The others in the boat begin saying it together, they hear Peter’s words, they see how he glows, and they repeat after him: “You are with us, no more, we are alone. No more, you are with us, no more. You are with us, no more, we are alone.”
7 A GLIMMER OF LIGHT
Come to me and listen. I’m blind, and yet I see many things. I’m what stays in the shadows while the light falls elsewhere. Don’t come with your prayers, not here. You pray for good, but good and evil are nothing to pray about. You should pray for a story to belong to, one you can believe in, one you can doubt.
Nadab is among you. You don’t trust him. You don’t know what’s wrong with him. You don’t know what he’s doing, but listen to me, and I’ll tell you Nadab’s story.
He was hungry, he stole a loaf of bread, he was a thief.
He wouldn’t admit guilt, he put up a fight, he was a rebel.
He fled, he went out into the night, he was nothing.
“Catch that thief, punish that damned rebel,” they yelled. But the guards looking for him said they couldn’t see anything, it was too dark. Nadab was already far, far away. And even though they didn’t catch him, Nadab sighed, as he was alone once again.
He’s been alone all his life, distant, always on his way to somewhere else.
There are those who say that an honest and upright man is a law-abiding man. But who decides which laws are right? Who writes the laws? You people sitting there, you know what it’s like to fight for your rights. You know what it means to fight for your daily bread, for a place to sleep. Everybody says “forgive us our trespasses,” but who wants to forgive those who trespass against us? Temptations will come, good won’t deliver anybody from evil, you can only do that by yourselves. For yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. You choose for yourselves which story you want to belong to. Some call you bandits, but I prefer to call you freedom fighters. You free yourselves from this mean and empty life that others sink into.
In that way, Nadab’s like you.
When you met him, you didn’t think he was up to much, but he has mighty powers. I can hear you wondering if this young man’s too soft, if he’s made of different stuff from you.
You mustn’t doubt Nadab! He won’t hesitate, he won’t beg for mercy. He’s tough, he belongs here. There are times when he might be weak too, like you can be weak. Perhaps when he’s working together with others, on a farm or in a limestone quarry, perhaps he might then think about a mother, a father, and a brother, about a family. Perhaps he might wish to be bound to others with ties that the eye can’t see.
But that’s what you’ll give him. That’s how you’ll keep him tied to you. No more nights alone in the wilderness, no more days spent creeping around like a four-legged animal with a tail, scratching for something to put in his mouth. Nadab dreams of what you have to offer: being with somebody. Being a part of something bigger than himself. Being one among many.
So welcome Nadab. He’ll be loyal to you, he’ll give everything. I’ve led him here, I’ve given him a place in the story.
But know that there is something inside him, something I can’t catch hold of, a glimmer of light. I don’t know everything, I don’t control everything. How did it get inside him? Who put it in there?
With you, he’ll become what he is, what he was made to be. I think you can take care of him, I think you can teach him about darkness and toughness, as you’re tough, you believe in what you’re doing. Nadab will be safe with you, that little light will be put out here.
Now! He’s coming, I can hear him approaching!
You won’t remember me, but everything that’s been said here will lie hidden in your hearts.
Good-bye, my thieves, farewell. Take care of Nadab.
They sat there waiting for me. I said hello, but none of them answered. They seemed tired. Jehoram muttered beneath his breath, something about putting out a light, or was it flames? I couldn’t hear. He looked at me strangely. Jehoash got up and told the others to do the same.
“Have you been sleeping?” I asked.
Reuben sniffed. “I don’t sleep when it’s dark,” he said.
Jehoram grinned. “All that anger, Reuben,” he said. “You should cool down, take a bath, you stink of anger.”
Reuben shook his head and spat. “Damn you, Jehoram,” he said. “Listen to your brother and get up.”
“Nadab,” said Jehoash, “it’s decided, you’ll be joining us.” I nodded and looked over at Reuben, but he didn’t say anything.
