The Galilean he pounds manages to say, “Wilderness, John?”
John stops his pounding. He looks back at our settlement, noting how far it strays from the word
wilderness.
Goats and sheep there are in profusion. Courtyards and well-made walls and the tall stone tower and carob and fig trees and the plash of blue water running from bath to cistern to canal to settling basins. John turns back, laughing. “I see thou hast escaped Herod the Fox, Yehoshua. I hear it was well done.”
In turn, the man Yehoshua now claps his brother-double on the back. More dust, more shouting. “To escape a fox, one must be a fox, eh Jude!” He says this as John would say this, in the slipshod accent of Galilee. The twin Jude does not speak, he growls, touching the knife that is thrust through a loop in his rope belt. And I am the child I once was in my horror of this Jude, of Simon of Capharnaum, of this Yehoshua. Once again, I feel blood, hot with life, flow over my feet.
And yet, Jude and Yehoshua are not as the man Simon.
There is a sight to them, or—what is it? In the midst of my wilderness, my half-loved and half-hated home of yellow dust and high rock and heat like a kiln, the brothers Yehoshua and Jude seem as thunderheads, seem like black clouds charged with lightning. They smell of great deeds. Father once said great deeds are the promise of bright beginnings and the truth of horrible endings. John asks them what I would ask them. “What did you do, Yeshu’a, to provoke Herod so?”
“Do?” He laughs. Of all these men, only this one seems a friend to laughter. “What did we
do,
Jude?”
Once more, Jude growls, and this time, Yehoshua translates. “Jude says he did nothing, but that I, his brother, vexed a priest in the city of Tiberius.”
I think, is another priest dead for God?
“Jude says that Herod Antipas would say I preached sedition and full merited his jail.”
It eases me so to learn this one talks, and does not kill.
“But if that is so, my brother should like to know why John the Baptizer is here and not rotting away in a similar cell at this very moment?”
Salome’s eyes widen at this. Her nostrils flare. If this Yeshu’a is not careful, he will have an enemy before even he has settled in. If such a thing should befall John, Salome would dig him out with her nails if need be, or bleed to death trying.
John the Baptizer laughs like Eio. Or at least as loudly. “He would not dare. I am more popular than he is. Do not the Pharisee and the Sadducee visit me more and more often, demanding to know my business?”
Yehoshua does not laugh like Eio; he laughs as Father used to laugh, big round sounds. He is not the only one who laughs. Addai laughs. Salome laughs in delight at her favorite. The men and women laugh. Even I almost laugh. The children laugh because we laugh. We are all fools for laughter. John can do this; often he makes us lose ourselves in joy. Or fear. John can do either with equal skill.
Through his laughter, Yehoshua says, “Perhaps we were jailed so that there would be people in his new city, Tiberius. Having built on a Jewish graveyard, Herod must now drag them in by the scruff of their necks. Not that they stay. Have you been there, John? It stinks as this place, steam and sulfur. Now, where do we eat? Where do we sleep? Where do the children play? Have you work for us?”
John sucks in air so that he might shout out his answers, but another has stepped forward. This one has never known a smile, inside or out, there is no room on his face, black bearded to the cheekbone, for other than rage and gloom. In a land of serious men, I have seen none grimmer. Even John, who towers over him, thinks to take a step back, but does not. “Ah,” says John of the River, “Jacob.”
Jacob has thoughts as dark as pitch in his head, thoughts as hard as stone. His mouth when it opens is like a cave. And now he yells as a prophet would yell, as if he too were an immerser on the banks of the Jordan and his accent is as thick as the mud of its banks. “The Righteous will taste more than jails; the Righteous will die by their thousands. Open your nose! Smell the war in the wind? These are the Last Days. These are the End Times! Are you prepared?”
As Jacob yells, I feel Salome’s hand on my arm and am pleased. It has been so long since she touched me. She allows me into her thoughts. This one, she says, has made himself stupid in his righteousness. There is a power in this kind of stupidity that can drain the very sea.
