The Book of Q (11 page)

Setting it down, she deftly untied the leather cover, then slowly began to roll back the parchment. It must have taken her twenty minutes to lay out a section of no more than eight inches square, but her meticulous care kept Pearse rapt. Every so often, a word or two would escape
her lips, pursed in concentration; her eyes would light up at those moments, her fingers, though, ever serene, precise, never giving in to the excitement. When she was fully satisfied that she had placed the parchment just right, she produced what looked to be four velvet sacks filled with sand and placed them at the corners. Then, with the section of scroll laid as flat as caution would allow, she pulled a large glass dome—an odd metal knob at its far side—from one of the desk drawers and set it over the scroll. In one fluid movement, she turned the knob and watched as the dome clamped itself to the top of the desk with a sudden hiss of air.

“Clever device,” she said. “Not a vacuum seal, but close enough. Let’s me spend some time with the scroll without damaging it.” She pulled the last cigarette from the pack on the desk, produced a lighter from her pocket, and lit up.

“Handy to have around,” he answered, craning his neck so as to try to scan the topmost portion of the text. “Glad to see you’ve cut down.” He smiled.

“My one indulgence, Father.”

Still staring at the text, he said, “If you think I believe that—”

A loud cackle rose from behind the cigarette. “Really, Father, you’ll make me blush.”

“Somehow,” he said, his own smile wider, “I doubt that.”

Another burst of laughter. “What a shame you’re a priest. …” Without finishing the thought, she took a long drag and said, “Do you read Syriac, Father?” He shook his head; she continued. “Well, that’s what’s staring up at you. It’s rather surprising. I would have thought—”

“Latin or Greek,” he cut in.

“Latin or Greek?” She looked genuinely puzzled.

“Well,” he explained, now a little less confident, “the few Manichaean texts I’ve seen were written in either one or the other.”

“Really? That’s odd. I was about to say Chinese. The only Latin text we have is the
Rule for Auditores
, the one they found just outside Tebessa, in Algeria. As for Greek—well, that’s only in the later tracts. I assume you’re referring to a specific collection?” No time to answer as she turned back to the scroll, a pair of half glasses emerging from a pocket; she spoke somewhat offhandedly, eyes scanning the words. “Actually, the fullest texts we have come from a group of seventh- and eighth-century sects who managed to survive on the fringes of the
Chinese Empire.” She glanced up at him. “Can you imagine that? China?” Just as quickly, she turned back to the scroll. “There are even references to a Manichaean community as far east as—”

“Fu-Kien?” he said, unable to mask a rather coy smile. “Thirteenth century?”

She stopped and looked up, her surprise once again all too obvious. “Very good.”

“Well, I had to make up for the Latin bungle. Show you I’m more than just a pretty face.”

“True.” She waited, then added, “I’d forgotten I have to be on my toes with you.”

“Hardly. That was my best shot. I’ll be lucky if I can keep up.”

Her smile told him he had hit the mark. “Oh, I know that’s not true. As I remember, you’re very, very good at all these ancient puzzles.” She took another quick drag. Evidently, Angeli could be equally coy when she wanted; Pearse couldn’t be sure, but he thought he might just have shared a moment’s flirtation with her, willingly or not. Another reminder of why he’d always enjoyed working with Cecilia Angeli so much.

She turned back to the scroll, once again caught up in the text.

“So, as I was saying, you’d expect Chinese, and if not Chinese, then Pahlavi, Soghdian, or Middle Persian. But Syriac”—she stooped even lower over the dome so as to peer at the words, smoke streaming from her nose—“that makes this a very strange document. A very strange document indeed.”

She pulled her glasses from her face and stood upright. “And one considerably older than any of its Chinese relatives.” Turning to him, she asked, “Would you like some coffee? I think I’m going to make a pot.” Without waiting, she began to wend her way through the piles of books, the glasses quickly back in her pocket, a trail of gray smoke settling on the room behind her.

Pearse smiled to himself. It wasn’t the fact that he was thirty years her junior that was holding her back. Just the collar, which, as he now recalled, he wasn’t even wearing. She had been nice not to mention it. Or maybe that was what was egging her on. Pearse started to laugh as he edged closer to the desk.

