The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel

by Wangerin Jr. , Walter

  Mary dropped her gaze and stared into the palms of her hands, so pale that she could see the blue veins there.

  “Why,” she whispered softly, nervously, “why did you heal me? I didn’t ask, but you healed me.”

  Jesus neither shifted his gaze nor said a thing.

  This frightened Mary. Three weeks ago it would also have silenced her, but she was growing more independent. And this moment of unexpected intimacy granted her a certain boldness, so she spoke:

  “The Gerasenes told me what they do to people possessed by evil spirits,” she said. “They tie them with iron. Rabboni, they tie them with fetters and chains. But I heard that man, that demoniac, wailing among the tombs, and I knew exactly how he felt. He despised himself! On account of the devils living inside him, the man hated everyone and despised himself in the hatred. It’s a horrible loneliness! I know. I know! And among all people on earth, this hatred hates you, Jesus, the most. But you healed that man. Why did you heal him?”

  Still, Jesus continued to stare into the distances. There was the white worm of a scar on his cheek. The rest of his face was darkened by the sun, but the new skin of that scar had remained white.

  Mary said, “Did you heal him because you were sorry for him?”

  Then she said, “Did you heal him because it’s what you’re supposed to do?”

  Poor Mary! Bold or not, her heart was hammering to be asking such questions. “Did you cast the evil spirits out of that man because you loved him?” she pleaded. “Did you love him, Rabboni? Can it be that you loved him?”

  Softly, Jesus spoke. “All that I do,” he said, “all these miracles, healings, and wonders—they are signs pointing to the one glorious deed which the Father has sent me into the world to accomplish. Yes, there is love, Mary. God loves the world.”

  Mary whispered, “I wanted to kill you.”

  Jesus neither turned nor looked at her.

  Mary was shaking from her shoulders to her knees. Her fingers felt like ice.

  “The moment I saw you standing at the end of the street, staring at me, I felt such a strong urge to murder you. And I loved the feeling. And I hated myself because of it. Ah, Rabboni, I was filled with seven faces of hatred and seven voices of sorrow. When my own mother died, I laughed! I despised the laughter, but I laughed! When my father died, I ran out of the city of Magdala shrieking with laughter. I ran all the way to Tiberias. I made the Romans laugh with me. I rollicked and carried on and played the fool until we were spending both night and day in a mindless laughter. And then I saw you at the end of a street, your eyes like level suns, and you were not laughing. You were a cold, unwinking judge, making the devils in me tremble like the strings of a lute. You made me sick to my stomach. I ran at you! I was very fast. My fingers were knives. Beardless face! White throat! I was going to kill you by cutting your throat. I flew at you, my knives flashing—”

  Mary had not planned this tirade. It was horrible! She had never told the story before, to herself or to anyone else—never!

  “I am the one,” she whispered. “I am the one who put that scar on your cheek. No one but me. I feel so sad for it. But in that moment it seemed to me that a fire came out of your mouth and burned the devils in me until they ran away. The hatreds, the laughter and murder and loathings, they all went out of me, and I grew small and I was so weak that I couldn’t walk. But you touched my face, and I rose up and followed you, and you did not deny me, and that has been my comfort ever since. It is enough. Truly, it is enough.

  “But sometimes I wonder why you did it. Is there a reason why you healed that woman in Tiberias? Did you feel sorry for her? Or is it just what you are supposed to do? Or…did you perhaps love her, Rabboni?”

  There passed a long moment of silence while Mary held her breath, purely ignorant of how the master might answer her questions.

  Finally Jesus said, “Would you hand me the flask of cream? I’d like to wash the raisin cakes down with a swallow of cream.”

  But Mary was immobile. She could not move. He had asked for the cream. But such shame was running through her limbs that they were paralyzed. Oh, Mary, why can’t you hold your tongue?

  Jesus reached for the flask himself. Mary’s head was bowed down, her shoulders rounded; she was circling into herself.

  Jesus said, “Why did you make these cakes with honey? Are you celebrating something?”

  But I am a part of his family, Mary thought. He said I was among his sisters and brothers. He said it, then he looked at me.

  Jesus touched her elbow. “Do you want some cream?” he said.

  She shook her head.

  “The honey is expensive,” he said. “And I know you, Mary from Magdala: you are a frugal soul. Why did you bring honey all the way up to the top of the hill for me?”

  O Lord! O my God—the bad news! Mary had forgotten the real cause of her coming here. Forgive me! Forgive me!

  But she could not raise her face to look at him. How unworthy she was to be the messenger of such news as she had now to offer.

  “John,” she said softly, nearly broken by humility and the weight of her words. “His disciples came to Nazareth this morning and told us: John the Baptizer is dead.”

  That was the news. It had been spoken. But Jesus said nothing.

  Mary filled the void with more talk.

  “Herod Antipas gave a banquet,” she said. “His wife’s daughter danced. She danced so well, he vowed a vow. He vowed to give her whatever she wanted. She went to her mother. Her mother said, ‘Ask for the head of John on a plate.’ Her mother hated John for blaming their marriage as sinful.”

  All of Mary’s strong emotions now rose up and flowed from her eyes. She couldn’t help it. She began to weep.

