by Nino Ricci
The town was a bit further than Jerubal had led me to believe and I was nearly crippled under my load by the time we got to the place. It looked to be just a wilderness town, a bit of mud thrown together, with a few squares of field around it that took water from the river but then beyond that only scrub and waste. It was our luck, though, that there was a market going on, and Jerubal took us into it, going along on a walking stick he’d culled out of the brush so he looked like an old desert wise man. Then as soon as we were in the thick of the crowd, he started shouting, “Praise to God!” at the top of his lungs, so that it wasn’t long before people had gathered around us.
The way Jerubal had it, those fish we were carrying were part of a miracle we’d seen. He had the whole story plotted out, how he and I were simply walking along the river when we came on Jesus, the holy man of Galilee, on his way to Jerusalem with his followers. They’d run out of food, and hadn’t money, and thought they’d have to turn back and miss the feast. But Jesus said to his men, “Cast a net into the river,” and it came out teeming with fish. And they’d been able to eat their fill and pack some away for the journey and still had these baskets left over that wouldn’t keep, and Jesus, seeing us going along there, had given them over to us so that we might raise some money for the poor. “I saw it with my own eyes,” Jerubal said, “and my servant here, who’s never told a lie in his life, will tell you the same.”
Jerubal had said all this almost in a single breath, as if to admit no contradiction. But it was clear in an instant that this was no village of Amorites, because those townspeople just stood there staring at us as if they didn’t know whether to stone us or spit, probably wondering, from Jerubal’s accent, what kind of foreign demons we were. It seemed they were just girding themselves to drive us from the town when suddenly a man emerged from the crowd looking as if he’d just crawled in from the wilderness, his hair and beard tangled as thistle and reaching down practically to his waist, and his shirt belted on with a raw strip of goatskin. He had the glint of a madman in his eye, and I thought the crowd would chase him off. But instead everyone cleared a way for him as if he was some sort of leader in the place.
“You mentioned Jesus from Galilee,” he said, staring at us as if to burn a hole in us.
But Jerubal, keeping calm, agreed that he had.
“He was with John the prophet,” the man said, which didn’t mean a thing to me though Jerubal seemed to know what he was talking about. “There’s a lot of us here who still follow John. He used to preach at the river.”
I thought he was intending to say that we’d insulted John’s name, and he’d have to avenge it.
But Jerubal said, “Then it must be his power that Jesus called on, to do what he did.”
I could see the fellow considering that—now he’d be the one to insult the memory of John, to say it couldn’t have happened. He seemed to strain then with the weight that was on him, everyone looking to him.
Finally he said, “Then it must be a sign of the end of things, the way John warned us, if he’s giving that power to the ones he taught.” And he walked up to the baskets and took the first fish himself, giving us a coin to pass on, and Jerubal stood there as if it was the most natural thing in the world that this wild man should just believe when all the rest had their doubts.
Another man would have turned to the crowd fairly quickly then and said, “Look, even John’s follower took one, now do the same.” But not Jerubal. He just stood there a moment staring at the crowd as if to say it was clear they didn’t even believe in their own god here, then started to pack up the fish. And you could see people begin to shuffle nervously at that, and talk amongst themselves, and look at Jerubal and the fish. And finally someone came up with a few coppers in his hand and said he would take one as well, and then another came and another, and Jerubal had me collect the money as if it was a little beneath him to touch it, saying we’d be catching up with Jesus on the road to hand it over to him.
It wasn’t long before half the town was lined up for their fish. It was as Jerubal had told me once, the bigger the lie, the more people fell for it in the end. And it seemed true, because Jerubal could open his mouth and you never knew what kind of incredible thing would come out of it, yet he always found the way to make people believe him. Now he was going on about how he’d worshipped Aphrodite and Baal all his life but seeing the miracle by the river had won him over to the god of the Jews, and he was going down straightaway to the temple in Jerusalem to make an offering. And people were taking him seriously, and agreeing with him that their god was great, and Jerubal happened to mention in passing that rather than eating their fish, they’d do best to hang it over their doors for good fortune, to save himself a lot of sick folks holding their stomachs and chasing him down.
Our pockets were full by the time we left town. But I was feeling a bit uneasy about that money. I asked Jerubal about the prophet John and he said the Jews had all sorts of holy men like that, who lived in caves and said outrageous things about the end of the world and who the Romans usually came along and killed off, the way they’d done with this John. I wanted to know if he’d performed any miracles but Jerubal couldn’t say. “What about Jesus?” I asked him. “Do you think he does miracles?” “Of course he does,” Jerubal said. “Look at us—we were just a couple of poor sots when the sun came up and now he’s turned us into rich ones.”
In my own head, though, I couldn’t make a joke of it—I had to know what was what, all of a sudden, since Jerubal had me so turned around by now I couldn’t tell the difference any more between things that had actually happened and what we’d made up. I’d been that way as a boy—I’d hear a story about some piece of wonder or magic and then it was as if I was the one who’d witnessed the thing, I saw it so clearly. The truth was you could meet a lot of people who were like that, sensible people otherwise but who, when it came to wonders, couldn’t have told you what they’d seen with their own eyes, or only heard about, or invented whole cloth. That seemed the way so many stories got spread, until you’d think wonders were as common as spit.
