The Damascus Road

by Jay Parini

  Hunger and fatigue became brothers, each pricking and agitating the other. We passed around lumps of unleavened dough, raisins, and small quantities of salted fish heads. These dwindled within five or six days, producing violent tempers. The prisoners erupted one night in shouts and fistfights, and irritable guards wasted no time in killing the ringleaders. I watched the blood-soaked bodies tumbled overboard, counting eight splashes.

  Hope frayed, and one dark morning a member of the crew leaped into the sea and disappeared quickly: a suicide, the first of several.

  I moved among the men belowdecks, praying with them, offering hope and the Christ’s faith in God, with Luke and Aristarchus beside me. One dying prisoner looked at me in terror. “Was Jesus God?” he asked. I gripped his hand tightly. “He humbled himself before God, before his father, taking on human flesh,” I said, “these tatters, our bodies. He emptied himself for us. His life was perfect, as our lives are imperfect. You will die, my friend, but only to live forever in the warm and blessed arms of the Almighty. Trust him.”

  “I trust him!” he cried.

  At this, I dribbled water from a cup onto his forehead, baptizing him. And soon others asked for this as well.

  The agony of these days proved, for me and others, a useful time of prayer and reflection. In times of crisis, spiritual progress becomes possible. I had so often in my life found myself advanced by suffering, brought closer to the breath of God. Any semblance of pain recalled the blessed pain of the cross.

  Luke and Aristarchus followed my example, and so we moved together among the men, day after day, hearing their confessions, their hopes, their fears, giving comfort, offering baptism. It was often enough to listen, to hold someone’s hand in the simple ministry of presence.

  I knew I would not die in these waters, as God wished for me to stand before Nero himself, to proclaim the greater glory of Jesus. One night in half sleep I dreamed of Odysseus with Ithaca in mind and dear Penelope waiting on her island and fending off suitors. Odysseus had plied these same waters, long ago. He trusted in the journey home, as I did. But my home was heaven.

  One day I woke to screaming. It seemed as if a madman were tearing out his hair: The storm had found its voice again. It shrieked now like a mad, unruly child. The waters turned from gray to black, roiling, and the ship rocked from aft to stern, even spun in a circle. The anchor lines snapped, and I knew we had broken free and would splinter on the rocks. I could actually see and hear this splintering before it happened.

  A dozen crew tried to haul in the longboat, and I called out, “Stay with us! It’s safer!”

  A soldier used his sword to cut the line to the longboat, and several of us watched the sea, and the gray swirling fog, absorb it.

  One poor man wept on the deck, bending to his knees, curling into himself, shaking, then becoming still. I don’t know if he died or fell into a stupor.

  We all stood on the deck, a crowd of horror.

  Within the hour, we heard the lashing of waves on nearby shoals, the boom and tingle of the surf. An island swung into view, ringed by a stony black outcrop. Beaching the ship would not be easy, though we had no other course but to make for the narrow inlet. I watched with admiration as the pilot managed, without sails, to steer us using only the rudder paddles toward the most plausible landing.

  “Ready!” he cried.

  We heaved onto a cluster of granite blades with a crunch and hung motionless for a moment, as if caught in the beak of some prehistoric bird. The ship groaned and suddenly split in two on the rocks, with the stern lifting its shadow above the prow as the deck splintered underfoot. I rushed to the bulwark, clinging to a stray line, looking for Luke, who lay on the deck nearby calling for me, desperate. I saw Aristarchus jump overboard.

  His leap shocked me. I knew he could swim, but that act of heaving himself over the rails defied everything I knew about him. Was it complete terror, a loss of control, or an act of unexpected self-confidence? Had he caught some glimmer of eternity? Or imagined he could best survive by himself? Had God perhaps called him to jump? Anything was possible.

  Then I saw many of those who could swim leap into the icy waters behind him, though a number of soldiers attempted to slay their prisoners before they could escape, as was customary. Guards often killed those in their custody in these circumstances rather than see them escape, but Julius—that dear man—cried out, “No murder! All who can swim, let them leap. Others, find a piece of the ship. Any fragment will do. Hang on for life!”

