John (14 page)
'Go! He is dead. Tell them to come at sunrise. Go now! Hasten.'
Fool. Belief is easily created in a fool.
Matthias waits a moment, admits surprise himself at the push of the wind against the chest; a man cannot stand upright in the world tonight. His dark head he tilts upwards to the starless vault, flesh of his cheeks pressed flat to the bone, eyes watering with salt. He turns to re-enter the shelter but catches sight of a blanched lump not far off. What is it? He cranes toward it, this whiteness, then goes seven steps in the dark to see lying there what seems a fallen swan. He sees the one, and then another, then all about the dwelling, in a vast littering he can make out the bodies of white seabirds slain. There are a hundred, maybe two. He cannot count. The image of them, a mass of white feathering pitched out of the sky and slung there about his dwelling, makes Matthias gasp. There is a sky army fallen. He holds an arm above his head, as if a rain of birds may descend still. He looks up into the deep dark, the swarth of night, sees the nothing there is. He foots a seabird next to him to be certain it is dead, toe-feels the cold, wet plumage; with heavy looseness the neck slides further into the stones. For moments Matthias cannot move, the appalling sight of so many arrests him. It is as though the world is turned upside down and the earth-sky studded with birds. They are legion, and may continue beyond the dark edge of vision. Matthias holds a hand to his mouth. The night blows at him. He thinks of plague and contagion, all manner of canker and pestilence that may be broadcast in such upheaval.
He regains himself, turns to hurry back to his dwelling, but cannot keep from another gaze. He looks back at the swan sea, considers, nods.
A portent. Useful. Mythological. The Night of Resurrection it happened that.
Stepping inside, Matthias relights the candle, stoops to see Papias is breathing well.
They will come at daybreak for prayers. There is an hour, maybe less, beforehand. He readies himself. In the earth of the floor next to the bed mat he scrabbles two depressions, rubs at his knees with a small stone till they redden raw, then kneels into the holes. In fools appearance is the foundation for faith. A soul cannot easily be resurrected. There must be effort, and of this there must be evidence. He considers his posture when they come to the door. He will bend down so, he will have prayed himself into the very ground so — nay, look at the imprints. He will have his two hands lain upon the youth's forehead and be praying and not even look up or notice they are arrived.
But I will need another sign. Something of the cost of intercession. That it is not the business of mortals, but only those who can touch the Divine.
A wound. I should have a wound.
From where he kneels, Matthias looks into the shadowed room. Upon the table is a short metal spike, holed one end as a needle. It is within his reach. How the Divine provides for his own.
Matthias waits. He listens into the whirl of the wind for the bell ring and for those who will be coming. He is perfectly poised. Papias breathes easily now and soon will wake. He may hear or not, it is of no import. The others will let him know Matthias wrestled him back from death.
Then, faintly, like a distant bird lost, the bell sounds. There is no light. No daybreak is apparent to Matthias, but must be. He takes the metal spike, touches its tip to the candle flame, then he brings it to the corner of his eye.
I will weep blood.
With one hand holding the spike to the outer corner of his eye and the other raised behind it, he begins to press. The needle burns minutely. With a sudden blow, he smacks hard the hand that holds it, and it pops with blood spurt in past the corner of his eye socket. He shrieks out, pulls and lets fall the spike, then must fumble in the dirt to find it quickly and throw it out of view. The pain is wild. Blood blurs his seeing, but he finds the needle and flings it away. Roughly he pokes at the wound, the pulpy blood and watery leakage of himself, draws a weep line on to his cheek. His teeth chatter and he has to bite hard to keep from weakness. Their footsteps approach. He throws himself forward, lays both hands on the youth's forehead, and says aloud the prayers in a voice not his own.
Then John and the disciples step inside. They see the shocking figure of the kneeling mourner, the blood flowing freely from his eye. Then Linus sees the chest of Papias rise.
'He lives!' he cries out. 'Papias lives! Look. Behold, he is brought back!'
The younger disciples fall to their knees. The Apostle stands.
'Papias lives?' he asks.
'He does,' Auster says. 'Praise the Divine.'
