John

19

They have three days to prepare. In spring light the community is quickened. Age falls off the elders, Papias thinks, and the weakness of after-fast vanishes as if their bodies are things of no consequence. Beneath blue skies the island is no longer a place of banishment, but where they have been steadily preparing their spirits for this, the return. With light step he crosses to the dwelling of Simon, who is caretaker now of the papyri of Prochorus. He brings the message that nothing must be left or forgotten, and is to offer his help. They must bring with them the testaments of their long enduring and belief. Now persecution is at an end. In Papias's mind he understands it as though the world has been cured of an illness. It was not ready before for the Christian message. But time makes all things come to pass, and now, now the glory is near. He moves nimbly up the stones. Perhaps more than the others he feels triumphant joy. He wants to shout out, sing praise into the wide sky. He, after all, has known nothing of true persecution; he has no experience of being despised, spat at, jeered, locked out of the synagogue. He knows the history, but it is not scarred into him as in the elders. He imagines their arrival in Ephesus, the word spreading from the dock as the boat pulls in, the excited crowds that will gather as they walk into the great public square of the State Agora. At last, at last the world will see. Now will commence a time of brotherhood, of charity, hope, of faith. This is what the Apostle meant when he said their work was not even begun. He knew, Papias thinks. He knew with the wisdom of ages that if he waited long enough on this island, eventually the world would turn, the world would at last be ready. And now it is. A time of love is born.

With such rapturous vision, Papias comes inside the dwelling of Simon. He stoops inside the open doorway to see the elder disciple seated on a low stool, his face in his hands.

'Brother Simon.'

The elder raises his head from the mask of his fingers.

'Do not approach!' he calls out.

Papias is startled. 'I am come to help you collect the scriptures of Prochorus,' he says.

'Do not approach further! I command it.' Within the brown umbra the disciple's pale face stares.

'Brother, are you ill?'

'Stay out, Papias.'

'You will feel better if you come into the air. When we come to Ephesus, all will be better. We will have proper dwelling. Real walls,' Papias says, smiling, touching his hand to the mud and stick overhead.

'Stay out!'

'I am only come to help you collect the papyri.'

'It is done. They are all collected. I will leave them by the entrance. You can take them when you sail. I am not coming to Ephesus.'

'We are all going.'

'Not I.'

Simon's eyes are fixed on the faraway. He does not incline his head toward the youth, but considers instead the truth that is before him said aloud in words for the first time.

'But why? Brother Simon, the persecution is lifted, the banishment over. The time of glory for our Lord is here. We go to glory. To Ephesus. To begin the great work. You cannot stay on Patmos.'

'Nonetheless, I shall. I shall remain here and die like Prochorus.' He raises a hand. The sleeve of his robe falls back, and in the half-light Papias can see his hand and arm are bedded with sores. His neck, too, where one side turns, reveals a raised canker black and bubbled.

Involuntarily, Papias brings his hand to his mouth.

Simon nods. 'It is true. I have the plague that killed Prochorus. Though I kept myself from my good friend in all manner when he fell ill. Though I did not allow myself to touch his hand or pray by his side at his deathbed. Though I have lived in poor faith, always fearful for my own health. Nonetheless, I have it. I must remain here. Go and tell the Master.'

Papias does not move.

'Go and tell him.' Simon waves a hand, and now Papias can make out its gnarled form, long incisions where itching has grown intolerable and wounds opened with dark, lumpish gristle. The youth cannot breathe. Fear and guilt stop him.

'Go, Papias. Go with God.'

'We will not let you stay, Simon,' he blurts out. 'In Ephesus there will be healing, there will be cures, food, shelter. You will recover.'

'I will not risk you all by coming with you. It is decided. Go.'

Papias is bewildered. He looks at the bald-headed figure as though he is part of a puzzling dream, a design that does not fit. How can this be? How does this have meaning?

'Go. Be not troubled, young Papias. I am at peace.'

But Papias is troubled. 'We go to Ephesus to begin our great mission,' he says. 'You must be with us.'

'I will remain here. Truly. Only my blessing will go with you.'

'But. .'

'Good Papias. Go lest you take this plague from me. My prayers are only that those who sat to my sides at communion, Ioseph and Danil, are spared.'

'I will go and tell the Master,' Papias says at last. 'But you will be coming with us. We will not leave you.' He turns out into the day and draws a deep breath. His forehead is beaded. He blinks at the light. Below, the sea glistens. On the foreshore are Ioseph and the Apostle, and at once he takes off to race down toward them, spinning stones from underfoot, hurrying down the curved pathway until he meets the sand soft then hard and calls out into the wind.

Ioseph and John stand, and when Papias arrives to them, he breathlessly gasps, 'Simon is ill. He will not come. He says it is the disease of Prochorus. I saw his sores.'

The sea sighs. The waves collapse and come to their feet.

'Say again,' Ioseph says, 'and slowly.'

And Papias does and Ioseph bows his head and holds it so in silence some moments, as though his spirit absorbs a blow.

'He fears for you and Danil,' Papias says to Ioseph, looking at where John's hand lies on the old disciple's arm for guidance. 'He fears a contagion that would kill us all if he came to Ephesus.'

The three stand on the shore. John does not remove his hand from the elder's arm.

'I will go and reason with him,' Ioseph says at last.

Papias is flush-faced and agitated. 'He will not allow it. He is resolved. And. .' He presses his lips tightly together. As if to hear the unspoken, John turns his face toward him.

'And?' Ioseph asks.

Papias shakes his head. He will not say before the Apostle. But John says simply, 'Tell.'

'What if it is true? What if he carries the disease? What if it is on his flesh, in his very breath? What if we bring him with us and we come to Ephesus plagued? Though I love Brother Simon and all who are our community. .'

'Yes, Papias?'

He knows he has spoken rashly. The sign of it is in his cheeks, in the wideness of his eyes. He lowers his head.

'Papias is right,' Ioseph says, 'Simon must stay.' A tall wave unfurls, slowly falling, then he adds, 'And I with him.' His voice is calm. 'I will remain and attend him until the disease passes or takes us both.'

Once Ioseph has said it, all three know it will be so. It falls out as if by natural decree, as if such bonds of love and selflessness are written in air and await only discovery. Ioseph turns to the blind apostle, whom he has known and followed a lifetime. By the sleeve hem of his robe he begins to lift the arm that lays on his and to place it instead on Papias. But John raises both of his hands and leans forwards, reaching till he finds the face of his old friend.

He says nothing. He holds the face in his hands. The wind lifts and lets fall the thin strands of his white hair. Ioseph bows his head. The sea breaks in foam.

When at last Ioseph steps back from the embrace, he bends forward and kisses the sleeve of the Apostle's robe, and, leaving him with Papias, he goes along the shoreline to the stone-way that leads to Simon.

Later, John sits by the cave entrance. Papias attends him. Meletios and Danil have been instructed to gather what things they will not need and bring these to the fisher families on the far shore. They come and go from the cave. What will they need after all? What lies ahead is for each differently imagined. They have lived so long on the island, the greater world has fallen away, first into memory, and then into the shifting domain of dreams. The world they keep with them is the one of childhood. The dust of summer in Judea. The streets of Jerusalem, the shadowed cool by the synagogue, running fleet and barefoot past the merchants' stalls. It is a world from before hearing the Word, before each of their lives were stopped and turned about. In silence and exile on Patmos, almost all had to let go the grief of their days before banishment, the spitting, the name calling, the stones. Each, through dream and prayer and will, had to come to a place of understanding whereby suffering and persecution were part of the Lord's plan, where the ignorance and scorn of the world made it easier to leave it. And leave they had. On the island the world was elsewhere. In the first years of Danil's dreams his narrow jaws ground together until he had a vision of wings sprouting at his ankles and moving him three feet above the ground. He woke and understood they were to live now between heaven and earth, and he lost all resentment of banishment. To Meletios the island took on the form of a great ship pulling away from the shore and sailing on through day and night toward a New Jerusalem always just beyond the horizon. Lemuel, bald-headed and genial, smiled at this. 'The world is light and dark, is day and night rising and falling over us. What need have we of any other world? This place is all places,' he had told Papias. 'Why need we ever leave?'

And so, variously, they had each come to acceptance, and even gratitude. Their prison had become a sanctuary. And now that John has spoken, not all feel, as young Papias, the glory of the return.

Meletios takes a wooden table and Danil stools from the cave across the upper plane of rock. They do not voice dissent, nor even consider it. But yet there is a shadow. What will it be like to leave? The island, bare and harsh in winter, has become a part of them, and the world at Ephesus that now awaits is unknown. Is it perhaps better to remain like Ioseph, even to die there? The Roman lifting of banishment does not mean hatred of them will be gone. Hearts will not have changed, only laws.

They carry the furniture across the island and come down the shale to a crooked hut of stone and boat planking. An old fisherman sits there. They greet him.

'We are, all but two, leaving this island,' Danil says. 'We will leave with you what goods we have in thanks and blessing.'

The old man looks impassively at the gifts.

'There is more. We will bring more,' Meletios tells him, but in the tangled nets of wrinkles the fisherman's eyes do not brighten.

'You can tell all. There will be things of use to be shared,' Meletios continues. Then, uncertain the old man hears them, he raises his voice to call, 'WE GO TO EPHESUS. THE CHRISTIANS GO TO EPHESUS.'

Slightly the fisherman nods, but shows no emotion.

'To Ephesus. We go to Ephesus,' Danil says. He is a short, sturdy figure and his voice is strong.

The old man narrows further his eyes. His mouth is drawn tightly, a downward curve of dismay at all the world. The sunlight silhouettes the disciples before him. He says nothing. What is the price of this bounty? What is asked for all this Christian love? He and other of the fisher families on the island are considered converted, but the old fisherman knows the conversion is a convenience merely, a present tide. Once the Christians leave, their teachings will ebb away, the islanders will remain with only the concern offish and fire. Who knows what believers may come next? In his mouth the old man turns salt spittle of seaweed. Of his face the sun makes a wrinkled map. He makes no gesture or response to the gift, but studies the two disciples who stand puzzled before him.

Danil looks to Meletios.

'Peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you,' Meletios says. He raises a hand in blessing to the fisherman. But the old man remains unmoved. The blessing passes over him. The sun moves behind cloud. He considers a last time these two, sees the torrid future that awaits them in Ephesus, and the very texture of their skin paling with immanent ghosthood.

The disciples turn and walk away. When they are gone, the old fisherman rises and takes the table.

Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.

You said.

Gather up the fragments that remain.

The Apostle keeps his word to teach to Papias. When Ioseph leaves, he walks first with the young disciple down the sand in silence. The bright wind blows, the sea tumbles near. This news of Simon must cause him suffering, but Papias sees it not. There is only this calm, this exterior of serene acceptance. He is the manifest of faith, Papias thinks. This is faith, this quiet in grief, this coming of knowledge, understanding of divine ordinance. He can learn this from the Master. He can learn to shorten the bridge between suffering and acceptance, to surrender himself, to understand. In the Apostle there must be sorrow. He must have thought to return one day, if not with Matthias and the others, then at least with Prochorus, with Simon, with Ioseph. But now there will be only the few. It must wound him, but he bears it so.

They step into the prints of themselves moving, where an apron of surf melts into sand. Above, seabirds hang like banners on the wind.

'Great work is ahead for us, Papias,'John says at last. His voice is almost without tone. There is no excitement or anticipation, but an even sounding as if the words are stones placed carefully to step a stream. 'In Ephesus we will begin a new time of the Lord. We will bring the Word of the truth.'

'The glory is at hand, Master,' Papias says.

Still they walk. The tide touches their ankles.

'Yes, Papias. But such will not be simple. We will meet with opposition. The world may not be ready.'

The blind apostle stops. He turns towards the youngest of them, in whom lies his greatest hope. He touches the air with his hand. Papias thinks to take it, but thinks better of it. He offers only the sleeved arm. For some moments there is this wordless bridge-way between them, frail transport of love and hope and faith.

'There are others gone before us. You know this, Papias.'

'Yes, Master.'

'There will be many Antichrists who will deny that Jesus is the Christ, is the Son of the Father.'

'I know.'

'But now, Papias, now it is the last time. And though we will sojourn in a place of mistrust, of jealousy, though we will be despised and by some hated, we will know one another.' His voice has a sudden quiver in it. In his lost eyes there moves perhaps the future. Perhaps in an inner white domain he can witness their coming, see them, the Christians, and how they will be received. His hand holds tightly the other's arm.

'Papias, we will know one another. We will know one another by love. For this is his Word. We will abide in him, that when he shall appear we will have confidence. Remember this. Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed on us that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knows us not, because it knew him not, Papias.'

The phrase is as a thorn at his eye. The Apostle winces. Because it knew him not. Through the deep layering of acceptance sings this oldest of wounds: that the world did not see. It is in him yet, this piercing. The world knew him not. And if it had? What history then there might have unfolded? What time of love and forgiveness? What if all had embraced him, allowed that the Father had sent his Son? What world might have been? In his mind John cannot white away the images of the thousands crucified, the roads marked with them, the thin, head-hung figures crying out from crosses in the darkening sky. Because it knew him not.

It is the grief of love: that in finding your heart blown open, in seeing the wonder and miracle of another, that this is not perceived by all. The love was not shared. The multitude that followed the signs was turned aside. They spat on him John loved. The wound leaks an old bitterness. The blind man tastes it rise and is quiet.

The seabirds come close to the two still figures, reclaiming their shore.

'We will abide in him,' Papias says. In his voice is a tremor, seeing a first glimpse of what lies ahead.

20

You are coming.

We go to meet you.

To prepare the time, for it is near now.

Truly, you are coming.

What turned before will turn back again. The multitude that was by the shores of the Sea of Galilee. The great number calling out your name that would have taken you and made you their king. When you left them and crossed the sea, they came after by shipping to the temple at Capernaum. They came, though already for healing on the Sabbath the Pharisees had spoken against you.

They came, their number great, their voices loud. We twelve about you in a circle. I, full of pride and love, not knowing they would turn.

I thought: your time is come. I thought: your glory has already begun.

Then said some from Jerusalem: 'Is not this he whom they seek to kill?'

And another: 'Do the rulers know that this is the very Christ?'

And above the murmuring you cried out: 'Ye both know me, and ye know whence I am; and I am not come of myself, but he that sent me is true, whom ye know not. But I know him, for I am from him, and he has sent me.'

And some pushed in the crowd to lay hands upon you, and I and James and Philip raised our hands to ward them back. But already they had sent officers to take you.

Already there was a turning.

Yet a little while am I with you, and then I go on to him that sent me.

And some said: 'This is the Christ.' But others, 'Can Christ come out of Galilee? Is not this man Jesus son of Joseph the carpenter?'

And the turning was as the sea and we upon it.

In the fall of even we went, the twelve, with you on to the Mount of Olives. But you withdrew further and we sat below and spoke of the unrest. Though the night was still and cool, I did not sleep. I watched where you sat further up on the mount, the stars about.

The early morning we followed you again to the temple, each of us knowing what talk and judgement awaited, what already was said against you. The scribes and the Pharisees brought you the woman taken in adultery, asking if you would break the Law of Moses and not have her stoned. Seeing if they might accuse you.

For now there was hatred and some who sought to kill you.

You judge after the flesh, I judge no man. I am the one who bears witness of myself and the father who sent me.

And they said, 'Where is thy father?'

You neither know me nor my father. Whither I go you cannot come. You are from beneath; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world.

If you continue in my word, then are you my disciples. You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

And they cried: 'We are Abraham's seed and were never in bondage to any. How shall we be made free?'

The crowd pressing forward, James and I stepping in front of you lest they try to seize you.

Your voice crying out above the clamour. Those who shouted against you, who pushed against us. One who stepped to the pillar and called, 'See, say we not well that this is a Samaritan and hast a devil?'

The jeering. The mockery. The ones who raised their fists, sought in the ground for stones. One standing on the pillar shouting, pointing. And the first stone coming, and the great surge of the people to seize you. Philip striking out against the head of one; James with both hands outstretched pressing back a number. I pulling down one by the pillar, dragging him by his garment to the ground, falling down upon him amidst the sandalled throng, the sea of anger.

The turning.

That now will turn again.

For you are coming. Your time is at hand.

Facing the sea, John sits against the rock wall, his head back. As light into a cave, memories. Detail, words, voice. They come without summons, vivid, startling. The decades since fall away and he is returned to himself as a youth. He can see each place as if standing there again. In a grove of olive trees. On a road not far from the pool of Siloam. Whole days, sights, weathers, things he did not know he knew, or were ever in his mind. So it comes to him that such were not lost in his memory but are gifts. Out of the great length of time he has lived, out of the constancy of his enduring, his body has weakened, his mind been betimes unclear. But now he is lit. All is strangely clarified. He hears the words of Jesus spoken a lifetime since and knows that change is here. He hears them as if in his company again. There is a sense of nearness, and of imminence; he sits by the rock wall and suffers illumination with a pulsing joy. His blind eyes flicker as if at sights.

Papias thinks to visit Simon and Ioseph before leaving. He thinks of the contagion that killed Prochorus and now stops the two eldest from joining them. Is it my fault? Is it of the air or the flesh? Is it me? Should I have told Ioseph I would stay in his place? I should. It was cowardly not to. Why did I not speak up?

In the cave he gathers and wraps in cloth a few precious things they are taking: two chalices, scrolls, three oil lamps.

What stopped my tongue? Why am I so weak?

Is it simply that I fear death?

Is my faith that small?

Or is it just that I want fiercely to go to Ephesus? To be there when he comes? To witness?

Is my vanity that great?

Papias sickens his spirit with questioning. He has so anchored inside him the elemental prime desire — to be good — that his failure twists in his stomach like a rag rope, leaking loathing, sour, fetid. Goodness — not the act of it, not an incidence considered and carried out, but a constant way of being — is his goal. Papias considers this an answer to heaven, a cry of gratitude for his creation; we should live in the image. We should be as near angels. Imperfection is in each of us, but this we can strive against until our flaw is so near to healed as to show the glory of living, what we can become. Goodness, to be good. Can a man not be good all the time? If not, then we are greater flawed and thus the Creator lessened.

In Papias imperfection is a grievous failing. It rises from his spirit on to his skin. He finds an itch behind his left shoulder blade; at a site he cannot see he scratches roughly. In the cool of the cave he feels hot. He needs water. He hurries the readying of the things so he can go outside.

The Apostle sits in reverie. The day is bright and blown stiffly.

'If you do not need me to attend you, I will go to the well and fill water bottles for the journey,' Papias blurts.

The old man turns his sky-tilted head, his pale eyes. Perhaps he already knows the other's inner condition. 'Go, Papias,' he says. 'Go with peace to get the water.'

The sea is high, the waves white. There is the rolling turbulence of spring, the restless energy of the world returned. He hastens along the wind-way, the water bottles on their cords knocking. The furious itch does not quiet. He walks, chin-in-elbow, with his right hand over his shoulder scratching, so it seems from behind he is drawn forward one-handed by an otherwise invisible other. He shortens the route by cutting upwards across the rock slope, needs both hands to clamber forwards over a steep incline, then again scratches as he stands upright on the high point. The island is all below him. And for the first time since the Apostle's announcement, Papias realises he may not see it again. He has been here and nowhere else as a Christian. It has become even a place of comfort, because here the community dwelled as one without significant interference from others. For all its harshness Patmos has been home. He knows its contours, its goat paths and water holes. Ahead there is only the unknown. He might have taken more time to consider this, but his face is hot and flushed, a cold tide of sickness in his stomach. He needs water. Even the wind blowing against him as he crosses the high rock cools him not. What if I, too, have the contagion? What if it is in me and I gave it to the others and now bring it with us to Ephesus? What if I pass disease to the Apostle, bring about the death of all of us, the end of Christians?

Thrice he strikes his hand hard against the itch in his back and shouts out against its persistence and intensity. He flails at the itch with his nails. What heats so in my blood? Is there a bite? Vividly he sees a night serpent cross the cave floor to his bed mat, stealth and slither, the head finding access in the low back of his robe.

'There was no snake. This is not a snake. Don't be a fool, Papias,' Papias says aloud. He licks at his dry lips, palms a pasty sweat from his forehead, and suddenly feels pulsing pain where his ear has been bitten. He touches it tenderly, as if its healing is turned backward and the ear grows raw and bloody again. As if what goodness was in him is now overcome. He begins to run.

He runs across the top of the island like one who would take flight if not for the absence of wings. He runs against the wind, his long legs clapping his sandals against the rock. He comes breathless and wild to the water hole. It is a dark cleft. A bucket is left. He throws down the water bottles and falls to his knees. He scratches furiously over his shoulder, then takes the bucket and dips it. He draws it back quickly; it cannot come quickly enough. His eyes are blurred. The thing that eats at his left shoulder ravages away, and his head is so hot he thinks in a moment it will flame. He moans with defeat, clasps the bucket, and brings it full to his face. He pours the water into his mouth so it fills and overflows and washes past him down his throat and chest as he gulps. He empties the bucket on to and into himself, drops it and draws it again. His hands are trembling, his arms; the whole of him pitches in shakes. Papias takes the next and again drinks furiously. He is awash in water, his knees in pool. He opens his mouth a wide chalice and fills it, letting overrun before drinking. He cannot drink enough. The water hole itself he will empty. He wants to be inundated, to have all that is within him sluiced, laved. Again and again he drops the bucket to the water. Again and again, from his position on his knees he pours it into and over him. His face and hair, his chest and torso drip. He pulls back the opening of his robe and then roughly draws it off him. He is naked in the wind. The bucket he fills once more. Once more he gulps, his throat aches under the deluge, but he cares not. He tilts the bucket into him. Is there end to what man can take of water? Papias thinks not. His eyes weep it, his body bucks with the assault, but still his thirst. It will not be slaked.

He is crouched there, dousing, land-drowning, with no relief, drinking near an hour later when a fisher's boy comes and stands watching the strange Christian, the left side of whose back is bloodied with raw wounds, as though seized from above by a claw.

21

A new time begins, Matthias thinks. He steps on to the shore. His eye wound stings, but he displays nothing of the pain. He wears a tight smile of tolerance moving amongst the crowds. I have forgotten the common ignorance of the world. So many without so much as a drop of purity. Bodies only, brute as beasts.

