And inevitably there were the hawkers of genuine antiquities.
“The sword of the famous Amazon Queen, Penthesilia.” I made the mistake of looking curiously at the sword, clearly of recent make, but the same shape as the one Sarah had held. As a result, I was pursued for nearly half a mile by several sellers of Amazon weaponry, all of which had belonged to one queen or another. “Domina, domina, for you a special price.” I was almost tempted to buy a sword and put it to immediate use.
Through all this commerce and chaos, Ma kept her eyes resolutely closed, as we slowly walked the two miles to the Temple. She did not open them even when we came in sight of the wonder itself with its one hundred and twenty-seven Ionic columns standing still in perfect lines, the great hall opening out to the sea. As for me, I found myself unmoved by the symmetry and splendor. I had visited this Temple and hundreds of others in my wandering years. If any living deities inhabited any of them, they had remained as stone to my beseeching, and I felt just as cold and stony as I approached the dwelling place of the goddess whose fame and worship rivaled that of Isis or Demeter, though perhaps underneath their different forms and names, they were all the same goddess, who existed, if she existed at all, for her own purposes, not ours.
“Ma,” I said. “Open your eyes. We’re at the temple steps.”
“Guide me,” she commanded.
And still she walked blind until we reached the top step and entered the hall. Then, abruptly, almost rudely, Ma shook me off and opened her eyes to face the huge, impassive goddess, waiting at the opposite end of the hall, with her arms outstretched in a gesture that struck me as curiously non-maternal. Although she was called Artemis, there was nothing Greek about this goddess. Her towering crown, topped by a temple that was held aloft by winged bulls, recalled the crowns of the Hittite goddesses. Her face was stern, and she was clothed in creation—pomegranates, eggs, bees, lions, bulls, and other horned beasts. I looked from the statue to Ma, small and weathered, swathed in the black widow’s weeds she’d always worn. She stood still for a moment, gazing at the goddess, but not, it seemed, in awe. She was taking the goddess’s measure, sizing her up. Then, waving me back, she began to walk, step by resolute step, closing the distance between herself and Artemis of Ephesus.
I stayed a pace or two behind her, and as we proceeded down the great hall, the temple began to change. The first thing I noticed was the silence, as if a great wind or surf had swallowed up all the bustle of the temple, the people coming and going, the chants, the prayers, the sacrifices. Then I noticed the carvings on the walls, patterns of crosses, spirals, and squares that contained birds, fish, bees, flowers—they came alive, or at least I sensed movement on the periphery, though when I looked again, they remained stone. Maybe it was just the effect of the shadows sweeping across the open center of the temple, swift moving clouds, birds’ wings. Something even more improbable happened when Ma stopped before the goddess. She stood by herself. The crowd had fallen away. There was not even a priest or priestess in attendance.
I stood aside, watching Ma; her lips were moving, but I could not hear what she was saying. Tears began to wash down her face, but they did not seem to have anything to do with sorrow. It was more like watching a waterfall cascade over rock—inevitable, elemental. I looked at the statue again, and all at once, I felt her power, as if something, maybe the goddess, herself, had hurled a bolt of lightning straight into my veins. This graven image wasn’t just an inert bit of carved stone, it was an encoded secret, and the secret was being imparted to Ma right before my eyes. Everything else disappeared or everything else was contained in that exchange.
I don’t know how long it took. It seemed as though they went back to the time when there was no temple, just a plain and a spring, a huge oak tree with a swarm of bees in its hollow, and a smooth black standing stone that, like the spring and the tree, was also the goddess. Centuries passed, the temple rose and fell, rose and fell, till in the end there was nothing again but a plain and a spring, wind in the reeds, and no tree or stone, just one lone column topped by a stork’s nest. I watched the bird rise on its gangly legs and fly away.
Then I found myself back in the temple again, with all its columns and noise. Ma still stood gazing at the goddess. At last, slowly, almost imperceptibly, she nodded—you really couldn’t say she bowed—and turned away.
