Gospel (62 page)

“Well, who can blame them?” said O'Hanrahan afterward. “You don't know what you might drive these old monks to back in the stacks. Consigned here for your own safety, I suspect.”

“Sexist pigs,” she whispered back.

Lucy took a table near a desk lamp, directly across from an ikon of St. John the Theologian staring at her from the next world where, Lucy was sure, the library would be coed.

(You got that right.)

O'Hanrahan reached into his satchel and produced a manila folder filled with dog-eared loose sheets, Xeroxes of pages from all kinds of books, in all sorts of scripts.

“This is my Matthias folder,” he explained. “Every mention of Matthias I have ever been able to turn up in ancient writings I have photographed or copied and collected here. Look it over and educate yourself. Second, I've decided to give you an exercise to translate.”

“Ooh, a test.”

“That's right, a test. This is from the Louvain imprint of Flamion's apocryphal texts, 1911—a virtual bible of biblical pretenders,” he added, pulling out a single Xerox of a page of Greek script, placing it before her. “It's Alexandrine Greek of the 300s and it should give you a few problems here and there. I want to see what conclusions you draw from this.”

Lucy was thrilled. “Got a pencil?”

“Maybe the
Panagia,
Blessed Virgin, will provide one,” he grumbled, as he delved into his satchel trying to scoop a pencil off the bottom amid the paper clips and pocket change from several countries. “Make sure you return it.” He also sacrificed a few sheets from his legal pad for her to work upon.

“What happens, sir, if I can't do this?”

“Chicaaaahgo, Chicaaaahgo, it's a wonnerful town,” he sang.

As Lucy focused on the page before her, O'Hanrahan shuffled off for the stacks, his old-fashioned, black-framed reading glasses squarely on his face, ready for work. The professor jovially addressed the middle-aged monk behind the reference desk in Modern Greek. “I'm looking for the photostats of the
Clementine Recognitions,
” O'Hanrahan said. “I realize you will not allow me to see the original ancient documents…”

No, the monk confirmed, that would be impossible without permission from the Patriarch himself. But alas, not even the large folio of photostats was available, having been recently shipped off to Megistri Lavra on Mt. Athos.

O'Hanrahan frowned. “And the material on the
Clementine Homilies
?”

“Sadly, that is also at Megistri Lavra,” said the monk. “To what do we owe this rebirth in the interest in these uncanonical fragments?”

“Interest?”

“Indeed. A monk this very week called up these same documents, and the
Sermium Compendium
—”

“No,” O'Hanrahan said in distress. “That was the very thing I was going to ask for next.”

“That, sir, we have never owned. That has always been at Megistri Lavra.” Megistri Lavra was the oldest and greatest of the Mount Athos monasteries, founded 963, a Byzantine showplace of frescoes and ikons, possessing a library adorned by the wealth of Eastern Christianity.

Professor O'Hanrahan smiled politely. “Do you recall who ordered these documents, Father?”

“The monk who read these scrolls did so here before me in this reading room, sir. As he was not removing them, there was no need to keep a record. Hundreds of scholars pass through here each year.”

O'Hanrahan immediately thought of the Mad Monk of Father Vico's paranoia. O'Hanrahan pressed the librarian for a description.

“An old man, a beard, gray hair, monk's robes…” He laughed. “I'm sorry, it could be any of our fathers.”

O'Hanrahan then wearily slumped at a reference table and drummed his fingers there, until told to hush by a nearby scholar. He thought: someone is on the same trail I am on. Then he dismissed the thought; there were many reasons to look at the
Clementine
documents besides looking for obscure alphabets and the
Gospel of Matthias.

O'Hanrahan was hoping to go straight to Jerusalem after seeing these documents, which, frankly, he hadn't expected to be terribly revealing … but now that someone else was so interested, perhaps he had better see these documents at all costs. That meant going to Mt. Athos and living in the Dark Ages for a week. Because women are banned from the Athonite slopes, Lucy would have to wait behind in that little port city of Ouranopolis.

Oh well, O'Hanrahan sighed, while he was here in the library, he might as well cave in and look for Father Beaufoix's book on African scripts. He couldn't remember the name of it. A bland title like
African Scripts,
something like that … O'Hanrahan stood and went to the reference shelf, determined to look up his rival's entry in the Scholarly Register.