The holy are different as fish from dogs.

A grizzled trader with stink breath approaches. He stops Matthias with a hand, rough-coaxes toward his wares. At once Auster comes forward. 'Do not hand him! Leave off.' he cries. There is brief jostle and commotion. The trader unsnaps dogs of curses, but Matthias stands unmoved, unassailable, smiling his one-eyed smile.

A new time indeed.

At first light on the third day Ioseph hears Lemuel ring the bell. He opens his eyes, pauses before stirring from the bed mat, into his heart a seep of sorrow. They will pray before leaving, he knows. They will pray for safe voyage, and for he and Simon, and that all may be cradled in the hands of God. In the moment before he moves, the loss of the community flows darkly into him. In an hour they will be gone. The greater part of his life he has lived in the company of many like-minded disciples. He has the idea of a shared soul, as though each grows to become part of the whole, and is both one and many. Now there is to be only him and poor Simon. He feels the sundering. What happens when the community is so broken? First the death of Prochorus, the going out of Matthias and the others, and now this last, each a blow. Ioseph cannot deny the course of grief, the aloneness he feels. The Apostle would have had them stay to attend Simon, but Simon would not have allowed it. He would have drowned himself in the sea rather than risk them. And so now, now there are to remain on the island only two.

Ioseph moves his thin legs stiffly, rises from the rush mat. Simon lies in a shuddering sleep by the wall.

He sees the spreading light of dawn. The sea is calm. He draws slow, full breath, then kneels down on the stones to pray for Simon's health and for the community's safe passage to Ephesus.

After, he comes back inside and prepares a new poultice for Simon's arm. There is a mortar and pestle, herbs and oils. He works in the half-light. When the remedy is prepared, he draws the stool to the other and sits. Simon's eyes startle wide.

'I am sorry to have woke you.'

'In my dreams I heard a bell ringing, Ioseph. Calling me. Is it calling me to death? Am I at death now?'

'Calm yourself, Simon. You are not at death. It was Lemuel ringing the dawn bell. Be at ease, Simon. I have a fresh poultice made.'

'They are going now?'

'Soon.'

Simon sits upright. He is thinning by the hour. Lengths of white hair lie on the sacking of the pillow. His brow, fretted with a lifetime's worry, he palms tenderly like an egg.

'It was ringing in my dream, too,' he says. 'Or I lose my wits, Ioseph. Do I? Did Prochorus go mad? He didn't, did he?'

'Calm, Simon. It is all right. You are fighting the illness. You will defeat it. I will be here with you.'

Simon lowers his eyes. 'You should go,' he says unconvincingly.

'I am not going until you are well.'

'What if I give you the, the, this?' He holds out his arm. The sores worsen. What was red is blackened now and smells putrid.

'Then I will have it with you, and we will cure together.'

'Agh!' Simon turns toward the wall. 'You are losing your wits already,' he says.

'Perhaps.'

'You have a last chance. You should go now. Take the boat.'

'I am staying.'

Simon's eyes burn as he turns back. 'What if this is my punishment? What if I am meant to be left alone here, to die alone? Have you considered? What if it is the Lord's plan? It will not be so easy to care for me. I am not. . I won't be. . accepting.'

'I know.'

'I will say things I shouldn't. I may cry out against the Lord, against you. I know myself, I am weak. You must think of the days ahead, Ioseph. When the illness ravages not only my body, but my mind. Ioseph, kind Ioseph, go. Go with my blessing. Take the boat.'

Ioseph's chin rests on the bridge of his hands. He considers the urgent face of his old friend, the prominence of the cheekbones now, the pallor of flesh, the eyes aswim. The first signs of rash are progressing faceward from the left ear. Simon seems to have grown smaller in sleep, frailty making him a thin, ancient boy.

'I am staying,' Ioseph says. 'It is decided. Now be still and I will apply the dressing.'

Simon's chin trembles; he presses his lips tightly. His arm he extends, his head he turns away.

After, wordless, in the dull tranquillity that follows acceptance, they go together outside. Though he needs it not yet, Simon uses a stick of olive wood slightly curved. His head is lowered near his hand-grasp. They come some fifty paces, no further, to a little platform of the rock. Light is risen. Gulls and other birds cross the wind. Side by side the disciples stand and watch below the small remnant of their community progress across the shore to a fishing boat with cream-coloured sail. They watch, unspeaking. Lemuel helps the Apostle to step from the water onboard. Then Papias, Danil, Eli, and Meletios, are by turns hand-pulled up. It is done in moments. Then the fisherman turns the sail and swiftly the boat slaps away into the shallow waves.

They watch it go like a candle flame, bright above the darker water, but with each instant diminishing further into the distance, until at last they can see it no more. Neither man moves. For a long time they watch the nothing that remains of it on the horizon. Then Ioseph sees that Simon's hand shakes badly where it holds the stick, and for support he places his arm under the other disciple and leads him across the silent island to a rock where the sun warms.

The fishing boat cuts quickly into the water. The disciples do not speak. Each carries jumbled burdens of anxiety, uncertainty, caution, of regret as well as hope, but these remain unvoiced. They look to the Apostle, who sits in the prow, his blind head aslant to the sky. Then, each to their fashion, they try and lighten their spirits. Sand-haired Meletios looks back at the island, as if it is part of himself that retreats now. He sees its contour and dimension for the first time and is astonished that it seems so small. How can this have been where such faith was? How can this mound of grey rock have been home to the entire community? It looks no more than a dark fragment, fallen off, adrift from the greater mainland, rocky anchorage of a lesser God. The years they have spent there grow small even as the island does. All that time, the day after day of waking to the dawn bell, the rituals of their faith, the silent enduring through harsh winters, blazing summers, seems in some manner diminished as the boat pulls away. Will none of it matter if in Ephesus they are not received? Will the world be ready for the Word? Meletios holds his hands tightly. The island gone, he lowers his head, and is like Danil and Eli across from him, bowed over a stomach tangle of questions.

Lemuel the bell ringer is not so. He stands by the mast, his face turned upwards in a smile. His eyes shine. In the slap and roll of the sea beneath him he delights. He is remade a boy and opens his mouth with surprise at the strength of the wind, the crack it sounds in the sail. He bounces six steps down the boat following a high wave, and though the others wish he would sit, they don't say. The voyage to him is a wonder. He leans to the side to see the Aegean depth, what fish silver the under-boat, what brown-and-white gleams flash past and sink into sea ink. A wave crashes the old salt timber of the bow, and the splash rises to his face. He cries out and the others look up, but for a moment only. Lemuel laughs. He laughs full-mouthed with head back and hands by his side. Great whoops of joy escape him. His eyes are blue of lapis; he is in his fifth decade but in dripping seaspray is giddied back to an earlier self, awe-filled, juvenate. He cannot sit down. The fisher captain shakes his head. This is the sea-madness of the Aegean, the sometime elation that takes hold of a soul skimming over such blue. Sky and sea alike are ultra, are blue beyond blue. The whitecaps of the waves arise like rapture. Lemuel bends across the side, his heels out of his sandals, his head and shoulders out of sight where he reaches to put his hand in the moving tide. He five-fingers the flow, watches the eddy about his white hand. There is such pull, such energy of motion, such elemental force. Lemuel lets his hand get pulled away from him through the water, then tugs back through the wake. What it would be to slip over into the current now, what easeful peace to be carried swiftly away in the blue.

'Lemuel.' Papias places his hand on the bell ringer's back. 'Be careful.'

The other moves back from where he hangs overboard. He looks at the younger disciple and beams.

'It is dangerous, Lemuel.'

'I am filled with joy.'

'God is with us. He brings us out of exile.'

Lemuel smiles. He cannot keep a smile from his round features.

'We might best to sit,' Papias suggests, but Lemuel shakes his head. 'This flowing of the sea, it moves me, Papias. I have forgotten.' He smiles again and turns back to the slap and splash of the side, the fishing boat tilting now in meeting currents, angling over deep into a seam in the sea, then righting as it seals up beneath them. Lemuel stands and rocks, in the slow rhythm of the Aegean not imagining water sprites, sea serpents, or other of the vast population of mer-creatures mythic and storied, but only as it comes to him a memory he does not know he has remembered: in his mother's womb, the sea, and he a sail.

What we are.

What little we are, we are for you.

We who have remained and come now as witness.

In fellowship.

John prays. His prayers take mixed form, both the ancient texts of the psalms, scripture he has known since a child, and short simple phrases addressed to Jesus. He converses as though certain he is heard, though he hears no reply. He says all silently. He sits hunched down in the front of the boat, a small white form with blanket about him. Strands of his hair fly about. Spray saddles his shoulders darkly. The fisher captain offers him sea grass to suck, but he declines. In the blind dark where he is, John is far in contemplation. The physical world is gone. What is prayer and what is thought are not delineated. He has lived so long distant from the measure of time, the reality of the body, that he is as might be imagined a spirit, a portion of light in the corner of a fishing boat.

The sea moves past. Adjudging the spring currents treacherous, the fisher captain sails them northwesterly. They leave behind them the Dodekanisos, the twelve, heading in the direction of the island of Ikaria, where they will pass the first night out of exile. The fisherman has a cousin in Agios Kirykos. The small boat is borne swiftly, a ragged banner of the gulls of Patmos overhead. Other boats cross before them, fisherboys and men eyeing the strange crew of Christians who cast no nets. Lemuel waves to them. Wind flaps and cracks in the sewn sail.

'Are you well, Master?' Papias asks. 'I have water if you thirst.'

The pale face turns upward to the voice. 'Thank you, good Papias; no, I thirst not.'

'We are away from Patmos.'

'Yes.'

'I had forgotten what it feels to move freely.'

Though he has not indicated fear, the Apostle says to him, 'Be not afraid, Papias.'

The youngest disciple sits by John. He drinks the water himself. In the sea he feels still an unslaked thirst.

They sail on in silence, the disciples burdened each by fear and hope alike. Do they come in triumph now? Is this at last the time for salvation, the age of Jesus Christ the Lord and Saviour come now, and they its harbingers? It is long since they have walked in a busy street, had casual converse before a trader's stall, laughed at wit or anecdote, dwelled in the flux of everyday that the ordinary is to be extraordinary for them, and as such holds a fascinating terror. How shall it be?

As the boat puts Patmos behind them, with every moment the world draws nearer. Danil looks up at the sail, tight with wind, and wishes the breeze might lessen for a time. Might not the breath of the sky be stilled awhile? Sudden change in sea condition is not unheard of; wind as easily goes as comes. Why not now? Why not a brief respite, and they to be left adrift mid-sea, meandering the blue waters for a time until their hearts were ready? It has been too quick, Danil thinks. Three days to change a lifetime. To turn around to face the world. Would it have been so terrible to have waited a week? Even a month? What is a month to the Lord, who has all time unto eternity?

The wind does not lessen. It sits in the sail like a chest-proud athlete pressing forwards. Hunched against the creaking, salty timber, shut-eyed, Meletios rocks softly to the rise and fall of the southern Aegean. Next to him, Eli knots his fingers, knucklebones a rough bridge beneath his chin, and stares at nothing. Lemuel alone looks at the world approach.

In the proximate noon of the day, the bell ringer at last sits and then kneels in the bow, and the others do likewise. As has been their way for years, they pray the twelfth hour, and, bent in the boat travelling the sea waves, are as in the side gallery to an invisible altar.

The blue is unbroken above them.

Seeing them so the fisher captain is moved and steadies the sail. Abashed by the reverence and being witness to the peculiar intimacy, he looks away into the wake. In the trailing white water he sees a silver school offish. It glitters just below surface, a great wide V, following, fleet, as if pulled in undertow. In all his years of throwing nets he has never seen so great a number. He studies the waters about them, what might betoken this uncaught catch, what manner of thing is happening. But the sea on all sides is as ever and reveals nothing. He takes a step on to some wooden crating for a better view outwards and down. In the full scope of his vision, as far as the furthest ripple they have left in the sea, is this gleaming arrow of fish. It comes in their after-waters catching light, then shadow, then light again. Though the boat moves cross-current toward Ikaria, the fish follow, a silent suite, opaque as souls, profound as mystery. Such might last a moment, might in ordinary fish life be the happenstance of tide and timing, a brief meeting of man and creature in the sea hectic, but this is something other. The fish follow. While the disciples pray, bowed in the boat, the multitudinous school swims after and grows greater until it seems a portion of light itself fallen from above and by means unknown attached to this strange cargo of Christians.

22

They come ashore at Agios Kyrikos. The island of Ikaria is verdant and fertile, and it does not escape the disciples how barren and unforgiving was Patmos by comparison. Here are green arbours, olive groves, many freshwater wells to the single shallow, poor one in Patmos. The disciples step from the boat like innocents, heartened by the loveliness, by the ordinary that seems to them tender and full of marvel, even by the noisy movement of traders by the boat docking.

'What have you got?' a short, sour-faced trader calls to the fisher pilot.

'Travellers from Patmos,' he says, and looks behind to where the fish are no longer to be seen.

'From Patmos? What do they bring? What do you bring?' the trader asks, his head pressed forwards on his neck and his eyes narrowed, as if to scrutinise this puzzle.

'We bring the word of the Lord Jesus Christ,' says Papias with blunt innocence.

The puzzle revealed, the trader pulls back. 'Christians,' he scowls, 'you have nothing so.'

'We have. .'

'Papias, come,'John interrupts, lifting a hand toward the trader. 'God be with you.'

They move away, staying close together. They wait while the fisher captain visits his wife's cousin, brings the news that she is with child. They walk the unfamiliar way into a street of dwellings that seems to crowd toward the water. Outside dark open doors, men stand conversing in the shade. They stop to watch the strangers.

'God be with all,' John says quietly as he walks on, leaning to Papias's arm, progressing up the street and leaving behind them murmurs and whispers. Word of their arrival slips away into the open doorways of the village like a cat making rounds. When they are passing near the top of the street, a large man of heavy jowls salutes.

'Greetings, strangers. Be most welcome to Ikaria.'

The disciples stop.

'God be with you,' says Lemuel, his blue eyes smiling.

'And with you, strangers,' the man says, and makes a shallow bow, laying forwards his arm in the air and drawing it back as though he rolls out before them an invisible carpet. 'I am Cenon. This is my dwelling. You have travelled from Patmos?'

'We have,' Lemuel answers. 'We are Christians come from exile to bring the word of our Lord Jesus Christ.'

'You must be hungry, Christians? I have food,' Cenon says. He places his hands on the amplitude of his hips and rocks gently in his sandals. 'Come in and eat.'

They are hungry, it is true. Momentarily they stand in the street shadow before the large figure, given pause by the surprise of generosity. Is this how the world is to be? Is this the sign of the coming times when the hungry shall be fed and the weary given rest?

'Come, come inside. The old man looks weary. Come sit in the cool shade and rest yourselves,' Cenon offers, and turns sidelong as though he obscures the attraction of the entrance. He takes two steps towards it, holds out his hand, smiles back at them. His eyes are small as dark beads.

When the Apostle does not speak, Lemuel answers for them. 'We will, with thanks,' he says.

They enter a stone house for the first time in many years. The straightness of the walls, the carpets, the cushions of lambswool, carpentry of table and stools, all such are as marvels. So, too, the sudden quiet. For, inside, they no longer hear the sea.

'Sit, sit, Christians,' Cenon says, and indicates the best places, the scented water bowl where they may wash. The room is dim and smells sweetly. 'I have figs from Thessalia,' he tells them.

When they are seated, there falls a hush in which the disciples feel lost. It is so long since they have sat in the company of others, they have forgotten.

Roundly Cenon chews a fig, offers the bowl. Fat-fingered, he scratches at the brown curls above his ear.

'So tell,' he says. 'You have been in exile on Patmos?'

'We have,' Lemuel answers and beams, as though in telling it now there is only humour.

Cenon nods. 'There is no cruelty like Roman cruelty.' When this brings no response, he says, 'Drink, drink your fill. You must thirst after the voyage. I have berry wine. Old sage, will you drink wine? Here, give this beaker to him.'

'I would drink water,'John says, 'with thanks for your kindness.'

'Water, here, water first. Drink your fill.' He pours it. He stares at the blind apostle. 'You are a great age, O wise one.'

'This is John, the beloved apostle of our Lord Jesus Christ,' Papias says. He has said it before he realises he shouldn't. He has said it before he sees Eli and Danil shake their heads.

'Indeed?' says the large host. 'I am honoured.' He rolls a hand over thrice in front of his chest, as though spreading a fragrance. 'My house is honoured.'

Papias looks down, his face burning.

Cenon presses his great weight forward. 'You were with him in Jerusalem? What wonder! What miracle your own enduring! I have heard from travellers' tales of this great prophet, this Jesus. They say he could make water wine, turn rocks to bread. O mighty prophet indeed!'

'The message of our Lord is love,' Papias says, thinking to recover himself.

'Love, indeed love. Noble message, young traveller. Love, O that we love one another. I am myself a servant of love. Have loved long and wide, am known for love. Ask any. Indeed a noble message. Drink, more berry wine; these olives are without parallel. I offer them in love.' Cenon bows slightly, chin pressing fat folds forward. 'So you were exiled to Patmos?'

'We were.'

'Bare nothing. Verily a rock, nothing more.'

'It was where we held our community,' Meletios says. His soft-spoken manner is suited to kindness, to the sympathy of this stranger.

'Of so few? Did you suffer plague? They say there is pestilence on Patmos? You are all. .' He does not say 'clean'; he says '. . well?'

'We are,' Danil replies quickly, the berry wine strong. 'We bring nothing but the good news.'

'A wonder. A marvel. Verily I thank my good fortune in encountering you. Blessings upon us all.' Cenon draws a fig, pulls back its flesh with his top teeth, turns it in his cheek. 'But you, O sage,' he says, swallows, 'you in truth are the marvel. You have been at the right hand of Jesus of Nazareth?'

John does not answer directly. There opens a brief unease, but Cenon is quick to dispel it. 'O a mighty prophet,' he says, 'a most excellent prophet. Here, I have roasted goat meat crusted with herbs. Christians, help yourselves. Be welcome. Be welcome.'

Unfamiliar with charity, the disciples are unsure. They look to one another for consent, for guidance. Hunger turns in the empty bowls of their stomachs.

'We thank you,' Danil says, and goes to where the meat is laid. Eli and Meletios and Lemuel join him. Papias stays by John's side. They hear the commencement of a prayer of thanks.

'Shall I bring you some meat?' Cenon asks. His breath is sweet. 'There is plenty for all.'

'Water is food enough for me, my thanks,' John answers.

'You are a wonder, Ancient one.' The large host considers the others eating his food behind them, then he leans closer still to the old disciple. 'I know,' he whispers. He looks back; the others have not heard. Papias, although present, is ignored. Cenon brings his mouth to the Apostle's ear, hotly whispers again: 'I know. I have heard of you. I have heard tell there was one, an ageless sage who remained. I have heard he, too, did miracles and wonders. Cured the sick, made whole the infirm.' Cenon turns his tight eyes back to the others. 'There is sweetbread with honey,' he calls. Then he whispers again: 'I know your Jesus made more than water into wine or rocks to bread. What use of wonder are these? I know he made stones to gold and silver, too, and why would he not, being able to? And is this what he taught you, O sage? To Patmos did you bring a wealth, or did the Romans take it from you? It matters not. You have the power still. You come back to make the golden temples to your Lord, and praise be to him. Praise indeed! But for my kindness, for my welcome, something small.' Cenon draws the bowl of olives and places it in the blind apostle's hand. 'Make these to gold, it will suffice.'

The disciples have noticed the intensity of the exchange and have come forwards. They stand close.

John holds the olive bowl a moment only, passes it to the side. The anger in his voice is apparent at once. 'Our Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God,' he says.

'O indeed, I doubt it not,' Cenon answers quickly. 'The Son, the greatest of the prophets, a spirit of almighty powers! Hail to him! I am a believer like you, like all of you. And ask only a little reward.'

John stands, Papias with him. 'Blessed are they who give and seek nothing.'

Cenon blocks their way. 'A bowlful of olives. No more. Just this,' he asks. 'So that I might spread the word of your master,' he says to the disciples.

But already they are moving to the entranceway.

'Stop, stop, reward a believer!' Cenon calls, and when it is clear they will not, he puts down the olives and cries out, 'You have eaten my food! You have taken my generosity! And given nothing!'

The disciples come out into the sunlight with the fat host hurrying behind them. At the rear, Meletios stops. 'We have no coins,' he says. 'We give you our thanks, we have some seeds.' He offers a handful. Cenon slaps them into the air.

'Seeds for wine! Seeds for meat! You are robbers all of you! Christians are thieves and beggars as they say of you!'

The disciples move away. They do not look back. Behind them Cenon roars and curses. He picks from the ground stones of hand size and throws these after them; his aim poor, they land short and thud into the hardened dust of the street. But a boy, watching, serious and intelligent, lifts a smaller stone and offers it. 'Fire it! Go on! Fire it! Thieves and beggars!' Cenon cries. Briefly the boy stands, perplexed with the licence to wound, then he flings the stone overarm. It whizzes through the air and catches Danil in the back of his head.

'Good boy. Good boy, another. Another for a sweet fig!' the fat trader calls. But the boy, studying the ground for another stone of just such weight and size, allows the disciples to escape down the street.

They hasten down the shaded side of the crooked line of dwellings. Some have come outside to see the commotion and watch without comment this elderly caravan of men pass. A woman cradles a basket in her arm, considers Papias, whose bitten ear sings redly. With the old apostle on his arm, he looks away from her. They cannot move quickly enough. Danil leads, then comes Papias guiding John, with Eli, Meletios, and Lemuel behind.

The Apostle's gait is uneven and uncertain. The stones of the street catch his toes; he stumbles and sways and is borne upright on the strong arm of the youth. This is a new dark. In the years John spent on Patmos — first seeing, then blind — the geography of the island he took inside himself. He knew how each path ascended from the sea, which rock-way crossed to the altar stone and which to the well. Each crag and slope, each fissure, terrace, and fall of ground, he knew as one might come to know as an intimate the features of a prison. The island became to him an inner as well as outer place, in time first familiar and then even — though it went unsaid — in some manner, comfortable. To leave it was a considerable challenge to all, but to him whose blindness had become lessened with acquaintance it was an arduous decision.

