A New Kind of Zeal

by Michelle Warren

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: The Prism

  John ducked under some pohutukawa trees. He moved quickly down the track, away from Coronation Reserve, and then onto the road below.

  What had just happened to him? What had just happened?

  His heart was pounding hard. He groped around himself, for something to hold onto, but couldn’t find anything: only the open space – open air, and streets ahead of him, to criss-cross on the way back to Central Avenue.

  Joshua…His eyes were before him again: brown eyes, but that didn’t matter. Behind the eyes was an ocean, somehow – vast, stretching John’s mind: so big! Like…like glimpsing the entire Universe in one moment. Too much! Drowning! And yet…utterly wonderful. Overwhelming, and…and wholly alien.

  John shuddered. In that one moment, everything had changed. In that one moment his mind had felt turned inside out.

  “Wait!” a voice cried out behind him. “Where are you going?”

  John stared out ahead of himself, mechanically following the same route he had followed so many times before, back to work.

  “Wait!”

  A strong hand was on his shoulder. He halted, and the Maori man was there again: the big one, with the tattoos.

  “Kei te pehea koe?”

  “Sorry?”

  “How are you?”

  John swayed a little, on his feet. “What?” he gasped. “Oh…I’m all right…”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Back to work.”

  “How can you go back to work?” The man asked. “You’ve just found our king!”

  John stared at him. “Our king?” he whispered. “I have no idea what that means.”

  The Maori face furrowed, as if in disappointment. “Never mind,” he said. “I’m spreading the good news! At last, the true King of Aotearoa! A new age is coming! Let’s see what those reporters do with this!”

  And he passed John, and disappeared amidst the streets of Whangarei.

  Sweat started to drip into John’s eyes. His trousers were clinging to his wet legs. Wearily he weaved his way through the streets, and finally found his office again, on Central Ave.

  Reaching for his keys, he unlocked the door, moved to his desk, turned the fan back on, and sat.

  In front of him were prisms, and lenses. He had developed a new kind of lens: thinner than the traditional plastic, and lighter – cheaper, too. Business had really started to pick up, until global warming had started to take a greater hold. Now materials were scant – it was expensive to bring them in from overseas. John was beginning to explore local solutions: alternatives to plastic, with refractive properties – perhaps even a new form of shatter-proof glass…

  “You help people to see again.”

  John started, and looked up. It was the other Maori man – the one with the gentle eyes.

  “My name is Rau Petera,” he said, extending out his hand again.

  “I know,” John said, before he could stop himself: accepting his hand, rising again to his feet. “That other man Tristan told me: you are a priest.”

  Rau smiled, nodding. “Very pleased to meet you, Mr ...”

  “John,” he said quickly. “John Robertson, but just call me John.”

  “John.” Rau’s expression looked thoughtful.

  John searched his face. What was he doing here? Had he followed him? He must have followed…

  “I…” Rau looked like he was trying to find the right words. “I found what you had to say very interesting, up in Coronation Reserve.”

  John shifted a little awkwardly on his feet.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Sorry about that.”

  “Sorry?” Rau asked. “Why?”

  “Well, for butting in…”

  “No need to apologise.”

  “It’s just…”

  “Yes?”

  The brown eyes were upon him. John almost felt he was being tested, in that moment. His awkwardness escalated. Should he speak? Should he share what was suddenly burning in his heart?

  “I don’t understand it,” John said, “but…there’s something about him. Something unusual.”

  “No argument there,” Rau said, suddenly grinning. “‘Unusual,’ ae.”

  “No, it’s more than that.”

  “More?”

  Again, the eyes were upon him. John swallowed. He sat back down at his desk. He lifted a prism.

  Suddenly inspired, John raised the prism into the yellow sunlight streaming through his window.

  “Look,” he said.

  Rau moved, to stand on John’s side of the desk – as John held the prism to the light, with a blank white page behind it. The light shone through the prism, and then dispersed: into all the colours of the rainbow.

  “It’s like…” John struggled to spit the words out again. “It’s like Joshua is the prism.”

  Rau was still, beside him: silent. John quickly looked at him – what was he thinking? But the face was still warm.

  “Very good,” Rau said, and John shrugged.

  “Not really,” he said.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I really have no idea what I’m talking about.”

  “I think that’s what makes it so good.”

  The brown eyes were dancing, in that moment. John found himself smiling, and then he shook himself and returned to his prisms.

  “What will you do now, John?” Rau’s voice asked.

  John’s hands began to tremble, as he reached for his other lens designs.

  “I don’t know,” he whispered.

  Rau reached over his hands, to take up one of the prisms.

