by Ron Cooper
“You!” Philip called. “Should I fetch him, Thomas?”
“No,” I said. “They must be frightened.”
Later that day, we saw three or four more of Jesus’ followers on their way out of the city. When we spoke to them, they too quickened their pace and pretended not to hear us.
We sat in a tent where a merchant sold bowls of barley soup. I had no idea what to do next. Philip said that if we went to the high court and inquired about Jesus, they’d be bound by law to give us the information. I don’t know where he got such an idea, but asking the high court would have been useless. During Passover, the court was overseen by the Roman prefect, even when the Temple police made the arrests.
Seeking information from the Romans would probably get us arrested, too. Thaddeus thought an arrest for something the Romans considered just a minor annoyance—one that probably would result in only a few days in jail—might be our only hope of finding Jesus.
“I’ll do it myself,” Thaddeus said. “I’ll go to the prefect’s headquarters—that shouldn’t be hard to find—and demand information. They’ll knock me to the ground to get rid of me, and I’ll jump up and insist they hear me, and they’ll put me in a cell. They probably have all their prisoners in the same place.” He leapt up as if he were about to march off.
I was about to say that, if Jesus had not yet been released, he had surely been executed, and that we would have better luck trying to find where the Romans dumped insurgents’ bodies. Then someone grasped my arm. I jumped and turned to see a woman’s covered face. Only the eyes were exposed, swollen and bloodshot yet unmistakable.
“Leave, Thomas,” said Mary. “There’s nothing to do. It’s over. I can’t go on.”
I embraced her. Several people stood together nearby and watched. I didn’t examine them with any care but wondered if they were followers who had stayed only because they looked to Mary for guidance.
“What happened, Mary, after the arrest?”
Mary tilted her head at the group beside us. “These are some of my family. You remember my brother Balkai? They came for Passover. I’m going back with them. There’s nothing for me now. Nothing for any of us.”
I had not recognized them. I nodded to Balkai and to the others, then took Mary’s face into my hands. Her breath was sour, as if she had not eaten in a long time. “Mary, tell me what happened. What’s happened to Jesus? Where’s Judas?”
Her face fell into my chest like dropped fruit. She moaned and choked, a sound erupting from a grief far beyond weeping. Her family members shifted their gazes among each other, each probably waiting for another to give me the news that they must have known I’d already figured out. Mary looked up at me and untied the scarf from her face. “They’re both dead,” she said. “The Romans crucified Jesus. I watched him hang on a pole, Thomas. I haven’t been able to sleep—that vision of him fighting for breath for hours and hours.”
I was dizzy, like the time when I was eight or nine and a donkey that Jesus and I were pestering with a pointed stick hoofed me in the stomach and I shat on myself. I remember that Jesus doubled over in laughter as I lay in the dirt whimpering. I could hear Mary sniff back tears, but I could see only an image of Jesus, his face twisted in agony. Did he at least die with the slight comfort that I did not have to witness that horrid scene? I felt drool on my chin. “Where’s the body?”
Mary wiped my mouth with her sleeve. “The Romans chased us off. They beat James and John. I heard that the bodies of the executed are dumped on a trash heap outside of town, and the soldiers will not let anyone near it. I don’t know. I haven’t had the heart to go look.”
“Wait. Judas is dead, too?”
She covered her mouth with her hands and breathed through her fingers as if filtering a foul odor from the air. She exhaled with a low hum. “After Jesus was arrested, everyone was frightened and confused, Judas grabbed me, and we ran to the home of someone he knew. He told me not to leave the house until he returned, and then he went back out into the night. I never saw him again. I found Andrew and some of the others hiding at another house. Andrew said that Peter told him Judas had been killed.”
“Killed by whom?”
Mary just shook her head.
“Are Andrew and the others still at that house?”
“They were this morning.”
“Take me.”
