Fifth Gospel (16 page)

For this reason
, she rarely ventured to the places where groups of people met, to the bazaars where the merchants called out the virtues of their wares, or where people bargained for silks and baskets and gold and trinkets. She did not venture to those places where tradesmen, their minds intent on money, worked with tin and gold, silver and iron. She avoided the squares where musicians played their music; she did not even wish to go to the synagogue where men and women, crowded with devils, sought redemption and purification. Her dress became confused, her hair untended, unperfumed and uncombed and she wandered about, speaking to herself.

Thos
e men who in the past had never cherished even a hope that she might look in their direction, now jeered at her and spat at her feet. Those women who had envied her position and privileges, her beauty and noble bearing, now whispered behind their veils, gloating with self-satisfaction.

‘There goes the fine, rich, harlot!
There goes the mad one!’

Her sister, worried for her health,
took her to doctors, one after the other. All of them agreed that hers was not a physical malady. Beside herself with worry, Martha called a rabbi to the house to perform an ancient ritual of banishment.

It was a fine day when the rabbi
arrived.

D
ressed in the wide fringed garments of the order of the Pharisees, he sat beneath a tree in the walled garden of the house at Magdala, chewing on the dates and nuts that her sister had served him, while frowning over an assortment of parchments. Mary, full of sorrow and guilt for her condition, sat opposite him, waiting for his diagnosis.

For a long time
, the rabbi said nothing. When he finally spoke, it was between sucking dates and chewing nuts,

‘It is the way of demons,’ he said to Mary with a contemptuous
slur, ‘that they like to enter into the backbone of girls who are not reverent…have you been bowing low to worship God, my child?’

‘Of course, rabbi.’

He observed this with a sceptical turn of the lip, ‘Have you borrowed drinking water?’

‘No rabbi.’

‘Or walked over water that has been poured out?’

‘No, rabbi.’

‘And the water you wash your hands in, and the oils which you use to anoint them…do they come from a known vessel?’ He looked at Martha. ‘Never leave a vessel unattended outside the house! It can be cursed by the evil eye of a neighbour, or a jealous suitor, or a demon of the morning intent on causing havoc.’

Martha said from her corner, ‘All our water comes from our own wells and is drawn just before we need it
. The oil is our own and kept in sealed pots.’

He gave this some moment
of sour consideration and bent his head again to study his parchment. ‘Here it says…that women who go about with their hair uncovered are prone to enticing evil spirits…that those who walk between two palm trees in the moonlight, especially when the space between them is wider than four cubits, are in danger of becoming possessed by demons. Have you been walking about in moonlight, child, between palm trees?’

‘No…’ Mary hesitated
, ‘well, not exactly…but I have dreamt of moonlight, of rivers and temples.’

He stared at her, watchful, eager
, and his lip ran a constant activity. She knew he was inspecting the air around her for demons and devils and spectres. But she also knew he must be blind to them, since about him there hovered so many that he did not seem to see. They pressed into him and squeezed him from without and made him slap his own head with a hand, which occasioned a great,

‘
Oof!’

After it
, a general silence fell.

Astounded
by this unbidden action on the part of his hand, the rabbi said quickly, as if the foregoing were a prelude to this one word, which he knew would sum it all up:

‘Danger!’

He looked to Martha then, and gathering vehemence to his heart, said it again, only louder, ‘DANGER! Dreams of moonlight! Dreams of temples and rivers, more danger! Demons love moonlight! They live in the shadows of temples, in the shadows that move in the waters of rivers and streams. They live in the shadows of shadows!’

Meanwhile, Mary watched his
own shadows whisper into his ears and scratch under his chin, but the rabbi, not cognisant of them, reined himself in, wiped his lips and consulted his parchments again for a cure.

‘Perhaps these dreams are caused by a chill of the head?’ he
suggested. ‘If we cure the chill, the dreams might stop and the demons, not having a place in them, might leave!’ But he did not consult the women, for he was lost in the clever paths of his thoughts. ‘The remedy is to pour a quart of goat milk – mind that it is a white goat – to pour a quart of goat milk over three cabbage stalks in a pot, and to boil this together, stirring with a piece of Marmehon wood. It should be drunk during the full moon. And just to make certain you must wear an amulet of plants and herbs containing a verse from the Pentateuch.’ He looked up. ‘This has been tried?’

