The Gospel of the Twin (9 page)

“Apparently, this is what they want to hear,” I said. “This is no different from how he spoke at John's camp, except that now he favors parables more. Maybe that's it—people need stories, not arguments. Look, I know what he says sounds odd, but look at him. He's pacing about, smiling and laughing, more energetic and inspired than he's been in weeks. He seems so at home before the crowd.”

“Is this what we've yearned for? Jars of flour? Will Israel be saved by seeds on rocks?”

“Pay attention, Judas. He's speaking of truth—the truth that's within us.”

“And what
I'm
speaking of is action—revolution,” said Judas as he sat down again by Mary. “That won't be accomplished with a sermon, from him or from you.”

Judas was right. As much as I loved Jesus and believed in his leadership, this was much as things had always been—I, his twin, flesh and bone, was not sure where he was taking us. Perhaps it was all wishful thinking on my, and, I suppose, Judas' part. Maybe we wanted a movement so badly that we had deluded ourselves into believing that one of us was a born, irresistible leader.

Jesus had changed in some way since John's death, but I was not sure of the exact nature of his change. He usually stayed up after the rest of us went to bed. He ate less. He spoke in private to me less often, but when he did, it seemed more that he was talking to himself. Was he more focused? Perhaps, but maybe he focused on a goal only he could see.

More people came to hear him speak. Someone brought an ox cart for Jesus to use as a stage. Three hours after nightfall, I surveyed the crowd to find about two hundred huddled by the water. Old people with hands cupped to leathery ears, and even children, perched on their mothers' laps, were enthralled.

“I once thought that the baptizer was the Lord's anointed,” Andrew said as Jesus spoke of sheep lost and found, stolen coins, and unfaithful servants. “Jesus' voice has gotten clearer, Thomas, like a hammer striking a bronze bowl. Just listen.”

Jesus was telling a story about a man sending a servant to invite people to a feast. The moon sliced through the trees behind him so that sometimes he was illuminated, but other times he was in shadows. I just can't believe that he did this knowingly, but he seemed to punctuate his story by stepping into or out of the moonlight. The people, seated on the hard Bethsaida clay, looked like loving children hearing their grandfather tell them of King David.

“Then go out into the street,” Jesus said, a huge grin spreading across his face, “and invite anyone you meet. Bring in the beggars, the lame, the lepers. I should have invited them first, for why should I feed those with full stomachs?”

The crowd “oohed” and clapped their hands and nodded, surely thinking that they had just partaken of such a banquet.

“Now I understand something,” Andrew said, “or I think I do. I believe that John's purpose was to prepare us for Jesus.”

I took Andrew's arm and pulled him some ten or twelve paces from the edge of the crowd. “What are you saying? What sort of preparation did we need?”

“Well, not us. The rest of the world.”

“The rest of the world?” Did he have any idea how big the rest of the world was? He probably did not, nor did I, before my years of travel. “What does the rest of the world need to hear? No one outside of this land gives a damn about what the Romans do to us.”

“Maybe that will change.”

I had to push him on this. “So you're satisfied that we did the right thing?”

“What thing?”

“Damn you,” I said. I looked around. No one was near, but I lowered my voice just the same. “I'm talking about John, and you know it.”

Andrew's entire face tightened like he was waiting out a pain in his throat. “I have no regrets. We did what we had to do, right? We had to do it. We
had
to.” He opened his eyes and blew into his fist as he might do to warm his hand on a cold night. “Judas said we've redirected history. We have, don't you think?”

I was happy that Andrew was feeling some of the same doubt that was plaguing me. I heard my brother stomping across the ox cart slats as he spoke. “Andrew, please answer with your heart. Do you think Jesus is the messiah?”

Andrew turned to look toward the stage as if he were ignoring me. After twenty or thirty seconds in which Jesus said something about a happy servant, Andrew looked back at me and slowly shook his head. “I don't know. What can I say, Thomas?” The crowd roared in delight at something Jesus said. “Maybe he is, but who knows what the messiah is supposed to do? Will he deliver us? Will we even recognize our deliverance?”

For decades, I've wondered about these questions. And I've wondered if I ever would have the answers.

