by Linda Stasi
“Geez, Terry,” I said, picking him up off the table to get to the door. It wasn’t the super. It was the Judsons. “We saw Gerald, the super. Everything OK?”
“Oh sure, thanks, the lock in the baby’s room keeps opening.”
“You want me to have a look?” Dane asked.
“Sure, thanks.”
“Dane can fix anything!” Raylene exclaimed, holding out her arms in the universal “Can I hold the baby?” gesture.
“Mama up!” he exclaimed happily to Raylene.
“May I?”
“Sure,” I said. She proceeded to sit down and feed Terry his bottle while I heated up a jar of mashed peas.
“I’ll be damned,” I said. Raylene looked proud as punch that Terry was eager to eat the peas she proffered.
“I can’t get him to eat anything. I’m afraid I’m not so good at this mother thing,” I moaned.
Raylene smiled and pshawed. “You’re a fine mother. I was a good mother back in the day, too…”
“Why, Raylene! I had no idea you had children. I mean, you never mentioned…”
“‘Had,’ my dear. I had a son, Makenson, but well, he died. Tropical disease. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Of course. I’m so sorry,” I said, rubbing her shoulder.
Terry was done, but she wasn’t budging, so I picked up one of the books from the stack I’d taken from Morris’s house. “I have about five hundred hours of research to do,” I said, hoping that she’d take the hint and leave because I really did have five hundred hours of research to do.
“Let me bring Terry to our place, give you some time to work,” she said as Dane came out of the nursery. “Looks like the super did a super job.” He laughed. “Gaffer’s tape! The tape of the gods.”
“Dane,” Raylene said. “We’re gonna take Terry to our place for a couple of hours. Give Alessandra some time to work.” Did I say that was OK?
“Excellent!” Dane said.
“Well, excellent then it is,” I said, throwing up my hands. I packed up a diaper bag with bottles, diapers, and Cheerios. “You’re like twenty feet from my door, but still…”
As they were about to leave, Dane turned back. “Alessandra, I know you’re very busy, but we’re having a few friends in for a small dinner party tonight. Even a local politician. We’d love it if you could join us…”
That was the last thing I felt like doing. “Gee, I’d love to but I haven’t got a sitter.”
“Don’t be silly,” he said. “Bring the baby.”
“A screaming baby is not exactly great dinner company.”
“He’ll be fine. Why, look. He’s quiet as a lamb of God,” he said.
“Yeah, that’s funny because he’s been the devil spawn all day so far,” I joked.
“Dinner at eight,” Raylene said, whisking away Terry, who was happy as could be to be whisked away. They were quirky, but nice people, and frankly I was glad for the solitude. “I’ll pick him up around five…,” I tried telling them as they rushed away.
I sat down at my desk in the living room and cracked opened the Voynich Manuscript. As soon as I opened it, I heard a loud bang, like a crack of electricity. It seemed to emanate from right near where I sitting, but there was nothing there. Scared it was an electrical problem, I smelled all the wires near me. Nothing.
Between the cold and the crack, my apartment was turning into one of those self-contained climate laboratories. What next, indoor rain?
Again, it just seemed coincidental and so I blindly went back to studying the book.
As Roy had said, the Voynich Manuscript was an ancient, illustrated codex of weird plants and other oddities, which were hand illustrated and written in a language I’d never seen before. But this volume wasn’t just any old book. This copy of the Voynich Manuscript looked to be ancient and hand created. The pages looked to be real calfskin parchment. Jesus. What I didn’t know then was that only one of them was supposed to have existed and if another one existed, it sure wasn’t supposed to have been in Morris’s Levitt house.
I was carefully—very, very carefully—turning the pages when I came upon a note tucked into the book somewhere between the middle and the back.
It wasn’t that there had been a note tucked inside that made me sit up and take notice, it was what was written on that note that did it.
8
To my son,
Once the tube is in your possession, contact Mr. Myles Engles, Engles Rare Books, Lexington Ave., New York City.
