According to Mary Magdalene (8 page)

Quintus laughed, not noticing that Mary was not amused. But he agreed with her when she said the same could be said of all gods.

He mostly talked about his dreams, about his great love for her and the golden future awaiting them.

Mary said nothing most of the time, hugging herself and her secrets to herself. He neither asked, nor saw, that she was beginning to be bored.

He spent a whole afternoon telling her about his family, his mother, a Jewess who enthusiastically worshipped the awful Jewish God.

“She has a word from the scriptures for every occasion,” Quintus said with a scornful laugh.

“But what does your father say?”

“He's hardly ever at home. But he has forbidden her to turn me into a Jew.”

“But your sisters?”

“I don't know them,” he said. “They live their own life at home, humble and versed in the scriptures, they are, too.”

Mary listened, refusing to let herself to be distracted by his mouth or ears, nor even by the brown eyes or the enchanting fringe that kept falling over his forehead.

She could see it all before her, the sisters turned into shadows, the mother's silent power, that maternal power partly exercised with quotes from the scriptures.

Everything in her said no.

“What do you think your mother will say when you have to tell her you found your bride in a brothel?” she said aloud.

He did not reply, and that was answer enough.

She was not even saddened. She glanced at him, wondering for a moment whether he understood that his fragile dreams had just collapsed. She herself had not been dreaming, but simply suffering from thirst. And she was to slake her thirst, Euphrosyne herself had advised her to.

“You can come tonight. Jump over the wall and go to the cave. I'll meet you there as soon as I can get away.”

The moon was full as Mary slipped out through the garden, down to the shore, and up to the grotto where he was waiting. They kissed until they were out of their minds, and Mary gave in, her desire filling mouth and back, thigh, and breast. It hurt when he drove into her and she screamed with pleasure and pain. By all the gods, she did not want to live without this.

They slept for a while, a heavenly sleep. Then she had to wake him. “You must go now, Quintus. And don't come back, ever.”

The next day, Mary told Euphrosyne that she had done as Euphrosyne had said, and he wouldn't be coming back.

“That was all his love was worth then?” said Euphrosyne.

“Precisely. But it was a wonderful moment, and I've no intention of forgoing it in the future.”

“Mary, I don't want that.”

“But I do.”

The girl had grown up.

She liked men, their purposeful striving to achieve pleasure, and their bodies, nearly always so tense and hard. She learned a lot and always had the courage to show how she wanted it—she was both inventive and demanding. One of the courtesans taught her how to give massage and she found her hands could make men weep. That was not difficult. After intercourse, people are sad.

Her clients were carefully selected by Euphrosyne, primarily Roman and Greek officers.

Occasionally she received a Jewish man. His body was softer but afterward always turned rigid with remorse. Then she was unable to help him and the burning hatred in his eyes frightened her.

Mary talked to Euphrosyne about it, and she said she gave a great deal of thought to the Jewish God who never forgave the sins that he himself decided people should commit.

But she also said she liked the Jews for their high ideals and firm attitudes to life and because many of them showed compassion.

Then she sighed. “They suffer from eternal feelings of guilt. Their obedience to the laws and acts of goodness never seem to be enough.”

M
ary Magdalene sat at her writing table in Antioch reading with some surprise her story about how at her own request she became a whore.

Truth always has a forgotten side to it. She had seldom given Quintus a moment's thought and she had totally obliterated her conversation with Euphrosyne.

But when she had been writing the day before, she had put pressure on her memory to an extreme, and had found a lusting adolescent and a foolish passion.

A boy happened to pass by. And as her story had shown, the boy had lit a fire in her blood. Some fuel must already have existed. Perhaps she had never been an innocent fifteen-year-old?

Had eroticism been built into the walls of the house of pleasure? So that she had breathed it in with the air? Or do the bodies of all young girls burn?

In that case, the question remained why most managed to resist and keep their virginity? The answer is obvious—strong taboos existed in their upbringing. In hers? She suddenly remembered the words she had once spoken to Euphrosyne—I have never had anyone to be like. Does that mean I am amoral?

Was that what Jesus had meant when he said she was one of the innocents?

She now lived a celibate life with a man she loved as a brother. The desires of the body, where had they gone?

She smiled slightly, for she could certainly feel them in fleeting moments, as when she occasionally met the Jewish rabbi in private.

