Seven

Mary could not, of course, spend a whole night and day simply waiting and not thinking--and what was there to think of now except her situation?--though she would have bitten off her tongue and spat it at the prophet before she would have admitted it to him.

Nor did she make any attempt to kill herself prematurely, possibly because she did not want to put his power to the test, in case he actually could reach out somehow and prevent her from doing what she chose.

In a way, she was trapped by her own desire to be free from his control; in order to prevent herself from obeying his commands, she found herself doing what he told her. She saw this and hated it; but what alternative was there?

She realized this even as she walked home through the moonlight, which created a mockery of day before her just as her life was now a mockery of life. Everything she had been, everything she thought she knew and was, had vanished. True, as the "Master" had said, she recognized herself; he had left her with her vindictiveness, and her cursed desired to analyze everything, her longing for something to make sense out of the horror that was herself, her conviction that nothing could do so, and the perverse will that would reject it if she found something. Her hatred for herself and everyone else. Especially for him.

In spite of all of this, however, she knew that she was not what she had been thinking she was--even what she had been thinking she was as late as this very afternoon, after all the transformations and translations of her ideas in the past few days. What was she?

She had always been so sure that she was a hero: a valiant fighter struggling to avenge a wrong that cried to heaven for redress. This gave purpose to her life, and allowed her to carry on the tedious business of sex with a fervor that must have excited her clients as much as it inflamed her to hate them, and made them come back again and again for more. Whatever she did to them, she did not bore them--which was apparently easy to do, judging by how many of them fled to her from wives.

But what she had recently thought she had discovered was that she was perhaps just another link in the same chain of those who ruined others and went away justified--except that she was the particularly perverse link, who tried to open others' minds to believe that they were doing the very thing that she in her blindness was doing to them.

And if that indeed was what she was, killing herself was small expiation. Nowhere near the expiation the crime deserved. But on the other hand, it was the least she could do, and what else could she do? And so, as soon as the prophet released her from his clutches, and before the demons could enter once again to block her, she would leap off the cliff.

At this point, the prophet's statement, "You will find that it is not now necessary," came to her mind. She laughed as she went into her door and flung herself on her bed to wait the required night and a day.

Sleep was impossible, and as the square of moonlight made its journey across the room, the prophet's words pecked at her consciousness like a chicken trying to emerge from its shell. Was she one who ruined others so that she could justify herself? Had she ruined anyone as she had been? Had she in fact been ruined by Zebediah? The shell began to crack.

What in fact had happened on that night? What she had wanted to happen. She did not quite know what it was, but she herself had brought it on, had she not, by walking provocatively in front of men? Was not that what he said he was trying to show her? And did she not realize it in some dim way?

So she had performed this mysterious act of coupling, and found what it was like--and it is a fact that he had been much gentler with her than many men had--but she had found it out in a silly context, lying in the shadows under a tree with a complete stranger, afraid of being discovered, rather than openly with a man who really cared, for whom it would be a joy to bear a child--whatever that meant. The evil was not in the act, it was in the context--and hers was in a context in which she had destroyed in herself the ability to understand what the act really was. She had tried to find out what it was, and had experienced it in such a way that she made herself unable to know what it really was.

Her mind for a while formulated no conscious thought, though it was clear that it was pondering what all this meant. It had something to do with the incongruity in regarding a child as a disaster, when everything about the act was leading to the child as its fulfillment. The act without a child was incomplete, perhaps, rather than evil; but the act with a child was its full self, since the child was what really united in one body both of the lovers, and became himself a new personality to be cherished for his own sake as well as the embodiment of their love.

How beautiful when thought of in this way! And until this moment, she had never considered it as anything but a calamity, and something to be slaughtered, when it came to the crisis, because it stood in her way of regarding the incomplete act as all there was. How stupid!

And that was the secret of it all, was it not? That what she had done was stupid. Zebediah had been a vehicle for her to discover what this emerging maturity in her had wanted her to discover, and so what terrible disaster had he brought upon her? Had she gone home that night and never returned to him--as she never in fact did return to him--who would have known, until perhaps she married and her husband, if he were knowledgeable enough, discovered that she was not a virgin?

