The Book of Q

by Jonathan Rabb

  “I prefer the Latin,” he said. “When I’m alone. Old habits. I hope that’s all right with you.”

  Pearse nodded, ever more at ease. Old habits. A sense of place, belonging.

  “Good.” The old priest smiled. Then, with a long breath—a moment of quiet thought—he began to chant, eyes somehow smaller behind the frames, concentrated, his body swaying back and forth, hands holding on to the table for support. An image of perfect serenity.

  Pearse let go, as well. And for a few minutes, he seemed to forget everything that had brought him to the refuge of San Bernardo. Everything that lay beyond its doors.

  The second-floor lights told him she was awake; the shadow scurrying past the window confirmed she was still at work on the scroll. Pearse pressed the bell and waited.

  As much as he hated to admit it, there really had been no other choice. The scroll was all he had to go on. More than that, it was his only leverage; at some point, he knew they would track him down. Better to understand what it was they wanted before facing the inevitable.

  Another quick lesson from Angeli.

  A hesitant voice answered. “Hello?”

  “It’s Ian Pearse,” he said. “I saw the light—” The buzzer cut him off; he pushed through and stepped into the hallway.

  Upstairs, the apartment lay under a veil of smoke, the smell of cigarettes thick on her breath as he followed her in. No word of hello, not even the expected smile, only the glass dome peeking out from over the barricade of books as they made their way through. Nearing the desk, he noticed she had managed to get to the end of the scroll, the right-hand side now laden with rolled parchment. He also saw how tired she looked, the red of her cheeks having faded to gray, her hair matted in odd clumps, obvious signs of long hours spent in deep concentration. A few crumbs of biscotti were all that remained from the once-full plate.

  Her voice was hoarse when she spoke. “This is a surprise.” She seemed distracted. “Or perhaps not.”

  He wasn’t sure how to respond.

  Whatever strain he thought he had seen in her face now showed itself to be something far more unsettling. Concern. Perhaps even apprehension. She returned his gaze, intensity, not fatigue, staring back. “Why don’t you have a seat, Father.” A disconcerting echo from last night. He did as he was told, taking the nearer of the two chairs, watching as she gathered up the various pieces of paper that lay scattered around the dome. She glanced at each page, trying, it seemed, to divine some sort of order out of them. “I see you’ve recovered your collar,” she said, not bothering to look up, eyes darting from one passage to the next. Pearse said nothing. No reason to bring her up-to-date on the night’s events.

  Reaching for her cup, she moved around the desk and sat on the front lip of the second chair. She took a sip; her expression told him the coffee had long since lost its edge.

  “Why didn’t you tell me what the scroll was?” she asked.

  Her tone surprised him. “I … didn’t know what it was. I still don’t.”

  “It wasn’t found in San Clemente, was it?” Her response was no less accusatory.

  “I was told it was.”

  “Then you were misinformed.” She continued to stare at him. When he didn’t answer, she elaborated. “The prayer by itself, I could accept. Even that bizarre preamble from John. But not this,” she said, raising the papers in her hands.

  Pearse followed the swirl of pages, unsure what she wanted to hear. After everything he’d been through last night, a grilling from Angeli was the last thing he needed. More than that, the attitude wasn’t like her at all. He found it hard to imagine that she could actually believe he had purposely misled her. What could he gain by that? If he had known what the scroll was, why would he have brought it to her in the first place? Why the charade?

  When she finally spoke, her tone was far less severe.

  “You really have no idea what it is, do you?”

  “No, I really have no idea.” He was doing his best not to allow the last few hours to color his tone.

  “Well, I suppose that’s a relief.”

  When it was clear she was happy to leave it at that, Pearse prodded. “Any chance you might tell me what it is?”

  She looked over at him.

  He picked up the ashtray nearest him and placed it on the arm of her chair. “Does that help?”

  At last a smile. “Ah, the art of seduction.”

  “If I’d known it was that easy, I’d never have taken the cloth.”

  Another tired smile.

  “So what’s in the scroll?” he said.

  “‘The scroll,’” she repeated. Looking across at him, she said, “Something I’ve never seen before.”

  “That sounds promising.”

  “Perhaps.” A long breath. She eased herself back into the chair, then began to speak: “Well … to start … it’s not a continuous scroll, which is what one would have expected. It’s a series of unsewn single sheets, rolled together. That, by itself, is strange, but not unheard of.” Before he could ask, she clarified. “Fire, decay, those sorts of things did, at times, leave groups of arbitrary single sheets lying about, which would then have been put together in a codex or scroll simply for storage’s sake.”

  “And that’s what this is,” he asked. “One of those collections?”

  “No. Which is even more surprising. In this case, each independent sheet is linked to the others in a very purposeful way, something, as I said, I’ve never seen. It starts out with a full text of ‘Perfect Light’—which, by itself, makes it unique—but then becomes a series of epistles. Letters.”

  An image of Saint Paul wandering through Asia Minor fixed in his mind. “Apostolic?”

  “Not at all.”

