by Paul L Maier
“And the good?”
“I couldn’t be happier. They’re going to winch us up in a large netted basket or raft, just as they used to do for people and goods in past centuries.” Jon gestured to the contraption as they walked toward it.
Shannon laughed. “I don’t think so.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not going. If you are suicidally minded, you can go, Jon. I’m staying here.”
“Aw, c’mon, Shannon. It’s perfectly safe. Where’s your spirit of adventure?”
“Where it should be: next to my feet, which are planted firmly in the realm of sanity.”
“Look how sturdy these lines are-one-and-a-half-inch hemp. Now they’re calling to us from the top. Please hop on board?”
Shannon looked very skeptically at the contrivance. It had a small wooden floor, something like a raft that was covered with netting underneath and along the sides. The netting was bunched together at the top, where it was secured to the main hoisting rope cable. Two smaller ropes were attached to each side to stabilize the rig. It was interesting to look at, to be sure, but hardly worth risking one’s life, she concluded.
Just then, a monk came along to join them for the trip to the top. Smiling genially, he climbed onto the conveyance as if it were an Otis elevator. His confidence seemed to melt Shannon’s qualms, and she finally boarded also.
“Hoist away!” the monk called up in Greek.
Slowly the ascent began. Shannon actually enjoyed the first part of their voyage upward because of the spectacular view. But when they were two hundred feet off the ground, she made the mistake of looking down. She gasped and clutched at Jon’s arm.
“No, darling,” Jon soothed. “Don’t look straight down. Just keep looking out over this once-in-a-lifetime panorama.”
“But what’s that clickety-click sound up there?”
“Just the ratchet wheel on the windlass that’s hoisting us up. You always want to hear those clicks.”
“Why?”
“They prevent the winch from turning the other way.”
“In which case we’d hurtle back down?”
“Well… exactly.”
“Oh, how delightful! I wonder if that’s ever happened.”
“I understand that the windlass works perfectly. Most of the time, anyway.”
“Jon! Not a time to be joking.”
By now they were over halfway up to the monastery. While the view outward was breathtaking, any glance downward was terrifying. They were higher now than most radio towers, suspended between heaven and earth, and held only by hemp cables that looked quite worn. Now they themselves were also meteora.
Shannon was sorry that she had ever let Jon talk her into this exquisite bit of torture. She cast another glance at the hawsers that spelled life or death for them. “How often do they replace those ropes, Jon?”
He turned to the monk and asked the same question in Greek. When he had the answer, he turned to Shannon and smiled. “He thought the last time was when Lord Byron visited Greece in the 1830s.”
Both men hardly concealed their mirth. Shannon pondered which of them to hoist overboard first, but she decided their weight in the basket was beneficial to her own safety.
The monk then added another comment, which Jon translated. “The brother here was only spoofing,” he said. “As good stewards of property, they replace the ropes only ‘when the Lord lets them break!’”
“Not helpful, Jon!” she cried, Jon… Jon… Jon echoing across the entire valley. The men, however, were doing a miserable job of trying to stifle their laughter.
Suddenly the clickety-click stopped and the ascent upward was halted. A wind from the west had arisen, causing their rude gondola to start swinging from side to side. “What’s going on?” she demanded, her hands clammy.
Jon asked the monk, then replied, “He says that you should not be concerned. The machine breaks down sometimes, but they’re usually able to repair it in less than twenty-four hours.”
Her heart momentarily stopped. But then her mood changed to one of steel as she said, “Now listen closely, Jon. If I could let go of the edge of this witch’s basket you’ve arranged for me, instead of my holding on for dear life, these two hands would gladly wrap themselves around your throat until you begged for mercy. And the same goes for your new Greek friend there, monk or not! Now get me out of this mess, and I mean now.”
Realizing that once again he had stepped over the line, Jon admitted, sheepishly, “It was only a little joke, honey.”
