‘Treat his fever,’ I implore. ‘Seek assistance from the brothers who have knowledge of medicine. I can go out into the city—there are men of learning I can ask.’
Adam is shaking his head. ‘Uncle, I promise you, what I do I will do honourably.’
A hand is at my wrist. Able is beside me. ‘Come, Timos,’ he says gently, with profound kindness, ‘you can hardly stand. Come with me.’
And then he does something that shocks with the cataclysm of a bolt from the sky. He brings his fingers to a point and, over the child but not touching him, he brings the fingers down the body, and then across over the chest of the boy. This is a rupture of the world; the veil is torn and there is a new dawning, whether terrifying or blessed we do not know. All we can understand is that something new has been born to this world. I have never before been witness to the sign he makes but I know it as if it had been there with me since my own awakening: he outlines the shape of the abominable gallows. He makes the shape of a cross over the boy.
I am stripped of speech, even of memory and vision, as Able leads me up the stairs to my cell, one arm draped across my stooping back. I am bathed in light, I am in the Spirit. When he sits me on the stool, when I can gather breath and speak, I clutch his hand, I kiss his wrist. I say, ‘You have healed him.’
It is as if I know this already: the sign he made is the very manifestation of the Lord’s promise. The boy will not die. The boy will live forever.
I pass the night not sleeping but in attendance to visitations. True, there is my brother in my bed, he mops my brow, squeezes water from a cloth to wet my cracked and feverish lips. There is only me there in my tiny room and my last brother, my Able. But we are not alone. Throughout the night my beloved brothers are on either side of me: my Paul whispering in one ear; and my life, my glory, my eternity, the Twin kissing the other. Each takes their turn to speak but they both speak in the one voice: ‘The boy will be saved.’
The day banishes the night. Able is kissing my damp brow.
I grab at his hand. ‘Did you see them? They were with us, our brothers Paul and Thomas.’
The old man attempts a smile. I let my grasp slip. He did not see them but I did. They were there. And I know that the child will be safe.
When we go downstairs, the women at their tasks will not look at me. I ask for Adam and I am told that he has left to look for work. I demand to know where Jacob is but no one answers. It is only when I threaten to climb to the very rafters to search for him, and do not care if I fall and crush my skull, that a young girl, a refugee maiden, draws back her veil.
‘Uncle, the boy is dead.’
Doubt. I am swept up again into the maelstrom that is doubt. As I make sense of her words, I am close to a faint. A cold, wet hand is at my throat, covering my face, the voice of Satan is in my ear: ‘What good is his crucifixion and reawakening—can he not even save one boy? Why do you follow such an impotent and useless god?’
Fate. I will drown in the unconquerable waves of fate. I am the first generation and the boy is the fourth. Between us lie three generations, three generations in which I have not spoken to my father, my mother, my brothers, my cousins, my kin. We are human and the gods play with us, for the gods despise us. It is not the voice of the Lord’s adversary in my ear. It is the voice of my father.
Faith. I am pulled from the tempest by faith. I believe. I have sacrificed all and I have done this willingly. I will not let the furies come and tear my flesh. I will not and cannot and must not succumb to doubt. I have only found peace in love; I have only found strength when I love. When I held the ruined boy in my arms, a madman flying through the cruel and ignorant streets of Ephesus, I loved that boy as a father loves his child and in that love I am father and brother and son. I bring my fingers together, I recall the sign that Able’s fingers followed. I press my lips, my heart, my right breast, my left. And as if God’s words are written across my chest, I am freed of hesitancy and uncertainty.
I turn to the girl. ‘Did Jacob die in the night?’
‘Yes, uncle.’ She places a hand over her breasts. ‘May his soul rest in peace.’
‘Where is he buried?’
I notice the hurried glance she throws to an older woman. ‘I do not know, uncle.’
I have to use all my will not to hit her.
My brother steps forward. ‘In the name of the Lord, sister,’ says Able, ‘in the name of the risen son, is it true that you don’t know where the boy is buried?’
