The Book of Q

by Jonathan Rabb

  “You make the Manichaeans sound like some sort of secret society.”

  “Oh, they were that,” she insisted. “There, I can show you plenty of proof.” She smiled up at him. “Very racy proof. Any number of documents describe how they developed a network of cells—à la the French Resistance—within the Roman Empire both to spread their own interpretation of the Word and also to avoid detection. Most scholars claim that the sect wanted to avoid detection by the Romans. As I said, though, there have been those who’ve suggested that the Manichaeans might have wanted to avoid detection by other Christians, as well.” Angeli creased her lips around the cigarette and inhaled deeply. “And given what your scroll contains, I’m now somewhat inclined to agree with them.”

  Pearse knew there was more to her admission than merely an academic’s reassessment. His encounter with the Austrian had been proof enough of that. The question remained: What? “So fifteen letters, describing some kind of transcendent experience, will change the way we view the Manichaeans? I can’t see how that would be earth-shattering for more than a handful of people.”

  “Then you would be wrong.” Nothing hostile in her tone, simply a statement of fact. Without waiting for a response, she bent over and began to lay the pages on the carpet, one by one. Whenever she needed more room, she would push the encroaching pile of books as far as her short arms would allow, eventually forced to drop to her knees so as to gain added leverage. Every so often, a few books would topple; she continued, undeterred, until the area from desk to Pearse lay hidden under a blanket of yellow paper. “Remember, it was a prayer passed down orally,” she said at last, still fiddling with the order of the sheets. “Somehow, I forgot that little piece of information for nearly an hour. Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

  Pearse gazed out over the sea of yellow, the scrawl only slightly less daunting than the wild arrows that ran from one sheet to the next, exclamation points circled in red ink, whole paragraphs written vertically in the margins, the letters almost too small to make out. He watched as she twisted her head once or twice so as to follow the mean-derings of several of the linked pages, the red pen emerging from one of her pockets to solidify the routing. When she was fully satisfied, she pulled herself up to the chair and sat.

  “So, what do you think they are?” There was almost a giddiness in her tone.

  Pearse looked across the pages. After almost a minute, he shook his head and turned to her.

  “Oh, come on. You were wonderful on this stuff. Remember those bits from Porphyrius Optatianus, the poet-courtier of Constantine? All that wordplay? You were the one who figured those out, not me.” She nodded again at the pages. “So come on. What do you think they are? It’s right there in front of you.”

  The gauntlet had been thrown. Pearse moved to the edge of his seat and again began to scan the yellow sheets. Another long minute.

  “Transposition of lines?” he said. Fatigue, lack of practice—either way, he knew it was a weak attempt, but he had to go with something.

  “Too obvious.”

  “Thank you.” He looked again. “Reverse sequencing?”

  “Before the twelfth century? Oh, come on. You’re not even trying.”

  He couldn’t help but smile. “I promise. I’m trying.”

  “Think Hebrew scripture.”

  “Okay. It’s … actually a pillar of salt.”

  “Ha-ha. I’m telling you, you’re going to hate yourself.” When he shook his head again, she conceded, “Oh, all right. It’s a series of acrostics.” She looked out at her handiwork. “Such a common device in prayers, and Hebrew literature is full of them. Took me an age to get that that’s what they were doing here, but I thought you’d … well, anyway. They’re acrostics.”

  He saw it at once. Following each of the lines, he confirmed it for himself. “The first letters of each line placed together spell out something else.”

  “And these are ingenious. Those pages there,” she continued, pointing to the sheets closest to Pearse, “are the fifteen transcriptions of the prayer. Notice anything strange about them?”

  He inched out farther on his chair. This time, he saw it immediately. “The lengths of the lines are all different,” he answered.

  “Exactly. Given that they’re all the same prayer, you’d expect them to be identical, or at least close enough, perhaps a few words altered here and there. But in each one of these, the lines begin and end at entirely different points, while the individual words remain identical. Why?” He could tell she was enjoying this.

