The Last Time They Met_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [17]
—Why do you call them “The Magdalene Poems?” she asked after a time.
He hesitated. You must know why.
Of course she knew and wished she hadn’t asked. For the asking invited confidences and memories she didn’t want. You spell it Magdalene, she said. With the e.
—That’s the way it’s spelled in the Bible. But often it’s spelled Magdalen without the e. There are many versions of the name: Magdala, Madeleine, Mary Magdala. Did you know that Proust’s madeleines were named after her?
—You’ve been working on the poems a long time.
—I had to let them go. After Africa.
There was an awkward silence between them.
—They transcend any subject, she said quickly. Good poetry always does.
—It’s a myth, her being a fallen woman. They thought that only because the first mention of her follows immediately the mention of a fallen woman.
—In the Bible, you mean.
—Yes. It hardly matters. It’s the myth we care about.
—And they were lovers?
—Jesus and Mary Magdalene? “She administered to Him of her substance,” the Bible says. I’d like to think they were. But the farthest most scholars are willing to go is to say that she let Him be who He was as a man. Seems code to me for sex.
—And why not? she mused.
—All we really know of her is that she was simply a woman not identified as being either a wife or a mother — interesting in itself. And, actually, she’s touted now as being her own person. A woman important enough for Jesus to consider a sort of disciple. Important enough to be the first to carry the message of the Resurrection. That’s the feminist interpretation, anyway.
—What was the reference to the seven devils?
—Intriguing to speculate. Luke says, “Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out.” We don’t know. Was she afflicted with a malady such as epilepsy? Was it an emotional or spiritual or psychological malaise from which she needed respite? Was she simply mad?
—Your poems are exquisite in any event.
On the port side, Linda saw Robert Seizek grasping the rails as if he were the captain of the ship. Perhaps he was studying the horizon as people do who are about to be seasick. She doubted he would remember his reading the night before, or even that she had been there. On the ferry’s benches there were teenagers, underdressed for the outing, small silver rings catching the sun at their navels, despite the chill. Their presence reminded her that it was a Saturday. Each girl wore her hair parted in the middle and pulled tightly against the head into a ponytail. Her own hair dating her because she herself couldn’t manage the current, sleeker style. The ponytails flicked in the wind like their namesakes.
—Whatever happened to Peter? Thomas asked, lighting a cigarette. The question took her by surprise.
—I don’t know exactly. He went back to London. Once when I was there, I looked in the phone book, but there was no one by that name in the city.
Thomas nodded, as if the disappearance from one’s life of someone to whom one had once been married were commonplace. The sunlight that was reflected from the water was unforgiving, showing every imperfection in his face, never perfect even in his youth. She didn’t want to think about her own face and struggled against the urge to put herself in shadow.
—Have you ever been back? Thomas meant to Africa.
—No. I would have liked to take my children there. But it was always so expensive, and somehow I never did.
—It’s a dangerous country now.
—We thought it was dangerous then.
—It was dangerous then. But it’s worse now. I’m told tourists need armed guards.
Inexplicably, it was warmer on the island, and, after they had landed, they had to take off their coats. Thomas removed his blazer, and she found herself studying his hexagonal shoulders in his white shirt. She was conscious of her blouse, of the weight of her breasts, that familiar heaviness. Lately, she’d occasionally had the sensation of milk letting down, and thought it must be hormones run amok.
They walked up a street between wooden cottages, Thomas with his jacket folded over his arm, like a