Twenty-three

even though Jesus' visit had brought Mary back out of the worst of her despair and her inability to act, it solved nothing for her. She wanted desperately to believe what he said, whatever it meant, but it seemed painfully clear that he had lost all contact with reality.

Not only did he think that he was God, he thought that he could transform others into God also, presumably in the same sense in which he was God, since he had not gone so far as to deny that he was flesh and blood. That it was a contradiction in terms to be God, a spirit, and flesh and blood did not seem to bother him in the least.

Judas was right; it was tragic: profoundly, shatteringly tragic. And it would end as Judas--and he himself--had predicted. Though he always added that he would rise again on the third day. He evidently thought he could bring himself back to life, and that this would prove him correct. And of course, if he were God, he could do this. But if he were God, how would he allow himself to be killed in the first place?

The whole thing was absurd.

But on the other hand, how had he known all about her conversation with Zebediah? Obviously because he could read minds; but did one need to be God for that? Or perhaps it was even more simple; perhaps Zebediah had told him. That was unlikely, but preferable to his being God. If God were some Zeus, such a thing might even be conceivable; but not with the Hebrew God. He had even forbade any kind of image of Himself, because he was so far beyond anything of the sort. How could a man be that?

And also, though it was very kind of Jesus to interpret her treatment of Zebediah as an act of love, when she looked back on it now, all she had done, really, was to adhere to the conventions of common decency. Once she had returned to Bethany, her training here had reasserted itself; and in that training, one thing was paramount: there must be no scenes. So her upbringing seemed to have its useful side; but this was the mere appearance of virtue, not its reality.

No, she should not deceive herself that Jesus had uncovered the truth of her actions; she had very little to be proud of in that encounter. The only thing that gave her any satisfaction was that her dismissal of him had apparently been icy enough that he had not had the courage to return.

During the day and the evening that Jesus had stayed with them, Mary sought in vain for Judas, without quite realizing that she was doing so, until Matthew happened to mention that he was in Jerusalem on some errand--and then what little light had been lit for her by Jesus went out, and not even Matthew's kindness could kindle a new spark--but the thought of how gentle and good he was made her heart go out to him. She wondered why she always considered him old, since he was not above six or seven years older than she; but he looked old, perhaps because of the life he had lived previously. At this, Mary wondered how she had managed to escape that fate--and then reflected that it was by careful coddling; her beauty had been her instrument, to be preserved and polished with great care. What a chase after wind! It would have had some purpose, perhaps, if it could have moved Judas; but she knew, in spite of the agony it caused, it was better that it had not, and better, too, that she was apart from him.

And now it would be better if she remained apart also from Jesus, she realized. It was painfully obvious that within a matter of months or perhaps weeks he was going to make publicly some sort of remark like the one he had told her--some pronouncement about himself so scandalous that no Hebrew could tolerate it, and so unequivocal that not even the best disposed could misinterpret it in his favor.

And then he would have to be destroyed. So it was absolutely essential to put oneself at an emotional distance from him before it was too late, and one found oneself caught up in the horror, and a sword pierced one's own heart.

It might just be possible to accomplish this, since Jesus was intending to return immediately to Galilee, she had heard, and it would be quite some time, perhaps, before he returned. It seemed that, to prove that God was sanctioning his wild statements, he had cured a man born blind on the Sabbath before Mary had had that disastrous conversation with Zebediah; and it had caused tremendous controversy, because the man himself would not cooperate with the authorities, and insisted that Jesus had to be a man of God, because no demon could give sight to the blind. His attempt, however, to instruct the Pharisees and priests, coupled with the fact that, as born blind, he must have been a sinner himself, had the only result one could expect: they removed him from communion with the Hebrew people and treated him like a Gentile--and were more resolved than ever to get rid of Jesus or at least discredit him somehow.

But there were some who could not surmount the miracle; and so Jesus left, allowing the controversy to deepen and ripen without his presence, until, presumably, he judged the time right for reappearing and doubtless making an even more outrageous claim, to be backed up by an even more spectacular feat. But it would be lost on the only ones who mattered; Mary knew too much about the Pharisee mentality to believe that they could be swayed by such a little thing as evidence.

Still, his absence even from the environs meant that Mary could now make the effort to adjust to a life without him. But she found that it was exceedingly difficult to do in that house. Martha and Lazarus became increasingly at odds about him, and Mary found herself caught between them.

