Twenty-two

Jesus had been preaching in Judea during these days; but the controversy was mounting enough so that he had decided to go back to Galilee for a while; and he sent word through Lazarus that he would be coming for his usual visit before he left the region.

This, of course, threw Martha--and now Judith, who had by this time taken on the role of a sort of poor relation--into a frenzy of cleaning and preparing, since Jesus was due to arrive the next day. Actually, there was not that much to do, since Martha had been anticipating a visit; but the house had to be turned upside down nonetheless, to show the importance she gave to it.

Lazarus fled the house, as was his custom; but Mary, who had nowhere to go, remained in her room.

It had been four days since she had seen Zebediah, and she had not yet recovered from the encounter. Not that she spent her time thinking about it or analyzing it, or him or herself, as was her custom; she simply gave herself over to an emotion of profound despair, in which it was a supreme effort even to breathe, and which stifled any conscious thought.

She sat in her room all day, barely dragging herself out for meals, at which she said not a word. The news that Jesus was coming did nothing to rouse her, nor did Martha's increasingly annoyed pleas for help. What difference did it make? What difference did anything make? A clean house for the Master, who spent so much time living outdoors. The Master himself. Why did anyone bother to go on living? If he came, she would probably not bestir herself to see him. For what? So that he could turn her back onto the road to action, when she could not even lift her hand? Had he not led her to this?

Had his philosophy not made her tolerate Zebediah, and was it not her refusal to tear him to pieces which produced this ocean which had drowned her? That she should be considered as nothing at all by such a nullity! That she should be forgiven by him! By him! Forgiven! And Jesus would confirm the forgiveness, she knew he would, because she deserved to be forgiven. That she should be such slime that she deserved forgiveness from that--that breath of fetid air!

Now she had not even the desire to kill herself; it was not worth the trouble. Nothing, not even death, was worth the trouble. She simply saw the long black tunnel of her life stretching out before her, and swallowing her deeper and deeper as she perforce had to pass into it, pushed by time; but there was no air here, no light, no sky, no peace.

Martha passed by, her loins girt, with Judith and the servants, sweeping and packing down the floors, and Mary looked up as Martha pointedly refused to glance in her direction. She had given up. Mary's expression, without her realizing it, turned into that of a plea, she could not have said for what; but Martha did not see it, nor would she have understood had she done so. Mary herself barely understood. She merely felt, dully, that Martha cared for her as an additional helper in the vital task of ensuring the spotlessness of the house. Not that she deserved to be the object of anything more. Had Martha known the truth about her, she would--and should! And should!--have thrown her out forthwith.

But even without the knowledge, what was she but an additional burden? She was a burden on everything, not least on herself. And beyond that, why should she even be noticed? Because she was family; but that was a bare abstraction, an accident, and had nothing to do with what she was. What she was was what she had made herself, and that was unspeakable. She had been lost, had ceased to exist, and now that she had come back to life she was nothing. She mattered not at all.

The great blow was that she mattered nothing to Zebediah; what they had done mattered to him, so much so that he had spent a life of remorse agonizing over it; but he did not even hate her for it. If only he had thought enough of her at least to hate her! But the only difference she made to him was that she had been a reminder that he had been unfaithful to his wife, and that she might be able to satisfy his lust once again--though if he had any backbone, any prostitute would do as well, now that he was no longer tortured by guilt. But he probably could not bring himself to seek another, simply because he had never done so; the only importance Mary had for him was that the experience would not be new.

And what of all the others who had found her so irresistible? They had gone on with their lives, and those who once needed her so desperately had found another they could pay to satisfy that need, and Mary had faded into a rather unpleasant memory, all things considered. No one now would want her back. Not that she would want any of them; she wondered now that she had ever had the energy to hate them; she supposed it was so that she could delude herself into thinking that something mattered.

Something might matter if she mattered to Judas! Oh, if she could be important to Judas, it might make sense to live!

And the presence--the atmosphere--of Judas filled her mind; it was not even his image, but simply the awareness that he existed, and the feeling that he existed totally independently of her; it was his existence which was her despair, her hopelessness, the darkness in the tunnel of her life, the tight belt about her chest that made it so hard to breathe. It was his indifference that stole all color from the world, all shape from everything she saw, so that no matter where her eyes turned, she saw nothing. So she stared, without even blinking, since to blink was to make an effort, and saw nothing, because all she could see was Judas and he was not there.

A shadow she used to call Judith filled her field of vision, and she felt hands upon her knees. Jerkily, her head moved a little downward, as though the springs in her neck had rusted, and there was a face before her, looking up into her eyes. A face of one kneeling, grasping her. Tears. Some words.

