by John Rechy
“Splendid.”
I listened in terror as the Baptist by the River proclaimed the coming of “the Lord who shall baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire.”
Fire? Why should the Lord whose coming he promised add terrible wrath? I viewed the people surrounding him. Surely misery — they were ragged, hurt, gaunt — had brought them here. I had known enough wrath on the streets. I would not linger long.
The Baptist’s hand had been about to rise before a kneeling supplicant; it froze. He had seen the glorious woman leading Jesus to him.
With the barest touch, Mary surrendered her son to the Baptist, as if Jesus was a divine offering.
Judas stood and stared toward the River.
Jesus smiled at the Baptist, the smile of a young man still a child, playing a game for adults, although John was hardly older. It was only then that I noticed that a bearded man had accompanied Mary and Jesus. He waited a few feet away from the water, staring forlornly at the young man and his mother. Yes, the bearded man was Joseph, the husband of Mary, the man who wanted to believe he was the father of Jesus.
Mary said to John the Baptist: “This is my beloved son. His name is Jesus. Surely you recognize him.”
John studied the radiant youth.
I could not hear Mary’s next words clearly, only fragments — “. . . the angel . . . conceived . . . announced . . . Son of . . .” — words spoken only to the young Baptist, who listened, waited — and then he nodded, solemnly.
Nearby, Joseph bowed his head, not in reverence but in sorrow.
The Baptist spoke to Jesus: “Yes, it is you. I have need to be baptized by you.”
Jesus laughed joyfully. “I’m here for your baptism, preacher.”
“I believe, Lady,” Madame again interrupted my recollections, “that you have reassigned some words. It was God’s voice out of the clouds that introduced the child as ‘My beloved son.’ I believe it was St. John the Baptist who said to Jesus —”
“I know what others have claimed, Madame,” I tried to be patient. “Those events, too, have been changed.” I faced that, from time to time, it would be necessary to reiterate my strongest evidence: “I was there. I know the truth.”
“Indeed.”
Why was John in such awe before Jesus? I wondered that day by the River. What had Mary whispered to him?
The Baptist stripped Jesus to his loincloth — the boy’s body was even more beautiful than I had imagined — and he held him in his arms, then submerged him in water. Standing, Jesus bowed his head, but I saw a conspirator’s smile on his face. Mary’s solemnity — and a sharp tug at his hand — attempted to subdue him.
The Baptist and Jesus emerged from the River, their flesh glistening with water and perspiration. Mary stood before the two, asserting the bond established in those moments. As he tossed his head to dry his hair, Jesus glanced sideways toward Judas, still before the sculpture he had created out of sand. My admiring gaze shifted between the two.
The Baptist had reached over Jesus’ head, as if to run his fingers through the careless hair. He stopped his gesture, a spell broken, aware again of the crowds surging into the River for his blessings.
Mary moved away with her child. Joseph followed them, a vague ghost.
Lingering behind as if he had stumbled on a stone, Jesus waved secretly at Judas. I had moved swiftly toward Judas and his sandy sculpture, so both he and Jesus would see me at the same time. Jesus extended his secret wave to me, his hand beckoning at his side. His smile — he lowered his head and looked up briefly — directed Judas to look at me.
He did and smiled, too, he and Jesus sharing their awareness of me. I knew I was desirable — yes, beautiful. My breasts were already fuller than those of most of the women I saw in the marketplace. At night alone — after I had made enough money to sustain me through another day — I would lie naked under a watchful moon that courted every curve of my hips, the dewy —
“Lady,” Madame interjected after a series of assertive coughs, “I must make an observation. It does begin to seem to me that you’re describing everyone as being very, very sensual —”
“I do so only when they — we — were, Madame.” My tone matched my firm words.
Madame had continued to mumble: “— everyone, everyone is very sensual — and very beautiful in addition” — she inhaled as if to pronounce her words with greatest emphasis — “and either in a partial state of undress — or quite nude.” She rushed on as if that might ease the look of outrage on my face. “I want to make a strong point about the matter. It’s possible that interviewers might begin to remark on that, perhaps even become somewhat offended or even” — she sneezed into her embroidered handkerchief — “even aroused.”