Chapter Twelve

Verse One

For the next three days in Bethsaida, we fished with Andrew, Simon, and the brothers James and John. Sometimes, Jesus said things at night that seemed more like attempts at proverbs than comments about our tasks. One afternoon, Andrew said, “Another boat and some longer nets would really help.”

Jesus said, “A fleet of boats and nets the size of the sea are worthless if the fish aren't present.”

“What?” I asked. Why make a statement so facile and obvious?

“Knowing where one should be,” Jesus said in hardly more than a mumble, and he dipped a rag into the water to wrap around the nape of his neck.

Jesus preached at night, and Mary would lead everyone in joyous song. Jesus' sermons were serious, but they were far from the devastation and woe called for by John. John was about waiting for the Lord to unleash his wrath; Jesus was about transforming ourselves into a new society.

Still, Jesus seemed to be doing his own sort of waiting. As we prepared for sleep the third night, I asked him about his plans. Jesus asked me if I thought we should leave, then seemed to answer his own question. “I think at least a hundred or more of these townspeople are ready to join us. Where should we go? We could just begin walking and see where the winds blow us. Is it important that we plan? Rivers don't plan, but they find their way to the sea.”

“Not always,” I said. “What about the Jordan and the Dead Sea?”

He ignored me. “Suppose we head for Nazareth and, on the way, find more to follow us. Do you wish to return to Nazareth, Brother?”

I had thought of this already. “Judas talks as if he's ready to march on Rome tomorrow,” I said. “If we go anywhere, even Nazareth, that might settle him some. You know how restless he gets. Besides, Mother doesn't know where we are. I imagine she's grieved this entire time. Joseph is old, and Mother needs us.”

“Judas came to talk to me earlier today. Restless indeed. I tried to explain to him that I need a little time for my thoughts to take form, to take root, to unfold like lilies. He got impatient and walked away. Now, as for Mother, she loves us, Thomas, and of course she wants us home, but she will also want us to do the Lord's and our people's work.” He smiled. “Do you have another reason for wishing to go home?”

I looked Jesus in the eyes, as I did when we were children and wanted him to listen to me. He stopped smiling. I said, “My brother, my flesh, it's not enough for me that you make fine speeches. I know you wish to help our people, to liberate them somehow, and I can appreciate that your plans are still in their infancy and maturing slowly. But I need to know exactly what you mean when you say ‘the Lord's work.' You must tell me now, or I'll leave.”

Jesus took me by the hand and led me away from the crowd to sit under a low willow. “Yes, Thomas, we are the same flesh,” he said. “Sometimes you seem to know my very thoughts before I speak them to you. But I don't think that I can express even to you what I feel rushing through me now. If I could put into words all that has come to me, you could drink from my mouth and know. Each day it becomes a bit clearer. Something awakens, stirring within me like a great light coming from behind my eyes, so bright that the figures before me are obscured, like dancers behind trees.”

“Mary says that you have been given a special power by the Lord,” I said. “Do you think so?”

He continued to talk as if he had not heard me. “Sometimes it is like a song in a tongue that I half-comprehend,” he said. “The light, the song, each is the part of us that is God, that seeks to be reunited. But this is where the prophets were wrong: It is not we who are lost. It is God, and I am picking up his tracks.”

He dragged a willow leaf through his teeth as he looked across the river. “I can't say all that I feel. Sometimes when I am giving speeches, it's as if I open my mouth and an echo begins deep within me that flows up my throat and moves my tongue, almost like the Greek poets we've heard about who say they are mere instruments of their muses. I feel pulled, compelled, but I am not sure towards what.” He thumped the leaf into the air and watched it twirl to the ground. He turned toward me. “I cannot do this without you, Thomas. Some things I can say to no one but you.”

Tears welled up in my eyes. I knew, and so did he, that I could not leave him. “I want to see that light and hear that song, Brother.”

“Sometimes I can know your thoughts, too, Thomas. You're yearning to see Leah, aren't you?”

“I'm very tired. Let's go to sleep.”

Jesus laughed a bit but didn't push the question. Sometimes, he did indeed know my thoughts before I voiced them.

Verse Two

The next morning, Mary came to offer us bread for breakfast. Judas, a few steps behind her, motioned to me. I went to see what he wanted as Mary sat down beside Jesus.

“What were you and Jesus speaking about last night?” asked Judas, who was with Simon, Andrew, and the brothers James and John.

