The Christos Mosaic

by Vincent Czyz

  “No idea.”

  “Listen: Wisdom hath been created before all things, and the understanding of prudence from everlasting. The word of God most high is the fountain of Wisdom; and Her ways are everlasting commandments. To whom hath the root of Wisdom been revealed? or who hath known Her wise counsels?”

  It was the Gospel of John again, except for her. “Wisdom was personified as a woman?”

  “Wisdom, hochmah, is feminine in Hebrew.”

  And in Greek: sophia.

  “According to Proverbs 8:22, She was indeed God’s first creation.” He held the book out to Drew. “This is why Sirach was not included in the Bible. The Church fathers could not accept Wisdom as a woman. Nor, for that matter, the Holy Spirit. Spirit is also feminine in Hebrew.”

  Drew took the weighty volume from the old man. The Jewish Wisdom of Ancient Alexandria had been scripted in gold, much of which had flaked away, across the black cover.

  “The Jews living in Alexandria held wisdom up as a universal ideal.

  Through Wisdom, one attained spiritual and moral perfection. This is more important than Ezekiel’s Exodus, although that is this book, too.”

  Drew waffled the book in one hand. “How much?”

  “One hundred, twenty-five Egyptian pounds.”

  Drew didn’t think he would even need to open the book. Intuitively he was sure he already knew exactly why Ezekiel’s Exodus was among Stephen’s keywords—it was one of those clues there to define another clue: The Bacchae. The Bacchae was a play written by Euripides in the fifth century BC. By mentioning Ezekiel’s Exodus, a play written in the style of Euripides, Stephen was pointing out that Jews had taken up writing Greek-style tragedies—a measure of the depth of the interpenetration between Greek and Jewish cultures.

  “You don’t happen to have any Euripides do you?”

  Shimon stepped back and made a sweeping motion with his arm. “Euripides, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Aristophanes …”

  “The Bacchae?”

  Shimon produced a battered paperback, small enough to fit in Drew’s back pocket. “One hundred, thirty Egyptian pounds for both.”

  “How about a hundred and fifty?” It was less than $30.

  Shimon slapped Drew’s hand as though swatting a fly on the taller man’s palm, but held on and shook his hand vigorously. “You are very generous, my friend.”

  Drew waved as he and Zafer crossed the parking lot.

  On the other side of the impressive sand-colored walls, a monk in an information booth used a walkie-talkie to call one of the other monks to guide them around the monastery.

  A burly man named Father Adwan greeted them in a courtyard. Although he had a beard of graying tumbleweed, he looked like he could bear hug a novice to the floor. He spoke clear English in a baritone voice.

  Zafer listened politely, but he cut off the priest’s next sentence with an explanation of why they had come.

  Father Adwan shook his heavy head. “I have been here all my life. I remember no Tariq Soufanati.”

  “Is it possible that you … forgot? It was a long time ago after all.”

  “I know all of the monks, and I know the names of all the children and novices we’ve taken in in the last fifty years.”

  “Father, this is the largest monastery we’ve seen. Are you sure you haven’t forgotten a boy who lived here but never became a monk?”

  “One hundred and twelve may seem a large number of monks to you, but when you have lived here among these people all your life, I assure you, it is quite small. And those who never became monks stand out for that very fact.”

  “Could we just … check the records? Just in case?”

  “May I ask why?”

  Zafer took out his MIT credentials. “Tariq is dead. His death involved certain … antiquities. Although he later converted to Islam, he spent some years in a Coptic monastery. We were hoping we could talk to someone who knew him.”

  Father Adwan shook his head. “No. We had no one like that.”

  “Could we look over the monastery records? Just to be sure?”

  The monk shrugged his broad shoulders. “This way.”

  The records were kept, not in a windowless office buzzing with flies, but in a fluorescent-lit library humming with air-conditioning. A spindly librarian sat behind a desk with a computer on it. Father Adwan issued an order in Arabic, and the willowy monk got up and disappeared into a back room.

  Drew noticed a portrait of Jesus hung on one of the walls. Even here, in North Africa, Jesus was depicted with blue eyes and fair hair.

