Nor, perhaps, any memory of the past and its wounds.
* * *
One day when Beppe had just left them after replenishing their supplies, the hermit smoothed down his beard and turned to him.
“Why do you still wonder what my words of welcome meant, when I said: ‘I was expecting you, my son’?”
This man could read him like an open book.
“But… you didn’t know me, you hadn’t been informed of my arrival, you don’t know anything about me!”
“I do know you, my son, and know things about you that you yourself are unaware of. You’ll see – living here you will acquire the vision of inner Awakening, the one that Jesus possessed when he left the desert and that enabled him to see Nathanael under the fig tree, even though this was outside his field of vision. I know what you have suffered, and I know why. You are seeking the most precious treasure, the one to which not even the Churches possess the key, and to which they can merely indicate the way – when they don’t actually block access to it.”
“Do you know who the thirteenth apostle was?”
The hermit gave a silent laugh, and there was a sparkle dancing in his eyes.
“And do you think one always needs to know facts in order to be acquainted with realities?”
He allowed his gaze to wander across the valley where the high-altitude clouds cast moving shadows. Then he spoke as if he were addressing someone other than Nil.
“Everything can be known only from within. Abstract knowledge is merely a rind, you need to get past it to reach the heart, the sapwood of real knowledge. This is true of minerals, plants, living beings – and it is also true of the Gospels. The ancients called this inner knowledge ‘gnosis’. Many of them were intoxicated by the excessively rich nourishment they found in it, it went to their heads, and they thought themselves superior to every one else, catharoi. The person you meet in the Gospels – the same person you experience in prayer – is neither superior nor inferior to you: he is with you. The real presence of Jesus is so strong that it joins you to everyone but also separates you from everyone. Already you have started to experience this, and here you will not live on anything but that presence. That is why you came.
“I was expecting you, my son…”
90
Rome observed with indifference as the Society of St Pius V was taken in hand by Cardinal Emil Catzinger. In the name of the Pope, he himself appointed the Rector who would succeed the Neapolitan Alessandro Calfo, who had suddenly died at home without having been able to transmit the coffin-shaped ring, which recalled his formidable task as the guardian of the Catholic Church’s most precious secret: that of the real tomb in which the bones of the crucified man of Jerusalem still rest.
He chose this rector from among the Eleven, and wanted him to be young, so that he would have the strength to combat the enemies of the man who had become Christ and God. For those enemies would soon be lifting their heads again, just as they had always done, ever since it had been necessary to wipe out the person and especially the memory of the impostor, the so-called thirteenth apostle.
As he slipped the precious jasper onto his ring finger, he smiled at the deep black eyes, as tranquil as a mountain lake. Antonio’s only thought was that, now that he was Rector, he was finally safe from Opus Dei and its tentacles. For a second time the son of Oberstleutnant Herbert von Catzinger, the ward of the Hitler Youth, was offering him his protection – but he would still be requesting his dividends. In the coffers of the Society, Antonio found a file marked confidenziale, in the Cardinal’s name. If he had opened it, he would have seen documents concerning his powerful protector, documents bearing a swastika at their heading. Not all of them went back to before May 1945.
But he didn’t open it, and handed it over in person to His Eminence, who in his presence fed it into the shredder of his office in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
In his severe black cassock, Breczinsky watched the monotonous and gloomy Polish countryside go by. He had been apprehended in his office in the stacks by Antonio in person, and bundled away to the central station in Rome. Since that moment he had been incapable of thinking. After crossing the whole of Europe, the train was now speeding across the plains of his native land: he was surprised to discover that he felt no emotion. Suddenly he sat up, and his round glasses hazed over with tears. He had just raced past a small provincial station: Sobibor, the concentration camp around which the Anschluss division had regrouped before embarking on its hasty retreat westwards. Pushing ahead of it one last convoy of Poles, who were to be exterminated in this very spot, just before the Red Army arrived. In this convoy had been all that was left of his family.
A few days earlier, a young priest, Karol Wojtyla by name, scorning the danger, had taken him by his hand and hidden him in his cramped apartment in Cracow, to shelter him from the round-up organized by the German officer who had just succeeded Herbert von Catzinger, killed by Polish partisans.
Breczinsky would be getting off at the next station: it was there, a small Carmelite nunnery far from the world, that he had been placed under house arrest by His Eminence Cardinal Catzinger. The mother superior had been sent a letter bearing the coat of arms of the Vatican: the priest they were sending her must never be allowed any visitors, nor could he correspond with the outside world in any way whatsoever.
He needed care and rest. Probably for a long time.
91
The audience rose to its feet as one: for Lev Barjona’s last concert in Rome, the Academy of Santa Cecilia was filled to bursting. The Israeli was going to perform the third concerto for piano and orchestra by Camille Saint-Saëns, and in the first movement he would be showing off his panache, in the second the extraordinary fluidity of his fingers, and in the third his sense of humour.
