Short Fiction · Mary Magdalen (7/10) (1/2)

VII

On the floor of a little room Mary lay, her face to the ground. In her ears was the hideousness of a threat that had fastened on her abruptly like a cheetah in the dark. From below came the sound of banqueting. Beyond was the Bitter Sea, the stars dancing in its ripples; and there in the shadow of the evergreens was the hut in which that Sephôrah lived to whom long ago Martha had forbidden her to speak. Through the lattice came the scent of olive-trees, and with it the irresistible breath of spring.

In its caress the threat which had made her its own presently was lifted, and mingling with other things fused into them. The kaleidoscope of time and events which visits those that drown possessed her, and for a second Mary relived a year.

There had been the sudden flight from Magdala, the first days with the Master, the gorges of the Jordan, the journey to the coast, the glittering green scales of that hydra the sea. Then the loiterings on the banks of the sacred Leontes, the journey back to Galilee, the momentary halt at Magdala, the sail past Bethsaïda, Capharnahum, Chorazin, the fording of the river, the trip to Caesarea Philippi, the snow and gold of Hermon, the visit to Gennesareth, the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and the return to Bethany.

Her recollections intercrossed, scenes that were trivial ousted others that were grave; the purple limpets of Sidon, the shrine of Ashtaroth, the invective at Bethsaïda, the transfiguration on the mountain height, the cure of lepers, and the presence that coerced. Yet through them all certain things remained immutable, and of these, primarily her contact with the Christ.

To her, Jesus was not the Son of man alone, he was the light of this world, the usher of the next. When he spoke, there came to her a sense of frightened joy so acute that the hypostatical union which left even the disciples perplexed was by her realized and understood. She had the faith of a little child. And on the hills and through the intervales over which they journeyed, in the glare of the eager sun or beneath the wattled boughs, the emanations of the Divine filled her with transports so contagious that they affected even Thomas, who was skeptical by birth; and when, after the descent from Hermon, two or three of the disciples mused together over the spectacle which they had seen, the rhyme of her lips parted ineffably. She too had seen him aureoled with the sun, dazzling as the snowfields on the heights. To her it was ever in that aspect he appeared, with a radiance so intense even that there had been moments in which she had veiled her eyes as from a light that only eagles could support. To her, marvels were as natural as the escape of night. At Beth-Seân she had heard him speak to dumb beasts, and never doubted but that they answered him. At Dan she had seen a short-eared hare rush to him for refuge, and follow him afterwards as a dog might do. At Kinnereth he had called to a lark that from a treetop was pouring its heart out to the morning, and the lark had fluttered down and nestled in his hand. At Gadara he had tamed wild doves, and a swarm of bees had stopped and glistened in his hair. At Caesarea, when he began to speak, the thrushes that had been singing ceased; and when the parables were delivered, began anew, louder, more jubilant than before, and continued to sing until he blessed them, when they mounted in one long ascending line straight to the zenith above. At his approach the little gold-bellied fish of the Leontes had leaped from the stream. In the suburbs of Sidon the jackals had fawned at his feet. The underbrush had parted to let him pass, and where he passed white roses came and the tenderness of anemones. At times he seemed to her immaterial as a shadow in a dream, at others appalling as the desert; and once when, in prayer, she entered with him into the intimacy of the infinite, she caught the shiver of an invisible harp whose notes seemed to fall from the night. And as she journeyed, her love expanded with the horizon. She loved with a love no woman’s heart has transcended. In its prodigality and ascending gammes there was place for nothing save the Ideal.

The little band meanwhile lived as strangers on earth. Out of her abundant means their simple wants were supplied. She was less a burden than a sustenance; her faith bridged many a doubtful hour; and when, as often occurred, they disputed among themselves concerning their future rank and precedence, Mary dreamed of a paradise more pure.

One evening, near the rushes of Lake Phiala, where the Jordan leaps anew to the light, a Greek merchant who had refused them shelter at Seleucia ambled that way on an ass, and would have stopped, perhaps, but one of the band scoffed him, and he rode on, and disappeared in the haze of the hills.

Unobserved, the Master had seen and heard; presently he called them to where he stood.

“Do not think,” he admonished⁠—“do not think that because you imitate the Pharisees you are perfecting your lives. They fast, they pray, they weep, and they mortify the flesh; but to them one thing is impossible, charity to the failings of others. Whoso then shall come to you, be he friend or foe, penitent or thief, receive him kindly. Aid the helpless, console the unfortunate, forgive your enemy, and forget yourselves⁠—that is charity. Without it the kingdom of heaven is lost to you. There, there is neither Greek nor Jew, male nor female; nor can it come to you until the garment of shame is trampled under foot, until two are as one, and the body which is without is as the soul within.”

