The two brothers stood over the mangled remains of a frisbee, their mouths gaping open in an expression of shock and admiration. They lingered for a minute in silence, until one cleared his throat loudly. “Look, Jacob, I’m really sorry.” He looked down at his feet and tried clearing his throat again, but it felt awkward and he swallowed conspicuously instead.
Jacob sighed. “Don’t worry about it, man,” he said as he turned to look at his brother. “I could have tried a bit harder to catch it. I mean, Esau, you of all people know how lousy I am at this game.” A vague sense of guilt remained in his brother’s knitted eyebrows, but the slightly upturned corners of his mouth betrayed his readiness to forget the whole ordeal.
“Who even knew these things were so flimsy, anyways?” he exclaimed as he gingerly picked the ugly plastic wad up with two fingers, before almost instinctively tossing it to the side.
Jacob was slightly annoyed, but he was much more impressed by his brother’s characteristic nonchalance regarding his own mistakes. Nonetheless, recognizing the impossibility of reprimanding Esau and softened by his now jovial attitude, Jacob heaved another sigh, this time with slightly added emphasis. “Well, it wasn’t exactly designed to withstand things like him,” he said as he nodded toward the fenced-off area to the right. The rottweiler could be heard pacing with his meaty, tree-stump legs, his fortified metal chain hanging underneath the sway of his thick neck and jowls. He whispered one more guttural growl and lashed out a few sharp barks, as if reminding the brothers that he’ll take more than their frisbee if they stick around any longer.
Esau had been fidgeting the frisbee with his foot, but now spontaneously straightened up and kicked the remains away with a shout. “Let’s go to the forest!” he whispered with contained animation. If Esau had continued looking at his brother for a mere half second longer, he would have noticed him instantly begin to shake his head, as if by habit, and his playful expression melting into a frown and furrowed eyebrows. But just as Jacob opened his mouth to speak, Esau dashed away, galloping toward the sheet of shrubs smeared across the deep end of the backyard, behind which a messy dirt path leading deeper into the forest jutted out.
Jacob shouted out to his brother: “You know that-”
“Oh, come on! Don’t be so scared. We’re not children anymore.”
It was not an invitation as much as it was a calculated, tested method to force Jacob to tag along on Esau’s various escapades. For although he knew that his brother’s stubborn conscience loathed the foolish games in which Esau was an expert, he also correctly predicted that the same conscience would revile abandoning his brother even more. Jacob, not having enough time to object, began following his brother in a brisk speed-walk at a pace just fast enough to keep sight of his brother, but also slow enough to air his vexation silently. He mumbled to himself that he was “not afraid…. obviously not afraid, what a crazy idea…” and that “I’ve already told him that he’s going to get himself hurt one of these days…”
Jacob’s vexation, however, did not detract from the awe he felt toward the sheer beauty of the brown-green cascade that now surrounded him. The waves of leaves above the towering oak trees swayed and glittered in the melting daylight, dancing against a backdrop of red-orange sky. The branches jounced as squirrels chased one another across the hanging tangle of wood. A stream could be heard gurgling alongside the sonorous song of birds that sweetened the air. The ground and the plants and the animals absorbed all the superfluous noise, all the distractions that disrupted the steady thrum of the forest; it seemed for a moment that the rest of the world had passed away without a sound, and only this hushed pocket of life remained.
Esau turned around abruptly: “Ain’t this wonderful?” he crooned. Hearing Esau’s voice reminded Jacob of the reason for their being here, and the charm of the forest vanished like a blanket torn away from a man in deep sleep.
“This isn’t smart. Remember how-” He paused and frowned as he realized that Esau had started galloping toward the sound of water nearby. Jacob jogged up to his brother. “Look, let’s just go to the park. The park is great! Remember that time we…” Jacob decided to save his breath, for he recognized that look in his brother’s eyes: that whimsical focus that he inevitably adopted in response to advice. It was both a frustrating and strangely endearing expression, but Esau’s natural charm rarely failed to magnify the latter impression over the former. A smile cut short the sigh that escaped Jacob’s lips.
They stepped onto the bank of the humble river, strewn with tiny pebbles smoothed flat by time and nature. “Let’s just relax here for a bit,” Esau said as he bent down with a grunt, gathering a handful of stones in his left hand. “Betcha I can get more skips than you, loser,” he mocked, and launched a stone downstream across the bubbling sheet of water. It sank with a plop.
