John (33 page)
'Unclean? You who were one of us now call us . . .'
'He is diseased. His flesh rots. You knew and sent him to us, Auster says. That you might strike at the Holy One.'
'He is . . . you lie.'
'His skin falls off Linus presses forward his head to spit the phrase. 'He is dead now.'
Danil must keep himself from striking him.
'Bring us to Matthias,' John says.
Linus wets his lips. There is authority in the Apostle he fears yet.
'The Holy One is in the sanctum. He fasts. He is not to be disturbed.'
'Bring us there,' John says, and the disciples push past the remonstrations of the other and go through the building, opening doors, until they come to a place of candles and incense and a stone altar upon which lies Matthias. He remains perfectly still.
'Matthias!' Lemuel calls.
Still the other does not move.
Lemuel approaches. 'Matthias, where is Papias?'
Very slowly, with such deliberation of movement as to be considered grace, Matthias raises himself, to the air above makes a circular blessing with his right hand. Then he steps down from the altar.
He smiles to see this ancient man come before him.
'Old man,' he says. 'Do yet you see the light? Are you come to confess the true way?'
'We are come for Papias,' Lemuel says stoutly. 'He has been here?'
Matthias stands some way back from them.
'He has, but I could not save him. He was eaten with contagion.'
'Where is he?' John asks.
'He is dead.' Matthias smiles. 'Your Christ did not come to save him. He knew this and came to me. He confessed himself unclean, and I cleansed him of the sin of ignorance.'
John raises his voice. 'You are an Antichrist. You are the evil that is in the world.'
'Old man, it is you are the corruption. This Papias came to know. I see he did not tell you that he was a leper. He feared to. Why? Why did he not come to you? Why did he come to your charity and love? I will tell you. Because he came to know you are nothing but a useless old man waiting to die. What else are you? I showed him the true gospel of John I bought in the market. Have you one? They have many. Papias read it and knew you were nothing. Even in the gospel your Jesus is only a prophet. You are a vain old fool who has lied himself to importance. Who believes what you say?' Matthias glares about at the disciples. 'These old men? These who went out from their own people and made outcasts of themselves? Papias came to know. To understand. He came to ask to follow me. To be one of us. Already once I had brought him back from the dead. But he had doubted the One too long, too long he had turned his back on the Divine, and so his own back was eaten first. His flesh . . .' he scowls in disgust, '. . . was putrefied.'
'You are lying!' Danil shouts.
'O stout Danil, stout in ignorance to the last. On his knees Papias begged that I heal him. Yea, there where you stand he wept and pleaded, kissed my hand.'
'Come, let us leave this evil,' John says, 'we have no business here.'
As they bear him from there, Matthias calls, 'See how at last he withers? The old man will be dead soon. Fear not, you can yet repent like Papias. You can yet come to see the truth. When the old man is buried in a week, in a month at most, you will come then. I know.'
They reach the doorway.
Matthias calls his farewell, 'I will pray for you all.'
Then they are gone. He stands looking at the doorway some moments. The confrontation has inflamed his heart, and now the rash on his chest stings again. He closes his eyes against the urgency to scratch. Then he steps back to the altar and climbs on to it, lying prostrate, hands crossed on the contagion, as he prays for a cure.
The disciples bear the Apostle back. None speak. The sky darkens with storm that is not yet come. Wind whips the awnings; ropes on masts whistle a lash song. Above the streets wheel seabirds with cry plaintive and urgent. John is carried back to his bed. What is happening within him happens still. But the action is inchoate yet, a turning of hurt and anger and grief that in one man's spirit are as a blade working, paring, incising. From the raw and tender stuff of love and its disappointment is painfully fashioned enlightenment. How is he to change the thinking of a lifetime? The world is rotten with soft credence. Man twists belief for his own purpose. Each day a new messiah. A hundred years he is, and the most of that he has been a voice, preaching the word in desert towns, in hill villages, in Roman cities. But as he returns from encounter with Matthias, a hundred years seems too long to have lived. The world does not improve but worsens. How hard to keep faith in it. What effort, what hardship, has been his for so long, so long he has remained believing that soon, soon faith would be rewarded, that now through infinite weariness he must find strength to turn around his mind. The terrible news of Papias, the memory of the gospel seller, how fiercely Matthias and the others had turned against them, such things are deep wounds.
'Lay and rest, Master,' Meletios says. 'The journey has wearied you.'
And John has not the strength to answer him.
Do I die now? Do I die now when the world is thronged with evil?
One side of my body I cannot feel.
How am I, an old man, to turn back the Antichrists?
My heart shakes with rage.
I would the world were ended already.
Or that I were young and strong again and could strike your enemies down. I would be as a fierce sword.
But I am weak. My breaths are numbered.
I sin of despair.
You crossed the brook Cedron, where there was the garden you had oft visited. The last of times. We knew and did not know. The night falling in the olive trees. They came with lanterns and torches and weapons.
'Whom seek ye?'
'Jesus of Nazareth.'
'I am he.'
Then Simon Peter. Then Annas. Then Caiaphas. Then Pilate.
'Art thou the King of the Jews?'
'My kingdom is not of this world.'
I followed. I could not weep.
The last of times.
Already you were gone.
'Away with him! Away with him!'
The cross.
The storm proper comes in the night. The sky over Ephesus booms with thunder. Such noise as is makes shake stone jars and statues. The moon and stars are taken. The sea comes inshore on a high tide, throws boats like toys, makes mud of dust and slides it elsewhere. In the dark all huddle and pray. The night breaks up. Thunder deafens again. A crash and then another, then another still. In the streets and alleyways, in the square, out the Magnesian Gate, no man or beast moves. It is tempest too fierce and keeps from sleep the thousands who stare at the dark. Boom, the thunder breaks again. What is thrown about but entire kingdoms? one tells. Here in the heavens is battle engaged. How the sky holds it is mystery. Something must fall through.
