The Secret Magdalene Read online

  The man called Addai, says, “She stays. We have no need of scaring children.”

  His voice is heavily accented. Is it a Peraean accent? Galilean? Big of belly and bowed of leg, his nose is as flat as his face and his mouth is as wide as a jar. As for his robe, it is poor. And his feet—bare. But the man Heli is dressed in a white robe almost as fine as one of Father’s. Two such men speaking as equals? Such a thing would not happen in Father’s house, and that is a certainty!

  Heli speaks to Salome. “Ananias tells us you are a witch. He tells us the other one is also a witch.”

  Tata shoots Ananias a look of such malevolence it ought to make his nose fall off. Salome turns pale and does not answer. Witches! For all of Father’s influence, if we are witches, Salome and I might be put to death by stoning. For if we are witches, do we not practice kishuf? Are we each not a ba’al ‘ob, meaning two who allow the dead into their bodies? Or so these men must think, for all who do not know feed on what they think they know, making great leaps of dreadful imagination. A ba’al ‘ob like Megas of Ephesus is almost untouchable. A magician and miracle worker like the great Hanina ben Dosa is almost a rabbi. But Salome and I are not either of these. Does Ananias hate witches? Is this why he mentioned Megas at Father’s table, to entrap us? Oh Isis! Do we stand before men who would abide by the commandment in Exodus that thou should not suffer a witch to live?

  I look at the man Addai; I reach into his mind. How his moon-eyes widen! He can tell I have entered him…and I am so startled, I pull away. He is a short man, but he looks as solid as a bullock. “If you would know what I think, little one, you must come out and ask me.”

  Unnerved, I stand as proudly as my knees permit. “Who are you?”

  “I am Addai of Shechem.”

  “And Shechem is where?”

  “At the foot of Mount Gerizim.”

  By the stars, a Samaritan! Father reviles the Samaritans. He says they are a mongrel stock, a horrid mix of Israelites and Assyrians. He says they accept scripture only up until Moses, but no further, and claim all later prophecy is false. He says—no, he shouts!—that they once built a temple atop Mount Gerizim they claimed was the true Temple. “The true Temple! Thank Yahweh that the Maccabees destroyed the thing, an abomination!”

  The only time I worry over Father’s health is when he discusses the Samaritans.

  “What are you?” I ask this, this…Samaritan.

  “A stone carver. I learned my trade in Samaria but perfected it in Galilee.”

  A stone carver? Father would haul us from this house in gibbering apoplexy. A lowly stone carver addresses the blood of his blood? I am my father’s daughter, and as I stand in this house of strangers, I find myself full of his feelings and teachings, angers and passions. A Samaritan is worse than a Galilean, and as Father would say, a Galilean is bad enough. Even Father’s slaves have more distinction than this man. “I know what a stone mason is,” I say, knowing I insult him by the use of the word mason instead of carver.

  Salome, high-handed as ever, asks, “Whose house is this?”

  “This is the house of Heli bar Nehushtan who is of the Way.”

  Salome dips her head toward the older man. “That is Heli bar Nehushtan?”

  “It is. And unlike myself, he follows an honorable calling, which means he amasses money. Like your guardian, he too is a merchant. Among other priceless spices, Heli exports the juice of the balsam plant. The woman at the gate is Dinah, his wife.”

  “What is the Way?”

  “Ah, we come to the crux of it.” Addai’s voice is light. Amused, he says, “To know more is to endanger the innocent, by whom I mean you. Not to mention the guilty, by which I mean me.”

  “Why did Heli bar Nehushtan ask Ananias to bring us here? He has no right to bring us anywhere.”

  Addai looks back at Ananias. “You are right. These are not mere children. Heli asked to meet you because Ananias has sung your praises from here to Jericho.”

  “As witches?”

  “Heli misspoke. Not as witches, but as prophets.”

  Salome and I shudder as one. More than the word witch, the word prophet rings on our ears like doom. Once, prophets were those who made clear God’s wishes. These days, prophets are men of business. Where Ananias sells sponges and Father sells glass, prophets now sell visions; for a fee they answer personal questions. These days, the common people are as infected with prophets as a dog is with ticks. If they hear one marketplace crackpot, they endure ten, each one telling them they must follow the Law to its last tittle and dot, must strive for more moral fervor, or perish by the hand of Yahweh.

