Twenty-Two

I had returned to the group only a short time, when John came running up. He had been somewhere, but gave no indication where. But he himself had barely returned to the group when Judith--that servant of Mary's--also came up, running hard, and panting, "Master! Master!" Jesus came over, and she gasped, "Martha told me to tell you to co--come at once! She said that raising Lazarus was noth--nothing in comparison with this!"

I was expecting something or other. If Mary was silent, then she could not hide what she felt from Martha, who, I knew, had no love for me, any more than I had for her or her precious brother, who now was "resurrected" in anticipation of what Jesus thought would be his own resurrection. Well, I could remove her from their contamination. We could go away together, and forget about Jesus and all he stood for.

Jesus put his hands on her shoulders as she tried desperately to breathe, and said in a calm voice, "I understand what is the matter. Be not distressed. You may tell them that my time has arrived, and that I will come to dinner there in two days, and that you should invite some friends of Lazarus, as you had planned. And you must assure them that there is no cause for concern."

"I do not understand. Invite? Planned?"

"They will know."

A shock went through me. We were to attend a dinner with Lazarus, Martha, and Mary? How could I avoid it? I said, without much hope, "Are we all to accompany you, Master?" "The Twelve, I should think," said Jesus. They could not suffer an invasion of all of us." He looked over at Chusa's Joanna as he said this, and she reddened and fled when he caught her eye. So, as I thought, she had been the one who had told Lazarus who Mary was, and it was doubtless Lazarus's breakdown at this--his suicide? But he was too much of a coward for that--that precipitated his sickness and death. Evidently, his "return to life" was a charade that he deeply regretted, but what was done was done. He probably thought it a fate worse than death. It would be interesting to see how Jesus straightened this out. After all, he had been responsible for it, and must have planned some kind of solution.

Jesus said to Judith, "Tell them to be ready in two days. It is little enough time for them to prepare, but if I know Martha, it will suffice; and I think it not prudent to delay longer. Now go when you have caught your breath; they will be wanting news as soon as possible."

Judith did not wait, but ran off before she had fully recovered. David--the fool!--looked after her with a mixture of desire and contempt, and then looked, his eyes narrowed, over at me. Why me? Did he suspect, or even see, something? That could be dangerous in the extreme, especially if that demon from the dark pit of hell found out about it.

And Ezra and Thomas met, and had a long, but obviously private, conversation. It had something to do with me, it seemed, since they looked surreptitiously at me, and Thomas reacted with extreme shock at one point. Something drastic was obviously being talked about, and what else could it be than what had happened between Mary and me? Perhaps Ezra, when he lost me, suspected I had gone to Mary and seen our little adventure. That filled me with chagrin, that he would see me at least apparently raping someone, while at the same time, I triumphed at the fact that I could do this, while Ezra would not have a chance with someone like her. It would be like being raped by an ebony statue.

At any rate, shortly afterward, Jesus and we Twelve set off for Bethany, and for some reason did not collect a crowd as they traveled. Perhaps the people were busying themselves with preparing for the Passover, which was to take place in six days. Or perhaps it was simply that when Jesus did not want to be accompanied, no one somehow noticed him and his followers.

As we arrived, a number of people from Jerusalem were already there, friends of Lazarus, talking with him and pointedly avoiding mention of the event that had happened, but simply making small talk, which Lazarus took almost no part in, merely giving one-word answers when he had to speak. He was obviously in the depths of despair--a fact which was as manifest and as ignored by everyone as his death and return to life--and was finding it a supreme effort behave with even minimal politeness. Fortunately, the people surrounding him were of the upper class in Jerusalem, and, given Lazarus' personality, he could not insult them by ignoring them or appearing too morose.

Martha, who was in the room, was looking with concern and pride at his effort. Mary, as usual, was not visible. I was wondering how she was taking all this.

