Gospel (67 page)

O'Hanrahan, eager to talk to Father Kallistratos, began the steep climb from the dock to the entranceway. Heaving and huffing he made it, bathed in sweat, stopping to put on his suit jacket to cover his naked arms in this sultry heat. A guestmaster, all smiles, welcomed him and showed him to a room in the tower. Next to the brick-red multi-domed church, safely within the walls, stood an eight-story tower to hide within when the Moslems came calling, or worse, the Venetians.

O'Hanrahan was given a chamber to himself with access to a hall that led to the reeking hole-in-the-ground toilets and a bathing area, a laundry basin, and at the end of the hall a wooden balcony overlooking the cliffs and the lapping water below. O'Hanrahan stepped out on the spindly balcony, half-testing it to see if, having held for centuries, it had waited until now to crash down to the rocks. The sun was lowering and O'Hanrahan took in the scene, the endless textures of Athonite quiet, a world without modern sounds, where a distant bird or a fishing boat splashing through the glassy water could be heard for miles. What peace. What a place to listen for the ever-so-quiet directives of God.

(Where shall We begin?)

Feeling a sudden anxiety, O'Hanrahan turned away. He returned to the inner courtyard as the monks filed into the refectory for supper. He sat on a long bench and stared at the visionary frescoes of the End Times, painted in the 1500s. There was a mushroom cloud and scorpions and cockroaches wearing crowns—the only creatures that could survive a nuclear holocaust, the new kings of the world. Beyond was a fresco of world destruction: lamenting citizens hiding under the ground in caves while futuristic skyscrapers toppled and fell, as missilelike rockets streaked across the sky. The sun and the moon, with impassive faces, are surrounded by thick clouds: the world's first prediction of nuclear winter. Awesome, in the original sense of the word, thought O'Hanrahan.

(
Disaster after disaster! Behold it comes. An end has come, the end has come; it has awakened against you.
)

“It is not, Dr. O'Hanrahan, the whole picture, no?” An older monk, speaking excellent English, approached and sat beside him. “I'm Father Eusebio Kallistratos. Welcome.”

O'Hanrahan looked at the thin, tall, frail man of gray hair and prodigious wrinkles, but still possessed of dark black eyebrows that aimed his glance with totalitarian intensity. “The famous librarian,
Pater.
”

“It is not the whole picture,” Father Kallistratos continued after acknowledging the compliment with a slight bow. “Everyone is awed by these paintings and they do not see the final frames on the wall over there … the triumph of God, the angels in glory. The victory of the Lamb.”

“The victory scenes seem symbolic, Father,” said O'Hanrahan, smiling. “A lamb on a throne. But the destruction parts we know could be quite real.”

“It is not long, my friend.” Father Kallistratos went on assuredly: “We are in the End Times. Many have come to Athos to await them. Can we doubt it can be much longer? For 1915 years after Christ was crucified, we have not had the power to destroy ourselves. But now we have and so, eventually, we will. Where will the Islamic horde stop in waging Holy War against us? How long before an attack on Israel and then Europe as predicted? Ah, it is soon, very soon.” Before O'Hanrahan could speak, the father added, “You have heard what happened at the Skete Prophet Ieremiou?”

O'Hanrahan decided to play dumb.

“There is an Islamic fanatic on the peninsula who is defacing ikons with blasphemies and slogans. It is not the first time, of course. All through the Turkish occupation, we endured raids and sacrileges.”

The professor nodded sympathetically.

“And that Islamic man, whoever he is, is quite stupid. For if he is discovered he shall be killed here. We are not under Greece's jurisdiction. He shall be as if he never existed. The monks will dispose of him.”

“Not exactly turning the other cheek, Father.”

“Are we not to fight even the Antichrist and his disciples? But enough of this.” The librarian then asked, “What may I help you to find?”

“I am actually hoping to see the
Clementine Recognitions
and the
Clementine Homilies
and commentaries at Megistri Lavra, the
Sermium Compendium
as well. I have an alphabet I cannot decipher, Father.” He asked the next with forced lightness. “Have you heard of others, Father, looking for a lost gospel?”

