Sela took another drink, sifting through her limited options. She would go to Egypt with them, yes. Going south made sense, and besides, there was safety in numbers—even if they weren’t the numbers you would’ve picked if given the chance. But she wouldn’t linger there. She would continue on by herself. Maybe across the north of Africa to Carthage or across the sea to Greece.
You rebuilt your life once before; you can do it again.
She had no interest in playing odd woman out to a Jewish couple. Nor did she have much interest in hanging around with the man formerly known as the love of her life. From the looks of it, Balthazar had no interest in her, either. He was off on his own, watching—
A herd of ibex grazed in the distance. It was a smaller herd, only a dozen or so. Not the hundred or more they’d spotted outside Hebron as they walked into an ambush. Balthazar sat a good distance from the others, watching the ibex mindlessly, stupidly chew their cud. Taking comfort in it.
Blissful, simple little things.
They spent their abbreviated lives flitting around, moving from place to place, taking what they needed to survive. Always searching for the next little patch of green to keep them going, always running away when it got too dangerous, never stopping until they were either hunted down or simply faded into nothing. Forgotten.
Balthazar could think of a million explanations for what they’d seen in Beersheba, none of which made much sense. Just as he could think of a million reasons why a stream might appear out of nowhere in the desert or a riot might break out at exactly the moment they needed it to. But he could no longer outrun the nagging feeling that had been following him through the desert for days:
There’s something about that baby.
There had to be. Why else would all these people want him dead? A tiny, brand-new creature who had never so much as uttered a word. A creature who still bore the half-open eyes and misshapen head of his birth. And why did the child always seem so calm? Like it knew exactly what was going on? Why had the old man in his dream shown him an image of Egypt? Why did nature itself seem to come to their rescue when they were in need? And how?
Balthazar was filled with new questions. New doubts. Doubts of his old doubts. And this swirling pool of questions and doubts made him confused. And being confused made him angry. And here he was, sitting apart from the others, watching the sky slowly darken over the desert. Angry and alone.
Sela had been watching him sit there for some time, when a disembodied voice gave her misery more unwanted company:
“Why don’t you go and talk to him?”
She turned to her left and found Mary walking toward her. The baby still feeding beneath her robes.
“Sorry, what?”
“Why don’t you go over there?” said Mary, sitting beside her. “Sit with him. Talk to him.”
“And why would I do that?”
Mary looked confused. Isn’t it obvious?
“Because…you love him.”
Sela was sure she’d gone cross-eyed. Love him?
“Did you see the way I greeted him when he showed up at my door?”
“Yes. And if you didn’t care, you would’ve turned your back on him. Closed the door in his face. But the very sight of him made you angry. Violent. Those are passionate feelings. You don’t feel those things if you don’t care about someone.”
“It’s a little late for passion.”
“If there was love, real love, between you, who can say if it’s—”
“You know,” said Sela, cutting her off, “I think we have more urgent things to talk about, like the fact that we’re alone in the middle of the desert. Or that a whole army’s trying to find us and kill us.”
Mary realized she’d gone too far. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s fine.”
“No, you’re right. It isn’t my place.”
“Really, it’s fine. Let’s just leave it—”
“I was only trying to help. Give you a little advice,.”
Sela couldn’t help but smile.
“What?” asked Mary.
Just say “nothing,” Sela. Don’t insult her—just leave it alone.
“I just…I think it’s funny, that’s all.”
“Think what’s funny?”
Leave it alone, Sel—
“The fact that I’m getting relationship advice from a fifteen-year-old girl. And one who freely admits that her baby isn’t her husband’s.”
A considerable silence followed.
“It’s different,” said Mary at last. “It’s God’s child.”
Sela smiled again. “I thought we were all God’s children.”
And now another considerable silence, and a tinge of regret from Sela. She could see that she’d really wounded the girl with that one.
“You think I’m a joke,” said Mary at last.
Sela rolled her eyes. Here we go. This was exactly the conversation she didn’t feel like having. Not now. This wasn’t two girls talking about boys anymore. Just move past it.
“I don’t think you’re a joke. I just…” How to put it?
“You just don’t believe me,” said Mary.
Look at this face—this earnest face…this fifteen-year-old who thinks she knows everything.
“No,” said Sela. “I guess I don’t.”
Mary turned away, toward the ever-darkening visage of her sleeping husband. Her exhausted husband, bruised from shielding her through the storm. Poor Joseph, she thought. Poor, noble Joseph.
“I understand,” Mary said. “Sometimes I ask myself, why, of all the girls in the whole world, did he choose me? Should I not love my baby as a mother is supposed to? Should I not hold him when he weeps? Comfort him when he is frightened? Scold him when he misbehaves? Or should I worship him, even now?”
“I can see how that might get a little complicated, sure.”
“I didn’t ask for this burden. I didn’t appeal to heaven or beg of God for any honor. But this is the path that’s been chosen for me by God, and I have to walk it.” She turned back to Sela. “I can either walk it alone,” said Mary, “or walk it holding the hands of the ones I love. Either way, it’s the same path.”
