According to Mary Magdalene by Marianne Fredriksson Read Free Book Online Page B

difficult to understand, and very sad.”
    Mary wept.
    Life returned to normal in the house of pleasure. With the help of wine, the girls forgot the terrible thing that had happened. Mary had a pain in her stomach and had to stay in bed. That meant she had time to think, to make comparisons between then and now, between people in the village—the orthodox, and people here—the unclean.
    But as she did so, things only grew worse.

M ary Magdalene let the scroll lie. She could not find the energy that evening to go through what she had written. Her back was aching and her fingers stiff from writing.
    She was cold.
    Slowly, she got up and went to close the shutters.
    Dusk was creeping into the treetops and it would soon be dark. Leonidas had not yet come home. Perhaps this was one of the nights he would spend with his boy. What had he said that morning?
    She could not remember.
    She lit the lamps in the kitchen and made a meal for two. Then she ate hers, washed, and crawled into her warm bed. She stretched, the warmth and relaxation slowly lessening the pain in her back.
    Early next morning, she read through what she had written. One question worried her. How old had she been when Leonidas disappeared? Ten? Twelve? She shook her head. She could not remember. Children are so free in their relations to time, she thought.
    Toward afternoon, she heard Leonidas coming home, his firm steps up the garden path, the door opening, and his call: “Mary, Mary, I'm here.”
    She went to meet him and at once saw that he was in low spirits. Disappointed? Burdened with guilt? She smiled a little wider than usual and that helped. His bearing softened and he said, “I'm rather tired.”
    She kissed him on the cheek. “I've been writing about you. Perhaps you'd like to read it while I get the meal?”
    “Yes, indeed.”
    He went into the library and she gave him the long scroll before returning to the kitchen. While she boiled beans and cooked the fish with freshly picked buds from the caper bushes, she thought about Leonidas' lover, a handsome but heartless boy. He was not good for Leonidas, but there was nothing she could do about that.
    Leonidas came back into the kitchen as Mary was laying the table.
    “You exaggerate,” he said. “It just isn't possible for that simple, scarcely thirty-year-old warrior to have had so much wisdom.”
    Mary flushed.
    “Writing has taught me to respect a child's memories,” she said with some heat. “Every word of it is probably not true, but it's a child's interpretation of everything that happened and was said.”
    “I give in,” said Leonidas, holding up his hand and laughing.
    Mary had to smile.
    “How old was I when you had to leave?”
    His face darkened.
    “That was the same year the tribune Titus finally broke our agreement,” he said. “Then you'd been with Euphrosyne for five years.”
    “Oh, Leonidas, I understood so little.”
    “Perhaps we should try to remember together. I'll stay at home tomorrow and tell you, while you make notes.”

S omething very strange happened to me that night I found you in the mountains. I've never understood it and sometimes I'm prepared to believe, as religious people do, that God intervened in my life.”
    Why should he? It had been a dreadful evening.
    He fell silent, then smiled.
    “I'm sure you think I'm exaggerating,” he said. “But there was something divine about that child, a light…. So I wasn't at all surprised when I found you again many years later with that young man of God in Galilee.”
    He stopped abruptly. “Why are you so occupied with your own childhood?” he asked.
    “Because I must know who I am. I've had the peculiar idea that if you're to testify to the truth, then you must be true yourself.”
    “I'm sure you're right, but you set your sights very high. I've gotten no further than trying to get used to myself.”
    Mary laughed. “Perhaps that's the same thing. But go on telling me about the evening you found