He was a lovely man and they never dared even look at each other. He had lovely hands, as tempting as Quintus' ear had once been.

But she no longer burned like fire. She regarded her body's reaction almost with amusement, the blood hot in her veins, the tension in her breasts, the pull of her loins.

She had put a distance between herself and her desires. Like Euphrosyne, Mary thought she would write a letter to her stepmother and yet again try to persuade Leonidas to go to Corinth. A voyage. They could set sail when the heat of the summer was over.

C
ool came on the wind from the sea, as usual in the afternoons in Antioch. It had been a hot day and Mary went out to water the garden.

She sighed as she looked over her flower beds. No flowers smiled at her, no vetches or mignonettes, carnations or toadflax had survived their six-month life and were now, dry and dead, rustling in the wind.

It looked untidy.

But the time to cut them all down had not come, for the seeds, almost invisibly small and enclosed in their watertight shells, were still drilling their way down into the scorched soil.

Some moisture would help, Mary thought, and filled another can.

The irises and cyclamens also looked dead, but she confidently gave their tubers a good soaking so they would survive even this summer and flower again after the winter rains. One single flower, dried to tissue paper, still glowed blue among the irises to tell her that her eyes were the same color.

When Mary went to the well to fetch another can of water, the winds swept down from the upper terraces, bringing with them the scent of oil-rich shrubs, thyme and salvia, oregano and rosemary. She breathed in their scents with delight. How ingenious it was that the aromatic oils protected the herbs from the drought.

Her thoughts went to Setonius, who had taught her how to care for a garden. Euphrosyne had freed him as soon as she had arranged for her new house in Corinth, and he had done what he had dreamed of doing for many years, returning to his island and his gods in the Ionian Sea. He was away for a few months, then he came back to Euphrosyne, saying little.

He had told Mary Magdalene that everything there had been just as he remembered it, but that he had forgotten how limited it was. They had agreed that life offers no ways back.

He had then laid out a new garden in Corinth.

Mary felt a pain in her back, and as her mother had done, placed her clenched hand between her shoulder blades and stretched. As she did so, she heard horses clattering toward the street and a carriage screeching by her gateway. It was Livia, pale with scarlet patches on her cheeks.

“Mera is at the temple of Isis to give birth. But something's gone wrong. The child is lying wrongly and won't come out. She asked me to come and fetch you. Come quickly.”

Mary managed to wash her hands and face and pull a clean mantle over her shoulders before locking up the house and as usual giving the key to her neighbor.

“Leonidas knows,” said Livia as they set off. Mary could see she was shaking and took a firm hold of her sister-in-law's hand. She had nothing consoling to say and could only nod when Livia assured her the priestesses at the temple were known for their skill in the art of delivering babies.

Mary closed her eyes and prayed. To the almighty God of the Jews? She did not know.

The temple was a large circular building around an open courtyard, that was also circular. In front of the doorway to the delivery room was the bronze statue of Isis, alien and self-evident at the same time, glowing with inward-looking tenderness for the child in her arms.

They could hear Mera screaming with pain and fear. The two priestesses were trying to calm her, but their words did not reach her. One of them had her hand on Mera's belly, which was moving as if waves in a storm.

“Dear Lord Jesus, help me now.”

Mary did not know whether she had said it aloud, but that was of no importance. What was important was that he heard her.

“The pain will go now, Mera. But only for a moment and at that moment you must think about the birds sailing in the sky, about the trust they put in the winds. They are so sure that even the storm bears them as long as they can float in calm confidence with the wind. Now you are the bird and the force drawing through your body is the wind. Can you feel it, Mera, can you? Give way and go with it.”

Mera nodded.

“We must cut her,” said one of the priestesses.

“Do so,” said Mary, looking straight into Mera's eyes and using all her strength to keep Mera in the bed while the operation was being carried out.

“Breathe,” she said. “Breathe calmly.”

It was over in a moment and the priestess nodded to Mary. “The time has come to push.”

“The storm's coming soon,” said Mary to Mera. “And you must go with it, not resist it. Now, can you feel the immense wind drawing through your body? It hurts, but is also magnificent. Go with it, help it, you're flying.”

Mera flung out her arms. “I'm dying,” she cried.

Mary cried just as loudly into the girl's ear. “No, I'm holding you. Go with it, keep pushing.”