In any case, as soon as everyone saw us Twelve and Jesus, the atmosphere grew, if possible, even more tense. I assumed that the guests from Jerusalem had been selected on the basis that they would not immediately report Jesus, because no one suddenly left.

Lazarus greeted Jesus politely--what else could he do?--but since Jesus was not high society, he looked at him with a loathing that made his position on resurrection perfectly clear, and nodded perfunctorily to us twelve Emissaries (to whom he had always paid scant attention in any case), and then turned back to one of his banking companions from the city, evidently resolved to act as if Jesus were not there, and letting Martha, who was responsible for this debacle, make the best of it she could. Martha's attitude indicated that what she wanted was for the Emissaries to be present for some reason, and she evidently had also invited those from Jerusalem in order to prevent Lazarus from rushing away as he might well have done in other circumstances.

Fortunately, neither Jesus nor--what was more perilous--any of us Emissaries started any controversial conversation; and the others put a face on things whenever it was necessary for any in the two groups to mingle, which they did as little and as briefly as possible. There was a certain bemusement on both sides that the two groups would have been invited together; both thought it was a social blunder on Mary's part, who presumably had wanted to unite those who had come to the tomb with Lazarus' savior, not realizing that what had happened at the tomb was as forbidden as mentioning the name of the One who had effected the deed.

Mary had come in, rather shyly, around this time, and helped Martha to place the guests on the dining-couches. I tried to see if I could have a word with her, but she ignored me completely--I presume because she did not wish to give either of us away, and was not sure she could control herself in my presence. She and Martha placed those from Jerusalem at all the high places around the outside of the U of the table (the serving was done from inside)--to the left and right of Lazarus, who would, of course, as the master of the house, be at the center of the curve. Jesus and we Twelve were seated in the lowest places at the table, but given what Jesus had taught about such things, we were not in much of a position to complain.

At least Jesus was lying at the arm of the table in front of Lazarus (though it meant that he had to tip his head to look at him); it would have been a distinct insult if Lazarus had not been facing in his direction. I had a decent enough view of everyone important.

Martha and Judith with the servants served the dinner; and again Mary absented herself. Matthew had also tried to catch her eye earlier, but she had been very preoccupied with something-or-other--she was almost as lost in thought as she had been in the woods--and left as soon as she decently could.

Martha had just taken in some dish to serve, when Mary, with a look of anguish and sorrow, rushed into the room, looked about as if distraught, cried, "Master! Forgive me!" and rushed to his feet, which, like everyone's, were of course hanging over the outside edge of the dining-couch on which he was lying. She broke the neck of a bottle of nard and poured it over them, kneeling and wiping them with her hair. At first, she made weeping noises, and then the tears became all too real. Everyone was paralyzed with shock. This was a reenactment, for some reason, of what we all knew had happened at the house of Simon the Pharisee in Magdala. What was the point of it?

The scent of the perfume filled the whole room, as it must have done in Magdala, and there was total, stunned silence, except for her weeping--as, one heard, there had been the first time. Interestingly, Mary seemed to be play-acting at the beginning, and then genuinely remorseful. Did she regret her complicity in what happened, and wish Jesus to take her back?

What a catastrophe!

So I said, to defuse the situation, "Why this waste? Why was this perfume not sold? It would have brought three hundred denarii, and we could have given the money to the poor."

Jesus looked over at me, at first almost vindictively, swiftly overcome. Then he said--I must say--in a gentle voice, "Let her alone. Why are you pestering her? She has done a me a great kindness." He looked down at her. "She is preparing me for my burial. You always have the poor with you; you will not always have me." Then he looked around the room. "Amen I tell you, whenever the good news about me is reported in the whole world, what she has done this day will be told in memory of her."

As he was speaking, there was a sudden stirring. Mary looked up, and everyone's eyes focused on Lazarus, his face ashen, rising from the table and rushing out of the room. Mary leaped up and ran after him. In the room, people began getting up and there was general consternation.

