The Thirteenth Apostle (41 page)

A few days later, the Pope opened this letter and read it out twice in front of Catzinger, who had handed it on to him as instructed.

Wearily, the Pope placed the letter on his knees. Then he looked up at the Cardinal, still standing respectfully in front of him.

“This French monk you have told me about – in what way do you think he is a danger to the Church?”

“He casts doubt on the divinity of Christ, Most Holy Father, and in a particularly pernicious way. He needs to be silenced and sent back to the solitude of his abbey, which he never should have left.”

The Pope allowed his chin to drop onto his white cassock. Christ would never be known in all his truth. Christ was ahead of us: we could only set out in search of him. To seek him, St Augustine had said, was already to find him. Ceasing to seek for him was to lose him.

Without raising his head, he muttered a few words, and Catzinger had to prick up his ears to follow them.

“Solitude… I think he possesses solitude, Your Eminence, and I envy him… yes, I envy him. ‘Monk', you know, comes from
monos
, meaning one, alone – or unique. He has found the one essential thing, of which Jesus spoke to Martha, the sister of Mary and Lazarus. Leave him to his solitude, Your Eminence. Leave him with Him whom he has found there.”

Then he added, in an even more imperceptible voice:

“That is why we are here, is it not? The reason why the Church exists. So that, within it, a few may find what you and I are seeking.”

Catzinger raised an eyebrow. What
he
was seeking was to solve one problem after another, ensure the Church endures, protect it from its enemies.
Sono il carabiniere della Chiesa
, I am the policeman of the Church, his predecessor of illustrious memory, Cardinal Ottaviani, had said one day.

The Pope seemed to emerge from his reverie, and made a sign.

“Take me over to that machine in the corner. If you don't mind.”

Catzinger pushed the wheelchair towards the little shredder placed in front of a waste-paper bin half-filled with confetti. As the Pope, with his trembling hand, couldn't switch the machine on himself, Catzinger deferentially pressed the button.

“Thank you… No, it's all right, I can do that myself.”

The shredder spat out some shreds of confetti that fell into the basket filled with other secrets, which the Pope preserved as mere memories in his still astonishingly perspicacious brain.

“There's only one secret, and that's God's. He's a lucky man, that Father Nil. Yes, a really lucky man.”

93

In the middle of the night, Nil was woken by an unusual noise, and lit a candle. Lying on his straw mattress, his eyes closed, the old hermit was uttering a low throaty rattle.

“Father, are you feeling unwell? We need to get Beppe, we need…”

“Don't worry, my son. I just need to leave the shore, to slip into deeper waters – and the moment has come.”

He opened his eyes, and enveloped Nil in a gaze of great kindness.

“You will stay on here – it is the place set aside for you since time began. As the beloved disciple did, you will lean your head towards Jesus, so as to listen. Your heart alone will be able to hear him, but every day it is a little more alert. Listen, and do nothing but listen: he will lead you along the path. He is a sure guide, you can place all your trust in him. Men have betrayed you:
he
will never do so.”

He made a final effort:

“Beppe… look after him, he's the son that I am entrusting to you. He is as pure as the water that flows down from this mountain.”

In the morning, the light struck the crest on the opposite slope. When the sun's flames enveloped the hermitage, the old hermit murmured the name of Jesus and breathed his last.

That same day, Nil and Beppe buried him in a sheer cliff face which perhaps resembled – thought Nil – those overlooking Qumran. In silence they returned to the hermitage.

Once they were on the little terrace, Beppe seized the arm of Nil as he stood there motionless, bowed his head before him and gently placed the monk's hand on his head of thick curly hair.

Days followed days and nights followed nights. Time stopped, and seemed to have assumed another dimension. Nil's memory had not yet healed, but he suffered less and less from the anguish that had oppressed him throughout those terrible days that he had spent trying to track down some illusion of the truth.

