Twenty-eight

She stiffened. She felt his arm at her waist; he now was standing slightly to her left behind her, his whole right side against her. This was what she had been dreaming of for months. There was no question of it now; he wanted her. She could not breathe.

"What were you thinking of?" he asked, not letting her go.

"I was--" she tried to say, but no sound came. She cleared her throat. "I was thinking of Lazarus."

"That is strange," he said; "so was I. I was wondering why you did it."

Still looking straight in front of her, she said with surprise, "Why I did what?"

"Perhaps, then, it was not you, and you had to agree. I need to know that."

She tried to turn to look at him, but he still held her in such a way that she could not. She turned her head, and could see his face--that face! So close!--out of the corner of her eye. She almost fainted. After a moment, she recovered enough to say, "I know not what you are saying."

"Who was it arranged for Lazarus to appear dead, so that he could call him out of the tomb?"

She was so startled that her sudden turn to face him made him release her. "What do you mean?"

"Come, now!" he said, and took her hands. "Am I so hateful?"

She looked at his face, and then dropped her eyes. "No."

He laughed. "You have not changed, have you Mary. Not in all these years!"

She looked up at him. "What do you mean? I do not understand."

He smiled. "You are acting remarkably obtusely, my dear; if I were not aware how intelligent you were, I would think you genuinely did not know what I was saying. But you cannot tell me that you do not remember, that you did not recognize me that first night. I knew you the instant I saw you; and I saw you look at me. You knew me also."

She stared at him speechless, and suddenly remembered that it did seem to her that she remembered him from somewhere, that night when she first saw him in the encampment. But she had thought it a trick of her mind.

"I always wondered," he went on, "if the little girl in the Temple was the famous Mary of Magdala; but I never dared to try to find out. I had been poisoned once, and it took me months--years--to drive it out of my system. I could not afford another dose. But I wondered; one does, you know. And when the others told me what you were like, with your apparent innocence, and your blaming them for seducing you--who else could do that as well as you?" He laughed.

"So I was all but certain,"he continued. "But I never really knew until that night; and there you were--even more beautiful, after all those years, than you were that afternoon when the little girl said so demurely, 'I can show you what he did to me if you will take me inside.' I knew not what I was capable of until that moment! Would you believe that that little episode in the room in the Temple was my very first time? I was virtuous until I met you!" And he laughed once again.

"But . . ." she said, "But why are you . . . here? Now?" Her very hands were burning with desire inside his; but her mind was in turmoil.

"To ask a question. Did you have anything to do with that little masquerade with your brother? Or did they do it in spite of you?"

"Masquerade?"

"Mary, Mary, I am not naive. --Very well. I suppose you would never admit it. And I suppose that that is not really what I must know. Tell me this, then: Did Jesus tell you to do it?"

"To do what?"

"Mary, please, credit me with some sense. I am not stupid enough to become involved with you again if you are still his. He may not be able to resurrect people, but I would have no doubt he could kill someone if he chose. But I thought that when you left, he had grown tired of you, and it would be safe. But just when I had made up my mind to come here and claim you for myself, he announced that he was going back to Judea to see his 'good friend Lazarus,' who had died. Well, what was I to think? I now had to assume that the reason you left him was that people suspected what was going on between you, and he had to part from you temporarily, but--"

"What are you saying?"

"You need not act thus, Mary. He--and you--will be safe with me, believe me. And this pretense at innocent bewilderment does not really become you with someone who knows you so--shall we say intimately? --Oh, very well, you need not even admit this, I suppose; I know that you want me too much to see me killed--and so if you say nothing, I will know that you are no longer his mistress--"

She slapped his face.

He looked at her in surprise. "Why did you do that?"

"You think I was the mistress of Jesus!"

"Well of course! Why--"

"And you think he grew tired of me and threw me aside!"

"That is what I need to assure myself of. Because--"

"And you wonder why I slapped your face!"

He was still holding one hand. He pulled her to him and clasped her to his chest. She felt him burning against her. "And now I know," he said huskily, "and even if I did not know, I am past caring. I said you poisoned me once, and I had got over it until I saw you again; but then I had a relapse, and only the fear of what he would do to me kept me from you. You know that. You saw me looking at you. You knew. And you wanted me also; I could see it. You still do."

She still did--more desperately than ever, with him there against her; she could smell him; he permeated everything about her. But she started to struggle.

"Now be still!" he said, pushing her and holding her so close that she could not get any leverage. They were on a small slope, and she felt herself going down backwards. "I have learned a thing or two," he said, "since last we met."

She tried to cry out as he forced her slowly down, but he kissed her in such a way that she could not bite him, and was holding her so close that struggling was of no avail. He had his hand at her throat now, the hand she had so often imagined caressing her, and she knew that it was too late; all her training as a prostitute told her that struggle now would only lead to her death. She made a slight move to try to escape, and felt the pressure. He also knew. She relaxed.

"That is better," he said, but kept his hand on her throat as he raped her. Finally, he rose, leaving her sobbing on the ground.

"Really, Mary!" he said. "You would think that you were virtue deflowered! Let us hope that the next time you will allow me to be more gentle; this was a bit more exercise than I had bargained for--though I must admit, it was interesting. They were right when they said that you were many things, but never dull."

Looking back toward the house to see if anyone had noticed, he made off through the woods in the direction of Jesus's encampment.

For a long time, she lay on the ground, sobbing, alternately feeling waves of horror, elation, loathing, and soaring ecstasy, all of which carried her soul onward and onward toward an ocean of fear.

She had wanted this so much, and it had happened! It had happened! And in spite of everything, it was beyond description! How could she wait until he returned? How could she not go to him, now, this instant, and give herself to him gladly, instead of struggling, again and again and again?

