Song of the Magdalene

by Donna Jo Napoli

  I thought immediately of the oily waters of the Dead Sea, the waters that reeked of mineral decay, the waters whose buoyancy I had struggled against these months when I called upon the sea to serve as my mikvah. They might have healing powers, and they surely would cool her down. I reached for the child. “Let’s soak her in the sea.”

  The woman looked at me. “That helps only temporarily. Within the hour, the fever returns.” She spoke Hebrew in an accent unfamiliar to me. It lured me.

  I dropped my outstretched arms, unwilling to be lured. “What causes it?”

  “I don’t know.” The mother spoke in a whisper, as though the child wouldn’t hear her that way, even though the child lay in her arms, within breath’s reach. “I came for help from the people at Qumran. I want to take her to Galilee. But no one will accompany me. And I don’t have the strength to carry her all that way myself.”

  Galilee. Magdala was in Galilee. “Why would you go to Galilee?”

  The woman looked at me as though my question was silly. She shook her head and her loose black hair brushed the child’s legs. “So she can be cured.”

  I crossed my arms at the chest and hugged myself. A woman who sought cures could not seduce me so easily. I would not yield so easily, no. “Surely there are healers closer by. Jerusalem is much closer than Galilee.”

  “I have been to healer’s. So many Roman healers.”

  I bent over her, wondering if I had heard right. “Roman?”

  “I am not a Jew like you.” She fingered the edge of my veil and looked me up and down. “I am Roman.”

  A pagan. I had suspected she was pagan, yet to hear her say it gave a sting. I straightened up. In Magdala we kept our distance from the pagan women. They did not even come to the same well. Some said they did not drink water at all, only wine.

  “But do not be deceived. I would not limit myself to Roman healers.” The woman’s voice was heavy with disappointment. “I have been to Jewish healers, Greek and Hellene healers. But no one can help. And many are unkind to a woman alone, even with a child.” She looked at me meaningfully. “You must know how it is. A Jewish woman knows as well as a Roman woman.” Her eyes insisted.

  Were my eyes responding to that insistence against my will? I shut them.

  She sighed loudly. “So I must get to Galilee. The great healer is there.”

  My eyes flew open. I shook my head in confusion. “I used to live in a town of Galilee. I knew of no great healer.”

  “He’s only started healing in the last few months. But he can heal everyone. He’s cured blindness, lameness, paralysis, catalepsy, hemorrhage, wounds. All those things have to be harder to cure than my daughter’s fever, don’t you agree?” The woman clutched my skirt with her hand, just like Abraham used to clutch my shift. “They say he has raised the dead. Now that has to be much harder than curing my baby’s fever, don’t you agree?”

  I hardly heard her last words. I kept repeating the first few in my head. Paralysis. This healer cured paralysis? I felt suddenly scared for the first time in a very long while. My trembling fingers played on my wide belt where I had tucked the polished stone. Everything I owned was on my body. I was intact. Yet I felt as though I’d lost something, left something behind. “What is this healer’s name?”

  “Your people call him Joshua, son of Miriam.”

  The son of Miriam. Isaac would have been called the son of Miriam, too. I stroked my dry throat. My skin jangled at the touch of my own hand. I no longer resisted. “Do you sing often?”

  The woman looked down at her daughter, who had fallen asleep in her arms. She whispered, “Singing helps relieve the pain.”

  I leaned over the child and watched her long lashes flutter on her flushed cheeks. “Yes,” I said softly. Our whispers mingled with the hot breath of the sleeping child. “But why would a Roman woman seek help from the Essenes at Qumran? Surely your own people will take you to Galilee.”

  “No Roman would help me.”

  A woman whose own people wouldn’t help her. I sat down beside her. “Why not?”

  “They hate Joshua.”

  “They hate a healer?”

  “He’s not just a healer. The people claim he is the son of God.”

  “All Jews are the children of the Creator. So he is Jewish, then?”

  “Yes. But he isn’t meek like the other Jews. Some say he’s dangerous.”