There was a movement to try to follow him, and then people began to think better of it, and a few blocked the door. And then, from the other room, suddenly there were women's screams and sounds of fighting, which went on for a considerable time. It sounded as if Judith had attacked Mary, of all things, and then Martha had joined in.

After what seemed an hour, but was probably only a few minutes, Lazarus' voice rose above the tumult. "Judith! Judith! Judith! Stop! Stop!"

Immediately, everything ceased. There was a dead silence both in the room where the fighting had been going on and in the dining room.

Lazarus' voice came again, too soft for words to be audible, and then there was the sound of Judith sobbing and muffled words, as if she were speaking into cloth.

After another, rather briefer silence, Lazarus spoke again and she answered, more distinctly now but still too faint to for anyone to understand what was being said. Lazarus spoke again, rather more at length, and then she replied, with something that sounded like, "Dear dear Lazarus, I did not dare!"

Judith? "Dear Lazarus?" Good heavens! Judith was in love with Lazarus! Of all people! But the astounding, dumbfounding thing was that Lazarus seemed to reciprocate it, from the little we could hear. It certainly sounded like it. Incredible! Had Mary been planning such a confrontation to bring Lazarus to his senses? Had she known Judith's attachment, and relied on it? If so, it was superbly done! My Mary!

My Mary?

But had she not in effect just said that she wished Jesus's forgiveness for her sin--which had to be our, shall I say, liaion? She wanted him back.

And since he did not denounce her, then he still wanted her!

But then what of me? I was certainly not going to get a jar of nard and wash Jesus's feet at our next dinner, even if--and I was sure he would--he were to forgive me. I did not want to be forgiven! I wanted Mary! And I was sure--as certain as that I was breathing--that she still wanted me. In fact, I saw her glance my way before she ran out to the melee in the other room, and her look was as if to say, "What have I done?" She still wants me!

But Jesus will kill us, if I take her away again!

But what does it matter? I must have her, and I know that if I try to have her, she will yield. We will have to escape Jesus somehow.

But of course, all this would be solved for me, would it not? If I continued with what I had planned, then as Jesus went to the garden of Gethsemani after the Passover meal, the Romans and the High Priest's retinue would meet him--with me--and he would be taken away from causing trouble for us. I could then come back and claim Mary at my leisure, and she would yield to me. True, she would resist at first, but I could persuade her that I admired Jesus fully as much as she did, and I was only doing it to prevent the whole Judean people from being crushed by the Romans, which would have happened if Jesus had seized control of the Kingship. No doubt he was planning some spectacular miracle to change the people's minds in his direction away from following the Judean authorities; they were not disposed in that direction in any case.

And the authorities knew it, which was why they had accepted my proposal. Their idea was without the slightest doubt to capture him at night, stage some kind of a trial in which he could be accused of blasphemy, and then batter him into a pulp and put him on display as weak and disgraced. The people would turn against him in an instant. No, they were not stupid when their own interest was at stake, and all they needed was for me to show where he was at night.

No, all would soon be well.

Unless, of course, he actually was what he claimed to be. But even there, it did not matter, because he had predicted that in fact he would be handed over to them and that they would crucify him--which meant handing him over to Rome.

So all I had to do was wait and not reveal myself. If he knew, as he might, then he also knew that there was a possibility that I might not actually do it, and being the self-important fool that he was, he would leave room for me to change heart and return to him. So I would appear to do so for the next four days--and who knows? I might actually decide, even at the last minute, not to go through with it, and see how he would handle himself if the authorities could not get to him under cover of night. It might be very instructive.

And he would forgive me, when it was all over. Of course he would.

But then, where would I be with Mary? I could only be safe with her when he was out of the way.

Or could I?

Well, I need not decide until the last moment. Perhaps then he would do something that would tip the scales one way or the other.

--Interesting. If he was what he said he was, I would be responsible for killing God Almighty--in human form, of course, but he was "one and the same thing" as the Father. Not even Satan could boast of that!

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