Twelve

The next morning Andrew rang Anna and asked her to go with him to Israel. At first, she was reluctant – she still felt sour towards her parents and was afraid she might be in trouble for avoiding the draft – but Andrew argued that as an archaeologist she should grab the chance to study her father’s find, and that he would find it very useful to have a second opinion from someone he could trust. When she still hesitated, he said that he would be glad of her company in case he was affected in the same way as Father Lambert. ‘I know I’ll be all right,’ he said, ‘but Henry thinks I should have a chaperon, and he’s offered to pay for your ticket.’

She agreed to go, and on the El Al flight to Tel Aviv she chatted cheerfully to Andrew as if they were going on holiday to the Red Sea. Her mood changed as soon as they arrived at Lod, and were met by Michal and Jake Dagan; for, though her father greeted her with all the conventional gestures of affection, it was apparent, even to Andrew, that there was a certain reticence and artificiality in both his kiss and his embrace.

Like Jake, Michal Dagan was a slim man of medium height with brown eyes. His hair, once black, had thinned at the temples and turned grey. Unlike his son’s, his features were small and precise – almost feminine – and they alternated between a look of petulance and a roguish, boyish smile. He could look distinguished on a dais – Andrew had heard him lecture; but his eyes avoided the eyes of others, as if Dagan was afraid that something might be read in his expression which he did not want to be known.

He also hid whatever thoughts might be passing through his mind behind a patina of irony which Anna had either inherited or learned to imitate as a child. It was this that made his kiss less than a kiss and his embrace a false embrace – as if he were saying to Anna, as he welcomed her: ‘Isn’t this how fathers greet their daughters? Isn’t this the way it’s meant to be done?’ And Andrew, knowing how, behind the same ironic manner, Anna longed to be enveloped in an instinctive, unselfconscious hug, winced as he witnessed her disappointment and trembled as he anticipated her disgruntled mood.

Professor Dagan was more friendly towards Andrew than he was towards his own daughter – not, Andrew recognized, because he was fond of him but because he was the protégé of one of his closest friends. Yet it was Father Lambert who had once described Dagan to Andrew as the archetypal wandering Jew – part German, part American, part Israeli; eminent in all these countries but at home in none; dreaming of a Heimat which could only exist if Central Europe were to be recreated in the Middle East.

Now, as they left the airport, he said no more about the death of his friend than he had said over the telephone to London. He led Andrew and Anna to a white Volvo in which a swarthy man, who to Andrew might have been either an Arab or a Jew, sat waiting in the driver’s seat. He got out to put their luggage in the boot. Jake sat next to him in the front, while the others got in behind.

The car was air-conditioned, but outside it was so hot that the driver, as they drove out of the airport, looked anxiously at the temperature gauge on the instrument panel. Jake talked to him in Hebrew, which Andrew did not understand, but because of his presence and because Dagan himself did not bring the subject up, Andrew felt unable to discuss either Father Lambert’s death or Professor Dagan’s find.

He therefore sat in silence as the car followed the motorway across the coastal plain towards Latrun, then curved up into the Judaean Hills towards Jerusalem. As they passed the burnt wrecks of armoured cars, which had been preserved at the roadside as memorials to the battle for the city, Anna scowled and said: ‘Why don’t they clear those hulks away?’

‘Why should they?’ asked Professor Dagan.

‘They kind of spoil the landscape.’

‘People want to remember.’

‘What? How they clobbered the Arabs?’

‘What they sacrificed to recover Jerusalem.’

They reached the outskirts of the city. Jake directed the driver towards East Jerusalem, and all at once Andrew caught sight of the domes and spires and minarets of the old walled city and was moved, as he always was, by the sight of this paradigm of Heaven. It did not matter that the walls had been built by a Turkish sultan, not a Jewish king; or that the breach in the wall by the Jaffa Gate was not made by the legions of Titus to storm the city, but by the Turkish caliphs to enable Kaiser Wilhelm to enter in his landau. The city’s setting was as dramatic now as it had been when King David chose it for his capital three thousand years before; and the jumble of churches, mosques and white, flat-roofed houses brought to Andrew’s mind not just scenes from the Gospels but also those fables of the Orient like Sindbad the Sailor or Ali Baba.

