John (11 page)
He goes to the small bench to find lamp oil or candle, but sees neither. The rat recrosses the earth floor, and he shouts at it, stamps his sandal, so it darts out beneath the broken end boards of the door. He finds a cloth and dips it in the bucket and brings it to her. With a gentleness he has forgotten is in himself, he washes her face. He has never touched the face of a woman before. Her eyes are open. Water trickles down her neck. Her lips, blistered and swollen, part. She looks above him for spirits winged, then directly at him.
'You,' she says.
'I am Papias,' he says, 'a Christian. You remember?'
'My children are dead.'
'Yes. I have buried them outside. I have prayed for their souls.'
'Am I dead?'
'No. You are living.'
She groans at this, turns her face sideways into the ragged fall of her hair.
Papias feels the fierce hold of temptation then. He is seized by it. His desire does not take the form more easily defeated: it is not her body that draws him. More forcefully it is the idea of saving her soul. He is compelled by the notion that she is one he has come across on his way, one who has fallen into his very path, and that the reason for this must be that he is to save her. It is part of his purpose. The steps to this understanding he leaps three at a time. It is wonderful. Here, the Lord has given him this poor woman to whom he can administer salvation. She will be the first of his congregation, his church of one. The realisation is a sharp thrill. It polishes his eyes with desire.
'Your children are in heaven above,' he tells her.
From sipping at the water, Marina regains herself. 'The devil took them.'
'No.'
'The devil is my hands.'
'No. They are with the Lord.'
'What kind of cruel Lord is he that is same as the devil?' She spits the question at him.
Papias bites his lip. 'The Lord is not cruel,' he says. 'His ways are merciful. But they are mysterious.'
'Bring me a knife, and I will show you. There is no mystery. My children are dead.'
'It is sad, and you grieve. But you have been spared.'
'I do not want to be spared. If there is a Lord, he has forgotten me. He has left me behind like a fish too many for his basket. Bring me the knife.'
'No. You must not say such things. He is merciful. You will be well.'
'My husband is dead! My children are dead!' she screams at him. 'I am with demons; they are in my hands, in my breath!' She blows an air stale and putrid toward him. 'I breathe death.'
Papias draws back. No, it cannot be. If it were so, he himself would be ill already. It was chance. It was the design of the Lord to take the children, and his design is so great, so beyond the understanding of simple man, a purer mathematics than can be conceived, that it is foolishness even to try. It was divine mystery. He will show this woman, Marina, the truth. He will lead her there. Already Papias feels love for her. He feels the kind of love that connects one to another in community; he feels his strength will meet her weakness, and blissfully envisions the entire world so, how it might be saved one soul at a time, how loving and forgiveness can bind each sheaf until there is a harvest so great its golden bounty will stack to the sight of the Almighty. And the Almighty will be pleased.
But even as he is settling things so in his mind, Marina is pressing herself up to stand. She is small and weak but possessed of resolve.
'Wait! Stop. You must rest,' Papias tells her.
She ignores him. In the half-dark she steps past. She knocks a reed basket, a beaked earthen cup that spins and breaks against a table leg. Her head is down and the fall of hair obscures her face. She pats the table. Papias comes behind and hoops his arms over her. He holds her tightly against himself.
'No. No, you must rest,' he says. Her hair smells of salt. But there is something of honey, too. The feel of her in his arms is so slight and yet of substance; she is a marvel, like a creature rescued from overboard, he is thinking. But she pushes out her arms against his hold and cries out. Still he clings on to her. Her head jolts back against him, knocks a sharp rap on his chin.
'Let me. Release me!'
'No.'
She thrashes her torso one way and the other, the hemp of her garment rips. Barefoot she stamps a heel on his foot. Papias yells. Still he will not let her go; he will save her. He tries to tighten his lock about her, his arms pressing across her breasts, her body doubled forward now and her head down. She fights against him. On the table before them is the long knife she uses to cut the fish heads.
