‘Amazing. As if the water presented itself there for exactly that purpose.’
‘Only three left,’ Gallio reminds them, before they get carried away. ‘It’s too late for Peter but thank god for John, and for Matthew. At least in Cairo he’s safe. Have you heard from John? He ought to get out while he can.’
They correct him: sorry, but Matthew is dead. Assassins tracked him to a two-room house in the Entoto suburb of Addis Ababa. They broke down the door. In his study they found a simple chair and table and a roll of blank papyrus imported from Egypt.
‘He died horribly.’
The assassins chopped off Matthew’s hands, and in the yard of the house they wrapped him in his papyrus then soaked the paper in dolphin oil. They poured brimstone over his head, and asphalt, and pitch, then piled up tow and scrubwood beneath him. They invited local dignitaries to come along and watch. Bring your friends, bring golden images of your gods. See if Matthew the disciple of Jesus will burn.
When everyone was assembled and sitting comfortably, the gods and the men, someone struck a match.
The Christians at the Abbey outside Rome take grim pleasure in the details of Matthew’s death, which evidently hasn’t worked as a deterrent. In one sense Matthew is as thoroughly dead as the nine disciples before him, but he is also a light in the darkness. Faith is rewarded by persecution and death, but a brighter day is coming.
‘What is the brighter day?’ Gallio asks. ‘When can it be expected to arrive?’
He realises his mistake: he ought to know, or as an honest follower believe without facts and details. Jesus is coming back, an article of faith for true believers.
‘Who are you, exactly?’ they ask. ‘What do you want? Can we help you?’
This is their response to every quandary, and to every challenge Gallio has tried to devise: they think they ought to be able to help him.
‘I need to see Paul,’ Gallio says. ‘Wherever he is now I have important news for him. I was with Andrew when he died.’
Early the next day Cassius Gallio is climbing over rubble in Rome’s shattered back alleys, avoiding the mainstreet patrols that encircle the Fourth Regidor. The Christians at the Abbey told him about a safe route through to Paul’s house, and along this or that unexpected vista Gallio sees new buildings squeezed next to old, satellite dishes and ancient domes, a lone seagull gliding.
He falls in behind an early-morning organic rubbish collection. The bin-men of Rome tip baskets of food waste into a filthy wagon as it trundles through side streets, and Gallio meets no patrols at this time of day in these places. He rubs his beard, wonders how good is too good to be true. He’d spent the night in the Abbey gardens, after the Christians had given him food and a key to the washroom at the café. In the mirror above the sink he’d checked his face for errant nerves, then disapproved of the way he looked. He went back out to find more believers. They loaned him nail scissors and he trimmed his beard.
Paul is under nominal house arrest on the second floor of a two-storey building, in a flat above a kitchen supplies outlet. This is it, the main drag of the Fourth Regidor, and the shops on either side are blackened and boarded up, the cauterised walls patched with fly-posters for the Circus, Sold Out stamped diagonally across the venue and date. For some reason, the fire has left Paul’s building untouched.
At the top of the outdoor stairs a plainclothes officer, a dark-skinned Roman in skinny jeans, sits in a rattan chair with his feet against the railings. He’s playing Tomb Raider on an iPad. Gallio doesn’t know if the police are guarding Paul or protecting him, but either way he can’t back out now. The man lifts his eyes, takes in Gallio’s appearance. He nods him through.
In the kitchen a woman is peeling apples into a red plastic tub. She tells Gallio to keep going, as if he looks convincingly in need of spiritual help. In the living room at the end of the hall Paul is writing at a polished wooden desk. His bodyguard faces the door with arms crossed, not a threat but a barrier. Paul glances up, then squares a bundle of papers by blocking them against the leather inlaid desktop. He looks again at Gallio over the frames of his glasses.
‘Antioch,’ Gallio reminds him. ‘And the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. I’ve changed.’
Paul nods, takes off his glasses and puts them to one side. ‘Don’t like people to see me wearing them. Not the Paul my audience expects.’
The bodyguard is never far away as Paul gestures to a leather three-seater sofa he surely can’t afford. Gallio sits soft, and Paul takes the matching armchair, which is slightly higher. On the glass coffee table between them, a plate of wrapped sweets and a bowl of banknotes. Paul offers Gallio a sweet. Gallio checks the position of the bodyguard.
‘Don’t mind him. He won’t do anything unless you do.’
Gallio takes a sweet, unwraps, sucks. Ah, sugar. ‘You live well.’
‘I haven’t been convicted of a crime, and I’m a citizen. I have the right to appeal against false accusation without harassment. Are you here to harass me?’
‘If you hadn’t appealed you’d be free. After James was beaten to death you wanted us to arrest you for your own safety, but it seems like you weren’t in danger after all.’
Paul sighs, expressing the heavy burden of his knowledge of the world. Against his will he must inform Cassius Gallio, alas, that the world is largely unjust. ‘Now I’m here they can’t decide what I did wrong. I’m under arrest for breaching the Jerusalem peace, apparently, which sounds more convincing than conspiracy to make a dangerous phone call. What is it you want?’
Cassius Gallio remembers Paul as the centre of attention on the conference stage at Antioch. He did so enjoy his following, and Gallio can imagine Paul relishing the entertainment of his trial. They can’t convict a citizen without a triaI, and at his hearing he’ll persuade the judge and jury that belief in Jesus is a rational position to take, that black is white and death is the beginning not the end. He may be expecting applause.
‘You’ve done a fantastic job, Paul. First and foremost I came here to congratulate you. The Jesus believers appreciate your leadership, in which there’s so much to admire.’
Gallio makes a point of admiring the leather furniture in which they sit, the reflective finish of the coffee table, the rock-solid bodyguard. The disciples strive to live like Jesus and are difficult to imitate, problematic as role models. Far easier, now and always, to live like Paul. Not like Peter, in prison offering solace to the damned. Not like John, wherever he is, hunted and poor.
‘You’ve made a name for yourself at the centre of civilisation,’ Gallio says, ‘where none of your enemies dare touch you. Academics quote your letters and defer to your theology, even when they don’t agree.’
‘Please,’ Paul says. ‘I can’t take all the credit.’
Paul has a sophistication the disciples lack, which means Gallio isn’t certain what he’s thinking. Paul spreads his hands to mean he accepts Gallio’s flattery, or he doesn’t. ‘A greater power is at work. Now if you tell me what you want, I may be able to help.’
‘I need to set up a meet with John.’
‘You and everyone else. I don’t think you realise what you’re asking.’
‘He’s in Rome, isn’t he?’
Paul steeples his fingers, but the gesture is too studied, buying time. He uses the tips of his fingers as a sight, along which he aims a steady gaze into Gallio’s eyes. ‘You have to understand, John isn’t…’ Paul dissolves his steeple and taps his head. ‘He has suffered. Your people don’t know where John is and neither do I, because since the fire Rome has struggled to cope with the homeless, the raving, the unwashed. In this city one delirious voice praising angels sounds much like any other. The situation is very sad.’