Gospel (100 page)

She raised her eyes to see O'Hanrahan looking at her with tenderness. God, she thought, on top of everything else, he needs me. If I leave him now, it really will be over for him. “I'll get … I'll get packed,” said Lucy automatically, rising to use the connecting door between their suites.

“I knew you'd see your own self-interest.”

But it wasn't self-interest at all! At this moment, nothing could be further from her motivations than academic posts and appearing in a thousand future footnotes. She walked into her room to see a bouquet of a dozen long-stemmed red roses.

O'Hanrahan poked his head into the room after her. “Oh yeah, those,” he said, laughing. “Figures. I ordered them for you last week and they come today when we're leaving.”

“Sir, they're beautiful.”

Lucy opened the card, which read:

And everything upon which she lies during her impurity shall be unclean; everything also upon which she sits shall be unclean. And whoever touches her bed shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water and be unclean until the evening.

Shemoth 15:20–21

“What a lovely sentiment,” she said, not getting the joke.

“See?” O'Hanrahan was saying, holding up the calendar page of his address book. “Here's what I've written: ‘
Lucy's period.
Be nice to Lucy.' See? I don't want any more unpleasant episodes, like in Florence. All through 1990 I've written ‘Be nice to Lucy' across the same week of the month, heh-heh-heh. Hence the
Exodus
menstruation reference on the card with the flowers, heh-heh-heh … I gotta call the travel agent.”

Lucy closed the door behind him, then lay down on the bed. It was going to be hard to abandon a man who wrote ‘Be nice to Lucy' every day of her period.

Which she hadn't had yet.

Dear Lord in Heaven.

Lucy was paralyzed as the implications of a missed period overwhelmed her. Couldn't be. Couldn't happen. Of course it could be, of course it could happen. And as soon as the full horror of the idea expanded and touched every inch of her conscious mind, she raised her hands to her face and shut her eyes.

No! Oh, what folly. What a stupid girl you are, she told herself. And Gabriel saying she looked different, had a glow—she felt that she might tremble. Mother Mary, full of grace, I beg of you … But her prayer ran dry, seemed impotent and arid to her.

(That might be because it's been several weeks since you've actually spoken to Us properly, hasn't it been, My dear?)

I am with child, she said to herself, trying out the idea.

The second I thought of it, Lucy reeled, I knew it was true. The Fall! And a Fall it is, she thought, for that's what it feels like, a sinking, a hanging above an abyss by ten fingers, then five, then one, then a freefall into hopelessness that takes the very operation of the body with it, the heartbeat, the breathing. I have fallen from a life of light to some unforeseen damnation where my sin will define me, where my life would now reshape and recast itself.

“… yes, that's right,” O'Hanrahan was saying in the other room to the travel agent on the phone.

She calmed herself: no sense getting hysterical. A late period may be just that! You might well be fine.

“Uh-huh … two first-class seats, left side if possible. The smoking section of the bus, please.” O'Hanrahan laughed. “Of course, where's my mind? This is the Middle East. Everybody smokes!” He laughed again. “Also, miss, you've been so helpful maybe you can help me with this. I have an American prescription that needs refilling here in Israel, since my trip has gone longer than I thought. Where could I…”

A pause, as he got the information he wanted.

That old man in there, Lucy thought, is running from the implications of the end of life. He doesn't ever really want to solve the mysteries of the Matthias scroll—not really. He wants a quest to beckon before him and keep eluding him so he never has to die. And I am part of his hopeless illusion. I, who want to run from the implications of life beginning, here inside me, which will grow at the expense of what used to be Lucy Dantan, now condemned.

Okay then, she decided, rising to pack stoically:

I'll run with you, old man. The wasteplaces are vast, this Wilderness of Sin, good enough for the wayward Hebrews for forty years. Lead me, you old charlatan, dealer in golden calves, Patrick Virgil O'Hanrahan!

(Go to the desert, Patrick and Lucy. The deserts of the Middle East are Our old stomping grounds, whence I have always talked to My children. You flee into My arms.)