He stared down at the strange script through the glass. The thick curve of letters melded easily into one another, yet each was distinct, a line of indecipherable signs linked only by the common touch of a single scribe’s hand. In and among the letters, tiny sticklike figures littered
the parchment—little men carrying daggers, what looked to be a lion poised in attack. Likewise, wrinkles and tears peppered the almost hypnotic flow of words and illustrations, choice bits lost forever, left to the reasoned imagination of the modern reader. Pearse knew Angeli would have no trouble filling in the gaps, offering up her own vision of continuity with intricate explanations, as if perhaps she had been there, peering over the shoulder of the ancient scribe as he had inked the original. She had done as much with Ambrose; somehow he sensed she’d be more at home here, more comfortable with the renegades and heretics.

“I was thinking,” she said as she reappeared at the doorway, “there might be a link to the Mandaeans, given the little pictures. Mani’s father was a Mandaean. It’s a natural connection. Did any of your research with Ambrose take you as far afield as them?” She was reclaiming the glasses from her pocket as she neared the desk.

“The Mandaeans?” Pearse replied. “Actually … no. I can’t say that it did.”

“You know Fu-Kien, but you don’t know the Mandaeans?” She was clearly having a bit of fun. “Really?”

“Shocking as it sounds, I know.”

Her smile grew. “Actually, they’re more of a strictly Gnostic group. Individual responsibility, hidden knowledge—the ‘gnosis’—that sort of thing. There’s certainly a link, but they’re much earlier than Mani and Manichaeanism.”

Leaving the banter aside for the moment, he asked, “So, if they were earlier, that means they would have died out by the time ‘Perfect Light’ was written?”

“Oh, no,” she answered. “Most of the silver and gold markets in Basra and Baghdad today are run by Mandaeans. In fact, I once spent a very wonderful afternoon with one of their
nasuraiyi
, a ‘guardian’ of the secret rites and knowledge.” Her eyes stopped momentarily on a spot on the rug. “Fascinating man. Tried to explain the five realms of light. Absolutely incomprehensible.” She looked up with a smile. “It’s just that seeing the Syriac with illustrations—well, it’s a very odd choice. Naturally it makes one think of the Mandaeans.” She drew up next to him and again began to scrutinize the scroll.

“Naturally.” He now remembered how essential such digressions were to her work—essential, if equally incomprehensible. It was best to let her mind range as it saw fit. “So you
don’t
think it’s linked to the Mandaeans?” he asked.

“Of course not.” She looked up. “Why do you ask?”

Now Pearse smiled. “No reason.”

She turned again to the parchment. It was time to get down to business. Within seconds, she was translating as she read: “‘It is from the perfect light, the true ascent that I am found in those who seek me. …’” She let the words trail off as she seemed to reread the section to herself. “That’s some sort of preamble,” she continued. “There’s a section missing here, and then it goes on: ‘It is I who am the riches of the light; it is I who am the memory of the fullness. And I traveled in the—’” She stopped and bent closer in to get a better look, her eyes now scanning the next few lines, lips always moving silently. Pearse noticed another large tear just below her finger on the glass. “That’s odd. This bit comes right out of the ‘Secret Book of John,’ the ‘Poem of Deliverance,’ at least in these first few lines.” She read on. “There’s another section missing here, and then it runs, ‘And I traveled in the darkness …’ something about a prison, and then picks up again here with ‘And the foundations of chaos moved.’”

She stood upright, her eyes still on the scroll. “That’s the Book of John all right. A Syriac version of the Gnostic Greek, but definitely John.” She turned to Pearse. “I’m sure I could find a better translation of it; wouldn’t be much help, though, I don’t think. My guess is that the writer used it to set the tone, establish a link—although why he connects ‘Perfect Light’ with John …” Her words once again trailed off as she leaned in over the glass. “That isn’t clear at all.”

“Right,” said Pearse hesitantly. “Actually, the Manichaeans might not be the only ones traveling in darkness here.”

“What?” She looked up, clearly having been listening with only half an ear.

He smiled. “I think I missed class that day.”

“Oh … I would have thought with Ambrose, you would have—” She cut herself off. “Or maybe not.” She smiled, the teacher trying to find the right words. “I suppose it’s all rather … obscure, isn’t it?”

“A little earlier than my period, that’s all.”

“Always a good excuse.”

