CONFESSION
In another Life he would have stayed in this house with its courtyards, arcades and fountains forever. This could be the beginning of something. Already a whole community surrounded him. He could live out his life here, live it with John, live it for a long time, and when he had passed out of the world, leave his teachings, leave his example. When he had gone to the East, he’d seen a great white stone statue of their Buddha, teaching peace and calm, teaching self control, and his example had changed their world. But Jesus felt himself on the edge of some great wildness, some self destruction, and he saw himself taking all of his people with him.
“Why is that the way?”
Why did he wish to keep traveling out of this place of fountains and moonlight, out of the joy of Sepphoris? He should stay here forever.
But you cannot stay here forever.
Jesus entered the shade of the bathing house and stood over the great pool.
If you stayed here, you would forever stop your mouth up from all the words coming up to it, and in clinging to this safety, you would cling to fear.
“But the Buddha…”
You are not the Buddha.
“But…”
Your fate is not to live a long life.
Jesus took a deep breath, and his hand gripped the stair rail descending to the pools.
“So be it,” he whispered.
He stood there a while and then he said, out loud, “You may remain.”
He heard nothing at first, and then there was a splash from where the pool went into darkness, and in the half moonlight swam a figure, Seth.
“You may remain,” Jesus said again.
He removed his robe, and stepped into the water, slowly, up to his feet, up to his legs, the water embracing his hips, his neck, and then he dived, moving through the water like a fish.
He plunged up, puling his hands through his thick hair.
“I need more than this,” he said. “I need a scrub. I need to scrub the world away and the whole last few months.”
Seth swam away, and he returned with soap and sponge and strigel.
“My thanks.”
Jesus reached for them, but Seth said, “No. Let me.”
“It isn’t necessary.”
“It’s the least I can do,” Seth said. “You have literally brought me back from death.”
Jesus surrendered to Seth as he had to John so many times. He remembered that day when he had at last come to Palmyra with James and Jude, and the night when he had, at last, relaxed while John washed his hair and scrubbed his flesh.
“I admit,” Seth murmured, “since the time I woke to you, I had wanted to touch you. Touch your arms, your hands. Such hands, gentle hands but strong, and look at these scars.”
“I was a worker of stones and a carver of woods.”
Seth nodded, though Jesus, eyes closed, could not see it.
“And a healer of men,” Seth said. “Now bow your head.”
Jesus obeyed and Seth poured soap and oil into the thick curls of his hair, and Jesus trembled at the feel of his hands. All of the last months, all of the journey north, all of the rage of preaching in Jerusalem, the thrill and the force of the power of God shooting through is body, this strange, heavy heavy sadness, rolled down and down under the comfort of Seth’s hands, rolled down to his stomach, to his goin, made his scrotum into a tight ball and his penis heavy.
“Dunk your head,” Seth said.
Jesus did and washed the soap away and came up blinking.
“And now you are clean,” Seth smiled.
“Thank you,” Jesus said, quietly, “for doing this for me.”
“I would do anything for you.”
“Never say that. Never say that to anyone.”
They moved from the deepest part of the pool. They stood waist deep and Jesus said, “Seth son of Miriamne, what do you want of me?”
“What?”
Jesus touched his cheek and said, “What would you have of me?”
Seth lowered his eyes.
“Lord, I can scarcely say.”
“In the saying of it is power. In the doing is power.”
“Lord, surely thou knowest.”
They were silent and Jesus said, “There are hundreds of thousands in this world who want a thing, and the thing is not hidden from me. It is not enough for me to know it. One must speak it. One must reach for it.”
Seth took Jesus face in his hands and kissed him. He held his face some time. His hand, planted on Jesus’s chest, descended, descended, descended, reached under the water and cupped him as Jesus eyes closed and his mouth opened in passion.
“Is this plain enough?” Seth whispered. “Where are you sleeping?”
While he felt himself growing larger and more vulnerable in Seth’s hands, felt his body trembling with a different kind of power, Jesus rasped, “Let me show you.”
“How does it feel?” Seth asked in the dark.
“Feel…?” Jesus whispered after some time.
“To fuck something that’s died.”
A moment ago, Seth had held onto his hips and his body had arched, and the seed exploded from him. After the affection turned to ecstasy and their bodies strived in the lightless room, they lay together exhausted, and Seth was in his arms and his fingers moved through Seth’s hair. He was still overwhelmed by the extraordinary feeling of being inside of Seth, of tapping him over and over again.
