'Nonetheless. Answer me.'
'I will obey you.'
'God be with you.'
The weather is broken, the island in bleak light. What was empty before is now more so. Where before the younger disciples carried out many of the chores of the community, catching the fish, drawing the water, such tasks are now fallen to the elders. In the aftermath of the departure there is renewed vigour in belief, but hardship, too. The Apostle is aware of this. More than ever now he wishes their faith might be rewarded. He wishes there might be something to avouch for their staying on, for their refusal to surrender though their number is diminished. Long since, he has accepted for himself that there be no obvious exchange, between heaven and earth no simple traffic of plea and response, whereby all that is sought is granted. But nonetheless he feels there exists always the listening presence. He feels love. Always the prayer is heard; the judgement of its merits is the Lord's. But now, in the bleak aftermath, John feels the urgency of the time. There is a turning. He can sense it in the air, in the fall of the sea. It must be now. Now nears the hour. So he says to Papias, 'I am to ask the community of our brothers to fast with me. We will fast that our spirits be made pure and our prayers ascend. I will ask this of our brothers, but not you, Papias.'
'Not me? But I am the youngest. I am the most able. I. .'
'No. Not you, Papias. I command it.' John extends his hand, takes hold of the youth's shoulder. 'You have suffered and serve the Lord as he wishes. I am grateful for your love. But you should not fast. Bear with us. For forty days and nights we shall take only water. The time is near for our Lord.'
The disciples are told at communion. All consent. They eat the last bread and taste the last wine. Then quiet falls on them. Their faces are old and lined. The flesh of Ioseph's cheeks is white and sags from prominent bone. The bald head of Lemuel is wrinkle-creased, his brown eyes deep; Danil is in his sixth decade, narrow-jawed; Melitios, with the long face and blue eyes of Iconium, has forgotten his age; in his narrow chest Simon breathes wheeze. They are all in various manner infirm. In ordinary time they suffer the multitude of ailments visited on the aged — rheums and aches of joint, poorness of breath, wheeze and gasp and cough, vision blurry or marred with floating fish-hook nothings, dryness, deafness, flakiness, dolour of source unknown — and are poorly suited to the rigours of fasting. Nonetheless, each agrees without discourse. By nightfall they are begun.
The first days hunger comes for them. It comes like an unwelcome companion at mealtimes. Its teeth are sharp, its breath foul. It licks its lips with wet red tongue, spits aside the dust of the day and impatiently waits. It says the names of foods. Warm soup of lentils and beans. Pepper spices. Dipping bread. Pottage of sweet lamb with crushed herb of rosemary. Fat onions fried. Baked fish filleted with lemons sliced inside, drizzled over with honey. Touch it. Suck your finger burn. Taste the juices. Sip from the wineskin, pour and watch the beading bubbles, purple mouth swallow. Swallow in the gullet, for the good of it. Taste the sweetness of a honeyed cake, warm from the fire. Break its crust, go on, let free the scent, breathe it deep. Finger the soft food. Eat. Eat. Eat, the cruel companion urges. But the elders endure and do not relent. They sit with bowed head. Some pray the same prayer over and over so it curls about them and is cast like a cocoon. Others find a place, at first in the real, in the mid-distance, a rock, a minor landmark, and stare at this. They focus intently and do not move. They watch an hour, two; they watch while the stiffness comes in their necks and locks tight the vertebrae, they watch themselves into perfect stillness and on until through the place they see they see another, and this takes all their sight. To this other place they go, escape the unwelcome companion who cannot follow.
By the end of the first seven days they are already noticeably weaker, thinner, as Papias brings them water. How can they continue for another thirty-three?
The spring is coming to meet winter. Winds blow down off bright skies of swift white cloud. Seabirds in the twist of season fly low across the broken surface, search the first fish of season. The light changes by the moment. The heavens throw down fists of hail, darken the island then make brilliant with the sun. Light and shade compete across the stony shore, outpacing the flight of gulls. Suddenly the air warms. Up the coast of Greece come mild drafts, gusts carrying the scent of the lemon trees leafing. While the disciples fast, the sea turns blue before them. White sails cross. All is renewal. The plate of the earth itself seems borne upward toward the sun.
Whether the disciples note this or not, Papias cannot say. He comes and goes from each without word. They are both present and absent, their silence deep. The Apostle lies by night on the bed mat of dried rush, sits by day outside the cave, his face to the sun. What prayers he says, or whether he prays at all, remains a mystery. Does he sleep? Does he rest truly? The fasting is a purge of spirit, a paring back to the root. It is painful before it is purifying. In perfect stillness, their faces composed, some of the elders' eyes weep. Twin tears thinly gloss their cheeks, as though they mine a source. Then the water stops. They sit or kneel on, travelling further to another place in their soul, where some history of their weakness or failure awaits.
But the weather is clement, and clemency seems the coming mood of season. Papias himself prays thanks for his rescue; he does not know or understand yet the reason and prays to know his purpose. But for now that purpose is the care of these disciples. The words of the Apostle concerning love are with him like a white stole. God is love, he says to himself many times, and feels in this a vast illumination as though a rock has been pushed back and a bright revelation beheld. If he can hold on to this, if he cannot forget for one moment, then the world is easily lived, he thinks. Within the white aura of this radiance he can put aside any thought of Matthias and the others. He can banish the disturbing thought of the rupture in the community, the versions of his death and resurrection, and the evidence that evil exists.
The sun shines.
By the twentieth day the spring is truly come, but the disciples weaken visibly. Papias thinks to squeeze berry juice in their water, anything that may give strength. But then chastises himself for not trusting the Lord. He himself tries to eat little, but the hunger is fierce and he fears he grows weak and risks illness, so he takes a little more. As he brings the water from one silent old man to the next, he watches for signs they need more. But rarely do their eyes rise to meet his or is there the slightest indication they know he is there. They are as ones gone away, their bodies like cloaks cast off. Nonetheless, Papias can see the wastage. He can see the bones emerge, the skeletal features of Meletios, the sharp jawbone of Danil, and worries compete with his faith. How can there be twenty days more?
At sunrise each day he goes to the table rock alone. He has been asked to ring the bell for Lemuel, though none are to gather. And so he does, hand-beating the dull notes to the pale sky, where the birds turn over in surprise having forgotten men exist. After the prayer bell he rings again, one chime for each day of the fasting past, then he kneels alone and prays. Sometime across his prayer there comes to him the image of the greater world. He has a glimpse of places far away, the villages and towns where the ordinary business of markets and merchants continues, where the day is begun not with a bell but stalls and salutes and the cry of prices. He sees the world gone ahead without him and for moments feels the melancholy of that loss. Out there is the life he might have lived, might be living now, with a family and neighbours, the joys and complaints of every day. On his knees by the table rock he must pray himself back to concentration. No, he has chosen this other life. Because he has a purpose. Because the Lord has a purpose for him, though it may be no more than to attend the Apostle. So be it. If that is his will. Amen.