But John is John the Baptizer, famed from one end of the Jordan to the other. None will be allowed to yell louder than he. He opens his mouth and lets out a mighty bellow, “Prepare yourself, Jacob! If every man cares for himself, all will be cared for.” With that he turns back to the brothers, which stops Jacob’s flow as a farmer stops water by closing a sluice gate. Jacob steps back, but his silence is as loud as his voice has been loud. There is more anger in this one man than in any man I have known, and by now, I have known enough angry men to whip the Great Sea to frenzy. John ignores him, therefore all ignore him. John flings out an arm. “Here, we are far from Galilee. Here, neither Herod nor Herod’s men will find you. Nor yet Herodias, the woman he makes his wife, though she be his half brother’s wife as well as his niece. Here, you will make your home, you and all your family. And here you will find many others who flee the law, and none, so far, are snared by it. Not so long as they keep to the wilderness. My home is your home, cousins.”
Cousins? This, then, is why we are bid to witness their arrival; these are John’s kin! But I am wondering, by law, does he mean the Roman law, which is also Herod’s law, or does he mean the Law, which is the Law of Moses—which, among all else it does, forbids Herod to take his brother’s wife to wife? But in truth, I do not care. I have done what was asked of me; I have waited in the sun to witness the coming of his kin. I have felt fear of Simon. I have felt a certain wonder at Yehoshua. Some for Jude. And none for Jacob. Now I should like to go back to my
nahal
and my sulking. Those who have waited for John move forward now to greet those who have arrived. There is much confusion. I see all this, and I could not be more vexed. It is hot. I am bored. There is a hairy brown spider on the wall near my ankle. I know it is harmless, and yet, in spite of myself, I lean away from it. By this, I push Salome who, not understanding, pushes me back. I am so irritated I kick her. She cannot believe I have done this and stares at me as if I were a hairy brown spider.
I wish with all my heart that I were again in my Egyptian bed under its Egyptian netting. How I long for the voices of the Egyptian night: the murmur of a last few scholars too engrossed to go to bed, distant flutes from the rich district of the Brucheion, the heated song of the streets, the call of night watch to night watch on the ships out in the harbors, salt harbor or sweet—but no. I am in the wilderness and all around me everyone is engrossed with coarse Galileans. If I cannot be in Egypt, I would rather be talking to Eio, scratching the hard hairy bone between her eyes. I would rather be in the cool of a cave reading a book. Lately I reread the book given me so long ago by Heli, the philosophy of Epicurus of Athens. Oh, that I should have my own
eudaemonia,
that “good guardian spirit” Epicurus speaks of, that I should know freedom from bodily and mental pain, and attain
ataraxia
! I imagine myself an Epicure. Like the followers of Pythagoras did, Epicureans admit women as well as men, slaves as well as the free, the poor as well as the rich. How far this from the ideas of the Poor or the Essene! All they wish for is a mind free from disturbance, a body free of pain, and a simple personal happiness that can only be found by loving the world on which Epicurus placed such high value. I find the Epicurean idea of everything being made of invisible indestructible moving particles, and there being more worlds like this world, wonderful. As wonderful as Metrodorus of Clios saying the stars are surely peopled. But as for Epicurus denying immortality, this I know to be false, for long ago, when I was ill at Father’s—
“And this,” I suddenly hear John say no more than a pace away from my ear, “is our young magician and this our young prophet.”
My eyes do not snap open for they have not been closed. But no part of my mind has been looking through them. It does now, all that I know of it, and with a suddenness that is almost like falling off the top of the tower. As so long ago, once again I am staring into the face of the man Yehoshua—but now he stares also into mine.
I know John is very near me; I know here too is Salome. I know all the others, even Sapphira and her brood of red-faced brats, have moved into the courtyard. I can hear John say, “Simon. John. I would have you meet my favored cousin, Yeshu’a.” And I can hear that the Baptizer does not shout; that instead he almost whispers. But what I know more than I know anything is that I do not know what I
feel.
It is not irritation. It is not anger. It is certainly not the weariness of the spirit that lately plagues me. What is it? It feels as if a small tooth nibbles on my heart. This man cannot remember me. It was so long ago. I was a child. A female child. Who would remember such a one? But I, I remember this man, and I cannot look away.
I am grieved to see that Yehoshua
can
look away, and does so when John points to Salome. “This is Simon Magus whom Seth says already confounds the mathematicians and the magicians.” He points to me, “And this is John the Less.”