Judith cared. She mattered to Judith. But why?

Why?

How could she be important to Judith?

--And she loved Judith, and the room came back into existence.

"Oh, thank God! Thank God!" wept Judith, seeing the change on Mary's face. "Miss, the Master is here, and he is asking for you!" She remained kneeling, and buried her face in Mary's lap, weeping.

"The Master?" said Mary, bewildered, but no sound issued from her mouth. She tried again, and still nothing happened, and then attempted to rise, and found after an effort that the floor made its way back beneath her feet. Judith sprang up and tried to lift her from the seat, and for a moment she would have pushed her away, but realized that she could not rise without her.

She took a step and then another, and seemed to solidify with each. By the time she was out the door of the room, she thought she could speak, and said, in a feeble voice, "Thank you, Judith, I think I can manage now. Where did you say he was?"

"He is out in the front of the house, on the bench, Miss."

"Thank you, Judith." She took a step, her hand on the wall to steady herself, and then turned and looked back. "Thank you."

Judith, who had no idea what she was being thanked for, melted under it.

As she emerged into the blinding sun, Jesus was saying, "It is hard to face, is it not? Let us sit here, and we can talk, if you wish."

"Talk?"

"Have you not tried to face yourself?"

"I have done nothing." What was there to face?

"You have sent Zebediah away, it seems."

"Yes."

"Do you wish to speak of that? You have not been, shall we say, loquacious lately, Mary, and people are concerned. They are, you know." She thought of Judith. Perhaps they were. Perhaps she was merely not seeing what did not feed her despair.

"I am sorry," she said.

"I will not force you to speak, if you cannot bring yourself to do so. But I think it would be better if you did."

She sat there for a long while, at times fighting with an impulse to get up and run back into her room. But that would be fatal; she knew that she was drowning, and he was trying to bring her back to life. Finally, she said, "It was Zebediah who . . ." and she could not continue for what seemed to be forever. "It . . . he . . . it was my first time, and . . . and a few days ago, he explained . . . he was sorry that he had been un--oh, what does it matter?"

"He was sorry."

She gritted her teeth. "That he had been unfaithful to his wife! And he forgave me! Forgave me!" She spat out the repetition.

"And you would have preferred him to ask forgiveness."

". . . No."

"You would have preferred to forgive him without his asking."

"No!"

"You would have preferred not to forgive him."

"No!"

"You wanted him to understand what an outrage it was, his forgiving you."

She sat, looking at her hands in her lap.

"Is that what you wanted?"

"Not--No."

"Then what did you want?"

"Nothing."

"You have not, then, been facing anything, Mary, but simply letting it affect you. And you can go on staring into space and seeing nothing and driving Judith--and the others also--frantic with worry, or face reality. And it is not so very difficult. You have already lived it; you are beyond it."

She was silent, and then said finally, "I will face it, I suppose. What else is there to do?"

"You did not like the idea of being forgiven for something that you consider his fault. Was that it?"

She did not answer.

"You thought of yourself as something more than a temptress, and he did not. But you did tempt him."

"Yes! You know I did! Yes!"

"And you cannot forgive him for forgiving you for that."

"I care nothing whether he forgave me or not!"

"Then if it was not his forgiving you, what was it?"

"Do you not know?"

"I do, as it happens. The question is whether you do."

She sat in thought for a while. "I was at fault, I suppose, though I knew very little of what I did. I did know it was wrong, I remember. But if he were aware of what else I had done to him, he probably could not have forgiven me.

"It was not the forgiveness; it was--it was that he did not consider me at all. I was simply--Oh, what does it matter?"

"You care that he gave no consideration to the effect his actions had on you: that he 'ruined' you, as you would so picturesquely put it."

"Well, did he not? You know what I was, and what I became!"

"I see a woman who is far from a ruin. Unless she persists thus."

"Now perhaps. But before I met you."

"But now is what matters, is it not?" There was another pause, and then Jesus said, "Tell me, Mary, did you ever think what happened to your many victims? Did you ever wonder whether any of them had been ruined? By you?"

Mary looked up at him. The thought had sometimes flickered into her consciousness, but the light was too feeble to be noticed, and was quickly quenched, to keep her from seeing by it. The men had simply been vehicles for her to achieve her vengeful purposes. She cared nothing whatever for them in themselves.

But that meant that she had done, hundreds and hundreds of times, the very thing she had found so abominable in Zebediah! "How horrible I am!" she cried, hiding her face in her hands.

"True," said Jesus. "But it is of no importance."

She looked up at him sharply. "How can you say that?"