There is the murmuring of prayer. The door being ajar and the gathering both inside and out, the storm blows amongst them. The framing of the hut creaks, the cloth tenting slaps and snaps angrily. A beaker rolls on the floor.
'Bring me to him,' John says.
Ioseph leads him. Auster and Linus offer their arms to lift Matthias from his kneeling, his bloodied eye-weep making the others look away.
'God has answered my prayers,' Matthias says aloud. 'Praise him.'
'Look how he has prayed himself into the ground,' Linus whispers, pointing to the imprints.
John reaches his hand, pats the dark until his outstretched fingers descend to find the face of the youth. He kneels then. His fingers lie flat against the cheek of Papias and he bows his head. He says nothing. He touches the ravaged ear and a shudder passes through him. His blind eyes he shuts tightly.
O Lord. O Lord Jesus.
I am a poor shepherd who loses his sheep.
Forgive me.
His lips do not move; his prayers are unheard. Some leave to accompany Matthias and to dress his wound. Others kneel on their uncertainty. John stays, and in his staying suffers the pain of self-knowledge. He sees his weakness, his withdrawal, his waiting. He sees how ineffectual he has become, how the community itself falls away to nothing. How day by day time erodes what had been built with blood and suffering. It is his fault, vanity that made him believe his work was over and the Lord Jesus would respond by coming now. He has been blind in all ways, not merely in sight. But above all, he has forgotten the essence that returns so powerfully to him now. He has forgotten love.
On his knees by the side of Papias it suffuses him. He feels it like a course of water coming, sluicing from gates unlocked. It roars into the very blood of him, his ancient arteries quickened, laved. Love. Love. His eyes weep. He draws his hands together. The knuckles whiten in fierce clasp. Love. What comes pouring, flowing to every end of him is the awareness of love. And within it sorrow. Here flows and intermingles the sorrows of failed love, of untold love, of love afraid and perishing, of love twisted by pride, made silent, destroyed. He loves Papias, as he loves Ioseph, as he did Prochorus, but feels he has failed all. He weeps, his shoulders shudder. Ioseph kneels down at the Apostle's side, as do others of the elder disciples. The wind whirls in the little dwelling, the day breaking with little light. Still John is bowed, his heart inundated. We are nothing lest we love. We are of God, who is love. Therefore let us.
The thoughts course, swollen with feeling, carrying in bright effluvium flotsam of phrases, things he might say. Antique channels of him open, wildly irrigated and overflowing. Comes the vivid recall of the love he felt for Jesus, the absolute, the unconditional. This is light and water both. Flowing, flowing, and he a vessel. Love. How a man might be filled and overfilled and feel the radiance of all creation to be the radiance of love, the daylight itself awash, dazed, deluged. How he might be humbled so to feel himself connected to the everlasting, the infinite flood of love, the bounty therein. And feel himself taken, carried, helpless but hopeful, full, filled. A man filled, light-filled, touched like the wick of a candle with flame so he trembles. Love. And knows a bliss of gratitude, an ecstasy of soul to witness himself so capable of such light, such water. Water of life itself. We are nothing lest we love. We are of God, who is love. Therefore let us.
John's frame is bent over, his brows knitted, his white hair a gleam waterfall over the prone figure of the youth. He is other than himself. Not yet is he thinking of what happened to Papias, of the fire or the woman or what Matthias claims. Not yet is he considering the straying of the community, the meaning of what happened, or what must follow. For he is breathed into with spirit, in-spired and at one with what was from the beginning.
At the fifth hour Papias opens his eyes. He lies still. He sees the host of elders gathered around and wonders if he attends his own funeral. Does his spirit float free? The faces are grave, heavy-featured, the room dimly shadowed. There is a noise like the sea that is not the sea. Has he drowned? Has his body drowned and he been thrown up on the shore to be laid out before burial? The waves whisper.
The elders move their mouths. Papias falls back beneath the sea.
The pain in the eye is exquisite. It shoots in from the corner, needling deeper than the needle with the slightest movement of the head. Matthias's vision is smeared as with ointment. The pain pierces. He would shriek if it were not for the others. Baltsaros dabs at it, then lays a poultice he has prepared. It stings fiercely. Matthias feels holed into the back of his mind.
But it was worth it. How they look upon me now. Pain is proof. How the ignorant love suffering in another.
