HIM, page 23
break apart into stars.
She saw her ghostly hand
the size of a continent.
Everything swelled and she had no sense of scale.
The whole world spun
then bubbled itself still
There was ground, there was sky
But such a ground.
No trees and all laid out like courtyards.
Deep into the sky giant things rose up
of metal and glass
knives and bottles mixed but
full of light,
and moving inside them,
people like aphids.
And she could hear those people
thinking in unknown languages
of things so new
she understood each word but not a single sentence.
This world Babatha knew
was the death of everything
she had known and loved.
She flung herself away from it,
and began to beg whatever held her
Let me go, let me go.
Something gasped
and everything folded in
and then blew out.
All the different ups and downs,
all the folds and blurrings,
she saw them whole for a moment:
mother of pearl
arrested in its opalescence.
Then with a lurch and a sudden dropping down,
A sensation like landing on cats’ paws,
and she was back on the field of stone.
An old gentleman limped past her in the moonlit heat
while crickets buzzed.
Over in an instant and indescribable.
Babatha had had another kind of mind, one that could see so much more of the world, like viewing it through a diamond. Except that now the light still seemed to shine but out of her.
Babatha walked as if the rocks would crumble beneath her feet, or the Earth might pitch and throw her down.
She found she needed to talk to Ami, though she could not remember the word. There was Maryam’s face, asleep on the ground. Babatha crumpled at the knees and burbled. She had forgotten how to talk, or rather could not find the pathway back to words. Those stars, that ground, had no words. She was trying to speak like dust would speak, or ash or rainfall. She blurted out something, a plea for help.
Her mother woke. Babatha mewed. Her mother made sounds of alarm, hugged her, tried to get her to her feet.
Maryam was talking to her but Babatha got only the general sense of what her Mother said, everything partial and scrambled. Babatha glimpsed things, sudden stabs of light. She pointed and howled: There, there, look there! But her mother had no idea where to look in the world, or that she even could be elsewhere than on the skin of things. The fragile skin of the world.
Babatha began to weep out of fear and exhaustion. Ami seized her hand, made her stand and began to pull her. Babatha had a half-formed thought: I am a baby again.
Ami stroked her cheek, calmed her. Maryam was a series of echoes in both light and time, a golden, blurred threading that stretched back over the horizon towards Nazareth, and back and forth from Yerusalam.
Her mother pulled again, insisting. Babatha could do nothing except follow, though she feared she might fall through the ground again, or burgeon upwards into the sky, and that she would be so huge her mother would lose her grip.
Babatha wailed in terror, for she did not know what would be the consequence of each step. She did not know if she would ever talk again or come back to a world she could understand.
Had they been walking hours? It felt like they had, but they had not crossed the tent. Though this tent was blue and might be bigger than the sky.
Something dark seemed to rise up from the ground, awkwardly at first on all fours. Babatha thought that perhaps the boulders were standing up. Then she feared that there was a bear in the tent; or perhaps Night itself had decided to walk.
No, it was a woman, all in black. The woman enveloped Babatha in her arms. Her words echoed meaninglessly, but the tone was comforting. The woman eased Babatha back down onto the ground. Then Babatha heard,
“The sister, of course.”
Babatha picked her way back to words as if walking over broken pottery. She had once been a baby being bathed by her mother in a pot and she had understood every word Ami had said, but could not find the right words back. She understood then that she would have to find the right word for each thing, one for each fragment of the world.
Her mother’s voice rose and fell on waves of alarm. Babatha wanted to say to her, You won’t understand. It’s all all right. All of it.
What came out was. “Bill coos cross-beaked. All shit. Shit and sand.”
The Migdali translated. “Mother, she’s means everything is all right. She’s just having trouble finding her own words, aren’t you, Darling? But she’ll find them again. And more than her words. Many people’s words.”
She shushed Babatha and soothed her again. It was as though Babatha had sunk under the earth. She would rise.
In the morning, the Migdali was still squatting next to her.
“Good morning,” the Migdali said brightly. “Do you still see it?”
Babatha looked. The broken basalt, the thorny scrub, the tents – yes. They were still burgeoning outward.
Everything always expanding until she looked harder, and then it seemed that everything was also shrinking backwards. She focussed again and she could see the smallest details of everything, little particles getting so small and fine that it was like the basalt boulders, the tents, the sand were not really there.
They were really something else, something as tiny and fiery as stars. Those flakes themselves were nothingness twisted until it looked like something. Everything was nothing. And everything. At the same time.
Babatha found words, though her mouth still felt numb, and she drooled a bit when she spoke. “It’s all changing.”
The Migdali looked pleased and took her hand. “Well done. You’re talking.” Maryam reached forward and wiped Babatha’s chin with her sleeve.
There were so many words. So many people. Babatha said the same thing again in the Roman tongue then Greek, then actual Greek as spoken in Greece. Then in the language of the Persians.
The Migdali patted her hand. “Yes dear. They can all do that.” Babatha repeated herself in Coptic, Sidoni, and then a language no one yet spoke.
The Migdali patted Babatha again, and then held up a warning finger. “Stop. Don’t keep on at it. You’ll drive us mad. Just talk Common.”
