John

  JOHN

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  Four Letters of Love

  As It Is in Heaven

  The Fall of Light

  Only Say the Word

  Boy in the World

  JOHN

  A NOVEL

  NIALL WILLIAMS

  BLOOMSBURY

  Copyright © 2008 by Niall Williams

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Bloomsbury USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

  Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York

  Distributed to the trade by Macmillan

  All papers used by Bloomsbury USA are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in well-managed forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR.

  Williams, Niall, 1958-

  John : a novel / Niall Williams.—1st U.S. ed.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-1-59691-935-8

  1. John, the Apostle, Saint—Fiction. 2. Christian saints—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6073.I43273J64 2008

  823.914—dc22

  2007025810

  First U.S. Edition 2008

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh

  Printed in the United States of America by Quebecor World Fairfield

  To the Memory of

  Stephen G. Breen (1955-2007)

  CONTENTS

  I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  II

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

  A NOTE ON THE TYPE

  I

  1

  The sun rising, a bell is rung. On the narrow bed inside the cave the old man hears the bell but does not see the light. He has not been sleeping, but lying wakeful in almost a hundred years of memory. In the cool of the cave he rises to sit upright; his feet find the leather sandals. It is another morning. This one is cold. There is a wind from the sea. Storms have been foretold, and it was advised he move from the wooden hut on the hill. They were not wrong, he thinks, the storm is near.

  Within the sound of the wind is the slap of sandals on stone. Papias is there. 'Master,' he says.

  The old man stands. The youth holds out his arm stiffly, as if it were a rail, and the blind hand alights upon it. Together so, they move out towards the wind.

  At the entrance of the cave the man's robe flaps sharply and his long hair blows about. He pauses Papias an instant, as if he can see then the thin crack of light unlidding the darkness in the east, or the pale spread of dawn on the broken surface of the sea. The wind blows at him. His face is long and composed and ancient; his eyes are open but unseeing. The blindness came to him there on the island of Patmos in the second year of his banishment, in the aftermath of vision, now a long time ago. But the things he had seen in the world are not forgotten, and on the rocks above the shore it is as though he views the dawn.

  Papias waits. The old man is thin and vulnerable to the wind. His legs are not steady. He is a frail assembly of bones. Waves ride in high and collapse further up the stones. The air is full of the excited noise of the sea, and in standing facing it the old man may lose all sense of time and be returned to the beginning. It is dark still. He steps towards the sound of the waves on the stones, and Papias puts out his arm in case the old man will fall forwards. But he doesn't. He stoops down and feels for the water. He lets its iciness flow about his wrist and then cups a handful and brings it to his face.

  'The storm,' he says. 'The storm comes.'

  'Yes, Master.'

  The bell rings again. They go towards it across the shore. From the darkness other figures appear and move wordlessly in the wind to a place above in the rocks. They are in number near thirty. As light breaks and reveals great heaves of black and purplish cloud rolling in the sky above, the men wait. They watch Papias lead the old man up the rough stones. The one that holds the handbell places it on the ground. Where they stand, exposed, the wind shows them little mercy. It comes at them like a paring knife, as if to test if anything in them not hard and true remains. It whistles and blows. Their robes slap. There is not light enough yet for them to make out one another's faces.

  John arrives among them. They look upon him with reverence and greet him with the quiet gladness of those who are afraid each time they see him that it may be the last. Some are young and others old, but none as old as he. He takes their greeting kindly. Then, in that place on the hill, he stands and holds his hands out from his shoulders, parcelling a portion of the half-light and the wind. The men bow their heads. The Apostle's blind eyes gaze forwards into what only he can see. By the rock where once lightning struck and where, with his head pressed against the stone, he had the revelation, he kneels now. The others do likewise, shadows faceless in the half-dark. The wind whirls about them.

  They pray.

  The storm proper arrives by mid-morning. He is back in the cave and sits on a large stone just inside the entrance. He sees the storm through its sound. He sees the swirl of cloud descending out of the bruised heavens. Darkness contends with the little light and makes nothing of the day. The sea is up and crashing. High swells surface in mid-water and ride imperious to the shore, dragging back rocks that had once been surrendered.

  The wind howls. Papias asks his master to move inwards out of the gale. But he will not. He is like a watcher on the deck, attendant, expectant. Salt skins his face, embeds in a thousand wrinkles. He sits, crouched forward as if he might miss something, as if in the contention of earth and sea and air is a message in a language just beyond his understanding.

  'My Lord,' Papias hears him say, but nothing more.

  The island is sheeted in rain. Vast, urgent thunder rolls across morning. Still John does not move from his place. When the bell rings at midday, Papias asks, 'Master, will you stay and not risk the weather? Will I tell the others to come here?'