  “The girl,” she said, “did what her mother told her. She asked for the head of John on a plate. Herod Antipas was sorry. But he had made his vow in public. He couldn’t deny it. So he sent a soldier of the guard into the prisons, and the soldier beheaded him—”

  “Ahhh!” Jesus released so sharp a cry that Mary looked up. He had wrapped his arms around his stomach and was rocking slowly backward and forward.

  Mary’s tears poured down like a rain. “The soldier of the guard came back to the banquet with John’s head on a plate,” she whispered. “He gave it to Herod. Herod gave it to the girl. The girl gave it to her mother.”

  “O my cousin! My cousin!” Jesus wailed. His chest was heaving. He had thrown back his head. Mary could see the white rim of his bottom teeth. “O John! O my dear Baptizer!”

  Jesus crouched down and rolled sideways until his head lay on Mary’s lap. “Woman,” he murmured, “would you hold me a while?”

  Mary raised her hands above the face of her master, not touching him but spreading her palms as if in blessing. Then she whispered, “Yes, I will.”

  She lowered her hands and began to stroke his black hair from the temple to the shoulder.

  “Rabboni, Rabboni,” she whispered over and over until the day had descended into night and it seemed to her that her master was sleeping.

  And still she whispered, “Rabboni.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Simon Peter

  I

  IDIDN’T KNOW. How could I know? The days were bright and free and full of promise, and we were a glad company—and successful besides. Jesus sent the twelve of us in pairs through villages preaching and healing, and we grew so excited, because of his trust in us and because of the authority he gave us. We returned with joy crying, Lord! clapping our hands: Lord, in your name even the demons obey us!

  We called him “Lord.”

  And then he, the Lord, blew off the top of my head with an observation ten times mightier than ours. We had said “demons.” But he said “Satan.” He said, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.

  What power! What a man! Strong, firm, smart, and—strong. In those days I was giddy with goodness and happiness. I had no idea what was going to happen.

  He told us. He said
it. He repeated it several times over, filling in the details. This, he said, is what they will do to me. And there, he said, locating it. And for three days. He said it would last three days. Even so, I didn’t comprehend it. Like stone I stayed ignorant. Maybe it was willfulness.

  Maybe I didn’t want to know.

  II

  OVERNIGHT, IT SEEMED, Jesus changed. He used to laugh and relax. He had an easy, ambling stride, you know. Interested in nearly anything. Would listen as much as talk. More so. After supper we could make a great cackling of our talk, and he’d lean back and listen, flicking his eyes here and there. Interested.

  But when the twelve of us returned from our missionary journeys, we saw how tight his face had become. He had a restless urge to move. He wanted to get away.

  There were so many people coming and going that we couldn’t even find time to eat. Jesus said that we looked tired after our tour of preaching. That was the reason he gave.

  “Let’s sail to some private place apart,” he said. “You need the rest.”

  But there was an urgency in him that hadn’t been there before. He didn’t lean back and listen any more. He was thinking things. He began to draw his lips into a whistle, thinking of things.

  So we boarded our boats, and I sailed mine into the lead, and we began to travel east along the north shore of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus didn’t sleep. For the first hour he sat with his head bowed. Then I looked shoreward and saw a great herd of people pacing us on land, and other people running from the villages to join them. I yanked a halyard and made some comment, and he looked up, and then that was all he looked at: those locusts, those vultures who would devour him with never a thought for his well-being.

  In another hour Jesus pointed to an inlet that opened backward to a green field. “Put in there,” he said.

  In fact, that’s where the herds were gathering. They were pouring down into that field and pressing close to the water.

  “There?” I said. “You think that’s a private place?” People lined the beach like locusts crowding an oak tree so thick they’ll break it.

  “There,” he said, and I didn’t argue. I shut my mouth and made for land. I heard him mutter, “God have mercy,” and I knew his mood. “God have mercy on them,” he said. “They are like sheep without a shepherd.”

  All this was different, you see. Jesus wasn’t cheerful anymore. Even when he started to teach all those people he had the knot of frowning in his brow. Intense.

  I remember that he begged them always to pray and never to lose heart. He told them stories: There was a judge who neither feared God nor cared for people. And there was a widow who kept coming to that judge, saying, “Vindicate me against my enemy.” He refused. The judge refused until he grew so irritated by her constant coming that he said, “I will vindicate her, or the woman will wear me out!” And then the Lord made sure the people understood his stories: Even so will God vindicate those who cry to him day and night!

  He told them a story about people who trust in themselves and despise others: Two men went into the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself: “God, I thank thee that I am not like other people, extortioners, unjust, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I get.” But the tax collector, standing in the back, would not even lift his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, “God, be merciful to me a sinner.”

  And all those sheep-people were watching him and nodding, but the Lord frowned and made sure of the meaning: I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, but those who humble themselves will be exalted.

  On and on all afternoon the Lord taught like that. Sober. Pleading—almost as if his eyes were arms reaching into the crowds and grabbing people one by one.

  And then it was growing late, but Jesus didn’t look like he was going to quit. You see?—he was forgetting the plain, daily things. So I had to go and remind him.

