Thirteen

'I still do not see what you are saying," said Thomas.

She laughed. "I do not seem to be very good today in explaining myself. I am not used to speaking of myself, and I find it somewhat embarrassing. But, as I said, because you are living through an extreme of the unnatural but normal life that humans have lived ever since the Fall, it would be specially useful to you to see what life will be like once the Kingdom of my son is formally established."

"And so that is what I have got myself involved in?" said Thomas. "He has, to be sure, made some enigmatic statements already, that seem to tend in the direction you are hinting at. Do you think that he can do it? Restore us to what I think you are saying: the condition our First Parents were in before the Fall? Is that what the Kingdom is all about? And you actually believe he can do it?"

"Oh, I am sure that he can do it."

"Water into wine is amazing, granted, not to mention what happened to me. But . . ."

"Oh, I know, it sounds fantastic--impossible. But I have lived with him all his life, and I know more of him than anyone else. But it will not be inevitable, even if he is capable, as I am sure he is, of the transformation. Everything ultimately, I think, depends on his being accepted as King."

"And by this you mean what John believes: the King, the Son of David who was promised so many centuries ago. That King."

"You are very astute, Thomas. That, and much more than that. You will see. Do you remember, for instance, the prophesy of Isaiah about the lion and the lamb?"

"You mean, lying down together, and the lion eating hay and the child patting the serpent and all of that?"

"Exactly. It was a prophesy, was it not? People think of it as poetry. But I think he means to transform the whole world to one in which there is no suffering or pain anywhere."

"As he transformed the water into wine?"

"Well, you saw what he can do. And what he did with you. You yourself are one of his signs. And you will see more. Many more."

"I?"

"You are a sign of what he can do, and how he intends to do it."

Thomas thought this over. "Well, he did free me from drink, but only in a sense. He told me that he would free me from the necessity of drink, but not from the desire."

"Exactly. He could have 'cured' you completely by his own power. But he will not. He only helps, so to speak, those who cannot help themselves, but who wish to be free."

"Oh, if I but knew that I truly wished it! I long so fiercely to be its slave again!"

"You know you do not. Otherwise, you would have taken a different cup."

Thomas was silent for a moment. Then he said, "Frankly, my Lady, I suspect that none of us can ultimately help himself. In that sense, I suppose you are right, that I am an extreme example. When the urge comes--as it does every few moments, it seems--I pray to him almost as to God to help me. I am two people at war with one another--which is ironic, because I once was twins, and was more a single person then than I am now!"

"I see nothing wrong, truth be told, that you pray to him."

"Sometimes I wonder if it is blasphemy. But when I pray, he does seem to help me." He thought of the previous night, and said, "I am sure of it. That it is he who is--what, intervening?--when I am about to step off the edge."

"As am I. But, you notice, you must go to him for help; he will not force you."

"That is too true also, it seems."

"And that is what I admire."

"I still do not see what is admirable about it."

"Well, you do not see things from my point of view. How could you?" She paused a moment, then took a deep breath. "As I said, my experience of life has been very different, which is one reason I admire you, and now I find another thing I admire: that you do not, as I suspected, admire yourself."

"Admire myself! If you knew!"

"Oh, Thomas, I know enough. You see, young John told me about you weeks ago. He was terribly worried."

"John? You mean the son of Zebedee? What did he know of me? I never met him before a day or two ago."

"That is true, but he had met Samuel at one time when he and Samuel were selling their catch of fish, and you had one of your study sessions with Nathanael."

"He did? He never told me."

"He became friends with John and James, but especially John, who was younger than he but obviously brilliant--you will see--and he told John once that if you could have a rich friend, he could have a friend also, one who would one day be famous, unlike lazy Nathanael."

"I had no idea he was jealous! He always seemed to despise Nathanael and everything I did with him--and I suppose he suspected that Nathanael was the one who supplied my wine."

"According to John, he did not say much, but did not have a very good opinion of Nathanael, who he thought was corrupting you. And he was at his wits' end to know what to do with you. He loved you deeply--very deeply--and of course he knew you drank, and had that pouch of wine hidden under your robe."

Thomas's face flared scarlet, and his hand flew to the place he kept his bladder. He glanced up with fear, realizing he had betrayed himself.

She smiled. "You see. That is something else that I admire, and I must confess do not understand. You keep it with you, but you do not take from it."

