CONCLUSION OF CHAPTER TWO
THE TEMPLE OF ESHMUN
Judas, Judas, and oh, the pleasure of his mouth, Judas and the softness of his skin. How rough he seemed and how he yielded to me. Even gentler than how I gave myself to him.
They know it is morning by the change in the energy of the temple.
“They are cleaning. Those old passages we wandered down are being washed for the daylight hours, the priests are purifying.”
“What of in here?” I ask.
“They never come this far, not into these rooms.”
“But yesterday,” John said, “we came here. We saw none of this.”
“You did not come soon enough,” Judas said, “and you did not travel deep enough.”
He said, “Look, you must go toward the water and the light, the water and the light.”
He lifted the bottle to his nose and inhaled a deep waft of fumes.
“But then, if you care, if you really care, you must go deeper, and beyond the water and light is always a greater darkness.
“And in the darkness?” I asked before Jesus could.
Judas pulled me to him, his green eyes hooded, the fire in them gone down for once as he kissed me so deep, his tongue pressing into my mouth.
“Is Pleasure.”
John would have been content, or so he told himself, to straggle behind and let Jesus enjoy his new friend, but Judas was the expert lover who knew what he wanted and what to do, who understood his good fortune, and while they walked the city, he cupped John’s buttocks and caressed him or pressed his hand against his sex. While they ate the midday meal in the bazaar, Judas’s hand slipped under John’s robe and milked him the whole time. He parted from them to piss in the alley and John skipped after him only to find this was a fiction, that Judas stood, arms crossed waiting for him with a half grin.
“What do you want, and don’t be shy in asking it,” he said.
“Shy John, demure John, little John. What does Jonni want?”
“I want…” John opened his mouth lost his voice.
“I want your mouth.” he said quickly.
Judas pressed John against the wall so he narrowly missed hitting the back of his head. Judas fell to his knees, lifting John’s robe in the dark alley, and John cried out as powerful lips went to work on him.
They were drinking on the roof of the traverna, and the city lights winked on the black water. The shawms played wildly in the courtyard below and a woman sang
“I love you even as the singing bird
I love you like the singing bird
I love you like the little, red, bright one
who pierced herself on a branch and
sang her sweetest song.”
“John, you are not yourself,” Jesus said.
“But you are yourself?”
“Eh?”
“There was a fire in you, and when your father died it died. There was such a fire I believed you could do anything. And then it was gone. As I said, I think it’s the reason your mother made you travel with Jude and James to get me. And now the fire is back.”
“I do not know if there is a fire,” Jesus disagreed. “I’m just a happy man, not an urgent one. I just feel joy.”
“Joy comes before the fire,” John said. “No one ever built a fire from despair.”
His cousin nodded to this, and said, “I just want to keep going. Judas is traveling to Edessa. I would go that far too.”
“Yes,” John said. “Only I don’t want to go. I want to go home.”
Jesus laughed and clasped his cousin’s knee.
“Then go, my John, and go with my blessing.”
“After Edessa?”
“I do not know. I have a journey to make. There is much to see.”
John opened his mouth and closed it.
“I’m afraid you will go so far I will not be able to find you.”
The drums and mallets beat, the woman sang
“Oh please have mercy,
have mercy and hear me
All my days I cry that
you would see me,
my hands are full of figs,
ripe figs and melons,
ripe as my love for you.”
Jesus caressed John’s face and kissed him.
“I will always return to you.”
That night, their last night, in a high, small room in the top tower of Cyron’s house, they are together alone. No Judas, no Magdalene, no James or Lazaros, they make love while the waves crash below, taking with them the fishermen’s boats.
As their bodies link and Jesus’s kiss up and down John’s body, they both murmur old snatches of the ancient song.
“Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.”
The next morning, as the gulls are sinking to the sand and the sun shines into their tower, John rises, watching the golden sun on Jesus long bronze body, the light traveling down his back to the dark cleft of his buttocks. John savors how he smells like bread and how they smell, together, like bread and honey after they’ve made love all night. John dresses slowly and puts on the copper bangle Jesus gave him, then leaves the other one near Jesus’s head on the pillow. He folds the old unbleached robe behind Jesus’s head along with his cloak and his staff and kisses him lightly, not wanting to wake him, but hoping he might.
Downbelow they are preparing to take the sea road back to Bethshaan which will take them quickly to Galilee. He wonders when he will see Jesus again. Before he leaves he stands at the top of the stair remembering last night when he lay pressed to the floor and over and over again, mouth on his ear, Jesus pummeled him, fucking him deeper and deeper, both of their bodies thrusting back and forth in pleasure. He closes his eyes, taking it on faith that he will see him again, unable, right now, to follow him any further. Then he turns to walk downstairs.
The journey through the mountains and hills had been beautiful, but Magdalene didn’t ever want to take it again. Oh to be near the water, to travel by the sea every day! Her family was wealthy, merchants with stations all around the great sea and some even into Mesopotamia, but they themselves rarely traveled. Cyron had been to the very Pillars of Hercules, but this was as far as Magdalene had gone in her life. Lazaros despised ships, and so they traveled on horseback from Sidon to Tyre, the city which, in the past had been born from Sidon but in time surpassed it. The Tyrians told a story of a princess who had sailed away from that land, or was it the Sidonians? For those tales said she was related to Queen Jezebel. Her name was Alyssa and she had founded the great city of Carthage which had founded a mighty empire, growing wider and mightier until the Romans destroyed them. But still the cities founded by the Carthaginians remained, and the House of Eliezer had offices in all of those cities: Marseilles, Lyon, far off Cartegena and Cadiz. One day Magdalene would leave Jerusalem, go to the port of Joppa with an escort, and travel to one of those distant posts.
Right now, though, they camped in an open air inn, and in the courtyard, while they dipped bread into thick lentil soup, she tried to be a comfort to John. She said nothing, but touched his hand frequently. The further he was from Jesus, the worse he felt.
“I should never have left him.”
“He had a journey to make,” Magdalene said. “And if you think carefully, you may realize you have a journey too.”
“Hopefully not as a long of a journey as we are taking now,” Lazaros said.
“We could have taken a ship and been in Joppa by now,” his sister reminded him.
“You know well how I feel about ships.”
“Then you have only yourself to blame, and I don’t want to hear anymore about it,” Magdalene said, only having time to pity one man, and hooking her finger through her white veil to bring it over her head.
“Were you going all the way back to Jerusalem?” John asked.
“We were,” Mary said.
“Why not come home with us, and travel south that way, along the Jordan?”
“I am impatient to be home,” Lazaros said.
“Well, then,” Mary decided, “You be impatient and go home. After Dor, the road heads south east to Sepphoris. I will travel with the boys and stay around the sea, then return to you before the holidays.”
And because she was Mary, and he understood his sister, Lazaros did not protest. What would have been the purpose?
The land was lower and greener here, and the road broad as they traveled toward the interior. After Dor, hearts were lighter on their way home. Green trees touched by yellow, the lushness of spring taken from them in a way they had not been up in the north, lined the road, and sometimes they passed through stands of olive trees, their silver green leaves clicking in the breeze.
“So many songs for going to Jerusalem or going to the sea,” Magdalene reflected. “But never any for going home.”
John was about to say, “But you are not going home.” But there was no point to this and, anyway, he wanted Magdalene to always stay with them and remembered being a boy, sitting on her lap while she fed him wine and raisin cake and bid him return to sleep.
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