Father Kallistratos was informative. “Indeed, this very month. Perhaps it is the
Gospel of St. Matthias?
That is what a monk was searching for, quite recently.”

O'Hanrahan cursed inwardly. “Can you describe this monk, Father?”

Father Kallistratos almost smiled. “He looks like every monk, sir. A gray beard, a black robe, an intelligent man.” The father walked O'Hanrahan toward the dazzlingly frescoed refectory for his meal of white beans, pepper, a teaspoon of oil in a vague soup of hot water. “Of course,” he added, “my patron, St. Eusebius, whose name I have taken as a blessing, first librarian of the Church, condemned the gospel by St. Matthias, did he not?”

“Yes, but perhaps he did not actually read it.”

“But he knew, no doubt, people who had seen it and would hardly have declared it heretical without evidence, or for that matter, the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who rests with each Orthodox scholar.”

(No, not all of them, Father.)

“If this gospel should come to light, it should be kept here on Mt. Athos where it may not confuse the faithful, or prove useful to the enemies of the Church, the False Prophet who is already born and lives among us.”

“The End Times,” sighed Dr. O'Hanrahan.

O'Hanrahan retired at an hour after midnight Byzantine time—about 8:30
P.M.
in the outside world—knowing that the monks would beat rhythmically upon the wooden beams that hung near the tower, calling all to prayer at 3:00
A.M.
Through the night for four hours they will pray and chant and touch their foreheads to the floor and adore the ikons and hear the words of Our Savior in the Greek language he may well have spoken. In this blessed quiet O'Hanrahan fell easily and deeply asleep, weary from his walk up the hill.

Then hours later, he found himself awakened.

There was running about in the courtyard, excited voices. He looked at his watch, which didn't quite glow bright enough to read. But at that moment the door to the dormitory room in the tower flung open and he was looking into a flashlight.

“Yes?”

Someone approached. Two monks talking in impassioned Greek. He tried to understand them. They yelled for him to awaken.

“I'm awake,” sputtered O'Hanrahan. “What's going on?”

They began to look in his satchel by the cot.

“What are you doing?” O'Hanrahan sat up in bed.

The guestmaster was in the room the next moment: “Stefanos! Loukas!
Prosohi
!”

The two monks released the professor's satchel, chastised. The guestmaster told them to leave. Father Kallistratos walked into the chamber the next moment.

“I apologize for this invasion,” he began, when the others had left. “But we seem to have been visited by the defacer.”

“No,” breathed O'Hanrahan. “Where?”

“Not in the main
katholikon,
God Most Merciful be praised, but in one of the outlying
kathismae,
by the vineyard.”

O'Hanrahan stood up, rubbing his eyes. “Your outer gate is locked after five
P.M.
, is it not,
Pater
?”

The guestmaster stared at O'Hanrahan. “Indeed. So there is no way you could have … Well, forgive the young men, they are outraged and not thinking clearly. You perhaps understand why the brothers impetuously came into your room, to see if you had … materials to do this wicked thing.”

“Father, they're perfectly welcome to search me. But I would not do such a thing.”

The father raised his hand. “Of course not. Please, go back to sleep.”

“Was anything destroyed?”

“An ancient ikon, defaced,” he mourned with cold, vengeful distaste. “We have a
kathisma
beside our vineyard. Father Paulos looks over the
Panagia Elaiovrytis
there, and begins his prayers there every morning at three before he joins us. This morning he found the ikon with an Arabic curse written upon it, that scrawl of the Devil!”

Elaiovrytis,
O'Hanrahan considered, translating it to himself: Our Lady who flows with oil. As the father mourned the defaced ikon, O'Hanrahan became increasingly unsettled: was this happening all over the peninsula or just, inconveniently, where he was staying?

Father Kallistratos pulled the door behind him. The professor got out of bed and looked down from the rough-hewn stone window into the inner courtyard where torches had been lit. He saw, he assumed, Father Paulos, tearful and fragile, moved to deepest, wordless grief, inconsolably wringing his hands—to have this happen on his watch!

