Christ the Lord - Anne Rice [62]
I moved down into the river. I passed Joseph and my mother, and the toll collector who stood at Joseph's elbow ready to assist him, on account of his age, even as James was there.
I moved up in front of John bar Zechariah.
My way had always been to look down. The subject of whisper and insult through much of my life, I seldom confronted a man with my gaze, but rather turned away and sought my work as a matter of course. It was a quiet demeanor.
But I didn't do this now. It was no longer my way. That was gone.
He stood frozen, staring at me. I looked at him—at his rugged frame, the hair matted to his chest, the dark camel-skin cloak half covering him. I saw his eyes then fixed on mine.
They were glazed, his eyes, the inevitable defense against a multitude of faces, a multitude of gazes, a multitude of expectations.
But as we faced one another—he only slightly taller than I—his eyes softened. They lost their tight puckering, their deep distance. I heard the breath pass out of him.
There came a sound like the flapping of wings, gentle yet large, as of doves startled in the dovecote, and all struggling Heavenward.
He stared upwards, to the right and left, then back at me.
He hadn't found the source of the sound.
I addressed him now in Hebrew:
“Johanan bar Zechariah,” I said.
His eyes grew wide.
“Yeshua bar Joseph,” he said.
The toll collector drew in to watch, to hear. I could see the vague shape of my mother and Joseph nearby. I could feel the others turning slowly towards us, moving clumsily towards us.
“It's you!” John whispered. “You . . . baptize me!” He held up the conch, dripping with water.
The disciples to the right and left stopped in the very midst of what they did. Those coming up out of the water remained standing, attentive. Something had changed in the holy man. What had changed?
I felt the throng itself like a great connected and living thing breathing with us.
I held up my hands.
“We're made in His image, you and I,” I said. “This is flesh, is it not? Am I not a man? Baptize me as you've done everyone else; do this, in the name of righteousness.”
I went down into the water. I felt his hand on my left shoulder. I felt his fingers close on my neck. I saw nothing and felt nothing and heard nothing but the cool flooding water, and then slowly I came up out of it, and stood, shocked by the flood of sunlight.
The clouds above had shifted. The sound of beating wings filled my ears. I stared forward and saw across John's face the shadow of a dove moving upwards—and then I saw the bird itself rising into a great opening of deep blue sky, and I heard a whisper against my ears, a whisper that penetrated the sound of the wings, as though a pair of lips had touched both ears at the same time, and faint as it was, soft and secretive as it was, it seemed the edge of an immense echo.
This is my Son, this is my beloved.
All the riverbank had gone quiet.
Then noise. The old familiar noise. Shouts and cries, and exclamations, those sounds so mingled in my mind and soul with the stoning of Yitra and the mob around Avigail—the noise of triumphant young men, the endless broken crying of pilgrims—I heard them all around me, the excited beat and cry of voices intermingling with one another, answering one another, growing louder and louder as they vied with one another.
I stared upward at the great endless stretch of blue and I saw the dove flying higher and higher. It became a tiny thing, a speck in the shimmer of the drenching sunlight.
I staggered backwards. I almost lost my balance. I stared at Joseph. I saw his gray eyes fixed on me, saw the faint smile on his lips, and saw in the same instant my mother's face, impassive and still faintly sad, lovingly sad, as she stood beside him.
“It is You!” said John bar Zechariah again.
I didn't answer.
The chorus of the crowd rose.
I turned and went up the far bank, tramping through the weeds, moving faster and faster. I stopped and glanced back once. I saw Joseph again, held tenderly in the arms of the toll collector