The girls slips to her knees, kisses the hand of my brother. ‘Uncle, he is outside the walls. He is beyond the world.’
As soon as I hear these words I turn and march out of our house. Able calls for me to wait but I ignore him. I damn my feet, I curse them, demand from them speed and agility. I know the meaning of our sister’s words; she’s referring to an escarpment, a narrow and desolate field just outside the southern wall of the city, barren except for stones and weeds, bordered on one edge by the fallen rubble of the ancient wall that marked the first city built on this land, its name and its people lost to those of us who came after the heroic age. In this evil wasteland live beggers and villains, the diseased and the criminal. The destitute take shelter there at night, though reality makes a nonsense of that word: what shelter is possible in a snakepit of rape and murder? It is indeed beyond the world. It does not lie far from our dwelling, but it is accursed and I have forbidden our brethren to go there. One fine youth had his throat slit there; a sister’s maidenhood was taken there even as she convulsed into death. We did not dare to report those crimes, knowing that the wicked inhabitants of that godless place would have no qualms about accusing us of atheism and treason. But this morning I have no fear. It is to this Hades I go.
Though it is only the dawn of the day, they have already begun to drink and to fornicate. A girl, still a child, her naked body without hair, is slurping from a small urn, the firewater spilling onto her lips and chin. A cheering gang of boys is encouraging her to drink more. A nearby crone watches and shouts insults and obscenities. She is mad and she is diseased; half of her face has rotted away. With one breath, she damns the boys to the cruellest of punishments in the underworld; and then in the next voice she gives licentious instruction on how best to pleasure the girl. As I storm past, she spits in my direction and calls out, ‘You have to pay if you want a go.’
At the far end of the field is where our city throws its scraps, the waste that even the starving beggars don’t want. I stop before a mound of raised earth. A piece of material is visible in the dirt and shit. I scrape away the soil and reveal a body bound in cloth. I dig further, maddened now myself. I unwind the flimsy, filthy shroud.
It is a boy’s body. A dagger has sliced through artery and throat, so violently that the head is nearly severed. I lift a hand of the corpse. The fingers are stiff and unbending. It is Jacob. In the mud and slime, I kneel beside the boy and take him in my arms. Behind me, the world has fallen silent. Even the rapist boys, the insensible girl, the insane crone and the drunken lepers, even they are brought to stunned pause by my offence in touching the dead. I kiss and embrace the corpse.
‘Brother, this is not wise.’ Able is behind me. At the edge of the broken wall, Heracles keeps an anxious lookout.
‘Those who have done this will pay.’ My voice is iron. ‘I will banish them from our fellowship.’
With great effort, his face puckered, Able squats before me. ‘Timothy, you must find understanding. They are a proud and upright tribe. What was done to the boy cannot be undone on earth. He would not have wanted to live.’
I lash him with callous words. ‘What was done to him was done to you, scores if not a hundred times. Why do you live?’
My envy and my jealousy, my arrogance and my pride, their hollowness is now revealed. There is no anger in him—his face is peaceful and serene. I cannot wound him.
He answers gently. ‘I was born a slave, brother, and I was born a Stranger. There was no one who granted me any honour
and so I had no honour to lose. Only one man showed me respect and charity, and that was our beloved Paul. He came into my master’s house and he spoke to me. He honoured me, because the resurrected son had entreated him to honour those who are shit like me.’
Even now, so many years later, his voice conveys the astonishment wrought by such a bizarre act of kindness.
And then his voice steels. ‘But trust me, brother, there were many times before I heard the words of the Saviour that I wished I could bring a blade to my own throat.’
His hands dart, search, he dares pollution and touches the body still in my arms.
‘Let him rest,’ he counsels. ‘He was a Jew and what those ungodly priests did to him nullifies the Lord’s first commandment to his people. He could never be a father—he could never truly be a man now.’
His voice is hard, hard as flint. ‘Trust me, he would not have wanted to live marked by such dishonour.’
That is true. There can be no denying that truth.
‘I will not let him be buried here.’