O'Hanrahan lay again on his bed: someone is following me or I am having the damnedest luck. Tomorrow I'll get to Megistri Lavra, the greatest library of Athos, and I'll be able to read what I wish, take my notes, then get the heck out of here before any more of this bizarre criminality happens and I'm caught up in it. Ghosts and curses and miracles and apparitions and visions of the End Times are common as houseflies here—not a place to run afoul of.

J
ULY
18
TH
–19
TH

Megistri Lavra, the middle of the next night.

O'Hanrahan was again lying in another cell staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep.

“
Dedilosi!
” cried someone excitedly.

Monks were running about the courtyard, a commotion was beginning.

O'Hanrahan sighed. His old age had caught up with him yesterday. After the incident at Moni Dionysiou, he had lain down and gone back to sleep for eight hours, waking up at 1:30
P.M.
—disastrous! He hurriedly flagged down a fishing boat and managed to run up to the gates of Megistri Lavra just as they were closing at 4:30. Could he please be permitted this late to see the library? No, they said, Wednesday was a night for a service consecrated to Mary their protectress, the Blessed Panagia, Theotokos. O'Hanrahan had been promised time in the library this coming morning, but the chaos outside suggested that he would never be granted this privilege.

Another monk near the window wailed “Desecration!”

Yes, it's happened again. Now there's no way I won't be suspected. O'Hanrahan thought calmly: I've demonstrated I can read Arabic, and been at the three places this has happened and even if some explanation is found, it will mean a questioning, a possible police interrogation—or worse than that, facing some 10th-Century Athonite form of justice. Some Turkish militant must be going where I'm going and committing these desecrations so they will have a fall guy to blame. A ridiculous unlucky break, to be picked as a fall guy by some Turk … but then again, the Turks don't write in Arabic. They write Turkish, since Ataturk, in the Roman alphabet. A Turkish Islamic scholar would know Arabic, though. But why would a scholar come all the way over here for this dangerous exercise in vandalism?

There was a knock on his cell door.

“Yes,” he said, fearing the worst. The door opened and a fierce novice entered, glaring at him. Behind him was the short, scowling guestmaster. “Would you be so kind as to come with us, please?”

O'Hanrahan was already dressed. It occurred to him that being dressed looked suspicious. Better for him to have been caught undressed in bed dozing. He stood and reached for his suit coat, checking to see if his wallet and passport were there. Then he reached under the bed for his satchel. It wasn't there. He looked near the water basin, under the bed across from him, on the window ledge and, in desperation, out the window.

“My satchel is missing,” he said.

“Come with us now, please,” said the guestmaster firmly.

O'Hanrahan followed. Who could have taken it? He had left the briefcase in his room at dinner, and then he had left it again when he went to the latrines later that night to prepare for bed. This was a monastery, after all, and he even remembered smiling to himself: at least no one will steal it here. But someone did. Someone has the photos of the
Gospel of Matthias,
many of his essential papers …

O'Hanrahan was led to a small white-plastered room with a table and several chairs, a reception room where monks can meet their visiting brothers and male relatives. An older monk with a candalabra entered and sat across from him, pulling the table to himself, and the guestmaster stood behind him.

“I'm Father Irenaeus and I speak English,” said the older monk, a tall thin man with white hair and beard, looking inaptly like Santa Claus. He spoke English with a European-taught British accent. “This is yours?”

A novice brought forth O'Hanrahan's briefcase, opened, and stained with red spray paint at the edge.

“Yes,
Pater,
it's mine. It was stolen from me.”

“This was found in the Chapel of St. Basil the Blessed. One of our fathers entered to say a late prayer, and heard a man drop the paint can and dash for the exit. Your document bag was found on the floor beside the paint can. The ikon of St. Basil has been desecrated. All,” he sighed, controlling an intense fury, “but St. John Evangelist, the Virgin, and Jesus have been defaced on the
ikonostasis.
”

“That's because…” Damn it! Why did he open his mouth? “That's because,” O'Hanrahan started again, “the Islamic people who did this consider John and Mary venerable persons along with Christ.” The monks stared at him. “Look,” O'Hanrahan went on, “this has been happening, I hear, all over Mt. Athos. These desecrations. I've seen two myself.”