Chapter 34 - Magdalene

More and more sick people came to me, the remedies quickly ran out, and I sometimes walked quite far away from town to collect medicinal plants. These morning walks gave me mental strength, the green hills and palm groves north of Chorazin days people-free and pristine, and beyond them began the unused land where everything was overgrown with tamarind and wild cherry, with hazel, blackthorn, the prickly caper bush and an array of beneficial herbs.

One day I returned around noon with a bag full of St. John's wort, marjoram, mint and vitalia, and heard from the sisters that a man as unkind as he was suspicious was looking for me. It turned out to be the master stonemason from Sepphoris, whose wife I had saved by freeing her from her fruit.

He had come to Chorazin to deal with me, assuming that I was to blame for the death of his child. I don't know how exactly the stoneholder wanted revenge. The sisters said he was alone there unarmed. For that matter, of course, he could have hidden a knife in his belt, or in the folds of his robe. He demanded to be let in, but the sisters had denied him access to the house, it was clear. He had sat at the gate for a while and then had gone to the local chief rabbi to complain about me.

I spent the rest of the day in the medicine room, and I had told the nurse to tell everyone that I was not at home. I was afraid that the stonemason, in his drift, might send a miscreant to pounce on me. But by evening he left town and the coast seemed safe.

But a few days later, the rabbi called a meeting of the city council, at which the elders deliberated on what to do with "this Jesus, this seer, diviner and magician who disgraced our God-blessed city. They turned to the representative of the Roman city council, but he saw no wrongdoing in my conduct and said, 'You must manage your own Jewish affairs yourself, but according to the laws of the empire there is no reason to punish him.'

I never dared to visit the synagogue of Chorazin, the local rabbi that is a hard iron, had once served as a foreman in the army of Judea and did not allow unknown prophets into the house of worship entrusted to him. Therefore, I also believed that I was in no danger, because I had not antagonized anyone in town too zealously. I had done no bloodletting, no crowds gathered, and none of the locals had died after coming to me.

Or rather, I had visited the synagogue once, because I wanted to see it inside. With its dark stone, its great spaciousness, with arched vaults, it was larger than the synagogue of Capernaum, and in front of the cabinet in which the sacred law scrolls were kept was a stone rabbinical seat with fine carvings and armrests shaped like lion's paws. The seat dated more like a throne, and when the local rabbi sat in it facing the assembled congregation, he in all likelihood felt like a little king.

Throwing on this Moses-like seat, the rabbi made a vote against me among the townspeople of Chorazin, and with success. I don't know what exactly he is and what lines of Scripture he falsely invoked in the process, but the attitude of the townspeople toward me did deteriorate.

Moreover, Venedad from Gergesa had finally found out where I was, and had filed a complaint with the elders of Chorazin, explaining huh how an honorless debtor was holed up in a town. He demanded a lawsuit against me. But despite that, I was in no hurry to give the greedy Venedad his states back.

Overpowered by bad premonitions, I slept poorly. My salvation was that I spent more time in my boat on the lake, where I read, dreamed away in my observations of fish and noted birds. This proved extremely interesting; I was trying to figure out the building laws of the world not through mental labor, but through living nature. By this time I had managed to bring together a few serious books that helped me in this regard: the works of Aristotle, of Theophastus, of Herophilus... And then in particular the treatise on freshwater fishes by Philolaus of Croton, but I believe that the author excelled more in astrology than in other fields, knew a lot more about the secret position of the stars than about fishes and the wordless world in which they lived. Incidentally, he claimed that the sun was made of glass and even reflected the light coming from the Hestia exit, but that doesn't seem very likely to me.

Alcmaeon's works on living matter challenge more convincingly. Stunning is his description of the structure of a chick in its egg, and I share his view that the tree of knowledge is in the human brain, not in the heart. So with fish, too. Surely they didn't come swimming to the little boat to eat the bread crumbs I threw into the water because they sensed it with their hearts, they had nostrils just like humans to lap up the smell of food.