Truth did not lie in the letter of the thirteenth apostle, nor in the Fourth Gospel. It was not contained in any text, however sacred it might be. It lay beyond words printed on paper, words uttered by human mouths. It lay in the heart of silence, and silence slowly took possession of Nil.

Beppe had transferred to him all the adoration he had shown to the old hermit while the latter was still alive. When he came, always without warning, they would sit together on the edge of the terrace or in front of the fire in the hearth. Nil gently read him the Gospel and told him the story of Jesus, as the thirteenth apostle had done for Yokhanan in days gone by.

One day he had a sudden inspiration. He traced an immaterial cross on the forehead, lips and heart of the young man. Spontaneously, Beppe showed him his tongue, and his fingers lightly grazed that too with the sign of death and life.

The next day, Beppe came very early in the morning. He sat on the straw mattress, gazed at Nil with his tranquil eyes and murmured, in a clumsy whisper:

“Father… Father Nil! I… I want to learn to read. So that I can study the Gospel by myself.”

Beppe could speak. From his overflowing heart, the words spilt out.

This led to a slight change in Nil's life. Now Beppe came to see him almost every day. They would sit down at the window, and on the tiny table Nil would open the book. In a few weeks, Beppe was able to read it, only stumbling over the complicated words.

“You can always take St Mark's Gospel,” Nil told him. “It's the simplest, the most limpid, and the one closest to what Jesus said and did. One day, later on, I'll teach you Greek. You'll see, it's not so difficult, and if you read it aloud, you'll hear what Jesus's first disciples said about him.”

Beppe fixed his grave eyes on him.

“I'll do what you tell me: you are the father of my soul.”

Nil smiled. The thirteenth apostle, too, must have been the father of the souls of those Nazoreans who had fled the very first Church.

“There is only one father of your soul, Beppe. The one who has no name, whom nobody can know, of whom we know nothing except the fact that Jesus called him
abba
: father.”

94

On this October morning, St Peter's Square was in festive array: the Pope was to proclaim the canonization of the founder of Opus Dei, Escrivá de Balaguer. On the façade of the basilica, the centre of Christianity, a huge portrait of the new saint was displayed in front of the assembled throng. With his mischievous eyes he seemed to be looking down at them ironically.

Standing at the right of the Pope, Cardinal Catzinger was radiant with joy. This canonization had assumed a particular significance for him. To begin with, it marked his personal victory over the members of Opus Dei, whom he had forced to come and eat out of his hands for years while the process of beatification of their hero proceeded. Now they were in his debt, which placed him somewhat further out of reach of their never-ending schemes. Catzinger was pleased at the fine trick he had just played on them and, for a while at least, he now had the upper hand.

In addition, it meant that Antonio was safe from any pressure from Balaguer's Spaniards. It was a matter of importance to him that the Society of St Pius V be governed with a firm hand, to avoid the trials it had undergone while Calfo was rector.

Finally – and this was not the least of the reasons for feeling happy on this particular day – the Pope (who was increasingly incapable of making himself understood) had entrusted to him the task of giving the homily. He would take advantage of this opportunity to set out his programme for governing the Church, in front of the TV cameras of the whole world.

For one day he would indeed govern the ship of Peter. Not surreptitiously, as he had been doing for years. But openly, in broad daylight.

Mechanically, he lifted the hem of the Pope's chasuble: the tremors that shook the Pope kept making it slip off in a far from telegenic way. And to disguise his gesture, he smiled at the camera. His blue eyes, his white hair, cut quite a dash on screen. He straightened: the camera was pointing at him.

The Church was eternal.

Lost in the throng, a young man was gazing mockingly at the spectacle of the Church's pomp. His curly hair gleamed in the sunshine, and his jacket, the type worn by Abruzzi peasants, did not stand out: Catholic delegations from the whole world, in their national costumes, made splashes of colour in St Peter's Square.

His hands were not free: clutched to his chest, they were hugging a round leather bag.

