Gospel of Mary

Michael Garcia Bertrand

CHAPTER 1

1. In the middle of determining whether two multivariate polynomials were indistinguishable, Judas Borges discovered he was Jesus Christ.
2. There he was, standing at the moveable blackboard, chalk in mid-air, suddenly made paralytic by the realization of his own immaculate conception.
3. And the thought occurred to him, Me?
4. He stared at the integers’ sudden loss of universality, surprised that the variables and coefficients, normally limpid as cool water, were conveying new universes.
5. And yet, somehow, he discerned that when this moment was complete—this transubstantiation through algebraic reasoning—the astonishing inspiration that divinity was now his would be unequivocally affirmed, and he realized,
6. This cross was going to be a bitch to bear.
7. Judas scratched his ribcage with his finger, a nervous habit he learned from his father, who used to playfully poke him there when he was a child, asking, Whoo-das, do you believe in yourself?
8. If his calculations were correct, and rarely were they not, this new life was not going to be a convenient one,
9. For his trajectory would no longer be tied to anything quantifiable, nor would he travel anymore along coordinate systems—connecting points, plotting zeroes, calculating y-intercepts, finding maximums and minimums—nor be limited by laws of addition, multiplication, and exponentiation,
10. As every factor, variable, sign, equation, expression, sinusoid, theorem to which he had ever set eyes, hands, and brain—written, copied, studied, resolved on blackboards, whiteboards, textbooks, notebooks, laptops, napkins, doilies, receipts, and even once on toilet paper marked with his own excrement—was now rendered inconsequential.
11. Finding his ordered world of constants, graphs, and functions neatly and indisputably razed, he hypothesized there was going to be more in store for him than preparing lessons or checking homework, and he felt unceremoniously split in,
12. Three—the mystery of the Trinity already moving in him.
13. He wondered if he was up to it.
14. He knew he was not crazy and accepted the revelation that he was, in fact, the Son of God, riding upon the clouds of heaven, ready to take his place next to the great I am … or was he, in fact, the great I am?
15. The problem put him in a quandary, for he admitted to himself that,
16. He could not recall the specifics of his own teachings, nor could he remember what words he spoke to the multitudes in that other time so long ago,
17. And he blushed with shame and embarrassment, recognizing that he was a poor Christian indeed,
18. And he asked himself: how could he be Jesus Christ if he knew so little about Christianity?
19. His father was an atheist and his mother, Josefa Borges, a reluctant Catholic—even if she wore a gold cross around her neck for as long as she lived and had a picture of the longhaired, blue-eyed Jesus thumbtacked to a kitchen cabinet.
20. Then, and with sudden relief, he remembered how in Judea he did not know many things either, only pretending to whenever he spouted enigmatic parables on the fly or let loose pretty metaphors filled with whimsy and irony, and Paul was not part of the story yet, so everything might be all right in the end.
21. Abruptly, his mind’s eye played like a film projector, showing him instances of his previous human incarnation, starring himself, Judas Borges, high school math teacher, not Hunter or Dafoe or Caviezel, but he, himself, from childhood to crucifixion, and he experienced again the pains of St. Francis—
22. And he rubbed his palms together to numb the old complaint, grasping that he was on the verge of apotheosis, and he briefly considered the potential ramifications:
23. Future Good Books would need an addendum, a new Gospel, which would form the central focal point of a new New Testament.
24. Bibles in hotel rooms around the world would have to be replaced.
25. Unless his story simply lapsed into the Apocrypha.
26. He scratched his side again.

