THE CHRIST
In the night, Magdalene and John clap and sing like children and Mary confesses, “But waiting for you to return, I knew it was time to go. This place was good for a while, but now we must be off.”
Jesus was in an indulgent mood, happier than ever, for now he understood he had the power to indulge. He flexed his hands and opened them. He had the power to do anything.
“I would take you to Bethany.”
“It’s been a long while since I’ve seen Lazaros,” Jesus said, “It will be good to speak with him.”
“And you have never met my sister.”
“Marta? I met her long ago. I doubt she’ll remember.”
“You are so greatly changed,” John said. He had been half asleep under a great mustard bush when he had seen Jesus coming toward him like a half starved phantom in ragged robes, the fatness and the sturdiness washed from him, his skin dark as an Ethiopian’s, his eyes wide and burning like lamps. Even now, as they sat eating, John nearly winced at his emaciated arms and his visible bones.
“I’ll be fat for you soon enough, Jonni,” Jesus said, toucling his hair and seeming far merrier than he had before.
“Even so,” John said, “you are changed.”
“And how am I changed?” Jesus said, seeming to mock John as he raised a finger before his nose.
“You’re louder,” Magdalene said.
Jesus laughed.
“And gladder,” John noted.
“And stronger.”
“Good,” Jesus said.
“The world is quiet with murmuring under the rod of oppression. It is miserable and weakening every day. I’ll lend it my joy and my strength. If you lend me yours.”
“Lend you ours?” Magdalene bawked at this.
“Magda, believe me,” Jesus said, “I will never be your strength if you cannot be mine. We cannot do this alone.”
“I don’t even know what this is,” Magdalene said.
Jesus shrugged lightly, untroubled as the stars, unperturbed as the flowing Jordan.
“Neither do I,” he said.
Jesus laughed.
“Let’s find out,” John said.
“Yes, Jonni,” Jesus agreed, flashing a white, almost insane smile at his beloved, “let’s indeed.”
When they slept, all three of them slept side by side under the stars, both Magdalene and John careful for the body which seemed to frail and so strong. Long and narrow, it radiated such heat.
“He’s not fragile.”
John, who for the first time ever was heavier than Jesus, sensed the strength in his own limbs, the weight of his muscle.
“And yet he seems it.”
“Do you believe he is Messiah?” Mary asked.
“I do, and I never believed in such things. Every messiah whoever sprung up, I shook my head at and laughed. But I do believe in him. I always have.”
Distractedly, Mary ran her hand over Jesus’s side while he snored softly
“I do too. But I love him so much I wish he wasn’t.”
“Why? The Messiah will bring about the new world.”
“Theudus, Rabat, Dositheos! All the others who claimed to be the Christ—”
“They were false.”
“They were killed,” Mary said. Stroking Jesus’s hair.
She did not want to ruin John’s mood, and she did not want to voice what was on her tongue.
Messiahs are always killed.
The next day Yochanon saw Jesus coming toward him and cried, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”
Jesus, thin as a rail and still a little tottery, looked frankly embarrassed as he walked midway into the water. If he had hoped to come in secrecy, Yochanon had destroyed that.
“This is the one I meant,” Yochanon continued, gesturing to his cousin, “when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.”
Of Jesus had hoped that only a few would hear, or that the general noise of this place of baptism would cover Yochanon’s words, it was a vain hope, and now the crowd drew together, listening to Yochanon. John, where her stood, heard Andrew and some of the others whispering.
Then Yochanon continued, shouting as he climbed a great rock in the river.
“I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ I have seen and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One.”
“You keep saying things like that you’ll put a target on his back,” Magdalene reprimanded when they were eating the midday meal.
“Things like the truth?” Yochanon said.
Magdalene raised an eyebrow.
“How will he be the Christ in secret? How will he be the Christ unproclaimed? When his work begins, will he do it in the shadows?”
“We don’t even know what his work will be,” Magdalene said.
“A target is on all of our backs,” Yochanon said. “If we stand too close to fire we burn. And he is the fire.”
Mary looked where Jesus was excitedly speaking to John and Andrew and a few of the others. Having been out in the desert, how very much he resembled Yochanon.
“You thought I was the fire,” Yochanon told her, chewing on a bit of bread. “But he is the fire.”
“In the morning we leave,” Magdalene said. “I would have him rest a day.”
“Are you his mother?”
Losing the reverence she had for Yochanon, she slapped him.
Yochanon received it, rubbing his stinging face.
“That was fair,” he said.
“We are all his mother,” Mary said. “And in the morning we head to Bethany. After that I do not know.”