The clickety-click resumed, and soon they were at the summit. Though Shannon’s knees were wobbly as she emerged from their netted elevator, she refused to give Jon the satisfaction of accepting his help in ascending the final steps to the courtyard of Varlaam monastery.
“Shannon, honey,” he called. “I’m sorry. Really.”
“Later, Jon,” she said through clenched teeth. Honestly, sometimes she wondered if her husband would ever grow up. As much as she loved the man, there were times she could hardly stand to be within ten feet of him.
A violet-robed warden of diminutive stature extended them a warm greeting, and Shannon tried to arrange her features into a more neutral state. The warden showed them to their quarters for the night, and Shannon was pleased to see that the room was nicely appointed-not the monastic cell she had expected-with twin beds and a window looking out over the valley below. Shannon quickly chose the bed away from that window.
By now it was late afternoon, a golden yolk of sun starting to drop onto the western horizon. The vesper had rung, and the brother monks gathered in the monastery chapel to chant their evening prayers. Jon and Shannon, however, were escorted to the refectory, where they were treated to a simple, though tasty, dinner of seafood broth, green beans, white fish, dark bread, and-of course-black olives. A pungent retsina wine, served in wooden goblets, assured them that they were in the very heart of Greece.
Early to bed, Jon finally admitted to her why their “ascension to heaven” was momentarily delayed. On the cell phone, he had asked the brother in charge of the windlass to halt the hoisting for a minute or two when they were near the top “so that they could gather in a final view.”
“I’m sorry, honey.” His voice was contrite. “I shouldn’t have taken your acrophobia so lightly. I really thought…” He paused.
“I’m listening.”
“I really thought the magnificent view would take your mind off the circumstances. I didn’t mean to scare you out of your wits. Truly I didn’t.”
Shannon took a deep breath. It wasn’t the first time Jon’s enthusiasm had overridden his better judgment, and she knew it wouldn’t be the last. Despite his sometimes-childish pranks, she did love him. And she somehow always found it in her heart to forgive him.
“Okay, Jon. I… I’ll try to forgive you. But if you want a good-night kiss, you’ll have to come over here. I’m not getting any closer to that window than I have to.”
Almost before she’d finished speaking, Jon appeared at her side. She squeezed over against the wall to make room for him on the narrow bed. He snuggled in and wrapped his arms around her. “Thank you, darling. I love you.”
Surrendering to his embrace, she once again thanked God for bringing this wonderful, unpredictable, albeit exasperating, man into her life.
The meeting with Abbot Simonides the next morning went well enough, although it was complicated by the fact that the rotund, white-bearded archimandrite insisted on using his broken English instead of Greek-this in deference to Shannon. In responding to Jon’s manuscript project, Simonides promised to secure the cooperation of the other monasteries at Meteora, but admitted that they were better known for their museums, icons, and relics than their libraries. “Here at Varlaam,” he said proudly, “please to believe it: our museum has a finger of St. John the apostle, and also a shoulder blade of the apostle Andrew, brother of St. Peter!”
Shannon exchanged a glance with her husband that told i
t all: privately they would share a chuckle over the dear brother’s sincerity, but a simple smile and a nod were far more appropriate here.
“For your purposes, I would go to Holy Mountain,” the patriarch continued.
“That is indeed our plan, Your Grace,” Jon replied. “Mount Athos, in fact, is our next destination. But for the very reasons you mention, the collections at Meteora have been overlooked, I think. If you and your colleagues at the other monasteries here took a complete inventory of your manuscript collections, something priceless might yet be discovered and the world would be in your debt.”
The abbot’s eyebrows arched. Slowly he nodded and said, “Yes, we will do this. We will do this. And yes, let the photo people come too and make pictures of our treasures.”
“We could not ask for more, Your Grace,” Jon said.
Shannon knew that he was probably restraining himself from doing cartwheels in his delight. “We also deeply appreciate your hospitality at Varlaam,” Shannon added. “Ef charisto!”
“Parakalo!” Abbot Simonides replied. “It is nothing. It is nothing.”
