Chapter 35 - The Ascent
We wandered through Galilee for a few months, were in Gischale and Zabulon, went to Perea, on the other side of the Jordan, and almost everywhere we were received with enthusiasm. I felt new powers flowing in and even healed a few lepers, even though that was the most difficult thing of all, it required a huge energy, but I felt how it vibrated in my fingertips. As a precaution, we did not visit Capernaum, Tiberias and Gergesa, because the first city had a strict prefect, the second was the residence of the tetrarch and the third of the merchant Venedad who, according to the stories, would strangle me if he encountered me and I did not repay my debt to him.
I took away curses, could offer healing for tetanus and rhinitis, made deliveries, drove off fruit using herbs or, if necessary, a pessary.
AirDrop again had a crowd of people with us and we got a lot of willing women again. One of them, whom I had once known, had a 10-year-old boy with her and said he was my son, but I polled my students and we came to the conclusion that the woman was lying, the boy was reddish, while his mother, like me, had dark hair. It was not the first case of people trying to brand me as a father in a lying manner.
I look right through people, and can read their minds. Maybe it was just a conversational experience, and it wasn't so hard to read the thoughts of such a rural tanner who came for advice. As so often, people usually wanted to beg a blessing from me: for a marriage, a move or a trade deal, and if someone really didn't look like a sick person, I would come right away and say, if he even came up to me, "I know where you are from and I bless you! Often that was enough, I then immediately had a follower there, returning home and testifying to this master, because he saw such as his sacred duty.
Yes, to pass for clairvoyant you did not necessarily have to seek out the ancient altar to Baal in the mountains, sacrifice a young boy on it and read all the unknown by his entrails. It was enough to train your mind.
People wanted signs and got them. I remember well, one time when I was spending the night in the open field, I had the heavenly calf appear to us. The campfires burning, much wine and sikhera had been drunk, I stood up and understood, turning to the sky, "Come down and lift us up the dog of the moon, oh pudgy and much-starved calf!
The moon capsized, the women let out a scream, I can't stay on my feet and fell face-first into the grass and felt how the back of my head had been hit by the ice-cold metal hoof of a deity, and this brought my insides into an inexplicable rapture, I had been in communication with the heavens, with the animal secrets of the night sky bodies.
I taught people to enjoy life. Nothing grief, nothing self-abasement! The time of the weeping psalms written by David in the desert was over; I knew how to fill every hard with the spirit of immortality.
'It is easier to obey the rules given to us as a bag of curses from our fathers than to fathom the will of God!' I said to the people, standing on the stair steps of the synagogue of Zaboelon. 'Learn to listen to yourself, for God dwells in each of us! The times are fulfilled! Don't be afraid of your own desires! Do not reject yourself! I speak truly! Hear me! Do not allow the forces of evil to catch your hearts in a net of pitiful duties! And the never extinguishing light shall rise above you!
The local rabbi tried to chase me away, but my stand did not permit him.
'My words are the light!" I continued in rapture. 'I love everyone! Love everyone! As the sun hardens wax and clay, so do the hearts of clay harden against me. Be as wax! And you will be given, dear people!'
The people protected me and the world was no longer a hostile army camp. In some spots the inhabitants threw palm branches at my feet and spread their garments before me, catching up with me with songs and hymns. With a wreath of cypress I lay at the fanciest tables, sat at the head of dinners with invited guests, again received permission to preach in a synagogue, and dreamed of making the temple my tribune, from which from at last the word would resound that contradicted death. My phlegm made eczema, shingles and ringworm disappear, my laying on of hands dispelled fever, and there was no doubt that the whole Jewish people needed me and that without me the temple was like a white tomb beaten full of charnels. I had to breathe new life into it.
It was as if I only had to say one word and Jordan's date would separate.
I was the everyman's friend and cunning schemer with the keys to hearts and small towns. Sometimes there were declared wretches and deadbeats who bowed their heads before me, giving me as a sign of repentance the silver where the blood had not yet been properly washed off.
And that was a benefit. My first teacher Nikolaos had already said that he was concerned in the first instance with those who manfully sought wisdom and only in the second instance with those who made no missteps and could be accused of no injustice.
I let my own blood flow again and drenched the flocking with it, but diluted with water, so that there was enough for everyone; yes, and also the blood itself was more powerful and worked even at low concentration.
One man had a lame hand, and when he moved away from me he had power over it again.
In a spot near Jotapata, I brought in a man to me, and I cured him of the ailment which lay in that he never kept his mouth shut and was at one and the same time the same. I put my seal on his lips and he remained silent, to the indescribable joy of those close to him. The incantation was supposed to work for a year.
And in ecstasy I once caused myself to fill an empty dish with boiled beans and did not understand how exactly this had happened. A real miracle was as fleeting and irrevocable as a catastrophe, it was impossible to describe it truthfully by finding all the causes for it, but you could not escape it either, it descended upon you like an inexorable and eternal light.
