John (10 page)
There are curious seabirds overhead. They watch for fragments of bread, foodstuffs, fish, and cry raucous as though in torment. The sea tumbles. Sky burdened with cloud releases no light. The island seems evermore a prison.
Then John speaks from a psalm. He speaks softly, as if testing that the words like stepping-stones will take him across water.
'When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion,
We were like them that dream.
Then was our mouth filled with laughter
And our tongue with singing.'
He has found the psalm without looking. The words of it are inside him. It may be that in the lifetime of his preaching he is become a living book. The scriptures entire are scratched on his spirit, written with reed pen, dipped and dug into the soft red pulsing of his inner being. Inside him is a scribed record of testament. The voices of Moses, of Joshua, Ruth, Samuel, the Books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and Job, the Psalms and Proverbs, all of these are within him, and so, too, all from the twelve chapters of Ecclesiastes to the Book of Isaiah, from the voice of Daniel to Malachi. He is living book and carries their voices and their telling like a wind ever whispering inside him.
'Turn again our captivity, O Lord
As the streams in the south.
They who sow in tears shall reap in joy.
He who goes forth and weeps bearing precious seed
Shall doubtless come again with rejoicing
Bringing his sheaves with him.'
His voice grows stronger as he recites. Ioseph looks at him and is moved. 'We have missed your preaching,' he says simply.
The seabirds circle, as though chained.
'We would benefit greatly, all of us, if you preached to us again.' Ioseph leans forwards, speaks to the blind face in near whisper. 'I fear among us are heresies.'
A gap of sea sigh and gull cry. Light darkens under cloud.
John says, 'I know there are.'
Across the stony ground of the cliff top and through the scrub of thorn bush and weed where tethered is a thin goat, Papias hurries. He comes down the slope to the place where he buried the children and is relieved to find the rocks unmoved. He prays a short prayer, then continues to the dwelling. He is not sure why he has come. He is afraid of his reasons and leaves them in a corner of his mind. He knocks on the wooden frame. There is no reply. He calls out, but nothing happens. He looks around, behind him, at the desolate waste ground, three crooked sticks where cloths had been hung, a hank of briny rope, a holed bucket. He calls again, then enters.
At first there are only shadows. Papias can make out nothing. There is a stench of rotting, a salt tang of seaweed stewed long ago. He hands the edge of the rough wooden table, holds there briefly, blinks, says, 'It is I, Papias.'
His breath is loud and short. Fear of many kinds is within him. He thinks of the raw red print on Prochorus's face, the rage of the fever, the skin that buckled and bubbled and curled back from the bone blackly as though peeled. Silently he tries to say 'The Lord is my Saviour' over and over even as he breathes the thick grey soup of the air and fears he takes within him the disease. The Lord is my Saviour. He will protect me. I am a fool. I am weak to fear anything. The Lord is my Saviour. He will not let me die. Across the earthen floor a rat scuttles toward him, is apprised by smell or sense, and suddenly turns, darts into the dark. Papias looks down and in the dimness makes out the legs of the woman Marina.
She is not dead. Her mouth lets a slight warm bloom against his cheek as he cradles her head. Her eyes are far away.
'It is I, Papias,' he says. She does not move. He has not held a woman so, and the living weight of her is shocking to him - not the burden in his arms, for she is light, but the living substance of her. Her hair falls on his forearm. Her face is tilted back, and he touches it to bring her eyes towards him, but they are unseeing. Is that a blemish of contagion on her cheek?
The Lord is my Saviour.
Kneeling, Papias brings her head upright on the support of his arm. She is weak, she is collapsed from exhaustion and grieving, he decides. But within him he cannot escape the memory of her telling that she was with demons. He presses the thought away, shoving it deep. But it merely coils and snakes back and slithers now across his chest.
In an instant he sees it rise, actual, large, and loathsome into the dim air of the small room. It flicks back its head, makes hiss, and stretches with deep luxuriance, released from the tight confines of denial. The demon snake is a hundred times a snake. It twists about, rises to the rough mud of the roof, towers above the man and woman, and lets jab at nothing its forked tongue. Papias stares at it and holds Marina, as though aboard a rudderless boat that enters the mouth of a storm.
