The warm air was sweet with the scent of the river and the green marshes, and I could hear the cry of the birds who always gathered in the vicinity of the river. I liked it, and my heart was tripping, and I too felt that sadness again, as I'd felt it with my mother. It was light yet terrible. It made for a kind of drifting and amazement at the smallest and most trivial things.
Something was changing and forever. The children, summoned now to go to sleep whether they liked it or not, had no sense of this change, only of novelty and adventure, as they might on an excursion to the great sea.
Even my brothers had lapsed into a wary exultation which they defined decisively to one another as they agreed that they would confess, be washed, indeed allow themselves to be baptized if that is what John bar Zechariah insisted upon, and they would return to this or that chore, and this or that problem of life - with renewed strength.
In me there was a wholly different awareness. I did not press for speed, and I did not lag behind. I did not lament the distance one way or the other. I moved slowly towards what was at last going to separate me from all around me. I knew this. I knew it without knowing how or what would actually happen. And the only place I saw this same awareness - and some measure of this same acceptance - was in my mother's soft, habitual gaze.
Chapter Twenty
IT WAS MIDMORNING, under a gray and blustering sky, when we came upon the entire baptismal gathering.
Even our own numbers had not prepared us for the size of it, the great spreading mass of people on both sides of the river, stretching out as far as we could see, and many with broad, richly decorated tents, and feasts laid out on their rugs, while others were the masses of the downtrodden who'd come to stand side by side with the Priests and Scribes, in their ragged garments.
Cripples, beggars, the very old, and even the painted women of the streets made up part of the crowd, along with all those who'd mixed with us in coming.
The King's soldiers were everywhere, and we recognized the apparel of those who served King Herod Antipas here, and those who served his brother, Philip, there, and all around were splendidly clad women, flanked by their servants, or just emerging from their sumptuous litters.
When we finally caught sight of John himself, the crowd was hushed, and the anthems being sung were a distant backdrop. Here men and women removed their outer robes, and went down only in their tunics into the water, and some men removed even these to proceed in their loincloths, as they approached the clear figure of John himself and his many disciples.
Everywhere around us were the secretive whispers of those confessing their sins, begging for forgiveness from the Lord, murmuring just loud enough for a voice to be heard but no real words, as eyes were closed and garments dropped in the reeds, and people wandered on into the marsh and then into the river.
The disciples of John were to the left and the right of him.
And he himself was unmistakable. Tall, with this shaggy black hair streaming over his shoulders and down his back, he received one pilgrim after another, his dark eyes shining brilliantly in the gray morning light, his voice low and carrying over the rumble of voices around him.
"Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand," he declared, each time as though it were the first, and those around him took up the saying, until we soon perceived it was a very chanting, a chanting that mingled in timbre and pitch from time to time with the random and ceaseless confessions.
Jason and the young men stood back, arms folded, watching. But one by one my brothers went down, stripping off their robes, and entered into the water.
I saw James go down under the current and rise up slowly as John, his face unchanged by any conceivable recognition, poured a conch of water over his head.
Joses, Judas, and Simon moved towards the disciples, their sons and nephews moving with them. Menachim had taken Little Isaac by the hand and led him down close beside him as he seemed wary of the spongy earth and the dense reeds, and the river itself though the depth of it didn't rise above the knees of those who stood in it.
A high tent mounted on four ornate poles flapped in the wind loudly as the gray clouds glided over the radiant sun. Out of it came a rich toll collector, a man I knew in passing only from the inevitable journeys to work or visit in Capernaum.
He stood beside me, staring at the great shifting mass of the baptizers and the baptized, and indeed the core of the crowd seemed to swell and stretch out to the right and left as we watched it.
Out of the gathering behind us, thrusting himself between us, came a Pharisee, beautifully garbed and with a long white beard, and beside him two men who were obviously Priests in their finest linen garments.
"By whose authority do you do this!" demanded the white-bearded Pharisee. "Come now, John bar Zechariah. If you are not Elijah, then who are you that you draw men here for the forgiveness of sins? Who are your disciples?"
John stopped and looked up.
The sun behind the gray clouds made John squint as he tried to pick out the man who was challenging him. His eyes passed over me and the toll collector.
Again the Pharisee declared, "By whose authority do you dare to bring these people here."
"Bring them? I haven't brought them!" John answered. His voice rang out effortlessly over the entire throng. He drew in his breath as one used to speaking above noise or wind.
"I've told you. I am not Elijah. I am not the Christ. I have told you that He who comes after me is before me!" He appeared to gain strength as he spoke.
The disciples went on baptizing the pilgrims.
I saw Avigail, fully robed, descend into the river. I realized the young man who beckoned to her, who lifted his conch and directed her to kneel in the water, was in fact my young cousin John bar Zebedee. There he was, in his wet and clinging robes, his hair long and unkempt, a boy of twenty beside the man who cried out now for all to hear:
"I tell you again, you are a brood of vipers! And you will not be safe declaring yourselves the sons of Abraham. I tell you the Lord can raise up sons of Abraham from these very stones. Even as I stand here, the axe is being laid to the root of the tree. Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down, and cast into the fire!"
All throughout the crowd people looked to the Rabbis and the Priests who were moving forward at the sound of John's voice.
Jason called out suddenly,
"But John, whence comes your authority to declare these things to us! This is what all men want to know."
John looked up, but did not appear to recognize Jason any more than he recognized any particular man, and he answered:
"Haven't I told you? I will tell you again. 'I'm the voice of one crying in the wilderness, "Make ready the way of the Lord, make His paths straight. Every ravine shall be filled, and every mountain and hill will be brought low; the crooked will become straight, and the rough roads smooth . . . and all flesh will see the salvation of God!" ' "