The Secret Magdalene

by Ki Longfellow

  I raise my head in wonder. We have done this thing. We have slipped in and out of a fortress, we have stolen Roman prey from beneath Roman paw. I did not know such a thing could be done. I did not know such a thing was ever done. I am a stranger to myself. I rest in my skin, but I do not know it. I see and I hear and I taste and I touch, but I cannot tell who does these things. Who is this new Mariamne?

  Salome! I have not seen Salome since we left for Jerusalem. It is Salome who will remind me of who I am.

  I find her in the small courtyard near the potteries.

  Simon Magus sits on the broad yellow limestone steps that lead from the easternmost bath to the settling basin below it. Beneath that, the yellow ground drops away sharply to the yellow shore of the blue Salted Sea. Across this sea, Moab’s mountains shimmer in the hot and weighted air. To his left and his right sits Maacah and Miryam, Veronica and Babata and Bernice. Veronica’s now toddling babe lies asleep in her lap. Each of these women holds a stylus, each a waxen tablet.

  At the feet of Simon Magus reclines, as ever, Helena of Tyre. With the help of Helena, Simon Magus teaches the women to write and to read.

  Simon turns to me and I see Salome shine in his eye. There is love there. There is love for me, and my heart soars. Simon rises. “John! You are awake. Come away. I have a great desire to speak with my brother.”

  We do not hide in our nahal. Yeshu has been there. Jude has been there. There is no surety they would not come again if it should suit them. We do not descend to the underground chambers, where Dositheus is writing what must surely be a great work—why else does the parchment mount around him? We cannot go to Tata’s roomy tent; there Dinah and Rhoda will be tenderly caring for Tata as well as Addai, my beloved Addai, whose jaw is broken, as well as his arms and his hands. Therefore, and without a word between us, it is decided Salome and I will go to our sleeping tents. My tent is as if a battle has been fought within it; hers is as tidy as a triangle. We choose hers. Her tent and mine, our manner of choosing between, is as wine to me. It is as we were. And might be again?

  But now I am suddenly shy. I have so much to say to her I can think of nothing at all to say. Wordlessly, I arrange myself on her rug, compose my hands and my face. But my heart beats as a drum. Salome sinks onto her bedding, smiles at me as if it has been only hours since last we were girls together. And to begin, she uses my name, saying, “Mariamne, people are so taken up with Tata and with Addai, and with what John shall do now, no one has time to tell me truly what you have done. I know certain of it, but not the all. I must know the all.”

  This is my Salome. Forever curious and forever demanding. With such a beginning, I talk of what was done for hours, leaving nothing out, every moment of horror and tedium and thrill. I tell her that in the Jerusalem we have left behind, Romans search the city, house by house. I tell her how all that happened changes me, how I am become lost to myself. I tell her that sitting as we are sitting and speaking as we are speaking, brings me peace. And Salome listens as I am used to her listening, as a child to one of Tata’s stories.

  “And John?” she asks when I am finished, when I have brought us all back again, and Addai and Tata are safe and cared for. “Tell me what was said of John on that day in Jerusalem.”

  “I have told you,” I begin. “Because of John, a Temple banker was moved to kill a Roman soldier.”

  Salome waves that away. “No. Not that. Tell me what the people listening said of him. Oh, that I had been there that day! Did they hear him? Did they know who they heard?”

  “Do you mean did they know it was the Prophet of the River? Of course they knew it was the Baptizer! Because they knew this, a very great crowd had gathered. So many, the Romans had come out in force.”

  “A great crowd,” sighs Salome, “a very great crowd. And tell me again, as John spoke, how did this great crowd listen?”

  “Dositheus said that it was as if Moses had come among them once more. There were those who pushed forward merely to touch his robe.”

  Salome shuts her eyes with the pleasure of it, and my thought that we are as girls again dims. Though she has listened to talk of tunnels and secret ways and the death of our old friend Heli, of trussing a Roman guard as one would truss a sheep meant for slaughter, of Addai’s terrible pain and how Tata’s poor fierce head has been split like a gourd, now I think her listening is only to hear of John. At this, I feel a sudden flare of anger. I look directly at Salome in the hope that I might force her to look directly at me. I do not speak my sorrow, but I show it in my eyes. And though I have never known a time when Salome could miss such a thing, she misses it now. Or ignores it.