Lazarus had become aware that Jesus was raising hackles in important circles, and numbers of influential people had changed from regarding him as an amusing eccentric, and possibly someone useful to keep the rabble occupied, to a definite menace who had to be dealt with before the people tried something foolish like proclaiming him King--at which point, the Romans would step in and the repression the people now experienced was nothing compared to what would happen then. Those who knew feared that it might mean the total destruction of the whole people; they were barely tolerated now, with their refusal to worship the Emperor, and a rebellion would be met with overwhelming force. So it was no longer possible for Lazarus to tolerate him, with or without amusement; the time had come to take sides.

And take them he did. He remonstrated daily with Martha, telling her that at bottom the man was "vulgar," and that neither she nor Mary was to have anything to do with him.

Mary would have been all too willing to follow his advice, had he simply counseled leaving Jesus alone; but this ukase from the lips of Lazarus, as though he were the supreme head of their lives just because, as the eldest (by three years), he was now officially the head of the parentless household, was something that made Mary bristle. She had obeyed no man but her father--and of course Jesus, but that was different--and was not about to start obeying a man now, still less a man who, until a few weeks ago, she had pictured as a pimply-faced boy.

And so, in spite of herself, she found herself taking Martha's side and defending the indefensible; and the more shrill Lazarus became when he saw his "authority" called into question, the more dispassionate, calm, and logical Mary became--all the more so because Martha treated Lazarus' rantings with the scorn they deserved.

And it turned out that one could make out a very good case for Jesus, if one left out certain things; and those things, as it happened, had not the slightest meaning to Lazarus. He would, Mary suspected, even be willing to accept Jesus as God, if that made Jesus urbane and "like oneself," as he said, summing up a whole code of polite, sophisticated behavior. Jesus' shortcomings in this regard had earlier been ignored, because geniuses have their own rules--as long as they do not disturb the complacency of those who matter--and it is clear that one can maintain one's lofty perch while indulgently examining the interesting specimen on the ground below. But there is a limit to what can be tolerated, and Jesus had gone far, far beyond this by now.

And it had to be admitted that Jesus did not always wash his hands before eating (though he always did at their house); and Jesus did have disreputable people in his entourage, even notorious ones (how well Mary knew that!); and people had begun to notice this and take it into account. And this meant for Lazarus that, miracles or no miracles, he would have to go his way, and Lazarus and "his family" would go theirs. He meant, he said, no slight to Jesus in this. They were simply different, and there was nothing that could be done to make them the same. However good a man he might be, however well-intentioned, he and Lazarus were oil and water--and he carefully refrained from pointing out who was the oil and who the water--and that was that.

Well of course that was not that, and at great length, day after day, and especially evening after evening, during the whole of that autumn.

Eventually, Lazarus saw that his attempts to quell what he regarded as insubordination were futile, and were even making him look ridiculous, which was not to be thought of; and so it came to pass that he began simply sitting in sulky silence in a corner of the room, while Martha pointedly discussed Jesus with Mary within his hearing.

It began to be a habit. Lazarus would return from Jerusalem, and they would engage in pleasantries about the day, especially during the dinner. Afterward, they would retire to the large sitting room, and Martha would make some remark about Jesus, hoping that this time she could win Lazarus over. He would cast at her a look of disgust and go off by himself, and she would start in with Mary about some aspect of Jesus's teaching.

For Mary, it was something of a game; but Martha was deadly serious. For her, everything about Jesus and especially everything he said was of utmost importance, and worth rehearsing three or four times to uncover the least atom of meaning. And, while Mary did not believe that Jesus was the demigod that Martha thought him to be--and she could not understand how any Hebrew could believe it--still, Jesus was an extremely fascinating enigma, and his teachings were a thing of beauty, if a tissue of contradictions on any other supposition than Martha's. It added zest to the conversations that Lazarus was there, hating every moment of them.

The result was that Mary learned, in that month or two, much about Jesus's life before she had met him, and turned over and pondered and meditated upon many of the facts and sayings that she already knew--and he became for her more and more like something out of a beautiful legend, a story-book character like Moses or David; one who was, to be sure, real, but as presented so much larger than life that he did not exist.