I caught a glimpse of her face, young and ancient, wild and so lonely I thought my heart would break. Her face was the plain itself and the bird flying into empty blue.
“Ma!” I cried out.
“It’s all right, Maeve,” she said. “I gave her my promise. It’s all right.”
I decided not to ask what she meant. Gently, firmly, as if I were a child, Ma led me out of the temple.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
EPHESUS AND GREATER EPHESUS
OUR ENCOUNTER WITH THE GODDESS left us ravenous, and hunger answered the question of what to do next. We headed straight for the food vendors outside the temple and bought wine, cheese, and figs, and honey cakes baked in the shape of the goddess, a local specialty. Without having to consult with each other, we headed, with our picnic, in the opposite direction from the city, walking along a cart trail through the fields towards a line of trees that promised shade and maybe a stream or a river. When we reached the bank of what turned out to be a meandering creek, a strangely familiar scene greeted us. Ma and I stopped behind a plane tree and peered around it at some thirty or so white-robed figures, swaying and chanting, waiting their turn, it seemed, to be dunked by a man who stood in the midst of the stream.
For an instant I was back at the river Jordan, the stench of damp camel hair in the air, and a wild prophet haranguing the crowd to repent. But this dipper was much more kempt. His hair and beard neatly trimmed, he wore clean Egyptian linen of excellent quality and spoke (loudly and commandingly) in the Greek of a well-educated person.
“I, Apollos, apostle of Jesus who is called the Christ, baptize you as he was baptized, in the baptism of John. Insomuch as you have repented and turned to the Lord God of Israel, you may now be cleansed of sin! Ready?” he said more quietly to the man about to be baptized. The baptismal candidate clamped his fingers over his nose, and Apollos the Baptizer bent him backwards and under. “John was a lot rougher,” I whispered to Ma. “He practically drowned me. Did he ever baptize you?”
“Not necessary in my case,” murmured Ma, enigmatically.
“Well, it didn’t take in mine,” I added. “Either time.”
“You could have another go,” she suggested.
“No thanks,” I said. “If I want a dip, I can take one by myself. At the moment I’m hungry. Let’s go.”
“We will sit under this tree and eat,” Ma announced. “These people are followers of my son.”
Ma did not speak much Greek, but she recognized her son’s name in any language.
“All right,” I said warily. “But I hope you aren’t planning on asking them for hospitality. If you think I am going to be a laundress in another ecclesiastical house, you can think again. Did you forget? These people kidnapped Sarah.”
“Not these particular people,” Ma scolded mildly. “I just want to see what they’re up to, don’t you?”
“Not really,” I grumbled, but I sat down and spread out our picnic, hoping I would not be called upon to multiply it, though the crowd gathered here hardly numbered in the thousands, and no one seemed to be paying any attention to us.
As we ate, and the rather sedate dipping went on, I became aware that we were not the only onlookers. A few feet away from us, a handsome middle-aged couple had come to survey the scene.
“Well, Aquila, I am afraid it is as bad as we feared. Apollos is educated, personable. I suppose it is no wonder Jews and proselytes are flocking to the synagogue to hear him, but he is leading them all wrong. He clearly knows nothing of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. What are we to do? How can our little house ecclesia compete?”
“Now, Priscilla. We
are not without influence in Ephesus. We are well-known and respected citizens. Surely he will seek out our weekly salon—or we can invite him. We can debate with him.”
Despite myself, I eavesdropped with some interest. While I had been sailing the seas searching for Sarah, missionaries for the Way had spread out over the same territory, and their controversies with them. I wondered how I had managed to stay out of the way (pun intended) for so long.
“Dearest husband, we must be realistic. You may be the foremost tentmaker and supplier in Anatolia and beyond, we may have fortune enough to maintain a home within the city walls, but we are not well-versed enough to compete with someone educated at the finest schools in Alexandria. We might make fools of ourselves and do the true teachings of the Way more harm than good!”
Her husband was silent for a moment, and I studied his face to see if he bristled at his wife’s assessment of his limitations, but he only appeared thoughtful.