"Did I not tell you your sins were forgiven? You did in fact do horrible things--things far more horrible, in some cases, than you could have imagined. I tell you this because you have need to know it; one day soon you will discover the bitter, bitter fruit of a seed you sowed in careless ignorance. But I also tell you because the Father does not regard what you did, or what kind of person you were, as of any importance whatever. That is what makes forgiveness possible.

"You see, Mary, the Father is Master indeed. He has complete control over the universe, and nothing whatever happens without his--shall I say assistance? Cooperation? Even sins. Yes, even sins, insofar as they are actions and are real. And he arranges each thing so that all together work for his own ends. And his ends, as it happens, are our freedom. He will cooperate with our self-destruction, if we so wish; but if we repent, he can arrange things to bring good out of what we have done. Because we have no importance for him."

"I do not understand," she said.

He looked at her, and took her hands in his. His were warm and large, still hardened from his earlier labors; hers were tiny, soft, and icy. "You have come very far, Mary. Very far. And I think I am telling you a secret, which you will come to understand, because of all my students, you are the closest to being able to understand it--and I have not much time left.

"You have been thinking that you do not matter, and that nothing you do matters--and there is a sense in which you are correct. That is the secret. Of love. Of perfect love. In imperfect love, the beloved matters desperately to the lover--because the lover has needs." She thought of Judas, and how his very existence mattered so much to her. He let her hands fall back into her lap. "The beloved," he went on, "is important to the lover; valuable, precious.

"But a perfect lover has no needs," he went on. "In that sense, the beloved is not important to him not at all. The Father loves you--I love you--for no other reason than that you exist, not for the effect you have on us. And therefore, nothing you do can disappoint me or Him. You have not harmed either of us in any way by what you did; and the harm you did to others can be turned into benefit. So there is no need to undo the damage you have done to the Father. Nothing you do can affect Him in any way. When he forgives, he does not ignore the harm to him, as humans do when they forgive--because there was no harm to him. When he forgives, he erases the sinfulness of the act: whatever there was about it by which it was a futile attempt to take God's place--to act on one's own without God's assistance, which is impossible. The act remains, and its effects; but the sin is simply gone. That is forgiveness. It is no longer a sinful act; it is merely an act."

"I do not understand."

"No, you do not. Not now. But this fact is why it is possible to be born again. You heard me speak of being born again, and you have been through it. It is possible to take one's life as a fact and continue without the sin in it, to face reality. Many 'face reality and go on' by ignoring the sin, without being born again; and the sin festers within them, and ultimately kills them--because it, and especially they themselves, still have importance for them. For God nothing is important; for God everything simply is. For one's sin to be forgiven and not simply forgotten, one must take over God's attitude: that one is. Yes, Martha."

"Master," said Martha, who had come up to them, "does it not concern you that my sister has left me alone to take care of waiting upon you?"

"Martha, Martha," said Jesus, "So much is important to you, and you have so much on your mind. But there is only one thing that matters. Mary has chosen the better part, and it will not be taken away from her."

Martha looked indignantly at the two of them, and marched back into the house muttering that unless someone took the worse part, those who took the better would do so on empty stomachs.

Jesus laughed. "You see what happens when you consider things to be important?"

The trouble was that Mary could see Martha's point of view, and felt guilty about it; but Jesus was evidently not finished. She said, "You said that there was one thing that matters. What is that?"

"God. The Father. That God is."

"I do not understand."

"If it matters to you that God exists, then nothing else need matter; everything is play."

"Play?"

"To play is to do something which does not matter, is it not? To do it simply for the sake of doing it. What matters is serious; what does not matter is a game. Enjoyment. And, of course, if it does not matter that God exists, then one's own self, ultimately, is what matters; one's life becomes serious; but more than that, it becomes a fraud--because God's point of view is that nothing but Himself is serious, nothing matters; to Him we are all superfluous, and yet we exist because of Him."

This was either a joke, or he was raving. She looked into his eyes, but he was serious. "But if nothing matters except that God exists, then why do anything?" This is what she had been wrestling with. Nothing mattered, and so why do anything?

"Why not?"

"I do not understand."

"This is to ask why play a game. Do you think God created you because you mattered? But that would mean he needed you for something, and so created you for that need of his. But he has no needs; and so his creating you was not 'serious' for him. The answer to why he created you, really, is Why not? It was good to do it--not that it matters."

"But if it does not matter, why do it?"

"I told you. Why not do it? It is good."

"But it does not matter."

"Exactly."

She turned away. "You are the one who is playing."