  “Why?”

  “The Jews flock to him. They believe him. They are beginning to say he is their real king, not Caesar.”

  “King of the Jews,” I said slowly. “So men go to him.”

  “Multitudes. And some travel with him.”

  “And he refuses no one?”

  “He takes even idiots, the despised of society.”

  My heart skipped a beat. The fierce shouts of the prophet Amos were heard across the centuries, condemning those who would ignore the poor and needy. The cool, soothing words of Hillel rang out, affirming what we had to do. And now these new voices joined in. First Jochanan the Baptist and, finally, this Joshua. Would that he were a worthy heir to the tradition. “If he’s way up in Galilee, how do you know so much about him?”

  “He’s been to Jerusalem. He’s been everywhere. Everyone knows about him. He preaches that all are welcome and I know that all come.”

  All? “Do women come?”

  “Not many, I don’t think. And I’ve heard that the men who are closest to him spurn the women. But Joshua himself helps women as much as he helps men. He’ll help me if I can only get to him.” Her voice grew stronger. “I will get to him. I will find someone of strong arms and a willing heart.”

  I stood with legs that would collapse if they had their own way. I forced them to be solid. My whole life had prepared me to make this journey, carrying this child. My whole life. I lifted the sleeping girl child from the pagan woman’s arms with care and gratitude.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Lucia walked with more stamina than I had expected. Her need to save her daughter strengthened her legs and lungs. When I would ask her if she wanted a rest, she’d shake her head in silence. I admired her determination, for a rest would have sorely tested the patience of my soul.

  We followed the riverbed again, this time going north, of course. The great river connected the Dead Sea to the Sea of Galilee. It was the shortest, truest path. I had traveled much of this route only little more than a half year before, but in the opposite direction. I looked at everything, expecting to recognize landmarks here and there. Instead, the world stood new and fresh before me. I went as swiftly as my companions could bear, for there was no reason to delay now. The final words of the final canticle infused my spirit:

  Make haste, my beloved, and be thou like to a roe or to a young hart upon the mountains of spices.

  The child Martina remained patient in my arms, though I knew the trip was tedious at best and painful at worst. She didn’t complain and groans escaped her rarely. Lucia sang to her almost constantly, even when the child slept. I knew she sang to comfort herself. I recognized the habit.

  We rested finally and Lucia bathed Martina at the river’s edge. Then she produced from within her cloak small, hardened, sweet rolls rich with raisins. I washed my hands and offered the Creator my thanks and ate, while Martina nestled in her mother’s lap. The child’s eyes were wide and curious now. Despite the heat in her cheeks, she looked around, restless. Yet I knew she’d have no ability to run and play. My heart went out to a child that needed to play but could only watch.

  I opened my cloth bag and took out the flute which had lain dormant too long. I played the tune that Lucia had sung.

  Martina smiled the purity of childhood. I would have done anything to keep that smile on her face.

  Lucia sang now, and my flute sent out strings that wove a pattern through her mysterious Latin words. When she stopped, I went to put the flute away in the bag, for my hands needed to be free to carry the child.

  “May I, Miriam?” Lucia put out
her hand. “I play a little myself.”

  I gave Lucia the flute and she yielded Martina into my arms. We got up and walked. Lucia put her lips to the flute and played. And how she played. She was more expert than even Judith. The melodies she knew were strange and lovely to my ear.

  “Did you like that?” Lucia’s voice betrayed her eagerness to hear my response.

  I was surprised and oddly excited. What did it matter to Lucia whether or not her music touched my heart when her whole day was focused on the ailing state of Martina? Yet it did.

  And I was glad that it did. I, too, wanted to give pleasure with my music. I answered honestly, anxious to see her reaction. “My feet would have danced gleefully to that music when I was younger.”

  Lucia let out her breath in relief. “That’s good.”

  “Lucia, tell me . . .” I stopped.

  She put her hand on mine. “What, Maria?”