CHAPTER 2

1. How long he stood there with his duality exposed was difficult to say, but he became aware of an intensifying silence behind him.
2. His students, raucous on most days, had metamorphosed into rigid stones of silent accusation as if they, too, sensed something momentous occurring.
3. For a moment, he felt himself like a philosopher set adrift, yet, simultaneously, he experienced the sensation of walking on water, no, more like hot coals,
4. Because the absence of their usual noises of derision and flatulence unnerved him, and he worried his courage might fail him.
5. He was, he knew, never much of a teacher, too lost in his own labyrinthine reasoning on most days to really work at communicating knowledge to immature minds, even though he entered the profession with the best of intentions,
6. But he made a sorry sight, galumphing down the hallways: the disheveled, addled professor of mathematics, mouthing computations under his breath, like a clueless humpbacked nomad, heavy bookbag in tow, scuffed shirt untucked over wrinkled corduroys, pockets jangling with loose change because he liked to buy junk food—chips, candies, sodas—from vending machines scattered throughout the campus, and he wore dirty canvas shoes and unwashed socks.
7. His neck was thick, or absent, his vertebrae fused together like a cursed prophecy to give him the look of deformity; a birth defect; nature’s cruel joke, not God’s; his chest was large, obtrusive, and he was no taller than five feet,
8. And his long shaggy hair was usually a greasy tangle, which he brushed back carelessly with a damp hand when he thought of it; and his face was gnome-like, a Halloween mask in the sunlight; his bushy, tangled beard unruly and unkempt; his fingernails coarse, jagged from nervous biting; his voice like wet alleyways, grimy, gurgling, phlegmy, as if he was always in the act of clearing his throat; and his thick granny glasses were scratched and smudged; and he smelled of wet clothes.
9. Since he was often preoccupied with mathematical things, he was oblivious to the barbs of his students.
10. Mary heard them say, Hey, Judas, why did you betray our Lord and Savior?
11. Mary heard them say, Hey, Judas, you stink!
12. Mary heard them say, Hey, Judas, throw us your silver!
13. He would not turn to face them, not yet, until he took the necessary steps to recheck his findings,
14. Because even when, long ago, he sojourned into the desert to wrestle with the devil, he exhausted forty days and forty nights just to make sure he was up to snuff;
15. After all, Christianity was not built in a day, you know, and besides, there were,
16. No angels blazing the sky or blowing big-band instruments to guide him;
17. His only recourse was to depend on the numbers on the board, even though he had, through many dark periods during his miserable life, secretly harbored the hope that he could be something more than what he was:
18. The hapless outsider, the exile, the stranger, unable to relate to others, sent before his time, the intruder, the unfortunate abnormality, the pitiful outcast, the pariah, the anomaly, the untouchable, the leper, one of life’s uglies,
19. And he blamed his name (and his misshapen trunk), which was his father’s name, and grandfather’s name, and great-grandfather’s name, and so on, the name seared into their lives like the mark of Cain, not because anyone in the family particularly liked it, but because it was part of stubborn family tradition—
20. As all firstborn Borges males were fated to wear it, except that he was the only one to have to marry it to a malformed husk,
21. Forever trapped in one of the hell-mouths of Dante’s three-headed monster, just as the original Judas was.
22. As a child, he was reviled, mistreated, ignored, shunned,
23. And he was called names and made fun of,
24. And everyone grew taller than he,
25. And developed better features and straighter postures,
26. And his parents were not demonstrative or effusive in expressing love, warmth, or affection toward him,
27. And he thought about murder and suicide once or twice;
28. His father, however, knowing full well what it was like to live with the Judas name, reminded him, You make the name; the name does not make you.
29. So it was that Judas, which in Spanish was pronounced Whoo-das, trying to adopt his father’s sage advice,
30. Drowned himself in comic books, sci-fi novels, philosophy, science, and, not least of all, mathematics.

CHAPTER 3

1. At the blackboard, he began to piece together the clues from his past, conceding there had been many.
2. When he was six, for example, he awoke with the words of the Pater Noster on his lips, of which he had never been taught.
3. And, later, when at the frightening insistence of a bully with scars on his face, he divided his baloney sandwich into as many pieces as was required to feed every child sitting at the longest table in the school cafeteria, all of whom expressed astonishment at the absence of hunger for the rest of the day.
4. And, later, in high school, he rushed to protect a cornered classmate because she was known to cavort with boys, though he did not understand why he did so—
5. For girls ridiculed him as mercilessly as boys, and he knew they were never going to be part of his world, though he thought about them all the time—yet he threw cutting words and poetry at her tormentors as heavy as stones.
6. And, later still, when he accompanied his mother to visit a cancerous aunt in the hospital connected to several machines,
7. And he felt such sorrowing pity that he could not resist the compulsion to lay a trembling finger on her hand while his mother wept into tissue paper,
8. And the woman sat up as if shocked by electricity and turned her brown eyes toward him with instant life.
9. And, when, just before the high school graduation ceremony he decided to forego, his mother ran into his room to tell him that his father was dead of a heart attack, Judas asked without cleverness, Which one? and he felt the sharp, stabbing pains of the stigmatist, but there was nothing on his palms except for the red marks caused by his recent scratching.
10. Afterward, in the throes of a baffling desire, Judas tried to read the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Luke, and Mark but could not finish them because he found them sad, painful.
11. And, all the while, his loneliness continued to be a scourge; he was wretched, unhappy, misunderstood.
12. The female sex thought him weird, creepy, stalker-material,
13. The kindlier ones, experiencing pity instead, who recognized in him intelligence, kindness, and compassion, befriended him but only while in school or work and, no, no, never anything more, how could it be possible to think of him in that way, just look at him, he was too ugly to be around.
14. He never went to parties or movies or dinners or on any dates.

