'The Lord has placed Papias in my care. So I have come to tell you. That you might pray for me that I might bring about the miracle of his living. If it be the Lord's will. Ours is not to understand the mystery of his ways.' Matthias looks to Linus, gestures him to move from where he stands by the wall to the cave entrance. 'The storm will be fierce. You should not leave the cave until it is passed. Linus, observe what I say. Protect our Ancient. See he remains here in safety. God be with us all.'
14
He did not burn, though the fire was all around him, Auster has told Matthias. Papias did not burn.
From this, Matthias concluded ignorance and fantasy to be the measures of Auster's mind; the youth had probably been rescued too soon, that was all. Miracles were most often explained by the unreliability of the witnesses. The resurrected were most often the buried too soon, the mere sleeping, who woke bound in chambers and fought to be returned. No, the fire would have eaten the youth soon enough. There was no miracle in that. But now, here — so much black blood leaked out of him, the ear cut away — here there is something worth considering. Papias should be dead. He lies on the very lips of death — a moment and they may open and take him. But still he breathes. Such a one is valuable in these times, Matthias thinks as he returns from the cave. Do not mistake the value of a resurrection. He steps in out of the wild, dark wind that is blowing now. In pulsing candlelight Auster looks up from where he is squatted by the rush mat.
'He lives?' Matthias asks. 'Leave us now, but be nearby. I will implore the Divine to let me save him,' he says.
He chafes his hands, sits in the crooked light. The youth's forehead is cold, his breath as nothing on the back of Matthias's hand. Is he already gone? Matthias presses his head to the chest, hears the thin beat of life.
If Papias dies, I will say it was because God wished it. Or should I tell about the woman? Should I say he confessed to me?
Or better, that he awoke before death and I saw the devil himself in his eyes? Indeed. I saw him and fought against him for the soul of our youth. Verily, I will say. Verily, verily I myself drove the devil off, so that before dying our dear Papias was saved. Alleluia. Alleluia.
If he lives, I saved him.
This is better.
Live, youth.
The night howls. The dark is utter. Whips of rain lash the island. The wind lifts the sea into the sky and lets it fall. In the eastern end the charred shell of the fisher's hut is deluged. Metal flanges, twisted tin spoons, earthen bowls, all are taken by the hands of the storm and carried elsewhere. The ground is cleaned of human living. With dextrous intent the white biscuit bones of the dead are lifted, let fly into salt swirl and then dropped to be washed away into the suck of tide. Seabirds unsheltered try to go beyond the storm but are blown backwards in darkness like the souls of the undeserving from the near bounds of heaven. The stars are undreamt. Pathways in the rocks are awash and tumble water like jagged wounds weeping. It is weather eloquent but in language lost or forgotten. It fizzes the air, whistles, roars, bangs, and in their disparate huts keeps from sleep the disciples. Some are on their knees in prayer, others are curled on bed mats and rocking softly, as though riding from doom. On Patmos in winter they are used to storm. The inclemency of the weather they take as a characteristic of their banishment, as though rain rods are the bars of jail. But this storm comes more fiercely than the last, or the ones that have rumbled off across their memory. There is something happening, it seems to say. Something in the heavens is happening. The disciples cannot keep themselves from taking recourse to the scriptures. They are fluent in the writings of the ancients, the testaments of the prophets, and each has their own favourite. To each there are chapters, episodes of assail and trial that have appealed and found residence in their imaginations. Just so, then, are they unable to keep from thinking of these as the storm howls. One, Eli, huddles and sees his candle blow out and thinks of the verse from Job: 'How oft is the candle of the wicked put out! And how oft cometh their destruction upon them! God distributeth sorrows in his anger. They are as stubble before the wind, and as chaff that the storm carries away.' Another, Lemuel the bell ringer, finding fault in himself, is visited always by the vehement, burly-chested figure of Moses. Here in the fifth book, Deuteronomy, for those who fail to observe the commandments, Moses rages with fierce promise: that the Lord shall send cursing and vexation and rebuke, that he shall make pestilence cleave unto thee until he has consumed thee from off the land, shall smite thee with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning. Lemuel tosses beneath his blanket, feels his brow hot, his body cold. In the howling of the storm he hears Moses roar: 'Thou shall be oppressed and crushed away! The Lord shall smite thee in the knees and in the legs with a sore botch that cannot be healed from the sole of thy foot on to to the top of thy head!'
The disciple scratches wildly, prays contrition, screws tight his eyes.
The storm rages.
Something is happening.
Indeed, the heavens are wild, Matthias thinks. He sits forwards, elbows on knees, fingertips a tent below his lips. Perhaps Prochorus hammers on heaven's gate. Perhaps the Divine makes clear his displeasure with him, blows him thither to a furnace beneath.
It is a thought.
Papias breathes still, but thinly. The candlelight is canted, the small room umber and dark, shadows long and twisted. To the howling there is no end.
I have my twelve. But no miracle. This one, the servant of the old man, is most apt. What better disciple. I save him and he follows me. It follows as numbers, one upon the next.
But live, youth. Live.
Outside wind and rain contend. The dark is beaten with fury. The skies crash and bang and no dawn approaches.
But beneath all, prone on the bed mat, from the lips of death Papias returns. His chest expands more profoundly. Matthias draws the candle closer to examine if indeed the colour comes in his cheek. When he is convinced, he blows out the candle and shuts the narrow room into darkness complete. Then he goes dimly to the door and cries out into the storm.
'O heaven! O Divine!'
He has to shout again before Auster comes from beneath a covering, stands in the gale.
'What? What, Master?' he shouts.
'It is Papias. He is dead. Look.' Matthias draws open the door into the dark. Auster sees what he has been told is there, the motionless body of the dead, and is turned back by the hand of the other. 'Go, go and tell the others,' Matthias says into the wind. 'Go and tell the old man.'
Auster nods, blinks, shouts against the storm: 'But the fire did not burn him.'
'Go! He is dead. Tell them to come at sunrise. Go now! Hasten.'
Fool. Belief is easily created in a fool.
Matthias waits a moment, admits surprise himself at the push of the wind against the chest; a man cannot stand upright in the world tonight. His dark head he tilts upwards to the starless vault, flesh of his cheeks pressed flat to the bone, eyes watering with salt. He turns to re-enter the shelter but catches sight of a blanched lump not far off. What is it? He cranes toward it, this whiteness, then goes seven steps in the dark to see lying there what seems a fallen swan. He sees the one, and then another, then all about the dwelling, in a vast littering he can make out the bodies of white seabirds slain. There are a hundred, maybe two. He cannot count. The image of them, a mass of white feathering pitched out of the sky and slung there about his dwelling, makes Matthias gasp. There is a sky army fallen. He holds an arm above his head, as if a rain of birds may descend still. He looks up into the deep dark, the swarth of night, sees the nothing there is. He foots a seabird next to him to be certain it is dead, toe-feels the cold, wet plumage; with heavy looseness the neck slides further into the stones. For moments Matthias cannot move, the appalling sight of so many arrests him. It is as though the world is turned upside down and the earth-sky studded with birds. They are legion, and may continue beyond the dark edge of vision. Matthias holds a hand to his mouth. The night blows at him. He thinks of plague and contagion, all manner of canker and pestilence that may be broadcast in such upheaval.