Chapter Sixteen
Signs
The days began with breakfast, though they did not all eat together, and maybe a crowd appeared or maybe a crowd did not appear, and then, before noon, came Jude Thaddeus, playing on his harp while the people of the house raised hands and sang psalms, and sometimes they spun in circles, twirling as they sang long into the night until the house was filled with a quiet wind and they were caught up in the presence of God.
And in the midst of this now, coming down the stairs into the great hall of the Alphaeus house, mantled in white, was Jesus, his hands outstretched to be touched, and so he would raise his hands in song as well, and who knew how long that would last until, finally he would sit down to speak.
“A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.”
Later people would bring their children for blessing, or have questions about life, ask him to pray for them, come for healing or embraces, just to touch his cloak, and Judas was sensitive to the men in black from the synagogue and from Jerusalem, and now and again he noticed the Roman soldiers.
“You have nothing to fear,” one of them said. “My name is Sebastian, and I am a friend. Many of us followed John, many of us are partially descended from you, or from Syrians, and we are only curious. We are only here to keep the peace.”
“Keep the peace,” Judas wondered. Well, that could mean many things.
In the night, after those who had come to hear Jesus and the men in black and the soldiers were gone, the disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”
He would reply, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. This is why I speak to them in parables:
“Though seeing, they do not see;
though hearing, they do not hear or understand.
In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:
“You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
you will be ever seeing but never perceiving
For this people’s heart has become calloused;
they hardly hear with their ears,
and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts
and turn, and I would heal them.’”
He looked down, and Gemuel was tugging at his robe. He lifted his nephew and placed him on his lap, planting his face in the boy’s hair and kissing him. Cleophas and Rachel, his parents, thought now and again how it was a shame that Jesus had no children, and as the boy clung to his uncle, Jesus continued in a much gentler voice.
“But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.
And then he added, as his nieceGanima, not content to be left out of the embraces, made her way onto Jesus’s lap as well.
“Listen then to what the parable of the sower means: When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This is the seed sown along the path. The seed falling on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful. But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”
“Has no root, has no root,” Nathanael said later on, when even most of the members of the house were gone, and it was just him and some of the others, and Jesus was sitting in the silence that usually overcame him after speaking.
“But what is the root?”
John turned to Nathanael and smiled as if the answer was obvious.
“Be rooted in love.”
The pleasure of love became the pangs of childbirth, and Mary was there along with Magdalene, Joanna and Rachel, when Ada went into labor. Her mother walked her round and round the part of the house they’d separated for the birthing until Ada was tired and sat down upon the birthing stool.
“I hear in palaces the women lie on their backs ot give birth,” one of them said.
“Well, what’s the use of that?” Mary wondered.
The labor was quick, and before midday, Ada rejoiced in a daughter, Ahinoam in a granddaughter, and Peter ran in to embrace this child so small, so serious in her little face and twitching nose.
“What will we name her?” he asked his wife.
“Tamar,” she decided.
“A name of ill omen?”
“A name of remembrance,” Ada said, remembering the women of that name, and how they had been made to suffer, the Canaanite who was the mother of the tribe of Judah, widowed twice, forced to play the prostitute and bed her own father by marriage. The other Tamar, her descendant, a princess of Judah, raped by one brother and used as a political point by another.
“Still,” Ada said, “though that will be her true name, let us call her Tzadefet.”
“Pebble?” Mary wondered.
“The Little Rock, a chip from her father the Rock.”
And so they did, though, when Sebastian caught wind of it, he called her Petronilla, which sounded better, and so it stuck.
Even as rejoicing spread in their community, in the group of homes spreading from Capernaum to Bethsaida, and from Peter’s house to Matthew’s, the new family of Jesus, darker news spread too. The whispers were finally confirmed on a morning when, all in black, weary, worn, ancient looking from her suffering arrived, Marta with a noisy unhappy baby, and a worn down Lazaros as well as Nikodemos, Joseph of Arimathea and several tired people Jesus had never seen, but whom John remembered, vaguely.
“Followers of John,” Magdalene mused.
And it was Lazaros who spoke, not Marta.
“He is dead,” Lazaros said, falling at Jesus’s feet and clutching them.
“Yochanon is dead.”
The story went thus:
As all knew, Herod himself had given orders to have John arrested, and he had him bound and put in prison. He did this because of Herodias, his brother’s wife, whom he had married. For John had been saying to Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.” So Herodias nursed a grudge against John and wanted to kill him. But she was not able to, because Herod feared John and protected him, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man. When Herod heard John, he was greatly puzzled; yet he liked to listen to him.
