Readings for Holy Week. Mary Magdalene or the salvation 
by Marguerite Yourcenar *
My name is Mary Magdalene called me. Magdala is the name of my people, is the small area where my mother had some fields, where my father owned a vineyard. I was born in Magdala.
At noon, my sister Martha pitchers of beer distributed to the workers on the farm I came to them with empty hands, drank my licks smile, his eyes feel me like I was almost ripe fruit, which taste depends on a little more sunshine.
My eyes were wild animals caught in the net my eyelashes, my mouth almost black, a leech bloated with blood.
The loft was full of pigeons, the ark, breads, the chest, coins bearing the likeness of Caesar. Marta got bad sight marking my wardrobe with the initials of John.
Juan's mother was fishing, John's father had vineyards. John and I sat on the day of the wedding under the fig tree from the source, felt already upon us the intolerable weight of seventy years of happiness.
It would play dance music at the wedding of our daughters, I was already full of children that they were going to have.
Juan came to me from the bottom of his childhood, smiling to the angels as children, the angels who were his only companions, I had rejected, for love of him, the offers of the Roman centurion.
John fled from the tavern where prostitutes to move as snakes are exciting flute sad sight away not to see the round face of the maids of the farm. Amar
his innocence was my first sin.
I did not know he was fighting against an invisible opponent, just as our father Jacob with the angel, or that the commitment of combat was that messy-haired boy, crowned with wisps of straw and outlining a sort of halo.
I did not know John had loved another before I loved him before he loved me for me, I knew that God was not the remedy sought by the lonely. I presided
the wedding reception in the fourth of women, the midwives I whispered in his ear tips and recipes courtesans pimps, the flute was screaming like a virgin, the drums sounded like hearts, women wallowed in the shadow package leaflets, clusters of breasts, and I envied the violent thickly happiness of the Bridegroom.
Lambs were slain in the yard screaming as the innocent in the hands of the butchers of Herod could not hear in the distance, the bleating of the Lamb thief. The fumes of the night blotted particularly the upstairs room, the gray day lost the sense of the shapes and colors of things I did not notice the white tramp sitting among the poor relations at the far end of the table of men who communicated to young people , only with touch or kiss them, the horrible kind of leprosy which forces them to move away from everything.
I do not guess the seductive presence of the waiver does seem as sweet as sin.
closed the doors, burning perfumes to ward off demons and left us alone.
Al looked up and saw that John had not done it through your wedding party like a crowded plaza coincide with a public holiday.
trembled only pain was pale, but of shame, only a weakness of the soul afraid to leave him powerless to possess God. I was unable to distinguish in the face of John the grimace of disgust of desire: she was a virgin and, besides, every woman he loves is a poor innocent.
realized later that I represented to him the worst of the sins of the flesh, sin legitimate, sanctioned by custom, the more vile as you are allowed to wallow in it without shame, so much more to be feared as it does not entail the condemnation.
had chosen me to the most hidden of the girls whom he would woo the secret hope of never, I justified his reluctance to other available prey, sitting on that bed, and it was only a loose woman.
The inability to love me that was created among us a strong similarity to those contrasts that serve sex between two human beings, to destroy confidence to justify love, both wanted to yield to a stronger will than ours , surrender, be caught, and we went up with all the pains to give birth to new life. That soul with long hair running toward a spouse.
leant his forehead on the glass increasingly tainted by his breath, his eyes tired of the stars and even spying on us, a servant lurking on the other side of the door took maybe my sobs and exclamations of love.
rose in the night a voice call to John three times, as in households where someone will die: John opened the window, leaned out to measure the depth of the shade and saw God.
I saw nothing but sheets of the bed and tied them to the rope, fire flies thrive in the earth like stars, so he seemed to sink into the sky.
lost sight of that turncoat unable to prefer a woman to breast of God.
cautiously opened the door of my room, where nothing had happened not be an escape.
jumped over the guests, who were snoring in the lobby and picked up the hanger cap of Lazarus.
The night was too dark to see on the ground traces of the divine plants, the stones in which encountered were not those that I'd jump on one leg after school, perceived the houses for the first time, as seen from outside who are homeless.
On the corners of the streets of ill fame, turned to ooze the councils in the toothless mouths of the pimps, had vomit of drunks under the arches of the market that I recalled the puddles of wine wedding feast. To escape the round, ran along the galleries wooden inn, until the fourth Roman lieutenant. He opened me
gross, drunk even libations in my honor at the table of Lazarus certainly took me by one of the prostitutes with whom he used to bed. I kept my face covered with the cap of Lazarus, the thing was easier when it came to my body.
When he recognized me, I already was Mary Magdalene. He hid that John had left me on my wedding night for fear that it believed required to pour, the wine of desire, the tasteless water of compassion.
I let him believe that I preferred his hairy arms and the long arms of my pale always together boyfriend: he kept the secret to John for his escape with God.