"O God! O Jesus! Help me! Help me!"

But it was too late. Having now sinned once, she knew she would not be able to save herself. "I tried, Master!" she cried, at the same time her inner self told her that she did not really try, that she had only pretended to try. She could have broken free earlier; all her experience with such men had trained her to escape from danger before it became acute; but she had waited until he had her close. And even then, she could have kicked him as he was pulling her; she had done so with others. But she had waited until it was too late. Because she had been taken by surprise? Or was it because she simply wanted to be able to excuse herself for what she so desperately desired?

"I am lost! Lost!" But it felt as if she had won, that she had found herself at last. He wanted her; he wanted her; he wanted her! And he would be coming back for her! He could not keep himself away from her!

And how desperately she wanted him, and could not keep herself from him! She had known that this would happen; once she began to believe that he would not spurn her, then only one outcome was possible. He was her life, from now forever; Jesus, who had before filled her consciousness, was now a dream.

This reminded her of Jesus, and how Judas had believed that she was his mistress. "I contaminate everything I come near!" she exclaimed aloud. Even Judas himself! "I was virtuous until I met you," he had said. And that brought back the whole scene, and she lived every moment of it over and over, with all its contradictory emotions that shook her so violently that she shuddered from head to foot.

Finally, rising, she started for the house, half with the idea of finding clothes and running to him, half with the idea of pretending to run to him and this time being sure to kill herself before she found him--and in the back of her mind, barely conscious, was the hope that Martha would discover her and stop her and somehow save her.

But there was no Martha when she entered; her doom was sealed. She would be able to run off unseen. Her heart sank and soared at the same time. She tottered giddily into her room, the floor barely beneath her feet and the wall seeming to tip crazily, and went to the chest for the clothes she had once worn, which she had not been able to bring herself to throw away, because a part of herself had foreseen this moment. She picked out one robe, looked at it, and the lid of the chest slipped from her weakened hand and fell with a bang.

"What was that noise?--Mary! What is the matter?" cried Martha at the doorway, rushing toward her. "You look--what is wrong? Tell me!" There was horror in her voice as Mary, still with the robe in her hand, looked at her for an instant with hope, and then with the eyes of a tigress seeing her cubs about to be stolen. Martha stopped halfway, frozen.

The two stood there, looking at each other, Martha growing more and more terrified, and Mary looking more and more as if she were about to spring upon her.

Then something in Mary broke, and she burst into tears, and she rushed into Martha's arms, crying, "Martha! Martha! Forgive me! I am lost!" And she collapsed at her feet.

Martha sank down and took her head in her hands. "What is it, Mary?" she asked tenderly. "Tell me."

At first, all Mary could do was cry, huge racking sobs, her head on Martha's lap, with Martha stroking her hair. Finally, between gasps of sobbing, she said, "I am sorry, but I am going to--" and broke down again, for a long time.

When she was beginning to be too exhausted to cry any longer, she said, "I was in the woods--" and the dam broke, and the whole story came out, from the first moment she felt Judas touch her until he left her there on the ground. And then she related how she had desired him from the first moment she had seen him on the night when Jesus had forgiven her, and how she had struggled and fought against it, and finally how she had come to Bethany to be away from him--and how, she now knew, he had also been fighting his desire for her, and how it was now too much for either of them.

And she told how she realized that if there was any evil in him, it was because of her, how he had been a good priest until she had met him and led him astray in the very Temple after she had run away from home; and how she knew he had been a loyal follower of Jesus until she had appeared and poisoned his mind once again, making him think that Jesus had taken her for his mistress, and making him misinterpret everything Jesus said from that moment on.

"Did he tell you all this?" said Martha.

She was still catching her breath and sobbing. "No," she said. "But from what he did tell me I could see that it was true."

Martha thought for a moment. "Yes, he would do it in that way."

She looked up sharply. "What do you mean?"

Martha sighed, looking down at the tear-stained face. "Tell me this: Do you want to go away with him?"

Mary hung her head. "I am sorry, Martha. But yes." Then after a long silence, she added, as if to herself, "Unless I can kill myself first."

Martha grasped her by the shoulders and shook her. "Now stop that! What do you mean, kill yourself?"

"Martha, you have no idea what it is like! I know well what I am going toward--too well; I lived that kind of life for years and years, and I know what happens--and this will be a thousand times worse! I need him, and he knows I need him, and he will have me, and it will be--unbearably beautiful!--for a while. But only for a while, because then he will tire of me, and will throw me away, and I will die! If I do not kill myself then, I will simply die of desire! And I cannot stop myself! I will go to him! I am sorry, and I ask your forgiveness now, before it happens--because it must happen! It cannot not happen! God help me!"

"Judith! Judith! Judith!" cried Martha, at the top of her lungs. Mary slipped from her grasp and collapsed sobbing once again in her lap. "Judith!"

The girl appeared at a run and stopped in the doorway, horror-stricken, as she saw the two women on the floor, with the seductive clothing strewn about.

"Listen to me!" said Martha, turning toward her, but still holding Mary's weeping head in her lap. "You are to run as fast as you can to fetch Jesus--"

"No!" cried Mary.

"Be still!" said Martha. "And you are to tell him that he must come again at once! Tell him that raising a man from the dead is nothing in comparison with this! Run!"

After Judith had left, with the fleetness of terror, Mary said, "It will be of no avail."

"What are you saying?" said Martha. "Did you not tell me he drove seven devils out of you?"

"Yes, but--"

"There are no devils in you now; only a devil in the shape of a man among his Emissaries! He can do anything! How can you not believe this? You, of all people!"

"Oh, Martha, I so want to believe!"

"Then stop worrying. Everything will be all right." Then she added, "Somehow."

Next