The Christos Mosaic

by Vincent Czyz

  Since de Vaux, a militant Catholic, and the others on the team of the Ecole Biblique insisted that the scrolls predated Christianity by at least a century, the find was disturbing. One scholar called the Teacher “the exact prototype of Jesus.”

  Friction developed between John Allegro and the rest of the Ecole’s international team.

  The third name: John Allegro.

  The sole team member who was not a Catholic, he made startling discoveries of his own. “I shouldn’t worry about that theological job if I were you,” he quipped to a colleague. “By the time I’ve finished, there won’t be any Church left for you to join.”

  What Allegro had found in his fragments were chiefly phrases once thought to have applied only to Jesus. In a letter to de Vaux he wrote:

  As for Jesus as a ‘son of God’ and ‘Messiah’ – I don’t dispute it for a moment; we now know from Qumran that their Davidic Messiah was reckoned a ‘son of God,’ ‘begotten’ of God—but that doesn’t prove that he was God Himself. There’s no ‘contrast’ in their terminology at all—the contrast is in its interpretation.

  “Huh,” Drew said aloud. The Jews, or at least the Qumran sect, apparently had seen David as well as other messianic figures as sons of God. Drew wasn’t attached to the idea that Jesus was God’s “only begotten son,” but he wouldn’t have to go far to find people who were.

  Allegro was given only a small fraction of the eight hundred scroll fragments to look over, and he expressed his deep misgivings in a letter: “I am convinced that if something does turn up which affects the Roman Catholic dogma, the world will never see it. De Vaux will scrape the money out of some or other barrel and send the lot to the Vatican to be hidden or destroyed.”

  Where, Drew wondered, was the material Allegro never saw?

  Although subsequent scholarship has determined that some of the scrolls do not, as de Vaux originally supposed, predate Christianity, the mystery remains unsolved: who was the Teacher? It could not have been Christ since there is no mention of a crucifixion or a resurrection. Who were the Liar and the Wicked Priest who had persecuted him? The ancient drama continues into our own time.

  Drew pulled up a few more articles, which essentially corroborated the first. He had a lot of questions for Stephen, but there were nearly two hours before he and Kadir were supposed to meet the professor.

  He closed his laptop and leaned back in his chair.

  Next to the computer—he knew it was a bad idea, but he had never been able to bring himself to move it—was a picture of him with Yasemin. Her head thrown back and her mouth pried open by laughter, she had her arms around him. His smile was more subdued, his long hair like a dark stream caught in mid-flow. The picture had been taken in a bar before they’d gotten married. Before they’d started fighting.

  It was Thursday. Yasemin and a coterie of colleagues at the publishing house where she worked crowded into the same restaurant in Taksim for dinner and drinks. He could drop in, feign casual indifference, talk her into sitting down with him for a few minutes. After getting her to smile and maybe admit she still missed him, he’d look at his watch, announce that he had to go—he couldn’t talk about it right now but why not get together on another night when they’d have more time?

  Drew snatched his keys off the desk and headed out the door.

  3: 2

  HORATIO

  WHEN DREW LOOKED at his ringless finger, he still didn’t really understand what had happened. How little things had gotten so out of hand. Like the Saturday he was reading in the living room and Yasemin was still in bed. Early morning was his favorite time of day, before the city kicked into gear and the streets became noisy. Eighteen-carat light streamed in through a pair of windows, and he’d backed himself against an arm of the couch, knees drawn up, book in hand.

  When he heard Yasemin’s slippers scuffing the floor in the hall, he closed the book. She was wearing a long T-shirt as a nightgown. She answered his “good morning” with a grunt; she wasn’t in a good mood.

  Hopping off the couch, he followed her into the kitchen.

  Her caramel skin had taken on a morning glow. The crescents under her eyes, which she thought made her look old but he found sexy, were puffy from sleep. He brushed one of her cheeks, the texture of acne scars fascinating to his fingertips. She always turned her face away when he tried to kiss her after she woke up, self-conscious about what cigarettes and a night’s incubation had done to her breath, but it never bothered him. Being denied the kiss bothered him.

