According to Mary Magdalene (6 page)

A
letter came from Leonidas, a cheerful, jolly missive assuring her he would soon be back in Tiberias, but already at first reading she knew he was lying, that he was not only deceiving himself, but also trying to deceive her.

Then nothing.

Euphrosyne went to the new tribune and was received with malicious friendliness and thanked for the orderly and sophisticated way in which she dealt with her activities. It was extremely important for the morale of the soldiers, he told her.

An old man, tired and finished.

Euphrosyne quickly told him about the child she had undertaken to care for on behalf of the centurion Leonidas. Now she wanted to know where Leonidas was.

He looked troubled, called for his scribe, who took out the reports from the Roman expedition to the kingdom of Parthia.

“A total failure of a war,” he said.

She had a strong sense that he had not needed the reports and that he knew, but wanted time. Then he said that an advance troop led by Leonidas had been wiped out in an ambush. The Romans had counted their dead, but the centurion was not among them. There was a possibility that he had been taken prisoner, but…”

“But?”

“The Parthians don't usually take prisoners.”

Euphrosyne took a long detour through the new settlers’ part of the town, streets where it was difficult to make your way among the building sites and heaps of bricks. She was miserable, weighed down with her responsibility for Mary.

What should she do?

She stopped to watch four workmen fitting a beautifully carved door into one of the new houses and by the time the heavy door was in place, she had made up her mind. She would look on the girl as her daughter. Mary would be Greek. Euphrosyne would wind down her activities. Then she would return to Corinth with her daughter. And a handsome fortune in good Roman coins. But now it was a matter of telling Mary. No lying, and yet being considerate. It turned out to be simpler than she had feared. Mary had only to meet Euphrosyne's eyes and in both of them was certainty and despair.

“He's dead?”

“They don't know. His body wasn't among the dead.”

“Prisoner?”

“The tribune said the Parthians don't usually take prisoners.”

Mary was dry eyed and rigid.

And it stayed that way, unapproachable with either consolation or friendliness. All words came up against a wall she had raised between herself and others.

“If only she would at least cry,” the girls in the house kept saying. “If only she…”

She must be kept busy before she turns in on herself completely, thought Euphrosyne. She set Mary to sewing, but the girl's fingers were too impatient for the needle and the work of mending tunics and darning mantles was not productive. Not even embroidery pleased her, despite the bright colors and beautiful flowers.

Then one day Mary took to her bed. “I've a pain in my stomach,” she whispered.

Euphrosyne left her there, but returned an hour or two later and just sat at her bedside.

“Dear child,” she kept saying. “Dear child.”

It was so unusual for Euphrosyne to be emotional that her words got through the wall.

“Why does everyone forsake me?” Mary cried out.

“Not everyone,” said Euphrosyne, and Mary could hear she was angry. “I am here, and I am doing what I can.”

Then she left the room.

Mary stayed there, thinking how difficult it all was, for there was no reason why Euphrosyne should give her food and houseroom, friendship, and care. No money was coming from Leonidas any longer and she was of no use in the house. Why not throw her out on the streets with the other beggar children?

She was ashamed.

Then it struck her that Euphrosyne was counting on her, as a whore.

They said she was pretty.

Dear Lord, help me.

She thought about Miriam and now she understood.

She leaped out of bed, pulled on her tunic and ran downstairs straight into Euphrosyne's office, where as usual she was sitting over her accounts.

“I won't be a whore,” she cried.

“Nor is that included in my plans,” Euphrosyne said, coldly, but then suddenly her voice broke. To her immense surprise, Mary saw that she was crying. It was so terrible and unbelievable that it broke down the wall around her and she gave way to her grief, a wail rising in her throat and the tears overflowing.

But nothing could allay Euphrosyne's bitterness.

“You're an ungrateful creature,” she said. “Go to your room and be ashamed. Think about Leonidas and his loyalty. And mine. You clearly don't even know what love is.”

The next day, Euphrosyne said that Mary was to put things right by going and helping in the kitchen. Learning to cook was an art a woman would always have use for.

Things went better for Mary there, partly because ever since she had come to the house, she had liked the cook. He had been given the handsome name of Octavianus, but he was actually a cheerful Gaul who loved food, Euphrosyne, and life in this house of pleasure.

He called her his assistant, taught her how to trim and brown a roast, gut a fish and fry it golden brown, render vegetable stock into bouillon, and how to make sauces, as well as teaching her the thousand secrets of herbs and spices. He encouraged her, occasionally praising her, but he often shook his head.

“You lack what is most important,” he said. “And that's the actual joy in it.”

She was very tired by the evenings, her body from all the hard work, her head from all that was new. But before she fell asleep, she wondered about what Octavianus had said about her lacking joy.

She lacked love, too, Euphrosyne had said, but she had plenty of shame. Dear Lord, how ashamed she was.

A day or so later, she was summoned to Euphrosyne's office. She went as she was, in her coarse tunic, stained with blood and spots of fat, and stood stiffly in the doorway, thinking that she must somehow say it.

