Gospel (43 page)

But rounding the corner into the depot lobby, O'Hanrahan froze, and Lucy looked up to see what had stopped him in middisquisition: Gabriel. Gabriel was in his friar's robes, asleep, slumped uncomfortably on a bench. His thin frame seemed lost in the rough brown robes. Lucy watched O'Hanrahan walk over to the bench and startle Gabriel awake by blasting
matins
at him at full volume:

“
Pulsi procul torporibus, surgamus omnes ocius,
you little Judas!”

Gabriel jumped awake: “Oh hello, Patrick…”

“Shall I sacrifice you here, or pitch you from the walls of the basilica?”

Gabriel tried to hurry himself awake. “Uh, can I explain—”

“I've been waiting two months for an explanation, you little runt,” said O'Hanrahan. “Not that it will satisfy me!”

O'Hanrahan paced back and forth before his former assistant, emphasizing the occasional item with a sharp pointing of the accusing finger, which made Gabriel startle every time: “When you said you'd accompany me, it was clear that you swore allegiance to the project. Damn you, Gabriel, you told me you were going to
leave
the Franciscan order! How'd they get to you? They brainwash you? Pay you thirty pieces of silver? You
steal
the scroll from me, Gabriel?
Twice,
no less? I didn't think you were capable of this kind of deception…”

“Patrick, if you'd just—”

“The scroll
is
here, isn't it?”

“Yes, and they're expecting you at Santa Maria degli Angeli.” Gabriel looked at Lucy and said, “I'll phone them and tell them you're coming too.” Taking advantage of the brief calm in the tirade, he fished for a measure of sympathy: “I've been here for two days camping out, making sure I'd catch you.”

“You caught me all right,” snapped O'Hanrahan. “I'm off to Santa Maria and later this morning I'll see your superiors and find out what you people are up to. And as I don't need to talk to you, I don't think I will.”

O'Hanrahan picked up his suitcase and satchel and stormed out to the front of the station. Gabriel looked up at Lucy sorrowfully.

“Guess Patrick didn't want to hear my story. He'll be happy when he hears the whole story. You know, Lucy, we've got to talk sometime.”

Every mothering instinct rose to the surface at this scene, and Lucy felt joy at this reunion, a qualified determination that things were not distant between them after all, and a pang of desire. She really intended—no, really, she did this time—not to let their being together pass without demanding of her friend an account of their unspoken semiromance. Here in Italy was a perfect place to discuss everything. David McCall was just a dry run for this encounter—

“Luuuucy!” bellowed O'Hanrahan from the front of the station. He had found a taxi and poked its driver awake.

Lucy wanted to linger but the wrath of O'Hanrahan was worse, so she told Gabriel, “Find me and get in touch,” then scurried with her suitcase to the waiting taxi.

Santa Maria degli Angeli is a suburb out on the flat plain before the medieval Assisi up on the hill. St. Francis wanted to get away from it all and founded his order here in the Porziuncola, a brick shack now overdecorated with a shimmering icon and other offerings; to the side of that is the chapel where Francis died, as a result of a botched medieval medical treatment, and in the neighborhood of that is the rose bush that St. Francis threw himself on in a bout of worldly temptation. The flowers turned from white to red in honor of his blood, and the thorns immediately fell off as a sign of respect. All these sites are within the cavernous Basilica di Santa Maria degli Angeli, which is the official headquarters of the Friars Minor—Franciscans and Poor Clares. In this village of parking lots for tour buses, religious bookstores, souvenir shops, and hostels for visiting Minors and Minoresses is the bureaucracy of the holy order.

And as Gabriel promised, they were expected at the Franciscan headquarters. They were given rooms for as long as they wanted them, and they were given habits to wear.

“You're kidding,” said Lucy.

“They have been issued for our own safety,” said O'Hanrahan simply.

“Do I have to wear it?”

“Here, take it, Sister Lucy,” said O'Hanrahan, draping the habit over her unwilling arm. “You can't keep walking around in that giant red hat—we're sure to be spotted.”

“I didn't
have
the giant red hat before yesterday, you'll recall.”

“This is your key,” he said, pressing one in her hand. “You Poor Clares are over there…” He meant the building across the court. “A cell to yourself. Watch it, though, we friars are going to stage a panty raid a little later tonight!”

