The Gospel of the Twin (27 page)

Chapter Thirty-One

Verse One

The next two years are difficult to sort out. I wandered from Syria to Egypt and back, in and out of the Galilee, but not to Nazareth. I could not face my mother until I'd gathered the threads and woven together the true story of my brother's final hours. Even when I'd completed that, I would need to unravel that fabric again and reweave it into a pattern presentable to my mother.

However, all I got during those years were conflicting accounts that only molded the tellers' dreams into their own images of Jesus. To the militants, he was a flaming-eyed revolutionary who matched swords with the Romans until the last. To the mystics, he was a mirror-eyed seer who read God's secret code in the stars. To the reformers, he was a stone-eyed Moses who delivered a new Torah. Each of these contained a mustard seed's measure of truth. I wondered how much I had contributed to their growth.

A year or so after I departed Jerusalem, I found Bartholomew in Alexandria. He was shouting from atop a wooden stool on the street like a crazed prophet: “Jesus the risen god will return again soon to rule the righteous! Repent the failures of your heart and be free from the bonds of man! Jesus said I will see him again! You must join me in repentance!” A small crowd listened, probably more out of morbid curiosity than genuine interest.

Bartholomew scanned the crowd, pointing to individuals for emphasis. “You, brother! Repent! You, sister! Prepare for his return!” His gaze came to me. “You!” He stopped. He fanned his face as if chasing away a gnat. He threw out his arms toward me and shook his hands as if flinging water from them. I thought he was having spasms like those of people who have fits. “People of the Lord!” he yelled. “He is among us!” I turned and fled and heard him saying, “Pursue the Lord! Catch the Lord!”

Of course, no one gave chase. I circled back but waited for him to end his sermon. He picked up his stool, and I followed him to the vagabonds' region of the city, where I pushed him into an alley and struck his face with the flat of my hand. He fell to the ground and cried.

“Are you mad?” I asked. “What were you trying to do to me?”

He put his face to the ground and covered the back of his head with his hands. “Forgive me, Master,” he said. “I'm only trying to serve you.”

“Get up, you fool. I'm not your master. I'm Thomas, not Jesus. He's dead. You were there that night I pretended to be him. You heard the entire plan. Have you forgotten?”

He turned as if he would crawl away like a dog. He bent to the ground again and gagged like a poisoned man. “I'm doing what you said.” He spat and wiped his hand across his mouth. “You told us all to go out and spread the good news of your—of Jesus' resurrection, and I've been preaching ever since.” He rose up to sit on his heels. My red handprint was on his cheek. “I have a community of people here trying to continue Jesus' work and who are looking for his return.”

“What do you mean,
I
told you?”

“That sermon you gave that night on the hill. You told everyone—then, after that, you told us to go and start new groups of followers.”

“After that? I left and haven't seen any of you since that night on the hill.”

Bartholomew stood and brushed dirt off himself. With his wild hair and nervous eyes, he reminded me of John the Baptizer. “Someone saw you. Said they saw you. Maybe Mary. Said you gave instructions.”

“Bartholomew, I need to know what happened the night Jesus was arrested. You were there, weren't you?”

He shook his head and looked down. “We were all fearful that the police would come for us. Jesus had made a fuss at the Temple. Yelling at the money-changers and the merchants. Throwing rocks at a group of priests.”

“He threw rocks?”

“Hit one in the eye. But Jesus wasn't concerned at all,” said Bartholomew. “It was as if he had just finished a great meal and was taking a relaxing stroll. That evening, Jesus was talking to us—not exactly preaching, but making odd pronouncements that I think he considered important. Things like we should not pick lilies, and that many things will pass, except he will not. I saw Peter talking to Andrew in the shadows.

“Then Judas showed up and had a fight with Peter. You remember they left without us when we were in Bethany, and we hadn't seen them since. I couldn't tell what it was about without walking right up to them, and they were trying hard not to draw attention to themselves. You know how Peter was—he would have all but killed me if I'd disturbed them. Insubordination.”