  “Prophets?” My voice squeaks like a small hinge.

  Addai laughs like the swinging wide of a great door. His warmth would melt stone. “To be a Deborah or a Miriam or a Noadiah or a Huldah? Is this so terrible?”

  Says Salome, “There are no more true prophets, not since the Exile.”

  Heli rounds on her. “There speaks the ward of an influential man. The influential have no need of prophets.”

  I look at Addai. “But you are a Samaritan. You cannot believe in prophets?”

  “What has been,” says he, “can be again.” And here he smiles a smile as wide as his wide face, and I cannot help it, I smile back. There is no maintaining fear and foreboding before him. I redeem myself by saying, “Prophets are as common as rocks. Why wish to be another rock?”

  The people laugh. In the midst of this laughter, Heli of the Way calls forth a servant, a woman he names Rhoda, and in her hands she bears a tray. My laughter dries in my throat.

  There are stones on the tray. There is a pendulum. Heli signals the woman to place the tray on a small stone table, saying, “Ananias has described these things to us. As humbly made as they are, I hope they will serve you as your own.”

  Tata has come forward, but Salome stays her, “You expect us to perform kishuf?” Her color and her voice are high. Not to mention her eyebrows.

  “I had hoped,” replies Heli, “you would favor us with your gifts.”

  “Hope is a flown bird.”

  But I find I trust Addai, stone carver and Samaritan. And if there is yet danger here, I have thought of something that will release us from it.

  “I will,” I say, and enjoy the surprise followed by the disapproval that clamps down on Salome’s face, the shock on Tata’s. I pick up the pebbles, arrange them any which way. I take the pendulum, nothing like ours in balance and weight. Everyone has gone quiet. The men lean forward. The wife Dinah leans back. With this, my Salome is returned. I can see it in the curve of her lip as she struggles to keep a straight face; adults have only three reactions to things they do not understand: they fear it or they worship it or they deny it.

  Perhaps the first two are the same reaction. The third as well.

  The pendulum does not move. I throw it down as if I am exasperated. I slip the silver chain from my neck with its small vial of spikenard. With a flourish, I use this for a pendulum. But this too hangs like a dead thing.

  What comes is exactly nothing. Just as I meant to do. Nothing.

  I swear I will not be stoned for a witch.

  Ananias is ashamed that he has praised us so, and I am pleased to see it. So too am I pleased to see the disappointment of Heli bar Nehushtan and of Dinah, his wife. Though it does not please me that Addai might be cast down. But if not to stone us as witches, what then did they all expect? That Isaiah or Ezekial or Elijah had come among them as a female child? As two female children?

  But Salome cannot stand it, she simply cannot. She snatches the alabastron from my hand, rearranges the pebbles in their proper order. What can I do? Salome is Salome. Right away the alabastron steadies under her hand, then begins to slowly swing, picking out one letter at a time. All lean forward in earnest, even the servant Rhoda. I wonder they do not bump heads. If they mean us ill, we are sunk.

  The first thing the alabastron spells is the word silence. Then in a rush, “Lo, comes the Angel of Silen
ce. Hear ye, children, hearken to the unheard.” Salome reads it aloud so that they do not miss a word. I have not heard this before. I catch Salome’s eye. Rather than pretend to fail, does Salome pretend to succeed too well, so that she makes no sense at all, thereby confusing and confounding? Ananias is repeating the words under his breath, “The Angel of Silence. Hear ye, children. Hearken to the unheard.” Meaning what? he thinks. Is this great profundity? Or great foolishness?

  But Addai of Shechem has been staring at Salome; instead of puzzling out the words, he has taken up the mirror from the tray. He has been turning it this way and that, and now he turns to me. The shape is in the mirror again. Something that seems a coiled snake moves like smoke across its surface. I gasp. Salome’s eyes dart from the stones to the mirror. As do the eyes of Ananias. “See! Did I not say my little fish were full of wonders?”

