Song of the Magdalene

by Donna Jo Napoli

  My breath filled my hands, which covered my face. I waited for the rush of blood to slow. After many minutes, I could speak again. “Abraham, the people who stopped the stoning were decent. And the decent people prevailed.”

  Abraham twisted until he faced me. “And if they hadn’t been there?”

  “Decent people will always be there.”

  “You speak nonsense, Miriam.”

  I couldn’t imagine the people of Magdala with stones in their hands. I couldn’t imagine the people of Israel anywhere with stones in their hands. But maybe that was because I refused to. I looked into Abraham’s sea eyes. The Sea of Galilee was also called the Lake of Kinneret because it was harp-shaped, like the kinneret that my mother used to play. Abraham’s eyes didn’t move; the Sea was still today. “I will never tell people about you, Abraham. I will never betray you.”

  • • •

  And so it passed that Judith and Father married and I danced with the women at their wedding feast and Judith came to live with us. I didn’t speak again of marrying Abraham, nor did I ever speak of Abraham’s true self.

  I often wondered if Abraham thought about my conversation with Judith that day. We never spoke of it. Abraham never acknowledged that I had told Judith in his presence that I loved him. Yet we seemed to be more careful in how we touched each other after that. When I’d pull him into the cart, I’d lift him from behind and hold him far enough from my body that my breasts wouldn’t press against his back. Whenever his right hand reached for me, it was my hand he touched, never higher up on my arm, or my face, or my hair. We hadn’t been so physically distant before that. Before that our bodies had been facts no more compelling than the fact of stones and trees and dirt. They had a size and shape and texture that simply were. Now our bodies were ideas. They could enter the mind and fill every crevice. They were to be avoided.

  Our talk seemed more guarded, too. We read the Torah together now, whenever we had the privacy we needed. I could have counted on my fingers and toes the number of times up till then that I had touched the sacred scrolls that made up the books of the Torah. Now suddenly I was touching them almost daily. Exhilaration made me dizzy the first time I carried one across the room and unrolled it beside Abraham.

  Abraham delighted in discussing with me the great women leaders of Israel. But now he didn’t talk of Daniel and the women Daniel had spoken of who lived in our times. We turned, instead, to a higher authority — to the scriptures. We told each other the ancient stories of Deborah, the judge and leader, who commanded the people in battles with the Philistines. We spoke of how Barak, the man leader, turned to Deborah for guidance. We reveled in Jael’s pounding a nail though the soft temples of King Sisera’s head as the Philistines slept, and thus saving her people. And Abraham loved most reading with me the tales of Miriam, my namesake, who was called a prophet.

  A woman prophet. A woman with a voice that would be heard. A woman who sang a war victory song. Would that I could take a timbrel in my hand and place a crown of olive wreaths on my head and celebrate victory over the battles of my life, as Miriam had done.

  Abraham and I spoke of other things, too. We spoke of my vegetable and herb garden. We spoke of birds and trees. We spoke of the people of the village. But we never spoke about each other anymore. We never spoke our fears. Nor our hopes.

  Maybe Abraham had no hopes. I wasn’t sure I did.

  I missed Abraham, though I was with him in the same house day after day. In my dreams we were close again. In my dreams we climbed the hills that surrounded the Sea of Galilee. We followed the River Jordan south. We sat among the flowering mustards that grew as tall as trees. And nothing, nothing kept us apart. But when I’d awaken, we’d keep our respectful distance once again.

  Sometimes I didn’t want to wake. Sometimes the distance of Abraham during the day left me lost and disoriented. At those times I’d study the Torah most intensely. I wanted help in this passage through life.

  Judith was true to her word. She taught me new and intricate dances. My eager feet couldn’t learn fast enough. They demanded more, and Judith taught more. But she watched my face closely. She said my mouth moved in silent song. She played a reed flute and three months after her wedding to Father she bought me one, saying I needed to make music with my mouth. I remembered sitting beside Mother as she played the harp. Father had given that harp to one of her sisters when she died. My hands had itched with the desire for those strings as I watched them carted away.