Finally the opportune time came. On his birthday Herod gave a banquet for his high officials and military commanders and the leading men of Galilee. When Salome, the daughter of Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his dinner guests.
The king said to the girl, “Ask me for anything you want, and I’ll give it to you.” And he promised her with an oath, “Whatever you ask I will give you, up to half my kingdom.”
She went out and said to her mother, “What shall I ask for?”
“The head of John the Baptist,” she answered.
At once the girl hurried in to the king with the request: “I want you to give me right now the head of John the Baptist on a platter.”
The king was greatly distressed, but because of his oaths and his dinner guests, he did not want to refuse her. So he immediately sent an executioner with orders to bring John’s head. The man went, beheaded John in the prison, and brought back his head on a platter. He presented it to the girl, and she gave it to her mother. On hearing of this, John’s disciples came and took his body and laid it in a tomb.
“What nonsense,” Marta declared.
“The only part that is true is that they disposed of him like a carcass, and we bore his body away and buried him where no one will know and no one will desecrate him.”
“Men do what they will,” Joanna said, “And blame a woman and say, see this is what women were like.”
“What really happened?” John asked.
“There was no dance,” said Marta. “What fool of a king would promise a girl half of his kingdom for a dance? Or, at least, it was no innocent dance.
“It is true,” Marta said, holding her hands out for the baby she had born Yochanon, “that Herod feared him, but he did not fear him enough to release him.”
“And it is true that Herodias loathed him. And she is a proud woman, the granddaughter of Great Herod, and a queen three times over. Miriamne, whom Herod killed and all Israel mourned, was her grandmother, and Miriamne’s grandfather was Hyrcanus, the great high priest. So you’d better believe it did not sit well with Herodias to be called an adulteress,” Joanna noted.
“I have heard it said that the princess Salome is a good girl, a good young woman.” Magdalene noted as she took her little nephew from Marta’s arms.
“She is a sad young woman, a pawn of men and of women more powerful than herself, like all princesses,” said Marta.
“There are some who say that Herod, knowing Salome was bound to marry a king—who is a cousin or uncle of course—was forbidden from touching her. And he very much wanted to, for that family love a bit of incest. Remember that, because Herodias married an uncle, both she and her daughter are grandchildren of Great Herod. Anyway, I believe she wanted John dead, for John was quick to call them incestuous and sinful, and from Machaerus prison he preached against them loudly. So I believe Herodias offered up her daughter for fucking in return for John’s head.”
Even Thaddeus, who wished to always be unshockable, went white, his eyes widening at this.
“That’s the dance Salome danced,” Joanna said. “And I doubt it happened only once.”
“My poor cousin,” Jesus said, wearily, sitting down. He was lost in sadness, and it was some time before he looked at the baby on Magdalene’s lap. She looked to Marta, who nodded, then handed it to him.
“Poor little fellow, without a papa in this world,” Jesus held him to his chest and rocked the boy whose fingers clung to his hair.
“I haven’t named him,” Marta said. “All this time my mouth was dry and could form no name.”
“This is how it was when his father was born,” Mary remembered. “All the time Elizabeth was swollen with John in her womb, Zechariah could not speak. And then on the day of John’s naming, his voice was loosened.”
“Name him,” Marta said to Jesus. “Name him for me. I have run out of words.”
“When Rachel died near Bethlehem, giving birth, she named her son Ben Oni bcause he was the son of sorrow. But Jacob renamed him Benjamin, son of my right hand, and that seems like a good name.”
Andrew and Philip were weeping outright, and Mary found tears running down her face for her long gone kinswoman’s son. She wondered how she would tell her mother when she returned to Nazareth. Those who were too shocked to cry covered their faces, and those who had never known Yochanon, like Peter or Judas or Matthew, hurt for the sake of their friends, and after a time, Jesus, still holding little Benjamin, stood up and clutched Peter by the shoulder.
“Can you and Zebedee, James and John get out some boats and take us away from this place. Can you just take us to a place where we can be alone? For a while?”
Peter nodded, and Jesus released him.
In the end they took five boats. Not all left. Mary stayed with Ada and Marta and most of the new arrivals. They sat in sorrow on the roof of Simon Peter’s house, looking over the parapet at the old wood boats that raised their sails and set out across the little sea.
