Mary Magdalen: A Chronicle

CHAPTER V

The house of Simon Barlevi was gray, and in shape an oblong. It had a flat roof laid with a plaster of lime, about which was a fretwork of open tiles. Beneath, for doorway, was a recess, surmounted by an arch and covered with a layer of mud. On each side was a room.

In the recess, sheltered from the sun and visited by the breeze, Simon stood. His garments were white, and where they were not they had been neatly chalked. On the border of his skirt and sleeves were the regulation fringes, and on his forehead and about his left arm the phylacteries which Pharisees affect. He was not pleasant to the eye, but he was virtuous and a strict observer of the Law.

In the room at his left were mats and painted stools, set in the manner customary when guests are awaited. For on that day Simon Barlevi was to give a little feast, to which he had bidden his friends and also a rabbi whom he had listened to in the synagogue, and with whose ideas he did not at all agree. Save for the mats and stools, and a lamp of red clay, the room was bare.

In front of the house was a bit of ground enclosed by a hedge of stones; and now as Simon stood in the recess a guest appeared.

“Reulah!” he exclaimed, “the Lord be with you.”

And Reulah answering, as etiquette required,“Unto you be peace, and to your house be peace, and unto all you have be peace,” the two friends clasped hands raised them as though to kiss them, then each withdrawing kissed his own hand, and struck it on his forehead.

Singularly enough, host and guest looked much alike. Simon had the appearance of one conscious of and strong in his own rectitude, while Reulah seemed humbler and more effaced. Otherwise there was not a pin to choose between them.

To Simon’s face had come an expression of perplexity in which there was zeal.

“I was thinking, Reulah,” he announced,“of the rabbi who is to break bread with us to-day. His teaching does not comfort me.”

Reulah was unlatching his shoes. “Nor me,” he interjected.

“On questions of purity and impurity he seems unscrupulously negligent. I have heard that he is a glutton and a wine-bibber. I have heard that he despises the washing of the hands.”

“Whoso does,” Reulah threw back,“will be rooted out of the world.”

Simon nodded; a smile of protracted amiability hovered in the corners of his mouth. For a moment he played with his beard.

“I think,” he added, “that he will find here food in plenty, and counsel as well.”

Reulah closed his eyes benignly, and Simon, in a falsetto which he affected when he desired to impress, continued in gentle menace:

“But I have certain questions to put to him. Whether water from an unclean vessel defiles that which is clean. Whether the flesh of a dead body alone defiles, or the skin and bones as well. I want to see how he will answer that. Then I may ask his opinion on points of the ritual. Should the incense be lighted before the high-priest appears or as he does so. Is or is not the Sabbath broken by the killing of the Paschal lamb? Why is it lawful to take tithe of corn and wine and oil, and not of anise, cummin, and peppers? In swearing by the Temple, should one not first swear by the gold on the Temple? and in swearing by the altar, should one or should one not first swear by the sacrifices on it? These things, since he preaches, he must know. If he does not – ”

And Simon looked at his friend as who should say: What is there wanting in me?

“If I may be taught another duty I will observe it,” said Reulah, sweetly.

At this evidence of meekness Simon grunted. Two other guests were approaching. On the edges of their tallîth were tassels made of four threads which had been drawn through an eyelet and doubled to make eight. Seven of these threads were of equal length, but the eighth was longer, and, twisted into five knots, represented the five books of the Law. The right hand on the left breast, they saluted their host, and placing in turn a hand under his beard, they kissed it. A buzz of inquiries followed, interrupted by the coming and embracing of newer guests, the unloosing of sandals, the washing of feet.

As they assembled, one drew Simon aside and whispered importantly. Simon’s eyes dilated, astonishment lifted him, visibly, like a lash, and his hands trembled above his head.

“Have you heard,” he exclaimed to the others – “have you heard that the Nazarene whom I invited here, and who pretends to be a prophet, allowed his followers to pluck corn on the Sabbath, to thresh it even, and defended and approved their violation of the Law? Have you heard it? Is it true?”

Reulah quaked as one stricken by palsy. “On the Sabbath!” he moaned.“On the Sabbath! Why, I would not send a message on Wednesday, lest perchance it should be delivered on the Sabbath day. Surely it cannot be.”

But on that point the others were certain. They were all aware of the scandal; one had been an eye-witness, another had heard the Nazarene assert that he was“Lord of the Day.”

“This is monstrous!” Simon cried.

“He declared,” the eye-witness continued,“that the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.”