No, it was not what had been done to her, not the act itself, that was the disaster, it was the fact that he had acted as if she were evil, and the only evil one, when what the two of them were doing was to perform a beautiful act in a stupid context. It was his hypocrisy, not what he had actually done, that she could not stand; because even while it was happening, she remembered, she liked it and wished for him to continue--and wanted more after he had finished, when he had slapped her verbally in the face with that "explanation" of why he had done this with her, as if she were too much of an idiot to realize that he had done it because it pleased him.

Suppose she had laughed in his teeth, as she now would have done, and said, "Do you think I believe that? I know why you are here, and you know it as well as I. What would you do, denounce me publicly? Suppose I should denounce you? You are nothing but a pathetic dung-beetle, pushing his ball before him claiming that it is gold! If you can only receive satisfaction by rolling with children beneath a tree, then go along home and ponder your miserable life!"

Suppose she had done that. He would have slunk away in shame and never bothered her again, and every time they passed he would have been in mortal terror that she might say something to expose him. And how could he know that she would not have done this, that afternoon when he told her to meet him under the terebinth tree--that she would not, perhaps, appear there with her father and brother, who would beat him to within a jot of his life? He was even more stupid than she, since he could foresee the possible consequences to himself--though hardly what actually happened--of that night, and still he appeared at the tryst. Who knew? Possibly, as hesitantly as she, for all his bravado. Certainly, many of Mary's clients afterwards approached her in fear and trembling.

No, it was not the act they did that was stupid; it was the fact that they were doing it then that was stupid. And it was the stupidity, Mary now realized, that she resented, and had tried all these years to hide from herself.

In fact, the real evil of that night was that instead of laughing him to scorn, she had--in her fury at what she now saw was her own stupidity of giving in to this impulse--run to his house and set it afire, burning his poor wife to death. In her attempt to avenge her own stupidity as if it were his evil, she succeeded in--what? In freeing him from his crippled wife, who had probably made his life miserable for decades. And he did not even know that it was an act of vengeance on her part!

So this too was supreme stupidity. How could she have thought that she was avenging herself upon him when he doubtless regarded it simply as an accident, totally unconnected with what he had done? And, after his shock at his wife's dying, he might well have come to think of it as a blessing, without her to be concerned constantly about. This was her vengeance! How idiotic!

And even poor Ruth. The body he had carried out did not seem to be a charred mass; she had not burned to death. She must have died from the smoke, or perhaps from a failing heart. And she had been spared discovery of Zebediah's infidelity--or perhaps of this latest instance of his infidelity, with how much more to come. But even if she never suspected this of him, she was spared more years of feeling that she was a burden to Zebediah and could be no wife to him. Perhaps she had longed for death, not only to free herself from the constant pain of her affliction--Mary knew well how she had been in pain--but to free Zebediah so that he could have a real wife again. Had Mary done her harm, or a favor? Who could know?

She lapsed once again into meditation. The moon had set when she came to herself, and it was totally dark except for the lamp that she had left burning in the other room, whose light she could only see as a lesser darkness in the doorway.

Was this all that it was? Were the unforgivable evil that had been done to her that night, the inexpiable sins she herself had then committed, mere stupidity, to be laughed at rather than shrunk from? She had tried to be like God, knowing good and evil, and had succeeded only in discovering stupidity. She had tried to emulate God's power over life and death, and had succeeded in benefitting her enemy and freeing a poor soul from prolonged anguish. Stupid.

And afterwards? All the evil she had done? What had she done, even if she were imitating Zebediah, as she so shrank from admitting? She had shown people what they wanted to discover, and had tried to convince them that finding out from her and in that way was some horrendous crime, when all it was was to engage in a beautiful act in a stupid context: as a transaction. All the while she and they were panting in desire, giving in to the pleasure and joy of the other's body, both knew that it was a simple economic act of buying and selling that meant nothing, even though in itself it meant--could mean and should mean--so much. Stupid.

And she thought that in finding pleasure and joy in their bodies, she was destroying them and taking out her hatred for men upon them. By giving them pleasure and joy! And while she was taking as much pleasure and joy as she was giving, she was refusing to admit that she was enjoying herself, because if it were so, then that would be love, not hatred, would it not? Stupid.

And now she realized that there were some whom she let go in the waning hours of the night with a pang, because--she now saw--she yearned for the man not to go and forget her, she wanted him with her for the rest of her life, for him to come home to find her waiting, for him to eat her food, for him to father her child, for him to support and cherish and feed her with the affection she was seeking in vain. And she would not admit this to herself, because she wanted only to hate men. Stupid.