"I asked Jesus about it, for it was given me after--and I found I could not give it up, in case the longing became unbearable. If I had it, I thought I could refuse; but if I did not have it, I would be desperate, frantically seeking it. It makes no sense, but . . ."

"But he knows of it, and did not forbid it. You need have no fear."

"Fear, My Lady, is my whole life. I am nothing but fear."

"But put your trust in him, and there is nothing to fear."

"Except myself. That is what is is terrifying. But I understand you; and that is what he told me. 'Trust in me, not yourself. You will succeed. Trust in me."

"At any rate, Samuel explained the situation to John, who is, as you will no doubt see, something of a hothead, and John said, 'You must confront him! You cannot allow this to go on, or he will ruin both of you, and your father too! The next time you are out in the boat, tell him that this must stop, that you know what has been going on, and take the wineskin from his robe and throw it into the sea!"

Thomas's eyes widened. He sat for a while, the memory flooding over him, drowning him, and finally said, "And that is what he did, and I--in leaping after it, I killed him!" Tears leaped unbidden to his eyes, and he bent over in uncontrollable sobs.

Mary let him cry himself out, looking on him with pity, and then said, "There is another way to look at that, you know. You leaped out of the boat, as I understand it, and it capsized, hitting him as it did so. People sometimes call such things 'an act of God,' and if one looks at it carefully enough, one can occasionally see the Lord's hand in it."

"Oh?" he said, still breathing sobs. "I fail to understand how," he responded, almost angrily.

Mary answered, "Well, you see, consider this. John, naturally, felt hugely guilty about what happened. As soon as he heard of it, he concluded that Samuel was dead because of what he had done in giving him advice. And then when you were evidently trying to destroy yourself, he came to me to see if I could ask Jesus to rescue you. Now first of all, would you say that Samuel's death was really John's fault?"

"Of course not. Perhaps what he advised was rash, but how could he have foreseen what would happen?"

"And perhaps what you did was rash--but you were being driven by the demon in the wineskin."

"Jesus did tell me that the curse I was under drove me to jump."

"But it was sudden--an impulse. But think: even with what you just called the 'curse,' if you had had time to think, would you have jumped out as you did had you known what would happen to Samuel?"

"Oh, my Lady, I know not!." But then, he said, "I certainly would not if I could have--no, you are right. Had I known, I cannot believe I would have done it." She smiled again.

"Then if you do not blame John, how can you blame yourself?"

"It is not the same. I did the deed. John did nothing."

"But you are still not seeing the event as a whole. Samuel told John that he would give his life if it would save you from your slavery to drink. And did not his death do so? Through John? If John had not told Samuel to do what he did, would you have stopped drinking? If, for instance, he had merely spoken to you?"

After a pause, Thomas said, "I suppose not. In fact, I know I would not. It had happened before. And this time I was much more its slave."

"You see?"

"But I did not stop even then. I nearly drank myself to death!"

"And that," she said, "is yet another part of the story. Had you not been doing just that, John's remorse would not have brought him to me, and you to my son--who is, as I think you realize, your only hope of rescue. John's advice and Samuel's action accomplished what they both wished to achieve."

Thomas gave a small ironic laugh. "You make it all sound so--rational. As if it were preplanned, somehow. But I wonder if Samuel would take the attitude you attribute to him."

"You wonder if he thinks the sacrifice he made was worth while?"

"Yes. Supposing him to 'think' now."

"This may be one of the things we cannot know on this side of the grave--or until the Kingdom is inaugurated. But perhaps, if it is necessary, you might even find out."

"You are as good at speaking in riddles as your son."

She laughed. "They are not riddles. We simply utter the truth, and in the world we live in, the simple truth often appears as a riddle."

Thomas fell silent for a considerable time. It was true; there was a whole tapestry of interrelated events, all of which seemed to converge in a mysterious way. Perhaps there was hope for him, after all. It seems he had been singled out, somehow. And this strange woman seemed to have recognized it. Singled out for what? he wondered.

Finally, he said, "But you said something about knowing from experience what the natural state of human life is. Is this connected with the 'simple truth' you refer to?"

"In a sense." She took another deep breath. "Let me tell you about myself--and him."