He lies with his back rested against a goatskin cushion of lambswool. (Who of them harbours such a thing?) Linus points Phineas to the reddened knees, but Matthias waves him away, a movement that causes a wince, as though a hook embeds in the jelly of his eye. He sips the thinned winter-berry wine, its sourness recalling him from the hurt. There are figs; there is a bowl of raisins swollen in honey. There are dried pieces of goat meat.
Such dreary offerings. My disciples.
'Master, you saw the devil?' Auster asks, kneeling, his plump face pale and his eyes watering like one fevered.
'The devil had taken the youth; I had to pursue him,' Matthias says.
'He was a serpent?'
'He was serpent in form, but greater than a serpent. He twisted in the youth's eyes, two-headed.' Matthias pauses. They want more. They hunger for detail. Struggling against weariness and the pain, he continues. 'He had taken possession of the spirit, and he rose out and up above me, in size enormous, as to sink his venom in me.'
There is a hush. His twelve, and Auster and Linus attend. He sips the sour wine.
'I called to him to be gone. I opened my arms wide like so, and in my hands were swords of silver. Light shone from them and lit the room and dazzled the devil, but he twisted upon himself and spat and became then a creature breathing fire. "Be gone," I cried out. "Be gone. You know not who I am." The fire he breathed burned me not. I was as one bathed in light divine and he cowered back. One head sucked at the youth for the last of his spirit, the other spat skyward, and a flock of birds it seemed fell from the sky slain. I raised my sword and plunged it to him. It sunk into the hardened scale as though in hide. Black blood of him, hot, flowed. Verily it did. He was wounded, and my sword plunged again and again till he twisted back from me and the youth and departed into darkness.'
Matthias allows a pause. None speaks. The pain in the eye pulses from the telling. He touches the poultice, tries to mask the shudder that passes through him.
'Papias?' Baltsaros asks. 'He was dead?'
'The youth was dead. Auster saw. But his spirit was not taken. It hovered still between this world and the next.'
There is nodding. There is a murmur. There is reverence.
'I knelt then,' Matthias tells them. 'I knelt then to pray that I might be able to intercede on the youth's behalf, that he not leave this world yet. That he be spared to me and returned from death. I summoned the Divine, and found it within me, and touched Papias's forehead, and behold! he lived again.'
There is a gasp. Matthias bows his head. The others do the same.
Wonderful. The power of a story to the credulous.
When Papias wakes a second time, he sees the face of the Apostle. John is bent low over him and must feel the moment, for he turns his head at once.
'Papias?'
'Master.'
'Praise God.' The Apostle reaches his two hands to lay them on the forehead of the youth. The fever is gone.
'Can you hear, Papias?' Ioseph asks.
Tenderly the youth touches his ruined ear, as if his fingers recollect, he nods. 'Yes.'
'Come, we will bear you to the cave,' John says.
'Master, I can walk.'
'You will be weak, Papias,' Ioseph counsels, 'let them bring a litter.'
'No. I will walk. And guide my master. Please.'
And so Papias stands and seems at once to the elder disciples as though he has aged greatly. There is in his bearing the prudent air of one who has come through peril, as if a traveller from lands of plague and famine. He is slow and deliberate where once sudden. He offers his arm to the Apostle. 'Master?'
They go out into the day. Though the storm has moved to the west, the sky is overhung with clouds and the light poor. The disciples progress silently from the dwelling across the smooth rock face polished with wind. The slain seabirds lie where they fell, but none make comment. The dark sea throws itself about, unsettled yet. On the stone steps Papias takes care to attend the Apostle, offering both hands. Wind whirls the white hair and beard. The elders stop and wait. They do not voice opinion on what Matthias seems to have brought to pass; they will wait to hear the word from the Apostle. They have the reverence of ones aware they are in a presence, and though each feels turn inside him the tireless wheel of human questioning, they keep silence. Something is happening, and has happened, but it is not for them to know yet, they believe. All will be revealed. Their faith now is founded as before on the telling of the acts of Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, and the Apostle is as a roadway leading back to that reality and onwards to the Second Coming. He will tell them when he has considered it. He will tell them if Matthias has worked a miracle.