And at first this is lightning. A rend is cut and forth flashes a white spear. Of jagged edge a sky javelin flies. The city is illumined, made small by the vastness of light; its antique history, its fabled greatness are as nothing beneath the force loosed from the dark.
Again the thunder. Now with it further javelins. A first sheet of rain pelts down. Drops larger than the eyeballs of camels. Wind whips, takes down what is upright. Cloths, coverings, poles, lengths of netting, rope, stools, crates, all fly.
The storm does not stop. Unabated in the dark is the fierce conflict. A hundred crashes of thunder, more are counted. Lightning whitens the arrows of the rain.
And in this broken night, the disciples come to the bedside of the Apostle. They, too, are fearful and seek assurance.
What happens? Is this weather only? Or is it now at last that the end of time comes?
The thunder crashes. The lightning illumines their frailty.
'Master?'
'We pray,' John says.
They pray then the Introit of their community. The words that may be their last in this ending of the world.
'In the beginning was the Word,' John says, and the others are enjoined. 'And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.'
If the ending is now, it will come on the words of the beginning. If it is now, it will be on their profession of faith.
They pray the Introit a second time. 'In the beginning was the Word.' Their voices are raised in the thunderous night. They cry out the words above the roar and the lash and all the bruited dark. And in the action of the praying itself the voice of the Apostle grows stronger. Gradually he loses age and weariness, and though the storm continues wild and wracks the world thereabouts, he has no fear. He is before them as one in rapture, and here, in mid-prayer, he finds his feeling returned to his left side, and he raises up that hand to the other, and can move then from the lain position to stand amongst them. He is marvel and revelation. But none declare it, for the world may be nearly done now, and with the Apostle standing before them they pray only. Their prayers have the intensity of another form - not words but flame perhaps - and burn their foreheads where they are turned upright in expectation and yearning.
The storm crashes yet, the dark more dark still, all the world bowed and blinded.
And now, here, in John, is again revelation.
Here is vision of time itself, of all things temporal and not.
He knows.
He knows as he has not before what is finite and what infinite. He knows that for light darkness is needed and that his hundred years is not an end but a beginning only. He raises up his hands, and it is as though to word sent long ago response is now received. His voice cries out a prayer. And here in the illumined room of his spirit he sees a church, a vast lit place to which keep coming men, women, and children innumerable as stars. The church fills and further fills, its walls expanding; his spirit rises like an eagle and sees the throng stretch into the greater distance, yea on to the horizon of sea and sky itself. 'Hall'luyah, Hall'luyah,' he cries, and the disciples look to one another in awe and joy of what immanence is made manifest. Here is rapture and revelation. 'Hall'luyah, Hall'luyah!' Here is an ecstasy of soul, a condition out of ancient scripture, a purity of communion not known nor considered actual in their old age of the world. But here it is. Here is man with God. Here are all things made new.
John sees.
Returned to him is every moment from the first to the last and beyond. Returned to him in perfect clarity is each instant he spent by the side of Jesus. Each word spoken is in his mind. The teachings are as scribed on fresh papyrus. All is recollected. In those moments while the storm beats and flashes, he himself is the book being written. Here are things he had forgotten. Not the detall of sunlight nor the scent of the olive trees, not the salt slap of the Sea of Tiberias nor the close heat of Cana, but words, ways of saying. Everything taught, each phrase Jesus said is here now. And in that moment John knows the testament is not himself but the Word, and that what remains and what will remain to the last is just this, the word he carries. What gift he bears is not a narrative, is not a telling of what happened, but something other; it is a vision for all time, it is the very cornerstone of the vast church that looms in his mind.
He sees.
He sees and is humbled and uplifted both. He sees as if from a great height and is consoled.
The storm raging still, he lowers his arms. He speaks the names of the disciples gathered there and tells them not to fear.
He says, 'The Lord is with us.' Then he asks that one of them write what he will tell.
He sits. A light is lit.
In voice clear and strong, he begins to tell of the Baptist: 'There was a man sent from God whose name was John.'
He speaks on through dark. He does not stop. His manner is composed. Though outside the night is still broken, the disciples have no fear. Each has heard the Apostle teach pieces of the whole before, but here verse and chapter follow as though the words are already written. John does not grow weary. Into his voice comes sometimes anger at the world, sometimes sorrow, and sometimes nothing but the suffusion of love. Hour follows hour. He speaks long passages of the words of Jesus, and while he does, to those attending it seems a truth absolute, that these
exact
were the words spoken and by miracle in this man here preserved. In such a way is time overcome. There is no tarnish of age, no lack of clarity or pause for recall. The words are there, and are as an argument full of reason and logic. Phrases are balanced, built. Time and again certain words ring out. Love. Beloved. Friend. Truth. True. Glory. Command. World. Hour. Darkness. Light. And amidst these is all manner of the verb 'to remain'.
Abide. Dwell on. Stay.
The composition continues. None can say for how long. Does the dawn come and the day pass and another night fall? Is it even on to the third day, as some will tell? Does the storm blow all the while? It does not matter. From this all else will follow. From this will be accounts numerous, versions of how and where and when that will continue even for thousands of years. There will follow scholars and sages, legions of the learned who in the coming history of the world will unearth possible traces of the gospel's genesis, what comes to be added after, what versions followed what and to what purpose in the unfolding of the early church. There will be one John, and then another. There will be argument and debate as to who wrote what and fragments of antique testimony offered in frail proofs. But none will matter. The words themselves will outlast all such. They will last to the very edge of eternity.