Sela looked at Mary intently and smiled. She supposed this fifteen-year-old knew more than she let on. Mary turned away from her and stared straight into the desert, toward the fading image of their broad-shouldered protector.
“He doesn’t believe me, either,” she said, looking at Balthazar.
“Yeah, well, don’t take it personally. He doesn’t believe in much of anything.”
“He’s a strange man. He’ll fight to protect my child, but he won’t so much as look at him, hold him. And I wonder how a man can be so angry—so cruel, so violent. And how this same man can risk his life for a child he hardly knows.”
Now it was Sela’s turn to sit in silence for a while, considering. Maybe it was the guilt of having insulted Mary, or the need to show a little girl who thought she knew everything how little she actually knew. Maybe it was the need to sort it all out in her own head, to remind herself of how this had all begun. Whatever the reason, Sela decided right then and there to tell Mary about the day Balthazar died.
“We were still in Antioch,” she said.
II
And we’re fifteen again, and in hopeless, hideous young love. There’s Balthazar and I kissing on the banks of the Orontes, and it’s beautiful and golden and forever, and it always will be. And there’s Balthazar’s little brother, Abdi, following us everywhere we go. Four years old and still wearing that gold pendant around his neck. The one his big brother stole for him but won’t tell me from whom or where. There he is, proudly imitating Balthazar. My God, he loves his big brother. And my God, Balthazar loves him more than any object or idea or feeling in this world. We both do. He’s our constant companion. Our shadow. Our son. A practice son, for the ones we’ll have together when we’re married.
But not marriage—not yet. First, Balthazar teaches me ho
w to live again. How to fend for myself. Teaches me how to fight. How to pick pockets in the forum. And Abdi looks on as he teaches me. Imitates his brother. Idolizes him. He wants nothing more than to be Balthazar.
And there’s Balthazar taking me to the forum when he thinks I’m ready to try my pickpocketing skills on a real target. There he is playing my accomplice. And there’s Abdi, who we’ve told to wait for us across the forum. “Don’t move from this spot,” says Balthazar, “until we come and get you.” But there’s Abdi moving anyway, wanting so desperately to be like his brother. Sneaking off on his own, trying to pick a pocket all by himself. He’s watched us practice so closely, so often. He’s sure he can do it. But he’s not yet five years old, and he doesn’t know it isn’t a game. And there he is, following a man through the forum. A man who looks like he’ll have a great deal of money hidden away. There he is, mimicking the way Balthazar slips his hand into the target’s robes, pulls out his coin purse. And there’s Abdi reaching…and there’s Abdi taking…
And there’s Abdi caught in the act.
His hand seized as it grabbed at an overstuffed coin purse. Seized by a man who towers over him, looking down with a pair of harsh, unforgettable eyes as he squeezes that thieving little hand. Squeezes it until its little bones threaten to break. Squeezes it until Abdi has no choice but to scream out. And the towering man leans over this little thief. This little Syrian rat. The very picture of everything that’s wrong with this wretched city.
And the man is a Roman centurion.
And the centurion’s bodyguards surround him now. And a crowd of locals forms around the centurion and this suddenly very, very frightened little boy—not yet five years old. And a few of the locals, the men, beg the centurion to let him go. “We’ll make sure he’s punished,” they say. “We’ll beat him until he bleeds,” they say. And the little boy is terrified, of course. Screaming out to be let go. Screaming out because his hand hurts so, so much. Screaming out because he suddenly knows this isn’t a game. And the centurion pulls out his sword. And some of those in the surrounding crowd gasp and cry out in protest. And the men redouble their promises to punish the child themselves, even though they know they’re helpless to interfere.
“Let this be a warning!” the centurion shouts. “A warning that crime will not be tolerated in Antioch! By ANYONE!”
And he squeezes Abdi’s hand even tighter, eliciting another anguished cry. But there’s Balthazar to answer it. Here’s the heroic big brother who would never, ever let any harm befall Abdi. There’s Balthazar, drawn by his brother’s anguished cries—running right at the centurion, with me on his heels. We’ve been summoned by that familiar voice. And Balthazar is going to tackle this Roman before he can do what he intends to. He’s going to tackle him and beat him bloody while Abdi and I escape. And chances are he’ll pay for this with his life, but he doesn’t care.
But the centurion’s bodyguards care. They block Balthazar before he reaches his target. They form a barrier in front of their fellow Roman, grabbing Balthazar’s arms and legs and holding him in place, even as he struggles and screams. Even as his eyes meet Abdi’s, and the little brother suddenly realizes that the big one can’t save him after all.
And the centurion pushes his sword into Abdi’s belly. And the boy cries out as his tender flesh gives way but doesn’t break. So the centurion pushes harder, and the skin tears, letting the blade in. Letting it through his little belly and out the back.
And we stop now for a moment. We stop right here in this little piece of time, because our eyes have deceived us. Because, we tell ourselves, this isn’t what happened at all. It can’t be. It can’t be, because men don’t run little children through their little bellies with sharp swords. It can’t be, because Abdi is going to grow old and have a whole life with us. A whole, rich life of his own, filled with all the beauty and discovery, all the love and opportunity a little boy with a warm heart deserves in life.
