Jesus Christ: A Fictional History. Chapter 11.
They did a forced march north along the road that skirted the Sea of Galilee — Jesus’ disciples stealing uneasy glances at him, the boys, John and the younger James, breaking into a trot from time to time to keep up with the pace of the men, the crowd thinning and falling further and further behind.
“That was incredible,” Simon Peter said at last, breaking the silence.
Jesus glanced at him. “Do you mean that you don’t believe what you saw, or that you wouldn’t have believed it had you not seen it?”
“Oh, I believe it,” Simon Peter said. “I believe it.”
“But you wouldn’t have.”
“No.” He shook his head.
“And yet some will. Some will hear of it and believe, not having seen.”
“How could they?” said the younger James.
“It takes an extra measure of grace.”
“How did you do it in the first place? Did that take an extra measure of grace as well?”
“Yes. Yes. What you have witnessed is the very grace of God pouring itself out upon men.”
James shook his head, and his curly hair bounced around his head. The other disciples pulled their cloaks more tightly about themselves and quickened their pace.
“So where are we going?” a man said, and everyone turned to look.
“Who are you?” said Judas.
The man cleared his throat and waved his hands in embarrass¬ment. “My name is Thaddeus. I guess I, uh, followed you folks through the window at Capernaum.”
“What do you want?”
“To go with you. Where are you going, anyway?”
Jesus waved a hand. “Gennesaret,” he said. “Magdala. Cana. Jotapata.” He started walking again, and the others followed.
Thaddeus laughed, still sounding self-conscious. “Sounds like you’re making the grand tour.”
“I am. Do you still want to come?”
He shrugged. “Sure.”
“What do you mean, sure?” Judas asked. “You don’t have anything more important to do than to go traipsing all over the countryside?”
“Evidently not.” He smiled weakly, bobbing his head vaguely in all directions as if thereby to render himself less objectionable.
“We’re delighted to have you, Thaddeus,” Jesus said, and he bumped Judas’s hip with his own to silence him.
“What about me?” Levi said in his high-pitched voice. “May I come, too?”
Everyone looked at him. Judas said, “Don’t you have any taxes to extort?”
“I never . . .”
“Don’t tell me you never. Just look at you! Who in Palestine has the opportunity to get fat? We’re an occupied country. Only those who curry favor with the Romans are able to prosper.”
Levi looked down at his vast expanse of stomach, bouncing a little with every step. “Perhaps a little traipsing would do me good,” he said.
Jesus’ hand closed on his shoulder, and Levi looked at him anxiously. “I think a long hike will do you all kinds of good,” Jesus said.
By degrees Levi’s face relaxed into a smile of relief.
Simon Peter had never imagined that, when he left his home in Bethsaida that Sabbath morning, months would pass before he saw it again. Walking south along the west coast of the Sea of Galilee, they went first to Gennesaret, where they stayed several nights with a woman Jesus seemed to know from somewhere, a wealthy widow named Susanna. Jesus taught at the synagogue and was well-received.
“You ought not confine your preaching to the synagogue, Rabbi,” Susanna told him in her customarily sharp, clipped tones. “Not many women attend. Oh, I know they can attend; I know even that women are encouraged, sometimes, to attend; but the fact remains that not many of them do. You want to know where you ought to be preaching? The village well, early in the morning. You want your message to reach women and children — and you should — then that’s what you need to do.”
Hers were the sharp opinions of an older woman, and Jesus smiled at her affectionately. “You know, Susanna, I don’t know what I’d do, sometimes, without you to tell me.”
“Humph,” she said, not quite certain whether or not she was being made the butt of a joke. Jesus laughed. Her mouth twitched, and she smiled at him.
He did preach one morning at the well at Gennesaret, attracting a crowd of several dozen. His words aroused interest, but no more: He refrained from healing any paralytics and from speaking to demoniacs.
Gradually, his disciples began to relax into their role as the pupils of a celebrated teacher.
When they left Gennesaret, they continued south along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. They approached Magdala early one morning, walking along the shore where fishermen were returning from their night on the lake. Their womenfolk were there, too, cleaning fish and salting them, and their sons were mending nets. Jesus called out to people and greeted them. Some looked at him askance, without speaking; others responded with a wave of the hand and a friendly word or two. As the morning grew late, Jesus led his disciples up the hill toward the village of Magdala.
“Do you know somebody here as well?” Simon Peter asked Jesus, who shook his head.
“Not a soul.”
“Susanna gave us provisions enough for the noon meal. After that we’re on our own.”
“Not completely,” Jesus said. He nodded to the women gathered at the market stalls along the street.
“What do you mean, not completely?” Simon Peter said.
Jesus was looking about him, evidently enjoying the soft breeze and the sunshine. “Peter, Peter,” he said, pausing with his hands clasped behind him to take in the scent of baking bread coming from a nearby shop. “Have you learned nothing from me yet?”
