The Gospel of the Twin

by Ron Cooper

  “And he killed Judas.”

  Andrew didn’t answer. He looked up at an evening sky that was as dull as the eye of a dead fish. “Is this the empire of the Lord, Thomas? This?”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Verse One

  Magdala was now even more destitute than when Mary had first taken us there. Like most of the women in the village, Mary dressed as a widow. She was sitting in front of her house sewing when she saw me and ran into the street. Tears covered her cheeks as she embraced me, alternately pushing her face into my chest and throwing back her head to wail like the old women at funerals. Curious neighbors came to find out which son of Magdala had fallen to the Romans this time. Mary’s family gathered around. Balkai embraced me, and then he led us inside.

  “You found me on a special day, dearest Thomas.” Mary pulled her shawl from around her face and draped it about her shoulders. “I was actually outside. Most days I sit here. Some days I cook bread. Some days I comb my hair. Some days I listen to the wind or the rain. Every day I wish for death.”

  Balkai took her hand. “Don’t speak like that.”

  “The Romans have robbed us of our very being. We have been reduced to maggots living off their filth. Jesus and Judas gave me hope, each in their own way. What’s left? The murderer Peter, I hear, has his own following now.”

  “You don’t know that he’s a murderer,” I said.

  “I know far more than you, Thomas.” She moved her hand away from Balkai’s. “Living with the truth has been almost as painful as living without the dream.”

  “What truth, Mary?” I said. “I find many truths, one from each person I meet.”

  “You do not know this truth.” Mary nodded to Balkai. He arose and went to the far side of the room where his wife was scraping some sort of root. The two of them left the house, and Mary and I were alone.

  “Judas and Peter crafted a plan to have Jesus become more than a spiritual leader—more than just another healer. Something had to happen to add to Jesus’ political appeal. They decided to have Jesus arrested on a minor charge, then raid the prison to free him. They thought that many of our people would find this even more impressive than raising Lazarus from death. They would call it a sign from God that Jesus, not the Temple priests, was God’s choice as leader of the Jews. Judas enlisted his comrade Barabbas and the other Zealots, who were already converging on Jerusalem and trying to finalize their own plans.”

  “Andrew said that Peter told him something much like this.”

  “I bet Peter never told Andrew this part.” Mary went to the table where Balkai’s wife had been peeling roots, drew a cloth from under her robe, and dipped it into a bowl of water. She pressed the rag to her face and inhaled slowly. When she came back, she sat by me and took my hands into hers. “I didn’t see Judas in Jerusalem until moments before the arrest,” she said. “I could not greet him with joy as I had hoped, for he was in a brutal state of mind. He and Peter stomped toward where Jesus and I sat. It was obvious that the two had been fighting, and Judas had one hand beneath his cloak.

  “I suspected that he was holding his dagger. Neither said anything about the nature of the quarrel, but when Jesus stood, Judas shoved him and called Jesus a deceiver. Judas also accused Jesus of being in love with me and of trying to have him arrested so that Jesus might have me to himself. Peter said that Judas was a traitor, and Judas called Peter an apostate.

  “Jesus had said peculiar things to us in Jerusalem—things that made me think he had a premonition about how his career was about to reach either a completion or a new phase. The rest of us were already on the edge of our nerves, and the incident at the Temple had made us all fearful. I just knew he’d be arrested and, from what we’d heard, the Romans were executing anyone they thought looked or sounded suspicious. They didn’t even bother with trials.

  “I told Jesus we should leave, but he just said, ‘But, Mary, this is my hour.’ So when this quarrel started, most of us were too astonished and confused to do anything. I heard the words, but I stood like a post and pictured them killing each other—Judas killing Jesus or Peter killing Judas, or even Jesus attacking Judas. I swear to you, Thomas, I saw in Jesus’ eyes the same thing I saw in Judas’ when he killed that man who had slandered me.