  “So Augustine got it wrong? It’s not a collection of Jesus’ sayings?”

  “Evidently.”

  He allowed himself only a moment’s disappointment before asking, “So whom are they written to?”

  “That’s a very good question.”

  “Thank you.”

  A smile. “To the ‘Brothers of the Light.’” She was almost flip in her response.

  “Manichaeans?”

  “Yes, Manichaeans.”

  Silence. She seemed to be retreating again.

  “How many ashtrays am I going to need?” he asked.

  She peered over at him. “I’m not sure you’re going to want to hear this.”

  “Now who’s teasing?” He waited. “So the epistles … can I assume they’re all written by the same scribe?”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But they’re not. They’re actually fifteen separate letters—not in Syriac, but Greek—that span a period of almost four hundred years.” She stopped, her eyes fixed on his.

  “Four hundred years?” he said. “That doesn’t sound right.”

  “No, it doesn’t, does it? But given the references to various emperors, Popes, and patriarchs, you can pretty much date the letters from somewhere in the middle of the sixth century, up through the end of the tenth. Considering that western Manichaeanism was supposedly wiped out by the end of the fifth, those are rather remarkable dates.” Again, she held his gaze. “Added to that, all of the letters are connected to the prayer—they all begin with their own transcription of it. Another odd distinction.”

  “So where are they from?”

  “All over. As far west as Lyons, northern Germany, Rome, Milan, Constantinople, Acre. The known world at the time.”

  “That’s … incredible. There’s nothing like that in the canon.”

  “I think I just said that.”

  “So what do these letters say?”

  Her eyebrows rose in anticipation. “Ah, now that’s where it gets interesting.”

  “Good. For a minute there, I thought it was going to be as dull as last night.”

  “Oh, really?” It was clear she was beginning to loosen up. “Well, compared to this, last night was—what did you always call it?” Pearse had no idea what sh
e was talking about. “Minor-level? Minor—”

  “Minor-league.” He smiled.

  She nodded. “Yes. Minor-league. Last night, we were playing in the ‘bonies.’”

  “Boonies,” he said, correcting her.

  “Boonies. Whatever.”

  “So what makes these letters so interesting?”

  Again, she drew forward to the edge of the chair. “Each one is an apparent description of the writer’s personal ‘heavenly ascent.’”

  “His what?”

  “His tour of the divine realm, his ascent, where he’s made privy to esoteric knowledge. All very Manichaean. Except that each one of these is written as if from the pen of one of the five prophets. Now, that’s very strange.”

  Happy as he was to see Angeli back in full swing, Pearse needed clarification. “Prophets? I’m not … Which prophets?”

  “Adam, Seth, Enosh, Shem, and Enoch,” she answered, as if citing nothing more obscure than her own name. “The Manichaean prophets.” It was now time for the cigarettes to reappear. “You’ll also find Noah, Buddha, Zoroaster, and, of course, Jesus slotted into the list, but it’s primarily the other five. Each appearing in cycles, and each bringing us one step closer to redemption.” She lit one up. “Mani himself is the last of them, the Paraclete, ‘the seal’ promised by Christ.”

  “Right,” he said, just to slow her down. “Why don’t you take a few puffs.” She was beginning to fly off; he needed to tie her down to something more tangible. “Let’s hold off on the prophets for a minute. What do the letters actually say?”

  Looking over at him, she, too, realized she was getting ahead of herself. She nodded. “They begin with the basics. Foretelling the end of the world, when all evil will be burned in a final fire, light set free, full knowledge attained—that sort of thing.”

  Slowly, he said, “Okay. So that would be … typical apocalyptic warnings. The light of Christ rooting out evil. Right?”

  “Oh, it’s not the light of Christ. That isn’t it at all. That wouldn’t make it Manichaean.”

  “No, of course it wouldn’t.” So much for the tangible.

  “They’re an easy bunch to get muddled with.”

  “Remember, I’m easily muddled.”

  “I’ll try to dumb it down.”

  “Very kind.”

  She crushed out the cigarette and settled back into the chair. Waiting until she’d found the right approach, she began: “All right. You have to remember that the battle between light and darkness isn’t a metaphor for them. It’s real, manifested in the very way they chanted their prayers, the way they performed their rituals, even in the way they chose their foods. Unlike your basic Christians, or even Gnostics, the Manichaeans believed that light and darkness were substances scattered within the material world. For instance, they actually thought that melons and cucumbers held a great deal of light, meats and wine the dark elements. Eat a melon, promote good. Eat a chicken, foment evil.”

  “And that was what Mani developed out of Gnosticism? Evil foods?”

  “It’s not as silly as it sounds. How much sillier is the idea of separating spirit and matter—spirit good, matter evil? The Greeks got a great deal of mileage out of that one. And it’s not as if Mani didn’t find the material world as abhorrent as the orthodox Christians did; it’s just that he managed to make it an essential part of salvation.”

  “Right, right.” Pearse slowly remembered his brief foray into the world of “Light and Darkness.” “And that’s why Augustine and the church were so uneasy.”

