The Thirteenth Apostle (10 page)

After reciting
Kaddish
, they slipped on their long white robes: transferring a corpse into pure earth represented a religious act for them, and it was obligatory to wear white. Furthermore, it would identify them to Jewish pilgrims – who were used to seeing Essenes transporting certain corpses for reburial in their own cemeteries.

Only two of them made ready to lift up the body. Everything had happened very fast on Friday evening, and the dead man's relatives would certainly be coming to finish preparing the
body for burial. If they discovered an empty tomb, panic would ensue: they needed to be warned.

So the other two men, still wearing their white robes, settled down comfortably, one at the head and the other at the foot of the burial slab, while their companions took up the body and started out on the long journey towards one of the Essenian burial grounds in the desert.

The two who had stayed behind did not have long to wait: the sun was still low on the horizon when they heard furtive footsteps. Women from Jesus's entourage.

When they saw the heavy tombstone rolled to one side, the women gave a sudden start. One of them took a step forward and screamed in terror: two beings dressed in white were standing in the dark cave mouth of the tomb and seemed to be waiting for them. In her terror she stammered out a question to which they calmly replied. When the white apparitions started to come out, to explain further, the women turned on their heels and fled, screeching like a flock of birds.

The two Essenes shrugged. Why had Jesus's apostles sent women instead of coming themselves? Anyway, their own mission was over. They simply needed to tidy the place up before leaving.

They took off their white robes and tried to roll back the tombstone – in vain. There were now only two of them, and it was too heavy. So leaving the tomb open, they came out of the garden and sat in the sunshine. The Judaean who had organized it all would be coming to see them: they just needed to wait for him.

20

Calfo twirled the whip again and then lashed his shoulders with it. The metal discipline, which he prescribed to the Society only on rare occasions, is a skein of small cords with small aluminium balls threaded along them. Normally, drops of blood should start to appear at around verse 17 of the psalm
Miserere –
which thus acts as a kind of hourglass for this penance. At the twenty-first and final verse, it is seen as a good thing for a few red drops to spatter the wall behind the flagellant.

This mortification recalled the thirty-nine lashes received by Jesus before his crucifixion. When administered by a sturdy legionary, the Roman whip, with its balls of lead each as big as an olive, dug into the flesh and laid bare the bone: it was often enough to kill its victim.

Alessandro Calfo had not the slightest intention of succumbing to the flagellation he was inflicting upon himself: it was
another
who would soon be dying, and to whom this suffering offered a mystical witness of fraternal solidarity. He did not even have any intention of breaking the delicate skin on his chubby back: the girl would be returning on Saturday evening.

“Three days before the ‘end of the mission' of our now senile brother.”

When he had sent the girl to him, his Palestinian agent had informed him:

“Sonia is Romanian, Monsignor, she is a reliable girl. With her, you need have no fear of the problems caused by the previous one… Ah yes,
bismillah
, in the name of God!”

His years as Apostolic Nuncio in Egypt had taught him
how to carry out the necessary negotiations when faced with contradictory and urgent impulses. With a grimace, he prepared to give his shoulders another lashing: to negotiate does not mean to give in. Despite the weekend of pleasure that he could look forward to with Sonia, he would not suppress the exercise of the discipline, tangible proof of his solidarity towards one of the members of the Society. He would compromise between his fraternal love and that other imperative, the integrity of his velvety skin: the penance would last no longer than a
De profundis
.

This is a penitential psalm, like the
Miserere
, and it conferred a very satisfying value on the suffering that he was inflicting upon himself out of Christian virtue.

But there are only eight verses in the
De profundis
, which lasts merely a third of the time taken by the interminable
Miserere
.

21

Nil took off his glasses, rubbed his sore eyes and smoothed down his short-cropped grey hair. He had spent a whole night working his way through the photocopies of the
M M M
. He pushed back his stool, rose to his feet and went over to pull away the towel blocking his window. Lauds, the first office of the morning, was about to be rung: no one would be surprised to see light in his cell.

Through his window pane, he gazed for a moment at the black sky of the wintry Val-de-Loire. Everything was dark, both outside him and within.

He went back to his table and sat down wearily. His body was short and slender, and yet to himself he seemed massively
heavy. In front of him rose several piles of handwritten notes that he had taken in the course of this long night, carefully classified into different heaps. He heaved a sigh.

His research into the Gospel according to St John had led him to the discovery of a hidden actor, a Judaean who kept appearing furtively in the text and who played an essential role in the last days of Jesus's life. Nothing was known of him, not even his name, but he called himself the “beloved disciple”, and claimed to have been the very first to meet Jesus on the banks of the Jordan, before Peter. And he also said he had been among the guests at the Last Supper, in the upper room – a room that was certainly situated in his own house. He recounted that he had been lying next to the Master, in the place of honour. He described the crucifixion and the empty tomb in the style and in the truthful tone of voice of an eyewitness.

A man who was essential for learning about Jesus and the origins of Christianity, a friend whose testimony is of the highest importance. Curiously, the existence of this capital witness had been carefully eradicated from every text in the New Testament. Neither the other gospels, nor Paul in his letters, nor the Acts of the Apostles mentioned his existence.

Why had they been so bent on suppressing a witness of such importance? Only an extremely serious reason could have motivated his radical removal from the memory of Christianity. And why were the Essenes never mentioned in accounts of the early Church? There had to be some reason – Nil was convinced of the fact, and Andrei had encouraged him to follow the mysterious thread linking the different events that had for ever left their mark on the history of the West.

“The man you have discovered by studying the gospels is the same man I think I have encountered in my own field – manuscripts from the third to the seventh centuries.”

Sitting opposite him in his office, Nil had started.