“It is monstrous!” Simon repeated.“The command to do no manner of work is absolute and emphatic. The killing of a flea on the Sabbath is as heinous as the butchering of a bullock. The preservation of life itself is inhibited. Moses had the son of Shelomith stoned to death for gathering sticks on it. Shammai oc cupied six days of the week in thinking how he could best observe it. It is unlawful to wear a false tooth on the Sabbath, and if a tooth ache it is unlawful to rinse the mouth with vinegar.”

“Yet,” objected Reulah, “it is lawful to hold the vinegar in the mouth provided you swallow it afterward.”

No one paid any attention to him. Simon’s indignation increased. Of the thirty-nine Abhôth he quoted twelve; he showed that the Nazarene had violated each one of these prohibitions against labor; he showed, too, that by his subsequent speech and bearing he had practically scoffed at the Toldôth, at the synagogue which had drawn it up as well.

“If the Sadducees were not in power, Jerusalem should hear of this. As it is – ”

Whatever resolution he may have intended to express remained unuttered. A silence fell upon his lips; his guests drew back. At the step stood the Nazarene, behind him his treasurer, Judas of Kerioth. For a second only Jesus hesitated. He stooped, undid his shoes, and moved to where Simon stood. The latter bowed constrainedly.

“Master,” he said, “we awaited you.”

At this his friends retreated into the little room. Reulah reached the middle seat of the central mat first and held it, his nostrils quivering at the envy of the others.

Preceded by their host, Jesus and Judas found places near together, and, the usual ablutions performed, the customary prayers recited, lay, the upper part of the body supported by the left arm, the head raised, the limbs outstretched.

On the stools were dishes of stewed lentils, milk, and cakes of mashed locusts. Reulah ate with the tips of his lips, greedily, like a goat. Judas, too, ate with an air of hunger. The Master broke bread absently, his thoughts on other things. These thoughts Simon interrupted.

“Rabbi” – and to his wide mouth came the sneer of one propounding a riddle already solved – “it is not meet, is it, to thresh on the Sabbath day? Yet since you permit your followers to do so, how are we to distinguish between what is lawful and what is not?”

The Master raised his eyes. The dawn was in them, high noon as well.

“Show yourself a tried money-changer. Choose that which is good metal, reject that which is bad.”

Simon blinked as at a sudden light.

“But,” he persisted, “in seeking to observe the Law, there is not a jot or tittle in it that can be rejected.”

With an acquiescence that was both vague and melancholy, Jesus looked the Pharisee in the face.

“Seek those things that are great, and little things will be added unto you – ”

He would have said more, perhaps, but a woman who had entered from the recess approached circuitously, and kneeling beside him let a tear, long as a pearl, fall upon his unsandalled feet.

Judas’ heart bounded; he glared at her, his eyes dilating like a leopard preparing to spring. At once he was back in the circus, gazing into the perils and the splendors of a woman’s face, telling himself with reiterated insistence that to hold her to him would be the birthday of his life; and here, within reach of his hand, was she whom in the din of the chariots he had recognized as the one woman in all the world, and who for one moment the day before had lain unconscious in his arms.

Reulah sat motionless, his mouth agape, a finger extended. “The paramour of Pandera,” he stammered at last; and lowering his eyes, he looked at her covetously from beneath the lids.

Simon, too, sat motionless. There was rage in his expression, hate even – that hatred which the beautiful excites in the base. Time and again he had seen her; she was a byword with him; from the height of her residence she looked down on his mean gray walls; her luxury had been an insult to his abstinence; and with that zest which a small nature takes in the humiliation of its superior, he determined, in spite of her manifest abjection, to humiliate her still more.

“If this man,” he confided to his neighbor, “has in him anything of that which goes to the making of a prophet, he will divine what manner of woman she is. If he does not, I will denounce them both.” And nourishing his hate he waited yet a while.

The Master seemed depressed. The great secret which in all the world he alone possessed may have weighed with him. But he turned to Mary and looked at her. As he looked she bent yet lower. The marvel of her hair was unconfined; it fell about her in tangling streams of gold and flame, while on his feet there fell from her tears such as no woman ever shed before. In the era of primitive hospitality the daughters of kings had not disdained to unlatch the sandals of their fathers’ guests; but now, at the feet of Mercy, for the first time Repentance knelt. And still the tears continued, unstanched and unde tained. Grief, something keener still perhaps, had claimed her as its own. She bent lower. Then Misery looked up at Compassion.