6

Nilus! O great flow from Earth our mother,

From her Aethiopean bosom rolls the great torrent

Down past her Egyptian flanks

Until it finds release from her fertile delta

Discharged into the Great Sea!

 

I surely don't have to tell you, of all people, in what famous poem one will encounter that precious jewel!

2.
I might have stayed in lovely Alexandria forever, as I was saying yesterday, but I was aided, however, in my quick exit by your friends the Romans, who arrived in our Judean Macedonia
1
to pillage, carouse, and deface the metropolis, in addition to rounding up suspected Nazirenes, and yet-rebellious Jewish sympathizers. Indeed, there has been no true peace for the Jews since the days of Cestus Gallus.
2
What frustration to know that even as you read this, your mind is busy inventing some justification for the Romans, some plausible motive to absolve them! Rome's greatest man, Julius Caesar, while smilingly patronizing the Jews with pillars and plaques, began his campaign in Alexandria by the burning of the
Museion
[the great library]—what more evidence need be given of the Romans' inhuman propensities?
3

3.
And so, in the seventh year [76
C.E.
] of your beloved Vespasian's ignoble reign, I left Alexandria with the trade caravan Duldul ibn-Waswasah had arranged for me, with his letters and money to meet my expenses. The Romans had been spreading terror throughout the delta without adding a jot of security, hence robbers and brigands were afforded every opportunity of rapine. On our second day, the caravan was stopped by a band of Bedouins who neatly removed anything of value, including my purse where I made a great show of losing everything I owned. This clever theatric disguised a secret hoarding I kept under my robes wrapped tightly around my groin. I counted this small triumph to be an omen and I separated myself from the trade caravan, that slow-moving target, at the first opportunity in Ptolemais Hermiu.

4.
I attended the Nazirene synagogue there where I observed that no article of Our Church had survived uncorrupted, and I sought to confirm the reports that a disciple—Philip, it was rumored, or perhaps Matthew, who was known to have traveled here—worked in the Faiyum. I heard that the Disciple Philip was indeed in a village near Oxyrhynchus, back down the Nile, maddeningly, from which I had come.
4

I was persuaded to wait until the end of the week when a group of Nazirenes sought to make this simple journey together for safety's sake, though the crew assembled could hardly have withstood a pack of geriatric dogs—a caravan sent by God, I am sure, to test my patience. One Nazirene crone, impressed by my air of education, asked me if I were a Disciple and I told her, “If I were a Disciple do you think I should be crouched down here among you people, hiding from the Romans? I should perform twenty miracles and have them swallowed up by the earth,” and that seemed to satisfy everyone. Surer yet, had I said I was a Disciple I should have been called upon for martyrdom, the way the old women were talking.

5.
For this mob, Our Master was all miracle worker, doom prophet, and dispenser of secret mysteries; I do not think one of the group could remember a single charitable teaching of Our Master. Three old unmarried sisters—the Nazirene capacity for attracting unmarriable women remained insuperable—two old men, one quite senile, and a collection of orphans and ever-hungry young men who thought nothing of rampaging through a stranger's farm for chickens and small sheep. Some purity we Nazirenes maintained!
5

Escaping to the main road before dawn I met some Egyptians (who spoke no Greek) and with them I walked onward to the witlessly named oasis of Ammos [“Sand”] where Philip and his Nazirene commune reportedly resided.

6.
I approached the gate of their small but high-walled village. No amount of persuasion was sufficient to let me inside. The hairy beast of a gatekeeper explained that virgins were within and I threw open my arms and asked if he seriously thought I was a threat to the girls' most precious compact. In time, a man, said to be the Nazirene hierarch of the village, arrived outside the gate.

I said to him, “I seek the Disciple Philip.”

He said to me, “I am he.”

7.
Vividly you might imagine my surprise to discover, my brother, not Philip but an impostor! He was much younger than a True Disciple could ever have been, no older than his fifth decade [his 40s], with a shamefully shaven face and a bald head. If the rabble in the Faiyum had submitted his appearance to a moment's serious reflection they would have realized their error and banished this charlatan to the desert wastes.