He pulled something from a pouch at his side and rubbed it between his palms as if cleaning dirt from it. He blew on it and returned it to his pouch. It looked like a smooth, blue stone, perhaps an amulet some Egyptian charlatan had sold him.

“Then the three of them went to where Jesus and Mary were sitting. Mary jumped up and embraced Judas, but Judas pushed her away. Jesus leapt to his feet and began quarreling with Judas—calling him a liar—and soon they were all fighting and shoving. I was terrified, Thomas. Judas' Zealot friend, Simon, pulled Judas aside and tried to calm him down. Mary spat on Peter and walked away, and Judas followed her.

“Then, out of nowhere, the police arrived. One struck Jesus, and a struggle started, but it didn't last long. They left a few of our people hurt and took Jesus away, bound like a slave to be sold.” He shook his head again, spat, and stared at his feet.

“Continue,” I said. Bartholomew seemed in a trance. I grabbed his shoulders and jerked him. “Bartholomew! What then?”

“It's hard for me to remember it all, Thomas. It was frightening,” he said. “Andrew was in a frenzy and went to find out where Jesus had been taken. I went with him. We figured the court building that the governor was using for his headquarters was the first place to look. We ran into Judas. He said that nothing could be done—no, nothing
should
be done—and that we should go back and join the others and tell them that the Lord does everything for a reason.

“I had no idea what he was talking about, but Andrew seemed to understand. He pulled Judas aside, and another quarrel started. Judas hit Andrew in the stomach. Andrew fell, and Judas stood over him, holding a dagger, and said something like, ‘Don't ruin this.' Then Judas was gone. We went to the court building, but guards chased us away. Peter found us as we were leaving, and he and Andrew whispered something for a few moments. I think they were arguing. Then Peter was gone, too.”

Bartholomew rubbed his ears as if he were hearing a painful sound. “That's all I know, Thomas. We sat around not knowing what to do, and then you returned.”

“Did you hear anything Peter and Andrew said to each other?”

“No.”

“What do you
think
they said?”

Bartholomew rubbed his hands and looked at them as if making sure they were clean. “Please, Thomas. This pains me. I've even cursed myself for thinking it.”

I wanted to slap him again. Bartholomew blinked; he must have sensed my impatience. He sniffled, and a low yelp, like from a puppy needing its mother, came from deep in his throat. I still wanted to strike him; instead, I embraced him. He wept into my shoulder. He mumbled something, chant-like, like a prayer.

“What did you say?”

He pulled his face a bit from my shoulder. “I don't want to say it, Thomas.”

I stepped away from him, and Bartholomew crossed his arms in front of his face and yelped again. In a moment, he peeked through his arms, saw that I was not braced to hit him, and wiped his face with his inner wrists. Seemingly relieved, he took a deep breath. “Thomas, I can't be sure, but I think perhaps Jesus' arrest was no surprise to Peter and Judas. I got the idea that they had conspired against us on their separate way to Jerusalem.”

“Why would they do that?”

“I don't know. They just behaved oddly.”

“And Andrew?”

“No. I think Andrew suspected something and didn't approve, but found out too late to prevent anything.”

“Wait. I thought Jesus was arrested because of his scene at the Temple,” I said. “Are you saying that Peter and Judas had him arrested?”

“I don't know, Thomas. I just can't figure it all out. I don't know if I want the truth anyway.”

I feared asking the next question. “What about Mary?”

A tear swelled on the rim of Bartholomew's eye. “Whatever was going on, I cannot believe she was part of it. I think she suspected nothing,” he said. “If Judas plotted against Jesus, he was smart enough not to tell Mary. He knew, as we all did, that no one was more loyal to Jesus than she. I mean, except for you, of course.”

Tears rose in my eyes, I suppose for the rushes of anger, frustration, and betrayal in my breast, but perhaps more for the agony Mary must have gone through when she tried to piece all of this together. “Bartholomew, someone told me that you wrote down some of the things Jesus said.”

