The Secret Magdalene

by Ki Longfellow

  We see no reason to climb down more than once through any of the deeply cut nahals just to find ourselves on the shores of a sea that stinks of sulfur and bitumen. There is nothing there, not even a wharf, though boats go by below us daily.

  Addai tells us we are fortunate to arrive in the season of the rains. He swears that all through summer, day and night, one can bake bread on the flat clay roofs, but for now the winter sun shines off the smooth lime-stoned walls in light as white as linen. It takes days before my eyes grow used to this, and to the lack of color. There are only the pale yellows of the dry cliffs above and below us, the pale yellows of the high flat shelf where the settlement stands, the pale dusty green of the palms, and the lapis lazuli blue of the pools. There seem more pools here than in the whole of Jerusalem, and from each to each, sweet blue water flows through canals cut in the yellow rocks.

  As for the buildings within the yellow walls, some are as high as three stories. The tower is higher than this and, oddly, has no entrance on the ground floor. But no building is a house. It is either a meeting hall or an eating hall or a workshop or a flour mill, or it is full of storage rooms, but never a sleeping chamber. People sleep in tents north of the outer walls. Addai tells us many more sleep in the caves that are all around us in the high and dusty cliffs. I shudder at the thought—no matter how hot the night, I would not sleep in a cave for my life. There are sand rats in caves. There are vipers in caves.

  We have come to know the handsome young man with the bent nose, Seth of Damascus. When he finds us idle, he produces books from somewhere, and we devour them…we would read anything, and we gaze on Seth’s books as a drunkard might gaze on a vat of wine. For example, the Book of Enoch. In Genesis it says that a thousand generations ago Noah and Enoch walked with God, but only Enoch vanished because God took him. But the Book of Enoch says more. “And I looked and saw a lofty throne. Its appearance was transparent hailstone, its wheels like the sun, and then the sight of the cherubim. From underneath the throne came streams of fire so that I could not look directly at it. The Great Glory sat there. His raiment shone more brightly than sun and was brighter than snow.”

  Though I have never spoken of it, I know what Enoch saw, for I too looked and saw a Great Glory as I lay ill, and I tremble in my skin to read another try to describe it.

  Though he is young himself, Seth seems always at a distance, always watching, always weighing. Sometimes it seems he is become our shadow. He also becomes our uncle. If anyone asks, and many do, they are told I am John, and Salome is Simon, and that we are kin to Seth. This silences them immediately. Seth explained the need to remain male like this. “If you are female, you will be treated as females.” That was all that Salome needed to hear. Young Simon and younger John have appeared as prophets in the wilderness, and we are both respected and avoided.

  Tata has had a great deal to say on the subject of our being males, much more than when we merely went to Heli’s house. Here we must learn how to stand, how to sit, how to make this gesture or that. Salome moans about binding her treasures, and worries about her menses, a thing that now visits me. But Tata has an herb for our monthlies. It does not stop them, but it makes them so much less and so much easier to hide. She makes sure our cloths are taken from us when needs be, that they are smuggled into the woman’s camp and buried there. Tata also tutors us in our choice of phrase so that we do not say things as a female might, nor abase ourselves before our fellow males without thinking. Where did Tata come by all this knowledge?

  Above all, Tata tells us, is the matter of being “cut.” If the removal of their foreskin isn’t the single most important thing, after the member itself, in a Jewish male’s life, I don’t know what is. It marks him as chosen; it is the blood covenant he has made with God. Salome says you would think if God wanted to mark a man chosen, he might have left this bit off their person in the first place. Now, that would be a mark.

  Here in our wilderness, people are daily coming or going: old, young, men, women, children, whole families, Jews as well as Gentiles. Our small open spaces are so often packed with travelers and their animals, with asses and dogs and goats and sheep and camels, the encampments so swollen with tents or simple bedding under the stars, or the caves so filled to overflowing, it is like Jerusalem at Passover. These visitors seek out Seth or Addai or others we do not yet know. The travelers are ill, or they are wounded, or they are troubled in their minds. Some come to bathe in the large basin set aside for them. Some come for the prayer. More come for the herbs, or poisons, or potions that are traded here or grown here. All come for miracles. Some never leave but are buried in the cemeteries on the edge of the cliffs.

  Yet not all who arrive are ill. Nor are they blind or crippled or possessed. Some are the men who stood recently at the edges of Heli’s crowded courtyard, the hairy, wild-eyed men. All these are sons of Israel no matter if they are Samaritans or if they are Galileans or even Ituraeans. I am confused and confounded by them. Some are armed and some are not. Some men in the same sect carry knives and others do not. Ananias is certainly right: there are more divisions in an Israelite’s belief than I should ever have imagined. And all spend much time arguing with each other! Each evening at table, we hear them. They shout, they wave chunks of bread, they turn their backs on each other. Salome says they speak much more of war, revenge, and righteous hatred than of the nature of their god. Or perhaps, adds she, such things are the nature of their god.

  Meanwhile, though all who are Jews have the same god, not one of them can agree on how to approach him or to honor him. What they do agree on is that God, who is male, is the only God. By this they do not mean YHVH is supreme among gods. They mean that there are no other gods or goddesses at all. They mean that those that claim to be gods—Baal and Isis and Zeus and so forth—are demons. By the hour, they assure themselves that the One and Only God has singled them out especially. They swear they are am segulah, God’s treasured people.