So he finds the way troublesome. John has never set foot before on Ikaria. He has no sense of the street, its upwards slope, its crooked turnings. He does not know where they take him, nor what figures watch from doorways. Dimmest blurrings of light he catches if he turns his face full to the heavens, as though the blue above is thickly veiled. He knows the earth and the sky, but little more. He is made breathless with their flight out of the village.

'None are behind us,' Danil says. 'We can stop.'

'Here, rest here, these rocks.'

John's right hand reaches down, Papias guides it to the rock.

When they are sat there none speak. They are like ones that bear the pieces of a broken vase.

It is the afternoon of the day. Behind them the land greens with April. Olive trees are in bud. The sea air is softer than on Patmos, and the springtime of the year is everywhere. But the disciples are spirit-wounded and sit slumped in recovery. In each is the need to reassemble the idea of the world they go to meet. It is an old story, the misunderstanding, then the hatred and the persecution. And though their experience thus far is of only one, this fat trader Cenon, it has echoes in a hundred memories. Silently they chastise themselves for the simplicity of their hope, and then must rebuild it stronger. They must believe in a new world. They must believe in it strongly so to accept that the last vestiges of the old one, the age of intolerance and hatred, are still present, but that it is also about to end, and that they return not only as heralds, but as architects of the time of love and forgiveness.

It is an onerous and intricate spirit-labour. They sit in silence. Some pray. An hour falls past them, another.

In the changing light, a thin figure approaches. Papias gets quickly to his feet. The others stir. The figure comes the dry dusty road very slowly. He is in the sunset and they see only the silhouette. Soonest to defend them, Danil rises and stands before the Apostle. They are old men for fighting now but if needs be will give their lives for John. The figure stops. Only now has he seen them by the side of the road. There is a moment of delay, a brief interlude in which the figure must consider their number and strength, and then he comes forwards.

Where the road turns him out of line of the sun, he is shown as himself. Papias knows him at once.

'It is the boy from the village,' he says, 'the boy who threw the stones.'

He is sallow-faced, a thin, wide-browed youth with intense eyes. He comes to within ten feet of them and stops. He looks with cool regard, as if they are species beyond catalogue in his experience.

'For what have you come, boy?' asks Danil.

The boy turns. Only then does Danil see the stone in his right fist held loosely down by his side. The boy does not answer directly. It may be he is himself trying to answer, For what have I come? What reason underlies the reason?

'For what have you come?' Danil asks him again.

The boy studies his questioner closely. He seems so intent on the disciple's face that it is as if he expects understanding to be found there. There is further delay, time fragmented, the boy still and profoundly serious. For what has he come? He holds the stone tightly. They are near about him. Is he the emissary of hate? Does he come to win praise by wounding them, these old men and one youth? Is this his reason?

Papias steps forward, puts his hand on the boy's shoulder, who turns to face him.

'You are forgiven,' he says. 'We bear you no ill.'

'Truly,' says the short, stout figure of Danil.

The stone slips to the ground. The boy opens his mouth and makes a guttural noise from below his broken tongue. It is expression in no language, a low choke sound the mute boy can make. He stands amongst them, reading their lips, and coming to a first understanding of the question Danil asked.

'Go, go with our blessing,' Meletios says to him.

'Go with the blessing of our Lord and Saviour,' Papias urges, and pats the boy's shoulder.

He turns away from them and walks back a small distance. He stops and sits by the roadside.

He remains as the evening comes. He is there as the disciples realise they will not sail from Ikaria that day and must make bedding beneath the spring stars. He is there as they pray together before nightfall.

The Apostle tells them, 'Jesus said, "Verily, verily, I am the door of the sheep. I am the door, by me if any man enter in he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and shall find pasture." '

He pauses, tracing back through a vast terrain to find the place and time again. Then he says, 'Jesus said, "I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. But he that is a hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming and leaveth the sheep and fleeth, and the wolf catcheth them and scattereth the sheep. The hireling fleeth because he is a hireling, and careth not for the sheep. I am the good shepherd and know my sheep, and am known of mine."'

Again he pauses. The disciples wait, uncertain if he will continue. Darkness is fallen.

Sorrow rises in John's throat. He touches his lips together where a tremble moves in them. He swallows loss and the suffering of love. It would be easier not to recall. Knowing the outcome, knowing the end of Jesus's days with him, it would be easier if afterwards his mind had been taken, if in his great age he had forgotten all. But he remembers. A light shines inside him. He raises again his voice: ' "And other sheep I have which are not of this fold," Jesus said. "Them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd." '

The disciples nod. They think of what lies ahead in Ephesus, of the other sheep that are not of this fold. By the words, by the enduring presence of the old apostle, they are consoled. They barely hear the whisper on which he finishes: ' "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again.

He lowers his head. He hears the words as if spoken for the first time. Rising around them is the memory of after and those turning against Jesus, of fierce debate and anger and accusation from the Pharisees.

John remembers. He remembers Jesus slipping away before they would stone him, and he a youth following, protective, moving to the street and hastening from there by the side of Jesus until they were again beyond Jordan and into the place where John the Baptist had begun. A return to the beginning, he remembers. And the time that they abode there when peace was, and when John wished they might have stayed living in tranquillity with the disciples, out of Judea, in the simplicity of love. The time they were by the river is in memory sunlit and golden. A time out of time. Though he knew then it could not continue, nonetheless he wished it so with all the fervency of his young heart. And they did stay on, and Jesus stayed among them there, until a man came walking with the news from Martha that Lazarus was sick.

Cold night of glittering stars spreads overhead. The disciples untie blankets. From his place nearby, hunkered, holding his knees, the boy watches. Meletios brings him a bedcloth.

In the first wafer of dawn light, when Lemuel rings the bell, the boy is discovered to have come nearer in the night.

When the Apostle gives the day blessing, the boy's head is bowed like the others.

23

The fisher captain finds them in the morning. His eyes swim in the night's drinking. His footing on the ground is uneven, as if the earth is not flat. The tide turns, they must hurry.

They follow him through the village, the mute behind. Papias tells him he must return to his parents, but the boy simply follows a few paces after. Villagers with looks quizzical or mistrustful arrest and stare. A dog yelps, dances in frenzied tailspin barking. At his doorway Cenon scowls, tips a bowl of yellow foulness at their passing.

'May God curse and strike you down for thieves and beggars!' he cries. He looks to the blue sky. 'O God hear my prayer!' Then he sees the stone thrower. 'Boy. Boy, come here! Throw fresh stones. Boy. Idiot boy, come!'

But the boy doesn't. They board the fishing boat as before, the captain making ready the ragged sail. Wind awaits. The mute watches them. Then, as they are leaving, he holds out a hand and Danil pulls him aboard.

Their route takes them north-east. They pass the islands of Thymaina and Fourni to the south, sail the steady waters between Ikaria and Samos. All are silent. Even Lemuel sits and clasps his hands together in thought.

John turns his face to the oncoming wind, as though he sees.

It is coming now. Now we return.

Ephesus. To Ephesus.

He knows where he goes. For he has been there before. In a lifetime since, it was to Ephesus he came with Mary after the crucifixion. To a small, low house with a vaulted doorway, where she might be kept safe. It was as he was instructed, but it was not what he had wished. He was young. In the aftermath he wished he might die. In the shadow of the cross he wanted a sword. He wanted to run against all, flailing a blade, to kill as many as he could. He wanted to be crucified. Nothing other could appease the loss. It did not matter to him then that his discipleship would end at once, that there would be no continuance, no preaching or conversions. He had seen the nails being driven and turned away, biting away his lips to keep from crying out. How could he stand idly by? What was to be gained by living? He had stood at the foot of the cross in the wild lamentations. He could not look up at the body with the downfallen head, the glisten of sweat and blood in the thunderous dark. The cries were all about him. Murmurings and jeers, whispers, pointing. He wanted to shout to them all, to say, Look, look what you have done, that here was love itself nailed and dying before them. How could he not cry out?

Then, knowing his grief, Mary had turned her head towards him. She did not speak. In her was a calm like a white robe folded. From the cross Jesus said, 'Woman, behold thy son.' And to John, 'Behold thy mother.' And the youth he was knew his last instruction was to care for her, and he did not think yet there was another meaning coming after and into his care would be an entire community, a Church.

It was a lifetime ago. It was the day he most wanted to be dead. To be with the Lord, not to live and care for his mother. But he obeyed and remained.

They had stolen away from Jerusalem weeks later, after the third time the risen Jesus had shown himself, leaving the city by night with a single ass and going northwards as if following a star, though in the sky none shone. They moved like lepers under darkness, wore coverings of thick blanket over their heads, spoke to no other, their route at first not direct nor expedient but the staggered meander of a small creature stunned under a blow.

Ephesus. They had come to Ephesus to seek asylum, to be unknown in the crowded city, where believers were varied and many. When they entered the low stone building at the end of their journey, they sat in the darkness without words. Neither peace nor rest was there, only an exhausted quiescence. In the stillness of after-travel, grief caught up to them and came with its paring knife. They suffered it without complaint, each in the unimaginable torment of having lost the company of Jesus.

Ephesus. John remembers. He was there before the beginning of his great travels. He knows it is there he must return.

Bent forwards in the boat, Papias's back stings. The mainland of Asia Minor is before them. The disciples watch the coastline with volatile mix of hope and apprehension. Glory awaits, Papias thinks. We are almost here. The scabs in his back sting, but he does not itch them. Tremors of excitement move in his blood. It will be now. Now the work will be done. The way will be prepared for the Lord once more. And though I am unworthy.

He stops. He sees the shoal offish in their wake. He takes from it instant meaning, and his spirit is further stretched and in joy flaps like a sheet held at each end. He dips a hand in the swift sea. Then he notices that the mute boy is looking directly at him and has seen the fish following, too. Papias smiles. The smiles keep rising like bubbles off the floor of his belief. He cannot keep them from his lips. He lowers his head when he fears he might burst one in laughter, then smiles at the boat bottom at his feet, the small slop of saltwater in which sit his sandals. Sunlight plays upon their heads, makes liquid dazzle, and their arrival is accordingly imbued. All will be well, Papias thinks. We are in his hands now. Eyes shut, he raises his head to let light flood his face. His smile goes heavenward. Noise of the near shore is within hearing, traders, boys, labouring carts, those in converse whose eyes turn to consider the cargo arriving.

The fishing boat slows, bumps, sounds a rough drag, and sways back and over twice.

Though I am unworthy.

Papias opens his eyes to the great joy that is to begin. He stands as do the others in the tilt and knock of the boat. He holds out to the Apostle his arm and touches it against him so as to ascertain its support.

'We are arrived.'

As the old man reaches out his thin hand, Papias takes the briefest look behind him. But in the murk waters the fish are no longer to be seen.

24

Be with us.

Be with us even as we come to meet you.

They are on the outskirts of the city only, but already in the commotion and press of commerce. Traders, dealers in fish and fruits, merchant's boys, eye all arrivals for bargains. Sun falls on the Christians as they leave the fisher captain and come on to the mainland in a tight cluster. Even in the flux of travellers who frequent that place, coming from the four-cornered world, it is apparent at once that these are other. They wear a frail hesitancy and cannot keep from looking at all that surrounds them. The ordinary is rendered miraculous, all the loud and untidy activity of human engagement. Cries, calls, laughter; there is such noise, Meletios thinks, turning his head this way and that at each voice. It is truly now that the long silence in which they have lived is apparent. The island has transformed them, among its actions the ablution of the memory of this, the rough animation of man. They have forgotten what it is to move in a crowded street. Some push against them, going elsewhere. Others call overhead the price of a catch, are haggled down, cajoled. A crate of fish is carried past; stacked silver and mouth agape, the fish appear in astonished pose no different to Meletios, Danil, Eli, Lemuel, and Papias.

The disciples move up away from the sea unsure of exact destination other than to enter the city proper. Danil leads. Behind him the thin, remarkable figure of the Apostle on Papias's arm, the others behind, the mute at the last. They are a ragged parade in clothing and manner, and all but vanish in the throngs.

Nonetheless they are seen. The one who sees them is himself unnoticed. He stands in against a white wall in his white garments. He watches some moments to be certain. He counts their number, then hurries away with the news.

Ephesus, great and ancient, lies at the mouth of the Cayster River. Its coinage as old as any, it has already been a city for twelve hundred years. To here come the merchants from up and down the coast of Asia, from Miletus, Pergamum, Smyrna, and beyond. Here was born Heraclitus, who said from water the soul wins life, then proclaimed that fire was the central element of all the world. Here, too, were born the philosopher Hermodorus, the poet Hipponax, the painter Parrhasius, and these among a full galaxy of artists and artisans, geographers, astrologers, goldsmiths. The city has a history of the gifted, but the arts alone do not account for its greatness. Almost two hundred years ago it was in Ephesus that Mithradates signed the decree ordering all the Romans in Asia to be put to death. One hundred thousand are said to have perished. But in four years Sulla again took control and slaughtered in Ephesus the leaders of the rebellion, returning it to Roman rule. It is territory soaked in blood, but traversed by pilgrims, too. It is here, on the marshy banks of the River Selinus, that Chersiphron built the wonder of the world that is the Temple of Artemis, that which was burnt down and then rebuilt for a hundred and twenty years to the plans of the architect Dinocrates. The route to it is packed hard with the feet of petitioners. It is to the glory of the female, and brings to the goddess bountiful offerings from all parts. It is a city so, suited to the supernatural, its citizens acknowledging the higher world. To many it is considered almost a portal, a place where the gods might hear more easily the myriad of entreaties and respond with favour. Here, too, now decades since, a first Christian community had been established under Apollo, a disciple of John the Baptist, and Paul had come there and for a time worked to establish a new church in Ephesus. He had taught in the schola of the rhetorician Tyrannus before being forced to leave because a goldsmith, Demetrius, preached against him and rose a public outcry. 'Great is Artemis of Ephesus!' the goldsmith cried, because he feared Paul weakened his business in the selling of golden statues and tokens of the goddess. Paul's disciple, Timothy, had remained, and been in time martyred.

John has not been there in fifty years. When he left Ephesus, it was to go to the first council in Jerusalem in the time before his travels. When he left, it was in the belief that the Word was about to be spread in the world entire, that churches would be formed everywhere, that they, the apostles of the Lord, would form them. When he left, he could see.

Now, returned, such history is in his mind. The world is not as he thought it would be. Time and again he must accept the mystery of what is. He must press on, though time seems soft sand beneath his feet. Papias leans to tell him where they are.

'There is a terrace of streets with high frescoes, three stories high,' he says.

'Yes.' John nods.

'A mosaic of Hercules and Acheloos.'

Two small boys run up to them; in chasing each other bump against the old man, who staggers in surprise, turned about in his blindness.

Papias calls out to them. 'Get off, go!'

But John's hand stills him. 'Leave be, Papias,' he says. Then, as if it has come to him only now that he has lived so long in their absence, he says, 'They are children.'

There is in his manner some import, and Papias looks at the blind face. The old apostle's head is half turned to where the boys have run in the street, as if his thought follows them.

'Children,' he says again, as if the word is a key he discovers in his hand.

They continue past the temple to the emperor, where a statue four times his size in life gazes down. Below it is inscribed 'Ruler and God.' The Christians go in the crowds following the natural progression of streets toward the State Agora, a vast public square that opens into the sunlight. Lemuel stops at the edge of it in the busy thoroughfare. Before them are all manner of stalls, tenting, barrels, tables, coloured awnings beneath which sellers ply for trade. Dogs sniff. Cats curious idle and rub against the ankles. There in a line are goldsmiths with coins of various size that bear the image of Artemis. She is everywhere. She can be found on copper, too, for those less able to afford or for minor offerings. There are draperies of spun cloth, wool traders, weavers, a loom being worked and orange and purple threads crossing the air to become a handsome waistband. There are fruit sellers, fortune-tellers, traders in all that might be imagined. No need is unmet.

And to the disciples it is both wonderful and terrifying. For Ephesus seems a place of great significance, it is fit theatre for the new beginning, its excitements, its life, pulsing all about them, and yet in it they realise they are as nothing. None pays them attention. If they stand out in the square and call out for followers of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will pause to listen?

How, here, are they to begin?

Standing in the middle of the narrow passageway with stalls on either side, they are jostled, knocked, passed brief quizzical looks. A trader in skins calls out.

'Come, come closer. Good prices, good bargains! Come! Feel the skins, soft.'

His call alerts his neighbour, a fat seller of figs, who extends a palm. 'Here, travellers, good figs. Figs sweet as honey!'

Sensing easy prey, the other traders thereabouts join the clamour. Fish, olives, bread, brooches, votive tokens of gold, the disciples cannot hear one offer for the other. Two hands draw Meletios forward, his kind, long face puzzled; there are three men about the short figure of Danil urging to him the merits of various merchandises. Another holds a slab of herbed cheese to Eli and Lemuel. 'Taste, good flavour.' In the bustle Papias keeps the Apostle close. They are caught in the stream and can go neither forwards nor back. Stench of sweat and oil and endeavour are about them. It is a sensual assault, the world, volume, smells, sights, the pressing of the physical. The disciples are not prepared. Nothing in the life they have led on the island can have readied them. Their heads spin. Bewildered, meek Meletios is across the way at a stall of stuffed olives. Danil has embroidered cloth in his hands. He turns to look back for the others and cannot see them.

'No,' he says. 'No, I do not want it,' and puts the cloth aside, only for the trader to lift another at a lesser price, press it into his hands.

'Feel. Feel it.'

'No!' Danil drops the cloth, and in hot agitation says loudly, 'We are Christians. We have nothing. We do not want your wares.'

'Christians?'

'We are followers of our Lord Jesus Christ, come to bring the Word.'

The trader pulls the cloth back.

'You have nothing?'

'We have the good news of our Lord Almighty.'

The trader spits a yellow-veined globule that lands on Danil's cheek an olive stain. He calls to his rival neighbour, who is urging on Meletios the merits of garlic stuffing. Then he, too, as if stung, pulls the merchandise away, calls something down the stall-way.

Danil and Meletios step backwards, an air of menace descending. Lemuel and Eli are next to them. Of them, Danil is most likely to go forwards and strike, but Lemuel presses his shoulder. They turn quickly to find Papias and the Apostle and the mute boy, still in the middle of the passageway pressed about with sellers and buyers. 'We must go,' Lemuel says, 'we must go, quickly.'

And they do, the tight band of them, turning into a side street where lesser sellers have their stalls, where traders in charms and fortunes sit in doorways and await the misfortunate and the doomed. They bundle past, the pace too quick for John, so he stumbles and is borne on Papias's arm and brought forwards again. Down a street of entire shade they go, until they are beyond all dealers and their merchandise and in the cooler air of that empty place at last make pause.

They have no words. They help the Apostle to take rest on a stone step by a closed doorway then arrange themselves thereabouts in rumpled disquiet.

It is not to be as they had imagined.

They sit without speaking, a broken urn of expectation between them.

25

So they are come.

They are come even as the soothsayer that Auster met foretold. The troubled moon she saw is they very same darkness they bring. Here to our beginning, to the glory of the One, they bring their clouded ignorance. Credulous fools, lamb followers of an old man who follows a younger one who is dead. The doctrine of a ghost. Preachings of vagueness and confusion. Doors, sheep, bread. How do they imagine to have followers? They know nothing of this new world. They are themselves without clarity or understanding.

All is mystery, O indeed. Indeed to them it is. They who drink the blood and eat the body of their ghost.

Savage their practice, outlandish their creed, will be the cry.

I know. None knows better than I.

I who before was blind and now see.

They will be despised and jeered and then in their tediousness ignored.

But still.

But still, with the imperfect knowledge of the plebeian, they will darken us. By existing they besmirch the true Divine. In the dim mind of the commonality there will be confusion. There will. In the muddied perception, the Christians, with their preaching of the Light of the World, will seem little different to our truth.

This is the very word of the fortune-teller. The portent: the moon fighting to be free of cloud.

For true light to shine, she must vanquish them.

Verily.

So, they are come.

I will pray. I will pray for strength, that through me the light of the One may blind them into darkness and oblivion.

I will tell Auster to warn Diotrephes they are come. They will seek him out, thinking he a follower.

Let them.

The Apostle and the disciples sit in the shaded street. In silence they compose themselves.

The day well past the noon, Papias asks, 'Whither should we go, Master?' His voice is quiet. In the interim since they left the marketplace he has had to remake his hope. The repaired fracture is frail. 'Should I go and seek for lodging?' he asks.

'We will all go, Papias,' John says.

'But we draw attention to ourselves, perhaps it is better if Papias alone goes,' Danil offers.

'Or I will go with him,' Lemuel says. 'We will find some place and come back for you.'

'It may be safer,' Danil agrees.

Though these two are as old soldiers in the face of unknown opposition, their anxiety is sharp and clear. It is not for themselves they fear, but for the treasure beyond calculation that is the Apostle. Though they do not word it so, all are aware of how vulnerable he is, and so, too, how their community takes its meaning from him. The world is a threat. It is not something any have considered, that in the quotidian will be peril and from it they must shield him.

They exchange looks across him.

'We will all go,' John says, and presses his hands upon his knees to rise. 'The Holy Spirit guides us. Be not afraid.'

He stands amongst them, his demeanour serene, his face upheld as is become his way.

'But in which direction do we go, Master?' Papias asks the blind man.

'We go towards the quarter of the city where I once lived,'John says. 'It is to the south of here not far.'

He takes the first steps as Papias gives him his arm, and they go once more.

It is not long later, walking into the warm sun that fills a broad thoroughfare, that the Apostle tells them they are there or thereabouts.

'Tell me,' he says to Papias, who describes for him then the stone dwellings, their porticoes and groves beyond.

'There is one a little withdrawn?' John asks.

'Yes, Master.'

'A low building facing the rising sun?'

'Yes, Master, I see it.'

'Lead me there.'

Papias does. The others pause at the entranceway while the Apostle is led on. He holds a hand out just before him. His thin fingers waver slightly as though in air he finds traces of himself years before. Here is where he lived once. Here is where Timothy lived after him. Here, too, where he heard Philip had once sojourned before travelling further into Asia. His lips press against each other as he approaches the doorway. There is a minor tremble in his chin.

He has no idea what he will meet, Papias thinks.

John's left hand is light upon his arm, his right extended.