Babatha giggled, and waved both hands up and down in excited unison.
You could say the whole truth. But you’d have to talk for ever in every language. The universe would not last long enough for the whole truth. You would never stop talking. The idea struck Babatha as terribly funny and she began to laugh.
The Migdali leaned forward to Maryam, and said. “They all go through this. Second childhood. They calm down later.”
The idea of talking proper, like a fish or an acacia tree, made Babatha laugh all the more. Truly, she felt such glee. She stood up (this time without shooting off into a star cluster or the distant future) and despite all of the new flesh around her hips and thighs began to dance and sing one of the Mizmor.
She sang in it Common mixed with Greek, then mixed with something else that in her addled state she decided was the language of angels, only she repeated it in Coptic. Some of the women in the tent noticed and ululated for her. Some clapped to give her dance rhythm. Babatha called out thanks to God, and called out for mercy and forgiveness. She knew now.
She was in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Later, as Babatha slept again, Maryam thanked the Migdali.
“It was so kind what you did. I had no idea what was happening.” Emotion surprised Maryam; tears came; she covered her mouth.
“Glad I was there,” said the Migdali, taking her arm.
“Have you…” Maryam stopped. She knew what blocked her throat: a note of envy. “Have you been visited by the Spirit too?”
The Migdali’s face turned slightly green and looked weighted down. “Naw. Noooooo. I were possessed by demons.” Abruptly, she walked away.
There was a Calling Out, and all of the seventy-two felt it like a tremor in the earth.
They put down their work, or their lack of it, stood up, or wiped their hands, their smiles dim with relief or gratitude, and started to amble towards the hill.
“Babatha?” Maryam asked as her daughter suddenly walked away.
“You come too, Ami,” Babatha said over her shoulder. From all over the camp men and women were being drawn to the bedrock on the hill. Maryam scooped up Rut and trotted after her daughter.
These new apostoli seemed to recognize each other. They nodded to one another, acknowledged each other, but were self-contained. They sauntered. As they drew closer to the outcropping, some of them took each other’s hands. They knew each other, like birds.
Maryam felt a tremor of sadness. Just when she had regained her daughter, she had lost her again.
The whole eklesia began to realize something was afoot. There had been all this talk of a long walk to Yerusalam, and new emissaries. Some of them sang snatches of Mizmor, but only snatches, as if the words were butterflies landing on branches.
They jumped from “Happy is the man who trusts in Him” to “The young lions lack and suffer hunger. But those who see the Lord shall not lack anything good.”
As they drew near, the Son stood up, brushed his buttocks, and threw up his hands.
“You are the sea!” he half sang. “You come in waves! Flow like water down the valleys. You are the river and you baptize! For you bear the Holy Spirit.”
He jumped down from his rock to be among them, calm and affable like his old self. “You can do now what I do. I cure the sick. So can you.
“You can drive away the fragmented spirits, blow them gently back into the fold. You will be able to talk to anyone God needs you to talk to.”
He held out his hands, dividing them into sets of two. “You are a pair. Bless and watch out for each other. You walk now to Dalmanuthu and spread the word.”
Then the next two. “You are a pair. You walk to Tiberias. Prepare the way, make it straight. We will follow. Tell them not to fear us, we will take nothing from them.”
“You two, you’re a pair. You two to Philoteria. Tell them that we come bringing with us the Kingdom of God. Heal if the Spirit moves you, but it is news you are bringing. Warn them that the eklesia follows.”
He came to Babatha, and held out his hands that took in her and Esta, Platon’s wife. “You two are a pair. Bless each other, keep each other safe on the road. You go to Scythopolis.”
The lips of Babatha’s fixed grin didn’t move but still she said. “What-polis? Never heard of it, where is it?”
The Son laughed. “Ah, Sister. Do birds know place names? They just fly.”
“Give us a hint.” Some of the eklesia chuckled, elbowed each other. Babatha was known to be amusing.
The Son’s eyes closed. “Atha, your map is your mouth.” Hoots of laughter from those who heard. “Just ask. It’s south toward Ginae.” The Son’s voice rose. “After that we go to Shomeron, then back to cross into Perea and beyond.”
He walked on creating pairs: Sebastae, Neapolis, Sekem, Aenon all through Perea to Philadelphia. Some he sent very far north, to Ephesus, or Damascus, places the eklesia as a whole could not possibly visit.
“You ask what will you eat? Do birds ask what they will eat when they fly south guided by the Spirit? You will be housed. You will be fed. And you will be rejected.” His voice became exaggerated, and he waved from side to side. “Some folk may even be unkind.”
“No!” the eklesia chorused back. “Say not so!” Maryam realized it was one of their standard jokes. Some people must have been very unkind to them, flung rocks to chase them away.
“Well for those places that reject you? Just kick the dust from your sandals. That dust is not worthy for you to even walk on.” He grew still and serious. “For you know and walk in the Spirit of the Lord.”
Little Esta, the beaten wife of that horrible man, little Esta now walked in the Spirit? Something like pride swelled in Maryam.
And the Son began to sing a new Mizmor with the words “Walk in the Spirit, Walk in the Spirit of the Lord.”