“And why not, Madame!” That’s all I said, and I looked quite coolly at her before I resumed my narration of the fateful afternoon by the River Jordan:
The conspiracy of glances and smiles between Jesus and Judas invited me to join them on the hill where Judas had remained.
Jesus broke away from Mary, who called out to him, but he had already rushed past me. “Come on!” We both ran toward Judas. Mary stared after her son until we had disappeared.
Along the glistening bank, Jesus and Judas and I ran laughing. Then Judas fell and Jesus stumbled over him, and I almost stumbled over them. I suspected Judas had only pretended to fall. A lone child like me, he was wily, and this was a trick to invite the closeness of our bodies. The two wrestled on the sand, their bodies tossing and turning so that at times I couldn’t tell them apart — except that one was fair, the other dark. They beckoned me to join them, their almost naked bodies glowing from the exuberant exertion of their game.
“Yes, Madame?”
I waited for her to speak after she had called attention to herself with a series of unnatural sounds made on the tea service. “I don’t think you’ll misunderstand” — she soothed her throat with tiny sips of tea — “what I’m about to suggest. Might you just say that, like the children you were, you merely ran up the hill to play? That is such a charming image, three beautiful healthy children playing by the side of the hill — and fully clothed — while a watchful, caring mother waits for her son and in the near distance a holy man continues to baptize his flock under a clear blue sky.”
I was sorry to have to be sharp with Madame Bernice. “Madame, the details are essential to prepare for what is to come.”
“What do you mean, what is to come!”
Ermenegildo peered at the table as Madame’s tea spilled.
That afternoon on the hill, I watched Jesus and Judas wrestling playfully. I delighted in their beauty, to which I would add mine. I slipped out of my dress, exhibiting myself.
“Lady —”
I enjoyed their stares, Judas’s much more knowing, Jesus’ surprised, excited. Judas tossed his clothes off carelessly. Slowly, Jesus tentatively began to undo — then fastened, then undid — his loincloth, keeping it for seconds before him, finally allowing it to fall. “You’re both beautiful,” I told Jesus and Judas, and they were, oh, they were. “No!” Jesus protested, and shook his head to affirm his protest — I saw his hair whip across his forehead. “It’s you who are beautiful,” he said, “you and Judas.” “No, you and Magdalene,” Judas asserted. With delight and excitement, we studied each other’s nudity.
Ermenegildo winced when Madame’s cup fell from her hand and shattered on the marble.
Jesus and Judas and I embraced like gentle lovers — no, like children not realizing they’ve embraced like lovers. We lay on the warm sand under sheltering palms, holding on to each other, cherishing and extending this new excitement, the beginning of our love. Judas knelt over me and kissed me on the lips. Jesus closed his eyes, waiting for, accepting, and returning Judas’s kiss — and then he passed it back to me.
“How beautiful, Lady, yes, yes, how beautiful,” Madame Bernice said too eagerly. “Three children kissing, only kissing, nothing more, just kissing, even if they had removed
some of their clothes in the heat of the day —”
“We had removed all our clothes, Madame,” I emphasized my strictest commitment to truth.
Madame fanned herself, in response, no doubt, to my having evoked the heat of that distant evening, since this evening was growing somewhat cool on her veranda. “And that was all that happened, a kiss, a —”
I said quietly, remembering, oh, yes, remembering, “That was all that occurred then, Madame, a playful kiss of children.”
On that hill by the River Jordan, I did not know how fervently I would wish later that we could have retained those moments forever, that time when as children we embraced, not knowing that we were protecting each other from destinies whirling and shaping about us, leading us all to that bloody mountain.
A shadow fell upon us.
It was Mary’s, a blue apparition when I looked up.
Jesus stood, covering himself. “Mother —”
We all dressed hurriedly. Mary looked only at her son. She touched his shoulders with firm gentleness. “Have you forgotten you have a mission to fulfill?”