It was difficult for the car to enter the narrow streets of the Christian quarter, so, at Andrew’s suggestion, the Dagans dropped him at the New Gate. From there it was only a short walk to the Simonite monastery and church. Both had been built by the Crusaders in the eleventh century, destroyed by the Saracens in the twelfth, rebuilt under the Mamelukes, left to decay under the Ottomans and restored to their present condition only in the nineteenth century, with small, barred windows on the ground floor, a thick studded door beneath a Venetian arch, and an old-fashioned bell which jangled within as Andrew tugged at the iron lever.

The door was opened by a sallow monk and Andrew stepped into a cloister which was much gentler and prettier than the exterior of the monastery had suggested. It had the fat pillars and barrel vaulting of the twelfth century and looked more like a monastery in Normandy or Burgundy than anything indigenous to the Middle East. The monk too was not an Arab but an Italian, and spoke to Andrew first in his native language but then, when he realized that Andrew was one of that rare species, an English Simonite, changed with greater enthusiasm than skill into English as he led him towards the office of the Prior.

Andrew had been to the monastery before on several occasions and it saddened him to remember that on almost all of them he had been in the company of Father Lambert. The news of the death of this eminent archaeologist had already reached Jerusalem, and the Prior – a German Simonite called Father Manfred Stott – said at once how sad he had been to hear the news. ‘And he seemed so well when he was here,’ he said. ‘A little affected by the heat towards the end, perhaps, but no one could have imagined that one day after his return he would die.’

It was clear from the way in which the Prior expressed his sorrow that he had no inkling that Father Lambert’s death was caused by suicide or murder. He knew, of course, that their General, Cardinal Memel, was coming to Jerusalem, and that Andrew’s arrival was somehow linked to this, but it was part of the discipline of the order to curtail unnecessary curiosity. He informed Andrew simply that the Cardinal was expected later that night, and then asked the Italian brother to show him to his room.

It was a pleasant cell, in which Andrew had stayed before, with old-fashioned furniture, an enamel wash-stand and a jug of water. There were clean sheets, a clean towel and a view from the window over the roofs of the Christian quarter towards the two domes of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Andrew unpacked his few belongings, then went along the wide corridor to take a shower in the huge, archaic bathroom. He was sticky and smelly after his journey and was relieved for once, after washing in this way, to change his trousers and jacket for the cotton habit which had been laid out for him on his bed. He put it on not just because it was cool, but because he dared not greet Cardinal Memel wearing anything but the robes of the order.

It was now five in the afternoon. At six there would be vespers, and at seven supper. Andrew therefore had an hour free to go out into the streets of the old city. Although the shops were shut, because of the strike called by the leaders of the intifada, some Arabs had come out into the streets to take advantage of the cooler evening air. Andrew did not feel conspicuous in his grey habit, because here, in the Christian quarter, it was common to see priests of every known denomination – Catholic, Orthodox, Maronite, Coptic – as well as monks and friars from the different orders, and pilgrims from every country in the world.

This evidence of the universality of the Christian Church had always exhilarated Andrew when he had been to Jerusalem before. Now, however, as he passed through the gate into the paved forecourt in front of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, he wondered what would happen when the news leaked out of Professor Dagan’s find. Here, since the time of Constantine, pilgrims had come to pray over the very tomb from which Jesus was said to have risen from the dead. Would the church be abandoned? Or change its name to the Church of the Crucifixion, for Golgotha, too, was under its dome?

He stepped between a group of American pilgrims and a party of German nuns, to pass beneath the Romanesque arch into the gloomy church. He had never liked the hotchpotch of its architectural styles – the Latin pillars, the Byzantine icons – nor the shabbiness which came from the inability of the different denominations to agree about its repair and redecoration. Nor, in the claustrophobic little shrine within the church built over the tomb of Christ, with its suffocating smell of burning oil and stale wax, had he ever felt moved to pray.

Now he did not even try, but simply watched the tourists and pilgrims file in to light a taper handed to each of them by an Orthodox monk. He turned back towards the door, but before leaving the church, he climbed the narrow staircase to the ornate altar built over the spot where the cross had stood. Here, again, where once he had knelt to pray, he merely studied the intricate silverwork which surrounded the painted faces of the Greek icons; looked up at the twinkling vulgarity of the candelabra; and noted the naïve depiction of Christ on the Cross.

