In a later world where work was everything, the world where people praised men for hard work on someone else’s fields as if there was something virtuous in semi bondage, the lives of Philip and his friend Nathanael Bartholomew would have been difficult to explain, indeed the lives of many men in this story would have been hard to fathom. For it was not that there was no work, but that work was always there, for the taking. There were few who woke up and went into a factory or a counting house and stayed there. Farmers planted in the three springs and reaped in the three harvests, and if a man wanted employment, he showed up to their fields. Something always needed doing somewhere, and so a man might go up and down the country as he wished, stopping to gain coin for the day or days ahead as he might, and moving on.
And there would come times when the people were dull, even the high up people, dull and incurious so that the idea of tradesmen who read and philosophized and sat at the feet of masters, who delighted in the freedom of the world, was unknown and not understood, but Nathanael and Barholomew were such men, both from Bethsaida, both not as traveled as they wished to be, and not as rooted as they willed, who had run into each other now and again, wandering up and down, north and south. They were the men who smuggled texts of Plato, Socrates and the secret scriptures of Enoch, who hungered for every new and mystic teaching and stood up late at night, rolling pipe weed and smoking long cigars, praying to the God of mysteries for enlightenment. Hillel the Rabbi was their hero, Daniel and Ezekiel the prophets they revered. But the mystics of Greece and the far off lands of India they revered as well, and now they drank wine on the roof top and passed the great smoking cigar back and forth and both made them heady, made their heads buzz and their spirits fly from their bodies.
“He said,” said Philip, “If you fast, you will give rise to sin for yourselves; and if you pray, you will be condemned; and if you give alms, you will do harm to your spirits. When you go into any land and walk about in the districts, if they receive you, eat what they will set before you, and heal the sick among them. For what goes into your mouth will not defile you, but that which issues from your mouth—it is that which will defile you.”
“No kashrut?” Nathanael stretched out, propping himself on his elbows, “The dietary laws no longer apply?”
“Possibly. And he also said, ‘When you see one who was not born of woman, prostrate yourselves on your faces and worship him. That one is your father.’”
“He sounds like a madman,” Nathanael said, “and yet… it is a madness I want more of.”
Philip grinned madly himself.
“I am convinced of it: we have found Him of whom Moses in the law, and also the prophets, wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”
But here, Nathanael laughed, almost in relief. For a moment he was about to get up again, follow one of these men again. He almost had.
The innkeeper’s daughter, who was almost sweet for Philip, and certainly planning to be paid a little before going to bed, had arrived, and she sat beside him, smelling of sandalrwood.
“Nazareth!” Nathanael continued, “that place on the other side of Nain that sends all its men to work in Sepphoris because it has no work of its own? What good can come from Nazareth?”
The whore brushed Philip’s cheek, affectionately.
Philip said to Nathanael, “Come and see.”
Before they’d left, the innkeeper’s daughter discreetly closed the curtains around the pillowed area of the rooftop where they were, and then, while that space was filled with the grey smoke of Nathanael’s cigar and darkened by the draperies, she lay on the cushions and raised her skirts, and Philip, who’d known no woman in a while, mounted her with the joy of the day just passed. While he fucked her, the girl cried out in something like actual pleasure, for one must take their pleasures where they could, and when Philip came, he spilled his seed like Onan, on the cloth between the girls legs. He was dizzy headed and spinning when he collapsed on his back in the seat where he’d been before, and took the burning cigar from Nathanael. He placed more than the price of a fuck beside the girl’s purse and by then, Nathanael was aroused, and so he took a second furious turn and wobbly legged and satisfied, the girl left them, opening the curtains to the night and releasing the smoke. They were both weary with drink and food and smoke and fuck, but didn’t dare sleep, and after another half hour, throwing their arms about each other, the two friends made their way down below, and Philip headed back toward where he had left his new teacher and his new fellow disciples.
But then they were lost. Though this was the smallest, most insignificant town in the world, a suburb of Nain, which was itself in no way a remarkable town, they were lost. The drink the excitement, the smoke, the sex perhaps, and at first the two of them laughed over their lostness until it became irritating, and Nathanael said, “Do you have any idea where you are ging, or will be be sleeping on the side of the road?”
