by Ron Cooper
“Oh, Mother, do not speak to me like this!” Mary said as she tried to free herself from Jesus.
“I’m not your mother! I did not birth a she-wolf! You are death!”
I had an urge to laugh. This turmoil had struck us like an unseen snake, and I was taken by the uncertainty of things—by the blinding shifts of fortune that cancel out weeks of repetition. Which is closer to the ultimate nature of the world: unity or randomness? Hasn’t the story of Israel been too unpredictable a mixture of the two for us to really learn much from studying the past? Is the proper response to shake one’s head, laugh, and pretend to accept the fundamental instability of life, of history, of God? But I didn’t laugh.
People crept from their shacks and sidled by us for a glimpse of the combatants. They squinted their eyes and searched faces and asked futile questions of Mary’s tight-lipped family. Only Mary’s mother offered clues, but her mad rant just produced more confusion. When it seemed the entire village had turned out, I saw Jesus say something to John, who scurried off between two shacks. Two men lifted the one Judas hit and carried him down the street. The man was unconscious and his jaw hung limply to the side as if unhinged. John returned with a large, mud-covered urn, upended it, and helped Jesus climb up and balance himself atop it.
“My good brothers and sisters of Magdala,” Jesus said. The slug of phlegm was still on his face. He must have left it there to make some sort of point. “This mother was unprepared for the return of her daughter. She has waited for her child, unsure of her welfare, unable to offer her the love that spills from her heart as from the heart of every mother. When love cannot find its true place and sits idle, it turns, like wine to vinegar.”
I expected the Magdalans to walk away or kick the urn from under Jesus, but they listened to him with implacable faces.
“A man was plowing a field when he unearthed a jar. He wiped the dirt from it and saw that it was a beautiful jar with magical beasts in blues and golds painted on it. The man said, ‘I shall wash this jar and give it to my wife, and she will display it in our home and be happy.’ But when he returned from the field, he heard his daughter screaming. The girl was being attacked by a dog. The man threw the jar at the dog, and although the dog ran away, the jar was broken. As the man washed the little girl’s wound, he pointed to the shards of the broken jar. ‘Behold,’ he said. ‘See how the jar is now in its proper place.’”
Our band all smiled, and a few shed tears, while the Magdalans questioned each other about the meaning of the story. “Was the man angry about the broken jar?” “Is the broken jar like the old woman’s broken heart?” “No, the jar is like Mary returning home, isn’t it?” “Where was the mother when the girl was being bitten by the dog?” “I think he just made up this story.”
“Woman,” Jesus said to Mary’s mother, “your daughter has returned to you with joy in her heart. She has brought to you her husband. See? She has given you another son!”
“No! No!” The old woman screamed and hurled two handfuls of dirt at Judas. “You swine! I’ll not have it!” She stood up and lunged toward Mary, but was restrained by her sons. Alone, Mary had been a whore. Married, she was swine. What did the old woman want?
Several of the villagers spoke to Mary and Jesus. They began to walk together, and Jesus motioned for us to follow. Mary’s mother yelled curses—“You will birth piglets from your polluted belly! Your husband is a goat-demon who lies with his own children!”—until we could no longer hear her. When the only sounds were sandals on the dry earth, I could repress it no longer and burst into laughter. Others soon joined in, and within seconds, we all laughed so uncontrollably that we stopped in the road to keep from stepping on those who had doubled over and fallen. None laughed so loudly as Mary, who raised her arms above her head and twirled in glee.
Only Judas refrained from the joy.
“Mary,” Judas said, “how can you do this after your mother said all those things to you?”
Mary laughed even more loudly, placing her hands on Judas’s face. “What mother, my love?”
Verse Two
The people who led us from the scene were more of Mary’s kin―an uncle and an aunt or two from her father’s side of the family, I think. We went outside the cluster of buildings that formed the village proper to a compound consisting of a house and several open structures that may have been used for livestock, but no animals were there. Our group could huddle in the animal sheds for the night.
Mary and her people scraped together whatever food they could find—bread, a few eggs, some dried fish—to feed as many as they could. Some of our followers scavenged the woods for wild onions and tubers as women with infants sat inside the house and hummed to their babies.
Things settled down after we had eaten. We cleaned leaves and loose branches out of a few areas where people would sleep. A group of children chased each other around the sheds, throwing dirt clods and yelping when they became targets. I saw Mary’s brothers arrive with something in their arms. I followed them inside the house, where they deposited a stack of blankets. They invited me to sit and join them as they told Mary of events since she had left Magdala.
Their father had sunk into gloom after Mary left, and when a detachment of Roman soldiers passed through the town—causing no trouble this time, not even stealing food or livestock as they usually did—he ran into the street, cursing the soldiers for taking his daughter. The soldiers, of course, had no idea what he was ranting about, nor could anyone else imagine why he blamed the Romans, but they summarily ran him through with a sword and dragged his stripped body through the street and out of town. The murder had a chilling effect on the entire village, the brothers said, but none more than their mother. She spent weeks rocking in the dirt, clutching her sides and mumbling the names of her husband and her daughter Mary.