Jacob’s initial scowl of disapproval had completely disappeared by now, and it gradually grew into a cheeky grin as more stones were flung and the sun sunk deeper into the horizon. It was completely submerged by the time the brothers had sprawled across the stony bank with laughter in their eyes and the first drop of rain tore through the surface of the stream. The fiery sky had cooled into a frigid gray; it was a frightful shade, the color of dirty ice and violent sea. With a contemptuous stoicism toward the warmth it now chased away, it descended upon the world below in an illuminating shadow as the squirrels and birds retreated to their homes and the insects of the night emerged.
“When do you want to start-“
“Just stop. Please,” Esau interjected.
Jacob sat up on an elbow and looked down on his brother. The familiar playful stubbornness had given way to knitted eyebrows and a stern frown. “What do you mean ‘stop’? We have to go home at some point and it’s-“
“-starting to rain and it’s getting dark. I know, you don’t have to remind me.”
A cold silence hung in the air. “Okay, man.” Jacob sat up and looked back toward the water with screwed-up eyes. He waited for his brother to say something, but the same silence remained. Ten minutes passed as Jacob watched the water crawling over the rocks jutting out of the stream. He turned to Esau: “Hey…is something wrong?” he whispered.
Esau exhaled through his nose with exasperation and squeezed his eyes shut. “Don’t get started with this again, Jacob. You know it pisses me off.”
“Look, I’m just asking-“
“What makes you think something is wrong with me?” He opened his eyes but continued glaring into the blue sea of dim stars.
“What? I never said that-“
“You said ‘something is wrong.’ So do you think there’s something wrong about me?”
“I never said that.”
“What else would you be saying!”
“I…“ Jacob sighed and, closing his eyes, rubbed the bridge of his nose out of habit. “Let’s just get out of here.”
Esau turned and looked at his brother with contempt. His mouth twisted with bitterness, his brow deeply furrowed, and eyes squinted into a glare of disgust. But the expression passed as quickly as it came, and by the time Jacob turned back toward him, he had resumed looking at the sky and had adopted the same cold, stern countenance. “You can leave if you want. No one’s forcing you to stay.”
Jacob opened his mouth, but could not find the words to say. He had talked to Esau about this before, and they had even agreed to work on it together. And yet, it would always take no longer than a week for another display of sarcastic bitterness, always unexpected and always directed toward Jacob. “Seriously, is everything okay?” Jacob repeated.
Before Jacob even finished, Esau whipped his body toward him, sitting up on a hand that dug into the stones below. “How many times do I have to tell you to shut the fuck up?” he snapped, his eyes wide open. “Just leave me alone. It’s really not that hard.” He began to slowly lay back down.
Jacob watched meekly. As always, Esau’s anger did not make him indignant. It only planted a sorrowful aching deep in his heart, a pity that desired to reach out and console his brother but knew that doing so would only push him further away. The feeling demanded both distance and tenderness, space and comfort, and as it sunk deeper and its roots spread wider, Jacob felt his heart being torn apart. “Esau, why are you saying this?”
Esau had almost decided to entirely forget his brother’s nagging, but something about the paradoxical weakness and false authority with which Jacob spoke jarred him. The puerile tone, the patronizing analysis of his character, it all presented itself to him as a feigned obsequiousness that was actually designed to make him ashamed…for something. But it did not matter; Esau recognized the arrogant display of moral superiority and, in a moment of clarity that had slowly been accumulating over the years, he felt embarrassed for having never seen through the charade.
He sat up abruptly. “Holy shit, do you hear yourself? ‘Why, why, why’! You keep asking me why I do this or why I do that…as if I have to give you a reason for everything I do! When did you become the judge of what’s right for me and what isn’t? You don’t know me. You don’t understand what it feels like to be in my shoes, to be constantly told that I fall short of a standard that…isn’t even real! People create for themselves and then demand that I—that everyone—follow it.”