Mary
nodded, losing all hope in her heart.

‘To no avail?’
he looked to Martha.

Martha
affirmed it, from her safe position.

He put away his parchments and was taken with the devil of a thought.
He shook his head like a dog with canker and scratched his nose at the place where sat numerous little devils and then, of a sudden, made a pause. He looked this way and that, full of concentration. ‘Do you know…I think I can smell them…’ he said. ‘Yes...’ He was cautious. ‘Indeed...I smell demons!’ he exclaimed. ‘They are here,’ he shrieked, ‘among us!’ he shouted. ‘What will we do?’

The black creatures disappeared into his nose and into his ears
, and a sudden thought occurred to him. He dug into a great woven bag to retrieve from it some herbs and a large bone. He brandished these items like weapons that are to be used with extreme caution. ‘These,’ he said, significantly, ‘will exorcise the demons!’

‘Cress and a bone?’ Martha
was sceptical, and sat forward to look at them.

‘Yes
, woman! Cress and a bone! Ancient are the ways of the learned ones!’ he said, with mystical authority. ‘Besides, we have no other recourse!’

H
e stood and made a gesture in the air, an ancient, dust-laden sign, and cried out with such boldness and unexpected vehemence that it startled Mary and caused Martha to make a little shriek in her corner of the garden.

‘Burst! Curst! Dashed! Banned!
Bar-Tit, Bar-Tema, Bar-Tena, Chashmagoz, Merigoz, and Isteham, Ruach Raaah, Ruach Tumeah, Seirim, Shedim, Sheyda, Mazzikin, Geber Shediyin!
’’

H
e struck Mary on the head with the herbs then and shouted, ‘I cast you out and I enchant you into this cress!’ He flung it to the ground. ‘And I beat you, with the jawbone of an ass!’

When it seemed he had punished the herb sufficiently,
he surveyed his work and found that it was good. He straightened, coughing, wheezing, and coughing again, he said to Martha, ‘Bury it in the garden, dear woman, far from the house and spread the ashes of a dead bird over it. That should do the trick!’

Satisfied, he popped some nuts into his mouth.

Mary had her eyes closed and when she opened them again she saw that for all his magic the rabbi had not cured her, for she could still see demons all about him, slipping in and out, crawling over his face and tickling his chin. She closed her eyes again until she smelt the old rabbi’s sour, rank breath on her face.

‘Open your eyes, child
,’ he said gently, paternally.

When she did
, she saw that he was peering at her so close that his nose near touched hers.

‘
Look, child…’ he said, with his own look of pleased complacency. ‘What do you see? Well? Are they still there, the demons and the visions?’

She hesitated
. ‘I…’

‘Come…come child
, you can tell me!’

‘
Yes…rabbi.’

‘Yes
…yes…what?’

‘Yes
, I still see them…my visions are not flown away.’

Frowning
, he straightened and grew thoughtful. ‘Describe them to me, my child!’

‘They are foolish, hideous, bashful things!’ Tears fell from her eyes
. ‘Horrible to behold!

‘
Oh!’ he said, ‘Where do you see them?’

‘
All around you…rabbi,’ she said finally, ‘inside your mouth and in your ears, on your back and crawling through your hair and beard! They come out when you speak and enter when you cough!’

‘
By the beard of Abraham!’ he gasped, and stepped back so abruptly that it caused a mishap to his back. Holding it he shouted, ‘What do you mean, insolent child? Around me?  Inside me? When I cough or speak!

‘
The banishment you made was not successful on them, rabbi!’ Mary said.

Panicked,
he stepped on the hems of his robes and they became entangled with his legs and he dropped his parchments to the ground. ‘I was not banishing them from me, evil, evil, girl!’ he cried, and hastily taking up his documents, headed for the gate. ‘I was banishing them from you!’ He paused at the gate and pulled his features into a distorted terrain of wrinkles. ‘To help this girl, would take a miracle. She is
Hêrem
. She is cursed!’ he shouted before leaving.