“Must I?” he asked.
“Nothing will interfere with it,” Mary said.
I heard solemn firmness in her voice, even as she smiled.
Sadly, Jesus looked at me, then at Judas, who sat with me on the sand. Now Mary scrutinized me and Judas, our somewhat disheveled appearance. I tried to conceal the rips in my clothes from an earlier encounter when a man had grabbed at me out of a darkened doorway. I could not have imagined then that Mary and I would become close and that I would come to understand her, and love her.
“Come.” She extended her hand to her son. He took it. He looked back once and smiled before they began to walk away.
Then Mary turned to face me and Judas, who was playing, suddenly moody, with some sticks. She said:
“My son has a mission to fulfill.” Her words were assertive, no longer whispered. “Today, the Baptist confirmed it.”
The whispering with John the Baptist by the River . . .
Judas and I sat silent until the sky grew dark and a field of stars appeared. We tried to banish Mary’s strange words by not remarking on them. Then Jesus was back.
I ran to embrace him. Judas tried to conceal his joy — by kneeling in playful awe before him.
“No,” Jesus protested seriously, pulling Judas up. Judas drowned his own laughter. Jesus gathered us in his arms. His hands —
“Lady —”
That was all. We fell asleep on the hilltop under the embrace of palms.
I was wakened by the howl of an animal in the desert. Only Judas lay beside me, asleep. I saw Jesus sitting alone on a rock, pondering . . . what?
Adhering to the unspoken contract made that first day between the Baptist and Mary, John traveled beyond the Valley proclaiming the coming of “the Lord.” I knew — but neither Judas nor I gave the knowledge words — that the Baptist meant the boy, our friend, whom the beautiful blue lady had brought to the River.
“‘The beautiful blue lady’ — that is how Judas and I came to think of Mary,” I explained to Madame Bernice that day at tea.
Madame said, “I like that for Mary, a gentleness, a touch of rue, yes, I like that image of the Holy Mother — the beautiful blue lady.” She tested the description on Ermenegildo, who responded in apparent approval by resting his head briefly on Madame’s lap.
Years passed. I became a woman, and Jesus and Judas were men. The powerful love among us grew. We slept together in the fields, in rooms they occupied, and that I shared but left at night, returning. Oh, there was intense desire among us, a common current in which we all swam. We were aware of it, of course. At times, our hands, as if with a life of their own, would touch, then withdraw. Both Judas and I would have fulfilled that growing desire; but if we had done so only with each other, we would feel we had betrayed Jesus. It was Jesus, troubled, who kept desire in check. Mary was the invisible admonishing presence between us, reminding Jesus of his mission, thwarting any divergence.
By then, we were wandering among idealistic revolutionaries. Jesus and Judas were the most fervently — and youthfully — committed to “overthrowing emperors and tyrants.” Oh, how ardently we discussed it all, and zealously plotted to bring it about.
I was too proud to tell them I had no home, that the body I knew they desired, as I desired theirs, with love, I sold to others, often with rage.
A rich merchant refused to pay me. When his wife discovered my presence in his shop, the merchant accused me of being a robber, infiltrating his room, stealing from his wife. They pushed me into the street. “Whore!” they screamed.
“Whore!” The word echoed along the streets and alleys.
I stood defiantly before them.
A crowd was upon me. The rabid mob hurled stones at me.
Jesus and Judas, who had been looking for me, had heard the shouts, had followed the encircling mob. “Stop!” I heard Judas command. Another stone hurtled toward me. I crouched, quickly standing, to challenge the jeering crowd. A stone hit my arm. I heard Judas’s startling words as he pointed to Jesus beside him: “This is the Prophet whose coming the Baptist has been proclaiming.” The crowd only laughed, picked up more stones. “Crush the whore to death!” the cry went up. “Crush the whore, crush the whore!” Soon stones would rain on me, smashing my life.
Jesus stepped forward. Although I recognized him, I was startled. His face was as beautiful, his body as lithe — everything was the same, except for this: There was a new aura about him, a commanding radiance.
