Fourteen

It was Thomas the Twin. He came over and sat down with them--with Matthew, actually; but he was one of those who did not seem to resent Mary as much as some others. Mary had once asked Matthew where his brother was, and was told that there had been a very tragic event, and--for the sake of someone other than Thomas who was involved, he would prefer to say no more. Mary of course replied, "Then why does everyone call him 'the Twin' if he does not want to be reminded of it?" and Matthew answered that he himself preferred the nickname, because he did not want his brother's memory to be lost--but that it did create a certain tension in certain quarters occasionally. Mary could see that it would be unproductive to pursue the matter, and dropped the subject.

"We were speaking of my theory," Matthew answered Thomas, "that the Master seems rather to choose those who are not necessarily best suited for the task, so that it will be clear that God is the one acting in us."

"Ah yes, that," said Thomas. "And you think, if I heard your last remark, that this explains the different yields of the crops sown on good ground. Well--it is possible, I suppose."

"My idea was, actually," returned Matthew, "that he does not much care what we do or what is accomplished, as that we do what we can."

"Are you saying that he is more interested in the fact that we act on what he says," said Mary, "than the results we achieve?"

"But in that case," said Thomas, "what is one to make of 'by their fruits you will know them'?"

"It does not necessarily contradict it," said Matthew. "You remember, he said that one does not gather figs from thorns or grapes from thistles. I think he was trying to say there that the type of behavior is a sign of the type of person we are."

"Ah," answered Thomas. "But you are saying that the degree of success--how many clusters of grapes there are on the vine, if you will--is not relevant. You may have a point."

"But it does seem odd," persisted Mary, "that if he assigns a task, he does not care how well it is performed. Why then assign it at all?"

Thomas looked over at her. "There is that, of course."

"Possibly," said Matthew, after a pause, "because it is good for us to be performing it."

"To be sure, he has not assigned anything particularly arduous to any of us as yet," said Thomas. "--if you discount Judas's task of keeping us solvent. And as to that, I suspect that, if we were to run short of funds, the Master would look into some rich person's eyes, and we would suddenly find ourselves with a surfeit."

Mary thought of the gold that she had sent Judith to give to--to Judas, was it not? She smiled, and then her smile changed into amusement at thinking that one of the motives the Master might have had in driving the devils out of her was to replenish the group's treasury. But it could have been a consideration, after all; the Master's motivations seemed enormously complex. In her own case, he was apparently also acting for little Martha and Lazarus.

"--find it more entertaining than anything else to be trotting about to various towns," Thomas was saying, "and announcing that this new Kingdom about which we know next to nothing is about to appear on the scene--not to mention curing the sick with a touch, as the Master does himself. I once," he added, looking at Mary, "even drove away a devil in his name. And you are saying," he turned back to Matthew, "that I can do this because I am incompetent at it. It is not exactly flattering."

"How else explain it all?" said Matthew. "Certainly, what we have done on our journeys is beyond our powers. Beyond any human power."

"Well, I hope he makes himself clearer soon," said Thomas. "I am becoming a bit tired of not understanding, and simply following blindly."

"It may be, that this is just what he requires of us." said Mary. "He certainly says a great deal about believing and trusting; almost all his cures, he says, are because the person believed. Mine was. I remember having to convince myself that he could do it, even though I knew that it was impossible."

"But then why does he say things he obviously wants us to understand?" said Thomas. "I am sorry, but I am not like Philip, and I cannot be like Philip. Whenever there is some story that seems outrageous, Philip says, 'Well, he said it, and if he said it, it must be true.' And when we say, 'Yes, but how is it true? What does he mean by it?' Philip simply answers, 'What he said, I suppose.'"

"Philip can be maddening in that way," agreed Matthew.

"Well, it does solve the problem," laughed Mary, "does it not?"

"Not for me, I fear," said Thomas, and Matthew nodded agreement.

"Does he always speak in stories like this?" asked Mary.

"Oh, no," said Matthew. "In fact, he only began speaking this way not too long before you joined us. He had spoken quite openly beforehand--"

"But it was worse, believe me," said Thomas. Half of the crowds went away shaking their heads in bewilderment, and the other half were infuriated."

