Gospel (51 page)

O'Hanrahan: “1999.”

“Great.”

O'Hanrahan continued. The 16th-Century Nostradamus, who had described World War Two with uncanny accuracy, even naming the instigator “Hilter”—which is close enough to be impressive—predicts a coming war in Yugoslavia, the rise of the Mohammedans and China, a reborn Germany, and the fall of France to an Islamic population in 1998. None of that looks too unlikely all of a sudden, concluded the professor. “Serving Antichrist will be a ‘Barbarian in a Black Headdress.'”

“Sounds like an heir to Khomeini,” said the rabbi. “Of course,
Daniel
and
Ezekiel
say the Beast was going to come out of Babylon, or modern-day Iraq. Nostradamus was thought to be a secret Jew and I'm sure he knew his Old Testament Prophets and Kabbalah.”

Lucy asked, “Nostradamus was specific about which years this all was going to happen?”

“He didn't use a lunar calendar but a solar one, so there's room for play. But 1999 he mentions by name. And he also says there will be a great discovery of an early saint of the church that will rock the Vatican.”

The rabbi crossed his arms. “Ah, perhaps Mr. Matthias is that saint.”

“You guys,” said Lucy, “are creeping me out.”

“I taught a course for years at U.C.,” said O'Hanrahan, “on Apocalyptics. That stuff does give you the creeps if you dwell on it too long. Enoch and Elijah will return to preach against the Antichrist, a False Prophet will appear, a False Prophecy will lead the Church to doubt, some woman or some nation perhaps is the Great Harlot. My bet is that's a reference to Miss Dantan here.”

Lucy ignored this, asking instead, “So I've got about seven, eight years left before things turn nasty?”

The rabbi added, “Remembering that a day is as a thousand years with the Lord, some Ultra-Orthodox think there will be 6000 years of toil before the thousand years of rest, just as there are six days followed by the Sabbath. We all know the world was created in 4000
B.C.
, backtracking from the genealogies of the Old Testament. We're coming up on 2000
A.D.
It's time for the finale, huh?”

O'Hanrahan enjoyed torturing Lucy. “So
Revelations'
millennium of peace is upon us. That is, after we go through the rise of Antichrist and the Tribulation.”

“Hey,” said Lucy, swirling the ice in her glass, “I'm too young for any of this.”

Then suddenly at O'Hanrahan's side, a priest in a cassock cleared his throat to interrupt. “Excuse me…” The priest was North American. Possibly forty, but looking younger, with tender pink skin, sunburned from Roman sightseeing, with a pair of small gold glasses that made him look scholarly. “Excuse me, I hate to interrupt, but you're Dr. Patrick O'Hanrahan, aren't you?”

It turned out that this young man was a priest, Jim Vupolski, from Lorain, Ohio, first time in Rome, and he saw O'Hanrahan in the restaurant by Il Gesù at lunch, but was too shy to say hello.

“I've seen you lecture twice,” Jim was saying, “once when I was studying at Notre Dame, you did the Patristic Fathers series, and this is probably ancient history for you, but I had an adviser who had a tape of your lectures twenty years ago in Bologna—”

“Bologna!” beamed O'Hanrahan.

“Yes, I think I enjoyed it more in Italian, actually. You did your lectures with such … you know, bravura. You're a real showman, Dr. O'Hanrahan.”

O'Hanrahan was only too quick to agree, and proceeded to relive that lecture's reception for the rabbi's benefit.

“And this is my associate, from Rome,” said Father Vupolski, during a breather in O'Hanrahan's banter, “Father Agnelli.”

A short, pudgy Italian man, also about forty, with a pale face and a permanent shadow of beard, stepped into the conversation.

“Good to meet you,” said O'Hanrahan, shaking hands. “Please sit down with us…”

“Well, I don't want to interrupt,” said Jim.

“La fotografia…”
said Father Agnelli, nudging Jim.

“Oh yeah … a bit embarrassing, but could we—could I ask to have your picture taken, with us, here? Father Agnelli really enjoyed the lectures at Bologna.”

“Naturalmente!”
cried O'Hanrahan. “You were there, Father?”

As the men relived O'Hanrahan's glory, Lucy was drawn into service. She took two pictures: both identical and flashbulb-marred, she imagined, the two grinning prelates and a red-faced O'Hanrahan, arms around one another's shoulders, old friends for years.