CHAPTER 4

1. After attending classes at the local college, he helped his mother run his father’s furniture store, which they decided to keep and maintain, where they sold unpainted, unvarnished pieces made of wood.
2. Most of the objects in the store were ordered pre-made, but just the same, he had learned rudimentary carpentry from his father.
3. His mind worked with the observant skills of the mathematician, applying geometric logic to his shaping, cutting, molding, crafting.
4. He let his hair and beard grow out, so he could hide the absence of his neck, and imagined himself as the familiar figure of his mother’s picture thumbtacked to the kitchen cabinet,
5. Wearing a white tunic, his arms spread in welcome, wonderfully handsome, tall, erect, with the bluest eyes, except that he still wore his granny glasses, for his eyesight was poor, which made him look more Beatle than Messiah.
6. One afternoon, while waiting for a customer to fish out her credit card, he got the notion to build his own cross, one whose dimensions would be proportional to his warped body and weight.
7. He knew it was a strange thing to think of, much less pursue.
8. He worked it all out on notebook paper with Euclidian precision, but, when he studied the actual methodology of crucifixion, he became nauseated and threw his computations and diagrams away.
9. He gave up carpentering then and there and decided to be a teacher,
10. Because he thought he might prefer the rigid constancy of bells, which tried to impose order upon chaos, and wanted steady paychecks earned without much trouble;
11. He also found comfort in predicting where he would be from one hour to the next, one day to the next, one week, one month, one year, one decade to the next, the advantage of being a public-school teacher,
12. Because life was filled with uncertainty, and there were too many hours to fill,
13. But he was unspectacular, and his students found him tedious, uninspiring, and they mocked him because he was funny-looking, so he began to retreat more and more into his own apocalyptic thoughts.
14. After his mother died, he sold his father’s store and inherited his parents’ house and immersed himself in solitude.
15. He was a voracious reader, spending countless hours trying to work out universal riddles while enduring bouts of anxiety and fits of crying.
16. At thirty, he awoke to find strange permanent markings on his palms, as if someone had taken a knife and scored lines of cryptic languages on them, which erupted sometimes in blood.

CHAPTER 5

1. Are you all right, Mr. Borges? Mary asked.
2. He recognized the voice of his best student.
3. She was his greatest advocate because she understood the implications of numbers.
4. Mary had taken two courses with him and was now, in her senior year, his teacher’s aide during freshman algebra, and she defended him against the jeers of his heretical students.
5. He considered Mary’s question and decided that, yes, he was all right.
6. Because he was Jesus Christ … and why not he? Why not a high school mathematics teacher this time around?
7. (No, not Jesus, but Judas, Judas Christ. Christ meant Messiah, after all.
8. Perhaps God was finally trying to make amends to all those cursed to carry the Judas name.)
9. Some of the rabble began to snort and bray.
10. So, Judas carefully placed the chalk on the metal tray, and he muttered under his breath, Forgive them for they know not what they do.
11. He could not swivel or turn in one fluid motion because of his affliction, and had to move his head and torso completely around, together, hop-skipping his stubby legs one careful half-turn after the next, and he knew he had to be careful,
12. Because the last thing he desired was to lose his footing,
13. As these young people would bear witness later, and he wanted to make sure the significance of the moment would not, could not, be marred by accident.
14. Once he was certain all eyes were on him, he raised his thick, foreshortened arms perpendicularly and tried to muster a smile of beatitude as he had seen in the images of Raphael, Tintoretto, Caravaggio, before saying, Have courage! It is I. Believe in me.
15. He was, after all, thirty-three.