That is also true and nor can that truth be denied. Those who abandoned him here thought him polluted and beyond the care of the Lord. They remain ignorant. When this boy rises again he will be the first among men.
I carry Jacob back, as I carried him home the day before. I carry him on my own. The beggars and villains and diseased scatter from my path, sickened by my derangement, making pleas to their wicked gods, beating their chests and spitting as we pass.
The foul odours of that pestilent field still cling to us but I am no longer nauseous. The boy has been violated and disgraced, he has been castrated and defiled, but his scent is a miracle—the closest I have come to sensing the true Lord. The boy smells of the foaming sea and of the morning dew. Amidst all that is monstrous, this broken body cradled in my arms smells of the Lord.
A carriage is sent for and two deathworkers are called. I insist that only Able travel with me.
I urge the deathworkers to drive till there is no more land, till the sea beloved by my teacher stretches below us. It is placid tonight. A small path curves and drops sharply down to the beach. But just before the steepest descent there is a cliff face of granite, flecked with quartz so that reflected light of the stars and moon sparkle there. Throughout, a network of tunnels goes deep into the mountain. In there is where we lay Jacob’s body to rest. We have brought him to the Lord.
And then I bathe and cleanse my old and dying skin in the waters of the blessed sea. The first sea, the Great Sea that my Lord, the God of the Israelites, created. And then my Lord wedded His son to the world and took ownership of every land and of every country and of every ocean. But this, this sea loved by the heroes, this first sea, this water remains the most beloved of our Lord.
I emerge naked from the gentle waves.
Able takes my hand. He places a fleece over my frail and shivering body.
‘Let us go home,’ he says.
On returning to Ephesus, Able announces his departure. It is right that he should do so. He has baptised the infants. His own family, his assembly, are waiting for him—they have been denied him too long.
Of course, I insist on our doing what is dutiful and right for our brother. The thanksgiving and the feast of love on the eve of his departure is long and generous; throughout our house, from the cellar to the yard, there is the sound of laughter and of cheer. As I have done so often, I remark on the loyalty and affection that my brother commands, from Ephesians and from Greeks, from the most lawful of Israelites and from the most superstitious of Strangers: they all make clear their care and devotion for him.
This must be our final parting—for what else can it be? We are ancients now, and destined never to see one another on this earth again. Knowing that, I feel wonder and joy that I experience no envy nor any sign of pride. I say all that I must to show our gratitude to our brother, and I perform all of the rites that I must to honour his work—even to bringing my joined fingers from brow to heart to breast, a sign that delights the brethren and which I know will be rehearsed and copied and taught to the very youngest amongst us. And I do not mind. I do not find reason to admonish the unlearned for their reliance on ritual, nor to berate the superstitious for their attachment to signs. If there are further generations to come before the advent of the promised kingdom, those who come after me will need to patiently teach and convince our growing family that we don’t need any signs or symbols—no liturgy, no mysteries, no temples, no priests, no sacrifices, no pomp and no idols. All we need is the word of the Lord.
The day after Able’s departure, I scribble notes to the two wisest and most learned of our assembly, Silver and Emmaus. She was born a slave and a Greek, and since being granted her freedom from her master in Galatia, she has come to a thorough and compassionate understanding of the meanings and deeds of our Saviour. He is a proud Jew, upright and grateful to walk in the light cast by the Redeemer. I hope that they will be the ones to steer our family, for in their dual care they unite what is best of my father’s and of my mother’s blood. But I can only make my suggestions. It is the strength and miracle of our fellowship that such a decision must be made in one voice. I farewell my brethren in the words of the resurrected son: Let him who has ears hear.
On the second morning I refuse breakfast. I have no need for food, for my body is sustained by light. I decide to begin a new letter. A sister knocks, dares to shift the screen, and I voice my disapproval of the interruption. The poor girl was only bringing me fresh water. I call her back, offer apology after apology, and drink even though I am liberated from thirst. When she leaves I kneel by my desk to commence my writing.
I struggle to find the words. I am stricken by all that I do not know and all that I cannot comprehend and all that I must make amends for. I am burning with shame, of my ignorance and my sins. Of my fear of death.
