The Table

We sit here together around this table that your father built before you were born, and we eat the rich olive bread from the wooden plate at the center of the table; thirteen hands sharing bread, and I wonder at the intimacy of it, especially now when we all feel as distant as strangers. I keep trying to catch your eye, but you keep your head down and eat very little, and if there were not so many others around us I would maybe reach out to take your hand, or to ask you what is wrong that I cannot soothe. 

The wine is spicy and auburn, but you do not drink more than a few sips before leaving it to sit in its cup before you, so different than everyone else, who are swiftly emptying the deep pitchers almost as swiftly as the serving girls can bring them out, silent and brown as wrens as they slip here and there carrying more wine and bread and figs laid out in the shapes of pomegranate blossoms. 

As for myself, every bite of bread tastes like dust, as heavy and unyielding as sorrow in my throat. I wonder how they can all eat and speak of meaningless things while the weight of this moment grows until surely it will break this table, surely it will break you where you sit-silent and patient and holy and oh so sad. And I don’t blame you, because I have only been with you for such a short time and I feel as though I could weep. 

It is the greatest tragedy, the one that no one can see except for those who know what should be, and instead watch as strangers who were supposed to be everything to each other sit around a table and talk and laugh as though they are brothers, when really they do not know each other, when they could be anyone at all. 

I wish that I was closer to you, that I did not have to sit here at the end of the table while you sit at the center, surrounded by the others like the petals of a rose, and I think with the faintest trace of bitterness that it is the stem that is the furthest from the center, and yet is holds it all up, is what supports the weight of beauty and thorns alike. I try to catch your eye, a boldness that I know is unprecedented and audacious, but I want to see, for one moment, those soft brown eyes that remind me of the desert horizon when the sun is going down.

I wonder, suddenly, that if when you are gone I will see your eyes in each sunset, if a part of you will become a part of the desert itself. 

◇◇◇

Matty is talking about the money he collected today, and how it will buy us enough to last for another two fortnights at least, even after he gives the required amount to the priests. Everyone is congratulating him, and I wonder if they realize how his words sound so very like the doctrine that we avoid, how, although they praise him as if his actions were selfless, he did nothing more than take gold from those who did not have gold to give. I know that tomorrow, if there is a tomorrow, you will take the gold and return it to the people he took it from, and then blame thieves in the night. It is what you do every month when Matty brings back the money, and yet somehow we never go hungry, even though I do not know how you pay the serving girls and the merchants for the food and wine and perhaps even the priests for our lives.

At the table, where we sit beneath this blanket of friendship where the threads have worn thin and I can see our own foreignness pushing through like a persistent ache, I look at all these faces and wonder how many of them I really know. And, with a shiver, how many of them you even know. How quickly this could all fall apart, and yet we sit like family and listen to Matty speak of his work and Tom steadily growing drunker and louder and Jamie tell jokes that are rarely funny and yet we laugh every time. 

Surely we all have our secrets, hidden beneath the surface, quiet and patient, but a deep vermillion in hue like the desert where the sun strikes it at midday, hot and exposed. 

Once I heard two women in the market speaking of Simon, and I stood close by, pretending to be picking out a bolt of cloth, and trying to push away the guilt that I was listening to gossip, and yet unable to walk away. They said that before he came to walk with you and stand on wooden platforms and speak until he lost his breath, he had two wives and seven children, and when he left he left them as well, to live in a hut in the South and provide for themselves. I couldn’t imagine Simon, with his passion for speaking to the people and his utter reverence for you, leaving his own children and wives behind to follow his own desires. 

So now, when I look at him eating olives and telling Peter about his plans to go South of Galilee in the summer months to speak to the people there, I cannot see his face clearly through the image of hungry children with Simon’s eyes and two women who loved him and who he walked away from. I wonder if he sees his own family in the faces of the people who he speaks to, if he hopes that one day he really will see them, if he cannot stop moving and speaking because he is afraid that if he pauses for one moment, he will wonder if it was worth it. 