"I was quite young," she began, "when I realized that I was somehow different from everyone else. Other children became sick with all sorts of diseases, and I never even had so much as a cold. Other children fell and scraped their skin, and if I fell, nothing happened. And most of all, I found to my surprise that other children really meant it when they said, 'I could not help it!' when they had done something foolish out of anger or desire for a sweet.

"You see, in my case, if I had a desire to eat something, and my mother told me it was too close to our meal, or I realized for some reason it would not be good for me, I immediately lost the desire. If someone did something unjust to me, as children will, my anger would arise, but I was always capable of reflecting, and if I considered that it would be better not to be angry, I actually lost my anger. I had all the emotions everyone else had, but unlike anyone else, they were always completely under my control. If my reason wished to stifle a feeling, it simply disappeared."

"In truth?" exclaimed Thomas. He looked at her with awe. "What an enviable--what an impossible--state to be in!"

"And yet, if one thinks about it, it is the state we ought to be in. How is it that our own minds can tell us 'This must not be done; it is dangerous,' and that same mind can insist and insist on our doing it? As your desire to drink is doing. It makes no sense. That was why I said I was living in the truly natural state human beings are to live. And this is the state, I am convinced, in which we will all find ourselves in the Kingdom. I am its precursor, in a way.

"My condition has its drawbacks, however. It was frighteningly easy for me, especially as a child with no experience, to despise my 'weak' companions, wondering why they let themselves become sick or hurt, or gave in to their emotions when it was clearly a foolish thing to do. It was very, very difficult for me not to think that I was more meritorious than they; that my control of myself was something I had done, when in fact, it was a pure gift I had that I had nothing to do with acquiring. What to others would have been heroic virtue was to me as easy as breathing, and thus had nothing virtuous about it.

"But I was lucky. My mother saw how I was--as did my father, but like most fathers of daughters, he doted on me--and she took care to instil in me that I should be humbled by my extraordinary gift, not made proud by it. She dinned into my head that I had done nothing to deserve it, and that I should thank the good God every day and every moment that he had made me as he did, and to think that I had the gift perhaps because I could not bear up under the struggles that others had--and pray to him that some day I would come to deserve what he had done in me.

"I wanted to resist. I knew I was special, and it was very difficult for me not to think it was because of myself that I was special. But of course, my mother had reason. How could I have made myself not become ill or hurt? It had to be a gift. And a gift I ought to put to use. I began taking care of those who were sick, with the secret knowledge that I would not--that for some reason I could not--catch what they had.

"Everyone seemed to admire my 'courage' in exposing myself to terrible diseases, and sometimes blamed my mother for allowing me to run rashly into danger; but she and I knew (though we knew not why) that there was no danger, and I was perfectly safe doing what I was doing. There was nothing admirable about it.

"And that, of course, is why I admire people like you, who run the risk of terrible pain and even death. I could not face it, I think. I went into 'danger' only in the certain knowledge that I was in no danger at all. In that, I considered myself, in a sense, less than everyone else. And my mother, thank God, helped me to foster that attitude. Who was I? What did I have that I was not given? And if I was given it, what had I to boast of? It was mine for some purpose; to use."

Thomas was even more awestruck, if that were possible. Such an incredible woman, if what she was saying was true, and for such an incredible woman to be humble! "You astound me," he said.

"There is nothing astonishing in it. It is, as I said, the truly natural state we all should be in. Certainly, it felt natural to me, and after a time, I forgot about it.

"But of course, if one is given such a gift, one wonders what its real purpose is. And since I was a direct descendant of David, a purpose thrust itself upon my consciousness: perhaps I was singled out and given these favors because I was to be the mother of the Messiah, and the Prince that had been prophesied for so many centuries was about to be born from me. Not that I deserved it, but whoever would be his mother would have to be, one would think, different from other women somehow. At least, it would be fitting. I could not avoid thinking thus."

"Correctly, it seems."

"Well, yes and no. The Lord acts in peculiar ways. My thoughts were only strengthened when I learned that Joseph, my friend and playmate from as long as I could remember, had been chosen to be my husband. He also was a descendant of David. Two descendants of David, and the Prince was to be a descendant of David.

Of course, I never gave voice to my thoughts--how could one? I had done nothing to deserve being the mother of the Prince, and here I was living in Galilee, instead of where some of my cousins lived, in Judea, which would at least have been close to where one would expect the Prince to be born. But I could not help thinking it."