The Book of Q

by Jonathan Rabb

  And so unto this wanton life befell the ravages of the times of which I have spoken, and which, even now, consume the better part of the Christian world. When that heretic priest arose, I should have taken it as a sign to shake myself from my torpor, to seize the chance and redeem myself in the eyes of Mani. But I did not. Instead, I took this Luther to be a Brother of the Light, his contempt for Rome proof of his convictions. I convinced myself that he had found the “Hodoporia,” for what else could so shake the gates of the ecclesia impura? Surely his words at Wittenberg had been a prelude to the great awakening. Surely it was all evidence of the Great Hand of Mani. Once again, I was self-deceived. This Luther was no brother, his message one of division, not unity.

  How rife the world was for such upheaval. How perfect the time for the “Hodoporia” to assert its will. How miserable my own existence.

  At last awakened from my slumber, I only compounded my iniquity. Like Jonah to Tarshish, I ran further from my duty, now to the East and the city of the Turks. Can I say that I knew I would find the scroll within its walls? I must confess, I cannot. I ran to Constantinople to bury myself in a world unknown. Yet even in my own depravity, Mani guided my steps. Even in my humanity, He allowed me to find the seeds of my salvation.

  The story of my redemption is one of Mani’s power….

  Pearse flipped through the next few pages—Ribadeneyra’s own version of Confessions—his salvation, in keeping with Augustine’s, at the age of thirty-three while sitting in a garden in Istanbul. But whereas Augustine had succumbed to the flesh—“give me chastity, and give me constancy, but do not give it me yet”—Ribadeneyra had fought a far less tangible enemy: his own self-doubt.

  Pearse wondered if such uncertainty ran like a common thread through all those who sought the scroll. His own affinity for the Hieronymite monk grew with each page.

  And yet, he couldn’t help but ask just how seriously he was meant to take it all. The phrase “Take it and read” gave way to the equally inspiring, though now familiar, “Those who enter may see the light.” Clearly, Ribadeneyra had chosen the phrase after having seen the scroll and deciphering its message. Still, it made for compelling narrative. Even more absorbing were the tales of midnight jaunts to abandoned churches, secret messages delivered by Orthodox priests, a vision of Mani himself appearing to set the wayward brother on his proper course—all of it ultimately leading the monk to “enter” an eleventh-century church, the scroll hidden within one of its long-forgotten crypts. Soon thereafter, the decoding of the text, the connection to Phôtinus, the Vault of the Paraclete. Piety rewarded. Certainty reclaimed.

  Pearse could only hope for such results.

  On unearthing the “Hodoporia,” however, and on reading its contents, Ribadeneyra had made the momentous decision that the brothers of Mani, and the world in general, were not yet ready to confront its power. His certainty had evidently brought with it a residual serving of pride.

  How much of the Pure Tongue flies through these pages. How simple the words, their source undeniable. Yet their power demands too much of us, their truth too great a threat. Are such thoughts a blasphemy? Perhaps. But a blasphemy we cannot confront in this age. Too much now conspires against the “Hodoporia” to unleash its power. Too much would be lost in the frantic swirl of heresies that abound. And if not lost, then abused in aid of this Luther, thus sealing the fate of Mani’s return. No. The “Hodoporia” must appear when all is at peace, when the papal church once again grows well pleased with itself and is not armed against its enemies. (How I regret the chance I let pass. How long I shall live with the shame.) Then shall the “Hodoporia” assert its power, and thus make a place for the fullness of the light.

  It was here that Ribadeneyra offered his truest indication of faith. Or perhaps the only rationale for his own inaction:

  But it is for Mani alone to decide when that time shall come. He alone shall know when the “Hodoporia” shall be revealed.

  Now certain he was acting in the best interests of all Manichaeans, Ribadeneyra had returned to Istanbul, reinterred the scroll (for the one “worthy enough to accept the task”), and concocted another bit of gnosis, so that, “centuries from now,” another might discover it—Ruini, as it turned out—and “unmask the path to the Holy Truth.” Mani would keep the scroll well hidden; Ribadeneyra would handle the “Hodoporia.”