They whisper that Johnny used to visit brothels, that Matty used to befriend the priests, that Andrew renounced God. I wonder how much of what they say is true, and how much of it is the empty talk of people who cannot help but imagine what darkness might be hiding behind the stars, and the brighter they shine, the more the stories are told. 

You must know all of their secrets I think, and the shame tastes like unripe olives on my tongue-bitter and unforgiving. You know all of their secrets and you sit with them at this table and give them food first and drink from their cups of wine. You know my secrets, even the ones that I have not told you, and yet you still smile at me and allow me to touch you and eat with you. I feel my face burn hot and I look down, hoping that perhaps you do not know all of my secrets, the shameful secret thoughts about you that I cannot help but think whenever I am near you. 

I suppose that it is good that I am not seated besides you, and instead sit at the end of the table as is expected for a woman, for if I was next to you wouldn’t I feel that strange burn in my chest and face and wouldn’t my skin feel as if it were doused in sunlight whenever it brushed your sleeve? 

Juda is seated besides you, and unlike the others, and like me, he is not eating or drinking or laughing or even speaking. His brow is furrowed, and I can see the lines of tension in his body across his shoulders and in the way that he leans away from you, like he is afraid that if he brushes you for even a split second, he will break. I wonder if you can tell, if you can feel the pain beneath the surface of his skin, and I wish that you would reach out, place your hand on his and release him. And yet I am terrified that if you do, we will all find out just what Juda has been hiding, and then we will not be able to go back to where we were, to where we are now, at this fragile balance between companionship and followership and strangeness. 

Out of us all, I think that Juda has the most secrets, and yet they are not secrets because we can all see them burning beneath his skin. He has changed since I first knew him, and even more so since the rest have, and as he has become more estranged and angry and fearful the rest have pulled away, all except for you. As we have pulled away like the petals of a flower, you have drawn in, and I wonder that perhaps you think that you are the only one who can still save him.

Last night I couldn’t sleep because of the stifling heat and so I went down to the courtyard to find respite in the coolness of the desert night. You were there, with Juda, and although I knew that I should walk away, I couldn’t help but stand in the shadow of the doorway and listen. You stood silhouetted by the moonlight, and streaks of silver caught in your hair and painted your profile argent, taking my breath away and making my heartbeat in my chest like a trapped bird. Juda stood in shadows, and I couldn’t help but notice the contrast of the moment-you, enveloped by light, and him lost in the darkness before you.

I heard Juda speaking, low and hushed and almost desperate, “Do you ever wonder of the cost?” He said, “The cost of all of these glorious moments, maybe not tomorrow or even the next day but eventually, when we realize that we will never be able to grow old and have families and die in our beds in peace?”

You didn’t respond for a minute, and then you said, “But won’t it be a glorious end too, Juda, whenever it may come? Would you not rather die so others can grow old and die in their beds in peace then have that yourself?

I heard Juda make a fierce noise in his throat, and then he said, “I should think that, shouldn’t I? I should be humble and proud and unafraid and willing to sacrifice my living soul for the ninety year old beggar woman?” He turned away from you, and there was a heavy pause before he continued, in a voice that sounded broken in places, “I am not like you, I cannot be quite so selfless that I kill myself.”

There was a pregnant pause, and I held my breath, but when you did reply your voice was quiet and calm and gentle, “It won’t be me that kills me though, will it, Juda? And it won’t be the priests or the guards or the people either,” he continued, “it will be faith, and I am not afraid, for to die by faith is to live on past the point where my heart stops beating.” 

“You speak in riddles,” Juda said, his voice cold and shaking, “I am going to bed.” He turned and brushed past you, and I pressed myself into the shadows of the doorway, holding my breath until he had gone past.

You stood very still, the moonlight bathing you, and you looked like a statue in the cold silver light. In that moment I saw the secret that you had kept from Juda and that you kept from me and that perhaps even you were trying to keep from God. I saw quite clearly then that you were afraid, and that maybe you did want to die peacefully and old man, and maybe you even did not want to be who you were. 

