Fifth Gospel(32)

Throughout the winter months, fulsome in long shadows and cool winds and resplendent skies, the Essenes came each day and sat with him in the garden. He knew they were gleaning from him the measure and nature of his knowledge and the dimensions of his experience and soon they made Jesus an offer. The knowledge he had gained all these years was similar to that knowledge attained through initiation, and so if he chose to enter the order, he would not need to undergo the trials of the lower grades. They assured him, they could teach him more than he already knew.

‘Do not judge us too hastily, Son of Mary, for what you see around you in Nazareth and other cities is not a reflection of our order’s true nature. It is in the monasteries that you will find our saints, our seers, men who live by the pure rule. Only they can teach you what you concerning the deepest and most profound secrets of our order.’

They left to await his answer.

Over seven nights Jesus pondered his decision.

While reviewing his life since his twelfth year he came to an understanding. The Essenes, among whom he had lived all his life, had separated themselves from the ecstasy of the pagan people and also from the calculated inward brooding of the Hebrew priests. Perhaps in their inner sanctum they held that living knowledge which he was seeking? Perhaps wise Salome had been right: He had been like a mule in search of a scent that had always been behind his ear. There was only one way for him to know and so he made up his mind to say yes. He would follow them to their sanctuary at Engaddi to learn their ways and laws, on the provision that he would be permitted to remain aloof from those same laws, if he so wished.

They agreed.

Jesus was aware that Mariam did not ask him why the quiet ones came and went from her home, or what they asked of him, but he knew the question lived in her soul as she busied herself with everyday matters. These days she was surrounded by people: his aunt Mary and his uncle Cleophas, who had come to help since his father’s death; her daughters and her other sons; and her servant, Salome.

There was rarely a moment of quiet to tell her of his decision.

On the anniversary of his father’s death, when the winds announced the coming of warmer days, there came the opportunity.

She was alone, kneading bread.

He took a long time to come to the point. He sensed in himself a hesitation and awkwardness in her company. When he finally told her that he would soon go, she took a long moment to answer, so that it seemed almost as if she had not heard him at all.

‘Why so soon?’ She blurted out, without looking at him, her attention on her fists pounding the dough, ‘You have barely returned from your wanderings, now you want to go again! What makes you so restless?’

Looking at her, Jesus pondered their peculiar friendship. In many ways they were strangers and yet he had known her near all his life. It was true that her blood did not run in his veins, but there were moments when her heart in its slow measures opened up to his and he felt the warmth of recognition and love. When those moments came, her face, framed by the black mourning mantle, with its nose and the angle of the jaw and the bones of the cheeks, seemed etched in his memory, as if each detail had been carved there with a knife. But there were other times, when along with this feeling of the deeply familial, they held each other aloof, as they were doing now; as if they were seeing each other for the first time.

He could not explain this strangeness to himself, and now when her eyes met his, the expression in them was so close and natural, yet so distant and strained, that it was unbearable to look upon it. Something told him that they were sharing an unspoken act; that they were each seeking to remember something through the other, but whatever it was they sensed sorrow in it and so they swung like a pendulum, from closeness to distance, seeking one another out one moment and pulling away the next, forestalling the moment of recognition, again and again.

He realised he had not answered her question. ‘What makes me restless?’ he looked at her. ‘I haven’t found what I’m looking for.’

‘Do you know what it is?’ she asked.

‘I will know when I find it.’

She looked at this, and returned to her pounding.

‘You need not worry for money,’ he told her, ‘You have all the earnings of my journey and you must use it as you see fit.’

She paused. ‘That’s not my worry, Jesus,’ she said, and took the dough and slammed it on the table to make her point. ‘My worry is not for money, it is for the tongues of the people...they don’t know what to make of you...they say you’re lifted up too high for yourself. Mind what I say…such talk can lead to suffering.’