As usual, the pianist came on stage without deigning to glance at the audience, and went straight over to the piano stool. When the conductor motioned that he was ready, his face suddenly became set, and he played the first solemn, pompous chords that announce the romantic theme, introduced by the orchestral tutti. In the second movement, he was dazzling. The acrobatic twists and turns spun magically under his fingers, the notes came rippling out, each of them distinct in spite of the infernal tempo he had adopted right from the start. The contrast between this perilous quicksilver and the total impassivity of his face fascinated the audience, which, after the last chord, gave him one of those standing ovations with which the Romans never fail to acclaim those who have conquered their hearts.
There was a general expectation that, as was his habit, Lev would immediately vanish off into the wings, without granting the audience the traditional encores. So the audience was greatly surprised when he advanced to the edge of the stage and signalled for a microphone. He took it and looked up, dazzled by the footlights. He seemed to be gazing far away, beyond the audience which had suddenly relapsed into silence, beyond even the city of Rome. His face was no longer set, but wore an expression of gravity that was unusual in such a relentless charmer. The scar that vanished into his mop of blond hair heightened the dramatic character of what he was about to say.
It was very brief.
“To thank you for your warm welcome, I am now going to play you the second Gymnopédie by Erik Satie, a marvellous French composer. I especially dedicate it this evening to another Frenchman, a pilgrim of the absolute. And to an American pianist who died tragically, but whose memory will never leave me. He himself performed this music from within, since, like Satie, he had believed in love, and he had been betrayed.”
While Lev, his eyes closed, seemed to abandon himself to the perfection of this simple melody, a man at the back of the hall watched him with a smile. His muscular body was hunched up, and he rather stuck out among the poised and elegant women around him.
“Those Jews!” Mukhtar Al-Quraysh was thinking. “They’re all so sentimental!”
With the death of Alessandro Calfo, his mission was coming to an end. He
had had the satisfaction of eliminating the American with his own hands. As for the other man, he had vanished, and Mukhtar had still not picked up his trace. It was just a question of time. The next day he would go back to Cairo. He would report to the Council of Hamas and receive his instructions. The Frenchman must be got rid of: to track him down, Mukhtar needed help, financial and practical. Lev had just publicly declared his admiration for the infidel, he could no longer count on him.
As for Sonia, she was now out of a job. It wouldn’t be long before he brought her over to Cairo. Wearing a black veil, her gorgeous shape would do him honour. He’d keep her for himself. After passing through the hands of a perverse prelate from the Vatican, she must know how to do things that the Prophet might well have condemned if he had been aware of them. The Koran merely states: “Women are a field to be ploughed: go up and down that field and plough it as you wish.” He would plough Sonia. Completely indifferent to the delicate music that was emerging from Lev’s fingers, he felt the blood swelling his virility.
92
Three weeks had gone by since Nil had arrived in the Abruzzi, and he felt as if he had spent his whole life in these solitudes. Little by little he had told the hermit his whole story: his arrival in Rome, Leeland’s attitude up until his dramatic confession, the meeting with Lev Barjona, the apostolic letter that had been so hard to track down and its discovery in the secret Vatican collection…
The old man was smiling.
“I know that this changes nothing in your life and the direction it is taking. It’s the truth that you have always sought; you have found the rind, you now need to deepen that understanding in prayer. You must never bear a grudge against the Catholic Church. She does what she has always done, that for which every Church is designed: to win power and then keep it at all costs. A monk of the Middle Ages defined it realistically: casta simul et meretrix, the chaste whore. The Church is a necessary evil, my son: its continual abuse of power must not lead you to forget that it is the repository of a treasure, the person of Jesus. And that without the Church you would never have known him.”
Nil knew he was right.
Intrigued by this newcomer who so much resembled his adoptive father – including even his white hair – Beppe started coming up to the hermitage a little more frequently than usual. He would sit next to Nil on the dry stone parapet of the terrace, and their eyes would meet just once. Then the Frenchman would perceive nothing more than his breathing, regular and calm. Suddenly he would get up, give a nod, and disappear down the forest path.
One day, Nil said to him:
“Beppe, will you do me a favour? I need to get this letter to Father Calati in Camaldoli. Can you do that for me? You have to give it to him in person.”
Beppe nodded and slipped the letter into the inside pocket of his sheepskin jacket. It was addressed to Rembert Leeland, Via Aurelia. Nil told him briefly about his arrival at the hermitage, the life he was leading in it, the happiness that for so long had evaded him and that seemed, here, to have become a reality. Finally, he asked after his news, and whether Nil would need to go back to Rome to meet up with him.
A few days later, the Pope opened this letter and read it out twice in front of Catzinger, who had handed it on to him as instructed.
Wearily, the Pope placed the letter on his knees. Then he looked up at the Cardinal, still standing respectfully in front of him.
“This French monk you have told me about – in what way do you think he is a danger to the Church?”
“He casts doubt on the divinity of Christ, Most Holy Father, and in a particularly pernicious way. He needs to be silenced and sent back to the solitude of his abbey, which he never should have left.”