"And so he started the stories," went on Matthew, "because, he told us, in this way if people did not want to understand, they would now have something of an excuse. He quoted Isaiah, I believe, to that general effect."

Mary thought of Joanna, missing the point that applied to her in the wayward son story.

"--certainly consistent," Matthew was saying. "He will go to the greatest lengths not to condemn anyone--though he never tries to explain away their sins. That is another paradox; he wants us to be holy, but he does not seem to care what we do. You will notice that in the story he told on the morning after you arrived, the son did not have to do anything to make amends for his wasting his father's money."

"I noticed that," said Thomas. "I wondered if he had left it out because of the business of the other brother, or whether he meant it."

"I certainly hope he meant it," answered Matthew. "I have no idea what I could do to make amends for what I was forgiven for."

"Nor I, for that matter," said Thomas, and they all lapsed into silence, Mary musing on her own sins and what could possibly be done to make up for them.

"May we join you?" said Nathanael, who came over with Andrew the giant, and, assuming an affirmative answer, sat down, as did Andrew. Nathanael, whose name caused some confusion to Mary at the beginning, since he was also called by his patronymic Bartholomew, was a tall and rather lanky individual--and a rather languid one, Mary had observed. He had rather sharp features, which contrasted with his almost lethargic demeanor.

"Matthew says that the Master wants us to be holy, but does not care about our sins." said Thomas.

"Actually, that is one of the strangest things about him, I think," said Mary, too interested in the topic to wait for Nathanael to reply. "Who would have put up with me but he? Most people I know can forgive another person, but only if they can find something to excuse what he did--in fact, we can only forgive ourselves if we can excuse our acts. In my case, I could find nothing whatever to excuse myself, once--once the mask had fallen from the sham I was living. But he had said that if I wished, I would be forgiven. Simply if I wished. Of course, before that night, I had not thought that anything I did required forgiveness, I even thought of it as virtue, because--well, for a stupid reason. But then, when I could see what I had done--and he seemed to know what I had done far better even than I--I saw that nothing could excuse it. But he forgave it without looking for an excuse. It was as if he said, 'Well, you did it, and you now wish you had not done it, and that is enough.'"

"--Provided, of course, that you do not wish to continue doing it," said Matthew.

"Of course," she said. "I wonder," she mused, "what would happen if one did something again after having been forgiven." The specter of Judas simply would not leave her, and it terrified her that she might be plunged once again into the torment she had been freed from.

"As to that," said Thomas, "you must not think that it has not happened. Some of us have been with the Master two years and more now. It is just what you would expect. Do you remember, Matthew, when John provoked the Rock almost to a fight twice in the same day, and the Rock forgave him both times, and then went up to the Master, feeling so very virtuous, and asked him, 'How many times should I forgive a person who has wronged me? As many as seven times?' obviously thinking he would hear the reply, 'Oh, once is quite sufficient'--and you should have seen his face when the Master answered, 'Oh, no, not seven times; I tell you seventy times seven!'" He laughed huge guffaws, in which Andrew, who had so far kept silent, joined. Even Nathanael chuckled.

"I wonder why that is," said Mary, still concerned about Judas.

"I think I can answer that," said Nathanael, speaking for the first time. "I think he does not envy the sinner."

"He does not envy him?" said Thomas. "Come now, make at least a modicum of sense!"

"No, I am serious. Have you noticed how good people react to a sinner? They hate him and want to be sure that he is punished. Now why is that? Why should they care if someone else is doing what he should not? I think it is because they themselves would like to be doing it and getting away with it, as they see him apparently doing. But they are afraid that if they do what is forbidden, they will be punished, and so they want to make sure that he suffers for it."

"Say that again," said Matthew. "There may be something in it."

"It is total nonsense!" said Thomas.

"I think not," said Matthew. "I assume you are saying that people do not sin, not because they see it as bad in itself--or bad for them in itself, and so they would actually like to commit the sin if there were no punishment attached to it."

"Exactly," said Nathanael.

"And so they envy the sinner. . . . Hm."

"--and therefore want him punished," finished Thomas. "I must admit there might be sense in it at that. And you are claiming that the Master does not look on things in this way?"

"I would think that Mary and Matthew, of all people, would understand this," said Nathanael. "From what I gather, you two devoted your whole lives to sin--and the kind that people envy most, in fact." Mary was taken aback with the thought that people would actually envy the life she had been living.