'I will not let you,' Papias says. He holds her tight, his fingers dug into the soft tissue of her sides till they feel the bone. Her feet kick at his shins, stamp. Then, realising that she will not escape him so, Marina twists, spins about so she is facing Papias. Their breaths meet. Her eyes hold him, as if she sees further into him than he himself.
Papias lessens his hold. Her hand comes up like a blessing and reaches to the side of his neck, slides inside the robe and down the soft flesh of his shoulder.
Papias lowers his head toward her. She will be rescued. She will be saved. It is a victory. Love is all-powerful.
Her fingers on his skin are cool and delicious. He closes his eyes, letting himself surrender and fall towards her.
Her hand draws him down.
Then she opens her mouth and bites down with full force on his right ear.
The pain is incomprehensible at first. The wild surge of it blows open his eyes, shoots a yell from his open mouth. His hands fly up, releasing her. Still she is attached to him, her teeth fierce and unrelenting, gnawed into the very stuff of him. A pulpy blood stains her. Papias's head is bowed into the grip of her, and he is roaring now, his fingers trying to push her face from him. But still she bites down into him. The sharpness of the hurt lances into his brain, is blinding, makes him slump forward. The curls of his head are in her fists. What fury and grief is in her is set upon him.
Then, as the lance of pain presses on, spearing his mind, the woman Marina bites free the flap of his ear, and Papias falls to his knees. It lies on her lips. She spits it, steps back.
She turns to the table, having conquered the Lord of love and his spurious mysteries. She tears open her torn robe and exposes to him her breasts, her belly. Then she takes up the long-bladed knife that she uses to cut off the fish heads and two-handed plunges it into her chest.
The blood spurts out into the room. Her head jolts backwards. The knife swings, proscribes a range of angles as it protrudes from her. She stands a moment before the kneeling disciple. Upon her face freezes an expression of cruel joy. Then she falls forwards on to the floor.
The light I cannot see. The sky. The sun.
What I see is the evil of man. What I see is what grows in the darkness. But how can I cut it away? Lord, what use your gardener if he is blind?
On my lips is the prayer I confess from weakness: Make me to see again. Make me vigorous and whole that I may go about as I please and seek out those who betray you and be again as I once was. Let me show you the love I carry like breath all this ancient lifetime, the love that is yet like a sword that would cut down your enemies.
If I could see.
Let me serve you again with strength of body.
If your hour is not yet at hand, let your servant see again and stand fortified. I would hold what is. I would I were a better servant. Through my fingers now falls the water.
The Apostle sits in the inner cave, Linus by the entrance. He has returned from speaking with Ioseph and his spirit is low. Not because he has learned of the heresy spreading, for he knew this, but because he feels his physical weakness and wishes for the strength of youth, and because in him rage finds no release. The bones of his knees grind together as he moves from the stool and kneels. Suddenly the entire of him is racked with aches. They announce in his bones, in the bending and straightening, in the pulling and flexing of aged ligature. His elbows, from the near infinitude of crooking for prayer, are most comfortable foreshortened, as though his arms are wings folded in front. Each knuckle is swollen with small purses of pain. At the thin joints of his wrists are risen knobs, lumps of discomfort. His back curves, as though some force he resists bends him toward the ground. Here in his neck is a knife pressing; it advances if he tries to lift his head toward the sky. So he stoops forward, holds pressed and cupped the flimsy flesh of his hands, wherein seems a nest of bones. There is the pain of years, time itself a hurt that sings without relent. It is about him, an everywhere. He does not seek the source of it, or a remedy. But instead takes the dolour as a condition of living, the near century of his continuance. It is moments only, as he kneels, the pain orchestrating along the various podia of his body, before the Apostle can pray himself beyond.
He prays the first in words, as if he speaks personally, and knows that he is heard. But soon, to escape the hurt of time, he escapes time and is silent and drifts from the space, and is no longer present to the cave but restored to his own youth and the most meaningful days of his life.