  Pearse turned to the next page for the first installment of the monk’s “hidden knowledge.”

  There is a town on the Drina….

  The Drina River. Bosnia. Pearse’s eyes shot to the top of the page. The small triangle.

  And he remembered.

  Half an hour from the Bulgarian border, he’d crossed into Macedonia, now three hours ago, each passing mile a nod to the Holy Mother’s continuing generosity. Or perhaps to the ancient animosities between the Greeks and their neighbors to the north. Whichever it was, he was counting on that lack of communication to delay any alerts out of Athos. Still, he couldn’t expect to sustain his run of good luck at the border posts. Ill feelings notwithstanding, there’d been too much time since his hasty departure from the mountain. The collar would soon lose its charm.

  Unless, of course, the border he intended to cross lay in shambles. With one eye on the map, the other on the road, he knew he had only one choice: Kosovo. Over a year ago, the refugees had been pouring out, thousands of them crammed into camps littered along the Albanian and Macedonian borders. But there had been too many of them, thousands more shipped off to Turkey, Armenia, Greece—wherever friends or relatives had been willing to house them. Now, those same refugees wanted back in. Trouble was, there was no place to put them, entire villages buried under rubble. More than that, the Serbs weren’t exactly encouraging them to reclaim their homes; mines were once again springing up all over the place. Still, the refugees came. And with them, a rebirth of the camps. Not that the rest of the world was taking much notice. That was last year’s news. The horror of the camps, however, remained the same.

  Callous as it might sound, Pearse knew that a priest on a relief mission could easily get lost in one of them. Or at least be deemed lunatic enough to be let through without too many questions. He was banking on the latter. More to the point, Kosovo would be the easiest place to disappear once Nikotheos’s call went through to Rome. Mention of the “Hodoporia” would no doubt kick the Austrian and his cronies into high gear. Even if they should find the car—which he planned to abandon a few miles from the border—the chances of locating him within the mayhem were slim at best. Somehow, he would find his way to the Drina.

  Where along the river, however, was another question entirely. The latest Manichaean word game had nothing to do with acrostics as far as he could tell; this time, the gnosis lay hidden in what Ribadeneyra had described as “language alchemically transformed.” His explanation had done little to clarify:

  Everything has not only one virtue but many, just as a flower has more than one color, and each color has in itself the most diverse hues; and yet they constitute a unity, one thing.

  Still mulling over the sixteenth-century instructions, Pearse pulled into the “last petrol in Macedonia.” He’d expected to see some signs of life this close to Kosovo; instead, the road had become empty, the last half hour driven in complete isolation.

  And yet, the solitude shouldn’t have come as such a surprise. During his first pit stop some eighty miles back—what had passed for a gas station, shack and seedy little pump—he’d been told that, this time, the UN was trying to keep the refugee camps to a minimum—Senokos and Cegrane to the south of the capital, Blace to the north. Those not involved had no desire to get too close.

  The mayhem was at Blace—twelve kilometers on, according to the sign at the rest stop. On foot, Pearse knew, he could be there in a few hours.

  The rest stop had clearly been designed for the onetime bus tours destined for the St. Nikita monastery, its minimalist cafeteria—glass as its walls—nestled into an opening in the trees. Th
e pump here was pristine compared to the first he had seen, the name of the gas something unpronounceable, accents and consonants in the vast majority. Pearse pulled around to the back, grabbed the pack, and headed for the building. He left the keys in the ignition. If someone wanted the car, they were more than welcome to it. Let the men from the Vatican chase after an opportunistic refugee.

  Inside, the place was equally bare, save for a man and woman at one of the far tables, both under a cloud of cigarette smoke. At the first sign of Pearse, the man jumped to his feet.

  “Dobro utro.” He beamed as he made his way across. A few more incomprehensible words, then a hand indicating the tables.

  Pearse shook his head, and smiled, the international sign for “I have no idea what you’re saying.”

  No less genially, the man continued. “How am I helping with you?” A nod. “You make to understand?”

