The Fifth Gospel: A Novel Read online

  My inner turmoil increased when I saw that Peter was paying attention now as well. I’d never spoken to him about the Shroud. The complexity of my feelings about it would’ve been unfair to heap on a child.

  “The first thing you must know,” Nogara said, “is how the Shroud covered Jesus’ body. It wasn’t draped on top of him like a sheet. It was laid under him, then back over him, in a band. That’s why we have a front image and a back image.”

  He pointed to gourd-shaped holes cut into the cloth. All of them were in a pattern that matched the folds in the linen. “But the marks I want to focus on are these. The burn marks.”

  “Who burned it?” Peter asked.

  “A fire broke out,” Ugo said. “In 1532, the Shroud was being kept in a reliquary made of silver. The fire melted part of it. A drop of molten silver landed on the Shroud, burning through every layer of the folded cloth. The damaged linen had to be repaired by Poor Clare nuns. Which brings me to my point.”

  Nogara plucked a trade journal from a bookshelf and handed it to me. The cover said Thermochimica Acta.

  “This coming January,” he continued, “an American chemist from the national laboratory at Los Alamos will publish an article in that scientific journal. A friend at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences sent me an early copy. See for yourself.”

  I flipped through the pages. They might as well have been written in Chinese. “Enthalpies of Dilution of Glycine.” “Thermal Studies of Polyesters Containing Silicon or Germanium in the Main Chain.”

  “Skip to the end,” Nogara said. “The last article before the index.”

  And there it was: “Studies on the Radiocarbon Sample from the Shroud of Turin.”

  It contained pictures of what looked like worms on microscope slides, and charts I couldn’t fathom. At the beginning of the text, though, in the abstract, were two sentences whose gist I understood:

  Pyrolysis-mass-spectrometry results from the sample area coupled with microscopic and microchemical observations prove that the radiocarbon sample was not part of the original cloth of the Shroud of Turin. The radiocarbon date was thus not valid for determining the true age of the shroud.

  “The sample wasn’t part of the Shroud?” I said. “How is that possible?”

  Nogara sighed. “We didn’t realize how much work the Poor Clare nuns had done. We knew they had sewn patches over the holes. We didn’t know—because we couldn’t see—that they had also woven threads into the Shroud to strengthen it. Only under a microscope could they be distinguished. So, inadvertently, we tested a fabric that mixed original linen with repair threads. This American chemist is the first to have discovered the mistake. One of his colleagues has told me that parts of the sample weren’t even linen. The nuns made their repairs with cotton.”

  A cool energy spread through the room. In Nogara’s eyes was a controlled giddiness.

  “Alli,” Simon whispered, “this is it. This is finally it.”

  I fingered the chemistry journal. “The exhibit,” I said, “will be about these scientific tests?”

  Ugo allowed himself a smile. “The tests are only the beginning. If the Shroud is really from 33 AD, then what happened to it for the next thousand years? I’ve spent months digging deeper into the Shroud’s history, trying to answer the biggest mystery of its past: where was it hiding for thirteen centuries before it suddenly appeared in France? And I have some very good news.” He hesitated. “If I may interrupt your meal, I’d like you all to come somewhere with me.”

  From a drawer he collected a thick ring of keys to the column of bolts and chains on the front door. Then he tucked a plastic bag from his refrigerator into his pocket.

  “Where?” Peter asked.

  Ugo winked. “I think you’re going to like it.”

  DARK WAS FALLING AS we followed him through the palace halls to the rear doors of Saint Peter’s. The sampietrini, the janitors of the basilica, were starting to nudge tourists out the exits. But they recognized Ugo and left the four of us alone.

  No matter how many times I’ve entered that church, it has always given me a shiver. When I was a child, my father told me that Saint Peter’s was so tall, three whales could stand head-to-tail inside it, like a circus act on a unicycle, with enough room left for them to wear the Coliseum as a crown. On the floor, the sizes of other famous churches are measured out and engraved in gold letters, like tombstones of little fish in the belly of the leviathan. It is a place made by human hands, but not to human scale.

  Ugo brought us toward the altar beneath Michelangelo’s dome and pointed to the four corners around us. In each corner stood a tower of marble.

  “Do you know what’s inside these piers?” he asked.

  I nodded. The piers—each one of them almost as large as the Arc de Triomphe—were mountains of solid concrete and stone, built to support the immense dome. Inside each one was a narrow channel, a man-size wormhole, rising to a hidden room. On special occasions, the canons of Saint Peter’s would display the extraordinary contents of those rooms.

  Relics.

  Five hundred years ago, when the Renaissance popes set out to rebuild the greatest church in human history, they put four of Christianity’s most hallowed artifacts into the reliquaries of these piers. Then four statues were built, thirty feet high, signaling the relics that lay inside.

  “Saint Andrew,” Ugo said, pointing to the first. “The brother of Saint Peter. The first-called of the apostles. His skull was put in this pier.”

  Ugo pivoted. His finger was now pointing to a statue of a woman carrying a giant cross.

  “Saint Helena,” he said. “The mother of Constantine, the first Christian emperor. She visited Jerusalem and returned with the True Cross. The popes placed wood from that cross in this pier.”