  The flute didn’t have the same attraction. Flutes to me meant Mother’s funeral. So my hands, which had been so greedy for the harp, were now reluctant on the flute. My fingers touched the holes gingerly. Yet the notes that came forth were not mournful. They rose light and gay, and soon I came to trust them and my fingers moved more quickly and my lungs were happy to swell.

  Judith and I filled the house with birdlike melodies. Then we danced again. We laughed together and wove, side by side with Hannah, mindful that woolwork kept a woman virtuous. We spun yarn at night under the moonlight. Judith told stories of our people’s history as we worked, stories her mother had told to her. And every time the Israelites triumphed over an oppressor, we laughed. Judith came home from the well and told stories of the village children’s antics that morning. And we laughed again. We laughed often. But my laughter was never wholly carefree. I think hers was not, either.

  Yet we shared a kind of happiness that was new to me. I had helped Hannah all my life, so the details of household work were known to me. But I had never valued them highly. Now I learned to lose myself in grinding corn. I discovered the spirituality in being diligent, in creating a home in which faith could find firm footing. I saw the devotion in Hannah’s eyes as she washed her hands or cleaned the dishes, following rituals that our people had kept for so many generations. I saw the glow of purity on Judith’s cheeks when she came home from the mikvah, like a new bride. I thought of all the women of Israel everywhere renewing themselves monthly, offering themselves as pure gifts to their husbands, ever optimistic, ever generous. Women formed the filament of continuity, and my soul spun itself out on that holy thread.

  For the first time since my fits had begun, I could pay attention to the world around me as a member, not just an observer. I saw Hannah move with respect in Judith’s presence. I listened to their careful words, one to another, and rejoiced when they finally talked freely without guarding themselves. Gradually, gradually I saw Hannah relax in the realization that she was still secure, that Judith accepted her and Abraham without question.

  I saw Father step more quickly, his eyes shine more brightly. I noticed for the first time how large his hands were as they reached for Judith inside our home. I saw the color come to her cheeks and her lips part as she looked at him. I was careful to go to bed early on those nights. And if sleep did not come swiftly, I plugged my ears with my fingers and allowed Father and Judith their private world.

  These were the people I belonged to, and we were growing together as a family.

  The only one who did not seem to change with Judith’s coming was Abraham. He began by being silent in her presence and he persisted in that. She began by watching him. Then by doing her weaving near him. Then, finally, by addressing him. More than once I came into the house with dirt under my nails from working the garden to find Judith sitting beside Abraham playing her flute or recounting some event of the day before. Abraham’s eyes wandered, never lighting on her, never acknowledging that her attention was directed at him. More than once Judith blew in from the outdoors like a wild wind and found Abraham propped against the wall, a scroll on the floor before him. She walked over and unrolled the scroll just a bit more, murmuring a word or two about the strength one gained from the holy scriptures.

  Abraham didn’t look at her. He stopped reading. He glanced vaguely at the flowing script, then away, as though the words on the page were meaningless — as though Judith’s murmurs were undifferentiated from the sigh of the wind.

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nbsp; Judith didn’t talk to me of Abraham so I never knew for sure, but I believed she realized he was inside that body, I believed Abraham fooled no one. Judith spoke of him and to him with respect. And if she did it only for my benefit, she never let me know that.

  But Abraham didn’t relent. Sometimes I wondered if he was punishing me, if he refused to let Judith into his life because she had so cleanly come into mine. I tried to ask him once, but I couldn’t say what I needed to say in order to get him to answer honestly. How could I ask Abraham if he missed me, if he was jealous for my care, without opening up the issue we had both tacitly agreed to ignore?

  Still, despite my newfound friendship with Judith, I didn’t give up my visits to the valley with Abraham. I couldn’t. Being with Abraham, even in our now limited way, was my lifeline. We read or talked in the valley. I didn’t climb the sycamores and sing anymore. The flute sang for me without the pain of words. But still I had to be outdoors, in the open. And I had to be alone with Abraham. Even if being alone with Abraham gave me the loneliest moments of my life.