Respectfully
your father,
Morris Golden
PS: the chains of our Lord did not bind him. The secret is above where he hung below. 31.780231° N, 35.233991° E
My God, what a creep, I thought. And what a lunatic.
On the back he’d scrawled a phone number with 011+44 before it; it was the country code for England. Odd because the note said that Engles’ shop was in the U.S.
The vellum reminded me of the card that Father Elias had given to Roy—also with a different country code on it. I took it from my bag, and looked up the church online. The Wikipedia entry startled me: Our Lady of Vilnius, it read, was the national parish church of the Lithuanian Catholic community. Despite a landmarks preservation debate, the church was demolished in May 2015. Demolished? What the hell? New York City? Why would a ninety-year-old guy travel to New York City for a priest, anyway?
I dialed his number, but it just rang. No answer, no voice mail, no nothing.
I next Googled Arturo Elias, priest. But came up blank. Then I e-mailed The Standard’s librarian, Scott, to see what he could dig up on the church and this Father Elias guy. He e-mailed me back a few seconds later repeating what I’d already learned about the church and that there had been a huge protest when the diocese closed it, and worse, when they sold it to developers. The last parish priest there was not named Elias, but Frank Lowry, who had retired. I e-mailed Scott back to see if there was any info on where this Lowry had chosen to retire. That was a lot easier to find, so I dialed up the seminary in Maryland where he was now semiretired and teaching.
He got on the phone immediately. “This is Father Lowry, how may I help you?”
I explained who I was, but only said that Father Arturo Elias had presided at my friend’s father’s funeral and that my friend wanted to contact him to thank him but that we couldn’t find him since the church where he’d told us he worked, Our Lady of Vilnius, apparently was no longer there.
Father Lowry took a moment and said, “That’s correct. It was demolished. But Ms. Russo, and I’m loath to say this, someone was pulling your leg.”
“At a funeral?”
“Yes. There are some very weird people out there, as you know. I was there for twenty-two years and we never had a priest named Father Elias. Well, let me be clearer on that: there wasn’t a priest by that name during my time there.”
“Oh?”
“That’s why it’s so curious that this man would use that particular name.”
“What do you mean, Father?”
“Because Father Arturo Elias was the name of the very first pastor Our Lady of Vilnius ever had.”
“When was that, Father? I need to find him.”
“Find him? You’ll find him in St. John Cemetery in Queens! The church was built in 1910, so dear Father Elias died back in the 1940s.”
“But … this man couldn’t be more than, say, midfifties.”
“I’m afraid the man you encountered was a faker, Ms. Russo. Father Arturo Elias is long dead.”
“But why would someone fake it?”
“I have no idea. I mean, it’s possible that this priest is a distant relative of the first Father Elias, but to say he was associated with Our Lady of Vilnius? Preposterous.”
“I’m more curious than ever now,” I said. “Are there any archival photos of the parish priests back when the church was first opened?”
“I doubt it. Before I got there, there had been a fire in the rector
y and adjoining office. All the old records, photos, paintings—all gone.” We hung up, and I was more confused than before I’d called. Who the hell was the man pretending to be Father Elias, anyway?
I phoned Roy next and told him about my conversation with Father Lowry, but Roy, unfazed, let it roll off his back. “What a shock,” he said drolly. “My old man had friends who are as crooked as he was? Wow. That guy’s probably some petty thief who got a priest’s costume at Abracadabra on West Twenty-First Street. I got my Chorus Line Halloween outfit there last year.”
“Oh, shut up. Aren’t you even concerned that your father’s funeral was presided over by a fake Catholic priest?”
“Ali, are you seriously asking me if I care that my abusive Jewish-father-turned-last-minute-Catholic had a fake Christian burial? The guy was probably just some shyster who read about the relic and thought he’d take a stab at stealing it. Jesus H.”
“But how did he know where the burial was?”