“Can you forgive me?”

“I have to apologize myself,” said Euphrosyne, flushing. “I used hard words. And unjust.”

“No,” said the girl calmly. “I think you were right.”

Euphrosyne looked at Mary. She was quite tall now, but was still painfully thin, her face hollowed like a sculpture that had stood out in fierce winds and lashing rain for far too long.

“Listen, Mary. We must have a talk at another time, but at the moment I have something to tell you. Sit down, will you.”

Mary brushed down her tunic and sat on the very edge of the stool.

“When I heard from the tribune to say that Leonidas…was missing, I made a decision. I decided I would regard you as my daughter. In a few years, I am going to sell this house and go back with you to Corinth.”

Mary's eyes narrowed with the effort to understand. “Your daughter?” she said finally. “Do you want me as your child?”

“Yes.”

“You want me to be your child?”

“Yes.”

Mary got up, her legs weak. “Why?” she whispered.

“Because I'm fond of you, of course.” Euphrosyne's answer was brief, her voice gruff.

“I hurt so.”

Mary was hugging her stomach with both hands and Euphrosyne told her to go straight to her room and lie down. “I'll get the doctor and you can be properly examined. And get better.”

Mary lay very still in bed as the doctor squeezed her and said to Euphrosyne, “I don't think she's ill, but she's undernourished and dehydrated.”

I should have noticed, Euphrosyne thought. Then she was angry and found an outlet by summoning the cook and shouting and him. “How can you cook food with a child who is starving to death!”

Octavianus looked at the girl on the bed. “She finds no joy in food.”

“Then you must make sure she does,” cried Euphrosyne in fury, though aware she was being unjust.

But the doctor stopped her, turned to the cook and said: “You must now take the responsibility of making sure the girl eats so that she becomes nice and plump. You're a master of good food. Make delicious little dishes and sit at table with her while she eats. I rely on you.”

Mary was made to drink a whole goblet of honey-milk, and when she tasted the bitterness through the sweetness, she knew she would be able to sleep, and for a long time.

Euphrosyne tucked her in and sat beside her for a while. As she rose to go, Mary said, “You see, I've never had anyone to be like.”

M
ary Magdalene decided to spend the day working in her garden in Antioch. She went up the narrow steps that wound their way between the terraces, and when she came to her herb garden, she saw to her satisfaction that her plants were shooting as they should in early spring.

The garden was high up, so high that on a clear day like this, she could see right over the town wall and make out the sea in the west.

She stood there with the pruning knife and hoe in her hands as she gazed for a long time out over the sea, a streak of brilliant blue from horizon to horizon, a sail here and there, signs of mankind in the infinity.

She remembered the first time she had ever seen the sea, when Leonidas had been searching for her and had found her in Galilee, where she had walked, confused and mad, obsessed by the desire to see Jesus. Here by the blue sea, his spirit must surely be found and once again show himself to her.

She had looked like a beggar woman and was one, begging her bread at people's doors, asking for houseroom, and sometimes being allowed to stay overnight in an outhouse with the animals, though she mostly slept under the open sky.

It was a hot summer.

No one had recognized her.

According to ancient custom, she had strewn ash in her hair and, mixed with sweat, it had run in rivulets down her face. She never washed and grew used to the smell from her body. Her monthly bleeding came and she let it run down her legs. Her skin was dry and cracked, burnt by the sun and covered with sores.

The night before Leonidas found her, she was sleeping under an upturned boat on the shore and had a dream in which she was walking over land in an unfamiliar landscape, asking everyone she met for the sea. Most just shook their heads, but a few pointed in a certain direction, so she followed their instructions, but never found the sea.

Once she saw some waters that seemed to have no end. It became a long and exhausting walk to get there, but she was driven by her longing and hopes. When she finally reached the shore, to her despair she saw that it was a stretch of river she had seen and thought had no end. She tried imagining the waters of the river were like her, on their way to the sea, but was unable to follow the winding course, so she stopped by the trees on the riverbank, a place she knew, but where people no longer lived.

She wept with despair in her sleep.

It was strange that he recognized her. His cry of “Mary, Mary” reached her in the morning as she rolled out from under the boat. But she found she could neither answer nor even raise a hand in greeting.

I thought I was dead, she thought. But I was stark staring mad.

He took her to a house he had borrowed, put her in a warm bath, washed her hair and rinsed it again and again, then soaked the scabs off the sores on her body.

She submitted like an infant, but her blue eyes followed him, grave and questioning. By the time he had finally dried her, massaging her with a large towel and rubbing ointment on the open sores, she was able to ask, “Leonidas, do you think I'm sick in my head?”

“You've probably been a little, but you'll soon be well again.”

She could hear he was frightened.

He made her eat.

Before she fell asleep, he said, “As soon as you're better, we'll go to the sea.”

They went by wagon. To the Roman soldiers controlling all vehicles, he said: “My wife has been ill. We're on our way to the sea, where she is to rest.”

