While Andrew was talking, Henry had been eating his pizza. He now pushed the plate towards Andrew, who took a slice into his hand, but instead of biting into it, used it like a conductor’s baton to gesticulate while he talked.
‘Father Godfrey therefore decided to call Cardinal Memel in Rome.’
‘Who is Cardinal Memel?’
‘The head of our order.’
‘Is he a German?’
‘No, an American. He was the rector of Pater Noster University for ten or fifteen years. Father Lambert didn’t think much of him, but he is our General, and I suspect that Father Godfrey had told him already about the suicide of Father Lambert. He got on to him almost immediately and told him what had happened. He then handed me the telephone, and I had to repeat the whole thing myself. Then the Cardinal said: “You think there’s something in this?” And I had to say yes. He hesitated for a moment, then told me that I was to go to Jerusalem at once and that he would fly out to meet me there.’
Now, at last, Andrew bit into the slice of cold pizza, and drank, in one gulp, his glass of wine. Henry realized, with some relief, that his brother had been saved from the full shock of what the news implied by being swept up into the centre of such momentous events.
‘Is Cardinal Memel an archaeologist?’ he asked, filling Andrew’s glass.
‘No, a biblical scholar.’
‘Then how will he be able to form an opinion about the find?’
‘I dare say he’ll bring in a team from the Pontifical Biblical Institute, which will carbon-date the skeleton and all that kind of thing.’ He drank from his glass of wine. ‘The difficulty, of course, will be to prevent the news from getting out before the tests have been done. In fact it won’t be possible, and that’s why Professor Dagan thinks that if it is to be announced, then someone should do it at the Congress in July.’
‘Cardinal Memel, perhaps?’
‘Yes.’
‘There will inevitably be people who won’t believe it.’
‘I know. All those fundamentalists in America, and even Catholics …’
‘Wouldn’t they have to accept a ruling of the Pope?’
‘Not people like Archbishop Lefebvre – particularly not if that ruling was made on the advice of Cardinal Memel.’
‘Why not?’
‘He’s very liberal and ecumenical.’
‘Is that why Father Lambert didn’t like him?’
‘Yes.’ He emptied his glass again and Henry filled it – noticing, however, that the wine, rather than making Andrew cheerful, was changing his mood from elation to anxiety. ‘It’s so difficult to know,’ he said, ‘what effect it will have on the Church if it is established that the skeleton is that of Christ. Clearly, those theologians who presumed a purely spiritual Resurrection will be delighted. And even those of us who believed in a more literal way … well, it’s not the only article of faith in the Christian religion.’
‘No.’
‘There are still the many sayings of Our Lord which, I should have thought, have a value in themselves, and so people will still be able to model themselves upon him.’
‘Of course.’
‘But it would seem to suggest that, despite the inherent moral values in what he said about loving one’s neighbour and all that kind of thing, Jesus did have illusions about himself and his immortality, and his kingdom in another world.’
‘Yes,’ said Henry carefully, ‘but perhaps that aspect of his teaching will turn out to have been less important than had been imagined.’
‘Of course, but there are several aspects, not of Christian teaching but of the practice of the Church, particularly the Catholic Church, which do depend, finally, upon Jesus being the Son of God, and speaking with the authority of God.’
‘You mean the Eucharist?’
‘Yes. Clearly, an ordinary man, however wise and good, cannot turn bread into his body, or wine into his blood.’
‘No.’
‘And the same goes for the forgiveness of sins. We cannot presume, as we have done up to now, that the priest in the Confessional can forgive sins in the name of God if Jesus himself had no power to do so, because it was he who delegated that power to the Apostles and through them to the clergy today.’
‘It would be a pity to abandon a practice which serves a therapeutic purpose,’ said Henry.
‘But will it serve a therapeutic purpose if the penitent no longer believes that it is God, through the priest, who is forgiving his sins?’
‘I don’t know. I have never been to Confession.’