“Every time love is made it’s different,” Jesus said. “The question you ask is a question I cannot answer.”
“I… have been terrified,” Seth said, “terrified that I was untouchable. Death still clung to me. I felt like one of those strange creatures from nightmare tales. For the first time I feel alive. Making love to you, touching you, tasting you, you in my mouth, I felt alive.”
Jesus’s breathing was steady, and his hands were gentle on Seth, but he did not speak for and when he did, he declared:
“I am going to die.”
“We’re all going to die,” Seth said.
“Soon,” Jesus said.
“But you cannot.”
“I can.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
Seth took a deep breath. His and his lord’s legs were linked together, and Seth’s hand lay on his hip.
“I have died,” Seth said, “and so death does not bother me. Not like it did.”
Jesus pressed close to him, and Seth slipped his fingers into the tendrils of his hair.
“You are not dying immediately?”
“No,” Jesus said. “It will not be for some time. But the road I am on leads to destruction.”
“Would you have me follow you on it?”
“For a time.”
“I would follow you all the way.”
“No.”
Seth was quiet.
“If we travel together there will be a time when I tell you, remain here. Remain in this place while I and the others travel on,” Jesus said, “and you must obey me then.”
“Well, yes,” Seth said, “I will.”
In the morning, Seth woke to see Jesus standing naked at the window, the sun soft around him and the shadows on his back to the small of his back and his buttocks, rounded and and strong over powerful thighs.
Jesus turned around with a smile at once merry and solemn and said, “And now the true adventure begins.
Last night had been its own adventure in the dark, the loveplay and the surrender lust of sex. Now they dressed and joined the others for breakfast, and Jesus said, “Those of you who have come so long a way, if you would set back, set back. Others are going in boats We shall cross the sea and settle in Bethsaida. But after that, I shall take the Twelve and only a few others, and we shall journey north. We will journey out of Israel, but do not fear, we will return.”
“How can I turn back?” Photine demanded. “I feel as if all of these days, even with all that has happened, we are at a great party, at a wedding feast, and I am not ready to see it end.”
“What if I were to tell you that the bridegroom would become the widow’s son, and the feast a funeral? The march to the wedding, a march to death?”
“Then I would say, even so, lead me on.”
Jesus solemnly nodded and, it seemed to Seth, almost gratefully.
“Even so,” he said, “when we come to Bethsaida, there I shall bid you wait for my return.”
And Photine nodded in obeyance.
From that moment, Jesus was obsessed with traveling north. They all knew more or less that he had learned many things traveling East, and now wished to learn more.
“If anything is to be known or spoken, it will be from and to the scattered children of Israel, the very most scattered, and to those who were never children of Israel at all. For Israel came from somewhere, as did all four of his wives. They were the children of Aram, and to Aram we will go.”
As they traveled, Jesus sang, clapping his hands slowly:
“In my distress I called to the LORD,
and He answered me.
From the belly of Sheol I called for help,
and You heard my voice.
For You cast me into the deep,
into the heart of the seas,
and the current swirled about me;
all Your breakers and waves swept over me.
Seth’s voice joined his in a plaintive tenor and sang:
“At this, I said,
‘I have been banished from Your sight;
yet I will look once more
toward Your holy temple.’
The waters engulfed me
to take my life;
the watery depths closed around me;
the seaweed wrapped around my head.
“To the roots of the mountains I descended;
the earth beneath me barred me in forever!
But You raised my life from the pit,
O LORD my God!”
“What is the song they are singing?” Photine asked Mary, and the mother of Jesus said to her, “It is the song the prophet Jonah sang when he was cast into the sea and went to the land of the dead. The story we know says he was swallowed by a big fish, but all know that the fish was Rahab, and Rahab is another name for the mouth of death. In the world of the dead Jonah lay, three days and three nights, until, at last, God delivered him.”
Around them the men and Magdalene raised their voices and sang:
“As my life was fading away,
I remembered the LORD.
My prayer went up to You,
to Your holy temple.
“Those who cling to worthless idols
forsake His loving devotion.
But I, with the voice of thanksgiving,
will sacrifice to You.
I will fulfill what I have vowed.
Salvation is from the LORD!”
They traveled east, away from Sepphoris, and north, away from the rest of Galilee until they were in Dalmanutha, a town unknown to most of them, but there Jesus’s detractors waited.