  Pearse returned the nod and said, “Telephone?” Immediately, he saw the disappointment in the man’s face. “And food,” he added, the man’s expression at once brighter. Pearse then pulled out a few of the American bills. The man’s face again beamed.

  “Telephone. Food. Excellent.”

  Two minutes later, Pearse was doing his best with the operator. Eight minutes after that, he was being pulled away from a plate of something utterly unrecognizable, though surprisingly tasty, his call having gone through.

  Professor Angeli’s voice was a welcome relief. It took him no time to bring her up to speed on Phôtinus and the little bound book.

  “Yes, but where are you?” she asked.

  Pearse hesitated. “Probably best if you don’t know that.”

  A pause on the other end of the line. “I see.” When he didn’t answer, she admitted, “I suppose you’re right.” He could sense her unease, the reality of his situation—and her own reacquaintance with it—a bit too much. “All right…. You say it’s from a Spanish monk. Coded language. What did he call it?”

  “‘Language alchemically transformed,’” answered Pearse.

  “No, no. The other phrase. The one from Pliny.”

  “Oh.” Pearse turned to the page, quickly skimming through several passages. “‘Quaestio lusoria,’” he read.

  “Yes. ‘Quaestio lusoria,’” she repeated. Clearly, his warning had unnerved her more than he realized; her tone remained distant. More than that, it wasn’t like her to need any kind of reminder when it came to the world of esoterica. “I might have a book on that. Hold on for a second” Pearse listened to the sound of her receding footsteps, followed by almost a minute of silence. When she picked up again, she seemed no less edgy. “Carlo Pescatore,” she said. “The Art of Renaissance Wordplay. I knew I had it somewhere.” He could hear her scanning the pages, the usual hum conspicuously absent. “Yes. Here it is,” she began. “According to Signore Pescatore, a quaestio lusoria was a kind of puzzle….” Another flip of a page. “Primarily the domain of poets. Steeped in classical references.” She stopped, the first hint of the old Angeli creeping though when she continued. “Now that’s interesting. He says it could be considered the great-grandfather of the modern cryptic.” A few more flipped pages before she said, “You’ve always been very good at these. Like that Greek poem with Ambrose, remember?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, it’s similar to that,” she explained. “Except with this, it’s more about anagrams and word reconfigurations, not just transpositions. That sort of thing.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “Good. Because, in some form or another, I believe that’s what Señor Ribadeneyra has given you. It ties in perfectly with the Manichaeans. Meaning hidden within language.” Again a pause. “How many entries are there?”

  Pearse counted out the lines of text. “About twenty-five.”

  “I see.” Again, a pause. “Might be a bit tricky in Latin. If you want, you could … read them to me over the phone. I’m not so bad with these things myself.”

  Pearse hadn’t heard the request; he was already trying his hand at the first entry. It took him a moment to adjust his thinking. As he read, he began to see what she was talking about. On its own, the phrase made no sense whatsoever. Reading it as a cryptic—a bit of repunctuation here and there—he saw at once what Ribadeneyra was after. He wants an anagram of a word that means “He that walks in battle,” Pearse thought. He continued to stare. “He that walks in battle.” Something so familiar to it, hours and hours of Catholic school and seminary Greek and Latin swimming in his head. His “gift” as he’d so often been told. He closed his eyes. “He that walks in battle.” A moment later, he had the answer. Gradivus. From the Aeneid—the epithet of Mars. He quickly jotted down the letters on his palm. He read the rest of the clue. “Who turns the seventh to a fifth.” The seventh. He let his eyes drift. A musical seventh? The seventh Commandment? He stared back at the word. Or is it easier than that? His eye stopped on the u. The seventh letter? “Turns … to a fifth.” The fifth letter of the alphabet? With nothing else to go on, he replaced the u with an e. An anagram of Gradives. He then wrote the letters in a circle, the surest way to work out an anagram. Ten seconds later, he had the answer.

  Visegrad.

  “There is a town on the Drina….”

  At the same moment, Angeli broke through on the line. “Father?” Again, a pause. “Hello? Why don’t you read me the first one?”