“ Ouxi! In fact, it is everything,” Jon commented.
Shannon’s favorite memory of their visit to Varlaam was when the abbot announced, in parting, that the crack at the base of the pedestrian bridge from the monastery to the adjoining plateau had been repaired, and that Varlaam’s service vehicle would drive them down to their car. She would not have to risk her life again on that netted raft, since the trip down the cliffside would have been even more terrifying, she assumed, a virtual descent into hell.
God was good! Her husband, on the other hand? Well, the jury was still out in his case.
On the drive northward to Saloniki-as Greeks referred to their second-largest city, Thessalonica-Jon gave Shannon the gist of the phone call he had put in to Marylou Kaiser. To his surprise, sales of the Arabic translation of his Jesus book were booming in moderate Muslim nations like Morocco, Egypt, and Jordan, with brisk success even in Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, and Indonesia-and not just as fuel for book burning.
“Then again, chalk it up to controversy, Marylou,” he had said. “Controversy is always the mother’s milk of sales.”
“But it may be more than that, Dr. Weber,” his secretary had replied. “Because of your other comments on Islam in that chapter, all sorts of debates are springing up between Muslims and Christians in various cities here, including Boston.”
“Nothing wrong with that-so long as it remains dialogue and no one gets steamed. By the way, anything from the Iranians?”
“Do you mean, has your fatwa been lifted?”
“Yeah, I guess that’s what I mean.”
“No. Which reminds me, Mr. Dillingham-the CIA, you’ll recall-has phoned several times to complain that you aren’t checking in with their operatives in Greece, as you should have.”
“Darn. I plumb forgot. But hey, I haven’t been assassinated yet, have I?”
“That’s so comforting, Dr. Weber. Now please do the right thing?”
“I promise. Oh, and please ask Osman al-Ghazali to try and monitor some of those Christian-Muslim debates and get back to me, okay?”
Shannon had not worried about the fatwa for several days, but Jon’s mention of it restored a furrow or two to her brow. He saw it and immediately switched the subject to their favorite topic of late: the five leaves of brown parchment that had such explosive implications-provided they were authentic and could be dated.
“Those just have to be pages from Hegesippus’s lost memoirs, honey. And no, you don’t have to ask if I packed them. The attache case went into the trunk first.”
“Let me play devil’s advocate, Jon, and ask why you seem to be so sure that this is material from Hegesippus. After all, those pages are anonymous-no author’s name anywhere.”
“True enough. But they provide new detail on the death of James the Just that doesn’t appear anywhere else. So when Eusebius states that he got his information from Hegesippus, and the expanded version of this material shows up inside Eusebius just at that passage where Eusebius tells of the death of James, I think any scholar would support our conclusion that yes, this obviously older text must come from Hegesippus.”
She nodded. “I only hope the experts agree, especially because of what Hegesippus wrote about the Canon.”
“Yessss!” Jon dragged out the sibilants in his enthusiasm. He would never forget the tidal wave of excitement that had splashed over them both in Cambridge when they read the passage: After blessed Luke wrote his first treatise to Theophilus, which we call Luke’s Gospel, and his second treatise to Theophilus, which we call the Acts of the Apostles, he wrote yet a third treatise to the same person, which we call the Second Acts of the Apostles.
“Second Acts, Shannon, Second Acts!”
She beamed as if it were fresh news. “No less than a missing book of the New Testament!”
“What do you think Luke wrote in the second book of Acts?”
“I think it’s obvious, Jon. He must have finished off St. Paul’s story, since he really leaves us hanging in the last verse of Acts, where Paul is in Rome for two years, waiting for his trial before Nero.”
“True. Luke loved reporting about trials-think how many times Paul shows up before Greek and Roman authorities in the book of Acts. Wild horses couldn’t have prevented him from telling about Paul’s biggest trial of all-before the emperor himself. And yet, no report of it in Acts.”
“So that’s why he must have told of it in Second Acts.”