“Then I guess I’ll stick with it.”

“Fair enough”—a cigarette back in her fingers—“No reason you should be familiar with any of this.” She looked up at him, the smile in her eyes growing to a twinkle. “Well, is it to be the introductory lecture,
or just the highlights, Father?” Once again, she left him no time to answer. “I suspect just the highlights.”

She stepped away from the glass, turned, and sat on the lip of the desk. “Let’s see,” she began, taking a long drag, gesticulating with the cigarette to emphasize each point. “Dating. … John is written sometime in the first or second century, so it’s a contemporary of the canonical Gospels; it’s a Gnostic tract and therefore a threat to what would become orthodox Catholicism; it recasts the Genesis myth with God as a mother-cum-father entity prior to the God of the Hebrew Bible. …” Another long draw on the cigarette, her eyes now searching the air, the delivery no less staccato. “It focuses on self-knowledge and condemns the institutionalization of faith; it’s supposedly written by one of Jesus’ original disciples—John, the son of Zebedee—and purports to record the words of Christ Himself; and it’s done in the narrative style of what was called an ‘apocryphal act of the apostles,’ a sort of Christianized novel.” One last puff before she turned to crush the butt into the ashtray, speaking as she drove the cigarette deeper into the ash. “The poem is simply one section of the book, an explanation of how one might be able to achieve deliverance by reclaiming uncontaminated, or perfect, light.” She looked up. “So there you have a link to the Manichaean prayer. A tenuous one, but a link.”

Still trying to piece everything together, he asked, “And all of that makes John and its poem a typical Gnostic tract?”

“On a very fundamental level,” she replied, “yes. It’s one that conveys a secret knowledge—directly from Christ—which the initiated elite access in order to achieve an enlightened existence. Gnosticism at its most basic.”

Feeling a bit bolder, he added, “And once the four Gospels are canonized, it slips into obscurity, along with the rest of the Gnostic scriptures.”

“Well,
shoved
might be a better choice of words. Remember, at the end of the second century, the followers of Jesus—in all their myriad sects—were fighting for their lives. They needed to put up a unified front, rather difficult, given the number of gospels and apostolic letters making the rounds. Which meant internal debates among them ultimately amounted to a matter of survival, rather than theology.”

“Expedience over spirit.” Pearse nodded. “Kind of takes the sheen off of things, doesn’t it?”

“Reality has a way of doing that, yes,” she said.

“Glad to see you’re not sugarcoating it on my account.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

He smiled. “I could hide all the ashtrays.”

Another little chuckle. “I have them in places you wouldn’t begin to think of.”

He started to respond, then thought better of it. “So they needed one interpretation to stand supreme against the common Roman enemy, is that it?”

“Yes … but not just an interpretation. The early Catholic church needed a structure that could bring the faithful together. Something to turn the ‘followers of Jesus’ into ‘Christians.’ The ‘Jesus movement’ into ‘Christianity.’ Gnosticism defied any kind of structure and
therefore
made its believers difficult to control. No control, no unified front. You see where I’m leading?”

“To the end of Gnosticism.”

“Exactly. Anti-Gnostic writings became one of the standards of the new orthodoxy, most famously from the pen of the Bishop of Lyons, a man named Irenaeus. He wrote several books. …” She stopped for a moment, her eyes again searching the air. “What was the big one?
The Overthrow? The Destruction?
Something about ‘false knowledge.’” She looked back at him. “Whatever it was. It condemned all Gnostic gospels as heresy, and in so doing, helped to root out any internal squabbling. You had a common front.” She seemed to have expected a bigger response from him; he obliged with an exaggerated nod.

“Thank you. At the same time, though,” she continued, “that standard asserted an image of Christ that may very well have been different from the figure of Jesus His earliest followers had known. A shift. We, of course, will never really know.”

“A different image of Christ?” For the first time, Pearse responded not as student. “I’m not sure I understand that.”

Angeli smiled. “I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable, Father.”

“Yes, you do.” He smiled. “What shift?”

“Oh, I didn’t say there was a shift. I said there
might
have been a shift. No one’s absolutely certain how people understood Jesus in those first few centuries. Too many versions of the Word floating around. There’s Paul, the Gospels, the Gnostics, any number of Jesus sects—”