Jacob dropped his eyes. He noticed a sensation of shame settling in, but could not understand why. What do I have to apologize for?… he thought. I don’t understand, it’s all too… Does he really see me this way? Does he not realize that- He squeezed his eyes shut and nervously ran his hands through his hair. Noticing his breathing quicken and his mouth becoming more dry, he became even more desperate. “I’m trying to help you! Don’t you see how wrong it all is? You have to… You won’t be able to live with yourself if you-”
“I’ll be just fine! You’re saying all of this as if I’ll start killing people or robbing banks…do you really think that low of me? You’re always judging me, looking at me as if your life is so much better than mine. Yes, yes I’ve seen the way your face changes every time I say I can’t go to church or that I can’t pray or that I don’t want to talk about religion. I’ve seen you force that same condescending smile every Sunday, or even every day! Fine…If you want to believe in God, fine! Want to talk and read and write about God? Go right ahead. No one is stopping you. But the more you try to force me to live the way you do, the more I want you to leave me the hell alone. You call yourself a Christian, but where in the Bible does it say it’s okay to make people feel so…shitty about themselves? Would Jesus have done that? Would Jesus have-”
“How do you know what Jesus would have done?”
“That’s not the point! It’s not about Jesus or…you’re not listening! It’s about your hypocrisy. It’s about the forgiveness, love, mercy, all of the things you’re always preaching about, does that all not matter once you’re talking to someone who doesn’t believe in your God? You’ve become so…deluded by all this talk about God and Jesus that the only reason you would ever even think of talking to me, of helping or loving me, is so that one day…one day…I’ll see your charity and realize that it must be from heaven!…Or is it because you want a reward in heaven? Is it because you’re so selfish that…” Esau paused to breathe and continued staring at the rocks next to his feet. He wanted to look at Jacob, but he could not. It was not because of shame. No, he was not ashamed, but afraid, afraid of looking into his brother’s eyes and feeling his own hatred fester at the sight of that pathetic condescension. “You used to care about me because of me. It’s not the same anymore.”
“Of course I still care about you! Why would I not?” Jacob craned his neck to make eye contact with Esau, but he obstinately continued stared at the ground. His mouth seemed to twitch as if he were about to cry. “Why would I not?” Jacob whispered.
“Do you think I’m going to Hell?”
“Esau, you…you know what I believe.”
“Say it.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“Say that I’m going to Hell.”
“Esau, I don’t-”
“Say it!”
“I won’t say it! No, I won’t say it, because I don’t know. I don’t know, and neither do you. What I do know is this…I know that if you continue the way you are, you will be in Hell, and you’ll destroy yourself in the process. You think only about yourself, and you push away anything that could even possibly hurt your ego…if you continue, it will become more and more difficult to see reality at all. You’ll exchange the truth for comfort, and you might not suffer much at first, but without truth you’ll become less than human, and that’s an even worse suffering.”
“I don’t care about your truth, damn it! I don’t care about your twisted definition of “humanity,” either.”
“Please, Esau, try to understand! Truth and humanity won’t be in Hell, Esau—they can’t be. You don’t want truth, you don’t want God, what do you want then?” Jacob paused, but Esau remained silent. Jacob continued, “You want yourself, you want only what makes you feel good in the moment…and that makes you exactly like an animal. Insects may only pursue their instinct, but it takes a human mind to know what is right, and it takes a human heart to choose that over what is pleasurable. The more you live only thinking about your pleasure, the more of an insect you will become! And no matter how far you go, no matter how much you try to embrace your inhumanity, your conscience will never be unable to recognize how much more you could have been! You’ll spend your whole life as an insect, and you will die an insect knowing that you could have been a man. That is Hell on earth, Esau, and you can’t say that it is God’s fault for you being there!”
“An insect! You’ve started dehumanizing others now! Keep on sermonizing, keep warning me about “Hell on earth” and preaching about this useless philosophy you’ve constructed for yourself…it’s just a convenient way for you to avoid talking about the real Hell in your holy book! Even you must know how disgusting of a notion eternal damnation is…”
“The real Hell is only an extension of this. Hell on earth is feeling that you are an insect while knowing you could have been a man…and the divine Hell is feeling that you are an insect while knowing you could have been greater than a man…”
“Are you serious? ‘Greater than a man’…so you’re worshipping yourself now! We’re one and the same! How ironic, and yet you say that I’m the one without any values, without any principles.”
“Not accepting God’s call, not becoming greater than a man, that is sin! And Hell is the realization of sin…the recognition of its depravity and the experience of separation from God! I know that you have values and principles, but they all only serve your pleasure. And when they do not, you toss aside your principles and carve out space for exceptions…so is it principle or pleasure that you value?”