  “I finally gained control over my body and jumped in front of Jesus. Peter roared with laughter. Judas grabbed my shoulders and pulled me back at the very instant I saw Jesus fall to the ground. A Roman soldier had struck Jesus. I was so focused upon the quarrel―I guess we all were―that I hadn’t noticed the soldiers and Temple police swarming around us.”

  Mary pressed my palms together as in a prayer. “Judas pulled me away and told me about the plan with Peter,” she said. “He said that moments before he saw me, he found out that Peter had changed things without telling him. Peter had gone to the authorities and told them Jesus had raised an army to attack the soldiers, with the aim of killing Pilate. Jesus’ behavior at the Temple, Peter said, was a signal to the many separate Jewish brigands who had come to Jerusalem that the attack would take place as planned.

  “Judas told me that the charge against Jesus, instead of being something small, as they’d originally planned, would now be sedition—and as everyone, including Peter, knew, the penalty for sedition is death. Death, Thomas! Peter, Jesus’ rock, decided that Jesus must die and become a martyr. Judas said that his band of Zealots could have freed Jesus from the Temple police, but not from the Romans. He had to abort the plan.”

  We sat looking at each other. I knew that Mary would not lie to me, yet I couldn’t make all the stories I’d been told about Jesus’ last hours fit together. But I had also known Judas all my life and knew what a clever fabricator he could be. He had tricked the Romans into arresting John the Baptizer, but would he so deceive those he presumably loved—Mary and Jesus, too?

  I pulled her hands to my face and kissed them. “Mary, I know that you loved Judas, and you know that I loved him. He was my cousin. We grew up together,” I said. “But something doesn’t make sense. If what he told you was true, then why didn’t he try to save Jesus? Why did he accuse him of being in love with you instead of using his Zealots to smuggle Jesus away to safety?”

  “I asked him that when Jesus was arrested, after he led me away,” said Mary. “His explanation, I admit, was strange, although at the time I believed everything he said. He said that by pretending to be jealous and angry with Jesus, he was trying to cover any sign that a plan had been afoot or changed or bungled. If he’d said to Jesus, ‘You’re in danger and we must leave now,’ Jesus would not have cooperated. He said he was trying to get Jesus to step away from the crowd for a private talk, which Jesus would have done, and then he and the Zealots would have taken Jesus to safety, even if they’d had to bind him. But the soldiers and police arrived sooner than he had expected.”

  “Did you see those accomplices when Judas led you from the scene?” I asked.

  Her face went blank, and then she said, “No.”

  “Mary, could Judas have, in fact, been jealous of Jesus?” I said. “What if Peter didn’t really go to the authorities?”

  Mary covered her face with her hands and began to cry again.

  “When Judas went away after he killed that man,” I said, “Jesus spent more time with you than anyone else, even me. Someone could have planted the seed of jealousy in Judas’ head.”

  “No, no,” Mary said through her fingers. “That can’t be.”

  “Why did Peter go with Judas from Bethany to Jerusalem without the rest of us? What if Peter planted that seed? What if Peter did want Jesus dead, but he wanted Judas to carry the blame?”

  I let her sob for moment while the possibility grew more probable in her mind.

  “Mary, when did you last see Judas?”

  She wiped her eyes with her shawl. She blew three times slowly, as if she were cooling pottage. �
��We walked through town until we came across Judas’ Zealot friend Simon. Judas said that he had to tend to something but would find me later. He took us both to a house and told Simon to watch after me and help me look for Andrew and some of the others. He gave me a knife and told me to use it on any stranger who tried to put a hand on me. He told me to use an upward thrust from the side and showed me how. One quick thrust and then run.” She pointed across the room to where a dagger was stuck in the back doorpost. “There’s the knife. Only a pathetic lack of will has prevented me from using it upon myself.”

  Tears filled my eyes.

