The Gospel of the Twin

by Ron Cooper

  Whether Joseph died or not did not mean much to me. He was my father, but he had hardly been more than just there. How his death or survival was handled by Jesus, or translated to the crowd by me and Andrew and the others, was what mattered at the moment. I tried to convince myself that regardless of what happened, we could weave a narrative that would work to our favor. That would be the real miracle.

  If only Judas were here.

  Joses burst from the door of our house when we arrived. I expected him to announce that our father was dead, but he just stood before us as if we had a message for him. Jesus and I entered the house. James stared blankly at us. His wife Sarah sat on the floor with a drooling child of a year or two on her lap. Two women, neighbors, kneaded dough at the table. Slowly, our siblings, including James, came and hugged us. Deborah pressed my cheeks with her hands and kissed me, then did the same to Jesus. Simon told us that he had prayed for us to return home, where we belonged. Over their shoulders, I could see the bed: Joseph stretched out like a corpse, Mother curled beside him, mumbling. I went to the bed and took Joseph’s flaky, skeletal hand. Mother’s eyes were closed, and she appeared not to notice us. She held Joseph’s head.

  Jesus put his arms around Mother and whispered something to her.

  Without opening her eyes, she wailed and sat up as if she had been startled from sleep. She clasped her hands, moved her arms in circles like stirring a large pot, then looked at Jesus and pulled her hands apart as if releasing a bird into his face. She spoke gibberish—“hunkoi hunkoi”—and Jesus nodded in mock understanding. This seemed to give her great joy, and she leapt from the bed and pushed Jesus into her place.

  She ran around the bed to embrace me. “Thomas! Thomas, you have brought him back!”

  I did not, and still do not, know why she spoke normally to me and not to Jesus (and she never again lapsed into babbling), but I saw clearly that to her, my true and full identity was as my brother’s keeper. I suppose she was right, in a number of ways.

  “We are all here, Joseph!” Mother proclaimed. She went about the house touching everyone on the head and counting. She did not stop with family, but included the women in the kitchen. When she looked around and saw that no one was left to count, she left the house to count people in the street. My brother Simon ran after her, found her in a neighbor’s house counting children, and led her back. On the way, he said, she’d counted chickens.

  Jesus, meanwhile, sat staring at Joseph. I brushed the old man’s forehead, and his eyebrows fluttered but his eyelids remained shut. His breathing became more rapid, and I took this to mean he was aware that someone else was with him. Whether or not he could recognize our voices, I did not know. I also didn’t know what Jesus thought of his incorrect pronouncement that Joseph had died.

  “Father,” I said. “It is Thomas. Jesus is here, too. Father, can you hear me?” His hand moved, maybe voluntarily, or maybe it slipped.

  “He’s been this way for three days,” James said. “Sometimes he will move his head or moo like a cow, but he does not respond, at least not in any clear fashion.” He looked toward the door. Mary, Andrew, Peter, James, John, and a few others stood there. I motioned for them to enter, and they squeezed in and gathered around the bed. Mary pushed by the others to stand by Jesus. She was crying.

  Jesus stood and began to sing. “O Joseph, you are going, going into darkness, where Abraham has gone, where Moses has gone . . .” I cannot recall more, but what began as a dirge transformed into a sort of children’s memory game in which a list of items is repeated: “where David has gone” and “where Isaiah has gone” and so forth. Then Jesus added lines about Joseph: “Joseph held the hammer, hammer” and “Joseph split the stones, stones.”

  To me, this may have been Jesus’ most amazing talent, that on the spot he could compose a melody for any situation. People came in and filled our tiny house, and more stood just outside, and all sang. Everyone sang the first line, then Jesus would point to someone who had to sing the next line, then he’d point to another person, and so on, and soon we were laughing at ourselves for forgetting items in the list when we repeated the lyrics.

  Abarrane, the old midwife who’d brought Jesus and me and nearly every other Nazarene child into the light for the past forty years, sang, “Joseph split the Amos, Amos,” and we laughed so hard that we could no longer sing. James kissed his laughing wife’s forehead. Peter threw back his head and guffawed as he punched Andrew on the shoulder. Mary clapped her hands and did a gleeful hop. I think it was the only time I ever saw solemn old Abarrane laugh.

  Jesus made his way toward the door and motioned for the others to do the same. He began singing a different song—“We all take this happy journey, but alone, all alone”—and led us to the middle of the street, where he motioned for us to sit. Most of the Nazarenes joined us, including some of the old men who fancied themselves scholars and stood in the back pulling at their beards.

  “Be joyous with me!” Jesus said. “I see before me my beloved family, my friends from my childhood in Nazareth, my friends from all quarters of the Galilee, and even some from beyond there. I think we have a few Samaritans and perhaps”—Jesus looked about slyly—“even a Judean or two.” Everyone, except the droll old men, laughed. I suspect they were in no mood for a young man’s sarcasm, or anything else from the younger generation. Maybe they felt a challenge to their delusional self-importance any time someone else got attention. “This is a day, as all days should be for us, not for thinking of our regional and accidental separations, but for rejoicing in being subjects in the empire of the Lord.” The longer-term members of our group erupted into cheers, soon followed by the newer members.

