John (13 page)
None of this can Auster say yet. He is slumped forwards, like a beast of burden heavily used.
'What is it? What has happened?'
'Papias,' Auster mutters and raises a hand to indicate.
Matthias steps past him into the dwelling. There Papias lies, blackened and blood-faced, but breathing still.
In the small grove of the olive trees is the stranger. Early sunlight plays. From branch to branch birds engage and dart, quickened in the light. The first pale olive leaves stir with emergence, the minor rustle as a bird exits a tree and crosses with swooping flight to another, the morning otherwise still. Tranquil, his back turned, the stranger stands. His feet are unshod, his robe the brown of a gardener. So moveless and silent is he, the birds take no notice and cross the grove singing the new day.
The light is the light of early summer. It cradles the scene, makes of the trees and their undershade a haven.
How he himself comes there, John does not know. He has walked from nowhere but is at the edge of the grove, branches overhead not yet fruited but leaf-heavy and stirring in wind he did not know was there. There is a scent out of old Galilee, a perfume of olives and dust baked in sun. He handles the tough bark of the trees, touching as he passes. The light he sees. How it falls between the trees. How all is balanced, light and dark, as he steps forward. The birdsong is life-full, pulsing. The stranger he knows, even from distance, even though his back is turned. He knows because of how the world is about him. He knows because of this condition of stillness, about him the createdness of things, how in the stranger's company all seems of one purpose, from the smallest leaf-move in unfelt wind to the traverse of a bird, from the patterned fall of sunlight to the pooled shade beneath. In this company he feels all is intent. Nothing is but what is intended. All has been made. And as John walks forward, he feels the deep solace of this, the knowledge he has almost forgotten that he is loved.
'Brother,' the stranger says, turning to him.
'My Lord.'
'Papias! Papias!'
'What?' Linus answers, startled from sleep. He uncoils his long limbs, moves free an ache in the elbow he slept on.
'Papias?'
'It is Linus. I am coming.'
'Where is Papias? Why is he not returned?'
Linus looks at the old man, his filmed eyes, his white beard, anxiety wrinkling his face. Does he not know it is night? Linus speaks to him as if to a fool, slow and loud. 'I do not know where Papias is,' he says. 'You should sleep now.'
'Go and find him,' the Apostle urges. 'I must speak with him.'
Linus gasps at the arrogance of command, looks away as if to others for corroboration.
'It is night now,' he says, bending his long body down and slowing his words further still. 'Night. There is storm coming. There are no stars.'
'But where is he?'
Linus's lips are thin, his face pinched with scorn from narrow chin to yellow hair. 'I have told you, I do not know where he is.'
'And I have told you, go and find him! Go! Go!' The old man's voice is suddenly fierce, and he waves his arm, gesturing outward toward the cave exit and the night.
Linus steps back. How dare he. How dare he shout at me like that. He has it in his mind to shout back, even to push the old man off his stool, but doesn't. He sneers in disgust and shakes his head, walks out of the cave and stands not a yard from the entrance. The night is doubly dark, clouds gathering all day have not yet fallen, and there is strange cold. He holds his arms wrapped together, broken sleep and the raised voice of the old man making him shiver. The sea is wild. The air smells of salt and burning.
After a short time Linus goes back inside the cave and sits, his head propped against his arm on the wall, his eyes closed, looking in vain for sleep.
'Linus is that you? Are you back, did you find him?'
Linus does not answer. He keeps his eyes closed, allows a thin smile to turn up his lips.
'Linus?' the old man calls out. 'Linus?'
Linus lifts a small stone from the cave floor, pitches it high past the head of the Apostle so it lands with a sharp clack against the far wall. The old man turns toward it.
'Who is there? Who are you? Is that you, Linus?'
Another comes through the air and hits on the near side.
'Who is there? Speak! Who are you?'
Linus holds a hand across his smile.
'I command you, speak.'
The old man gets to his feet and feels in front of him. He is dark against dark, finger-tipping at nothing. A clump of dirt is thrown at the back wall, and a bat falls from hanging, flies, then another.
