Eshtine

excerpt: enjoying the miracle

I have a large unfinished work based on the Gospels. The narrator is Nicodemus, whom I've imagined as an outsider type, someone who can comment on the action from a fairly objective standpoint. Please note: it's fiction. Don't string me up for heresy or think I'm trying to impart some Received Wisdom.
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It was a hot day. Peter and I volunteered to go to the wine merchant's, as much to get ourselves to a shady spot as to get everyone a little something to drink (and little was right--we counted up our denarii and found we had enough to buy maybe two flagons to pass around).
Inside the shop were two other customers. Both of their faces lit up when they saw Peter. The bigger and burlier of the two, round as a water jar, clapped my companion on the shoulder. "Look who we have!" He didn't need to yell quite so loud; his friend was just a step away. "It's Simon the Baptist! Still running with those strange folk?"
The other man dropped down and hugged Peter's knees, saying in a mocking whine, "Leave me, leave me, great lord and master! I am a sinful man!"
The two men laughed loudly. Peter's arm started twitching. I turned my head; I didn't want him to resist giving the punch just because I was there. The water-jar-shaped man thumped Peter's back again. "Best we not tease him too much, Archippus," he boomed. There certainly was a lot of room for words to resonate in him. "The man has a temper! Just teasin' ya, Simon. No harm done." They left, still laughing. Peter's lips were tight. He knew I was curious though I hadn't said a thing--I had barely even turned to glance at him. He said, "Not here. Later," and we paid for our wine.
The later came as promised as we sat with the dregs left in the flagons after everyone had taken their share. We were in the courtyard of the little house near the shore, Peter and I sitting just apart from the rest of the company. Jesus had already gone inside. The others had noted Peter was in a black mood and seemed more than willing to keep their distance. The sun was retreating from view behind the houses and walls of Capernaum. I began to think it was a pretty city, in its way. Nothing could be as vibrant and colorful as Jerusalem, but the plain, spare buildings here reflected the practical mindset of the people, who would have scoffed at decoration as distraction. They are not far wrong, I thought.
"I was married," Peter said. He took another swallow. "She died." That was typical for Capernaum, too. No talk for the sake of talk.
"How long ago?"
"Two years." He gave one of his humorless laughs. Sometimes it seemed the world was all a dark joke to Simon Peter. "We were dead to each other, though, long before she got shut up in the tomb. Dead flesh next to dead flesh. She was not happy being the wife of a fisherman. I had to work all the time--we'd be out all night often, Andrew and I, and James and John, who were partners with us, lowering nets, bringing them back in with little or nothing to show for it." He gestured over his shoulder to the sea. "The fish in there aren't waiting for nets to jump into. At least..." He snorted. "Well, that's my predominant experience of it, anyway. Out in the boats all night, then back to the shore to wash out and untangle the nets in the hot sun, that is, if a storm doesn't blow up out of nowhere and you have to fight just to stay afloat, much less get anywhere near home. If you do catch anything, it's got to be made ready for the fishmongers, and that's work that will leave you stinking so bad, people will get out of your path like you're a leper. If you don't catch anything, you have to go home to your wife and tell her you can't afford to get the roof patched right though the rain's been getting in all the time..." He tipped the flagon back all the way, touched his fingers to the lip and sucked the last drops off of them. "Look at that," he said, regarding the bottle. "Dry as old Sinai. That's another thing. You'll drink up any money you make that day as often as not, knowing full well the wife will set on you like a harpy for it, but wanting to drink rather than go home to her. The Lord God made some curious creatures when He made men, didn't He? Ah--women are no better. The wife I wanted was sympathetic, a support in my home, a keeper of peace when I'd battled with the world all night and half the day. The wife I got just screeched at me."
I stayed quiet. I had heard this story from many men, though I couldn't relate to it. My wife was a woman of all the virtues--patient, thrifty, hard-working, devout. I said a quick, silent prayer of thanksgiving even as I felt a pang of homesickness. It had been some time since I had seen her.
"Ah, but don't think I blame her. I wouldn't want to be married to me either." He lowered his head. "I met this woman in Tiberias one day when Andrew and I were separated from the other boat by a storm. She brought us wine and blankets and--I kept going back to see her, any time I could. Her husband was gone all the time too. I didn't mean it to become...what it became. It was only because she was kind and sympathetic and practical minded, like me. I know I'm no ruddy handsome youth like they sing about, the one with hair black as a raven and milk-white teeth set like jewels, the one who always smells like myrrh. She didn't mind. And I didn't mind her eyes weren't like doves and her cheek wasn't like a half-pomegranate. We got along. We'd been lonely, and we...