  “Later, Simon left me with the residents of the house and scurried into the night,” Mary said. “The next day, I went out and happened upon Matthew. We ran into small groups of followers crisscrossing paths, none of them sure what had befallen Jesus or whether they should stay or go. We finally found Andrew, who said he had spent the day caring for James and John and someone else who’d been beaten by the police and soldiers. He had found a place—the place where I took you when you came back to the city—and assembled some of our group. I went there with him, and we all tried to decide what to do.

  “We sent a couple of young men to walk about the city and listen for any news. After a day, maybe two, I cannot recall, Andrew and I went to look for more followers. When we found them, they were frightened and confused, unsure what had happened and what they should do. We sent them to that olive grove where you spoke to them. Some weren’t sure if they should do as we asked. Some ran from us. Simon the Zealot showed up at the same time I saw Balkai and my family. Simon told us that Jesus and Judas were both dead. I fell to the ground. I may have fainted. I remember Balkai and his wife pleading with me to return with them to Magdala, and I just lay there without saying a word, wanting to die.”

  Balkai and his wife stepped into the house. They stood in the doorway to give Mary and me a moment to finish the conversation.

  “Soon after that,” Mary continued, “is when I saw you.”

  Balkai sat at our table while his wife went back to scraping her roots. “What are your plans, Thomas?” he asked.

  Mary left the table and dipped the cloth again. This time she rolled it and curled it around the back of her neck.

  “I have traveled around the region,” I said, “learning a few things from interesting people. Alexandria is full of Greek philosophers who have given me the means to question things I had always thought could not be doubted. They’ve even given me ways to rethink what Jesus may have meant. But Egypt is not very far away, and it has merchants quick with tales of magical lands in the East. The world is much larger than we know, with ways of thinking and living that differ greatly from our own. There are nations that worship no god, people who dwell in trees as we walk upon the earth, lands of perpetual night, and people who speak in barks and chirps instead of words. I have heard of tribes far more impoverished than we, who eat one meal a day, yet have never known despair. That may be the greatest wonder of all, and if it’s true, I’d like to know how they do it.”

  “Yes,” Balkai said. “That would be worth knowing.”

  “At times, I think my brother may have been trying to tell us, in the language of our people, how to live that way—how to live without despair.”

  Mary returned to the table. “I have given up on such a life. I had it when we were with Jesus. I hoped for it to return the night you preached on the hill in Jerusalem. Now it cannot be found in our land.”

  “Then we’ll find it in another!” Balkai said. “Thomas, do you remember when you visited us years ago and I told you about a merchant who had been to India and spoke of the many wonders he had seen? You said that if I ever went there, you’d like to accompany me. Remember? I’m ready to go.”

  I was intrigued, but a trip of that distance and through unknown lands seemed too large a task for me, and I told Balkai as much. He stood and leaned across the table. “We’re living in a wasteland, Thomas!” His nose almost touched mine. His breath smelled like onions. “Maybe even the Lord has left it. Let’s go search for him.”

  Mary sat up so quickly that her shawl fell from her shoulders to the floor. At first, I thought she feared that her brother might leave her. But she said, “This could work, Thomas! Our people are too much like me—unable to see past their own misery. You know that some of Jesus’ followers are spreading their twisted interpretations of Jesus to the Greeks, and even to some of the Romans. It’s probably too late to keep Jesus’ true vision alive here. You know better than anyone what he really was. You can take his message to people who have some hope, but need more, and haven’t been poisoned by Peter and the others.”

  I had the sense that a great burden was being placed upon me—one that I’d shrugged off after impersonating my brother in Jerusalem. I had lived for years under the weight of my brother’s vision and had no intention of hefting someone else’s. I had spent the previous years as a seeker, and not as someone who had anything to offer others. I made excuses to them: I had no money for travel, we would encounter savages, no one in India knew our tongue, my mother needed me back in Nazareth—

  “You have traveled to Egypt and Anatolia with no money, haven’t you?” said Mary, scolding. “There are many merchants who will pay assistants to accompany them. Haven’t you survived the Romans? Who’s more savage than they? You speak Greek and Latin, so you could learn other languages, right? You disappoint me, Thomas, with these children’s fears. And how dare you exploit your mother for a petty excuse! You must go to India.”