  'No, I will go.'

  And as before, he rises and takes the youth's arm and goes out across the foreshore, where the stones are slippery and treacherous, and up the rock steps to the small gathering. In the wild elements there they pray again. Lightning fingers the sea. Their faith holds them, but they look to the old man in their centre as to a mystery. Some have followed him for years, through Troas, Apollonia, Samaria, other places, desert lands where he came preaching. Whether because of the conviction of his manner or that he spoke of what he himself had witnessed, they left their lives aside like old garments and followed.

  Now they stand in the storm bowed and praying. When they have f
inished, and the rain beats down still, one of them, Matthias, loudly asks, 'Master, tell us, is it a sign?'

  He knows he is not to ask. He knows that all have the same question in their minds all the time, but that none utter it. For there is an unspoken understanding that the Apostle does not want to be asked, because for him everything may be a sign; because he was a witness of Christ and because he had the vision on the island years ago, he may see into everything. Or nothing. The vision of the revelation came and went, and there had occurred nothing since. At first the small community of disciples had expected other visions to follow. Even while the words of the revelation were being scribed, they imagined another coming. They looked at the heavens as if they might see evidence of an aperture, a sky portal thrown open and the first fierce angels descending. Every storm, every sudden change in weather might carry meaning. A flock of seabirds, a heavy catch offish, these might be portents. The world became burdened so, and the old Apostle with it. He felt their hungering and grew quiet, like the sea exhausted by storm. In time the disciples understood and did not ask. It was to be a test of their faith. They understood endurance.

  But this morning, standing in the storm, rainwater dripping from his black curls, Matthias asks again, more loudly, 'Master, will you tell us, is it a sign?'

  The others look up and then look down quickly, as though the blind man can see them. Their faces, their beards, run with rain. The noon is dark, the day ruined, above them the unforgiving sky.

  'It is a storm,'John says at last and then steps blindly away down the rocks before Papias, who scrambles after him.

  Inside the entrance of the cave the Apostle sits again. Papias brings him a cloth for his face, another he lays on his shoulders. John says nothing. He tilts his face slightly upwards, where the wind meets it, and he sits there, his bones locking, aches of age arriving. He remains wordless, witness of the storm's urgencies, his brow furrowed deeply, as if engaged in an impossible act of translation.

  The storm does not lessen. It brews and boils on. The day stays dark. All about the island rain-wind scours. The small community of fishers that live on the eastern shore remain in their homes and wait.

  Then, when the short day is falling into night and fresh lightning crackles, the old man stands. At once Papias comes to his side.

  'You stay,' says John.

  'No, Master, please.'

  'Stay. I command it,' he says, and he goes out of the cave into the driving rain.

  His footsteps know the way. His sandals do not slip as he makes his way down to the sea. The wind and rain is a hurly-burly, the heavens unpacking torrents and gales and all manner of broken weather thrown out in the dark. The old man feels the thin framing of his body, how his joints ache, how the very bones of him resist movement. He has walked ten thousand miles, more, preaching. He knows that at his great age he should long ago be dead. He knows that already of the twelve there are few remaining. He has heard of crucifixions, stories of torture and stoning. He has heard from boatmen landing on the island how the persecution of the Christians has continued until it has seemed he has lived to see in a hundred years the vanquishing of the faith that gave his life meaning.

  He goes down to the sea and along the shore, where the tide is high and the rocks rattle like bones. Blindly he finds the stones that are the steps and returns for a third time that day to the Rock of Revelation. He does not want the others about him now. To go truly he has to bend forwards and feel with his hands the way. The cold of the rain-wind is bitter, the sea in the night loud. There is no moon nor stars, as there have been none for him in many years. He clambers higher, then loses his footing and slips. His skin is thin and bleeds easily; the salt air tells him of the wound at his ankle. He climbs on until he comes at last to the flattened rock itself.

  John stands in the storm. He has no fear of any kind. He has outlived all manner of pain and been near enough to death to kiss its face and walk away. He has lived for a purpose and believes he knows what it is. He remains, awaiting the coming.

  And so now, at his great age, he stands and opens his arms to the wild night. It whirls about him. Not twenty feet away Papias watches silently. Rain comes and goes and comes again. The old apostle's arms tremble and waver, his long white hair blown back, and the flesh of his face weeping the salt rain.

  'My Lord,' he cries out, and raises his hands upward to the utter dark. 'My Lord, your servant waits.'

  2

  Later, sleepless, in inconsolable dark he thinks of the beginning.