  He was about to answer, then stopped. To this point, he’d attributed her hesitation to a concern for him. Now, something in her voice told him otherwise. “Is something wrong, Professor?”

  “No.” Her response seemed devoid of any emotion. “Nothing.” Before he could answer, Angeli screamed into the phone. “Destroy the book! Destroy it! They—”

  A momentary clattering on the other end, followed by silence, then the sound of another voice on the line. “Listen carefully, Father.” It was a man, the accent familiar. The Austrian. “Find the ‘Hodoporia.’ Bring it to us. Do you understand?”

  The line disengaged.

  Pearse walked to Blace in a daze, the couple from the rest stop having insisted he take something strong to drink before setting out. Language aside, they had seen enough in his expression to know what he needed. Rakija, homegrown brandy. Though far more lethal than the stuff Andrakos had served him, it went down easily, the color returning to his face with the second shot.

  Now, alone on the road, he continued to see the image of Angeli in front of him. Screams, then silence. The men of the Vatican had been there all along, heard everything. He couldn’t remember if he had told them about the Drina, Kosovo, the car. Had he mentioned Visegrad? All of it flew through his mind, the shock and the brandy making accurate recall impossible.

  And yet, what did it matter? There was no need to track him now. No need to find out where Ribadeneyra’s book would lead him. He was a priest. He wouldn’t let her die. He would give them what they wanted. No matter what the consequences.

  A reasonable argument four days ago. Now, he didn’t know. Delivering the “Hodoporia” would assure both his and Angeli’s deaths. That much, he did know. A surprisingly cold bit of analysis from a man of faith. Perhaps he was learning the ways of the Manichaeans too well. But to abandon her—and to convince himself that their methods were dictating his own callousness—was that really his only choice?

  With no answers, he found himself on the ridge of a hill, below him the first signs of the madness sprawling out from Kosovo. A group of outsized tents appeared along the border, impromptu barricades circling large tracts of what, until recently, had been open land. Just beyond them, the rim of another mountain rose up thick with trees. He had been told that the police had cleared the camp weeks ago, a resettlement agreement with the Serbs all but signed. Naturally, it had fallen through, and Blace—a village of perhaps a hundred homes—was once again teeming with refugees.

  From his vantage point, he saw the array of initials painted on the roofs of the tents—UN, NATO, IMC, ICRC, ACT, UNICEF, and a host o
f others he didn’t recognize—all cataloging the impotence of a world unable to deal with the most recent Balkan flare-up. Seven hundred years of emperors, sultans, presidents, and kings hadn’t managed to bring resolution. Why these thought they could, he didn’t know. From the looks of it, most of those posted to Blace were simply trying to hold whatever they could in check.

  The closer in he walked, the more unbearable the smell became. The first of the tents was still a good half mile off and already the stench of urine hung in the air. It was difficult to delineate the smells as he approached the first barricade: soiled clothes, unwashed flesh, an animal-like odor—wet fur doused in something sickly sweet—impossible to avoid. Not even a hand to the nose could keep it at bay, the air so thick with filth that it seemed to attach itself to every fiber of clothing, skin, hair. And yet, Pearse had little trouble ignoring it, the sights beyond the fence enough to overload his senses. Even from this distance, he could make out the faces, the thick frames of kerchiefed women, children—too big to be carried—clutched in weary arms. Some wandered about; others crouched in small groups, none talking, all with a stare of resigned helplessness, disbelief having long ago abandoned them. Bosnian, Kosovar—it made little difference. A new locale. Nothing else to distinguish them save the passage of eight years.

  Pearse hadn’t expected the place to jar him as it did, the “Hodoporia,” Angeli, and all he had learned on Athos momentarily erased from his thoughts. Even he had let himself believe that the worst had ended a year ago. Not from what he saw now. No doubt it was the reason he failed to notice the soldier driving up from his left, the man outfitted in field camouflage, the Jeep with the UN insignia on its hood. The man pulled to a stop and stepped out.

  “Oproste te, Tatko. Mozam li da go vidam identifikacija?”