Once more, Yehoshua looks my way. “I have heard of these youths.”
He would say more, but the moment Yehoshua turns his face from mine, I say, “I have not heard of you.”
Yehoshua laughs. He laughs! I love him for his laughter. I hate him for laughing at me. My petulant self would say more, but suddenly another face pushes into mine. This face comes as a shock.
“Who is this?” asks the face. “John? Yeshu’a? Come away. The sons of Judas would have a word.”
In his eyes I see all I saw the first time; Simon Peter of Capharnaum is as he was. Does he remember me? He had demanded my name so that he might remember me. But no, there is no memory there. I was a child then, and as nothing to him. I am as nothing to him now. With no more than a glance, he dismisses John the Less.
John and Yeshu’a move away, Simon Peter eagerly leading. Why do I grieve? Why do I
grieve
?
Salome nudges my foot with hers. By Isis, I have all but forgotten my Salome! “What do you see, Mariamne?” Salome asks this of me, using my name, my own name, under her breath. “I see John who lights up my heart. I see the Simon who darkens the air I breathe. But what do you see?”
I do not know what I will say until I say it. “I see that the One has finally come.”
The dark that falls over her face is darker than any Simon of Capharnaum could draw down. For Salome, John is the One. And from this day forward, for Simon Magus and John the Less, nothing is ever again the same.
Two days later, and Salome is pretending to hoe, but it takes only a glance to see she works out something from Pythagoras, a problem in geometry Theano once set her at lessons that results in a twelve-rayed star. I am actually hoeing. I have found I like to grow things, to tend them. There are rounds of salted dirt on my knees. There is salted sweat on the back of my neck. The sun does not burn my skin, but it heats my blood. All this morning, we have been down by the river far below the settlement, and now that it is the month of Tishrei, I have prepared a new bed for sowing more
rosh
poppies. I have washed salt from the stony earth through a sluice I myself have made, for the poppy does better when the soil is sweeter.
Eio is nibbling at the wild grasses that grow on the riverbank at the end of my unfinished row of poppies; one long shaggy ear bent forward and one long ear twisted back. I imagine myself Eio. I imagine myself Eio because it will be a change from imagining the brothers Yehoshua and Jude. It is Yeshu’a who does not leave my mind. I feel also the first stirrings of the Loud Voice since I cannot recall when, and I am afraid. I cannot ask help of Salome; neither of us has made further mention of voices, or much of anything else. I slip into Eio’s hide, curl like smoke through her nostrils, move through her blood—and the first thing I feel are the flies that torment her. The buzzing, the crawling. I toss my shaggy head and they come back. I toss them away again; they come back. How maddening not to have hands to swat them! I am tormented by flies. I stamp. I snort. I gather myself to bray—
“John!”
Yea Balaam!
I must leap a cubit. I find I have not been working at all. I have been a fly-crazed donkey and all the while I am a donkey, Mariamne’s body has been leaning on a hoe. But I am back now. Who shouts at me?
“A word,” says Tata, who has come all the way down from the settlement, across the entirety of the poppy field, and now appears before me without my notice, but not without Eio’s. Which of us has truly brayed? I find I do not know.
Salome glances up from her star in the dirt, wondering if a word is wanted with her as well, or if something is happening she would be interested in. If it concerns John of the River, Salome is always interested.
“I come for this one,” offers Tata, removing me from my hoe. “Addai has need of Eio.” She pushes at me, urges me away from our field on the banks of the Jordan. “Eio works for no one but John the Less and Addai.”
At the word
works,
Salome goes back to her dots and her dirt. In all this heat, I am hardly more interested in work than Salome, but, it is true, Tata could not make Eio walk a step. I call to Eio who trots over at once; gone for seven years and still Eio is mine. And so we walk away, Tata and Eio and I, out of the poppy field and up the steep path leading back to the settlement.
We are walking into the moment I will remember forever.
Addai awaits us in a drying room near the pottery workshops. From its door I can see the great kiln. This is where Tata now spends her days, for by now she has become more than a passable potter. Waiting as well are Seth, and the man Yehoshua, and Yehoshua’s twin, Jude.