The crowd backed away.
“He who has not sinned,” Jesus said, and his voice now matched his powerful presence, “hurl your stone.” I heard stones dropping to the ground, one by one. Jesus moved next to me and said, “Woman of Magdala, you’re saved, sin no more!” Then he whispered in my ear, in the voice I had known and loved from that first encounter, when he and Judas and I had romped on the hill near the river: “Hurry, Magdalene, before they find out what we’re up to.”
I ran to a sheltered ruin in the City, where I often slept. Jesus and Judas caught up with me, soothing me as I wept in their arms. I was not hurt, only bruised, bruises they tended to with leaves. “Magdalene,” Jesus said, “why did you keep this from us? You’ll live with us.” Soon, we were all three laughing at the ruse they had used to save me from the hungry mob.
“It’s all they would understand, it’s all we could use to arouse their fear of judgment,” Jesus said. “It was Judas’s performance that convinced them.” He was generous, always generous. “No, it was yours,” Judas insisted, “you looked . . . so Godly.” Yet again that night, Jesus separated himself from me and Judas. He sat alone in the dark.
Our performances, begun that day when the mob had attempted to stone me, continued. We roamed the mean streets of the City, helping those similarly accosted in those violent times. While Jesus played “the Holy Prophet proclaimed by John the Baptist,” Judas and I pretended to be strangers supporting his claims. Once I mimed being possessed by “demons.”
“I might have been a great actress,” I told Madame. The afternoon was waning. The blossoms of jacaranda trees were preparing to glow at twilight.
“Indeed you might have been a very great actress!” Madame agreed. Then she coughed delicately, and added, somewhat wistfully: “But, Lady, beautiful as they are, those trees don’t bloom here, in our environs.”
I did not realize till then that I had spoken aloud my admiration of the lavender-blossomed trees. “Perhaps the magic of pre-dusk light created the impression?”
Madame stared ahead at gracefully limbed trees beyond her garden. “Why, yes, I believe it does; I, too, might have mistaken them.”
“Or perhaps my memories of them in the lost paradise — where they were bountiful, where all flowers blossomed — are so vivid that they’ve infiltrated my waking days’ reality?”
Madame brought her opera glasses to her eyes. Ermenegildo stared ahead — and n
odded? “Why, Lady, I believe you’re right,” Madame agreed. “They might indeed be jacarandas — a new addition to our lush countryside.”
“Precisely.” I resumed:
At times Judas would play a madman, whom Jesus cured “miraculously.” We delighted in the eagerness with which the crowds accepted our games, even the chancy time when Judas pretended to be dead, brought to life by Jesus.
Then, without Judas’s participation nor mine, Jesus exhorted a crippled old man to walk — and the man did. “He just needed to believe,” Jesus answered my amazement.
I was becoming increasingly aware of his power to convince. When he played messianic prophet, his beauty was a magnet and his words grasped the crowd.
There was tension about the City. Unrest, discontent, oppression, poverty, intolerable conditions. With even greater fervor, we joined the City’s radicals.
“Only a revolution can save us,” Judas said.
Jesus agreed: “God will be on our side because He’s just.” There was passion in his voice: “Suffering is evil, poverty is evil, absolute power allows both. Freedom is holy.”
Gathering larger and larger groups, he began to deliver, at first slowly, then with growing conviction and passion, his first “sermons.” Judas and I listened and watched in loving marvel as our beloved mesmerized with his simple messages of justice and freedom — ordinary matters that became extraordinary when he spoke them.
I saw Mary moving toward me through the crowd listening to her son. “Do you and he and Judas —?” Even this close, she sustained the impression I had first had of her from a distance, of a blue apparition. She had deliberately not finished her question.
“We love each other, yes.”
“But to court — whatever you’re courting! — with a man who has a holy mission, Magdalene? — a destined mission.” Mary had kept her voice so subdued in response to my deliberately vague declaration of our love, so subdued that her words were even more startling.