John (24 page)
From Martha's eyes tears flow. Her children are about her. Her son, Philip, touches the tears, streaks them on his own cheeks.
After, the disciples are shown a square room where, under the watch of the children, they lay the thin mats of their bedding close together. For the Apostle they pile the blankets that Martha gives them. Though the sun is gone down, the room is warm from the day's heat. They sit in quiet with their thoughts, humbled by welcome. They are arrived on the threshold of triumph, of themselves as proof of enduring belief, but in the dark hours of night questions worm up to each from the clay floor.
What lies ahead? Danil wonders, turning his thorny knuckles over and back in the cup of his hand. What is it that is to be done? And how?
How in this city do we begin, is the question of Meletios, when everywhere there are believers in a pagan god? What will they say of us? Will they listen? How will I have strength? I am not strong.
Will there be followers? Lemuel asks. If I ring the bell will they come? Will they throw stones?
I miss the island, Eli thinks. Why do I miss the cool air and the sea whispering? How are Simon and Ioseph tonight?
In the summer dark Papias sits holding his knees, his head lowered. The mute boy is already asleep by his side.
In the morning we will go about in the city. But the Master is frail and should not risk the crowds. Do we say who he is that is among us? Do we proclaim him? What then if some turn against us? What if they seek to harm him?
Papias must divert himself from fear. Wounds in his back suddenly itch furiously. Sitting, he rocks slightly, then pats both feet against the floor as if beating a rhythm to make the questions retreat.
We are come out of exile for the glory of the Lord.
We are come out of exile for the glory of the Lord.
We are come out of exile for the glory of the Lord.
The hour is at hand.
'They are in the house of Martha,' Auster tells.
'Indeed. How many?'
'Five I saw with the Ancient.'
'Five only?'
'Yes.'
'Papias?'
'He led him on his arm.'
Matthias's dark eye pulses; he presses a palm against it. 'Leave me,' he says.
The footsteps retreat.
So it is, he thinks. In silence the world awaits a battle for souls.
Before daybreak the disciples are all awake. Their sleep, curdled with dream, leaves them uneasy. In separate dark the disciples lie and think of the city they have awoken in. Within it they have no presence as yet; there is no sense of belonging as there was on the island. Rather, there is a feeling of displacement, of being not only in the wrong place but in the wrong time. They feel
alien.
Other. Motionless, awake on their bed mats, they wrestle demons. What they must believe is twofold: first that their actions are designed, that the Apostle is guided by the Lord and that Ephesus is where they are to be, that it is so ordained, and what awaits is what is intended. This belief is not difficult. It is the bedrock, the tried and proven constant in their spirits, made to shine crystalline in the years of exile. The second is what taxes them most, for they must believe in humanity. They must believe in others, that when they go about the city they will find first an audience and then followers. They must put aside the ingrained hurt of previous experience of man, dismiss the jeers, the mockery, the insults, the beatings, stone throwings, all style of assault. It is not that they must wipe free the entire chronicle of grievances, being driven from the synagogue, the bitterness and hatred, but harder still, they must remember and yet still believe. Theirs was a history of contempt and rejection, so now how difficult to wake and believe the world transformed, to believe the very heart of humanity turned around and ready for the message of love. How difficult to forgive absolutely.
They are not fools. They know what they go to meet may not at first be welcoming. If it were, belief would be unnecessary. Instead, as they lie on their bed mats before the sun rises, they must anticipate rough beginnings and be not dismayed. Their faith must be stronger than the evidence, and they must be armed with this, their very souls like shields of tempered metal.
Lemuel rises first, and the others stir at once.
The Apostle, too, has not been sleeping. His head is propped upright against the wall, his face becalmed.
Does he know what is to come? In the boundless dark of his blindness, does he see? Or is his faith such that he abides without seeing or knowing and draws breath after breath in the certitude of love, of being loved, and that moment by moment the divine source draws closer?
In the crowded room they pray.
