The Body

by Richard Ben Sapir

  He waited a moment until it passed. These feelings always passed when he reasoned with himself.

  But this day it would not pass. Even if he had wanted to let it pass, it could not, not after what would happen to him in his three-room apartment with the new television and washer and stereophonic phonograph from Czechoslovakia.

  He found his son standing in the corner with his face to the wall. Arkady was seven, slightly short for his age, but nothing that would cause him embarrassment. Arkady, however, this day looked small because his head was shoved into the corner of the living room. He would not move.

  Warris came up behind him, and kissed the back of his hair. His beautiful, full, rich black hair.

  “Arkady, Arkady. What is the matter?”

  “Leave me alone. Leave me alone.”

  “Why are you not out playing?”

  “I don’t want to play.”

  “Arkady, Arkady. Come now. You are a man. I know you are a man. Why are you crying? You always love to play.”

  “They laugh at me. They laugh. They laugh now. They call me girl. They call me girl-boy.”

  “Who? How dare they? Do they know who I am? They dare call you that? Who?”

  “Everyone.”

  “Why?”

  Warris watched little Arkady lift his head from the corner, and when he turned around, Warris gasped. There on the cheeks of his only son was the faint pink coloring of woman’s rouge.

  “Take that off now,” said Warris.

  “I can’t.”

  “You will. Soap and water will do it.”

  “I tried. Mama spanked me. She says I must wear it.”

  “But why?”

  “Because if I don’t wear it, I look too sickly. I look sallow.”

  “But I look sallow, Arkady. You have my complexion.”

  Arkady did not answer. And Warris watched his only son turn his head and put it back into the corner of the wall.

  And all Warris could do was stifle an apology to his son for giving him his coloring in a land where it was not welcome.

  It was then, at that moment, that Warris knew no stereo from Czechoslovakia or any meal, no matter how rich with meats, could make this land his home.

  Somehow he was going home, and now he knew for sure where home was. It was a place where little boys were not ashamed of looking like Warris Abouf, Warris Abouf who was about to find for the first time in his career that no one currently available for a mission to the Middle East was quite acceptable. There would be something wrong with every Catholic-Palestinian-fluent Hebrew until he himself was chosen.

  He had learned in the bitterest way possible that an old saying was wrong. The enemy of your enemy was not your friend. He was just the enemy of your enemy. Warris Abouf was going home.

  5

  Let This Cup Pass

  Jim Folan awoke in a sparse room with a large crucifix on a painfully white wall, and he couldn’t remember falling asleep. He looked over at the small, brown wooden desk with the stacks of gray cardboard folders.

  “Oh, God, no,” he said. “No. No. No.”

  He shook his head and kept repeating, “No.” He went to the desk. He remembered where the photograph was, that harsh, flash-lit black and white picture of a find in Jerusalem. It was the third folder down, under the label “Golban, Dr. Sharon.”

  He unsnapped the rubber band and opened it. He just wanted to see what he had seen the night before when all these folders had been given to him by the Vatican Secretary of State.

  There were the skull and the bones resting on that rocky altar, with a dark streak on the tibia. Jim knew it was the tibia only because he read the notes that said the dark mark was oxidized iron on the tibia, and there was that big leg bone with the mark.

  So that had to be the tibia. And here he was, selected by the Church itself, to defend a challenge to the very foundation of Christianity when he had learned only just now from notes for certain that the big leg bone was the tibia.

  And there was some archaeologist who, for some sophisticated reasons he did not altogether understand, claimed the possibility that those were the bones of the unrisen Christ.

  Not for one second did he entertain the remotest idea that those dark bones could be those of Jesus lain hidden for two thousand years.

  But the very contention was so awesome that he felt numbed by its magnitude.

  If Jesus did not rise, then He could not be God. If He did not rise bodily, then how could mankind itself believe in its resurrection? If He did not rise, death won for all time for a Christian.

  His resurrection proved His divinity and His sermons. His resurrection was the great fact of Christianity. It made a Christian a Christian, and not a Jew or Muslim.

  And there was death in the picture of the bones, very quiet, with the eyes and brains out of that helplessly grinning skull. Some scientist was claiming that could be the Christ, the Light of the World gone out forever long ago, never really coming back from death to show the way. There in those disconnected bones.

  Impossible. What an assumption. The Romans once crucified three thousand people in Galilee alone after a rebellion.

  And that particular body was supposed to be what was left of the Hope of Heaven lying there in Locus III, whatever that was. Ridiculous. The Church knew that. And they would prove it.

  But what so drained Jim Folan numb to the marrow that morning was that the “they” was him.

  The Church that he had always looked to to protect him from such things was now Jim Folan himself.

  It was impossible. He had taken the notes the night before, making memos to himself, and had tried to establish who Father Lavelle was (Dominican archaeologist unsuitable for this situation), as well as Dr. Golban (Israeli archaeologist, finder of body), Mendel Hirsch (Jerusalem Director of Christian Affairs, a proper diplomat and main contact).

