The Book of Longings

by Sue Monk Kidd

  “We’ll begin at the Garden of Gethsemane. Perhaps he slept there.”

  “Do you know where this garden is?”

  “It’s at the foot of the Mount of Olives. Last night Tabitha told me of a path that leads there from the village.”

  I must’ve looked racked with worry, for he gave me a searching look. “Are you all right, sister?”

  Sister. The word caused me to think of Judas. I didn’t know how to go on being sister to him. I wanted to answer Lavi that I was well and he shouldn’t worry, but I sensed there was some great portending darkness out there.

  “Brother,” I said, my voice cracking a little.

  I stood and walked to the gate.

  “We will find him,” Lavi said.

  “Yes, we will find him.”

  As we descended the slope, the sun climbed into thick clouds. Everywhere pilgrims were waking beneath the olive trees, the whole hillside seeming to undulate. We walked rapidly, quietly. The hymn I’d written to Sophia began to sing in my ears.

  I was sent out from power . . .

  Be careful. Do not ignore me.

  I am she who exists in all fears and in trembling boldness

  * * *

  • • •

  IN THE GARDEN, I dashed through the trees, calling Jesus’s name. No one answered. He did not step out of the gnarling shadows and open his arms, saying, “Ana, you’ve come back.”

  We wandered through every part of the garden. “He’s not here,” Lavi said.

  I came to a standstill, the frantic feeling still going in my chest. I’d been so sure I’d find him here. All night, as I’d wandered in and out of sleep, my mind had pulsed with images of this garden at the foot of the Kidron.

  Where is he?

  In the distance, I could see the Temple protruding beyond the city wall, casting its white dazzle in the air, and next to it the towers of Antonia, the Roman fortress. Lavi followed my gaze. “We should go and search in the city,” he said.

  I was trying to imagine where in the vast maze of Jerusalem he could be—the Temple courts? the Pool of Bethesda?—when I heard someone moaning. The sound was deep and guttural, coming from the trees behind us. I started toward it, but Lavi stepped in my path. “Let me go and be certain there’s no danger.”

  I waited as he ventured into the grove, disappearing behind an outcrop of rocks. “Ana, come quickly,” he called.

  Judas sat on the ground hunched over his knees, rocking back and forth, making a godforsaken sound. “Judas! My Lord and my God, what has happened?” I knelt and placed my hand on his arm.

  His crying ceased with my touch. He spoke without looking up. “Ana . . . I saw you . . . from a distance. I didn’t mean to draw your attention. . . . Do not look at me . . . I cannot bear it.”

  A sudden coldness formed inside me then. I shot to my feet. “Judas, what did you do?” When he didn’t answer, I shouted, “What did you do?”

  Lavi had kept a tactful distance, but he was beside me now. I didn’t take time to explain what was happening, but stooped once more in front of my brother, fighting to drive the fear and outrage from my throat. “Tell me, Judas. Now.”

  He looked up and I saw it in his eyes. “You handed Jesus over to the Romans, didn’t you?”

  I’d meant to hurl the accusation, wanting it to strike him like a slap, but the words came out in a whisper, floating into the quietness like a moth or a butterfly, its wings a thing of incomprehension. Judas squeezed his hand into a fist and struck himself hard in the chest. There was a leather pouch filled with silver coins opened beside him on the ground; he grabbed it and flung the money into the trees. I watched, breathless, as the coins fell to the ground and lay there glinting like the shed scales of some grotesque creature.

  “I didn’t hand him to the Romans.” He was composed, but compelled now to recite every recrimination against himself. The scorpion-tail scar beneath his eye rippled up and down with his jaw. “Last night, I, his friend and brother, turned him over to the Temple guard, knowing they would hand him to the Romans. I led the guard here where I knew Jesus would be. I kissed his cheek so the soldiers would know who he was.” He pointed to a spot in front of him. “That’s where Jesus stood when I kissed him. Just there.”

  I looked at the place where he’d pointed—brown dirt, tiny white rocks, the imprint of sandals.