“Funeral directors post those things online now. Sometimes when there was a bad fire, we’d have to work with the funeral directors to make sure they’d inform the cops so that they could block traffic after they posted it. Disasters bring out more mourners than a Mafia funeral.”
“But he knew the relic was papyrus.”
“Stab in the dark, Ali. Just a nut. Trust me.”
“I’ll let you know if I find anything,” I promised.
Next I tried the phone number for Myles Engles, who picked up after one ring. He was in fact boarding a flight from England back to the U.S. at that very moment.
He hadn’t read my story, but said he’d be more than interested in seeing the relic. He’d have to know something more about it because it might not even be within his area of expertise.
“Well, I hate to discuss this over the phone, but did you ever hear of the Gospel of Judas?” I heard him gasp on the other end.
“Who hasn’t?”
“Well, did you know that some pages were missing?”
“Rumor, speculation, but frankly that has never been verified because the manuscript—when it was found back in 2000 in a bank vault—was literally in thousands of pieces, much too rotted to know what if anything was actually missing. It breaks my heart to even talk of it. One of the greatest finds of the ages, left to molder and rot…”
“What if some of it was, ah, rescued?”
“Rescued?”
“Stolen. Out of that safety-deposit box where it had been stored way before the rest of it was found.”
He gasped again, visibly shocked. “Oh. You’re there now? At that bank?”
“No, but I am in possession of the pages. I think.”
“We’re about to take off,” Engles said. “Can you bring what you have to my shop on Lexington Avenue first thing tomorrow morning?”
“Nine?”
“Nine. And Miss Russo? Te-he-zah-ree.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t understand you.”
“Yiddish for ‘be safe.’”
“Oh. You, too.”
I thought he was just looking for me to wish him a safe flight. Some Jewish thing I didn’t understand. I was wrong.
The rest of the day flew by as I tried to make sense of the Voynich Manuscript, which I had neglected to mention to Mr. Engles. I’ve learned in my years of reporting that it’s one thing at a time. Don’t give it all up at once.
Since the Voynich Manuscript made zero sense to me, I stored the book safely—well, as much as a two-bedroom NYC apartment allows. No, not in the Pampers box this time, but in the hutch in the dining area in the top drawer. Wow. No one could find it there! But I live in such a secure building, no one ever worries about robberies. For those of you who don’t live in NYC, I know, it sounds odd, but I’ve always felt safer in a doorman building in the city than in a house in the suburbs. We had a doorman on duty 24/7, security cameras all over the place, and if I ever thought—ever—that someone was breaking into my apartment in the middle of the night, I’d just pick up the intercom and call the doorman and security would be up in a New York minute, which is approximately thirty seconds.
I then Googled Gospel of Judas. I discovered that it had been found by peasants in Middle Egypt probably in the mid-1970s. The codex was then named for Frieda Nussberger-Tchacos, the woman behind its rescue (i.e., the Codex Tchacos). Decades later. It was then transferred to the Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art in Basel, Switzerland. The Gospel of Judas had taken a very circuitous route for several decades before Tchacos got ahold of it. It had been carelessly huckstered around the Middle East and Europe among dealers who had tried selling it for a small fortune.
Finally an Egyptian small-time seller of antiques by the name of Hanna got it, kept it, lost it, found it again, and took it to New York, where he thought he had a buyer, but didn’t. So—and here’s where it gets really weird—Hanna got disheartened and rented the safety-deposit box in a Citibank in Hicksville, Long Island, of all places and flew back to Egypt.
The codex was left to rot for sixteen years and somehow along the way it even spent time in another disreputable dealer’s freezer, where it suffered further damage.
It was almost impossible to believe that such a priceless relic was tossed around like a cheap library paperback that somebody had forgotten to return.
I next called Roy to tell him about the note and the phone call with Engles. He sounded good. “Well, that’s better news than the last call. Here’s even better news,” he said. “I have a date. We hooked up on Zoosk.”
“Be careful. You’re semifamous now—and maybe rich soon, too.”