Ah, the Scholarly Register; O'Hanrahan ran his hands over the searched-for volume with pleasure. What had started as a 19th-Century alternative to the Index of Banned books, the organ for right-minded Catholic thinkers approved by idiots like Veuillot and the stooges who wrote for
L'Univers,
had in one hundred years evolved into a hot Who's Who in the world of theology, a rank and file of the serious thinkers that the pope, in these times, did battle with. After Vatican II, the Scholarly Register expanded to list Protestant and Orthodox men of note as well, the outstanding Jewish ecumenicists too, hence the Metropolitan of Athens could look up his own name—indeed, so could Mordechai Hersch.

It was no small point of pride that Patrick Virgil O'Hanrahan was listed among these pages, listed as the former chairman of Chicago's Department of Theology, the renowned assistant translator among the original Dead Sea Scrolls team, adviser and editor to the Nag Hammadi Scrolls' critical editions, supervisor of the 1958 cataloguing of the Mar Saba Library, an all-around unforgettable, irreplaceable character … O'Hanrahan found the 1988 edition, as recent as they had, and looked up Father Beaufoix and found his works listed, ten or eleven of the finest contributions to 20th-Century Christian scholarship. Yes, there was the title:
Languages of the Nile.

Should he do it? Should he look himself up?

Why not, he figured with a brief look over the shoulder to make sure he wasn't happened upon. Hey, there seems to be some problem here …
O'Hanrahan
is not in the index. Nor on page 489 between Cardinal O'Connor and Oldenbourg's history of the Albigensian Crusade.

Well, what do you know? I've been dropped out, he murmured aloud.

O'Hanrahan returned the book to the shelf.

When the hell did they drop his name? We'll just see … O'Hanrahan pulled down 1986, 1980, 1977. Again and again and again he wasn't included. I've been a nobody for over a decade, have I? This is what you get for your vanity! At last, in 1976, he found himself, his little reduced entry, former head of the Chicago Dept. of Theology, noted translator, particularly the Thanksgiving Hymn, Dead Sea Scrolls, 1949 … The entry concluded: Retired emeritus, 1974.

Why don't they just put that on the other end of my parentheses, go ahead and bury me!
Patrick V. O'Hanrahan (1925– ).
He left the Registers scattered on the tabletop, too weary of heart to return them to the shelves.

Hell, he lectured himself the next minute, why
should
they keep you in? The wound was opened anew: where are your ten or eleven essential works? Idiots, cretins, morons, papal ass-kissers, and Protestant hacks are in this guide, possessing a tenth of your intelligence and knowledge of the Christian world, but they
wrote it down!
They wrote their drivel, for the world to read, and they exist to posterity! You and your laziness!

(
The way of a sluggard is overgrown with thorns.
)

Oh shut up! “It wasn't that I was lazy exactly…” he said out loud. “Ssssh!” said a monk, hushing him from a desk on the aisle.

I'm talking to myself, thought O'Hanrahan. I'm not only a has-been, but I'm senile to boot. I'm losing my mind in here …

*   *   *

That evening at the Matsoukises' dinner table a wild-eyed O'Hanrahan preached a crusade to Mount Athos by way of Thessaloniki where he could get proper forms for safe passage stamped and verified. Lucy considered what it would mean for her to wait for Dr. O'Hanrahan in Ouranopolis, the small fishing village and departure point for the holy peninsula. Days with nothing to do, just the Aegean sun to bask in, Greek café life to sustain her, a chance to get a tan, catch up on reading … Sounded good.

O'Hanrahan's first scheme was to rent a car and have Lucy drive him to Makedonia, but this plan faltered when Lucy confessed she couldn't drive a stick shift. O'Hanrahan then suggested volunteering Mrs. Matsoukis's Uncle Spiros, who had driven O'Hanrahan to the Meteoran Monasteries back in 1968, who at eighty-some might appreciate an outing.

“No,” mourned Eleni, “he is fine around his village, but I would not risk your lives with him now.”

“He was always a horrible driver,” O'Hanrahan noted, hoping for nostalgia's sake to have again the old man's crude, bawdy company for one last expedition. O'Hanrahan moved himself to the living-room chair, ice tinkling in his evening glass of milky ouzo, and looked at Lucy. “Well, Miss Dantan, perhaps you'll get your chance after all to battle the Mediterranean roads. There's bound to be a car company that rents automatics somewhere in Greece.”