  The librarian returned after a few minutes. He shook his head.

  Father Adwan shrugged. “It’s just as I said.”

  Zafer nodded. “Thank you for your time.”

  “One more to go,” Drew said when they were back in the sweltering parking lot.

  Zafer opened the door of the Renault but didn’t get in. “We’ll check, but I don’t think we’ll find anything.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Father Adwan is lying.”

  9: 5

  BROTHER PARAMOS

  ZAFTER WAS AT LEAST HALF RIGHT: Deir Makarios, twenty-five or so kilometers away, had no record of Tariq either.

  “Well,” Drew asked, “what now?”

  They were driving north.

  “I’m going to have to make Father Adwan an offer he can’t refuse.”

  Drew shook his head. “You’re forgetting whom we’re dealing with. Men like these you could starve to death, torture, burn at the stake, and they still wouldn’t break.”

  “You have a better idea?”

  It occurred to Drew that he did. “If you were a monk in Father Adwan’s monastery and you had a scroll written in something that looked like Hebrew, whom would you take it to?”

  Zafer looked confused. Then his face split open in a big grin. “The old-timer. Shimon.”

  “Right. Even if they didn’t show it to Shimon, Shimon speaks Hebrew, and he reads Aramaic. He’ll know which of the other monks know Hebrew. Or Aramaic.”

  Zafer’s right hand flew from the steering wheel, and the broad palm thumped against Drew’s chest. “That’s our man.”

  Drew felt like a gong that had just been rung.

  Zafer hit the accelerator, and the desert road disappeared under their wheels.

  Shimon’s bushy white eyebrows lifted when he saw the two foreigners in his shop again. “There is something else you would like to buy?”

  Drew smirked. “You have any copies of the Q document?’

  The surprise on Shimon’s face was genuine, but even Drew saw the recognition in Shimon’s eyes. He knew.

  “A copy in Aramaic, not Greek.”

  Shimon looked from Drew to Zafer and back again.

  “Tariq is dead.”

  Lifting his hands, Shimon tilted his face skyward and muttered in Hebrew. After lowering his hands, he shook his head. “I didn’t know.”

  “It was an accident, but it was because of the scroll, and now there are men looking for it, people who would have no problem killing you or the monks. Has anyone else been asking about Q?”

  Shimon shook his head.

  “Then why did Father Adwan lie to us? He said he’d never heard of Tariq Soufanati.”

  Shimon sighed. “He never forgave Tariq for converting to Islam. As far as he is concerned, Tariq Soufanati never existed.”

  “Have you seen it? The scroll?”

  Shimon didn’t answer, which, in itself, was answer.

  Church bells rang, signaling some service or other. They sounded plaintive, as though calling monks not to prayer, but to a funeral.

  “Look, Shimon, we’re trying to keep this scroll out of the hands of the Vatican. If you’ve seen it, if you know what it is, you know it’ll just about pull the rug out from under Christianity.”

  Shimon nodded slowly. He could express his thoughts in five different languages, and his head held who knew how much accumulated knowledge, but Shimon was sud
denly an old man fearing for his life.

  “Believe me,” Drew said, “we’re not the ones you have to be afraid of. But they’re not far.”

  Shimon’s dark eyes shifted nervously under his craggy brow. “Brother Paramos,” he blurted out. “You must find Brother Paramos.”

  “Is he in the monastery?”

  “No. The desert. Until last year, the road to the monastery was not paved. We had solitude. I sold only books then. And very few. After the new road was built, Brother Paramos became angry. A monastery, he fumed, is not for tourists.”

  “Where in the desert?”

  Shimon peeked warily out of his shop. “I don’t want Father Adwan to see you talking to me. Come, this way.” He led them to the side of his shop hidden from the monastery compound.

  “You see those hills?” He pointed in a northwesterly direction.

  “Those flat dunes?” Drew asked.

  “They’re stone, not sand. And there are caves. Brother Paramos lives in a cave well beyond those hills, but that’s the direction you must take.”

