Secret Magdalene (6 page)

We use our word stones. We talk as we have always talked, long and loudly. But we do not laugh as we used to, we are not indulged. We do not know where home is, or what will become of us. Still, I ask myself, is the life of a prophet to be preferred to the life of a wife and mother? Is the life of a poor male to be preferred to the life of a rich female? This is my answer: it is worth it. Though we are afraid and though we plan for the day we will run away, I have never known such freedom.

At supper this evening, one wild man has bitten off the ear of another wild man. Salome has leapt from her seat. Just as have I. Just as has every man here, some fierce in support of one wild man, some in support of the other, some in support of neither. Names are shouted out: “Athronges!” “Simon!” “Judas of Galilee!” “John the Baptizer!” And names are shouted down. There are cries of outrage and threat. The din in the dining hall brings more men running.
Yea Balaam!
I cannot believe I see this! I cannot believe its cause: the man who has lost an ear calls someone named Judah the Priest messiah; the man who has bitten it off calls someone named Zakkai the Hidden messiah. And now others name their messiahs. And all at the top of their voices and all at the ends of their fists.

Salome has darted forward the better to view this growing mayhem. I too would dart forward but am halted in my tracks. Seth has come from somewhere and grips my belt so that I get nowhere. Beside us, Addai, who was also not here a moment ago, pushes by in quick pursuit of Salome. He catches her just as she is climbing up on a bench between a man who calls down curses on one and all and another who shakes his fist. Salome too has her belt gripped and is pulled backward and away from the gathering melee. In moments, we are pushed from this place and out into the clear night air, as more and more men rush into the dining hall.

Though we moan to miss the madness, Addai chases us into our tent. He makes a small fire so that we might be warm and we might see. Seth does nothing but stand by the tent opening and watch him. Salome does nothing but grumble, but I watch Seth. How is it that he is near by night and by day, and yet we scarcely know it?

Nothing is said as Addai builds his fire, but when it is done, he looks to Seth, asking, “How long before our people erupt? This year? Next year?”

Shrugging, Seth seats himself. “These are the End Times, and if they are not, more and more men believe them to be so.”

I ask, “Do you believe them to be so?”

Seth turns his regard full on me. “The Queen Bee speaks.” Why does he call me Queen Bee? What does it mean? “And I answer her like this, the Poor claim the days are come when Good and Evil contend one with the other. They say it is now that Evil will bring the greatest misery to humanity, and more than misery to the Chosen of God. It is the time foretold for the coming of the Messiah.”

I ask again, “Do you believe this?”

“God has chosen and set aside one nation of all the nations of the world, neither numerous nor powerful, to be the recipient of his laws—”

“The Jews,” sighs the Samaritan Addai.

“And by observing them, to offer an example, a witnessing to all nations.” Seth raises sparks with a stick. “But it seems a whole people cannot be expected to carry such a burden, so it has come down to an elect to provide this obedience. But of these elect, there begin to be those who are zealous and who look for a messiah in the form of a warrior king. In this they prepare for a war between Light and Dark.”

Addai raises a brow. “This night they prepare by practicing on one another.”

Seth allows himself a smile. I, who have never seen him smile, am dazzled. “But we are the Nazorean, and we do not prepare for a war between Light and Dark. Nor do we look for a warrior king.”

Salome plants her feet in the dirt before Seth. “Tell me what you mean by Nazorean or I will go mad.”

I did not think Seth of Damascus could laugh! When he is finished laughing, he says, “I would not see you mad, Simon who is called by Addai ‘magician.’ Therefore, calm yourself, and listen. The people of Israel became one under the messenger Moses. But after the long and terrible exile in Babylon there was sent to the Israelites not one, but two further messengers: first Ezra, then Issa.”

I say, “Issa? The Loud Voice said, ‘Did Issa not walk with me?’”

If Seth has heard me, he makes no sign, but continues, “Ezra chose certain writings and said these were the holiest writings, the only writings. These were Torah. Ezra’s followers became the Jews. But Issa did not believe in the choices Ezra made, and those who thought as Issa thought became the Nazoreans. It is the belief of the Nazorean that it is they who are the true Israelites.”