“Uh, I don't know, Dr. O'Hanrahan,” said Lucy. “I don't do a lot of driving back home exactly. Can't you drive, sir?”

He looked to the ceiling. “My license, in an unfortunate altercation with Chicago's Finest, was removed from my possession.”

(DWI. October 2nd, 1979. Breathilizer went right off the scale.)

In the kitchen, Teddie and Stavros were spitting vindictive Greek at each other. O'Hanrahan cocked an ear and tried to translate … something about how Stavros never did a single bit of work at university and to send him to school was a waste of money. Stavros responded he was on break this summer and didn't see why he should feel compelled to study in advance of the school year or get any kind of job. Then, turning his attention, O'Hanrahan appraised Lucy in her bugeye glasses, dressed in a nebulous blue dress shirt handed down from an older brother, her hair yet to recover from the recent sea voyage across the Adriatic.

“I'm going to procure for you,” he said slowly.

(Oh Patrick, no.)

“What was that, sir?”

“Nothing, nothing…” he said, grunting to his feet and walking into the dining room to speak to Eleni.

J
ULY
15
TH

The next day the three of them, O'Hanrahan and Lucy, Stavros at the wheel for a prearranged sum, sped up Greece's major highway in a shiny yellow rented car at an unreasonable Mediterranean speed, wind rushing through open windows. Lucy sat in the backseat delighted with the scenery and the Greek roadsigns, presenting place names she knew from the classics.

O'Hanrahan rambled about nearby Thermopylae and the lopsided battle there—300 Spartans versus thousands of Xerxes' Persians—and the ridge of mountains culminating to the west in Mt. Parnassus, where the immortal poets dwell, where the muses hide. Unexpectedly, the road wound into a gray, sheer canyon and emerged upon the plains of Makedonia guarded by the
Oros Olimbos,
Mount Olympus itself. The isolated swirl of white cumulus around the peaks certified that the gods were home.

Stavros explained something in Greek to O'Hanrahan.

“A national park,” O'Hanrahan supplemented. “Zeus and company. I'd watch out for swans, Miss Dantan.”

“I'll keep an eye out.”

Lucy let the miles pass while imagining a trip one day with a backpack around the mountaintops:
In the bright hall of Zeus upon Olympos the other gods were all at home, and Zeus, the father of gods and men, made conversation.
Would Zeus talk to her upon that mountaintop?

(No, since he doesn't exist.)

Stavros broke this reverie by commenting upon two approaching female hitchhikers in the briefest of short shorts, by the side of the road. He wildly turned his head for a better view of thigh and cleavage, swerving the car. Whoa hoa hoa, Stavros uttered. O'Hanrahan, equally captivated, chortled approval. And then bilingual guy-talk broke out.

Lucy crossed her arms, frowning. Stavros Matsoukis is twenty-one and Patrick O'Hanrahan is sixty-five and though having nothing in common, having wholly different world views and levels of sophistication, they can unite here in this sacred, well-trodden Acadian grove where maledom adores a
NICE ASS
and
BIG TITS
, unifier of allllll mankind, bridger of all differences, from the cantinas of Latin America to the hashish joints of the Middle East:
NICE ASS, BIG TITS.
Pigs! And what woman, Lucy wondered, in her right mind would hitchhike in Greece in those shorts?

Stavros was saying something through O'Hanrahan's greasy, old-man's laugh, making gestures with his free hand, creating breasts in the air, speaking of
stitha amerikanida.
Something about American bosoms, Lucy figured. At this moment Lucy made up her mind not to lay so much as
a straw
upon the load of Stavros's male vanity, not to favor him with so much as a breath of interest, a glance of appraisal. Having sworn this she looked in the rearview mirror where she could see Stavros's eyes. He looked at her briefly and raised an eyebrow as if to say: looking at something you can't have? She quickly broke off eye contact.

In Thessaloniki, Stavros screeched to a stop in front of the Ministry for Northern Greece and O'Hanrahan hopped out to get his permission papers for Mount Athos stamped. Stavros idled in an active lane of traffic despite being waved away by a policeman and all of Thessaloniki honking and cursing behind him.