But just then they were in the town square, and it wasn’t as late at it seemed, for there were still folks coming to the well to get water for their donkeys, or in the case of those about to make a great journey, their camels, and there, under a tree by the well was Jesus, mantle drawn over his head like a hood, his long right hand draped over his knee and John dozing beside him. Even as they approached, he rose, and before Philip could introduce him, Jesus, lowering his hood said of Nathanael, “Behold, an Israelite indeed!”
Nathanael was caught up short by that greeting, and Jesus continued, “Behold an Israelite in whom is no guile!”
Nathanael said to him, “How do you know? How do you know what’s in me?”
Jesus turned away from him, as if his words did not matter, and gestured for John to rise. As he straightened his garments, brushing away dust, Jesus said: “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.”
Nathanael looked terrified, his jaw dropped and his eyes widened. His first instinct was to run, but the wise instinct, especially having heard of this man, was to fall, weakly, tired at last, on his knees.
“Rabbi, You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”
Philip looked from one to the other, clearly confused, and when he looked to John, John was just as flabbergasted. Jesus, though, instead of looking surprised at the Nathanael’s response, wore a half smile.
“Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe?”
And as the late evening stars began to appear, Jesus declared, “You will see greater things than these. Yes. Most assuredly, I say to you, hereafter you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”
Mary heard of their approach before she saw them. This is what it meant to live in Nazareth or to visit that place. By the time the party was approaching the house, they were escorted by Joses and Judah, their young children, and Mary’s youngest, Lydia. Mary perfumed herself like a bride, touched her hair with henna, and threw a light veil on before coming out to meet the new arrivals.
Jesus was in the midst of them and she came directly to him, holding out her hands. He placed his in hers, and she looked up and down at him, more than pleased.
“It has happened,” she said.
“Yes, Lady,” he said, bending to kiss her on each cheek, “it has.”
Not long ago, he had returned to her from his travels, and he was changed then, but it was not this new change. At that point she had said to her oldest son, one who had so often felt so frail, but at the moment felt full of power, “You are ready.”
He had brought back John and Magdalene and part of her hoped, impossible as it was, that he would have brought back Yochanon. Elizabeth had always worried for his safety, but when she had died, it had happened with a peace, committing her son to God. Mary did not quite know that peace for her cousin’s son, and as Chana came out to embrace her grandsons and Magdalene, Mary greeted the three shaggy men who had come with him.
He has disciples now. He has followers. Well, it all begins. It all begins.
“Be welcome into my house,” Mary said, closing her hands together, and then her eyes. She gave a regal bow of her head and touched her chest, and they did the same.
Meanwhile, Lydia caught Jesus’s hand and said, “You are here! You are right in time for the wedding.”
“The wedding?” Jesus looked confused, and then he remembered.
“Tirza is marrying that fellow in Cana. We head out tomorrow,” Joses said, taking his brother by the hand and leading him into the main house. “If you had come later, you might have missed us.”
“Nathanael is the newest,” John said. “He’s old friends with Philip and Andrew.”
“Have you met him before?” Mary asked her nephew.
“No, not really. Only heard of him. Seen him.”
Answering a question she had not asked, he added, “He’s an alright fellow.
“Magdalene remained in Sepphoris with Lazaros and Marta. They have a house there. They wished to visit, but did not want to crowd your house.”
“Her brother and sister. Marta. I remember when she married Yochanon. She was beautiful, though I fear I was not to her liking.”
“She is a strange woman. Strange in a good way. I always thought that when Yochanon left her it was because she was too common—”
“That is ungracious.”
“Still, I thought it. But she is like him in many ways. She is like Magdalene, for they both see things. The moment Jesus came to her door, she fell to her knees and clasped his feet, and she is neither a dramatic nor a humble woman.”
“Indeed,” Mary nodded as she sat on the other side of her nephew, kneading the bread for the evening meal, “and why should a woman be humble?
“We leave in the morning. Probably after midday. What if we traveled through Sepphoris on our way to Cana and collected them? “
Mary sighed, “I love a good wedding, even when I am not entirely sure who is being wed.”
