The Thirteenth Apostle

by Michel Benoît

  Just as the late lamented Father Andrei had done.

  You don’t quarrel with orders from Cardinal Catzinger, the Father Abbot reflected. And Father Nil’s recent behaviour had been giving him cause for concern. It was better to shift problems as far away as possible.

  Mgr Calfo had been obliged to interrupt his Sunday of pleasures for a moment and hurry over to his nearby office, but he had not managed to reach his Cairo counterpart. He strode briskly up the steps of his apartment block: what awaited him upstairs made him forget the drawbacks of his very Neapolitan paunch, and gave him wings.

  My beloved, naked, knowing my desires,

  Was wearing nothing but her clinking jewels.

  Actually, the only jewels on the body of Sonia as she slept were the glints in her hair. Calfo gazed at them appreciatively. “Ah, Baudelaire, what a poet! But personally, I never give them jewels: just a money shot, as it were.”

  Mukhtar had been quite right: not only did Sonia turn out to be extremely talented in the erotic arts, but she was also perfectly discreet. Taking advantage of her slumber, he quickly picked up his telephone and dialled the Cairo number again.

  “Mukhtar Al-Quraysh, please… I’ll hang on, thanks.”

  This time they’d managed to get hold of him: he was just back from prayers at the Al-Azhar mosque.

  “Mukhtar? Salam aleikom. Tell me, are your students leaving you any free time right now? That’s great. Get a flight to Rome and we can meet up. It’s about continuing the little mission I entrusted you with, for the good of the cause… Collaborating with your favourite enemy? No, it’s too early for that, if necessary you can contact him in Jerusalem. Oh, a few weeks at most! That’s right, at the Teatro di Marcello, as usual: discrezione, mi raccomando!”

  He hung up, smiling. The man to whom he had just been speaking was occasionally invited to lecture at the celebrated Al-Azhar University: he was a fanatic, an ardent defender of Islamic dogma. Getting an Arab and a Jew to work together, two sleeping agents of the most formidable special services in the Middle East, so as to protect the most precious secret of the Catholic Church – all very ecumenical, of course.

  It was during his time as Papal Nuncio in Cairo that he had first come across Mukhtar Al-Quraysh. The diplomat and the dogmatic theologian had each discovered that the other was burning with the same hidden inner fire, and this had created an unexpected bond between them. But the Palestinian was not seeking, as he was, to reach transcendence by means of erotic celebrations.

  Sonia uttered a little moan and opened her eyes.

  He laid the phone down on the bedroom floor, and leant over to her.

  33

  “Go back to Rome, Mukhtar. The Council of Muslim Brothers has managed to persuade Hamas of the importance of this mission. Their terrorist attacks would not be enough to protect Islam if the revealed nature of the Koran were to be undermined, or if the sacred person of the Prophet – blessed be his name – risked being sullied by the least little insinuation of doubt. But there is one thing…”

  Mukhtar Al-Quraysh smiled; he had been expecting this. His dark skin, his muscular build and his shortness of stature brought out in contrast the tall silhouette of Mustapha Mashlur, venerated by all the students at the Al-Azhar University of Cairo.

  “It’s your relations with the Jewish guy. The fact you’re friends with him…”

  “He saved my life during the Six Days’ War in ’67. I was alone and unarmed in front of his tank in the desert, our army had been routed: he could have driven right over my body, it’s what happens in war. He halted, gave me a drink and allowed me to live. He’s not a Jew like the others.”

  “But he is a Jew! And not just any Jew, as you know full well.”

  They stopped in the shade of the Al-Ghari minaret. Even now, at the end of November, the old man’s translucent skin felt vulnerable to the sting of the sun’s rays.

  “Do not forget the words of the Prophet: ‘Be the enemies of the Jews and Christians, they are friends with each other! Anyone who takes them as friends is siding with them, and Allah does not lead a people who are in error’.”

