“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-ooong …” 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.”
People around us turned to see who was speaking in such a way. I think few people would have been able to join the broken words together into sentences, but Naomi heard Jacob’s words. She lifted the cloth from her face.
The things we do to each other.
Her nose seemed to have been crushed, appearing as small broken pieces under her skin. Her mouth was swollen, with her lips covered in scabs. Her eyes were red and white where their light crept out through two narrow slits. Her hair was missing on parts of her head, and her forehead was like sheepskin, pale and flayed.
Obed covered her up, and Naomi let him. I saw tears run out from the slits where her eyes were.
“Don’t cry,” I said, sensing Jacob staring at me. “If he’s what everybody here believes he is,” I continued, “then he’ll heal you.”
My own voice left a bad taste in my mouth, as if I’d dipped my words in stagnant water.
Neither Obed, nor Naomi, nor Jacob said anything for a while. The sound of other voices drifted over to us. I tried to listen, trying to hear what everybody around us was talking about, what everybody had brought to show him, what everybody was asking to have cured.
I don’t know how long we sat there. Naomi fell asleep and slumped over into her brother’s lap, but she moaned when her head came into contact, and Obed helped her to crouch back up again. Jacob drew numbers in the sand. I yawned, bowed my head, and closed my eyes.
“My dear,” I heard somebody whisper. The voice was familiar, so familiar, and I opened my eyes to see Sarah. She crept toward me between the people around us. I closed my eyes, then opened them again, and Sarah had gone. Jacob laid his hand on mine and asked if I was all right. I turned toward him and asked if I’d fallen asleep. Jacob said no, that I’d been awake. I got up and felt that I was shaking. My feet were hurting, my back was aching, and there was a faint buzzing drone that reminded me of flies. Then I noticed that the sound was coming from the crowd I was standing in. The voices rose like the buzzing rises from a flowering shrub when the sun reaches it. And then I realized that Jesus must be on his way. Everybody around me was facing the same direction, all their eyes following a towering, young, bearded man with large eyes, a slight underbite, and hair hanging down loosely over his shoulders.