Williams Niall - John

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.

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 thinking John 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.