John (3 page)

When they reach the high point, the wind blows more vigorously. John's hair is taken back, his white beard laid against his neck. His blue eyes look about, as though they had sight.

What is happening in his mind? Papias wonders. What sights does he see? His master is like a cave full of secrets.

The sea below is white-capped and the seabirds hover and cry. There is a ship on the horizon sailing west. John stands without a sound.

It is as though he expects something to happen here, Papias thinks. It is as though at any moment a door might open in the heavens above him. Papias looks up at the blue and the white clouds crossing. For the old apostle he anticipates what it might be that is shortly to happen. He pictures a brilliant light; he imagines music of trumpets, and all manner of white horses, winged and golden shod, beating down in majesty out of the upper realms. Papias sees an order of angels swoop from the entranceway of the Eternal and flank the incandescent light. He anticipates a bliss divine. Upon the head of this ancient man he foresees a white fire alight and all grow radiant in such dimension as to blind with whiteness and make men fall to their knees as the Christ descends to be once more, there, by the side of his beloved disciple.

While they stand, Papias sees it so. In the furnace of his youthful faith he forges this perfect image. He imagines it will be at any moment. He is certain this is what his master awaits.

John says nothing. He attends the wind.

An hour, two hours pass. The silence is absolute. The old man's ankles ache. The bones of his legs are brittle and full of pain.

Clouds come from the east, darkening.

Nothing happens.

When he fears that he will fall, John reaches out to allow Papias to support him. He leans on his arm, but says nothing.

He stands there on top of the island. To the north is the risen darkness of Mount Kerketeus, clouds gathered upon it. Together the Apostle and the youth wait.

When the bell rings noon, they come back down for prayer.

'It is written,' Matthias says that evening to a small gathering in the narrow confines of his dwelling, three sides of timber planking against rock. He holds open the scroll of the Book of Revelation. ' "And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying: How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and revenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?"

'Amen,' Auster says, and nods toward the thin, flaxen-haired figure of Linus.

'Amen,' say the others.

Lambs all of them, Matthias thinks. Lambs that can be led.

He turns on his heel, spreads open his hands. 'How long, O Lord? How long? Yea, I dare to ask. While Domitian reigns there continues persecution. The crucifixion of the apostle Andrew is only one of many. The soul of the slain. I hear him crying out. We will be slaughtered from the earth and none care. We will be forgotten.'

'But Matthias, ours is not to question,' Cyrus says. 'Ours is to wait and keep the faith. '"
Yet that which you have, holdfast until I come."
'

'But so, too, it is written, Cyrus,
"Behold I come quickly",'
Matthias replies.

Cyrus nods. 'This is true,' he agrees. 'We believe our Lord is coming, Matthias.'

'But why does he wait?'

The lamb can't answer.

'How many crucifixions does our Lord want? Five hundred more? Five thousand? How many more crucifixions will mark the roads of Domitian's empire while we sit here?'

The lambs don't bleat. 'Recall,' Matthias says, 'the Apostle himself wrote: "And behold there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as a sackcloth of hair, and the whole moon became as blood; and the stars from heaven fell upon the earth, as a fig tree casteth its green figs when it is shaken by a great wind.

' "And the heaven departed as a book folded up." ' Matthias does not need to read; he knows the words. ' "And every mountain and the islands were moved out of their places; and the kings of the earth and the princes and tribunes and the rich and the strong and every bondmen and every freeman hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of mountains. And they say to the mountains and the rocks: Fall upon us and hide us from the face of him that sitteth upon the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of their wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?" '

He pauses, his face flushed, and he looks at each. They are a small gathering, chosen, asked from among the others to come to debate the way to truth. They are mostly the younger of the disciples. Their beards have no silver, their faces are unlined. They have come in recent years, many by choice, to be in the company of the Apostle, to await with him the coming. But time has worked on their faith, the nothing that has happened each day since eroding mountains.

' "The great day of their wrath. The great day of their wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?" ' Matthias continues. 'But tell me, where is this wrath? When is this day? This I ask you. Tell me if you know. Tell if it is only poor Matthias who does not understand. Take him from his ignorance. Is it to come while we sit here on Patmos? Verily, is this the intention of the Divine? Tell me, tell me Baltsaros, Linus, is it the intention that we wait on till old age and weakness come? Is this what you think Cyrus, Auster? Or' — Matthias raises a finger as if to arrest a thought, as if there passes in the air just then a solution hitherto unconsidered — 'might it be, might it be that we are to go forward to meet it? As an army on a plain is emboldened by the approach of another legion, should we not make the great day happen ourselves? Should we not show ourselves willing to the Divine?'

'It is a vexing question, Matthias,' says the high voice of Phineas.

Bald-pated fool of a lamb, eyes too close to each other for clear thought.

'But how can we know?' Phineas whines. 'Only the Apostle has seen the Lord, and he commands we abide here.'

The others nod and voice agreement.

Lambs indeed.

Baltsaros says, 'We are all grieved, Matthias, to hear the news of the apostle Andrew. But his place is assured at the table of our Lord in heaven. His work was complete. In that we can rejoice.'

'Rejoice because every day we are less, not more?' Matthias arches his eyebrows. 'Truly? Truly? Well, I cannot rejoice. What work for God do we do here? Are we not the same as those dead? What keeps us here in banishment? An edict from Rome? Because if we leave this island we will be persecuted and crucified? Consider this: perhaps this is our destiny, and we hide from it here, are cowards. I do not rejoice in the death of Andrew, I grieve and anger. As should you all.'