“So my father somehow believed that I left home because of the Romans,” Mary said. “I suppose he was right. Were they not occupying our land, I would not have sought a new nation, nor seen it reflected in Jesus’ eyes.”
One of Mary’s brothers leapt from his seat on the floor. “It is not your fault!” He bent at the waist and stomped his foot. How had Mary avoided this family tendency toward the dramatic? “I think of leaving every day,” the brother said. “Perhaps I’ll join the rebels and live off locusts in the wilderness, and try to kill at least a few Romans before they destroy us all—or become a Pure One and recede into the caves.” His eyes were red and watery.
What did this outburst mean? Some family dynamic that I didn’t understand was playing itself out. Maybe they tended to blame themselves for any tragedy and assumed that Mary was accepting guilt for her father’s death, although I had never witnessed such a tendency in Mary. Perhaps they often threatened to do something rash, like run off to join the rebels, hoping that others would beg them not to. If this was what her family was like, I could understand why Mary had left home.
“I’ve considered leaving, too,” said the other brother. “I could go with a merchant I met in Capernaum who takes linen and wool from Egypt to trade for beautiful fine threads and wondrous goods from India.” He pulled a square of fabric from a pocket and, although not allowing it to leave his hand, let us each stroke it. The cloth shone like a jewel and felt like nothing I had ever touched.
“I think I saw this material when I was a boy,” I said. “We went to Jerusalem for Passover, and merchants hawked large stacks of cloth. My father bought a scarf for my mother, but I don’t think it was made of this fabric.”
The brother tossed the cloth above his head, and it floated like a feather. He snatched it from the air and, with a flourish of the wrist, returned it to his pocket. Did he always carry it around like a charm? “I doubt your father bought a scarf of this material,” he said. He bent close to my face. “It would have cost him a year’s wages. But this one”—he leaned away from me and into the group, scanning the faces to mak
e sure we listened with the right level of suspense—“was given to me.”
Mary’s brother, whose name was Balkai or Balakai, told us about his discussions with the trader who had recounted the wonders of India: behemoths the size of ten cows that pulled great trees from the ground with their noses, yet children sat upon their backs and commanded them like horses; striped cats larger than lions that fed only on men; newborn babies that spoke upon birth, and in three or four languages; men who had been seen to glow and hover above the ground; magicians who swallowed deadly serpents seven cubits long, only to spit them out whole like a tongue of fire, then make them spin upright on their tails like dreidels; and multitudes of graven images of many-armed gods and goddesses in naked embraces carved on the very walls of their temples.
Balkai got increasingly animated as he continued these reports of strange creatures and customs, which were surely exaggerations. This was good, however, for a smile spread across Mary’s face as she regarded her peculiar brother with tenderness.
I didn’t much care for this braggart, but I was enchanted. I, too, had heard travelers’ tales of monsters and giants, which rarely impressed me, but I felt this India, as a real land far beyond Roman grasp, might indeed possess unspoiled wonders. I may have then vowed to myself that I would indeed travel to India someday. Later, when I lived in India—which was not because I felt I had to keep my vow—I found that some of those wonders described really were true.
“If you journey to India, Balkai,” I said (or maybe I said Balakai, although I seem to remember that he corrected me about his name, whatever I called him), “I should like to accompany you. It sounds like a place where a man could make a new life.”
“Giving up on this life already?” Judas said from the doorway. I instantly felt a tinge of guilt. Judas often had that effect upon me. “I’ve been looking for your brother,” he said. “Have you seen him?”
I realized that I had not seen Jesus since sundown, several hours earlier. Judas and I walked out to the sheds to wander among the clumps of people, some of whom were already asleep, and found Simon and Andrew, but they had not seen Jesus either. We walked down the road a few hundred cubits, calling his name, and then back the other way. James and John heard us and joined the search.
Since our childhood, Jesus had demonstrated a need for solitude, so his going off on his own would not ordinarily have been cause for alarm. But the stories of the great beasts of India had made me a bit uneasy, so I felt a strong sense of urgency. I had visions of huge, vicious fish walking out of the lake to drag him to an underwater lair and gutting him, and tremendous eagles swooping down to whisk off his remains to a craggy mountaintop in Persia to feed him to their blind and shrieking hatchlings.
I’m not one to let my imagination get the best of me, and I’m generally skeptical of fanciful tales from exotic lands. But I suppose I was on edge because of the jarring events of the day—the hostility, the cursing, the fighting. Also, my finger where the old woman had bitten off the nail burned as if molten lead had dropped on it. If a fearsome monster was somewhere nearby, I had already met it. I did not mention these crazed notions to the others, but they were clearly agitated as well.
We crossed the field behind the cluster of sheds and stopped by a stand of trees that, in the distance, looked like a boat with slender sails. I heard a murmur that I took to be the wind, perhaps the odd effect of air currents sweeping through the open field and sifting through the nestled trees. When it became more distinct and localized above me, I looked up to see a knotted form on a limb about seven or eight cubits from the ground.