Children found the people where I was and I threw stones. Lazarus sent to clean the pond of the mill, expecting to find there the corpse of John Martin lowered his head to pass in front of the inn, the mother of John came to me accounts of the alleged suicide of her only child, I defended myself: me seemed less humiliating to let everyone believe that the deceased had loved me madly.
next month, Marius was ordered to meet in Gaza, with the second division of Palestine could not find the money to buy the car in one of those third-class reserved seats always the prophets, the miserable, soldiers with the permission and the Messiah. EI
landlord hired me to clean the vessels, learned from my kitchen pattern of desire. It was very sweet to me to know that the woman scorned by John fell without transition to last post creatures: every hit, every kiss I modeled a face, breasts, a body different from what my friend had cherished.
a Bedouin camel driver agreed to take me to Jaffa by payment in hugs, a sailor from Marseilles took me aboard his boat, I was lying in the stern and the warm contagious me trembling sea of \u200b\u200bfoam.
In a bar in Piraeus, a Greek philosopher taught me wisdom like a more debauchery.
In Izmir, the largesse of a banker who taught me the sweetness of the oyster canker and skins of wild animals added to the skin of a naked woman, so that I envied, as well as desired.
In Jerusalem, a Pharisee taught me to use hypocrisy as a blush if unchanged.
In a slum in Caesarea, a paralyzed man healed and I talked about God.
Despite the pleas of the angels, who no doubt were trying to return to heaven, God continued to wander from village to village priests mocking, insulting the rich, dividing families, apologizing to the adulterous woman, exercising all over his scandalous office of Messiah.
To Eternity has its time fashion: one of those Tuesday that only famous people invited Simon the Pharisee had the idea to pray God's assistance. I had shot both with the intention of giving, that terrible friend, a rival less naive. Seducing God was Juan terminate their bearing of eternity, was forced to fall on me with all the weight of his flesh. We sin because God is not, as nothing is perfect presents to us, creatures compensable. When John realized that God was just a man, there would be no reason why he preferred not my breasts.
I dressed as for the ball, I perfumed like to get into a bed. I entered the banquet hall led to parasen jaws, the Apostles were raised with great tumult, for fear of being infected with the touch of my skirts, in the eyes of those people I was so unclean as if still bleeding. God Only
sat on the bench of leather worn instinctively recognize those feet from walking all the paths of our hell, those lice hair full of stars, those big eyes as the only pure pieces of the sky you were ... It was ugly as the pain was dirty as sin. I fell to my knees, swallowing I spit, unable to add the sarcasm the horrible weight of the helplessness of God. I realized then that he could not seduce, they do not flee from me.
my hair ripped it to better cover the nakedness of my guilt before he emptied the bottle of my memories. I realized that God outlaw should have slipped one morning outside the gates of dawn, leaving behind the people of Trinidad, surprised if not more than two. He had stayed at the Inn of the days had lavished countless passersby who denied him his soul, but it demanded all the tangible joys. He had endured the company of bandits, contact of lepers, the insolence of the police: spoiled like I belong to all, terrible fate ... put my head on his broad hand of a corpse, which seemed to be as bloodless.
not do more than change of slavery: the precise moment when the demons left me, I became possessed of God. Juan was erased from my life as if the evangelist had not been for me but the Precursor: Meeting the Passion, I forgot the love.
I accepted the purity as the worst of perversions: I've spent sleepless nights shivering with dew and tears, lying on the field in the middle of the Apostles, as a lot of lambs in love with the Pastor.
I envied the dead who sleep on the Prophets to revive them. God helped the healer in his wonderful cures: rubbed with mud in the eyes of the blind from birth. Marta let work on my place on the food of Bethany, for fear that John sat next to the heavenly knees in the stool that I would dajado. Were my tears and my cries were sweet which caster the second birth of Lazarus dead man wrapped in bandages which took its first steps on the threshold of the tomb was almost our son. I sought disciples, I dipped my pale hands with water scrubbing of the sacrament, I kept lurking in the "square" of Olives while the stroke was redemption. I wanted so much left to pity: my love was careful not to aggravate the distress, the only thing that made him God.
Not to ruin your career Salvador, consented to see him die, in the manner of a lover who consents to her lover make a brilliant marriage.
The room of lost steps, when Pilate gave us the choice between an outlaw and God, I cried like the rest the release of Barabbas. I saw him lying on the vertical bed of eternal marriage, attended the horrible moment that tied him with ropes, the kiss he gave to the sponge soaked in a bitter sea, the released of soldier who was trying to drill the heart of the divine vampire afraid that riseth to suck the future. Shiver on my forehead felt that sweet bird of prey stuck in the door of the Times. A wind of death pierced the heavens, tearing it like a veil, the world had matured side of the night, dragged down by the weight of the cross. The pale master
hung from the yards of three-mast, sunk by guilt: the carpenter's son atoned for the mistakes that his eternal Father had made in their calculations. I knew that nothing good could emerge from their ordeal, the only result of that execution would be seen by men that is easy to get rid of God.