  The world blew apart now, furiously. And I found myself in a plume of salty foam, with a stout length of the mast in my hands and Luke beside me.

  I called for Aristarchus, but he didn’t answer.

  We moved with the current, slipping sideways toward shore. A slantwise rain drilled the surface of the sea with a din like a thousand hammerheads on iron. I was cold but numb, and did my best to see that Luke didn’t drown, drawing him toward me, holding on to him as well as the mast. He looked half dead, his face blue, with seawater spewing from his mouth.

  I thought of Jonah, and how the whale had vomited him at the Lord’s command.

  And so God commanded the sea to heave us in a violent belch that left us on the shore, with loose strands of golden wrack around our arms and legs, and brown seaweed mixed with the sandy remains of cuttlefish and crab. Half a dozen drowned men bobbed in the surf or washed onto the beach, while survivors—four or five foam-white men—lay beside us. One of them smiled weirdly at me, and I nodded to him. The brotherhood of the living.

  Not being dead today counted for something.

  We lay there for a time, trying to gather ourselves, even to speak. I knew that God had something in mind for me in Rome, and therefore I would not die on this island.

  But where was Aristarchus?

  On wobbly knees I walked up and down the beach, hoping to see our good companion, our friend in Jesus for whom my fondness had recently grown. I had not quite realized how much I loved this young man, and I prayed for his safety, lifting my palms to heaven.

  Luke raised his head with difficulty when I returned, his slick beard streaming water. “Aristarchus?”

  “I fear the worst,” I said.

  Luke frowned, but I knew that anything but the truth would only further upset my friend, who faced reality with a brave but tender heart. He too admired and loved Aristarchus and would miss him. He might be drowned, but he might have been swept to another part of the island. In these fierce, unpredictable currents one could hardly hope to control one’s drift.

  Men from a local village rushed to the water’s edge, eager to assist us, this pathetic straggle of exhausted, starving, wet, nearly frozen men heaved onto their coast. They explained that we had landed on an island that was part of the Maltese archipelago, and promised food and shelter. One of our men begged them to light a fire, saying we required warmth more than food or shelter. And I agreed, setting off by myself to gather twigs from a nearby brush for tinder.

  As I bent to pick up a stick, it suddenly rippled into life, taking the form of a viper: the most poisonous of snakes. According to Maltese legend, anyone attacked by a viper was a murderer, and the villagers shouted and shrank back, watching me struggle with the snake.

  “Satan, let go of me!” I called.

  The viper died and dropped from my hand, falling into the sand, and I kicked it to one side.

  This provoked an outcry of wonder from the Maltese, and one of them shouted, “This is a god, not a man! He has come to visit us from the bottom of the sea!”

  Shades of Lystra, and my strange adventures there with Barnabas, rose before me.

  I objected, saying I was not a god, but had no luck in dissuading them. They required a god, it seemed, and I was too exhausted to evade my apotheosis. They lifted me on broad shoulders and carried me into the village, no more than a scattering of huts, taki
ng me to the thatched mud house of their mayor, Zacharias, whose father lay ill on a low bed of straw. The elderly fellow, gaunt and pale, had not left his pallet in four months. I held his loose-skinned, skeletal hand, telling him about Jesus and what he meant to me, to everyone who called on his help in times of sadness, terror, or affliction. “The Christ loves us in our sorrows,” I said.

  I was not sure the old man could hear me, but he offered a toothless smile, dribbling onto his chin.

  Zacharias asked me to help him, saying, “You’re a god. Do what is necessary.”

  “I can only pray for his recovery in the name of Jesus.”

  “So do this, my friend!”

  I put a hand on the wasted fellow’s burning forehead, asking God to heal him, in the name of Jesus.

  “Do you trust in God?” I asked the invalid.

  He nodded vaguely.

  “Heal!” I called. “In the name of the Christ!”