  “Was anything said? Did the people call to him?”

  My voice has gone flat, but Salome seems not to notice this either. I say, “As I have told you, there were those who called out, ‘John is King of the Jews.’” I watch her eyes, which now shine with something I find in them more and more often: the lift and the light that shines in John’s.

  “Then I am right. It is time.”

  I say nothing even though I do not know what she means. I am too unhappy to speak. But Salome is too excited to be silent. “As you are one of us, you must feel it too. Of course you do, my friend, my oldest and dearest friend.”

  Hope leaps up again at this.

  “You know Yehoshua’s mind and the thoughts of Seth. I speak only with John, and John concerns himself only with the coming day. As Yehoshua is and always was the first behind John, it is Yehoshua he looks to for the how and the when. And as Yehoshua follows John, the others follow the planning of Yehoshua. Therefore, I ask you, how long now before we move?”

  I have no idea what she is talking about, though I begin to have a horrid suspicion. But move? How can John move when he is now a hunted man? He would be seized by the soldiers of Pontius Pilate should he leave the wilderness, perhaps should he leave it ever again.

  “Does Yehoshua say when we go to make John king?”

  Somehow, I manage not to flinch. Nor to gasp. Make John king? And how would we make a king of John? The Romans make a man a king. Does she see the emperor Tiberius giving the throne to John of Kefar Imi? Or does she mean we shall wrest it from him? I search her face for signs of jest, but there is none.

  “The timing is crucial! The people must rise with us. Does it seem to you enough would rise at his word? There must be enough!”

  I sit, as I have been sitting, hands in my lap, the fingers slightly curled, my eyes downcast as if I were deep in serious contemplation of all that she asks. In truth, I cannot believe what I am hearing.

  “But if they come forth in their thousands, how can we doubt the outcome? It would make us a people again! As in the time of the Maccabees, it would mean the return of David!”

  The throne of David! She means to remake a time when Jews ruled Jews? Salome is not a Jew. She has never been a Jew, nor wanted to be. And now she would raise up a king of the Jews? Is this a game to her as our word stones were once a game? I use a voice I would not use if I were easy in my mind, though it sounds calm enough. “But is it not your belief that John is the Nazorean Messiah, not a king, but a perfected man to provide example?”

  Salome shakes her head, impatient with me. “Then he would also be king. The times speak to us. We must hearken to the times. Mariamne, how can you not understand such a thing? Have you not been listening?”

  I remember what Seth said, “Those who are yet Nazorean look for the coming perfection of man. We await the Lord of Salvation, who will call forth a Transformation of Being the like of which has never been seen on this earth.” Salome has forgotten this. Has John? Does Seth forget as well? I ask, “Seth knows of this?”

  “How could he not? It is the will of the Nazorean. It will be the will of the Few. It is the will of Queen Helen and of King Izates. Has she not already come to build John a palace? You do not think the anointed one could abide a palace of Herod’s?”

  I am staggered in my lack of understanding, but of this I am
certain: If I would regain lost Salome, I must follow where she goes. Is this a thing I can do? Is this a thing I want to do? I tremble where I sit. Hold myself still by pure will. But Salome, who once knew me better than I knew me, knows me not. On she goes in full flow, “It is the will of the first families of the Nazorean, it is the will of John. By the Voice within you, it is also God’s will.”

  And now I know what I have not known. Though I went with Yeshu up to Jerusalem, and though I sat all the following day listening to talk of John and of Addai and of Rome, I know that I am not told the secrets each share with each. But Salome is told. This is why she knew what had befallen Addai and Tata in Jerusalem before I did. This is what she and John must talk of as they stroll about the settlement, their heads and their hearts so close entwined. Salome knows all this, and I do not. And I have thought it was I who was closest to the Nazorean. And I have thought I was Mariamne Magdal-eder, meaning “She of the Temple Tower,” a name Seth calls me, taken from the tower of a sacred temple hidden on Mount Carmel where once he studied.

  I am such a fool. Nothing is as it was. Nothing will be as it was ever again.