  The third statue was of a woman rushing forward with her arms outstretched. Between her hands was perhaps the most mystical of the basilica relics.

  “Saint Veronica,” Ugo said. “The woman who wiped Jesus’ face as he carried the cross toward Golgotha. On that cloth, a mysterious image of his face was left behind. In this pier, the popes placed that cloth.”

  At last he turned to the fourth statue. “Saint Longinus. The soldier who pierced Jesus on the cross, wounding him in the side with his lance. In this pier, the popes placed Longinus’ lance.”

  Nogara turned to face us. “As you may know, only three of those relics are still here. In a gesture of goodwill, we gave the skull of Saint Andrew to the Orthodox Church. But Andrew’s head never belonged here anyway. This basilica’s relics should tell the most important story in Christianity.” A quiver began to form in Nogara’s voice. “The True Cross, the veil, and the spear are all relics of our Lord’s death. What belongs in the fourth pier is a relic of His Resurrection. John Paul, when he inherited the Shroud, was going to move it here. But the radiocarbon tests created a climate of doubt in which it was impossible to transfer the Shroud from Turin. Now we’re finally going to fix that. My exhibit is going to bring the Shroud home.”

  He lowered his voice so that Simon and I had to lean in to hear.

  “I have found ancient texts describing an image of Jesus that was kept in a city called Edessa for centuries before the Shroud appeared in France. That Turkish city is now called Urfa and is where your brother rescued me in the hospital. I’ve tracked our Turin Shroud to that location no later than the four hundreds AD. Now I want to do more: I want the finale of my exhibit to prove that this so-called Image of Edessa came from Jerusalem in the hands of the disciples themselves. And, Father Alex, that is where my work involves you.”

  Before continuing, he reached into his pocket for the plastic bag he had taken from the apartment. From inside it he produced something odd: a plastic spoon resembling a drumstick. He lowered himself to Peter’s level and said, “Peter, I need to speak to your father alone for a moment, so I’ve brought something
for you.”

  The tip of the spoon was covered with something pale and lumpy.

  “What’s that?” Peter asked.

  “Suet. And it has magical powers in this basilica.” Ugo led Peter to an open space near the altar. “Hold it out just like this, and pretend you’re a statue. Don’t move a muscle.”

  A moment later, a dove descended from the dome. It landed on the suet and began to feed. Peter was so surprised that he nearly dropped the spoon.

  Ugo whispered to him, “Now go anywhere you like. Take your new friend for a walk. I’ve found the birds here are quite tame.”

  Peter was enchanted. With the dove only inches from his hand, he began to drift through the empty nave, careful as if it were a candle he was holding. All of us fell silent for a moment, watching him.

  Then Ugo turned back to me. “As I was saying, I’ve been hoping to prove that the disciples brought the Shroud from Jerusalem to Edessa. This proof, of course, has been difficult to find. But I believe I’m finally on its trail. You see, Edessa was one of Christianity’s early capitals, and in the mid–one hundreds AD a gospel was written there. This gospel came to be called the Diatessaron, which I’m sure you know is Greek for ‘made out of four,’ because its text was a fusion of the four existing gospels into a single document. Since the Shroud would’ve been in Edessa at the very moment this gospel was written, I believe its writer may have mentioned the Shroud in his text.”

  I began to interrupt him, but Ugo held up a hand.

  “The challenge of confirming this is, of course, that the Diatessaron is extremely rare. Our only surviving copies are translations into other languages, written centuries later. All original copies were destroyed by the bishops of Edessa themselves when they decided in favor of the four separate gospels. At least, so the story goes. But recently I seem to have discovered otherwise.”

  I blurted, “You found a manuscript of the Diatessaron? In what language?”

  “It’s a diglot. Syriac on one side, ancient Greek on the other.”

  I was agog. “That would be the original text.”

  The Diatessaron had been written in one of these two languages and then translated into the other so quickly that no one today knew which came first.

  “Unfortunately,” Ugo continued, “I don’t read either tongue well. Father Simon tells me, however, that you read one of them fluently. So I wondered if you might be willing to help me—”

  “Absolutely. Do you have pictures?”

  “Alas, the book is . . . not easily photographed. I discovered it in a place where I wasn’t supposed to be looking, so I can’t bring the book to you, Father. What I need to do is bring you to the book.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He squirmed. “The only other person I’ve told about this is Father Simon. If word got out, I would lose my job. Your brother assures me you can keep a secret?”

  For just a glance at that book, I would have promised Ugo almost anything. I had spent my life since seminary as a gospel teacher, and the first principle of my profession was that a small handful of ancient manuscripts had given the world its entire text of the gospels. The life of Jesus Christ as most modern Christians know it is a fusion of several texts, all slightly different, all breathtakingly old, stitched into a single version by modern scholars who even now continue to make changes based on new discoveries. The Diatessaron, because it was constructed by that same process of fusing older texts, could reveal the gospels as they existed in the 100s AD, long before the earliest complete manuscripts that had come down to us. It could add new facts to what we knew of Jesus’ life and make us question the facts as we thought we knew them.

