“He’s converted, then?” Pullo asked. “He’s one of you?”
Madhukar at last turned back around to face them. “Yes and no. Ours is not like other faiths. One does not need to convert to anything to act properly. When the Teacher was asked how to become like him, he answered that a man needed only to act as he did. He taught that it is not our rituals or our beliefs that make us right or wrong. It is the truth of our deeds. Your friend is set upon that path now.”
On the shoreline, Caesarion was exiting the water with Rishi. Other monks approached, bearing saffron robes. Everyone was smiling.
“But wasn’t that a ritual?” Pullo asked.
Madhukar nodded. “When our forefathers came here from the east, they brought one truth, but they found another. From the Jews they learned of a powerful belief in the one God, a supreme being Who had created heaven and earth. We came to spread the wisdom of the Teacher, but we are not so arrogant to think that there are no other truths in the world. So we learned from the Jews about their faith that was built around God, a faith built of and for the earth. For the Jew, you see, faith is about how to live properly in this world, how to make each and every act more sacred, more befitting the divine spark that gave us life. This moved our fathers, for ours, too, is a faith about living properly. Not for a deity, and not for this world. For what god would create such suffering in this world? But here, on this island, at this temple, our forefathers met Hannah’s people, and we learned of their secret belief in the death of that one God, and the ways in which this brought about both freedom and suffering. We saw the ways in which this was like our own thoughts, and we saw fit to bring our peoples together into a fuller understanding of who we are. As Therapeutae, as the Greeks began to call us, we view the teachings of the Jews and that of the Teacher as two sides of the one very real truth: there was one God, our creator, Who set in motion the wheel of life and Whose death brought us into the cycle of suffering that we may learn in time to lift ourselves out of life and into the wholeness of being with what remains of His universal presence. So we bring together many of the ways of both peoples. Joachim, your young friend, has set himself upon the path of the Teacher in right wisdom, conduct, and focus. But he has also undertaken the ritual of baptism in order to become one of the Jewish people.”
“He’s a Jew?” Pullo asked.
“And one who follows the Teacher. He is both, you see.” Madhukar turned to Vorenus, who had been watching their exchange with interest. “It is indeed good that you were here for this,” he said, though the look of happiness on his face turned to one of sorrow. “It is a misfortune, however, that you suffered such losses on the way.”
“Thank you,” Vorenus said, bowing his head slightly. “Khenti was a good man.”
Madhukar nodded slowly, closing his eyes for a moment. “He carried much with him, I fear.”
Vorenus nodded, trying to digest what this meant among the monks. Though he had tried hard to learn it alongside the young man they knew as Joachim, the Therapeutan way of thinking remained as immeasurably strange to him as it surely was for the confused Pullo. Caesarion, however, had latched on to it quickly, declaring that it was, among all the philosophies in the world, the closest to his own beliefs.
It was also, Vorenus suspected, a kind of bridge for Caesarion between his own beliefs and that of Hannah’s Judaism.
As if bidden by the thought, Hannah came out onto the shoreline and embraced Caesarion in a powerful hug. She had been waiting, Vorenus knew, in a small room that kept her from seeing the young man’s nakedness. It was a strict rule among the Therapeutae—as it apparently had been among both the Jews and the disciples of their Teacher—that men and women were to remain modest among one another outside of marriage. They were also segregated during their times of communal gathering in the temple. Having seen how unfocused Pullo could be around women, Vorenus understood the principle, even if he did think that they went a little far in having a short dividing wall cutting their sanctuary in half.
Still, the segregation wasn’t as bad as it could be, Vorenus supposed. Caesarion had told him that the Teacher had apparently advised men to practice complete celibacy in order to better concentrate upon their meditations. Their Therapeutan descendants, however, had adapted to the Jewish acceptance of worldly passion and pleasure—albeit confined to marriage. “In the end life is suffering,” Caesarion had once told Vorenus, “but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t very real joys to be shared.”
And so it was in moments like this. Vorenus watched as the monks smiled and laughed while the two young people shared their embrace.
Caesarion was going to marry her. Vorenus was certain of it, and he couldn’t be happier.
“What is it that you worry Khenti took with him?” Pullo suddenly asked.
Vorenus blinked back to the two men beside him. “Ah, my curious Roman friend,” Madhukar said, “he took what he has been. What he has done. These things will carry with him in his next life.”
Pullo’s brow furrowed. “The Elysian Fields?”
“There are those who speak of such things. Of a life beyond in a heaven. I have not died in this life, so perhaps it is so.”
“But you don’t believe in it,” Vorenus said.
“Just so. As I have told you before, our Teacher showed us another path, another way. To continue in life is not our goal.”
“You want to die?” Pullo asked.
“In a manner of speaking. In truth we want to live to be released from life.”
“That’s death.”
“This is not so.” The monk’s voice was gentle and soft as the breeze. “It is release.”
Pullo looked confused, and Vorenus let out a little chuckle. “I’ve heard these same things, Pullo. They didn’t make any sense to me, either.”
“But I do want to understand,” Pullo said.
Vorenus saw a genuine pleading in his friend’s eyes. Pullo had never cared for the gods. When they were younger, when they’d known far less about such things, Pullo had mocked Vorenus for believing. And yet here the big man was, wanting to know the belief of the Therapeutae. What had happened to him while they were apart?
“It is difficult to understand,” Madhukar admitted. “It took the Teacher many years to learn the truth: life is suffering. You know this. You need only look around to see that all the joys of life are matched with an infinity of sorrows. Joy, one might say, is only possible because of that sorrow, for if all life was joy you would know it not for the joy that it is. We need sorrow and pain in this life, if only to know the importance of those blessed moments without them. But still, in the end, from the child trembling in the cold night to the worm drying upon the earth, the one truth of life is suffering. So we want to break the cycle of our being. Going to the Elysian Fields—to a heaven, as some call it—would only be to continue to exist, no matter what form you imagine for it.”
Pullo chewed on his lip for a moment, thinking. “So you want to be released from existence?”
“Released from suffering, yes.”
“So that’s what happened to Khenti? He was released from existence? He’s just gone?”
“I cannot know. I can only say what we have been taught. But I would say that he has not gone into nothingness, if this is your concern.”
“Tell him about the flower,” Vorenus said. “It’s about the only way this ever made sense to me.”
If Madhukar was offended by the negativity of the statement, it did not show. The monk instead gave an acknowledging nod. “I’m glad at least something in these years is getting through your Roman skull.”
Vorenus wanted to tell the monk that it wasn’t his fault—that what he had seen, what he knew now of the death of the one God and the futility of a life of pious belief, had left him unable to believe in anything anymore—but instead he just smiled. “I’m an old dog and this is all a new trick,” he said.