  Her sudden Romanization of my name was unexpected, yet not unpleasant. “You are plagued with troubles. I am no stranger to misery.” I swallowed the hot desert air. “And still we sing.”

  Lucia blew gently on Martina’s forehead and tucked the child’s curls behind her ears. “My people have a saying. ‘Without its stones, a stream would lose its song.’ ”

  And yes. Finally things were making sense. I wished I could tell Abraham. I was happy, so very happy. I found my mouth opening and I was singing, from the Song of Songs, of course, singing songs of passionate love to the fragile child in my arms.

  Behold, thou art fair, my love;

  behold, thou art fair;

  thou hast dove’s eyes within thy locks:

  thy hair is as a flock of goats,

  that appear from Mount Gilead.

  Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep

  that are even shorn,

  which came up from the washing;

  whereof every one bears twins, and none is

  barren among them.

  Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet

  and thy speech is comely . . .

  I sang and held Martina close. Her slender fingers moved to my voice.

  Lucia spoke Hebrew well, this I knew by now. She marveled at the words of the canticles. She listened closely and by nightfall, she was humming along. By midway through the second day, she was singing, as well.

  Before long we joined other travelers heading north. At first I thought they must be seeking baptism at Jochanan’s hands. But when we rested, I learned of Jochanan’s fate. The man who had called for all to return to a gentler age had been killed. His head had been served on a platter to Salome, the stepdaughter of Herod Antipas. I wanted to scream for that silent head. I wanted to bleed on Salome’s hands and leave an uncleanliness that could never be washed away, a mark that would tell the world forever who she truly was. Herod Antipas had worried that Jochanan the Baptist would incite the people to insurrection. The Romans feared revolt from every corner. Poor innocent, angry Jochanan. Though I myself was not drawn to follow Jochanan, though I myself had no desire to follow any man, I knew that Jochanan had traveled a personal road, not a political one. Poor raving Baptist. The man whose only true goal was a revolution of the soul had been slaughtered like an animal by another animal. Jochanan had become terefah, unclean flesh. No one would be nourished by his death. Senseless slaughter.

  I learned from my fellow travelers that before Jochanan was arrested and thrown in the prison at Machaerus near the Dead Sea so close to where I had been living all these months, he baptized the great healer and they worked side by side at the river. These travelers here headed now for Galilee, just like Lucia and Martina and me. Joshua was on everyone’s lips.

  My mind raced through these facts. If the Romans had arrested Jochanan, Jochanan who didn’t cure anyone, who no one called king, then surely they would soon arrest the man called Joshua. We had to place Martina in Joshua’s hands while he still lived.

  I walked faster, as fast as I could without wearing out Lucia. We passed every group of travelers we met. Our songs sped our steps. And each step increased my urgency. I had to hear this Joshua talk. I had to know him. And if he was truly a healer, then, oh yes, I would help him. I looked down at Martina, who slept now in my arms, and I knew that I had finally found my calling. If Joshua was who people claimed he was, he needed me.

  As we drew closer to Galilee, we learned that Joshua was in the town of Capernaum. Capernaum was an easy hour’s walk beyond Magdala. We would pass directly by my home town.

  The thought came to me slowly, putting itself forward as a vague desire at first, then finally rising from its shyness to take clean shape: I would stop in Magdala. If I saw no one familiar, I would go to my home and kiss Father and Judith and Hannah one last time. If I saw people I feared would recognize me, I’d turn away quickly and go only to the graves under the terebinth and the sycamore. Whatever happened, I would visit those three graves.

  I led Lucia to the outskirts of town and handed her Martina. “I have an errand. Go now to the house of prayer in Magdala. Anyone you meet can point out the way. You can rest there. If I can, I will meet you at sunset here on the road. But if I’m not back by sunset, you have nothing to fear. You can walk to Capernaum by yourself. You can carry Martina there, I promise you. The road is short and level.”