  Salome and I have discussed this before Addai as we should never have discussed it before Father. In Father’s house there was never much talk of Yahweh. But here it is as if he were only in the next city and were due home at any moment, and all were women crazed to ensure he would be pleased by how tidy his house, how obedient his children, how full his coffers. We question: if the Jew is the jewel of all creation, why did God bother with any others in the first place? Salome also asks what has happened to God’s wife? Tata tells us Yahweh once had a wife, and one of her names was Shekinah, and another was Asherah, and another was Astarte. She tells us they lay together in the Temple’s Holy of Holies as the Bride and the Bridegroom. But where is Shekinah now? Has Yahweh driven her from the marriage chamber? Is the Bride of God lost and alone?

  Addai listens but expends no effort on answering us, save to say, “I once heard it said that none of us know anything, not even whether we know anything or not.” Though he does suggest that perhaps my father’s people were chosen because all other peoples turned him down. At this, I honk with laughter, but Salome laughs so much harder I have to pound her on the back.

  The Poor make their home here, and have a council of elders who meet in a large room near the potteries. Save those who swagger about with knives in their belts and flint in their eyes, all are busy. Some of the men fish in the river Jordan, the mouth of which is a few miles away, or set out over the stinking sea in small salt-encrusted boats to collect the rare and precious floating rocks, which is tarry bitumen. Some labor in the fields of barley and wheat and some labor in the smaller fields of madder and other medicines growing wherever there is room. This medicine is used by the ill who daily arrive, or decanted into small bottles and sent up to Jerusalem with Ananias, but the bulk of it is traded with the Arabian tent people whose encampments fill the mountains of the Moab far across the Sea of Salt.

  One thing that does not occur here is the sacrifice of animals. Those in the settlement honor the Sabbath, they chant the Shema at dawn and at dusk, and they observe the Holy
Days, but there are no priests and there is no Temple. Father would be baffled. Nicodemus would be incensed. Both would ask why a man should have to do his own praying. Are there not priests for this? Is this not what priests are for?

  In Jerusalem, there is not a day save the Sabbath where people are not sacrificing some living thing in asham, a guilt offering as atonement for some infraction or other, or to make peace between this one or that one, or as an olah, a personal repentance, or to give thanks for whatever it is they feel thankful for. From early until late, there is such piteous shrieking and such helpless bleating, and there are days on end when the wind does not blow, and a haze of burnt flesh hangs over Jerusalem like a winding sheet.

  But here, this is not so. The air is clear, and Salome and I are set to guarding a secret grove of balsam trees, for the “white tears” of the balsam is worth twice as much as silver. Seth has shown us its true gift; more than a perfume or a royal oil, it stops the flow of blood and it deadens pain. I begin tending my tiny crooked trees as I would my own scrolls. We have also charge of a grove of carob trees and date palms that grow far up a steep-sided wash of gravel. Leading nowhere, this ravine, or nahal, narrows as it goes until it is seemingly impassable, so is home only to a family of feeble folk, one of the four things scripture says are “little on earth, but they are exceedingly wise.” Fat and furry, short of leg and small of ear, these hyraxes hide in the rocks, barking in alarm if we come near.

  Here there is a small spring that waters our palms and our carobs, and a space of soft sand bounded by a huge rock like a bowl that each day is warmed by the winter sun until it becomes a thing of great pleasure to lie in. We cannot be seen from the settlement and no one from the settlement can see us. Of course, immediately this becomes our private place. Kishuf is a thing of horror to the Poor, so we keep our word stones and our magical papyri hidden not in our small tent in the men’s encampment but here near the homes of the feeble folk. As Salome says, “Let their barking be of use.”

  As the days pass, we explore the desert above us and the Salted Sea below us. We have seen a thin red fox catch a fat brown sand rat, and once sat for hours watching big black ants devour some sad fallen songbird, until it was nothing but feathers and bones and beak. We have walked by the crystalline shore of the toxic sea picking up balls of gypsum, cracking them open for the yellow sulfur inside. The mud is black and stinks beyond words. Once we dared go farther, climbing for hours among the bluffs over the sea, and there entered a cave littered with shells and bones. In this cave we found three small figures made of lime plastered over reeds. They are all female and their femaleness is too evident for comment. Who made these things? No Jew would make such things. How old are they? We have wrapped them in cloth and hidden them with our other things up our private nahal.

  We think perhaps we might go farther still, strike out for Jericho, the Moon City that Moses saw from the top of Mount Nebo before he died, or for Egypt, for if we are boys, surely we can go where we please? When the time comes, Salome has concluded, and I have agreed, we shall gather up Tata and flee. In the meantime, we shall prepare ourselves for a life on the road. First, we will learn the fine art of spying. And second, we will learn kishuf from Addai; not spells and magical rites but tricks of the hand and eye. Such skills will keep us from going hungry as we travel.

  We take ourselves to our hiding place amidst the date palms and carob trees. Eio and the barking hyraxes on guard, we hide in the dusty heart of the fat brown trunks so that Addai might show us how to divert the eye, how to say one thing and do another, how to delude the mind. In no time, we learn to pluck objects from the air. Make things disappear. Produce scented oil or blood from the palms of our hands. Cause mirrors to cloud and sticks to become snakes. I revel in this. I practice for hours. I even think I might have a gift for kishuf, and Addai agrees. Though I suspect Salome’s gift is the greater. I am sure Addai agrees with this as well. In any case, he tells us that the spirit in the mirror is more than the usual magician can do, and more than the usual magic.

  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 ‘magicia
n.’ 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?”