John (28 page)

Wordless, the Christians pass on. They pass where others turn for the way to the temple. On the road, one, lame and old, hobbles towards them from the opposite direction. Shortly they come to him. When they are alongside he turns a scowl their way, then blinks quickly some sun-blindness and licks at blistered lips. He calls out.

'Strangers, stop.'

They do.

'Why do you not visit the temple? You walk past.'

'We go elsewhere,' says Danil, and turns to move on.

'The ancient one, I know him,' says the old man. 'Who are you, Ancient?'

'He is our friend,' replies Danil quickly. But John stands.

'I am John, son of Zebedee,' says the Apostle. 'How does thou know me?'

'I know thee. Though I know not how.'

'Why do you go to the temple?'

'Why, to pay homage. To give thanks, to ask for favour.'

'What favour?'

'My leg fails me.'

'How does thou know me?'

'I know thee.'

'Where have you been?'

'In the world. I am old.' The man palms the wrinkles of his brow, sweated dust. He studies the Apostle. 'In Symrna long since, you . . .'

'Tell.'

The man searches in imperfect memory.

'No, I cannot. But I know that I know you.'

'We are believers in our Lord Jesus Christ,'John says. 'The Son of God, who sits at the right hand of the Father. Who will come again soon. Go not into the temple. Go home to thy wife and children.'

'Christians.'

'Yes.'

'As many I saw crucified on these very roads. There, there, even beyond there to the rise.' He points about him.

The Apostle does not turn.

'Even so,' he says, and it seems to the others gathered there that in his blindness he looks not at, but within the other.

The man blinks in puzzlement. 'How do you know of my wife and children?'

'Go in peace,' says John, 'go in the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who loves thee.'

'Who loves me? How loves me?'

'Verily he does. And thy wife and thy children, too.'

The man's mouth is fallen open, his brows lowered in bewilderment. He scratches his head for memories. Where was it he saw this one before? Vague clouds of mind he sifts through, tries to find the image. Was it this man he dreamt not three nights since coming to meet him?

The Apostle offers his hand. The man takes it.

Then the Christians pass on, leaving him standing so in the mystery of things, not yet aware that when they are in the distance and merest specks on the road, he will discover the strength returned to his leg, his lameness gone.

30

In the night they return, their spirits lifted. The moon shows through cloud. Tobias has given them good welcome and has professed his faith in Christ. They have shared in the Eucharist and feel each one a cleansed serenity, as if a white linen cloth has been unfolded in their spirits. They come back the starry way into the city.

Is it to be so? Papias wonders. Will it be one by one they win disciples to them? How long is left in the world? How long is there for sinners to repent? For the lost to find the way? The walking makes his rash burn. He lets his elbow chafe against his right side as he goes, but the relief is brief. He walks face-upward a time, looking into the stars for revelation. When the itching worsens, he fights it with prayer, amasses a legion of them, then loses to the sudden darting of a night creature crossing their road.

They come across a low place where the river water seeps out into marshy ground. Hereabouts are snakes. The thought of them, ceaselessly writhing in the soft wet dark, is enough to disband the next column of prayer. How can a man be holy in this world? How can he keep himself to higher things? Lord, help me.

They come, unscathed, through, and are back on the sunbaked ground when the moonlight is swiftly shut away. Cloud darkens all. The stars are taken as if within a fist. The road vanishes.

Meletios cries out, 'What is happening?'

'It is a storm,' Danil shouts. 'It comes quickly.'

'What storm? It was calm a moment since.'

'Master, it darkens to storm,' Papias tells. 'We must take shelter.'

Wind blows at the Apostle where he stands. He raises his face to it, his hair blown awry, his blind eyes flickering. He holds outwards a hand as if touching.

