The Secret Magdalene: A Novel by Ki Longfellow

Author:Ki Longfellow [Longfellow, Ki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0307346676
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2007-03-27T00:00:00+00:00

The house of Thecla, the woman at the well, and the house of the man who is not her husband, is small and it is humble, and I would take comfort here if I could, but I cannot. My mind will go on and on, speaking not in Aramaic or in Greek, but in Egyptian, and I wish that it would stop no matter what the tongue. I would that I had no thoughts at all for I am numb as stone, as cold as the rain. But this I wish above all: that I did not know that John is taken. Zadok the Righteous One, who walked with Judas of Galilee and who was not taken then, is taken now.

But Simeon has told us of it, and there is no untelling.

John and his followers were sleeping when the soldiers of Herod Antipas appeared, for they had come for John in the darkest part of the night. And there followed such a terrible confusion, such a loudness of lamentation, that none can tell what truly happened, save only to themselves. The tents were torn open. The animals slaughtered or scattered. Dositheus is missing. Helena of Tyre is missing. As is Jair, the second son of Jacob bar Judas. As is Joanna, the wife of Chuza. Even Jacob the Just is lost. I am stunned. Even Old Camel Knees? None can say where these are now. There is no one who knows if they remain well. Or if they do not remain well.

We all of us sit in the house of the woman at the well, huddled here and huddled there, each a miserable lump of sodden clothing, and we listen to the din of the rain on Thecla’s flat roof. The woman moves among us offering food and wine that Menahem eats from the greed of youth and Yeshu eats out of compassion, for no one else takes Thecla’s food. I cannot eat, nor can I drink. I do not know where Thecla’s man is, and I do not care. I do nothing but watch the rain. Moments ago the sky opened as a great mouth would open, and it rains now as if all the rain at once would fall. Water rushes off the limestone of the walls outside Thecla’s door and over the stones of the street before her stoop, forming quick and sudden rills that could grow into rushing rivers that might wash away the whole of Shechem. I too would wash away in the rain.

All this is as the bitterest bile. All this is felt with the deepest sorrow. The heart of the father Jacob bleeds as he sits by the hearth, bent over and rocking, back and forth, his face in his hands. Anyone could know his thoughts. Where is his son? Is Jair locked away with John in the Fortress of Machaerus, a place of hopeless horror in Herod’s Peraea, which is the Land of Moab? Is he dead?

I know his grief as I know my own.

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