Lazarus, in self-defense, finally turned to Judith, who also sat with the family after dinner, since Mary did not want her to be with the two servants, or she would be lost to a decent marriage, though Mary had, in fact, done nothing to promote her seeing eligible men (hoping that Martha would undertake this task). But Judith seemed perfectly happy as she was, and was as inconspicuous as the very corner of the room she occupied, sitting there with her distaff in her left hand and the yarn she was spinning in her right, making delicate twisting motions while she hummed softly to herself.

She was quite startled when Lazarus actually spoke to her the first time, and answered in an embarrassed squeak that ended the conversation then and there. But Lazarus could not bear the torture that was being inflicted upon him, and had to fight back somehow; and so the next day, he made another remark to her, which Judith, who by this time had steeled herself not to react to him as Divinity speaking from a thundercloud, actually answered.

It took a considerable time, but gradually Martha and Mary's discussions lost the outward reference they had had, because Lazarus was not now listening. Judith, it turned out to everyone's surprise, actually had a mind, and was capable of sustaining a conversation; and she had a great natural dignity, which went a long way toward compensating for Lazarus' disdain for Galileans.

But most of all, she had absolutely no interest in Jesus. She had nothing but respect for him, especially because of what he had done for those around her, and she would listen politely for hours and hours when he was the topic of conversation; but he himself did not interest her in the least. So she was the perfect foil for Martha and Mary, from Lazarus' point of view.

Mary was startled to find, one day, that he had begun teaching Judith to read. But she thought it all to the good, because any husband would probably regard this as an asset, and so it made her that much more eligible. Besides, with Lazarus taking an interest in her as a person, it would not be long before it entered even his head that she would be better off married; and with his contacts in Jerusalem, the prospect of her making an advantageous, even a brilliant, match looked rather bright.

Things, therefore, began to be quite peaceful in the little household. Once Lazarus left off his antagonism toward Jesus, Mary and Martha found other things to talk about; and they discovered that they had a number of interests in common. Mary began liking Martha, instead of merely loving her as a kind sister; and even discovered, somewhat reluctantly, that Lazarus had his good points, and could be pleasant to talk to--and was at base quite a good person, if he could only crack his shell and emerge out of the egg of superficial self-centeredness in which he was encased.

Mary began to defer more and more to Martha's opinion, since she had a great deal more experience in ordinary living than Mary--and the things in which Mary had more experience were not much in demand in that family. Martha became in practice what Mary should have been: the older sister, and Mary the younger; except that Mary still adamantly refused to take on the role (which Judith had gladly accepted) of subordinate housekeeper.

But if, in the course of daily living, Jesus gradually faded into the background, Judas did not. Since he could not be a topic of conversation, he festered inside Mary, like a cut that has putrefied and cannot be opened to drain. He began as a hurt in her heart, but the infection spread throughout her mind, and occupied all her solitary moments. Even when she was talking, he was there somewhere, just out of range of the corner of her mental vision; and she caught glimpses of him in the pauses of the conversation.

She could not make him do anything; she could not picture anything definite with him--in fact, she found she could not picture him at all any longer. He was simply there, and there as unattainable, as an ache. But though she had difficulty remembering what he looked like, there was never any question as to who it was who was disturbing her; it was Judas.

It cannot be said that she learned to live with him and her desire for him, any more than it can be said that one learns to live with leprosy. She lived, and he was there, unattainable but yearned for; and she expected to see him there, and he always lived up to the expectation; and the hunger and thirst was there also, as urgent as it had ever been--more urgent, in fact, as the rather dull weeks went by--but, having nothing to satisfy it, she starved, day by day, and learned to expect starvation.

Many times she thought of running away to him; and there were several occasions on which she actually made plans and began to carry them out. Twice she went as far as to start to select clothes; but as soon as she saw them, her sense of reality caught up with her. If she ran to him, he would simply read her a dismissal like the one she had read Zebediah, and that would be past endurance. She could endure the hunger, though it was on the very edge of being unbearable; but the humiliation of being rejected and hungering afterwards was not to be contemplated. With the hunger she now had, she could toy with the feeling of going to him and being accepted; but if she actually made the attempt and it failed--as she had reason to believe it must and would--the prop to her sanity would collapse, and great would be the ruin.