  I crouched down with my back to the crowds and whispered, “Master, do you know how late it is? The people are hungry. Soon they’ll be cold and tired, too. Send them off to the villages round about for food and lodging.”

  Common sense. Basic needs at the end of the day.

  But the Lord turned that intense stare at me and said, “No, they don’t have to leave.”

  Suppertime, eventide, and he said that they didn’t have to leave. And then he said to me, “You feed them.”

  Me? I should feed them?

  Jesus didn’t blink. Neither was he laughing. I made a joke of it. I said, “I guess you want me to break into my great treasury and buy two hundred days’ worth of food—”

  “Simon,” he said. He interrupted me without the ghost of a smile. “How much food do we have?”

  How was I to know? And what difference could it make?

  But my dutiful brother pushed his face between us and said, “There’s a boy here with five barley loaves and two fishes.”

  Jesus, still staring at me as if I were the one responsible, said, “Ask the people to sit on the grass, and bring the food to me.”

  So I told them to sit, and they sat. Sheep. A great, bleating flock of sheep all up and down the green field. Five thousand men, plus the women, plus the children!

  But Jesus stood alone at the edge of the lake. He took the loaves and the fishes in his hands, and looking up to heaven he blessed them and broke the loaves and gave them to us, his disciples, to distribute among the multitudes. We did. And I’ll tell you what: we came back to the Lord for more, and he gave it to us, and we handed out bread and fish until every man and every woman and every child was satisfied. By nightfall I was grinning. I had a terrible tickling in my stomach, and I would have laughed out loud if everyone else had not been so solemn.

  He had been right! I had been wrong. Against all common sense and reason and facts and reality, the man could fill whole populations with food and still have enough left over for his nearest and dearest friends.

  Bursting with pride I went among the people again and began to gather the uneaten fragments. We disciples took up twelve whole baskets!

  So I walked where Jesus stood on the shore, ready to admit my huge stupidity and pound him on the back for this miracle too. But I didn’t. Even in the twilight I could see that there was no triumph in his face, no gladness or calmness either. His lips pursed: he was thinking, thinking. But he saw me coming.

  “Simon,” he said, “tell all the disciples to board their boats and start back the way we came. I will dismiss these people myself.” For just a moment his expression softened and he put his hand against my cheek. “I want to go up in the mountain to pray,” he said. “I want to go alone.”

  When the Lord touches my cheek like that—pinches it, really—he befuddles me. I huff and blush and cannot talk.

  So we left him ashore and pulled out toward dark water.

  Mary Magdalene always sits dead center in my boat, underfoot when I raise or reef the sail. And she sits in the bottom, not on a thwart. I’ve asked her a thousand times to stow herself where she belongs, but she doesn’t answer me and she doesn’t move. Sickly child! No meat on her bones. How do you argue with silence and pitiful eyes? I give up. But I step on her sometimes and I wonder whether it doesn’t hurt her. She doesn’t say.

  That night I had to gather the sail in altogether. The wind was contrary, and the waves were swelling so that we couldn’t tack. We had to row, and the rowing itself was a backbreaker—the more so since Mary was crouched at our ankles, as miserable as a mouse, uncomplaining.

  What took two hours during the day now ate up most of the night. Our muscles were cracking. The boat heaved high, causing the oar blades to skip from the water: useless! It’ll snap the spine, that sudden flip of the oar.

  Then Andrew cried out above the wind, “Look!”

  And I looked off starboard and let out a yell. There
was something on the black water, something coming—a human form, an apparition. The roots of my hair tightened.

  But it spoke.

  The ghostly figure said, “No, don’t be afraid! It’s me!”

  It was Jesus! Walking toward us on the rolling seas!

  Now I did burst out laughing. Great whoops of laughter—not only that the Lord had come after all, but that he had come in so grand a manner.

  “O Lord, is that you?” I cried. “Can I do that, too? Jesus, let me come to you on the water!”

  He said, “Come.”

  So I stood up big as a tree. I stepped my left foot on the gunwale and swung my right foot over and put it on the water, and the water took my weight. It was a long, slick surface—yes! But steady enough for both my feet.

  I was doing it! Everything in me wanted to throw back my head and bellow with laughter. But then Jesus rose ten feet on a huge swell, and I—the sea, the water and my body—sank into a deep trough, and my heart flew out of my mouth, and I felt my feet pop below the surface, and I shrieked, “Lord, save me!”

  Jesus was right there. He put out his hand and grabbed my arm and said, “O Simon, such little faith! Why do you doubt?”

  After he helped me into the boat and got in himself and moved to the stern, the wind ceased completely, and I sat shivering all over my flesh, trembling in my bones. I was cold to the marrow. I could not keep still. Then I became aware of a small hand patting my knee, and I looked down.

  It was Mary’s hand. The mouse who crouched beneath my thwart was peering up at me from her wet, white, anxious face and patting my knee.

  III

  WHEN WE LANDED SOUTH of Capernaum, Jesus sent Judas and Matthew directly to the city market for two weeks’ provisions.

  We’re not going to stop in the villages this time.

  I’m not going to preach.

  We will not be begging bread, neither as itinerants nor as guests.