“I could see it, Jehoash,” he mumbled. “The flame wasn’t out, she was keeping it alive.”
“Be still,” I whispered. “Listen to me.”
He kept on mumbling, but I could no longer understand what. I tried to reach out for his hand, but I lost my grip. My hands slipped over his shoulders and ribcage. And then there was nothing until I hit Jehoram and we fell down together to the ground. Reuben was on top of us, pulling at us and hissing.
“They’re coming,” he whispered. “The soldiers are coming.”
We stood up in the dark. The soldiers were heading straight for us. There were two of them, both carrying torches. I grabbed onto Jehoram and whispered in his ear what we were going to do. I gave Reuben the signal, and we walked out to the sides. Jehoram walked between us, toward the torches and the soldiers.
One of the soldiers yelled at Jehoram when he saw him. Jehoram stopped and stood there, smiling at them. Then we rushed into the light. Reuben went up to the one who’d yelled and stuck a knife in his side, sending the torch falling to the ground. Reuben put his hand over the soldier’s mouth, pulled out the knife, brought it down again between the soldier’s shoulders and neck, and twisted it around inside him. I was on the other soldier, but my knife bounced off a leather strap around his chest. The blow was still so hard that the soldier took a step backward, and there was Reuben, who grabbed his head, tilted it back, and cut his throat.
I told them both to be quiet. There was nothing to be heard, apart from some faint sounds coming from within the city and the gurgling of one of the soldiers.
“Come on,” I said. “We’ve got to get back to Nadab.” Reuben found the torches and hit them against the ground until they were extinguished. Jehoram smirked in the darkness and asked if the soldiers were tougher, but Reuben told him to be quiet.
“Nadab?” said Reuben when we got back to the cross. We couldn’t hear anything from up there.
“Lift me up,” I said. “I’ll try once more. If it doesn’t work, we’ll end it for him.”
Reuben took hold of Jehoram. “Come on,” he said. I clambered up on top of them, grabbed the cross, and put my feet around the wood.
“Nadab?” I said, but he didn’t answer. I reached out one of my hands to find Nadab’s. I could feel the nail going through it. It was impossible to pull it out.
“Nadab,” I said, “I can’t get you free.”
He was still silent. His warm breath rippled out through his nose.
“Nadab,” I said again, carefully taking out my knife. “You’re one of us, you shouldn’t have to hang here like this.” I got the knife ready. At that very moment came a strong gust of wind. It snatched me, I dropped the knife, I lost my grip. I fell again, and when I hit the ground, I saw the first bolt of lightning rip open the whole world. Jehoram screamed, Reuben cried out, thunder reverberated in the sky, and when the lightning struck again, I saw Nadab fall down.
I lay struggling on the ground. I had trouble seeing; my eyes hurt. Reuben took hold of me.
“Come on,” he said. “We’ve got to get away from here.”
I got up. Jehoram was holding something in his hands.
“Jehoash,” said Reuben. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” I said, and we started walking. They carried Nadab. The night was torn open, again and again. We walked through the flashing darkness and kept walking until we found something to crawl into. It was a cave, not big enough to stand up in. Reuben and Jehoram put Nadab down between us.
“I can’t see him,” said Reuben. “Is he alive? Jehoash, is Nadab alive?”
I leaned forward and looked until I could see his face. There was nothing coming out of his nose or mouth. I felt for a heartbeat, but even his warmth had gone.
“No,” I said.
“It’s so cramped in here, I need to get out,” Jehoram said. “I need to get out of here.”
The storm abated. We left Nadab lying there, crept out of the cave, and headed westward toward Jaffa. The moon rose. The road was like a deep, dark rift through the cold light. Jehoram walked in front, talking to himself. Reuben and I walked on either side. At one point, Jehoram called out and asked where we were going. I didn’t know what to answer, but Reuben broke the silence.
“Jaffa, we’re going to the sea,” he said. “I can’t show myself to Anna, not yet.”
Jehoram made a sound, and we stared at him. He was standing with his hands raised in the air. “The sea, Nadab,” he shouted. “We’re going to the sea.”