  “Exactly. More than that, because Mani believed human beings are fashioned by demonic forces—bent on keeping the light trapped for eternity—he also thought that men had to play an active role in their own salvation: find those things that help to free the light, avoid those that don’t. Melons versus meat. Augustine had said the will was free only when choosing God. With Mani, you’ve got something that grants a sort of cosmic feeling of responsibility to the individual, because he might be a bearer of the light. Catholicism never gave its faithful that kind of autonomy.”

  “Thanks for reminding me.”

  “I told you you weren’t going to like it.”

  “I might surprise you.”

  “Anyway, a prophet’s ‘heavenly ascent’ was simply the highest form of that responsibility, all of it geared to bringing the gnosis back to his followers and thus freeing sufficient light so that the last of the prophets—Mani himself—could return and bring about the final purification of the world.”

  “And that’s what the epistles are all about.”

  “No.”

  “No,” Pearse repeated. “Great.” He was doing his best not to get frustrated. “So these ‘heavenly ascents’—”

  “Are where the epistles begin. Yes. What you might call Manichaeanism at its most attractive.”

  “I see.” He had no idea what she was talking about, but he decided to press on anyway. “But it’s not where they end.”

  “No.”

  Again, he had to hold back his frustration. “So where do they end?”

  “With the not so attractive.” She shifted in her chair.

  “Meaning?”

  “Well …” Again, she hesitated. “You have to remember that Mani’s followers thought that theirs was the one true and holy Christian church.”

  “As did every other renegade sect at the time,” he countered. “What’s so unattractive?”

  “Yes, but the Manichaeans were after a kind of hyperasceticism. They professed to be purer than the other churches, their scriptures more comprehensive and unambiguous, their methods of describing the world through their knowledge more quasi-scientific—something very appealing at the time—and their preparation for the return of the Messiah more complete.” She began to sift through a pile of books, picking out one as she spoke. “That preparation, though, demanded that there be only one church standing when the Messiah returned.” She scanned the pages, talking offhandedly. “All others had to be rooted out, or at least subsumed within the Manichaean system. Evangelicalism taken to its extreme. Even the Romans thought of them as some sort of ‘superior Christians,’ more pious, more devout than the rest.”

  “So the Persian dualism had unity as its goal? That doesn’t sound right.”

  She nodded. “It’s known as ‘the Manichaean paradox.’ Light and darkness waging war, but only to a point. The ultimate aim: one pure church in a world beset by darkness.” She found the page she had been looking for. “Here it is. This is the catchphrase they used to summarize the whole theology: ‘of the two principles and the three moments.’ The two principles are, of course, light and darkness. The three moments are the beginning, the middle, and the end.”

  “That’s innovative.”

  She continued, ignoring the comment. “In the beginning, light and darkness are separate; in the middle, they’re mingled—that’s where we are now, in that middle moment; and at the end, they resolve themselves in an eternal triumph of life and light over death. It’s really quite simple.”

  Pearse did his best to nod. “Simple. I’m still not sure what makes that so ‘unattractive.’ It’s not all that different from what the Catholic church was trying to do at the same time. You called it ‘a unified front.’”

  “Yes,” she said, retrieving the cigarette, “but the Manichaeans were also seen as zealots, far too willing to brand those incapable of attaining the gnosis—that is, the vast majority—as threats to salvation. Only gnosis granted freedom; those without it, they felt, had to be controlled, maybe even manipulated. A sort of tough love. It was their methods for achieving that control that were unattractive and thought of as somewhat … suspect.”

  “Melons were actually evil?” he said.

  “Very funny. No. Certain early Christian writers suggested—albeit in completely unsubstantiated ways—that the Manichaeans had more in mind for the material world than simply its purification. Or at least that their methods weren’t as noble as th
ey preached. Most scholars today reject those claims as another clever way the Catholic church managed to turn a rival group into pariahs.”

  “Right, right. Not only were their teachings heretical but they were deceivers and manipulators, as well. That part, I know. The church was very good at that for a while.”

  “Precisely.” Smoke streamed from the cigarette. “And, from time to time, dating back as far as the third and fourth centuries, there’s been speculation that they were … infiltrators—for want of a better word.”

  “Infiltrators?” His eyebrows lifted as he smiled over at her. “That sounds pretty racy. Into what?”

  “I’m not sure I’d use the word racy, but”—she took a long drag—“infiltrators into other churches, where they would rise to positions of power, and then take those congregations in very specific directions. A sort of cancer within the Catholic hierarchy. Bolsheviks of the fourth century, if you will. And all in the hope of creating their one, pure church. There is, of course, no proof for any of that.”

  “Of course.” His smile grew. “It still sounds pretty racy … Bolsheviks, infiltrators. In a purely academic way, of course.”

  “Yes. Very … racy.” For all her playing, Angeli clearly had her limits. Still, Pearse was enjoying pressing at them. “Anyway,” she said, “most of us believe that the Catholic church eventually became too powerful and well entrenched, and no amount of covert manipulation could have changed that.”