“Exactly. I’d give my left arm-no, maybe both-if I could find that third treatise, O Theophilus.”
“Think it will ever be found?”
“Unlikely. Nobody ever mentioned it in other sources from that era.”
“Except for Hegesippus,” she corrected him.
“Except for Hegesippus-if dating those pages can authenticate their antiquity. Which, of course, is why we’re heading for Mount Athos. You and I have dealt with frauds before, but this particular find is different. Concocting those pages would be virtually impossible, and their random discovery all but shouts authenticity. Frankly, the main reason I want Father Miltiades to look at our treasure is less to see if they’re genuine and more to gauge their age-no rhyme intended.”
“Assuming they’re authentic, Jon, how do you think the public will react once we break the news?”
“The reference to Second Acts alone is going to shake the whole world of biblical scholarship.”
By now they were approaching Thessalonica on the national road, the inky blue Aegean Sea to the east and the towering hulk of Mount Olympus to the west, its top lost in the clouds. Jon opened the window and yelled up to the mythological home of the gods, “Hey, Zeus! How’s your dysfunctional family?”
“Jon, have you lost it?” Shannon wondered.
“Shhhh! I’m waiting for his answer.”
“You have lost it!”
“Probably. But we don’t skirt Mount Olympus every day, now, do we?”
They reached Thessalonica in time for dinner at their hotel, the Macedonia Palace, which stood proudly over the eastern waterfront of the city. Jon noticed that Shannon’s ire over his performance at Meteora had moderated, a mood change fostered by the delicious Greek cuisine they were sampling at a table on the hotel terrace overlooking the harbor. Below them was a band shell, where a small orchestra was filling the warm evening air with syrtaki music in general, Mikis Theodorakis in particular. Jon looked at Shannon and found her especially lovely when gilded by the setting sun. He took her hand in his and gave it a gentle squeeze. When she squeezed back, he assumed all was well again and that they could look forward to a beautiful evening.
At breakfast, they discussed Jon’s overnight trip to Mount Athos. While Shannon stayed at their hotel with plans to visit the museums and excavations in Thessalonica, Jon would embark on a ferry for the voyage to the port of Dafni midway down the western shore of the Athos peninsula.
Sh
annon would much rather have accompanied Jon to discuss the age of her documents with Miltiades Papandriou. She asked, “What about that strange rule excluding women from Mount Athos, Jon? Isn’t it the only place on earth with that restriction?”
“Probably.”
“Well, I think it’s antiquated at best, and sexist, medieval, discriminatory, demeaning, and an insult to women everywhere at worst.”
“I really wish you’d have an opinion on the subject,” he trifled. “But I don’t think women ought to feel singled out by that policy since it applies also to all female members of the animal kingdom.”
Fortunately she caught the slight smile at the corner of his mouth or she would have given it an affectionate slap.
“Wait… I think I made a mistake,” Jon confessed. “They do allow hens on Mount Athos. They need the fresh egg yolks to supply the tempera for painting their icons.”
“How very generous of them!”
“Oh, and feline femmes too. If it weren’t for cats, rodents would overrun all twenty monasteries on the Holy Mountain.”
“And that’s it for females on Mount Athos?”
“So far as I know.”
“But why, Jon?”
“The monks don’t want any of you sexy creatures around. These are holy men, my darling, and they don’t want to be tempted or seduced by womankind. At least, that’s the standard impression across the world.”
“Well, what’s the real reason, then?”
“I still think that what I told you is the real reason. Officially, though, they claim that women would distract them from their prayers and meditations-the higher purposes for which they chose the monastic life.”
She was pensive for some moments, her fingers turning an orange juice glass around several times.
Somewhat warily, Jon asked, “So what exactly are you thinking, my darling? I can see the wheels turning inside that lovely head of yours.”
“Oh, nothing really.” She gave him a teasing smile. “Just toying with the idea of somehow disguising myself as a man and accompanying you.”