Reuben told him to shut up. “They’ll be looking for us,” he said.
“Nobody knows us,” I said. “Besides, there are so many people for them to keep track of. Maybe we’ll go to Antioch eventually.”
“Nadab,” Jehoram cried. “Can you hear me? You have the skies in your hand, I’ll soon have the sea at my feet.” Reuben started off toward him, but I grabbed hold of him.
“Let him be,” I said.
“Maybe we should go to Sychar instead,” Reuben said. “Nobody will bother us there.”
“No,” I said. “We’re going to the sea. We need to go back to what we were.” I tried to see his face, to see if anything had changed. But even if the moon was above us, our faces were in shadow.
“I don’t know how you got him down,” Reuben said.
Jehoram was just a shadow in front of us now. It seemed as if he were still talking to himself, but we couldn’t make out his words anymore.
“I must keep an eye on Jehoram,” I said.
When daylight came, through a long, narrow gap at the end of the world, we stopped by a small grove of trees. People had been there before us. The grass had been trampled; there were the blackened remains of a fire. I treated Jehoram’s hands with ointment and wound them up in a blanket. Jehoram smiled at me, and a sound came from his mouth, as if he had something stuck in there. Reuben lay down next to us. Jehoram wrapped his face in a thin, dark strip of cloth, and I helped him down to the ground. I said I could keep watch, and Reuben muttered that I should wake him when I needed some sleep too.
“If I dream about Nadab, please wake me up,” Jehoram said. His words were muffled behind his dressings. I folded up my own blanket and put it under his head.
“What should I tell him?” Jehoram asked. I looked across at Reuben, but his eyes were closed. Birds were singing up in the trees, sunlight shining softly through the twigs and leaves.
“What should I tell him?” Jehoram asked again.
“Don’t tell him anything,” I said. “Don’t ask him to come back.” Jehoram lay still, his face hidden behind the dressings.
“Yes,” he said.
We made it to Jaffa, but we stayed there for only a few days before starting the journey to Antioch. On the way there, we met a group of several children, who started to scream when they saw Jehoram. He tried to catch some of them, but Reuben and I held him back. In Antioch, we knocked a man to the ground and robbed him, then we filled his clothes with rocks and threw him in the Orontes River. Another man we took had Roman coins carved out of wood stuffed in a purse. Jehoram kicked the man in the face so hard and so many times that he started gurgling before he died. Reuben took the small wooden coins and burned them on the fire that same night. He said there was no beauty left in the world and wondered who the hell made coins out of wood. One evening we were stopped by some soldiers, but they let us go once we’d given them all the stolen money we had on us.
And there are also many other things that we did. If I told all of them, I suppose that the world could not contain a faith like the one for which Nadab died.
5 THE BLACK BIRD
I
On her way to the well, Anna noticed a bird with feathers so black, but with a gaze so empty and distant, that it reminded her of Andrew. Of all the men she’d had, Andrew, her fourth, was the only one who stroked her on the cheek, who kissed her neck softly, who let her lie on top. Andrew, oh, Andrew! What was wrong with her? Why did the mere sight of a bird remind her so much of him
? One morning, he’d leaned down to her, whispered a few words in her ear, “I’ll return,” and left. He was seen around the sixth hour, wandering out of Sychar in the direction of Judea, and then he vanished. She missed him. His smell, his gentle fingers, the way he sometimes slept with his eyes open, with a gaze so empty and distant. So she asked around, and a man thought that Andrew was there, in Sychar, in a small stone house on the edge of the city. But when she sought out the place, there were only two young shepherd boys living there, who both stared at her as if driven by an enormous hunger. Another man, a traveler from Nazareth heading to the Temple in Jerusalem, thought he’d seen Andrew in Samaria. But who knew if it was Andrew or somebody else? Anna tried to verify what the man had observed. Was his hair long and black, were his eyes dark, was his nose long and bent at the bridge, did he hold the fingers of his right hand up to his mouth, like he always did when he felt nervous? The man smiled at her and said he didn’t know.