“Mary, we should go now,” said Balkai. He stepped toward us and took Mary by the hand. “Thomas, I’m sorry about your brother, but it’s not safe for Mary here. I understand that you want to find out more, but my advice for you and all your associates is to leave this city immediately. There’s no predicting what these Romans might do next. They could decide to kill as many of us as they can while they have the chance.”
“I thank you, Balkai. I have to at least find our friends, though. Please, I just need Mary to take me to them.”
A look of complete exasperation came over Balkai. “Have you forgotten, Thomas, that you are Jesus’ twin?” he said. “If the Romans who executed Jesus see you, they’ll do the same to you just for being his brother.” He looked around as if soliciting help for his case. “You know how superstitious they are, Thomas, with all their gods and ghosts. Gods taking women. Men becoming gods. People going to Sheol and coming back. They’re crazy, Thomas. They may think Jesus has come back from the grave. And they’ll have to crucify him again.”
Mary pulled away from her brother and turned to me with her mouth agape and her eyes spread wide. “Thomas, we can do it!” She realized that she had yelled and lowered her voice. “We can do it. Listen—” She shook her head. “No. Later.” She pulled her family together. They appeared to have a disagreement. Balkai put his hands on his head and paced around for a moment. Mary hugged the others.
Balkai circled my way and looked me over as if he were buying a slave. “Please take care of her. Will you bring her home?”
I said that I would, although I was not clear about what was happening. After goodbyes, Mary’s family left.
Something had changed in Mary’s face. “Let’s go to Andrew and the others.”
Verse Three
We stopped between a small house and a shed that held a few long abandoned chicken roosts. Mary told me to stay out of sight while she, Philip, and Thaddeus went into a house across the street. While sitting in the broken-down shed, I had time to make ten or twelve little people out of straw, as Jesus and I had once done for our sisters when we were young. I couldn’t remember the trick we used to tie the head so that it would not lose its shape. I was so engrossed with making these dolls that I didn’t notice Mary and Andrew until their feet entered my view. I looked up to see Andrew’s face sag as if he had been ill for weeks.
“Come inside, Thomas.” Andrew’s voice was thin. “James and John and a few of the others are here. We have something to discuss with you.” He sounded like a judge who hated to pronounce a harsh sentence.
Inside, the others were just as solemn: Mary, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Thaddeus, Matthew, and Simon the Zealot, who had joined us when Judas returned, and two or three others I cannot recall now. They looked at me as if I had been away for years—as if they doubted I was even really Thomas.
“Where is Peter?” I asked. “Is Judas really dead?”
They continued to study me. Did they hold me accountable for something? Did they blame me for Jesus’ death because I’d left for Nazareth?
“We can’t find Peter,” Andrew said. “Some here think that Peter . . . that he may have somehow been connected—”
“He killed Judas,” Simon said.
“You don’t know that!” Andrew said.
“I saw the body,” Simon said. “He had been strangled.”
“He was hanging from a rope on a tree,” said Andrew.
“He had cuts on his body and blood on his clothes that did not come from the wounds of ha
nging,” said Simon. “None of you have the kind of experience I have. Judas had been in a fight and was dead before being hoisted up on the rope. The marks on his neck that killed him were not the same as the rope marks from hanging. He was strangled by a very powerful—”
“What do have you against my brother?” Andrew shouted.
“Stop it!” said Mary. Her face was streaked with tears. “None of this will resurrect Judas.” She turned to me and held out her hands. I took them in mine. “But resurrection, Thomas, is what we must talk about.”
The others shifted in their seats. Andrew and Simon glared at each other. Someone passed around a wineskin. I took a long draft. It was as if there was a box and they all knew what was inside, but each was unwilling to lift the lid for me.
“Do you know what they did with Jesus’ body?” I asked.
After a long pause, Andrew spoke. “It’s in the trash pit. I saw them put it on a cart with a few others and take it there.”
“Can we get it?”
