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.
Papi
as 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.'