  Within moments this ghost of a man threw off his coverlet, swung his stick legs to one side of the pallet, then—reaching for his son’s hand—jerked himself to a standing position. He took a step forward, gingerly at first, and began to glide, as if walking on water.

  The gasps in the room thickened, lifting to a roar.

  “He is truly divine, this man from the sea,” Zacharias said.

  I protested, but nobody heard me.

  For the next four months we lived among these people, Luke and I in a stone barn with a roof of tightly bound shoots. Being a god in their eyes had its benefits. And yet I did my best to teach them about my Lord the Christ, and I brought many of them into our circle, praying with them, baptizing at least twenty villagers. Julius grew closer to us than I would have guessed, and (after many hours of vigorous conversation and prayer) I baptized him as well.

  The saddest thing, however, was the loss of Aristarchus. Luke would stand on a promontory with a view of the sea, searching the horizon, hoping for our friend to reappear, but Aristarchus never came. I prayed for his soul, continuing to hold out hope to Luke, saying that perhaps he had landed far away and found a hospitable village. It was always possible, given the swift and unpredictable currents. But he could just as easily have drowned, and probably did.

  To our relief, wintering in Malta proved acceptable, even palatable, with decent company and log fires. We drank our share of wine from local vineyards, which had been stored in wooden barrels, and ate well: Fish and fowl could be found in abundance. We had fresh eggs and small green apples. There were seeds, olives, almonds, and sycamore figs. One elderly woman brought us loaves of coarse-grain bread that had been baked over hot stones.

  Our new friends even secured a quantity of papyrus for writing.

  I was tempted to ask Julius if we might not remain among them forever. I was an old man and could easily have spent the rest of my days on this dun-colored hump of rock in the bluest sea. The Maltese would have welcomed me. I could imagine a gathering here of those who lived in the Christ. It would not be a bad way to end my days if, indeed, the final hour of history failed to come before I died.

  Spring arrived, as it did in these parts, with a flourish. Flowers broke into life: the snowy apple, the pink cherry, with blooms like snow on black branches. I watched an almond tree burst into a cloud of bees. There were carob, prickly pear, and lemon trees in profusion. I lay by a stream one afternoon on a bank of green-gray moss, which felt warm to my hands.

  Could paradise itself have outmatched this fragment of Malta?

  There is nothing quite like the sun in spring, when it wakens to its powers, with pillars of gold that drop through the bluest skies, with the surface of the sea like brass. I lay on the shingle on the sunniest days, counting myself part and parcel with the breathing gills of seaweed and the bleached driftwood: all flesh and bone, with everything belonging to the Almighty. I wanted nothing but God now, to be home with him.

  But Julius would not disobey orders, and I would never let him disappoint himself.

  And so in late spring we set off for the mainland, where we boarded another merchant ship—a small one from Alexandria—and sailed for Sicily.

  Rome lay before us, that much I knew. And I would set foot there before I died.

  God had spoken.

  Chapter Twenty

  LUKE

  “We can’t leave without Aristarchus,” I said.

  Uttering this, I knew perfectly well that Aristarchus would not join us, now or ever. He had not been seen since he leapt into the sea.

  Enveloped in mist and sleet. Sucked into a swirl.

  The horror of that shipwreck often returned, waking me in the night, shuddering through me when, for a few moments, my thoughts drifted toward it. We had splattered on the rocks with a loud crack, spun, and broken apart. Only the intervention of God Almighty saved Paul and me, as we clung to a piece of the mast that, quite miraculously, had passed in front of us.

  God’s big hand fathered us ashore.

  We washed up, choking and cold, whereupon a number of kind villagers stumbled toward us, curious about what the stormy seas had disgorged. They showed us sympathy, offering food and shelter and a dry place to sleep. And they treated Paul especially well because of a peculiar incident involving a snake. It was so odd. Paul had simply shaken a dead snake from a stick. No more than that. But word spread among the Maltese that a god was among them. Hail, mighty Paul, son of Neptune! He had stunned the serpent with a glare!

