Gospel (44 page)

“It is, of course, the property of Hebrew University in Jerusalem,” reminded the professor.

“Of course, they have lost it many times, have they not?”

“It was stolen, Father,” said O'Hanrahan delicately.

“And now we have it here, is it not so?”

Father Vico sat back in his chair. He looked at the ceiling, the ancient wooden beams. He looked at the wall that contained the tapestry, St. Francis before his father, taken from the Giotto frescoes next door. Father Vico then looked out his window. “Of course,” he said blandly, “we shall be happy to return the scroll to Hebrew University. In time.”

“In time.”

“Yes, in time. We would,
oseremmo insistere, professore,
insist that you yourself translate the scroll.” Father Vico remained fixed on the window. “So many people are looking for it that should not possess it, we feel it is best that you work on it under our protection. In Assisi.”

O'Hanrahan withheld comment.

“Thees cannot fall into the wrong hands,
professore
—the black market, a private collector. What if I were to tell you that we have learned that one of our Greek Orthodox brethren, in the spirit of the Gelasian Decrees…” He took a deep breath. “… has attempted to procure this scroll so he may destroy it, to put it in the flames. Yes, yes ees true.”

This is the first O'Hanrahan had heard of this.

Father Vico: “Yes, a Mad Monk stalking Assisi—a thing to make worry for, no?”

“Perhaps you are mistaken,” said O'Hanrahan, chilled at that prospect.

Father Vico, seeing he had O'Hanrahan's attention, continued, “Last month we had a visit from this monk. All up and down Italy he has been, every library, every ancient collection. He asks for the
Gospel of Matthias
by name.”

O'Hanrahan was meanwhile thinking of the possibilities. O'Hanrahan had made a trip to the Athens library looking for Eusebius scrolls in late May, a trip to the Metropolitan's Library in Athens to look at their African scrolls in April … it's just barely possible a librarian might have put two and two together. Or more likely, thought O'Hanrahan, that he himself had blabbed too much. Oh, God. Who was he kidding? He'd been telling anyone who would listen for the last forty years that such a scroll existed and he intended to conquer it!

O'Hanrahan tried at least to console himself. “Perhaps your Mad Monk, Father, is not really a monk. Perhaps he is a collector disguised?”

Father Vico didn't think so. “Oh, no, he is a monk—this I know well. Gray beard, black robe, an old man.”

A description that fit every Orthodox monk in the world, thought O'Hanrahan.

“He will be perhaps a problem,” said Father Vico. “As will the Mafia.”

“The … the Mafia?”

“Yes. That is why
we
stole it, so they would not.”

“The Mafia?” the professor repeated dumbly.

Here Father Vico came to focus, leaning forward, lowering his voice. “It will not come as a shock to a man, as yourself, who knows the ways of Rome, that the Mafia will do the bidding of the Vatican. You have heard thees? It is not without a, eh,
particella
of truth.”

The Mafia imagine themselves to be good Catholics, the father explained, and though the Vatican hardly sanctions their efforts or laundered money, neither do they reject what is given in the spirit of Christian atonement … “The process is inevitable, no? The pope makes his wishes known to his cardinals who mention it to the bishops who talk about thees at lunch in the
trattorie
in Trastevere,” Father Vico continued, making an ever-turning wheel with his hands, “and soon the diocesan priest knows, everyone knows. What the pope wants is not a secret in Rome.”

Might yesterday's afternoon caller in Florence have been an emissary of the Mafia? O'Hanrahan decided not to volunteer that information, because he didn't trust the Franciscans either.

Father Vico looked out his window again, chuckling. “The Mafia, ‘Ndrangheta, the Camorra, whoever, thinks, you see, if they please the pope by bringing him thees scroll—ah, who is to say? Hundreds of years off in the purgatory, no?” Father Vico settled back in his chair serenely. “And the Vatican, however they get their hands on it,
want
it.”

“Why do they want it?”

“To bury it,” he said convincingly. “It ees very dangerous, no? A gospel of the First Century, the oldest existing gospel on earth.” Father Vico, shrewder than he at first seemed, raised his eyebrows. “A gospel without a pope? Maybe … maybe thees scroll would make to revolutionize our notion of the Church. Maybe poverty, charity would be the message, as Jesus taught, as St. Francis taught. Perhaps there was never supposed to
be
a central Church, hm? What if thees work shows that Jesus had no Resurrection?”