Jehoram reached out his hands. I took them and thanked him. “You belong here now,” he said.
Jehoash said the same: “You belong here with us now. What we do, you do. What you do, we do.”
Reuben took hold of me and turned me toward him. “Nadab,” he said, “we’re tough, we believe in what we’re doing. Listen to Jehoash and what he says, and we’ll stick together.”
I nodded in agreement. “Yes,” I said. “I belong with you.”
That’s how I became one of them.
If it had all come to me in a language clear and plain, telling me what would happen, then maybe something would’ve been different.
I’d met Jehoram several days before, in Beersheba, when I sat down to eat a loaf of bread and some dried figs I’d begged for. He stood there, grinning at me, half hidden behind a pile of clay, with his back leaning against the wall of the building. I asked him what he was grinning at.
“You,” he said. “It looks like you’ve still got your mother’s blood stuck to your hair and your beard.”
I told him I couldn’t remember my mother, but that I could remember his mother, and she hadn’t had anything against my hair.
“Neither up here nor down there,” I said.
Jehoram grinned even more, so I went over to him and asked if he was hungry.
“No,” he said. “I’ve eaten.” But he still took some figs. I told him my name was Nadab; he told me his was Jehoram and asked what it was like to have hair that color. I told him I didn’t know what it was like. It had always been like that.
“Do the ladies like it?” he asked.
It was the middle of the day, the sun beating down right through to the inside of your head, and we were in the shade. Jehoram said he was there with his brother. His face was full of sores, red and pink cuts. His hands and his feet were covered in the same pattern, and I asked if it hurt. He said it didn’t, or, he didn’t know, it had always been like that. I nodded. One time when I was starved and on the run, I’d spent two days and two nights with a group of sick and infected people. They’d welcomed me. They’d given me food, let me sleep where they slept, and when I left, I shook them by the hand and thanked them. Most of them may be dead by now, as far as I know, but I didn’t catch anything, so I didn’t think Jehoram’s sores and wounds could hurt me.
I asked what Jehoram did and if he knew of any work going. He said he didn’t, as they’d just got here. They’d soon be leaving again, but he wasn’t sure, it was Jehoash and Reuben who’d decide, he said.
“Are they your brothers?” I asked.
“Jehoash is,” he said. “Not Reuben. Come and meet them.”
I agreed. If I was lucky, they might offer me something to eat, a place to sleep, maybe some work. The farmer I’d been working for before had let me go when the fruit trees were all seen to. There were others who’d been promised work, who’d been with him for a long time, and he owed it to them to let them stay. The farmer said I could come back when it became warmer and the fruit was ripe. I was paid and given some food, but I was already out of most of it by the time I got to Beersheba.
We walked together along the edge of the city. Some children came running and started shrieking when they saw Jehoram, who swore and told me that he hid, that he spent all the damn time hiding, and he’d begun to cover himself up. First his feet, then his face, but his hands were always trouble, his cursed hands, as he called them. I took the ends of the rags and helped him, wrap
ping one hand first, and then the other.
“There,” I said, “you can change it if it’s too tight.
Jehoram fell silent, and then said, “Come on.”
“This is Nadab,” Jehoram told his brother. Jehoash came over and greeted me.
“Reuben’s not here,” said Jehoram. “He’s out on an errand, some kind of thing, all kinds of things, you never know with Reuben where he might be.”
“Jehoram,” said Jehoash, “that’s enough.” Jehoash wasn’t quite as tall as his brother, he had his hair cut close to his scalp, and his eyes seemed as if they were staring holes right through me. He asked what I did, why I was in Beersheba. I told him about the farmer and the fruit trees, and told him I was on my way to find something else. Jehoash asked me to join them, they’d be going in a few days.
“You’ll get food,” he said. “We won’t steal from you, and Jehoram seems to like you.” I thanked him and asked what they were doing there. Jehoram started grinning again, and Jehoash turned to him, asking if I knew anything.