It was not that he doubted the fact of the crucifixion, but, if it was to turn out that there had been no resurrection, then it became a public execution of a more ordinary kind. He went back down the steps, and out of the church, thinking quite calmly of Jesus, and of the suffering he had endured. He felt he could love him and revere him, whether or not he had risen from the dead; indeed, he could love him even more if, as now seemed possible, he had been merely human after all, because always, since his conversion, Andrew had felt daunted by those passages in the Gospels in which Christ claimed to be the sole means of human salvation. Henry, after all, did not believe in him. Nor did Anna. And it had been difficult for Andrew to accept that his brother, and his closest friend, might both be damned.

He left the forecourt and walked south, past the Muristan, towards the Jewish quarter, remembering how he had put this problem to Father Lambert, and how Father Lambert had given a somewhat evasive reply, saying that what was just to God might seem arbitrary to man; and referring, rather drily, to the recurring theme in Scripture of God’s apparently gratuitous exercise of choice – of Jacob rather than Esau, of Judah rather than Joseph, indeed his choice of the Jews themselves.

Now, if it was to be established that Jesus was not the Son of God, it seemed to offer the possibility that any man of good will might be saved. This not only appealed to Andrew’s kindly instincts, but also to his sense of fair play. It made Jesus seem more human for having made such extravagant claims – there is something of a megalomaniac in us all – and, because he was more human, more likeable, and certainly not to be blamed for what had been done in his name. If Christ was not God, then he had never had the power either to deceive or enlighten generations of gullible believers.

He had passed into the Jewish quarter of the Old City and came to the top of the steps which led to the Western Wall. Here he stopped and looked down on what remained of Herod’s Temple. The view always astonished him for, even though – as Jesus had predicted – not one stone of the Temple itself remained standing, the massive blocks of the retaining walls were still in place; and now, as always, a row of pious Jews stood nodding and chanting as they prayed at this relic of their Holy of Holies.

The sight of these Hasidim with their frock coats, beards and ringlets, had always seemed bizarre to Andrew – sometimes even repulsive. Now, however, he felt a certain kinship with them. Why, after all, should it seem strange to him that they wore the costume of the Polish gentry in the eighteenth century when he was dressed in the habit of a medieval monk? Both bore witness, in their eccentric attire, to their faith in the same God. The Muslims, too, who had occupied the Temple Mount since Saladin had taken Jerusalem, believed like the Jews and Christians in the existence of a single God. Perhaps that was all that mattered – to believe and to acknowledge that belief, whether by chanting at the Western Wall, prostrating oneself in the direction of Mecca or singing vespers in a church. Was there not a residue of righteousness in all religions? Did it matter if one believed or disbelieved that God had given Moses the tablets of the Law, or that Jesus had risen from the dead, or that the Prophet Mohammed had ascended into heaven on the back of his horse, el-Buraq, from the rock beneath the golden dome which Andrew could see from where he stood? Did it not accord not just with charity, but also with common sense, to recognize that all religions, in their different ways, reflected elements of the same truth, just as water, glass, chrome or silver reflect the light of the same sun?

It was setting, that sun, sinking behind him, its last rays giving a pink hue to the honey-coloured ashlars of the Western Wall and reminding Andrew that he must return to sing vespers in the church of St Simon Doria. Whatever random thoughts had been passing through his mind, he retained a reflex obedience to the rules of his order.

The nine Simonite monks in residence in Jerusalem were a company mixed in age, nationality and occupation, united only in their common calling and faith. Dressed in their grey habits, and with their faces half hidden by their cowls, it was hard to tell who was a German, who an Italian, who an Irishman, who an Arab. The reading during supper in the refectory was in Latin – still the lingua franca of the Catholic Church – and since the monk at the lectern was the same young Italian who had shown Andrew to his room, he read with a certain fluency from Eusebius’ History of the Church.

It was just as the Prior, Father Manfred, was about to give thanks to God for what they had eaten that the sounds of commotion came from the hall. Father Manfred hurried through grace and rapidly left the refectory. Andrew and the other monks followed and saw, as they filed out, the tall figure of their General, Cardinal Memel.

He was dressed in a black soutane with scarlet edging and a scarlet cummerbund as marks of his rank. There was a golden crucifix hanging from a golden chain around his neck, as befitted a man who was the titular Bishop of Ebolium. He was, when Andrew caught sight of him, laying a friendly hand on the shoulders of Father Manfred as he knelt to kiss the episcopal ring. Then he stooped to help the German Simonite to his feet, and turned to present the young priest who had accompanied him from Rome.