They looked with pity at Mary's scorched face and thin body, glanced through Leonidas' papers and politely waved them on, Mary scarcely conscious of what was going on. It wasn't until she stood by the endless sea, bluer than the sky, but closer and full of strength, that she found her way back to herself and tried to explain: “Since last time you left…”

“I know,” he said. “As soon as I got back I heard about it. That damned Pilate had Jesus crucified. I had a feeling he was threatened. I oughtn't to have left him.”

Leonidas was also in despair.

“You couldn't have done anything. He decided himself.”

“So incomprehensible!”

“Yes, no one will ever understand.”

They had seven days to talk about what had happened, but what she remembered most of all of their time on the shore outside Caesarea was the waves breaking day and night, great waves that washed her until she was empty.

Mary brushed her memories aside. It was all so long ago now.

She got down on her hands and knees and started pulling up the weeds. She noticed the soil was dryer than usual at this time of year and that was worrying. She would have to start watering soon and she sighed even now at the thought of the heavy work of carrying water up to the top terraces.

As she was resting and slaking her thirst from the water jar, she noticed the mist sweeping in over the sea. The blue color had gone and she now had to be content with looking at her house, the lovely house Leonidas had had built on the slope.

She began wondering how it had come about that they had ended up here. Neither of them had wanted to live in the seething noisy town, that was clear. But why just here, on the outskirts of the Jewish quarter?

The finger of God, she thought, but she smiled. Perhaps it was Leonidas wanting to give her a home close to Jewish fellow believers.

The thought made her laugh.

Then she thought perhaps it had been for her.

A long time had gone by before she had dared go to the synagogue, slipping in to the women's gallery to hear Rabbi Amasya speaking. She listened in wonder to the words she recognized, about the God you could only serve by being merciful.

Rabbi Amasya told an old story about a Greek who went to the rabbi and asked to be instructed in the Torah. He was given the answer that it was simple, that all of Jewish wisdom could be found in a single rule: Love your neighbor as yourself.

Amasya quoted the prophets: Hosea who listened to God and heard him say, “For I have delight in love and not in sacrifice.” And not without pride, he said that Judaism was the first religion to preach responsibility for all fellow human beings. He spoke of Amos, the prophet for whom Jehovah spoke on behalf of the oppressed. People may close their eyes to injustices and cruelty to the poor, but God did not.

The rabbi quoted from the scriptures: “Therefore all things whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do you even so to them.”

Mary heard another voice, a young voice saying: “All that you wish people to do to you, shall you do for them.”

She was far away in the unusual light over the hills by the blue sea when the service ended in a prayer to God who was beyond our understanding, but was on the side of the powerless and the despairing. As the women around her rose to leave, Mary looked at the rabbi down there, her gaze so strong that he looked up, met her eyes, and smiled. As she left the synagogue the last of all, he was standing in the doorway.

“I knew Leonidas' wife was a Jewess,” he said. “So I have waited a long time for you.”

“I'll be back.”

On the following Sabbath, the rabbi told another story.

A man died, was wrapped in a shroud and placed in a coffin. Many people assembled for his burial, mourning and weeping.

But the man was in suspended animation and was awakened by the wailing. He banged on the coffin lid.

Horrified, the mourners looked at each other. But the bravest of them opened the coffin, saw the dead man sit up and heard him cry out, “I am not dead.”

At which the brave man said in a firm voice: “Both the priest and the doctor have pronounced you dead. So lie down again.”

Then they nailed down the coffin again and lowered it into the grave.

A murmur ran through the great hall, and an astonished titter or two, but Mary's laughter filled the synagogue. Heads turned and necks craned toward the women's gallery. Appalled, she slapped her hand to her mouth, but she noticed the rabbi smiling slightly, and that he gave her a grateful look.

The very next day, Rabbi Amasya knocked on her door. Leonidas received him and told him he had listened to his wife's account of the services at the synagogue.

“You must be a brave man.”

“Antioch is a large town and most Jews here have for generations been influenced by Greek thinking. There are shifting perceptions here, Gnostic Jews and the new Christians. So we have many seekers from other religions. And people who are just curious.”

“But what do the orthodox say?”

“They're probably disappointed. There are always people who are so full of fears, they have to stay within the authority of the rules.”

Leonidas laughed.

It became the start of a warm friendship.

Mary got up from her weeding and stretched, surprised by all the memories that had washed over her that day. Must be all this writing, she said to herself. As if sluice gates had been opened.

The next moment she heard the dry rustle in the bushes that told her that rain was coming. The mist from the sea had met the heat from the earth and had turned into heavy clouds. Although she ran down the steps, she was soaked through by the time she reached the house.

The sea sent yet more rain over Antioch when Mary was to sleep that night. She heard it striking the stone-laid courtyard and rustling through the tops of the fig trees.

Blessed, she thought.

It had been a good day.

Tomorrow she would return to that thirteen-year-old in Tiberias.