  A pat of my hand and Salome is gone. I shall not forget the look she could not hide as she left. She thinks that great things occur around me, but I cannot see the truth for my willful blindness. She thinks I am in danger of being left behind. I think she is right. But I cannot help but also think she is wrong.

  John of the River is not the One.

  He may speak and the people call him king. But I do not think he is the Perfected Man. Would my friends forgive me if they knew my mind? I suddenly think: Perhaps they do know my mind. Perhaps this is why I am told nothing…Yet there is still this truth: we cannot make John king! We cannot overcome the will and the might of Rome! Even should all of Jerusalem rise, such a thing cannot be done—it has been tried before. People in their thousands have died in such efforts. Is Rome gone from our land? Are the Herodians any less powerful? Do the priests in the Temple cower before us? Are men like Father a coin less rich? By the moon and all the stars, I now understand that this is what Salome expects shall happen! I see with horrid clarity the truth, a terrible truth that John the Baptizer asked me to see so long ago. I am not worthy of Life. I am an intruder in the tent of Simon Magus and Salome is not known to me. I am an intruder in the wilderness that is not home to me. I am friend to no one. I am nothing to myself. I serve no father, no husband, no child, no messiah, no god. In truth, I serve nothing. I am vastly learned, and yet I remain entirely a fool. I have neither use nor purpose.

  This is what has become of me.

  I stand as abruptly as if I am burnt. I push aside the covering of the ordered tent of Simon Magus and I rush away. I do not know where to go. I have nowhere to go. I merely run from the tents and the stone of the settlement walls toward that which is surely farthest from man and from woman and from the pain of knowing either, down the path leading to the salted Sea of Stink. The path is steep. It is littered with stray stones. But I leap down it without error. Without thought, I run as I have never run, as an athlete in the games, as an ibex, as a hare. It seems if I run fast enough, I might fly.

  I reach the shore of the sea. It is flat and stinking and crusted with salt. I do not run north. North will take me to the sweet-water Jordan and to strangers in their fields of wheat and barley and medicines. It will take me to my poppy field. I run south. South there is nothing.

  I do not know how long I run, but I know that I run past all endurance. I would run past life if I could. I would throw myself into the Sea of Salt, there to slip under its waters and find oblivion, but nothing sinks in our sea, not even an entire bullock. As I run I am sure that I will not stop, I will never stop, for where will I be if I stop but with myself, and I do not want to be with myself. Yet I do stop. I stop by falling headlong, and I lie where I fall, and my whole world is pain. My whole body is pain. I hold it close, I embrace it. I do this because I can bear the pain. What I cannot bear is what has become of me. I cannot bear who I am. And then there is nothing because I will it. I will myself to leave myself, to become as black as the back of a cave, as empty as the castoff skin of a scorpion, as unfeeling and as unthinking as a hung and butchered corpse.

  When I open my eyes, it is evening.

  Not yet night, there are long shadows on the cliffs above the sea, shadows the color of wine. Roses and saffron shift on the cliffs to the east, the last touch of the sinking god of the sun. The stench of brimstone fills my nose; its taste fills my mouth, burns my tongue. I am alive. I would wish this was not so. If I do not move, if I never move again, will my wish come to pass? I close my eyes in the hopes of this…breathe in, breathe out. How long must I lie before breath stops?

  I do not mean to, but I listen to the sounds of the coming night. By a sea in which life cannot live, on a shore that feeds nothing, there is little to hear. But by and by I note that though it seems utterly silent, the world is never silenced, that it talks and laughs and sighs, and that it fills the ear: the distant short bark of a waking fox, the more distant trailing scream of an eagle, doves in the acacias far to my right. A slight whisper, a second breathing, behind me, to my right. What is that? Does something await my death as eagerly as do I? With this wretched thought, I raise my head, turn it slightly to the side, and there sits Yeshu of the magician red hair, a color burned deeper red by the setting sun. What is it he does here? Nothing more, it seems, than I am doing. Facing east, his eyes are closed and he breathes as I do, in and out, and in. I lower my head once more onto the salted pebbles and the bitumen, onto the black and salted mud. I close my eyes. Death will come eventually.

