John (31 page)
An instant, then Matthias reaches and with both hands rips open the disciple's garment to reveal a torso covered entire in rash and blister, blood and crust and ooze. He cries out in revulsion, looks at the hands that have touched the disease. He spins back, staggers, calls for Auster, who comes at once and clasps his hand across his mouth.
'Get him out! Get him from here! He is unclean! He is cursed! He would not come to us, and so now is devoured. Get him out!'
With a hand still across his mouth, and the other sleeved, Auster prods at Papias with his foot. Papias goes, and falls into the street, and lies there, shaking still and tearing at himself until the time later when Kester finds him.
Now.
Now might you bring the world to end.
Your servants wait.
John alls. What fortitude and changeless health he had on the island are no more. Martha and Ruth attend him. He is cleansed and wears a fresh white robe where he lies on the bed. For many hours of the day, while the disciples are elsewhere carrying the Word, he remains in a cave of silence. Sometimes, hearing the whispered voices of the children, he raises his head from stillness and tells Martha to let them come to him. They stand by the bed and he is changed by their attendance. His hands take theirs; he smiles as if at this proof of innocence in the world yet.
'Who am I?' he asks them.
'You are John, son of Zebedee, disciple of our Lord Jesus Christ.'
The days are long. The summer burns itself in brilliant heat, but in the stone room where he lies it is shaded and cool. There he waits. Is each breath he draws numbered? Is there an appointed time when the Lord will come? What moment marks it? What configuration of stars, what height the sun, heralds the opening of the heavens? Or will there be no notice, no annunciation but one instant in ordinary time when the sky parts and he is there?
'I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you,' he remembers.
Then he says this over soundlessly in his mind.
I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you.
And again. His thin, dry lips move minutely. His blind eyes are turned away, angling to the right, to the space above him, where he can see then the face of Jesus as he said the words.
Kester comforts Papias. The disciple pulls back from him and tries to hide himself and the disease, but the mute sees and is unafraid. At his side he has a bundle in which he carries the things he steals. From this he takes a pouch. He gives Papias lemon water to drink, sits in the street a long time with him until he is calmed.
Having drunk, Papias will not return to him the water pouch. 'I am unclean, you must not take it. You must not drink from it after me.'
He puts it on the ground. Kester the thief picks it up.
Papias clings to his knees, rocks himself in desolation. Where should he go now? What can he do? The gospel he has read sickens him in his spirit. He does not believe it. It cannot be true. That was not the gospel of the true John. It was written for sale, for trading to the credulous. The beloved disciple is in the house of Levi. He is the apostle John. I believe it. I believe it. I believe it. That was nothing. It was deceit and lies.
But still his spirit sickens. The contagion eats further inches of his chest. He thinks his skin smells of death. How can he go back to the Apostle now?
At sunset the others note that he has not returned. But it is supposed he accepts the hospitality of a Christian and will be back in the morning. Nonetheless, the Apostle is concerned. With assistance he sits upright. 'Where was Papias going?' he asks.
None are certain. 'To the east of the city,' Danil tells.
'We pray for him,' says John.
After a deep quiet full of disquiet, John asks the news of Ephesus then lies back to listen. In the telling he hopes for signs, but cannot say so.
The discourse is quickly impassioned. The disciples speak of the splintered world. 'There are a thousand creeds, and more each day,' Lemuel says. 'Everywhere there are ones obscured by darkness.'
'I am sad to confess, the world hates us still,' Meletios says.
'But there are believers in Jesus,' Danil argues.
'Yes, but what Jesus?' Lemuel asks. 'They number him no different from other prophets. He is another they can petition, no more than this.'
'But is not this a beginning?'
'No. They understand nothing of what we teach.'
'And the scribes and the chief priests, they speak against us still no different from before,' Meletios says.
'But there are some in the synagogue,' Danil says. 'remains in a cave of Chiram and one Eben, who confessed to me they believed in Jesus but could not say so in public for fear of being driven from the temple.'
Lemuel shakes his head. 'We must teach otherwise. They prefer the praise of men to God.'
