Gospel (66 page)

O'Hanrahan marveled. “Yes, from the Council of Sermium. I know the book of alphabets has been lost but the commentaries may shed some light.”

“It's the Matthias gospel, perhaps?”

“How did…”

“You mentioned it in 1950 when you were here before. That God has allowed by His grace such a gospel to resurface is the talk of Athos—not that much of that kinda talk reaches us up here in the…” He checked his vocabulary with Brother Victor before completing his sentence: “the boonies. I'd like a glimpse myself, I gotta say.”

A Russian silver cup of tea was set before O'Hanrahan. O'Hanrahan resolved he would go tomorrow to Father Kallistratos at Moni Dionysiou, the great authority on the libraries of Mt. Athos, and ask about what is known concerning the
Gospel of Matthias,
and who might be searching for it. Now that Matthias was damnably common knowledge. What a big mouth, O'Hanrahan condemned himself.

It was becoming dark already. Shadows lengthened and the brothers opened the metal panels of the fireplace to allow the room to fill with firelight and faint warmth. A candle and glass was prepared for O'Hanrahan when he was to retire to his chamber. The younger monks were yawning and about to drop off, seven
P.M.
being quite past their bedtime. But Sergius was fresh and relishing conversation.

The abbot: “You know, Seraphim over at Prophet Eliou says the End Times are upon us, my friend. All the spirit-bearing men are in agreement, for once.”

O'Hanrahan sipped his tea, glancing at the firelight shimmering upon the silver samovar. The professor assured his host, “History has never looked better, Father. Russia is dissolving, the Eastern Bloc is liberated.”

“And nonetheless, up and down Athos the sense is that the End Times have begun. Russian history bears the sadness of the race. It shall not be so easy for her to find the light, my friend. And the Middle East will be at war soon.”

O'Hanrahan smiled. “But you are not allowed to read the papers, Father.”

Father Sergius's eyes crinkled. “We know more than you guys think up here. For God tells us much.”

O'Hanrahan reflected this was one of the last places in the Christian world where mysticism was encouraged, fostered, listened to, revered.

The abbot: “I only bring it up so that you might have time to prepare, dear Patrick.”

“Prepare?”

“Let me baptize you in the Orthodox faith, huh? You're an Eastern Christian at heart, I feel it—an absolutist in your way. Most of your churchmen have perished debating the role of the pope, for him or against him, a fight without end. But you, Patrick, search for the way it was, in ancient scrolls, in old texts, you look deeply into the Eastern eyes of the men of God, is it not so?”

Yes, he had always adored the remnants of the Early Church.

Father Sergius may have sounded Brooklyn but he spoke with that unmistakable lyrical directness of the Russian: “Come home to us, my friend. Be embraced by the True Church at long last—enough with the innovations and distractions. The Early Church of the Fathers is here in these walls. Let me baptize you anew this morning at our prayer service.”

O'Hanrahan hesitated. “I appreciate it, Father … Tomorrow let us talk about it.”

Father Sergius continued to stare a moment. Then the abbot bowed with a half-smile. “Okay. I'll take you to your room.”

The monastery was now completely dark and the little candle barely progressed against the enshadowed vaults of the dank old corridors. O'Hanrahan was led by Father Sergius to a long hallway of cells, all empty now, ghostly and chilling. In O'Hanrahan's chamber was a pitcher of water and a basin for washing, a single linen sheet and a straw-stuffed pillow, and on the wall a faded, yellowed photograph of the Tsar Nicholas and Tsarina Alexandra, regal smiles from their irretrievably lost world—yet this very century!

“You recall what we ask here,” Father Sergius mentioned as he stood with his own candle in the doorway.

O'Hanrahan: “A prayer for the restoration of the royal family to Russia.”

“Indeed. No man should spend a night here without that fervent wish in his heart. How the True Church has missed his protection and guidance,” the abbot added sadly. “We shall see you tomorrow! When you hear the woodblocks, come down and join us in the
katholikon
if you like.”

The father blessed him, mumbled a Russian folk prayer to wish him a good sleep without danger or demons, and crossed himself and left.

