The Putzmeister 4

At first light, a Sunday, Mary of Magdala hurried to the tomb in order to be near Jesus. Since she’d become chaste, since her transformation from a prostitute to a follower of Jesus, all of her enmity toward men transferred to fervent love for one, Jesus. A low fog rose to her knees and caste a gray hue on the stony path ahead. Tombs with large rocks hewn out of Mt. Golgotha stood near to the height so that horse-drawn carts did not have far to travel. She wore her robe of pure white, hood up. Pebbles kicked in between her soles and leather of her sandals, which were fine but not so fine, soft yet durable, as Jesus’ sandals had been, for the artisans of Galillee & Judea traveled to the various towns & knew & created for one another. Beads of sweat surfaced on Mary’s dark face on which, since the transformation, abundant black hair grew, sideburns, mustache, singular straight black pubic-like hairs on the chin—just like the zealous renegade nun of Nino Agliolio’s old neighborhood of Brooklyn, she’d entered the nunnery but then left before final vows but continued to love & serve Jesus, moved in with her parents and, in a theatrical costume shop, purchased the white habit & black veil of the Dominican order, & gigantic round wooden rosary beads that wrapped round her thick waist, descended along her right inner thigh, and over the knee to the ankle, the large crucifix coming to rest atop her shiny thick black shoe. Every summer morning around ten-thirty this nun-like woman passed Nino’s hedges on her way to Our Lady of Guadalupe church. Asweat, his knees dirty, Nino stopped his play and went by his hedges. He was a strapping boy, with broad shoulders, sinewy beautiful legs, wild crop of brown hair, eyes that turned hazel & green, and the longest lashes the women of that neighborhood had ever seen. But it was the combination of his full cheeks and his goodness and the fact that he never smiled that had prompted his adoptive mother Sofia Agliolio to name him Nino. To be a Nino meant to be good. To be a Nino meant to have full cheeks & be good & never smile. Goodness was embodied in the full cheeks. Full cheeks was the consequence of the goodness of a Nino’s soul. For Nino Agliolio was always at your disposal. He simonized cars, shoveled snow, tossed everyone’s refuse, carried heavy appliances such as refrigerators & ovens &dough mixers, high above garage roofs like an acrobat & strung clothes lines from bedroom windows to the tall metals poles rising from garages. Here's comes the nun! Nino’s beautiful eyes looked unblinkingly into the passing veiled woman’s hairy, sullen face, eyes turned down, thin hairy lips moving rapidly in silent prayer, forefinger & thumb working the looping hanging rosary beads. Nino looked so intently into this woman’s face that he left his eyes there. And these disembodied seeinging eyes had a way of hovering inches off the side of the cheek of all the characters Nino Agliolio would ever seek to resurrect. In this way he envisioned Mary Magdala that particular Sunday morning, and, now & then, Jesus too, whose faces were dark & hairy, eyes with deep shadows beneath. Jn 11:1-5 indicates that Mary of Magdala was not Mary sister of Lazarus, and, at the dinner in Bethany in Jesus’s honor following Lazarus’ resurrection, this Mary brought in a pound of pure nard, a costly ointment, and, while Jesus, Lazarus as well as Judas Iscariot sat a table, knelt at Jesus’ feet & anointed them. The nard’s pungent odor filled the adobe & mingled with the steaming spices, those at table smelling but not seeing, all the more powerful the negotiation of senses. Nor was Mary of Magdala the Mary of Jn 7:35-50, Mary the Sinner, who’d heard through her reliable network of information, horny men whom she abhorred, that a Pharisee had invited Jesus to a meal. She waited till the men were at table then entered carrying an alabaster jar of nard. Doors were always open to women of easy virtue, and once again the ointment’s ascerbic odor permeated th house. Then Mary the Sinner knelt behind Jesus, sobbing quietly to herself so that the men above could not hear, and her tears fell upon Jesus’ sandaled feet. Though he sensed that she was down around his his precious pale feet, they not stir, and Mary the Sinner watched her tears closely, how then lingered and played around each separate straight toe, in the crevices. Mary the Sinner wiped the tears with her long tangled black hair, then planted brief hard kisses on Jesus’ feet, tasting the salt & the sand, then anointed them with the nard.