W
ord of Mary’s demonic possession and the priest’s failed exorcism soon reached the ears of the people. When the rabbi died not long after, the townsfolk accused her of having cursed him. Life became an unbearable round of humiliation and disgrace and having no other recourse, the family moved from Magdala to Bethany, where no one knew them, and where Mary, Lazarus and Martha, could live without shame.

H
ere they were to remain, and such would have been Mary’s life had Lazarus not set out after a spiritual calling, in search of a man called…John the Baptist.

RECOGNITION

M
ariam, stepmother
of Jesus, had been sorrowful on the day Jesus had journeyed away from their home for Engaddi. Wearing her mourning mantle and veil, she had watched him from the dry stonewall with her back straight as a rod, waiting for him to turn, but he had not turned. He had walked down and onward without looking back, and was soon gone over the hill to the township carrying the food she had made for him in a bundle.

R
ecalling that day she grieved, for she had not told him what she had seen in his eyes when they had spoken of Engaddi. She did not know why her voice had fled from her.

Since then
, the years moved in a noiseless chain of days woven together by those unspoken words. The time waiting for him was long. Now and again, she would take a moment to observe the road, hoping to see his form coming over the rise. But he did not come.

Sometimes
, when the others were busy and she had a moment to herself, she would go to Joseph’s deserted workroom, where Jesus had often fashioned tables and doors, and chairs, and other useful things. She would touch the hammers and nails and hold up the saws, she would let her hand roam over the cool anvil or take up a piece of wood to smell its fragrance. In all these trivial things she sensed the soul of Jesus. Jesus who had always seemed so troubled in his heart.

Her sons and daughters and relatives had never understood him and thought his behaviour more and more strange and incomprehensible.
‘Why does he speak so little?’ they asked. ‘Why does he stare at walls? He behaves like one who is above the ordinary, for he does not do ordinary things: he leaves his home and his family to live the life of a vagabond; he refuses to continue his father’s trade, and he will not take a wife and maintain the lineage of his fathers. If he thinks himself a sage, why did he not remain in Jerusalem? Now this further arrogance! What man went to Engaddi to live at the Motherhouse without taking vows? What man imagined himself so high as to impose conditions on the perfect ones?’

She wished
that she had defended him from their unkind words and mocking smiles; she wished that she had sat with him more, listened to his part, and consoled him.

But she had not.
What had prevented it? She did not know.

One day, pondering these things while sitting on a stool in the workshop, she fell to observing the sun coming through the slats in
the roof. Rays of light had stolen into the dark corners and in them dust motes floated like warm snow. These began to form themselves into a shape, which came to stand before her, as bright as day.

Was this Jesus? Jesus
, with his soft-spoken eyes and his mother’s smile, made from sunlight and air?

She felt his spirit incline towards her
s, desiring to draw out all the worldly dross of her life.

As in a dream
, she poured herself out, all her weaknesses, her fears, her longings and hopes. She asked him to forgive her for not being a better mother, for letting the others speak ill of him. She told him then of all the disappointments of her life, and in so doing a feeling of strength began its slow descent into her spine to make her steadfast.

Now she felt she could say what she had failed to say out loud to him before he left.

‘In my heart you are my son, Jesus!’

From that moment in the workshop her soul became full with calm acceptance. Peace now replaced the never tiring round of thoughts that had previously tortured her, and she grew to be as still as the moon, as steady as the sky, as sure as the rhythm of day and night. She did not seek to understand this joyful feeling, since it was a thing more suspected than seen
, and had come from a singular meeting of souls – far removed from the comprehension of an ordinary mortal. And so she did not speak of it to anyone.

The afternoon
she saw his silhouette come over the hill, as if rising upwards from out of the deepening sky itself, she could not believe it; her breath was near taken away with happiness.

She came to him shyly
and took his load from him and led him to the house. He was older, weary and thin, and her heart was troubled by the look in his eye. She had Salome prepare him a bath while she readied him a meal of bread and olives and goat cheese. He ate sparsely and afterwards did not wish to sleep, but wanted to speak with her.

In the cool of the inner court of the house, she sat beside him with her heart running
rings and waited for his questing soul to open its doors to her, as she had opened her soul to him. But when finally he spoke it was not of intimate things but of the destiny of men.