  “You say Joshua is like one of these?”

  “Yes.”

  “Haven’t you been trying to focus light all your life?”

  John swallowed. He knew what Rau was trying to do: he wasn’t sure he could follow.

  “You don’t understand,” he said. “This office is my life.”

  “I can see that,” Rau said.

  “I can’t just up and leave.”

  “But how can you stay, now?” Rau asked. “Finding a real life prism?”

  “He…” John struggled again: why was it so hard to say the words? It wasn’t that it was hard to speak: it was that the perceptions were so very indescribable…

  “He makes me feel tossed! Like a boat on a massive wave – I have no idea where I’m going! No idea whether I might be crashed on the rocks…”

  “Lost,” Rau murmured, and John quickly nodded.

  “Yes! I thought I had my life sorted, and now it’s all up in the air again! Lost!”

  “I get you,” Rau said, his face changing again into that same thoughtful expression. “I was the same, but now…”

  “Yes?”

  “Now, suddenly, I’m starting to feel found.”

  John searched him – a strange growing certainty in his eyes.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, and Rau broke suddenly into a wide grin.

  “I’m starting to get it.”

  “Get what?”

  “Him.” Rau’s face was radiant now. “I’m starting to get him!”

  John could not understand him, and was worried, for a moment, that Rau might break into some kind of Maori karakia. Instead Rau leaned over to him.

  “What about you?” he said. “Don’t you want to get him, too?”

  The ocean behind the brown eyes of Joshua was before him again. What did it mean? Huge! Alien. Should he run? Should he stay away? And yet, such colour! Like light, dispersed: all the spectrum of life. Such compelling light…

  He looked down at the papers on his desk.

  There must be something more to life than this. Joshua had spoken his very thoughts. But to follow meant to shut the door of his business: to shut the door on his life! To follow meant to risk everything.

  “If you don’t do this,” Rau said, “you will regret it for the rest of your life.”

  John trembled before him. “It’s easy for you,” he replied. “You
are a man of faith. I’m not.”

  “He is beckoning you: can’t you see it? He is inviting you.”

  “I know,” John said, “but I don’t know the man! I don’t know him, and you’re asking me to give up everything.”

  “I’m asking you to gain everything, John! To gain everything, sometimes you have to first let go of what you already have.”

  John rose to his feet. He wandered around the walls of his office – he began to pace.

  “A sudden shutting of the doors can spell death to a business!” he said. “I’ve built this place up for fourteen years!”

  “I know it’s a big ask.”

  “What did you give up, to be here?”

  Now Rau shifted slightly. “Okay,” he said. “You’re right – it’s easier for me right now than it is for you. But just wait, until my Vicar starts asking more questions. Why the extended leave? Why the sudden Sabbatical? Wait until she has to talk it over with the Bishop…”

  “What then?” John asked. “Will you also need to give up what you already have?”

  Rau looked at him. Now he swallowed. John was grateful to see some human frailty in his eyes – some doubt.

  “My fathers have been priests for generations,” he said, “ever since Samuel Marsden first preached the Gospel to the Maori, on the coast near Kerikeri, in 1814.”

  “That’s quite a legacy.”

  “My father lived just long enough to see my ordination.”

  “I guess you don’t want to lose all of that, do you? Your family’s reputation?”

  “Mana…” Rau’s face clouded. “My whanau’s mana…”

  John fixed his eyes on him, now: now the test was suddenly unexpectedly reversed.

  “Would you be willing to give all that up?” he asked. “If that’s what it took to follow Joshua?”

  Rau frowned. “Would I give it up?” he pondered. “I suppose if God required it…”

  John was impressed by the sudden resolution in his eyes. “I would give up mana for God,” Rau said. “I would choose a new path, different from the old, if God required it.”

  John nodded, beginning to understand him. “Then you are faithful to the God you believe in, Reverend Rau,” he said, “but I don’t share in your faith. My parents went to church at Christmas and Easter, that’s all. We never spoke of God. Why would I suddenly risk everything to follow this Joshua?”

  Rau’s eyes studied him – they searched him, and John purposefully held the gaze. Then Rau smiled.

  “Because there’s more to life than this.” And he gestured around the office.

  John stared at Rau. He glanced around his office. He heard the words: his own words, Joshua’s words, and now Rau’s words. He agreed with them.

  “All right,” he finally succumbed. “I’ll come with you.”

  What was he doing? Shut up his business: what was he thinking?

  “Come now,” Rau said, his smile widening, “before you change your mind.”

  “I’ll come now.”

  And John gathered up his papers tidily into a drawer, turned off the light, grabbed his keys, and moved to the door.