  Apparently this type of snake had peculiar meaning among them, and Paul had fit himself into their larger narrative. He had expressed divinity.

  Why he refused to deny his status as a god puzzled me. He could have scoffed at those who elevated him, made everything plain with a simple statement to the contrary. But this glorified status served us well on the island where we spent the whole of winter in their safekeeping. Divinity had its perquisites, which included regular supplies of fish and meat, loaves of good local bread, lemons, tart green apples, beans, and a variety of root vegetables. Amphorae of wine turned up once a week: a ruby-tinted, granular wine that we loved.

  “Soon they will sacrifice sheep and goats in your name,” I told Paul one evening after a basket of bream appeared at our door.

  “I will eat whatever they bring,” Paul said.

  He could feign a cheery mood, but I sensed a shift in my friend, a diminishment of spirits, amplified by fresh infirmities. The shipwreck had weakened and darkened him in unexpected ways.

  “What does God have in mind for me?” he asked.

  We could hardly deny that the Kingdom of God had not arrived, not as Paul had once conceived it. “It’s foolish to imagine anything in detail,” he said. “Whatever you think will happen is what never happens. One might use this as a ploy: imagine the worst thing you can imagine, but only to forestall it.”

  I saw he did not engage the Maltese with quite the passion one might have expected from him. His energies had fallen away quite sharply, and he became an old man overnight. The gray of his beard bristled white, as did the hairs that poked from his ears and nostrils. His once rather taut, nut-brown skin now draped over his skeleton, a loose pallium of flesh. His stoop increased, so that he looked at the ground as he ambled forward, measuring each step. His vision grew worse and worse.

  This was hardly the fiery, fiendishly bold apostle I knew from years gone by, the man who took on the armor of the Christ, braving everything for heaven’s sake.

  I tried my best to understand him, asking if he felt well. He stared at me without seeming to recognize my question.

  “The sky is blue above Malta,” he said. “The heavens unfold.”

  “I know you would prefer to spend your last days here, in a chair by the garden wall, with the voice of the sea in the background,” I told him. “You can do this if you like.”

  “Really?”

  “God will understa
nd. It may well be the right thing.”

  By his pensive glare I knew I had uncovered a truth. He preferred to remain here and never to move again. Yet this could not possibly be an appropriate fate for the apostle, a man who had taken the message of Jesus to the wider world, among Jews and gentiles, among pagans. His words like spores had passed in the winds of empire, taking root in unlikely places, becoming whole forests of faith. (After so many years, I had learned the gift of metaphor from him, and felt more comfortable now with the device.)

  “Rome is so far away, so far,” he said.

  I remained gentle with him, preferring to draw him back to our mission but aware that he must follow his nose on this matter.

  “Perhaps I should stay,” he said. “You go, Luke.”

  “The Roman circle, they remain our friends,” I said. “Think how delighted they would be to see you in person. I’m sure that Prisca will be waiting. Your letters have meant a good deal to everyone in the capital. I’m sure of this.”

  “Peter went to Rome,” he said.

  The comment seemed dislocated in time, irrelevant. Peter was not, in his mind, a reliable ally or someone he should emulate. The disciple of Jesus had done nothing to protect Paul during our visit to Jerusalem, when we had delivered our gift, a generous sum by any reckoning. Perhaps worse, Peter had never acknowledged the weight or wonder of Paul’s teachings. He felt uncomfortable among Greeks, even those who sought to emulate the Christ, “opening their minds to the larger mind of God,” as Paul put it.

  The Maltese villagers who had rescued us and allowed us to become their friends sat with us in the evenings by the dying embers of a log fire, listening to us recall our adventures and trials over many decades. Now we had Julius with us, though not Aristarchus, whose loss clouded our time on the island.

  Since leaving Caesarea, we had delighted in the company of Julius, who in due course joined the Way, praying with us, seeking baptism. He would have allowed Paul to remain on the island of our shipwreck, but Paul—after long thought—decided to join us on our voyage to Rome. The chance to see Prisca again perhaps drew him forward, I could not say.