  The day was blue and still. We were to be out in the boat fishing on Lake Genesareth, but I did not go that day. When Father came to call for me, I was already gone. Fishing was dull and tiring. What did I want of the family business, catching fish and drying them for sale in the narrow storeroom at Bethsaida? I was proud and stubborn. I left the house as if pulled on a cord, and walked that day as others before many miles through the dust to the place by the river where small numbers gathered to hear the teaching.

  This day was no different. I was gone before James and Father had woken. I walked out in the cool of the early morning and across the unrisen dust of the street. It was a long journey. The sun rising thinned the blue of the sky until it shimmered.

  On the road there was no one. No birds flew. For sound there was only my footsteps, the soft crush of sandals in sand. Brilliance of light. The low hills and folds of the desert unshifting in the windless day.

  Remember looking upwards at the sky. Remember wondering what a day this was, and thinking of them waking now and going out on the lake with the nets. Remember thinking of the disappointment my father would feel seeing my bed empty.

  But I walked on. That blue morning crossing the distance between one life and another, though I did not know it yet.

  The Baptist was a thin figure with long hair. He seemed to eat not at all. From long speaking his voice was strong, his words compelling. He spoke of the Messiah coming. From scripture he quoted Isaiah: 'I am a voice in the desert, crying out, "Make the Lord's road straight!"' This man spoke, it seemed, all day and night, untiring. From him the stream of words that washed over those who sat by the riverbank, in some manner comforted by the vision of one so flowing.

  I sat by the side of Andrew and listened.

  The sun was hot, the river shone. Soft dazzlements crossed the current. I watched the water moving in light. I watched the heavens blue in the water. Remember. I turned my face upwards, imagined flight on such a day as this. What height I could reach into the blue, and what it might be to see from above. Imagining when the Baptist made louder his voice and cried out, 'Look! Behold! Here is the Lamb of God!'

  Andrew turned first.

  I looked around behind and saw you walking.

  The storm continues for three days. The disciples come to the Apostle's cave. They pray the prayers he has taught them. Pro-chorus asks, 'Master, will you teach to us from the Revelation?'

  John does not answer. They are unsure if he is with them or not.

  Prochorus carries the copy he himself scribed in the Greek language. Matthias nods purposefully to him, and he begins to read from it.

  'After these things I looked, and behold a door was opened in heaven, and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet speaking with me, which said: Come up hither, and I will show you the things which must be done hereafter.

  'And immediately I was in the spirit: and behold there was a throne set in heaven, and upon the throne one sitting.'

  Father's eyes. His face when I told him.

  'Jesus, son of Joseph?'

  'Yes, Father.'

  'You are going to follow Jesus, son of Joseph?'

  James beside me. I had brought him the next morning to see for himself.

  'Both of you?' Father said.

  Mother by the table, arms crossed on herself. 'Zebedee, be quiet.'

  'He is your mother's cousin, he is Salome's cousin. And you think he is the Messiah, he is the Christ? And what of the famil
y? What of the fishing? I am old. Who is to care for us in our age?'

  'We must go.'

  'Why? Why must you go? You are young. You are rash and stubborn. I am your father. I know because it is my rashness and my stubbornness. But why? Are there not others who have gone? Why must you also? Both of you? I need you here.'

  'God will care for you,' James said.

  Father's fist hard on to the table. He would have broken things. He would have lifted the table and thrown it against us. He would have nailed shut the door. Mother came to him.

  Father's eyes. How they looked upon us, sorrowful.

  And knowing.

  As if he knew, the years ahead, the suffering, but could not save us from it.

  Father.

  His last look as we went. Knowing.

  When we returned from Cana, illumined, excited, witnesses of the signs, proclaiming, Barnabus met us at the road and told us, 'Zebedee is dead. Your mother is gone to live with a cousin.'

  O Father. O Father, look down upon me.

  'Master? Master, surely you will teach us now,' Matthias says. He is a thin, dark-bearded figure of thirty. His hands he holds cupped in front of him, his head angled forward. His manner is honeyed with humility.

  'Is the storm passed?' John asks.

  'It is passing, Master,' Papias says.

  'Master, the teaching?' Matthias presses forwards. 'We wait for your teaching. If you do not teach us, what are we to think? We are weak and you must give us answers. You have answers for us from on high.' He has stepped forwards to stand directly in front of the old man. 'Tell us,' he says. 'Tell us, O holy Master, what the Divine sees for us.'

  There are looks and frowns. The cave air is clotted with disapproval, but Matthias is unperturbed. 'Tell us, O wise and holy Master,' he asks, 'how long are we to live here on this island in banishment? Tell us his plan. How are we to continue to wait and pray here, Master, if we do not know?'