She just looked at him, unamused.

“Of course, I hear Poor Clares are too poor to wear anything underneath those habits, huh? Except those kind of pink crotchless panties you see advertised in the
National Catholic Reporter?
”

Lucy shook her head. “
One
lightning bolt is all it would take, Dr. O'Hanrahan. One bolt from above and you'd be gone.”

“That's why I say these things indoors. Go.”

So she went. She checked in with a pleasant sister who spoke a smattering of English. Lucy asked about laundry and there was a sister assigned to that lowly task, though she didn't collect Lucy's dirty clothes with the joyous smile her vow of humble obedience required. And Lucy, now in her second-floor room, overlooking the backside of the Basilica Santa Maria degli Angeli—ghastly, monumental thing!—sat on her bed and contemplated the habit.

Looks like Mother's going to get her way after all: Lucy in the habit, Sister Lucy, bride of Christ. She got undressed and slipped the habit on. A modern habit, stylish really, functional for charity work, a knee-length skirt, rather fashionable collar and bead belt, pretty snazzy actually. Nice lines.

*   *   *

O'Hanrahan ordered a light, unsatisfactory breakfast in the refectory, then donned his Franciscan robe and rode the shuttle bus into Assisi. It is a town of carefully stacked pink and white rock following the contour on the higher hills to the south, and culminating in the north at the huge bastioned fortress of the Basilica di San Francesco, ponderously imposing its will upon the Umbrian farmland beneath it. How long had it been since O'Hanrahan had wandered the shambling alleys and passages of rough-hewn crumbling walls, had ascended and descended the worn-smooth marble streets, this village baked each day into medieval preservation, a city of chaste white stone lifted against the deep blue Italian sky announcing its purity and sacred fame to the world.

Francescano,
mused O'Hanrahan, etymologically related to “Frenchman.” Ironic—the last epithet applicable to the least worldly of men. O'Hanrahan, now off the bus, ducked into a
bar-pasticceria
for a strong reorienting coffee and one of the many little pastries. Difference between France and Italy, thought O'Hanrahan: in Italy the pastries always taste as good as they look. A glance at the clock showed it was nine. Better get tangling with the Franciscans over with …

O'Hanrahan walked toward the Basilica di San Francesco, two show-stopper churches, one sitting on top of the other: the Lower Church, a basement of vaults and shadows, dank and medieval; the Upper Church, the gothic perfection of Italy, a long nave capped by a ceiling of aquamarine blue worthy of the Sardinian coast, gold stars affixed, and along the walls, the famous frescoes by Giotto depicting the life of St. Francis, the renunciation of his inheritance before his father, the Dark Night of the Soul, receiving of the stigmata …

“Professore O'Hanana…”

“That's me,” said O'Hanrahan, identifying himself to the young semi-English-speaking novice.

“You weel come? Here. Weeth me?” he requested unsurely.

O'Hanrahan followed the languid young man down a series of old corridors, across groaning wooden floors, by tapestries hung on the walls to hide the lack of repair, carpets on the slanted floors doing the same. The professor was deposited on a lumpy sofa in a room with a Minoress typing slowly on a manual typewriter. There was a modern tapestry from the '60s, no doubt thought to be very with-it then, but lurid and obvious now, bits of shag carpet sewn together. Along a wall, next to a bookcase full of tomes surely unopened since Francis's day, were a row of small statues, a plastic Mary, a kneeling, stigmatized Francis. Geez, thought O'Hanrahan, they have the artists of the world at their disposal and this is all they can do—

“Professore,”
said a small man, standing in the doorway to a further office. “Welcome to Assisi, welcome!”

O'Hanrahan stood and received a brotherly pair of kisses from the father—Father Paco Vico, as it turned out, one of the chief librarians of the order. O'Hanrahan offered to speak Italian.

“Oh no no,” sniffed Father Vico,
“mio inglese—”
He kissed his fingers. “
É perfetto!
We will have the good conversation, no?”

O'Hanrahan, reserving judgment, followed the friar inside his office, which was simple and appropriate, tan plaster walls, wooden beams above, shelves of books, a stark crucifix on one wall, and a window that looked out on the rolling countryside.