Father Vico shrugged and joined his hands again.

“That, it may surprise you, would make little difference to our order,
professore.
Jesus is of God and whether he was a Begotten Son, to some of us today, makes little difference. To feed the poor.
That
matters. To clothe the naked.
That
matters. To rid the world of fascism and tyranny and poverty and oppression.
That
matters. If Christ were just a holy man…” He shrugged again. “… many here among us now would not falter in our mission.” He looked O'Hanrahan directly in the eye. “But what a tremendous difference it would make to the pope, hm?”

O'Hanrahan felt a smile creep across his face. He'd missed this, the
Romanitá:
the wheeling and dealing of the Church. The Jesuit in him was aroused! And why shouldn't the Franciscans want to keep this out of papal hands? Since Pope Paul VI let everything go to hell, the Roman Catholic orders have been steadily mounting deep opposition to the all-demanding papacy—most acutely the Jesuits and the Franciscans—but also the Maryknoll Fathers, the Carmelites, virtually every American scholar of note in every North American seminary of note, Liberation theologians, scores of progressive left-wing and socialist Catholics.

“I see you are theenking thees over, no?” said the father.

O'Hanrahan nodded with a polite smile. Not since the disastrous, criminal Pius XII had there been a more conservative pope regarding his own divine authority than John Paul II. In addition to the intrusion into the Jesuit elections, he'd even toyed with the cloistered Carmelite order, demanding they return to the unworkable 1581 Constitutions of St. Teresa. John Paul's Cardinal Casaroli, hatchetman of the moment, had informed the nuns if they didn't like living in medieval squalor they could leave their order.

(It seemed to slip the infallible mind that Paul VI had approved the modernization of the Carmelites.)

The Dominicans, persistent in going their own way, elected Father Damian Byrne, fan of the papally unpopular Edward Schillebeeckx, in 1983. Then the struggle moved here, to Assisi and the 1985 Franciscan election for Minister General. John Paul then published a blunt open letter calling for the Franciscans to return to the obedience of the original rule. The election, held on the anniversary of John Paul's near-assassination, resulted in the California progressive, Father John Vaughan, being returned to office in a safe majority. His acceptance speech was full of Third World concerns, wars and refugees, an easing away from capitalism, materialism—the sole guide was “absolute fidelity to the Gospel.”

Yes, O'Hanrahan now reflected, fidelity to gospel accounts and to the early communal Christianity, priestless and bishopless, would not go down well with Rome, and the
Gospel of Matthias
would definitely be a trump-card in any theological debate should the Franciscans continue to go their own way … Father Vico was tactically astute: the Vatican can't be let anywhere near the scroll.

“We would like,” Father Vico continued, slowly and carefully, “to oversee, if we may, your work on this. If ees revolutionary, thees new gospel, if it is genuine, we will support you and your conclusions. Rome, of course, will scurry to dismiss you.”

A good bet, considering how the Vatican initially condemned the Dead Sea Scrolls, O'Hanrahan remembered.

“You'll forgive us the presumption…” Here Father Vico smiled faintly at O'Hanrahan. “… of removing this from the Jesuits, hm? Many of the Society of Jesus, these so-called Ignatians, are quite conservative, no? Who remember their oath of complete loyalty to the Bishop of Rome.”

O'Hanrahan smiled. “And after I translate the scroll, Father, it will be returned to its rightful owner, Hebrew University?”

“Of course,” he shrugged. “After the truth of what ees there ees known. After the world knows.”

“There is one problem, Monsignor,” said the professor. “Assisi, I fear, does not have the resources for me to penetrate the mysteries of this scroll.”

Father Vico nodded without expression.

“I must use, I suspect, the Vatican Library, perhaps the monasteries in Greece, I may have to go with the scroll to Jerusalem, to Cairo for all I know, since, I believe, it's written in some mysterious African language.”

A faint smile from Father Vico. “It ees not a problem,
professore.
We have churches everywhere, no? You have made, I imagine, a photographing of the text of the scroll?”