Andrew had gone.
She thought of Ruth, her elder sister. Ruth always said that the men who came to them were men who’d lost their way. “All we need to do,” her sister said, “is to let them think they’ve found the way home.”
The bird was sitting in the thin top branches. Those black feathers and those black eyes. Anna looked down at the stones, the tufts of grass. A chill wind blew, taking hold of the trees, and when Anna looked up again, the bird had gone.
Voices were coming from the well. A group came walking toward her, heading down toward the city. Anna moved between the trees, put down her pitcher and stood there, watching the people pass. They were dressed in rags, filthy, men and children and a few women, holding each other’s hands. Anna picked up the pitcher and set off on the last short stretch to the well, but she stumbled on her sore leg and let out a slight whimper. A swollen red mark went from her calf down toward her ankle: Reuben’s mark. Andrew used to rub oil on her leg and foot. He’d never once asked her what had happened.
Reuben, her third man, and later her fifth too, had left that scar. She screamed so loudly when it happened, so loudly that he knelt down, started stroking her hair, and tried to make her quiet down. The white bone sticking out of her skin made her scream as if she were possessed. Looking back now, she can’t remember feeling pain, just a thud and a ringing in her ears. She fainted, came around, and fainted again.
Reuben carried her to an old man with pale eyes, who reset her bone.
“I’m blind, and yet I see many things,” the old man whispered. “I’m what stays in the shadows while the light falls elsewhere.”
She tried to stay awake, but her eyes slipped shut. The only details she remembered were that the old man smelled of earth and sour goat’s milk, and that there were small jars on the shelves along one wall. Anna can only just remember Ruth coming to find her.
“I’m going to heal your sister,” the old man said. “She’ll be able to start all over again.”
“I’ll look after her,” said Ruth. “She has nobody else but me. I have nobody else but her.”
“You don’t have each other anymore now,” the old man said. “She was given to me.”
“She hasn’t been given away to anybody,” said Ruth.
Everything was in fragments, and Anna floated between sleep as the voices buzzed around her.
“Let go of her,” said Ruth. “Let go of me, let us go.”
“She’s free,” said the old man. “Reuben’s made sure of that.”
And then Ruth disappeared, and the old man was left sitting by Anna. In a whisper, he told her to rest, close her eyes, take deep breaths.
Anna lay there for a long time before she came around, and for a few more days until she was able to get up. She kept asking for Ruth. Reuben came to collect her and carried her back home. He gave her something to eat and something to drink. His tough, broad face was unchanged. She asked where Ruth was. He kissed her, said that Ruth was fine, and carried on clumsily stroking her hair. One evening, when Anna’s throbbing pain wouldn’t let her sleep, he sang to her. His voice was so strangely soft and faint.
When Reuben left her the first time, it wasn’t the memories of when he broke her leg, beat her, or threatened her with a knife that made her hobble along the sides of the houses, asking if people had seen him. What made her hobble about were those times when he just sat there next to her. But she couldn’t find him, nobody knew anything. Then she asked about Ruth: “Where’s my big sister, have you seen her?” The answer was the same. Nobody knew. Not being able to speak to Ruth, not being able to hear Ruth’s voice or countless attempts to comfort her, made Anna keep looking. She walked around the outskirts of Sychar, staring at everything that seemed unusual, everything that seemed new. She walked through Shechem and came back in the evenings, alone and exhausted. She collapsed on the floor and prayed, talked to herself, tried to remember everything Ruth used to say to her. And when she couldn’t remember any more, when sleep descended on her like a heavy, warm blanket, she could hear Reuben singing faintly.
Those memories of Ruth’s words and the times when Reuben sat next to her led her, blind with longing, into Andrew’s hands. And Andrew, Andrew, what was it about him? How did he find his way so close to her? Why did he never hurt her? Sometimes, when he was sleeping next to her with his eyes open, she sat up and talked to him. She whispered about why she was there, in Sychar, she whispered about her mother and father and what little she could remember. She told him about Ruth, who’d taken care of her and taught her everything she needed to know, but who’d gone. She asked if he’d stay there, with her, forever, at which Andrew moved and blinked before lying still again. She lay down close to his warm body. His hair-covered arms were like great wings.
