Gospel (61 page)

et Deus erat Verbum.

Hoc erat in principio erat Deum.

Maybe I'm not a good Roman Catholic, thought Lucy, but how much more I am moved by the Greek in which it was written. Aside from its meaning, the sound is … like an incantation, at once Western and philosophical, but at the same time sonorous with the mysteries of the East:

En
arch
n
ho Lógos,

Ka
ho Lógos
n
pròs tòn theón,

Ka
theòs
n
ho Lógos.

Hoûtos
n
en
arch
pròs tòn theón.

Lucy turned off the bedside light and snuggled underneath the covers. My mind has never been more alive, she thought. I am full with thought. I want to live this mindfully always—yes, even if it means never going home. Forward, keep letting me move forward, to somewhere new. Let me, Holy Spirit, travel always …

(Sure about that, Lucy? You just might get your wish.)

J
ULY
10
TH
–14
TH

In the leisurely days at the ever-generous Matsoukises, Lucy was permitted a few days of sightseeing and souvenir shopping amid the only days of true rest she and Dr. O'Hanrahan had had in weeks. Lucy got to visit the Akropolis with a bored and deprecating Teddie:

“The tourists are so ugly this year, uglier than ever before … It's too expensive to come up here to look at these broken-down things—look, over there, someone has brought his dog who has made a mess. People are less civilized now than ever before…”

O'Hanrahan, meanwhile, went to the library near the Metropolitan Church. Father Basilios from the Acolyte Supper had written him an all-purpose permission letter to wave in any official's face who stood between him and the valuable libraries of the Orthodox.

One morning at breakfast, Lucy asked O'Hanrahan how the search was going, and he said something patronizing, then drank and ate as if she wasn't there.

She stopped him afterward in the Matsoukises' hallway. “Sir,” Lucy pleaded, “isn't there something academic I can do to help you? Why don't you take me to the library?”

“I thought you'd rather sightsee, Miss Dantan.”

Well, the guilty secret of Athens, source of the Western World, is that you can do everything in two or three days. More important now, Lucy felt she had to improve her credentials in the professor's eyes, to be a full academic partner. After further entreaties, he relented. She tried to gush enthusiasm for long hours in the Metropolitan's library. “My guidebook says there's an excellent ikon collection.”

“Fun fun fun,” yawned O'Hanrahan, gathering up his satchel and trying out a wayward ballpoint on the outside of it, trying to make it write.

By noon they sat in a small assistant librarian's office waiting for a pass to be processed for Lucy. A monk then led them into another waiting room where O'Hanrahan's letters of recommendation were submitted to some unseen authority.

Minutes passed.

“Bet they don't let me in,” mumbled Lucy.

They were led shortly into the gallery of famously celebrated ikons and illuminated manuscripts on display, which was due to open later for the tourists that afternoon. O'Hanrahan leaned over to stare at the miracle-working
Galaktotrophousa
from the 1000s. Lucy, peering over his shoulder, took a moment to work out the meaning of the name, but O'Hanrahan rushed to translate it in crisp tones: “Our Lady Who Gives Suck.”

Lucy giggled, despite herself.

“Undoubtedly Our Lady's breast shown here, at some point, produced a drop of holy cream … Of course, Mary's milk, as endless Catholic theologians have assured us, was not like normal women's milk. So perhaps this ikon's milk was part divine effluvium, part real milk, sort of like Borden Half-and-Half.”

“Ssssh, the monk's going to come back any minute.”

“You no doubt recall that Aquinas in Naples was sitting beside a painting of Our Lady, who allowed him to catch three precious drops that spurted from her full, heavy breasts.”

Lucy couldn't stop snickering and was reminded of being a young girl in church.

(Lucy, you
are
in a church.)

“Darn if St. Bernard didn't have the same thing happen. Droplets sprang from Mary's bosom and placed themselves on his tongue, one, two, three. I had in mind, once upon a time, to do an article on God's taste in art. To look at the minor painting that spurted on Aquinas or the crucifix in Assisi that spoke to St. Francis or all the plastic statues that weep and bleed throughout the Mediterranean. God could, if He wanted, speak through the Sistine Chapel but no, He always goes for the black velvet painting, the plastic Latino hood ornament, that lady in Mexico who had Jesus appear to her in the refried beans of a tortilla.”

(Remember the story of Balaam's ass, Patrick?)

Lucy's eyes were teary from trying to suppress her unwarranted bout of the giggles, but she was determined to be under control—

“Our Lady Who Gives
Suck,
” O'Hanrahan repeated richly. “See, I can get you to laugh at the word ‘suck.' You're an easy mark today, Luce. Look at this ikon here, the
Glykophilolussa,
Our Lady of the Loving Kisses, or here's … yes, I've seen one of these before in a number of places, a
Myrovlitissa,
Our Lady Who Flows with Myrrh. Considering what her great-great-ancestor Solomon wrote about myrrh, I don't suppose we should contemplate whence floweth this myrrh—”

“Dr. O'Hanrahan, sssshhh!”

“Wouldn't you like to see one of these ikons go off at one time, streaming with myrrh, a bit of oil down the front, the lips smacking away, milk spraying in twin jets from the breasts—”

The monk-librarian: “Would you be so kind as to follow me?”

Lucy looked down to the floor and tried desperately not to laugh. O'Hanrahan moved calmly behind the father, who was now positive these two pilgrims had no place in his library. Lucy and the professor entered the rare book room pretending not to notice the glare of the unwelcoming monk behind the desk. It was nothing like she or O'Hanrahan expected: modern, clean, air-conditioned, and she thought she discerned the hum of a computer terminal in the adjoining office just out of the line of sight. The father grudgingly escorted Lucy to a more public area of tables but informed her that since she was a woman, he himself would have to fetch whatever book she requested and bring it to her.