The Secret Magdalene Read online

  Salome’s voice overrides that of Ahad Haam as a river overrides a rill. “Hear me! He who presumes to know aught for certain knows nothing. And he who presumes to know nothing, stands at the brink of gnosis.”

  The heat of the people rises. The voice has used a Greek word, gnosis. Most do not understand it, but Ahad Haam understands it well enough. Gnosis means more than knowledge. It means insight into the divine.

  I am not alone when I wonder who speaks here.

  “I will not listen to this,” says Ahad.

  “You will not hear. And yet my voice is all around you. You will not look, yet my face shines in yours.”

  I press closer to Salome. The face of Ahad Haam is as dark as Father’s face when he is crossed by someone of no importance. His breath is like the breath of a winded horse. Behind him, his friends make a show of threat. I catch sight of the handsome young man. His hand is in his robe. Does he carry a Persian dagger at his belt? I reach into his mind to see what it is he sees. I reach further…and further…and then I no longer know if it is night or day, past or present or future. I turn away as fast as I can, only to find myself standing. I do not remember standing up. But I am on my feet and I am shouting louder than Ahad Haam of the Yahad or Salome. Much louder. “BEHOLD! I AM COME AMONG THEE ISRA-EL!”

  Ahad Haam, Salome, the crowd itself, fall silent. At this moment, a dove winging home to Dinah’s dovecote lands on the tall wall keeping out the steep and narrow street beyond. I see this as if I were no more than a cubit away, yet I am across the courtyard. I see every feather in its breast, the tender blue skin around its eye. A number of the big bearded men in the back are moving toward us, pushing people aside. There is an antique among them, an old man with skin as dark as wet leather and eyes as bright as the dove’s eye. Tall as a ladder, skinny as a rung, he seems to push harder than the younger men, and when they see it is he, they step back as if he were a leper, or a high priest. My heart is throwing itself against my chest as if it would escape me. I do not want this shouting voice to come. It has not come at Heli’s before. Wildly, I look around—there is Salome, as surprised as I. There is Tata and Ananias and Addai and Heli and Dinah and Rhoda. There is the handsome young man. I close my eyes, grind down on my teeth. I will not speak again, I will not, will not.

  “HEAR YE, SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF ISSA-RA-EL. FROM THE MOUTHS OF CHILDREN COME I. PREPARE FOR THE COMING DAY. I SHALL MAKE MYSELF KNOWN THROUGH ONE WHO APPEARS AS A SHEPHERD AMONG LAMBS, THROUGH ONE WHO STANDS FORTH AS A LION.”

  What am I saying? I do not want to hear.

  I look around me, the Voice of Voices strong in my throat, and I cannot move. “DID ISSA NOT WALK WITH ME? AND IS THE WORD NOT MY WORD?”

  At that, I faint dead away. Later Salome, bathing my face and hands in aromatic oil, tells me that the first to reach my side was the handsome young man. He lifted me and took me to Dinah’s private room. His name is Seth, and she tells me he comes from Mount Carmel, which is far to the north. He is a Nazorean, who are not the Many but the Few. But no doubt, this is a play on words, a jest.

  As I am put into my own bed in Father’s house this night, I ask Tata what she makes of the shouting voice. “I think,” says Tata, fussing with my bedding, “that we shall have to find a new courtyard. Perhaps we might try Herod’s amphitheater.”

  Pinning up my hair so that I might seem a boy is a tedious process. Still, Tata manages it. She and I are about to walk out a side entrance of Father’s house when I realize I have forgotten my stones. “Tata,” I say, “run back and fetch them.”

  Salome, bundled against the cold rain in a hooded Arabic burnoose, is already outside. As is Ananias, wearing his thick wool mantle and head shawl. They are near the door in the north wall of Father’s house, along which runs the side street that climbs up our steep and terraced hill to Herod’s palace and the Upper Market. I remember something else I have forgotten, but Tata is already gone. I poke my nose out the door so I might tell Salome and Ananias to wait just a few moments longer even though Ananias is made nervous by the night. Our merchant believes in demons, and demons come out after dark, especially the Queen of Demons, Agrath, daughter of Mahlath.