  When I open my eyes it is full dark. I still live and the sound of breathing is still behind me. Once more, I close my eyes.

  I am awakened by a beetle. I have no fear of beetles, but neither can I remain still as one scurries past the corner of my mouth, hurries into my hair. I lift my chin on the instant, shaking my head back and forth, and lay it back down again. I have found patience in loss and despair. Yeshu is still here, just as he was. If he is asleep, he has slept sitting. His back is unbent, his head on his neck uplifted toward the rising sun. Where last night his face glowed in the light of its setting, now it glows in its rising. I look east into the return of the light. Where has the sun been all this while? Men have answered this question in so many ways, but where has it truly been? And what if it should never return? Is it foolish for men to see it as the face of God? Or to see God as Light? Oh, but by Isis! Is there no way to stop the voice in my head? Mariamne is nothing but questions. She will never be other than questions.

  Though I have not eaten and I have not drunk, I feel no hunger, no thirst. Though I have run until I dropped, and though I have scraped the skin from my elbows and knees, abraded my cheek against the gritted crusts of salt, and then lay in this way for many hours now on the cold shore of a lifeless sea, I am empty of feeling. “Yeshu?” I say.

  His answer is almost a whisper. “Yes, John?”

  “John the Baptist will not be king.”

  Yeshu says nothing but I know he is listening. I say, “He will die and those with him will be scattered.” Yeshu remains silent, but I am not discouraged. I am beyond discouragement. “John is not the One the Voice within me prophesies.”

  “Who has told you this? Was this you or was it your Voice?” Yeshu’s voice is soft and sure, but in it is something I have not heard before.

  “I have told me this. I do not need prophecy to see what there is to see.”

  We are both silent again. I am no longer sure that I can lie here until I die. There are things that will not allow this. I have an itch on my inner thigh that becomes maddening. There is something that pokes into my stomach, a sharp stone or a stick. I reach under myself. The muscles of my back endure a strange sensation. I must move, or shout with irritation.

  Now both Yeshu and I sit in the saline mudded sand, sand and mud and bitumen stuck to our feet and to our legs, and look at th
e coming sun. Vast flat cakes of ice-bright salt float on the surface of the briny sea, forming even as we watch. Across the salted waters, the tops of the mountains of Moab burn as they did on the day I first saw the settlement from Addai’s shoulder. Addai! Could I die and leave Addai? With the memory of Addai, feeling floods back into my heart. So much so a sound escapes me, and I look to Yeshu in hopes he has not heard me, and by so doing, catch such pain on his face that my own flees at the sight of it. His hands grip his knees. The morning is still cool, yet he is drenched in sweat. His skin is pale. His lips chapped and dry. It is as if he has been drained of blood. “Yeshu?”

  “It is nothing, John. I have known it since my youth.”

  “Known what? What do you know?”

  “The pain inside my head. My eyes become full of broken light so that I cannot see as a man should see. When it comes, I can do nothing but wait until it leaves me. It always leaves me.”

  I touch his wrist. The skin feels as cold as the scales of a fish. “How often does this come?”

  Yeshu takes his time in answer, but he answers. “Often.”

  I look at this man in surprise. He can live with this? I think of silent Helena who endures a pain that never leaves her, a pain that makes her shrink and creep and cleave close to Salome. I think of Addai and his broken arms, his broken hands, his jaw. I think of Seth who grieves that though his life is a search for gnosis, gnosis eludes him. I think of my own pain. Though not of the body as the day I fell into the city of the dead, it is surely pain. Do I endure as they? “You do not take rosh?”

  Across the face of Yeshu there moves the ghost of a smile. “I have learned that once begun, there is no end to the taking of rosh.”

  I think of Helena, even of Tata. Perhaps in this he is right.

  Yeshu turns to me. Even the turning causes him agony. “You speak of John the Baptizer. You awaken from dreams of death and the first thing you speak of is John. Who else but you, new friend, could I tell that all this night I have thought of nothing but John? A man was killed hearing John. How shall things go that begin with death? Another man is killed by Rome for failing in his duty, because you and I went up to Jerusalem. Did you know? I know his very name, Acilius Marius. He gave no more offense to me or to you than to be at his post when we came for Addai.”