With beastly visions still racing about in my head, I gasped and leapt, startling the others. Simon stumbled over a tree root and fell, taking James and John down with him. They scurried on the ground, then stopped suddenly, like birds in a flock that seem to fly of one mind. We held our breaths to listen, and the murmur became human.
Simon stood, took a few slow steps toward the form, and asked, “Master, is that you in the tree?”
The murmuring continued. The rest of us crept to Simon’s side. We strained our eyes until we could make out a head and arms, with legs folded under in a squat on a branch. It was indeed Jesus, but he was not exactly speaking.
“What’s he doing?” asked Andrew.
“I think he’s praying,” John whispered.
“He seems to be in a trance,” said James.
“If he’s in a trance,” Simon said, “he may fall.” He grabbed a low limb and began to pull himself up.
“No,” said Andrew. “You’ll disturb him and he’ll surely fall.”
James and John agreed, but Simon continued to climb. Just as he placed his hand on the limb upon which Jesus sat, Jesus spoke: “Simon.”
Simon fell and hit the ground with a thud. We bent over him to see if he was conscious. His eyes were wide, and a low groan seeped from his lips.
“I think he hit his head,” said James.
Judas laughed. “In that case, he’ll be fine. His head’s like a stone.”
“That is true,” said Jesus after coming down from his perch. Somehow, without having made a sound, he was standing alongside us. “The wind was knocked out of him. Stretch his arms above his head.”
This was a remedy from our childhood. Perhaps the belief was that this movement expanded the chest and pulled in air, but it always seemed to me that if you just waited out those few agonizing moments, your chest would recover on its own, and your breath would return. The same is probably true of many so-called medicines and cures. How many of our maladies would, in time, simply work themselves out, rendering superfluous all of our elixirs and superstitions, and even prayers?
Simon’s great chest heaved, and the air rushed in. He took several deep breaths and scrambled to his feet, undoubtedly embarrassed by his ungainly descent. Jesus placed one hand upon Simon’s big, square head and, with the other, brushed some debris from Simon’s shoulder.
“Are you all right, Simon?”
“Yes, Master. I am fine.”
“Do not be embarrassed, Simon. You were concerned for me, and you acted while the others stood idly by. Now smile.” Jesus rubbed his hand briskly over Simon’s scalp, then thumped it. “Your head is indeed like a rock, but perhaps a better description would be that your will is like stone.”
“Then let’s call him ‘Rocky,’” Judas said. The others laughed, but I knew that much more was contained in that remark. Though Judas had a certain admiration for Simon, and they were usually in agreement on our political situation and the need for action, Judas often lost patience with Simon, whom he considered a reluctant comrade at best.
“I like that suggestion,” said Jesus. I suspect he took Judas’s “suggestion” as a subtle way of showing Judas that he knew about Judas’ view of Simon. “But, Peter, I like the Greek version better. It gives it a certain sophistication befitting our hardy friend.”
A cloud slid by and moonlight washed over Simon’s—Peter’s—broad, grinning face.
When I questioned Jesus later that night about why he was in the tree and what he was mumbling, he said that the night had been beautiful and that I should spend more time in meditation. Actually, he said that the night “pulses in” and that we must “attune” our internal rhythms—I think he said “currents”—to the “flow of the earth.” I was sleepy and could not quite follow him, and did not or could not press him to explain, but when I awoke the next morning at the entrance of one of the sheds, Jesus was sitting next to me exactly as he was hours before, as if he had not slept.
Verse Three
That morning after breakfast, Jesus walked into the woods alone, and I followed him. He stopped to sit beneath a fig tree. After a minute or two, he seemed to fall into a trance. I didn’t think he’d noticed me, so I sat beside him, watching him and trying to imitate him. Jesus appeared to be asleep, and would at times mumble nonsense like re
stless sleepers often do: “at the trees,” “beyond the water houses,” “women of eyes,” “jumps with bread and walking hills.” At other times, his eyes would open and strain, as if trying to follow a distant figure. My attempt to “attune” to my currents and the Earth’s flow amounted simply to a nap.
The same happened when I took lessons in India. I could sit for hours and, as I had been taught, focus upon a single thought, but enlightenment eluded me the moment I closed my eyes and began to breathe deeply. I would start with the image of a letter, say aleph, or that three-headed Indian god, but soon my mind would turn to the luscious Indian whores, the best I ever had. They’d show me a book called the Kama Sutra (I still carry a copy with me, just to give this old man a smile), and I’d pick from it my pleasure. They were unmatched artists at their work, and their fees were piddling. No awakening for me then.
Only years later, when I’d had my fill of such distractions, did I become adept at meditation. I don’t think, though, that Jesus and I ever saw the same things.
Chapter Fifteen
Verse One
Several days later, we left, our number increased by ten or twelve Magdalans. Some were Mary’s brothers or cousins; they all looked alike and trod in a clump, none having Mary’s independence or charm.
We took much longer getting from there to Nazareth than we should have. Someone would mention that an upcoming road led to some village, and then we would be on that road, seemingly without anyone’s decision to take it. Everyone seemed to assume that fate guided us, that destiny was unfolding, and that we were gathering subtle clues that would reveal a great truth when we arrived in Nazareth.