  Things defined themselves in contradictory ways. Judith was ours now — an addition. Yet I, who had not been lonely before, was now terribly lonely in my womanhood. I shared with Judith and Hannah an aspect of femininity that gave dignity to my day. But I was aware of another aspect of femininity that suffered from lack of satisfaction, satisfaction only one man could provide.

  No unwanted offers of marriage came, though I no longer went about the village in a way unseemly to a proper woman. I didn’t know whether that was because Judith fended off matches, as she had promised to do, or whether no offers were extended. I suspected the latter. Certainly I was as beautiful a woman as any in our village, though I was taller than half the men. I felt the eyes of lust on me even as I walked to the mikvah once a month. But it was only lust, not admiration. My behavior was too strange, even if I didn’t wander, even if I kept silent in the house of prayer these days.

  And I did go to the house of prayer. Judith took me with her often. It seemed to please Father. He always said an approving word when we came home. The passing of time smoothed away the worry that had come to Father’s brow after my singing in the house of prayer that one time. The passing of time dulled the edge of that knife I had known since I realized my love for Abraham. I came to believe that the passing of time saw the death of all things, good and bad. I came to think of passions as vanities, illusive and transitory.

  • • •

  Time passed slowly. Toward the end of the bitter winds and cloudy weather the year I was sixteen, Abraham got sick. It was a colder year than most. We had gone out well bundled up, but a storm came and we were soaked by the time we got home. I spread our clothes before the fire and insisted on rubbing Abraham dry myself, though Hannah was mortified at my seeing his nakedness. She forbade me from tending to him, when she had never forbade me from anything before. But I ignored her, just as I ignored Judith.

  I unwrapped Abraham as a woman would unwrap a child. It was easy to think of his body as a child’s, for his limbs were as thin as a boy’s and he had no power to object. Or, at least, he did not exercise that power. I exercised power — power over myself. I would not think of Abraham as a man. I tended to him as a servant does. I did what I had to do. It was my job.

  For I blamed myself for Abraham’s fever. I knew the skies from my many days in the valley. I should have read their message. I should have tasted their moisture. But restlessness seized me. I needed to walk about and suck the clean cold air into my lungs. So I had taken Abraham out without the proper precautions. And now he shivered in my arms and his thin chest radiated unnatural heat.

  The fever lasted three days before it broke. And even after that it kept coming back. Never so severely as at first, but still high, followed by racking chills. Abraham’s skin grew taut, until the ribs of his chest could be counted with the eye. He coughed often, a deep wet cough from the center of his being. His eyes varied from shiny wet to listless dull. Even his hair lost its luster. I stayed at his side and anointed his head and feet with oils I had scented with the sweet calamus.

  I couldn’t tell him the scripture stories, for he knew them all much better than I. So I made up stories to fend off boredom. I took him on boats through crocodile waters. We fed carob pods to hippopotamuses. We threw mimosa flowers into the air and storks caught them and flew away, leaving rainbow streaks in the sky.

  I wouldn’t leave his side.

  The first night Hannah appealed to Father. She kneeled at his feet. “It isn’t right. Please. Tell Miriam she cannot stay by his side through the night.” Her plea shocked us all. Hannah had never dared suggest action to Father before. She had never dared point out right and wrong to the man of the house.

  Judith stood beside Hannah and wrung her hands. I waited to see if she, too, would join forces against me. My fists closed until my nails bit into my palms. I had to stay by Abraham. It was essential. I prepared for battle with a rising sense of desperation.

  But Judith held her tongue. Oh kind Judith, oh true friend. She stayed silent against her better judgment. Her silence was fair and just — whether she knew this or not, I now did. For Hannah’s words had brought me new realization. It was not wrong for me to stay by Abraham’s side through the night. No. I was not tending to Abraham as a servant, after all; I was tending to him as a woman to a man she loved. And it mattered not that the love was unrequited. I had fooled myself these past three years, the years since my last fit — the years since Judith had come to live with us. My passion for Abraham burned as hot as his fever. It had never stopped burning.

  Father remained silent for a long moment.