He has scenes of extraordinary clarity. He can feel the sun of a certain day, the dust of the road. A bird he did not know he saw. But these moments are in disarranged order in his mind. He has poor remembrance of their chronology, and this is burdensome on his heart. The record that he is wears away from the inside. But this will not matter if the Lord comes soon. He will have endured; he will have remained behind as witness until the Second Coming.
So, hands held together, as if cupping a small bird of faith, he visits a morning of sunlight.
We were on the road. Coming back into Galilee for the second time. We had been in Samaria and you had met that woman at Jacob's well. The woman with her water pot; the others could not understand why you would speak to her.
'Sir, I perceive thou are a prophet,' she said.
'God is a spirit, and they who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.'
'A messiah is coming,' she said.
'I who speak unto thee am he.'
And afterward she went to the city proclaiming, and from there men had come to see. They had asked of you to stay, and two days we had tarried there, all of us strangely welcomed in that unwelcoming city.
Then, a morning of sunlight.
Come.
We left and walked back out of Judea into Galilee.
We were changed then. Already as we walked on that road we were other than ourselves. Andrew had put away his foolishness. Philip was older than himself. Peter. Peter walking as if carrying on his shoulders a burden, a building. Speaking nothing at all. We were returning to our own place, but with gravity, with import now. We knew we would come across others who had known us before. We were aware there would be judgement.
This in the sunlight on the road. Your step, light and long and purposeful. Always.
A prophet hath no honour in his own country.
So why then were we returning?
We did not ask aloud. We followed.
You followed, too. What was written before in scripture. You now like a reed in another's hand going along the letters toward the last word.
A high eagle I saw overhead us. It flew without wing-beat, gliding the blue ridges of the sky. I lost it and found it again. And again. All that day the eagle accompanied us. Watchful. Where we passed caravans and merchants, tent makers, a herdsman with goats, women bearing bundles, baskets of olives, the eagle remained above.
We were watched over thus. In the hot sunlight on the road.
I thought to ask if you saw it. I was young. I was a youth. But knew not to ask.
A wind arose though the sky was blue. It came across the barren land and whirled the sand in circles dancing. A herdsman hurried with his goats. A copper bell rang. We walked on, dust and sand blowing, our garments pressed back against us and fluttering behind as though we were aflame. The windstorm followed us. Blind whirl of sand. James looked to me and offered his hand. I did not take it. I wanted my brother to know I was a man. Our faces burned, skin sanded. You did not stop. You did not say we should take shelter and let it pass over, but walked on, the storm no more than a dream.
It passed as quickly as it came. Above us again, the eagle.
We came into Cana of Galilee once more. The word had gone before us, and it was not as before at the wedding feast. There were rumours of miracle. There were stories of you. There were tellers whose words were wild and far from truth. There were some who told for their own purposes. Who told so that they might watch the eyes of the Sadducees and the anger redden. Some, who had come ahead from Samaria, told of the woman near Jacob's well, and told, too, that you had said, 'Believe me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father.'
So it was reported.
Already there were words spoken against this.
When we walked into Cana, I wondered why we had come back.
But we followed you, and did not ask.
The narrow curve of the street, the low white buildings giving small shade.
We walked past whispers. 'He is the one from the wedding feast. He is the one.'
I looked all in the eye. I would have struck any that spoke aloud against you. I would have drawn a knife and bled them.
So wild is love.
The band of us, the twelve, coming into Cana, into the cool of the shade. Where were we going? What was our purpose there?
The deep faith we had that it would be revealed.
And was.
We sat by steps, a sprawl of men, and drank after the long journey. There gathered a small crowd. They watched to see if a miracle would happen. They whispered among themselves. Bring water. He may make the water wine again. Quick, bring water. Bring water. He is the one. He is a magician.
We were magician's followers.
He is a teller of fortunes.
We were the fortune-teller's followers. We had left our families to follow a fortune-teller. We were no wiser than children, some laughed. No wiser than foolish children.