The Pope allowed his chin to drop onto his white cassock. Christ would never be known in all his truth. Christ was ahead of us: we could only set out in search of him. To seek him, St Augustine had said, was already to find him. Ceasing to seek for him was to lose him.
Without raising his head, he muttered a few words, and Catzinger had to prick up his ears to follow them.
“Solitude… I think he possesses solitude, Your Eminence, and I envy him… yes, I envy him. ‘Monk’, you know, comes from monos, meaning one, alone – or unique. He has found the one essential thing, of which Jesus spoke to Martha, the sister of Mary and Lazarus. Leave him to his solitude, Your Eminence. Leave him with Him whom he has found there.”
Then he added, in an even more imperceptible voice:
“That is why we are here, is it not? The reason why the Church exists. So that, within it, a few may find what you and I are seeking.”
Catzinger raised an eyebrow. What he was seeking was to solve one problem after another, ensure the Church endures, protect it from its enemies. Sono il carabiniere della Chiesa, I am the policeman of the Church, his predecessor of illustrious memory, Cardinal Ottaviani, had said one day.
The Pope seemed to emerge from his reverie, and made a sign.
“Take me over to that machine in the corner. If you don’t mind.”
Catzinger pushed the wheelchair towards the little shredder placed in front of a waste-paper bin half-filled with confetti. As the Pope, with his trembling hand, couldn’t switch the machine on himself, Catzinger deferentially pressed the button.
“Thank you… No, it’s all right, I can do that myself.”
The shredder spat out some shreds of confetti that fell into the basket filled with other secrets, which the Pope preserved as mere memories in his still astonishingly perspicacious brain.
“There’s only one secret, and that’s God’s. He’s a lucky man, that Father Nil. Yes, a really lucky man.”
93
In the middle of the night, Nil was woken by an unusual noise, and lit a candle. Lying on his straw mattress, his eyes closed, the old hermit was uttering a low throaty rattle.
“Father, are you feeling unwell? We need to get Beppe, we need…”
“Don’t worry, my son. I just need to leave the shore, to slip into deeper waters – and the moment has come.”
He opened his eyes, and enveloped Nil in a gaze of great kindness.
“You will stay on here – it is the place set aside for you since time began. As the beloved disciple did, you will lean your head towards Jesus, so as to listen. Your heart alone will be able to hear him, but every day it is a little more alert. Listen, and do nothing but listen: he will lead you along the path. He is a sure guide, you can place all your trust in him. Men have betrayed you: he will never do so.”
He made a final effort:
“Beppe… look after him, he’s the son that I am entrusting to you. He is as pure as the water that flows down from this mountain.”
In the morning, the light struck the crest on the opposite slope. When the sun’s flames enveloped the hermitage, the old hermit murmured the name of Jesus and breathed his last.
That same day, Nil and Beppe buried him in a sheer cliff face which perhaps resembled – thought Nil – those overlooking Qumran. In silence they returned to the hermitage.
Once they were on the little terrace, Beppe seized the arm of Nil as he stood there motionless, bowed his head before him and gently placed the monk’s hand on his head of thick curly hair.
Days followed days and nights followed nights. Time stopped, and seemed to have assumed another dimension. Nil’s memory had not yet healed, but he suffered less and less from the anguish that had oppressed him throughout those terrible days that he had spent trying to track down some illusion of the truth.
Truth did not lie in the letter of the thirteenth apostle, nor in the Fourth Gospel. It was not contained in any text, however sacred it might be. It lay beyond words printed on paper, words uttered by human mouths. It lay in the heart of silence, and silence slowly took possession of Nil.
Beppe had transferred to him all the adoration he had shown to the old hermit while the latter was still alive. When he came, always without warning, they would sit together on the edge of the terrace o
r in front of the fire in the hearth. Nil gently read him the Gospel and told him the story of Jesus, as the thirteenth apostle had done for Yokhanan in days gone by.
One day he had a sudden inspiration. He traced an immaterial cross on the forehead, lips and heart of the young man. Spontaneously, Beppe showed him his tongue, and his fingers lightly grazed that too with the sign of death and life.
The next day, Beppe came very early in the morning. He sat on the straw mattress, gazed at Nil with his tranquil eyes and murmured, in a clumsy whisper:
“Father… Father Nil! I… I want to learn to read. So that I can study the Gospel by myself.”
Beppe could speak. From his overflowing heart, the words spilt out.
This led to a slight change in Nil’s life. Now Beppe came to see him almost every day. They would sit down at the window, and on the tiny table Nil would open the book. In a few weeks, Beppe was able to read it, only stumbling over the complicated words.
“You can always take St Mark’s Gospel,” Nil told him. “It’s the simplest, the most limpid, and the one closest to what Jesus said and did. One day, later on, I’ll teach you Greek. You’ll see, it’s not so difficult, and if you read it aloud, you’ll hear what Jesus’s first disciples said about him.”
Beppe fixed his grave eyes on him.
“I’ll do what you tell me: you are the father of my soul.”
The Thirteenth Apostle Page 31