  Finally, with the coffeepot on the stove, she hugged him back and moaned as if she had sunk into a heap of silk pillows.

  “Omelette?”

  There was nothing prurient about the nipples he saw through her T-shirt at this hour; they simply reminded him of motherhood and the baby they both wanted.

  “Sure.”

  He chopped onions and peppers, grated cheese, toasted bread. Although he’d already eaten, he sat with her and picked at a bowl of olives. When she had finished, he padded barefoot into the sitting room and went back to his book.

  On one of her trips between the kitchen and the bedroom, she stopped in the living room and glared at him. “Why didn’t you make the bed?”

  Confused, he pushed his eyebrows together. “Because you were in it.”

  “I’m not in it anymore. Do you forget about the bed after you get up?”

  The contempt in her voice was unmistakable, as if he were a disobedient child.

  “Pretty much.”

  “Well, go do it now.”

  He hated when she ordered him to do things. “Why don’t you?”

  “Because I always do it.”

  “Most of the time, yeah. But that’s because I get up before you.”

  “So you should do it after you get up.”

  “After I get up, I usually go to work.”

  “But not on the weekends.”

  “Weekends are for being lazy. So why don’t you just cut it out, okay?”

  “You see? This is the problem in our marriage. You don’t care about what I want.”

  “Hey, now you’re getting silly.”

  “Don’t call me silly. You do what you want, Drew. You don’t care about me, you don’t care about what I want.”

  He put his palms against his forehead and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Yasemin, you have to be kidding.”

  Her face turned stony, her glare accusing, as though the truth were so obvious she didn’t need to say anything else.

  “I changed my whole life to be with you. I left everything I had in the States—family, friends, everything. Doesn’t that count for a little more than making the bed?”

  “You moved here for a teaching job.” Iron filings grated in her voice.

  “That contract was for a year. I’m still here because I met you. Because I married you and you don’t want to live in the States. You don’t want to leave your family or Istanbul. So can you lay off the bed thing? I mean, didn’t I make you breakfast?”

  “But you didn’t wait for me. You ate without me. You live like you’re still alone.”

  Drew pushed to his feet. “What am I supposed to do? I get up at seven, you get up at ten. I can’t always sit around for two or three hours while you snore away.” He wanted to pull her close. He wanted to stop the next word from coming out of her mouth. To go back to a moment in the kitchen when he’d been admiring the way sunlight glossed her skin.

  “You see?” What she said now was being backed up by her I’m-the-parent-and-you’re-the-unruly-child face. “All you had to do was make the bed.”

  “Yasemin …” Drew felt like picking up one of her angular, glass ashtrays and hitting himself in the forehead. “All you had to do was ask me instead of command me. All you had to do was not … pretend that because I don’t make the bed you aren’t important to me. Find a fucking Turkish husband who makes the bed and does the dishes and cooks—”

  “Now you’re shouting and swearing. Inst
ead of making the bed, you’ve ruined the morning.”

  The points of her nipples behind her T-shirt had become hostile. The lines around her mouth had become pinched and—the transformation was astonishing—she actually looked unattractive.

  “I shouldn’t have to do anything. All you had to do was not be a bitch.”

  “Ah-ah.” Those strange Turkish syllables of surprise—good or bad. Anger flared in her eyes. “Now you’re swearing at me. This is why I can’t live with you.”

  “Stop this.” Drew flung his hands up, fingers splayed, as if in surrender. “Really, I can’t take this on a Saturday morning. You think you didn’t insult me? You just told me I don’t care about you—for an unmade bed. You’re going to be the only woman in Turkey who divorces her husband because he doesn’t make the bed. Am I an alcoholic? Do I stay out all night? Am I sleeping with someone else? Some people have real problems.”