The blind man spins about. 'Stop! Who is there? Linus! Is that you, Linus?' From the dark there is no answer. The bats circle, swoop, flicker in velvet black. John stops then. And it is as though in three moments he arrests the all of him, makes stop the beating of human fear and anger inside himself and stands perfectly still. Then directly he walks the smoothened floor across the cave to where his attendant sits. But Linus is up quickly and with held breath slides along the wall.
In the dark of the cave John turns his blind face to where Linus stands with in-breath pressed against the wall.
'Why do you act so?' he asks, as though he sees. 'Go I tell you. Go and bring Papias here.'
Linus does not move.
'Papias cannot come,' Matthias announces suddenly, his voice at the entranceway, where he stands watching Linus and the old man.
'Matthias.'
'Papias has been injured. I come to tell you.'
'How injured?'
'He has lost an ear and bled much. He has been inside the fisher's hut with the woman Marina when it burned.'
John feels for the cave wall.
'He is living still, but barely. Auster saved him, brought him to me.' Matthias does not take his eyes from the old man. 'He is in my care. I have prayed over him that the Lord may not take him, and the Lord has spared him to me these past hours.'
'He is living?' John's voice is thin and low.
'He is living.' Matthias shrugs. 'My prayers have thus far been answered. He has woken once and spoken wildly and fallen asleep again. In dreams he cries out, but without import. I speak to him, but he is unhearing.'
John cannot speak. He feels a deep wound of love open.
'Be assured my prayers are with him,' Matthias says. 'He cannot be moved. Linus will attend you these times.'
The Apostle stands. 'Take me to him.'
'The night is wild, the storm coming since nightfall comes still. You must remain. He may not live until sunrise. I come to ask that you pray for me in my ministering for his soul.'
'You must take me to him now. I will be by his side.'
Matthias taps his fingertips together before his mouth.
'For your own good I cannot allow it. You know my dwelling is on the cliff top. The way is treacherous. I near fell several times myself. I could not answer to the community with good conscience if anything befell you. Stay here. I will send for you if Papias lives.'
'You defy me?'
'I act from love, O Master.'
'I would go to him now.'
'Of course. But as it is written, "and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit. Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry, for anger resteth in the bosom of fools." '
'You quote scripture to me.'
'The Lord has placed Papias in my care. So I have come to tell you. That you might pray for me that I might bring about the miracle of his living. If it be the Lord's will. Ours is not to understand the mystery of his ways.' Matthias looks to Linus, gestures him to move from where he stands by the wall to the cave entrance. 'The storm will be fierce. You should not leave the cave until it is passed. Linus, observe what I say. Protect our Ancient. See he remains here in safety. God be with us all.'
He did not burn, though the fire was all around him, Auster has told Matthias. Papias did not burn.
From this, Matthias concluded ignorance and fantasy to be the measures of Auster's mind; the youth had probably been rescued too soon, that was all. Miracles were most often explained by the unreliability of the witnesses. The resurrected were most often the buried too soon, the mere sleeping, who woke bound in chambers and fought to be returned. No, the fire would have eaten the youth soon enough. There was no miracle in that. But now, here — so much black blood leaked out of him, the ear cut away — here there is something worth considering. Papias should be dead. He lies on the very lips of death — a moment and they may open and take him. But still he breathes. Such a one is valuable in these times, Matthias thinks as he returns from the cave. Do not mistake the value of a resurrection. He steps in out of the wild, dark wind that is blowing now. In pulsing candlelight Auster looks up from where he is squatted by the rush mat.
'He lives?' Matthias asks. 'Leave us now, but be nearby. I will implore the Divine to let me save him,' he says.
He chafes his hands, sits in the crooked light. The youth's forehead is cold, his breath as nothing on the back of Matthias's hand. Is he already gone? Matthias presses his head to the chest, hears the thin beat of life.
If Papias dies, I will say it was because God wished it. Or should I tell about the woman? Should I say he confessed to me?
Or better, that he awoke before death and I saw the devil himself in his eyes? Indeed. I saw him and fought against him for the soul of our youth. Verily, I will say. Verily, verily I myself drove the devil off, so that before dying our dear Papias was saved. Alleluia. Alleluia.
