“Oh God, dear God,” she whispered to herself. “Take care of Anna, take care of my little sister, I beg you, please, dear God.”
When Ruth found the way to the little house where the old man lived, she was met by Reuben, who didn’t want to let her in at first. He said she should go away. Ruth hadn’t seen him like this before. He stared straight at her, grabbed her by the shoulder, and pushed her away from him. His eyes were red, and his hands were stained with Anna’s blood.
“What have you done?” asked Ruth. “Where is she? What have you done to her?”
“He’s going to heal her,” Reuben said. “He’s promised me. Just go, get away from here.”
“No,” said Ruth. “I don’t want to go, I want to see my sister, I want to be with Anna, let me in.”
“Didn’t you hear me?” said Reuben, grabbing her. “Go away, she’ll be fine, but you’ve got to get away, leave this place, now.”
But Ruth wouldn’t listen to him. She tried to tear herself free, she started screaming, then Reuben held her close, begging her to keep quiet.
“Just let her in,” came a voice from inside. Ruth stopped screaming and stood still, but Reuben was still holding on to her.
“Go,” said Reuben. “Leave now.”
“Come in, Ruth,” said the voice again. Ruth escaped Reuben’s hands and stooped as she went through the low door.
Anna was lying on a mat. One leg and foot were bound in rags, and next to the mat was a dish of bright red water. An old man sat on the ground, stroking Anna over the head. He turned toward Ruth; his eyes were a grayish white.
“Big sister,” he said. “There you are.”
Ruth stayed silent, looking at Anna, then at the old man, and then back at Anna again.
“I’m blind, and yet I see many things,” he said. “I’m what stays in the shadows while the light falls elsewhere. I’m going to heal your sister. 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 to anybody,” said Ruth, going over to Anna and kneeling down by the mat. She took hold of Anna and tried to pull her up.
The old man got up and stood facing Ruth. It seemed as if he were staring at her, but his eyes had no power. The old man smiled. “Reuben,” he said, “it’s a good thing you’re here.”
Then Ruth suddenly felt Reuben grab hold of her, lift her up, and pull her toward him. One of his hands was over her throat, while the other held her hands together.
“Anna was going to fall and be destroyed,” said the old man, “just how women like you fall. But when Reuben broke her leg, he chose to do good, to lift her up and run around trying to find help. He wanted to save her. He came to me and asked me to make her well again. You’re surprised at that, I bet.”
Ruth tried to speak, but Reuben told her to keep her mouth shut.
“No, no,” said the old man. “Let her talk, it doesn’t matter. It’s already decided what will happen anyway.”
“Let go of her,” said Ruth. “Let us go.”
“She’s free,” said the old man. “Reuben’s made sure of that. I would’ve preferred her to stay what she is, a woman like you. A woman who’ll fall, be destroyed, disappear, rotting away in the arms of everybody tearing her apart. She was on her way there. Maybe she’ll be something else now, or maybe she’ll fall back into the same pattern. But Reuben and I have made a trade. He did good when he came begging for Anna’s life. I’m asking him to do evil again, so that I won’t lose him, so that Reuben won’t leave my story.”
Ruth tried to tear herself away, but Reuben held her tight.
“He’s not going to let go of you,” said the old man. “And do you know why? He’s not letting go of you because he’s got to do something bad, now that he’s done this good thing for Anna.”
Ruth felt herself trembling. She pushed both her feet hard against the floor, trying to stand still.
“Don’t do it, Reuben,” she said. “I’m her sister, you don’t need to do anything. Just let us go.”
“You don’t understand,” said the old man. “I have to say this over and over again. Reuben did something I wasn’t expecting when he saved your sister. He pulled himself out of the story I’d prepared for him. So I have to get him back and get rid of the good he’s done. He can have Anna, as long as he goes back into his own story. That’s why I’m telling him now: take Ruth, and do what you normally do.”
