The Immortal

by Thomas Nelson

  She had lost me again, but by the second mention of the b-word I deduced her meaning: Bibliotecari were librarians, and apparently I wouldn’t get anywhere without one. I wouldn’t even get through the gate without some sort of entrance pass.

  I smiled and struggled to maintain control of my temper. Most Italians I met were polite, if a little relaxed and phlegmatic, but this woman had definitely risen on the wrong side of the bed. “Thank you for your help.” I returned her icy smile in full measure. “I’ll be back.”

  Two hours later, armed with my Global Union identity card and a letter from Reverend Synn—I had vaguely explained that I was working on a research project—I approached the library’s admissions office. It took twenty minutes for them to examine my ID and fill out a form that gave me permission to pass the guarded wooden gate, but by noon I found myself standing before the library’s white-haired watch poodle again.

  “Here is my permesso di entrata,” I said, handing her the library form, “and I also have a letter from Darien Synn of Global Union. He asks that you allow me to search through the library this week.”

  She took both documents, scanned them, then gave me a frosty, tight-lipped smile. After handing the documents back to me, she picked up the receiver of the heavy black telephone on her desk and murmured something in Italian. A moment later a younger woman, this one soft and smiling, came up to the gate and invited me in. Upon her fuzzy sweater she wore a nameplate that told me her name was Carmela. “How may we help you?” she asked, speaking perfect English as she opened the swinging gate.

  “I’m researching the legend of the Wandering Jew,” I answered, happily moving into the forbidden territory. “I’d be interested in anything you have on the subject, no matter how old.”

  Carmela and I spent the rest of the afternoon playing find the needle in the haystack. The watch poodle wasn’t kidding when she told me only librarians could understand the cataloging system, and Carmela often seemed as baffled as I by the sprawling cursive script on the file cards. In one section of the library, bound volumes of handwritten pages functioned as a catalog. On its pages the books were organized per autore (author), per soggetto (subject), and per titolo (title).

  I’ve always loved libraries, and I can find practically anything in the New York Public Library within minutes. But in Rome, for some mysterious reason only librarians are allowed to access the stacks. When in the handwritten catalog I found a book I wanted to examine, I had to fill out a modulo on which I wrote the call number, title, publication place, and date. I then had to give the modulo to Carmela, who gave me a receipt and went to search for the book. More than once she returned after a lengthy search, only to tell me the book was out on loan or irreperibile—impossible to find.

  By the end of the first day, I wondered why the Romans, who profess admiration of many American institutions, had not thought to visit an American library.

  By the end of the second day, I was convinced the Romans had instituted their library system solely to encourage the ownership of household libraries.

  As I neared the end of the third day, I was ready to commit arson upon the American Academy Library so that Carmela and the watch poodle could have a new and efficient one.

  I was nearly ready to give up for another day when Carmela approached and placed a heavy, leather-bound volume on the catalog desk. “I found this,” she said, a blush of pleasure tinting her cheeks. “It seems quite complete. Such a pity the book has been damaged.”

  The book was titled The Legend of the Wandering Jew, and the author’s name was all but obscured by a water stain on the front cover. I thanked Carmela, then carried the book to the reading room where I could devour whatever information it held.

  The scents of mold and earth and leather rose from the pages as I cracked open the book and scanned the copyright page. The publication date was 1942. In the eternal scheme of things, this work was fairly recent.

  I smoothed the yellowed first page and began to read:

  The Legend of the Wandering Jew is an amalgamation of the traditions of Malchus and St. John. Malchus is identified in John 18:4– 10 as the servant of the high priest—the unfortunate soul who lost his ear in the face of Peter’s eagerness to defend the Savior in the Garden of Gethsemane. Later the apostle John tells us that a servant of the high priest struck Jesus with the palm of his hand (18:20–22). Though we cannot be certain of the abuser’s identity, he has traditionally been identified as Malchus. One fact is certain: a man struck Jesus at his trial, and in the following years those who repeated the story felt such a blasphemous act deserved a suitably horrible punishment— the curse of immortality.