“You will see Marta?”
“Your wife? My sister? Who lives in the house to which I’m going? Yes, I suppose I will.”
“Tell her…”
Mary Magdalene studied his face. For once he looked unsteady, uncertain as he rubbed his lower lip.
“No, nevermind it.”
“You had best tell me,” Magdalene said. “You do not now when you will have the chance to convey a message to her again.”
“Tell her she was my only wife, the only woman I loved, and if I could have brought her out into the desert with me I surely would have.”
Magdalene made her face a mask against her emotions and nodded, closing her hands over her face.
Jesus could not remember all he had said during that day, only that he opened his mouth and words seemed to come out of it. But when he stopped talking, when words died in him, was a little before the Perean guards rode toward them on the road. They bore a litter as they traveled to Machaerus, the palace on the other side of the river, and Yochanon cried out:
“Repent, Herod! Oh, Repent. Sinful and full of incest! Repeating the crimes of your father and increasing your crimes. All the land knows of the evil you have done. Return your wife to her husband’s side! Let them go about their own sin! You are our king, and the king’s son! Oh, prepare the way of the Lord and give up your sinning. You have seized your brother’s wife, and wed the daughter of your older brother! Oh, how your sins are stacked to heaven!
The red curtain of the crimson veiled sedan flew open and for once, just once, a white and poisonous face with blood red lips and kholed eyes raged at him.
‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says:
“‘In the pride of your heart
you say, “I am a god;
I sit on the throne of a god
in the heart of the seas.”
But you are a mere mortal and not a god,
though you think you are as wise as a god.
Are you wiser than Daniel?
Is no secret hidden from you?
By your wisdom and understanding
you have gained wealth for yourself
and amassed gold and silver
in your treasuries.
By your great skill in trading
you have increased your wealth,
and because of your wealth
your heart has grown proud.
“‘Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says…”
It was at this point that Magdalene saw the well dressed woman she had not seen in some time, the one whom the man on horseback had come for once. She was drawing a silken veil over her face while Yochanon continued:
“‘Because you think you are wise,
as wise as a god,
I am going to bring foreigners against you,
the most ruthless of nations;
they will draw their swords against your beauty and wisdom
and pierce your shining splendor.
They will bring you down to the pit,
and you will die a violent death
in the heart of the seas!”
Blowing their shawms and trumpets, the party simply turned away, marching on the road to Machaerus and, Jesus said, “They have chosen to treat him like a madman today, one who can simply be ignored.”
Magdalene nodded and voiced his other thoughts.
“But how will they treat him tomorrow?”
Jesus rose before the sun and made his way out of the hut where he slept between Mary and John and went to seek his cousin. Yochanon was sitting by the shore on an outcrop over the water, his eyes bright, and Jesus sat by him and they spoke for a time before Jesus kissed him on the cheek and climbed down from the rock. A little while later, he and Magdalene and John prepared to head for Bethany. The sun was rising, and already people were coming to the river. Yochanon was there again with two of his disciples, and when he saw Jesus departing, he cried, perhaps in goodbye, John would think later on, “Behold, the Lamb of God!”
Jesus only looked back and pulled his stole over his head, and then he followed Magdalene as she led them up out of the valley and in the direction of her home.
But when Yochanon’s disciples heard him call Jesus the Lamb of God, Andrew joined Magdalene and John, following Jesus. They followed for some time, till the rocky and lumpy land grew smoother and grassy and they rose up higher and higher to where, looking down, the Jordan seemed a flat silver blue ribbon. Only then did Jesus turn around and ask, “What do you seek?”
Andrew and John looked at each other. Andrew licked his lips. He had never been asked what he was seeking. He had only followed. But it was Andrew who said, “Rabbi, where are you staying?”
John had expected Magdalene to answer this, but she said not a word. It was Jesus who answered: “Come, and you will see.”
So they went and saw where he was staying, and they spent that day with him. It was about four in the afternoon.
The night was drawing on when they arrived at the house on the hill in Bethany, and there was a part of Magdalene that expected to be reprimanded by her sister, but when the door was opened to them and Jesus, ragged, and grey robed, burning eyed, stood before her, Marta lowered her veil and her wealth of red brown hair fell about her. She went to her knees and touched his feet.
“Rabboni,” she murmured, “be welcome into my house.”
It was the most extraordinary thing Magdalene had ever seen, and as Marta rose, Lazaros was entering, all manner of things passing over his face, and with a warm formality, Marta said to John and to Andrew, “All of you, you are welcome in my house.”
