John (29 page)

His hands knit, Papias rocks himself slightly back and forth as he prays. Lemuel's head is bowed, Danil's brow a furrowed field.

The women come and go from the Apostle with oils and ointments. He is bathed, his wounds cleaned. He lies three days while the house is filled in every corner with white birds of prayer.

On the fourth day Martha tells that he asks for them.

The disciples come into the room with the abashed timidity of men about an infant. John appears to all a changed figure. Is he more frail, or is it only the frailty of their hope that is more apparent to them now? His thin hair is combed away from his face; his beard runs to his chest.

Papias weeps to see him. He cannot stand a moment but rushes forwards and kneels by the bed and lays his head down by the Apostle's hand. It rises to comfort him.

'Weep not,' John says. 'All is as should be.'

'You are hurt, Master. You fell. I let you leave.'

'Be consoled, Papias.'

But poisons of guilt and loathing choke the disciple's spirit. In the terror of the quake his hands have touched them all; he may have passed disease to each, and death be quickening toward them. Christ must come. Christ must come now or Papias will have Killed them all. In spasms the fear and longing bursts from him. He weeps bitterly.

The hand of the Apostle is upon his head.

'Be consoled, Papias.'

John thanks them for their prayers. All wish to ask why he had walked from them, whither was he going? What purpose did he have? Did he go to encounter whom? What? In his blindness did he
see
something they did not? And if not, what did it mean? What meaning was in the earth splitting so? What is the meaning in catastrophe?

The questions remain unasked.

'There must be many hurt,' John says.

'We have not gone outside, Master. We have been worried here.'

Thought flickers in the pale face.

'You must go, all of you. Go and help who needs help. Be of good charity.' His tongue he touches to his lips. 'The God of patience and consolation be with you. Papias rise up. Be not afraid. May you all be like-minded to one another in love according to our Lord Jesus Christ. Go and be the glory of our Lord made manifest. My children, love not in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth. Love, this is the commandment we have. Love. Go, and peace be to thee. Go.'

The Apostle's hand rises in salute and blessing and farewell.

None move away. Briefly they are affixed to the scene. For it is a moment before the world rights itself in their spirits. Is he returned to them then? Is all to be repaired? There is a difference felt but not yet understood. Some change has occurred, but the defining of it is to be left for later. Now they are each, in the core of their souls,
consoled.
It is as if into the solitary space of each spirit has come a companion.

This, companionship, the nature of consolation exactly. And of love.

The city has suffered worst in its poorer quarters. In the outskirts are narrow streets where cheap dwellings crowd. Some have fallen entire, a spillage appalling of stone and bodies. Furnishings, tables, beds, are broken, scattered into the street. Some buildings are one side fallen and gape aghast with strange, naked vulnerability. Now, the fourth day, there are still everywhere cries, wailing. Everywhere there are figures scrabbling at the dirt. The disciples part from one another and go amongst the people. The day is boiled hot, but no sun shines. Rather, an opaque skin covers the sky and makes bleary the air. No wind takes away the scent of death and destruction.

On the threshold stone from which her house has fallen away a woman sits lamenting. Danil goes to her.

In cavernous ruins where fire has taken a family, Lemuel finds two children. Eli and Meletios come to the aid of an aged tinsmith who has lost his wife. Husbands, uncles, cousins, grandmothers, wives, children, all are missing and prayed for. The disciples come amongst those whose hope is snapped like dry bread, who bewail the horror and cannot be spoken to of consolation. Instead, Danil and the others offer their presence. What skills they have are in quietude, and these are plentiful. They sit on the floor of those in mourning, listen to the pain of ones lost in the mystery of suffering. They are its witnesses.