“We were discussing when we should leave and where we should go.”

“What more?”

“That's all, Judas. Why? What's wrong?”

Andrew placed his arm on my shoulder. “Thomas, when we were with the baptizer, we sat together most nights and talked—a council with no secrets. John may not have been the leader we wanted him to be, but we always knew what he was thinking. I've told Simon, James, and John all about him, and how I am even more dedicated to Jesus, but . . . I thought . . . Thomas, what will—”

“Does Jesus have a plan?” Simon broke in. His tremendous jaw jutted to the side as if something was stuck in his teeth. “His discussions with us are enlightening . . .”

“Yes, enlightening,” said James. John and Andrew nodded.

“. . . but I agree with Judas,” said Simon. “We need organization—a chain of command.”

“I see,” I said.

“Each of us could be responsible for a group of these people,” Simon said. “Then we could communicate to them more directly. Like officers with regiments, we—”

“What do we communicate?” asked Judas, who often succumbed to his natural impatience, but most often with Simon, even when they were in agreement. “I've tried to talk seriously with Jesus, but I can't get anything out of him.”

“Yes,” I said. But I was torn. The concerns of these men were legitimate, but I needed to shield my brother while he struggled to give shape to his new mysticism. We were at risk of losing not just these men, but other followers who yearned for a more concrete path, whether political resistance or withdrawal to pray in dark corners, or communal withdrawal into caves like the Pure Ones, but I did not want to rush Jesus into a role he was neither ready for nor suited to fulfill.

“I think what we're all trying to say, Thomas,” Andrew said, “is that we'd all feel better if Jesus would talk to us, just us, on a deeper level than his sermons. Those are parables and lessons for the simple people, but we―those of us right here―need something more from him. Thomas, I want to put all my trust in him, all my family's trust, and so does everyone else here. But he needs to show us that he trusts us.”

“Yes,” I said. I could hear the ache in Andrew's voice. First the Baptizer, now Jesus had offered him something more than wringing out the barest of livings on this murky lake, all while underneath a long Roman shadow. The woebegone souls gathered here by the water, who clung to Jesus' every word and who couldn't be sure they would eat the next day, had the same longing, and it seemed that I had to say something at that very moment, something at least to take the edge off their fearful hunger, or a thousand dim hopes would darken into shadow.

I had to take a chance and hope that they did not see the obvious conflict with what I had just said moments ago. “Jesus told me remarkable things, friends, astonishing things,” I said. “If I told you only one of them, you would not accept it. He's aware that something is developing in him, ripening to a fullness that I'm sure we all sense in him. He's also aware that he cannot yet express this—this renewal—in a manner to which you can relate. But there is something that I should tell you. Remember, I am his twin, and we have shared an ineffable bond since before we could speak. You grew up with us, Judas. Is this not true?”

“Yes,” he said.

“And often I can express what is brewing within Jesus better than he can. Right, Judas?”

“Yes.”

“After all, this is why you came to me instead of him. Right?” They all nodded. I waited for the duration of eight or ten breaths, to give them the idea that I was about to reveal something of immense consequence. I had to make this sound good. “Friends, I believe that God is working within Jesus.”

“Is he the messiah?” asked John.

I wiped my sweating forehead on the arm of my robe. “I don't know. I'm not even sure that God will reveal something through him, as he did with the prophets. But Jesus is part of a plan. When we are speaking in private, I hear something more―almost another voice, as if the spirit of the Lord dwells in him. He's at the center of something that is taking root, a great unfolding, like watching a lily grow.” I was afraid I was sounding as nonsensical as Jesus had sounded to me. Judas was much better at such fabrications, as when he convinced the Romans that John was a serious threat to them, and like any talented liar, he was also adept at detecting lies. But when I glanced at him, I saw no suspicion.

Simon tilted his great head and released a sigh. “Thomas, I believe you. I also believe that Jesus can help reclaim our nation and build a new temple. So tell us what to do now. Are you saying that Jesus needs some time? We can give him that. But in the meantime, we need to get things in order—get our people in order. They need structure. They need discipline and training.”

“Yes,” I said. “I'll speak to Jesus again today—a serious talk about plans. We can discuss this again tomorrow.”

“Yes,” they all said, except for Judas, who turned about sharply and walked away.