The Secret Magdalene

by Ki Longfellow

  But as we leave behind the last house of the lower city of Bethsaida where the poor live, a woman quickly steps out to bar our way; Jude has barely time to draw his knife. But she is unarmed and can mean no harm, save that we would hurry and she delays us. Jude keeps his knife in his hand but puts his hand behind him.

  “Master,” the woman says, and by this she means Yeshu, not King Izates, “I have heard, and I believe, that you can raise the dead, but can you also cause the blind to see?”

  Before Yeshu can answer, she points to the side of the road, and there under a tree, and as ragged as its bark, sits a blind man. At the man’s feet there is a begging bowl, and on the man’s body, a bit of shabby cloth no more than would cover a suckling child, and around the man’s head, flies. His mouth is encrusted with ancient spittle, the folds of his body are embedded with ancient scum, and his sightless eyes, oozing with yellow matter, are the flat and lifeless white of bird dirt. I shudder, for I have never seen a filthier thing, and I would step back but remember that Yeshu would not. Instead, like Yeshu, I move closer to the blind beggar. The man hears us. He pushes his bowl forward with a hopeful toe and smiles where he determines we should be. The tooth that is left him is as broken and black as his toe.

  The woman pulls at Yeshu’s mantle. Both Jude and Izates bridle at this, would push her away, but Yeshu stops them with the smallest gesture. She is saying, “He is blind from birth, Master, and cast out. Now I would know the truth of it, who did sin? This man, or his parents, that he was born blind?”

  “Neither,” answers Yeshu, “for God would not punish that which is loved.”

  The woman’s eyes widen, her thoughts plain on her face. This man has said that God would not punish that which is loved? What, then, does God love? For it seems all are punished in one way or in another way. Her way of saying this is, “But he cannot see, Master!”

  Yeshu leans down to scoop up a handful of dirt, saying, “There are some things that cannot be undone, being intended for one purpose or another, but there is this thing that can be done, and it is greater than eyes that see. I can give him the sight that is within him.” Spitting into his hand, he makes a paste of dirt and spittle. I have seen Tata do this. I have seen Yeshu watch Tata do this. With the paste he has made, Yeshu anoints the old man, first tenderly rubbing the lid of one poor eye and then of the other. “If you would truly see, old man, go, wash in a pool of Bethsaida.”

  And then, once more, we are on our way, moving quickly before the setting of the sun. But as I am quite the last, and as I do not concern myself with whether we break the law of the Sabbath by our movement, I think I am the only one to hear the woman answer the blind man when he asks who has touched him. “Yehoshua of the Nazoreans, old man. It is said he can raise the dead.”

  At this, the blind man cries, “Is he a prophet? Is he a magician? Is he a gazer? He must be one of these! Help me up, woman, for I would wash my eyes!”

  The last I see of him, he is struggling up from his place in the dirt and stumbling away. I am sure he makes his way to a pool; Bethsaida has no lack of pools. But such a thing holds less interest for me than what it is Yeshu has said, which has long been said in one way or another by Seth: “There are some things that cannot be undone, being intended for one purpose or another.” Again, the word intend. I know Yeshu does not mean “intended by God,” nor does he mean “intended by the Fates.” He means “intended by the Self,” which is the Daemon. But who will believe they would intend themselves blind or crippled or poor? Who could knowingly shoulder such a responsibility? Yehoshua would ask a man to know he is entirely free, that he is not beset with demons, nor is he a victim of circumstance, nor even of the gods. He would ask a man to know that his life and all it consists of is a thing of his own making.

  Who can face such freedom?

  Soon enough, as the fiery boat of the sun sets sail toward the sea of night, we are climbing a wooded rise, passing through a stand of fig and walnut trees, and then, coming at last to the top, we see spread out below us in the last of the light a wondrous sight. There are not hundreds here but thousands. Thousands upon thousands, perhaps as many as five thousand in all. The whole of the valley floor is tented and cameled and peopled, and the stream that runs through these runs brown with their presence. The sight and the smell and the sound of them come up as the din of approaching thunder. It is a daunting sight.