'Yes, but . . .' Danil shrugs at the old bell ringer. 'The work to come is still long.'
'That Jesus is a teacher is most easily understood. But this is not belief. They sit to a sacred meal but do not understand the Eucharist. Our gains are small.'
'Should we not be content that they receive us?' Meletios essays hopefully. 'That some there are who listen?'
'But what comfort is in this?' Lemuel asks. 'I can number on my fingers the ones who believe truly: Gaius, Demetrios, the young follower Polycarp, who asks that he come to see the Apostle.'
'Let him to come,' John says.
'You are weak still, Master. You should not be taxed with visitors.'
'Let who would come, to come. I would see all my brothers in Christ. We are a communion. We need not walls to keep others out.'
The discourse falls quiet. The sun has set. The disciples sit enlarged by their shadows. In what they are engaged seems enterprise of vast dimension and they are small and human only.
'Let us pray,' John says.
They do. Their praying is old solace, comfort ancient as time, as man's first petitioning into the first night.
An hour passes, another. They say the words of psalms, of scriptures in usage immemorial, lines once chanted in desert and plain, in the dust wherein grew cities that now are dust again. A single voice rises and the others join. A pause follows. Then, without indication, another amongst them begins a new prayer. So the dark is measured. They do not conclude. None move away to sleep. The Apostle is awake and prays with them.
And in that time, between dark and dark, when there is nothing but the bare bowed spirits of these men, there comes to John a frail light. He is moved by love. It comes to him at first as the deepest pity, that these have not seen Jesus as he has, and yet they follow. Their faith near makes him weep, and he feels for each one an unsay able love, within which is gratitude, pride, admiration, wonder, mystery, sympathy, surprise, all tender variants of affection. It wells up and floods the chambers of him as an inner tide. He is overcome. In his darkness then an epiphany:
such love he must not fail.
It is as simple as this, for epiphany is foremost marked by simplicity, by the condition of
claritas.
He sees as he has not before. Such love he must not fall.
Into the silence, he tells, 'Brothers, my brothers in Christ, unto the last hour, yea, unto the last moment of the last hour, you will teach the Word that others may be saved. In this is the love of God, that you teach the love of God. That you show the way, the way will be shown to you, and to all who find you. Though it is the last hour, we do not labour less, but more.'
He pauses. His voice is strengthened.
'I would that one of you would write these words,' he says.
Startled, as if from dream into the thing dreamt, the disciples bestir themselves. Danil lights a candle, Lemuel brings papyrus and stylus, offers these to Meletios, whose hand is fairest.
Then, to instruct, to clarify, to lead into light, to assist those he loves in their labours, which labours he knows will continue to the end of time, John dictates his great epistle. He writes to the world. He speaks clearly, with certain pause, each thought delineated with care.
'That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life . . .'
His voice is clear, his manner calm.
'These things write we unto you that your joy may be full.
'This then is the message that we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.'
John speaks on in the candlelight until it burns low and another is lit. He speaks without fatigue, telling, urging, teaching what numberless multitude in the unseen world might yet be Christian. He thinks of it as a last act, a summation of what is, a last offering out of his life that those he loves might use in their labours. For he has understood that in Ephesus there is much darkness. 'The whole world lies in wickedness,' he tells Meletios to write. And the writing, the telling, is an act against this. It is both warning and promise. 'Believe in the name of the Son of God,' he tells, 'that ye may know ye have eternal life.'
The dawn comes and he is speaking yet. His throat is grown hoarse, and Meletios looks up from the scripture, fearful that the Apostle will speak himself to his last breath. 'You must rest,' he says, 'we have the Word. We will bring it forth.'
The disciples are rapt, in-spired. How is this the aged one they feared dying after his fall? Danil brings him water to drink. John sips at it. He falls silent; in the after-hush asks, 'Is Papias not returned?'
How long is love? How long is love when there is nothing? When there is no other? When there is none to touch or see or hear? How is love then to endure? What hope for human love when it is sustained only by belief? How can a man love God? How can he love what he cannot see, cannot touch, cannot feel? And, more impossible yet, how can he feel that God loves him back? Does the air love? Does the sun? Does the dust of the plain?