“A few things.” He looked fearful. “I wanted to record Jesus' life. I began jotting down notes in Bethany and, since Jerusalem, I've been trying to recollect everything and fill in the events. It's nothing, really.”

“Let me see it.”

“Thomas, my writing is dreadful. I had a few lessons and tried to learn more on my own—”

“Now.”

We went to his house and Bartholomew retrieved the bundle of parchment scraps. I promised to give him back the manuscript when I returned in a couple of weeks. The next day, as I left the city, I burned it all.

Verse Two

I tried to find Peter, but got enough hearsay and claims of recent sightings that I began to suspect he knew I was seeking him and was planting false information to evade me. Usually, I was told that he was where I had just been and heading in the opposite direction. Tales of his exploits, though, grew: He restored a blind man's sight in Tyre, gave life to a stillborn child in Palmyra, caused a horse to speak in Lystra, and walked away unmarked when a lance passed through his gut in Apollonia. Not until the debate with Paul in Jerusalem did I encounter him again, and by that time I knew all I needed to know and no longer cared to kill him.

In the meantime, while some of our group pranced about the land peddling their version of Jesus, many of his most loyal followers returned to their worlds of bare tables and dark horizons. I found the Zebedee brothers fishing in Bethsaida just as before, except that now their father was dead. They could not afford to marry and so lived with their mother and sisters. They spoke with a soft nostalgia about our travels together, as if we had done no more than transport wool to Egypt and enjoyed a few young men's adventures. When I brought up the continuation of Jesus' work, they smiled sweetly and turned the discussion toward the scarcity of fish in the lake.

Andrew had also returned to Bethsaida. I found him at the market selling his meager catch for hardly enough money to buy a chicken. He acted quite happy to see me, and said that other followers often visited to seek his counsel.

“I really have no insight to offer them,” Andrew said. “I just spend every day in the boat hauling in barely enough to keep my family fed. I go out alone so I can contemplate what it all meant. Jesus touched me profoundly, Thomas, but I'm not sure how. Sometimes, I think going through this perpetual examination is itself the answer. But Jesus wanted more than that for us, didn't he, Thomas?”

We sat by his boat as he mended a net. I told him that I struggled with those very same questions, but he continued this elliptical discussion as if in time, impatient with his endless queries, some profound truth would reveal itself. At last, I forced his attention in another direction.

“Andrew, others have told me that some of our inner circle may have been involved in a conspiracy—one that may have led to Jesus' death,” I said. “They name Peter and Judas. What do you know?”

He stretched the net across the ground and began to roll it up. “I hear many rumors, Thomas.”

“So do I, but they tend to converge on your brother.”

“I have seen little of him. He said, maybe a year ago, that he was going to Antioch. I don't know why.” Andrew laid the net into his boat. “He told me once that he and Judas had indeed worked out a scheme. It included Judas' associate Barabbas and involved aggravating the hatred that the Sanhedrin and Pilate and Agrippa all had for each other. They planned somehow to have Jesus emerge as a populist leader. They thought that the Romans would see Jesus as peaceful, even cooperative, and place him in a position of power. In the meantime, Judas and the Zealots would lay low, recruiting more activists, and when the Romans let their guard down, the militia would strike. Something like that. He spoke vaguely about it—no details.”

I was about to tell Andrew how preposterous that scheme sounded and berate him for letting Peter get away with such lies when he leaned upon the sides of his boat and hung his head.

“I didn't believe Simon, but he got furious when I told him the same thing.” Andrew cleared his throat and may have sniffed back a tear. “Another time, he told me something completely different. He said that Judas wanted to have Jesus arrested and then free him from jail. They were going to bribe as many guards as they could—the Zealots stole money for just these kinds of schemes—and then the Zealots would attack. People could then easily be convinced that God had delivered Jesus from imprisonment. Simon didn't like the plan, but Judas went ahead with it anyway. When it fell through, Simon and Judas fought.”

“And he killed Judas.”