I wanted to go to you, but I was too afraid, afraid that if I did you would turn away, and even more afraid that you would turn to me, and I would feel the weight of your pain and not know how to carry it or take it away. 

So I stayed there in the shadows and watched you stand there in the brilliance, and when you finally turned to go I prayed with all the desperation in my heart that I wouldn’t regret not going to you when I still could.

Now, here, at the table, I feel the heaviness of dread settle over me, and I want to stand up and shout and demand that the enemies show themselves. I want to throw myself across your body as you sit eating olives to protect you from whatever may come. I want to ask Juda why he is so angry at your gentle kindness, I want to ask Matty why he cannot see the truth of his actions, I want to ask Simon how he could leave his own blood for strangers, I want to ask Philip why he cannot look me in the eyes, and I want to ask you how you can sit there and watch it all fall apart.

Instead I stand up and help the serving girls clear the empty platters from the center of the table, and I wonder how my hands are not shaking so hard that I drop the wooden dishes until they all look up from their conversations and see what is happening. When I reach beside you to gather your plate I feel your eyes on me, and I force myself to look straight ahead, for if I don’t I will surely begin to weep. I turn away from you like Juda did last night, like Juda does now when he follows me out of the room and comes up behind me where I am setting down the dishes. I turn to face him, afraid, my hands really are shaking now because he frightens me. 

“What is it?” I ask, and for a second he just looks at me, without saying anything.

“Go back to the table,” he says, and I am surprised, because his tone is harsh and unexpected and he has barely spoken to me before except to criticize my presence. “Sit beside him, where I sat before. Don’t leave him tonight.” Then he walks off, towards the garden, without looking back. 

Don’t leave him tonight, he said, and I wonder if Juda knows my secrets as well, if he is just as afraid as I am. 

When I return, the energy has shifted, and the tension is more defined. I wonder if you and Juda had spoken before he left because you appear agitated, and although the rest are still talking and drinking I can tell that something has changed. You see me approach and rise abruptly and my breath catches when you say, “Come and walk with me, Magdalena.”

We walk through the garden in the growing twilight, and I wonder if you can hear my heart beating. It smells of jasmine and the faint scent of incense from inside, and when you reach out and take my hand I feel as though I have been struck by lightning. We do not speak until we reach the very end of the garden, and then you turn to me, and your breath is sweet with wine and my heart is swollen and beating in my throat. 

I feel all of the words that I am too afraid to say to you rising hot and sweet on my tongue-don’t let yourself be hurt and you are far too beautiful for them and who are you and i love you. And perhaps I would have said some of them if you had not pulled me to you and kissed me then, so all of my words got caught on your lips, and so perhaps you heard it all anyway or perhaps you didn’t need to hear it, because you already knew. 

And all of my secrets were given to you, then, as you kissed me in the garden fiercely and softly and wonderfully, and they were not shameful or I was not afraid of you knowing because your lips were a benediction, and whatever was to come after this moment did not matter at all. 

When you pulled away I forgot that I was afraid, and when the setting sun turned you into a man made of cinnabar and gold I thought suddenly that it did not matter if you were who they thought you were, or if you were just a man in a garden with a woman afraid of tomorrow, because I loved you, and perhaps, in this moment, you loved me as well. 

And tomorrow could come, and they could take you away from me and break you into a thousand pieces and that would not matter because in the garden you were whole and for one second you were mine. 

In the distance I hear the men still seated at the table begin to sing, and although we do not know each other at that table with those men and all those secrets that fill the air as heavy and stifling as myrrh, I know that one day, perhaps even tomorrow, there will be a table set for two, and there will be no fear or secrets or waiting for something terrible to happen, because we will have all the time in the world, and you will have nowhere to be and nothing to do. 

And we will feed each other figs and perhaps you will even laugh, and there will be no need for words, and yet we will speak anyway, for no other reason except the joy of hearing our voices, spoken aloud into the soft night air.