  “As we move about, so moves the empire. For what is an empire? Is it the soil within territorial borders? Is it the force of a throne armed by swords and chariots? Is it a mass of people who happen to dwell in an area? Or, is it the people united by a spirit?” More cheers, applause, and shouts of “The people!” and “A spirit!” It was amplified this time by most of the population of Nazareth, who had sat down simply out of curiosity but were soon caught up in Jesus’ spell. I saw them sidling in the back, trying to look nonchalant, talking in hushed voices to their companions, probably saying, “It’s that Jesus. Hasn’t he been gone? Wonder what he’s carrying on about this time.” Soon, though, they moved closer and joined in on the exuberance. I knew most of them, of course, and was happy to see that they were so welcoming of Jesus.

  “A uniting spirit, one that holds a people together as the parts of our bodies are held by sinews. But this holding-together is more than mere strings of flesh. It is a harmony, an attunement that runs deeper than the marrow of our bones. It runs through the depth of the body and through the breath in the throat and joins the body to the very air and earth that give it life.”

  He continued about “the depths of things” and “the body of God,” and more than ever before, his speech became like a song, with its own distinct elements of tone and rhyme and rhythm. I felt vibrations, as when a chorus sings in a marble amphitheater. He was as masterful as the singing poets of Anatolia who hold audiences in their power for hours with just the sounds flowing from their mouths. Jesus’ words lost their sense for me, or else made a higher sense that needed no attention but instead seeped in like rain into a garden. I saw the others swaying. We were all charmed like the serpents who dance to music that I saw later in India.

  Mary stood. She was at the very front, where all could see her. She held her arms above her head as if supporting a falling roof. She began to rock slowly, first from side to side, then in a figure-eight pattern. She dropped her arms and flattened out her palms to look as though she were pushing herself up from the ground.

  Andrew stood and rocked. Then Philip. In fives and sixes, others joined in until we looked like rows of grain succumbing to gentle breezes.

  I moved from the crowd and nearer to Jesus to get a better loo
k at the event. I wanted to remain fully in the experience, yet witness the whole as well, which is not really possible. Once, years later, I spent a week at the home of a philosopher in Alexandria. Much of our discussion was about the elusive nature of experience, and he pointed out that, even though the same world is available to us all, we are each shackled to one inescapable perspective on that world. Once we attempt to extract ourselves from our perspective to try to get a new view of it, we add another sort of experience to the original experience, like a layer of oil placed on a watery surface. As you peer down through the oil, the water no longer looks natural.

  I asked him if he thought that God was beyond this predicament. He said that if so, then we can have no understanding of God and, worse, God can have no understanding of us.

  As I struggled to stay in the euphoria of Jesus’ voice, I noticed some movement in the crowd. It parted slightly in the center, the way stalks of wheat lean away from each other, then fall back when an animal walks through a field. In the front, Peter and Andrew stepped aside, James carried his child, and Mother emerged.

  James handed the child to Jesus, who kissed and rocked it and continued to recite his poetry. Mother took her place in front of Jesus and threw open her arms. The crowd parted again, and out came the Zebedee brothers, carrying Joseph on a berth of sheets tied across two staffs. They rested one end of the berth on the ground and stood it upright beside Mother.

  The sermon and the swaying and the occasional outburst of cheering and crying lasted much of the day. Finally, this body of God dispersed to bake bread, feed sheep, and carry on in two empires, one of sorrow and one of hope.

  Chapter Twenty

  Verse One

  “You look even more like Jesus than the last time I last saw you,” said Leah. “I hope your travels were interesting.”

  Joseph was back in bed, my family was inside, and most of our Nazarene neighbors had returned home. The followers were settling down for a night in barns, under trees, and wherever they could find a few unoccupied grassy spots. I was about to join Jesus and the rest of my family when Leah surprised me.

  “Yes,” I said. “We’ve had some strange experiences.” This was not how I imagined my reunion with her. I’d planned to go to her house and knock on the door. She would open it, flour on her hands and her dove-colored hair twisting about like grape vines. She would gasp and throw her slender arms around my neck, saying, “Oh Thomas, oh Thomas, I feared for you so!”

  “We had some strange experiences today,” she said, one corner of her mouth twisting up in a sly suggestion of a smile. “I’m not sure what they signified.”

  That meant that she had been present today with the other curious Nazarenes, but I hadn’t seen her.

  “Neither am I,” I said. She was even more beautiful than I remembered, with dark, calf’s eyes and lips rounded like a lyre. “How is your family? Baruch and Judas and I used to get into so much mischief when we were kids.”

  “My brother is dead. Romans. Same as my husband.”

  “I’m sorry.” I wasn’t really. All I heard was that she had no husband.

  “I consider them both heroes, but for every one of our heroes, there’s a legion of Roman soldiers.” She looked off into the distance, as if expecting her dead brother and husband to return. “This is why Jesus’ sermon, or was it a song?, was so meaningful to me. I had given up on any kind of resistance but hadn’t thought of a spiritual one.” She looked back at me. I wanted to see love in her eyes, but I’m not sure I could have recognized it had it been there. “I saw you today, but it wasn’t the right time to talk.”