The monks coming out of the refectory hesitated for a moment, uncertain as to whether they should greet their General or humbly make themselves scarce. Since few of them, however, had ever seen Cardinal Memel at such close quarters before, and since he was a gaunt, handsome, genial man who looked more like a film star than a cleric, they could not bring themselves to disperse but stood in a cluster around him; and Cardinal Memel, alert despite his journey, and sensitive to the flurry of excitement, turned to welcome his fellow Simonites with the informality and friendliness of a modern Prince of the Church.

Father Manfred, a shy and pious scholar, introduced those monks whose names he knew, but since several, like Andrew, had only recently arrived, he became confused because he could not remember what they were called. They therefore introduced themselves – Father Xavier from La Plata, Brother Laurence from Cork, Father Ignatius from Cracow – filing past in a line like guests at a reception. Indeed, Father Manfred, taking the Cardinal’s geniality rather more seriously than perhaps the Cardinal had intended, herded his flock into the monastery parlour and asked the Irish brother to open some bottles of Lebanese wine.

As they were walking from the hallway into the parlour, Andrew introduced himself to the Cardinal. At first, Cardinal Memel did not seem to distinguish him from the other monks, but the young priest who accompanied him moved forward and whispered in his ear. The Cardinal’s expression became more serious, and he turned back to Andrew saying: ‘Ah, yes. The young Englishman. Good. I’m glad you’re here.’ Then his expression changed back to that of the feted film star, and he swam into the group of chattering scholars who, with the innocence of the pious, had grown tipsy with the excitement of the occasion even before tasting a drop of the order’s Château Musar.

Later that evening, after Andrew had returned to his cell, he was summoned to the office of the Prior. It was a large room on the ground floor with, on one side, small barred windows giving onto the street and, on the other, larger ones which looked out over the cloister. These were shut, and, although a large fan turned slowly in the ceiling, the room was unpleasantly hot. As Andrew entered, he saw, in the dim light, the Cardinal seated on a sofa and the Prior, looking tired and miserable, on a wicker chair beside him. The young priest who had come with the Cardinal from Rome was standing behind them, his body propped against the Prior’s desk.

Cardinal Memel stood up as Andrew came in. ‘I’m sorry it’s so stuffy,’ he said, as if reading Andrew’s thoughts, ‘but we can’t risk opening the windows. We mustn’t be overheard.’

‘Of course,’ said Andrew.

The Cardinal extended his hand but, before Andrew could stoop to kiss the ring, he felt his own hand grasped and then shaken, and the Cardinal’s other arm came around to take him by the shoulder and guide him towards a chair.

‘You don’t know my secretary, Father Pierre,’ he said, nodding towards the pale young Frenchman by the desk. ‘But you know Father Manfred, of course.’ He turned briefly to the Prior. ‘Sie kennen diesen Jungen schon?’

‘Natürlich, Eminenz.’

Cardinal Memel pointed to a chair next to the sofa and they all sat down in a circle, except for the secretary who remained leaning against the desk.

‘Father Manfred knows why I am here,’ the Cardinal began in his deep, drawling voice, ‘and Father Pierre is also in our confidence, but it is of the utmost importance that no one else should know. The Holy Father does not want the news of the find to leak out before we are ready to react. He has authorized me to make a preliminary assessment of the claims made by your friend Professor …’

‘Dagan,’ said Father Pierre.

‘Dagan. That’s right.’

‘Now, as far as I know, the Church has never pronounced upon the validity of the Slavonic additions to Josephus’ Jewish War, let alone the Codex that turned up in Vilnius. However, the tendency among our scholars has been to accept their authenticity, and what reactions there have been to the Vilnius Codex have been affirmative. This does not mean, of course, that we can discount the possibility of a fraud or even a coincidence of some kind. Quite the contrary, we must bear that very much in mind. But we must not close our minds to the possibility that Almighty God now considers us ready for a new revelation that may alter our understanding of the Faith.’

Andrew nodded. The other priests were silent.

‘Too often,’ the Cardinal went on, ‘the Church has been caught on the hop – by Galileo, by Copernicus, by Darwin. Too often, she has reacted to uncomfortable facts by burning those who brought them to her attention, or simply by anathematizing any awkward developments, as did Pius IX with his Syllabus of Errors.’

