I don’t have the strength to speak. It feels as if my legs had been walking all day. My neck hurts, and I try to breathe calmly and quietly. Somebody starts singing nearby, and several others join in. I don’t have the strength to look up. I just sit there staring down at the ground. I’m alone, he’s not here.
The next day, Naomi goes down with me to the lake. We don’t say much, just walk along the shore. The boats are out on the water, some men casting their nets in the shallows. The sky’s gray, a cool wind blowing the water, making small, white-capped waves. It looks like many people are busy salting the fish that’s come in. A group of children run away from Naomi, but she just smiles at them. Then she stops and asks if I know him. I don’t know what she’s talking about or whom she means, until I look up and see the old man from the day before. He’s coming toward us.
“I don’t know who it is,” I say. “He was here yesterday too.”
“Maybe he recognizes you from when you lived and worked with your father,” says Naomi.
I don’t answer her, just staring at the old man coming over to us instead. He’s broad shouldered in spite of his age, and his hands appear huge. His eyes are sharp, and he’s tall.
Naomi says hello to him, and the old man is clearly surprised when she speaks instead of me. He stares at Naomi’s face, but then turns his eyes to me.
“I’ve heard of you people who follow Jesus of Nazareth,” he says. “I’ve heard that you’re different.”
Naomi tells him she isn’t quite sure what he’s talking about.
“I’m an old soldier,” he says. “I’m a Roman, and when I was young, I worked for King Herod the Great. That was long ago now.”
Naomi looks over at me. I’ve already taken her hand to pull her toward me.
“Why aren’t you saying anything?” the old man asks me. “Can’t he speak?” he asks Naomi.
I ask him why he’s been following me, and what he wants. He stares at me.
“I’ve never heard anybody talk like that,” he says.
“What do you want from us?” Naomi asks him.
“I want to save something,” he says. “Not everything was lost that evening when your master was born, and not everything was lost when they killed him in Jerusalem. I thought you’d run away when you heard what I used to be. But you were alone, and I thought that it would be easier to talk to a person alone than to a whole group.”
Naomi seems nervous and looks around her. But there’s only us there, some children, and the fishermen who haven’t gone out on their boats. The old man holds my gaze.
“There’s nobody else here,” he goes on. “Nobody lying in ambush, I’m alone. Look at me, I’m old, I’m dressed in rags. I only want to speak with you.”
“Who are you?” Naomi asks him. “What are you doing here?”
“My name’s Cato,” he says. “I was there, in Bethlehem, when your lord was born.”
When evening comes, Naomi goes to the synagogue. She wants to tell the others about Cato and what he’s told us. She wants to see if Andrew would like to meet him. Cato stays with me, and we sit by the small house, wrapped up in blankets that the family’s let us borrow. The wind isn’t blowing anymore. Cato points up to the sky and says there was a star that night, shining so brightly.
I look up, and everything’s black. When Cato asked Naomi what happened to her, she told him the whole story. I’ve heard her tell it before, but it was as if the story were different this time. I don’t know why, but it was as if I’d forgotten parts of it. Cato was moved by the way Naomi opened up to him, a stranger. He took one of her hands between his.
“We break each other into pieces,” he said.
Then he told his own story. It was difficult for him; he stammered and had to start again, not sure which parts he remembers and which he’s added in retrospect.
He told us about that night in Bethlehem, years ago. All the houses they’d gone into. All the small children he and the others had killed. I thought of the children in the family we were staying with now. Cato told us that they took the lives of boys even younger. They did what they were hired to do.
“I’ve done other things too,” he said, “but this is all I wanted to tell you. I was there. There were a number of us, we did all we could, but your prophet still got away. I’m glad he did, I think that if he’d been one of the ones we killed, then there’d be nothing left of me.”
When Naomi asked him why he’d come to us, why he wanted to tell us this, Cato fell silent. He said he didn’t really know. He’d been going over it in his mind for a long time, what he was and everything he’d been.
“I don’t have much time left,” he said. “I’ve lived longer than many. I’ve always believed in what I was doing, I was one of the best. But when I became older and they no longer had any use for me, I was given a new life. I’ve traveled around, and when I meet people like you, I try to tell them about what I did that night. It’s always been with me, it won’t go away.”
Cato’s quiet now, staring up into the sky. It feels strange, but I like sitting here with him. I don’t want to meet the others. I don’t know if I can stand being with them anymore, it only makes me think about everything that’s gone.
“Has it always been like this?” Cato asks.
I turn toward him.
“The way you speak,” he says. “Has it always been like this?”
I nod, but tell him not always. There was a time when it had gone.
He lets me finish, and then he continues: “And then it came back?”
I’m about to say something, to tell him that Jesus got rid of it, but he shakes his head.
“Maybe it won’t go away,” he says. “Maybe it’s a part of you.”
I tell him that it’s not a part of me. It’s a sickness, something that’s been put inside me.
“But it changes,” he says. “I can hear it now. It’s not getting stuck as much as earlier today. You can control it yourself.” I stare at him. “Maybe it’s not something inside you, Jacob, maybe it’s the way you are. The way you speak, that’s you.”
I tell him I’m not like that. I tell him that I was like him, tall, my father’s firstborn. I spoke with Jesus, I was full of his power. I can be another person, I was another person. But now I’m nothing, I’ve lost everything, I can’t hold on to it.
“That’s doubt,” says Cato. “It’s a part of us. And just like there’s doubt inside us, there’s evil inside all of us too. It’s a part of everything we are. We have to live with it, fight it so it doesn’t take over. I let it take over, but you’ve always fought it, you haven’t let it consume you. You’ve got to keep on like that, Jacob. We must make it a part of all the good we do.”
I tell him it’s not like that. I say, “It’s something else, it’s been put inside me.”
Cato falls silent again.
“You can’t know this,” I tell him.
“It doesn’t matter that much what I can or can’t know,” he says, “but I believe in it. It’s how I try to carry on. Something lured me in, something called to the evil in me, and I obeyed. I chose that story. But I’ve chosen something different now. I don’t want to be a part of the story that was made for me anymore.”
His voice almost turns into a murmur, but he looks at me and smiles.
“It won’t go away, Jacob,” he says. “You speak the way you are. We’re transformed by what we do. Not by what we think, not by what other people tell us. Jesus gave you what I’m telling you now, didn’t he? He gave you the courage and strength to be somebody else. He didn’t take away what makes you twitch, what makes your words get stuck. He got you to do it yourself. He showed you how you can live with it.”