O'Hanrahan lay on the stiff, cool bed and observed the candlelight softly illumine the old photograph of the last of the Romanovs. So, this is all that is left of that 2000-year-old idea called “Caesar.” From Augustus and the Western Empire, passed to Emperor Constantine of the Byzantine Eastern Empire, then to Moscow through Nicholas II, and now kept alive in these Russian hearts, by prayers with Brooklyn accents, begging for Caesar to return.
Regions Caesar never knew thy posterity shall sway.
Maybe that would be the end to all the Russian troubles, to restore the earthly head of the Orthodox Church, patron and example to the people, but please, more beneficent this time, more humane and loving.

O'Hanrahan thought tiredly: no tsar will come back, no hero will rise up. There is just our own pitiful generation's longing for the more glorious history of another. As sleep filled the room, O'Hanrahan thought: no, I will not pray for the tsars, but I will pray for Russia and her people and her endless Slavic burdens, all the winters she has yet to face.

J
ULY
17
TH

O'Hanrahan was awakened not by the morning call-to-prayer but by a knock on the door. He sprang awake not able to see a thing, and in the shadow he heard a match strike. It was Father Sergius lighting his candle.

“There we are,” he said. “Ah, you are safe, my friend.”

“Safe?”

“There has been a—how d'you say?—a break-in,” he said glumly without overreacting. “A desecration. In our church. What do you call it … uh, the can of the paint that goes out in a hisssss sound, you know—”

“A spray can?”

“Yes, someone has come into the
katholikon
and spray-canned some Arabic profanities on the
ikonostasis.
”

O'Hanrahan sat up in bed, and with his feet tried to position his shoes to be slipped into. “How horrible, Father.”

“We never lock the door—why should we? An island of holy men, yes? But tonight, someone has come and done this thing. I shall have to reconsecrate everything. How odd that I joked with you about reconsecrations yesterday afternoon. Ah, perhaps God was speaking and I did not pay attention.”

O'Hanrahan, while sitting on the bed, lit his own candle from the father's. “Was anything stolen?”

“Not that we can find, no.” Though their conversation hardly seemed at an end, the father turned and left O'Hanrahan to get dressed. O'Hanrahan wondered if the father privately thought that he had something to do with it.

It was 6:15 in the morning, the sun not yet up and the sky a muted blue in anticipation. O'Hanrahan made his way downstairs and joined the seven resident monks, shaken and distressed, in the church where the damage was done. Someone had spray-painted red over the faces on the ikons and then sprayed an Arabic slogan or two.

“Can you read it?” asked Father Sergius, calmer than any of his charges, who were proposing violence, some tearful.

“Yes,” said O'Hanrahan. He sounded it out. “Wasil ibn-Ataah—it's a proper name, I believe.” O'Hanrahan had heard the name before. “There's more … something about graven images.”

“An iconoclast Moslem,” murmured Father Sergius.

It was a somber parting from Prophet Ieremiou.

Father Sergius wailed that the defilement meant getting a restorer up from Athens to clean the ikon wall. As a Russian, he hated dealing with the Greeks, who schemed to rip them off for everything.

“I wish I could do something,” said O'Hanrahan.

(You could. What about the thousands of drachmae in your pocket?)

“Oh,” said O'Hanrahan, not pausing to think of the consequences. “Perhaps this could help you, Father.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the money. Father Sergius at first refused, saying God would provide, but O'Hanrahan convinced him that God had led him here with this money that he could surely spare.

Father Sergius took it humbly. “But that,” he said, “does not make up for the loss.”

“Of course not. Those beautiful ikons—”

Father Sergius flashed an impatient glance. “I mean the loss of your faith, my friend. Are you sure I may not baptize you anew in the love of Jesus Christ? Let us pray together. Let us return you to your faith. For, you see, I know. I know it is not the orthodoxy that you object to, it is God. You are estranged from God, great scholar that you are. Too much time in libraries, not enough at prayer.”

O'Hanrahan had nothing to say. Father Sergius had looked into his heart, had read him like a familiar text.

“I'll come back again, Father,” O'Hanrahan awkwardly said, taking a step back.

“I do not think you will,” said the abbot sadly, more concerned with O'Hanrahan than with the tragedy that preoccupied his monks, who were milling about vowing revenge on the culprit, for here was the more urgent concern of God. “I was hoping that we might discuss the great fathers at length, month following month, as long as it takes. I mean, of course, in the Next World.”