  Perhaps momentary weakness had caused my initial reluctance to join Balkai. Perhaps it was momentary weakness that caused me to obey Mary. Balkai’s wife stood and looked as if she would throw her roots at her husband, but a glare from Mary pushed her back into her chair.

  I spent the night and the next day there, and after Balkai made some arrangements with neighbors, we set out on my first journey to the East.

  I never saw Mary again.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Verse One

  On my return from India, I traveled home to Nazareth. It was five years or so after Jesus’ death, three of which I had spent in the East. I had to confront questions that were still not fully answered, although I had my views on what was most likely.

  What exactly were the events that led to his death? Who was the principal traitor—Peter or Judas—and was anyone else involved? What did Jesus think he would accomplish in Jerusalem with his antics at the Temple? Was he trying to get arrested? I cannot believe he wanted to be a martyr, but who knows? He had surprised me in many other ways.

  During the long trip back, I began to notice how much I had absorbed from the Indian mystics. I realized that the pleasant conversations about what had seemed at the time only mundane matters, and the hours of sitting in silence, were sessions in which they exercised their mastery at teaching by example. Instead of saying, “Look at those beautiful birds,” they’d remark, “See those six birds with the bright red plumage and yellow beaks,” encouraging me to take in the fullness of the moment by becoming caught up in the details.

  We would sit and listen to a river’s rolling current or the wind rustling reeds, and I would find that my own thoughts would flow with the same smoothness. I could not articulate the differences precisely, but I knew that I was a changed man with a new way of being in the world—a new way of being the twin. I had faith that when I arrived in Nazareth and saw my mother, the right words would sing from my mouth like warbles from a swallow.

  Nazareth was ghastly. Fields that should have been blanketed with grain held only dust. The few sheep were as thin as the hairless dogs that skirted between leaning shacks. Four or five people in rags scuffled along the streets. A young woman sitting in a doorway waved at me, then pushed her finger in and out of her mouth as she tried to hide the infant at her breast. I had grown used to such physical frankness in India, where stone gods and go
ddesses consorted together on temple walls, but I never thought it would come to my land.

  I passed what remained of Leah’s house. Pigeons sat on the caved-in roof. A wall had crumbled, and the bricks undoubtedly had been taken to repair someone else’s house.

  My home was standing, but it had received little care, and had the look of the house of an old woman living alone. I pushed open the door. Joses jumped wide-eyed from a chair and backed against the wall, as if a ghost had entered. He then ran to me, threw his arms around me, and wept. When he pulled away, I took his hands. One of them felt odd. I looked down and saw that all the fingers on his right hand, except for the thumb, were gone.

  “Brother,” he said, smiling, “I thought you were dead. Oh, Thomas.”

  We looked at each other for a moment. The few items in the house were scattered: a stool with a broken leg lay on its side, a robe puddled in the middle of the floor, another in the corner on top of a pile of rags, a dirty hoe leaning against the door, a bowl and spoon encrusted with porridge and surrounded by crusts of bread on the table. I figured he had been here alone for some time.

  “They’re all gone, Thomas. Deborah’s husband was killed by soldiers. A centurion on horseback nearly trampled their son as they crossed the street. He cursed the centurion. Deborah says the centurion merely pointed with his chin, and a soldier shoved his sword through Ishmerai’s back. It took him two days to die. Sharon and her husband said they feared their sons would either die of starvation here or be conscripted by the Romans. They took Deborah and her children and left for Egypt. Come and sit.”

  We pulled two stools together by the table. Joses tried to balance on the broken one but gave up and sat on the floor. “Simon grew bitterer each day,” said Joses. “Each time soldiers came through the village, I was afraid he’d accost them and get himself killed. One morning, he woke me before dawn. He said that he and a couple friends were tired of waiting around to die. They left to join the Zealots. That was two years ago.”