  “You know the Holy Koran better than anyone, Murshid” – he called the man by his title of “Supreme Guide” to show his respect. “The Prophet in person did not hesitate to form an alliance with his enemies for a common cause, and his attitude is binding in law, even in the case of Jihad. It is not in the interests of either Jews or Arabs to see the age-old foundations of Christianity being shaken to the depths.”

  The Supreme Guide gazed at him with a smile.

  “We reached that very conclusion a good while before you did, and that’s why we’ll let you get on with it. But never forget that you are a scion of the tribe that saw the birth of the Prophet – blessed be his name. So behave like a Quraysh, since you bear that glorious patronymic: your friendship for that Jew should never let you forget who he is, or who he is working for. Oil and vinegar may come temporarily into contact – but they will never mix.”

  “You can be reassured, Murshid, that the vinegar of a Jew will never bite into a Quraysh: I am thick-skinned. I know that man, and if all our enemies were like him, we might have peace in the Middle East.”

  “Peace… There will never be peace for a Muslim until the entire earth bows down five times a day before the kiblah indicating the direction of Mecca.”

  They left the protective shade of the minaret and walked in silence towards the entrance of the madrasa, whose dome sparkled in the sun. Before going in, the old man placed his hand on Mukhtar’s arm.

  “And the girl – you trust her?”

  “She’s better off in Rome than in the brothel in Saudi Arabia where I took her from! She’s behaving herself for the moment. And she has no desire at all to be sent back to her family in Romania. This mission is simple, we’re not using any sophisticated tricks: just the good old home-made methods.”

  “Bismillah Al Rahim. It’ll soon be time for prayers, let me go and purify myself.”

  For the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brothers, the successor of their founder Hassan al-Banna is, in the eyes of Allah, just one Muslim – one submissive human – among others.

  Mukhtar leant against a pillar and closed his eyes. Was it the caress of the sun? He could see the scene in his mind’s eye: the man had leapt down from his tank and walked towards him, his right hand raised so that his gunner wouldn’t shoot. All around them, the Sinai desert was again swathed in its usual silence, the routed Egyptians were fleeing. Why was he still alive? And why was this Jew not going to kill him there and then?

  The Israeli officer seemed to hesitate, the features of his face totally immobile. Suddenly he smiled, and held out a water gourd. As he drank, Mukhtar noted the scar across his forehead, where his hair was cut very short.

  Years later, the Intifada exploded in Palestine. In a back alley in Gaza, Mukhtar was cleaning out a block of hovels that the Israelis, coming under pressure and being forced to retreat, had only just abandoned. He came into a yard gutted by grenades: a Jew lay slumped at the foot of a low wall and was groaning quietly as he clutched at his leg. He wasn’t wearing the uniform of Tsahal – he was probably a Mossad agent. Mukhtar pointed his Kalashnikov at him and was about to open fire. But when the Jew saw the barrel of the weapon aimed at his chest, his face, crumpled in pain, grew more animated, and he sketched a smile. There was a scar extending from his ear to under his helmet.

  The man from the desert! The Arab slowly stopped aiming his gun at the Jew, cleared his throat and spat. He slipped his left hand into his short pocket, and threw the man a small bundle of emergency bandages.

  Then turned on his heel and barked out a brief order to his men: keep advancing, there’s nothing and no one in this dive.

  Mukhtar sighed: Rome is a beautiful city, plenty of girls to be found there. More than in the desert, that was certain.

  He would indeed go back to Rome. With pleasure.

  34

  Three days later, Nil wa
s trying to settle down on the uncomfortable seats of the Rome express.

  He had been completely taken aback to learn he had been summoned to Rome, without any explanations being given. Ancient music manuscripts! The Father Abbot had handed him a train ticket for the following day – it would be impossible for him to go back to Germigny and take a second photo of the stone slab. As well as his files – for he mustn’t leave anything compromising in his cell – he had slipped into his suitcase the negative he had stolen from Andrei’s office. Would he be able to get anything out of it?