Behind them, waiting, are the others. They watch intently, as if for revelation.

'Here, the door?'

'Yes, Master.'

And the right hand of the old blind man rises, fingers extended flatly, as if for an instant it calls halt to what fear or doubt traffics there or is raised upright to draw down the attention of one looking from above.

It rises and holds, and then thrice the old apostle bangs it on the door.

He stands without display of emotion. Papias looks to him and then at the door itself, bracing himself for rejection.

There is nothing. For a moment they are islanded so, awaiting the arrival of the Holy Spirit.

Then the door opens and one of the dark-haired daughters of Philip is standing there. She is a woman of more than two score years, her father already dead a long time. As she opens the door, around her come running her three children.

Her name is Martha. She knows John, having never met him. She knows him for the resemblance to her father, though Philip was more broad and full-haired. The resemblance is in the expression, in the eyes a light familiar.

'I am John, son of Zebedee, brother of James,' he says.

She brings her hands to her mouth. She has thought them all to be dead. She has thought hatred vanquished them all. At the sight of the Apostle she cannot speak. Her children hold to her robe. She allows for the miracle that is this old man before her to assemble. Then she says, 'Forgive me, come, welcome, welcome all.' She waves a hand to beckon forward the others standing by the entranceway. She tells the children to step back to allow the visitors. Papias bows his head to her. But she cannot yet fully comprehend what is happening and forgets her manner. Truly to her they are like ones from another kingdom, and their reality is at first no other than figures from a dream.

They come inside, a shy, quiet cluster in poor clothing. They appear nervous in the company of a woman.

With an urgent hospitality she tells them to sit. She tells them her name. When the disciples hear that she is the daughter of Philip, there is as a wave of light breaking in each.

'Philip,' John says.

'He is buried in Hierapolis in the province of Euphrates,' Martha tells him. 'My sisters also.'

'But you remained here?' Papias asks.

'With my husband, who died twelvemonth ago.'

She rises and brings them jugs of water. Her children follow her. 'Forgive me my poor welcome. You have had a long journey?'

'From Patmos. We have been living there in banishment and exile,' Meletios says softly, 'but come now for the glory of the Lord.'

She sits by the Apostle.

'You cannot see,' she says.

T see all that is,' he replies. 'You have kept the faith of your father.' His hand reaches out. She bows her head and his fingers alight upon her.

The small children watch with large eyes.

Though the house is small, they are welcomed to stay. They eat a supper of salted fish and bread. Martha names her children for them, Philip the eldest, and Mary and Ruth, and to them the mute boy makes faces until they laugh.

'If it please you, tell me of my father,' Martha asks.

And John does. His brow wrinkles momentarily. Whether the act of recall is painful or it is the substance of the memory, briefly his face is knotted. Then he touches his tongue to his pale lips and says, 'When Jesus was passing, he stopped and saw Philip and said, "Follow me."'

He pauses on that cusp of action, in his mind the entire drama brought to this essence, this absolute. Jesus gives no explanation. There is no precursor, no expansion nor reasoning, no rhetoric. The dynamic is in the mystery. Why should Philip follow? Why should he walk out of his life on just those words?

John blinks his blind eyes, as if the sun-bright scene is again before him.

' "Follow me," Jesus said. And Philip did,' he tells.

And Philip did. It is the simplest of tales, the two words themselves potent and revelatory, in gentleness and command both. Follow me. John does not have to paint the scene for them to picture it. He does not have to relate the shy and sober character of Philip or tell what forces might have struggled in him on that instant of beckoning. Nor does he need to narrate for Martha the lifetime of consequence that followed, the sacrifice and hardship, first the witnessing and then the wandering, the endless road of bringing the Word that was still, even to his death, a continuing obedience to that first bidding. Of Philip, John tells her, 'He was my brother and I did love him in the truth, and not I only, but all who have known the truth.' He says, 'Little children, listen.' He tells of a day when Philip said to Jesus, 'Lord, show us the Father and it is enough for us.' And that Jesus replied to him, 'He that sees me, sees also the Father.'John leans forward and holds the hands of Martha. 'Philip saw,' he says. 'Philip saw and knew the truth. And knew it thereafter always.'

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.

26

'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.'

'What do you ask of me?'

The voice is cold, drops the words from the raised seat like lesser coins.

'I am sent with the good news,' Papias says falteringly. 'Though we are small in number now, we will soon. .'

'Again, what do you ask of me?'

The frankincense stings in the nostrils.

'We ask that you will receive us. We seek dwelling that we may go about the city to gather to us the community of faith. You have many buildings.'

'Wherefore should I receive you?'

'Because we are come in the company of the Apostle to bring the good news.'

'The apostle John?'

'Yes, the Beloved.'

'The one called the apostle John is dead.'

'No.'

'He is dead. Another pretends to be him; he you follow.'

Papias blinks. The world shifts out of its focus. Do the walls slide slightly? Does the light buckle? 'It is not true!' he says loudly. 'He lives. It is he. I have lived by his side these years past on Patmos.'

'John is dead. He was killed in Rome, stoned and crucified, years since. This man is another,' Diotrophes replies, his voice unchanged, his manner cool, as though he but tells the hour. 'I have it on good account. You are fools. It is widely reported. Your numbers have diminished as the truth has enfolded. This man tells outrageous falsehood and some believe him. It is the way o£ the world. Ignorance is everywhere.'

Papias does not know what to say. The man sits before him, his hands upon his knees, his deep eyes slow and spiritless, as though he studies dull wares.

'This John,' Diotrophes says. 'He speaks of Jesus the Galillean?'

'Our Lord Jesus the Christ.'

Diotrophes shakes his head slowly. 'The Christ?'

'The Son of God.'

The phrase makes the elder man respond; he blows a half sneer to the ceiling. 'I have not heard it said outright until now,' he says. 'I had heard it reported but not spoken in my own presence. Jesus the Galillean, the Son of God! I should drive you from my house for blasphemy. You are a fool who has been taken for a fool.' Diotrophes's face warms with anger. His eyes now dark, he points a finger at the other. 'I should spit upon you for speaking such, have you beaten by my servants.' He sighs, looks above him, his nostrils wide as he draws to him the frankincense. 'But Diotrophes must be great of spirit,' he says. 'And is great of spirit. Your hope lies only in your ignorance. That you may be instructed. You are ignorant. John son of Zebedee was a fisherman who followed Jesus a prophet. Nothing more. Jesus was a wise teacher. Nothing more. John claimed for him this. Nothing more. John was killed in Rome by Romans. The rest is lies.'

'Jesus was the Son of God,' Papias says. His voice is quieter than he wants, as if he tells himself.

'Again, the Son of God?' Diotrophes raises his voice. Spittle flecks whitely his beard.

'It is what John believed,' the disciple says, then corrects himself, 'what John believes.'

'There is no John, you fool. You know nothing of God. Do not you speak to me of God! Do not utter it! Do not defile my house with your blasphemy. What gives you right to say this man was the Son of God, or that one? Why not my servant Galen? Why not Absalom, why not Ezra, why not my fatted goat, why not my horse? Any one of them no further from the truth. God the One forgive you, for you are ignorant. You are not fit to say his name. Be gone. Go before Diotrophes is removed from Diotrophes and is ruled by anger. Go, tell this John he is false. Tell him to go back to his island. To die with the fools who follow him. Tell him Diotrophes knows God the One, the True. Tell him a new age is come, that his Gallilean Jesus is forgotten and his John with him. The holy are not ignorant fishermen now, not carpenter's sons, but wealthy and important people. Look at my house. Do you see my house? Is this the house of an ignorant follower of your Jesus? Is this not the house of one whom God loves? If God loves me not, why do I prosper? Diotrophes is preeminent in God's eye. You tell this. Go. Go tell him this. Be gone from my house.'

Papias does not move. What is happening cannot be happening. It is a dream. It is the infection in his blood speaking. His mind is disordered. He stares up at the bearded man, whose head shakes in scorn. What is he to say? What reply can be make?

Beside him appears the flaxen-haired servant. His audience is over. He is touched on the elbow to be led away. But Diotrophes cannot let go yet of the outrage, and before Papias has reached the doorway, he calls after him, 'Tell him he is discovered a liar and a blasphemer! Tell him if he comes to my door I will have him beaten away! Diotrophes will punish him for God. I will bring the wrath of God upon him. Tell him that!'

Diotrophes puts hand in fist behind his back, walks from the dais and out into a side chamber.

Papias's head spins. His cheeks are aflame. He is like a bird stunned from flight, falling. He cannot see what he passes.

Then he is outside in the street once more, and past the cypress trees and the avenue.

He cannot think what to think. Is he blind or seeing? There is such sudden dark. He leans to a wall to steady himself.

He does not see Auster watching, nor Matthias pass on his way into the house.

27

In the evening they are gathered again. Lemuel has good report of Gaius, who received him well, as did Demetrios, Meletios. Josiah was ill, Eli tells.

'What of Diotrophes?' asks Danil.

Papias looks at the serene face next to him. He is the apostle John, Papias knows he is. But he cannot unhear what Diotrophes said, nor can he break to John the news of hatred.

'Diotrophes, Papias?' Lemuel prompts. 'Did he receive you?'

'No. No, he was elsewhere; his servant told he was away,' he lies. He looks at his hands, sees tiny specks of dead gnats. He has not told John yet that Kester is not returned.

Their host, Martha, brings them wine and bread, her children about her. The disciples, unused to the presence of a woman and of children, sit quiet in humility. But John most easily demonstrates gratitude. He finds in Martha virtues forgotten. Or perhaps it is that in her he traces back to others of the women in his life. Perhaps in her modest manner, in her voice, in the soft sounds of her movements, he is carried back into the century past where was his mother, and Mary and the Magdalen and another Martha, and others, too, such women. Perhaps it is only now, after years on Patmos, that he recognises how greatly he has missed the virtue of woman. He is deeply moved, it is clear.

So, too, by her children. In the day the disciples have been absent, he has become familiar to them, and sometime in their presence reaches his hand out into the air and one or another takes it briefly, and the Apostle's face breaks in smile.

No other dwelling has yet been found. They must burden their host a little longer. Martha tells them they are welcome, though the space is small. At sunrise they pray together, the first frail day of their return over.

The darkness is past. The light is again.

We are in fellowship with you.

We walk in the light now, and have no occasion for stumbling.

In the morning John tells that he will go about in the city. The disciples, having witnessed the crush and noise of crowd, rough traffic of human commerce, are concerned for his safety.

'He will be knocked aside,' Meletios says. 'The numbers are too great. You all saw how the streets are thronged. He should remain here. You must tell him, Papias.'

'I?'

'Yes, you can tell him it is unsafe.'

'He is resolved. I have never known him to turn.'

'Then we must bear him on a litter,' Danil says. 'Or a chair, that he be out of the crowd. Ephesus is not Patmos. And if a number rushed forwards to touch him, even that they might touch one who had touched the Christ, what then might befall? Calamity and grief.'

'You should tell him, Papias, that if he must come, we will bear him above us.'

The Apostle is seated outside the doorway, his face to the morning light. The habits of his life on the island remain with him. His robe has been washed by Martha and all but shines whitely.

'Master?'

'What troubles you, Papias?'

'It is thought the city is too dangerous.'

'I am come not to stay hidden. I go into Ephesus to begin to prepare the way.'

'I have told that you would not remain here. Danil says that we bear you on a litter, or a chair shouldered between us.'

John smiles. 'Go, tell that they must not fear. I will walk. And I will come to no harm.'

Papias has known this would be the answer. He turns to bring the news inside when John says, 'Papias, the boy Kester did not return with you?'

The disciple pauses on the precipice of truth. 'He went away from me in the street,' he says. 'I could not find him after. I thought he would be returned here. But he is not come back.'

The old man nods slightly, says nothing.

They leave the house soon after in small phalanx, Papias and the Apostle at the rear. The day is already hot, the merchants and traders already installed. They come the narrow streets slowly.

Some standing in conversation, or idling in shadow, take notice of the thin figure robed in white, his long wisp hair, his blind eyes. What new sage is this? What soothsayer? Where will he set up? Perhaps he can read fortunes. Look, already he has followers.

The disciples head toward the open square of the State Agora and the basilica. Short, tense, Danil squares his chest, leads at the front. Noise of voices, cries of exchange and barter, of prices, weights, matters mercantile, swells the streets. Goods of all kind are borne to and fro. In his blindness, what must the Apostle think? He is as one bearing a candle flame. What readiness he might have to meet the jostle of the traders is nothing to what he needs next when they are arrived at the square. For here, in clusters tight and disparate, are gathered preachers, mentors, masters and followers, domini of varied belief. Here the trade is creeds, and the stock measured in disciples. Men call out for custom, promise reward, promise the favour of God, promise a place at the right hand. Some, in extravagant dress with red sash, with purple stole, or covering of snakeskin, make high drama, dance steps, drumbeat. All is clamour. All seek the attention of each passerby, make urgent claim of knowledge. Here seem assembled all those who interlocute between man and God, who have been variously touched by light, by fire, by vision. As the disciples move among them, their sleeves are pulled by youths in day employ to bring listeners.

'Come, come hither, listen to my master. Save your soul.'

'Here, hear the great Athos. Hear the salvation of the world.'

'Do not touch us, let go.' Lemuel spins back to see a youth try to drag the blind apostle to where a number of men stand in brown robes. With two hands Papias knocks the youth forcefully back.

'Stop! Stand back. Do not touch him!'

'Come, come to hear the word of John,' the youth says, and points.

'Of John?' Papias asks, startled.

'Of John, yes, John, come,' the youth nods.

And the Apostle and the disciples move across to stand then in stunned amaze and listen.

'Learn of the water of life,' cries one of the men. 'Unless you be baptised of the water of life you cannot enter to the kingdom of God.'

A man, wizened, gum-shrunk, approaches, upon his cheek a constellation of sores.

'All can be saved and given eternal life in the name of John the Messiah.'

'John was not the Messiah!' Lemuel cries. The crowd stirs about to consider him. But the baptiser is not deterred; he is used to all manner of objection, the goldsmiths have decried him, all and sundry.

'Yes, John was the Messiah. John came from God,' he calls down, 'came from the right hand of God to show the way to heaven. In his ministry here on earth he performed many miracles. Made the blind to see, the lame to walk. Often in the waters of the Jordan came healing, came salvation thanks to John.'

The old man drops to his knees. The crowd that has gathered presses forwards. Some who have been attending less dramatic presentations hurry over for the spectacle. Something may happen. You never know the hour. The sun burns hotly. There is brilliance of white light.

'John was not the Messiah!' Lemuel cries once more. 'John came before. To bear witness. He was sent by God to bear witness to the light that was to come.'

There are murmurs and the crowd presses to see, a swathe of sun-browned faces and dark beards. Is there to be a fight? Which tells the truth? Will they wrestle each other for victory of God?

The disciple is prepared to elbow forwards to further argue, but John says, 'Lemuel, come away.'

The Apostle turns and tells Papias to lead them to a quieter place in the square.

'Come back and find salvation!' the baptiser exhorts.

The disciples in a loosened knot slip back from the crowd. Some shake their heads at them for cowardice or remaining unclean of spirit. Then another has stepped forwards to be baptised and takes all attention.

In the square there are everywhere islands of proclaimers, about them small gatherings that stand and disperse as interest or boredom decide. Here are loud hollerers, ones who beat their chests across with thorned sticks and cry out to the blue sky, here others in heavy chains, so long worn as to have enwreathed the flesh with running calluses, red and purple and yellow. So, too, are small assemblies in attendance to doctrines obscure, prophets from distant lands whose names are unfamiliar but were, too, emissaries of God. There are desert gods, mountain gods, river gods, gods of rain, gods of particular places, particular months, days. Gods who demand sacrifice, payment, service. At one larger gathering there is proclaimed a great god of insects; those who would be his disciples may take inside them the very body and spirit of their god who is come on earth in the low form of beetles, centipedes, such. A man with great wool of hair and whiter-than-white of eye blears about, chants in tongues, then dips his hand into a timber bucket and draws from it the long wriggling body of a horned insect. Fine black antennae twist in the air. 'Take inside you the body and spirit of God!' he cries out, then opens wide his mouth and drops the insect inside. There is chorus of mixed admiration and revulsion both. He chews roundly, shuts his eyes, and intones some manner of prayer.

'Come, partake of the body of God. Eat and be made holy!'

The disciples move on. The crowds flow fickle, this way and that; about their edge, with condemnatory regard, those passing to and from the synagogue. See what happens, they seem to say, when the doors are opened, when anyone can be called God.

The hot sun boils down. The air is crisped. The Christians cross the sunlight to the further end, not far from the stalls of the gold and tinsmiths.

'Here, here is quieter,' Lemuel says.

They look to one another. None has been prepared for this. None has imagined the world so and in their dismay wonder what the Apostle has understood of the scene before them. How will their faith be adequate to the world?

'We should go back,' Meletios says. 'It is too crowded, too dangerous. There is no place for us here.'

'For this we are come,' John says.

His face is composed, his manner unperturbed. What depths of belief are in him cannot be imagined by the others. What sustains him, what remains not only undefeated but even undiminished by human weakness, capriciousness, by time itself, is outside their understanding. How is it he is not dismayed? How is it, with the jabbering range of religions arrayed before them, he believes still in beginning here, now? Who will listen to their quiet Word? The opposition will be outrageous. The odds against them making headway so great that to all but the Apostle it seems a doomed enterprise. Yes, spread the Word, but to those ready to receive it, to those in their own houses, where the disciples will not be troubled by clamour and jeering and ridicule. This is the easier path. Then, too, because of love, because they love the one who has been at the centre of their so long, they would not see him attacked and belittled. Because of love, they urge him once more to go back.

But John is of another mind. His resolve such that neither argument nor age nor force will impede him. The world will not obstruct him from the place he is to come. No pain, no rejection it can offer, will dissuade him, for he believes he has long ago been taken from himself, that the one who should have died many times ages since is not the one who remains. He is become the instrument. And this, in the scope of his understanding, is what love has made of him, what love wants, and to which he has submitted his being entire. For this he is here. To tell of love.

'Be not afraid,' John says to them. 'The Lord is with us.'

He raises his blind eyes to the light. He holds out his hands not far from his body. He begins.

28

Fools of a fool. Of an old fool. Of a blind old fool. In the State Agora, Auster says, preaching to no one. They should have stayed on their island, let their bones whiten on the shore.

This is the time of the Divine. Not a carpenter's son.

The world is more full of fools than wise men know.

My hour approaches.

On the third day of preaching in the square, their audience small and temporary, there comes before the Christians a file of figures in coarse shrouds, their faces smeared with dirt. They are at first no different from others of bizarre practice who cross there. But one among them stops when he hears John say the name of Jesus.

'Jesus was a prophet,' this one calls out.

The few who are gathered turn back to look.

'Jesus was a witness to the Son of God,' the dust-faced says, 'to the great Lazarus, who rose from the dead.'

'Lazarus was raised by Jesus,' Danil shouts. 'It was Jesus, of Galillee, who prayed at the tomb and brought Lazarus back from the dead.'

'Blasphemy! Lazarus sent word to the mind of Jesus that he come and bear witness to his resurrection. Jesus came because he was sent for. To tell the world of the greatness of Lazarus. Pray to Lazarus that ye might all be resurrected!' the Lazarean cries. From the ground he lifts a handful of dust and pushes it to his mouth. 'Dust to dust,' he shouts out, chokes. 'We are dust lest we be resurrected again to new life by Lazarus. Come, follow.'

The man, with dust mouth and dirt face, leads the file like ghosts away, and some, attendant on the Christians, follow.

In ways they have been no different from others trafficking there, but in their aftermath the Apostle is quietened in himself. It is as though a cloak of weariness has been left on his shoulders. It is past the noon. Papias asks him if he will rest on the steps, if he will take water.

'Yes, Papias. I would drink now and gladly.'

He sits into the shade of a porch. The others continue to preach to whomever delays before them.

Lazarus. Because of Lazarus you returned.

We had gone beyond Jordan into the place where John first baptised. And there abode.

And there were many who came and believed in you there.

I thought: we might remain. We might continue here in safety and love.

It was a place of peace. Our needs were simple. We were free of accusers and hatred. Might we not have remained there? The twelve and the others that came. A first community. Might we not have lived thus, sitting between the olive trees to hear your teaching?

To build a church even there, to live in example of love.

Might that not suffice? I thought. That we might live so in your presence.

Then came the figure out of the sunlight.

I saw him first, a shape moving in a wave of heat. He approached steadily across the burnt ground, small dust of haste in his wake. I went to meet him.

'I bring news to Jesus of Nazareth,' he said.

I did not want the news. I confess it. I did not want the world to come and find us. To find you.

'What news?'

'I am to tell Jesus of Nazareth,' he said, and went past me.

I felt the cold of death then. As foreknowledge. I understood submission but did not want to submit. Understood sacrifice but did not want you to be sacrificed. I am a man only. And knew and feared what must come.

When I followed after already, you had risen and walked to make easier his finding you.

'Lord, the one whom you love is sick,' the messenger said. The one who was sick, he told, was Lazarus from Bethany, brother of Mary and Martha. They sent word that you might come, for they believed in you and prayed you might intercede.

You withdrew into a quiet place.

We were left with argument.

'We should not go, it is dangerous,' James said.

'Why can we not remain here?'

'They will take him if he return.'

A chorus of consent then among us.

'How take him when he is the Lord?' the question of Judas.

Two days.

For two days you did not go.

For two days you remained apart and did not eat and did not speak and took but little water.

I sat not far distant. I wanted to tell the messenger return, tell them he cannot come. Tell them it is unsafe and he will be killed for this Lazarus. Tell them we are at peace here, that there will be no more signs and miracles. This time is now for our community of love, here, and we will welcome who will come to us.

There was no need to go. If it was your wish, you could heal Lazarus from afar, I thought, simply by saying it should be so. You could stay and cure both.

From where I sat, I prayed it would be so. I prayed another figure might come out of the sunlight with word Lazarus was healed.

At the dawning of the third day, you shook my shoulder. Had I slept? How had I slept when I wanted so to remain awake?

You woke all the disciples, in the thin light said, 'Let us go again into Judea.'

The protests were quiet but firm. Voices about the mystery. 'Master, they have of late sought to stone you, why should you return?'