  He kept talking in his tortured, calm voice. “I wanted to give the people a reason to revolt. I wanted to help bring God’s kingdom. I thought it was what he wanted, too. I believed if I forced his hand, he would see it was the only way, that he’d resist the soldiers and lead the uprising, and if not, that his death would inspire the people to do so themselves.”

  Violence. Uprising. Death. Ridiculous, meaningless words.

  “But do you know what Jesus said to me when I kissed him? He saw the soldiers coming behind me with their swords drawn and he said, ‘Judas, would you betray me with a kiss?’ Ana, you have to believe me—I didn’t know until that moment what I’d done, how I’d misled myself. I’m sorry.” He dropped his head onto his knees. The moans came again.

  Now he was sorry? I wanted to throw myself at him and claw the skin from his face.

  “Ana, please,” Judas said. “I don’t expect you to understand what I’ve done, but I’m asking you to do what I cannot—forgive me.”

  “Where’s my husband?” I said. “Where did they take him?”

  He closed his eyes. “They took him to Caiaphas’s house. I followed them. At dawn they delivered him to the western palace. It’s where the Roman governor resides when he’s in Jerusalem.”

  The Roman governor, Pilate. The one Lazarus had called brutal. I searched for the sun, hoping to guess the time, but the sky had solidified into a gray murk. “Is Jesus still there?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I couldn’t bear to remain and learn his fate. The last I saw him, he was standing on the porch at the palace before Pilate.”

  “The palace—where is it?”

  “It’s in the upper city, near Mariamme’s Tower.”

  I bolted, Lavi chasing after me.

  “Ana! . . . Ana!” Judas called.

  I didn’t answer.

  iii.

  We entered Jerusalem through the Golden Gate, crossing the Court of the Gentiles and plunging into the tight, twisting streets bloated with Passover pilgrims. I looked west for a glimpse of Mariamme’s Tower. Smoke from the Temple altar hung overhead in a thin, drooping canopy, infused with the revolting smell of burned animal entrails. I could see nothing.

  We threaded our way through the masses in the upper city with excruciating slowness. Move. Move. Move! A desperate, anxious feeling battered against my breast. “There!” I cried. “There’s the tower.” It jutted up from the corner of Herod’s palace into the stench and haze.

  We turned a corner, then another, careening into a host of people lining the street and the rooftops above it. I wondered if we’d blundered upon a stoning. I looked for some poor woman accused of adultery or thievery crouched alone on the street—I knew the terror of it. But the crowd did not seem stirred to anger. They appeared dazed, grieved, possessed by an unnatural quiet. I didn’t know what was happening, nor did I have time to inquire. I pushed through them toward the street, determined to reach the palace and gain news of Jesus.

  As I reached the edge of the crowd, I heard horse hooves, then a bone-scraping noise as if some heavy object was being dragged over the street stones. “Make way!” a voice shouted.

  Glancing about for Lavi, I spotted him some distance behind me. “Ana,” he called. “Ana, stop!” It was not possible to stop—he must know this.

  I stepped into the street. I saw everything then. The Roman centurion on the black horse. The firebird plumes on his helmet, the splash of red they created in the grayness. Four soldiers on foot, the flap of their capes,
the puncturing jabs their spears made overhead as they marched. A man staggered behind them in a filthy, bloodstained tunic, bent beneath the weight of a large, roughly hewn timber. One end of the plank rested on his right shoulder; the other end dragged on the street behind him. I watched for long, stupefied moments as the man labored to hold up the beam.

  Reaching me, Lavi grabbed my arm and swung me toward him, away from the street. “Don’t look,” he said. His eyes were like the spear tips.

  I felt the wind rise, a hollow, whooshing sound. Lavi went on saying words. I no longer heard him. I was remembering the timbers that stood erect on the stark little hill just outside Jerusalem, the hill they called the Place of the Skull. Lavi and I had seen them only yesterday as we’d approached the city after our long trek from Joppa. In the dusk, they’d appeared like a little forest of dead trees amputated at the neck. We knew them to be the upright beams of the crosses on which the Romans crucified their victims, but neither of us had said it.

