The Book of Longings(70)

I looked back toward the storeroom and I was filled with dread. I told myself Yaltha was well for her age and free of sickness. I told myself that if Jesus decided to follow John the Immerser and took me with him, he would take her, too; he would not separate us. I told myself the beam of light that connected us could not be broken.





xxiv.


It took several days to reach the village of Aenon, where we traded my brass comb for chickpeas, apricots, flatbread, and wine, restoring our empty pouches. There, we crossed into Peraea and traveled along the left bank of the Jordan. Each morning Jesus woke early and went off a short distance to pray alone, and I would lie in the green smells with day breaking over me and mutter praises to Sophia. Then I would rise, my legs snarled with cramps, my stomach panged with hunger, blisters on my heels—oh, but the world was large and mysterious and I was far from home, journeying with my beloved.

On the sixth day, we came upon John the Immerser on the pebbly banks of the river, not far from the Dead Sea. The multitude was so great, he had climbed onto a crop of stone and was shouting as he preached. Behind him, apart from the crowd, stood a band of men, twelve or fourteen of them, whom I guessed to be his disciples. Two of them seemed oddly familiar to me.

Though Jesus had prepared me for John’s appearance, I was nonetheless startled at the sight. He was barefoot and thin as thread, his black beard bouncing around on his chest and his hair swinging at his shoulders in matted coils. Strangest of all, he wore a camel-hair sackcloth, a thick, wooly garb tied at his waist that barely reached the middle of his thigh. The spectacle made me laugh, not with ridicule but with appreciation for the outlandishness of him, at the realization one could dress like this and still be adulated as one of God’s chosen.

We picked our way along the edge of the assembly, drawing as close to him as we could. It was late in the day and clouds had piled up over the limestone hills, cooling the air. Little fires burned here and there along the shore and we drew near one of them, warming our hands as we listened.

John was urging the throng to turn away from money and greed. “What good will your coins do now? The ax of judgment is ready to strike the root of the tree. The kingdom of God is at hand.”

I watched Jesus. How he feasted on the prophet’s words—his eyes gleaming, furrows of concentration on his face, the quick breath in his chest.

I thought John’s talk about the apocalypse would never end—it unnerved me—but eventually he turned his fiery tongue to Herod Antipas, assailing him for his greed, for turning his back on God’s laws, for decorating his palace in Tiberias with a menagerie of graven images. Nor did he spare the Temple priests, accusing them of growing rich off the animal sacrifices they performed in the Temple.

I knew Jesus would ask me what I thought of this peculiar man. What would I say? He’s eccentric and strange and I’m leery of all his talk about the end-time, but there’s something charismatic and powerful about him, and while he hasn’t captured my imagination, he has captured the people’s.

A man wearing the black-and-white robes of the Sadducees, the elite of Jerusalem, interrupted John’s scorching criticisms, shouting, “Who are you? Some say you are Elijah resurrected—who do you say you are? The priests have sent me here to find out.”

One of John’s disciples, one who seemed familiar to me, shouted back, “Are you a spy?”

I whirled toward Jesus. “That disciple—he’s one of the fishermen from Capernaum who sat with you in the courtyard, the one on whose boat you fished!”

Jesus had recognized him, too. “My friend, Simon.” He scanned the other disciples. “And his brother, Andrew.”

Simon continued to bellow at the Sadducee, demanding to know who he was. “Hypocrite! Leave us and go back to your lucre in Jerusalem!”

“Your friend is easily heated,” I said to Jesus.

He grinned. “I once saw him threaten to toss a man over the side of his boat for accusing his brother of miscounting the fish.”

John raised his hands to quiet the uproar. “You ask who I am—I will tell you who I am. I am a voice crying in the wilderness.”

These words, this proclamation, fairly stunned me. I thought of the words inscribed in my incantation bowl: When I am dust, sing these words over my bones: she was a voice. I closed my eyes and imagined the words rising from their ink beds and escaping over the side of the bowl. The figure I’d drawn of myself at the bottom leapt up and danced along the rim.

Turning, Jesus laid his hand on my shoulder. “What is it, Ana? Why are you crying?”

I reached up and felt the wetness on my lids. “John is a voice,” I managed to say. “What it must be to say such a thing of oneself! I’m trying to imagine it.”



* * *



? ? ?

WHEN JOHN CALLED UPON the multitude to repent and be cleansed of their sins, we streamed into the river with the rest of them. I didn’t go in hungry to turn back to God’s law—I went desiring to cleanse myself of fear and deadness of spirit. I went repenting of my silence and of the meagerness of my hope. I went thinking of the newborn self I’d dreamed of birthing.

I gulped the air as John pushed me gently beneath the water. Coldness closed over me. The silence of water, the weight of darkness, the belly of a whale. I opened my eyes and saw small striations of light on the river bottom and the faint glint of pebbles. A moment only, a heartbeat, and I came up splashing.