  Just then, a figure enters the street from below, to come striding up the hill, and oh, I would know Father anywhere. I am so terrified I think I might pee myself, but I cannot run away. Perhaps Father will not notice Salome and Ananias? But of course he notices them. What man of property would not take note of two robed figures lingering by his door as the night draws down? Father stops and confronts them. But neither Salome nor Ananias can answer him, for if they do he shall immediately know them. I feel Tata come up behind me; I feel her tremble with the same terror I know.

  Ananias is Father’s guest and he is standing in the street with Salome. Young females are not allowed out without escort, are not allowed out in the company of men other than their father or their brother or their husband. Father reaches out and violently jerks back the hood of Salome’s burnoose, pulling loose her pinned hair. Did he think it was me?

  I know what will happen now. What will happen is that my life will change forever. Salome’s life will change forever. Father is a proud man, and quick to judge. Ananias is already condemned. Salome is already banished. I am already bereft. Eloi! Eloi! I would rush into the street and plead for Salome if I thought Father would listen. I would do anything to stop what is about to happen. But there is nothing I can do, so I do nothing.

  “Defiler of children!” Father shouts. “Foul betrayer! Get away from my house. And take this, take this, this—” Father is so monumentally outraged he cannot find a word strong enough, bad enough. He spits, “this female with you before I kill you both!”

  Ananias can do nothing. To tell the truth would accomplish naught but the betrayal of Heli and Dinah and Addai.

  “Leave my house and never return. You, Salome! You will take nothing away with you. You will never speak to Mariamne again.”

  Salome does not cry and she does not plead. She does not bring up the name of her father, Coron of Memphis, to remind my father of his promise to care for her. She will walk away though she is only thirteen. Where will she go? And who will marry her now?

  I can feel Father turn in his mind; the black and bitter rage centered on Ananias and Salome now looks for me. He wonders how much I have been involved in this abomination to his name and to his house. He wonders if I too have been defiled. He wonders what he must do about it.

  I spin on my heels and I rush toward our quarters, not stopping to see what Tata does with herself. I tear off the boy’s clothes I am wearing, kick them under a clothes chest. I work at my hair, pulling it down as fast as I can. I struggle into my night things, and I manage all this only moments before Father strides into Salome’s and my room. I have never seen him like this, never felt him like this. Inside he is like a cave of winds; he does not want to banish me, I am all there is left of my mother. He is terrified that he must punish me as severely as his Law commands him to. A man cannot have the females in his house behave as he believes Salome has behaved. Father lives for the good regard of others. If he thinks I have also behaved in this way, or if I have been of help to Ananias and to Salome, then he has no choice, he must shun me.

  I stand silent before him, my head down, my mouth dry, my skin crawling with dread. I could not speak now if it meant my life. I have never been more afraid.

  Father has decided I am guilty. Over the years, there is nothing that Salome has done in our house that I have not done as well. I can hear him thinking—rapid, desperate thoughts. Salome is thirteen and expected to know what is moral and what is not. But I am yet under the age of twelve and therefore cannot be legally held to such a standard, and in this he finds a loophole. And a solution: he will pretend he does not suspect me. He will send me away. But not too far and not for too long. Though it shall be far and long enough.

  “Mariamne,” he says, and I know how much it costs him to control the shaking of his voice. “You will
never see Salome again. In the morning you are to travel to Bethany. Tata will accompany you.” I almost collapse; I was sure he would have Tata beaten for this. It is her responsibility to watch over Salome and me. “You will live quietly in my brother-in-law’s house. You will be a sister to his children.” He takes note of the books scattered over table and couch and floor. “There shall be no books!” He ignores my stricken look. “This comes from indulging you with books! There will be no more indulgences from an overly fond father! You will be gone by the time I awake. In time, I will send for you. And for Tata.”

  I find my voice. It is a very small voice. “How long, Father?”

  Father does not look at me. “You will not be a child when you set foot in this house again. Nor will you be without a husband.”