  Consider now the Legend of St. John, which has its roots in Matthew 16:28 and John 21:20–22. In the Matthew passage, Christ said, “Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” Theologians have long debated what Jesus meant, but many people of Jesus’ day thought the Savior meant to honor John with the gift of immortality.

  According to tradition, John the dearly beloved disciple did not die either in Ephesus, where he worked after Christ’s ascension, or on Patmos, where he spent time in exile. According to the Legend of St. John, the disciple’s grave was opened after his supposed death, but his body had mysteriously disappeared. Proponents of the legend say John is a wanderer and a prophet, still waiting for the day of Christ’s second coming.

  These two ideas—the story of John and the tale of Malchus— met and married, bringing forth the Legend of the Wandering Jew. Throughout history, the legend has served as a vehicle for anti-Semitism, though some early versions maintain that the Wanderer was not Jewish, but Roman.

  The legend first appeared shortly after A.D. 1200, when a Latin chronicle recorded the Wanderer’s appearance in Armenia. The old man, who called himself Joseph, told the people of that city that he had been a Roman porter in the house of Pilate. There he witnessed the “passion of the Lord” and drove the Savior away with a blow and wicked words. The Lord reportedly answered him, “I go, and you will await me till I come again.”

  The Wanderer is said to wear sandals with seven holes in the bottom of each shoe. The holes form two lines, horizontal and vertical, so that the Wanderer leaves the imprint of the cross with every footstep. Several versions of the legend recount his trek across blazing desert sands, imprinting the cross upon the dunes. In some versions he is called Joseph, in others Cartaphilus or Ahasuerus. In a German legend, he is called John Buttadaeus, whose appearance is recorded in the thirteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. John Buttadaeus’s last recorded appearance was in Brussels in 1774.

  Paul von Eitzen, Bishop of Schleswig, was said to have encountered the Wandering Jew in Hamburg in 1542. During his interview with the Wanderer he learned the man’s name was Ahasuerus. A shoemaker in Jerusalem, Ahasuerus had cried out in anger when Jesus, carrying his cross, stopped to rest against the wall of Ahasuerus’s house. Jesus replied, “I will stand and rest, but you must walk.” Ahasuerus reportedly felt compelled to follow Jesus and witness his execution, then he left Jerusalem to wander about the world, miserably but reverently providing a witness to Christ’s power and teaching.

  Throughout countless generations, the Legend of the Wandering Jew has been retold and embellished. The Wanderer has, on occasion, represented the futility of questing for the fountain of youth and personified the wandering nation of Israel. He has embodied world-weariness and nostalgia and served as a symbol of the entire human race. His tale has been set in ancient times and contemporary; a 1940 novel by Nelson Bond even launched him into outer space.

  Though within the following pages I will attempt to give as complete a rendering of the legend as possible, space will not permit me to describe all the different versions of the legend. In some stories he ages until he reaches one hundred years, then he falls asleep and awakens as a thirty-year-old. In nearly all stories he refuses gifts and speaks of the coming of t
he Lord, telling his tale with great sorrow and repentance. In some stories he is a shoemaker, in others a servant. He is supposed to have visited several of the crowned heads of Europe, impressing them all with his knowledge of the events surrounding Christ’s crucifixion. In 1604 he was reportedly seen in France; he visited Saxony in 1603–4 and spoke with several noblemen there. His story has blossomed in poetry and song; his fame has spread throughout Europe and the Western world.

  He is as much a man for our time as he is a man for the ages.

  Looking up from the book, I found that my brain had become a lightning rod for ideas. Was it possible that Asher had read this book, or one like it, and adopted the role of the Wandering Jew for himself? He certainly knew the story of Ahasuerus; he had recited it for me.

  And he said he was an orphan. In seeking his identity, why couldn’t he have latched onto this persona of the Wanderer? Without parents to give him the foundation of a family, he could easily have looked elsewhere for emotional and psychological support. And in a city like Rome, where the stones of the streets themselves attest to the elegance of generations past, who wouldn’t want to be known as “a man for the ages”?