"Oh, no! I am telling you about perfect love. This is the secret that no one is willing to accept. Why did God create you? If he did so, people think, you must have much importance for him. You must be lovable if he loves you. But he loves you because you are, not because you are lovable. He created you that you be, and that you be what you choose to be, not for some other purpose he has for you. That is perfect love. Even if you choose to be miserable. Even in that case, it is good that you be. But if you choose to be not miserable, that too is good--and why not fulfill that choice? Not that it matters."

"So you are saying that I do not matter to God."

"True."

"Then why has he done so much for me? Why have you?"

"I have been trying to tell you. Why not?"

"In other words, I am simply a vehicle for you to amuse yourself."

"Do you think God needs to be amused? That he is bored and wishes entertainment? Do you really think I find you amusing, Mary? In fact, you will see before long how absurd this is, because I will die for you--but not because you are important to me. I will do it because it is good for you, and you exist. If you refuse to accept it, I will do it nonetheless, because it is still good for you to have the chance it offers--not that it matters. If it is good, why not do it?"

"It makes no sense!"

"It does, in fact; but the real point is that it is the truth. And if you take the attitude that nothing matters but God, you begin to think as God thinks; and that is the truth, and the truth will set you free--because you are not the slave of what matters. And I will tell you further that this truth is life. Think as God thinks, and you live God's life. I have come so that God's life will be given to men, and to make it possible for them to think as God thinks. To be divine."

"You are mad!"

"No."

"How could you make such a--such a preposterous statement? You are mad!"

"No."

"Can you not hear what you are saying?"

"Yes."

"How could any human being hear it and not think you are mad?"

"No one can, unless my Father has chosen him."

"Stop! Stop!" she said, covering her ears.

"Mary, Mary, you worry too much."

"Master," she pleaded. "Listen to me! I am no one, I am dirt, but listen to me! If you say such things in public, they will kill you!"

"I know. It does not matter."

"It matters to me!"

"I know that also. That is why I have told you all of this. You have no need of stories, because it is possible for you--difficult, but possible--to understand. You have been chosen."

"I do not want to be chosen!"

"Yes you do. Your desire, months ago, to be chosen was the choice. You came to me, I did not come to you; and you came to me because you wished to understand. And you are on the road to understanding."

"I understand nothing! Nothing! But that they will kill you!"

"You understand much, because you love much. I told you that much was forgiven you because you loved much. And you have recently shown something of the depths of your love."

"The depths? Recently?"

"With Zebediah."

"Master, I hate Zebediah! I am sorry, but I hate him!"

"Do you? I tell you this, Mary, to make it easier for you to see that I am not mad, and that what I say is true. You think you hate him."

"It is true. I cannot bear the sight of him!"

"And feeling as you do, you allowed him to visit you for four days--for hours at a time, did you not?"

"Well, yes, but--"

"But you were trapped into accepting, because to refuse him in front of others would have humiliated him."

"Well, yes, but--"

"And so you refused to humiliate the one you hate."

"But it was not thus!"

"Was it not? And you listened to him say things that outraged you, and you said nothing in reply. You see, I know what happened."

"I did not reply because I was speechless!"

"Were you? And yet you were able to say that I had forgiven him, and you were able to assure him that his wife would have forgiven him if she would have forgiven you--and so you gave him peace of mind, not torment."

"He knew nothing of what his wife had to forgive me for!"

"And you refrained from telling him. Why not? Because the lack of knowledge would torment him more?"

"Because there was no point to it."

"Exactly. Because it did not matter. Why add this to his torment just for some petty satisfaction of having him know that you caused the greatest pain he ever suffered in his life? And when, relieved of his guilt because of you, he inclined himself toward another sin, did you tempt him, or send him away from you and temptation?"

"I suppose I did, but--"

"And did you do so by making him see what a fool he was making of himself, or did you leave his self-respect intact?"

"He would not have heard what I said; he thought of me as nothing but a sinner."

"Come now, Mary, that is your self of yesterday speaking. That was the excuse you gave yourself for your action; but you know that he was at your mercy. True, you did not like him; you found him repulsive and disgusting. But consider not what you felt, consider what you did. Could the person who loved him most dearly have treated him better than you have done?"

"But I have not the slightest affection for him! Exactly the opposite! His peace of mind, his happiness, makes absolutely no difference to me!"

He paused to let her realize what she had said, and then remarked, "And that, Mary, is why I said that you were on the path toward understanding, because you loved much. You have already put what I have been saying into practice. None of the others would have been able to do this as yet--though they will do so later. You have far still to go, Mary, and much to suffer, very much. But do not be worried. You will reach the end; you will understand."

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