The Gospel of the Twin by Ron Cooper Read Free Book Online Page B

sure I hurt Jesus’ feelings, but when I was caught up in a moment of anger, the very confidence I often admired in him seemed more like sheer smugness.
    â€œWatch me now, and you will know,” said Jesus, but then he said no more and went out into the night. When he returned the next morning, James had already left.

Chapter Six
    Verse One
    One of my mother’s many cousins was being wed in Cana to a man who owned a sizable fig farm. This would make her the wealthiest member of the family, and the wedding was sure to be the most extravagant we had ever witnessed. Jesus and I accompanied our mother and our younger brothers and sisters to the festivities. Judas and his family also came. The wedding house was four times as large as our sorry shack, and splendidly decorated: wool drapes embroidered with dancing sheep-eyed girls, feather-pillowed chairs with yellow silk tassels, and polished oil lamps hand-tooled with stars and diamonds.
    Food was abundant—spicy roasted goat; fish marinated in honey wine; date and almond-stuffed chicken; and sticky sweetmeats that I could not identify but could not eat enough of. Musicians played and children ran about twirling ribbons.
    Jesus, Judas, and I filled our plates and sat outside with men who were our distant relations. Most were dressed in peasant linen like ours, but a few wore fine cotton. I had never eaten with anyone having the slightest measure of wealth. One of the cotton men lacked front teeth—knocked out by a blow, he said, from the butt of a centurion’s sword when he had refused to bow. Another said that his son had joined a group that followed some militant leader by the Jordan River. He had not seen his son for three years and feared him captured and enslaved in some fashion by the Romans.
    Judas pointed to a woman in the doorway. “Who’s the one with the long hair and striped dress?”
    â€œShe is Mary from Magdala,” said one of the men. “She’s a friend of the bridegroom’s family.”
    â€œI should have known,” said Judas. “Too beautiful to be from our family.”
    A ruckus started inside. We squeezed through the door and saw the married couple’s respective fathers yelling into each other’s red faces, spit forming at the corners of their mouths. Their wives waved their arms around, poked out their necks, and screeched like cranes. The poor bride squatted and wept into her hands. The bridegroom paced behind her and shook his head as if he heard something rattling inside it.
    Most of the guests stood in nervous silence, but some began to get excited. “That’s a lie!” some yelled. “Disgraceful,” said others.
    We asked our mother what was the matter. “They have run out of wine,” she said. “The families are blaming each other for ruining the ceremony.”
    Judas and I found the affair hilarious, but Jesus looked grim, and I knew he was about to get involved. Before I could try to restrain him, he stepped up to the fathers. “Gentlemen,” he said, “why do you fight at this celebration? We have what we need right here.” He reached for a cup of water and offered it to the groom.
    The groom stared at the cup, then looked to the bride, who nodded. He drank. Jesus continued: “Is wine not a life blood? We drink, and the blood is strengthened.” He then offered the cup to the bride, and she drank. Jesus said, “And does water not also nourish the blood? Marriage is not a joining of only the flesh, but also of the blood and of the spirit. Even as I speak, even as this water flows past your lips, your spirits are flowing together. You, woman, are the life moving through your husband’s veins and you, Nathanael, are the pulse in your wife’s throat. Put your hand to her neck, and feel yourself flow in a new body.”
    The father of the bride was pleased. “You have given us a finer wine than any before,” he said,