John

by Niall Williams

  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 nam
e 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 st
ronger 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.