Free John by Niall Williams Page A

serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up," the Lord said, "that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life in him." Yes, the Lord said, "God loved the world so much he gave his only Son that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life." '
    The Apostle pauses. He has preached the scene many times in far places. He has remembered often sitting in the starlit night when Jesus spoke the words for the first time, when the lemon trees were in bloom and the air sweet.
    He leans close to the scribe. He touches with his fingertips the eyes, discovers that Prochorus is dead.
    Anger and grief course through him. John stands up, a pale figure before the dawn, and when he speaks there is violence and hurt in his voice. The other disciples are gathered at the doorway, Matthias now among them.
    'The light has come into the world, our Lord said, but men have preferred darkness to light,' he cries out, 'because their deeds were evil, for everyone who practises wickedness hates the light and does not come near the light for fear his deeds will be exposed.'
    His chest heaves. It is not clear if he knows that Matthias is there, or whether he thinks there are others, too, who no longer believe as he has told him. He stands and is a glimpse of his younger self, fierce and loyal and resolute. His lips quiver with anger. It is as though he sees in the landscape of his blindness a vast temple begin to crumple, and he throws out his hands to hold it up.
    Abruptly he pushes forward and knocks a stool. Papias steps quickly to his side, offers his shoulder for his master's hand, and they go past the others outside to where the dawn is not yet risen and the wind gone elsewhere.

9
    The scribe is buried in a mound on the cliff top, his face towards the east. Stones are piled above him, their soft clack a doleful music. The disciples stand and pray. John is not with them. He has told Papias to leave him, and his absence is felt but not spoken. Old Ioseph leads the prayers. Matthias stands by his side with two others, Auster and Linus. The ceremony is short, Ioseph's voice thin with grief. For each there is a sense of betrayal of which they cannot speak. How has this happened, that their scribe has been struck down like this? That one who gave so much of himself to the service of the Lord has been visited by this plaguey death? Why has he been taken from them? The air above their heads is crowded with questions. The death threatens the unspoken belief they have in being chosen, in being set apart. Not because they have imagined themselves free from dying, nor because they have taken as a sign the great age of the Apostle and believed they, too, will outlast all perishing until the dawn of the Second Coming, but because Prochorus was not old. Because his role in their community was to record, and the taking of him seems an act full of portent, as if their tongues have been pulled out. All have expected the Apostle to have further revelation, and for Prochorus to be on hand to write it down. Now his death seems a wilful silencing. The disciples voice no protest. Some of them, bowed, mute, with vigilant rigour tour the inner rooms of their souls and find evidence against themselves - jumbled furniture of doubt, unbelief, false piety, pride — and leave to begin atonement.
    Among them Papias harbours the greatest guilt. He fears he brought the sickness to the scribe, but has told no one. He has no sign of it on himself. When the disciples leave the burial mound, he hurries away down the rocks to the shore. His face is white, his eyes glitter like fish scales. Arriving on the soft pebble-and-shell floor of the departed tide, he slips and sinks in haste, his sandals are unfooted as he steps forward into the shallow waves. There, grey corona of gulls turning above him, he bends and dips his hands in the salt sea and rubs them hard together. Again and again he dips and draws the water and scrubs the invisible from