She tried to turn her mind away from everything by the thought that what she was contemplating was sin; but "sin" was such an abstraction, and Judas was there, to be physically confronted and taken, should he be willing. She supposed that if the opportunity ever offered itself, she would make some attempt to resist what she knew that she would do; and she supposed--she hoped--that Jesus would once again forgive her.

But of course, that meant that in order to do so, he had to be God; and that brought her full circle, and her mind retraced the familiar, futile pathway.

The relative tranquility was broken that winter, however, on one particularly cold day, when Lazarus, blowing out steam from his mouth as he approached the door, announced (knowing that they would hear it soon enough anyway) that Jesus was in Jerusalem for the Feast of Dedication--something Martha had actually been expecting--"and apparently making more of an ass of himself than ever. I did not," he added, "go to hear him, of course. But I want to make it very clear that--"

"We will have to go down tomorrow!" said Martha, knowing what Lazarus was going to make "very clear," and interrupting him every time he tried to say anything further.

They sent word to Zebediah, who returned a message pleading that he was not well enough for a whole day in Jerusalem, much to Mary's relief, and so the three of them set out the next day in tense silence, since Lazarus had decided that this was his only way of informing them that he not only did not approve of their going, but that he wanted absolutely nothing to do with Jesus himself. He could not have stopped them, he realized, short of locking them up; and managing this, in addition to being humiliating, would probably have taken more courage--and more strength--than he could muster.

He left without a word for his banking-table immediately upon entering through the city gate, and so the two of them went into the Temple, where they spotted a crowd around Solomon's porch, and heard the familiar voice of Jesus even before they could distinguish the words.

"--long are you going to leave us in suspense?" someone was shouting. "If you are the Prince, come out and say it!"

"I have told you," said Jesus, "and you did not believe it; and the deeds I do in my Father's name give proof of it--and you do not believe them either, because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep recognize my voice, and I know who they are, and they follow me; and I will give them eternal life, and they will never be lost, and no one will take them out of my hands."

There was an uproar. In the din, Mary was thinking how wonderful it would be to be, like Martha, one of those sheep who simply followed that melodious voice, never questioning except to understand better, never doubting. Martha was enraptured. Mary had never gone so far as to tell her of Jesus's apparent plans for his believers, because she could not bear to have Martha swallow even that, and try to convince her of it. Mary, that day, had chosen the better part, but it was Martha who believed; it was ironic.

When the noise died down somewhat, Jesus continued, "My Father, who gave them to me, is greater than anyone, and no one takes anything from his hands. And the Father and I are one and the same thing!"

Well, they had once again asked him to be plain, and once again he had obliged them. They roared louder than ever, and Mary saw that there were a number who had stones ready to throw. But Jesus held up his hand, while some said, "Wait!" and "Listen! He is about to speak!"

"I showed you many good deeds from my Father," said Jesus. "For which of them are you going to stone me?"

"We are stoning you for blasphemy, not for any good deeds!" came the answering shout. "You are a man, and you are claiming to be God!"

Jesus looked out at the crowd, meeting their eyes. "Does it not--" The roar of the crowd drowned him out for a moment, and he resumed, "Does it not say in your Law, 'I said you are gods'?" He ran his finger across his open palm as he said this, as if it were a page and he was pointing out each word.

"Now if Scripture calls 'gods' those through whom the words of God were uttered, and--" again he looked out at, it seemed, each one of the crowd, "if you cannot deny that Scripture says this, why do you say I am blaspheming when I say that I am the Son of God, if I am the one the Father consecrated and sent into the world?"

In the confused hubbub which followed, people turning to each other, Jesus's defenders questioning the antagonists, and the antagonists struggling for an answer, Martha turned and shouted into Mary's ear, "I told you that there would be a true way to understand what he said!" Many others were saying in essence the same thing to their neighbors, but Mary felt that this was merely a debater's trick on Jesus's part. Scripture had been speaking in hyperbole; the problem was that Jesus thought that he was literally the Son of God. And who could believe that?

Again Jesus's voice was heard above the din "--not believe me if I do not do deeds that can only be done by my Father. But if I do do them, then if you do not believe me, believe the deeds, so that you will realize and know that I am in the Father and the Father is in me!"

But this was too much for the crowd. They surged forward, and Mary almost found herself trampled by the onrush--but once again, there was no Jesus to take prisoner to the Pharisees. "Where did he go?" they said, and "Stop him!" "How does manage to escape thus?"

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