He told her that in the beginning
, humanity was like a child, it crawled and walked and learnt and came of age. Now it was grown old and entering into decline. He had seen it clearly from his twelfth birthday.

‘Before that, I remember only dreams…grass and sky and rain and the smell of sheep…
’ he said to her, ‘I remember my mother’s heart too, in my ear, and the whispers of angels…’

She nodded
, remembering that many had shunned him for being addled.

‘B
ut on the steps of the Temple a bewildering happening took place which I didn’t understand at first. Afterwards, I lost my mother and my life changed. My eyes lost their ability to see the dream-full spaces of heaven, since everything became sharp-shaped and clear to them. I began to forget all that was spontaneous and pure, and from that moment, in forgetting, I began to remember and to accustom myself to looking with different eyes…with the eyes of wisdom…eyes that were not mine.’ He looked at her. ‘What I saw caused such loneliness in me! Ah, my mother! If only you knew! That is why I fell into silence and could barely speak for the pain of it! During my stays with my teachers in Jerusalem, I saw and heard the decadence of their teaching, how it had lost its life, how it was no longer given out of direct knowledge. I realised with sorrow that if the prophets came again, no man would understand them!’

‘Oh
, Jesus!’ a sob was caught in her throat for his words. ‘How your sensitive soul has struggled! But think of Hillel, my son! He was a great teacher of the law! In my time, he spoke with a voice so sure and powerful. Could such a man not recognise the voice of the prophets if they were to return again?’

Jesus’ face, lit meagrely by the penumbral light, was gravely cast. He said, ‘Hillel was wise,
it is true…but there are no more Hillels!’

With these words,
a coldness settled over her and she pulled her shawl over her head and hugged herself to keep from shaking. ‘How can this be true?’

He recounted his journey to the pagan
lands and spoke to her for the first time of the downfall of their temples. He told her of his experience at the altar, where he had fallen as though dead, and where he had heard the Bath-Kol in all its terrible splendour. After that, he recounted his experiences with the Essenes and his disappointment with their ways, and he told her of his meeting with the being called Buddha.

‘I am alone!’ he
said to her, ‘There is nowhere left to turn! This has been my last realisation. All has fallen into decadence and there is no truth left in the world. No light of hope can brighten the darkness that lies ahead! I have seen the portent of humanity’s future suffering and the destruction of the world!’

She stifled a sob with her hand
, for the entire burden of Jesus’ sorrow had moved into her on the wings of his words, and they had formed in her mind a vision of what he had seen with his eyes, an entire panorama of calumny and misfortune. Mariam’s hands and arms lost their strength.

‘What
will you do?’ she asked him.

‘There is a man in Judea who baptises with water for the remission of sins. He announces the coming of the
Messiah, who will bring youth to the soul of the world.’ He looked at her, to cause the meaning of it to arise in her, ‘This Messiah will speak forth the voice of God and reverse the words of the Bath-Kol to unite us with what we have lost.’

‘What are these words
that you speak of, my son?’ she asked.

‘Aum, the evils hold sway…’

When he had finished, Mariam sat still, listening for the resounding of those words in her soul.

Jesus’ eyes
grew distant. ‘It is time.’

She looked at him
, attentive now. ‘Time for what, Jesus, what?’

But as she spoke
she did not see Jesus, she saw Yeshua! The eyes of her soul were opened to what she had always sensed with her heart! Jesus’ words to her those years ago now made sense:

‘God can make two into one, if it serves his design.’

She understood now! Yeshua had accomplished his task after all! Long ago, on those Temple steps, he had become one with Jesus! That is why Jesus had begun to see with different eyes, why he could argue with the rabbis, why he seemed like two men, one serious and wise, and the other playful and loving. That is why she had seen her son in him!

So t
his had been Yeshua’s task - to weave his wisdom into Jesus’ loving soul! His selfless task was accomplished!

W
hat now?

Jesus made
to stand. His face was framed by the dark sky full of stars and she remembered two boys sitting beneath a fig tree, arm in arm, two boys who many years ago had left their mothers to ascend the Temple steps in the broad light of a sun-full day.

Th
ey gave her one last glance now over their shoulders, and left to make their way into the night. With her heart near breaking, she watched them go, for the third time.