It didn’t take us long to catch up with Jesus’s band again—they’d put up at the roadhouse outside Aenon, just a couple of miles on, to wait out the heat. The place was known for its waters and was surrounded with palm groves and gardens, though beyond them was desert, dozens of trees sprouting up above the town walls all in bloom then with the spring. Some were the purple-flowered ones, wispy as gossamer, that we called King’s Ghost up in Baal-Sarga. I felt a pang, seeing them and remembering the lake and how green everything had been around it, next to the sun-cooked flats we’d been travelling through. But the roadhouse was fine enough, with a large pool in the middle of the courtyard and a little wine shop in one of the arcades.
With money in our purses again, Jerubal and I bought some wine for some of Jesus’s followers who we’d got friendly with. But while we were standing there with our cups, Jesus himself came around to join us, instantly ordering a cup as well to save us feeling sheepish at being caught with wine on our breath. Jerubal immediately got out a coin to pay for the thing, and Jesus didn’t try to stop him but just said, “Thank you,” as if he meant it, and took a drink.
I’d assumed by this point that Jesus hadn’t recognized me from our meetings. But he turned to me now and said, “I see you’re still hiding your light at the back of the crowd, the way you used to,” and I saw he’d known all along who I was.
I must have blushed then because he smiled.
“I’m glad you and your friend could join us,” he said, and drained his glass and went off, leaving my head spinning. But then I remembered the money in my purse and all my good feeling left me. I’d find the way to make some sort of penance with it, I said to myself, maybe keeping just enough of it back that I didn’t go hungry.
We were getting ready to set off again when a bit of an argument broke out. It seemed that the town we were at, even more than the one before it, was crowded with followers of t
he prophet John, and some of them had got wind that an old student of his was passing through and had come out to see who it was. But when one of these fellows heard that Jesus had been drinking with his followers, he said that John would never have stood for such a thing. Jesus, instead of defending himself, agreed that the fellow was right.
“He lived the way most of us can’t,” he said, “and we’ll never see the likes of him again. I remember how we used to come to this very town, though it wasn’t everyone here who believed in him then.”
It seemed he was saying that maybe the fellow himself was one of the ones who hadn’t believed, and from how his face fell for an instant, it looked as if that was the case. But then he said, though more carefully, “There are more who believe in him now because they saw he was ready to die when Herod took him. But some of those who were with him just ran off.”
It was as if Jesus had been slapped—he fell quiet, and turned away, and said to his men, “Let’s be going.” And that was how he left the place, under a cloud, so the rest of us had to hurry to collect ourselves and straggle in behind him. It was unusual for Jesus to let anyone get the better of him and people looked confused, wondering how he could have been in the wrong. But Jesus didn’t stop to explain, marching straight on into the blazing wilderness. A few miles from town, we reached a spot where the river widened and there was a bit of a ford.
“We’re crossing here,” Jesus said, he didn’t say why, though you could see he wasn’t brooking any argument.
People arranged their goods on their heads and we went into the water single file, with Jesus out front. There must have been some rain up around the lake the night before, because the current was running swiftly, and the children along with us might have been washed away if they hadn’t been tied to their parents. The other side of the river was even more blasted than the one we’d left, just rubble and sand and stone and then bald white hills that stretched as far as you could see. When we’d landed Jesus led us down the shore a ways to a little resting spot where there were a few thorn trees to give a bit of shade. We all stretched out our belongings to dry, but not settling much, imagining we still had a patch to cross to get to whatever town it was we were headed to for the night. But then Jesus announced we’d be stopping right where we were.
It seemed strange to camp in that bit of wild away from any town or road. But Jesus said he had chosen the spot because the prophet John had had his camp there. I made out then the old tent pegs in the dirt, and the spots where the ground was beaten down. I had an image of the place as it must have been, with the tents all around and a young Jesus there with his teacher John. Not far from the river an embankment rose up that had a row of caves in it, and I pictured John and his men putting up there looking like the wild man we’d sold our fish to, with their hair coiled and long and the strips of goatskin tied around their waists.
We set up camp. Jerubal by now had quite a following with some of Jesus’s band, and the group of them set up a tent right at the edge of the camp. I wandered around on my own for a bit, though the truth was I wanted to get close to Jesus again, still drunk with the fact that he’d known me. But then he saw me lingering near his tent and actually called me over to help with supper. I was so tongue-tied I couldn’t even answer him.
“Now I’ve got my three Simons,” he said, “like the three wise men,” an old story people told. And he gave me a nickname, Simon the Wise, which left me with the strangest feeling, like he’d claimed me.