The conversation among the three raged on, and Lucy was thrown back on the rabbi for conversation. And none happened. A few polite questions back and forth. Lucy then listened to O'Hanrahan talk Italian with both men and she felt herself falling asleep, eyes getting heavy.

“Paddy?” asked the rabbi, momentarily, “are we going to talk about our, uh, project tonight or shall I go on back to the hotel?”

The two priests stood and apologized for invading like this, but actually, said Father Vupolski, they'd had a long day—up for prayers since four
A.M.
! They were headed back to the hostel near the San Callisto Palace.

“Good heavens,” said O'Hanrahan, “we're practically neighbors! We're at the Santa Cecilia down the street.”

“Great!” said Father Vupolski, “if you're going to be in Rome, then some of the fellows at the convocation would love to, well, you know, meet you and buy you a drink. Or two.”

Hearty male laughter accompanied this suggestion.

Jim: “Can we give you guys a ride then? Father Agnelli has his car, thank God.”

Lucy saw her chance to make a break and volunteered to come along. The rabbi and O'Hanrahan were abandoned to talk strategy.

Lucy: “Yes, you're sure it's not out of your way?”

“Not at all.”

Soon their car was poking through Rome traffic, trying to thread its way to a major boulevard and out of the alleys. The Italian priest drove them, while Lucy sat in the back with Jim from Notre Dame.

What a day it had been: what an assault of the monumental and grandiose, the impossibly huge, ornate, and expensively wrought—Rome is certainly what it's cracked up to be. Lucy, with the guidebook fragments floating in her head, realized that still ahead there was the secular Rome of the palaces and art museums, the Imperial Rome of the Caesars and Capitoline Hill and the Forum, the café Rome where James Joyce worked on
Ulysses
and Keats and Shelley and Byron got drunk and Conrad and Henry James met for coffee, the Rome of fountains, the Rome of fashion, the Rome of food and drink and piazza-sitting. As she looked out her window she saw they were crossing the Tiber and that the moon made a path across the slow waters and she sighed the sigh of the tourist, for a moment touched by something ancient and immutable.

“Beautiful moon,” she said.

“Just the perfect temperature, isn't it? After the hot days down here last week.”

“Yeah.”

She closed her eyes lightly, ready to cease consciousness. Her feet could have been amputated without her minding; all she wanted was to sink into the bed and sleep for a day or two. Tomorrow she'd have to load up for all the relatives—a dozen of those little crucifixes at least, and as much as she didn't care for them, some Mary statues because she had some older relatives who would care for them, particularly a Mary from Rome … that's odd, she noticed, they're crossing the Tiber again.

“Wait, uh, Jim?”

“Hm?”

“The place, the Hosteleria Santa Cecilia? It's on the Vatican side of the river, isn't it?”

But Jim didn't say anything.

“Uh, you know where I'm going, don't you?”

He smiled barely. “Yes. I know where you're going.”

Something was wrong. “I think I better get out. Why don't you let me out right here and I…” She reached for the door handle as the car slowed at an intersection.

Jim grabbed her hand. “It really wouldn't be a good idea to get out of a moving car.”

Lucy's heart began beating faster. “Jim, are we going somewhere else first?”

He cleared his throat. “My name's not Jim. But there'll be time for introductions soon enough.”

Lucy swallowed hard. “You didn't really go to Notre Dame, did you?”

“No.” Again the slight, unfriendly smile. “I didn't.”

J
ULY
5
TH

O'Hanrahan arose the next morning feeling no effects of the previous night's excess. He threw open the window and looked down upon the narrow avenue, into the Italian domesticity presented by the windows across the street. He looked up to see the perfect blue sky of Rome and felt the sun on his face. What a shame he had to go see Father Vico today.

After an elaborate shower and grooming session, O'Hanrahan passed by Lucy's room to see a
DO NOT DISTURB
sign hanging there, just as it was last night. Your loss, kiddo, he thought, Rome's out there just waiting for you.

“Signore, taxi?”
said the mustachioed cabdriver in front of the building as O'Hanrahan stepped from the hosteleria. “Very good rate for you! Spanish Steps, eh, Villa Borghese, eh? San Pietro, you go to see the poop?”