  “The oral tradition,” he nodded.

  “Exactly. I knew you’d get it. There wouldn’t necessarily have been established designations of lines and stanzas, because they would have recited it as a continuous flow of words—with a few pauses here and there—but with nothing absolutely fixed. An obvious explanation for the discrepancies. But was it?”

  “I’m guessing no,” he answered, eyes still glued to the pages.

  “I began to ask myself, Why, given that tradition, did they find it necessary on these occasions—most of them separated by thirty years or so—to write down the prayer along with the letters? Plus, you would have thought that a natural cadence for reciting the prayer would have emerged over time, giving it some sort of shape. There should at least be some similarities among the copies. And yet, there’s none. Why? And why include the prayer with each of the prophetic letters?”

  “And that’s when you thought of the acrostics.” He nodded, getting caught up in her excitement.

  “Of course. It ties in perfectly with the very thing that lies at the heart of any type of Gnosticism, Manichaean or not—secret knowledge. The gnosis. That’s why they all start with that bit from John. An alarm bell, if you will. ‘Remember the gnosis,’ it’s saying. In this case, the knowledge is literally hidden within the text.” Her enthusiasm continued to mount. “Why the different line lengths? Because each transcription has a specific message of its own, thus requiring different first letters in each of the lines.”

  “So what’s the message?”

  Her cigarette now found the ashtray. “Unfortunately, none of my first fiddlings came up with anything that made sense. More than that, I began to realize how oddly constructed the prayer itself is. One would expect a prayer called ‘Perfect Light, True Ascent’ to be uplifting, begin with the mundane and progress to the divine. In fact, it works in precisely the opposite way. Sublime at the start, commonplace at the end. That’s when I turned to the letters.” She pointed to the sheets closest to the desk. “They were also about ‘heavenly ascents.’ Why include them? And why keep them all together?”

  Pearse stared at the pattern Angeli had created on the floor, following the arrows, trying to make sense of it all. He became aware of her growing impatience. “I’m all ears,” he said.

  “Oh, come on, you must see it this time,” she said, the childlike eagerness once again in her voice. When he shook his head, a smile crossed her lips; she quickly leaned over and began to sweep her hand through the air just above the pages, three or four times—desk to him, desk to him—before nodding in encouragement.

  “Pillar of salt?” he said with a smile.

  With a burst of energy, she threw both her hands into the air. “Up. It goes up. True ascent. You have to read the transcriptions from bottom to top. That’s where the acrostics are.”

  He looked at the sheets; it was staring right up at him. “Form following content.” He nodded.

  “Exactly. The message is in the ascent. It’s really quite marvelous.”

  “Granted, but I still don’t see what’s—”

  “So earth-shattering?” she cut in, nodding to herself as she focused on the pages near the desk. “Neither did I for nearly an hour. Each acrostic produced coherent sentences, but their overall meaning wasn’t clear—nothing more than unconnected catchphrases. I can’t tell you how frustrating that was.”

  “I’ve worked with you before, remember? No broken plates this time?”


  “That was an accident.” She waited. “And no. Just a few snapped pencils.”

  “Then it couldn’t have been that long before you figured it out.”

  “You know,” she said, “I’m beginning to like you less and less.”

  He laughed. “I’m sure you are. You found the answer in the epistles, didn’t you?”

  Her eyebrows rose. “You are a clever boy.”

  “Each one was ascribed to one of the five Old Testament prophets.” He nodded, “Which, of course, was impossible.”

  “Exactly. Oh, I wish you’d been here a few hours ago. Would have saved me an immense amount of time.”

  “Not to mention pencils.” He smiled. “So why did the writers choose those names?”

  “Why indeed?” she nodded, another cigarette emerging to fuel the fire. “To give the letters an added force, a certain sanctity? Maybe, but the very fact that each one included the written prayer was more than enough to set it apart. There had to be something else, didn’t there? It was then that I began to think that the entire scroll might be based around the idea of ascent, or at least of looking at things from bottom to top. More of the gnosis. It had worked with the acrostics, so why not with the prophets, who just happen to be the most sacred within the Manichaean system?” A long drag. “Maybe their names were meant to focus our attention not on the sacred, but on the profane.”