And so she sought out men like Simon, whom she could not stand, to perform the act of affection as if it were an act of vengeance, and to give them power over her in order to pretend that she had power over them, when all the time what she really wanted in all of this was to find someone for whom it was not a question of power but surrender, on both sides. And she had made it impossible for someone of that sort ever to approach her, and because she had made it impossible, she claimed to herself that no such existed. When she knew they existed, since she had seen it in her own father. Stupid! Stupid!

Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! She would kill herself.

--And compound the stupidity. They knew, all those who had seen her tonight, that she had said that she was merely going to wait until her time was up and then kill herself. They would say, "And she had been freed from seven devils, and instead of beginning life anew, she had killed herself at the first possible moment." How could they know that she wanted to kill herself before ever the devils had left her? How could they know that beginning life anew made no sense in her case? How could they know that what she had done was unforgivable?

"If you wish to be forgiven, you will receive forgiveness."

--Was it possible?

Unthinkable.

Yet what had she just been telling herself? That all of what she had regarded--had been so proud of, in fact--as evil was nothing but stupidity and the opposite of what she thought it was and what she intended it to be. She was trying not to be herself and doing the opposite of what she intended to do, all the while pretending that her intentions had been achieved. The acts themselves had been silly because they were out of context, that is all. It was her desire to make them into something vital, something of utmost importance, and not simply absurd toying with what was no toy, that was where the evil lay.

If she could be forgiven, Zebediah could also achieve forgiveness. No! How could he ever be forgiven? And who would forgive him? The prophet? What had he done to the prophet? She herself would have to be the one to forgive him. For what he had done to her.

But what, she had been asking herself, had he done that forbade her forgiving him? That he asked her to come to him, and that he was there when she came, and showed her what she wished to discover? It was wrong, certainly, but because it was a silly use of what was not silly; but how is that unforgivable?

"Because he destroyed in me the power to be honest in the act!" she exclaimed aloud, hoping that the prophet was listening, somehow--or that someone other than those driven away was listening, and realizing why she could not forgive him. But the someone seemed to be answering, "But if you yourself had turned back home, as you yourself have said, and put this folly behind you as nothing but folly, you could have regained the power. Perhaps you could even regain it now."

No, but that was not possible, with all the practice she had had. But was he responsible for the practice? "He was! It was my hatred for him that made me what I am!" Yes indeed, her reason forced upon her, it was her hatred, not the pathetic romp in the shadow of the terebinth, and not his wretched and ludicrous attempt at self-exculpation. She hated him for his dishonesty; she hated him in her dishonesty at attempting to feel a virtuous victim of his dishonesty. How was he responsible for her hypocrisy, which was what had driven her all these years? She saw his hypocrisy so clearly, she thought, because solely of her own hypocrisy. And she had worked to expose to herself the hypocrisy of others in a twisting of the truth into such a snakes nest of intertwined lies that she herself could not even begin to untangle them until this night!

But did this mean that he had no blame at all? Of course not. He had issued the invitation--but she had freely responded. But actually, was it not she who had first issued the invitation, though she only dimly suspected what she was inviting men to? He had said that this was what she was doing, and was he not correct? Had he not, in fact, responded to her?

But he was to blame for responding to her, since he knew he should not! But that meant that she was equally--"No! Not equally!"--yes, equally to blame for issuing the first call, though she knew she should not, and in responding to his response, though then she knew too clearly that she should not, even if she did not understand why. And if, as she had been telling herself, her blame was slight, was his that serious?

Or if his blame was not something that cried to heaven for vengeance, for which to forgive was to overturn the fabric of the universe, was her blame all that direful and unforgivable?

"If you wish to be forgiven, you will receive forgiveness."

From whom? How would Zebediah receive forgiveness from her, who was equally to blame? Or how could she receive forgiveness from him, as if he were something virtuous she had wronged? Even all the rest of the men. She had not raped them; if she had wronged them, they had wanted to be wronged and to wrong her. How could any of them forgive her of what he was responsible for, and how could she--why should she--forgive them? What was there for any of them to forgive?