‘Na, ja …’ murmured Prior Manfred, nodding his head in agreement.

‘Therefore, we must approach this discovery of Professor Dagan’s with an open mind – not so open, of course, that it should endanger our fundamental faith and let in despair, but open with a total trust in Almighty God who, in his own good way and his own good time, reveals to his children the truths of his creation.’

He stopped, rather as if he had reached the end of a sermon; and stood up – not to go to an altar to say the Creed, but to suggest that they all should get a good night’s sleep because they would need their wits about them the next day. Then he left the room, accompanied by the Prior, and Andrew prepared to follow them, but the secretary, Father Pierre, held him back.

Unlike the German Prior, who had appeared devastated by what he had been told, the alert young Frenchman remained quite calm. He asked Andrew, almost as a courtesy, whether he spoke French; but when it became apparent that, however adequate, Andrew’s French did not compare with Father Pierre’s exquisite English, they reverted to that language to go over the arrangements for the following day.

‘It is unfortunate,’ said Father Pierre, ‘that the Cardinal is never willing to travel incognito. It means that there are many who will learn that he is in Jerusalem, and will wonder why. The Patriarch, for example, has not been informed, but he will certainly know by tomorrow morning. So will the Greeks and the Armenians, the Jesuits and the Dominicans. We have therefore prepared a story that the Cardinal is here for an informal conference of biblical scholars at the Ecumenical Institute at Tartur. Of course, there is no such conference, and his Eminence rarely has time to meet his fellow exegetes these days, but it was the best pretext we could come up with at such short notice.’

Andrew, who had not considered complications of this kind, merely nodded to signify his acquiescence to anything Father Pierre might propose.

‘We have therefore arranged to travel tomorrow morning to the Institute, dressed in our clerical habits, and there to change into something less formal before returning to West Jerusalem, where Professor Dagan is to meet us. He has been entirely cooperative in making these arrangements. He is aware, I think, of the sensitivity of the Cardinal’s visit.’

‘Of course.’

‘As the Cardinal told us just now, the Holy Father is particularly anxious that before the find is validated, the Church should not be seen to be taking it seriously.’

‘But how …’ Andrew began.

‘Of course,’ the young Frenchman interrupted, as if confident that he could express better than Andrew what Andrew intended to say. ‘How can the Church validate or invalidate the find without investigating it, and how can it investigate it without appearing to take it seriously?’

‘Yes.’

‘That, my dear brother, is the kind of conundrum which is not uncommon in the Vatican.’

‘Does the Cardinal himself intend to make the initial assessment?’

‘Yes.’

‘But …’

‘But how can a biblical scholar decide upon an archaeological question?’

‘Yes.’

Father Pierre gave a Gallic shrug. ‘How indeed? He is not even much of a biblical scholar, and his theology is deplorable.’

‘Then why was he sent?’

‘He sent himself, mon cher. He was, most unfortunately, the first to know, and he told the Holy Father only yesterday when all his arrangements had been made.’

‘But surely the Holy Father could have stopped him?’

‘That might have been even more dangerous. At least, if his Eminence feels himself to be responsible to the Holy Father, he may think twice before he opens his mouth to the press.’

‘Is he likely to do that?’

Father Pierre shrugged again. ‘He is an American. He feels that the people have a right to know. And there is nothing he likes better than a Press Conference.’

‘So what should we do?’

‘Restrain him. Don’t let him get carried away.’

‘But is he likely … to get carried away?’

The Frenchman closed the folder that had lain open on the desk, picked it up and started towards the door. ‘The Cardinal has many virtues,’ he said in a lowered voice, ‘but humility is not preeminent among them. He is quite convinced that the Holy Spirit has already chosen him as the next Pope, and he seems to think that the best way to ensure this destiny is to run for the post as one would for the Presidency of the United States.’ He hesitated at the door. ‘Did you notice how he spoke German to Father Manfred?’

‘Yes.’

‘He can hardly speak German at all, but he likes to practise for his blessings Urbi et Orbi.’ He mimicked a Pope giving his blessing from the balcony of St Peter’s. ‘And he chose me as his secretary to teach him French.’ He opened the door and ushered Andrew out of the room. ‘To be a candidate for the throne of St Peter’s these days, you must be a graduate not just of a seminary but also of Berlitz.’