Unholy Night (24 page)

A
nd we’re fifteen again, and in hopeless, hideous young love. There’s Balthazar and I kissing on the banks of the Orontes, and it’s beautiful and golden and forever, and it always will be. And there’s Balthazar’s little brother, Abdi, following us everywhere we go. Four years old and still wearing that gold pendant around his neck. The one his big brother stole for him but won’t tell me from whom or where. There he is, proudly imitating Balthazar. My God, he loves his big brother. And my God, Balthazar loves him more than any object or idea or feeling in this world. We both do. He’s our constant companion. Our shadow. Our son. A practice son, for the ones we’ll have together when we’re married.

But not marriage—not yet. First, Balthazar teaches me how to live again. How to fend for myself. Teaches me how to fight. How to pick pockets in the forum. And Abdi looks on as he teaches me. Imitates his brother. Idolizes him. He wants nothing more than to be Balthazar.

And there’s Balthazar taking me to the forum when he thinks I’m ready to try my pickpocketing skills on a real target. There he is playing my accomplice. And there’s Abdi, who we’ve told to wait for us across the forum. “Don’t move from this spot,” says Balthazar, “until we come and get you.” But there’s Abdi moving anyway, wanting so desperately to be like his brother. Sneaking off on his own, trying to pick a pocket all by himself. He’s watched us practice so closely, so often. He’s sure he can do it. But he’s not yet five years old, and he doesn’t know it isn’t a game. And there he is, following a man through the forum. A man who looks like he’ll have a great deal of money hidden away. There he is, mimicking the way Balthazar slips his hand into the target’s robes, pulls out his coin purse. And there’s Abdi reaching…and there’s Abdi taking…

And there’s Abdi caught in the act.

His hand seized as it grabbed at an overstuffed coin purse. Seized by a man who towers over him, looking down with a pair of harsh, unforgettable eyes as he squeezes that thieving little hand. Squeezes it until its little bones threaten to break. Squeezes it until Abdi has no choice but to scream out. And the towering man leans over this little thief. This little Syrian rat. The very picture of everything that’s wrong with this wretched city.

And the man is a Roman centurion.

And the centurion’s bodyguards surround him now. And a crowd of locals forms around the centurion and this suddenly very, very frightened little boy—not yet five years old. And a few of the locals, the men, beg the centurion to let him go. “We’ll make sure he’s punished,” they say. “We’ll beat him until he bleeds,” they say. And the little boy is terrified, of course. Screaming out to be let go. Screaming out because his hand hurts so, so much. Screaming out because he suddenly knows this isn’t a game. And the centurion pulls out his sword. And some of those in the surrounding crowd gasp and cry out in protest. And the men redouble their promises to punish the child themselves, even though they know they’re helpless to interfere.

“Let this be a warning!” the centurion shouts. “A warning that crime will not be tolerated in Antioch! By ANYONE!”

And he squeezes Abdi’s hand even tighter, eliciting another anguished cry. But there’s Balthazar to answer it. Here’s the heroic big brother who would never, ever let any harm befall Abdi. There’s Balthazar, drawn by his brother’s anguished cries—running right at the centurion, with me on his heels. We’ve been summoned by that familiar voice. And Balthazar is going to tackle this Roman before he can do what he intends to. He’s going to tackle him and beat him bloody while Abdi and I escape. And chances are he’ll pay for this with his life, but he doesn’t care.

But the centurion’s bodyguards care. They block Balthazar before he reaches his target. They form a barrier in front of their fellow Roman, grabbing Balthazar’s arms and legs and holding him in place, even as he struggles and screams. Even as his eyes meet Abdi’s, and the little brother suddenly realizes that the big one can’t save him after all.

And the centurion pushes his sword into Abdi’s belly. And the boy cries out as his tender flesh gives way but doesn’t break. So the centurion pushes harder, and the skin tears, letting the blade in. Letting it through his little belly and out the back.