The professor said he had. “But, honestly, my friend. I feel I must ask you if I may
see
the scroll now.”

Father Vico weighed this, at last consenting. “Ah, it ees good that you trust no one in this. Not even me. Antonio!”

Antonio, fearing another beverage request, was instructed rather to bring in the safe. From the outer office Antonio produced a huge, jangling ring of keys and unlocked a closet door that had three locks. From this emerged a little combination safe on wheels. Antonio with difficulty rolled it across the cross-grained floor and edges of rugs, which offered resistance.

“It ees completely secure,
professore,
” Father Vico said proudly.

O'Hanrahan stared at this ridiculous little safe. “Surely,” he began, “this could be broken into…”

“I alone,” said Father Vico, raising a finger, “know the combination and I alone possess the keys to the room it dwells in. Ask your assistant Gabriel. He himself saw me put our treasure into this safe.”

O'Hanrahan insisted he would
still
like to see the document.

“Ah, very well…”

Father Vico creakingly got to his knees, groaning and cursing his stiffness, and after ordering everyone to look away, he dialed the combination, opened the safe, and presented O'Hanrahan with the scroll in a secure, clear plastic airtight envelope.

Yep, it was the one.

Father Vico: “We will follow you, wherever you must go, with the original manuscript, guarded by our brethren, safe and in our hands. Do you know San Francesco a Ripa in Trastevere?”

O'Hanrahan and the father arranged to meet again in Rome at this Franciscan fort in the shadow of Vatican City. Father Vico offered to O'Hanrahan that he and Brother Gabriel could stay there, in fact, if they so desired—

“I have no further use,” clarified O'Hanrahan, “of his services. If he was capable of betraying me, he might well be capable of betraying
us.
He didn't have to steal the scroll, Father. If he had put it to me as you have, I would have given it to you.”

Father Vico waved this aside. “Do not be too harsh on him. We did not explain anything to him. We just told him it was of the great urgency for him to bring us Matthias. We did not want to alarm him with tales of…” He made an empty gesture. “…
mafiosi,
and papal politics, hm? Now that you are here and the scroll ees here and we are all happy … there is no cause of anger.”

O'Hanrahan bowed his head unenthusiastically.

“Your tea is cold—we have talked and I have not let you drink it.
Mi dispiace,
I shall give you some more tea—”

“No, that's all right.”

“Ees no trouble—”

“No, I'm fine, really—”

“But it ees no problem—”

Etc.

*   *   *

Meanwhile in the town, Lucy saw the sights. She had taken a nap and had been awakened around eleven
A.M.
by a sister saying there had been a message. She eagerly bounded down to the desk to get it, hoping Gabriel had made contact, but it was only an O'Hanrahan phone message that commanded her presence by Assisi's basilica, lower entrance, at 1:30, on the dot.

“Lucy!” boomed O'Hanrahan.

“Dr. O'Hanrahan,” she called out, rushing across the parking lot and forcing her camera in his hand. “Could you please? A picture in front of the basilica? In my nun's suit. It'll be good for a joke one day.”

O'Hanrahan complied. Lucy couldn't fool him, though. She was thrilled to be posing there, in the uniform of the Poor Clares. O'Hanrahan returned to a thought he had entertained in Ireland: How do we do it? Take our young Catholic women and confine them, neuter them, harass them with chastity and renunciations. Poor girl, he thought, focusing the camera on Lucy. She had a set look for photos that wasn't flattering, a tense, unnatural squint.

“Relax your face,” said O'Hanrahan.

“It is relaxed.”

Screw it, take it anyway. O'Hanrahan was eager to get to lunch.

Lunch was in a place O'Hanrahan remembered from years ago. It had changed owners and menus and now took credit cards and was probably ruined but it was too hot to search for quaintness, so the little place in via San Ruffino would have to do. He immediately checked the wineracks along the wall.

“Rosé wine? We better seize the moment,” said O'Hanrahan, motioning to the waitress and procuring a bottle of local Umbrian
rosato.
The waitress was ignorant when asked what vineyard produced this nectar.
“Il nombre della Rosé,”
he joked, though Lucy didn't register. No matter, O'Hanrahan poured the pink wine. Lucy celebrated with half a glass.