The next morning, Andrew leaned over Anna and kissed her on the breasts, on the neck, on her closed eyes. His hand lingered on her torn ear.
“It looks like a shell washed ashore by the waves,” he said.
One day, when Andrew had gone too, Reuben came back, and she just stood there in her small room, trembling. She tried to pull herself together. She made him food and lay down next to him, but her trembling wouldn’t stop. She trembled all through the night, in the pitch darkness, with Reuben’s warm breath on her head. Only when he held her tightly in the soft morning light and pushed his way inside did her fingers, hands, and feet become still.
Those last days Anna and Reuben had together did her good. She didn’t scurry back and forth, dripping with sweat, cold, muttering, moaning. When Reuben came back, he found what she’d forgotten. He made her see that the world in which he sang, in which he caressed her, the world in which Andrew’s fingers, his mouth, soft hair, and gentle voice could be found, was a false world, and it had made her lose her mind. Underneath Reuben, she was pushed back inside herself and back into the real world.
When Reuben left her the second time, he took out a small purse of silver coins.
“This is for you and your foot,” he said. “I see you’ve still got a limp.”
Three men stood waiting outside. One of them had his face bound up in rags, while the second, tall and thin, stood facing the back alley that led to where she lived.
“Reuben,” the third man said, “it’s time to get going.” The man’s eyes looked gray and glowing, his hair cut close to the scalp.
“I’m coming,” said Reuben. He turned, but then Anna reached out to touch him.
“Have you seen Ruth anywhere?” she asked.
“She’s gone,” said Reuben, but Anna started to describe her big sister and what she looked like. He cut her off. “I know who Ruth is, I haven’t seen her. I’ve got to go now.”
“Will you come back?” Anna asked. Reuben looked down at her before putting his hands up to hold her face. He looked surprised, as if what he held were something he hadn’t seen before.
“I’ll return,” he said. “I promise you.”
She never saw Reuben again. Ruth’s words had been true. All the ones who came to them had lost their way. Ann
a made them feel found. But none of them stayed. Even Ruth had gone. A rumor went around that her elder sister had left with a man from Judea and his children. She’d dropped everything and left, but Anna wouldn’t blame her for it.
Anna would dream of Ruth, talking to her in her sleep. In the soft, blue world of dreams, Ruth told her about the children who called her their mother, about her husband who gave her gifts, and how they were truly blessed by the Lord God. She told Anna to visit them, that they had space for one more in their house. Her dear husband had a brother too, and maybe this handsome, gentle brother would ask Anna to marry him?
But everything dissolves in the light of day. Like the man Anna had now, Baasha, who came to her in the evening and vanished by morning. He didn’t beat her, but he pulled her hair and would only enter her from behind. He smelled of nothing, and sometimes when she woke up and he’d gone, she wondered whether he was human or just something evil that came alive in the dark of night.
This morning, while the world was still only lit by a faint light, and before Anna went up to the well and saw the black bird, she’d woken to Baasha standing there, staring at her.
“You’re dirty in the light,” he said, leaving her.
She got up immediately and shouted after him. Anna screamed and shouted, and Baasha ran away. She didn’t know what was wrong with her. She grabbed one of the jugs she had standing there and smashed it on the ground. The jug was a present from her second man, Aaron. He’d found it among the possessions of his late mother and wanted to give it to Anna as a gift. That was only a short time after Anna’s first man, Philip, had broken all his promises and left her.
Aaron kept on bringing her presents, and when she started to say no to the things he brought her, he stammered and told her she couldn’t say no. He told her he didn’t have any money of his own; this was all he could pay her with. Those words made her lunge at him and scratch his face. He ran off but came back that same evening and forced himself on her. He beat and kicked her so hard that she couldn’t walk for several days.
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