  I wanted to hug her, but it just didn’t seem the right time for that either. “Who was your husband?”

  “Ravid. You remember him―Samuel the baker’s son?”

  “Yes. He was a good fellow.” I’d barely known him. He was always baking, even when he was young, while the rest of us were running around pulling childish pranks. Perhaps Leah favored the quiet type.

  “We were married for only three months when he and Baruch decided to join some rebels in Upper Galilee. Two weeks after they left, a messenger came to tell us that the Romans had captured most of the rebel band—I don’t know how many—and executed them all.” She crossed her arms and squeezed as if trying to hold something in her chest. She relaxed and sighed. “Now, tell me about you. Have you a wife?”

  I had the urge to say that I had married a beautiful woman from Magdala whose family sold exotic fabrics that they brought from India, where they journeyed once a year, and that she had bore me a handsome son with a purple birthmark in the shape of a ram on the back of his neck which meant, according to a priest, that he will be a great leader one day and that they are waiting for me in Magdala where my wife, Bayla, who has long black hair as shiny as the jewels in King Solomon’s crown—no, that glistens like the Jordan in the moonlight―is caring for her ailing mother, which is why my beautiful Bayla is not with me. All I managed, though, was, “No,” before an old Nazarene (funny—probably none of those “old” men was nearly as old as I am now), I think he was called Asa, interrupted us, “Where have you heard such things as you spoke of in that speech of yours? Surely not in the scriptures. Nothing you say is supported by them.”

  “Sir, you are confused about who I am.”

  “I know you.” Another elder had walked up. I remembered that he was a weaver. “You are the son of Joseph the Judean and Mary. Have you been polluted by Greeks?”

  “Maybe Egyptians,” said a third old man. They stood shoulder to shoulder. I would not have been surprised had they produced lances and charged me.

  “He is not Jesus,” Leah said. “He is Thomas, the twin.”

  The old men, some of whom had clucked their tongues when Jesus spoke earlier, ignored her and attacked me with questions. “Who is the emperor of your empire? Did you anoint yourself to step in to rule when the Romans are gone? Do you not think that the Romans will execute you in front of your mother’s eyes on beams hewn by your own father? Do you believe your own nonsense? The Lord may strike you down before the Romans do for uttering such blasphemies—‘the Lord coils within us like a worm’ and ‘drink the Lord like wine’! What did you mean by ‘hand out the Lord like breaking bread’? They say you heal the sick—is this a demon’s power? Why do you associate with the unclean?”

  I was more entertained than annoyed by these old men. They considered themselves the keepers of tradition, so I could understand why Jesus’ metaphors would sound peculiar to them. But did they have to take such offense? I had decided to let them continue to think I was Jesus so I could enjoy more of their taunts when Leah pointed to the other side of the street.

  “Look!” she said. “There’s Jesus. I told you this was the twin!”

  Jesus was being accosted by a similar contingent of old, self-appointed scriptural authorities. I was about to leave to join forces with him when Leah took my hand. “You don’t have to stand here and be abused.” What to me was merely an amusing encounter had angered her and, as she led me away, I saw a red-faced Peter standing beside Jesus and looking eager to snap the old men’s necks. I heard Jesus say something about a debt to the older generation.

  Verse Two

  Leah’s house was a bit larger than ours but no better furnished. Her mother and grandmother busied themselves preparing food while I made a minor repair to the wobbly table. The original nail had been replaced with one too small. I wedged in a sliver of wood and promised to fix it properly the next day.

  “Things fall apart when no men are around,” Leah said. Her daughter, who looked about a year and a half old, scratched at the floor with a stick. “Of course, men do their share of damage as well.”

  “I know I’ve done mine.” I said this without thinking, something of a self-effacing joke, but what if she asked what sort damage I had done? Would I confess that I’d had my cousin killed? Would she conside
r my sharing a horrid secret, admitting the searing guilt, to be a chord binding our hearts?

  Leah’s mother placed a bowl of figs on the table. “Did you come home because of your father?” she asked.

  “We were on the way home when we heard that he had fallen ill.” I wondered if that question was a test to see if I would answer that I had convinced Jesus and the others to come here for a variety of false reasons and that it was just so that I could be with her daughter.

  “It’s good that you are here. Your mother has your brothers and sisters, but you and Jesus are the lamps in her heart. Now she can spend the rest of her years happy.” She returned to the kitchen before she could see what I imagined was a look of guilt on my face. Leah saw it.

  “You must do what you must do, Thomas,” Leah said. “There’s nothing to regret about that.”

  I resisted the urge to ask her to accompany me on our mad wanderings, although I was sure she would have agreed to come. “You are right. I have to follow my brother. I feel that my life would have no meaning without him. My mother would not understand, but her life would also lose its meaning if Jesus didn’t complete his work. And he needs me. I feel a great responsibility to him, to our people.”

  “Your mother understands,” Leah said. “Would she want you to forsake your sense of duty? You have found a purpose, Thomas. That’s to be envied. Most of our people move through their lives looking for nothing more than the end.”