Secret Magdalene Read Online Free PDF Page B

unnoticed as we make our way down from our high hill and through the streets to Heli’s house. This goes on for many months, from the dry season of Iyar to the rains of Marchesvan.
    We do not think of how it will feel when it all must end.
    As, of course, it must.
             
    I wait behind a door that opens onto Heli’s courtyard on this evening in the month of the olive harvest and I prepare myself to speak. Israelites come from everywhere; there are members of a sect who call themselves the Congregation, there is the Brotherhood, the Yahad, the Covenant of Unity. There are the Friends, and the Meek, and the Little Ones, and the Dawn Bathers, and the First, and the Many—and just as Father said, the Many also call themselves the Poor. There is, of course, the Way, though as Addai says, almost every sect from here to Egypt names itself the Way. I have asked him why then do he and his friends do the same? He has not answered.
    One can get a headache from all this, trying to know who is who, and why.
    I peek out to see who is here. Tonight there are a few Haberim, whom the people call Pharisee, curious to see what the fuss is about, though these are careful to keep themselves apart for fear of being defiled by the touch of the
am ha-aretz,
or “people of the land,” the unlearned farmers and fishermen and herdsmen and laborers and such. In return, the
am ha-aretz
turn eyes full of loathing on the Pharisee. I see countless more
am ha-aretz
than Pharisee.
    There are a handful of scribes, and for one fearful moment I wonder if any of these know Father, or he them. Then I remember that here we are as boys. Even should they know Father, they would not know Father’s daughter or ward in either of us. There are also two Doers of the Law, the Osims or Essenes, in white robes and girdles. Father laughs at the Essene; I once heard him tell Nicodemus that these are so devoted to the exact ritual fulfillment of Torah they do not allow themselves to excrete on the Sabbath. We have never seen one of Father’s Sadducee here, but this is not surprising. Father and his friends are rich and powerful, so what need they of change? Besides, they do not believe in angels and rewards and punishments in the world to come. Though it is curious that they do seem to believe in demons.
    There is now begun to be a group of scruffy, fierce-looking men who gather in the back, keeping to the walls of the courtyard, and always near the exit. These men wear the roughest of robes, and over their shoulders seem to carry all they own in leather bags. Salome thinks they might be Cynics, followers of the philosopher Diogenes, who believed in living as an animal lives, with great naturalness, and if so, she should like to know them.
    I think that the more people who come, the worse the smell.
    It does not occur to us to fear what is happening by making our voices public. It does not occur to us what these people might be thinking of us or what they might eventually want from us. We are yet children, and nothing occurs to us but our own happiness at having all these people think us boys, and that we are now listened to.
    We make our way through the hot press of people, who hush as they see us, and we seat ourselves on the stone bench by Heli’s shell pool. This evening it is Salome who speaks. “A spirit came to me,” she begins, “and it said, ‘You, son of man, though you have bound yourself in flesh, know that you are a being of Light. There are none who do not walk in the Light.’ Do you doubt this?”
    And right away a man bent by the years speaks up. “I, Ahad Haam, of the Yahad, doubt this. For he who would walk in shame and corruption cannot also walk in the Light.”
    We are used to these interruptions; the things the voices say always cause a ruckus. More than once Ananias has cried out for silence, saying that we were
nabi’im,
the mouthpieces of Adonai. People must believe him, because more and more come to hear us. The voice in