Andrew didn't answer. He looked up at an evening sky that was as dull as the eye of a dead fish. “Is this the empire of the Lord, Thomas? This?”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Verse One

Magdala was now even more destitute than when Mary had first taken us there. Like most of the women in the village, Mary dressed as a widow. She was sitting in front of her house sewing when she saw me and ran into the street. Tears covered her cheeks as she embraced me, alternately pushing her face into my chest and throwing back her head to wail like the old women at funerals. Curious neighbors came to find out which son of Magdala had fallen to the Romans this time. Mary's family gathered around. Balkai embraced me, and then he led us inside.

“You found me on a special day, dearest Thomas.” Mary pulled her shawl from around her face and draped it about her shoulders. “I was actually outside. Most days I sit here. Some days I cook bread. Some days I comb my hair. Some days I listen to the wind or the rain. Every day I wish for death.”

Balkai took her hand. “Don't speak like that.”

“The Romans have robbed us of our very being. We have been reduced to maggots living off their filth. Jesus and Judas gave me hope, each in their own way. What's left? The murderer Peter, I hear, has his own following now.”

“You don't know that he's a murderer,” I said.

“I know far more than you, Thomas.” She moved her hand away from Balkai's. “Living with the truth has been almost as painful as living without the dream.”

“What truth, Mary?” I said. “I find many truths, one from each person I meet.”

“You do not know this truth.” Mary nodded to Balkai. He arose and went to the far side of the room where his wife was scraping some sort of root. The two of them left the house, and Mary and I were alone.

“Judas and Peter crafted a plan to have Jesus become more than a spiritual leader—more than just another healer. Something had to happen to add to Jesus' political appeal. They decided to have Jesus arrested on a minor charge, then raid the prison to free him. They thought that many of our people would find this even more impressive than raising Lazarus from death. They would call it a sign from God that Jesus, not the Temple priests, was God's choice as leader of the Jews. Judas enlisted his comrade Barabbas and the other Zealots, who were already converging on Jerusalem and trying to finalize their own plans.”

“Andrew said that Peter told him something much like this.”

“I bet Peter never told Andrew this part.” Mary went to the table where Balkai's wife had been peeling roots, drew a cloth from under her robe, and dipped it into a bowl of water. She pressed the rag to her face and inhaled slowly. When she came back, she sat by me and took my hands into hers. “I didn't see Judas in Jerusalem until moments before the arrest,” she said. “I could not greet him with joy as I had hoped, for he was in a brutal state of mind. He and Peter stomped toward where Jesus and I sat. It was obvious that the two had been fighting, and Judas had one hand beneath his cloak.

“I suspected that he was holding his dagger. Neither said anything about the nature of the quarrel, but when Jesus stood, Judas shoved him and called Jesus a deceiver. Judas also accused Jesus of being in love with me and of trying to have him arrested so that Jesus might have me to himself. Peter said that Judas was a traitor, and Judas called Peter an apostate.

“Jesus had said peculiar things to us in Jerusalem—things that made me think he had a premonition about how his career was about to reach either a completion or a new phase. The rest of us were already on the edge of our nerves, and the incident at the Temple had made us all fearful. I just knew he'd be arrested and, from what we'd heard, the Romans were executing anyone they thought looked or sounded suspicious. They didn't even bother with trials.

“I told Jesus we should leave, but he just said, ‘But, Mary, this is my hour.' So when this quarrel started, most of us were too astonished and confused to do anything. I heard the words, but I stood like a post and pictured them killing each other—Judas killing Jesus or Peter killing Judas, or even Jesus attacking Judas. I swear to you, Thomas, I saw in Jesus' eyes the same thing I saw in Judas' when he killed that man who had slandered me.

“I finally gained control over my body and jumped in front of Jesus. Peter roared with laughter. Judas grabbed my shoulders and pulled me back at the very instant I saw Jesus fall to the ground. A Roman soldier had struck Jesus. I was so focused upon the quarrel―I guess we all were―that I hadn't noticed the soldiers and Temple police swarming around us.”