“They guard it, Thomas. They pay people to catch stray dogs and bring them there to eat the pile of bodies. You cannot imagine how many they execute each day. They’re monsters, and even worse are our people who collude with them.”
“Let’s get back to our plan,” Mary said.
“Plan?” I asked.
“Dearest Thomas, Jesus is dead, but again he is not. His vision lives in us, and we owe it to him to continue.”
“This is crazy!” said Philip. “You’ll make fools of us all. This isn’t Greece, where they believe in such nonsense.”
Mary spun her face toward Philip. Her eyes widened and her lips parted as if she were about to speak to him. Philip looked down at the floor. Mary turned back to me and slid the back of her hand across my cheek. “Many of his followers have left, but some are gathered just outside of town, too shocked to believe their dreams are over. Some new followers have joined them. They saw or heard about Jesus’ disruption at the Temple, and he inspired them. Hearing he had been executed even seemed to give them more inspiration. Some of that spirit is being picked up by the older followers.”
“I can’t believe this,” said Philip.
“Silence!” said Matthew. He gave Philip a fierce look and inflated his chest like Peter used to do when he wanted to intimidate someone.
Mary kissed my hand. Tears fell down her cheeks. “We, too―those of us here― were in shock. We tried to keep all the followers here and convince them that we could continue. We brought all we could gather to this house and spoke to them. Andrew addressed them and gave a moving plea to continue in Jesus’ name, just as he would have wished. Matthew spoke, comparing Jesus to Moses and reminding them that after Moses’ death, our people continued on their mission to reclaim their homeland. I led them in song, but they just didn’t respond with any enthusiasm. We—those of us sitting here with you—didn’t think we had the charm, the spiritual power, to keep the movement going. When you saw me leaving today, I had abandoned all hope. I had lost my husband, my true love, Thomas, and the hope that Jesus gave us for a new life. I didn’t really want to return to Magdala with my family. I didn’t want to go anywhere or do anything. I could just walk the streets of the city where Judas and Jesus died. Thomas, I comforted myself with the thought that I could at least make a living as a whore.”
She took a deep breath and looked around the room. “I think everyone else here felt the same loss of purpose.” Some of the others nodded. Mary wiped her eyes and cheeks, then placed both her wet hands on the sides of my face and moved in close to me. I thought I could hear the breath of the others quickening. Mary was about to open the box.
“Mary,” I said, “I’m not Jesus. I don’t have that charm or spiritual power either. I—”
“Shhhh,” she said, and placed her tiny hand upon my lips. “Thomas, that’s not quite what we’re asking you to do. Dearest Thomas, to keep Jesus’ spirit alive, to keep this movement growing, to give you and me and these others the hope that they have not made all these sacrifices and done all this work in vain, that Jesus did not make the ultimate sacrifice in vain, they need a miracle. Think of how they reacted to Jesus’ miracles—to Lazarus’ resurrection.”
Mary pressed my face until it hurt. Her voice sharpened to a whistle, as when the wind tightens through an alley.
“My precious Thomas,” she said. “You are Jesus’ twin. Even those of us who know you well have often had a difficult time telling the two of you apart. If these followers believe Jesus has returned to them from the grave, can you imagine their zeal?”
Chapter Thirty
Verse One
I ran into Andrew in Byzantium, where he had been preaching “the Way,” as he called it, for years. He was a natural at adapting Jesus’ teachings, or what had become of those teachings, to local beliefs. If cleansing ceremonies and ritual meals appealed most to the people we encountered, then he would make those rites central to their way of following our movement.
If death and resurrection resonated within them, as it did for the Greeks, then he would minimize ritual and emphasize rebirth.
Andrew accompanied me on one of my trips to India. The variety of world views and cosmologies he found in India fascinated him, and he delighted in the challenge of creating nuanced versions of “the Way” to fit each new group.