“Do you mean you have found traces of the ‘beloved disciple' in texts postdating the gospels?”

Andrei's eyes had narrowed in his round face.

“Oh, clues that would never have attracted my attention if you yourself had not kept me up with your own discoveries! Almost imperceptible traces – until the Vatican sent me this Coptic manuscript discovered at Nag Hammadi” – and he pointed to his folder.

He gazed pensively at his companion.

“We each pursue our research by ourselves. Dozens of exegetes and historians do the same without being the least bit worried by the fact. On one condition: their work has to remain partitioned off; nobody must try to link together all this different information. Why do you think that access to our libraries is restricted? As long as everyone sticks to his own speciality, he risks neither censorship nor sanctions – and all churches can proudly assert that freedom of thought within them is total.”

“All the churches?”

“As well as the Catholic Church, there is the vast constellation of Protestants – including the fundamentalists whose power is rising right now, especially in the United States. Then there are the Jews, and Islam…”

“The Jews, well, up to a point – though I don't see how the exegesis of a New Testament text could concern them, since they only recognize the Old Testament. But the Muslims?”

“Nil, Nil… You live in the first century, in Palestine, but my investigations stretch forward to the seventh century!
Muhammad put the final touches to the Koran in 632. You absolutely must study this text, without delay. And you'll discover that it is closely linked to the fortunes and destiny of the man you are seeking – if he indeed existed!”

There was a silence. Nil was working out how exactly to continue the conversation.

“
If he existed
… Do you doubt that this friend of Jesus's existed?”

“I would doubt it if I hadn't followed your own research step by step. Without realizing it, you led me to scrutinize certain passages in the literature of antiquity that had hitherto remained unnoticed. Without being aware of it, you enabled me to understand the meaning of an obscure Coptic manuscript on which I'm supposed to be presenting my report to Rome – I received a photocopy of it six months ago, and I still don't know how to spin my report, I'm in such an awkward position. Rome has rapped my knuckles once already, and I am frightened they'll call me in for questioning if I delay any further.”

Andrei had indeed been called to Rome.

And he had never returned to this peaceful office.

The bell chimed in the November night: Nil went down and took his habitual place in the monastic choir. A few yards to his right, one of the choir stalls remained obstinately empty: Andrei… But his mind refused to focus on the slow melismata of Gregorian chant; he was still absorbed in the manuscripts which he had just spent all night deciphering. Over some time now, his lifelong faith had been torn to shreds, piece by piece.

And yet, at first sight, there was nothing sensational about the manuscripts of the
M M M
. Most of them came from
the scattered library of the Essenes of Qumran: rabbinical-style commentaries on the Bible, fragmentary explanations on the struggle between good and evil, the sons of light and the sons of darkness, the central role played by a Master of Justice… it is now known that Jesus could not have been that Master of Justice. The general public, momentarily filled with excitement by the discoveries on the Dead Sea, had quickly been disappointed. Nothing spectacular… and the texts over which he had laboured all night long were no exception.

But for a mind as alert as his, what he had just read confirmed a whole set of details that he had carefully noted down over years of study. Notes which never left his cell, and of which nobody knew anything – except Andrei, from whom he kept nothing secret.

They completely threw into doubt everything that had been said hitherto about the origins of Christianity – in other words, about the culture and civilization of the entire West.

“From San Francisco to Vladivostok,” Nil thought, “everything rests on a single postulate: Christ was the founder of a new religion. His divinity was revealed to the Apostles by the tongues of fire that settled upon them at Pentecost. There was a time
before
that day, the Old Testament, and a time
after
– the New Testament. But that is not the whole truth – in fact, it's false!”

Nil suddenly realized to his surprise that he was standing up in church, while all his fellow monks had just prostrated themselves to chant the
Gloria Patri
. Swiftly, he bent down like the others in his row of choir stalls – from the stalls opposite, the Father Abbot had looked up and was observing him.

He tried to follow the divine office more closely, but his mind was galloping along like a wild horse. “In the manuscripts of the Dead Sea I have discovered the basis of the notions by which Jesus was turned into a god. The apostles were not well educated, and could never have carried out such an operation: they drew on
things that were being said around them, and we knew nothing about these – until the discoveries at Qumran.”

This time, he found that he was the only one facing the opposite choir stalls, while the rest of the community had just turned as one towards the altar, to chant the
Our Father
.

The Father Abbot was not looking at the altar either: he had turned his head to the right and was gazing pensively at Nil.

As he left lauds he was grabbed by a student, who urgently needed some advice on his ongoing dissertation. When he had finally got rid of this unwanted interruption, he swept into his cell, picked up the
M M M
from his crowded table and slipped it without further ado under his scapular. Then, as naturally as possible, he headed to the library in the central wing.

The corridor was empty. With a beating heart, he stepped through the door of Biblical Studies, then into Andrei's office, and continued until he reached the corner where the two wings of the Abbey joined: the long north-wing corridor was equally deserted.

Nil went up to the door that he was not authorized to open – that of Historical Studies – took out of his pocket Father Andrei's bunch of keys and inserted one of the two small ones into the lock. A last glance down the corridor: still empty.

He went in.

Nobody would be in the library at such an early hour in the day. However, he did not want to take the risk of switching on the main lights, which would have indicated his presence. A few low lights remained permanently on and cast a wan, yellowish light. He headed to the far end of the library: he needed to get to the first-century book stacks, and put the
M M M
back in the place he had taken it from the evening before. Then disappear before anyone saw him.

* * *

Just as he was coming up to the third-century bookshelves, feeling his way along with his right hand, he heard the muffled noise of the door opening at the other end. Almost immediately, a glaring light flooded the whole library.