  “Another way of flipping everything on its head. That’s very good.”

  “Yes. I thought so.” She nodded, smoke pouring from her nose. “So that’s what I did. And that’s when the acrostics finally made sense. I noticed that anytime there was a reference to a metaphoric path taken as part of the ‘heavenly ascent’ in one of the epistles, there was a line from the acrostic that directly corresponded to it and, in a very real sense, brought it down to earth. For example, in that one there,” she said, pointing to a page a few rows up from the desk, “the letter describes the moment when the writer, calling himself Enosh, ‘followed the hand of the Paraclete into a garden of scented chestnut trees and found sustenance.’ In the acrostic that precedes the letter, there’s a sentence that reads, ‘In Trypiti, chestnuts grow lush.’ Now Trypiti, as you know, is a town on the northeasternmost peninsula of Greece.” Pearse didn’t know, but, naturally, he let it pass. “I also saw that the word chestnut appears nowhere else in the acrostic or the letter. So it went. With each new allusion in the letter, the acrostic provided a real-world connection. And the further along I read, the greater the detail—location, direction, even distances. Between eight and ten such references in each twosome throughout the entire scroll.” She waited before continuing. “The prayer and epistles aren’t about ethereal quests for knowledge; they’re about one very specific quest. Here. In the world of the material.” She seemed to be on the verge of giggling. “What makes the scroll so earth-shattering is that it turns out to be an ingeniously coded map.”

  Doña Marcella placed the ring on the white linen tablecloth, then laid the napkin across her lap. Three silver-domed dishes stared up at her. She removed the first to find egg whites, fruit, and a perfect square of clear gelatin; the second, wheat toast; the third, that awful concoction her doctors insisted on, grainy gray lumps peppered with some sort of chalky crystal. Her fight against cholesterol. Better now than later, they’d said. Take a stand against those evil foods. If only they knew.

  She placed the lid back on the third and started in on the eggs. Dry and bland. She scanned the table for salt. None. They were making this difficult.

  The train ride had just over an hour before Barcelona, four private cars hurtling through the Spanish countryside. She preferred it to flying, something about the numbing suspension of an airplane. At least on the train, she could feel the movement. That she was forced to use commercial carriers, unlike her father and grandfather before her, never seemed to bother the contessa in the least. The railway men were courteous, efficient, and accommodating. What more could she ask? None of her family understood. Even her youngest niece—already at work on her first marriage—had encouraged her to “join them in the modern age.” There was enough in Doña Marcella’s life that screamed of the late twentieth century; she certainly wasn’t going to give up her one link to a simpler time. Half past ten, Rome. Good night’s sleep. Barcelona by morning. Quaint, but ideal.

  An idiosyncrasy to keep everyone guessing. A lesson she had learned from her father. With no sons of his own, he had brought her into the Manichaean fold early on, something virtually unheard of within the brotherhood. At most, a handful of women had ever been made privy to the inner workings, but the count had known his daughter was more than capable. He had also known it would set her apart. The amount of money she had funneled out of Spain on Franco’s death alone had indicated her special talents. So unexpected from a woman. Keep them guessing. Keep them on their toes.

  It was the role her father had trained her for, the role he himself had played before her. A watchdog, of sorts, someone to maintain their focus, keep their sights on the prize. So fitting a role for a woman among men.

  She had left the sitting room car much as he had designed it, cutting-edge furnishings for the mid-1960s, sleek, straight lines of Danish craftsmanship, sofa, chairs, a card table bolted to the floor. A few pictures hung in what little space had been left between the windows, snatches of her extended family, no children of her own, but enough nephews, nieces, and even a few grand-nieces—parties, hunts, someone windsurfing—to give it that neatly cluttered look. She liked to take her breakfast here rather than in the more elegant dining car. Brighter, less formal. The hint of her father.