“Ah, Matthias,” he addressed me, as if familiar, “you perhaps do not remember me? I have taken the name after Philip, my own teacher.”
6

Upon hearing this, I was somewhat mollified, but still to pass himself off as a Disciple of which there could only be, of course, twelve. O splendid number!

8.
He said to me, “I'm sure it could not matter to Our Master that others borrow the names of his original clan.”

How preposterous! I insisted rightly that Our Lord and Master would have not tolerated this falsity for a moment.
7

This impostor said to me, “Well, we shall disagree on this, I fear. I suspect it matters little to Our Lord in Heaven. These people of Egypt would not be convinced unless I came to them with some title, some rank. Examine, dear Matthias, the great store you yourself put by it.”

9.
I said to him, “But what of the real Philip? If you fall into heresy and disrepute you have besmirched that great Disciple's reputation.”

(This was somewhat disingenuous for I never liked Philip and thought him weak-willed and fond of grand moments and self-promotion. I recall him rehearsing questions of such dexterity that Our Master was unfailingly impressed with his second-rate mind.) My suspicions as to Philip's character were well founded, for the next moment I was to learn, from Pseudo-Philip:

“The other Philip is quite happily retired from the ministry in Media, as you may know.”

I informed him I knew no such thing. I had, however, heard tales of a great martyrdom in Armenia.
8

“Oh, he is no more martyred than you or I. He has retired to his farm and is working to bring his estate in order so that his fifteen children might know some subsistence. I had heard, actually, that
you
were martyred in the fall of Jerusalem, my dear Matthias; I received an epistle to that effect from James bar-Alphaeus. But I see your treacherous brother has had your life spared.”

10.
I said to him, “Do you mean to tell me that you are in contact with other disciples who are unaware of your false identity?”

I must say Pseudo-Philip's capacity for a friendly countenance in the brunt of my searing indictments was admirable, but perhaps this show of humility and charity was just another sham to impress me with Nazirene virtue.

He said to me, “I am in contact with most disciples still alive. Shall I show you a missive from Peter?”
9

Poor, senile old Peter—deluded by this impostor!

He said further to me, “I assure you, Peter is not beguiled in the least. His scribe writes to me as ‘Crassus Philip,' combining my former name when I was Philip's assistant and my new chosen name. Dear Peter, though never having visited, is fond of our commune here and sent us money in the early days. Truly, Matthias, judge for yourself. It is among the largest and most prosperous of the Nazirenes'.”

11.
He suspected that I did not perceive the clue to his background. I said to him. “So Crassus is your former name. I take it then, you are Roman?”

He said to me, “Do not tell me you are of the circumcision party?”
10

That of course went without saying!

12.
I next threatened to expose Pseudo-Philip before his community for the fraud he was. He said to me after what he would have me interpret as a painful silence, “You are the only Disciple who has found cause for complaint. Come and see how we live. Everyone has enough to eat, no one has more than anyone else. The elderly and sick are prayed and cared for; we harbor fugitives from the Romans, prostitutes who have turned away from that life.”

I said to him, “You have great confidence in your own performance. I may yet go into the center of the commune and announce to the world that you are not Philip!”

Pseudo-Philip said to me, “You would not be believed.”

13.
I informed him that I should be recognized as a True Disciple.

He said to me, now most unpleasant, “How should that be? Where has been your ministry? Inside a library, I understand. The people will not believe you because they have seen miracles and they love the way of life here, the way shown by the Master.”

Miracles? I examined Pseudo-Philip on this incredible claim.

14.
He sighed as if he were weary—how well, you will observe, my arguments had tired him. He said to me, “I do not mean parting of seas or such. Elderly widows who no longer wished to live now embrace life. Children who were starving and racked with illness and demons are better. The man who let you in the gate, Levi? He beat his wife thoroughly, each and every night, though he observed the Law and was a member of the finest Alexandrian synagogue. Here, he has heard the teachings of Our Master and shared all he has with us. When he ceased to worry about money, he ceased to beat his wife and children. It is that sort of miracle to which I refer.”