Aware of how incautious are his words, he stops. He must bring the lambs back into safe pasture.

'Forgive me my weakness, my brothers. Pray with me that I may know the way to truth,' he says, and before them kneels down and bows low his head.

A brilliant stratagem. As though I ask them to show me the way. These lambs that think they are lions.

Matthias closes his eyes. The seeding is begun.

4

And the beast coming up out of the sea having seven heads and ten horns, and upon the horns ten diadems. The beast that was like to a leopard, and feet the feet of a bear, and mouth of a lion.

And the seven vials of the wrath of God. The sore and grievous wound that fell upon the men with the character of the beast. The blood poured into all the sea, wherein every living soul died. The rivers and the fountains made blood. The sun afflicting men with heat and fire so all were scorched and blasphemed. The vial that was poured on the seat of the beast so his kingdom became dark and they gnawed their tongues for pain. The sixth vial that was poured into the river Euphrates and dried up the waters. And from the mouth of the dragon, from the mouth of the beast, three unclean spirits like frogs. Spirits like devils working signs. And the seventh vial poured on the air, and a voice out of the temple saying, 'It is done.' And lightnings and voices and thunders, and a great earthquake, and the great city divided into three parts, and every island fled away and the mountains not found. And falling then the great plague of hail.

Did I see such things as these?

Did I?

Did those words come from me?

I remember not.

Was there a vision so clear?

When Papias reads it to me, it seems familiar yet strange.

Dear Lord, remember your ancient servant. Have pity. Pages in the book of my memory fall away.

Did the angel come to me truly?

Did I see such vision? And then was blind?

But Jerusalem fell. The mountain Vesuvius opened with fire. Nero's Rome burned. Such things did happen.

And yet you did not come.

Papias reads to me: ' "And I, John, who have heard and seen these things. And after I had heard and seen, I fell down to adore before the feet of the angel who showed me these things."'

But now I am afflicted, Lord, and cannot remember.

My spirit thirsts for salvation.

John kneels in the rock chamber and confesses. Papias is gone to see what fish have been caught. The old apostle's head is bowed. The news of the death of Andrew has struck him like many blows. Though the crucifixion may have happened a long time ago and the news taken this time to travel, it is to him as though yesterday. Cut as wounds into his mind is the history of the suffering of each of the twelve. Accounts he has heard. Each of these return him to one moment on the road.

They were passing through Phrygia and the country of Galatia when they met a traveller in purple. He was a wizened creature, humped, with ragged beard. Sun blazed upon them. 'O Christians!' he called out, his head tilted upward, his rheumy eyes aswim. 'Come, buy from me!' He had a wife and a loaded ass, gestured with a long-nailed hook hand for them to pause. The Apostle and his followers had nothing to trade. And when he discovered this, the traveller spat into the sand. 'Ye are not worth spit,' he said, and waved his wife to stop unloading the goods. 'Ye will be dust soon,' he muttered for consolation, glare-eyed, blister-cracking his lips. 'Ye're heads will roll like the son of Zebedee,' he said with undisguised glee and turned away.

'Wait. Tell us,' John called after him.

The traveller stopped, looked back over his hump. 'For what profit?' he asked.

'I am a son of Zebedee,' John said and walked forward. 'Tell.'

And for the pleasure of pain, for the tale he could carry to the towns of Phyrgia and perhaps trade upon it, the traveller turned. 'I saw myself the head of James, son of Zebedee, cut from his body by order of Herod Agrippa. I saw the blade rise, the hair pulled back, the eyes wide like moons.' He came closer. 'I heard the bone snap,' he said, clutching his hooked hand to his own throat below a blister-smile. 'The head, it rolled,' he said, and rolled his hand in a tumbling fall. 'The brown eyes stared till dust blinded them.'

John fell to the ground and cried out. And then bowed down and scooped a handful of dust and pressed it into his mouth to keep from shouting out with sorrow. The wild lamentation that lacerated him he could not release in weeping, for the others of his followers he believed he could not show the feeling of abandonment by the Lord. Instead the wolf of grief he took inside himself and let it roam and savage freely.

In repeated dreams after came the sight of his brother bowed before the blade the traveller told. In such dreams always John stood among the assembled witnesses; powerless, he saw James refuse to deny the Christ and his prayers growing louder even as the blade rose in the air. Forever since, though blind, he sees still; he hears the terrible crack and sees his brother's head fall away.

Now, with news of Andrew, all such returns to him. The loss is so great as to be unutterable.

John kneels and confesses. He kneels so long on the bare rock of the cave floor that his knees lock, and the framework of his bones entire is turned solid. First he aches, and pain is everywhere. And then, slowly, slowly, he passes beyond the condition of pain, into an inner terrain where by himself he himself is forgotten. There, these his ancient hands held together, this his bowed head with white hair, are no more present to him, and he is become instead like an element or a timeless feature of that place.

He is away, and out of this world.

Water sounds. The cave where he kneels speaks with the sound of a thousand invisible streams.

On the far side of the island, Papias goes to visit one of the poor families of fishers that live there. On the eastern shore there is a small scattering of houses that existed before the Christians arrived. At first mistrustful of the band of men who were brought and released on to the island, the fishers grew to understand they offered no threat, and then to warm to them because they were hated by the despised Romans. Finally, some among them were converted by the stories of the Christ, Jesus. The kingdom everlasting was explained to them, and gave solace in the hardships of island life to those who felt abandoned on that bleak edge of the world. When sons and husbands drowned, the Christians were told and asked to come and pray.