And we stop now for a moment. We stop right here in this little piece of time, because our eyes have deceived us. Because, we tell ourselves, this isn’t what happened at all. It can’t be. It can’t be, because men don’t run little children through their little bellies with sharp swords. It can’t be, because Abdi is going to grow old and have a whole life with us. A whole, rich life of his own, filled with all the beauty and discovery, all the love and opportunity a little boy with a warm heart deserves in life.

But it is real.

The centurion withdraws the blade and lets go of the boy’s half-broken hand. Lets him fall into a seated position, where he remains a moment, before falling over on his side and silently clutching at his stomach. Clutching as the blood runs over his fingers. And as Balthazar watches this in some other world where it can’t possibly be true, he imagines Abdi tugging at his leg and crying, “Bal-faza…Bal-faza…you stay right here…”

And the anguish. The screams of his big brother. His big brother—still too small, too young to fight off the guards who hold him by the arms and neck. Who beat him into submission as he struggles and screams his throat raw. And the crowd is shocked. Silent. Helpless. It’s not their place. They don’t want to end up on the other side of the river, in one of those shallow graves.

I’m watching all of this, right beside Balthazar, but miles away from the agony he feels. He’s all alone in that, and I know it. Even then, in the first seconds of it. I turn away from my screams, toward his. I watch as Balthazar undergoes a transformation right there in the forum. I watch him fall to his knees. I watch him pick up his brother’s lifeless little body, holding it in his shaking arms. Holding our practice son. And I drop to my knees, too, feel the sickness crawling up the back of my throat.

And now the centurion’s eyes meet Balthazar’s, and he knows. He knows this is a relative. A brother. And he smiles at Balthazar, because he can. Because he’s above the reach of the law. A god. And the centurion decides to leave his mark on this Syrian rat, dragging his blade across Balthazar’s right cheek twice, leaving a bloody
“X
” behind. And like that scar, the centurion’s face will stay with Balthazar forever.

Adding insult to murder, the centurion takes the pendant that hangs around the boy’s neck—rips it off his neck while he gasps for the breath he can’t find—and hangs it around his own.

“Probably stolen anyway,” he says to the assembled.

And with that he’s gone. Whisked off into the busy forum by his bodyguards.

Just in case
, I think.
Just in case we aren’t as afraid as you make us out to be, and we decide to rise up against you
.

But we are. We’re too afraid, and we let him slip away into the safety and anonymity of Antioch’s ruling Roman class. And with the centurion gone, never to be seen again, we turn our attention back to the two brothers he’s left behind. One big, one small. One dead, one wishing he were.

And we witness this together. Gawking at this deeply private moment. Intruding into this mourning with our eyes, unable to offer any comfort. Together, we witness the end of the being who went by the name “Balthazar” and watch the birth of a new being. The one who they’ll call “the Antioch Ghost.” An angry, murderous creature.

It isn’t good enough to rob the Romans anymore. He wants to kill them. No, not wants. “Wants” is too weak. It’s merely a desire. But even “needs” is insufficient to describe what courses through him now. He’ll kill the centurion. He knows this as surely as he knows his own name. Like me, he wants to burn Rome to the ground. But unlike me, he knows he’s actually going to do it. Not today, not in a year’s time—but someday. He knows he’ll stand over Rome as it burns to the ground. He soothes himself with this knowledge. And though he isn’t a praying man, he prays for this. He prays as earnestly as any man ever has. A silent prayer, right there in the forum:

He’s shaking now, sobbing as Abdi’s body bleeds into his lap. Rocking him back and forth as he kneels on the cobblestones of the forum. And for some reason, my eyes are drawn to Abdi’s robes, and I see that he’s wet himself. And this is what brings the tears at last. For it reduces him to the child he is; it speaks to the fear he must have felt and takes the last shred of dignity from him. And the crowd is already thinning, frightened that the Romans will come back and punish all of us for making too big a scene of so little a murder.