I had always wanted to get hold of something from the works of Avel Cornelius Celsus, but I had never succeeded, because all the copies of his books had already been bought up by the learned men of Rome and did not reach the shores of Israel. I had only read excerpts from them that a physician from Egypt had shown me, and I immediately understood that Avel was a great healer. I even wanted to go to Rome to be his pupil for a while. I waited until circumstances allowed me to do so. He was not so young at that time, and I prayed for Avel's health so that I could still meet him in the flesh.

By studying the living world, I myself could significantly perfect my skill as a healer, but...

I needed new books, and that was doable, just sending one of my students with those groceries to Caesarea, where there were books for sale in the port, or to Jerusalem, to the vendors of a store in the lower city, with him you sometimes come to find something new. Yes, a lot closer, in Tiberias, you had the library, built by the bookman Issahar, but only rabbis seem to be able to go there. How silly! By the way, I'm sure Issahar didn't include any books in his library that were really worthwhile.

I had to cut open corpses to know better how the human body was put together, to study its structure, not to look for the signs of a divine presence in it, as some madmen did. Well, I came to make arrangements with intrepid people who for money secretly brought corpses from the graveyard to me. Sure, you had to be careful that they didn't kill defenseless vagabonds along the Lord's roads to do so, because opening a grave was a time-consuming job.

But what I needed above all was peace, and achieving it was the most complicated of all, now that the rabbi of Chorazin had decided to smoke me out of town. He had the inhabitants make a complaint against me to Tiberias Antipa, to the sanhedrin, in Jerusalem, he came to the house of Gita and Tali when I wasn't there and tried to placate him, to throw me out the door. Without result admittedly, the sisters loved me because I had taught him to enjoy life in old age and they did not want to lose their teacher.

The rabbi incessantly fines the ill-fated net.

On the upside, from time to time I also get women on my roof who had read me and now came to tell me they were pregnant with me.

The power of the stonemason from Sepphoris was the last straw.

I fell more and more prey to restlessness and decided to leave Chorazin for a while (a month at most), wait until everything calmed down and then returned to him in silence.

It was decided to move to Magdala.

On the eve, Philippus went to the pool and shared that he had become acquainted with a potter with a detached house and that we could live there for a small fee.

When I left the house, I left all the instruments on the shelves in the treatment room. I also left a lot of my books there: on the holy disease, On the eyes, Plant theories, To the astronomer... I only tookThe seed of the Unicorn with me, from that book I did not want to part with. Yes, I knew it by heart by then, but sometimes enjoyed the mere sight of it, of the slim rows of words, set in a more perfect order than the archers and haetaires of the illustrious Alexander.

On the eve we organized a farewell's meal with Gita and Tila, who became attached to us and did not want to let us go. I tried to reassure the sisters and said we would be back soon.

The little boat I had bought remains behind at the Chorazin jetty.

My students also left town on Sunday carrying a lot of load, leaving most of their belongings in the sisters' house. All of our possessions fit on one pack mule.

Once I left Chorazin, I look from the top of the neighboring hill through the branches of a eucalyptus at the strip of pale blue water, fringed by pink and lilac mountains, and it became so bitter to me, as if I were seeing the Sea of Galilee for the last time.

We made no hurry on our trip through Galilee, which I loved so much. In some places it looked like a sea of green that had stiffened during a storm. High in the sky the hawks prayed, in the sodden bushes along the road the eternal music of the cicadas sounded. Now there was the wild, impenetrable undergrowth, then there were those in the untouched fields and meadows. The naked rocks that hung over the road ... the small patches with a dozen houses of dark stone. The women at the well, with a water jug on their shoulders. Approaching us came the donkeys, dribbling in the clouds of dust and packed on either side, slowly separating the camels, accompanied by pitch-black tanned floats. The shadows of clouds drifted through the valleys, like ghosts of negroes who had conquered these fertile places created by the Most High by way of justification for the fact that so much of the Jewish land was desert. The warriors of Assyria, Egypt and Babylon had come here, but where were they now? The Romans would also leave again.