The Master stretched his hand. For a moment it rested on her head. She quivered and clutched at her throat; and as he withdrew that hand, in which all panaceas were, from her gown she took a little box, opened it, and dropping the contents where the tears had fallen, with a sudden movement she caught her hair and poured its lava on his feet.

An aroma of beckoning oases filled the small room, passed into the recess, mounted to the roof, pervaded and penetrated it, and escaped to the sky above.

And still she wept. Judas no longer saw her tears, he heard them. They fell swiftly one after another, like the ripple of the rain. A sob broke from her, but in it was something which foretokened peace, the sob which comes to those who have conceived a despairing hope, and suddenly intercept its fulfilment. Her hands trembled; the little box fell from her and broke. The noise it made exorcised the silence.

The Master turned to his host. “I have a word to say to you.”

Simon stroked his beard and bowed.

“There was once a man who had two debtors. One owed him five hundred pence, the other fifty. Both were poor, and because of their poverty the debt of each he forgave.”

For an instant Jesus paused and seemed to muse; then, with that indulgence which was to illuminate the world, “Tell me, Simon,” he inquired, “which was the more grateful?”

Simon assumed an air of perplexity, and glanced cunningly from one guest to another. Presently he laughed outright.

“Why, the one who owed the most, of course.”

Reulah suppressed a giggle. By the expression of the others it was patent that to them also the jest appealed. Only Judas did not seem to have heard; he sat bolt upright, fumbling Mary with his violent eyes.

The Master made a gesture of assent, and turned to where Mary crouched. She was staring at him with that look which the magnetized share with animals.

“You see her?”

Straightening himself, he leaned on his elbow and scrutinized his host.

“Simon, I am your guest. When I entered here there was no kiss to greet me, there was no oil for my head, no water for my feet. But this woman whom you despise has not ceased to embrace them. She has washed them with her tears, anointed them with nard, and dried them with her hair. Her sins, it may be, are many, but, Simon, they are forgiven – ”

Simon, Reulah, the others, muttered querulously. To forgive sins was indeed an attribute which no one, save the Eternal, could arrogate to himself.

“ – for she has loved much.”

And turning again to Mary, who still crouched at his side, he added:

“Your sins are forgiven. Go now, and in peace.”

But the fierce surprise of the Pharisees was not to be shocked into silence. Reulah showed his teeth; they were pointed and treacherous as a jackal’s. Simon loudly asserted disapproval and wonder too.

“I am amazed – ” he began.

The Master checked him:

“The beginning of truth is amazement. Wonder, then, at what you see; for he that wonders shall reign, and he that reigns shall rest.”

The music of his voice heightened the beauty of the speech. On Mary it fell and rested as had the touch of his hand.

“Messiah, my Lord!” she cried. “In your breast is the future, in your heart the confidence of God. Let me but tell you. There are those that live whose lives are passed; the tombs do not hold all of those that are dead. I was dead; you brought me to life. I had no conscience; you gave me one, for I was dead,”she insisted. “And yet,” she added, with a little moan, so human, so sincere, that it might have stirred a Cæsar, let alone a Christ, “not wholly dead. No, no, dear Lord, not wholly dead.”

Again her tears gushed forth, profuser and more abundant than before; her frail body shook with sobs, her fingers intertwined.

“Not wholly dead,” she kept repeating.“No, no, not wholly dead.”

Jesus touched his treasurer.

“She is not herself. Lead her away; see her to her home.” And that the others might hear, and profit as well, he added, in a higher key, “Deference to a woman is always due.”

And to those words, which were to found chivalry and banish the boor, Judas led Mary from the room.

CHAPTER VI

“Are you better?”

The road that skirted the lake had branched to the left, and there an easy ascent led to the hill beyond. On both sides were carpets of flowers and of green, and slender larches that held their arms and hid the sky. Above, an eagle circled, and on the lake a sail flapped idly.

“Yes, I am better,” Mary answered.

From her eyes the perils had passed, but the splendors remained, accentuated now by vistas visible only to herself. The antimony, too, with which she darkened them had gone, and with it the alkanet she had used on her cheeks. Her dress was olive, and, contrary to custom, her head uncovered.

“You are not strong, perhaps?”

As Judas spoke, he thought of the episode in the synagogue, and wished her again unconscious in his arms.

“I have been so weak,” she murmured. And after a moment she added: “I am tired; let me sit awhile.”

The carpet of flowers and of green invited, and presently Judas dropped at her side. About his waist a linen girdle had been wound many times; from it a bag of lynx-skin hung. The white garments, the ample turban that he wore, were those of ordinary life, but in his bearing was just that evanescent charm which now and then the Oriental possesses – the subtlety that subjugates and does not last.