Thereat, with a gesture of exquisite indulgence, he turned and left them to the stars.

Mary had heard, and in the palingenesis disclosed she saw space wrapped in a luminous atmosphere, such as she fancied lay behind the sun. There, instead of the thrones and diadems of the elect, was an immutable realm in which there was neither death nor life, clear ether merely, charged with beatitudes. And so, when the disciples disputed among themselves, Mary dreamed of diaphanous hours and immaculate days that knew no night, and in this wise lived until from the terrace of Jerusalem’s Temple the Master bade her return to Bethany and wait him there.

Obedience to that command was bitter to her. She did not murmur, however. “Rabboni,” she cried, “let me but do your will on earth, and afterwards save me or destroy me as your pleasure is.”

With that she had gone to her sister’s house, and to the bewildered Martha poured out her heart anew. There could be no question of forgiveness now, of penitence even; her sins, such as they were, had been remitted by one to whom pardon was an attribute. And this doubtless Martha understood, for she took her in her arms unreproachfully and mingled her tears with hers.

Where all is marvel the marvellous disappears. To the accounts which Mary gave of her journeys with the little band that followed the Master, Martha listened with an attention which nothing could distract. With her she sailed on the lovely lake; with her she visited cities smothering in the scent of cassia and of sugarcane; with her she passed through glens where panthers prowled, and bandits crueller than they. With her eyes she saw the listening multitudes, with her ears she heard again the words of divine forgiveness; and, the lulab and the citron in her hands, she assisted at the Feast of the Tabernacles, and watched the vain attempt to charm the recalcitrant Temple and captivate the inimical town.

For in Jerusalem, in place of the reassuring confidence of peasants, was the irritable incredulity of priests; instead of meadows, courts. Besides, was not this prophet from Galilee, and what good had ever come from there? Then, too, he was not an authorized teacher. He belonged to no school. The followers of Hillel, the disciples of Shammai, did not recognize him. He was merely a fractious Nazarene trained in the shop of a carpenter; one who, by repeating that it was easier for a camel to pass through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, flattered basely the mob of mendicants that surrounded him. The rabble admired, but the clergy stood aloof. When he was not ignored he was disdained. Save the pleb, no one listened.

Presently he spoke louder. Into the grave music of the Syro-Chaldaic tongue he put the mutterings of thunder. Where he had preached, he upbraided; in place of exquisite parables came sonorous threats. He blessed but rarely, sometimes he cursed. That mosaic, the Law, he treated like a cobweb; and to the arrogant clergy a rumor filtered that this vagabond, who had not where to lay his head, declared his ability to destroy the Temple, and to rebuild it, in three days, anew.

A rumor such as that was incredible. Inquiries were made. The rumor was substantiated. It was learned that he healed the sick, cured the blind; that he was in league, perhaps, with the Pharisees.

The Sanhedrim took counsel. They were Sadducees every one. The Pharisees were their hereditary foes. Both were militant, directing men and things as best they could. The Sadducees held strictly to the letter of the Law; the Pharisees held to the Law, and to tradition as well. But the Sadducees were in power, the Pharisees were not. The former endeavored in every way to maintain their authority over the people; and against that authority, against the aristocracy, the priesthood, and the accomplices of foreign dominion, the Pharisees ceaselessly excited the mob. In their inability to overthrow the pontificate, they undermined it. With microscopic attention they examined and criticised every act of the clergy; and, with a view of showing the incompetence of the priests, they affected rigid theories in regard to ritualistic points. Every detail of the ceremonial office was watched by them with eyes that were never pleased. They asserted that the rolls of the Law from which the priests read the Pentateuch were made of impure matter, and, having handled them, the priests had become impure as well. The manner in which the incense was made and offered, the minutiae governing the sacrifices, the legality of hierarchal decisions⁠—on each and every possible subject they exerted themselves to show the unworthiness of the officiants, insinuating even that the names of the fathers of many of the priests were not inscribed at Zipporim in the archives of Jeshana. As a consequence, many of those whose rights the Pharisees affected to uphold saw in the hierarchy little more than a body of men unworthy to approach the altar, a group of Herodians who in religion lacked every requisite for the service of God, and who in public and in private were bankrupts in patriotism, morality, and shame.