“You sound like an old lady. I’m a giant guy. I know how to take care of myself, Gramma.”
“You’re right. Have fun. I’ll let you know what happens at the bookstore tomorrow.”
I hung up and started digging into what the Gospel of Judas itself was about—what was left had been pieced together by experts working with National Geographic, although most of it was beyond repair—but when I glanced up at the clock again, it was already five! Holy crap, where had the day gone? I ran down the hall to pick up Terry at the Judsons’ apartment. As I approached I could smell something delicious cooking. I walked in and found Terry happily playing on the rug. When he saw me he said, “Up Mama!” Then, “Cookie!”
“Did he just say ‘cookie’?” I asked the Judsons, astounded.
“No, dear,” Dane said. “Our little Terry is a smart boy, but I don’t think he’s into making culinary suggestions just yet.”
“Cookie Mama!” Terry repeated himself. Maybe he was!
Raylene, who’d managed to set a beautiful table for eight with china and silver, chimed in, “He’s such a delight! A real pleasure!”
“Thanks so much for taking him. I really appreciate it,” I said, marveling at all she’d accomplished that afternoon. “How in the world did you cook and get the table set with this little monster around?”
“Oh, it’s easy, honey. Like I said, a pleasure!”
Gee, she really must have been a wonderful mother. I can barely order out when Terry’s going baby-berserkers.
“Smells great, Raylene. What’s cooking?”
“Turkey a la Dominicana, stuffed with rice and pigeon peas,” she answered, opening the oven to baste the turkey. “And pastelón de arroz, plus my own favorite, bollitos de yuca.”
“You made Spanish food?”
“Dominican. When I was a little girl I lived in the area that they now call Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic. But it was still mostly jungle then. My parents had a big place in Santo Domingo, but they let me stay with my abuela—my grandmother—during the summers. She was a mambo, a voodoo priestess.”
“Really,” I said, astounded. These two never stopped surprising me.
“The mambos—the women—were looked down on by Christian priests and nuns and were horribly harassed by them. My grandmother was Haitian, but she moved across the island to the Dominican side—after the Christians drove her o
ut of Haiti.”
“You grew up in the Dominican Republic,” I said, more as a statement than a question. It seemed impossible. She nodded her head.
“Well, I’ll be.” I let that fact sink in before changing the topic, grabbing a dish towel for no reason other than to look busy. “So what can I do to help? You must have your hands full.”
“I’m fine, dear, just get yourself prettied up. The politician we told you about is single.”
“Who is it? I must know him from my job.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” she said, grabbing the dish towel and scooting me out the door with the baby.
“Can I bring anything—wine, dessert?”
“Just yourself, and Terry, of course.”
She managed to watch the baby, make dinner, and set the table while all I did was try unsuccessfully to figure out an old book. The woman’s amazing.
Terry was not happy to leave, but I got him home, gave him a nice bath, and put on his best jammies. After all, he was going to his first dinner party.
I took a quick shower (very quick), while he was in his jumpy seat then riffled through my closet looking for something that fit.
Little black dress and big, fat stomach? Too little, too fat. Black sweater and skinny pants? Too drab. Navy sweater and pencil skirt, big loop earrings and killer spikes? Perfect.
Who are you trying to impress? The world’s kookiest dressers or the mystery dinner politician? Wait a minute here—you are trying to look good for their unattached male guest! You’ve come a long way, baby. You who said you’d never look at another man again.
I was surprised and even a little pleased that yes, maybe I was getting ready to get ready to start dating again. Someday. Not that day. But someday. Maybe.
Right. Wait until Terry starts fussing or stinking up the place during dinner. That should clinch it with said unattached male politician.
Ready! I opened the door, took a deep breath. This was going to be a boring evening at worst or somewhat interesting at best—if the guests were. I walked across the hall to the Judsons’ apartment. I was barefoot and I carried Terry in his baby seat in one hand, my spikes in the other, diaper bag on my shoulder.