Mary pressed my palms together as in a prayer. “Judas pulled me away and told me about the plan with Peter,” she said. “He said that moments before he saw me, he found out that Peter had changed things without telling him. Peter had gone to the authorities and told them Jesus had raised an army to attack the soldiers, with the aim of killing Pilate. Jesus' behavior at the Temple, Peter said, was a signal to the many separate Jewish brigands who had come to Jerusalem that the attack would take place as planned.

“Judas told me that the charge against Jesus, instead of being something small, as they'd originally planned, would now be sedition—and as everyone, including Peter, knew, the penalty for sedition is death.
Death
, Thomas! Peter, Jesus' rock, decided that Jesus must die and become a martyr. Judas said that his band of Zealots could have freed Jesus from the Temple police, but not from the Romans. He had to abort the plan.”

We sat looking at each other. I knew that Mary would not lie to me, yet I couldn't make all the stories I'd been told about Jesus' last hours fit together. But I had also known Judas all my life and knew what a clever fabricator he could be. He had tricked the Romans into arresting John the Baptizer, but would he so deceive those he presumably loved—Mary and Jesus, too?

I pulled her hands to my face and kissed them. “Mary, I know that you loved Judas, and you know that I loved him. He was my cousin. We grew up together,” I said. “But something doesn't make sense. If what he told you was true, then why didn't he try to save Jesus? Why did he accuse him of being in love with you instead of using his Zealots to smuggle Jesus away to safety?”

“I asked him that when Jesus was arrested, after he led me away,” said Mary. “His explanation, I admit, was strange, although at the time I believed everything he said. He said that by pretending to be jealous and angry with Jesus, he was trying to cover any sign that a plan had been afoot or changed or bungled. If he'd said to Jesus, ‘You're in danger and we must leave now,' Jesus would not have cooperated. He said he was trying to get Jesus to step away from the crowd for a private talk, which Jesus would have done, and then he and the Zealots would have taken Jesus to safety, even if they'd had to bind him. But the soldiers and police arrived sooner than he had expected.”

“Did you see those accomplices when Judas led you from the scene?” I asked.

Her face went blank, and then she said, “No.”

“Mary, could Judas have, in fact, been jealous of Jesus?” I said. “What if Peter didn't really go to the authorities?”

Mary covered her face with her hands and began to cry again.

“When Judas went away after he killed that man,” I said, “Jesus spent more time with you than anyone else, even me. Someone could have planted the seed of jealousy in Judas' head.”

“No, no,” Mary said through her fingers. “That can't be.”

“Why did Peter go with Judas from Bethany to Jerusalem without the rest of us? What if Peter planted that seed? What if Peter did want Jesus dead, but he wanted Judas to carry the blame?”

I let her sob for moment while the possibility grew more probable in her mind.

“Mary, when did you last see Judas?”

She wiped her eyes with her shawl. She blew three times slowly, as if she were cooling pottage. “We walked through town until we came across Judas' Zealot friend Simon. Judas said that he had to tend to something but would find me later. He took us both to a house and told Simon to watch after me and help me look for Andrew and some of the others. He gave me a knife and told me to use it on any stranger who tried to put a hand on me. He told me to use an upward thrust from the side and showed me how. One quick thrust and then run.” She pointed across the room to where a dagger was stuck in the back doorpost. “There's the knife. Only a pathetic lack of will has prevented me from using it upon myself.”

Tears filled my eyes.

“Later, Simon left me with the residents of the house and scurried into the night,” Mary said. “The next day, I went out and happened upon Matthew. We ran into small groups of followers crisscrossing paths, none of them sure what had befallen Jesus or whether they should stay or go. We finally found Andrew, who said he had spent the day caring for James and John and someone else who'd been beaten by the police and soldiers. He had found a place—the place where I took you when you came back to the city—and assembled some of our group. I went there with him, and we all tried to decide what to do.

