The Fifth Gospel (7 page)

He lowered his voice so that Simon and I had to lean in to hear.

“I have found ancient texts describing an image of Jesus that was kept in a city called Edessa for centuries before the Shroud appeared in France. That Turkish city is now called Urfa and is where your brother rescued me in the hospital. I've tracked our Turin Shroud to that location no later than the four hundreds AD. Now I want to do more: I want the finale of my exhibit to prove that this so-called Image of Edessa came from Jerusalem in the hands of the disciples themselves. And, Father Alex, that is where my work involves
you
.”

Before continuing, he reached into his pocket for the plastic bag he had taken from the apartment. From inside it he produced something odd: a plastic spoon resembling a drumstick. He lowered himself to Peter's level and said, “Peter, I need to speak to your father alone for a moment, so I've brought something for you.”

The tip of the spoon was covered with something pale and lumpy.

“What's
that
?” Peter asked.

“Suet. And it has magical powers in this basilica.” Ugo led Peter to an open space near the altar. “Hold it out just like this, and pretend you're a statue. Don't move a muscle.”

A moment later, a dove descended from the dome. It landed on the suet and began to feed. Peter was so surprised that he nearly dropped the spoon.

Ugo whispered to him, “Now go anywhere you like. Take your new friend for a walk. I've found the birds here are quite tame.”

Peter was enchanted. With the dove only inches from his hand, he began to drift through the empty nave, careful as if it were a candle he was holding. All of us fell silent for a moment, watching him.

Then Ugo turned back to me. “As I was saying, I've been hoping to
prove that the disciples brought the Shroud from Jerusalem to Edessa. This proof, of course, has been difficult to find. But I believe I'm finally on its trail. You see, Edessa was one of Christianity's early capitals, and in the mid–one hundreds AD a gospel was written there. This gospel came to be called the Diatessaron, which I'm sure you know is Greek for ‘made out of four,' because its text was a fusion of the four existing gospels into a single document. Since the Shroud would've been in Edessa at the very moment this gospel was written, I believe its writer may have mentioned the Shroud in his text.”

I began to interrupt him, but Ugo held up a hand.

“The challenge of confirming this is, of course, that the Diatessaron is extremely rare. Our only surviving copies are translations into other languages, written centuries later. All original copies were destroyed by the bishops of Edessa themselves when they decided in favor of the four separate gospels. At least, so the story goes. But recently I seem to have discovered otherwise.”

I blurted, “You found a manuscript of the Diatessaron? In what language?”

“It's a diglot. Syriac on one side, ancient Greek on the other.”

I was agog. “That would be the original text.”

The Diatessaron had been written in one of these two languages and then translated into the other so quickly that no one today knew which came first.

“Unfortunately,” Ugo continued, “I don't read either tongue well. Father Simon tells me, however, that
you
read one of them fluently. So I wondered if you might be willing to help me—”

“Absolutely. Do you have pictures?”

“Alas, the book is . . . not easily photographed. I discovered it in a place where I wasn't supposed to be looking, so I can't bring the book to you, Father. What I need to do is bring
you
to the
book
.”

“I don't understand.”

He squirmed. “The only other person I've told about this is Father Simon. If word got out, I would lose my job. Your brother assures me you can keep a secret?”

For just a glance at that book, I would have promised Ugo almost anything. I had spent my life since seminary as a gospel teacher, and the first principle of my profession was that a small handful of ancient
manuscripts had given the world its entire text of the gospels. The life of Jesus Christ as most modern Christians know it is a fusion of several texts, all slightly different, all breathtakingly old, stitched into a single version by modern scholars who even now continue to make changes based on new discoveries. The Diatessaron, because it was constructed by that same process of fusing older texts, could reveal the gospels as they existed in the 100s AD, long before the earliest complete manuscripts that had come down to us. It could add new facts to what we knew of Jesus' life and make us question the facts as we thought we knew them.

“I can fly to Turkey as soon as next week,” I said. “Sooner if you need me to.”

The pulse was becoming thready in my chest. It was June; I didn't have to teach class again until the fall. There was enough money in my savings account for two airplane tickets. Peter and I could stay with Simon.

But Ugo frowned. “I'm afraid you misunderstand,” he said. “I'm not asking you to come back to Turkey with me. The book is
here
, Father.”

C
HAPTER
6

A
S I FOLLOW
Simon out of the canteen and up toward Leo's apartment, my mind contains a single thought: the Shroud is here. The burial cloth of Christ is within these city walls. I wonder if it's already locked in one of the piers of Saint Peter's. Maybe the news will be public soon.

The Shroud's arrival lends Ugo's exhibit new significance. The truck's papers were signed by Archbishop Nowak, which means it was John Paul who ordered the Shroud moved. For sixteen years, since the radiocarbon tests, the Church has made no official pronouncements about the Shroud. Suddenly that seems about to change. My thoughts about Ugo's death, and the intruder at my apartment, begin to tip in new directions. I wonder if this is what Ugo was trying to tell me in his e-mail. That he had succeeded in bringing the Shroud here, only to encounter some kind of problem.

