The Book of Longings(78)

“And Judas? Lavi believes he became one of John’s disciples, too. What do you know of my brother?”

“He joined us late last fall. After John’s arrest, he went to Tiberias in search of news. He promised to come here as soon as he could.”

“Judas is coming?”

“I asked him to meet me here. There are plans I wish to discuss with him . . . about the movement.”

What could he mean? The movement was in disarray. It was over. Jesus was home now. We would go back to the way it had been. I gripped his hand. I had the sense of something awful coalescing around me. “What plans?”

There were squeals at the doorway and three of the children—Judith’s two girls and Berenice’s youngest boy—charged into the workshop in a game of chase. Jesus caught the smallest in his arms and swung him about. When he’d given them each a twirl, he said, “I’ll tell you everything, Ana, but let’s seek a quiet place.”

He led me across the courtyard and through the gate. As we left the village and descended into the valley, I smelled the citrus harvest that signaled the arrival of spring. He began to hum.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“If I tell you, it will not be a surprise.” His eyes were alight. Traces of his playfulness with the children still clung to him.

“As long as you’re not taking me to the fields to consider the lilies, I’ll go willingly.”

His laugh was like a clapper bell, and I felt the months of our separation fall away. When we took the road that led to the eastern gate of Sepphoris, I knew we were going to the cave, but said nothing, wishing him to have his surprise, wanting the lightheartedness to last and last.

We walked through the balsam grove, through the thick, piney smell to the outcrop of rock. My heart did a little stag leap. There it was. It had been ten years.

When we stepped inside the cave, I looked toward the back where I’d once buried thirteen scrolls and my incantation bowl, and even now, they seemed buried to me, languishing in the bottom of my cedar chest. But he was here and I was here—I would lament nothing.

We sat in the opening. I said, “Tell me everything, as you promised.”

His eyes searched mine. “Hear me to the end before you judge.”

“All right, I’ll hear you to the end.” What he would say would change everything—I knew this indelibly.

“After I’d been with John for two months, he came to me one morning and said he believed God had sent me, that I, too, was God’s chosen. Soon after, I began to baptize and preach alongside him. Eventually he moved north to Aenon, where he could slip easily into Decapolis out of Antipas’s reach. But he wanted to reach the whole country and he asked me to remain in the south to preach his message of repentance. A small number of the disciples stayed with me—Simon, Andrew, Philip, Nathanael, and Judas. Multitudes came—you cannot imagine the crowds. People began to say John and I were the two Messiahs.” He drew a deep breath and I felt it blow warm on my face.

I could see where he was leading, and I didn’t know if I wished to follow. He’d brought me here to the place of our beginnings, but only later would I think of the snake biting its tail, how the beginning becomes the end that becomes the beginning.

“The movement spread like floodwaters,” he said. “Now, though, with John in prison, it has been silenced. I cannot let it die.”

“You mean to take it up on your own?” I said. “It will become your movement now?”

“I’ll go forth in my own way. My vision differs from John’s. His mission was to prepare the way for God to throw off Roman rule and establish his government on earth. I hope for this, too, but my mission is to bring God’s kingdom into the hearts of people. The masses came to John, but I will go to them. I’ll not baptize them as he did, but I’ll eat and drink with them. I’ll exalt the lowly and the outcast. I’ll preach God’s nearness. I’ll preach love.”

He’d first told me of his vision of God’s kingdom here in this cave . . . the feast of compassion where everyone was welcome. “God has surely chosen you,” I told him, and I knew it to be true.

He pressed his forehead to mine and left it there. I think of it still, those moments, that leaning upon each other, the tent our lives made together. Then he rose and walked a few paces. I watched him standing there, bladelike, resolute, and felt overcome by it all. There would be no turning back.

He said, “After Salome’s wedding in Cana, I will announce myself at the synagogue in Nazareth, then Judas and I will go to Capernaum. Simon, Andrew, Philip, and Nathanael are waiting for me there, and I know of others who may join us—the sons of Zebedee, a tax collector named Matthew.”

I stood. “I will come with you, too. Where you go, I will go.” I meant those words, but they sounded strangely ill-fated in my ears and I could not account for it.

“You may come, Ana. I have no qualms about women joining us. All are welcome. But there will be difficulties—traveling from village to village with nowhere to lay our heads. We have no patrons or money with which to feed and clothe ourselves. And it will be dangerous. My preaching will set the priests and Pharisees against me. Already there are those who say I’m the new John who’ll rally resistance to Rome. This will certainly reach the ears of Antipas’s spies. He will see me as a messiah who stirs revolution just as he did John.”