  As we stand looking down on this, I find I am between Ananias and Seth. Yeshu is halted a distance away with Jude and Izates and Thecla. Perhaps they too are struck with wonder, for I would swear they have come to a sudden halt at the sight of so many gathered below. But we three, who have known each other in other times and in other guises, stand apart. And as those with Yeshu talk of the astonishing number below, how he shall manage to be heard by them all, and of what the more fiercely lawful will make of his speaking on a Sabbath, and how so many are surely proof of the strange and dangerously volatile mood that has come over every kingdom in Palestine, Seth and Ananias and I fall into talk as easily as we once did. For did we not travel to Egypt together, and did we not together set eyes on the fabulous city of Alexandria, and did we not, after many and many an adventure there, travel back to Judaea together?

  Looking away from the great spectacle below, I note that Ananias has grown more chins, two more of them, and I tell him how I admire them.

  Says he, “A man needs bulk as a buffer between the world and himself, the more bulk the better. How else to defend against a wife and her litter? By the spit of my camels, how they increase! They spring up overnight like weeds in a poppy field, like evil spirits in the footsteps of Agrath, the Queen of Demons…like customs officials! Not to mention a man’s wife’s brothers and her sisters and her aunts and her uncles and on and on as far as a man’s purse and a man’s mind can stretch. In this, you are wiser than I, Seth.”

  “How so?” asks my friend the philosopher, who is so much wiser than Ananias, I almost find cause to smile.

  “Is it not obvious? You have never married.”

  I think Seth will laugh at this. I think I know full well he will brush away the teasing of Ananias, as he would brush away a troublesome fly. For of course Seth has never married. What need he of such things? Though both Shammai and Hillel, the very greatest of the Jewish teachers, insist that marriage is a sacred act from which no one shall abstain, and though it is true an unwed man cannot be a rabbi, such an uncommon man as Seth is not made for such a common thing as marriage. Therefore, when he replies in all seriousness that he would marry, I am more surprised than I was at the sight of the thousands below us. I snap my head toward him.

  Seth holds his beardless and beautiful face as impassively as I have tried to hold mine in these last difficult days. “I would marry,” he continues, “if the woman I would wed would wed me.”

  By the ancient stars of Sumer! Who could this woman be? Has she been wooed and lost, far away and long ago, but is yet unforgotten? Is she a daughter of Jerusalem? Or of Adiabene? Is she rich or is she poor, beauteous or plain? As clever as he? She must be as clever as he; I cannot imagine he could bear a feeble or a foolish woman. But how could a woman, any woman, not return the love of my beloved friend? Or not wish to wed him? More remarkable still, how could any father of such a woman not take it upon himself to see her wed to Seth, having once seen she is too foolish to see to it herself?

  I look up at Seth with all this alight in my eyes, my indignation and surprise and disbelief and wonder, not to mention my quiver full of questions dying to be fired from my bow of a tongue, and I find he looks down at me with such a look I think my eyes might turn back in my head; I think I might swoon. I know on the instant who the woman is. I know on the instant what I should have known all along. Not because of a thing said, and not because of a thing done, but because I am a prophet and a toucher of minds. Eloi! Eloi! Eloi! Isis, Queen of Heaven, how you must laugh at such a one as I. It is all I can do not to fall on the ground and beat my head bloody on ston
es. I am not a prophet. I am a fool beyond any fool. He means me. Seth of the Maccabees, who once ruled Israel, would take Mariamne, daughter of Josephus, to wife!

  If ever a thing took away my very breath, it is this thing, and I am not sure, but it seems the body of John the Less stands witless and voiceless and helpless and hopeless, while the mind of Mariamne shies away, shies away, her heart beating as the heart of a poor bird caught stunned in the fine tangles of a fowler’s net. But if I have seen who it is Seth would wed, so too has Ananias. Wily Ananias is not left witless, and he is not left voiceless. For some unfathomable reason, in this astonishing and terrible and long-lived moment, he is delighted. He pats his fat hands together. He licks his fat lips. He wobbles his chins. He winks at Seth. He says, “Hear me, my old friend. Would you have me put in a good word with her father?”

  Though I am graceless as an overturned tortoise, though I am as mute in my unbalance, Seth has the grace to smile. He has even the equanimity to answer. “I would rather you put in a good word with the woman herself.”