  With that, he turns his back on me and walks away.

  Not until he is gone do I feel Tata grip my shoulder and shake me hard. “Mariamne! Child! What shall we do?”

  For the first time I realize how helpless she is. I am only a child, yet a woman asks me what we shall do. Not because she is not strong, not because she cannot think for herself, but because she is a slave and has no right to choose the events in her life. In the midst of all else, I am struck rigid by this discovery; I have never once thought of it. My poor fierce Tata, to be born both a female and a slave. Until now, I have thought nothing save what shall I do? Now I think: what shall we do?

  Father’s brother-in-law is the husband of my dead mother’s sister, Rachel. He is almost as serious as Nicodemus of Bethphage. Their only son, my cousin Eleazar, is a sickly little thing. To live in the house of Uncle Pinhas and Aunt Rachel is to grow old while I am yet a child. Tata will be a slave among slaves, inferior to those who serve the master’s own children. My father is rich and important; therefore my female cousin cannot ill treat me. But she shall certainly make Tata and me pay for the shame brought on their house by my presence. And Tata more than me. I have met my cousin Martha. I know this will be so.

  And no books! Cicero said that a room without books is like a body without a soul. I cannot live without my soul. Still, to do as my father bids me is the sum total of my duty. What else can I do? What is Salome doing right this very moment? She is going to Heli of the Way’s house, that is what she is doing. And then I think this thought: if Salome can go to Heli’s house, Tata and I can go to Heli’s house.

  It is as if all the stars in the sky fall into my mind. I do not have to do what Father tells me. I can feel my heart beating in the tips of my fingers and at the roots of my hair and at the base of my spine. I love Father. I know he loves me. But Father is trapped in his Law and in how he is required to behave. And did not Addai of Shechem say he should care for me as if I were his own beloved daughter?

  “Tata, pack a basket with whatever you value most. Then help me pack my things and Salome’s things. We are taking as many baskets as we can carry, for we are leaving Father’s house.”

  “To Bethany?” she asks.

  “No, not to Bethany.”

  Tata’s spirit would escape out the top of her head if more joy crowded in. Or more fear.

  Tata and I arrive breathless at Heli’s gate at the second hour of the night, to find all in turmoil. Immediately we are bundled from sight, sent to join Salome who greets us with shrieks of relief and delight. Salome and I cling to each other and await our fate.

  In the fourth hour, we are told to rise up and prepare ourselves for travel.

  We shall go as males. It seems we are leaving Jerusalem. Having no more to lose, neither Salome nor I object. So it is that we five—Addai the Samaritan, Ananias the merchant, Tata the runaway slave, and two “youths,” both outcasts—set off east through the streets of Jerusalem, watched from the shadows by Heli and Dinah of the Way as well as by others we do not know and cannot see. Heli presses a book into my hand as I pass. It is one he treasures, and I weep to receive it. We walk toward the Gihon Spring Gate and the Kidron Valley.

  Beyond that, I do not know where we go. I merely follow Addai.

  We walk all through the night. Somewhere on the way down through the steeply dropping country to the east of Jerusalem, I fell asleep and Addai picked me up as if I were a swaddled babe. He has carried me now most of the way. Ananias and Tata have walked, a donkey between them bearing our worldly goods. Our worldly goods are not much. Salome has ridden a second, smaller donkey. Barefoot, Addai travels with all that is his, his tools and the female donkey Salome rides. He calls her Eio. Salome whispers that eio is Egyptian for ass. I am still surprised at the sponge merchant joining us. Does he not have goods to protect, servants to see to, the Queen of Demons to avoid? But there have been no explanations.

  Where are we going? All I know is that we go east, and that the east is the Holy Land, for the east is the place of the coming forth of Helios, the sun. Addai leads us; we follow no path. Even in the dark I can tell the land we travel is as barren as Sarah’s womb. From the heights of Jerusalem we have dropped down and down, following the folds in the hills, some of which are as narrow as the streets of Jerusalem and some of which are as deep as tombs. The rain comes and the rain goes, but never enough to wet us through. The night air smells of dirt once baked and now steaming with damp. Tata is not used to such walking, and Ananias frets that we are being led into worse danger than the danger we flee. They both grumble at the thorns that catch at their clothes, the abuse to their feet. Addai shifts my weight and I ask him if I should walk. “Hush, child,” he says, “we are very near.”