The Lord is my Saviour.
The demon laughs. Its coils continue to rise, coming from beneath, curling. Its green-gold-patterned snakeskin sliding past Papias and crowding the room. Now it lies along the lower wall, now a second length upon itself, and a third. The demon is unending; it fills the space like sin and thickens the air with a sweet poison. Papias raises his hand and cries out in fear.
The demon laughs. 'How thin is your faith,' it says. 'Look at you!'
Sharply it flicks forward its great head, lets fly its tongue so the thin yellow fork of it lashes like lightning, snaps, quivers not a finger's breadth from Papias's face. He screams, closes his eyes, thrashes at it wildly with one hand, touching nothing. With his other arm he clings to Marina.
The demon retires a small distance. 'You cannot drive me off,' it says, and laughs again as from behind Papias its tail comes and crosses his belly and enwraps him and the woman both. Papias heaves at it, but it is too great a weight.
'Go!' he cries out. 'Go. Be gone!'
But the demon does not. 'Dear friend Papias, where would I go?' it asks.
'My name. How do you know my . . . ?'
'I know all you know.'
'Spare her,' Papias says. 'Spare her.' He is surprised by his own words.
'If I give her to you, what will you give to me?'
Papias looks at the woman Marina, who lies across his arm. He does not remember speaking again. But at once the coils unwrap from about their waist. From above the demon snake descends in silence and crossing coolly backwards across the disciple's chest, with hiss and flicker, diminishes into nothing.
From a joint gap in the planking of the wall, Auster watches. He sees the young disciple hold the figure of a woman in his arms. So this is why Matthias wanted him followed. This is why he had to go up that treacherous cliff after him. Palms flat on the wall, face pressed sideways, he one-eyes the gap. He watches Papias hold the woman close to him. The youth studies her face, moves hair from her mouth, then he lays her down and rises and goes from view. He returns with water but no scoop. He hand-cups it to her mouth, touches water against her lips. And she coughs at last and sputters some and stirs. Her eyes come to, and she partly sits and is in a wild manner beautiful as she turns to look at him who is holding her.
'You?' she says.
The day being with little wind, the sea is flat and Matthias decides on a boat. A boat is fitting. He sends word by Cadmus: he has had a revelation and wishes to speak of it. Matthias tells him which disciples to call, which to pass by. So to the shore comes a quiet gathering of twelve. Matthias is pleased; numbers are signs, too. In the shallow water a boat waits.
'Come, follow,' he says and steps ahead of them into the low lapping waves. The under-stones give slightly; his brown robe darkens. He does not look behind him to see if they are following.
He walks erect into the sea. Command is in your bearing, and in your mystery, he has discovered, and proceeds in perfect faith. He is not wrong. The twelve, after a puzzled pause of only moments, step down the stony incline into anklets of surf. Matthias is on board the fishing boat and only then turns to see his flock. He goes toward the prow and stands. He wears the look of revelation upon him, or so he considers. The disciples he has chosen are the younger of those on the island. Their youth gives them a hunger for action, and Matthias knows they are restless in this useless banishment. The hold of the Apostle upon them is weakening every day. How long will they continue to believe? How long before worms of doubt eat them hollow? Will they live into old age on Patmos, confined by the Romans like mad dogs? Matthias has run a speech in his mind, an exhortation, a patina of genuine concern to hide the hooks of intent, but all the time feeding doubt, dropping worms to fish. His skills at rhetoric are considerable; he could argue them into discipleship, but in the end has decided on a different lure.
The boat sails with gentle sway. The island retreats and shows itself for what it is, a barren place of grey rock and scrub. The twelve sit ranked on either side, saying nothing. The water deepens below them, a black-blind murk. Matthias instructs Cadmus to lower the dun-coloured sail, and the boat slows and lingers in slap-water sounds, its mast an inverted cross.
Matthias plants his feet and holds open his arms. The time is now; he will wait no longer.
'Let us pray,' he says. The disciples bow their heads. He has a last moment here, a pause that fills him with power. He enjoys the parallels, this touching of something untouchable.