"--have any man she pleased, and discard him as soon as she had used him." he was saying as she came back into consciousness of her surroundings. "And you, Matthew, how much did you overcollect on the taxes Rome asked for? Twice as much?"

"Oh, no!" said Matthew. "It was more like five times."

"And you kept the difference, of course." He turned to Mary. "And you should have seen his mansion! We went there to eat after he joined us. It is sold now, of course, and here he is, as poor as the rest of us. Are you sorry you are not rich?"

Matthew smiled. "There is something in me that still is, of course, but I see what you mean. Being rich . . . has its advantages, I suppose I could say, in some ways. But in very few ways, when it comes to that. But I certainly would do anything rather than go back to the life of scheming how to cheat others without being cheated myself, worrying about how to prevent all those who hated me from killing me--and even worse, from stealing back what I had in effect stolen from them--and all the rest of it. I had not a moment's peace or rest. Often and often, I wished that they would come and kill me and put an end to all of it. And what was all of it, in fact? A soft bed, upon which I could find no sleep, and luxurious food, which my stomach would not digest. You are right."

"Is it not the same with you, Mary?" he said.

"Oh, yes. There may be women, to be sure, who are tired of their husbands and who would have looked at me and envied me--though I am sure they would never admit it--for having a different man every night. What they do not realize is that not being able to have the same man night after night makes the whole thing a mockery and a horror. And all the perfumes and the carved wood and the rich surroundings are merely so much bait. Nothing could ever be enjoyed for what it was, least of all the act that everyone calls 'pleasure.' No, you are perfectly right; he rescued me from agony; my sin, far from being enviable, was a punishment far beyond any conceivable suffering which could be added to it."

"And you are saying," said Thomas, "that it is thus in every case. That if one really understands the sin, the sinner is to be pitied, not condemned."

"I would say that the sinner is condemned. And all the worse if he continues to think of his sin as something desirable."

"True," said Matthew. "I know some tax-collectors who think I am a fool. But what can one do? They refuse to listen, and I see the torment they daily undergo, but they in their delusion call it joy."

"That may be," said Thomas. "I do not deny that he probably sees sin as misery from which he can help us escape. How else can one explain his actions?"

"I am inclined to think, though," said Matthew, "that there is even more to it than this. I think he sees a misery even greater than the one we see, even when we are the sinners ourselves. Perhaps he sees a future for the sinner which we know not; the Pharisees say that life does not cease with death, and the life afterward might be the garbage-dump of Gehenna he speaks of about where the worm does not die and the fire is never extinguished." Mary thought once again of the black vortices behind Jesus's eyes, and the demons in her, who evidently lived in them, and shuddered.

"But there is something else about what he says that concerns me more than this," broke in Andrew. The others looked at him.

"What is that?" asked Mary.

"Some of the things he tells us we should do make no sense. True, we should forgive our enemies, if we wish to be forgiven ourselves. It also makes sense to love one's neighbor as oneself. Fine. But why give your tunic to a person who steals your cloak? If your cloak is gone, you need it more than he. And he stole it, after all. Why reward him? Why go two stadia with a person who has forced you against your will to go one? I can see forgiving my enemies, but why do them favors?"

"Does he say that?" asked Mary of Matthew.

"Oh, yes," he answered. "He said it in so many words, in fact, even before he started telling stories."

"No wonder, then, that he put things into stories. It does not sound fair."

"That is the point," said Andrew. "If I am no better than anyone else, I do not see why I should consider that I am worse. Remember that story he told the other day, Matthew, about the people the landowner hired to work in the vineyard? I do not see that at all."

"What story was that?" asked Mary.

"It was about a man going to hire harvest workers by the day," said Matthew. "He went out in the morning and hired all the people in the marketplace for a denarius apiece. And--"

"Wait. What was wrong with that? That is a fair wage."

"That is not the problem!" said Andrew, growing heated. "He went out in the middle of the morning, and at noon, and in the middle of the afternoon--and even an hour before day's end--and hired more workers he found. And then when he paid them, he gave each of them a denarius!"

"Even the people who worked only one hour?"