Reuben tightened his grip on Ruth and dragged her out of the little house. The gray daylight shone in her eyes, and she was about to scream, but Reuben held on to her mouth and hit her on the head. First once, then again, and again.
She came around, and everything was dark. She tried to move, but her head hurt so much. It was difficult to get up, the ground was rolling like she’d seen the sea roll.
“You’re awake,” said a voice.
It was Reuben: he was sitting there next to her. Ruth filled with fear and began scratching at the sand.
“What was it you told me that time?” he said. “You said that I should be good to her.”
She reached up to her head. It was sticky and stung when she touched it.
“I am what I am,” he said. “There’s nothing that can be done about it. But I won’t touch her like that again, I promise.”
“Reuben,” she whispered. Her mouth was so dry, her head was pounding, her feet cold.
“Here,” said Reuben, reaching down toward her. He was holding a small leather canteen in one hand and let the water run into her mouth.
“Thank you,” she murmured, trying to sit up, but she couldn’t. “Am I going to die?” she asked.
Reuben crouched down next to her. “Yes,” he said. “I’m doing this for her.”
“I can’t remember,” said Ruth. “Where’s Anna? What happened?”
“I want you to know that I’m doing this for her,” he said again.
“Take care of her,” she said. “Look after her.”
Reuben said he would.
“I’ll send light,” said Ruth. “If you don’t look after her, I’ll send light.”
Reuben nodded and passed his hand over her face. He let his fingers glide over her forehead and down over her nose and mouth. Ruth felt his warm skin, and she kissed him. She kissed his sticky fingers.
“God is with us,” she whispered, “and he can see us, and God’s love will save us, and I’ll be healed soon. Somebody else will come along, and everything will grow again, and soon you’ll have forgotten who I was, and soon you’ll have forgotten what they did.”
Reuben lifted his hand and stood above her. Ruth closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
11 IT WON’T GO AWAY
We’re near the end, and yet something new is beginning.
When I stutter and get stuck, Naomi doesn’t say anything. She just tries to hold my gaze. But I look away, close my eyes, clench my fists. My whole face tries to be like my hands, trying to grab onto words and throw them out. When I eventually finish, Naomi says, “Jacob, don’t fight against it.” I feel myself going into a rage. What does she know about fighting? What does she know about not being able to say straight out what seems plain and clear?
I try to remember Jesus’s words. I try to remember my father, the way he always sat there, waiting for my words to come, the way he spoke with me. And I try to bring back what I think is my mother, as she appeared to me in a dream, with glowing hands.
We’ve been traveling for a long time, and I’ve become thin. I’ve been scratching myself, along my arms, and down on my feet. Naomi wraps me up and says I shouldn’t scratch. She says I must fight against it, and I tell her I can’t remember what she wants me to fight against, and what I shouldn’t fight against. She calls me a fool but doesn’t let go. She just strokes my face, kisses me, and says it doesn’t matt
er how I behave.
“I’m still yours,” she says. “We belong together.”
We’re traveling to spread the word of Jesus. People welcome us, but there are also some who are afraid and don’t want to be seen together with us. Lately I’ve been having trouble talking to strangers; I don’t want to call on families or knock on doors anymore. That doesn’t make it easy for Naomi. When she goes alone, few people let her in. A woman without a man, and with a face that makes children hide.
It was Naomi’s suggestion to go to Capernaum. It’s where Jesus stayed when he was in Galilee, and both Peter and Andrew have spoken of how they spent more time in the water than on land when they lived here. A place where we could start over again, Naomi thought. We could meet other people, pray together with them, visit the synagogue where Jesus used to teach. I could get some rest.
When we arrived, I sat there, staring out at the lake, while Naomi looked for somewhere to stay, a place to sleep. I took off my sandals and put my feet in the water. It was like stepping into another world, cold and clean. I remembered how my father always began the day by praying for water to wash in. Every morning, a new start. We were a wealthy family, and my father had close ties to the rulers. Occasionally, when he was with me in his last few years, he mentioned that he didn’t like the way the country was being run. I think he trusted me, I think he knew that I’d do the right thing. When he died, I gave everything away to my brothers. I built a new life based on the model Jesus laid out for me.