'Are there not twelve hours in the day?' you said. 'If any man walks in the day he stumbles not, because he sees the light of this world. But if a man walks in the night he stumbles, because there is no light in him.'

We did not understand of night and light and of what you answered. You said, 'Our friend Lazarus sleeps, but I go that I may wake him out of sleep.'

'But if he sleeps, Lord, he shall be well,' Philip said. 'We need not go.'

In your face a cloud.

'Lazarus is dead,' you told plainly. 'And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe.' You looked away into the sun rising. What pity was in your eyes. For pity is love.

'Nevertheless, let us go unto him.'

You moved away to make ready.

Thomas said to us who sat in puzzlement and fear, 'Let us also go, that we may die with him.'

A quiet return we had of it. None there were who spoke. The messenger run ahead of us.

The end begun.

And Martha came out the road to meet us. 'Lord, if you had been here, my brother would never have died. Even now I am sure, whatever you ask of God, God will give you.'

'Your brother will rise again,' you told her. 'I am the resurrection and the life, he who believes in me, even if he dies will come to life. And everyone who is alive and believes in me shall never die at all. Do you believe this?'

'Yes, Lord, I believe you are the Christ, the Son of God, come into the world.'

And Martha went and brought Mary, and those who were in the house consoling her followed. And Mary fell at your feet with weeping. 'Lord, if you had been here, my brother would never have died.'

And you were moved with deepest emotions, your spirit troubled.

I never saw such before and was afraid.

You wept.

And those thereabouts said, 'See, how he loved him!' But others, 'He opened the eyes of the blind man, couldn't he have done something to stop this man from dying?'

Even troubled so, even with tears falling, you went then unto the tomb.

And after, some believed because Lazarus was again in life. And others went to the Pharisees, and the chief priests gathered the Sanhedrin to ask, 'What do we? For this man does many miracles. If we let him thus alone, all men will believe in him and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.'

And from that day they planned to put you to death.

We went from there after into the wilderness. And to the city called Ephraim. It was the time near Passover. And many asked if you would come up to Jerusalem for the feast.

The high priests had issued commandment that if any knew where you were, they must show. That they might come and take you.

So there was no more the peace as was before Lazarus.

All was changed. For this I wept. To accept what must be.

The time that was coming. The time was coming when you would be gone.

The end begun.

There is the sound of trumpets. Shrill blasts flourish above the noise of the crowd. And again they sound. Do they come out of the dazzling sunlight, out of the white heat above? Does the sky open its folds to revelation? There flows a wave of murmur then hush as the trumpeting approaches. Three notes, then three more herald arrival. The fanfare makes stop the square entire. It comes not from the sky but the eastern corner, and there is a parting of people then as first a tall insignia is borne forward. It is a symbol O, a great silvered circle on a high pole, carried by one with shaven head and garment of pale blue. Behind him come a pair likewise attired and bareheaded carrying placards aloft on which are written 'The Divine' and 'The One.' Following these are the trumpeters. They blast again, make clear of birds the upper ledges. Into the brilliance of the light, with a manner no different from the approach of a Roman column, come more of these figures, beardless, head erect, in palest blue. Their clothing uniform, their identities are masked at first. They come in file with fixed expression. There are a dozen of them, then more. The crowds part for them as they cut across the square to its centre. The trumpets ring out. Men, women, children push forward to see what is arrived amongst them.

There are further banners, insignia obscure painted in red, then two figures bearing drums. Behind these comes Diotrophes, august, chin-tight, upon his chest a silver O. Then other drummers follow. At what signal is unclear, but now they quicken the beat. Hands flash and the sound thunders. The trumpeters enjoin in a music of urgent annunciation. All the crowds in the square are arrested, all other claims made deaf. Then enters, at last, Matthias.

The blue-robed disciples in front have formed a large O in the square. It is into its centre Matthias now walks. He, too, has shaven head and eyebrows, is moon-faced serene, seems not to see those who press forward to see him. The tempo of the drumbeat quickens to match his ingress, stops to silence when he stands in mid-circle.

It is high theatre, and the crowd responds. From other holy men, teachers, those who were listening move away to catch this instead.

'Children of God,' Matthias shouts, 'bow your heads!'

And as one the entire circle of disciples about him does. Some in the crowd do likewise, momentarily unsure if something blinding is about to descend. Soon enough they are eye-cocked back, peering in at the performance.

'Children of God, bow your heads and give thanks. We are come to bring you the good news. The good news of the One. Who made you. Whose children you are. The One from whom all goodness flows.' Matthias raises his hands skywards, and as the sleeves of the robe fall back, the arms and fingers are whiter than flesh, as if he has reached previously into immaculate light. He calls out, 'O Divine, who has chosen me for thy message, give me power to bring it to these your children!'

He shuts his eyes, lowers his head to his chest, then, as though the power he asks is granted, he raises it quickly and proclaims, 'The Divine One is the Father. We are all his children. This is the message he instructs me to bring to you.' Matthias turns his eyes about him — one blind, one seeing — discovers the Apostle and his disciples not far distant by the steps. 'Do not believe you are sinners. Why should you be called sinners? The children of the Divine are not sinners. Would God make sinners? Would the Creator make imperfect children? If so, then he would not be the One who made heaven and earth, who made all things, and gave to all things a perfect soul. No, heed not those who speak to you of sin. Heed not talk of imperfection. You who hear my word are children of the One and can through following the Father's ways return at death to his side. This he has told me. This is the truth and the way. We are things of light. We are the essence he created. Be not afraid of your own perfection. Your own light. Come and follow us. This way is heaven. The Divine has said. Has come to me even on an island, where I prayed for him to enlighten me, to show me what was truth. He brought me light and power, power to heal, to bring to him the elect, those of his children who will sit at the front rank in heaven.

'Children of God,' Matthias cries, 'we are made for his glory. Come and follow. Heed not those who preach to you of men, of the Baptist, of Lazarus, of Jesus; these are but lesser teachers, prophets, yea even holy men, whose message was misunderstood and is now proclaimed for advantage by the unscrupulous. follow not them. They are dealers in mistruth. Darkness apt awaits them.'

'You lie!'

The voice of dissent is heard in Matthias's pause for breath.

Papias has left the others and come closer without meaning to. He has been drawn by a potent conflux of anger, fascination, and shame. He knows he should walk away. He knows the Apostle will not wish him to speak out, but the words are from him before he can stop them. Heads in the crowd turn his way.

'Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, is the Son of God,' he shouts. 'You are Matthias, one of us, who lived among us on the island of Patmos, who believed in our Lord Jesus Christ.'

Matthias's eye finds him, the familiar head between the shoulders of the others.

'Behold one whom I brought back from death!' he cries out. 'Was it not so?' He turns to the circle, wherein now Papias sees Auster, Linus, Baltsaros, Phineas.

Cadmus steps forward. 'I was witness to this miracle,' he says.

'And I,' calls Auster.

'I, too!'

The voices chorus, and the crowd murmurs their approval. 'From death,' one says. 'Verily, a miracle,' another calls.

'You are Papias the Ingrate,' Matthias says, 'who lives in darkness. Who comes to block the way to light. A follower of Jesus, a man who you call God. No man is God. Am I God? No. Are any of you? Who here is man and God? Raise your hand, step forth.'

The crowd cowers, shakes its head.

'Jesus was come from God,' Papias shouts, 'was the Son of God! He came down from heaven.'

'Indeed? Came down how? In a golden chariot? With phalanx of angels? Where came down? In Ephesus? In Rome? In what great city? And God had one son only? Why one only? Why not many? Surely if God could have one son, he could have many, being almighty? Only one son, truly? And God's son, what, was a lowly carpenter? Was not even a good carpenter! Have you God's chairs and tables?'

There is soft laughter. There is mild concord. How outlandish this young objector, Papias the Ingrate, seems. The mind of the crowd like a tide is turned against him.

'No, you twist the words,' Papias shouts.

'It is blasphemy to call Jesus the only Son of God!' Matthias roars out. 'It is outrage against the true Divine! You will be damned to perpetual darkness for it!'

'No, no, you are the. .'

The hand of Danil grasps Papias back. Further words die in the young disciple's throat. He looks into the face of the other, anguished. But Danil says nothing, only beckons backwards his head. When Papias doesn't move, Danil reaches and draws him by the hand. They move back through the crowd while Matthias speaks on, his voice swollen with triumph. 'Light will come to light, and darkness be expelled,' he calls. 'All who are of light, who would be children of the Divine, come to us. We will show you the way.'

He is speaking still when Papias is returned to the Apostle, who sits on the steps yet. His face betrays no anger, no hurt, but only an impossible calm. He raises his hand for Papias, who gives his arm.

Without discourse from any, they leave, moving into the fly-swarmed shade of a side street, unnoticed, and are as a remnant of a dispersed defeated army, outrageously wounded, retreating.

29

Why did the Apostle not come forth? Why did he not speak out?

Papias turns restlessly on his bed mat. They have moved to a dwelling house belonging to one Levi, a Jew who is drawn to them but will not say so publicly and risk expulsion from the synagogue. There are others of like mind who believe in Jesus but still think themselves Jewish. Proclaiming this, they have been expelled from the temple. Though Levi told Danil they could live in the house for free, he pretends a rent. So they are come there in the night and have each made a quarter of privacy for rush mat and prayer. From years on Patmos they are most comfortable with insularity.

Papias does not sleep. He turns about on the thorns of disappointment in the one he loves. He must reason to himself why the Apostle's actions were right. He must come to an understanding that is still far distant.

I was humiliated. We were disparaged, all, jeered. Why did he let Jesus be jeered? I would have rushed forth and wrestled Matthias to the dust. Are we not to defend our Lord? Would not the Holy Spirit have burned within us if even we few fought against so many? Would he not have seen us to victory?

This meekness he showed. The world is too harsh for it. We win no favours for meekness.

And why why why did the Apostle not speak out? Are we to let the world laugh at us? To be made the fools of such as Matthias?

Matthias did not bring me from death. I was not dead. I was not.

He has no power.

We should have done something. There were a hundred, two hundred, more, gathered. It was time to act.

But what is our action?

What are we to do, being so few? Who will follow Jesus when there are so many others? What are we, a small number of the meek?

Unless the Apostle speak out. He is our testament. He is the living miracle, the beloved disciple, who lives on undiminished by time, who remains until our Lord come again. He endures. No sickness takes him. He is proof himself of God's love. No harm will come to him. His faith is a shield. But must it not also be a spear? Must we not go forth and defeat the enemies of Christ?

Why? Why did he not come forth? Why did he let them jeer?

Papias turns about in ropes of moonlight. The more he turns, the more tightly bound.

There is no sleep. He lies on thorns he thinks, and grows hot to fever. His ear stump burns, as if elsewhere Matthias speaks ill of him. Across the bright night sky a flit of bats. All the commotion stilled, all the voices of the city of Ephesus quieted now. What traffic might be is of spirits and thieves only.

Papias reaches over shoulder to scratch at his back. He has done so before he has thought not to. The rash sings. Swiftly his back entire is aflame. He thinks it even worse than previous and in the moonglow opens his garment to see if he can look behind him.

He does not need to. For in the fall of light it is revealed that the angry rash has travelled further and from his left side now crosses in blisters toward his heart.

The Christians find a practice of sorts. In the dwelling house of Levi, Lemuel rings the bell at sunrise. They rise and pray as before, their island now this house, the city about them the sea, in which they go like fishermen. The Apostle leads them in prayer, then after instructs who should travel to which house. Within a short time they have discovered there are, thereabouts in Ephesus, various that are inclined towards Christianity but are not yet believers in all the disciples teach. Some there are who yet attend the synagogue, others who themselves have been expelled from it. There are some of great age who remember a chance encounter years previous with a travelling Apostle, a figure standing in the square, a voice worn rough from preaching and the still eyes of the saintly or mad. They listened a time and walked away. But did not forget. Unknown, embedded, was a splinter of doubt that is the beginning of faith. Though the skin grew over it, it remained yet, and now near the age of death, it rises. In such grey-bearded elders, one foot stepped inside the cool of the tomb, the question of the Christians troubles still. What is the truth of it? What if truly it happened so? If the one that time was lit by God? If my crossing the square that day into his path was not chance? What if tomorrow I die and learn what he spoke was true? Will I see his martyred face again, too late?

On the threshold of death, such elders send word to the house of Levi that they can be visited in the evening time. John agrees. Eli, Danil, Lemuel go by turns to call on various of these.

But not Papias. He the Apostle keeps close to him. In the quiet of the house he sits sometimes and teaches to the young disciple. The summer heat blazes outside, but the stone house is cool. John can begin anywhere. He can, without apparent prompt, commence by saying, 'It was six days before the Passover and Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, who had been dead.' Or later that same day, 'Jesus went over the Sea of Galilee and a great multitude followed him.' Or at another time, 'There was a marriage in Cana of Galilee.' And in listening, Papias begins to realise that in the mind of the Apostle there is no exact chronology. The events of his life with Jesus are as epiphanies, each so illumined as to dim all around them. So Papias comes to understand that he cannot ask the question What happened thereafter? Nor can he ask the many others that rise in his mind. After Lazarus lived again, did he speak to Jesus? And what did he tell of what he had seen in the hereafter? And when did Lazarus die at last? Was he martyred? Did he rise up? Was he chosen? Is each one of us chosen? How did Lazarus seem after his resurrection? What had changed for him? Was the earth itself differently understood?

There are a thousand questions unasked.

Sometimes John speaks of Judas Iscariot. 'He cared not for the poor, but was a thief. He had the bag and bore for himself what was put therein.' And says this as though Papias has asked of him, or carries an opinion that needs correcting.

The young disciple merely listens. In his own mind he tries to order the events. He fits the pieces into a fractured whole. In the telling he notices smallest changes in the timbre of the Apostle's voice, and from these interprets grief and loss and regret and what comes to seem to him the living history of love. For love is measured in hurt here. Love is what has remained, a grieved longing that has outlasted time, that keeps the image of love untarnished, unchanged, as yet in the same youth and beauty, with the same imperishable mystery. When the Apostle speaks the name of Jesus, his face does not change. He retains ever the serene composure that makes the world about him seem an elsewhere. He cannot be known as others. He cannot be Papias's friend or father, but can love him nonetheless. This is the very strangeness the young disciple comes to realise in the days and nights he sits attendant on the Apostle. He moves from thinkingJohn loved jesus to he loves him. It is not passed.

Then he comes to the realisation: the telling is a way to keep it present.

For four weeks of summer, there is nothing else. The disciples go into the city, Papias stays with John. He lives in the constant teaching. He hears things he has heard before, but now the Apostle is at greater pains to be certain that he has understood the import. For his pupil he tries to clarify, time and again, as if he draws a line in the sand, then smudges it away with his sandal and tries again, as if there is one absolute and true, and endlessly he fails to delineate it exactly.

'He who says he is in the light and hates his brother is in darkness even until now.

'He who loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no occasion of stumbling in him.

'But he who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness, Papias, and knows not whither he goes. You understand?'

'Yes.'

'He knows not whither he goes,' he says, 'because that darkness has blinded his eyes.'

Papias looks at him. The blind face is unchanged. Never once has Papias known him to speak against the loss of his sight. Nor does he seem to here. It is strangely the opposite, as though he is the one who sees.

There are small victories. Danil reports a family of a wealthy trader who has come to believe Jesus is the Christ. Josiah on his deathbed has asked for the unction of the Holy Spirit and Eli has administered to him. With the gentle gladness of his character, Meletios tells that one Tobias wishes to take the Eucharist.

'We will go to him,' John says.

'His house is beyond the city, Master. A far distance.'

'We will leave in the morning.'

The disciples exchange looks of concern. They have come to know more closely the hostility of the city. They wish the day when Matthias appeared had not happened, and that Papias had not drawn attention to them by speaking out. They want no public. It is safer and easier if they go unnoticed, as if they are bearers of a secret faith. They are happier that the Apostle remains in the house, unseen.

'Master, the city is dangerous for you,' Danil says.

'I have no fear, Danil. We will visit good Tobias and share Eucharist with him.'

'Perhaps Meletios and I should go only.'

'Yes, two of us — or three even, say Eli — is sufficient surely?' adds Danil.

The Apostle raises his face to him. It is a face pale and calm, the skin soft with an appearance of thinness almost to translucence. The eyebrows are faint wisps of white, the eyes still and impossibly distant.

'Why do you fear? Why do you fear the world?' he asks.

'We do not fear it for ourselves, but for you, Master. The city is full of noise and commerce and pagan creeds. There are thieves, rough figures that think nothing to slit a throat and look after for the purse. We fear for you, Master,' Danil says, his thin face furrowed in earnestness.

'Why fear for me,' says John, 'when I have none for myself? I am not come to be killed in Ephesus. My brothers, look not to the world and fear. I know the world. You need not think to hide it from me. I know the time that is and what people are in it. I know all these things, and I say to you, fear not. We will go and visit Tobias and share Eucharist with him.'

They dispute no further. The daybreak following they leave. They bear with them little, but in sacking cloth an antique chalice the Apostle has since before Patmos. Their route follows the archaic processional road leading to the Temple of Artemis through the Magnesian Gate. There are groves on either side. Their footsteps are on the trodden dust of ages where in legion petitioners and worshippers have come. There are some such about them on the road. The sun is rising. Their fellow travellers consider them, this curious collection of quiet men who have not dressed in fine robes to go to beseech the goddess. What chance their prayers? Some, wealthy, borne on litters and flanked by servants, bring golden artefacts for offering, likeness of themselves, coins with brief messages stamped, busts of Artemis herself. They pass the slow-walking Christians with mild scorn, losers in the day race to the Divine. Others there are, figures in poor and ragged finery, who walk the route clutching a single coin or token, their heads low, weighted with desperation. By and large none converse with other pilgrims. All work at a private reckoning, an inner calculus whereby as they approach the portal of the gods each is already measuring how much better their world will be hereafter.

Wordless, the Christians pass on. They pass where others turn for the way to the temple. On the road, one, lame and old, hobbles towards them from the opposite direction. Shortly they come to him. When they are alongside he turns a scowl their way, then blinks quickly some sun-blindness and licks at blistered lips. He calls out.

'Strangers, stop.'

They do.

'Why do you not visit the temple? You walk past.'

'We go elsewhere,' says Danil, and turns to move on.

'The ancient one, I know him,' says the old man. 'Who are you, Ancient?'

'He is our friend,' replies Danil quickly. But John stands.

'I am John, son of Zebedee,' says the Apostle. 'How does thou know me?'

'I know thee. Though I know not how.'

'Why do you go to the temple?'

'Why, to pay homage. To give thanks, to ask for favour.'

'What favour?'

'My leg fails me.'

'How does thou know me?'

'I know thee.'

'Where have you been?'

'In the world. I am old.' The man palms the wrinkles of his brow, sweated dust. He studies the Apostle. 'In Symrna long since, you. .'

'Tell.'

The man searches in imperfect memory.

'No, I cannot. But I know that I know you.'

'We are believers in our Lord Jesus Christ,'John says. 'The Son of God, who sits at the right hand of the Father. Who will come again soon. Go not into the temple. Go home to thy wife and children.'

'Christians.'

'Yes.'

'As many I saw crucified on these very roads. There, there, even beyond there to the rise.' He points about him.

The Apostle does not turn.

'Even so,' he says, and it seems to the others gathered there that in his blindness he looks not at, but within the other.

The man blinks in puzzlement. 'How do you know of my wife and children?'

'Go in peace,' says John, 'go in the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who loves thee.'

'Who loves me? How loves me?'

'Verily he does. And thy wife and thy children, too.'

The man's mouth is fallen open, his brows lowered in bewilderment. He scratches his head for memories. Where was it he saw this one before? Vague clouds of mind he sifts through, tries to find the image. Was it this man he dreamt not three nights since coming to meet him?

The Apostle offers his hand. The man takes it.

Then the Christians pass on, leaving him standing so in the mystery of things, not yet aware that when they are in the distance and merest specks on the road, he will discover the strength returned to his leg, his lameness gone.

30

In the night they return, their spirits lifted. The moon shows through cloud. Tobias has given them good welcome and has professed his faith in Christ. They have shared in the Eucharist and feel each one a cleansed serenity, as if a white linen cloth has been unfolded in their spirits. They come back the starry way into the city.

Is it to be so? Papias wonders. Will it be one by one they win disciples to them? How long is left in the world? How long is there for sinners to repent? For the lost to find the way? The walking makes his rash burn. He lets his elbow chafe against his right side as he goes, but the relief is brief. He walks face-upward a time, looking into the stars for revelation. When the itching worsens, he fights it with prayer, amasses a legion of them, then loses to the sudden darting of a night creature crossing their road.

They come across a low place where the river water seeps out into marshy ground. Hereabouts are snakes. The thought of them, ceaselessly writhing in the soft wet dark, is enough to disband the next column of prayer. How can a man be holy in this world? How can he keep himself to higher things? Lord, help me.

They come, unscathed, through, and are back on the sunbaked ground when the moonlight is swiftly shut away. Cloud darkens all. The stars are taken as if within a fist. The road vanishes.

Meletios cries out, 'What is happening?'

'It is a storm,' Danil shouts. 'It comes quickly.'

'What storm? It was calm a moment since.'

'Master, it darkens to storm,' Papias tells. 'We must take shelter.'

Wind blows at the Apostle where he stands. He raises his face to it, his hair blown awry, his blind eyes flickering. He holds outwards a hand as if touching.

'Come, come, Master,' Papias says, but in looking about can see nothing. Darkness is absolute. It is a storm unlike any — no rain falls, but hills and land are blackness scoured with wind. They cannot see where they might go for cover. All, by instinct and fearful hope, look above and see only the darkened world. The air blows a howl. No bat or bird moves, the sky emptied of all but wind. The disciples can go nowhere. Lemuel takes the hand of Eli; he, Meletios; and so the others, until they are a thin linkage on the bare earth, themselves only as shelter. Fearful of what contagion he carries, Papias does not give his hand to the Apostle, but his robed arm. They stand in the dark, the gusting fierce enough to make quiver the flesh on their bones. It is occasion for faith only. There is nothing in the night to protect them. They are some distance yet from the city on a flat plain. Moon and stars are so obscured as to make their return unimaginable in the darkness above. Light is out and with it quiet. A prayer would go unheard.

