According to Mary Magdalene Read Free Page B

was able to give her knowledge that we wouldn't have understood.”
    Jesus had said that. The gentle Levi had said those words. Why had she forgotten them?
    Mary's heart filled with pride, and she went out into the garden to delight in every flower.
    What was it Jesus had seen in her?
    She knew that the tremendous question of just who he was would never be answered. All she could do was to give her testimony on what was incomprehensible insofar as she had understood it. But to do that, she first had to know who she herself was. She would take Leonidas' advice and start from the beginning.
    She was born in Magdala on the shores of the Gennesaret, her village poor, the people scraping a living from the meager fields, and the lake, which was rich in fish. Sheep and goats grazed on the dry hillsides. Mary was not yet five when she was sent to watch the animals on the slopes round the village. Her mother warned her not to go in among the trees higher up the slopes. There beneath the terebinth trees and among the gray trunks of old oaks, wild dogs and the laughing hyena lay in wait, greedy for human flesh.
    Mary was an obedient child, but was occasionally defiant and went into the forest, where it was quiet and dignified in the shimmering foliage beneath the trees. The child realized that that was where God lived.
    God was often talked about at home. Every winter morning she heard her father thanking the Almighty: “Praise be to Thee, oh Lord, King of the Universe, for not creating me a woman.” And her mother's voice answering: “Praise be to Thee, Lord, for creating me according to Thy will.”
    The father never looked at the girl, but past her or through her, as if she did not exist. She was afraid of him, the darkness that surrounded his coarse figure, and that closed face with its hard eyes.
    It was a relief when spring came, not just because of the warmth and the flowers, but because it never failed that as the breeze rocked the red anemones on the hillsides, and whenever her father went away, a great peace fell over their home. “Where does he go?”
    Her mother's reply was always the same. “Up into the mountains.” She said it with pursed lips, as if reluctant to let the words out, and the girl realized she should ask no more questions.
    But her mother was also more lighthearted after her husband had gone. Not that she showed it, and perhaps Mary was the only one to know her secret. When the two of them went to the well to fetch water, they might stop on the way and look up at the mountains where the oleanders were flowering pink among the honeysuckle and broom. If the child asked properly, she could persuade her mother to read aloud from the scriptures.
    “For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with their tender grape give a good smell….”
    Then they smiled at each other.
    Mary's family owned neither fishing boat nor vineyards, but they had one great wealth—the largest fig tree in the village growing outside the door of their house. This blessed tree with its thousand green fingers gave shade during the hot summer and was generous to the poor, providing two crops each year. In mild springs, the first sweet figs might ripen as early as at Passover, then toward winter, before the rainstorms came, the fruit on that year's shoots ripened and were carefully, almost reverently, gathered from the tree.
    Her mother gave birth to a child every summer, four sons in an equal number of years, the births always occurring most inappropriately in the middle of harvest. She gave birth without a whimper and was back in the fields again a few days later, a new child in a bag on her back. The neighbors helped as best they could, but not until after the new son had been circumcised.
    It was when the latest infant was ill with a high