  It was also far less intimidating to those she brought along as her guests.

  “You’re sure you won’t give me a small piece of your yolk?” she asked, a naughty glint in her eyes. “I won’t tell if you won’t.” The man began to respond. “No, I won’t put you in that position,” she continued. “After all, you were nice enough to meet the train this early, and on such short notice.” A forkful of fruit now hovered above her plate as she spoke. “I’m sure it must be something of an inconvenience for you.”

  “Not at all,” he replied. In his late forties, and wearing a suit to rival her own tastes, Col. Nigel Harris looked the perfect product of Eton and Sandhurst, wide face and high forehead below a neatly combed crop of ash blond hair. It was clear he’d spent time in the field, his skin a leathery red; what was so often that blotchy pink with Englishmen was smooth yet rugged here. A scar just below his left eye was a reminder of his final foray during the NATO mop-up in Bosnia, the explosion of a land mine sending him off after twenty-five years of service. They’d told him the eye would go sometime in the next five years. Complete blindness within ten. Not much time, then, to make a lasting impression.

  “I don’t think that’s entirely true, Colonel, but you’re very nice to say so.” She brought the fruit to her mouth, chewing slowly, aware that he was showing no signs of impatience. Promising. “I’d imagine your schedule is now quite full, both in England and the United States.”

  “There’s a bit of a demand, if that’s what you mean.”

  One would have been hard-pressed to describe any of his individual features as handsome, and yet his bearing, along with a highly fit body—posture firm, though far from rigid—made him a very attractive man, as easy with power as without it. Except for the eyes, ironically enough. There, if one were to strip away the soldier’s veneer, lay the subtle shadings of an unfettered ambition. Doña Marcella had seen the signs too often not to recognize them. It made him all the more desirable.

  She let a practiced smile crease her lips. “You’re not on Nightline now, Colonel. False modesty doesn’t play so well here.” Again, his reaction was what she had hoped for. A momentary grin, a single bob of the head. “I will tell you that I found your sudden departure from the Testament Council rather odd.”

  “How so?”

  “A heretofore minor organization becomes the new image of Christian
politics, with you at its helm. No doubt a few feathers were ruffled, but they must have realized you were the one responsible for their newfound legion of followers. That must have put you in a position of considerable influence.”

  “Or made me the poster boy for ‘one more shameful abuse of the cult of personality.’ The Mirror was never one to stint on its appraisals.”

  “Still”—she stabbed at a piece of fruit—“the Christian voice was being heard.”

  “Evidently not loud enough, given the results of the last parliamentary elections.”

  “Your membership was growing every day. Given time—”

  “We would have been marginalized.” He showed no hesitation in challenging her, a measured deference as he spoke. “I really had no interest in being a gadfly for the next forty years, Contessa. The army taught me the futility of that. The council has influence now, but it has no idea how to use it.”

  “Christian leadership doesn’t have quite the same cachet as political leadership?” It was time to see how well she understood her guest.

  “They’re not mutually exclusive.”

  “I think Tony Blair might have something to say about that.”

  “Yes, and that’s the problem.” A dusting of sugar for his strawberries as he spoke. “He’s a rather limited target, wouldn’t you agree? The British Protestant doesn’t have quite the same zeal as one finds elsewhere.”

  “As I said, I’ve noticed your widening scope, Colonel. You’ve become very popular in the States.”

  “For the moment, yes. They seem … intrigued. Or it might just be the accent.” Another smile.

  “Or the charm,” she countered.

  He waited. “As I see it, they appear to have a genuine yearning for something beyond the cold manipulations of partisan politics, beyond the arbitrary whims of market economies. It’s beginning to show in the rest of Europe, as well. Unfortunately, we English are always just a few steps behind on these sorts of things. People want something more stable, perhaps, if I may say, eternal.” He placed the spoon back in the bowl. “Faith has become rather attractive again, and the Americans seem to be leading the way. Difficult not to make them a focus.”