  Drew grinned at Zafer. “Bir mah’ara.” A cave.

  Zafer nodded.

  “When you reach those hills, look west. You will see three more such formations. The one due west—that is where Brother Paramos is now. It will take you perhaps an hour and a half on foot. Which, unless you steal our tractor, is the way you must go.”

  Drew stepped out of the shop. A hot gust made him squint. There was something carried by this wind. Not so much the grit, which was just earth with no place to settle, but something of the mummies he’d seen in Cairo’s museum. You could marvel over how old they were, but you’d wind up the same way—bits flaking off and dusting away—if you stood in this wind too long. Indifference. That’s what it carried. An awful indifference to you and what mattered to you.

  “Wait!” Shimon pulled a folder of papers from a shelf and handed it to Drew. “I’ve translated the scroll into English.”

  Drew lifted the cover and glanced at the first page, marveling at the tiny, incredibly neat letters. He couldn’t believe he was holding a copy of Q1.

  Zafer’s phone rang. He frowned, black eyebrows crinkling, as he checked the number. “Kadir,” he said to Drew as he answered.

  “Hello, Zafer.”

  The accent was French.

  “Raymond,” Zafer growled.

  9: 6

  IMMACULATE MIRRORS

  “THERE IS SOMEONE who would like to speak to you.”

  “Özür dilerim, Zafer.” I’m sorry.

  Kadir’s voice.

  “I don’t know how they found me.”

  “Where are you?”

  Kadir didn’t get a chance to answer.

  “I recommend that you find the scroll before we do. When you find it, we’ll be happy to return your little friend to you. If you don’t find it … only God knows what will happen to him. Au revoir.”

  The signal died.

  “Lanet olsun!” Zafer clenched the phone in his fist. “If we don’t find the scroll before they do, Kadir’s dead.” Zafer looked at his cell phone. “And how long have they known this number?” He turned to Drew. “C’mon.”

  Zafer found a taxi driver in the parking lot and paid him a hundred Egyptian pounds to drive his cell phone to Cairo. He made the driver swear in the names of the Prophet and Allah that the phone would stay in Cairo. “I don’t care what you do with it, as long as it doesn’t leave Cairo for a week.”

  “What about mine?” Drew asked.

  “For now just keep it off. We might need it later.”

  From the trunk of the Renault, Zafer grabbed a canvas bag containing canteens, flashlights, compact binoculars, a first aid kit, a narrow wooden box identical to the one that had held the Habakkuk Scroll, and an army spade with a folding blade.

  “I don’t know why I didn’t tell Ashraf to get us an SUV.” He shook his head. “Piss-poor planning.”

  Drew hoped it wasn’t an omen.

  Zafer slipped the strap of the bag over his head, and then wrapped his head in a white keffiyeh. “You, too.” He held up another keffiyeh. “Can’t go into the desert without covering your head.”

  Nodding, Drew doubled his ponytail so that it wouldn’t stick out. He was about to drop the folder Shimon had given him on the front seat, but then thought better of it and put it in the trunk. Glimpsing himself in the reflection of the car’s window—T-shirt, keffiyeh, sun-glasses—he realized what a ridiculous figure he cut.

  “Let’s go.”

  Shimon was standing just inside his shop. He looked as light as a bird under the white jalabiya, whose hem was being tugged by a breeze.

  “There is a gate in the fence, there.” He pointed.

  It was a good time of day. The sun was still hot, but not quite as merciless as it had been a few hours earlier.

  A monk waved them back as they walked through a cultivated field, but they ignored him.

  In minutes the fields were behind them.

  The earth under their sneakers became dry, but it was hard-packed. Tinted red. It seemed to get drier as they approached the first set of hills, and the land itself turned a uniform tawny.

  Except for the wind humming in their ears as though through the chambers of a seashell, the scrape of their sneakers on the sand, their own breathing, and the rustling of their clothes, there was nothing to hear. No bird twitters, no insect hums.

