The Gospel of the Twin (28 page)

Chapter Thirty-Three

Verse One

On my return from India, I traveled home to Nazareth. It was five years or so after Jesus' death, three of which I had spent in the East. I had to confront questions that were still not fully answered, although I had my views on what was most likely.

What exactly were the events that led to his death? Who was the principal traitor—Peter or Judas—and was anyone else involved? What did Jesus think he would accomplish in Jerusalem with his antics at the Temple? Was he trying to get arrested? I cannot believe he wanted to be a martyr, but who knows? He had surprised me in many other ways.

During the long trip back, I began to notice how much I had absorbed from the Indian mystics. I realized that the pleasant conversations about what had seemed at the time only mundane matters, and the hours of sitting in silence, were sessions in which they exercised their mastery at teaching by example. Instead of saying, “Look at those beautiful birds,” they'd remark, “See those six birds with the bright red plumage and yellow beaks,” encouraging me to take in the fullness of the moment by becoming caught up in the details.

We would sit and listen to a river's rolling current or the wind rustling reeds, and I would find that my own thoughts would flow with the same smoothness. I could not articulate the differences precisely, but I knew that I was a changed man with a new way of being in the world—a new way of being the twin. I had faith that when I arrived in Nazareth and saw my mother, the right words would sing from my mouth like warbles from a swallow.

Nazareth was ghastly. Fields that should have been blanketed with grain held only dust. The few sheep were as thin as the hairless dogs that skirted between leaning shacks. Four or five people in rags scuffled along the streets. A young woman sitting in a doorway waved at me, then pushed her finger in and out of her mouth as she tried to hide the infant at her breast. I had grown used to such physical frankness in India, where stone gods and goddesses consorted together on temple walls, but I never thought it would come to my land.

I passed what remained of Leah's house. Pigeons sat on the caved-in roof. A wall had crumbled, and the bricks undoubtedly had been taken to repair someone else's house.

My home was standing, but it had received little care, and had the look of the house of an old woman living alone. I pushed open the door. Joses jumped wide-eyed from a chair and backed against the wall, as if a ghost had entered. He then ran to me, threw his arms around me, and wept. When he pulled away, I took his hands. One of them felt odd. I looked down and saw that all the fingers on his right hand, except for the thumb, were gone.

“Brother,” he said, smiling, “I thought you were dead. Oh, Thomas.”

We looked at each other for a moment. The few items in the house were scattered: a stool with a broken leg lay on its side, a robe puddled in the middle of the floor, another in the corner on top of a pile of rags, a dirty hoe leaning against the door, a bowl and spoon encrusted with porridge and surrounded by crusts of bread on the table. I figured he had been here alone for some time.

“They're all gone, Thomas. Deborah's husband was killed by soldiers. A centurion on horseback nearly trampled their son as they crossed the street. He cursed the centurion. Deborah says the centurion merely pointed with his chin, and a soldier shoved his sword through Ishmerai's back. It took him two days to die. Sharon and her husband said they feared their sons would either die of starvation here or be conscripted by the Romans. They took Deborah and her children and left for Egypt. Come and sit.”

We pulled two stools together by the table. Joses tried to balance on the broken one but gave up and sat on the floor. “Simon grew bitterer each day,” said Joses. “Each time soldiers came through the village, I was afraid he'd accost them and get himself killed. One morning, he woke me before dawn. He said that he and a couple friends were tired of waiting around to die. They left to join the Zealots. That was two years ago.”

He saw me staring at his mutilated hand. “Romans. I was coming home after doing some work for old Talmai. He'd given me a chicken. A group of soldiers were walking toward me. One had a dead lamb over his shoulders. They were loud and had wineskins. One stopped me and took the chicken. I didn't say a word, but two of them dragged me off the street and placed my hand atop a fence post. One chopped off my fingers with a swipe of his blade. Then one hit me in the head with his sword. I must have passed out for a moment, and when I came to, my fingers had been shoved into my mouth and a dog was licking my bloody hand. Simon left soon after that.”

I leaned over and cupped my face in my hands. I felt responsible for this curse on my family—Jesus dead, Deborah widowed, Sharon in exile, Joses maimed, Simon probably dead. I rose up to see Joses staring at me without expression, and I wondered if he knew what I was feeling. I wondered if he agreed.

“James?” I asked.