Something had changed in the nature of the world, and everything I tackled succeeded.
The sky came so close that I could poke it with my wand.
Even the wild animals understood that, vicious guard dogs licked my hands and pigeons were afraid to shit if they sat down on my shoulder. Probably I could have gotten a crocodile to take me from one bank of a river to the other, but I couldn't try it out, you didn't have crocodiles in Galilee.
Of course, not everyone bent their knees before me, but the mockery, rebuttals and scornful remarks of the few irritated and believing in nothing only gave me more strength. Sometimes among the crowd that remembered me mingled Pharisees, for whom the joy of the people at the sight of their teacher was more bitter than wormwood. But I was the flame that burned on any word, praise as well as jeers served one and the same purpose. The substance of words gave me extra strength. I look at my life as if fragments of text that I had managed to strip of all worldliness, they could be shifted, added to, and changed places until the perfecter human life was created, and then (soon already, it seemed to me), as Isaiah had foretold, the desert and the dry earth would make merry, then the land would rejoice and blossom like a daffodil.
My disciples were also enveloped by the cloak of love of the people, and all the women knelt down before Magdalene: on one occasion she abandoned us for a while, to look up a friend in a spot near Mount Meron, and the people sprinkled the earth with flower petals at the gate through which she would ride in there on her donkey.
"Hosanna, Mary!" one called out to her. 'Bless you who come to us in the name of Jesus of Nazareth!'
She thought back on it with pride, she loved the fact that women and men knelt before her and kissed her hands that smelled of spikenard and cinnamon. Yes, all this was done in my name, and Magdalene was the female hypostasis of the Messiah.
Incidentally, that did not prevent her from becoming a man with the women during love-making.
In those days I saw in the heavens the sign trade! And I decided that I could prophesy freely in Jerusalem. I wanted to enter the city as a victor.
I felt that my gift of orator had greatly gained strength; I was ready to argue with the entire sanhedrin at once. It seemed to me that the time to keep my hiding was over. I wanted to serve the truth in a different format, along with the king and the Roman government. I knew what had to be done, how the laws had to be reformed, how the conflicts between the Sadducees and the Pharisees had to be eliminated, how Rome had to be shown that the people of Israel could be both independent and wise. I even knew how to modernize Jerusalem's waterworks to save on drinking water! I knew how to normalize and develop trade between the cities of Israel and other nations, how to change the tax system... And then when it would finally be possible to sell to Arabia or so thousands of ritual calves, goats and lambs, instead of sacrificing them in the Temple... And distribute the money to the needy! Curing the sick! Feeding the poor! Making sure that at least in Israel there were unhappy people left. If only to make one city ideal... Open healing houses and schools where the children of the poor would be educated free of charge. Prohibit corporal punishment and abolish painful forms of capital punishment ... The main thing was to find a new language in dealing with Rome. And to bring together in the houses of medicine the scholars who were experimenting with new medicines.
My students did not share my enthusiasm. Simon tried hardest of all to talk me out of the trip to Jerusalem. Andrew and Philip fell in with him. Judas was silent. Matthew chuckled meaningfully and wrote something down, as always, and I understand that his work was but an artificial world very far from the truth, even then I was the protagonist of it. Magdalena and three more women who were with us at that time, namely no part in the discussion of the plans. One of them, the very young Egyptian Niktimena, spoke poor Hebrew, but was very beautiful. She had come with them from Egypt with her father, who had trading interests in Palestine. They were to return home again, but the father died suddenly of an illness, and Niktimena, having no way to reach her hometown, entered the service of an inn whose owner, an old Jew, abused her. She fled from him and joined us. I must confess, she was enchanting: as slender as a reed, with silky soft dark skin and firm, perfectly mature breasts. Through her large dark eyes, it was as if Noet herself, the Queen of Stars, was your touch. She made friends with Magdalene, who cared for her like a blood mother.
'Do not be afraid to go to Jerusalem,' I said to my disciples. 'When the branch of the fig tree softens and shoots leaves, you know that it is almost summer, and when people everywhere rejoice in us, believe and open the doors of their houses on Sunday morning, it means that our great triumph is coming. Drink this cup to the bottom and on those messengers you will find the gold!
Deep in my heart, I wanted to return to Chorazin as soon as possible, to the home of Gita and Tali, hoping that the displeasure with me had calmed down and that the inhabitants would focus their inheritance on something else, such as the new law that required an alabaster bust of Tiberius to be placed in front of every synagogue. I hoped to continue my work in the room where my books had been left and my medicinal instruments, but I did not know how the sisters would welcome Magdalene. Would they get along with her? I could not send her away, I had become very attached to her body, and every coitus was a celebration: on a soft sponde in the room, in the terms among the clouds of steam, beside the campfire, on the meadow under the stars. But most of all I wanted to be with Mary in the presence of people, on the naked, rocky earth, as it was the first time, when her beautiful writhing hair had swept through the dust.
It was almost Passover.
We decided to go to Jerusalem.