  “Salome,” I gush, “where is the new spell?” I have forgotten that every word we say is witnessed. I have forgotten all but the mirror. We make Tata fish the magical papyrus of Hermas of Ephesus out of her basket, though Salome has to yank on it before Tata lets it go.

  “What shall we do for eye paint and the water of a shipwreck?” ask I.

  “Words carry more power than any of these things,” answers Salome.

  I nod—of course! Perhaps no magician would agree, but we have come to think it is not the trappings of magic that make magic but rather the intent to make magic that makes magic. But there must be power behind the intent. And it must be done in perfect confidence. Others might believe that this power comes in the form of demons, or from gods. Others might think one must allow a demon to enter one’s body, to take on its power, but we do not believe this. We believe power comes from our own intent.

  Salome and I quickly speak the words on the papyrus, not taking our eyes from the shape in the mirror, and I see that it responds to us—it responds! But Addai has stepped forward, he has taken the mirror from us, uttering two very foreign words, words that sound as the ripping of cloth. And with that, the mirror is clear. He says, “From this day on, if allowed, I shall care for these two prophets as if they were my own beloved daughters.”

  I stare at Addai. Salome glares at him. But Heli smiles. “They have endured enough of us,” he says. “Take these children home.”

  As Rhoda ushers us away, as Tata follows a pace behind, I hear Addai speaking to Ananias. “You have spoken truly, my friend, these are indeed bat qol. Go. Tell our friends. Have our friends tell friends. But shun the collaborators. Shun even the Poor who await the fall of the Kittim.”

  I know who the Kittim are; they are the Romans. The Poor are surely those Father made such good fun of at table the night we met Ananias. But I am not sure whom he means by the collaborators. Does he mean Father and Father’s friends? I think he does.

  Just as we would step through the door, Heli stops us, saying, “Let me show you something.” At this, he pulls back a woven cloth that hides the entryway into another room. “Behold,” he says. And we do. We see a treasure of books such as we have never seen in one place. “When you return,” he says, “you may read as many as you wish.”

  Return? We shall return?

  On the way back to Father’s house, I walk on air at the thought of so many books.

  Eventually, I ask Salome why she would lead us to Heli bar Nehushtan’s house. She answers, “I have no answer, Mariamne.”

  And so it begins, our new life. Not that we know it is our new life. What we think, Salome and I, is that it is a grand adventure, and that like all childhood’s adventures, it shall pass and we will remain where we are and who we are: young females waiting for the day Father arranges our futures by arranging our marriages.

  From this day forward, we pester Ananias to take us to Heli bar Nehushtan’s as often as he can. Because we are so often disregarded in my father’s huge house, it is as easy to do this as Salome once said it would be. And if Ananias cannot take us, then Tata does. Through Heli and Dinah’s wonderful home come men of learning, the educated of all nations, men who teach philosophies, men who write poetry, men who wonder at the sun and the moon and the stars and who question the nature of the gods. And there are women! These are not many, but they talk as the men, debate as the men, teach and write as the men. My head spins with the thought of being a woman like these.

  We escape Father’s white marble house in the Upper City of Zion whenever we can. How exciting to bind our hair, to dress as boys, to follow Tata’s instructions in how to move, how to lower our voices, how not to lower our eyes. I need no longer envy Salome her treasures. Tata binds them tight, tight enough to make Salome wince. We do all this so that we may go unnoticed as we make our way down from our high hill and through the streets to Heli’s house. This goes on for many months, from the dry season of Iyar to the rains of Marchesvan.

  We do not think of how it will feel when it all must end.

  As, of course, it must.

  I wait behind a door that opens onto Heli’s courtyard on this evening in the month of the olive harvest and I prepare myself to speak. Israelites come from everywhere; there are members of a sect who call themselves the Congregation, there is the Brotherhood, the Yahad, the Covenant of Unity. There are the Friends, and the Meek, and the Little Ones, and the Dawn Bathers, and the First, and the Many—and just as Father said, the Many also call themselves the Poor. There is, of course, the Way, though as Addai says, almost every sect from here to Egypt names itself the Way. I have asked him why then do he and his friends do the same? He has not answered.

  One can get a headache from all this, trying to know who is who, and why.