Balthazar sobs and screams and rocks his brother—
our son
—to sleep, just like he used to on the banks of the Orontes, when Abdi would nap in his arms in the shade of their scarred tree. And I’m on my knees beside them, rocking and sobbing myself. But there’s nothing I can do. I’m already useless, and I know it.

Forget me or his mother or anyone else. Balthazar is alone. But worse—so much worse than that—is what he knows in his heart. He knows that this is his fault. All of it. It’s his fault for being so irresponsible. For teaching a little boy how to steal. For being a bad example to a good soul. And he knows that somehow, some unseen power is punishing him for what he’s done with his own life. All of the unforgivable sins he’s committed. He’s knows that God hates him. Here is proof in his arms. What God could do this? Only a God who hates.

And smooth, singular purpose washes over him. He’s dead now. There are no more consequences in life. He’s dead, and the dead have license to kill the living. He’s dead, and God hates him. Here’s the proof—right here, bleeding into his lap. But Balthazar won’t settle for being hated by God. He’ll hate God right ba—

S
ela stopped in midsentence. The desert had grown almost completely dark, but she could feel Balthazar standing over her. She looked up, and there he was, looming over the two sitting women and their tear-streaked faces, silhouetted against the last of the pale sky and the first stars to welcome the night.

“Go on,” he said. “Don’t stop there.”

Sela tried to tell herself she didn’t care what Balthazar thought. But she couldn’t help but feel a little ashamed at sharing his darkest secret with relative strangers. Mary was right. She still cared enough to feel a twinge of guilt over having betrayed something so deeply personal.

“Go on,” he said again, in a tone that sounded less like a suggestion and more like a threat.

“Balthazar, I—”

“Tell her,” he said. “Tell her what happened next.”

Sela sighed. There was no point in arguing. The damage was done.
The damage was done a long time ago.
She turned back to Mary, and continued.

“He spent weeks searching all over Antioch, asking questions. Spying on Roman barracks, hoping to get a glimpse of the man who’d killed his brother, a glimpse of the pendant that hung around his neck. I barely saw him anymore, and when I did, he hardly said a word. And then one day, he found what he’d been looking for. A clue. Someone who’d seen the centurion pack up and leave Antioch, headed to a new post in another part of the empire. He left that night without a word to his mother. Or me.”

“Then what?” asked Mary.

“You’ll have to ask him,” said Sela, looking up at Balthazar. “That was the last time I saw him until three days ago.”

“After that,” said Balthazar, “he spent every waking minute looking for the centurion. Looking for vengeance, or justice, or whatever you want to call it. Following rumors from city to city. Stealing to survive. Killing. Until one day, for no real reason at all, he woke up and realized that it was all pointless. Life isn’t fair. There
is
no justice—there’s only what’s taken from you and what you take back, and that’s it.”

“If it’s meant to be,” said Mary, “God will deliver the centurion to you.”

“God had nine years to deliver him to me.”

“Maybe this was his plan for you all along.”

“Don’t talk to me about ‘God’s plan,’ okay? What about the plans Abdi had? What about the children who died in Bethlehem? The babies who were hacked to death before their lives even began? What plans did their mothers have for them?”

“What about the plans I had for us?” asked Sela.

Balthazar turned to her, stared at her for a moment. Then another.

“Hurry up and finish feeding that thing,” he said to Mary at last. “We have to get moving.”

With that, he disappeared into the darkness again, determined to soak up a few more minutes of being angry and alone. Sela stood and disappeared, too, determined to do the same.

Mary found herself alone in the last of the dying light. She looked down at the baby in her arms, asleep but nursing. Seeing him there, so helpless and trusting, brought the full horror of Sela’s story rushing back. She imagined the grief that Balthazar’s mother must have felt at losing two sons in one day. She imagined the face of the centurion as he squeezed Abdi’s hand to the breaking point. She didn’t know how a person could do such a thing to a child. Nor did she know how anyone could go on after witnessing something so violent happen to someone you loved.

She only knew that the terrible man didn’t seem quite as terrible anymore.