small fire. He has made a place to rest himself during the night.

I sit with my knees tucked against my chest and my chin on my knees. My hands are clasped round my ankles. I am alight with expectation. What does he think to share with me?

Yeshu reclines in the sand across the fire from me. His left leg is stretched out before him, his right leg drawn up. With a casualness I have seen before, he scratches. By Horus, we are certainly males here. We are equals in gender. I find I would not change this. Not for all the lusts of the male, or the female. But as I look at him, lit from below by fire and from above by the face on the coin of the moon, I see a whole man lit with more than these feeble things. I see Glory come from the inside.