  “This is a real problem,” she snapped. “I can’t stand you sitting around reading when there are dishes in the sink. When the bed is unmade. You don’t care about the house. I’m trying to make a home.”

  “Okay.” His voice took on the tone of a prosecuting attorney. “How often do you make breakfast? In all the years we’ve been together, how many? Three? Four?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “What does it take to make the bed? Two, three minutes? Doesn’t a little more go into breakfast?”

  “I told you. The sink is full. And you’re sitting there reading.”

  “Yazz, I do the dishes. I just didn’t do them this morning. What is this? Why do you have to find problems everywhere you look? Why can’t you be like other people who are happy they don’t have to go to work on Saturday?”

  “Maybe you should find someone else.”

  “Jesus, how many times do we have to do this? I don’t want someone else, I just don’t want you to be …”

  “Such a bitch?”

  He made another gesture of surrender. To say no would be a lie. To say yes would make things worse. But then he blurted, “Yes! Do you really have to?” Now there was belligerence in his body language, and he stepped close to her. “Do you?” He brought his face closer to hers.

  She turned her back on him. “Conversation’s over.”

  “What?”

  She walked away. “Conversation’s over.”

  “Conversation’s over?” Blind rage took hold of him. He grabbed a vase and hurled it at the wall. It shattered against the plastered-over brick and sprayed the couch with glass.

  Yasemin stormed back into the room. “What did you break?”

  “Conversation’s over?” he hissed. He brought his fist down on the seat of a chair and to his surprise cracked the wooden panel.

  “Baby, don’t …”

  Drew didn’t even hear her any more. “Conversation’s over?” He slammed his fist into the chair again. The wood gave with a satisfying snap, and his hand went through.

  “Drew! I’ve had that chair since I was a girl! Pleeeease, Baby, please stop.”

  She wrapped her arms around his chest. “Please, Baby, please.”

  He was still looking over her head for things to smash. That particular Saturday, he’d stopped himself, but there were times when he’d actually shoved her out of the way to continue his rampage. Then, disgusted with himself, he would grab his jacket and run out the door.

  Now he was running back. Because in the last two years he’d learned that being miserable without her was worse than being miserable with her, that bullying her with logic until he’d proved his point wasn’t as important as keeping the argument from escalating.

  Fucking Horatio.

  3: 3

  AFTER TWO THOUSAND YEARS

  HE CRESTED THE HILL that put him in a tiny square encircled by shops and cafes. This was the Tünel end of Istiklal Avenue. His mouth had gone dry, his fingers were like icicles, and there was too much give behind his knees as he walked. Cobblestones under his sneakers, he went through an iron gate that opened into a narrow courtyard. A niche of artificial twilight paved the ocher flagstones, and the courtyard overflowed with potted tropical plants and tables occupied by upscale customers—men wearing shimmery summer suits and heavy rings, women with curving birds’ necks and shoulders exposed by light dresses.

  He peered through the glass of Asmali restaurant. There she was, standing at the bar with a couple of other editors, her hair as short as ever but streaked blond now. She was wearing a gray skirt and a sleeveless black top that outlined her proportions a little too well. Seeing her look this good without him was like catching an elbow to the gut. Her angular jaw had come from her father. From her mother, cheekbones she rarely bothered to accentuate with makeup. The thick eyebrows, like her jaw, suggested masculinity, but her nose, ever so slightly pert, was purely feminine. So was her mouth. From the neck down, all comparisons to men ended.

  His pulse thumped in his ears, and the pit of his stomach felt suddenly drafty as he reached for the brass door handle.

  How could she still turn him into a seventeen year old on a first date?

  Yasemin’s friends spotted him and leaned back a little, their eyes widening as though he were an apparition. Yasemin turned to see what had caught their attention.

  “Drew.”

  A restrained smile, not the one he’d fallen in love with. “Why didn’t you call?”

  He shrugged. It was all he could muster in the way of nonchalance. “Nothing planned. I was just headed up Istiklal and thought I’d peek in. Do you have a few minutes?”