  I flipped through the following pages, skimming stories and poetry and supposed eyewitness accounts of encounters with the man called “the eternal wanderer” or the Wandering Jew. One stanza of a seventeenth-century poem caught my eye:

  Desiring still to be dissolv’d, and yield his mortal breath;

  But as the Lord had thus decreed, he shall not yet see death.

  For neither looks he Old or Young, but as he did those times

  When Christ did suffer on the Cross, for mortal sinners’ crimes . . .

  “If thou had’st seen grim Death,” said he, “as these mine eyes have done, Ten thousand thousand times, would ye his Torments think upon;

  And suffer for His sake all pains, all torments, and all woes.”

  These are his words, and this his Life, where’er he comes and goes.

  Something in my heart constricted as I read the words for neither looks he Old or Young. Asher looked exactly the same today as he did in the photograph taken with Adolf Hitler . . . if that was Asher in the photograph.

  Shaking my head, I dismissed the possibility, then turned the page and found myself staring at a photograph of a man with swarthy features, narrow eyes, and a dark goatee. The caption told me the black-and-white photo was from a 1933 film about the Wandering Jew, but the fierce-looking man in the picture bore little resemblance to Asher Genzano.

  Smiling at the moviemaker’s caricature of the villainous wanderer, I turned the page, then froze, my heart beating hard enough to be heard a yard away. Two photos faced me, one on each page, and each portrayed an ancient image. The first featured a woodcutting titled “The Wanderer on the Road,” and though the man in the primitive cutting could have been anyone, there was something in the Wanderer’s posture that reminded me of my delusional friend. The slim body and long hands were Asher’s, as were the broad shoulders and the unique way his hair curled over his forehead . . .

  The second photo slammed into my consciousness with all the delicacy of a charging bull. I stared at a marble statue sculpted in the tradition of Michelangelo. The stunning bust revealed a man with broad shoulders, a cleft chin, and wide white eyes that seemed to gaze upon a world filled with tragedy and sorrow. The chin was Asher’s, as was the jaw; the nose could have belonged to no one else. The sculptor had caught every detail of the face I had studied for hours, even the cowlick that forced the curl over his left brow to stand slightly apart from the others.

  Feeling as though I moved in slow motion, I lowered my hands to my lap, wiped my damp palms on my skirt, and sent my thoughts scrambling for a reasonable explanation. Could this image be the result of some sort of genetic fluke that resulted in identical men born hundreds of years apart? Why not? After all, how many combinations of eyes and nose and mouth and forehead could the human body fashion? Sooner or later, nature was bound to duplicate a creation. This statue looked like Asher, but it was an eerie coincidence, period. Perhaps Asher Genzano had passed a lazy summer afternoon looking at this book and he noticed the resemblance himself. Perhaps he had been an impressionable youth at the time. His fantasies and an unstable family situation rendered him susceptible to suggestion, leading him over the years to believe he was this eternal wanderer . . .

  Grasping for an answer, I read the caption beneath the photograph. According to the author, the bust had been sculpted between 1501 and 1505. Some art experts claimed Michelangelo himself had carved the sculpture, but others doubted it, since his marble David was created at the same time. One odd peculiarity, the caption noted, was a small initial chiseled into the base of the bust, a tiny letter A.

  I felt a cold hand pass down my spine. A—for Asher. Or Ahasuerus.

  I shivered and drew the edges of my sweater together as a horrifying realization washed over me. My suppositions and wild conjectures were more far-fetched than the story Asher had related. Why was I more willing to give credence to random genetic coincidence than to the man who asked nothing of me but belief? Believing that the man who posed for this marble bust was Asher’s genetic duplicate required far more faith than accepting the obvious—I was staring at a bust of Asher himself.

  I dredged that admission from a place far beyond logic and reason, and the resulting flood of relief surprised me. With sudden clarity I understood that I wanted to believe Asher. Despite my fears and misgivings, he had done nothing to hurt my standing at Global Union, and he had proved himself capable, honorable, trustworthy . . . and a good friend. I liked him. Why, then, couldn’t I accept his story?