Now I’m afraid everything’s falling apart. I don’t have my father’s strengths, I’m not the Master’s chosen one.
Everything changes, everything shifts its shape. I wake up in the morning full of faith, I praise the light coming in everywhere, the new day arriving. And then I lose it; it slips through my fingers, it slips away from me. In the evening, I try to hide, I wrap myself up in blankets, I talk to myself. I try to remember all the good things. Like when my father took me to see Jesus. But more and more often, I think of my journeys up the valley where the river Jabbok runs, into Hananiah’s country. Hananiah comes to me in my sleep, out of a dark, empty cave. His head has shriveled, and another voice rises out of it. It’s Jesus talking from its dark mouth, and I wake up, scratching myself.
There are a number of us here in Capernaum. Some are afraid after what happened to Jesus. Others have had their faith strengthened. There are so many stories going about, stories about his life, about everything he did. But I don’t want to tell them what he meant to me. It doesn’t feel right to talk about it anymore. All these tales, it would take several lives to fit in everything they tell. It won’t be long until we start arguing about what was true. It won’t be long until we make new laws, new rules, to set the boundaries of what’s the right way, the true faith.
We’re staying with a family who own a small house just by the synagogue. Their children aren’t afraid of Naomi: they run around her legs and argue about who gets to sit on her lap when she sings to them. I can easily talk with these little ones, but when I try to speak with the adults, then I start to stutter and get stuck.
Every evening, I sit together with Naomi. She tries to get me talking. She won’t give up, she wants me to say something, say anything, just carry on and not fight against what’s inside me. I tell stories from when I was a child, from when I was with my father. Like the time I decided to run away and live alone up in the mountains. My father spotted me sneaking out of the house. He stopped me and asked where I was going. Then he asked if I had any food with me, if I’d taken something to wrap myself up in when it got cold. I showed him everything I was taking, and he nodded. “Good, that’s good, son,” he said. But how would I find the way? I pointed and told him which way I was going, which route I’d follow. “That’s good, Jacob,” he said. “You’re very thorough.” Then he bent down, lifted me up, kissed me, gave me a hug, and wished me a pleasant journey.
Naomi asks me how far I got before I turned back. I tell her that I didn’t go, I decided I’d rather be with my father, and Naomi laughs.
“But why did you want to run away?” Naomi asks me.
“My brothers were tormenting me,” I say. “They all thought I was sick, that I was possessed, things like that. I don’t know. I remember my father, but not everything.”
“There you go,” says Naomi. “That’s it.”
I look at her.
“You didn’t fight against it,” she says. “You didn’t get stuck.”
I try to tell her that doesn’t mean anything, but then it all gets stuck again. My whole body struggles and strains.
“You mustn’t let it control you,” says Naomi.
I tell her to be quiet, and I try to sit still, even if all my small sores start itching.
“It doesn’t matter,” says Naomi. “You’re not evil, I don’t care what other people say, or what you think yourself. You’ve not been marked. Jesus touched you, he took it all away.”
I shake my head and say that there’s something that’s changed. I don’t know what, but something led me to that cave that day, to the one-eyed man and Hananiah’s skull. Naomi says it’s not true, there’s nothing evil guiding us.
“Nobody has that power,” she says. “Not since Jesus touched us.”
But I don’t believe her. There’s something different here in the world, something different in us. It was able to grow in Hananiah and his followers, and it’s growing in me.
Sometimes we walk together down to the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Sometimes I go there alone. I tell Naomi that I want to be in peace, that I need to think.
There’s another kind of life there, another kind of rhythm. The fishing nets, the fish colored and shaped by the water, the children waving and calling to the boats heading out, and standing there when they come back. Sometimes I see young men who couldn’t get a place on the boats, standing there casting nets from the shallows. I keep away when they come back ashore, as I don’t want to get talking to anybody.