“You are an Irishman, yes?” said Vico, going behind his desk and sitting, swallowed by his much taller chair.

“Well, Irish-American.”

“Theen you will like some tea in the morning, no?”

No. But O'Hanrahan politely said yes, that would be nice.

Father Vico pressed an irritating buzzer and the effeminate novice knocked quickly and entered. The novice, incensed for some reason, was ordered to fetch some tea.

“Te?”
the novice mumbled.
“Non ce n'é. Dove trovo il tè a quest'ora del mattino, padre?”

“Antonio, ora sono impegnato. Ma no sará cosí difficile! Ora va, per cortesia.”

The novice made a sound like a horse, and turned to depart.

O'Hanrahan cleared his throat, “If it's a problem…”

“No problem, no problem. Thees,” said Father Vico, with a swirling gesture, “thees is an international community. Cosmopolitan, ey?”

“Yes, Father.” O'Hanrahan tried to commence business. “As for the scroll that young Brother Gabriel, uh, removed from the safe…”

Father Vico waved him quiet, “Sssssh ssssh, no, wait.” He put his hand up for silence, smiling flatly, “Wait until your tea has arrived. I don't theenk young Antonio needs to hear,
capisce
?”

O'Hanrahan sighed compliance.

A minute went by. O'Hanrahan made eye contact with Father Vico once and they smiled at each other. Antonio entered presently with a paper cup and a tea bag in it.

“Una coppa? Una coppa di carta? Che bella, Antonio—ma non abbiamo qualcosa di meglio? Antonio, Antonio…”

O'Hanrahan watched them argue about the indecency of the paper cup, and look there's no milk. So Antonio was off in search of a proper cup and saucer, and O'Hanrahan's cold tea finally arrived in a souvenir mug with a design of Assisi on it. Antonio, grumbling, withdrew from the room at last.

“The tea ees all right?”

“Just fine.”

“You are sure?”

O'Hanrahan wasn't about to recommence another round of tea making.
“É superbo, signore.”

Father Vico, sat back, apparently satisfied.
“Bene, bene.”

O'Hanrahan smiled politely.

Father Vico: “What ees this scroll,
esattamente,
hm?”

“Father, do
you
not know what the scroll is?”

“
Si, si
—of course, I know what it is
supposed
to be. What your assistant, Gabriel, said it was. He says it is,” Father Vico here looked at the ceiling, “a gospel of the disciple Matthias, yes?” The father joined his hands together seriously. “But, surely. Ees not possible, eh?”

O'Hanrahan was wary of making the Franciscans value the scroll too highly and maybe keep it. “Naturally,” began O'Hanrahan, “I do not know. It might be a fake, a pseudo-gospel written centuries after Matthias, it might be a worthless curiosity. I haven't had a chance to translate it. What with Brother Gabriel stealing it from me on two occasions.”

Father Vico persevered. “The script is odd, is it not? We have tried ourselves here to—how you say—
decifrare
?”

“Decipher it.”

“Decipher it, yes. We cannot. We have never seen the language before. Our Chief Librarian says it is like, what is it?” Father Vico searched his disorganized desk for a little slip of paper, he looked here, he looked there … ah, there it was. Now where were his spectacles? He looked in that drawer—no—and he looked in that drawer, not there either … He had them out a minute ago—perhaps, by the bookcase, no. Not in his habit, but he checked anyway. Ah, here they are, on the desk all along. He put on his glasses and took a look at the word he had written down so carefully: “Yes. Oxyree … ocheerick…”

“Oxyrhynchene,” said O'Hanrahan, impatient to his depths. “Yes, it is similar—your librarian is very smart. But, alas, it is not Oxyrhynchene.”

“No,” sighed Father Vico, folding his paper. “It is not Oxyrhy … Oxyree…”

“Oxyrhynchene.”

“Yes, it is not that.”

Silence, for a moment.

“You
do
have the scroll, don't you, Father?” asked O'Hanrahan.

As if it were an afterthought, Father Vico nodded distractedly. “Um, yes yes, we have it. With the exception of an ultimate—how you say?—chapter?”

“Yes, a final chapter is missing.”

“Yes, well, what there is, we have.”