But who else would there be to forgive either her or Zebediah? Ruth? For perhaps by being his wife awakening his desire which she could not fulfill, and provoking him to seek fulfillment elsewhere? True, she did not intend this; but in all probability this is what she was doing. As were so many wives, who in their virtue drove their husbands away to people like Mary. And could Ruth, who may have realized this and longed to be freed from it, forgive Mary for giving her the release?

But this was to say that nothing was wrong, that nothing even deserving of forgiveness had occurred--which was absurd. One does not burn down a man's house and kill his wife and say that because good came out of it--if it did--then there is nothing to forgive about it.

And yet, the more one looked at the actual act and its actual consequences, the less the act appeared to be what demanded forgiveness. If Ruth's naked presence in Zebediah's house awakened desire which he perhaps tried in vain to stifle, there was nothing to forgive in this; it was simply a natural consequence of her crippled condition. As much "forgive" an earthquake, or a fire that started by a thunderbolt, or even a coal too full of sap that leaped off the hearth. The fire in Zebediah's house needed forgiveness because it was her heart, not natural causes, that started it. Once started, it did what fires do.

And it was the hypocrisy of Zebediah's heart that needed forgiveness, was it not? But who could know to what extent it existed? Perhaps he was as ignorant of himself as Mary had been of the sources of her own actions until this night. If Mary had not realized how much of a hypocrite she was--though she had dimly suspected it, she now saw--then who was she to say that he was fully aware of what he was doing, in all of its implications?

Who was anyone to say such a thing? Only one who could read into the heart better than she could herself would be able to forgive her, because only he would really know, and all her ruminations even now about her own motives, was speculating. She did not know. When once she seemed to see what was behind her actions, she seemed to lift another veil, and the whole scene out that curtained window changed.

So now it seemed that forgiveness was not possible, not because what had been done was unforgivable, but because there was no one who was competent to forgive.

So what was she to do? To ignore the past, and start over? To forgive herself, as it were? But she was no more competent to forgive herself than was Zebediah or anyone else--and what was she now except what the past had made her? It was simply not possible to undo what had been done, not to have traveled the road she had traveled. She could not do that, any more than she could return to her thirteenth year and take the road she should have taken. The self she could have been had she not met Zebediah on that night died on that night--or rather, was transformed into the self she now was, even if she no longer was possessed by demons.

If she were not to kill herself, it would be someone else who would be living from now on. She certainly could not continue as she had been doing; the self who did that sort of thing was breathing its last breath, and it was unthinkable now to meet men with the delusion that she was exposing their hypocrisy.

But on the other hand, if she did kill herself, she would be killing, not the self that now existed, but that old self who had already died. She was already not herself; she was no one, at the moment. She had no idea what she could do, except that it could not be what she had been doing for years and years. What point was there in killing this different person for the sins of the one who had already died?

"You will find that it is not now necessary to kill yourself."

That was what he had said she would discover, was it not? And she had discovered it. It was not only not necessary, it was foolish, and as wrong as any of the stupidities she had blamed in herself and others so long.

But he knew it. He knew it before she did.

"If you wish to be forgiven, you will receive forgiveness."

He knew about the demons also, something she herself did not know.

He knew what was happening in her own mind--better than she herself knew it.

Was it possible? Was he, in fact, the one--the only one--who could forgive her? Had he not created this new self in her by killing the self-deluded demoniac and leaving her body intact and making her able to think clearly for the first time in years?

Either that, or she had been right all along, and the way she seemed to herself now was the deception. But that was absurd. A waking person may entertain the thought that he might be sleeping, but he knows he is awake. The present state was no delusion, however much she might have thought she was not being deluded in the past.

So he, only he, knew how guilty she really was.

Which meant that he, only he, knew whether she could be forgiven or not, and because of this, only he was competent to forgive her.

"If you wish to be forgiven, you will receive forgiveness."

But this meant that he could forgive sin! Impossible!

But if impossible, how could he know more about her than she knew about herself? How, in fact, could he have driven the devils out of her? They groveled (she found herself cringing as she remembered that though they groveled, it was she who was writhing in the dust) and called him "Master" and obeyed his every word, though they hated it. They fought and even tried to tear her apart, but they obeyed to the smallest jot every word of his command.

Then if he could command devils as a man commands his dog, could he not command sin to vanish?

No, that was something else. It was impossible. That would be to erase what was.

