Some people said I should do the right thing and let him go.
Others said I’d done all I could.
I made offerings at the Temple. Priests and officials gave me their advice.
“The Lord God has given you a sign,” said one of my family. “It’s up to you now.”
One night, when I couldn’t sleep, I got up before cockcrow and washed my hands and face in the light of the oil lamp. I scrubbed my fingers and palms and used my nails on my cheeks, nose, and forehead; it was as if I had oil stuck to my skin and hair. I knelt down, lowered my head, and immersed it in the water. I breathed through my ears and listened with my mouth. Everything was upside down and back to front. The water was alive; it ran inside me, whispered to me as it flowed and gave me resolve: I would have to fight. The water spoke to me.
I would have to take up the battle against the evil power in Jacob, against what was tearing his speech apart. I would do anything to save him, to cleanse him.
But I was no savior. I had no power over this evil. I would have to search.
Some men who worked for me, and who came from the city of Samaria, had spoken of an old woman who lived in Bethel. I summoned the men and asked them to tell me about this woman. They apologized and said they couldn’t vouch for her. It was just a rumor, a story heard by the daughter of a sister of the husband of a sister.
“What kind of story?” I asked. The man who’d dragged his whole family tree into the equation stared at the ground and fell silent.
“I’m not going to punish you,” I said. “Nobody will hear of this, you have my word. This is between us.” The man nodded but still kept his eyes on the ground. He told me that a young girl in his extended family, a niece of his brother-in-law, had a neighbor, and the father of this neighbor had told her about his sore toe. His foot had been caught while he was working to clear a patch of land, and within a few days the foot had already turned a nasty color, so he traveled up to Bethel, since these people lived in the area around Jericho, not far from the river Jordan. In Bethel, there was an old woman who mixed some herbs in a bowl, poured boiling water on top, forced him to drink it, and then placed her hands over the poor man’s sore toe. While he sat there, watching with his own eyes, all the agony and swelling, bruising and pain vanished. His skin regained its normal glow, and the happy man walked all the way back to where he came from without feeling anything other than the Promised Land beneath him.
I took Jacob with me and left for Bethel that same day. The men described the route to me and did their best to explain what the old woman looked like and where I might find her, but since neither of them had seen her themselves, I set no great store by their eyewitness accounts.
When we arrived in Bethel and began to ask around, it soon became clear that the people in those parts knew the old woman. She lived with a man I understood to be her son, and his family.
The old woman was blind, her hands shook, and when she spoke, she began shouting. I asked her son if she often had visitors, to which he shook his head and said that it had been a long time since people last came to her.
“People step aside if they see her now,” he said. “Even my children keep away from her. She pulled out the hair of one of my sons. Since then she hasn’t been allowed to stay in the house with them. She sleeps in the stable, with the animals.”
“She pulled his hair out?” said Jacob, in his own way. The man looked at him, and then looked at the ground and asked me what Jacob had said.
“He was asking if she really pulled out your son’s hair,” I said. The man nodded and called out a name, and a boy with his head covered came running over to us. The boy went up to his father, and the father pulled the rags off his head. His hair had been shorn, but the skin on one side of his head was bright red.
“It’ll grow back,” said his father.
I gave them some coins, wished them God’s peace and future happiness, and we went back the same way we’d come.
I didn’t give up. On another journey, we crossed the Jordan and followed the river Jabbok up a valley, where we were greeted by a ragtag mob of men. We were far away from everything, but I’d been told that these people were peaceful and that they were led by a prophet with God-given talents. I wanted him to set Jacob free.
“Are you here to meet the Master?” asked a man with one eye and one deep, black hole. I told him we were and held on tightly to Jacob.
“This is my son,” I said. “We wish to meet Hananiah and seek his counsel.”
“The Master will see you,” said the one-eyed man. “And remember, in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” We stared at him, and he began to laugh. “Come on,” he said. “Follow me.”
The one-eyed man took us to a tattered tent that had been pitched beneath a tree next to a mound of rocks. The crowd of men stood behind us now, whispering, and some of them came up to me asking for gifts and offerings. The one-eyed man batted them away with a stick.
“Keep yourselves pure,” he shouted. “Remember the words of our Master and allow our kind guests to meet him before you speak to them.”
“Wait here,” he said, disappearing into the tent. He came straight back out again and signaled us to remain standing, before he turned back to the tent and knelt down. The chatter behind us turned to whispering, and then to silence when their prophet stepped out through the tent door.
He was covered with dark hair, even his beard appearing to grow up to his eyes, and his clothes were wrapped around him as if he were freezing and had no wish to be standing outside there with us.
“May God’s peace be with you,” he said, before coughing and spitting. He motioned to the one-eyed man. “Tell them to come to me, and then leave us in peace.”
“Yes, Master,” said the one-eyed man, waving us forward.
I’d heard Hananiah’s name spoken by some of the workers of one of my tenant farmers. They said he could heal the sick and release us all, and they told me where I could find him. I thanked the workers and asked my tenant to turn a blind eye to what they’d told me. From what I understood, it was safe to seek out Hananiah’s followers as long as they hadn’t crossed the Jordan to approach Jerusalem. If the rulers saw him as a madman, they would have him flogged in public and let him go, but if he really was what he claimed to be, they would crucify him and his followers.