  The bone scrape on the street intensified. I turned back to the sad procession. The soldiers are taking the man to the Place of the Skull. He’s carrying the crossbeam. I studied him closer. There was a familiarity about him, something about the shape of his shoulders. He lifted his head and his dark hair parted to reveal his face. This man was my husband.

  “Jesus,” I said quietly, speaking to myself, to Lavi, to no one.

  Lavi tugged my arm. “Do not be a witness to this, Ana. Spare yourself.”

  I wrenched free, unable to tear my eyes from Jesus. He wore a cap plaited out of the thorn twigs used to kindle fires. He’d been flogged. His arms and legs were a mass of torn skin and dried blood. A howl formed in my belly and pushed into my mouth. It came without sound, just a violent spasm of pain.

  Jesus stumbled, and though he was at least twenty arm lengths away from me, I reached out to catch him. He fell hard onto one knee and wavered there as a puddle of blood oozed around it. Then he collapsed, the crossbeam thudding onto his back. I screamed, and this time it split the stones.

  As I started toward him, Lavi’s hand clamped my wrist. “You cannot go to him. If you impede these men, they will not hesitate to kill you as well.” I jerked my arm, twisting to free myself.

  The soldiers were shouting at Jesus to get up, prodding him with the shafts of their spears. “Get up, Jew! Get to your feet.” He tried, pushing onto his elbow, then dropped back onto his chest.

  My wrist burned from Lavi’s grip. He would not relent. The centurion climbed down from the black horse and kicked the crossbeam off Jesus’s back. “Leave him be,” he ordered his men. “He can carry it no farther.”

  I hardened my eyes. “Release me now or I shall never forgive you.” Lavi dropped his hand, and I charged into the street, past the soldiers, keeping my eye on the centurion, who paced the edge of the crowd with his back to me.

  I knelt beside Jesus, possessed now by an eerie calm, by a self barely known to me. Everything receded into the distance—the street, the soldiers, the noise, the city walls, the people craning to watch—the whole pageant of horrors abating until there was nothing there but Jesus and me. His eyes were closed. He didn’t move or seem to breathe, and I wondered if he was already dead. He would never know I was here, but I was relieved for him. Crucifixion was barbarous. I rolled him gently onto his side and a breath floated up.

  “Beloved,” I said, bending close.

  He blinked and his gaze found me. “Ana?”

  “I’m here . . . I’ve come back. I’m here.” A drop of blood trickled over his brow, pooling in the corner of his eye. I took the sleeve of my cloak, his cloak, and dabbed it. His eyes lingered on the red thread on my arm, the one that was there at the beginning and would be there at the end.

  “I will not leave you,” I said.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he whispered.

  Far away I heard the centurion command a bystander to step forward and carry the crossbeam. Jesus and I didn’t have long. In these last minutes, what did he most want to hear—that he’d been seen and heard in this world? That he’d accomplished what he’d set out to do? That he’d loved and been loved?

  “Your goodness will not be forgotten,” I told him. “Not a single act of your love will be squandered. You’ve brought God’s kingdom as you hoped—you’ve planted it in our hearts.”

  He smiled, and I saw my face in the dark gold suns of his eyes. “Little Thunder,” he said.

  I cupped my hands about his face. I said, “How I love you.”

  We lingered only a second longer before the centurion returned and jerked me upward. He flung me to the side of the street, where I stumbled into a man who put out his hand to keep me from falling, but I fell nonetheless. As Lavi appeared and helped me up, I looked back at Jesus, who was being roughly hefted to his feet. His eyes lighted on mine before he trudged forward behind the large man chosen to carry the crossbeam.

  As the procession began again, I noticed that the strap on one of my sandals had broken when I fell. I stooped and removed both shoes. I would go to my husband’s execution as he did. Barefoot.

  iv.

  I called out in Aramaic, “I’m here, Beloved. I’m walking behind you.” The centurion twisted in his saddle and looked at me, but said nothing.