CHAPTER 6

1. He recognized their incredulity—mouths and bodies suddenly frozen in place, though a few grinned mischievously—and remembered how difficult it had been to cast his net wide and far the first time around.
2. He would be as patient now and pray for the gifts of the charismatic to return to him, for he had had them once before.
3. He lifted down his arms, conjoined his squat hands in the way of priests and monks, and articulated something meaningful, before striding out of the room with the slow tread of inevitability.
4. He knew he was daring them to follow,
5. And smiled at the memory of his first disciples, their initial hesitation and courage later.
6. Mary was the first to fall in step behind him, and then the rest, sensing a welcome distraction and spectacle unfolding, hastily grabbed their laptops, books, backpacks,
7. And he smiled again, for he was unbeguiled by their sudden burst of energy.
8. Judas walked up the hallway, led them through the EXIT, and strode into the sunlight just as the lunch bell blared, and thought how auspicious the timing, but as he headed to where intuition called forth, his mind grew troubled:
9. Now that he was the Christ once more and the world was to be reborn (once more), he realized with a shudder that another terrible sacrifice might be warranted.
10. The lashings and beatings, the awful crown of thorns, the iron nails like railroad studs through his flesh and bone, the hot explosions of his thick blood, the hoisting into the clouds of the wooden contraption of torture, the unbearable strain of his body’s weight, the struggle to breathe, the dehydration—no, he could not go through that again, not again.
11. Surely, the world was different, and he lived in a time when such barbarous things were not practiced anymore, in a land to which his parents had emigrated because they wanted more opportunities for themselves and their unborn children, of which Judas Borges was the only surviving one.
12. At worst, he might be thrown with the mentally ill—also His children—and he stifled a chuckle when he envisioned the symbol of the straitjacket in time replacing the cross, which, with his second coming, was no longer relevant.
13. And, to think, he might have been led astray by the advent of Joy.