“No, thank you,” said O'Hanrahan, preferring to walk the short distance to San Francesco a Ripa. The inner offices of San Francesco a Ripa were more dilapidated and bare than the Assisi offices. Father Vico was enthroned in a plaster-cracked room with a slit window, again sitting in a chair that seemed to swallow him.

“Rome is like a foreign country to me,” said Father Vico wistfully, after procuring O'Hanrahan a cup of badly made tea.

“After Assisi, I can see why,” said O'Hanrahan, who politely sipped, knowing better than to complain.

“I have for you a sooo-prise,” said the Father.

After a phone call to the ever-petulant Antonio, who had accompanied Father Vico and sat brooding in the outer office, an ancient man was shown into the room. The two Franciscans paid reverence to each other as Father Vico rose to his feet.

“This is Friar Luco Gatteoti, a brother attached to San Francesco for feefty years now,” Father Vico said proudly, with a wave of his hand. O'Hanrahan observed this white-haired, funereal man. “Luco has full access to anything you may wish to see in the Vatican Library, and he shall accompany you.”

“Where, Father,” O'Hanrahan asked, “is our scroll now?”

“It ees safe,” said Father Vico. “It ees safe in a, how you say? A safe. It ees safe in the safe, ha ha ha ha ha…”

O'Hanrahan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Where is this safe?”

“It is a very safe safe, ha ha ha ha ha…” Father Vico resumed his seat. “Antonio,” he called.

Antonio, after some instruction, wheeled in the same asinine miniature safe Father Vico had presented in Assisi. O'Hanrahan cringed to hear the unoiled wheels screech in rhythmic triplets, squeak-squeak-squeak, squeak-squeak-squeak, as it was rolled across the uneven wooden floor.

“That really does not look very…” O'Hanrahan averted using the word
safe.
“… secure, father.”

“Not even the Father General knows the combination, though I have been pressed to confess this secret. Nor did I commit our treasure to vaults and safes in Assisi or in a bank or a, what to call it?”

After some minutes, O'Hanrahan understood he meant a security deposit box.

Father Vico: “It is myself I trust alone. Anyone else might to be bribed, yes? The safe is in my power, so you do not to have the fear.”

O'Hanrahan and Friar Luco left San Francesco and stood on the sidewalk. O'Hanrahan asked if the monastery had a car they could borrow or a driver to take them to the Vatican, and Luco didn't seem to know. How did Friar Luco go to the Vatican? O'Hanrahan asked. He walked, he said, all two miles, up the hill and down the hill. Annoyed, O'Hanrahan led his companion back to the Hosteleria Santa Cecilia.

“You want to the Spanish Steps to go?” asked the driver, awakened from a brief slumber.

“The Vatican, please,” said the professor.

O'Hanrahan felt he had seen the cabdriver before … in a cartoon. Yes, that's right, Gepetto the Carpenter in Disney's
Pinocchio.
O'Hanrahan had taken Rudy when he was eight to see it. Same full mustache that could have been a bad theater department prop. O'Hanrahan turned to Friar Luco looking straight ahead, faintly smiling as if a taxi ride was a new, unaccustomed thrill.

“So,” began O'Hanrahan, making conversation in Italian, “what is your field of expertise, Luco?”

He shrugged. “What I am told to do, I do.”

Formalities were brief at the Vatican Library desk since Luco was trusted and familiar beyond suspicion, and permits were issued to O'Hanrahan for everything but the oldest and most valuable codices kept in the vaults under the Vatican Palace. Friar Luco would be happy to get O'Hanrahan anything he needed from down there, however. On the chance that Luco might know something, O'Hanrahan removed from his briefcase a photo four-by-five print of a page of the Matthias scroll.

“Brother Luco, does this script mean anything to you?”

“No,” he said in a moment, not interested.

O'Hanrahan then wrote on a slip of paper a work he wished brought up from the vaults: the 14th-Century vellum scroll of an Ethiopic
Contendings of St. Andrew.
Brother Luco looked at the request, sighed at the work expected of him, and went to locate it.

What a creature of the Vatican, the professor thought, thinking again of the
Romanitá,
the Vatican mode of thought, which was part Macchiavelli, part haggling in the marketplace, but also had a converse aspect of utter, stupefying laziness and incompetence, the work of a month, the inspiration of a moment, stretched to a slow death over centuries.