  Most of the spectators had hastened ahead of us toward the Gennath Gate that led to Golgotha, too impatient to wait on the man who was taking one slow, agonizing step after another. Glancing behind me, I saw that the few who’d remained to walk with him were women. Where were these disciples of his? The fishermen? The men? Were we women the only ones with hearts large enough to hold such anguish?

  All at once a cluster of women joined me, two on my right, two on my left. One took my hand, squeezing it. I was startled to see she was my mother-in-law. Her face was wet and shattered. She said, “Ana, oh, Ana.” Next to her, Mary, the sister of Lazarus, tilted her head at me and sent me a steadying look.

  At my other side, a woman slid her arm about my waist and gave me a wordless embrace. Salome. I grasped her hand and pulled it to my chest. Beside her was a woman I’d never seen before, with copper hair and flashing eyes, whom I guessed to be the age of my mother when I last saw her.

  We walked pressed together, shoulder to shoulder. As we left the city gate and the hill of Golgotha came into view, Jesus halted, staring up at the little summit. “Beloved, I’m still here,” I said.

  He lurched forward, moving against the swell of wind.

  “My son, I am here also,” cried Mary, her voice shaking, the words shredding apart as they left her lips.

  “And your sister walks with you as well,” Salome said.

  “It is Mary of Bethany. I, too, am here.”

  Then the unknown woman called, “Jesus, it’s Mary of Magdala.”

  As he climbed the slope, toiling to lift his feet, I quickened my pace and drew closer behind him. “The day we gathered our daughter’s bones, the valley was full of wild lilies. Do you remember?” I called out the words loudly enough for him to hear, hoping not to draw the soldiers’ attention. “You told me to consider the lilies, that God takes care of them and will surely, then, care for us. Consider them now, my love. Consider the lilies.” I wished for something beautiful to fill his mind. I wished for him to think of our daughter, our Susanna. He would be with her soon. I wished for him to think of God. Of me. Of lilies.

  When we reached the top of Golgotha, the man who’d carried the crossbeam laid it down beside one of the uprights and Jesus stood gazing down at it, swaying a little. We women were allowed no farther than a small knoll twenty or so paces from him. A putrid smell pervaded the air, and I wondered if it was the accumulation of all the atrocities that had ever transpired here. I pulled my scarf across my nose. My breaths came in small gulps.

  Don’t look away. Terrible things will happen now. Unbearable things. Bear it anyway.

  Beside
me the others moaned and wept, but I didn’t join them. Later, alone, I would wail and fall to the ground and beat the emptiness with my fists. Now, though, I choked back my anguish and fastened my eyes on my husband.

  I will think only of him. I will give him more than my presence; I will give him the full attention of my heart.

  That would be my parting gift to him. I would go with him to the end of his longings.

  I watched the soldiers strip Jesus of his tunic and shove him to the ground, pinning his forearms to the crossbeam with their knees. The executioner probed the underside of Jesus’s wrist, searching for the hollow space between the bones, though I could not understand then why the soldier pushed his fingers into that soft place like a woman who rummages in her bread dough for some small, dropped object. He raised his hammer and drove a nail through that small opening into the wood. The cry that left Jesus sent his mother to her knees, but somehow I went on standing there, muttering “Sophia. Sophia. Sophia,” as the other wrist was probed and the nail driven.

  The crossbeam was lifted up and its notch fitted onto the upright. Jesus writhed a moment and kicked the air as the crossbeam fell into place with a jolt. The soldiers gathered his knees together, bending them slightly, and then with studied precision, arranged his right foot over his left. A single nail was pounded through them both. I don’t remember that he made any sound. I remember the vicious, hollow thud of the hammer and the wail it set off in my head. I closed my eyes, feeling I was abandoning him by retreating into the dark behind my lids. The wail slapped like waves against the inside of my skull. Then came the sound of laughter, far away and strange. I forced my eyes open, allowing in a painful slat of light. A soldier was nailing a pinewood placard above Jesus’s head and finding merriment in it.

  “What does it say?” Mary of Magdala asked.

  “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews,” I read. It was written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Latin lest anyone miss their mockery.