If he lives, I saved him.
This is better.
Live, youth.
The night howls. The dark is utter. Whips of rain lash the island. The wind lifts the sea into the sky and lets it fall. In the eastern end the charred shell of the fisher's hut is deluged. Metal flanges, twisted tin spoons, earthen bowls, all are taken by the hands of the storm and carried elsewhere. The ground is cleaned of human living. With dextrous intent the white biscuit bones of the dead are lifted, let fly into salt swirl and then dropped to be washed away into the suck of tide. Seabirds unsheltered try to go beyond the storm but are blown backwards in darkness like the souls of the undeserving from the near bounds of heaven. The stars are undreamt. Pathways in the rocks are awash and tumble water like jagged wounds weeping. It is weather eloquent but in language lost or forgotten. It fizzes the air, whistles, roars, bangs, and in their disparate huts keeps from sleep the disciples. Some are on their knees in prayer, others are curled on bed mats and rocking softly, as though riding from doom. On Patmos in winter they are used to storm. The inclemency of the weather they take as a characteristic of their banishment, as though rain rods are the bars of jail. But this storm comes more fiercely than the last, or the ones that have rumbled off across their memory. There is something happening, it seems to say. Something in the heavens is happening. The disciples cannot keep themselves from taking recourse to the scriptures. They are fluent in the writings of the ancients, the testaments of the prophets, and each has their own favourite. To each there are chapters, episodes of assail and trial that have appealed and found residence in their imaginations. Just so, then, are they unable to keep from thinking of these as the storm howls. One, Eli, huddles and sees his candle blow out and thinks of the verse from Job: 'How oft is the candle of the wicked put out! And how oft cometh their destruction upon them! God distributeth sorrows in his anger. They are as stubble before the wind, and as chaff that the storm carries away.' Another, Lemuel the bell ringer, finding fault in himself, is visited always by the vehement, burly-chested figure of Moses. Here in the fifth book, Deuteronomy, for those who fail to observe the commandments, Moses rages with fierce promise: that the Lord shall send cursing and vexation and rebuke, that he shall make pestilence cleave unto thee until he has consumed thee from off the land, shall smite thee with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning. Lemuel tosses beneath his blanket, feels his brow hot, his body cold. In the howling of the storm he hears Moses roar: 'Thou shall be oppressed and crushed away! The Lord shall smite thee in the knees and in the legs with a sore botch that cannot be healed from the sole of thy foot on to to the top of thy head!'
The disciple scratches wildly, prays contrition, screws tight his eyes.
The storm rages.
Something is happening.
Indeed, the heavens are wild, Matthias thinks. He sits forwards, elbows on knees, fingertips a tent below his lips. Perhaps Prochorus hammers on heaven's gate. Perhaps the Divine makes clear his displeasure with him, blows him thither to a furnace beneath.
It is a thought.
Papias breathes still, but thinly. The candlelight is canted, the small room umber and dark, shadows long and twisted. To the howling there is no end.
I have my twelve. But no miracle. This one, the servant of the old man, is most apt. What better disciple. I save him and he follows me. It follows as numbers, one upon the next.
But live, youth. Live.
Outside wind and rain contend. The dark is beaten with fury. The skies crash and bang and no dawn approaches.
But beneath all, prone on the bed mat, from the lips of death Papias returns. His chest expands more profoundly. Matthias draws the candle closer to examine if indeed the colour comes in his cheek. When he is convinced, he blows out the candle and shuts the narrow room into darkness complete. Then he goes dimly to the door and cries out into the storm.
'O heaven! O Divine!'
He has to shout again before Auster comes from beneath a covering, stands in the gale.
'What? What, Master?' he shouts.
'It is Papias. He is dead. Look.' Matthias draws open the door into the dark. Auster sees what he has been told is there, the motionless body of the dead, and is turned back by the hand of the other. 'Go, go and tell the others,' Matthias says into the wind. 'Go and tell the old man.'
Auster nods, blinks, shouts against the storm: 'But the fire did not burn him.'