CHAPTER 7

1. Instantly, he was struck by her kindness, for she was a stranger, really, since they did not have much opportunity to interact with each other; the campus was large, and she taught in the English department, which was in another building.
2. They had only exchanged perfunctory greetings during trivial encounters; once he held the door for her, and she smiled and said, Thank you, on which he placed little significance whatsoever.
3. Her name was Joy Esperanza, meaning Hope in Spanish, the original language of both their progenitors. He had heard that she encouraged her students to call her Miss Joy and that they loved her.
4. He could understand why.
5. Her eyes were warm and balanced; her face, a model of perfection, like an elegant proof, like Euler’s identity, like the music of Bach; her smile, tridimensional, resplendent; her figure all angles and curves, geometrically sound, symmetrical.
6. Fate paired them as unlikely partners at a weeklong seminar, and it was clear to him from the beginning that she was a shy seeker like himself, struggling to find meaning.
7. Their task, which they humored with seasoned patience, was to create a lesson marrying their disciplines: literature and mathematics; he suggested coupling Frankenstein with Differential Equations, an utterly ridiculous combination, and that made her laugh and they, like naughty pranksters, invented plausible-sounding justifications whose preposterousness would be utterly lost to most anyone else in the large conference room.
8. As they worked together the rest of the day, he found himself laughing, a thing he usually did grudgingly, uneasily, uncomfortably,
9. And that night in his dreams, she came to him like a vision,
10. And he awakened to wettened sheets, which had not happened to him since he was a teenager,
11. And he began to dare to daydream about a life with Joy and joy.
12. (Mary’s voice broke his reverie: Where are we going, Mr. Borges? she asked.
13. The reverence in her voice was not lost on him; he knew she knew; he knew she understood;
14. She would be his Peter.)
15. On the second morning, he brought her a muffin—blueberry—from the continental breakfast buffet with as much physical grace as he could muster, which she graciously accepted, and they spoke about their careers and life paths, and she seemed unbothered by his awkward, unsettling movement of head-and-torso when he turned completely to look at her, almost as if she were indifferent to his condition, and she was several inches taller than he, but this, too, she seemed not to mind.
16. He offered his coat when she shivered because the large room was freezing cold, and she politely declined.
17. Later he recognized that his coat was stained and smelled of heat and sweat.
18. He was not used to thinking about things like that.
19. They sat next to each other the whole time and listened to the presentations with suitable equanimity and—miracles abound!—traded phone numbers because they were colleagues, after all, and friends now.
20. On the afternoon of the fourth day, he stumbled into an invitation to dinner for the following weekend, combing his greasy hair back with a wet hand as he did so, and he was overjoyed when she, with a blush, nodded in the affirmative.
21. He experienced a fit of hilarity upon waking the next morning and hastily stumbled through his ablutions so that he could arrive as early as possible, so that he could tell her before the first speaker of the day approached the podium,
22. How much he loved her.
23. He laughed out loud thinking about it, which caught him by surprise because he was not prone to laughter.
24. And when he discovered that she was not attending the last day’s session because she had come down with something, probably because of the cold air blasting through the ceiling ducts, he finished what was left of their project and gallantly placed her name above his on the upper left-hand corner of the top page.
25. He left her a message on her voicemail during the afternoon break and chuckled abruptly during the last presenter’s slide show, causing people to stare in his direction with disgust,
26. And he blurted how much in love with Joy Esperanza from the English Department he was, and his eyes glistened as if they were about to shed tears,
27. And went so far as to imply that marriage was a foregone conclusion between them because, well, two and two was four, as everyone knew well.
28. He was so happy that he did not notice their faces of disbelief.
29. The next day, Saturday, he sent her several messages and, finally, late in the afternoon, he received a text from her:
30. Forgive me, Judas, but I cannot go out with you,
31. And that was all.
32. Judas went to her house just the same, carrying flowers to cheer her up, to see how she was faring, and could not comprehend her frightened expression nor her tone of distress when, through her screened window, she said she was not going to open the door and to please go away,
33. And he did not notice the flowers wilting in the muggy evening-turned-night, barely acknowledging the police officers who arrived to prod him, kindly, to go home.
34. He took a car back, and fell onto his bed, and did not get up for many days, perhaps as many as forty, and exhausted his sick days in the process; and it was true that,
35. Every day and every night,
36. Judas wept.

CHAPTER 8

1. And then, without notifying anyone, he returned to school as if he had never left,
2. And he showed up in class, startling the students and the substitute teacher, who left the room in evident confusion,
3. And Mary ran from her desk and embraced his thick torso with happy tears, and he tried to reciprocate, but he was clumsy and did not know how to.
4. Judas taught his students from then on, some of whom were respectful and cooperative for a while, thinking that Mr. Borges’s life had recently hung in the balance,
5. And he tried to go back to what he was, except that something felt different now,
6. Though he continued to try: the next day and the next day,
7. And the next day and the next day and the next day and the next day,
8. And the next day and the next day and the next day and the next day,
9. And he avoided going near the building where the English Department was housed, for he was afraid and embarrassed to run into Joy,
10. And then the day arrived when, ultimately, the truth of his existence was revealed through the equations on the moveable chalkboard,
11. And that day was today,
12. And he was leading his students to where everyone convened to eat their lunch, wondering who his next disciples would be and if twelve was a fixed number.