You have no courage, Timothy, I curse myself. I dip the nib of my pen in the dye, stretch out the reed parchment, and I write.
I write to my nephew. I haven’t seen him since he was a plump-cheeked infant. What great joy had greeted his arrival. My brother and my father slaughtered three of the finest of our herd, shared the offering to the gods with all our neighbours. My mother sent prayers and offerings for a sacrifice to be made in the great Temple in Jerusalem. Knowing my attachment to her faith, she said to me, her youngest, ‘One day soon you will know this joy, my Timos. One day you too will honour the greatest commandment of our Lord—to be a father.’
My tears fall as I write.
Is my nephew still alive? And how many others have been born to my brothers and sisters? My parents must be long dead and so probably are my brothers. In renouncing them and choosing the Saviour—choosing Paul and the road—I have not dared to return to my ancestral home. I did not have the courage to face their fury, their contempt, to acknowledge my shame.
Yet I write to my nephew. And if he is dead, then I hope he he might have a son to read my words. Surely one of his sons will have been educated and coddled, just as I was. This thought brings a wry and tender smile to my face. Maybe none will have been schooled. It may be that my wasted example warns against such an extravagant indulgence.
I wipe away my useless tears. I write. I confess my arrogance and admit to my disgrace. I am a son who failed to mourn his parents. I never married and I never fathered a child. For such transgressions my nephew owes me no loyalty and I assure him I understand this. I declare that I am without means and without property. Anything I had has long been distributed amongst my true family, my brethren in the holy breath of the Lord. What I do ask of him is that he conducts, in my name, the rights and the honours to my father that I should have performed myself. In the folly of zealous youth I refused to do so. But my abandonment of my father is a wound that has not healed and I implore my nephew to make whatever sacrifices and say whatever prayers are required for my father to finally pass over the river Styx and rest in peace.
Dear nephew, I who have no rig
hts over you and no bond with you, I ask that you do this one thing in my name. To honour the blood of your grandfather.
How do I end such a letter? I stare at the scratches my pen has made. How to amend for the bitterness and sadness I have sown?
I take the pen and I write: Peace. I write that word and I hesitate. I was to write: Peace, nephew. But we are no longer kin. Instead I finish: Peace, brother.
I do not eat, I do not move from my desk. I have a gospel to finish: that of my teacher, my friend, my beloved, my Paul.
I write of his understanding that the meaning of our Saviour is to be found in his death. Morning becomes day and turns into night and I am no longer aware of the changes across the sky or of the light’s depletion in my chamber. I write of how Paul was transfigured by light on the road to Damascus, of the heavy burden demanded by the Saviour, that the promise of eternal life requires a terrible renunciation: that to be with the Lord requires us to turn from all that binds us to this world. Be it blood, be it parents, be it kin, be it children, be it creed, be it emperor, be it law or be it our very ancestors—all these bonds must be broken if we are to be reborn as new. To the Lord and only to the Lord through the terrible sacrifice of the crucifixion. To understand the hatefulness and cruelty and injustice and arrogance of man, that is why the Lord entered human form and for the first time experienced all that is endured by His Creation. The Lord came to know fear and the terror of death, which is the source of all despair and all calamity. And the Lord had to bear witness to the depths of our misery, to the body broken and slaughtered on the gallows, the body humiliated and violated, flogged, disowned and defiled. And through that knowledge the Lord saw that there stood above justice a greater law: a law of love. In our faith it is not the gods that chain Prometheus to the rocks, it is man who leads the Lord to understand suffering.
I am no greater than the most despised and ill-treated of slaves. Paul came to understand this and in this understanding his blindness was lifted. He took his staff and prepared to journey to the ends of the world, to proclaim that if we do not have faith that the Lord truly knows our suffering, we cannot believe in a better world to come. And without this hope in a better world to come, then we are doomed to selfishness and greed and fear. Without faith there is no hope and without hope we cannot love our neighbour or love the stranger. Without faith and hope we cannot love.
Damascus Page 29