  There was a coin that somehow established a probable date. There were tests to be done for a sure date. There was the axis of the spine, whatever that was for. And the Hebrew he couldn’t read because it was handwritten, and the only Hebrew he knew was the printed kind with the bowl letters, the kind he had used to study Jewish Thought and Liturgy 204. The kind he would see on a kosher butcher shop in Boston. Not the line writing he had to read in the gray folders, similar to the disk, of which special note was made that it was kiln-fired. Why that was important he didn’t know, either.

  But he did know one thing that morning. He would make an appointment with His Eminence Almeto Cardinal Pesci to explain that the Church had chosen the wrong man.

  Surprisingly, Cardinal Pesci saw him the same day. Father Folan was told to enter through a special passage because His Eminence was cutting five minutes from each of four meetings to give Father Folan twenty minutes and His Eminence did not want any of his audience seeing him and suspecting they were losing something.

  In daylight the office of the Vatican Secretary of State was even more impressive, with incredibly ornate and rich tapestries and furniture that looked as though they should be in a museum.

  The chair Jim had sat on the night before was probably worth more than his priestly allowance would amount to in a lifetime. Cardinal Pesci’s rich red robes seemed to glisten with opulence. The room smelled somehow of old wax.

  “Sit, sit,” said Cardinal Pesci, waving his ring in a gesture signifying the ring was kissed by a unilateral outward thrust and didn’t need Jim’s lips. “You have found something. What is it?”

  “I am the wrong man,” said Jim.

  “That is too late. Too late now. Arrangements have been made. Positions have been clarified. No. No. Too late.”

  “I can’t do this thing. I am just not qualified.”

  “Nonsense. We went through a whole procedure.”

  “Well, for one thing, I have never been anything special. I was in the CIA, but it was only for a year in Laos. I gathered information. We must have someone better in the Church than that.”

  “As a matter of fac
t, there was a man who had been an officer in the Deuxième. The Deuxième,” Cardinal Pesci repeated, to let Jim know the French secret arm was a respected one.

  “And why wasn’t he chosen?” asked Jim.

  Cardinal Pesci went into a silk-covered book with loose papers inside. He took one out, and Jim recognized the papal seal atop.

  “He was rejected because of too intellectual a faith.”

  “Archaeologists. We must have many archaeologists.”

  “Yes. Oh, yes. There were twelve. Eight were eliminated because they had been involved in that area.”

  “But wouldn’t that recommend them, Your Eminence?”

  “Unfortunately, that is a part of the world where political passions often cloud loyalties.”

  “Yes, but that is politics. This is scientific and religious.”

  “Father Folan, nothing that happens in that part of the world is not political. Nothing.”

  Father Folan could have disputed that point for an hour and not begun to fully bury a statement so broad as to be untenable past junior high school. It was just the sort of statement a person immersed in politics would make. It was the lazy man’s way to explain away the vast and incomprehensible multitude of what went on.

  But Father Folan was not here to win an argument but to save the Church from a very serious mistake.

  “What about the other archaeologists?”

  “Not broad enough. There was one, the last one, who seemed to have everything. But your answer on how to approach this problem showed we could get both his expertise and the expertise of others, and without the prejudice of a narrow archaeological discipline.”

  “There must be someone better than me.”

  “You are an administrator by training, a man of professionally trained suspicion, high intelligence, impeccable loyalties. And you are a Jesuit. You can bring to bear a multitude of skills and discipline on this thing.”

  “I cannot be the best man in the Roman Catholic Church to face this.”

  “Why not?” asked Cardinal Pesci quite pleasantly. He had gone on to his papers and was answering Jim now as he read and signed them.

  “Because it is so important.”

  “Do you refuse?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Would you like an audience with the man who selected you? Would you tell that to your Pope?”

  Jim hesitated. “Yes,” he said finally. “I would do that. I would have to do that.”

  He had always thought that perhaps someday he would have an audience with a Pope, undoubtedly among hundreds of priests, and probably to hear His Holiness address them on some special subject for some special occasion.

  Jim Folan never thought it would be to tell his spiritual sovereign that the man had made a mistake. And he never thought it would be alone face to face, in what had to be one of the starkest papal apartments on the third floor. Unlike the Secretary of State, His Holiness had no rich tapestries, damasks, or ornate furniture. The room was lit by harsh fluorescent lights, and twenty chairs that could have been used for a Boston College assembly were set against a far wall.

  Jim waited by himself for almost an hour, and then His Holiness entered quickly and alone. He was a large man, with kind Slavic features and eyes Jim remembered always smiling in pictures. There were no smiles this day. Jim paid the proper respect, falling to his knees and kissing the papal ring. This was his sovereign on earth. His Holiness spoke in English.

  “Well, Father Folan. We hear you think we made a mistake.”

  “Yes, Your Holiness.”

  “Why?”

  And there was no place left not to tell the truth.

  “Because,” said Father Folan, lowering his eyes, his palms turning up in helplessness, even his voice so weak it took the force of a yell to get a whisper. “I’m just Jim Folan from South Portland. My father worked at Pourtous Mitchell Department Store as a floor manager, when he could hold the job, and my mother’s name was Elizabeth Mary and her maiden name was Coffey, and she did part-time work most of her life. Their grandparents came from Ireland, I went to Georgetown University, and I was not a great student. Nowhere, anywhere, Holy Father, is there anything in my life that has shown I am supposed to do a great thing. This is too big for me … I’m just Jim Folan.”