They stand, blown about, attendant on what will happen.

Then comes the first shudder.

The earth beneath them moves. In the gale each is unsure if it is he alone who has lost balance. In the dark they shoulder against one another, reach for support. Again the ground shudders, and they fall.

But not the Apostle. He stands with Papias, the earth quaking about them. There is rumble and groan and noise such as a beast might make in grave pain. It comes from within and without both, is uncertainly sourced, as if creation itself aches and buckles and bursts the bounds of its form. Air and ground alike are torn. What cries the disciples make are unheard in the howling. The great shuddering shakes out ribbons of dark in the dark. There is the sound of cracking, as though the world were round like an egg and its shell fissured by the beak of a beast coming to be born.

The disciples are fallen to the ground that opens thereabouts. They cannot see beyond their hands, and the land may be all fallen away from what they can tell. Perhaps all is already fallen, all from Judea to Africa to the eastern lands, already returned to the nothingness from which begun. They themselves may remain the last island, and their time, too, be about to end. They do not know. They dare not look above for the arrival of the Almighty, but in the wordless prayer that comes on the instant of imminent death they pray it may be so. There may be vast illumination in moments. In moments the sky may part like a cloth and the angels descend. Have faith. Hold on.

For first the earth buckles once more. Once more there is a vast shuddering, a sundering of iron ground with rough exhale of heat. Those with face in dust feel the urgent, plotless exodus of creatures from the crust, wild scuttle of hundred- and thousand-footed insects seeking refuge in the hair, the ears, the crevices of the human islands. In the darkness all are unseen.

'Be not afraid!' the Apostle cries out. 'Be not afraid!'

But they are nonetheless. What reckoning comes they fear then. They fear each a private failing that will be illumined in instants. They have been but men, and have the weaknesses of men. Their faith and love has been inadequate, and the knowledge is a scorching along the rims of their souls.

So it is in that time as the earth quakes beneath them.

Do not come yet, is their prayer. Do not come yet.

Down the dark howls the storm. The Apostle's head is upturned. Papias cowers down, looks up to see the starred white hair, the outreached hands. How can he not fear it? How can he be certain of unhurt? Papias holds his arms tightly about himself. He clings to his sides, as if they, too, might give way. Do I believe well enough? Do I believe well enough that I am loved? Is it love that comes now?

He screws tight his eyes, clenches his teeth against fierce embrace. His head is lowered as if to be split by lightning.

Then, without his knowing, the Apostle steps away from them into the black.

The ground falls from the ground. It is as though the earth is transmuted into water and a great wave rolls through it. In the dark it is a terror dream. Bodies tumble, are rolled forward in the dirt. The disciples cry out in horror. Here are legs, hands clutching at dust. The world is being broken. From below rises the noise of rupture, of resistance and collapse. The wave passed, the ground is stilled a moment. Then earth parts from earth with crack and roar, a formless vocable ripped from beneath creation, a sounded agony as in the surface great lesions appear. An instant and they burst open.

If a beast from below rises, none sees. All fall along the ground. There is a gaping dark. There is a scream above others.

In Ephesus stone topples from stone. Columns sway as if scrolls of papyri. Great porches collapse. From Roman mosaics gods fall.

Matthias stands in his chamber. Auster rushes to him.

'We should go, Master. We should find open ground.'

'Go you. I will stay.'

'The house will fall.'

'Go, I say, go!'

When the other still does not leave, Matthias turns to him in rage. 'You fear. follow your fear. Run. I stay. I fear nothing.'

'There is fire, Master. The streets shake.'

'Good. Let the world be shaken. Let the world burn, and all within it that do not believe in the One. Let all perish. Let only the pure remain. So the world is cleansed.'

Auster bites at his lip, twists his hands, studies the profile of the other, whose blinded eye is a weal of white.

'Go, come back later if it be his will that you live,' Matthias says, without turning. 'Go!'

The sandals leave, a quick-slap down the steps.

Alone, Matthias attends the plot of revelation in mid-chamber.

I will not die.

I will not die.

I will not die, because I am your son.

A creature of form indistinct, Papias scrambles wildly across the ground. The earth has stopped. In the dark he makes out the figure of Danil, then Lemuel.

'Where is he? Where is he? He left me. He walked away when I. . I had let go of him in fear. I. . Where is he?'

Lemuel is dirt-blind. He fingers into his eyes roughly, blinks to see what world they are in.

'The Apostle is gone?'

'I didn't realise he. . It is my fault, he. .'

'Papias, stop! He is gone?'

'Yes.'

They are on their feet.

'Gone? How gone?' Danil asks. 'What did you see?'

'Nothing. I saw nothing. I was afraid.'

'We were all afraid, Papias. You have no blame,' says Meletios gently.

'Master!' Papias calls. 'Master!'

'Careful! The ground is split. There is a. .' Danil does not say 'hole'. But as he and the others make out the great fissure that has opened there beside them, all think the same thought.

It cannot be.

Papias feels his insides sicken and gags on vomit. His body buckles. Lemuel grasps his shoulder.

'We will search for him,' he tells.

But still cloud keeps the moon and her stars behind. There is such dark as to blind everything that is beyond the span of a man. The disciples go feelingly in the broken world, calling. They get no response, their search burdened with despair.

Papias cannot keep himself from thinking. What if he is gone? Risen to the heavens and none of us saw or knew. How could he leave us so?

The pain of this question is easier than the one that shadows it: what if he fell into the opening? What if the ground split here at his feet and he fell within? What if that is what happened?

Then nothing.

Then nothingness is.

Then all is made nothing.

It cannot be.

'Master! Master!' Papias calls. But the dark returns no answer.

They search a small circle, then Lemuel says, 'Beyond we cannot see. We must stop and await the dawn.'

'We cannot stop.'

'It is dangerous, Papias. We may all perish.'

'We must continue looking.'

'We can see nothing.'

'I would rather perish than stop.'

'We must be for one another. If he is gone, we are what remains. We must be of one voice.'

'He is not gone!' Papias cries. 'He has not left us!'

He turns from them and goes into the dark.

'Wait, Papias!' Lemuel says, and when the younger disciple pauses, tells him, 'We will all go. We will hold to each other, be bound like a vine.'

He offers his hand. Papias seems to hesitate in taking it, but does. Each takes the hand of another and they go forth over the ground slowly, calling for the one they have lost.

It is an hour.

Then another. Pink dawn fringes the horizon.

Then they find him. He is fallen between the earth and the world below, his hip and leg twisted, his head bloodied where it struck a rock. He has the stillness of death.

They rush to him. Papias cradles the beloved head.

There is breath. He lives still but is badly injured. He is too weak to speak.

None say a word. Their spirits are too busy with prayer.

With such tenderness as cannot be told, they bear him from the ground.

31

The house of Levi is undamaged. There the disciples return and lay the Apostle on layered bed mats and a goatskin cushion, the property of Levi. John is weak, speaks but little. Sometimes he says the word 'children', and Papias is unsure if he asks for the children of Martha or refers to the disciples. He drifts away in sleep. Martha is sent for and comes with a cousin, Ruth, to attend to him.

The disciples sit in an outer room, mute with shock. The quake, the Apostle's fall, seem redolent with meaning, but none want to translate it. They cannot deny how near John has come to death, and may die still, and how that thought moves all to a precipice. But they do not want to ask why, why such might happen, and why now. They cannot bear what seems to approach. Is it the will of God that John will die? And if it is, who are they to try to divert it? And yet divert it they would. Is the Apostle's work done? Is it to die from a fall in Ephesus that he has lived so long? Where comes Christ? Where is the revelation?

His hands knit, Papias rocks himself slightly back and forth as he prays. Lemuel's head is bowed, Danil's brow a furrowed field.

The women come and go from the Apostle with oils and ointments. He is bathed, his wounds cleaned. He lies three days while the house is filled in every corner with white birds of prayer.

On the fourth day Martha tells that he asks for them.

The disciples come into the room with the abashed timidity of men about an infant. John appears to all a changed figure. Is he more frail, or is it only the frailty of their hope that is more apparent to them now? His thin hair is combed away from his face; his beard runs to his chest.

Papias weeps to see him. He cannot stand a moment but rushes forwards and kneels by the bed and lays his head down by the Apostle's hand. It rises to comfort him.

'Weep not,' John says. 'All is as should be.'

'You are hurt, Master. You fell. I let you leave.'

'Be consoled, Papias.'

But poisons of guilt and loathing choke the disciple's spirit. In the terror of the quake his hands have touched them all; he may have passed disease to each, and death be quickening toward them. Christ must come. Christ must come now or Papias will have Killed them all. In spasms the fear and longing bursts from him. He weeps bitterly.

The hand of the Apostle is upon his head.

'Be consoled, Papias.'

John thanks them for their prayers. All wish to ask why he had walked from them, whither was he going? What purpose did he have? Did he go to encounter whom? What? In his blindness did he see something they did not? And if not, what did it mean? What meaning was in the earth splitting so? What is the meaning in catastrophe?

The questions remain unasked.

'There must be many hurt,' John says.

'We have not gone outside, Master. We have been worried here.'

Thought flickers in the pale face.

'You must go, all of you. Go and help who needs help. Be of good charity.' His tongue he touches to his lips. 'The God of patience and consolation be with you. Papias rise up. Be not afraid. May you all be like-minded to one another in love according to our Lord Jesus Christ. Go and be the glory of our Lord made manifest. My children, love not in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth. Love, this is the commandment we have. Love. Go, and peace be to thee. Go.'

The Apostle's hand rises in salute and blessing and farewell.

None move away. Briefly they are affixed to the scene. For it is a moment before the world rights itself in their spirits. Is he returned to them then? Is all to be repaired? There is a difference felt but not yet understood. Some change has occurred, but the defining of it is to be left for later. Now they are each, in the core of their souls, consoled. It is as if into the solitary space of each spirit has come a companion.

This, companionship, the nature of consolation exactly. And of love.

The city has suffered worst in its poorer quarters. In the outskirts are narrow streets where cheap dwellings crowd. Some have fallen entire, a spillage appalling of stone and bodies. Furnishings, tables, beds, are broken, scattered into the street. Some buildings are one side fallen and gape aghast with strange, naked vulnerability. Now, the fourth day, there are still everywhere cries, wailing. Everywhere there are figures scrabbling at the dirt. The disciples part from one another and go amongst the people. The day is boiled hot, but no sun shines. Rather, an opaque skin covers the sky and makes bleary the air. No wind takes away the scent of death and destruction.

On the threshold stone from which her house has fallen away a woman sits lamenting. Danil goes to her.

In cavernous ruins where fire has taken a family, Lemuel finds two children. Eli and Meletios come to the aid of an aged tinsmith who has lost his wife. Husbands, uncles, cousins, grandmothers, wives, children, all are missing and prayed for. The disciples come amongst those whose hope is snapped like dry bread, who bewail the horror and cannot be spoken to of consolation. Instead, Danil and the others offer their presence. What skills they have are in quietude, and these are plentiful. They sit on the floor of those in mourning, listen to the pain of ones lost in the mystery of suffering. They are its witnesses.

It is practice that Papias finds at first most difficult. He wants to preach God's love. He wants to tell that Christ is coming, that they must just believe. But even he, too, comes to this understanding, that it is a time of silence and action. In one house a trader who has lost his father gives him salted fish for thanks; this Papias brings to another not far distant who starves. A scorched morning when the birds of prey wheel lower a woman rushes from a ruin, clutches at his robe. 'Help me, help me, my daughter.' She pulls him to an inner courtyard of stone and sand and broken timber. 'She lives. I know she lives!' she says. 'I hear her.'

'You hear her?'

'She doesn't stop calling. Listen. You can hear.'

Papias hears nothing. It is days since the quake. None can be living still.

'Help me. Please sir, help.'

Papias looks at her as at a memory. He looks away and throws himself into clawing free the rubble. The sun burns at his back. Beneath his robe he can feel the sores ooze. For an hour, two, he pulls away the collapsed building. He hears no sound of any child, only the woman sobbing prayers to all gods and any gods that will listen. Shreds of cloth, shards of vase, remnants of all manner, he pulls from the dust, then finds large stones that have crossed one another in falling. Beneath he hears a whimper.

'It is her! She lives!' The woman falls prostrate.

Papias runs to the street for help, and then there is a crowd gathered, and with angled poles they pry open the sealed place, and Papias brings forth the living girl.

I thought you came out of the heavens, the earth breaking.

I thought the hour at hand, our waiting over.

What light I saw I went towards. What light was and was the light to ever be now that time was ended.

I thought.

The earth breaking, I fell.

Now do I come to meet you.

I have little breath left in this world.

We prepare the way. Imperfect as we are.

Come, Lord. Come.

In the stillness of the bed where the women attend to him, John remains. He takes but little water. He waits.

Frail and gaunt, he breathes with great gaps between breaths. There are long absences in which Martha fears another breath will not come; then, as if an afterthought, it does. This, the stillness with which he reposes, and his blindness, makes it seem he is elsewhere, or that his spirit comes and goes from his body on airlike wings. When the disciples return each evening, they return with the same face, the same question in their eyes. Martha answers that he is unchanged, and they go to him; he holds out his hands, and they take them and tell of what they have met in the city. They wash and break bread together in the small room and pray thanks.

'Will you teach us, Master?' Papias asks.

'The Master is too weak, he should not,' Danil says.

'Rest yourself, Master,' urges Lemuel. 'There will be time for teaching later, Papias.'

'I am sorry, forgive me.'

But John moves forward to angle himself upright and is assisted then until he is facing them. 'Papias is right. I will teach until the last hour,' he says. 'I will teach of when the Lord knew he was to leave us. When he knew that his hour was come and that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them unto the end.'

He speaks slowly, the words are placed like the timbers of a bridge. He finds each with clear deliberation and tells of the Last Supper. It is plain as he speaks that he speaks toward suffering, that in the telling itself he revisits the very place of which he tells, and is in truth there. He is there as Christ moves amongst them to wash their feet, there as Peter objects and Jesus says, 'If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me,' and Peter answers, 'Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.' He is there as his own hands are washed, and he looks down at them, his hands in the hands of Jesus, the water flowing over them and no word spoken. In the telling John is again by Christ's side at the table. And so, too, then, are those who listen.

The voice of the Apostle is quiet, barely more than a whisper. The room is small, and in it the disciples and the two women do not move. Night is fallen outside as it is in the telling when Judas leaves the table and goes out, and John says Jesus told, 'Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.'John says this so quietly, it seems he might say no more. In the pause is love and loss absolute. In the movement of his throat is swallowed grief. His blind eyes pulse. It is clear to all the spirit pain he encounters, how near the telling brings him, and yet, at the end of some phrases, a pause in the account, and his body reminds him how far.

He regains minor strength, tells until he falters again to say, on the edge of the audible, 'Jesus told, "In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself." '

Again he pauses. His chin trembles. Immensely he struggles to speak. His tongue wets his lower lip.

They should tell him to rest himself, that they will leave him to rest now, but they are afraid of what feeling seems to course through him now. They are afraid this may be the last time. Every utterance is at the point of revelation.

' "And if I go",'John says again, very faintly. ' "And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself. There where I am, there may you be also." '

He stops. He lets his head rest back.

Silence falls.

The day following, Papias comes to the Apostle before he is to go about in the city. He comes to seek blessing only, but John seems to him stronger than the night before, and he cannot keep himself from asking.

'Master, what you teach. .'

'Yes, Papias?'

'I would record it in scripture. I have not the hand of Prochorus but would endeavour well. I would make faithful copy.'

'What I teach you teach,'John says. 'You are the scripture living. There is no need.'

'But I am imperfect, Master, and forget and would have it written that. .'

'There is no need, Papias,'John says with surprising force, then is quieted to say, 'We are in the last time. There are many Antichrists, are there not?'

'There are.'

'So it was written. So we know it is the last time. So we know he comes. We will be living scriptures to the end. It will suffice.'

Papias presses no more. He goes into the city as before. In the aftertime of the earthquake have come into Ephesus the soothsayers, fortune-tellers, dealers in tokens to dispel disaster and bring back the dead. Out of desert, mountain, and plain have come bearded nomads bearing potions, scrolls, effigies, bones, the skulls of creatures slain by lightning, such things. They trade on the fear of survivors. They broadcast fevered interpretations of the gods' displeasure and how favour is to be regained. Crowds flock to them. The city streets fill with flushed faces. Homewards hurry those who have bargained new immunity, while others rush out afraid they are too late. It is a city aswarm with prophets. Some speak in tongues urgent and profound and untranslatable; others quote scriptures of sages unknown, figures from distant lands who scribed the secret mysteries of the world. Fair copies can be purchased at good price, bargains all. Protect yourself with the holy words.

Papias hastens on. He is travelling down a shaded street to call on the mother whose daughter he rescued when a figure steps into his way. He does not recognise Auster at first.

'Papias!' The voice is a hoarse whisper, with shaven head, the face a moon. 'It is I, Auster.' He waits a moment as if to allow the other to consider the glory of himself. 'The One would speak to you.'

'The One?'

'He would speak with you. He sent me to bring you.'

The One? There is a chill in hearing it. 'Go from me,' Papias says. 'Tell him I would not go. Tell him I would not speak with him ever.'

'You will want to speak with him. You will want to come.'

'Go from me. I have urgent business.'

'The woman will wait.'

'What woman? What do you speak?'

'I know. I know all you know and do. I say again, come, follow me, friend.'

'I have nothing to say to Matthias.'

'But he has much to say to you. Come.'

'I will not. Go, be gone from me. You are an Antichrist.'

Auster smiles. 'O how you sting. You are in the dark, friend. I know. I have come from that dark. You live a lie.'

'I do not. I am in the light of Jesus Christ, who comes again. The hour is at hand. Be gone from me.'

Auster is unchanged. He stares from within a studied calm. He says, 'He would speak with you, you must come. You will come. For he will show you proof your life is a lie. He will show you proof because yet you may be saved, and he has decreed it so that you be offered this chance. You he elects. You will come. It will be revealed to you. Friend, he will show you proof that you follow a fool, proof that your John is not John.'

32

They go an unfamiliar route, Auster to the fore, Papias some short distance behind as if he follows not. The journey is not long, but the heat oppressive. At an august building with round doors carved in a single large O, Auster awaits his charge. He smiles to see him come.

'Blessings to you, friend. You will see.' His eyes glitter like nothing in nature. 'Come.'

He opens the door on to air thickly fragranced. In an antechamber Papias waits. He should not have come, he thinks. He should have driven him off as an evil spirit. Should have been deaf to any words the other used. Papias paces this thought until it finds a contrary: he was among us. He was one of us, and for so long believed as us. So, too, may not he believe again? And Matthias, too. May it not be this chance is come for Papias to return them all to the fold? Is this not the mystery of the Lord, how all things fit and find place?

'Now. Come, come and cleanse here,' Auster says.

He leads the way to a font and folded cloths.

'Friend, shall I wash your feet?' he asks, smiles at the refusal.

After, Papias is brought along a hallway where a figure stands with silver bell. He is none the disciple knows, a newer follower.

'I leave you, friend. You will thank me, you will see,' Auster tells softly and retreats.

The bell peals, a bright tingling. The door is opened from within. Papias goes into a broad room unfurnished but for a great standing silver O similar to that he saw in the house of Diotrophes. There is a like couch on a raised platform, a pair of tall urns, long-stemmed white blossoms. There is the scent of frankincense. For some instants Papias is in the room alone. Who opened the door left by it as he entered. It is theatre of high order, the space prepared and allowed its play before the protagonist. Reverence, awe, respect: such are the prizes sought. The great circle of silver is ornately crafted, a masterwork without seam. From where Papias stands, he looks through it to the staged couch, the altar where now Matthias arrives. He wears a robe of palest blue and comes with hands flatly before him, palm-to-palm, as if he bears in miniature a church of one. He steps up, turns, looks down at the disciple through the O. Again an instant, then he looks above him and opens his hands to cup shape, to catch what invisibly falls. This he gathers until filled, and then opens both hands in a gentle gesture of throwing outwards and sharing the bounty he has just received. Matthias bows in after-thanks, opens wide his arms.

'Papias, welcome. May Divine God be with you.'

The disciple has lost his words.

Matthias comes down the side of the altar, his bare feet soundless. He stands before the visitor, surveys him. 'My heart is warmed. I am glad you have come,' he says.

'I did not want to come.'

'Nonetheless I am glad. Come and sit.' Matthias gestures a hand to his right. All in his manner is practised, the movement of hand in air a soft curve, as though it flows or mimes the supposed ease of angels.

Papias does not move. 'I will not sit.'

'Just so. You are afraid.' Matthias nods. 'You need not be afraid of me, Papias. I am a holy man. I will bring you no harm, only blessing. I am a man of God. As are you. Should we not sit and discuss?'

'I will not sit.'

'Ah. Do you wish to drink? Are you thirsty? You appear hot.'

'I want nothing. Tell me what you want to tell me,' Papias says shortly. He is hot and thirsty, his ear stump pulses painfully.

'So many things, my friend, so many things.' Matthias takes a step closer. His eye has never recovered, the lid only closes partly over it. There is an out-turned weal of pinkish white. His breath is near enough to smell, a sweet wine.

'We have lived the same life, you and I, Papias. Have we not?' he asks. 'Both of us seeking to find the truth. To find the Divine. Both of us servants of this quest. And is this not the best of a man? Is this not the highest ambition of a soul? To know that this life is but a shell of another eternal one, and that it is to be spent in the service of the Creator; is this not what you and I have understood?' He pauses. Papias does not answer him. 'We have both known this, and have both been seekers. We have both sought to serve, to have our earthly lives mean something to the Divine, to the One, to God, whatever name we have called him. It matters not. He is the same. And you and I, Papias, in our seeking both came to the same place. Both of us heard the preaching of a great preacher, an old man who might have been our father, who might have been the fathers we had each lost, and who spoke to us of a heavenly father and his son. A father who loved his son.'

Matthias's mouth is at Papias ear, his black beard touching; his voice he drops to a whisper. 'It's true. You know it. You know it for I know it. We are alike. We came to him for this reason and surrendered all else. We lived on Patmos, you and I both, and forgot the world. What did it matter to us? We did not care for this world, we cared for the love of the Father. We thought to have found what we sought. What hardships were on the island mattered not. We could live so for ever — until called to the next life.'