It is practice that Papias finds at first most difficult. He wants to preach God's love. He wants to tell that Christ is coming, that they must just believe. But even he, too, comes to this understanding, that it is a time of silence and action. In one house a trader who has lost his father gives him salted fish for thanks; this Papias brings to another not far distant who starves. A scorched morning when the birds of prey wheel lower a woman rushes from a ruin, clutches at his robe. 'Help me, help me, my daughter.' She pulls him to an inner courtyard of stone and sand and broken timber. 'She lives. I know she lives!' she says. 'I hear her.'

'You hear her?'

'She doesn't stop calling. Listen. You can hear.'

Papias hears nothing. It is days since the quake. None can be living still.

'Help me. Please sir, help.'

Papias looks at her as at a memory. He looks away and throws himself into clawing free the rubble. The sun burns at his back. Beneath his robe he can feel the sores ooze. For an hour, two, he pulls away the collapsed building. He hears no sound of any child, only the woman sobbing prayers to all gods and any gods that will listen. Shreds of cloth, shards of vase, remnants of all manner, he pulls from the dust, then finds large stones that have crossed one another in falling. Beneath he hears a whimper.

'It is her! She lives!' The woman falls prostrate.

Papias runs to the street for help, and then there is a crowd gathered, and with angled poles they pry open the sealed place, and Papias brings forth the living girl.

I thought you came out of the heavens, the earth breaking.

I thought the hour at hand, our waiting over.

What light I saw I went towards. What light was and was the light to ever be now that time was ended.

I thought.

The earth breaking, I fell.

Now do I come to meet you.

I have little breath left in this world.

We prepare the way. Imperfect as we are.

Come, Lord. Come.

In the stillness of the bed where the women attend to him, John remains. He takes but little water. He waits.

Frail and gaunt, he breathes with great gaps between breaths. There are long absences in which Martha fears another breath will not come; then, as if an afterthought, it does. This, the stillness with which he reposes, and his blindness, makes it seem he is elsewhere, or that his spirit comes and goes from his body on airlike wings. When the disciples return each evening, they return with the same face, the same question in their eyes. Martha answers that he is unchanged, and they go to him; he holds out his hands, and they take them and tell of what they have met in the city. They wash and break bread together in the small room and pray thanks.

'Will you teach us, Master?' Papias asks.

'The Master is too weak, he should not,' Danil says.

'Rest yourself, Master,' urges Lemuel. 'There will be time for teaching later, Papias.'

'I am sorry, forgive me.'

But John moves forward to angle himself upright and is assisted then until he is facing them. 'Papias is right. I will teach until the last hour,' he says. 'I will teach of when the Lord knew he was to leave us. When he knew that his hour was come and that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them unto the end.'

He speaks slowly, the words are placed like the timbers of a bridge. He finds each with clear deliberation and tells of the Last Supper. It is plain as he speaks that he speaks toward suffering, that in the telling itself he revisits the very place of which he tells, and is in truth
there.
He is there as Christ moves amongst them to wash their feet, there as Peter objects and Jesus says, 'If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me,' and Peter answers, 'Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.' He is there as his own hands are washed, and he looks down at them, his hands in the hands of Jesus, the water flowing over them and no word spoken. In the telling John is again by Christ's side at the table. And so, too, then, are those who listen.

The voice of the Apostle is quiet, barely more than a whisper. The room is small, and in it the disciples and the two women do not move. Night is fallen outside as it is in the telling when Judas leaves the table and goes out, and John says Jesus told, 'Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.'John says this so quietly, it seems he might say no more. In the pause is love and loss absolute. In the movement of his throat is swallowed grief. His blind eyes pulse. It is clear to all the spirit pain he encounters, how
near
the telling brings him, and yet, at the end of some phrases, a pause in the account, and his body reminds him how far.

He regains minor strength, tells until he falters again to say, on the edge of the audible, 'Jesus told, "In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself." '

Again he pauses. His chin trembles. Immensely he struggles to speak. His tongue wets his lower lip.

They should tell him to rest himself, that they will leave him to rest now, but they are afraid of what feeling seems to course through him now. They are afraid this may be the last time. Every utterance is at the point of revelation.