‘No, of course not.’ Andrew blushed and looked apologetically at his brother as if realizing suddenly that he was not talking to himself.
‘But I can see its value,’ said Henry, ‘and I sometimes wish …’
‘What?’
‘That there was some equivalent for non-believers.’
Andrew smiled. ‘I may soon be looking for something of the sort myself.’
‘Have you ceased to believe already?’
‘No, no, certainly not. At least not in Jesus or his teaching or the value in his suffering and death. But I suppose that the finding of this skeleton, and the possibility that it might be his, has made me wonder whether there is that much point in being a priest.’
‘That seems to be the effect it had on Father Lambert.’
‘Yes. But for him it was too late, whereas I am young enough to change the direction of my life.’
Henry emptied the bottle of wine into his own and his brother’s glasses. ‘You know,’ he said – again choosing his words carefully – ‘that because I didn’t accept the premise upon which it was based, I never saw much point to your life as a monk. All the same, I should be cautious about making any sudden decisions. Give yourself time to take it all in.’
‘Of course. I don’t meant to leave the order tomorrow. Quite apart from anything else, it’ll pay for my ticket to Tel Aviv. But I am glad, all the same, that I have my academic qualifications to fall back on. Think of all those poor priests who have never done anything but administer the sacraments and preach the Gospel of the Risen Lord.’
Twelve
The next morning Andrew rang Anna and asked her to go with him to Israel. At first, she was reluctant – she still felt sour towards her parents and was afraid she might be in trouble for avoiding the draft – but Andrew argued that as an archaeologist she should grab the chance to study her father’s find, and that he would find it very useful to have a second opinion from someone he could trust. When she still hesitated, he said that he would be glad of her company in case he was affected in the same way as Father Lambert. ‘I know I’ll be all right,’ he said, ‘but Henry thinks I should have a chaperon, and he’s offered to pay for your ticket.’
She agreed to go, and on the El Al flight to Tel Aviv she chatted cheerfully to Andrew as if they were going on holiday to the Red Sea. Her mood changed as soon as they arrived at Lod, and were met by Michal and Jake Dagan; for, though her father greeted her with all the conventional gestures of affection, it was apparent, even to Andrew, that there was a certain reticence and artificiality in both his kiss and his embrace.
Like Jake, Michal Dagan was a slim man of medium height with brown eyes. His hair, once black, had thinned at the temples and turned grey. Unlike his son’s, his features were small and precise – almost feminine – and they alternated between a look of petulance and a roguish, boyish smile. He could look distinguished on a dais – Andrew had heard him lecture; but his eyes avoided the eyes of others, as if Dagan was afraid that something might be read in his expression which he did not want to be known.
He also hid whatever thoughts might be passing through his mind behind a patina of irony which Anna had either inherited or learned to imitate as a child. It was this that made his kiss less than a kiss and his embrace a false embrace – as if he were saying to Anna, as he welcomed her: ‘Isn’t this how fathers greet their daughters? Isn’t this the way it’s meant to be done?’ And And
rew, knowing how, behind the same ironic manner, Anna longed to be enveloped in an instinctive, unselfconscious hug, winced as he witnessed her disappointment and trembled as he anticipated her disgruntled mood.
Professor Dagan was more friendly towards Andrew than he was towards his own daughter – not, Andrew recognized, because he was fond of him but because he was the protégé of one of his closest friends. Yet it was Father Lambert who had once described Dagan to Andrew as the archetypal wandering Jew – part German, part American, part Israeli; eminent in all these countries but at home in none; dreaming of a Heimat which could only exist if Central Europe were to be recreated in the Middle East.
Now, as they left the airport, he said no more about the death of his friend than he had said over the telephone to London. He led Andrew and Anna to a white Volvo in which a swarthy man, who to Andrew might have been either an Arab or a Jew, sat waiting in the driver’s seat. He got out to put their luggage in the boot. Jake sat next to him in the front, while the others got in behind.