“Someone told James they thought they saw you the morning you left. They said they thought they recognized the two men with you from Jesus' group. James was furious that you hadn't told him where you'd gone and, in a couple of days, he left to find you and Jesus. He wouldn't let me go with him. In a few days, he returned and told us that Jesus was dead, and maybe you too. He brooded for weeks, neglecting Varda and Ezra and hardly eating. Finally, he said that it was up to him to restore the movement. He took Varda and Ezra and went to Jerusalem. He's sent a few messages since then. The last one said that some of the followers came back to Jerusalem and that they were making progress.”

We sat in silence for a while. I knew he would understand when, finally, I asked, “How long ago?”

“About six months,” said Joses. “When James came back from Jerusalem and gave Mother the news, she pretended not to be affected, as if she had known all along. One day, she wandered off alone. She'd been gone too long, and about the time we got worried, she appeared in the door, covered in blood. We thought she'd been hurt, but there were no wounds. We found out that she had walked around until she found someone about to slaughter a sheep—I think it was one of old Talmai's sons. She asked for a bucket of blood and poured it over herself.

“No one would get near her as she walked home, scared they'd be contaminated, and then she wouldn't let us clean her off until the next morning. She went to the well every day for a month after that and poured water over herself. After that, every morning, she'd walk around the house three times, then sit in front of the house all day, facing east, waiting for you. She would eat only roasted eggs and sip water from the shells.

“Mary from Magdala came here. She told us that her brother—Baikas?—and you had gone to India, and her brother had come back without you. She'd waited, hoping you'd come through Magdala before returning here. She sat and talked with Mother for two days, Mother nodding like a child being told the story of Moses. I don't know what they talked about, but Mother seemed at peace. She died a week later, sitting outside, facing east.”

Joses walked to the door and opened it to look out. “What happened in Jerusalem, Thomas?”

I told him that Jesus had angered the Temple priests and was arrested, but out of Pilate's fear of possible insurrections, he was charged with sedition and executed.

“Damn you, Thomas! I want the truth!” Joses leaned against the doorjamb and stared up at the ceiling. “I'm sorry. I want to know about the stories that he did not really die, or even that he came back from death. I struggled to keep them from Mother. I don't know what she would have done had she heard them.”

I drew a barley cake from my bag and broke it for us to share. “Joses, for generations our people have known only hunger—hunger for bread, hunger for hope. It is their way of life, and the only one they know. The stomach can become callused and tolerate its ache, but the longing for hope keeps the heart forever tender. People will trade their last loaf of bread for just the chance to grasp at a crumb of hope.

“These people followed Jesus with no thought of finding their next meal, but they had hope as long as they were with him. What could they do with that hope when he died?” I said. “Construct it into an idol of him. You and I can say that our father, mother, and brother live within us, and we know that we speak poetically. For those people, poetry within is not the same as an image without. They need to grasp at an idol of hope that's as real to them as the pain in their stomachs.”

“Nothing is as real as that.”

“I've seen the proof.”

“Hope is a luxury. Our people have no hope, and they do not hunger for it.” Joses held up the barley cake. “This, Thomas, is what they hunger for. Do you think that group you brought here followed Jesus because they thought he could put a Jew on the throne to rule our land like a new David? Ha! You talk about a trade? They'd trade a thousand Davids for one of these cakes. The Romans know that. They rule us through our stomachs. That's why we'll never win.”

I had always thought of Joses as a boy with only a boy's thoughts, too naïve to be so defeatist.

“I want to show you something,” I said. “Sit down here.” We sat on the floor, and I showed him how to sit in the Eastern style, with the legs folded in front, back straight, and hands upturned on the lap. “Close your eyes. Empty your mind. Feel your breath, nothing else. It's like praying, but no thoughts.”

I was adept at reaching the meditative state quickly, and when I pulled myself out of this session, I had gained an insight, which I have long forgotten, that I was eager to share with Joses. He was asleep, though, folded like a calf on the floor, his face slick with tears. I bought a chicken and plucked, cleaned, and roasted it by the time he awoke. I ate a leg, and he ate all the rest.

“You cried yourself to sleep.”

Joses placed the bones into a bowl and spread a rag over them. “It happens most days.” He wiped his hands through his hair. “Everyone in my family has died or left for good.”

“I'm here, Brother.”

“But you will leave, probably tomorrow.”

“Come with me then,” I said. “The Galilee is barren.”

“No. I'll stay here. This land is all I have left,” said Joses. “It's the only identity I have. It will kill me, but at least I'll know who I am when it does. When you leave here, Thomas, to go back to India or to Greece or wherever, will you know who you are?”

I stared at the floor for a long time, contemplating his question. Finally, I thought,
Yes, I will know who I am.