No. It would not erase the acts. But she had just got through realizing that the sin was not in the act, but in the stupidity of pretending that the act was not what it was, and being determined that it be something other than a beautiful thing out of context. The actual harm, even, was perhaps as much a benefit as a harm, depending on how one considered it. No, the sin was not that. It was the unrealistic desire to make things what one knew they were not, and pretending that they were what one knew they were not and could not be.

So to forgive the sin would be to restore her mind so that she could accept reality for what it was, and her will so that she could act accordingly, was it not? Could sin be forgiven? It could, but only if the mind could be remade, if the person one was could vanish and a new person take its place.

"If you wish to be forgiven, you will receive forgiveness."

But did she wish to become someone else? She wished not to be the person she had made herself, certainly. "I wish to die. I wish to cease. I wish to be nothing at all."

--But was that an option? She could die, certainly, though "You will find it is not now necessary to kill yourself." But suppose she did, though it was not necessary. Would she cease? Would she become nothing at all?

Was this not another delusion of the demons inside her? They were alive, for a certainty, and without bodies how could they be corpses? They were driven out of her, but would return; they did not become nothing. Perhaps it was true that, as the Pharisees said, when one died, one's breath or spirit or whatever it was one called "oneself" continued forever.

Which meant that if she killed herself, she would forever exist, forever vainly striving to be nothing, knowing that the struggle to go out of existence could never be won. She would still be herself, and trebly herself, hating herself and destroying herself without being able to destroy herself. She would be the same person she had just concluded had died. Killing herself would only revive this person, not create nothingness in its place.

"If you wish to be forgiven." If she wished to become someone else. If she wished, not to go out of existence, but to reject her self, the only self she knew, and become, somehow, another person. But who? Who would she be, if she received this "forgiveness"?

"You will recognize yourself." Already, she could barely recognize herself--but she could recognize herself; he knew her, he knew she would recognize herself. But she had not yet been forgiven, so this "self" she would recognize was not this self; this was a transitional self, not what she was, but nothing like whatever she would be.

Did she want this new self? Did she want to take this leap away from not only everything she had been--hatred, feeding its own hypocrisy with the delusion of unmasking hypocrisy--but the self she now was--confusion, hatred for what she had been, hatred for what she was still, hope which was as much fear as hope?

But if she did not, what would she be left w--

"Where did you want me to begin today, Miss?"

"What are you doing here?" Mary was on the bed facing the wall, and turned to see Judith standing in the doorway.

"It is time for me to come, Miss," she said.

"Nonsense!" But she looked out the window, and there was the sun about to set. A whole night and a day!

"Go!" she said. "I want nothing today."

"Nothing to eat?" Judith's eyes widened.

"Nothing at all! I am . . . busy." The sun was almost on the horizon. They would be coming back! She shook with terror.

"What is the matter, Miss?" Judith's face was an echo of what hers must be; she looked as though she had seen a demon.

"Nothing, Judith, nothing. It is . . . I am simply . . ." When would they return? Would she be able to keep them out of her?

"Miss, the prophet has arrived in Magdala. He will be--"

"I know."

"Oh, Miss, have you been to see him? They say he is--"

"Leave me! I want none of your prattle about prophets!" He would not let them attack her before she had a chance to see him and ask for forgiveness! He must not! She would not be able to resist them if they came back! "Leave! Leave! I have things to do! Leave!"

Judith turned and sped down the hill as if pursued by a pack of raving dogs. Mary waited in a frenzy of impatience until she was out of sight, and then hurriedly threw some clothes on. No fixing of her hair and face this night, though she stepped over to the glass from habit and saw the death's head she was.

But she must go before they came to her! If he could see into her mind, he could see greater filth than was on her face--and he could see how desperately she needed to reach him, and would not let her fail.

On an impulse, she snatched up a small jar of nard from the shelf beside the glass. He would want payment, and she could offer this to show that she could pay; and then he could have all the gold he desired--all she had, for all she cared.

As she started down the hill at a run, she realized that she was going to beg and plead and abase herself before him, if only he would forgive her. What did it matter? The demons were on her heels, and she must not return to what she was, no matter what the cost!

The thought that they were close behind and narrowing the gap made her almost stumble in her panic, but she caught herself and ran on. The sun was almost behind the hill. She could almost hear the sweet words as they insinuated themselves once again behind her eyes.

Where was he? Where would he be?

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