The last time he was here, I noticed that his hair had lost its grip on top of his head. He didn’t try to conceal it, and I tried not to stare. My own hair is long, with locks falling down from my head and over my shoulders. Sarah, Jacob’s mother, had such hair that I couldn’t get to sleep at night. I stayed awake, my fingers entwined in a weave I never thought would let me go. But she died, and I smoothed oil into her hair, packed it in cloth, and lowered Sarah’s whole body down into the ground. When I saw Jacob’s bald scalp that last time, I felt it was a sign: now Sarah’s body has rotted away. The very weave that was to cling to me forever is no more.
“Father?” says Jacob.
“Yes?” I reply. I’ve always listened to my firstborn. His difficulties with words and how they stuck in his throat; I know of other parents who beat or mock their children for less. I heard tell of a father in Samaria who killed his two daughters and his son because they didn’t speak clearly or properly. But I noticed that Jacob’s words came more freely when I stopped and turned toward him. Jacob always needed me to stay quiet and listen. Now he expects nothing else of me, even though he no longer finds himself tongue-tied.
“We’re lucky, Father,” says Jacob. He tells me about high taxes, about what some farmers he met on his last trade journey told him, and about some problems with a merchant from Jaffa. I ask him short, quick questions. Jacob passes his hand over his head and says that far too many people have to give up too much. He doesn’t like traveling around without stopping to care about other things than just his trading. I raise my voice to say that, even if it is our duty to help others in need, this land is full of needy people.
“My father, your grandfather, came from poverty too,” I tell him. “We’ve worked our way up to where we are now. What you’re doing for your family now, all the traveling, all the bargaining, will be the foundation for you and your brothers’ children to build a living.”
“Father,” says Jacob, “you’re getting worked up.”
“I’m not getting worked up,” I reply. Jacob smiles, and when he does, I can see Sarah in his eyes.
“Father,” he says, “listen to this.” He tells me a story he heard when he was last in Judea, in Jerusalem. It’s a funny story and it makes me laugh. We laugh together. I put my hand on his knee, and Jacob puts his hand on my shoulder. Then he suggests we should pray together. We kneel down next to each other. He starts with God, the Father, our Lord, but ends with Jesus. The Son of God is in our hearts. I am glad neither of us bore witness to how they killed him. Jacob doesn’t tell me much about what the two of them saw in each other, or what they talked about, but he still gives thanks, every day. I try to remember too, but there are days when I forget, and there are days when I don’t dare. Even when I hear Jacob speak, the words trundling out of his mouth like little ripe berries.
My son, what was it that Jesus did? How did he get you to speak without stuttering or stammering or clenching your hands? What was it of God’s love that he put in you to rid you of that trace of evil?
If only I knew.
What I do know is that there is evil in all of us, and there is evil in the Roman power ruling over us. Jacob speaks of the powers of darkness. I’ve seen what they can do, and I’ve given up trying to understand what God can do. After Herod’s death and the fighting that followed, I saw with my own eyes how Publius Quinctilius Varus came to Jerusalem with three legions and crucified two thousand of our people outside the city walls. My family and I were spared, but was that because we’d kept evil at bay, or because evil had stayed close to us? Are we possessed by those dark forces? Are we the ones shattering our people’s hope?
There was a time when I thought that my own child was possessed. Sarah was taken away. She gave me a child and was taken away. Our child was named Jacob, and I passed Jacob on to other women. I raised him up in their hands. I lifted him out of my life.
As he grew older and gained brothers and sisters from other mothers, I began to hear how his voice struggled. I could see his whole body struggle: his little face writhing, his fingers twisted, even his toes crooked. Sometimes he would close his eyes, squeezing them until they became two wrinkled slits. Other times his eyes were wide open, as if the evil were pressing on them from behind, as if the words stuck there were about to tear his whole body to pieces. At first I thought he was consumed by the memories of his birth, when Sarah’s screams for mercy filled the whole world up to the vault of heaven. Then I thought evil had left its mark on Jacob, branded him when he came out of his mother. I thought this evil was waiting for him to rot and end up in the soil so it could consume him.
Jacob bears no external signs of all those years of evil. He can talk about anything at all and with whomever he wants, even with the people he holds responsible for the occupation and all the killing. I’ve seen him talk with high council priests, and he seemed so at ease. I’ve seen him talking with Roman officers, Thracian and Gaulish soldiers red with rage, but Jacob made them laugh. What they were laughing about I never asked.
I’ve seen him standing together with a poor farmer, holding each other’s hands, crowning each other with wreaths of flowing, barely audible words.
But I’ve also seen my grown son walking alone in the pale morning light, muttering, gray and ashen-faced. I’ve seen how he can close up, even in good company, like a flower blooming in reverse.
Jacob is not just one person. But there are no others like him. He’s my son, my firstborn.
He’s my son, and God knows how alone he was during his first few years. I was never there. Sarah had gone. Judith was there, Leah was there, Mary, Deborah, Elizabeth. I remember all the women’s names, but I can’t remember who they were anymore. All those hands holding Jacob, all those kisses he was given, all the times he cried, wanting to be picked up.
I didn’t know my own child. I didn’t want to touch him. If I went over to where he lay, or watched him crawl, I saw the shadows approaching me. And out of those shadows reached Sarah, her body decayed, with hands like claws, and gray, sullen eyes. She didn’t come to me in my sleep; she came in my waking hours, every time I laid eyes on Jacob.
He grew up, little by little. He grew on me too. And Sarah had gone. Slowly, like twilit clouds, she was no longer to be seen, vanishing a second time. It slowly dawned on me that Jacob was mine. I was his.
Jacob’s seven brothers and sisters have not always been good siblings. There were times, as I remember it, that they were horrible to him. The other boys made rhythmic noises and laughed at him. They repeated everything he said or tried to say. One time, they were so awful to him that Jacob went silent. He would no longer open his mouth or say anything. I had to beat him to get him to talk again. I beat the words back into him. I subdued the stain of evil that had been left on him.
Now his brothers and sisters are all grown up. I see them all the time. His brothers’ wives, and their children. They are occupied with their own thoughts and families. They make offerings to the Temple and to the priests. They’re what I used to be. Now, when Jacob comes, his brothers drop whatever they’re doing. They no longer remember how Jacob used to be, and Jacob lets them forget, even though I know he remembers.
One night, last autumn, it was cold and we both wore dark, heavy clothes wrapped around our bodies. Jacob had been home for several days and had let his brothers take part in an important deal, but there had been problems and arguments. His brothers thought they hadn’t gotten a big enough share of the transaction; they thought that Jacob was pocketing more than he deserved. They came to me and said they feared Jacob was planning to cut them all out of their inheritance when I passed away one day. I said that was nonsense and told them to put things straight between themselves. Jacob took care of it, but afterward he stared out into the night and asked me if I remembered the child killings in Bethlehem. I told him I couldn’t remember anything of that sort from those days, but that I’d heard stories about it.