'Come, come, Master,' Papias says, but in looking about can see nothing. Darkness is absolute. It is a storm unlike any — no rain falls, but hills and land are blackness scoured with wind. They cannot see where they might go for cover. All, by instinct and fearful hope, look above and see only the darkened world. The air blows a howl. No bat or bird moves, the sky emptied of all but wind. The disciples can go nowhere. Lemuel takes the hand of Eli; he, Meletios; and so the others, until they are a thin linkage on the bare earth, themselves only as shelter. Fearful of what contagion he carries, Papias does not give his hand to the Apostle, but his robed arm. They stand in the dark, the gusting fierce enough to make quiver the flesh on their bones. It is occasion for faith only. There is nothing in the night to protect them. They are some distance yet from the city on a flat plain. Moon and stars are so obscured as to make their return unimaginable in the darkness above. Light is out and with it quiet. A prayer would go unheard.

They stand, blown about, attendant on what will happen.

Then comes the first shudder.

The earth beneath them moves. In the gale each is unsure if it is he alone who has lost balance. In the dark they shoulder against one another, reach for support. Again the ground shudders, and they fall.

But not the Apostle. He stands with Papias, the earth quaking about them. There is rumble and groan and noise such as a beast might make in grave pain. It comes from within and without both, is uncertainly sourced, as if creation itself aches and buckles and bursts the bounds of its form. Air and ground alike are torn. What cries the disciples make are unheard in the howling. The great shuddering shakes out ribbons of dark in the dark. There is the sound of cracking, as though the world were round like an egg and its shell fissured by the beak of a beast coming to be born.

The disciples are fallen to the ground that opens thereabouts. They cannot see beyond their hands, and the land may be all fallen away from what they can tell. Perhaps all is already fallen, all from Judea to Africa to the eastern lands, already returned to the nothingness from which begun. They themselves may remain the last island, and their time, too, be about to end. They do not know. They dare not look above for the arrival of the Almighty, but in the wordless prayer that comes on the instant of imminent death they pray it may be so. There may be vast illumination in moments. In moments the sky may part like a cloth and the angels descend. Have faith. Hold on.

For first the earth buckles once more. Once more there is a vast shuddering, a sundering of iron ground with rough exhale of heat. Those with face in dust feel the urgent, plotless exodus of creatures from the crust, wild scuttle of hundred- and thousand-footed insects seeking refuge in the hair, the ears, the crevices of the human islands. In the darkness all are unseen.

'Be not afraid!' the Apostle cries out. 'Be not afraid!'

But they are nonetheless. What reckoning comes they fear then. They fear each a private failing that will be illumined in instants. They have been but men, and have the weaknesses of men. Their faith and love has been inadequate, and the knowledge is a scorching along the rims of their souls.

So it is in that time as the earth quakes beneath them.

Do not come yet, is their prayer. Do not come yet.

Down the dark howls the storm. The Apostle's head is upturned. Papias cowers down, looks up to see the starred white hair, the outreached hands. How can he not fear it? How can he be certain of unhurt? Papias holds his arms tightly about himself. He clings to his sides, as if they, too, might give way. Do I believe well enough? Do I believe well enough that I am loved? Is it love that comes now?

He screws tight his eyes, clenches his teeth against fierce embrace. His head is lowered as if to be split by lightning.

Then, without his knowing, the Apostle steps away from them into the black.

The ground falls from the ground. It is as though the earth is transmuted into water and a great wave rolls through it. In the dark it is a terror dream. Bodies tumble, are rolled forward in the dirt. The disciples cry out in horror. Here are legs, hands clutching at dust. The world is being broken. From below rises the noise of rupture, of resistance and collapse. The wave passed, the ground is stilled a moment. Then earth parts from earth with crack and roar, a formless vocable ripped from beneath creation, a sounded agony as in the surface great lesions appear. An instant and they burst open.

If a beast from below rises, none sees. All fall along the ground. There is a gaping dark. There is a scream above others.

In Ephesus stone topples from stone. Columns sway as if scrolls of papyri. Great porches collapse. From Roman mosaics gods fall.

Matthias stands in his chamber. Auster rushes to him.

'We should go, Master. We should find open ground.'

'Go you. I will stay.'

'The house will fall.'

'Go, I say, go!'

When the other still does not leave, Matthias turns to him in rage. 'You fear. follow your fear. Run. I stay. I fear nothing.'

'There is fire, Master. The streets shake.'