“But you must be strong; we need your strength.”

Mary turned to him wonderingly.

“Yes,” he repeated, “we need your strength. Johanna has joined us, as you know. Susannah too. They do what they can; but we need others – we need you.”

“Do you mean – ”

Something had tapped at her heart, something which was both joy and dread, and she hesitated, fearing that the possibility which Judas suggested was unreal, that she had not heard his words aright.

“Do you mean that he would let me?”

“He would love you for it. But then he loves everyone, yet best, I think, his enemies.”

“They need it most,” Mary answered; but her thoughts had wandered.

“And I,” Judas added – “I loved you long ago.”

Then he too hesitated, as though uncertain what next to say, and glanced at her covertly. She was looking across the lake, over the country of the Gadarenes, beyond even that, perhaps, into some infinite veiled to him.

“I remember,” he continued, tentatively,“it was there at Tiberias I saw you first. You were entering the palace. I waited. The sentries ordered me off; one threw a stone. I went to where the garden is; I thought you might be among the flowers. The wall was so high I could not see. The guards drove me away. I ran up the hill through the white and red terraces of the grape. From there I could see the gardens, the elephants with their ears painted, and the oxen with the twisted horns. The wind sung about me like a flute; the sky was a tent of different hues. Something within me had sprung into life. It was love, I knew. It had come before, yes, often, but never as then. For,” he added, and the gleam of his eyes was as a fanfare to the thought he was about to express, “love returns to the heart as the leaf returns to the tree.”

Mary looked at him vacantly. “What was he saying?” she wondered. From a sea of grief she seemed to be passing onto an archipelago of dream.

“The next day I loitered in the neighborhood of the palace. You did not appear. Toward evening I questioned a gardener. He said your name was Mary, but he would tell me nothing else. On the morrow was the circus. I made sure you would be there – with the tetrarch, I thought; and, that I might be near the tribune, before the sun had set I was at the circus gate. There were others that came and waited, but I was first. I remember that night as never any since. I lay outstretched, and watched the moon; your face was in it: it was a dream, of course. Yes, the night passed quickly, but the morning lagged. When the gate was open, I sprang like a zemer from tier to tier until I reached the tribune. There, close by, I sat and waited. At last you came, and with you new perfumes and poisons. Did you feel my eyes? they must have burned into you. But no, you gave no heed to me. They told me afterward that Scarlet won three times. I did not know. I saw but you. Once merely an abyss in which lightning was.

“Before the last race was done I got down and tried to be near the exit through which I knew you must pass. The guards would not let me. The next day I made friends with a sentry. He told me that you were Mirjam of Magdala; that Tiberius wished you at Rome, and that you had gone with Antipas to his citadel. In the wine-shops that night men slunk from me afraid. A week followed of which I knew nothing, then chance disentangled its threads. I found myself in a crowd at the base of a hill; a prophet was preaching. I had heard prophets before; they were as torches in the night: he was the Day. I listened and forgot you. He called me; I followed. Until Sunday I had not thought of you again. But when you appeared in the synagogue I started; and when you fainted, when I held you in my arms and your eyes opened as flowers do, I looked into them and it all returned. Mary, kiss me and kill me, but kiss me first.”

“Yes, he is the Day.”

Of the entire speech she had heard but that. It had entered perhaps into thoughts of her own with which it was in unison, and she repeated the phrase mechanically, as a child might do. But now as he ceased to speak, perplexed, annoyed too at the inappositeness of her reply, she came back from the infinite in which she had roamed, and for a moment both were silent.

At the turning of the road a man appeared. At the sight of Judas he halted, then called him excitedly by name.

“It is Mathias,” Judas muttered, and got to his feet. The man hurried to them. He was broad of shoulder and of girth, the jaw lank and earnest. His eyes were small, and the lids twitched nervously. He was out of breath, and his garments were dust-covered.

“Where is the Master?” he asked; and at once, without waiting a reply, he added:“I have just seen Johanna. Her husband told her that the tetrarch is seeking him; he thinks him John, and would do him harm. We must go from here.”

Judas assented. “Yes, we must all go. Mary, it may be a penance, but it is his will.”

Mathias gazed inquiringly at them both.

“It is his will,” Judas repeated, authoritatively.

Mary turned away and caught her forehead in her hands. “If this is a penance,” she murmured, “what then are his rewards?”

CHAPTER 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 Cæsarea 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.