“Some of them are from Jerusalem,” John noted.
“Of course,” Photine said, “We have walked and traveled slowly in this great group, and all that time they took wagons, carts and swift horses.”
“It is not in me to speak,” Jesus said, wearily, but then he found that it was, and as if they had heard not a word, the synagogue leaders and the men of power from Jerusalem demanded, “Give us a sign that we might believe in you.”
They were in the Dalmanutha synagogue, not as ornate as the Capernaum one, but moreso than the one in Nazareth.
Jesus left the bema, and stood before them, his white mantle over his head:
“When evening comes, you say, ‘The weather will be fair, for the sky is red,’ and in the morning, ‘Today it will be stormy, for the sky is red and overcast.’”
Many of these men were or had been fishermen, were or had been farmers. This was not the world of Rome where a scholar was not a worker. Jesus himself worker and scholar continued:
“You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but not the signs of the times.”
And then suddenly he declared, his voice rising in great wrath:
“Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad; for a tree is known by its fruit!”
Whatever fear had once been in him gave way to anger and he strode up to the nearest of these black crows so that his spit brushed their faces.
“You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. The good man brings good things out of his good store of treasure, and the evil man brings evil things out of his evil store of treasure.”
“Really—!” some interrupted, and others said, “I say—”
But Jesus slammed down his hand and shouted:
“But I tell you that men will give an account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.
“A wicked and adulterous generation demands a sign, but none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”
He wheeled about so that his robes twirled around him, and he shouted to all the hall:
“The men of Nineveh will stand at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now One greater than Jonah is here.”
He gathered his cloak about him, and John and Judas, Peter and James ran to his side. Seth did not dare, for he seemed to burn with fire.
He was leaving the synagogue but the crowd was following him as he shouted:
“The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon,”
And now he wheeled about thumping his chest in rage, his voice hoarse like a Roman trumpet.
“And now behold! One greater than Solomon is here.”
That night, many who were traveling, departed, heading back south toward Nain and Samaria. They sat by the sea eating broiled fish, and watched the water darken, and the fishermen and all the boatmen , most kin to John and James and Andrew and Peter, made arrangements for those who would be sailing north that night to Bethsaida.
They set out on the night black sea, and Peter guided the first boat with Magdalene and Seth and Mark and all the Apostles. The sailing was smooth and the mother of the winds seemed to want them in Bethsaida again, and coming toward the shore of the great city, Thomas murmured, “We forgot to take bread. Good thing we will be at Simon’s house come morning.”
“Watch out!” Jesus told them. “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees. And the Sadducees for that matter.”
There was rumbling and eye rubbing, for it was late, and Magdalene was prepared to put what Jesus had said away, and think of it in the morning. He was, she knew by now, prone to these fits of mysterious speech, and the time for it, she believed, was not on these waters.
Apparently Seth and Mark had decided to put his words away as well, but Zelotes and Nathanael were earnestly discussing what Jesus, turned arway from them all, had seemingly already forgotten.
One of them exclaimed, “It is because we did not bring any bread,” and to Magdalene this was so hilarious she burst out laughing.
They had touched land on the pebbly shore. There’s was the first boat, and the others were coming. Jesus and even the child Mark and Magdalene strived to pull the boat onto land, and then, as they were doing so and Jesus was wiping sand and sea debris from his robe, he said, “You of little faith, why are you debating among yourselves about having no bread?”
Turning from pulling their things from the boat or adjusting their robes, they looked to him.
“Do you still not understand? Do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many basketfuls you gathered? How do you not understand that I was not telling you about bread?”
He looked on them sternly, and then adjusted the graying mantle.
“Beware,” he repeated, “of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”
But as he walked into the city and they followed after him, Magdalene could only thing how greyed, and yellowed were those robes which had been the garments of the bridegroom. Once there had been a jubilant wedding feast, and now they were going into something else.
“All this talk of bread is making me hungry!” Jude shouted.
At once, Jesus, who had been marching ahead of them all, doubled over in laughter, and they were all laughing and Jesus ran back and took Jude in a headlock, knuckling his cousin’s head.
“Ow, Yeshan! Stop! Ow.”
“Well, then!” Jesus said, his cousin’s head still in a grip while he marched, now with a new joy in his step, “if Jude is hungry, then let’s make sure when we get to Zebedee’s house he is well fed!”
