Secret Magdalene (50 page)

And it is now, and for the first time, that I see how full of fear is my beloved friend. But Yeshu’s fear has made him angry. He takes Peter’s wrists in his own hands, and by so doing pulls Simon Peter’s hands from off his shoulders, and the look on his face is black. “Get you behind me, Satan, who is ever the angel of doubt. You are an offense to me for you savor not the things of the Father, but of men.”

How this strikes at Simon Peter’s heart. I would not be him for all the world. His face is as ash as Yeshu walks away. But neither for all the world would I be Yehoshua the Nazorean. Yeshu cannot allow himself to doubt what he does. To doubt is to falter, and to falter is to fail.

Y
eshu sits in Father’s inner courtyard eating Nicolas dates, each longer than a woman’s finger, with flesh as white as northern skin and taste as sweet as honey. Half asleep, I lean my head on his shoulder and watch him pick among them for the biggest and the sweetest. All around us I hear the murmur of voices talking of this and talking of that, then there comes a moment of silence, and into this silence Simon Peter inserts what he has need of saying, what he has had need of saying ever since leaving the Temple Mount.

“Yehoshua,” he begins, and in his voicing of this name there is a world of meaning, “I have tried and I have tried, but I cannot shake your words from my mind. I tell myself you do not mean what you say, that you mean something else, something I cannot grasp, nor can others.” Here, he glances round at Jacob and Simon bar Judas and at Saul of Ephraim and even at Eleazar. “But you say it too often, and I begin to think there is a terrible truth in it. I have thought one other man king, and have I not lost that man to Herod Antipas? How is it you think to tell me I will lose another to the evil ones? How can this be? I am a simple man, Yehoshua, and I live by what wits I have, and by the knife at my belt. I did not come here to have you die. I came here to make you king.”

If ever my heart went out to this Galilean, this Sicarii, this gnasher of teeth and hater of women, it goes out now. And in this moment I know as Yeshu knows that Peter will not willingly betray his “king”; therefore, all that is left to hope of him is that he will betray Yeshu unwillingly.

Yeshu says, “Simon Peter, who is it that has created the world?”

“God did.”

“And where is God?”

“You teach us he is in man.”

“I tell you that men are in God and God is in man. I tell you that there is no God but the God in man who is in all things, and who expresses himself through all things. Therefore, I ask you, who is God?”

And though he would wish to answer, Simon Peter cannot bring himself to say that if God is in all men, then God is in Simon Peter, and if God is in Simon Peter and expresses himself through Simon Peter, Simon Peter is God. Simon Peter stands before Yeshu with all this written in his eye, with his eye full of tears, and though he struggles mightily to speak, he cannot. All that he has ever known of God and the Law stops his voice at its source. With the whole of his being, Simon Peter has made Yeshu his king. But as for the teaching! The teaching is wind in a cave. Where is the black of it? Where is the white? If there are no demons, how then explain the evil that befalls good men? If there is no Yahweh to please, how then can a man shape his fate? If all men are loved, who is there left to hate? If a man cannot love his hatred, what good can he do in this world?

And I, by my gift forced to listen, hear all this roar through his mind.

In pity, Yeshu speaks for him, yet there is a further, darker reason for what he now says. “If I were Simon Peter of Capharnaum and as Simon I were to know the Father, I would then say I was the Light of the World. But as I am Yehoshua the son of Joseph, I say that I too am the Light of the World, and they that follow me shall not walk in Darkness, but in Light. And they shall have the Light of Life and know not Death, but know Glory in Life. For I know from whence I came and I know whither I go. If any man knows these things of himself, he knows all things. By this truth, you shall be set free.”

But if Simon Peter has not understood him before this, he does not understand him now.

He is torn by the shame of his ignorance, by his unthinking fear of the Law, by his unthinking need for the laws of man, which do not set him free, but cage him. I watch, and I bleed for him. So too do the tender Miryam and the proud Maacah. Even the Sons of Thunder who understand only with their hearts are here moved to pity. But Yeshu watches him as a farmer watches a planted seed. When will it sprout, and what shall it be? In his love of all men and his desire to save all men, Yeshu is cruel to this one man. Simon Peter cannot bear his pain nor can he bear our pity, but most terrible of all, he cannot bear the look of Yeshu. And he turns on his heel and is gone from Father’s courtyard rather than endure another moment of it. And I am flooded with fear. Will Simon Peter go to betray Yeshu out of this pain? If he does, all goes well. But, if all goes well, it is as a pit that opens at my feet.

Josephus arrives, and the look in my father’s eye chases all thought of Simon Peter from my mind.