  “Because men don’t live forever.” I whispered the words, rubbing my cold hands together as I stared at the photo of the marble bust. “Because to believe Asher, I would have to believe in God and curses and eternal punishment. And I don’t believe in any of those things.”

  Sighing heavily, I closed the book, then stood and took it back to the librarians’ desk. I had spent three days searching for the truth, and my head now bulged with more questions than when I started. But at least I knew where to go next—I needed to speak to a minister, and I knew right where to find one.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I PAUSED OUTSIDE REVEREND SYNN’S DOOR, THEN QUIETLY KNOCKED. When I heard him call, I turned the knob and stepped inside. “Il Direttore, I hate to bother you—”

  “Nonsense, signorina, come in, please.” Synn had been leaning back in his chair with a book on his lap, but at my approach he closed the book and leaned forward, a welcoming smile on his face. “I have been wondering about your research project. I have scarcely seen you these last few days.”

  “I’ve been very busy.” I sank into the padded guest chair in front of his desk, then gave him an uncertain smile. “I’ve been a little concerned about one of our employees and had to do some background research before I approached anyone. And now, if you have the time to spare, I have a few questions to ask you.”

  “I shall always have time for a lovely signorina.” A relaxed smile played at the corners of his mouth, and I felt some of my uneasiness begin to melt away.

  “If I may speak of a confidential matter,” I lowered my voice, “I’d rather this not go any further, if you don’t mind. The employee in question has never done anything to jeopardize his work, and thus far he has been valuable to Global Union. But his beliefs are a bit unsettling, and I thought I’d ask you about them.”

  Synn’s smile vanished as he raised his eyes to my face in an oddly keen, swift look. “But of course, I will keep your concerns to myself . . . unless you convince me there is cause for alarm.”

  “There is no cause—at present. I just want to make certain there is no reason for alarm in the future.”

  Synn nodded, his gaze never leaving my face.

  “One of our employees,” I began, averting my eyes lest he read Asher’s name there, “is very religious. He believes, I think, every wo
rd written in the Bible and clings to it as if it were as fresh as the morning newspaper. He has interpreted certain portions of the Bible as predictions, and he believes a terrifically evil person will rise in the last days.”

  Synn drew his lips into a tight smile. “You are speaking of the Antichrist. It is an old prophecy and common in many cultures.”

  I smiled in relief, grateful that I had not been the first to say the word. “Yes—that’s what he called it, the Antichrist. In any case, he is quite serious in his belief that this antichrist will rise soon . . . and possibly from our own organization.”

  Synn’s brow wrinkled and something moved in his eyes. I felt an instant’s panic, then he smiled, his blue eyes glowing with humor. “The Antichrist—coming from among us? How delightful! I shall have to tell Santos. He’ll be amazed anyone could think such a thing.”

  I felt an unwelcome blush creep onto my cheeks. “Please, no. This is quite confidential.”

  Synn’s smile deepened into genuine laughter, and no amount of protest from me could stem his hilarity. He giggled, his bulk shaking his chair, until tears ran down his round cheeks. I watched, perplexed and helpless, until he palmed the wetness from his face and looked at me with streaming eyes. “All right.” His voice wavered. “I’ll keep the story to myself . . . at least until Santos and I need a good laugh.”

  I raked my hand through my hair, torn between being relieved that he’d found the idea hilarious and concerned that Asher was right. Synn’s response was overblown, and his exaggerated reaction might have been intended to cover embarrassment or discomfort.

  “Reverend Synn”—I shifted in my chair to try a new tack—“do you believe the Bible contains prophecies that will come true in the future?”

  “Ah, signorina.” He wiped more water from his eyes, then took a deep breath. “Of course the Bible is a holy book, and holy books are always relevant. It contains truth, certainly. It speaks wisdom and comfort to millions of people who have nothing else to guide them. But is it a crystal ball with which we can foretell the future? Definitely not. We are to live by faith, and faith does not rely upon fortune-telling and superstition.”