The Passion of Mary Magdalen. Elizabeth Cunningham
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“Red,” said Dido, “don’t you know? Isis is dea non grata in Rome. Temples to her are prohibited inside the city walls. It’s been that way since good old Queen Cleopatra, her late representative on earth, led first Julius Caesar and then Marc Antony around by the dick. Cleo had the audacity to want to be more than a Roman puppet. She had some notion that her country existed for some other reason than to feed Rome. What was she thinking?”
“Well, she lose in the end, poor thing,” sighed Berta. “But at least she was no captive. Do you know the story, Red? She puts poisonous snakes in her bosoms and when Roman soldiers break into her palace, they find her dead.”
“Original.” I was impressed.
“That’s not the only thing the purple have against her,” Succula said. “They’re afraid of her, because she draws riff-raff, slaves, foreigners, whores.”
Well, that description fit everyone within splashing range of me.
“That’s not entirely accurate, Succula,” said Dido. “If her followers were only from the dregs, the purple would pay no attention. She’s also popular with some of their own wives and daughters. It’s a trend—like wealthy matrons becoming Jewish proselytes and sending money to Jerusalem. The purple don’t like that kind of mixing. Their silly wives might end up funding an insurrection.”
Isis was sounding more and more appealing.
“So what is it about her?” I asked. “Rich, poor, slave, free, Roman, foreigner. Sounds like she takes all comers. She sounds like one of us.”
Everyone laughed and we did our whores’ high five (fingers in twat, then pressed together).
“You know, Red,” said Succula thoughtfully. “You have a point. Do you know the story?”
“Oh, let me tell it,” Berta pleaded. “So romantic. Just like your story, Red.”
Something inside me that had been drifting and dreaming woke up all the way.
“Listen, liebling. Isis loved her brother Osiris—it’s Egypt, kinder, that’s the way they do things down there and besides she was a goddess—they are twins, and they are lovers, you know what I mean, lovers even in the womb.”
Berta gave a gusty sigh and continued the story with lots of interruption and embellishment from the others. I closed my eyes and listened with my whole being. Berta didn’t know how right she was; she was telling my story, the story of my beloved and me, eternal twins in the great starry womb.
“After the wicked brother Set kills Osiris and sends him floating down the Nile in a coffin…”
A coffin! If I had needed more confirmation of the connection between Isis and my dreams, there it was.
“…Isis searches the world for her beloved. She wanders for years and years. She never gives up…”
Neither would I. Then I shook myself. The story was wrong, all wrong. My beloved was not dead. Why was I dreaming Isis’s story? What did she want from me?
“…she finally finds his coffin in a tamarisk tree, a column in Astarte’s temple. She brings him back home. She fans the air with her great bright wings, she breathes the breath of life into him, and he lives again to make a child with her…”
“Then he dies again—but she’s got the baby, so who needs him anymore?” said Dido.
“Dido! You are heartless! Heartless! You always ruin my stories. Now where was I?”
“The nasty brother cuts him into fourteen pieces, and Isis goes fishing.”
“Dido, stop. Liebling, don’t listen to her. Isis is true to her love. She gives a sacred burial to each part of him—”
“Except his prick,” Succula interrupted. “A crab ate it.”
“Really?” I opened my eyes and appealed to Berta, who nodded sadly. “And that’s what the, whatever it’s called, the Isia is? Everyone searching for body parts?” After such a promising start, I confess I found the end of the story disappointing and disturbing. It was not how I wanted my story to go at all. “I don’t get it.”
“Ah, liebling, don’t you see? Isis knows. She knows love; she knows sorrow. Just like us.”
“That’s not it for me,” said Dido. “What I like is that she rules—not just one little piddling thing, like these Greek goddesses, and their cheap Roman imitations—but everything—life, death, stars, seas, wind, thunder, everything people make from ships to looms. And she’s smart; she tricked the sun god Ra into revealing his secret name—”
“But that’s not the best thing about her,” said Succula impatiently. “Do you want to know the best thing? Berta left this part out. Almost no one knows, but it’s true.” She paused for effect. “Isis was a whore.”
“I have never heard this part. How do you know it?” Berta demanded.
“And what’s wrong with being a whore?” Dido countered.
“Shut up, both of you,” I said. “Let Succula tell the story.”
“Well, she’s wandering around the world for years. How do you think she supported herself?”
“Succula, she is a goddess. She doesn’t have to worry about such things.”
“Berta, you said it yourself. She’s just like us. When she was in Byblos, in Astarte’s Temple, she was a whore. They were all whores. Only in those days, people didn’t despise whores. Whores ruled. They were fucking priestesses. They were more important than kings. A king had no power at all unless the high priestess took him as a lover. When she did—if she did—she wasn’t just a priestess, she was the goddess.”
“Like Cleopatra,” said Dido.
“Where do you hear these things about Isis?” Berta still resisted any interpretation that departed from strict romance.
“Domitia Tertia,” Succula said solemnly.
There was a moment of silence. Succula had invoked her ultimate authority.
“Domitia Tertia!” I couldn’t help it. “She doesn’t worship any gods. I heard her making fun of Bone’s devotion to Cybele. She believes only in herself.”
“I didn’t say she was a devotee.” Succula was surprisingly calm. “I heard her arguing with Uncle Joseph. He was going on about the Greek heterae the way he does, and she went him one better. Also, Domitia admired Cleopatra—not many people know that either. She actually saw her once when she was a little girl. Her father was stationed in Egypt for a time. That’s when she started keeping cats.”
Circe and Cleopatra. Two women who ruled—or tried to. Too bad Cleopatra hadn’t turned Julius Caesar into a pig. Then my people could have roasted him.
“Succula,” I marveled, “you know more about Domitia than Bonia.”
“Bonia told me the story about Cleopatra,” Succula admitted. “Bonia’s been with Domitia a lot longer than I have. But I’ve taken the trouble to know as much as I can. You can hate her if you want, but as far as I’m concerned Domitia Tertia rules.”
We were all silent for a time, the bath water lapping at our separate shores. It was a comfortable, comforting silence, the silence of sisters who could insult and forgive each other as easily as we breathed. I was so at home with these women. But that was the trouble; I didn’t want to be at home. I wasn’t meant to be at home. When Osiris disappeared, did Isis sit telling stories in the bathhouse?
“Why have none of you ever told me about Isis before?” I finally asked.
“She