CHAPTER 9

1. Cafeteria workers sold sandwiches, hot dogs, hamburgers, and slices of pizza from kiosks ranged about the large courtyard covered in picnic tables; students carried their cardboard trays to sit next to friends or reached into paper bags; teachers and administrators milled about as well, watching the children, some eating and grading papers.
2. His principal, a walkie-talkie in her hand, stood at the gate separating the courtyard from the faculty parking lot to make sure no one snuck out, and glanced at him as he and his students strode by, the children laughing and grab-assing each other while they marched in a gaggle behind him;
3. He nodded a full-chested greeting in her direction, turning in that unsettling way of his, and her eyes arched in curiosity, and in that moment his glance caught,
4. Mary, who had moved a little way in the direction of the principal, making a circling motion with her finger to her head and pointing at him.
5. Unperturbed, Judas headed toward the table at the center of the courtyard normally reserved for the principal and assistant principals, where he would have everyone’s attention, rehearsing to himself snatches from the Sermon of the Mount as he thought he remembered them, just in case nothing original or poetical came to mind when it was time for him to speak.
6. He walked amid them all, teenagers and adults alike, and the sun’s rays clouded his vision, and he was sweating because it was hot, and his granny glasses fogged up,
7. And he imagined he was entering a beautiful church,
8. And the tabernacle was high and wide with rows and rows of pews like God’s phalanxes, and he clump-footed through the nave toward the chancel where a giant wooden crucifix adorned the polygonal apse, overlooking the altar,
9. Where baptism took place and divine grace was accorded,
10. And suddenly he was lifted aloft by his faith—in the adage that good things come to those who wait,
11. And he became aware of a carrying forth, and he climbed into the sky, his impish face heavenward, his own plucky hands, stretching and reaching high—and why?—but to touch the wooden crucifix floating above him, and he thought it was he, himself, who was nailed to the cross, suffering,
12. And he recognized he was standing on top of the picnic table in the center of the courtyard, commanding the view of everyone there,
13. And glanced out over this new congregation, truly his, because he was ready to fight, again, against the evils of loneliness, despair, insignificance, injustice, hate, tyranny,
14. And he saw that most knew who he was, and they were reaching out to him, their fingers extended,
15. And he smiled and paused and raised his thick arms into the air, and discovered that,
16. He was ready to die for them again, though he hoped that, together, they could achieve a different result this time—peace on Earth, finally, perhaps,
17. And he was to re-reveal himself as the Christ, among them once more,
18. And he felt the staggering wounds of his palms, and they began to bleed, and …
19. How difficult to endure it all, the terrible humiliation of self-disgust, self-loathing, self-recrimination every single day of his life and every single night of his life, and he asked himself:
20. What happens to a mind subjected to crucifixion?

CHAPTER 10

1. Excuse me, Mr. Borges, the principal asked, pronouncing the G like a J. Are you all right?
2. Judas looked from up high and replied, patiently, I am the light.
3. It is most inappropriate for you to be up there, she said.
4. Do you not recognize me? he asked, softly. Do you not see? he asked.
5. Of course, Mr. Borges, she said.
6. No, you do not, he said, smiling again. I am the Christ.
7. He saw her hold the walkie-talkie to her mouth while his children reached for him, clamoring as if crying out for alms.
8. Mary was staring up at him, tearfully, hands in supplication, shaking her head as if she were unwilling to recognize him.
9. You need to climb down, Mr. Borges, the principal said.
10. I have come in glory.
11. Get down, Mr. Borges!
12. The school’s security was upon him, climbing, stretching their hands and arms over the heads of the children.
13. I am the great I am.
14. Get down from there!
15. I only wanted to be loved.
16. That is my teacher up there!
17. He is crazy!
18. Grab him!
19. I only wanted to be loved.
20. Mr. Borges!
21. I only wanted to be loved.
22. MR. BORGES!
23. And he wanted to prove to them that he was finally worthy of their love, so he felt for the coins in his pockets and held them up in his open palms for all to see, before flinging them outward, above their heads.
24. And people lunged for them,
25. And, for a few moments, it was complete bedlam, a veritable brouhaha,
26. As the people pulled him from the table, laughing, screaming, crying, and he was lifted in the air, tossed like a sack of bread, and plunged up high into the realm of cloud and sun as if something beautiful might be in store for him,
27. And he was carried away and passed along upon a sea of straining hands,
28. And he was loved, so loved that everyone wanted a piece of him,
29. And when he came to, he was on the floor of the courtyard amid the sandwich wrappers and empty milk cartons, his broken body upon the ground, and everyone was staring down at him, including his students, and Mary, too,
30. And Joy was among them, beauty and anguish sublimely combined in her face, her head crowned in a mist of light, and she was saying, I am so sorry.
31. And he said in return, Why did you forsake me?
32. And he was taken away by two police officers, just arrived, and they towered over him on either side, their hands cupped gently beneath his meaty elbows, and the principal was running alongside, saying, Do not despair, Mr. Borges, everything will be all right. You will see.
33. And he smiled radiantly and said, You are forgiven. You are all forgiven.