“No,” said Jehoram.
“Do you trust him?” asked Jehoash.
Jehoram lifted up his hands. “He touched me,” he said. “He’s tough, can’t you see?”
Jehoash turned back to me. His eyes really glow, they do, I could feel my feet, my hands, my whole body starting to creak and crack. Jehoram had stopped grinning and was standing next to me.
“What’ll it be then?” he asked Jehoash.
Jehoash told him to be quiet, and then he told me who they were, what they did.
One time, when I was younger and living in a hut with some other children, I came across a dog that couldn’t stand. Both its front legs were broken, and the dog growled and whimpered as it dragged itself back and forth. Together with two other boys, I killed the dog, skinned and cleaned it, and tried to sell the meat, but it was no use. In the end we threw the rest away. Another time, I hit another boy in the head with a stick so hard that he keeled over and his legs began to shake. Jehoash’s world wasn’t unfamiliar to me. I’ve stolen from the people I worked for, I’ve been beaten and thrown in dungeons by guards. Nothing started or finished then. It was no rupture, I wasn’t a decent man who fell upon evil. I’ve always known what was good. But there’s a pattern, a sketch in the sand, that shows the order of everything. I’m a grain of sand in that pattern. When God judges us, I’ll be ready.
After they took me in, we left Beersheba and went up to Hebron. We got there in the pale light at the end of the day, and Jehoash said we’d stop there on the outskirts so that nobody would spot us. He went into the city and came back with something to eat and drink. When darkness fell, Reuben got up.
“Nadab,” he said, “come here.”
He gave me a knife and showed me how to hide it under my clothing, how to hold it. When I tried to tell him that I wasn’t unfamiliar with how to use a sharp blade, he told me to follow him.
“It’s not unlike seeing to an animal,” he said, “but animals won’t beg you to stop or call out the name of the Lord. So you’ve got to do it quickly, no hesitation, and you’ve got to do it quietly. It’s easy, but it goes a long way. You understand? Here, it’s yours, don’t lose it.”
The others got up. Jehoash stared at me, tilted his head, and scratched at a dark spot on his neck.
“It’s time for your baptism, Nadab. Come on, follow me.”
We went into Hebron. Jehoash told the other two to wait while he led me off the road, and we stumbled and scrambled across behind some buildings. A small brood of hens started flapping about, some dogs barked.
“Get ready,” said Jehoash. “Show me who you are.” He raised up a hand, drew a sign in the air in front of me, sat down and picked up some stones and soil, letting them run through his fingers. Then he got up, went over to a door, and knocked. A voice asked who it was, and Jehoash answered that he was waiting, that everything was ready. The door opened, and a man stepped out. I couldn’t see his face clearly. The man was around the same height as me. He greeted Jehoash and asked where it was.
“Come with me,” said Jehoash.
“Wait,” said the man. “Who’s that?” He pointed at me.
“He’s with us,” said Jehoash. “He’s going to show you.” The man stared at me, nodded, and came along with us.
We walked out into the field there, which was cultivated. Jehoash talked quietly to the stranger. We stopped, Jehoash came over to me, took me by the shoulders, and pulled me toward the stranger.
“Show me,” he said.
“So, you know where it is,” the man said to me. “Tell me, I can pay you well.”
I had my hands under the cloth that was wrapped around me.
“Well, are you going to say something?” the man asked. “Is he mute?”
I walked closer.
“What’s this, can’t you hear me?” the man said.
I pushed the knife into him. I cut him and felt him tear, felt all the warmth and wetness gushing out as he tried to say something, I couldn’t hear what. I pulled out the knife, but he was still standing there.
“Finish it,” said Jehoash, so I took hold of the man, turned him around, pulled his head back, cut his throat, and let him fall to the ground.
Jehoash came up, looked down at him lying there, looked at me, and said, “Good, you’re one of us.”