I am not worthy to be loved. My very flesh dies.
If we are loved, why is our way not made easier? Why does evil and pestilence prosper? Why do our enemies thrive? Why does the Lord not help us when we have carried his Word for so long? Where here is love? Where is the love in these blisters, in this disease that eats to my heart? Where is the love in this pain that wracks my body? O my soul is black with anger.
I am not worthy to be loved. My very flesh dies.
But O if you would come.
If you would come, I would be healed.
If I could see you, I could love.
If I could touch you, I could love.
If you would come.
John is the Apostle. I do not believe the scripture. Matthias twists the world for his own vanity. The Apostle rests in the house of Levi. I would I could go to him. I would I could kneel by his bed and his hand lay upon my head.
But I will not see him again now.
He it is who loves. He it is who remains true. Does his love for you not die? Does it remain a lifetime? Though it is yet ages past since he saw you, does he see you still? What can he feel that I cannot?
I feel only grief.
I confess it. I feel only grief and loneliness and anger.
By my sins I am cast out. I am elect to death.
Where is the love for me? Where is the mercy?
I crave it. I crave to feel love.
O my heart bleeds. My soul is black with anger.
Lord, have pity.
In a quake-toppled house where remains a room partly roofed, Kester the thief attends to Papias. The disciple is lain in a corner on a wooden pallet with a coarse covering of camel hair. His arms he crosses to scratch at his sores. Shakes wrack him. Now he trembles violent as a leaf in the last gale of autumn, now he is still as death. Such sudden visits make his body weaker still. If he would sleep, he might have respite, but he cannot. He lies with eyes baleful opened. All day and all night he stares. The vacant air lit and darkened, he studies as if for transport of angels. But none such come, only further sores. These, as though his blood resists less or extends welcome, bloom swiftly. There are sores built on sores. Rough ridges of flesh rise and burst in yellow pus. His nails flail. His lips swell as though by sinister kiss. Blisters at the edges will bleed if Papias opens wide his mouth, so Kester dribbles water from a cloth. He sits by. Sometimes in the day he is gone into Ephesus and returns with what he has stolen — foodstuffs, cloth, the makings of fire.
From a stall in a market, whether by theft or bargain, he brings herbs for a cure. These he mixes to a brew, lets cool till thickened to a paste.
'Why? Why do you bring this? I am to die, go away. Do not touch me. Save yourself, leave me,' Papias says, and turns from him to the wall.
Upon the raw exposed back, Kester lays the paste.
But the cure does not take. The sores climb the disciple's throat to meet those that travel out from the lips. On the bed, Papias shakes like the toy of a distempered child. He cannot still himself. His hands tremble wildly; his arms fly about; he lets out a long, pitiful moaning; tears at his hair. The pain become unendurable; he crawls to chafe himself against the wall, blood and poison running, as he cries out, 'Take me! O Lord, I beseech you. Hear me!'
The disciples are heartened. Within a day they have learned the epistle by heart; through them it will multiply. They preach with emboldened spirit by the basilicas, in market squares. Tireless, they go all the streets of the city fishing for souls. There is concern for Papias but not yet alarm.
The young man with eyes of piercing blue who is called Polycarp is brought to meet the Apostle and becomes one of them. On good reports of the faith of Gaius, John dictates to him an epistle, gives it to Lemuel to bring.
'Is there no report of Papias?'
'We seek for him everywhere, but he is not known.'
'Seek still. I will pray for him.'
The Apostle angles his face upwards, as if to interrogate the sunlight. In the stillness of the day his strength ebbs. Having so long forgotten his body, having lived without thought of its health for many years, now he finds he is reminded of frailty. This stiff movement of his fingers, this seized joint of elbow, labour of lungs, grind of anklebone, intervals of deafness, heart-race, numbness, cold unfeeling toes, such things as recall him to his humanity. His body fails. Having long since considered time immaterial, he does not know what age he is, and this is of no concern. Only that he abides matters. He must remain until the Lord comes again. That is all.