Salome, an Egyptian, is amused, but I as a Jew am shocked. “You mean Father and Nicodemus and Caiaphas are Jews, but to you this is not the same thing as true Israelites?”

Seth answers me most solemnly. “Ezra was then as the high priest Caiaphas is today. Caiaphas takes his power from Rome; Ezra took his from Persia. It was Persia, not God, who walked behind Ezra. Do you think the people of Moses would smile on Persia, and now on Rome? Would they see who serves the Temple and be content?”

Salome laughs. “I would not tell the father of Mariamne such a thing.”

“But he
is
told,” interrupts Addai, “as is the high priest, as are the Pharisee and the Sadducee. Many among the Nazorean have grown weary in their telling and become impatient,
more
than impatient. They begin to think of themselves as the soldiers of god. There are only a few of us left who do not see blood as an answer.”

I stiffen in understanding. “The daggermen. These are Nazorean?”

Seth moves away from the fire. I can no longer see his face as he speaks from the shadows. “The Queen Bee asks if they are Nazorean? Only insofar as they attach themselves to the teaching and teachers of Issa. John calls these men Zealots for the Law and hopes to contain them.”

I wonder, but do not ask, who this John is. There are so many called John, myself among them. I find a small voice to ask only this, “Why do you call me Queen Bee?”

“For the Voice within you. The ancients called such a one as you Pure Mother Bee, as they called all the queens who ruled in the age of the matriarchs.” I would that I had not asked, for I clearly see that Salome hurts not also to be called Queen Bee. Seth speaks on, “I say the Sicarii are fools and I fear them, for by their bloodletting they would destroy us all, Jews as well as Nazorean. Because of this, we of the inner Nazorean keep to ourselves as much as possible. As for what those who have broken with us call themselves, most are now the Poor. Or they are the men of Issa, Issa-ene or Essene. They await the Anointed One.”

“But the Nazorean do not await a warrior king?”

“The true Nazoreans look for the coming perfection of man, a transformation of being the like of which has never been seen on this earth.”

I am dazzled by the thought of such a messiah. A perfection of man? I am suddenly struck by what the Loud Voice said, I shall make myself known to thee through the one who appears as a Shepherd among Lambs, through the one who stands forth as a Lion. Has a voice in me prophesied the Messiah of the Nazorean? Frantic that somehow I have something to do with such things, I signal Salome, but she does not see me. “This Issa,” she says, “I would hear of him.”

Seth answers her, “I will tell you what is said of Issa, to show what men make of a man who confounds them. There are those who claim Issa was born of a virgin called Mari, that he was not human but divine, that he performed miracles and raised the dead, that he was crucified, taken up into heaven, and that he will come again as the Messiah.”

Salome shouts with laughter. “But as you are true Israelites and not pagans, surely you cannot believe this?”

“Issa was a son of man. As we all are. Is this not miracle enough?” Seth then turns his attention to Addai, saying, “It is not long before we must leave this place.”

Later this night, as we prepare our meager blankets for sleep, and close the dusty flap to our small tent, I whisper to Salome, “It is not long before we too must leave this place.”

A large caravan is in from the north. It is said this caravan will be among us for three days and three nights, and then will continue on to Gaza, the gateway to Egypt. Gaza is a Greek city, which means that though it is full of Jews, it is also full of everyone else. It is a cosmopolis, a universal city. In it live poets and philosophers and satirists. This is all we need to hear. When the caravan leaves, Salome and I mean to go with it.

On the second evening of the caravan’s arrival, a strange cold makes the air seem solid, as if we could step off the cliffs over the Sea of Salt and walk away on cold alone. In the third hour of the night, Salome and I sneak as close as we dare to the fire of the camel drivers and the muleteers. These are camped outside the west wall and the hubbub they make is more than the entire wilderness at its noisiest. We shelter behind the bulk of a sleeping camel, huddle against its flank for warmth.
Yea Balaam,
but camels stink! We peek over its skinny curve of a neck. There is more than one fire, for this is a large caravan. There must be five or six fires. There are women and children around one, what seem fairly wealthy merchants around another, simple travelers around a farther two, and off near the cliffs there are three tents that stand by themselves. There are camels with
hoodahs
on their backs, the largest of which is shrouded all in black. We should certainly spy on these first, all three tents look finer than any Father has, and as for
hoodahs
—
Eloi! Eloi! Eloi!
What do I see! The daggerman who stabbed the Temple priest is mere cubits from our camel!