Esau began to speak, but his words caught in his throat. He stood up suddenly. Looking down contemptuously at Jacob, he clenched his fists and dug his nails into the flesh of his palms.
“Judgement, judgement! All you do is judge and condemn…and you call yourself a Christian…”
Jacob jumped up hastily. “I’m not condemning you, I’m trying to save you, and you know that.”
“I don’t need a savior! It’s all self-righteousness…you think you’re better than me because of all your philosophy and psychology, but they’re all just empty words. They’re fairy tales that people like you invent to numb themselves into forgetting just how uncertain they are about heaven, about God! Come back to me when you can see, touch, or smell this ‘truth.’ Or, even easier, come back when every ‘Christian’ knows the ‘evidence’ for their faith! Until then, your ‘truth’ is a fantasy, and the vast majority of your religion is only following fantasies dressed up in pretty language. As for me, I’ll continue being an insect…I would much rather be a free insect than a mindless Christian.”
Jacob’s mouth gaped open, silenced by shock. An insect rather than a man? Only now did the brothers notice that the rain had begun to pour violently. The forest was submerged in a murky green-gray smear, blurring almost everything within ten feet. Nonetheless, neither Jacob nor Esau felt the slightest desire to start toward home. They both knew that their conflict was not resolved, but that there was something more. As the brothers came back to their senses from the heat of the altercation, every feature of the background came together slowly into an unsettling image of reality. The blinding deluge, the bitterness thick in the air, the sound of the river ripping through the air forcefully; it seemed that this pocket of the world, this rainy patch of forest, was pregnant with a horrible violence. Fear gripped Jacob and Esau’s hearts, and they both felt that something had gone terribly wrong.
The dark anticipation was pierced by the shrill sound of bushes rustling, and the brothers turned around abruptly to face the thicket of damp, tangled leaves. A bony hand pulled the branches away to reveal a thin boy stepping into the clearing. “I thought I heard you dumbasses here,” he jeered.
Esau took two steps forward. “What the hell do you want?” he thundered as his nostrils flared with spite. Jacob recognized that familiar grayness in his brother’s eyes. It was the same dead emptiness that remained after the rain washes away all the color from the world, after the clouds heavy with tears chase the blue sky away.
“We need to leave now, Esau.”
The boy in the bushes ignored him and continued staring at Esau murderously. “You know you’re not allowed here. How many times I got to tell you?”
“And what makes you think I give a shit?”
“Esau, come on, just-”
“Looks like you’ve grown a pair since last time, huh?” he laughed. “You still look like a bitch though.”
“Come a little closer and say it again.”
“Esau! Please-”
“Shut up!” he snapped, turning slightly to look at Jacob’s feet. He flung his glare back toward the boy, whose cheeks were now stretched back in a morbid grin. “You heard me, call me a bitch one more time!”
He threw his head back and released a guttural laugh. “Do you really think I’m afraid of you, bitch? I haven’t forgotten what you said the last time I caught you here.”
“And I meant it!”
His grin disappeared dissolved suddenly into a scornful, twisted frown. “Come show us how much you mean it, then, you cockroach. Meet me at Skull Hill,” he slurred. “And leave this useless piece of shit behind” said the boy, spitting at Jacob. The wind howled, the bush rustled, and the brothers were now alone. One stiffened with horror and the other burned with malice.
“A cockroach! He called me a cockroach, an insect…I’ll show him what sort of insect I am. I’ll show him…”
“Esau, please, stop!” Jacob stepped toward him and opened his arms to grab Esau’s shoulders. “Please, you can be so much-” Jacob felt his brother’s knuckles split the skin on his left cheek and fell onto his back in a flash. Sitting up frantically, he saw Esau running toward the outskirts of the forest, haphazardly shielding his face while barreling through the branches that swarmed his path and reached out to cut him. The slowly welling blood on Jacob’s cheek mingled with the water that streamed down his face and eyes. He looked up at the weeping darkness above. “Esau, Esau, I’ve tried to warn you so many times, but why are you not willing?” The desperate cry was quickly drowned out by the harsh storm.
As the blood and salt from Jacob’s face soaked into the earth, Esau crawled up the side of the hill, digging his nails into the flowing torrent of mud and spilling curses. No one understands, he mumbled between breaths of air. They only see me as an insect to be crushed! No, not any more. I’ll be the one doing the crushing!” For a moment, he was shocked at the vicious images that began to flicker through his mind. But, remembering the words of his brother, his shame quickly became a rabid excitement. No more acting, no more images! This is me…yes! What is there to be ashamed about? As he scaled the hill and stepped onto the flattened grass, Esau felt the liberation flowing through the blood in his veins.