  Lucia wanted to protest. I could see the fear in her eyes. She was tired and weak. Yet she kept herself from asking me to stay with her. Perhaps she responded to the need in my eyes. Judith used to be able to read my eyes — maybe Lucia had the same gift. I wished I could take her as far as the house of prayer, but I didn’t want her with me if I was recognized. I wouldn’t expose her and Martina to that.

  I took the flute from my bag, the flute we had shared on this journey. “When Martina is well again, teach her.” I slipped the flute into Lucia’s bag. Then I kissed her, I kissed my Roman friend, my singing companion. I kissed her daughter.

  I stayed on the main road, but within fifteen minutes I realized I had to take to the alleys. There were crowds in Magdala today. I’d never seen such crowds. Surely among all those people someone would recognize me, even behind my veil, even in my now tattered dress. I skirted along the alleys, in and out, my heart pressing against my ribs. I passed the little street where Jacob kept his carpenter’s shop. Dread squeezed my throat and for a moment I lost my breath. Grief and rage fought within me. If I stood at that corner long enough, perhaps he would pass. Perhaps I could look upon his face — maybe even into his eyes. And what did I hope to see there? Jacob’s mind was no better than wood.

  I kept on moving. I came up to our house from the rear. I went around the outside, looking carefully every which way for following eyes. Then I knocked on the door. When no one answered, I went in.

  The house was empty. I walked from object to object, running my hands over the familiar woods and clays. I buried my face in Judith’s pillow and breathed deep of her sweet odors. I kissed the handles on the water jar that Hannah’s fingers gripped every day. I spilled tears on the tassels of Father’s tallith, folded neatly on the shelf. Me, the one who went dry-eyed for two years, who had finally cried in the wilderness on the way to see Jochanan the Baptist, I was now a virtual fountain of tears. But these were tears of joy. Father and Judith and Hannah were well. This home spoke of their health and wholeness. Had they gotten the message I sent via Uncle? Did they think I was traveling with my husband? Did they envision me in Jerusalem, eating heartily, perhaps heavy with child? I would leave them with that vision.

  I went out the door quickly and ran. I sat on the earth halfway between the terebinth and the sycamore. I sang. Not the canticles this time. I sang songs I had made up in my months in the caves. Songs of morning and noon and night. Songs of juniper trees and mimosa and dates. Songs of the hawk and the sparrow, of the ox and the camel. Songs of women working together. Songs of men and women loving one another. Songs of mother and child. I breathed in the penetrating scent of the terebinth, until it perfumed my very soul
. I picked a ripe sycamore fig and ate it reverently, remembering the kindness of the whore the night Isaac died.

  Abraham’s cart was full of dry sycamore leaves, three autumns’ worth. I dug a small hole in the center of the leaves. Then I took the stone from my belt — that stone that had been the color of pomegranate when I first found it, but was all milk and moonlight now. I remembered patting the pomegranate juice from Abraham’s chin when we were children. I remembered the stain on my fingers, on his fingers. I buried my polished stone in the cart. I needed no solid token of the loves behind me. My past was with me, in me. My past would carry me forward.

  I walked back toward Lucia. I hurried, for there was nothing to keep me here any longer. And there was no time to lose in finding Joshua. I thought I’d circle around the well and then take the alleys. That would be shortest, quickest. But when I came out upon the well, I realized my mistake. There were many women at the well. They talked heatedly. I learned why there were so many crowds in the streets of Magdala that day: Joshua had come to town. Joshua was here in Magdala at this very moment. He was outside the house of prayer. Perhaps his hand was already cooling the fever in Martina’s forehead. Oh, yes. It was. I knew it was! I felt the flush race to my cheeks.

  I turned to go back into the bushes and make a wider arc around them. But I turned too late.

  “Who is that?”

  “It’s Miriam! Look!”

  “Why has she returned?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “She slept with the idiot!”

  “I heard that, too.”

  “The whore!”

  Something hit me in the shoulder hard and I stumbled to my knees. That one pause was enough to give them time to surround me.

  “Get away from here.”

  “You bring only trouble!”

  “I’m looking for the healer,” I said. I stood up.

  “The healer? What illness do you have?”