'O seekers of the Divine, it has come to me,' he begins. 'A vision I saw in ecstasy of mind. And to which I bear witness now. To you. For you are the chosen. I will share with you what has come to me, what light has fallen into my mind, that we may all benefit.'
The eyes of all are upon him. He feels his power grow and lets play a long pause. The sea rocks them softly.
Matthias says, 'Heed this: Jesus was a teacher. A great teacher. This we all understand. His place is great and certain, but heed me now, his place is amongst all the teachers who have come since the time of Moses. This an angel has made clear to me that we might know the truth.' Matthias's eyes catch water light, flicker with fallen scintilla.
'There is, my fellow seekers, an ultimate source of goodness. This is the Divine Mind. It is not of this earth. It is not of water or soil nor of flesh nor bone. It exists outside of the physical world. It is in an elsewhere. This world where we stand was not created by the Divine Mind, but by a lesser god. This world is flawed. What great god would make a flawed creation? What great god would make a world wherein a death such as that visited on good Prochorus would be allowed? What great god would allow the scourging and the torture, the crucifixions? The storms that drown the sailors? The great quakes that shake and open the ground wherein thousands perish? This is not the work of the ultimate Divine. We are flawed, all of us. But' - Matthias raises his right hand — 'within each of us in this world is a spark of the one Divine Power.' He raises his voice to announce it. 'Yes. It is true. I tell you the good news. Jesus knew this. He said so. He knew he carried the divine spark and was a great teacher. This is why his disciples followed him. For he tried to teach us that we are all carrying the Divine. We can all hope to touch the mind of God if we have the right teacher, one who hears the voice of the one God himself.'
Matthias steps down into the centre of the boat. He looks at each of them in turn. He watches on their faces for proof that the hooks of his words have taken hold. Some nod slightly, others are unconvinced yet. Still, it is a beginning. He is not discouraged. He points a finger and lets it roam around them all.
'Our teacher,' he says, 'teaches not.' He shrugs. 'He is an ancient who taught for many years. More years than he can remember. More words than he can remember and in more places. He has now the burdens of his great age. He forgets. Linus heard him say so. And of course he does forget. Why would he not? Is he not human? Is he not flawed? In years gone past I have heard sailors tell they knew stories of another who said his name was John the apostle of Jesus, and that this John was stoned in Iconium, imprisoned, brought to Rome, where he died at the side of Peter. So some have said. I have wondered: how could this our ancient be the same? I have heard some say they have doubted him to be who he says.'
There is a stirring of discomfort; it is a step too far and Matthias turns from his course swiftly.
'But of course this is untrue. He is the Apostle of the teacher Jesus. But he is old. He teaches no longer. He waits. We wait.
'But, beloved disciples, I tell you, we must not. This is the urgency that sent the angel to me. We must be taught to understand the Divine that is within each of us. This was the true message of Jesus and of all the teachers before him. We can each be as divine as Jesus if we open ourselves to this understanding.' Matthias pauses. He considers his step and then takes it. 'As have I.'
As he steps further out into his position, exposing what he has kept hidden from them, he feels a surge of power through him. Recklessly it rises from his heart, runs delicious chill along the back of his neck, makes pulse the blood in his very fingertips. Matthias stands as if he is an exhibit. He says, 'This the angel has told me. I, I have been gifted the knowledge. I have understood the message and discovered the Divine inside myself.'
He allows an instant for credence, for the sea sounds and soft noise of the wooden boat. He walks up to the prow of the fishing boat and stands to look back over them.
'If you follow me, I will teach you to do the same,' he says. 'We will become, all of us, the sons of God.'
Marina drinks from Papias's hand. She thinks he may be an angel and this some threshold before another world. She expects the faces of her children. She expects them in winged form in the space above his head. Her husband, she hopes, is in another place, where devils rent his soul asunder.
'Sit,' Papias says, and brings her slight weight against the wall. He does not know clearly why he is come. He tells himself he came to see if she was dying like Prochorus and if he could administer to her and pray for her soul. He tells himself he does not believe he carried the contagion from her to the scribe, but the fear is there nonetheless. If so, why has he been spared? On his hands, on his face in the sea pools he has seen no sign. The serpent devil he saw has left him quivering, like a stringed instrument in after-play.