  “Near where?”

  But he does not answer me. We are walking down a steep nahal in the dark, a ravine of bare rocks rising to either side, and only a thin strip of stars to light our way. The air changes. The smell of the air changes. It stinks of rotten teeth. “Addai, what is that nasty smell?”

  “Home! This is the land of Damascus.”

  Damascus? We could not be anywhere near Damascus. Damascus is a hard nine or ten days walk, at best, to the north. But I am too tired to bother with this puzzle. I lay my head back on his shoulder. We drop through a final nahal, and before us in the starlight, far as the eye can see, shimmers a still flat sea. It is the sea that stinks.

  “Behold,” says Addai, “we are where we meant to be.”

  I behold. Addai points to our left. Perched on sheer steep bluffs of powdery rock is a village. Or maybe it is a fortress. Whatever it is, it looks carved from the soft rock itself. If Addai had not pointed right at it, we might never have seen this place.

  It is another hour of hard climbing before we find ourselves near. Addai has led us around a stone wall, and I think there is no gate, until there is. The sun is touching the tops of the mountains on the far side of the flat and stinking sea when we pass through this gate. We are in a courtyard, as deep as it is wide. Beside us rises a stone tower the height of many men. Over to our right, there are steps leading to a huge stone pool. And right in the middle of the courtyard is a simple sundial on a dais. Father’s sundial is twice as big, but Father prefers that things of value be seen. Straight ahead there is another gate that leads out of the courtyard into what looks to be a narrow street.

  Leaving our donkeys tethered to a post beside a small cistern, Addai leads us to this gate and through it. Where are we? Is there anyone here at all?

  My question is answered a moment later.

  Out of the shadows cast by the rising of the sun from beyond the stinking sea steps the handsome man in the perfect white linen tunic.

  “How welcome you are, Ananias of Alexandria,” says the man who has called himself one of the Few. “I see you have brought our children home.”

  Salome and I dart startled looks at each other. Remember what the Voice said, she is saying. Remember? Ananias is come to take you home.

  I remember.

  THE THIRD SCROLL

  The Wilderness

  It is more than a month from the evening Father sent us away. We are in the wilderness, lost to the lives we once lived, lost to the c
ity of our childhood, lost to all we knew, lost to our very gender. More alien than the place are the people. We are children of wealth and privilege. These are poor nobodies! We are children of taste and gorgeous artifice. Here, our floor is dirt, our walls are skin and hair, our dukha is a stick for digging a hole in the ground.

  Here, there is no one to fan away the heat that wilts us, no one to brush away the biting ants that torment us in our beds. No one comes to bathe us, to comb our hair, to clean away what we have messed, to bring us sweets. No one but Tata. But as we are now males and she is not, she lives with the women. This is nothing as it was at Heli and Dinah’s house; it is not a grand adventure.

  For the first time in our lives, we are bit by bugs, stepped on by camels, shoved aside by strangers, made to fetch and to carry, slapped by cooks, shooed away by potters, shouted at by men. And oh, how we rush to the poor tents we’ve been given, there to stomp around and to howl when we discover we can no longer eat whenever we like or whatever we like.

  In short, we are miserable.

  We make Tata miserable. We cling, or we demand, or we complain, until one day she rounds on us, saying, “By all the salt in all the sea, how thoughtless are the young! If there is that which does not feel, save furies of the body, and the spirit caught up solely in the self, it is you two!” And then she tugs her skirts from our hands and walks away. We do not see her again for two whole days. It surprises us, even quells us for an hour or so, but it does not stop us. We remain insufferable.

  The merchant Ananias comes and goes on his travels. Addai spends much time in Jerusalem working on the construction of the dead Herod’s Temple, a task that has lasted his kind for more than forty years. But Salome and Tata and I never go anywhere at all.