So suddenly there I was right in the thick of things, with Jesus nearby and Jesus’s men at my elbow. Working with them I saw they weren’t so different from me in the end, like a crew of fishermen you’d meet at the Gergesa harbour. There was Simon who Jesus called the Rock, and who I knew from the Gergesa side—he was the sort who others would mock a bit, and hardly think about, but always count on in the end. Then there was his brother Andrew, who was simple, who everyone looked after like their own—he was one of the few who seemed to have any feeling for Judas, smiling like a child whenever he saw him. I’d have thought Judas wouldn’t have time for someone like him but the truth was he was gentle with the fellow and humoured him, one of the few signs I’d seen in Judas that he might actually belong with someone like Jesus.
Then there was Simon the Canaanite, who Jesus jokingly called the Zealot, nearly the same word in their dialect as a fanatical sect in Jerusalem. If there was one fellow in Jesus’s circle who made me want to run, it was the Zealot—it wasn’t that there was anything offensive in him, but that I saw in him what it was like to be part of that crowd and not be a Jew. Everyone said he was the most loyal of Jesus’s men, yet next to the others he seemed like some dog you might find in the wild and tame, loyal just because you’d brought it in. I didn’t ever want to be seen that way, as if I was some savage they’d saved, just because I had grown up hardly knowing one god from the next. The truth was, though, that Jesus didn’t treat the Zealot any different than the rest—he didn’t condescend to him but also he didn’t go out of his way to show he was equal, and so show in that way that he wasn’t.
Mary, from Magdala, was the one you noticed among the women. I’d picked her out from the start, the first night—she was just a stick, so thin you felt sorry for her, knowing not many would have her. But I would sooner have put myself in the way of any of Jesus’s men than in hers, for all that a good wind would have knocked her down. All sorts of stories about her went through the camp, that she was the one who’d poisoned the pregnant girl we’d heard about, out of jealousy, or that she tried to put enmity between Jesus and those she didn’t like. But it was just that she wanted to possess the man—you saw that in how she never let him from her sight, and protected him, and was the one who stood guard to see he had his moment of peace. When Judas returned, it was clear she had to bite her tongue not to curse him, though she welcomed him for Jesus’s sake, even if for his sake too she might just as soon have chased him away.
When the food was ready, a group of us went around with Jesus from tent to tent ladling it out, and people lit their fires with whatever scrub wood they’d collected and the sky over the hills stretched out blood red from end to end with the setting sun, a good omen. I was afraid that when we came to Jerubal’s tent we’d find him gaming, but his little group was actually at their prayers, Jerubal right there next to the others on his knees mumbling along with them as if he knew what he was saying, though he gave me a wink when I went by.
When we got back to Jesus’s tent, Judas was waiting there.
“I need to talk to you,” he said, in that grating way of his, as if it was just him and Jesus and the rest of us didn’t matter. But Jesus, to his credit, put him off.
“You can see we’re just sitting down to supper,” he said.
It seemed Judas had been trying to get him alone since he’d arrived, without luck—if it wasn’t one of the women who got in his way, it was some work that had to be done or just that Jesus was in a foul mood, and Judas would be forced to go off again. Now he just hung there at the edge of our circle glowering like a jackal. But Jesus seemed determined not to let anything spoil our supper, not even the insult he’d had at the roadhouse at Aenon.
We got to talking as we ate, pulling in close to the fire because the night chill was coming on, and one of the men asked Jesus about his days with John the prophet. I could see Jesus didn’t like to talk about his own life that way, but he started in, saying he’d come to John just a boy, willful and quick-tempered and full of pride, but had left him a man. There wasn’t anything in the world, Jesus said, that would keep someone like John from following what he believed. Afterwards people said he was hard and didn’t have any mercy in him but the truth was he never turned anyone away, and the only thing he asked from people was that they should be humble in front of their god.
“You have to be blessed to meet someone like that,” Jesus said. “Someone who makes you look at things differently.”
He told us then what it was like when J
ohn was taken. Though the Romans had had a hand in it, it was Herod’s men who came for him, about a hundred of them who marched down from Tiberias one day fully armed and carrying their flags out front, so you could see them coming for miles.
“When we got word of them,” Jesus said, “John called everyone together, and there were hundreds of people here then, and said, ‘Go home.’ But no one wanted to go. People said they would die for him before they went, and they would have. But John said there was no point in that. People didn’t really understand him then—they’d always been told it was important to die with courage, and be remembered that way. But John said, ‘If you die here, you might be remembered, which will be good for your own glory. But if you leave, then what I taught you will be remembered, which will be good for the glory of God.’”
Hearing the thing put that way, people finally started to go. In the end, the only ones left behind were John and the dozen or so men he’d been training to take over for him, and Jesus was one of them. Now the argument started over again, since none of them wanted to leave, and meanwhile the soldiers were getting close and no one knew, seeing how Herod was, what exactly they would do. John, looking for a way out, said half should stay, so people couldn’t say they were cowards, and half should go. And the agreement was that the ones who went had to cut their hair and take off their belts, because those were John’s sign, since there wasn’t any point in saving themselves if it was just for the sake of being captured later on.
They drew straws for the thing and Jesus picked one of the shorter ones, and had to go.