I witnessed Andrew’s most adept use of this talent in the court of Gondophares, king of the Parthians. They practiced the Persian religion of Zarathushtra which, unlike the Indian religions, had one almighty god, along with minor figures such as Mithra, who was a sort of sacrificed demigod about whom they had many stories. The priests were continuously tending to some ongoing rituals, in which they combined bright metals and multicolored minerals and examined them with intense interest.
Gondophares and his priests, with whom we conversed in Greek, found little of interest in what we said about Jesus until the discussion turned to what “the Way” promised for the future. I was about to speak of my people’s yearning for a messiah who would rebuild Israel, and how Jesus had entirely transformed that notion, when Andrew jumped in. He had listened intently to the Parthians as they told of a great battle in which Soshayan (or something like that), whose name means “savior,” swooped down from the heavens to cleanse the Earth, defeat the Evil One, and bring about rebirth to all.
“That is one of Jesus’ names!” Andrew said. “When he returned from the dead, he told us that we should call him Soshayan, because he was to go to the heavenly home of God, but would come back someday to transform the world.”
Andrew continued with this improvisation for much of the afternoon, embellishing it with details about angels and plagues and wars. The priests were impressed, and Gondophares had us stay in his court for months to advise his priests. We were given clothes similar to those of the priests, so, in a sense, Andrew and I became priests of the Parthian Way.
We were given all the luxuries the Parthians could offer: delectable sweetmeats that looked like cubes of lamb fat but were sweeter than crystallized honey; a beverage called homa, somewhat like wine but not as sweet, which they made from the leaves of a local plant which caused the imbiber to have visions (I saw winged chariots swirling out of the sea and giant purple chickens scratching at the Jerusalem Temple); and whores who visited us each night in twos and threes. They were covered in perfumed oils and their braided hair hung to the floor. I thanked Gondophares for these delights, but made the mistake of mentioning that his whores, while exceptional, should be sent to India to learn further skills. He said humph and excused himself for a conference with his advisors.
Andrew was so eager to continue spreading this new version of “the Way” that, after we left Gondophares, Andrew returned to India while I returned home. He left a week before I did, perhaps seeing some danger that I was too blinded to detect. I should have trusted his insight, I suppose, and gone with him. I never saw hi
m again, but I heard years later that he had been teaching in Anatolia and Greece.
Far from Gondophares’ palace and near the edge of his kingdom, I was attacked by what I took to be robbers. The little Parthian I understood was useless to me, but one of the robbers spoke Greek. His speech was labored and garbled—he had obviously tried to memorize a message and had not fared well. He said something about “polluting the fire” and the “face of an imposter and insulter.” They inhaled smoke from a burning paste in a reed and then stripped me and tied me belly-down to stakes in the ground and chanted and sang what sounded much like one of the songs I’d heard from their whores. Then the four of them took turns raping me. As one took me, the others laughed and spat upon me.
At that moment, I decided that if the Lord lived, he cared not a fig for me. They cut me from the thongs that held me to the stakes and rolled me onto my back. I was sure that they would then cut my throat, at which point I welcomed death. Instead, three knelt upon me while one gouged out my eye and mangled my face. I focused on the knife with my spare eye—it had a curved blade and a black hilt with a man’s turbaned head, perhaps of their god, carved into it.
In later years, after I’d adopted the practice of meditation, that was the image that enabled my most intense focus. He then sliced off my left nipple and shoved the eye into the wound, which bled surprisingly little. By then I was numbed to pain, and tried to surmise the significance of this mutilation. Was my heart looking out to the world? Was my sight as useless as my nipple? The meaning escaped me, although I did not seriously contemplate it after that day.
I was more concerned with who had sent the assailants and what their spoken message was supposed to mean. I knew that fire was sacred to the Persian and Parthian religions. Perhaps one of the priests resented the changes Andrew and I had introduced, or maybe Gondophares had great pride in the abilities of his whores and resented what he took as my insult to their talents. But who in Parthia would know me to be an imposter?