O'Hanrahan felt himself stirred, drawn to the spirit of this man, this Man of God! But his heart hardened. “I will return, I promise. We'll talk about the baptism then, Father.”

Father Sergius stroked his dry, gray beard and looked up at O'Hanrahan with the eyes of a boy, full of expression and care. “When we parted years ago I said we would meet again. I cannot say that this time with certainty, for my time on earth is coming to a close—and God be thanked, for the Time of the Tribulations is upon us…” He crossed himself and wished a blessing upon O'Hanrahan. “May God find you in your time on Mt. Athos,” he said, turning, and closing the gate behind him.

(Dearest Sergius, We can refuse you nothing.)

*   *   *

All morning, Lucy had searched the town for a fax machine, but this technology was unknown and not even the greatest pantomime description of a fax machine seemed to register with anyone in Ouranopolis. Well, Chicago would just have to hold its breath, she surrendered.

Lucy put on her big red hat and sat down near the beachfront, against a gnarled cypress offering insufficient shade.

“Oh Gregory, hold me! Hold me!”
said Priscilla in
So Hot the Sun.

I've read this book, thought Lucy, putting the paperback down. It took until page 243, but I just realized I've read this book before. This is the one where she gets on this desert caravan in Egypt and gets abducted by Bedouins and raped and all that.

She looked up from her bench to see a screaming trio of girls beckoning and waving someone nearer to them. Stavros, in a brief bathing suit, walked into view. The Naiads, the Nereids perhaps, the Sirens, fill in the nymphs of your choice—make that: nymphos. Lucy supposed the Rhine Maidens would be more appropriate. She stood up and moved location, lightly wishing the splashing, giggling women would drown and pull Stavros down too.

Well, she said to herself. Only thirteen or fourteen more waking hours to spend in this town before I might naturally fall asleep. What next?

*   *   *

O'Hanrahan walked for a few hours until he came to Karyes. A supply truck that hauled the monks' produce and ouzo and ikons to the dock at Daphne drove by in a cloud of hot road dust. O'Hanrahan waved to them and the driver stopped. O'Hanrahan crawled into the truckbed in back and, minutes later, he was returned to the pier at Daphne, where the pilgrim in a hurry can pay for a fishing boat that will ferry him farther down the peninsula.

The boat arrived within the half-hour and two Greek fishermen right out of Hollywood's Central Casting for weathered, salty Greek fishermen, caps and cigarettes and pants rolled up to their knees, extended a hand to the professor to pull him aboard. O'Hanrahan went to the bow so he could observe the spectacular setting for the monasteries along the southeastern side of the peninsula.

Moni Simonopetra. The Monastery of Simon Peter, like the monasteries of Meteora, among the most daring, confident monasteries ever built, dangling on a promontory half a mile above the sea. Seven stories of rickety wooden walkways and balconies affixed to 14th-Century plaster and stone, craning out over the abyss. Never did make that climb, thought O'Hanrahan, knowing now it would never be done, and that he would never drink their once-miraculous ouzo.

St. Simon was Mt. Athos's own stylite and he had lived and prayed atop these cliffs and, after a vision, was commanded in the mid-1300s to build the monastery. His first set of disciples were so terrified of the heights that they abandoned him. One day, having persuaded another crew of monks to work for him, he prepared a reward of ouzo and sent his servant Isaiah out to deliver it. Over the wooden beams Isaiah walked and teetered, when a stone dislodged and he went hurtling over the side, thousands of feet below. After much praying and gnashing of teeth, who should they see a few hours later but Isaiah, who returned to them unhurt and with not one drop of the precious liquor spilled.

(Your kind of miracle, My son.)

The fishing boat stopped at Simonopetra's seaside pier and a few hearty pilgrims and a monk got out, being wished luck and blessings by everyone else, not envying that climb in the 93-degree heat. After that, the water turned a Caribbean blue, and the mountains rose and met the sea in spectacular cliffs, rich with verdure, colorful blooms, hanging vines, many species of flowering trees. And finally, Moni Dionysiou, the jewel of the monasteries, came into view. Again built in the 1300s, again on a precarious cliff overlooking the sea, mostly funded and patronized by the Moldavian Church, and featuring the eeriest of works: the Apocalyptic Frescoes.