The pairs began to sing it too. Without any further preparation, wearing what they wore, they began to walk, shoulder to shoulder.
Babatha and Esta, the two Nazaredai, turned towards the south-east. Maryam knew the road, knew the peril. There was something she needed to say, something Babatha had asked of her.
“Babatha. The thing I never said.” Maryam walked with them, but hunched and anxious.
“Yes, Ami,” Babatha said calmly.
“Your brother was not born the usual way. I never told you. He does not have Yosef for a father.”
“I know, Ami. I know,” Babatha reached back and took her hand.
“No. You don’t understand. There was no father. An angel came to tell me.”
Babatha chuckled and kissed her mother on the forehead. Even little Esta chuckled. “Of course it looked like an angel. But everything, everything is angels.” Babatha put an arm around her shoulder. “Ami. It would have saved a lot of trouble if you’d told me earlier. I wouldn’t have hated her so much. But no matter now. Really. No matter now.”
In the Holy Spirit, Babatha knew.
At a crossroad, Babatha stopped and leaned forward in front of Rut. “I’ve got to go, my darling,” she said, as if to an adult. “You’ll be with Granny. It would be too hard for you alone with just me and Esta when we have work to do.” She hugged her daughter. “But you will see me in Scythopolis. I promise.” She kissed her again, stepped away, and walked on. Esta called goodbye to Rut as well, and gave a little wave with the tips of her fingers. The two Nazaredai walked backwards for a little way, then faced forward.
Rutit let out one long wail and held out her hands. Maryam picked her up and sat her on her hip. “Oooh! My, you are getting heavy. You’ll see Ami again. You’ll see Ami soon.”
Babatha, always the strongest in the family, always the solver of problems, always the one who acted. Who would have thought it? You, the female prophet, doing what even the Son would not do – preach as a woman. The things I have seen. The things I will see.
It bothered her that Rut was used to mothers going.
CHAPTER 23
THE CARAVAN MOVES ON
A few days later the camp, all five thousand, broke up.
In the women’s blue tent it was as though the ground itself had stood. The sounds rose up like a flock of birds – clothes being folded, bowls being wrapped in blankets, the rolling of carpets, the dousing of fires and the collapsing of the big tent itself.
Suddenly there was only sky overhead. The Rock finished detaching the main pole. The Migdali sprang a big smile at Maryam but was too busy to talk. She was bustling, telling the women not to worry, to take what they could. No one would get lost, how could they lose sight of so many people? The Rock collected Shushan. He shouldered up her carpet and then swung her on top of that.
“My heart is beating,” said Shushan in excitement, and gave Maryam a hug. Maryam decided she might as well stick with the Rock and Shushan for the march. The Son had said they were going first to Dalmanuthu, a mile or so south of Migdal Nunya.
Without any signal, the blue-tent women started to walk. The Migdali strode off to catch up with the Son. Maryam was pleased to see that she and the Rock formed a kind of leadership cluster at the head of a troop. Many of the women followed them, herding their goats and children.
At first little Rut played with other children, running in circles with them; but she soon tired, and Maryam had to carry her.
It was still the cool of the morning. There was pressure to be near the Son, who marched in front. Somehow, not thinking they were trying to, the Rock, Shushan and Maryam caught up with the students at the front, and these days the broad backs of the students parted to let them through.
The Migdali looked happier than Maryam had seen her in days. “Making ourselves a new road,” the Migdali said. Maryam looked behind at the caravan stretching out behind them and already, winding through the boulders and the scrub, a visible pathway had been beaten.
“We should be singing,” said the Migdali and clapped her hands and tried to sing in her weak and breathy voice. She nodded for Maryam to join in and Maryam dutifully did out of friendship. It was the prayer-song that somehow Maryam could never remember. Why would the Lord lead them into temptation?
Somehow the time was not right for singing. Perhaps people didn’t want to open their mouths in the hot sun and the drying air. They edged around the side of Mountain Kinrot and the hazy lake slowly came into view, with its yellow shore and Roman road. And here waiting for them was a large flock of goats, guarded by barTalemi and Mattit-yahu, local sheep purchased by Yoanna’s money. The flock joined the caravan.
The sun was at its baking zenith when they finally stepped onto the road’s beaten crust. There the caravan stalled and bunched, within sight of Nahum.
Some of the old eklesia had farms to go back to or other lives to resume. The followers gathered into knots of people who hugged each other, wished each other well, even wept to say goodbye. Then those knots broke apart.
Perhaps a quarter of the caravan turned north to walk back to Nahum or Beth Saida or even Caesarea Philippi near the sea. These farmers, merchants, and some tax collectors were the ones with mounts and sturdy shoes, and tunics that were not torn. They took much of the eklesia’s food and water with them.
The sick, the destitute, the egregious foreigners with darker skins who spoke strange forms of Greek – these followed south. Many of them limped or were carried, looking scalded by life. They hugged their empty bellies. There was no other place in all of the lands of the two Herods for such as these.
It was these hungry people who filled their stomachs with song. Now the song-prayers rose up. Their eyes yearned for the Son of Adam somewhere in front of them.
