Papias thinks to visit Simon and Ioseph before leaving. He thinks of the contagion that killed Prochorus and now stops the two eldest from joining them. Is it my fault? Is it of the air or the flesh? Is it me? Should I have told Ioseph I would stay in his place? I should. It was cowardly not to. Why did I not speak up?
In the cave he gathers and wraps in cloth a few precious things they are taking: two chalices, scrolls, three oil lamps.
What stopped my tongue? Why am I so weak?
Is it simply that I fear death?
Is my faith that small?
Or is it just that I want fiercely to go to Ephesus? To be there when he comes? To witness?
Is my vanity that great?
Papias sickens his spirit with questioning. He has so anchored inside him the elemental prime desire — to be good — that his failure twists in his stomach like a rag rope, leaking loathing, sour, fetid. Goodness — not the act of it, not an incidence considered and carried out, but a constant way of being — is his goal. Papias considers this an answer to heaven, a cry of gratitude for his creation; we should live in the image. We should be as near angels. Imperfection is in each of us, but this we can strive against until our flaw is so near to healed as to show the glory of living, what we can become. Goodness, to be good. Can a man not be good all the time? If not, then we are greater flawed and thus the Creator lessened.
In Papias imperfection is a grievous failing. It rises from his spirit on to his skin. He finds an itch behind his left shoulder blade; at a site he cannot see he scratches roughly. In the cool of the cave he feels hot. He needs water. He hurries the readying of the things so he can go outside.
The Apostle sits in reverie. The day is bright and blown stiffly.
'If you do not need me to attend you, I will go to the well and fill water bottles for the journey,' Papias blurts.
The old man turns his sky-tilted head, his pale eyes. Perhaps he already knows the other's inner condition. 'Go, Papias,' he says. 'Go with peace to get the water.'
The sea is high, the waves white. There is the rolling turbulence of spring, the restless energy of the world returned. He hastens along the wind-way, the water bottles on their cords knocking. The furious itch does not quiet. He walks, chin-in-elbow, with his right hand over his shoulder scratching, so it seems from behind he is drawn forward one-handed by an otherwise invisible other. He shortens the route by cutting upwards across the rock slope, needs both hands to clamber forwards over a steep incline, then again scratches as he stands upright on the high point. The island is all below him. And for the first time since the Apostle's announcement, Papias realises he may not see it again. He has been here and nowhere else as a Christian. It has become even a place of comfort, because here the community dwelled as one without significant interference from others. For all its harshness Patmos has been home. He knows its contours, its goat paths and water holes. Ahead there is only the unknown. He might have taken more time to consider this, but his face is hot and flushed, a cold tide of sickness in his stomach. He needs water. Even the wind blowing against him as he crosses the high rock cools him not. What if I, too, have the contagion? What if it is in me and I gave it to the others and now bring it with us to Ephesus? What if I pass disease to the Apostle, bring about the death of all of us, the end of Christians?
Thrice he strikes his hand hard against the itch in his back and shouts out against its persistence and intensity. He flails at the itch with his nails. What heats so in my blood? Is there a bite? Vividly he sees a night serpent cross the cave floor to his bed mat, stealth and slither, the head finding access in the low back of his robe.
'There was no snake. This is not a snake. Don't be a fool, Papias,' Papias says aloud. He licks at his dry lips, palms a pasty sweat from his forehead, and suddenly feels pulsing pain where his ear has been bitten. He touches it tenderly, as if its healing is turned backward and the ear grows raw and bloody again. As if what goodness was in him is now overcome. He begins to run.
He runs across the top of the island like one who would take flight if not for the absence of wings. He runs against the wind, his long legs clapping his sandals against the rock. He comes breathless and wild to the water hole. It is a dark cleft. A bucket is left. He throws down the water bottles and falls to his knees. He scratches furiously over his shoulder, then takes the bucket and dips it. He draws it back quickly; it cannot come quickly enough. His eyes are blurred. The thing that eats at his left shoulder ravages away, and his head is so hot he thinks in a moment it will flame. He moans with defeat, clasps the bucket, and brings it full to his face. He pours the water into his mouth so it fills and overflows and washes past him down his throat and chest as he gulps. He empties the bucket on to and into himself, drops it and draws it again. His hands are trembling, his arms; the whole of him pitches in shakes. Papias takes the next and again drinks furiously. He is awash in water, his knees in pool. He opens his mouth a wide chalice and fills it, letting overrun before drinking. He cannot drink enough. The water hole itself he will empty. He wants to be inundated, to have all that is within him sluiced, laved. Again and again he drops the bucket to the water. Again and again, from his position on his knees he pours it into and over him. His face and hair, his chest and torso drip. He pulls back the opening of his robe and then roughly draws it off him. He is naked in the wind. The bucket he fills once more. Once more he gulps, his throat aches under the deluge, but he cares not. He tilts the bucket into him. Is there end to what man can take of water? Papias thinks not. His eyes weep it, his body bucks with the assault, but still his thirst. It will not be slaked.
He is crouched there, dousing, land-drowning, with no relief, drinking near an hour later when a fisher's boy comes and stands watching the strange Christian, the left side of whose back is bloodied with raw wounds, as though seized from above by a claw.
21
A new time begins, Matthias thinks. He steps on to the shore. His eye wound stings, but he displays nothing of the pain. He wears a tight smile of tolerance moving amongst the crowds. I have forgotten the common ignorance of the world. So many without so much as a drop of purity. Bodies only, brute as beasts.
The holy are different as fish from dogs.
A grizzled trader with stink breath approaches. He stops Matthias with a hand, rough-coaxes toward his wares. At once Auster comes forward. 'Do not hand him! Leave off.' he cries. There is brief jostle and commotion. The trader unsnaps dogs of curses, but Matthias stands unmoved, unassailable, smiling his one-eyed smile.
A new time indeed.
At first light on the third day Ioseph hears Lemuel ring the bell. He opens his eyes, pauses before stirring from the bed mat, into his heart a seep of sorrow. They will pray before leaving, he knows. They will pray for safe voyage, and for he and Simon, and that all may be cradled in the hands of God. In the moment before he moves, the loss of the community flows darkly into him. In an hour they will be gone. The greater part of his life he has lived in the company of many like-minded disciples. He has the idea of a shared soul, as though each grows to become part of the whole, and is both one and many. Now there is to be only him and poor Simon. He feels the sundering. What happens when the community is so broken? First the death of Prochorus, the going out of Matthias and the others, and now this last, each a blow. Ioseph cannot deny the course of grief, the aloneness he feels. The Apostle would have had them stay to attend Simon, but Simon would not have allowed it. He would have drowned himself in the sea rather than risk them. And so now, now there are to remain on the island only two.