The car was air-conditioned, but outside it was so hot that the driver, as they drove out of the airport, looked anxiously at the temperature gauge on the instrument panel. Jake talked to him in Hebrew, which Andrew did not understand, but because of his presence and because Dagan himself did not bring the subject up, Andrew felt unable to discuss either Father Lambert’s death or Professor Dagan’s find.
He therefore sat in silence as the car followed the motorway across the coastal plain towards Latrun, then curved up into the Judaean Hills towards Jerusalem. As they passed the burnt wrecks of armoured cars, which had been preserved at the roadside as memorials to the battle for the city, Anna scowled and said: ‘Why don’t they clear those hulks away?’
‘Why should they?’ asked Professor Dagan.
‘They kind of spoil the landscape.’
‘People want to remember.’
‘What? How they clobbered the Arabs?’
‘What they sacrificed to recover Jerusalem.’
They reached the outskirts of the city. Jake directed the driver towards East Jerusalem, and all at once Andrew caught sight of the domes and spires and minarets of the old walled city and was moved, as he always was, by the sight of this paradigm of Heaven. It did not matter that the walls had been built by a Turkish sultan, not a Jewish king; or that the breach in the wall by the Jaffa Gate was not made by the legions of Titus to storm the city, but by the Turkish caliphs to enable Kaiser Wilhelm to enter in his landau. The city’s setting was as dramatic now as it had been when King David chose it for his capital three thousand years before; and the jumble of churches, mosques and white, flat-roofed houses brought to Andrew’s mind not just scenes from the Gospels but also those fables of the Orient like Sindbad the Sailor or Ali Baba.
It was difficult for the car to enter the narrow streets of the Christian quarter, so, at Andrew’s suggestion, the Dagans dropped him at the New Gate. From there it was only a short walk to the Simonite monastery and church. Both had been built by the Crusaders in the eleventh century, destroyed by the Saracens in the twelfth, rebuilt under the Mamelukes, left to decay under the Ottomans and restored to their present condition only in the nineteenth century, with small, barred windows on the ground floor, a thick studded door beneath a Venetian arch, and an old-fashioned bell which jangled within as Andrew tugged at the iron lever.
The door was opened by a sallow monk and Andrew stepped into a cloister which was much gentler and prettier than the exterior of the monastery had suggested. It had the fat pillars and barrel vaulting of the twelfth century and looked more like a monastery in Normandy or Burgundy than anything indigenous to the Middle East. The monk too was not an Arab but an Italian, and spoke to Andrew first in his native language but then, when he realized that Andrew was one of that rare species, an English Simonite, changed with greater enthusiasm than skill into English as he led him towards the office of the Prior.
Andrew had been to the monastery before on several occasions and it saddened him to remember that on almost all of them he had been in the company of Father Lambert. The news of the death of this eminent archaeologist had already reached Jerusalem, and the Prior – a German Simonite called Father Manfred Stott – said at once how sad he had been to hear the news. ‘And he seemed so well when he was here,’ he said. ‘A little affected by the heat towards the end, perhaps, but no one could have imagined that one day after his return he would die.’
It was clear from the way in which the Prior expressed his sorrow that he had no inkling that Father Lambert’s death was caused by suicide or murder. He knew, of course, that their General, Cardinal Memel, was coming to Jerusalem, and that Andrew’s arrival was somehow linked to this, but it was part of the discipline of the order to curtail unnecessary curiosity. He informed Andrew simply that the Cardinal was expected later that night, and then asked the Italian brother to show him to his room.
It was a pleasant cell, in which Andrew had stayed before, with old-fashioned furniture, an enamel wash-stand and a jug of water. There were clean sheets, a clean towel and a view from the window over the roofs of the Christian quarter towards the two domes of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Andrew unpacked his few belongings, then went along the wide corridor to take a shower in the huge, archaic bathroom. He was sticky and smelly after his journey and was relieved for once, after washing in this way, to change his trousers and jacket for the cotton habit which had been laid out for him on his bed. He put it on not just because it was cool, but because he dared not greet Cardinal Memel wearing anything but the robes of the order.