Matthias steps back, as if to consider where he has climbed, how far to above, how far to below.

'Dear Papias, good Papias, we have been alike, you and I, seekers of the truth, servants of the Creator. "O God, my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is." Have we both not prayed so? And has the Almighty not heard us? He has, Papias. The Almighty, the Divine, the One has heard. And answered me.' Matthias is close enough to kiss. 'And you also,' he whispers. 'You have been heard — and answered, Papias. Answered. I know. You have been chosen. You, of all, chosen, to be my right hand. Neither of us can deny it. You were dead. You were cold as dust. I asked for the Divine to intervene that you might be saved, that you might live to bear witness. And you were saved. Think on this. Think. Why do you live now when you were dead? Why do you live, Papias?'

'I live to praise God.'

'Indeed.'

'I live to follow the apostle John, the disciple of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.'

Matthias opens his hands as if to catch and crush the creed that comes at him. He might give a short response but thinks better of it and slowly brings his palms together before him. He looks at Papias with pity. His lips are tightly pressed.

'Good Papias,' he says at last. 'Good Papias, loyal and true Papias, my heart is full of love for you. You know this. I bear you the love of the Creator who has chosen you. And what I must tell I know will hurt, and I would not hurt the one I love. But,' Matthias sighs, opens his hands in a gesture of helplessness, 'from blindness to seeing is not easy passage. Many prefer the dark. But not a seeker such as you. You, good Papias, wish the light, wish the truth.' Matthias indicates a couch by the wall. 'Sit to hear.'

'I will stand. Tell what you tell and I will be gone for ever.'

'You see? You stay when already you could be gone. You seek the truth; this consoles me in the pain I must deliver. Papias, you have been blind. I, too, have been blind, I confess it. We mistook a messenger for the Messiah. It is not our fault, we had the conviction of an old man who said he was himself a witness, who said he himself had touched the hand of this Messiah and walked with him, who himself had seen miracles. O vanity and iniquity! Wickedness and conceit! I must tell you, Papias: this John you follow is not the same that followed Jesus of Nazareth. He pretends it only. Perhaps in his dotage he believes it having pretended so long.'

'It is not true! I will not listen!' Papias says, and turns towards the door.

'It is outrage, yes. It is painful, yes. But it is true, yes. I can show you the proof.'

Papias stops. His back is turned. Should he leave now? Should he deny Matthias another moment to spread his lies? His face is crimson. His hands shake.

'What proof?'

'I grieve to see you wounded, dear Papias. But wait, I will show.' Matthias leaves the room.

Papias is aware of his heart racing. Beneath his robe his flesh is awake, the creature of contagion crawling. He presses his hand hard against his chest, but it is not contained. With his nails he scratches deep.

'Here! Here, come, sit, Papias, and see.' Matthias is returned and holds in his hand a scrolled papyrus.

'What is it?'

'Come, sit, read for yourself.'

'What is it?' Papias asks again, as he takes the scroll.

Matthias wears a pained look as he delivers the blow.

'Dear Papias,' he says, 'good Papias, it is the true gospel of the apostle John.'

Papias sits without knowing he sits. His spirit is fallen. He holds the scroll opened before him. Matthias is beside him on the couch. He reaches to steady the young hand that shakes.

The scroll is ancient and wrinkled and frail. A delicate thing that has survived by miracle peril of sea and land, storm and fire. It is some part torn, some part stained by blood or wine or oil. Papias's heart is pierced to read it.

Here, in the Greek language, is written an account of the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth by one who was by his side. It tells of his meeting John the Baptist and of I, John, who followed him then. It tells of the wedding at Cana where Jesus taught the lesson that water should be considered wine, and by this meant our life on earth is water to the wine that is the world hereafter. It tells of his travels in Samaria with John and other disciples that grew so many until they could not be fed and turned angrily from him. Here is told that Jesus was a teacher and prophet, who spoke of God as the Father of all. 'But his message was mistaken by those who feared he was too favoured by the crowd. They told he called himself the Son of God that they might bring the law against him. This Jesus never said,' it is written. 'He was of us, a Gallilean. A man.'

Here, Papias lifts his head from the scroll. He finds his throat has closed and he cannot swallow. He finds his chest is constricted and will not allow air. He should put the scroll aside. He should read no more. But there is in the scripture a fierce hold. He is compelled by a sense of its authenticity. This is the truth, it seems to say, is the fact of what was. It is history and science only. There is nothing else.

The hand of Matthias lies over his own, the face is near enough for the sweet breath to feather against the disciple's cheek.

'Read more. Read all,' Matthias says.

Papias should not, but does. It is not true. This is not true.

But what if it is?

The larger portion of the gospel is an account of the capture, the scourging, the trial and crucifixion of Jesus. The writer spares no detail. Jesus is taken by Roman soldiers, who knock him to the ground and beat him though he does not resist. John stands back in fear. He follows when they drag the body off from the Place of Skulls. In a single phrase he tells of the trial, then moves to his main subject, the torturing of the body. Here is told each cut, each wound that opens in the face and body of Jesus. The writer glories in it. Jesus falls and is beaten. The dust clings to his wounds. Others on the route take turns to throw stones, pots, what comes to hand. The writer John tries to intervene but is driven back. Jesus is lashed. Jesus is stabbed between his shoulder blades with a knife and cries out.

Papias pushes the scroll back from him.

'It is sad, I know,' Matthias says softly. 'My heart was moved, too. The brute facts of it.' He pats Papias's hand. 'Who would not feel sympathy for such a man?' Matthias turns his face fully to the disciple; his eye wound jumps minutely and he raises a hand to still it. 'But read, read on, good Papias. It is important. You will see.'

The attacks continue all the way to the hill of Calvary. The writer is skilled in horror. The flesh that is torn away, the fluids that leak to the dust, the thousand scourges, all depicted. Then the crucifixion. Nails being driven, a darkening sky. The body mounted on to the cross.

Then, as the gospel nears its end, toward the bottom of the scroll, this: 'The body of Jesus hung on the cross until dead. When the soldiers had gone, the body was taken down and borne from that place and buried in a tomb. But fearing the wrath of the people and that they might come to desecrate the body in the morning I, John, and others of his disciples, took Jesus from the tomb and buried him elsewhere that we alone might know the last place of the teacher, Jesus of Nazareth.'

Papias lets the scroll fall.

'An account of love,' Matthias says. 'Clearly this John loved this Jesus. An account of hatred. Clearly this John hated the Romans and those who did not share his love.' He moistens his lips, purses some words he would say next. He must choose carefully.

'Papias, dear friend Papias, this script is old. It was traded in the market by an ancient who had come out of Antioch. He had many other like scrolls, testaments of various sages; he had a gospel, too, of one Matthew.' Matthias wrinkles his nose a short sneer, but quickly sees the disciple is not ready for such. Not yet. 'But this testament of John, I enquired of. He said he had it of a woman who traded it for salted fish. Truly. She was herself old and ragged, he told. She was alone and wandering and half mad. She said she knew the mother of this Jesus of Nazareth and had an account of his living written by one who loved him.' Matthias moves closer still. His voice he drops to a whisper, 'One John who hanged himself thereafter in guilt and love and was buried in Judea.'

Papias cannot speak. He cannot rise and run out. He cannot make the time go backwards and unhear what has been said. The silver O that stands in the room wavers in the glass of his tears. All along his chest the blisters speak. He shudders. Matthias lays an arm across his shoulders.

'We must not blame ourselves for believing an old man. I believed, too, a long time until the light. Until the One. But you have been chosen, Papias. You were dead, remember, and I asked that you be brought back, and you were. You are the elect, as am I. We cannot deny our calling. This other is in our past, was a false way, a way of darkness, but you are come here to find the true.' Matthias presses the disciple close to him, but Papias shakes violently. He brings a hand up to claw at his chest. He scratches through his robe.

'Calm yourself, it is all right. Calm,' the voice whispers at his ear.

But the shaking worsens. His body burns. Such heat as rises he thinks must burst aflame. White sweat leaks from his face. He scratches again fiercely, and again, twists in the embrace that holds him.

'What is it, Papias? Calm yourself. I am here. You need fear nothing. You are in the company of love, dear Papias.'

That he might still the troubled disciple Matthias doubles his embrace. He holds the other, who shakes wildly as a tree in storm. His cheek he lays against the chest of Papias.

And here he sees, in the opening of the robe, the angry red contagion.

'What? What is on you?' Sharply Matthias pulls back. He stands.

White-faced, shuddering, in the violent throes of an inner struggle, Papias stares outwards.

An instant, then Matthias reaches and with both hands rips open the disciple's garment to reveal a torso covered entire in rash and blister, blood and crust and ooze. He cries out in revulsion, looks at the hands that have touched the disease. He spins back, staggers, calls for Auster, who comes at once and clasps his hand across his mouth.

'Get him out! Get him from here! He is unclean! He is cursed! He would not come to us, and so now is devoured. Get him out!'

With a hand still across his mouth, and the other sleeved, Auster prods at Papias with his foot. Papias goes, and falls into the street, and lies there, shaking still and tearing at himself until the time later when Kester finds him.

33

Now.

Now might you bring the world to end.

Your servants wait.

John alls. What fortitude and changeless health he had on the island are no more. Martha and Ruth attend him. He is cleansed and wears a fresh white robe where he lies on the bed. For many hours of the day, while the disciples are elsewhere carrying the Word, he remains in a cave of silence. Sometimes, hearing the whispered voices of the children, he raises his head from stillness and tells Martha to let them come to him. They stand by the bed and he is changed by their attendance. His hands take theirs; he smiles as if at this proof of innocence in the world yet.

'Who am I?' he asks them.

'You are John, son of Zebedee, disciple of our Lord Jesus Christ.'

The days are long. The summer burns itself in brilliant heat, but in the stone room where he lies it is shaded and cool. There he waits. Is each breath he draws numbered? Is there an appointed time when the Lord will come? What moment marks it? What configuration of stars, what height the sun, heralds the opening of the heavens? Or will there be no notice, no annunciation but one instant in ordinary time when the sky parts and he is there?

'I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you,' he remembers.

Then he says this over soundlessly in his mind. I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you. And again. His thin, dry lips move minutely. His blind eyes are turned away, angling to the right, to the space above him, where he can see then the face of Jesus as he said the words.

Kester comforts Papias. The disciple pulls back from him and tries to hide himself and the disease, but the mute sees and is unafraid. At his side he has a bundle in which he carries the things he steals. From this he takes a pouch. He gives Papias lemon water to drink, sits in the street a long time with him until he is calmed.

Having drunk, Papias will not return to him the water pouch. 'I am unclean, you must not take it. You must not drink from it after me.'

He puts it on the ground. Kester the thief picks it up.

Papias clings to his knees, rocks himself in desolation. Where should he go now? What can he do? The gospel he has read sickens him in his spirit. He does not believe it. It cannot be true. That was not the gospel of the true John. It was written for sale, for trading to the credulous. The beloved disciple is in the house of Levi. He is the apostle John. I believe it. I believe it. I believe it. That was nothing. It was deceit and lies.

But still his spirit sickens. The contagion eats further inches of his chest. He thinks his skin smells of death. How can he go back to the Apostle now?

At sunset the others note that he has not returned. But it is supposed he accepts the hospitality of a Christian and will be back in the morning. Nonetheless, the Apostle is concerned. With assistance he sits upright. 'Where was Papias going?' he asks.

None are certain. 'To the east of the city,' Danil tells.

'We pray for him,' says John.

After a deep quiet full of disquiet, John asks the news of Ephesus then lies back to listen. In the telling he hopes for signs, but cannot say so.

The discourse is quickly impassioned. The disciples speak of the splintered world. 'There are a thousand creeds, and more each day,' Lemuel says. 'Everywhere there are ones obscured by darkness.'

'I am sad to confess, the world hates us still,' Meletios says.

'But there are believers in Jesus,' Danil argues.

'Yes, but what Jesus?' Lemuel asks. 'They number him no different from other prophets. He is another they can petition, no more than this.'

'But is not this a beginning?'

'No. They understand nothing of what we teach.'

'And the scribes and the chief priests, they speak against us still no different from before,' Meletios says.

'But there are some in the synagogue,' Danil says. 'remains in a cave of Chiram and one Eben, who confessed to me they believed in Jesus but could not say so in public for fear of being driven from the temple.'

Lemuel shakes his head. 'We must teach otherwise. They prefer the praise of men to God.'

'Yes, but. .' Danil shrugs at the old bell ringer. 'The work to come is still long.'

'That Jesus is a teacher is most easily understood. But this is not belief. They sit to a sacred meal but do not understand the Eucharist. Our gains are small.'

'Should we not be content that they receive us?' Meletios essays hopefully. 'That some there are who listen?'

'But what comfort is in this?' Lemuel asks. 'I can number on my fingers the ones who believe truly: Gaius, Demetrios, the young follower Polycarp, who asks that he come to see the Apostle.'

'Let him to come,' John says.

'You are weak still, Master. You should not be taxed with visitors.'

'Let who would come, to come. I would see all my brothers in Christ. We are a communion. We need not walls to keep others out.'

The discourse falls quiet. The sun has set. The disciples sit enlarged by their shadows. In what they are engaged seems enterprise of vast dimension and they are small and human only.

'Let us pray,' John says.

They do. Their praying is old solace, comfort ancient as time, as man's first petitioning into the first night.

An hour passes, another. They say the words of psalms, of scriptures in usage immemorial, lines once chanted in desert and plain, in the dust wherein grew cities that now are dust again. A single voice rises and the others join. A pause follows. Then, without indication, another amongst them begins a new prayer. So the dark is measured. They do not conclude. None move away to sleep. The Apostle is awake and prays with them.

And in that time, between dark and dark, when there is nothing but the bare bowed spirits of these men, there comes to John a frail light. He is moved by love. It comes to him at first as the deepest pity, that these have not seen Jesus as he has, and yet they follow. Their faith near makes him weep, and he feels for each one an unsay able love, within which is gratitude, pride, admiration, wonder, mystery, sympathy, surprise, all tender variants of affection. It wells up and floods the chambers of him as an inner tide. He is overcome. In his darkness then an epiphany: such love he must not fail. It is as simple as this, for epiphany is foremost marked by simplicity, by the condition of claritas. He sees as he has not before. Such love he must not fall.

Into the silence, he tells, 'Brothers, my brothers in Christ, unto the last hour, yea, unto the last moment of the last hour, you will teach the Word that others may be saved. In this is the love of God, that you teach the love of God. That you show the way, the way will be shown to you, and to all who find you. Though it is the last hour, we do not labour less, but more.'

He pauses. His voice is strengthened.

'I would that one of you would write these words,' he says.

Startled, as if from dream into the thing dreamt, the disciples bestir themselves. Danil lights a candle, Lemuel brings papyrus and stylus, offers these to Meletios, whose hand is fairest.

Then, to instruct, to clarify, to lead into light, to assist those he loves in their labours, which labours he knows will continue to the end of time, John dictates his great epistle. He writes to the world. He speaks clearly, with certain pause, each thought delineated with care.

'That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life. .'

His voice is clear, his manner calm.

'These things write we unto you that your joy may be full.

'This then is the message that we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.'

John speaks on in the candlelight until it burns low and another is lit. He speaks without fatigue, telling, urging, teaching what numberless multitude in the unseen world might yet be Christian. He thinks of it as a last act, a summation of what is, a last offering out of his life that those he loves might use in their labours. For he has understood that in Ephesus there is much darkness. 'The whole world lies in wickedness,' he tells Meletios to write. And the writing, the telling, is an act against this. It is both warning and promise. 'Believe in the name of the Son of God,' he tells, 'that ye may know ye have eternal life.'

The dawn comes and he is speaking yet. His throat is grown hoarse, and Meletios looks up from the scripture, fearful that the Apostle will speak himself to his last breath. 'You must rest,' he says, 'we have the Word. We will bring it forth.'

The disciples are rapt, in-spired. How is this the aged one they feared dying after his fall? Danil brings him water to drink. John sips at it. He falls silent; in the after-hush asks, 'Is Papias not returned?'

34

How long is love? How long is love when there is nothing? When there is no other? When there is none to touch or see or hear? How is love then to endure? What hope for human love when it is sustained only by belief? How can a man love God? How can he love what he cannot see, cannot touch, cannot feel? And, more impossible yet, how can he feel that God loves him back? Does the air love? Does the sun? Does the dust of the plain?

I am not worthy to be loved. My very flesh dies.

If we are loved, why is our way not made easier? Why does evil and pestilence prosper? Why do our enemies thrive? Why does the Lord not help us when we have carried his Word for so long? Where here is love? Where is the love in these blisters, in this disease that eats to my heart? Where is the love in this pain that wracks my body? O my soul is black with anger.

I am not worthy to be loved. My very flesh dies.

But O if you would come.

If you would come, I would be healed.

If I could see you, I could love.

If I could touch you, I could love.

If you would come.

John is the Apostle. I do not believe the scripture. Matthias twists the world for his own vanity. The Apostle rests in the house of Levi. I would I could go to him. I would I could kneel by his bed and his hand lay upon my head.

But I will not see him again now.

He it is who loves. He it is who remains true. Does his love for you not die? Does it remain a lifetime? Though it is yet ages past since he saw you, does he see you still? What can he feel that I cannot?

I feel only grief.

I confess it. I feel only grief and loneliness and anger.

By my sins I am cast out. I am elect to death.

Where is the love for me? Where is the mercy?

I crave it. I crave to feel love.

O my heart bleeds. My soul is black with anger.

Lord, have pity.

In a quake-toppled house where remains a room partly roofed, Kester the thief attends to Papias. The disciple is lain in a corner on a wooden pallet with a coarse covering of camel hair. His arms he crosses to scratch at his sores. Shakes wrack him. Now he trembles violent as a leaf in the last gale of autumn, now he is still as death. Such sudden visits make his body weaker still. If he would sleep, he might have respite, but he cannot. He lies with eyes baleful opened. All day and all night he stares. The vacant air lit and darkened, he studies as if for transport of angels. But none such come, only further sores. These, as though his blood resists less or extends welcome, bloom swiftly. There are sores built on sores. Rough ridges of flesh rise and burst in yellow pus. His nails flail. His lips swell as though by sinister kiss. Blisters at the edges will bleed if Papias opens wide his mouth, so Kester dribbles water from a cloth. He sits by. Sometimes in the day he is gone into Ephesus and returns with what he has stolen — foodstuffs, cloth, the makings of fire.

From a stall in a market, whether by theft or bargain, he brings herbs for a cure. These he mixes to a brew, lets cool till thickened to a paste.

'Why? Why do you bring this? I am to die, go away. Do not touch me. Save yourself, leave me,' Papias says, and turns from him to the wall.

Upon the raw exposed back, Kester lays the paste.

But the cure does not take. The sores climb the disciple's throat to meet those that travel out from the lips. On the bed, Papias shakes like the toy of a distempered child. He cannot still himself. His hands tremble wildly; his arms fly about; he lets out a long, pitiful moaning; tears at his hair. The pain become unendurable; he crawls to chafe himself against the wall, blood and poison running, as he cries out, 'Take me! O Lord, I beseech you. Hear me!'

35

The disciples are heartened. Within a day they have learned the epistle by heart; through them it will multiply. They preach with emboldened spirit by the basilicas, in market squares. Tireless, they go all the streets of the city fishing for souls. There is concern for Papias but not yet alarm.

The young man with eyes of piercing blue who is called Polycarp is brought to meet the Apostle and becomes one of them. On good reports of the faith of Gaius, John dictates to him an epistle, gives it to Lemuel to bring.

'Is there no report of Papias?'

'We seek for him everywhere, but he is not known.'

'Seek still. I will pray for him.'

The Apostle angles his face upwards, as if to interrogate the sunlight. In the stillness of the day his strength ebbs. Having so long forgotten his body, having lived without thought of its health for many years, now he finds he is reminded of frailty. This stiff movement of his fingers, this seized joint of elbow, labour of lungs, grind of anklebone, intervals of deafness, heart-race, numbness, cold unfeeling toes, such things as recall him to his humanity. His body fails. Having long since considered time immaterial, he does not know what age he is, and this is of no concern. Only that he abides matters. He must remain until the Lord comes again. That is all.

He lies on the daybed and prays for Papias. He fears the disciple is gone to Matthias or that Matthias has enacted some evil, and he sends his prayers against this.

In the days that follow, the disciples return from the city to report their number grows. In their voices John can hear the timbre of hope.

'There are others who would come see you,' Lemuel tells. 'They ask that they might see the one who touched the hand of our Lord.'

The apostle John hesitates. He does not want to be the reason for belief. He does not wish reverence or awe for his own person.

'Blessed are they who believe without seeing,' Danil says.

'Agreed, but all men are weak. And if it should increase the faith of some, then where is the wrong?' asks Lemuel.

'They have the Word, what need the person?' Danil replies quickly, then seeing Lemuel's eyes realises what he has said. 'I am sorry, Master. I did not mean. .'

'It is the truth, good Danil,'John says, and seems to think on this some time, then decides, 'But if there are some who would come and pray with us and share the Eucharist, then all are welcome. Tell them to come in the truth of our Lord Jesus Christ.'

The evening following, there are twenty. A week later, and from other small communities further distance, there comes more. They are too many to fit into the room and some stand bowed in the street outside. The Apostle is moved. To this church of two score and ten he speaks the words of the epistle. They are a small sect only, a minor assembly among the many others that gather in the city of Ephesus, where heresies flourish, but in their attentiveness and devotion is significance; in their number, too.

In John light breaks. When he speaks his aches are forgone. His voice is raised. He lifts his arms wide, and is then like a figure of olden time whose soul sings, whose testament is burnished with fire.

'These are the last of days,' he tells. 'Behold, we prepare the way.'

But in the aftertime, when the numbers are dispersed again and the night fallen, he is revisited by infirmity. His humanness declares itself in pain. Though he does not tell the others, such aches, such effort to find breath in his chest, are new to him. He lies in his own dark, aware of the air that seems harder to draw now. His thin lips are dry. He would ask for water, but it is night and the others sleep. Instead he suffers a thirst that tightens his throat. The effort for breath exhausts him. Is it now? Is it here in the night alone that he will see love coming? Along the hallways to his heart a fierce pain hastens. In the absolute aloneness of suffering he tries to make his mind accept what his body feels. The hurt is immense, his face grimaces as it arrives with iron blade in the centre of his being. But he does not cry out. His mouth opens, an O of anguish, and his eyes weep. He is impaled and cannot breathe. His two hands he brings to his chest and holds tightly, as though in battle to keep life from being cut out.