The possibility, therefore, that this fractious demagogue had found favor with the Pharisees was grave. He was becoming a force. He threatened many a prerogative. Moreover, Jerusalem had had enough of agitators. People were drawn by their promises into the solitudes, and there incited to revolt. Rome did not look upon these things leniently. If they continued, Tiberius was quite capable of putting Judaea in a yoke which it would not be easy to carry. Clearly the Nazarene was seditious, and as such to be abolished. The difficulty was to abolish him and yet conciliate the mob.

It was then that the Sanhedrim took counsel. As a result, and with the hope of entrapping him into some blasphemous utterance on which a charge would lie, they sent meek-eyed Scribes to question him concerning the authority that he claimed. He routed the meek-eyed Scribes. Then, fancying that he might be seduced into some expression which could be construed as treason, they sent young and earnest men to learn from him their duty to Rome. The young and earnest men returned crestfallen and abashed.

The elders, nonplussed, debated. A levite suspected that the casuistry and marvellous cures of the Nazarene must be due to a knowledge of the incommunicable name, Shemhammephorash, seared on stone in the thunders of Sinai, and which to utter was to summon life or beckon death. Another had heard that while in Galilee he was believed to be in league with Baal-Zebub, Lord of Flies.

To this gossip no attention was paid. Annas, merely⁠—the old high-priest, father-in-law of Caiaphas, who officiated in his stead⁠—laughed to himself. There was no such stone, there was no such god. Another idea had been welcomed. A festival was in progress; there was gayety in the neighborhood, drinking too; and as over a million of pilgrims were herded together, now and then an offence occurred. The previous night, for instance, a woman had been arrested for illicit commerce.

Annas tapped on his chin. He had the pompous air of a chameleon, the same long, thin lips, the large, protruding eyes.

“Take her before the Galilean,” he said. “He claims to be a rabbi; he must know the Law. If he acquit her, it is heresy, and for that a charge will lie. Does he condemn her he is at our mercy, for he will have alienated the mob.”

A smile of perfect understanding passed like a vagrant breeze across the faces of the elders, and the levites were ordered to lead the prisoner to the Christ.

They found him in the Woman’s Court. From a lateral chamber a priest, unfit for other than menial services because of a carbuncle on his lip, dropped the wood he was sorting for the altar and gazed curiously at the advancing throng, in which the prisoner was.

She must have been very fair, but now her features were distorted with anguish, veiled with shame. The blue robe she wore was torn, and a sleeve rent to the shoulder disclosed a bare white arm. She was a wife, a mother too. Her name was Ahulah; her husband was a shoemaker. At the Gannath Gate, where her home was, were two little children. She worshipped them, and her husband she adored. Some hallucination, a tremor of the flesh, the flush of wine, and there, circled by a leering crowd, she crouched, her life disgraced, irrecoverable forevermore.

The charge was made, the usual question propounded. The Master had glanced at her but once. He seemed to be looking afar, beyond the Temple and its terraces, beyond the horizon itself. But the accusers were impatient. He bent forward and with a finger wrote on the ground. The letters were illegible, perhaps, yet the symbol of obliteration was in that dust which the morrow would disperse. Again he wrote, but the charge was repeated, louder, more impatiently than before.

Jesus straightened himself. With the weary indulgence of one to whom hearts are as books, he looked about him, then to the dome above.

“Whoever is without sin among you,” he declared, “may cast the first stone.”

When he looked again the crowd had slunk away. Only Ahulah remained, her head bowed on her bare white arm. From the lateral chamber the priest still peered, the carbuncle glistening on his lip.

“Did none condemn you?” the Master asked.

And as she sobbed merely, he added: “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and sin no more.”

To the elders this was very discomforting. They had failed to unmask him as a traitor to God, to Rome even, or yet as a demagogue defying the Law. They did not care to question again. He had worsted them three times. Nor could they without due cause arrest him, for there were the Pharisees. Besides, a religious trial was full of risk, and the cooperation of the procurator not readily to be relied on. It was that cooperation they needed most, for with it such feeling as might be aroused would fall on Rome and not on them. As for Pilate, he could put a sword in front of what he said.

In their enforced inaction they got behind that wall of prejudice where they and their kin feel most secure, and there waited, prepared at the first opportunity to invoke the laws of their ancestors, laws so cumbersome and complex that the Romans, accustomed to the clearest pandects, had laughed and left them, erasing only the right to kill.