Jehoash and Reuben went into the dead man’s house and took everything they could find that was worth taking. We left together, through Hebron, following the road up toward Bethlehem. When daylight began to spread, we lay down to rest.
We walked at night, slept during the day. I got used to the dark, it became part of me. I was able to walk without falling, without stubbing my toes. I saw things I’d never seen before, creatures I didn’t know existed, and the faint but sharp light of the moon.
When we’d come as far as Sychar, Jehoash said it was time for some rest. He found a house for us to stay in. Reuben was away for several days.
I lay awake at night in Sychar. When my eyes closed, it was as if I were blinded. I tried to lie outside in the open air, by the wall of the house. I took a rug and a blanket. Jehoram smirked at me, but one night, while I stared up into the sky, I saw a flashing light. First it flashed red, then green, and it was moving. Soon it had crossed the whole black arc of sky I lay under. I didn’t tell the others about it. When morning came, I went inside and lay down. I didn’t wake up until darkness fell again that evening.
We traveled onward, back and forth, through Samaria, through Judea. Jehoash wanted to go to the coast, but Reuben didn’t want to go there yet; he wanted to wait until it became warmer. They argued. We came across soldiers, but Jehoash showed them Jehoram and told them we were going to have our brother treated. They let us go, and Jehoash cursed and swore, saying that we had to be careful, we wouldn’t get away so lightly next time.
One day, when we stayed at our campsite, Jehoram told me that he’d heard of a prophet who said he was the son of God.
“Imagine that,” he said. “The son of God. Imagine how well he’s hung.” He grinned, his teeth as dark as gravel.
That was the first time. The second time was when Jehoash told us about a woman who wouldn’t shut up at him. He’d finished and paid her, but she kept on speaking, and he asked her what she was talking about, and she said he wasn’t listening.
“Well, that’s right,” Jehoash told her, “but what are you talking about?”
The woman told him she was talking about somebody who’d touched her, who had God in his fingers and God in his eyes and God in his long hair. Jehoram started laughing and asked Jehoash how hard he’d taken her.
The third time was everything that happened afterward, from when we were caught in a storm until I met Martha.
It was too late when we realized what was coming; we’d been walking in the dark and hadn’t paid heed to the signs.
Clouds took away the sky and the light, a wind blowing so hard over us that Jehoram started screaming and whi
mpering, and Jehoash shouted: “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” Reuben stood there, tugging at Jehoram and yelling at him.
Jehoash took hold of me and said, “Come on, we’ve got to get away from here.”
I stayed close to him; we ran down a cleft in the terrain that lay there open beneath us. Jehoash turned around and looked at me, his eyes wild.
“Are we all here?” he said.
Before I could answer, Jehoram had pushed me forward, and another gust of wind made me stumble. I was about to fall over the edge, but Jehoash grabbed my hand and pulled me up.
“Come on,” he said. “Don’t stop, just keep up with me.”
It began to rain, big, heavy drops, I’ve never seen such rain. It hit us like gravel, and it was hard to keep our eyes open. Jehoash called to us. I saw his back for a moment, then he was gone, then he was suddenly in front of me again. How long we walked like that I have no idea. We were underwater, walking over the bottom of the sea, a billowing darkness crushing us.
Jehoash must have stumbled upon the stable by some kind of miracle. He pulled us all in there. We fell to the ground, spat, tried to catch our breath and pull off our clothes all at the same time. Jehoram was bleeding. Jehoash knelt down over him, asking him to get up, telling him they had to clean his wounds. But neither of them had the strength to contradict or obey the other, they just sat there like that, naked in the hay. Reuben tried to take out everything he was carrying. It had to be dried, the water would ruin everything, he said, but then he gave up and lay down on his back, coughing and swearing. I fumbled about, found a spot in the hay next to Jehoram, and lay down.
When we came around and a faint light shone through the opening, Jehoash got up and said we had to get dressed.
“This is somebody’s stable,” he said. “We can’t lie here like this.”
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