We ate and rested a bit in a spot near Beth said and arrived in Magdala toward evening. As she said her white haphazard houses were already showing themselves above us, we encountered a crowd of men standing in a semi-circle around a woman lying on the ground, or rather, on the blubbery earth flattened by cattle. Beneath the palms nearby was a stream, where the local shepherds watered their cattle.

We came to the exact moment when the woman's fate was decided. It was obvious: the mob had led her outside the city walls to stone her. Among the crowd that had thronged together, it was a broad-shouldered rabbi in a blue cape with tassels and a snow-white headband who stood out, ranting loudest of all, firing at the people: 'Stone her severely, to drive evil out of Israel. So it was and so it will always be!'

"My name is Jesus!" I shouted, walking closer, hoping they had heard from me. 'Stop it! What has this woman done wrong?'

"Do you want to join in the entertainment?" asked a tall, tall-backed man in a black soup dress; there was a general vile laughter. 'She's a prostitute! She has disgraced our city! We want to fulfill the law.'

My students and I could not do anything against such an excess, I could not stop them by force, while they could easily kill us dead, especially since there were quite a few drunks among and, probably they had celebrated that day and the spirit of wine had claimed a bloody victim by evening.

I had to find arguments, somehow interact with them with the word. I was disgusted by what these senseless people were doing, many of whom were illiterate and could not write their names, but who so needed to carry out the law with triumphant ferocity. The woman lay motionless on the ground, with her knees drawn up and with her hands in front of her face, her back to the bench, and I thought she had adopted the right posture, that it could prolong her life for a few minutes or even lords, if someone put a stop to the execution of the punishment: the stones that flew at her from the crowd could not hit her back, and the spinal column Bas bell the most vulnerable place. From the front, her body was protected by her arms and legs, whose broken bones could grow back together, something the spine could never do again.

'Do Julie have permission from the Roman government? Or from Antipa, your righteous king, may the Lord and protect? I asked, addressing the old rabbi in the blue cape; but he turned away demonstratively, so as not to lower himself to a conversation with me.

Threatening cries rang out, "Are you a traitor, Jesus? An accomplice of the Romans? We are not slaves of Rome, we only keep the law of Moses!'

"Out you go!

'Pick up the stones, godly brothers!'

Some of them picked up a stone, but they hesitated, the mood of the crowd had not yet reached the temperature necessary for a sanctified killing, but that point could be reached at any moment, and I tried feverishly to think of what to do, since no one with words would be able to stop the flying stones anymore, or only perhaps the Indian teachers, who had reached the highest degree of bliss, but even of that I was not sure.

'Master, let's go, this could all end very badly, we cannot stop every execution in Israel,' Matthew said hoarsely in my ear, then he tugged at my sleeve, but I ignored him.

'Does she actually have a husband?' I asked quietly, looking at them one by one. 'Is that you, perhaps? Or you?

"That had to be added?

'Who wants a prostitute like that?'

'Shave off, you're told!'

'Jason, grab a heavier one Stijn, you won't throw a frog dead with yours.'

'Dumbasses!" I cried. 'The prophet Moses said to stone only women who were unfaithful to their husbands. How can you carry this out when she is not even married?'

'She bewitched a venerable man, with wife and children,' boiled the voice of the haughty old rabbi. 'Nor is she from our city at all! And she deserves death.'

"Where is that man?" I asked.

'He is not among us.'

I wondered who this little pathetic man was, and I articulated the last argument that came to my mind at that moment: 'But after all, she did not put him in her bed by force! But by the greatness of her beauty! Then let us be proud that this beautiful woman has come forth from the daughters of Israel!'

"You're babbling, Jesus!

'It's been beautiful!

At that moment I understood that the woman was doomed, and at the same time, as could happen at a moment of great despair, with an utmost effort of mind and spirit, the solution came to me: 'Very well, but then I'll throw the first stone!" I cried, with big eyes and roaring laughter. 'That will be the stones of shame! That will be the terrible shame of death! After that she will die! You will see that!