' "And if I go",'John says again, very faintly. ' "And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself. There where I am, there may you be also." '

He stops. He lets his head rest back.

Silence falls.

The day following, Papias comes to the Apostle before he is to go about in the city. He comes to seek blessing only, but John seems to him stronger than the night before, and he cannot keep himself from asking.

'Master, what you teach . . .'

'Yes, Papias?'

'I would record it in scripture. I have not the hand of Prochorus but would endeavour well. I would make faithful copy.'

'What I teach you teach,'John says. 'You are the scripture living. There is no need.'

'But I am imperfect, Master, and forget and would have it written that . . .'

'There is no need, Papias,'John says with surprising force, then is quieted to say, 'We are in the last time. There are many Antichrists, are there not?'

'There are.'

'So it was written. So we know it is the last time. So we know he comes. We will be living scriptures to the end. It will suffice.'

Papias presses no more. He goes into the city as before. In the aftertime of the earthquake have come into Ephesus the soothsayers, fortune-tellers, dealers in tokens to dispel disaster and bring back the dead. Out of desert, mountain, and plain have come bearded nomads bearing potions, scrolls, effigies, bones, the skulls of creatures slain by lightning, such things. They trade on the fear of survivors. They broadcast fevered interpretations of the gods' displeasure and how favour is to be regained. Crowds flock to them. The city streets fill with flushed faces. Homewards hurry those who have bargained new immunity, while others rush out afraid they are too late. It is a city aswarm with prophets. Some speak in tongues urgent and profound and untranslatable; others quote scriptures of sages unknown, figures from distant lands who scribed the secret mysteries of the world. Fair copies can be purchased at good price, bargains all. Protect yourself with the holy words.

Papias hastens on. He is travelling down a shaded street to call on the mother whose daughter he rescued when a figure steps into his way. He does not recognise Auster at first.

'Papias!' The voice is a hoarse whisper, with shaven head, the face a moon. 'It is I, Auster.' He waits a moment as if to allow the other to consider the glory of himself. 'The One would speak to you.'

'The One?'

'He would speak with you. He sent me to bring you.'

The One? There is a chill in hearing it. 'Go from me,' Papias says. 'Tell him I would not go. Tell him I would not speak with him ever.'

'You will want to speak with him. You will want to come.'

'Go from me. I have urgent business.'

'The woman will wait.'

'What woman? What do you speak?'

'I know. I know all you know and do. I say again, come, follow me, friend.'

'I have nothing to say to Matthias.'

'But he has much to say to you. Come.'

'I will not. Go, be gone from me. You are an Antichrist.'

Auster smiles. 'O how you sting. You are in the dark, friend. I know. I have come from that dark. You live a lie.'

'I do not. I am in the light of Jesus Christ, who comes again. The hour is at hand. Be gone from me.'

Auster is unchanged. He stares from within a studied calm. He says, 'He would speak with you, you must come. You will come. For he will show you proof your life is a lie. He will show you proof because yet you may be saved, and he has decreed it so that you be offered this chance. You he elects. You will come. It will be revealed to you. Friend, he will show you proof that you follow a fool, proof that your John is not John.'

32

They go an unfamiliar route, Auster to the fore, Papias some short distance behind as if he follows not. The journey is not long, but the heat oppressive. At an august building with round doors carved in a single large O, Auster awaits his charge. He smiles to see him come.

'Blessings to you, friend. You will see.' His eyes glitter like nothing in nature. 'Come.'

He opens the door on to air thickly fragranced. In an antechamber Papias waits. He should not have come, he thinks. He should have driven him off as an evil spirit. Should have been deaf to any words the other used. Papias paces this thought until it finds a contrary: he was among us. He was one of us, and for so long believed as us. So, too, may not he believe again? And Matthias, too. May it not be this chance is come for Papias to return them all to the fold? Is this not the mystery of the Lord, how all things fit and find place?