  Ananias opens his hands in mock supplication. “Can you hear this, fair maiden, and not be moved?”

  Indeed, Ananias, I am moved. I am moved so that I cannot move and I cannot speak, and I turn my heated face away to hide all that I cannot think I think, and in hopes as well of gathering up whatever it is I might feel, so that I might more fully feel it, and turning, I hear Ananias say, “As you were born a woman, would you not live as a woman? Surely, Mariamne, daughter of Josephus of the very Sanhedrin, even for you must come a time to be wed?” And still I turn away, and as I turn I see what I would hope never to see. The blood in my face flushes red as a poppy petal. The blood in my head roars as the sounding sea. The blood in my heart drains away. For I find myself staring directly at Yeshu who is staring directly at me. I thought Yeshu still engaged in talk of John and of Zealots, of kings and Romans and messiahs, and of a mood on the land that is like unto a great plague, but I was mistaken. My Yeshu moved away from this talk, away from those who still speak of such things, and has come closer and closer to Seth and to Ananias and to me. Has he come close enough to hear what passes between my friends and myself? I cannot take my eyes from his eyes. In them, I seek his mind. Has he heard us? Does he know what it is Seth has said? Has he heard what it is Ananias has said? Does he now know who—and what—I am?

  He knows.

  He has heard the words of Ananias. He has heard the name Mariamne. His skin made ashen by his discovery, his eyes made bleak, he opens his mouth to speak, and I would join his mind to save myself, but I am pushed away. Yeshu pushes me away! He takes an awkward step toward us; I take an awkward step back. I do not know what Seth does, or what Ananias does, but at this very same moment, a moment that spans the eternal and in which I see that the look-alike Jude has heard as well, a name is called: “Yehoshua!” Someone among those below has seen him. And when this one has called out his name, it causes others to look up, and then others, and looking up, the tribes massed below us find him, see that he who they await is come. As one, they see Yeshu, head of the Nazorean, cousin of John, and son of Joseph of Japhia, he who has called them here, and whose call they have heeded, and there begins a murmur which grows into a singing, which becomes louder and louder, until the valley below is filled with his name: “YEHOSHUA!”

  It is Simon Peter who reaches us first. It is Simon Peter who races up the hillside, massive legs leaping up through the rocks and the shrubs like a marathon runner, massive arms pumping for balance and for speed, black hair and black beard and brown robe streaming out behind him. Behind Peter runs Andrew, bald as last I saw him. Behind Andrew come more and more, and more. First the Sons of Thunder and then Simeon and the sons of the Sons of Thunder. Then comes Old Camel Knees; Jacob the Just walks up the hill, he does not run, and the skin of his blue head is freshly shaven. I should be astonished to see him, for when John was taken, Jacob was one of those who went missing. Yet here he is now, and he is merely a beginning. If not stopped, would the whole of the five thousand leap up the hill after Peter?

  Yeshu steps back at the sight. So too does Jude. I think they might have mind to flee.

  But now sounds three sharp blasts on a ram’s horn. Even though Bethsaida sits a mile away, the hazzan blows clear and insistent. The Sabbath has finally come, and the coming of the Sabbath stops the rush for Yeshu in its tracks. All save the front-runners. Nothing would turn Simon Peter from Yeshu, unless it be John. But John is not here; only Yehoshua is here. I know what Peter now thinks; he thinks that if not John as king, then perhaps Yeshu’a?

  And I know what it is I think. There has finally come a thought into my roaring head, the first to visit since all thought fled. Get away! Get away from these men and from this life, Mariamne; hide yourself, make yourself small. No! Not small. Make yourself over. Reclaim yourself. You will not grieve and you will not weep. You will be as the women you have known. Brilliant Theano the Therapeutae, lover of Pythagoras and friend of Philo Judaeus. The long-lived Sabaz, doctor to the last of the Ptolemies, who died in the arms of the slave who adored her. Julia, the exquisite and poet, who loved Seth but made no show of it, rather fusing her love into art. Fierce Tata, zonah and storyteller and runaway slave. Beautiful Helena of Tyre, silently suffering, as innocent as a lamb, as strong as a lioness. Even the handsome headstrong Thecla of Shechem, who boasts five husbands and has come away from the last of these to follow she knows not what.