I am the Twin.

The next day, after a long embrace, I left Joses and Nazareth, never to return.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Verse One

My remaining eye sees only blurred forms. My aged hand can grip the stylus for only a few lines before it stiffens like mortar. I do not know if what I have written is even legible. I am no longer sure if I want it to be. My aim was to give the true account of my twin brother, Jesus of Nazareth. I may be further from the truth than when I began.

He comes to me in my dreams as a Moses, trying to lead our people out of despair and into an empire of promise, but the people tire and lag behind and lose him in the dark.

He also comes to me as Elijah, trying to turn our people from the idols they made from their own misery and toward the fulfillment of our nation, but they will not relinquish their identity as the Lord's despised stepchildren, the altar upon which they sacrifice their future.

He comes to me as the Buddha, trying to detach them from this anchor of a world to float freely within themselves, but they are afraid to let go of the only thing they know, even as it drowns them.

He comes to me as Dionysus, trying to fill their cups with the fluid of life, but thirst has clung to them for so long that they think only death will satisfy it.

And in these dreams I call to him, but my voice sounds like a sparrow's, and he recedes from me as if he were carried by a mighty river and emptied upon a great sea.

Deep in Africa are people who say they are Jews like me. They claim to be descended directly from David and explain that Solomon's son left Judah and settled there. The Greek name for their land is “Ethiopia,” but the people living there call it several names, among them “New Judah.” The people are welcoming, while their priests are reserved and reticent. They have not suffered under the Babylonians and Syrians and Romans as have Judeans and Galileans, and the priests want their people to remain far removed from that dark history.

They are, however, dark men in their own right. They are dark not only of skin, as are the other Africans beyond Egypt, but also of heart, for the Ethiopians protect a dark treasure. I lived among them for months, and some of the priests were fascinated by my travels to the East and my stories of Jesus. When they came to trust me, they took me to a shrine maintained and guarded by a special group of their priests who live much like our Pure Ones, whom, I have heard, the Romans destroyed, leaving only rubble in Qumran. They told me that inside this shrine was the Ark of the Covenant.

I begged to be allowed inside the shrine, but they refused. Neither they nor the blank-faced guard-priests had been near it. As in the ancient days before the Exile, only the high priest may view it. He will not so much as give a hint about its appearance. His successor has long been named, so the other priests have no hope of a glimpse.

I told them that my people would perpetually rejoice to be in possession of this great treasure and parade it through the streets daily. They hung their heads as the high priest, whose name, I think, was Melzik, spoke of the Ark as the heaviest of burdens.

“It is like a great truth,” Melzik said in a peculiar version of Greek, “that you wish to share with the world, but you know that it will be misunderstood. Forgeries of the Ark exist, deep to the south into the land of monstrous beasts with horns the size of a man, and also over the sea, across the endless stretches of sand in Arabia. I am told of another far beyond Greece, in a land where no water flows—only lakes of ice, and men must wrap themselves in many layers of thick pelts from hairy pachyderms.

“There are surely others, and those people would not believe ours the true Ark anyway. Other people, after seeing our true Ark, would construct their replicas and, in time, forget that they are copies. Someone may succeed in stealing it from us to reshape in their own vision, or to sell it like an exotic object in a market.

“You can see then, Judah brother,” as Melzik called me, “why this great weight rests upon our shoulders like a rough beam. Someday, perhaps, the world may be ready for the truth.”

As I bid them farewell, I thanked the dark men for impressing upon me a new understanding of responsibility and called them my brothers. I left with Jesus hanging more heavily upon my back.

Verse Two

Shadows stretch and crowd me as I sit against the one remaining wall of the Temple complex. The Romans charge a fee to Jews who wish to visit these ruins, as if they could get anything more from us. I shall leave tomorrow, probably for Egypt. Not nearly as many there have forged an image of my brother as have the Paul-besotted in Greece.

I do not know what I shall do with these pages. I may bury them in the sand on the way to Egypt, or toss them into the Nile. But this travel, too, is a dream, for I have no strength left to make another journey. I shall surely die along the way, and this stack of papyrus will be thrown into a pauper's pit along with this decrepit body. Maybe robbers will kill me, only to be disappointed to find a purse with a few coins and some useless scribbling that they cannot read.

It may be for the best. Only those who have heard of my brother would have any interest in my story, but they already have their own versions of him and will not trade them for mine.

Their stories may fade and vanish or, I worry, cover the world with their myriad, incompatible readings.

And what is our world other than the stories we tell?