  Too long. Hannah’s voice rose, betraying her internal battle against breaking into a wail. “If you allow this, it is your doing, not mine.” Fear scrabbled in her throat. “Not Abraham’s.” She doubled over in paroxysms of coughing.

  Hannah still walked the edge, always fearful of falling off. She feared Father casting her out as much as I feared Abraham rebuking me. I took Abraham’s hot hands in mind and held them tight.

  Father reached for Hannah’s hands at the same moment. He pulled her to her feet. “It is my doing.” He turned and looked at me with misery in his eyes. I knew then that he understood. My wonderful, unlikely father. He had always understood, even when he proclaimed he didn’t, even when he wished he didn’t. He comforted Hannah and Judith now, but all he could do for me was let me be.

  Those three nights I crooned to Abraham in his restless sleep. Only when the fever finally passed did I retreat to my own bed mat. But whenever the fever returned, I took up my station by his side.

  Whether the illness broke Abraham’s spirit or the illness brought him to his senses, I didn’t know — but the illness surely changed Abraham. For now he spoke to me and Hannah and Father in front of Judith. And when she played her flute for him, he thanked her.

  In full spring, Abraham’s cough ended and one day he begged me to take him to the valley to see the lilies. Hannah was against the idea, but Judith took my side. Abraham had to have the pleasure of the lilies this year. He deserved it.

  The valley was muddy that day, but the winds were warm already. “It is a perfect day, Abraham,’ I found myself saying over and over, “a perfect day.” I was so happy to be out of the house finally, I could almost have sung my pleasure.

  “Miriam, let’s stop here.”

  “In the middle of the mud?”

  “I’m tired. Do you care if you get muddy?”

  I smiled and lifted Abraham down to the ground. His body was so light, I thought of a child again — light as it had been the very first time I’d lifted him. I marveled at the deception of our bodies.

  I sat beside him, comfortable and easy. Not a worry crossed my mind. The fit took me totally by surprise. As the air around me flashed bright, I thought if only I could grab myself and pin myself down, I could keep it from happening. I screamed silently inside my head. I deafened myself.

>   The next thing I felt was Abraham’s right hand, stroking my hair in jerky moves. My head rested on his left arm and we lay side by side in the mud. I looked at his face. He was looking off in the distance. Then he caught my eye and smiled.

  Abraham had the sweetest smile of anyone I ever knew. His teeth were white, for Hannah rubbed them with salt every day, just as she did her own. There was mud in his beard. I thought of what a struggle it must have been for him in his weakened state to get to me and maneuver me onto his arm like this. I took his right hand and inspected it.

  Abraham laughed. “No teeth marks. Your fourth demon seems milder than the earlier ones. Your mouth didn’t foam.”

  His laugh was open and genuine. His laugh was everything good in the world. And before I knew what I would do, I was kissing his mouth, and he was kissing mine. The fierce purity of our passions knotted us together on the Creator’s earth. And I discovered, oh thanks be to everything holy, that all my doubts and fears were ungrounded, for Abraham had no trouble loving me.

  We went home hours later covered with mud. Hannah and Judith met us and I saw the question in Judith’s eyes. I looked at her and wanted to shout with joy. Instead, I smiled. She hesitated, visibly struggling with her own confusion and fears. Then she smiled back. Hannah saw our exchange. But she didn’t join in the smiling. I kissed her cheek.

  The three of us washed clothes that day, while Abraham slept in the pillows. From our rooftop I imagined I could hear the waterfalls on the northern part of the River Jordan. I showered in those cascades, washed new before the Creator by the rush of water over stone. I stepped into the silent spring air, clean and ready.

  The fever returned that night. This time it came and stayed. Some days it would be mild, only Abraham’s forehead would be warm. But on other days his hands were hot, and on the worst days even his feet were hot. I took over his full care from Hannah then. She didn’t argue with me. For now Judith and Father had aligned themselves with me. Consummation made as valid a marriage by Talmudic Law as any contract or exchange of goods. And Father couldn’t begrudge the fact that Abraham and I had not asked for his blessing — for it was obvious that a situation such as ours rendered foolish that formality.