“We sent a couple of young men to walk about the city and listen for any news. After a day, maybe two, I cannot recall, Andrew and I went to look for more followers. When we found them, they were frightened and confused, unsure what had happened and what they should do. We sent them to that olive grove where you spoke to them. Some weren't sure if they should do as we asked. Some ran from us. Simon the Zealot showed up at the same time I saw Balkai and my family. Simon told us that Jesus and Judas were both dead. I fell to the ground. I may have fainted. I remember Balkai and his wife pleading with me to return with them to Magdala, and I just lay there without saying a word, wanting to die.”

Balkai and his wife stepped into the house. They stood in the doorway to give Mary and me a moment to finish the conversation.

“Soon after that,” Mary continued, “is when I saw you.”

Balkai sat at our table while his wife went back to scraping her roots. “What are your plans, Thomas?” he asked.

Mary left the table and dipped the cloth again. This time she rolled it and curled it around the back of her neck.

“I have traveled around the region,” I said, “learning a few things from interesting people. Alexandria is full of Greek philosophers who have given me the means to question things I had always thought could not be doubted. They've even given me ways to rethink what Jesus may have meant. But Egypt is not very far away, and it has merchants quick with tales of magical lands in the East. The world is much larger than we know, with ways of thinking and living that differ greatly from our own. There are nations that worship no god, people who dwell in trees as we walk upon the earth, lands of perpetual night, and people who speak in barks and chirps instead of words. I have heard of tribes far more impoverished than we, who eat one meal a day, yet have never known despair. That may be the greatest wonder of all, and if it's true, I'd like to know how they do it.”

“Yes,” Balkai said. “That would be worth knowing.”

“At times, I think my brother may have been trying to tell us, in the language of our people, how to live that way—how to live without despair.”

Mary returned to the table. “I have given up on such a life. I had it when we were with Jesus. I hoped for it to return the night you preached on the hill in Jerusalem. Now it cannot be found in our land.”

“Then we'll find it in another!” Balkai said. “Thomas, do you remember when you visited us years ago and I told you about a merchant who had been to India and spoke of the many wonders he had seen? You said that if I ever went there, you'd like to accompany me. Remember? I'm ready to go.”

I was intrigued, but a trip of that distance and through unknown lands seemed too large a task for me, and I told Balkai as much. He stood and leaned across the table. “We're living in a wasteland, Thomas!” His nose almost touched mine. His breath smelled like onions. “Maybe even the Lord has left it. Let's go search for him.”

Mary sat up so quickly that her shawl fell from her shoulders to the floor. At first, I thought she feared that her brother might leave her. But she said, “This could work, Thomas! Our people are too much like me—unable to see past their own misery. You know that some of Jesus' followers are spreading their twisted interpretations of Jesus to the Greeks, and even to some of the Romans. It's probably too late to keep Jesus' true vision alive here. You know better than anyone what he really was. You can take his message to people who have some hope, but need more, and haven't been poisoned by Peter and the others.”

I had the sense that a great burden was being placed upon me—one that I'd shrugged off after impersonating my brother in Jerusalem. I had lived for years under the weight of my brother's vision and had no intention of hefting someone else's. I had spent the previous years as a seeker, and not as someone who had anything to offer others. I made excuses to them: I had no money for travel, we would encounter savages, no one in India knew our tongue, my mother needed me back in Nazareth—

“You have traveled to Egypt and Anatolia with no money, haven't you?” said Mary, scolding. “There are many merchants who will pay assistants to accompany them. Haven't you survived the Romans? Who's more savage than they? You speak Greek and Latin, so you could learn other languages, right? You disappoint me, Thomas, with these children's fears. And how dare you exploit your mother for a petty excuse! You must go to India.”

Perhaps momentary weakness had caused my initial reluctance to join Balkai. Perhaps it was momentary weakness that caused me to obey Mary. Balkai's wife stood and looked as if she would throw her roots at her husband, but a glare from Mary pushed her back into her chair.

I spent the night and the next day there, and after Balkai made some arrangements with neighbors, we set out on my first journey to the East.

I never saw Mary again.