"He even paid them first! So that the others could see it! Now you can say, as Philip did, that they were all treated equally, because they all got the same wage, but that is not my idea of equality! All I can say is that if I were one of the ones who had slaved the whole day long and received no more than someone who spent only an hour at it, I would resent it, and rightly so! You cannot convince me that I had no right to resent it!"

"Well, now," said Matthew, "he did ask those people what their problem was, because they had, after all, agreed to work for a day for a normal day's wage."

"Yes, but Andrew has a point. What difference does that make? It is still the case that one person worked twelve hours for the same wages that another worked only one hour for," said Thomas.

"Yes, but supposing he had hired no one else. Would they have complained about their wages when he paid them?"

"Of course not," said Andrew, "but--"

""Well, then."

"Well then what? He did hire others! And he paid them the same!"

"But how are the ones he hired first harmed because he gave them a fair wage?"

"Because they were not treated fairly! They did more work and yet received no more for it!"

"But all that says, Andrew, is that he treated others with special generosity. It does not say that he treated anyone badly. They received a just day's pay for a day's work."

"You honestly do not see the problem?"

"I see it," said Thomas. "And I am inclined to agree. There must be a different meaning hidden here somehow. Perhaps he is saying that we all will receive the same reward for our labors after we die, but it will be so much greater than anything we could have desired that it will make no difference."

"I do not see it. I do not see how it could make no difference."

"In my case," said Matthew, "I can see that you see a problem, and I see what it is. And perhaps Thomas's solution is correct. But it seems to me that the point is that there is no injustice unless one compares oneself with others--and that is evidently what the story says. Do you have a problem, Thomas, with the fact that you are not as strong as Andrew?"

"What has that to do with it?" said Thomas.

"Thomas, it has everything to do with it. The Master in heaven--the Father, to use his terms--has not made us equal; but if we have what we need, how are we harmed if others are more gifted?"

"But," said Andrew, "this is not gifts; he was speaking of what one earns from working! I care not if Nathanael here, or even Judas, is more intelligent than I; I care nothing that Zacchaeus, or Lazarus of Bethany, or--or you when you had it--have more money than I. What use have I for money? It is the principle of the thing!"

"Well, if you care nothing that others have more than you, why do you resent it if they receive more?"

"I tell you, it makes no difference to me what they have! What I resent is the fact that people are not being treated equally."

"And what I am asking is why, if in practice it means that they get something that you apparently do not want anyway?"

"Because they are no better than I!"

"Ah, I think we are coming to the point, Andrew. Who says that having things makes one person better than another?"

Andrew looked at him with disgust. "Of course, how could anyone who would stoop to tax-collecting be expected to understand what I am saying?"

Matthew's face flushed. "Oh, I understand very well, my young friend. Very well. In fact, somewhat better than you, if I may venture an opinion. But what you say simply proves my point--and, I suspect very strongly, the point the Master was trying to make. I had all the 'wages' any man could ask for, and with precious little effort; and you obviously think it did not make me any better than you. It is quite clear, in fact, that you consider yourself better than I. And you may well be; it makes not the slightest difference to me. But your real problem does not lie in the fact that you consider everyone to be equal; it is that you really consider yourself better than others. You will condescend to be treated equally; but it is intolerable if you think someone else is preferred to yourself."

Without a word, Andrew rose and strode away from them. Nathanael, who had been watching in silence all this time, said, "You are, of course, perfectly correct, Matthew. It is another instance of the kind of thing I was speaking of." And he too rose, bowed to Mary, and also left.

Thomas, who saw that Matthew was still smarting, made a few remarks to cover his own retreat, and Mary, after the two had been alone together in silence for a time, said, to ease the tension, "I had no idea that Nathanael was that intelligent. I do not think I have ever heard him speak before."

"Oh, yes," said Matthew, gradually calming down. "There seems to be a good deal inside that head of his; but it seldom emerges. He will lie back thus, sometimes for hours, listening to what is going on, and to all intents and purposes half asleep, and then suddenly come out with a remark that goes right to the heart of the matter. But having said it, he will again lapse back into silence."

He went on, "You must make allowances for Andrew. I was intemperate, I admit, and told him what he perhaps needed to hear but will probably not listen to. You see, he is in fact much more competent than his younger brother Simon; but it was Simon who was chosen."

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