Then John tells them they will stay in this house a few days only. Danil is to go to seek quarters for them elsewhere in the city. Martha has told that there are others who have kept the faith, but they are not many. Lemuel is sent to bring the news of their return to one such, the house of Gaius. Meletios will go to one Demetrios, Eli to Josiah, and Papias to Diotrophes. They are to go as heralds to the coming time, to announce that they are come out of exile in Patmos and to begin to gather to them the new community of Christians here in Ephesus. They are to prepare the way and bring the news that the time is turned, the Lord comes.
The mute boy watches their discourse. He cannot tell his name and by John is given 'Kester' and made by Papias to understand. The Apostle is moved by his presence among them. He tells Papias to care for him, to teach as best he can the character of their faith.
Papias looks in puzzlement.
'He must know we are Christians by our acts,' John says.
Brilliance of sunlight, untrammelled trust of morning, birds and men crossing the early daytime. Dust of street is unrisen. Leaden bell-tolls; smells of bread. The city partly sleeps. What doorways open reveal but shadows within, figures silent at domestic matters. Streetways near antique as time give one to another, a crooked route. Narrow and damp some, for small light falls. A man pushes a cart of wares, wheel creak continuing in his aftermath. A sullen boy follows.
Above, the sky absolute, a blue more blue by moments. A windless day. A corner and from a stone doorway a white robe is shaken out. A happenstance, its immaculacy seems yet to the disciples an augury. Flag of hope, emblem of spirit at this their beginning. They pass. Soft slip-slap of sandals.
Where four streets meet in a cross they stop; Lemuel indicates their various directions as he has been told. They are to one another more than company. They are part of one another's belonging and purpose and have not been separate. In the street-cross bright daylight beholds them, their wordless pause, their look from one to another, then embrace, then departure.
Emissaries, urgent and grave, they go into the shadows.
The day rises overhead. Man is announced in noise, from inside dwellings a discord of pots, jugs, clanging of metal, movement of wooden stools, tables, voices. Questions called, curses shouted. Into the streets come hastening traders, merchants minor, figures in varied dress, elbowing, inquisitive of all that might betoken business. Some with jewelled fingers, others in robes fringed with dust. They have their places to be; they know the best junctures, in what corners accumulate the most likely buyers. The city is theirs. A stranger is a purse yet unopened. The passageways are soon crowded. Ordinary clamour of humanity sounds, news of cousins, of sickness, of deals struck, fortune found. In the jostle of men, dogs moving. Men of generous proportion and slender spirit kick at them. With olive breath, spice breath, lemon fingers, honey-water wash, they exchange tales of outrageous boastfulness, how their acumen won riches, how the goddess shone down upon them, sent fools with deep pockets, how a mere two golden tokens in offering brought untold recompense. Ephesus is their city, a place blessed, where in return for sacrifice, the gods repay tenfold. In the traders there is this confidence, a practice of commerce they understand, that in the exchange between heavens and earth a tabulated costing exists. It is so: such an action brings such a response. For them, it is only to recognise the beneficence, to see what Artemis has sent them up the river or unloaded on the dock. So the early morning is beaten with haste and anticipation.
The sun burns. It seems to near, to descend, and make rise from below scents warm. Flies find the day come and take to the air. All species of gnat, spider, biting insect, traverse shadow and light in first quest of flesh.
Where Papias and Kester go some such hang in the air, a gauze drapery that falls across their faces. They are swiftly stung, the tiny black creatures virulent. Papias cries out, swats, slaps his forehead, his cheeks. He shuts his eyes where they swarm upon them. He fists into them; when at last the creatures are gone, he blinks into the light and realises that Kester is gone. The street pushes past him. He goes quickly back some way, then returns, hurries into another. He looks in doorways, scans the morning crowds. Panic races his heart, makes sing the bites in his cheeks, the wounded ear. Where is he? Where is he gone? Has he been
taken?
You were to watch over him; he was placed in your care. How can you have lost him? Accusation bubbles in his blood. His back itches wildly. He stands against a wall of rough stone. Beneath his robe the scabbed rash that runs from his left shoulder toward his spine is blossomed purple and craves his nails. Anything sharp will do. The ruined skin is inflamed and must be scratched to bleed. Papias could rub his back then against the wall. He could find relief so. But he doesn't. What pestilence is in him, what makes his skin rupture and blisters to weep, he fears, but he cannot drive it away. His itching is more furious than any; upon his skin, within his skin something crawls. But he will not scratch. Instead, he stands in near the wall, shaking. The craving worsens. Tightly he screws his hands to fists. He will outwait it; it will lessen. He shuts his eyes to make his mind see only the Lord. To see the face and the suffering. His lips move in prayer.