This morning I’ve got up while it’s still dark, while Naomi and the rest of the household are still sleeping. I go down to the lake, past all the houses in the town, watching the boats heading out toward the depths. An elderly man is sitting by some stones a short distance away, staring at me. My eyes are still sleepy, and I go down to the shore to wash my face. I glance over at the old man, who’s still staring at me.
When I get back to the house, Naomi’s sitting there, waiting for me. She tells me she had a strange dream. I try to listen to what she says, but I can’t. I look down at my hands. They’re soft. My father spared me from hard work. I was trained in his profession, I was his firstborn, I was to take over and manage everything we had, everything that became mine. But my father led me down a different route, without even knowing it. He wanted to get rid of the evil inside me, so he took me to Jesus. Now both my father and Jesus are gone. It feels as if a whole lifetime’s passed since the day the Master laid his hand on me.
“Jacob,” says Naomi, “you’re not listening.”
“I can’t follow anymore. It feels as if it’s all over.”
“It’s not over,” says Naomi.
“Yes, it is,” I reply. “If it’s not over, what is this, then? What are we doing? We’re telling people about how he came back, but I didn’t see any of it. I wasn’t there when they caught him, I wasn’t there when they killed him, hung him up there, I wasn’t there when he rose again.”
“Be quiet,” she says. “Don’t talk like that.”
Naomi takes hold of me. She pushes me over, and when I get up, she shoves me again, pushing me up against the wall and hitting me on the chest. But there’s no strength in her, and after a while she gives up and leans against me.
“Don’t say things like that, Jacob,” she whispers. “You have to believe, like I believe in you. If nothing else, then believe in me, stay here with me.”
When evening comes, we join the family we’re staying with for a gathering at the synagogue. The moon’s up, bonfire
s and torches have been lit, and all the followers of Jesus in Capernaum are there. Naomi talks to another couple who were in the far south of Judea before they came here. They’re older than us, and they turn out to be Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, and his wife, a woman called Anna. He says they’re planning to go to the coast and take the sea route to Lycia and Asia. I don’t say very much, but Naomi tells them about when we both saw Jesus for the first time.
“I remember it,” says Andrew. “That day, we couldn’t understand why he wanted to stay there.”
He looks at me, and his eyes narrow as if he’s trying to remember something.
“Were you the one who went up to the Master that evening?” he asks.
I nod.
“What did you talk about?”
I look at Naomi, but her eyes won’t look at me.
“Quite a few of us were wondering about it,” says Andrew. “I remember Simon felt hurt because the Master told him to leave him.”
The woman called Anna smiles, as if there were something funny about that story that the rest of us don’t know. That’s when I feel that I can’t take it anymore. If they’re so strong, if God is in us, in our fingertips and toes and tongues, then they can see and hear how Jesus’s power has run out in me.
“Uh, uh, uh, uuuh, uuuh, I t-t-trii-triii-triiied,” I tell them, “to sss-sss-ssspeak with him ab-ab-abooout it.”
Andrew opens his mouth to say something, but Anna puts her hand on his. Several others around us have stopped talking. Naomi looks at me, her eyes, they hold me steady.
“He d-d-didn’t ss-ssay anything, b-bbb-bbb-bbbut then uh, uuuh, uuuh, I saw he was t-t-t-trying, he was t-t-trying to speak, b-b-bbb-bbbut h-h-he c-c-c-couldn’t. He wuh-wuh-wuh. He wuh-wuh-wuh. He wuh-wuh-wuuh-wuuh-wuuh-waaas like m-m-meee. He had th-th-the s-saaame, th-th-the same th-th-thing you see n-n-n-nooow. B-b-b-buuut e-e-e-everything he said wuh-wuh-waaas nnn-nnnn-nooo yu-yu-uuuuuse. B-b-because the e-e-e-eeeevil iiis s-s-stiiill, stiiillll. Here, in mmm-mmm-meee.”
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