The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín Page B

which now seemed to be rushing out of the well, it was pumping out in vast spurts and spilling over and trickling down towards the trees, gradually forming a small stream.
    And then I turned and I saw him. He had come back to us, he was rising with the water, its power pushing him up from the earth. He was naked and the places where he had been wounded, including his hands, his feet, his legs where the bones had been broken, his forehead where the thorns had been, had blue marks around them and were open and gaping. The rest of his body was white. Mary held him as the water delivered him from the well and she placed him across my lap. We both touched him. It was the whiteness that we both noticed, a whiteness that is hard to describe. Both of us remarked on its purity and smooth, luminous beauty.
    In our dream there were moments before we woke in which he opened his eyes, in which he moved his hands and then his arms, and groaned almost, but it was gentle, both the movement and the sound. He seemed to have neither pain nor any memory of what he had been through. But the marks were there on his body. We did not speak to him. We simply held him and he seemed to be alive.
    And then he was still, or he was dead, or I woke, or we both woke. And there was nothing else. Because we could not contain ourselves, our guide heard every word. Something changed in him then, he began to smile and said that he had always known that this would happen, that it was part of what had been foretold. He made us recount it in detail and when we had done so a number of times and heseemed to have committed it to memory, he said we were safe, that something else would happen which would guide us towards wherever it was we needed to go. There was a lightness in us then, a lightness caused by hunger and maybe by fear. Whatever it was it left us free.
    I knew and Mary knew that we were moving blindly and I realized at certain times that we would be safer were Mary to separate from us and make her way home. Later, when a house was found for us, we could discuss this more calmly. We both knew that I could never go home, that I could never appear in any of the places where I would be known. But she could and I knew she wanted to. And then the calm days ended. The end was caused by food and by rest and by the change in our guide, which gave him a sort of glow. This glow meant that one or two people, complete strangers, and then others who knew he had been a follower, offered to help him. Through them he could send for help; and then he could tell us that we would soon be safe, that a boat would come for us and take us to Ephesus where there was a house waiting, a house where we would always be protected. He did not understand that his reassurances, that the comforts he offered us, seemed to make no difference to the grief that came now, the shock and the shame at what we had done. We had left others to bury my son, or perhaps he had not been buriedat all. We had run to a place where what happened in our dreams took on more flesh, had more substance, than our lives when we were conscious, alert, aware. And that seemed right for some days and maybe both of us hoped that the future would be coated in dreams too; and then it collapsed, all of it, and I knew that Mary would want to go, that she no longer wanted to be with me. I knew what would happen and it did: one morning she simply was not there in the other bed when I woke. And our guide had arranged for her to go since she wanted to. It was not a time when farewells were necessary or would have made any difference. I did not mind the method of her going. But I was alone with him now and I was going to have to work out a way of handling him. I also needed to make distinctions which were clear. From then on I wanted dreams to have their place, to let them belong to the night. And I wanted what happened, what I saw, what I did, to belong to the day. Until I died I hoped that I would live in full recognition of