The boy was born half an hour later, then bathed and shown to Isis in the doorway. As the child was carried out to the goddess, Mary felt a distance, a fear, but at the same time, she could sense his smile. He was laughing at her prejudices.

It was dark outside, the midnight hour, the child sleeping in his mother's arm. The last thing Mera said before she fell asleep was “promise me you'll stay, Mary.”

“I promise.”

She was given a bed alongside Mera, soft bolsters and light covers. Before she fell asleep, she had time to think that God was born on earth with every child. She was awakened once during the night when the boy cried, hungry and full of life. But she had no need to intervene, and with almost reverence she watched Mera put the child to her breast, as if she had always known what to do.

Then they fell asleep, all three of them.

Mary woke at dawn with a sense she was being watched. Mera was feeding her son and gazing at Mary, her eyes glowing with joy. “All that you taught me about the wind was fine.”

Then the priestesses returned with hot water smelling of essential oils and something else. What was it? Was it vinegar? Mary thought with surprise.

“We must clean up mother and child now. Meanwhile Mistress Mary can take a walk in the courtyard.”

It was good to go out into the fresh air and see the sun's rays spreading over the circular courtyard. In the middle was a big stone, black as ebony, and beside it an old woman kneeling, sunk in prayer.

I should be praying too, thought Mary. Giving thanks for help given. But she could not pray here at the heathens' sacred stone. At that moment, the old woman turned around and smiled at Mary. “Your god surely has nothing against our goddess,” she said.

That was the first time Mary had begun to realize that the old woman could read her thoughts.

Then without knowing where it came from, she said: “I once knew a man who said that in the beginning man created god and made him into his own image.”

The old woman smiled, almost laughing. “Naturally, that's how it is. We create the gods we need and worship them as long as they fulfill our needs. That is what makes the Jewish God so magnificent. He is one, and he is all that man is, cruel and power-mad, good and full of mercy.”

Mary felt her knees giving way and she had to support herself on the stone idol. The old woman noticed and said: “Come in with me and we shall have breakfast. It's a long time since you had anything to eat.”

Before they reached the doorway, the old woman stopped. “It is dark inside,” she said. “Let us stay here a moment and look at each other.”

Mary looked into the ancient face, the skin like dry leather, a broad mouth, and surprisingly good teeth. Her eyes were ageless and her gaze open.

The priestess looked at Mary, slight but stubborn and unbroken, despite her great loss. There was a certainty in those blue eyes, but also a strange impotence about her, like a ship washed into a harbor where no winds ever reached.

They went inside, the old priestess' room so dark it took some time for their eyes to get used to it. Circular walls here, too, dark as if in a womb. They sat in silence at the table as the food was put out. Mary was hungry. She took some bread, and as she bit into it, a foolish thought raced through her head. She would like to have the recipe.

Then she tried to give thanks for all the help her young relative had received, but the old woman did not want to hear. “You have a strong god,” she said.

Mary had no time to think. For the first time since she had come to Antioch, the whole amazing story of Jesus of Nazareth swept through her as if from a spring that could no longer be stemmed. She did not weep, even when it came to the crucifixion. Not until she described how the disciples had rejected her and the other women did her voice break.

The old woman looked sad. “I had hoped the new man of god would restore the womanly force on earth.”

Then Mary wept. “Nothing will change,” she said finally. “The apostles are Jews, rooted in ancient prejudices that woman has no soul and man is the only human being.”

“It's not just the Jews. The ancient goddess lost power all over our world. People free themselves from agriculture, from childbirth, and from the flow of life. We are heading for the time of the big city, for the era of the merchants.”

They were interrupted by a young priestess who told them the women from the harbor town had arrived and were waiting for the priestess in the courtyard.

The old woman explained. “We bring the prostitutes here in groups and cure their diseases and injuries as best we can. They are given rest, baths, and new clothes. Unfortunately that is all we can do.”

Mary thought about Jesus' words and everything she had neglected. “For I was hungry and you gave me meat; I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you took me in. Naked, and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came unto me.”

As they parted out in the courtyard, the sun was already high. Another hot day had begun.

“May I come back?”

“Come early. The mornings are best.”

Mary crossed the courtyard, avoiding looking at the prostitutes and their gaudily-painted faces.

Livia, pale and tired, was sitting with Mera. The child was asleep. Mary said goodbye to Mera. “I'll be back in the morning,” she whispered.

Leonidas was waiting outside in the street.