Let it pass, let it pass. If it be thy will, O Lord.
He prays not for healing, only a salve. The healing will come from the soul outwards and is not yet. He knows.
Across his back crawls the creature of his own unworthiness. Strike at me, it seems to say. Strike, scratch, draw nails across me. It is a wild torment. Papias knows he cannot defeat it, that if it scratches it will worsen.
Near the wall, he stands.
Traffic of traders passes, but not Kester. The boy is gone.
An old woman, kerchiefed, with hollow eyes and shadow moustache, watches. This man may be in the throes of bliss, may be an interlocutor, may against the wall be in receipt of an ecstasy divine. In Ephesus she has heard of such. The city draws them. The sacred and its mysteries are the local speciality. She gums sour spittle, watches. The man is white-faced, young, thin as all that have forgotten the body. Will he fall down in writhing as she has heard some do? Will he cry out in tongues? In Ephesus it would be no surprise. She has heard of such displays to bring followers. The outlandish, the extravagant, are the mark of theists now, such practice and manner as the Romans despise. The man barely moves. Sunlight comes down the wall to meet his head. His eyes are shut and his head tilted upward. Might it catch fire now? Might the gods let it burst in flame?
The woman watches. A cat comes to her feet. She loses the man a moment in the laboured passage of a laden cart. When she looks again, he is looking at her. He is righted. Has something happened? What is different? Has she missed the God moment? She kicks at the cat and to escape the man's eyes turns quickly inside.
The fury gone, Papias breathes. But where is Kester? Why has he run off? Did he not understand that they welcomed him? Did he not feel Christian love? Papias can find no comfortable answer. He steps out of the sunlight and continues to the end of the street. A figure of youth and curious intensity, he crosses the city and comes to visit the house of Diotrophes.
There are several buildings, all proportioned in style of wealth. The principal is a large dwelling with white portico, even placement of cypress trees on either side. The sun is hot; Papias will be glad of shade. At the entranceway he is readying what he will say when the door is opened. Before him is a man his own age with flaxen hair and eyes of palest blue.
'I am Papias, disciple of John, come to greet Diotrophes in the name of our Lord Jesus the Christ.'
The man says nothing. He looks at the stranger then turns and leads down a corridor to an anteroom. He raises a hand to indicate Papias should wait, and then is gone.
Here is the beginning, Papias thinks. Here is the first true beginning, the commencement of the gathering of the community. Diotrophes will have followers, he will know of others who have kept the faith and bring them the good news of our coming. They will join with us. How many? Maybe as many as three score. Maybe a hundred. And with those whom the others go to tell, by nightfall we may be a community of . . .
He has not time to calculate the number, for the attendant is returned and gestures him to follow. The room he enters is long and clouded with the burning of frankincense. In its centre standing is a large circle of silver, an empty O. At the top of the room is a raised dais upon which sits a chair of ornate carving. Here sits Diotrophes, a man of sixty years with grey beard and deep eyes pursed in wrinkles. He wears a robe of dark blue and a chain of gold.
Papias goes forward and greets him.
'I am Papias, disciple of John, who is come out of exile on the island of Patmos to bring the good news.'
Diotrophes sits impassive.
'John, son of Zebedee,' Papias says a little louder. The frankincense is stifling. 'John who was the beloved disciple of our Lord Jesus the Christ, who was from the beginning and at the end, who sat at the right hand of our Lord, who . . .' He has to pause for better breath. The air is so thick and sweet.
'We are come to bring the good news. I am to tell you that we rejoice in that you have kept the true faith and the time is now upon us for the coming of the glory.' His lips are dry. Is he not being clear? Is he failing to show the miracle of what is happening? 'It is a great time,' he says. 'We are full of joy.'