Nil had given it to him the night before. He was worried: in the village, where any stranger was immediately spotted, a man had been seen asking questions. He was definitely not from these mountains, nor even an Italian: too many muscles, not enough of a paunch – and the villagers' eyes were infallible. Given the way things are in a village of the Abruzzi, the rumour had soon reached Beppe's ears. He had mentioned it to Nil, who had sensed all his old anxieties reawakening.

Could it be possible that they were looking for him, even here?

The very next day, he had entrusted Beppe with his bag. It contained the results of years' worth of study. In particular, it contained the copy of the epistle that he had made. From memory, admittedly, but he knew that it was faithful to the text that he had briefly held in his hands in the Vatican's secret collection.

His life had no further importance, his life no longer belonged to him. Like the thirteenth apostle, like many others, perhaps he would die for having preferred Jesus to the Christ-God. He knew this, and accepted it in advance, his heart filled with peace.

His only regret was a sin against the Spirit that he would not be able to confess to any priest: he would have liked, in spite of everything, to see Jesus's real tomb in the desert. He knew that this desire was merely a pernicious illusion, but he could not extinguish it within himself. He would have liked to excavate the vast sandy wastes between Israel and the Red Sea. To discover the tumulus, lost in the midst of an abandoned Essene burial ground unknown to anyone. To go where the thirteenth apostle had expressly stated he wanted nobody to go. Even to think of it was a sin: silence had not accomplished its work of purification within him. He would struggle, with all his strength, to eliminate from his mind this thought that kept him from Jesus's presence, which he encountered every day in prayer.

Between a pile of bones and reality, the choice was easy.

But he needed to be careful. Beppe would go alone to Rome and entrust the bag to someone in whom he had every confidence.

Cardinal Emil Catzinger concluded his homily amid thunderous applause, and modestly sat down again at the Pope's right hand.

Furtively, Beppe lowered his head and respectfully grazed the bag with his lips.

The truth had not been erased from the face of the earth.

The truth would be transmitted. And one day it would resurface.

* * *

Hidden under Bernini's colonnade, Mukhtar Al-Quraysh did not take his eyes off the young man. He had located the village. The infidel must be somewhere hereabouts, in the mountains.

He would just need to follow this peasant from the Abruzzi, with his naive expression.

He would lead him to his prey.

He smiled: Nil had succeeded in escaping from the men in the Vatican, but he would not escape from him. You do not escape the Prophet, blessed be his name.

Just as I was leaving the hermitage, I could not refrain from asking yet another question:

“Father Nil, aren't you afraid of the man who's looking for you?”

He reflected for several moments before replying:

“He's not a Jew. Ever since the Temple was destroyed, they have been torn apart by a deep sense of despair: the promise was in vain, the Messiah will not come. But God remains a living reality for them. However, Muslims know nothing of Him – except that he is unique, greater than everything, and that he judges them. The tenderness and proximity of the God of the prophets of Israel are still foreign to them. Faced with an infinite but infinitely distant Judge, Jewish despair has become transformed, in their case, into an anguish they cannot master. And some of them still need violence to exorcise the fear of a nothingness that God cannot fill. He is probably a Muslim.”

With a smile, he added:

“Intimacy with the God of love destroys fear for ever. Perhaps he is indeed hot on my heels? If he wants to drag me down into his own nothingness, he will still never appease the anguish dwelling within him.”

He took my two hands in his own.

“Seeking to know the person of Jesus means becoming another thirteenth apostle. Anyone can be a successor to that man. Will you be one of them?”

Ever since, in my Picardy of forests, or fertile fields and taciturn men, the sound of Nil's last words has never left me.

When they echo in my ear, I start to feel a longing for the desert.

The Truth Behind

The Thirteenth Apostle

Where does fact end and fiction begin in
The Thirteenth Apostle
?

History is not an exact science, it only manages to achieve increasingly refined
hypotheses
. As time goes on, some of these findings settle down and are sometimes termed “definitive”. But in the field of history nothing is established for ever: the discovery of new sources, or simply a new perspective on events, can call into question an almost official historical truth which had been long-accepted by everyone.