“Educated we may not be, but you, my dear, are always wise. You have given me an idea. We must send word to Paul and invite him to come preach among us. He was educated at the Temple of Jerusalem itself—he would be a match for this Apollos.”
Priscilla clapped her hands. As for me, I choked on a fig.
“You are the wise one, my dear. Paul has a brilliant and subtle mind, and he is positively on fire with the Spirit of the Lord. Not only that, but he has been given ecclesiastical authority by Apostle Peter himself. We will send word to Paul at once.”
I stood up still gagging. Ma sat and gazed at me unperturbed, completely without prescience of the Heimlich maneuver. Priscilla, that wise and virtuous woman, whose price was no doubt above rubies, came over and whacked me soundly on the back, at which point I disgorged the fig.
“My dear, are you all right?” she asked. “Here, take some wine.” She handed me her own wineskin.
I confess I took a good long drink of very watered wine
“Thank you, domina,” I said. “You are kind.”
“Not at all,” she waved away my gratitude. “Whatever I do for another I do in the name of Christ Jesus, who died for the remission of sin that through him we might be reconciled with the Father and have everlasting life.”
She had definitely been paying attention to her friend Paul. It was a good thing that I had swallowed my wine and could not sputter, for Priscilla’s linen was very clean and of at least as good quality as the elegant baptizer’s.
“Quite so, quite so,” put in Aquila, who had turned his attention from the dipping to us. “I hope you will not think us presumptuous, but might we inquire if you are receiving instruction from Apollos and intending to receive the Baptism of John?”
I did think him presumptuous, actually, but I decided that to say so would only encourage him.
“I know nothing about Apollos,” I answered truthfully enough. “We’re just having a bite to eat in the shade.”
“Invite them to join us,” Ma, still seated, spoke to me in Aramaic.
“Ah,” said Aquila, “Your mother does not speak Greek? You are Jews, then? From Judea?”
“She is my mother-in-law, um, Naomi,” I said, dropping Ma a broad hint that I did not want to reveal our identity. “She is a Jewish widow. From Galilee.”
“Galilee!” Priscilla and Aquila looked at each other with rapt faces. “Where Christ Jesus first preached and healed!”
I had a moment of homesickness so intense, I had to turn my face away—for surely anyone who looked could see the lake there, the birds and the mists rising in the morning, and him walking beside the water.
“Ruth,” said Ma, who had not missed my reference. “I told you to invite our friends to share our food. These girls from Moab,” she said to Priscilla and Aquila. “No manners.”
Priscilla and Aquila looked confused by this reference to an ancient country that no longer existed, but since they did not really understand Aramaic, they let it pass.
“My mother-in-law would like you to join us in our meal. You are welcome,” I gestured to them to be seated. In fact, my manners, Celtic in origin, were all too good.
Now I am afraid Priscilla and Aquila’s class prejudice showed a bit, for they could not quite hide their alarm at the prospect of sitting down with us. They were prosperous merchants who lived in a sophisticated city. Ma and I owned little more than the clothes on our back, and we had just gotten off a boat, and probably should have joined in the dipping, if only for hygienic purposes.
“For the sake of Christ Jesus,” Priscilla whispered to her husband, and they sat down gingerly.
“The cakes are delicious!” said Ma.
Priscilla and Aquila blanched as Ma offered them an edible idol.
“No thank you. We have only just eaten our midday meal.” She hesitated for a moment, and then she decided to be more direct. “You must be strangers here. Perhaps you don’t realize that those cakes are made in the image of a pagan goddess. You must explain to your mother-in-law,” she directed me. “And in this town, you must be very careful, too, where you buy meat. So much of it has been sacrificed on pagan altars.”
I decided not to bother to tell Priscilla that meat of any kind wasn’t in our budget.
“Ma,” I said dutifully. “You’re eating a pagan idol.”
“Cakes for the Queen of Heaven,” Ma murmured, fortunately inaudibly, and she slowly licked her fingers.