El Divino sentenced to death just dropped to the ground seeds useless blood. The loaded dice of Chance unnecessarily jumped in the hands of the sentries, the rags of infinite robe did not fit anyone to have a suit. In vain their feet poured peroxide wave of my hair, tried in vain to comfort the mother who conceived only to God.
My cries of women and the dog did not reach my owner died.
thieves, at least, shared the same sentence: At the bottom of that shaft through which he passed all the pain the world, I did nothing but hinder its dialogue with Dimas. Rose stairs, they pulled strings. God came off, like a ripe fruit, and willing to rot in the earth of the grave.
For the first time, his head rested on my shoulder inert, the juice of the heart we put sticky hands, and at harvest time. Joseph of Arimathea went before us with a lantern, John and I doblábamos under the weight of that body heavier than the man soldiers helped us to put a millstone were blocking the entrance to the tomb.
not return to the city until it was cold evening sun. We met again, not without surprise, with shops and theaters, with the insolence of the bartenders, with the evening papers which filled event page Passion. I spent the night
choosing my best sheets courtesan, by morning I sent Martha to buy all the perfumes she'd found the best price. The cocks crowed, as if to freshen the repentance of Peter, amazed that the day came, I walked down a road lined with apple slums reminiscent of guilt and vines reminiscent of the Redemption. Guided by a memory, angel incorruptible, I went into that cave drilled into the depths of myself, I went to that body as my own grave.
I had given up all hope of Easter, the whole promise of resurrection. I did not realize that the stone was cut out of the press throughout its length as a result of some divine fermentation; God had raised from the dead as a bed of insomnia: the tomb unmade bed sheets hung begged the gardener.
was the second time in my life that I was dealing with a bed to sleep one absent. The grains of incense rolled on the floor of the tomb and fell to the bottom of the night.
Walls returned my vampire howling unhappy, to get out out of me, I noticed on the forehead with a stone lintel. The snow on the daffodils remained untouched throughout human footprint: those who had just robbed God walking in the sky.
fielder, bent down, weeding a flower bed, raised his head under his straw hat that was like a halo of sun and summer fell to my knees, full of sweet tremor of women who believe in love to feel how it spilled all over his body the substance of his heart.
On his shoulder the rake used to erase our sins, in hand, the ball and the pruning shears to the Fates trust his brother eternal.
may be prepared to descend into Hell by the way of roots.
knew the secret of the nettles of remorse, the agony of the earthworm. The pallor of death remained in it, so that seemed to have dressed as Lily.
I guessed that his first motion would be to divert contaminated by the sinful desire. I felt slug in the universe of flowers.
The air was so fresh that the palms of my hands they felt supported by a mirror, my teacher had been killed across the Mirror of Time. My breath clouded the big picture: God is erased, like a reflection on the glass in the morning. My body opaque was not an obstacle to that Risen. There was a crunch, maybe in the background of myself, I fell with outstretched arms, dragged down by the weight of my heart, there was nothing behind the mirror that I had just broken. I was again a widow emptier, lonelier than an abandoned woman. At last he knew all the atrocity of God. God had won not only the love of a child, the age when one imagines that are irreplaceable, God had also stolen my nausea in pregnant, postpartum my dreams, my naps in the old town square the grave dug to the bottom of the fence where my children had been buried. After you steal my innocence, stole me my sins God: when just beginning to prosper in my profession as a courtesan, I removed the ability to seduce Caesar or climb the tables. After his body, took away his ghost: I would not even intoxicate me with a dream. As the worst of the jealous, has destroyed the beauty that exposed me to lie on beds of desire: breasts hang me, I look like death, that old lover of God. As the worst manic, just loved my tears. But that God has taken away everything I gave everything.
I have not gotten more than a crumb of his infinite love, shared his heart with creatures like any other.
My lovers of old went to bed without worrying about my body, my soul, my heart just heavenly friend took care of heating the eternal soul, so that one half of me has not ceased to suffer.
And yet, I was saved. Thanks to him did not give me the happiness but its share of pain, the only inexhaustible. I escaped
the routines of home and bed, the dead weight of money, the impasse that is success, the contentment that seek honors, from the charms of infamy. Since that condemned the love of Magdalena has escaped to heaven, I avoid the error of being tasteless necessary to God. I was right
ride the big wave divine, I do not regret having been rebuilt by the Lord's hands.
I saved or death, or evil, no crime, because thanks to them we are saved. Just saved me happiness.
* From Fire
Translation: Emma Calatayud
Illustration: Portrait of Mary of Magdala attributed to Leonardo da Vinci