John and his brother James were walking together at the rear of the disciples. John elbowed James and nodded. “Have you been watching her? She was following us from boat to boat down by the lake. Don’t look!”
James jerked his eyes forward. Trying not to move his mouth, he said, “How can I tell you if I noticed her if you won’t let me look?”
“I mean look without appearing to,” John said. “Out of the corner of your eye.”
James tried it. “Where?”
“By the corner stall. She stopped when you looked at her. There! She’s moving again.”
“I see her.”
She was walking with her face turned toward them, one hand extended fearfully in front of her to ward off obstacles she might otherwise run into. “What’s that on her face?” James said.
“Dirt, I think.” Her face was streaked with it. Her eyes, impossi¬bly wide, seemed rimmed in red. “Notice who she’s focused on.”
“Do you think she’s a danger to him? Should we warn him?” Jesus had stopped at the well. He sat, hands braced on his thighs, and smiled cheerfully around at those crossing the square. Judas and Simon Peter drew the water, each drinking some and offering it to the others, then setting the bucket down at Jesus’ feet. Judas plopped the ladle into it so that Jesus could help himself.
The woman scurried forward, her head ducked as if to avoid being struck by the rays of the sun, the hood of her cloak pulled halfway over her face.
“Stop her,” James cried, and ran forward, followed by John in close pursuit.
The woman was too quick for them. She dropped to her knees in the dirt by Jesus. Her hand closed on the ladle he was reaching for. She scooped it full of water and, looking up at him, handed him the ladle as James skidded to a halt behind her, throwing up a cloud of dust, and John ran into him.
Jesus, in the process of taking the ladle, looked past the woman at them. “Thirsty?” he said. He extended the ladle.
James, his face reddening, shook his head.
“No,” John said. “We just . . . we . . .”
Jesus smiled down at the woman. “Thank you for the drink,” he said.
She ducked her head, nearly drawing it down into her shoulders, but she gave him a tentative smile.
“What is your name?” he asked her.
James had edged around so that he could get a better look at her. When he saw her face, he was startled to see that she was young beneath the dirt, perhaps no older than he himself.
“Mary,” the woman said.
“My mother’s name is Mary.”
Her smile was shy.
“Is there anything I can do for you, Mary?” Jesus asked her.
She shook her head with quick, birdlike movements; then, abruptly, a sob broke from her, and she fell forward over Jesus feet, her hair falling about them, her shoulders shaking in her grief.
James started forward, but Jesus checked him with a look and a shake of his head. He laid a hand on her back and let her cry a little. When she looked up at him, her tears had cut pale tracks through the grime on her face.
A number of women had drifted over from the stalls in the marketplace. “She ain’t right, mister,” said one of them. “Never has been.”
A merchant, who had come over himself to see what was attracting all his customers, said, “She has a devil, sir. More than one of them, if you ask me.”
“I didn’t ask you,” Jesus said.
“Your feet,” Mary said. “So very dusty.”
“I’ve come a long way.”
“Allow me. Please.” And she ladled some of the water over his feet, washing away the worst of the dust.
“Thank you very much,” Jesus said, gravely.
“Wait. They’re wet.” Casting about her for a cloth and not finding one, she bent forward again and began wiping his feet on her long, dark hair. A woman in the crowd clucked disapprovingly.
“She’s just smearing dirt back on his feet again,” James said under his breath to John, and John poked him.
“But who is she?” James said.
“You heard her. Her name is Mary.”
“But that doesn’t . . .” John poked him again, and James fell silent. Jesus was helping Mary to her feet.
“We’re about to have lunch,” he said. “I’d like for you to join us.”
She nodded, almost imperceptibly, her eyes locked on Jesus’ face.
In Tiberius, the capital city Herod Antipas had built for himself, they spent two days and two nights at the home of Joanna and Chuza, the steward of Herod himself. Herod was absent, and Chuza was with them almost constantly, providing for meals and mended clothes, listening to Jesus and providing for his every need.
“How do you know these people?” Simon Peter said to Jesus.
“What people? Joanna and Chuza? I just met them at the same time you did.”
“Then why —”
“Why did they take us in? Remember what I said about the pearl of great price: A man will sell all that he has to possess it.”
“But —” Simon Peter tapered off. Jesus was a man of uncommon charisma, he thought, and that was that.
The fortress at Machaerus, on the Dead Sea, had been destroyed by Rome in subjugating the Jews and was later rebuilt by Herod the Great. Herod Antipas, his son, had a large villa there that sat atop a barren mountain on the eastern edge of the Dead Sea. Though Herod had always liked the desert oasis, Herodias hated it. Machaerus was far too isolated. On their first return to it in many months, Herod went nightly to his dungeons to visit John. More and more it seemed to Herod that John’s voice was the voice of a prophet.
“They say you are Elijah,” Herod said to John on one such visit.