Is it now? Is it here?

The disciples sleep. He has not strength to call out. His chin he presses to his chest, his legs he draws upwards. He is small as a child.

And in the wrack of the pain, in the throes of his agony when dark upon dark he suffers, when he is brought even to the furthermost edge of living, there must come yet the hurt of bewilderment. For in hurt speaks humanity and John is mere man. If the very many near encounters with death in all his ancient lifetime had taught him to believe a coat of care was about him, that countless times he was protected, spared, even to the earthquake, miraculously enduring, then here now it seems is an ending. Such pain he has never felt. The coat is drawn from him and he is naked. And what comes to his mind, not yet in words, is why.

Why here, now, alone, do I die?

There is no light. Of Jesus there is no herald. No fold in the dark opens, nor do angels descend.

36

Light. Light. Light.

Sunlight on the road shining. Heaven light making golden the sand. Light. In Andrew's fair hair. In the pale body of the Baptist in the river water. Light. In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust. Behold. Upon the crest of a sandhill. Behold the Lamb of God. I saw a spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him. The beginning. What are you looking for? Light. Rabbi, where are you staying? Light. Come and see. We have found him, the Messiah! We have found him! O Lord Jesus. In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust. Light. And seven golden candlesticks. And his hairs were as white as snow and his eyes as a flame of fire. Light. The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer. On the road to Cana not a word spoken. We walked to revelation. Unto thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul. The stone water jars. The bird trapped. Light. His praise shall ever be in my mouth. And his feet like unto fine brass as if they burned in a furnace. Wings beating, the bird trapped. The awning shade. Shall I not rise and free it? And his voice as the sound of many waters. Light. I waited patiently for the Lord, and he inclined unto me and heard my cry. See the bird above us. They have no wine. Light. There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus. I will praise thee with my whole heart. And in a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar. And the sheep market by the pool, which is called Bethesda. Light. And he had in his right hand seven stars. And the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. Bread of heaven. I am the bread of life. Light. And out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword. And as Jesus passed by he saw a man who was blind from birth. As the deer longs after the water brooks, so longs my soul after thee. Light. And he spat unto the ground and made clay of the spittle and anointed the eyes. Go wash in the pool of Siloam. And his countenance was as the sun shineth. Light. And he laid his right hand upon me. How were thine eyes opened? There was a man called Jesus. Saying unto me, fear not. Light. Whosoever believeth in me shall not abide in darkness. O my Lord. Light. Bring light. I fall in darkness.

The sun rising, a bell is rung.

Meletios it is who goes to the Apostle. John reposes in such stillness he seems barely a man. His chest does not rise. The disciple is afraid to stir him. Surely he heard the bell, but perhaps prays so fiercely, is so portioned into the world of the spirit that his body is the lesser part and responds not. The disciple attends some moments, uncertainly. Then fears crawl free. Is he living? Meletios leans closer. From the Apostle there is not the slightest movement. It cannot be. It is unthinkable, and what cannot be thought cannot be believed. He reaches out his hand to touch John, but leaves it quivering in the air. Dread saddles coldly the back of his neck. The room is damp, heavy, the stones glisten.

'Master?' he says softly.

There is no response, no movement in the blind face of the Apostle.

'Master? It is Meletios.'

Again nothing.

He lays his hand upon the thin, thin frame of the old man, frall assemblage of bones in a white robe. His action is too slight to be called shaking; rather he touches tenderly the arm and presses there.

Into the room small light falls.

'Master?' His voice, though a whisper, betrays the first thick clots of loss. The lumps of grief rise in him. He moves his hand to the ancient face and feels it cold, and he cries out.

And from what furthermost edge, from what dark or light, by chance or design, John returns.

Very slight, he moves his head to one side, speaks softly the disciple's name.

Meletios drops to his knees, takes the Apostle's right hand in both of his and presses his head to it. 'Master, Master.' He can say nothing more at first. He hears John draw a slender breath.

'You are cold, Master. I will bring you more blankets.'

'Meletios?'

'Yes, Master?'

'I am here.'

It is not a question, or is it? Is he confused?

'You are here, Master. Yes, in the house of Levi in Ephesus.'

'Yes. But. .' The Apostle raises his right hand, it floats trembling in midair, pale uncertain bird, and then moves across to where it alights upon his left shoulder. John pats his own shoulder, then the upper arm, and forearm.

'I cannot feel this side,' he says. There is no fright in his voice; he tells it because it is. 'My arm, my leg.' Then, in mild interrogative, 'They are there?'

'Yes.'

John lies still. His breaths are long between.

'I cannot move them,' he tells.

'It is tiredness, Master,' Meletios offers, lineaments of love in his face 'You have not your strength. Rest, rest now. We will pray for your well-being.'

John does not reply. He lies in the heart of the mystery while Meletios goes to alert the others.

I am here, he thinks. But I cannot see and cannot feel that I am. How then do I know?

It is as though he has been partly taken.

In the day that follows, he turns the question over: why is it so? Does the Lord speak to him by this language of dying? Does he near take him each time, in the sea, in the quake, and by this, too? Does he tell something by sickness? What message is untranslated here? Why does the Apostle near death and not die? To now John has supposed the reason: that he prepares the way, that he remains spreading the Word until he comes again. It is the Lord's love for him, and his for the Lord.

But in the blind, dark stillness of the bed when one half of himself he cannot feel, he thinks there is something other.

He is a sign that he himself does not understand.

Teach me, he prays. Where do I wrong? Teach me to live as you wish.

That night Lemuel lies on the floor by the Apostle's bed. He cannot tell if he sleeps or not. He listens for each breath. When he rises in the dawn, John is awake already.

'We must find Papias,' he says.

'We have searched, Master.'

'You must bear me to Matthias.'

'But you are weak, it is not prudent. The city is. .'

John raises his right hand. 'To Matthias, bear me there. We will find Papias.'

'Let Danil go, or I shall. There is no need for you. You are weak. .'

'There is need for me yet.'

'I did not mean. .'

'It is all right, Lemuel. I am to go. Will you bring me thither?'

He is borne from the house in the early morning on a litter lain with a blanket of sheep's wool. The disciples all go with him. The way is crowded and already filled with traffic of commerce. Seabirds are come ashore in forecast of storm; they pilfer and squawk. Criers already rend the air with prices. The Christians then are a quiet caravan, aloof, privately purposeful. They cross from the district of alleyways and crooked lanes into the broader thoroughfare. The key of season is turned; the sky blotched with cloud. Small gusts of salt wind blow. Watchful of the heavens, traders lay stones on their wares, lower their prices a fraction.

Ephesus has seen all the world, its oddity and grandeur both, and pays little attention to the litter-borne apostle. Those who take notice think only it is one being carried to a tomb.

There are as ever in the streets the proclaimers, the soothsayers, the testifiers, and the priest. The weather changing is apt topic, the storm approaches. Here one points to the sky with force and conviction, declares he sees the seam rendering; here another tells the talk of the wind. The Christians press on. But on the edge of the square they are blocked by a crowd gathered for the spectacle of the gospel seller. The others have seen him before, but have not told the Apostle. He is a bearded, long-haired crier who waves a clutch of scrolls.

'Here, here, come gather and listen! Here is told the bloody crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth.'

For better market, he has a youth in loincloth and crown of thorn bush standing head-bowed alongside.

'Read, read the suffering of the carpenter's son!' he cries. And then commences by striking at the youth's bare back with a knotted lash.

An O from the crowd draws him on. He lashes again. The youth withers.

The seller knows his tale by heart. He knows what moves his audience, what vanity and righteousness make of man, and tells, 'Here, see he who thought himself a second God. Read what was his punishment. Read the words written by those who were witness. Read the gospel of Boas for each lash told. The gospel of Judas, who loved Jesus, here the very nails driven, look! A bargain. Truly. A reminder to all the sin of pride.'

What sorrow it is for John to hear cannot be imagined. Love is grief and anger.

The disciples call out to make way, and he is brought past and away. But already in the after-moments, in the strange bumped floating of the litter through the streets where John is borne like a last remnant of truth, something is happening. It happens with suffering. It happens as the sky clouds quicken and the light moves dark and bright and dark again. The wind from the east comes. The birds like torn things scatter and return. The air is made bitter. John says nothing. He lies in the first vision of new knowledge, in the place where it is first nothing but light without shape or form, a candescence that makes wince. He knows but does not know what yet. The thing that happens is whiteness only, is brilliance and illumination neither tender nor comforting but such as to cause pain. For in light is former darkness shown. There is something that happens. It is an inner blinding. But of it nothing can be spoken yet.

The litter is borne out from the city to the house of Matthias.

'Are you well, Master?' Melitios asks, for the Apostle has made no movement or sound. 'This is the place.'

'Tell we have come for Papias.'

Danil knocks. The disciples wait. A sinewy shaven-head figure with pale eyebrows that they do not at first recognise as Linus opens the door. He wears a blue robe to the ground; his hands he cups before his chest.

'We are come to talk with Papias.'

'Papias?' The name is like sourness in Linus's mouth. He tongue-tips his full lips. 'Papias is not here.'

He goes to close the door against them, but Danil stops him, seizes his arm. 'We have come to see him, where is he?'

Linus shrugs free, smoothes the fall of his robe. 'We are holy men here,' he says in distaste. 'None stay who do not wish it. Papias is not here. He went off. He is unclean.'

'Unclean? You who were one of us now call us. .'

'He is diseased. His flesh rots. You knew and sent him to us, Auster says. That you might strike at the Holy One.'

'He is. . you lie.'

'His skin falls off Linus presses forward his head to spit the phrase. 'He is dead now.'

Danil must keep himself from striking him.

'Bring us to Matthias,' John says.

Linus wets his lips. There is authority in the Apostle he fears yet.

'The Holy One is in the sanctum. He fasts. He is not to be disturbed.'

'Bring us there,' John says, and the disciples push past the remonstrations of the other and go through the building, opening doors, until they come to a place of candles and incense and a stone altar upon which lies Matthias. He remains perfectly still.

'Matthias!' Lemuel calls.

Still the other does not move.

Lemuel approaches. 'Matthias, where is Papias?'

Very slowly, with such deliberation of movement as to be considered grace, Matthias raises himself, to the air above makes a circular blessing with his right hand. Then he steps down from the altar.

He smiles to see this ancient man come before him.

'Old man,' he says. 'Do yet you see the light? Are you come to confess the true way?'

'We are come for Papias,' Lemuel says stoutly. 'He has been here?'

Matthias stands some way back from them.

'He has, but I could not save him. He was eaten with contagion.'

'Where is he?' John asks.

'He is dead.' Matthias smiles. 'Your Christ did not come to save him. He knew this and came to me. He confessed himself unclean, and I cleansed him of the sin of ignorance.'

John raises his voice. 'You are an Antichrist. You are the evil that is in the world.'

'Old man, it is you are the corruption. This Papias came to know. I see he did not tell you that he was a leper. He feared to. Why? Why did he not come to you? Why did he come to your charity and love? I will tell you. Because he came to know you are nothing but a useless old man waiting to die. What else are you? I showed him the true gospel of John I bought in the market. Have you one? They have many. Papias read it and knew you were nothing. Even in the gospel your Jesus is only a prophet. You are a vain old fool who has lied himself to importance. Who believes what you say?' Matthias glares about at the disciples. 'These old men? These who went out from their own people and made outcasts of themselves? Papias came to know. To understand. He came to ask to follow me. To be one of us. Already once I had brought him back from the dead. But he had doubted the One too long, too long he had turned his back on the Divine, and so his own back was eaten first. His flesh. .' he scowls in disgust, '. . was putrefied.'

'You are lying!' Danil shouts.

'O stout Danil, stout in ignorance to the last. On his knees Papias begged that I heal him. Yea, there where you stand he wept and pleaded, kissed my hand.'

'Come, let us leave this evil,' John says, 'we have no business here.'

As they bear him from there, Matthias calls, 'See how at last he withers? The old man will be dead soon. Fear not, you can yet repent like Papias. You can yet come to see the truth. When the old man is buried in a week, in a month at most, you will come then. I know.'

They reach the doorway.

Matthias calls his farewell, 'I will pray for you all.'

Then they are gone. He stands looking at the doorway some moments. The confrontation has inflamed his heart, and now the rash on his chest stings again. He closes his eyes against the urgency to scratch. Then he steps back to the altar and climbs on to it, lying prostrate, hands crossed on the contagion, as he prays for a cure.

37

The disciples bear the Apostle back. None speak. The sky darkens with storm that is not yet come. Wind whips the awnings; ropes on masts whistle a lash song. Above the streets wheel seabirds with cry plaintive and urgent. John is carried back to his bed. What is happening within him happens still. But the action is inchoate yet, a turning of hurt and anger and grief that in one man's spirit are as a blade working, paring, incising. From the raw and tender stuff of love and its disappointment is painfully fashioned enlightenment. How is he to change the thinking of a lifetime? The world is rotten with soft credence. Man twists belief for his own purpose. Each day a new messiah. A hundred years he is, and the most of that he has been a voice, preaching the word in desert towns, in hill villages, in Roman cities. But as he returns from encounter with Matthias, a hundred years seems too long to have lived. The world does not improve but worsens. How hard to keep faith in it. What effort, what hardship, has been his for so long, so long he has remained believing that soon, soon faith would be rewarded, that now through infinite weariness he must find strength to turn around his mind. The terrible news of Papias, the memory of the gospel seller, how fiercely Matthias and the others had turned against them, such things are deep wounds.

'Lay and rest, Master,' Meletios says. 'The journey has wearied you.'

And John has not the strength to answer him.

Do I die now? Do I die now when the world is thronged with evil?

One side of my body I cannot feel.

How am I, an old man, to turn back the Antichrists?

My heart shakes with rage.

I would the world were ended already.

Or that I were young and strong again and could strike your enemies down. I would be as a fierce sword.

But I am weak. My breaths are numbered.

I sin of despair.

You crossed the brook Cedron, where there was the garden you had oft visited. The last of times. We knew and did not know. The night falling in the olive trees. They came with lanterns and torches and weapons.

'Whom seek ye?'

'Jesus of Nazareth.'

'I am he.'

Then Simon Peter. Then Annas. Then Caiaphas. Then Pilate.

'Art thou the King of the Jews?'

'My kingdom is not of this world.'

I followed. I could not weep.

The last of times.

Already you were gone.

'Away with him! Away with him!'

The cross.

The storm proper comes in the night. The sky over Ephesus booms with thunder. Such noise as is makes shake stone jars and statues. The moon and stars are taken. The sea comes inshore on a high tide, throws boats like toys, makes mud of dust and slides it elsewhere. In the dark all huddle and pray. The night breaks up. Thunder deafens again. A crash and then another, then another still. In the streets and alleyways, in the square, out the Magnesian Gate, no man or beast moves. It is tempest too fierce and keeps from sleep the thousands who stare at the dark. Boom, the thunder breaks again. What is thrown about but entire kingdoms? one tells. Here in the heavens is battle engaged. How the sky holds it is mystery. Something must fall through.

And at first this is lightning. A rend is cut and forth flashes a white spear. Of jagged edge a sky javelin flies. The city is illumined, made small by the vastness of light; its antique history, its fabled greatness are as nothing beneath the force loosed from the dark.

Again the thunder. Now with it further javelins. A first sheet of rain pelts down. Drops larger than the eyeballs of camels. Wind whips, takes down what is upright. Cloths, coverings, poles, lengths of netting, rope, stools, crates, all fly.

The storm does not stop. Unabated in the dark is the fierce conflict. A hundred crashes of thunder, more are counted. Lightning whitens the arrows of the rain.

And in this broken night, the disciples come to the bedside of the Apostle. They, too, are fearful and seek assurance.

What happens? Is this weather only? Or is it now at last that the end of time comes?

The thunder crashes. The lightning illumines their frailty.

'Master?'

'We pray,' John says.

They pray then the Introit of their community. The words that may be their last in this ending of the world.

'In the beginning was the Word,' John says, and the others are enjoined. 'And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.'

If the ending is now, it will come on the words of the beginning. If it is now, it will be on their profession of faith.

They pray the Introit a second time. 'In the beginning was the Word.' Their voices are raised in the thunderous night. They cry out the words above the roar and the lash and all the bruited dark. And in the action of the praying itself the voice of the Apostle grows stronger. Gradually he loses age and weariness, and though the storm continues wild and wracks the world thereabouts, he has no fear. He is before them as one in rapture, and here, in mid-prayer, he finds his feeling returned to his left side, and he raises up that hand to the other, and can move then from the lain position to stand amongst them. He is marvel and revelation. But none declare it, for the world may be nearly done now, and with the Apostle standing before them they pray only. Their prayers have the intensity of another form — not words but flame perhaps — and burn their foreheads where they are turned upright in expectation and yearning.

The storm crashes yet, the dark more dark still, all the world bowed and blinded.

And now, here, in John, is again revelation.

Here is vision of time itself, of all things temporal and not.

He knows.

He knows as he has not before what is finite and what infinite. He knows that for light darkness is needed and that his hundred years is not an end but a beginning only. He raises up his hands, and it is as though to word sent long ago response is now received. His voice cries out a prayer. And here in the illumined room of his spirit he sees a church, a vast lit place to which keep coming men, women, and children innumerable as stars. The church fills and further fills, its walls expanding; his spirit rises like an eagle and sees the throng stretch into the greater distance, yea on to the horizon of sea and sky itself. 'Hall'luyah, Hall'luyah,' he cries, and the disciples look to one another in awe and joy of what immanence is made manifest. Here is rapture and revelation. 'Hall'luyah, Hall'luyah!' Here is an ecstasy of soul, a condition out of ancient scripture, a purity of communion not known nor considered actual in their old age of the world. But here it is. Here is man with God. Here are all things made new.

John sees.

Returned to him is every moment from the first to the last and beyond. Returned to him in perfect clarity is each instant he spent by the side of Jesus. Each word spoken is in his mind. The teachings are as scribed on fresh papyrus. All is recollected. In those moments while the storm beats and flashes, he himself is the book being written. Here are things he had forgotten. Not the detall of sunlight nor the scent of the olive trees, not the salt slap of the Sea of Tiberias nor the close heat of Cana, but words, ways of saying. Everything taught, each phrase Jesus said is here now. And in that moment John knows the testament is not himself but the Word, and that what remains and what will remain to the last is just this, the word he carries. What gift he bears is not a narrative, is not a telling of what happened, but something other; it is a vision for all time, it is the very cornerstone of the vast church that looms in his mind.

He sees.

He sees and is humbled and uplifted both. He sees as if from a great height and is consoled.

The storm raging still, he lowers his arms. He speaks the names of the disciples gathered there and tells them not to fear.

He says, 'The Lord is with us.' Then he asks that one of them write what he will tell.

He sits. A light is lit.

In voice clear and strong, he begins to tell of the Baptist: 'There was a man sent from God whose name was John.'

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He speaks on through dark. He does not stop. His manner is composed. Though outside the night is still broken, the disciples have no fear. Each has heard the Apostle teach pieces of the whole before, but here verse and chapter follow as though the words are already written. John does not grow weary. Into his voice comes sometimes anger at the world, sometimes sorrow, and sometimes nothing but the suffusion of love. Hour follows hour. He speaks long passages of the words of Jesus, and while he does, to those attending it seems a truth absolute, that these exact were the words spoken and by miracle in this man here preserved. In such a way is time overcome. There is no tarnish of age, no lack of clarity or pause for recall. The words are there, and are as an argument full of reason and logic. Phrases are balanced, built. Time and again certain words ring out. Love. Beloved. Friend. Truth. True. Glory. Command. World. Hour. Darkness. Light. And amidst these is all manner of the verb 'to remain'. Abide. Dwell on. Stay.

The composition continues. None can say for how long. Does the dawn come and the day pass and another night fall? Is it even on to the third day, as some will tell? Does the storm blow all the while? It does not matter. From this all else will follow. From this will be accounts numerous, versions of how and where and when that will continue even for thousands of years. There will follow scholars and sages, legions of the learned who in the coming history of the world will unearth possible traces of the gospel's genesis, what comes to be added after, what versions followed what and to what purpose in the unfolding of the early church. There will be one John, and then another. There will be argument and debate as to who wrote what and fragments of antique testimony offered in frail proofs. But none will matter. The words themselves will outlast all such. They will last to the very edge of eternity.

And this John knows as he says them. He knows the beginning and the end. He knows what work is his now, and that the world will not finish here, only his. He himself is already disappearing. He tells on. His spirit soars. He sees what is to come. He sees the numbers of the Christians grow. He sees the churches and thereafter the great cathedrals, the psalms, the songs, the composed Masses, the raptures and revelations of centuries of art divine yet to come. He sees the lives to follow of those about him, of Polycarp, of Lemuel, Meletios, and the others. He sees that on Patmos, Simon and old Ioseph are not dead but even now recover. As, too, in the fallen room in Ephesus where Kester tends to him, does the disciple Papias. The blisters retreat, the flesh is made new. In a day Papias will come to place the Apostle's hand upon his head. But already John will be near to discover that death is a doorway an instant long and beyond it is life everlasting. He sees this, and sees, too, how Papias will in time become bishop of Hierapolis, near Laodicea, and there himself write five books in his old age wherein he will tell of the apostle John, 'whose voice yet lives and remains.'

On and on it continues.

Vision is without end.

John tells his way to the resurrection. He tells it as now it will be told for all time. He tells it as testimony that God loves. And as he does, all feel the movement in their spirits from emptiness to fullness complete.

For here he is running to the tomb now and arriving first. Here he is, the sunlight in his hair. Here he is, little more than a youth running down the road, believing. The dust flies behind him. How swift he is. He sees the tomb opened and he cannot keep himself from joy. His hands he brings to his mouth. He would cry out. He would cry out with joy for ever now. The light fills in him as pure water that flows and flows. Love is resurrected.

He is risen. He is risen. He is risen.

My Lord, you are come.