They stiffened, and no one tried to stop me. Everyone was mesmerized as I ran up to the woman, poked her in the side with my sandal and shouted, "Get on all fours, you cursed slut!

She immediately did as I had told her. I lifted her clothes with a jerk, knelt behind her, freed my zajin, which by then had already become hard, and began to copulate hastily. I had to hurry, before someone in the crowd noticed what I was doing and would pull me away from her. I held the woman by her neck, pressing her head to the ground so that her luscious curls swept through the dust.

'What are you standing there for!" sounded the voice of the old man, the first to come to himself from what he saw. 'That man is a peasant, he should be killed too!'

But people were no longer in a hurry to do what they had been planning; they wanted to see this erotic tragedy through to the end, and then finish the woman, and maybe me too.

Sweat gushed down my face, ran into my eyes, I wanted to discharge my seed as quickly as possible, but I was totally unable to do so. I glanced at the crowd and saw as if through a blur that the herd in front of me had come to a halt and was holding its breath: instead of feet, there were the hooves, instead of clothes, the hairy bodies. I heard no voices, but quiet bellowing.

Someone from the crowd loosened his fingers and dropped his stone on the ground, and it occurred to me that this stone fell from the sky.

The woman began to involuntarily accommodate me in her movements, sat down on my zajien, and at that moment I finally poured my seed into her. I was proud; it was a victory worthy of a Gideon.

I stood up and helped the woman up. She screamed with fear and excitement, expecting death, but I knew that in that moment she had been reborn. I had accomplished what I wanted to accomplish.

"My seed is in her! I shouted. 'Now you cannot show her. By killing her, you kill her child, and you all come before the court.'

Someone dashed at me, saying "you dirty mess'it!" and wanted to kick me, but Andreas pushed him away. The man fell into the crowd and immediately calmed down, as if the raging spirit that had led him had flown away.

I watched the young man, who had been called Jason and stood mesmerized, holding the stone and with his mouth open.

First the elders left, then the whole crowd moved toward the city, as if the one who had incited her to murder had consciousness this morning or had fallen asleep.

My students expressed loudly their joy at this denouement, especially Matthew, who was tired from the day and wanted to rest in the city as soon as possible.

I grabbed the woman by the Kim and turned her countenance toward me, taking a closer look.

She had a long, tawny face with a narrow nose. Deep blue eyes. On her cheeks were bleeding scrapes, one had already managed to hit her when they had carried her out of town. On her right earlobe was also blood, someone had ripped out her earring. On the left it was still in place, a silver earring with green stones. On her neck the white Stripe could be seen from an old scar.

"What's your name?" I asked.

'Maria.'

'That's my mother's name, I don't like that name. I prefer to call you Magdalena, since you were born again in this city.'

"As you wish.

'I am a teacher and medic, and these are my students. Will you join us?

'Gladly... I dragged myself to Magdala in vain... I was advised against coming here... But I had to earn money anyway.... And I had just been exiled from Tiberias.'

'I get chased everywhere too, and in our time that's a sign that we're doing everything right,' I said.

'That rotten kid ripped out my earring...' she complained, feeling in her ear.

'I'll give you some new ones,' I promised.

'You were good...' Maria smiled. 'I liked what you did ... You're a real stud.'

The sun went down, the wind rose, above us came the dry rustle of a palm-top and white dust rose above the road, there along the angry inflamed and unsatisfied men returned to town. A violent day died away, the stony earth murdered its pent-up heat, the trees and bushes around us took less and less space, and were robbed of their shade.

We didn't go to Magdala. Too dangerous. We spent the night far from the city, in an orchard, under the bare sky, where once again I had intercourse with Mary, but now without haste, to prolong the pleasure of my access to her body. I understood that I had met a woman who could completely satisfy me: I admired each of her movements, she found me again and again, and at times I was amazed when I got the strength for so many times of intercourse in a row.