"I know it was wrong. I know I put her into terrible danger. After my wife got sick I never saw the woman in Tiberias again. I thought about her all the time, but then I would see my wife in the bed with the fever, and think, this is God's judgement on me.
"Not long after my wife died I was out in the boat with Andrew. We were back from a night so frustrating, I was ready to toss myself overboard, but instead I cleaned the nets 'til there was barely any net to clean. James and John were working beside their boat. I think old Zebedee was with them; I don't remember.
"There was a crowd at the shore listening to one of those itinterant preachers. Now, Andrew had gotten mixed up with the Baptizer, so he was curious about this fellow. I would have just as soon picked another dock. I did notice there were a lot of people, a crushing sort of crowd. I remember wishing something could be done about these sort of self-anointed prophets attracting such swarms of people around them. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: a mob is dangerous. Tempers get hot, people get trampled.
"The preacher seemed to see the danger to his own skin. He came right up and jumped into our boat without so much as a hello. He said to me, 'Pull away from the shore.'"
I frowned. "You kicked him out, I suppose, for being so presumptious?"
Peter laughed, showing his teeth, which were rather straight and white after all. "You don't have much experience with prophets or mobs, do you? Let me explain something. A preacher who is merely interesting doesn't attract the sort of people who are willing to risk being trampled to death to hear him. No, a crowd like that has more than a few true believers. The true believers see their leader forcibly ejected from my boat, do you know what they do to me? Do you know what they do to my boat?"
"Go on."
He sighed. "It wasn't like that. At the time I was thinking he had said something to make them all angry, and wild-eyed prophet or not I hated to see him torn up by that lot.
"We pulled away from the shore. This preacher--you've figured out who it is by now, of course it's Jesus--Jesus did all his talking from the boat. Not even standing, so as to give those who'd travelled all day for him something to see. Sitting down, mind you, like he owned the boat. And then he turned to me and said, 'Get into deeper water. Lower your nets for a catch.'
"I calmly explained how we had been trawling through every damn gallon of deep water in the Sea of Galilee for the last twelve hours. But I did it. You know why? Fishermen are gambling men at heart--and what gambler can resist one more throw of the dice? He was acting so cocksure, too, that there'd be something down there to catch--it would be pleasing to prove him wrong, even as that meant we'd still be going home with nothing."
"So you lowered the nets," I said.
"So I lowered the nets," Peter said. "With help from Andrew and those two men we met in the wine merchant's shop--no friends of ours. Old Zebedee hired them. We lowered the nets, and--" Tears welled up in Peter's eyes, but he looked me straight in the face, even as the twilight was making it harder for us to see each other. "You can't know. You just can't know. All those years of going out with the prayer we'd just catch enough to live on, to repair the boats when we needed to, to finally fix that cursed roof. I never wanted to be rich. I only ever wanted not to have to worry." He took a deep breath and started again. "We lowered the nets, and when we hauled the first one up again, the ropes were snapping. I thought we must have snagged some rock at the bottom of the sea, but no--they couldn't take the weight of the fish. We got them on board and the boat nearly sank. We waved frantically to James and John--they came and opened the second net on their deck; their boat nearly sank too. And this strange preacher--Jesus--was just looking at me. Next thing, I had my arms wrapped around his knees--he was still sitting--and I was blubbering, 'Depart from me, Lord. I'm a sinful man.' As I said, I hardly knew what I was doing. I can be a bit impetuous at times."
I coughed. I tried to be discreet about it, but Peter waved his hand.
"I'm not so blind I don't see myself as I am, Nicodemus. I know my faults. I just can't help it. The moment comes and suddenly I'm the bearer of drama. But I'm not crazy. Those fellows at the wine merchant's think I've utterly lost my wits. But I think they lost their wits. Why aren't they here tonight? They were in the boat too. They saw what happened! There's never been a catch like that!"
Peter was railing now. He jumped up and confronted the others in the courtyard, shouting in each one's face. "I know what you say about me! I'm that crazy, impulsive Simon Peter. Never thinking, only acting. What would you do if you were me, if you lost your marriage--and forsook your lover--and lost your wife--and then someone comes along and nearly drowns you in the only thing you thought you ever really wanted?"
Some of the company gaped at him, some just avoided his wild eyes. He huffed like he was struggling to get his breath, shaking his head so his hair flew in every direction. "Right," Peter announced. "I'm going to bed." And he turned and walked into the house.