  While all the world seems centered on Yehoshua, while there is such a confusion of voices and of faces, I turn. I take one step, two. Now I am quickly walking, and now I walk even faster, and here it is that I run. As I have run before, I run now, and as before, I do not know where I go. But this time I know who I am.

  Or will be again.

  I run straight into Tata.

  For those who consider such things, and there are many, Yeshu waits throughout the whole of the Sabbath before addressing the multitude who have gathered to hear him. Great hairy men with curved knives under their cloaks, men with fierce looks and fierce words, men whose blood burns hot enough now to march against Rome itself at his bidding. They have come from barren Judaea and from forested Ituraea, from the low coastal plains of the Great Sea to the farthest high deserts of eastern Peraea. With Jude, Yeshu secludes himself in the tent of his brothers, Joses and Jacob. There is much coming and going, but not once until the Sabbath ends, and it is a long Sabbath, gray and cold and wet, does Yeshu appear openly among the tribes.

  As he secludes himself this entire time, so too do I.

  I hide in the tent of Addai.

  I rejoice to see that Addai thinks himself well enough to come here, though I see his doing so distresses Tata terribly, just as it does Dinah and Rhoda, who hover near him, Dinah almost without sleep. He is careful of his arms, careful of his jaw, cannot use his hands, his voice is still no more than a whisper, and he eats rosh as he would eat bread, but he lives.

  In every way I know, I have shown them how beloved they are of me, how it moves me to see them again. Though I am numb of heart, still I fuss and chatter of where I have been and what I have seen. They are amused at the idea that people talk of Yeshu raising up a dead child. They are interested in Thecla and her many husbands, especially Tata, and they wonder as I do, at the blind man in Bethsaida. Has he bathed in every pool yet? If so, does he see? And Addai, who has not come near the city of his birth for many long years, listens to what I know of Shechem as I would listen to someone newly come from Alexandria. I have told them of Yeshu’s discovery of me, and I have told them of my discovery of Seth.

  All this I do as a sleepwalker. From the moment when Yeshu saw me, I have acted as I would require myself to be, as Mariamne, a woman of maturity and learning. This will be the truth of things. This woman will be born no matter how hard and how long I suffer her birth.

  Already, I dress in some of Tata’s clothes, putting away the clothing of John the Less in her traveling basket. I shall keep with Tata and with
Addai as befits my unmarried state, but I will not become quiet in the presence of men. Nor shall I act as if I know nothing, feel nothing, am nothing unless as a reflection of my use as a woman: mother, wife, daughter, mistress. I will be as Tata and Thecla and I will do as I please, and if I am shunned, then I am shunned. I will go to the Temple in Jerusalem and there I will ask for the ear of the high priest Caiaphas. From him, who has always feared me, and who will be happy to get rid of me as quickly as he can, I will claim my mother’s inheritance so that I am better protected by my wealth from men, and from their terrible hurtful beliefs. And finally, I will not place myself in the way of any of the brothers, the sons of Anna and of Joseph; I will not further shame them, and I will not further shame me. As for Salome…by all that breathes, I do not know what I shall do about Salome.

  But even as Mariamne, I swear I shall think of something.

  Late on the day of this interminable Sabbath, Seth joins us. I am heartened that he does, though his beloved presence brings the blood to my skin, and I flush yet again from top to toe. Seth is quiet and composed. He makes no mention of what was said before. As ever, I am impressed by my friend’s dignity and self-possession. And as I sit quietly, talking with those I love who love me, these three who know who I am, I now know I will return to Alexandria. It is decided. I tell them when next Ananias has business there, I shall go with him. Perhaps I will begin a school.

  The Sabbath is over. Outside, there are people stirring, speaking in louder voices. Great numbers pass close by our tent as they make their way to where Yeshu will speak. We hear the dull clatter of metal bells hung round the necks of sheep and of goats, we hear the bright chatter of children, for this is not only a gathering of fierce Sicarii come to show their knives and call down curses on all who are unrighteous, this is a gathering of whole families. The arrest of John of the River and the scattering of his followers have caused distress to entire villages. They come here to hear what it is that will now be done. They would hear prophecy.