Like a great tree, he stands planted before the sparking campfire, the skin of his thick legs and his thick arms and his thick neck and his fat cheeks above his black beard as ruddy as a roasted calf in the fire glow. Before our eyes, he boasts of his killing. He describes the stabbing of Ben Azar to a circle of seated men, all leaning toward him. We hear the man’s name: Simon of Capharnaum. In a voice thick with the unpleasant accent of Galilee, Simon of Capharnaum shouts out that he has killed other priests in other towns. He proclaims that he has killed Roman soldiers. He has burned whole villages of those he thought loved Rome. He killed a man in Jericho because the man was a Jew and would not be cut. He swears he would kill any Jew who polluted the Law, any Roman who suppressed those who kept it. “I have a brother and a son and a dozen cousins who would do as I do!” So shouting, he pulls a man to his feet, a man who looks nothing like him and is a full head shorter. This man glances round as if someone would kill him, and is speechless at the prospect. “This is my brother Andrew, a man every bit as righteous as myself!” Simon shoves his brother back down again, and here he stops his shouting long enough to glare about him. There comes a dreadful moment when I think he can see us behind our camel. No one moves; no one dares say a word as he tells them that the Lord will bring about the Last Days and that is certain, but he will not bring it with plague or with flood, no! He will bring it through the righteous anger of his Sons of Light. He tells them that he, Simon of Capharnaum, does God’s work, and that he waits for a man, a very king! “And then! And then! ‘We will make the people drunk with the Lord’s fury!’”

I see men listening who have long argued that no man can act for God. I see the ear biter who has forever sworn that the Anointed One has already come and he is Zakkai the Hidden. I see the man with one ear who claims he is a certain Judah the Priest. I see men who love John the Baptizer. Any moment, one or all of these men will surely leap up and run to Jerusalem in a night so that they might smite a Roman.

Now he is telling them what occurs up in Jerusalem, and as I listen my throat closes in fear. Simon and his brother are not only stabbing priests in the Temple, they are breaking into the houses of the rich. Simon swears that soon they will not just plunder the rich, they will kill them, and he laughs that the priests and the Sanhedrin and Rome stand helpless. I am frantic with concern for Father. Simon promises the robbing and the killing will go on until all righteous men will take heart, and arise. Then they will drive Rome and men like my father, children of the pit, from the land. The men who hear him snarl and shout out curses. Their hatred thickens the air until I cannot breathe.

I reach into the mind of this Galilean daggerman. It is as hot as his breath and as red as his rage. But to steal a man’s life and call it good? Father taught us no such thing. Our reading of philosophy has taught us no such thing. My heart tells me no such thing. Are these men right and all others wrong? If they do God’s work, has God gone mad?

I feel as if my illness is with me again, I feel as if I will once more sink into the heated dark where the shouts of this world become whispers.

“Come away,” Salome hisses. “We will wait for the next caravan.”

In that instant, a hand comes down on my shoulder, and I see an arm go round Salome’s slender neck. “What is this!” shouts the owner of the arm. The hand on my shoulder is a vise, its grip so strong I think my bone must break under it. We are shoved forward, out into the light of the campfire.

And all we can see is Simon of Capharnaum.

His hand is instantly under his mantle in threat. There must be a hundred fevered men here, and of these most are not his men, but men from the settlement. “And who are these among you?” he asks.

There comes a great stirring among the men of the settlement. Most of them know us; all know Seth and Addai. I cannot follow so many minds at once—what are they thinking? Simon has asked the men holding us to bring us closer. “Mere boys, eh? You would hear the talk of men?”

Salome does not dare to open her mouth. If this man were to find we are not boys, but girls, what should he do? What should all these men do? Simon turns his huge face to mine. I am close enough to smell his breath, made rotten by the stump of a broken eyetooth. I am so close he can poke me in the chest, saying, “Speak up, boy!” As he touches me, there comes over his face a puzzlement. His thoughts have not caught up with what the flesh of his finger is telling him, but they might.