  With surprise he noticed that his compartment was almost empty, and yet all the vacant seats were reserved. Just one passenger, a slender middle-aged man, seemed to be asleep, huddled in the corner by the corridor. Since they had left Paris, they had simply nodded to one another. His head was haloed by a mass of blond hair, with a long scar running through it.

  Nil took off his clerical jacket and placed it – folded so that it would not get crumpled – on the seat to the right of him.

  He closed his eyes.

  The aim of monastic life is to track down the passions and eliminate them at their root. From the time he had entered the novitiate, Nil had been well schooled: St Martin’s Abbey turned out to be an excellent establishment of self-renunciation. Since all his strength was bent on his search for truth, this caused him little pain. On the contrary, he was glad to be freed from those instincts that enslave humanity, for its greater woe. He could not remember getting angry – a degrading passion – for a long time now. So he hesitated to put a name to what he had been feeling for the past few days. The death of Andrei, the sloppy inquiry, the line hastily drawn under it all: verdict, suicide – a shameful end. In the monastery they were spying, searching rooms, stealing belongings. Now he was being packed off to Rome like a parcel.

  Anger? At all events a mounting irritation, as irritating for him as the sudden epidemic of an illness that had long been kept at bay by regular vaccination.

  He decided to postpone examining this pathological outbreak. “Wait till I get to Rome. The city has survived everything.”

  He had patiently reconstructed the events surrounding the death of Jesus, when the beloved disciple had been given a new lease of life. He had continued to exist after the Council of Jerusalem. The hypothesis of his flight to the desert seemed the most likely to Nil: it was there that Jesus himself had taken refuge, on several occasions. It was in the desert that the Essenes, and then the Zealots (at least until the Bar Kokhba revolt) had taken shelter.

  The trace of his steps was lost in the desert sands. In order to pick it up, Nil needed to listen to a voice from beyond the grave, that of his dead friend.

  Pursuing this research would serve to sublimate the anger he sensed mounting within him.

  He tried to find a comfortable position and get a bit of sleep.

  The gentle rattle of the train lulled him into a doze. The lights of Lamotte-Beuvron sped by.

  Then it all happened extremely quickly. The man in the corner next to the corridor left his seat and came over, as if to take something from the luggage rack above him. Nil mechanically looked up: the luggage rack was empty.

  He had no time to think: the blond head of hair was already leaning towards him, and he saw the man’s hand reaching out towards his clerical jacket.

  * * *

  Nil was just about to protest at the cavalier manners of his travelling companion – “He’s like a robot!” he thought.

  But the door of the compartment clattered open.

  The man quickly straightened; his hand fell to his side, his face grew more animated, and he smiled at Nil.

  “’Scuse me for disturbing you, gentlemen.” It was the ticket inspector. “The passengers who had reserved the empty seats in your compartment haven’t turned up. I’ve got a couple of nuns with me who couldn’t find seats next to each other in the train. Here you go, Sisters, sit where you like, plenty of room in the compartment. Enjoy your journey!”

  While the nuns came in and greeted Father Nil ceremoniously, the other passenger went back to his seat without a word. A moment later his eyes were closed and he was nodding off.

  “Funny chap! What came over him?”

  But getting the new arrivals settled occupied his full attention. A suitcase had to be hoisted onto the luggage rack, and bulky cardboard boxes pushed under the seats – and then he had to put up with their interminable chattering.

  Night had fallen. As he sought sleep, Nil noted that the mysterious fellow opposite him had not moved an inch, huddled in his corner.

  Awoken by daybreak, when he opened his eyes the seat next to the corridor was empty. To get to the restaurant car for breakfast, he had to walk the full length of the train – no sign of the man.

  He returned to his compartment, where one of the nuns obliged him to have a sip of disgusting coffee from her Thermos. He was forced to bow to the evidence: the enigmatic traveller had disappeared.

  Part Two

  35

  Pella (Jordan), 58 AD

  “How are your legs, abbu?”

  The beloved disciple heaved a sigh. His hair had turned white, and his features were hollowed. He looked at the man in the prime of his life standing next to him.