“You have come to meet me,” Hananiah said once we were standing in front of him. I told him that was right and began to introduce myself, but he interrupted me.
“I don’t want to know what you call yourself or who you are in this world,” he said. He looked across at Jacob. “Is that your son?”
I nodded and introduced Jacob.
“What do you want?” Hananiah asked.
“I have been told that you are a prophet, and that God speaks and works through you,” I said. “My son has something evil within him that prevents him from speaking. I want to do whatever I can to heal him so that he can speak freely.”
Hananiah stood there looking at me, before turning to Jacob. “Why do people like you come to me?” he said. Before answering, he waved his hand again to quiet me. “Let me hear you speak, boy.” Jacob looked at me, but Hananiah spoke to him. “Don’t listen to him, you’ve come here to me, to my kingdom. Listen to what I’ve got to say. Speak to me, let me hear what’s bothering you and your wealthy family.”
Jacob introduced himself, saying his name and where we came from. He told him about our journey there and that it was the first time he’d crossed the Jordan. When he fell silent, I was filled with hope, as here was a man who had listened to my son, who let him speak, stuttering and faltering. Only when Jacob had finished did Hananiah turn toward me.
“Have you seen my people?” Hananiah asked.
“Yes, they greeted us,” I said.
“My people,” said Hananiah, “are those and many others, and you’ve seen what they look like, but you haven’t heard them speak yet, or where they come from and the tales they have to
tell. Don’t come to me with your wealth and your son, asking if God can save him. You have already been saved here on earth; you are living in salvation. You don’t know what suffering is. God doesn’t care about how you speak or how you look. When God’s kingdom comes, you will know suffering. He will turn everything upside down.”
And on he went. He snarled and spat, and then turned his back on us, went into his tent, came back out and told us to go, before disappearing back inside. Jacob was scared and moved closer to me.
“It’s all right,” I said. “This was a waste of time, it’s my fault. Let’s go home.”
I almost gave up after this. Word got about as to what I’d done, and all sorts of people came to me with advice, but I’d lost all faith. I’d heard about prophets before and seen what the Romans did with them, but it was no new Isaiah who’d stood there with us. God did not work through these preachers from the wilderness. They were new kinds of insurgents, imitations of dreams of old legends. Hananiah couldn’t heal my son any more than he could save himself and his followers from the fate that awaited them.
I promised myself never to subject Jacob to anything like that again. I just wanted to carry on living, but I wished that Sarah were with us to give me an answer. If Sarah were by my side, I could have threaded my fingers through her hair, and maybe I would have found the answer there.
But then Jacob fell ill with a cough and a fever. I had some women look after him and gave them all they needed to make him fit and well again. One evening, a few nights before he would reawaken from his fever, pale but healthy, I went to see him. He was talking in his sleep, mumbling, sometimes audibly, and his head was moving from side to side, but there, in the land of dreams, his words were flowing like water down the Jordan. There was nothing chopping or grating the words as they came out, and even if they were only fragments that he wouldn’t even remember or understand when he woke, they were complete. They were whole words. The evil power had no effect on Jacob as he slept.
I was filled with a strange new hope. If my son was able to speak fluently in his sleep, then he was also capable of speaking when awake. There was good and evil within him, and the evil had to be wrenched out into the daylight.
I asked the women who sat there by Jacob if any of them had heard him talking in his sleep. They said he’d been doing it every night while the illness was at its worst.
“He talks like people talk in their sleep,” one of them said. I told them about Jacob and about what he was suffering with, and I asked their advice.
“I’ve heard about you,” said one of the women. “You crossed the Jordan to help him.”
“You’ve heard him yourself,” I said. “He speaks like a healthy man at night.”
“Why haven’t you sought out Jesus?” said another of the women.
“Jesus?” I asked, and she told me about an unclean man, a leper who had been cleansed after being delivered by a man called Jesus of Nazareth. I asked her to take me to the man who had been saved as soon as morning came.
In spite of what the woman had told me, the newly saved man was still unclean. There were open sores and boils on his face, down his arms, and on his feet. I kept my distance and put up a scarf in front of my face. I took hold of the woman and asked her what was going on: Was she trying to make a fool of me?
“He’s clean,” she said. “He can’t pass anything on to you. Jesus touched him with his hand.”
“He’s unclean,” I said. “Can’t you see?” The woman just smiled.
“You won’t catch anything,” she said. “What does it matter if he’s unclean?”
“Can you speak to him?” I asked.
“Yes,” she replied. “You can speak to him too. He’s right in front of you; he can hear what you’re saying.”
I raised my eyes to the man. He looked at me.
“What can I do for the master?” he asked. I took hold of the woman again and asked her to speak to him.
“Ask him where I can find Jesus,” I said. “If he really thinks he’s been healed, he must be spreading some powerful words. Ask him how I can find Jesus.”
