Fifth Gospel(40)
He stood before the river’s rim. The crowds were near gone. The sun, in its lowering path watched over the pastured lands, and the haze of afternoon began to fall over the trees. He removed his only garment and moved towards the water in his loincloth. The river was chilly. He stepped into its coolness and let it gather around his knees, then his thighs, until he was waist deep. It made him shiver. He felt alive.
He paused before John the Baptist, and trembling, asked, ‘You say you can recognise the Messiah?’
The other man answered, ‘I have put my soul at the disposal of an angel, and he has not opened my eyes yet…so He is not yet come.’
Jacob took this in. He was not the awaited one. He was surprised to find relief flooding his heart! He crossed his hands over his chest as he had seen others do and the Baptiser immersed him into the water. He held his breath. An instant stretched to eternity, an eternity fashioned an instant. Full of fear, fear and panic and fear again he held to his heart, for harder tests had he withstood. Finally, he let go his dread of death and allowed the water to drown him.
He was dying and in this dying something began to prise open the eyes of his soul, to reveal not the form-dwindling water, but something else – the weaving of his life in picture forms. Everything lay around him: his accomplishments and his many imperfections; his desires, his passions and his weaknesses; all of his vices and his transgressions; all the defilement of this life’s journey and the dust of his misplaced hopes and dreams.
All the content of his life was added to the river’s many voices and by way of the stream’s sacrifice, these remnants floated away from him, leaving him clean. Now, a vision of profound beauty was granted him, so great and so mighty as to cause him to feel the very ground of his being shaken with love.
He saw, in his mind’s eye, a man carrying a lamb on his shoulder.
Of a sudden he was lifted out of the water and he gasped for breath. He felt life enter into the dead parts of his soul. He heard a voice,
‘Arise, you have seen the good shepherd!’
Jacob knew that his wound was healed and so his pain was eased. He had found harmony in the stream of his life, for in the river’s stream he had found his salvation.
In this peace there was a species of loneliness. The world had grown alien to him and he would never again return to his former life. He would not remain a member of his family but would always be like a man in the wilderness, a solitary soul.
Such was the price of a new life, and a new name.
19
PETITION
Herod Antipas travelled the road from Callirrhoe like a child in search of a new experience. He was on his way to meet the man hailed as a prophet, a new Elijah. This was John bar Zacharias, whom they called the Baptiser.
Yesterday, a courier had left his camp with a message for John – Herod Antipas would give him an audience. This morning had come the ascetic’s answer: the baptiser would not see him at Ainon but at the place of baptism, some distance from it. So it was to this place that the small caravan now travelled.
Accompanying Herod on this journey was his soon-to-be bride, Herodias, and her daughter, Salome. Looking to Herodias now, sitting as she was beside him in their carriage, he felt a thrill at the base of his spine – she mesmerised him. She was a well of dark water, a soulless abyss and a bottomless chasm. She was spellbinding.
Some time ago while in Jerusalem visiting his half brother Philip, Herod had taken a fancy to Herodias, then Philip’s wife. Herodias was not only his sister-in-law but also consanguineously, his niece, since she was the daughter of another half brother, Aristobulus. Upon seeing her Herod had desired her despite her being an ugly thing to behold, and this had quite amused him, it amused him still! He looked at her now. Her hair was black and thinly woven and her forehead was carved low over mud coloured eyes that were rounded and strangely askew. She seemed to be all head, all shoulders, all chest; as if the upper part of her were put together with the lower from mismatched portions. And yet…and yet…what eyes! The first time he had seen those eyes they had seized him with their claws, and had thrust into his mind the content of an awesome knowledge, an elemental and infernal vigour, and an appetite that worked like a lightning strike into his apathetic limbs.
Thrilled and exhilarated, he convinced Herodias to divorce his brother, but his vacant mind had not foreseen the chagrin of his Arab wife, Phasaelis. In truth before he could do away with her, the woman had escaped from his clutches and made for the bosom of her angry father, who now threatened war. To add to this unfortunate turn of events, he found the council of priests at Jerusalem obdurate on the subject of his intended divorce and marriage. How could they ratify a marriage of uncle and niece?