'Good. Let the world be shaken. Let the world burn, and all within it that do not believe in the One. Let all perish. Let only the pure remain. So the world is cleansed.'

Auster bites at his lip, twists his hands, studies the profile of the other, whose blinded eye is a weal of white.

'Go, come back later if it be his will that you live,' Matthias says, without turning. 'Go!'

The sandals leave, a quick-slap down the steps.

Alone, Matthias attends the plot of revelation in mid-chamber.

I will not die.

I will not die.

I will not die, because I am your son.

A creature of form indistinct, Papias scrambles wildly across the ground. The earth has stopped. In the dark he makes out the figure of Danil, then Lemuel.

'Where is he? Where is he? He left me. He walked away when I . . . I had let go of him in fear. I . . . Where is he?'

Lemuel is dirt-blind. He fingers into his eyes roughly, blinks to see what world they are in.

'The Apostle is gone?'

'I didn't realise he . . . It is my fault, he . . .'

'Papias, stop! He is gone?'

'Yes.'

They are on their feet.

'Gone? How gone?' Danil asks. 'What did you see?'

'Nothing. I saw nothing. I was afraid.'

'We were all afraid, Papias. You have no blame,' says Meletios gently.

'Master!' Papias calls. 'Master!'

'Careful! The ground is split. There is a . . .' Danil does not say 'hole'. But as he and the others make out the great fissure that has opened there beside them, all think the same thought.

It cannot be.

Papias feels his insides sicken and gags on vomit. His body buckles. Lemuel grasps his shoulder.

'We will search for him,' he tells.

But still cloud keeps the moon and her stars behind. There is such dark as to blind everything that is beyond the span of a man. The disciples go feelingly in the broken world, calling. They get no response, their search burdened with despair.

Papias cannot keep himself from thinking. What if he is gone? Risen to the heavens and none of us saw or knew. How could he leave us so?

The pain of this question is easier than the one that shadows it: what if he fell into the opening? What if the ground split here at his feet and he fell within? What if that is what happened?

Then nothing.

Then nothingness is.

Then all is made nothing.

It cannot be.

'Master! Master!' Papias calls. But the dark returns no answer.

They search a small circle, then Lemuel says, 'Beyond we cannot see. We must stop and await the dawn.'

'We cannot stop.'

'It is dangerous, Papias. We may all perish.'

'We must continue looking.'

'We can see nothing.'

'I would rather perish than stop.'

'We must be for one another. If he is gone, we are what remains. We must be of one voice.'

'He is not gone!' Papias cries. 'He has not left us!'

He turns from them and goes into the dark.

'Wait, Papias!' Lemuel says, and when the younger disciple pauses, tells him, 'We will all go. We will hold to each other, be bound like a vine.'

He offers his hand. Papias seems to hesitate in taking it, but does. Each takes the hand of another and they go forth over the ground slowly, calling for the one they have lost.

It is an hour.

Then another. Pink dawn fringes the horizon.

Then they find him. He is fallen between the earth and the world below, his hip and leg twisted, his head bloodied where it struck a rock. He has the stillness of death.

They rush to him. Papias cradles the beloved head.

There is breath. He lives still but is badly injured. He is too weak to speak.

None say a word. Their spirits are too busy with prayer.

With such tenderness as cannot be told, they bear him from the ground.

31

The house of Levi is undamaged. There the disciples return and lay the Apostle on layered bed mats and a goatskin cushion, the property of Levi. John is weak, speaks but little. Sometimes he says the word 'children', and Papias is unsure if he asks for the children of Martha or refers to the disciples. He drifts away in sleep. Martha is sent for and comes with a cousin, Ruth, to attend to him.

The disciples sit in an outer room, mute with shock. The quake, the Apostle's fall, seem redolent with meaning, but none want to translate it. They cannot deny how near John has come to death, and may die still, and how that thought moves all to a precipice. But they do not want to ask why, why such might happen, and why now. They cannot bear what seems to approach. Is it the will of God that John will die? And if it is, who are they to try to divert it? And yet divert it they would. Is the Apostle's work done? Is it to die from a fall in Ephesus that he has lived so long? Where comes Christ? Where is the revelation?