  “James, let us sit a minute,” said His Holiness.

  Jim felt the Pontiff take his hand and guide him to the chairs against the wall.

  “Sit. Sit,” said His Holiness.

  Jim could not look at his Pope, and he felt most uncomfortable sitting next to him, as though this were wrong. He stared at his hands.

  “James, I too think this is a great thing that has come against us. Not for one moment do we think it is true, of course, and neither do you. Our good Secretary of State in his duty thinks of the diplomatic situation. He suspects intrigue. He thinks we should treat this whole thing as though it is a diplomatic maneuver. Now why, when I know, personally know, they have found the body of some poor man who suffered crucifixion like our Lord, am I concerned? Why do I want every scientific and logical process borne out to show this cannot be whom we know it is not?”

  Jim looked up from his hands. The question was not to be answered by him. There was concern on the Pontiff’s face, but not worry. A decision had been made for the care of the Church, and now its pastor was laying out the course safest in this world for his church at this time.

  “I am not concerned about what it is. I am concerned about what it can do to the faith of many, and not just the least intelligent or the least faithful. Have you met our Father Lavelle?”

  Lavelle, thought Jim. He remembered the name from last night’s briefing. That was the Dominican archaeologist who had returned to Rome with the report of the body, the one Cardinal Pesci had pointed out had been selected by the Israelis themselves. Cardinal Pesci had repeated that twice. Lavelle was in Rome within the Vatican under instructions not to leave.

  “I have not met him. I have been informed of him,” said Jim.

  “Father Lavelle, James, is a good man. He was good in his faith. It was not based as strongly as yours, perhaps, but it was a faith strong enough for him to leave great wealth, sever with close ones, and follow the Lord. I spoke with him. His good mind, which had helped him with his faith, had wounded that faith with the same intellectual lance. That is the danger we face.”

  “Your Holiness,” said Jim, “that still does not make me adequate for this task.”

  “Father Folan,” said the Supreme Pontiff, “you may be inadequate for this task. But that is your perception and not ours. You are the best from what is available to us in this world for a multitude of factors, which I hope you are aware of. But I personally feel good that you are here, that we have you. You are who we want. And that you feel inadequate to the task is only another sign that we are fortunate to have you. Son of Mary Elizabeth Coffey Folan.”

  The Pope gestured with a sweep of his right hand to the walls.

  “The Church is not these buildings. It is not one stone of one of these buildings or any building anywhere, or diplomatic covenant. It is the people who are the Church, and their faith that makes them part of it. This is the most direct assault on that faith which the Church has suffered. And the ones who will suffer the most are the ones who think the most.”

  “Holy Father, you are not making me feel more adequate to the task,” said Jim.

  “There is no reason you should feel adequate, James. But you always have our best friend. Go. And remember, above all, in every way, protect knowledge of this from loosing its poisons until you have made it harmless.”

  And from this Jim realized his Supreme Earthly Sovereign had not only read but remembered that essay on why Jim Folan believed Christ was God. He was left alone in the room again, as the Pontiff went off toward other people of the world. Jim took a moment to do a Jesuit spiritual exercise, going through how he felt about the day, and how that related to God.

  It took him less than two full s
econds to get to what he felt. He was scared. He went to the drapes and pulled back a corner. Outside was St. Peter’s Square. When St. Peter had come here from Galilee, he could have gone up to anyone in the street and talked of God and they would have answered him, “Which god?”

  That was two thousand years ago. And he probably would have answered them at that time, “The god who rose from the dead.”

  Now, Jim would be going in the opposite direction. He wondered if he would see Galilee. And then the force of his examen hit him. But it was too late, even as the prayer came again:

  “God, let this pass from me.”

  And then Jim dropped the curtain back. God had answered him. The answer was “No.” Jim had things to do.

  He was to work through Cardinal Pesci’s office exclusively, which would report to the Pope. The first thing Jim asked for was an appointment with any expert on the physical evidence of Jesus Christ extant in the twentieth century. He wanted one man who could be trusted.

  “Are you going to tell what you are working on?” asked His Eminence.

  “No,” said Jim. “No one who does not already know will know. Too many people know already.”

  “Do you think word might leak out, so to speak?”

  “I would be surprised if somebody somewhere hasn’t been noticing something.”

  “Yes,” said His Eminence.

  “Nevertheless, as you know, I must in no way investigate this thing so that I expose it.”

  “Yes. I know his orders,” Cardinal Pesci had said. “Before you go to Jerusalem, you must understand what is going on in that part of the world.”

  “I am sure you will prepare me well.”

  “No,” said Cardinal Pesci. “I will spend only an afternoon with you.”

  Father Lavelle had a small two-room apartment in the second-floor state complex. A young priest sat at a table before the door to the apartment. He was Pesci’s man and checked Jim out by phone before he let him enter.