“He’s in Galilee,” said the man, still staring at me. Underneath his strands of blond hair, I could see chapped and loose skin, as well as something glutinous and sticky. “The Lord saved me outside Cana,” he continued. “You can go to Nazareth and ask them about the Lord.”
I turned to the woman.
“Thank him from me,” I said, giving her a few coins. “These are for both of you. May God be with you.”
We dressed for the journey. I took food and servants I could rely on. I kept Jacob close by. All sorts of thoughts preyed on me. I feared that soldiers would storm out and arrest all of us for being rebels. I feared attacks by thieves. At one point, on the first morning, I even thought that there was nothing wrong with Jacob anymore, nothing breaking up his speech or making him stutter. Maybe the whole thing was over. Maybe faith was all that was needed, not a father who doubted so deeply whether his son really belonged to God. But when the first evening of the journey came, I asked Jacob if he was tired or if he was hungry, and again I saw his face writhe and squirm as he tried to answer, his hands clenching and opening, and his words grinding to a halt.
We traveled toward Galilee. We followed the road through Samaria, up to Scythopolis, and then northwest toward Nazareth. It was a small town, poor, as I’d been told, but we were shown the way to Jesus’s family. We were met by two of his brothers, who told us that Jesus had gone back up toward Cana.
“You’ve traveled far,” they said. “Stay with us tonight before you travel on.”
The next day, on the way to Cana, we came across other people who were on the same mission. Some had young children with them, while others were carrying elderly relatives. A number of them were unclean or infected, but they kept their distance and were not rude. I got talking with some men who turned out to be rebels. I made my excuses and moved away from them. They shouted to us that they were neither Romans nor traitors.
“We’re going to the same place,” they called. “Do you think we’re going to steal your riches and your son?” I told Jacob not to listen to them.
“This country has been torn apart,” I said. “Everybody’s fighting against everybody else.”
When we arrived, I stood there, staring at the strange sight. I am used to large crowds, but I’ve never seen so many people all gathered together off the beaten path. There must have been three hundred, maybe four hundred people. Jacob speaks of a thousand. I don’t know what I remember. My memories of that day are such that the fantastical seems just as naturally placed as everything else.
We stood at the edge of the crowd. Ahead of us, in the middle of all the people standing there, a small circle had formed. In the circle stood a man, and he reached out his hands and touched another man, but nothing changed. The light stayed the same, the sky still stretched out firmly above us, and the smell of sweat rose up as if we were part of a herd of animals.
“That must be Jesus,” said Jacob. I nodded. Jacob had been quiet for the whole journey, but now, as we had this miraculous figure and his followers in sight, Jacob began to speak. The people near us turned around to see what was wrong with Jacob, as if their own sicknesses, curses, and misfortunes weren’t enough. I laid my hands on Jacob’s shoulders and told him to save his strength.
“We may have to wait all day,” I said, “and even then there’s no guarantee he’ll have time for us.”
“He has time for everybody,” we heard somebody say ahead of us.
It was a young man with a full head of curly, dark hair. He smiled. Sitting crouched next to him was a girl with her face wrapped in a piece of cloth. She couldn’t have been any older than Jacob.
“Her husband made her like this,” the young man said. “Now all she’s got is me, and Jesus. I’m her brother.”
I was about to ask what her husband had done, but I wanted to fill Jacob with hope.
“H-h-h-ha-ha-how l-l-l-oo
ong …” Jacob began to say.
I finished for him: “How long do you think it’ll take us to get to him?” The man said he didn’t know. “How do you know that he has time for all of us?” I asked, immediately regretting the question. I tried not to look at his disfigured sister.
“I think he’s the savior we’ve been waiting for,” the smiling young man continued. “He saves everybody who wants to be saved.”
I nodded to the servants that they could sit down. Jacob brushed the sand with his hands before sitting down next to the young man and his sister. Then the sound of shouts reached us, and from where I stood, I could see people getting up and holding each other.
When I asked the servants to bring out our food, Jacob invited the brother and sister to join us for our meal. The young man smiled and kept his eyes on Jacob’s for as long as it took the boy to draw out his words. I sensed kindness in the way this man sat there with his sister, kindness in the way he listened and let Jacob finish before gratefully accepting the offer of food. When other people heard Jacob speak in my presence, they always turned away from him and toward me before saying something themselves. It was as if they all needed some confirmation to let me speak in his stead. Even women who had been mine turned away from him in the hope that I could take over the words that were stuck in his mouth.
“My name is Obed,” said the young man, “and my sister’s called Naomi. She has difficulty speaking,” he continued, as he helped his sister to sit down. “Her husband assaulted her,” he said. “He left her lying on the floor, battered and broken, in their own home.”
Jacob told them our names and reached out his hand. Obed took it, lifted Naomi’s hand, and laid it in Jacob’s. Naomi said something, but it wasn’t possible to hear what. Jacob leaned forward, tilted his head, and listened again to Naomi’s soft, barely audible voice. I wanted to say something, but Jacob sat back up and said those words I can never forget: “Maybe God is a voice that only those who cannot hear can hear. Maybe God is the way you, or I, speak now. Or maybe God is your face.”
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