  “I can fly to Turkey as soon as next week,” I said. “Sooner if you need me to.”

  The pulse was becoming thready in my chest. It was June; I didn’t have to teach class again until the fall. There was enough money in my savings account for two airplane tickets. Peter and I could stay with Simon.

  But Ugo frowned. “I’m afraid you misunderstand,” he said. “I’m not asking you to come back to Turkey with me. The book is here, Father.”

  CHAPTER 6

  AS I FOLLOW Simon out of the canteen and up toward Leo’s apartment, my mind contains a single thought: the Shroud is here. The burial cloth of Christ is within these city walls. I wonder if it’s already locked in one of the piers of Saint Peter’s. Maybe the news will be public soon.

  The Shroud’s arrival lends Ugo’s exhibit new significance. The truck’s papers were signed by Archbishop Nowak, which means it was John Paul who ordered the Shroud moved. For sixteen years, since the radiocarbon tests, the Church has made no official pronouncements about the Shroud. Suddenly that seems about to change. My thoughts about Ugo’s death, and the intruder at my apartment, begin to tip in new directions. I wonder if this is what Ugo was trying to tell me in his e-mail. That he had succeeded in bringing the Shroud here, only to encounter some kind of problem.

  Something has come up. Urgent.

  Christian relics can unearth the most subterranean feelings. Last year at Christmas, Peter and I watched TV footage of a huge brawl among priests and monks in Bethlehem over nothing more than which side of the Church of the Nativity they were allowed to sweep. Earlier this year, an armed guard had to be posted inside an international Shroud conference, and the Shroud’s priest-caretaker had to flee the conference hall because of violent reaction to a decision to have the surface of the cloth gently cleaned. If word of the Shroud’s transfer got out, no doubt most people in Turin would be thrilled to learn of Ugo’s plans to authenticate and honor it, but a small fringe might react differently. The only other violent attack I remember at Castel Gandolfo was inspired by strange religious delusions: when I was ten years old, a disturbed man tried to attack John Paul in the gardens, before leading Italian police on a highway chase back to Rome and charging them with an ax. In his pockets were found notes filled with ravings about emulating the gods. I wonder if it’s possible the moving of the Shroud triggered something similar. If so, then I thank God Peter and Helena weren’t hurt.

  I jog to catch up to Simon, wondering what his own thoughts are. But my brother has already disappeared. When I make my way inside, Sofia emerges from the nursery and says, “He went up there.”

  She points toward the rooftop. The most solitary place in the building.

  I begin to follow, but she puts a hand on my arm and whispers, “Peter needs you.”

  I turn toward the nursery. Inside, I find my son sitting up in his makeshift bed. The light is dimmed and the floor is strewn with books and stuffed animals from the nearby crib. Peter is breathing so hard he looks as if he’s been running.

  “What’s wrong?” I say.

  The air around him is wet and warm. He reaches out his arms.

  “Nightmare?” I ask.

  This is the age when night terrors and sleepwalking begin. Simon fell prey to both. I raise his gangly body into my lap and stroke his head.

  “Can we read about Totti again?” he whispers, half-delirious.

  Totti. The starting second striker for Roma.

  “Of course,” I tell him.

  He leans forward and paws the dark floor for his book. But he’s careful not to exit my lap. I’ve already left him once.

  “It’s over, Peter,” I promise him, kissing the damp back of his head. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. You’re safe here.”

  I stay beside him for a while after he falls asleep again, just to be sure. By the time I slip out, Leo has returned home, and Sofia is heating him a plate of food. In the kitchen I see him rub her belly while leaning across it for a kiss. Before they can invite me to join them around the table, I excuse myself to look for Simon on the rooftop.

  HIS HAIR IS WINDSWEPT and wild. His face is drawn. He is staring down at the lights of Rome the way I imagine a sailor’s widow would stare at
the sea.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  His hand, tapping for cigarettes from his emergency pack, is unsteady.

  “I’m not sure what to do,” he murmurs, not turning to look at me.

  “Me either.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “I know.”

  “I called him this afternoon. We talked about his exhibit. He can’t be dead.”

  “I know.”

  Simon’s voice grows thinner. “I sat beside his body, trying to wake him up.”

  A dull pang forms in my chest.

  “Ugo poured himself into this show,” my brother continues. “Gave it everything.” He lights a cigarette. A look of grinding disgust crosses his face. “Why let him die a week before opening night? Why let him die right on the doorstep?”

  “Human hands did this,” I say. A reminder of where his anger should be directed.

  “And why bring me there?” he continues, not listening.

  “Stop. None of this was your fault.”

  He blows a long plume of smoke into the darkness. “It was my fault. I should’ve saved him.”

  “You’re lucky you weren’t there. The same thing could’ve happened to you.”

  He glares bitterly at the sky, then peers down at the empty spot where we used to play as boys. One of the Guard families would inflate a plastic swimming pool on this terrace. All that remains is a water stain.

  I lower my voice. “Do you think this could have to do with the Shroud? Moving it here from Turin?”

  Tendrils of smoke creep from his nostrils. I can’t tell whether he’s considering it.

  “No one could’ve known it was moved here,” he says flatly.