Something has come up. Urgent
.

Christian relics can unearth the most subterranean feelings. Last year at Christmas, Peter and I watched TV footage of a huge brawl among priests and monks in Bethlehem over nothing more than which side of the Church of the Nativity they were allowed to sweep. Earlier this year, an armed guard had to be posted inside an international Shroud conference, and the Shroud's priest-caretaker had to flee the conference hall because of violent reaction to a decision to have the surface of the cloth gently cleaned. If word of the Shroud's transfer got out, no doubt most
people in Turin would be thrilled to learn of Ugo's plans to authenticate and honor it, but a small fringe might react differently. The only other violent attack I remember at Castel Gandolfo was inspired by strange religious delusions: when I was ten years old, a disturbed man tried to attack John Paul in the gardens, before leading Italian police on a highway chase back to Rome and charging them with an ax. In his pockets were found notes filled with ravings about emulating the gods. I wonder if it's possible the moving of the Shroud triggered something similar. If so, then I thank God Peter and Helena weren't hurt.

I jog to catch up to Simon, wondering what his own thoughts are. But my brother has already disappeared. When I make my way inside, Sofia emerges from the nursery and says, “He went up there.”

She points toward the rooftop. The most solitary place in the ­building.

I begin to follow, but she puts a hand on my arm and whispers, “Peter needs you.”

I turn toward the nursery. Inside, I find my son sitting up in his makeshift bed. The light is dimmed and the floor is strewn with books and stuffed animals from the nearby crib. Peter is breathing so hard he looks as if he's been running.

“What's wrong?” I say.

The air around him is wet and warm. He reaches out his arms.

“Nightmare?” I ask.

This is the age when night terrors and sleepwalking begin. Simon fell prey to both. I raise his gangly body into my lap and stroke his head.

“Can we read about Totti again?” he whispers, half-delirious.

Totti. The starting second striker for Roma.

“Of course,” I tell him.

He leans forward and paws the dark floor for his book. But he's careful not to exit my lap. I've already left him once.

“It's over, Peter,” I promise him, kissing the damp back of his head. “There's nothing to be afraid of. You're safe here.”

I stay beside him for a while after he falls asleep again, just to be sure. By the time I slip out, Leo has returned home, and Sofia is heating him a plate of food. In the kitchen I see him rub her belly while leaning across it for a kiss. Before they can invite me to join them around the table, I excuse myself to look for Simon on the rooftop.

HIS HAIR IS WINDSWEPT
and wild. His face is drawn. He is staring down at the lights of Rome the way I imagine a sailor's widow would stare at the sea.

“You okay?” I ask.

His hand, tapping for cigarettes from his emergency pack, is unsteady.

“I'm not sure what to do,” he murmurs, not turning to look at me.

“Me either.”

“He's dead.”

“I know.”

“I called him this afternoon. We talked about his exhibit. He can't be dead.”

“I know.”

Simon's voice grows thinner. “I sat beside his body, trying to wake him up.”

A dull pang forms in my chest.

“Ugo poured himself into this show,” my brother continues. “Gave it everything.” He lights a cigarette. A look of grinding disgust crosses his face. “Why let him die a week before opening night? Why let him die right on the doorstep?”

“Human hands did this,” I say. A reminder of where his anger should be directed.

“And why bring
me
there?” he continues, not listening.

“Stop. None of this was your fault.”

He blows a long plume of smoke into the darkness. “It
was
my fault. I should've saved him.”

“You're lucky you weren't there. The same thing could've happened to you.”

He glares bitterly at the sky, then peers down at the empty spot where we used to play as boys. One of the Guard families would inflate a plastic swimming pool on this terrace. All that remains is a water stain.

I lower my voice. “Do you think this could have to do with the Shroud? Moving it here from Turin?”

Tendrils of smoke creep from his nostrils. I can't tell whether he's considering it.

“No one could've known it was moved here,” he says flatly.

“Word could've gotten out. People hear things. The same way we just did from Leo.”

It would've taken a team of men to load the new Shroud reliquary onto a truck. Priests to open the chapel. Then more men and more priests to unload it here. If just one of them had mentioned the news to a wife, a friend, a neighbor . . .

“Ugo was on the truck that night,” I say. “Anyone else who was involved would've seen him. Maybe that's why they came after him.”

“But they didn't see you or me. Why come after us?”

“What do you think happened, then?”

Simon flicks an ash off the tip of his cigarette and watches an ember tumble through the darkness. “Ugo was robbed. I think whatever happened at the apartment had to be different.”

Yet there's the slightest wobble in his voice.

My phone rings. I check the screen.

“It's Uncle,” I say. “Should I take it?”

He nods.

On the other end of the line, a deep, slow voice says, “Alexander?”

Uncle Lucio always seems discommoded by people who answer their own phones. He can't understand why the rest of us don't have priest-secretaries.

“Yes,” I say.

“Where are you right now? Are Simon and Peter safe?”

He must already know about the break-in. “We're fine. Thanks for asking.”

“I'm told you were both at Castel Gandolfo earlier tonight.”

“Yes.”