Maria came to remember her parents poorly; they had been killed by Roman hand in the quelling of a revolt by yet another follower of Yehuda ben-Hizkiah. She said she had grown up in Gamle, in the family of her aunt, who had disliked her little niece because she felt the sweet girl had the coals in her to turn into a blazing fire. At 13, Maria gave herself to her aunt's husband and the following day they fled the house, even though he had since conceived plans to enjoy her young body on the sly for his wife.

Since then, Mary had wandered along Israel's lordly ways, offering herself to anyone who wanted it. There was not a day that she did not work, but she always had money, knew dozens of men to avoid becoming pregnant, had an excellent tongue, and knew how to excite even the most declared hermit. In the process, she herself experienced a primitive kind of pleasure from carnal love; every coitus represented for her the moments of being true. She knew what she was talking about.

Mary had tried thousands of men and the languid Eros blessed her path.

An occasional jealous man lashed out at himself as she left him for another. A few lost their minds or became as pious as ground doll shit. The young boys she abused wanted her for a wife.

She could pretend innocence and be avenged.

For her sake, throats were cut in roadside inns.

Predatory spoils were shared with her.

From time to time she had led a band of robbers, like a guiding star, by igniting them with her victorious fornication, and then eventually they all perished and she found a way to save her life. Her friends went to the cross, to the noose, or lay beaten to death before the walls of Jodphat, or he meanwhile danced with her tambourine, in a town far away, in the house of a venerable man who wanted to have a good time.

The ghosts followed her, along with the living, in a victorious procession.

The wives and mothers of men enchanted by her cursed her; they wrote the name Mary on a bowl and smashed it; they modeled dolls resembling her out of dough and burned them in the fireplace; the rabbis invoked the heavens to make a piece of darkness descend on her, compacting it to the state of a stone. But it was all equally futile; she did not believe in curses.

In Tyre, she copulated with a billygoat for 30 drachmas in front of feasting Hellenes. She was a bacchante, filled with God's zeal.

Up to a few times she was beaten half to death. On one occasion she dug Jordan up to her neck in the sand and left to die, but long-drawn nomads had dug her out again. She fled from them and in the desert seduced a famous hermit and hesychast named Zechariah.

I understood that she was virtually immortal, and that animated me even more and wounded me even more. Whenever death came along, she laughed at him. She despised Having Every Night and had no awe for tetrarchs, or for great rabbis, but she was always willing to make herself completely subservient to her lover of the moment, even if that was a slave with the brand of F on his forehead, willing also to cater to all his lusts. Maria liked it when my hair hurt during coitus, that made the fire in her flare up.

After settling in Ashkelon, she became the most famous harbor whore and was more dangerous to the sailors' guests than the siren of Peloriadis, because she finely undressed him. No one could resist Maria when she appeared on the seashore streets in her white tunic with the luscious granite-colored ruffles, perfumed, with a blanched face and with eyes, lit with charcoal and saffron juice. Eventually she was caught when she helped organize the robbery of several young residents of the city, who lured the Hellenes aboard, carried them away and sold them as slaves, and the city council determined to sink Maria in a lead coffin, 25 stadia from the coast. A ship was equipped for this purpose, Mary was imprisoned in the jail, but her lover bribed a guard and she managed to escape.

After spending some time in Jerusalem, Fasaïlida and Tiberias, was landed in Magdala, a city, whose inhabitants did not appreciate the caliber of her art and took advantage of it.

I immediately discovered the divine fearlessness in her. She practiced the things of love according to the most rudimentary and sordid laws of this great act, and I'm sure that on the basis of her erotic experience you could set up a system of knowledge as elegant as it was adequate, a new philosophical school that revealed to people through the great pleasure and the great sin the Golden Light of the other.

Mary saw the hidden. A scintilla voluptatis illuminated the space around her.

We were alike. And I understood that it was useless to expect gratitude from her for her rescue, she would disappear at any moment, like a little snake among the rocks. That I had saved Mary, by now, had no meaning for her. And rightly so.