  I peek out to see who is here. Tonight there are a few Haberim, whom the people call Pharisee, curious to see what the fuss is about, though these are careful to keep themselves apart for fear of being defiled by the touch of the am ha-aretz, or “people of the land,” the unlearned farmers and fishermen and herdsmen and laborers and such. In return, the am ha-aretz turn eyes full of loathing on the Pharisee. I see countless more am ha-aretz than Pharisee.

  There are a handful of scribes, and for one fearful moment I wonder if any of these know Father, or he them. Then I remember that here we are as boys. Even should they know Father, they would not know Father’s daughter or ward in either of us. There are also two Doers of the Law, the Osims or Essenes, in white robes and girdles. Father laughs at the Essene; I once heard him tell Nicodemus that these are so devoted to the exact ritual fulfillment of Torah they do not allow themselves to excrete on the Sabbath. We have never seen one of Father’s Sadducee here, but this is not surprising. Father and his friends are rich and powerful, so what need they of change? Besides, they do not believe in angels and rewards and punishments in the world to come. Though it is curious that they do seem to believe in demons.

  There is now begun to be a group of scruffy, fierce-looking men who gather in the back, keeping to the walls of the courtyard, and always near the exit. These men wear the roughest of robes, and over their shoulders seem to carry all they own in leather bags. Salome thinks they might be Cynics, followers of the philosopher Diogenes, who believed in living as an animal lives, with great naturalness, and if so, she should like to know them.

  I think that the more people who come, the worse the smell.

  It does not occur to us to fear what is happening by making our voices public. It does not occur to us what these people might be thinking of us or what they might eventually want from us. We are yet children, and nothing occurs to us but our own happiness at having all these people think us boys, and that we are now listened to.

  We make our way through the hot press of people, who hush as they see us, and we seat ourselves on the stone bench by Heli’s shell pool. This evening it is Salome who speaks. “A spirit came to me,” she begins, “and it said, ‘You, son of man, though you have bound yourself in flesh, know that you are a being of Light. There are none who do not walk in the Light.’ Do you doubt this?”

  And right a
way a man bent by the years speaks up. “I, Ahad Haam, of the Yahad, doubt this. For he who would walk in shame and corruption cannot also walk in the Light.”

  We are used to these interruptions; the things the voices say always cause a ruckus. More than once Ananias has cried out for silence, saying that we were nabi’im, the mouthpieces of Adonai. People must believe him, because more and more come to hear us. The voice in Salome rises against the old man of the Yahad. “There is not a soul in or under the heavens who is not beloved in the sight of God. Even you, old man, are beloved of God.”

  By Isis, but comes such muttered concern! Some are full of hope that this is true, and some are furious, for what is the purpose of the Law if all are beloved?

  I gaze out over the faces who stare at Salome as she is transported by the voice and my sight comes to rest on someone who is like no other. He is very handsome. He is very young, though not a youth. He has no beard, but shaves as the Romans and Greeks and Egyptians do. Like the Essenes, his clothes are white. His nose is bent. I like his bent nose; it makes him more handsome rather than less. I keep my eyes on him just as he now keeps his eyes on Salome. What is her voice saying? God loves all his creatures? I am surprised. No voice of ours has ever spoken for a god. For which god does it speak? It cannot be Yahweh, for he would not say such a thing. Salome and I know many gods and goddesses. Would any of these say such a thing? What of the pagans among us who do not give a fig for Yahweh against their own Baal or Dagon or Milkom or Chemosh or Qos? Perhaps it is one of these?

  “No!” shouts Ahad Haam, whose friends are urging him on. “This boy does not speak under the power of the Holy Spirit, for we all know that God does not shine on one and all!”

  “Not on them, old man, but in them,” says the voice in Salome.

  “Blasphemy!”

  “How do you know what is blasphemy and what is not? Do you speak for God?”

  “I know what the Law says!”

  “You may know what it says, but do you know what it means?”

  Salome seems to be growing taller. She is certainly getting louder. But then, so is Ahad Haam. He shrieks, “In Jeremiah, the Lord says: ‘I have heard what the prophets have said, who prophesy lies in my name!’”