“You must be very upset. I've had the guest rooms prepared for the three of you to stay here tonight, so tell me where you are and I'll send a car.”

I falter. Simon is already shaking his head, whispering, “No. We're not doing that.”

“Thank you,” I say, “but we're staying with a friend at the Swiss Guard barracks.”

There's no answer, just a familiar silence, the courier of my uncle's displeasure. “Then I want you to meet me at the palace tomorrow,” he says finally. “First thing. To discuss the situation.”

“What time?”

“Eight o'clock. And tell Simon, too. I expect to see him as well.”

“We'll be there.”

“I'm glad to hear it. Good night, Alexander.”

Unceremoniously, the line goes dead.

I turn to Simon. “He wants to meet us at eight.”

The news makes no impression.

“So,” I say, “maybe we should get some sleep.”

But Simon announces, “You go ahead. I'm going to sleep right here.”

Here. In the open. Under the pope's window.

“Come on,” I say. “Come inside.”

But it's hopeless. The refusal to sleep in a bed is a common self-­deprivation among priests, and healthier, at least, than cinching a rope around his thigh. Finally I give in and tell him I'll come get him in the morning. He needs to be alone. I'll say a prayer for my brother tonight.

LEO AND SOFIA ARE
in bed when I return. This is their way of giving me the run of the apartment. I'd hoped to talk to Leo about what he heard at the cantina after we left, but it will have to wait. A set of sheets lies on my old companion, the sleeper sofa, veteran of ancient benders. Its former geography of stains is gone, victim of a woman's touch. From beyond the distant bedroom door I make out faint sounds that can't possibly be lovemaking; my friends are too considerate for that. But like most priests, I'm not one to gamble on human nature.

When I check on Peter in the nursery, he's entwined in his sheets. His Greek cross, which he's found some reason to remove from his neck, is slipping from his hand onto the floor. I scoop it up and place it in our travel bag, then kneel beside the window. There's a Bible here, the Greek one I packed, which he and I use as he learns to decipher words. Placing it between my hands, I try to bury my emotion. To master the fear that lurks in this darkness and the rage that burns when I think of Peter threatened in his own home. Wrath runs deep in a Greek heart. It is the first word of our literature. But what I'm about to do, I've done hundreds of times for Mona.

Lord,
as I pray forgiveness of my own sins, so I pray forgiveness of
theirs. As I ask You to forgive me, so I forgive them. As they are sinners, so am I. Kyrie, eleison. Kyrie, eleison
.

I repeat it twice, wanting it to stick. But my thoughts are a muddle. I know there's a good reason why the Swiss Guards have posted more men outside the barracks. A reason why Lucio is calling us to his apartment. When I told Peter we were safe, I wasn't even being hopeful. I was lying.

As my eyes adjust to the darkness, I look at the animals Sofia has painted on the nursery walls. Dangling from a hook on the door are hangers of baby clothes she's sewn herself. Even more than usual, I feel the ache of Mona's absence. Her family still lives here. A handful of cousins and uncles, most of them plumbers, used to brandish lengths of pipe at boyfriends they disapproved of. If I asked for their protection, they would probably take shifts watching over Peter and me. But I would sooner leave town with Peter than put us in their debt.

In the darkness, I unbutton my cassock and fold it. Lying down beside my son, I try to imagine how to distract him tomorrow. How to erase his memory of tonight. I rub his shoulder in the dark, wondering if he's really asleep, hoping that he could use my reassurance right now. Since Mona left, there has been no diminishment in my number of lonely nights. Only a fading in their sharpness, which has a sadness all its own. I miss my wife.

I wait for sleep. I wait, and wait. But I feel I've been waiting all my life.

The gospels say Jesus prepared his followers for the Second Coming by speaking a parable. He compared himself to a master who leaves his estate in order to attend a marriage feast. We, his servants, don't know when the master will return. So we have to wait by the door for him, with our lamps kept burning.
Blessed are those servants whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival.
I remind myself that if I have to wait a lifetime for my wife to return, it's no longer than any other Christian has waited these past two thousand years.

But the waiting, on nights like this, feels like an ache that rattles from an infinite emptiness. Mona was shy and coy and dark. She echoed some uncertainty within me about who I was and why I needed to exist after my parents already had Simon. I didn't pay her much attention when we were kids because I was two years older than she was. But then, she was also too self-conscious to be noticed much. Growing up a girl inside these walls probably contributed to that. The pictures in her par
ents' apartment show a cheerful, round-faced child who became more attractive each year. At ten she's nondescript: dark shaggy hair, watery green eyes, thick cheeks. By thirteen that has changed; it's clear that she'll be something someday. By fifteen, just as I'm preparing to leave for college, the metamorphosis is beginning. And she knows it: for the next three years, there are new hairstyles and experiments with makeup. It's as if she's peered over the walls into Rome and has seen what a modern woman looks like. Her parents' photographs are carefully cropped, but Mona herself once pointed out to me the low necklines and high skirts still visible in some of them. She told me about the secret excursions into Rome to buy high heels and jewelry, the excursions during which she discovered that the whistles and catcalls weren't aimed at other women.