She really was impossible. Or at the very least improbable.
Meanwhile, Aquila and Priscilla were having another sotto voce exchange.
“You speak,” Priscilla whispered. “You are the husband, and you have spiritual authority as head of our family.”
“But perhaps it would be more fitting for you to speak with them alone,” he said. “I am, after all, a strange man.”
You can say that again, I thought to myself.
“It’s all right,” I said. “You can both speak, but it will be easier to understand you, if you speak one at a time.”
I smiled, but they looked at me blankly. No humor, no irony. They were in deadly earnest about everything, and, as I was about to find out, one thing, in particular.
“It’s just that we were wondering,” began Priscilla, who really did seem to be more of a natural leader than her husband, “seeing as you come from Galilee if you have heard the good news of Christ Jesus who was crucified in Jerusalem and who rose again from the dead after three days in accordance with the scriptures? If you have not, it would be our privilege and duty to bear our witness to his marvelous works and how his saving grace has come into our lives.”
Now it was time for Ma and me to have a conference. We looked at each other, her eyes so like his, dark, luminous, not focused on me—but on something beyond me, something I could not see. I found no answer there to my questions: Should I say who I was or am to him? What if Peter and James were still searching for Sarah? Better perhaps that everyone forget or never find out that Jesus had a wife and child.
“They would not believe me,” I said softly to Ma, to myself. “I am not part of the story anymore.”
“But I am,” said Ma softly, then more loudly. “I am.” She turned a dreamy smile on Priscilla and Aquila, who were looking understandably perplexed. “Yeshua. Yeshua ben Miriam, they called him in Nazareth when he was a little boy. The Son of the Mother.”
“What is she talking about?” Aquila whispered in Greek. “Do you think the old one is a little touched?
“Ssh!” said Priscilla, who was fully aware that I spoke Greek. “Yeshua would be his Hebrew name.” She turned to Ma, eagerly. “Did you know the Savior when he was a child?”
“I did,” said Ma. “I do.”
I held my breath, waiting for her to pronounce her two favorite words in any language, my son, which could lead to all kinds of questions, complications and general interference.
“Oh!” Priscilla very nearly gushed. “What was he like?”
“A brat,” said Ma serenely and in Greek, of which she knew a few choi
ce words.
(And if the son of the mother was a brat, the apple certainly did not fall far from the tree; I almost felt sorry for Priscilla and Aquila, who had stiffened and recoiled.)
“She is mad,” whispered Aquila. “Perhaps we ought to pray?”
“I am afraid I spoiled him terribly,” she added. “Translate,” she ordered me.
When I did, Priscilla and Aquila gazed with horror at this fey Galilean peasant (with a faux Moabite daughter-in-law in tow) who had just claimed to be the mother of Christ Jesus. Not being prescient, they could not foresee that a great church would be built in her honor in their very city where the third ecclesiastical council would meet to confirm her title Theotokos, the Mother of God.
“Forgive me for asking a terribly blunt question,” Priscilla turned to me. “We only want to help. Is your mother-in-law perhaps afflicted with a demon?”
I bit my lip hard to prevent myself from laughing maniacally.
“Because if she is, we might be able to cast it out in the name of Christ Jesus.”
“Priscilla,” said her husband nervously. “You have not been given the authority to exorcise.”
“But I would not be doing it by my authority,” Priscilla pointed out. “But by the authority of Christ Jesus, in his name.”
“That didn’t work for the sons of Sceva,” her husband objected. “The demons tore them limb from limb. Demons have to know that the exorcist has been authorized.”
“Well, I have received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit,” Priscilla was getting huffy now. “The sons of Sceva hadn’t. Really, Aquila, if you don’t think I’m qualified, then why don’t you—”
“It won’t be necessary,” I interrupted, their theological debate having had a numbing effect on my hysteria. “She is not afflicted with demons. Only with angels.” There being little difference, as far as I could tell, except that you can’t exorcise angels.
Bright Dark Madonna Page 34
