John by Niall Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

fall into them and never rise such is his loss and guilt and regret.
    He wades forwards and scans sideways into the sea, his vision smeared, and grief delirium not far. Gulls raucous wheel and hang overhead. Long, ragged ribbons of weed are in the tide and twine about him. He presses further into the freezing waves, peering down at what touches against him, half expectant to see floating and dragged there the drowned apostle.
    Papias sees what may be the white head. It is some way out, in the high, rolling waters. If it is a man, he is to the point of his depth and faces the waves that come higher than him, making his head vanish in the foam.
    Now, Lord.
    Now.
    I am here to meet you.
    By water. As in the beginning.
    Come now.
    'Master! Master!' Papias calls. His voice is carried away, but in the expiration of another wave he sees clearly now that it is the Apostle deep in the sea. Papias calls to him again and wades forward. The water is ice against his chest, his breath is crushed. But he pushes on; John is thin and weak and will drown in moments. What madness is this? Why has he blindly gone into the sea? Is his mind overthrown? He must be saved. Unevenly the sand floor falls away, and suddenly Papias is deeper and loses footing and drops beneath a wave, wide-mouthed and gulping. He cannot swim; he paws wildly at the sand glitter and a long, slimed scarf of weed that enwraps his neck. His life bubbles furiously; kicking and flailing he sinks to drown.
    In blind underwater his eyes are bulged O's of astonishment that it will end so. He calls out another grey bubble, is by a wave rolled upon himself so his garment swirls as a sea flower, and his white legs are strange stamens, loose and long and darted through by silvered fish in that fish-full sea.
    Kicking done, a sandal falls free, spins, floats, sinks, heels into the home of sea lice and sea worms.
    Papias is taken out by the hungry tide; the one who came to save, drowned. His eyes are open, white and pinked as scallops, his fingers pale starfish, all his body a bountiful island of feed. Underwater, the motion of the waves is soothing, is as waves of sleep coming, one after the other, each taking him further. He lets go, lets go of rescue, of struggle, of overcoming the sea. In the same instant, as if his life departs from him like a ship and he watches it go, Papias feels float from him the service of the Apostle. Floating from him are the years he has followed the Master since he heard the Christians were banished on Patmos and came himself in a fisher's boat to be baptised and stay. From him go the years of prayer and attendance and faithfulness, dissolving goes the night he has spent, the woman Marina, her dead children just ahead of him now on the journey into the everlasting. All sails into the deeps. Papias lets go, is dragged down by the undertow, wave-spun, his chest crushed for last air. A briny nothingness takes him. His brain is dulled, a sea cabbage, his final expression empty surrender.
    The undersea sounds constant pounding. As though all is within a great ear, pulse and thrum, susurrus, the ceaseless sighing. Fish, silent as death, slip one direction for another. On the sea floor a shell moves minutely. Black weed waves funereal slow. The body of the man sinks unevenly, feet down, head up, as if to foot off water sprites or land walking in the afterlife. It is as ascension in reverse, slow, deliberate, hands outwards, hair fanned, garments waving even with heavenly majesty, but in descent. This floating sinking is for ever, a journey not many feet but enduring out of time, the sea's small mercy before the body touches bottom and does not rise.
    But then it does.
    It defies the laws of death and dominion of the sea.
    It surges upwards, past waterweed and fish shoal and bursts headfirst through the waves.
    Papias does not feel the hands that grasp him. His eyes are away, his mouth agape. He does not know how the drowned return, how life is measured, cut, or