It was now five in the afternoon. At six there would be vespers, and at seven supper. Andrew therefore had an hour free to go out into the streets of the old city. Although the shops were shut, because of the strike called by the leaders of the intifada, some Arabs had come out into the streets to take advantage of the cooler evening air. Andrew did not feel conspicuous in his grey habit, because here, in the Christian quarter, it was common to see priests of every known denomination – Catholic, Orthodox, Maronite, Coptic – as well as monks and friars from the different orders, and pilgrims from every country in the world.
This evidence of the universality of the Christian Church had always exhilarated Andrew when he had been to Jerusalem before. Now, however, as he passed through the gate into the paved forecourt in front of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, he wondered what would happen when the news leaked out of Professor Dagan’s find. Here, since the time of Constantine, pilgrims had come to pray over the very tomb from which Jesus was said to have risen from the dead. Would the church be abandoned? Or change its name to the Church of the Crucifixion, for Golgotha, too, was under its dome?
He stepped between a group of American pilgrims and a party of German nuns, to pass beneath the Romanesque arch into the gloomy church. He had never liked the hotchpotch of its architectural styles – the Latin pillars, the Byzantine icons – nor the shabbiness which came from the inability of the different denominations to agree about its repair and redecoration. Nor, in the claustrophobic little shrine within the church built over the tomb of Christ, with its suffocating smell of burning oil and stale wax, had he ever felt moved to pray.
Now he did not even try, but simply watched the tourists and pilgrims file in to light a taper handed to each of them by an Orthodox monk. He turned back towards the door, but before leaving the church, he climbed the narrow staircase to the ornate altar built over the spot where the cross had stood. Here, again, where once he had knelt to pray, he merely studied the intricate silverwork which surrounded the painted faces of the Greek icons; looked up at the twinkling vulgarity of the candelabra; and noted the naïve depiction of Christ on the Cross.
It was not that he doubted the fact of the crucifixion, but, if it was to turn out that there had been no resurrection, then it became a public execution of a more ordinary kind. He went back down the steps, and out of the church, thinking quite calmly of Jesus, and of the
suffering he had endured. He felt he could love him and revere him, whether or not he had risen from the dead; indeed, he could love him even more if, as now seemed possible, he had been merely human after all, because always, since his conversion, Andrew had felt daunted by those passages in the Gospels in which Christ claimed to be the sole means of human salvation. Henry, after all, did not believe in him. Nor did Anna. And it had been difficult for Andrew to accept that his brother, and his closest friend, might both be damned.
He left the forecourt and walked south, past the Muristan, towards the Jewish quarter, remembering how he had put this problem to Father Lambert, and how Father Lambert had given a somewhat evasive reply, saying that what was just to God might seem arbitrary to man; and referring, rather drily, to the recurring theme in Scripture of God’s apparently gratuitous exercise of choice – of Jacob rather than Esau, of Judah rather than Joseph, indeed his choice of the Jews themselves.
Now, if it was to be established that Jesus was not the Son of God, it seemed to offer the possibility that any man of good will might be saved. This not only appealed to Andrew’s kindly instincts, but also to his sense of fair play. It made Jesus seem more human for having made such extravagant claims – there is something of a megalomaniac in us all – and, because he was more human, more likeable, and certainly not to be blamed for what had been done in his name. If Christ was not God, then he had never had the power either to deceive or enlighten generations of gullible believers.
He had passed into the Jewish quarter of the Old City and came to the top of the steps which led to the Western Wall. Here he stopped and looked down on what remained of Herod’s Temple. The view always astonished him for, even though – as Jesus had predicted – not one stone of the Temple itself remained standing, the massive blocks of the retaining walls were still in place; and now, as always, a row of pious Jews stood nodding and chanting as they prayed at this relic of their Holy of Holies.