  “It’s been twenty-eight years since Jesus died, and ten years since I left Jerusalem. My legs have carried me here, Yokhanan, and they may need to carry me elsewhere, if what you tell me is true…”

  They were taking advantage of the shade of the peristyle, the floor of which was covered by a magnificent mosaic depicting Dionysus. From here, the dunes of the nearby desert could be seen.

  Pella, founded by veterans of Alexander the Great on the eastern bank of the Jordan, had been almost entirely destroyed by an earthquake. It seemed to him, when he was forced to flee from Jerusalem to escape the threats of Peter’s followers, that this city situated outside Palestine would be safe enough for him. He settled here with Jesus’s mother, and they were soon joined by a core of his disciples. Yokhanan came and went between Pella and neighbouring Palestine, or even Syria; Paul had established his headquarters in Antioch, one of the capitals of Asia Minor.

  “What about Mary?”

  Yokhanan’s affection for Jesus’s mother was touching. “That child has adopted the mother of a crucified man, and has adopted me to replace his own crucified father,” thought the beloved disciple.

  “You’ll be seeing her later on. Tell me more about what’s going on: I’m so out of it here…”

  “My news is several weeks old. James, the brother of Jesus, finally won. He’s now the head of the Jerusalem community.”

  “James! But… what about Peter?”

  “Peter resisted for as long as he could. He even went to try and dethrone Paul in his own lair in Antioch – but he got sent away with a flea in his ear! Anyway, he’s just taken ship to Rome.”

  The two men laughed. Seen from here, on the edge of the desert and its vast emptiness, struggles for power in the name of Jesus seemed derisory.

  “Rome… I knew it! If Peter is no longer number one in Jerusalem, Rome is the only place big enough for his ambitions. It’s in Rome, Yokhanan, at the heart of the Empire, that the Church of which he dreams will grown and become mighty.”

  “There’s something else: your disciples left in Judaea are more and more marginalized, and sometimes hassled. They’re asking if they ought to get away as you have, and come and join you here.”

  The old man closed his eyes. This too was something he had been expecting. The Nazoreans were neither Judaizers like James, nor prepared to deify Jesus like Paul: caught between the two tendencies that were violently opposed in the young Church and refusing to be assimilated to either of them, they risked being crushed.

  “Those who can’t put up with the pressure can come and join us in Pella. We’re safe here – for the time being.”

  Yokhanan made himself comfortable sitting beside him, and pointed to the bundle of sheets of parchment scattered ac
ross the table.

  “Have you been reading, abbu?”

  “All night long. Especially this collection, which you tell me is circulating in Asia.”

  He showed the thirty or so sheets, bound by a woollen cord, that he was holding.

  “For all these years,” said Yokhanan, “the apostles have been transmitting Jesus’s words orally. So that the memory of them won’t be lost when they die, they have set them down here, in no particular order.”

  “Yes, it is his teaching, just as I heard it. But the apostles are cunning. They don’t put words into Jesus’s mouth that he never said: they merely change one word here, add a nuance there. They invent commentaries, or attribute to themselves things they never really said. For example, I’ve read that, one day, Peter fell to his knees before Jesus and proclaimed: ‘Truly, you are the Messiah, the Son of God!’”

  He threw the book down on the table.

  “Imagine Peter saying something like that! Jesus would never have accepted such a claim, neither from Peter nor from anyone else. Listen, Yokhanan: in exiling me, the apostles managed to gain exclusive control of the testimony. In their hands the Gospel has become a tool of power. The transformation of Jesus will continue apace, that much is obvious. How far will they go?”

  Yokhanan kneeled at his feet, and placed his hands on his knees in a familiar gesture.

  “You can’t let that happen. They are writing down their memories – you should write yours. You ought to record in writing the things you teach your disciples here – and circulate the text the way they are circulating theirs. Tell the whole story, abbu: talk about the first encounter on the banks of the Jordan, the healing of the lame man by the pool of Bethesda, Jesus’s last days… tell the story of Jesus the same way you told it to me, so that he doesn’t die a second time!”