  Selma and Esra tilted their chins up, looked down their noses at Yasemin, and shooed her with their hands, “Hadi, hadi …”

  Selma caught his eye and winked.

  “Five minutes, Drew.” Yasemin stepped away from the bar.

  They sat down at a table for two, its polished marble disk tinted pink.

  Waving away a menu, he ordered a beer. “Look, I just … I really wanted to see you. Just see you. In person.”

  She was made up today, foundation nearly obliterating her acne scars, mascara blackening eyes shadowed slate blue. Her lips shone with coppery iridescence, and, as though they weren’t sensual enough, she’d lined them.

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea anymore.”

  “We were married for four years, and we can’t get together for a beer once in a while?”

  “It always ends badly, Drew.” She lit a cigarette. “I don’t want to hear anymore about what I did wrong in our marriage. You’re the one who walked out.”

  “I know. Probably the biggest mistake of my life.”

  “It’s over, Drew. I’m not taking you back.”

  Christ, she knew where to stab him.

  “I’ve thought about it a lot, and if I could go back and do things over, I wouldn’t change anything.”

  “Nothing? You wouldn’t treat me just a little better? I mean, you don’t think your disdain validated every insecurity I ever had? I grew up with a father who made me feel everything I got excited about was basically worthless. Four years of high school wrestling and he went to two matches.”

  “You told me.”

  “Well I couldn’t take it from you. That … scorn. Not from the person I was closest to. Did you always have to snap at me? Then hit me with a list of my character flaws?”

  Her cell phone rang. She put her cigarette in her mouth and dug it out of her purse.

  “Alo?”

  Within a sentence he knew it was her boyfriend. And then that stunning smile—for him—the guy on the phone.

  More proof pain isn’t fatal.

  The waiter brought his beer, and he drank off a third of it in a few gulps.

  She kept saying, “I promise … promise …” Laughing her deep laugh and trying to hang up, she wasn’t able to until she’d said Soz veriyorum three more times. I promise.

  “Who is he these days?”

  She put her phone back in her purse. “Why should I tell you? You wouldn’t a
pprove.”

  He glanced over at Selma to let her know that he could find out if he really wanted to. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “He’s twenty.”

  If emotions translated to skin color, Drew would have flushed pure rage. He strained his voice until only mild sarcasm trickled through. “Is that what the blond’s for, to look younger? Hipper?”

  “The blond is for me. Can’t I have a change if I want one?”

  “Where the hell did you meet a college kid?”

  “I knew I shouldn’t have told you. He’s an intern.”

  Drew had always thought it would be one of the authors she worked with, not a fucking intern. “He’s probably been fantasizing about sleeping with his boss since he was hired. And now he thinks he woke up in heaven. He doesn’t even have to wrap it.” It hurt him to say it at least as much as it hurt her to hear it, but he was willing to drive the blade in a little deeper as long as she felt it, too.

  No doctor had been able to find anything wrong with either of them, but for two years they had tried—vitamins, the six critical days of the month, fertility drugs, artificial insemination—and still, at the end of every month, a bloody wad of bathroom tissue in the little blue pail, sometimes an ugly clot in the toilet. And then the week-long depression. The living room foggy with cigarettes first thing in the morning, the curtains drawn and the lights off, an open bottle of wine on the coffee table.

  Her eyes narrowed. “That’s why I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m glad we’re divorced.” She stood up. “Don’t come here again.”

  He finished his beer as she walked away. He didn’t mind so much that there was someone else. What he couldn’t bear was knowing that it was some kid who couldn’t possibly appreciate the woman he was with. Who was just in love with the idea of nailing his boss.

  The bottom of his mug hit the table hard enough to chip glass and turn heads. He left money on the table and walked out with a nod to Selma and Esra.

  He negotiated the maze of tables in the courtyard.

  Of course, no one named Jesus of Nazareth had ever walked the earth. After two thousand years nothing had changed for the better. Nothing at all.