He didn’t look like the greatest of the prophets: John’s hair and beard were matted from his captivity, and his clothing reeked of human waste. Always thin, he had become emaciated, gaunt. He was kept in a cell the size of a tomb, only just large enough to lie down in, and was permitted to leave it only when Herod wanted to talk. On such occasions, the stone was rolled back from John’s cell and John led by torchlight down a subterranean passage far from the reach of either breeze or sun.
“I am the son of Zachariah and Elizabeth,” he said. “There are those living who watched me grow up.”
“‘Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord,’” Herod said, quoting Malachi. “And you tell us you herald the coming of the Messiah. Wouldn’t that make you Elijah?”
Herod sat flanked by his guards, and John stood before him, his feet planted wide. “Not in the sense you mean.”
“Either you are Elijah or you are not,” Herod said.
“Or I am Elijah, and I am not. Reincarnation is a concept of Eastern mysticism, not of Malachi.”
“Ah,” Herod said. He leaned forward, and his eyes seemed to flicker in the torch-light. “I thought as much.”
John moved his head, surprised as always at Herod’s apparent fascination. He had little faith that it would do him any good.
“Elijah was the greatest of the prophets, was he not?” Herod asked. “Or perhaps that’s a matter for debate. At least we can say that he was the first of the great prophets.”
John said nothing.
“When Malachi says, ‘Elijah will return,’ perhaps he means that prophecy will return to God’s people. There has been no prophet in Palestine for four hundred years. Until you.”
John’s face remained impassive.
“Well? What do you say to that?”
“So I am a prophet. Do you mean to release me then?”
Herod shrugged, his face contorting in irritation. “I mean, what do you think of my theory?”
“Because if you’re not going to release me, then this prophet is prepared to return to his cell.”
A scowl tightened Herod’s mouth.
“And when you return to your villa —” John paused.
“Yes?” Herod said. “Yes?”
“You might consider the consequences of holding a prophet of the Lord God prisoner in your dungeons.” His voice crackled for a moment with its old authority.
Herod’s eyes widened.
“Especially a prophet foretold of old.”
“Are you threatening me?” But his voice quavered.
John only smiled, thinly, the fire fading from his gaze. He turned and stood facing the door until a guard moved to open it.
After Tiberius, Jesus and his disciples left the shore of the Sea of Galilee and struck off into the interior, stopping for a time at Cana, where James’s parents, Alpheus and Mary, put them up, and for a time in Jotapata. They returned to Bethsaida by a circuitous route, skirting the northwest border of Galilee and stopping in Baca, in Meron, in Gischala and Thella. They were on the road some miles north of Bethsaida when Andrew dropped back and gripped Jesus’ arm. “Listen,” he said. “Do you hear it?”
It was a bell, ringing monotonously somewhere up ahead.
“It’s getting closer.”
“A leper,” Philip said. “Unclean.”
Jesus turned toward him with a pained expression. “Which of the men made in God’s image would you call unclean?” he said.
Philip retreated to walk again beside Nathaniel. As the leper came into view, ringing his bell and wearing the required placard, Philip muttered, “Well, that man,” in a voice too low for anyone but Nathaniel to hear. The leper’s threadbare robe was torn in places, showing the tunic beneath, and he was dragging one sandal, its strap broken and hanging, the foot bleeding, leaving dark smears on the surface of the dirt road.
When the leper saw Jesus and his disciples coming toward him, he left the road and stopped in the brush to one side of it, waiting for them to pass. The hand that held the bell was missing two fingers; the places where they had been were unhealed sores. The pigment had come out of his skin in splotches, making his face, with its single, yellowed tooth, a mask of horror.
Simon Peter, Philip, and the others crowded forward, quickening their pace even as Jesus hung back.
The leper lifted his bell again and let it fall so that the clapper hit the side with a muffled ding. “Unclean,” the leper said in a hoarse voice.
Jesus approached him, stopping when he was only a pace away. The man regarded him with his one good eye, the other being stained a milky white. “Do not endanger yourself. There is no point.”
Jesus inclined his head. “No point in compassion?” he said. “No point in simple human contact?”
The leper shook his head. “Not for me,” he said. “Never again for me.”
Jesus held out a hand to him, palm up, and the leper drew back reflexively.
“It’s all right,” Jesus said, leaving his hand extended. “It’s all right.”
The leper met his eyes and, after a moment, reached out slowly to clasp Jesus’ hand in his own three-fingered claw. Jesus smiled encouragement, and the leper returned his smile uncertainly, exposing the yellowed tooth.
“What is your name, sir?” Jesus asked him.
“Simeon.”
“The Lord bless you, Simeon. May the Lord bless you and keep you; may the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you; may the Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and grant you peace.”
“Thank you, sir.” There were tears on his face.
“You’re welcome, Simeon.” Jesus smiled, then turned back toward the road.
“Oh, Simeon,” he said, turning back. “Don’t mention this to anyone.”
Simeon shook his head. “I wouldn’t do that, sir. They would shun you, too.”
“God’s speed to you, Simeon.” And he left him there beside the road.