  They reached the hills—more like lumps of stone tortured by the wind—after about twenty minutes, their exposed forearms glistening with sweat. Drew saw a couple of black holes that looked like the entrances to burrows for some enormous breed of animal. Had Saint Bishoi inhabited one of those caves? Did his ghost hover nearby after sunset like a pale flame? Did it matter?

  After skirting the southern end of the formation, they stopped and Zafer took out the binoculars. He panned back and forth for what seemed a long time. Even without binoculars, Drew could see their goal—a tiny lump on the horizon.

  “Looks like we’re alone, but I don’t like this. We’re too visible.”

  “Why don’t we wait until night?”

  Zafer shook his head. “If they know where we are, even the general area, then our best chance is to get in and get out before they show up. We’re playing for keeps now.” He put the binoculars back in the canvas bag. “You can still turn back, you know.”

  Drew used a middle finger to push his sunglasses higher on the bridge of his nose, but sweat made them slip right back down. “Not a fucking chance.”

  Zafer thumped him in the chest with the back of a hand. “Hadi.” C’mon.

  They disturbed a surface of fine sand as they walked, but it didn’t hold the shape of their feet. Someone with a desert eye, maybe Raymond, could probably figure out that someone had come this way, but Drew saw no trace of their passage.

  Zafer stopped frequently to scan the horizon, all 360 degrees of it.

  Nothing. No sign of Brother Paramos or anyone else.

  Sweat stung Drew’s eyes. Although the keffiyeh absorbed most of it, he still had to use the back of a thumb from time to time to squeegee his eyebrows.

  They were now close enough to see stony humps rising against a cloudless blue sky dusted with orange. The formation, more extensive than the previous one, was more or less split into two by a winding pass about fifty yards wide. They walked slowly through the rock-strewn gap.

  “There.” Drew pointed.

  Off to their right, shaped more or less like a diamond, was a ragged tear in the stone. They clambered up the slope on their hands and knees. The bag Zafer carried swung just above the rough stone. As the Turk stood up in the opening, a yard ahead of Drew, a monk in robes and an embroidered cap appeared.

  “What do you want here?” He spoke in English.

  The austere landscape seemed reflected in the thin face pitted with dark acne scars. Even the monk’s mustache and goatee were sparse, as though hair had difficulty taking root in that sharp-angled face. He was a
bout Zafer’s height, but looked bony beneath his midnight robes.

  Zafer put a leg up on the slope and rested an elbow on his thigh. His face was about level with the monk’s feet. “Tariq is dead.”

  The monk nodded. “I knew. I wasn’t sure, but I knew. I hear his voice sometimes in dreams, but I am never able to see his face.”

  “We’re here for the scroll.”

  “Why should I give it to you?” The monk turned and retreated into the cave.

  Zafer and Drew scrambled after him.

  The cave wasn’t large, but it had a high ceiling. The rough walls were burnt orange.

  Drew was thankful for the shade. Without the keffiyeh, he probably would have collapsed already.

  “Sooner or later the people who killed Tariq are going to find you,” Zafer said. “You’re not safe here anymore.”

  There was a thin mattress on the cave floor and, against a wall, a stack of books, food in cans and boxes, large bottles of water, candles melted to varying heights, a rectangular mirror that looked like it had come off a truck, and a broom. The broom, Drew guessed, was Brother Paramos’s chief weapon in fighting off the desert.

  The only other sign the cave was inhabited was a circle of rocks with ashes in the center.

  Where the hell does he get the wood? Drew wondered.

  “It is not vanity,” the monk said.

  He must have assumed Drew was looking at the mirror.

  “I am not the only monk in the desert. Sometimes, mirrors are our only means of communication.”

  Drew took off his sunglasses.

  “Why should monks be tour guides?” The monk’s voice rose in irritation. “For a few Egyptian pounds? If we had been able to sell the scroll, there would be no need of tourists. We need solitude. How else can we speak with God? We need silence. We need to free ourselves of the distractions that prevent God from communicating with us. Only when we are wholly cleansed, wholly pure, can we hear God’s voice. Only when we have made ourselves into immaculate mirrors can He see His reflection.”

  “But why would you sell a scroll that could change the meaning of Christianity?”