Through the hazy darkness, Esau could see no trees, paths, or mounds of dirt. The image of the empty, undifferentiated field seeped into the forceful streaks of rain, and Esau felt a lonely disorientation, as if everyone else had been swept away by the water and only he remained. For a moment, the dizzying fear gripped his heart once more and made the sensation more real than the fear itself. Gasping for air, Esau searched desperately for something recognizable, something to anchor him back to the world of objects and to pull him out of the nightmare that threatened to pull him apart.
A faint silhouette materialized out of the blackness. No…more than one! Oh, thank God! The horde moved closer, and Esau could see something dripping from their limbs and skin. Trembling feverishly, they seemed to heave their bodies in a drunken stupor. Esau felt the fear wash over him once more, but this time, he felt it in his fingers, his feet, his throat, his lungs, and he began to drown. Suddenly, the wind began to roar aggressively and pushed Esau back. As he tried moving his feet to regain his balance, he realized that the mud had swallowed his feet and grasped his ankle tightly. In a swift motion, Esau’s back slammed against the rocks behind him and all the air painfully escaped his lungs. His foot flew from the ground and sent him hurtling down the side of the hill. The sharp stones and rough swaths of wood pierced into his skin. He felt his neck, his joints, his whole body twisting and folding under him. Brown and black and blue streaked across Esau’s vision in a cycle that seemed to last for minutes until, like a sharp slap in the face, his spine dug into an emaciated tree trunk protruding from the ground halfway down the hill.
The sound of rain droplets tearing through the wall of leaves above pounded in Esau’s dirt-packed ears. Esau laid still for a minute with closed eyes, listening to the downpour and the sound of his own furious breathing. Everything seemed to slow down just enough for him to experience a moment of peace. Another minute passed. Esau’s heart slowed, his hands stopped shaking, and he opened his eyes. For some reason, the sight of the gloomy sky tucked away behind the trees sent a blinding flash of reality through his mind, and all thoughts of rest were replaced with realization of what awaited at the top of the hill. Jumping up, he looked up at the place from which he fell. His eyes widened slowly until his pupils seemed mere points in a sheet of white, and he froze in terror.
Another pair of white circles pierced through the darkness like headlights. An expression of meek terror surrounded the flashing eyes, and the face to which they belonged moved violently as nails tore it apart and feet pressed it into the dirt. No, Esau thought. No, no, no! What is this? This wasn’t supposed to-
He heard it all. The ripping of muscles, the beating of limbs, the crushing of bones; he could hear his brother’s skin breaking, his flesh tearing, his skull shattering. Esau could hear nothing but these sounds and could feel nothing but his own mind being eaten away by the gruesome reality in front of him. He felt his vision blur, his feet weaken, until a single shrill cry muffled by blood and dirt shattered the black night: “Esau…Run! Run!”
So, Esau ran. He ran until the sound of his heart throbbing in his throat was louder than the hideous din behind him. He ran until the pain in his legs pushed away the pain of the aching that pounded against his temples. Esau ran and ran, but regardless of how long he ran or how far he went, he could not silence the image of his brother’s expression flashing through his mind. The fear, the desperation, it seared itself deeper into his soul with each frantic step, and it began to consume him.
At the top of the lonely hill, Jacob’s body laid mangled and mutilated, his arms spread out as if he was trying to gather the sky into his heart. His brother’s name no longer remained on his lifeless lips; all that was left was a simple, childlike smile that shone through the dark as Jacob’s mouth filled with rain.
“We are accustomed to accepting the course of the Lord’s life on earth as predetermined. Because it is as it was, we conclude that it was meant to be so. We judge everything by its outcome and forget how monstrous—in the eyes of both God and man—the means by which it was accomplished. We have entirely lost the middle ages’ reaction of horror at the thought of God’s murder. We must strip ourselves of our customary callousness and realize how frightful the whole procedure was, how hardened men’s hearts, how paltry Jesus’ reception! Not until we have felt our way back to this attitude will we understand Christ’s words: ‘but this is your hour, and the power of darkness.’ (Luke 22:53)”
-Romano Guardini, The Lord