But it is real.
The centurion withdraws the blade and lets go of the boy’s half-broken hand. Lets him fall into a seated position, where he remains a moment, before falling over on his side and silently clutching at his stomach. Clutching as the blood runs over his fingers. And as Balthazar watches this in some other world where it can’t possibly be true, he imagines Abdi tugging at his leg and crying, “Bal-faza…Bal-faza…you stay right here…”
And the anguish. The screams of his big brother. His big brother—still too small, too young to fight off the guards who hold him by the arms and neck. Who beat him into submission as he struggles and screams his throat raw. And the crowd is shocked. Silent. Helpless. It’s not their place. They don’t want to end up on the other side of the river, in one of those shallow graves.
I’m watching all of this, right beside Balthazar, but miles away from the agony he feels. He’s all alone in that, and I know it. Even then, in the first seconds of it. I turn away from my screams, toward his. I watch as Balthazar undergoes a transformation right there in the forum. I watch him fall to his knees. I watch him pick up his brother’s lifeless little body, holding it in his shaking arms. Holding our practice son. And I drop to my knees, too, feel the sickness crawling up the back of my throat.
And now the centurion’s eyes meet Balthazar’s, and he knows. He knows this is a relative. A brother. And he smiles at Balthazar, because he can. Because he’s above the reach of the law. A god. And the centurion decides to leave his mark on this Syrian rat, dragging his blade across Balthazar’s right cheek twice, leaving a bloody “X” behind. And like that scar, the centurion’s face will stay with Balthazar forever.
Adding insult to murder, the centurion takes the pendant that hangs around the boy’s neck—rips it off his neck while he gasps for the breath he can’t find—and hangs it around his own.
“Probably stolen anyway,” he says to the assembled.
And with that he’s gone. Whisked off into the busy forum by his bodyguards.
Just in case, I think. Just in case we aren’t as afraid as you make us out to be, and we decide to rise up against you.
But we are. We’re too afraid, and we let him slip away into the safety and anonymity of Antioch’s ruling Roman class. And with the centurion gone, never to be seen again, we turn our attention back to the two brothers he’s left behind. One big, one small. One dead, one wishing he were.
And we witness this together. Gawking at this deeply private moment. Intruding into this mourning with our eyes, unable to offer any comfort. Together, we witness the end of the being who went by the name “Balthazar” and watch the birth of a new being. The one who they’ll call “the Antioch Ghost.” An angry, murderous creature.
It isn’t good enough to rob the Romans anymore. He wants to kill them. No, not wants. “Wants” is too weak. It’s merely a desire. But even “needs” is insufficient to describe what courses through him now. He’ll kill the centurion. He knows this as surely as he knows his own name. Like me, he wants to burn Rome to the ground. But unlike me, he knows he’s actually going to do it. Not today, not in a year’s time—but someday. He knows he’ll stand over Rome as it burns to the ground. He soothes himself with this knowledge. And though he isn’t a praying man, he prays for this. He prays as earnestly as any man ever has. A silent prayer, right there in the forum:
Give me this, O Lord…give me this. Let me see my enemy’s face again. Let me strike him down for what he’s done. Let me do this before my life on this earth is ended. Let me do this, whatever awaits me across the gulf of death. No matter the consequences of time or punishment.
He’s shaking now, sobbing as Abdi’s body bleeds into his lap. Rocking him back and forth as he kneels on the cobblestones of the forum. And for some reason, my eyes are drawn to Abdi’s robes, and I see that he’s wet himself. And this is what brings the tears at last. For it reduces him to the child he is; it speaks to the fear he must have felt and takes the last shred of dignity from him. And the crowd is already thinning, frightened that
the Romans will come back and punish all of us for making too big a scene of so little a murder.
Balthazar sobs and screams and rocks his brother—our son—to sleep, just like he used to on the banks of the Orontes, when Abdi would nap in his arms in the shade of their scarred tree. And I’m on my knees beside them, rocking and sobbing myself. But there’s nothing I can do. I’m already useless, and I know it.
Forget me or his mother or anyone else. Balthazar is alone. But worse—so much worse than that—is what he knows in his heart. He knows that this is his fault. All of it. It’s his fault for being so irresponsible. For teaching a little boy how to steal. For being a bad example to a good soul. And he knows that somehow, some unseen power is punishing him for what he’s done with his own life. All of the unforgivable sins he’s committed. He’s knows that God hates him. Here is proof in his arms. What God could do this? Only a God who hates.
And smooth, singular purpose washes over him. He’s dead now. There are no more consequences in life. He’s dead, and the dead have license to kill the living. He’s dead, and God hates him. Here’s the proof—right here, bleeding into his lap. But Balthazar won’t settle for being hated by God. He’ll hate God right ba—
III
Sela stopped in midsentence. The desert had grown almost completely dark, but she could feel Balthazar standing over her. She looked up, and there he was, looming over the two sitting women and their tear-streaked faces, silhouetted against the last of the pale sky and the first stars to welcome the night.
Unholy Night Page 21