“Yehoshua! They have done it. Gamaliel has gone to the prefect to ask that you be arrested, they accuse you of an attempt to seize the throne. They claim that a whole army of Zealots hides in the city, awaiting your word to rise up. They have rounded up a dozen men who will swear to this and who will condemn you most horribly. Chief among these is Nicodemus, and a certain Phabi of Nain. Do you know this one?” Father, who thinks this the blackest of news, stammers in his horror, clutches at his robe, looks from one face to another. “Have you heard me, Yehoshua? Do you know what I say to you?”

“Yes, Josephus, I know what you say to me. You have told me that what comes is called.”

Father does not understand. But then, few do.

W
hen I was very young, younger even than on the day Semne the Egyptian came to live in my house, Father tells me that my mother would walk out from the city so that she might delight in her garden, and when Hokhmah, the young and cherished wife of Josephus, did this, she would take her only child, a daughter, who could yet but toddle.

I do not remember my mother, but I remember her garden.

On the Mount of Olives, there are many olive groves, and of these, Father owns one of the largest. He owns, as well, an olive press, and it is near to this press that Mother made her garden, a beautiful thing, and walled round with stones, flawless in their fitting. In it there are carved benches on which one can sit and look out over Jerusalem. There are leafy myrtle trees that dapple the heated ground with blessed shade. There is a small cave near to which, long ago, Hokhmah would allow me to play. There is a tomb sealed with a large round rolling stone in which she lay for a time. There is a grave nearby in which her bones are buried. And there is an apple tree she planted before ever I was born. All this is tended still by certain of Father’s favored slaves.

On this day, as Mariamne, and without chaperone—in so many ways, Josephus lets loose his grip on the Law—I take Yeshu to my mother’s garden, named by her Gethsemane for its being so near my Father’s olive press. I bid him sit with me under my mother’s apple tree. Above us, the young apples are no more than swollen promises. Underfoot, the anemones make a thick red carpet. All around, the bees are busy in their work and the nation of ants tireless.

This day is ours, for on it Yeshu does not intend causing fear or anger or protest. For those who wish Yehoshua ill, this is their day to whisper in ears and to plot cunning deeds, to gather witnesses, and to send messengers running from palace to Temple to private homes throughout the city. But for Yeshu and Mariamne, it is our last day, and it seems we are content to sit, knowing that the other is close by. I push from my mind that which happens or does not happen in the city at our feet…Does Simon Peter do what is needed of him? Does he make his way through the streets of the Upper City seeking the home of Gamaliel? Does he fit his body into the shadows near to the great house of the high priest Caiaphas? Gradually I feel a voice rise up within me; it is not one of those that came in youth with Salome, and it is not the Loud Voice. This voice is mine, it is the voice of Mariamne, and what she would say is in her heart to say. “As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.”

For my brazenness, I bury my face in the brown cloth of my skirts. But through the heat of my rosy shame, I feel Yeshu’s touch on my hair, hear his voice in reply. “You are the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys. As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.”

I cannot look up at him. Does he smile at me? Does he laugh? Does he know the Song of Solomon as I know it, as Tata taught it to me at her knee? Whatever it is that he does, his voice above me speaks on, “Who is she that looks forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?’’ I feel his hand on my heated cheek, know that he encourages me to raise my head. “Who is this that comes up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved?”

I cannot help myself, I must look into his face, and what I see there is as tender as the grapes at harvest, and he is my beloved. He is the husband I will never have and the lover I have never known. And there stirs in me something I have never felt, as if a heated thing slept in me and now uncoils itself.

“I raised her up under the apple tree, where her mother brought her forth. Set a seal upon your heart, beloved; set a seal upon your arm, for love is as strong as death.”

And I know that Yeshu loves me as I love him, and I kiss his lips. By all the moments of eternity, how I love him, and in this last place I open to him; I give myself to him as my beloved gives himself to me.

W
e sit in Father’s innermost chambers, Jude and I, and try as we might, it is impossible not to glance at Yeshu now and again. He does not eat and he does not drink. His eyes stare out at nothing we can see.

It is certain. Simon Peter has not and will not betray Yeshu.

Jude, in the sly way of Salome, has learned that if Simon Peter thought John the Baptizer king, he is convinced of Yehoshua the Nazorean. Yeshu is not only his king but his master and his friend as well. How could he be other than a friend to Yeshu? Therefore, we can no longer hope our fisherman will act as prophecy dictates. I stare at Father’s floor of agate and lazuli. I think, could he have only known how much better a friend he might have been! But how subtle an idea it is, to lay up heaven’s gold, one must steal it here below. Such things are too much for Simon Peter the fisherman. But do I understand it any better? Have I, even once, imagined myself accepting this terrible shame for Yeshu’s sake? With this last, I am shot through with the sting of nerves. I cast around for some other. Could the tax collector, Zaccheus, be tempted for money? Or yet again one of the scribes from Lydda be duped into action? Who is strong enough to do this thing? For make no mistake, there would be no end to the suffering such a one would endure.