for his greed, for turning his back on God’s laws, for decorating his palace in Tiberias with a menagerie of graven images. Nor did he spare the Temple priests, accusing them of growing rich off the animal sacrifices they performed in the Temple.
I knew Jesus would ask me what I thought of this peculiar man. What would I say? He’s eccentric and strange and I’m leery of all his talk about the end-time, but there’s something charismatic and powerful about him, and while he hasn’t captured my imagination, he has captured the people’s.
A man wearing the black-and-white robes of the Sadducees, the elite of Jerusalem, interrupted John’s scorching criticisms, shouting, “Who are you? Some say you are Elijah resurrected—who do you say you are? The priests have sent me here to find out.”
One of John’s disciples, one who seemed familiar to me, shouted back, “Are you a spy?”
I whirled toward Jesus. “That disciple—he’s one of the fishermen from Capernaum who sat with you in the courtyard, the one on whose boat you fished!”
Jesus had recognized him, too. “My friend, Simon.” He scanned the other disciples. “And his brother, Andrew.”
Simon continued to bellow at the Sadducee, demanding to know who he was. “Hypocrite! Leave us and go back to your lucre in Jerusalem!”
“Your friend is easily heated,” I said to Jesus.
He grinned. “I once saw him threaten to toss a man over the side of his boat for accusing his brother of miscounting the fish.”
John raised his hands to quiet the uproar. “You ask who I am—I will tell you who I am. I am a voice crying in the wilderness.”
These words, this proclamation, fairly stunned me. I thought of the words inscribed in my incantation bowl: When I am dust, sing these words over my bones: she was a voice. I closed my eyes and imagined the words rising from their ink beds and escaping over the side of the bowl. The figure I’d drawn of myself at the bottom leapt up and danced along the rim.
Turning, Jesus laid his hand on my shoulder. “What is it, Ana? Why are you crying?”
I reached up and felt the wetness on my lids. “John is a voice,” I managed to say. “What it must be to say such a thing of oneself! I’m trying to imagine it.”
* * *
? ? ?
WHEN JOHN CALLED UPON the multitude to repent and be cleansed of their sins, we streamed into the river with the rest of them. I didn’t go in hungry to turn back to God’s law—I went desiring to cleanse myself of fear and deadness of spirit. I went repenting of my silence and of the meagerness of my hope. I went thinking of the newborn self I’d dreamed of birthing.
I gulped the air as John pushed me gently beneath the water. Coldness closed over me. The silence of water, the weight of darkness, the belly of a whale. I opened my eyes and saw small striations of light on the river bottom and the faint glint of pebbles. A moment only, a heartbeat, and I came up splashing.
My tunic clung around me in heavy folds as I trudged to shore. Where was Jesus? He’d been near me when we entered the water—now he was lost in the morass of penitents. I began to shiver with cold. I moved along the bank, teeth chattering, calling his name. “Je-Je-Jesus.”
I spotted him out in the river, standing before John with his back to me, descending into the water. I watched the place where he disappeared, how the circles of water spread slowly outward and the surface grew quiet and still.
He bounded up, shaking his head, creating a swirling spray. He lifted his face to the sky. The sun was sinking toward the hills, pouring itself onto the river. A bird, a dove, flew out of the glare.
xxv.
We bedded that night alongside the road to Jericho beneath a gnarled sycamore tree, our robes still damp with baptism. I lay beside him, drawing warmth from his body. We stared up at the branches, at clusters of yellow fruit, at the black sky smeared with stars. How awake we were, how