Gospel, page 52
He put his head in his hands. While he looked down he saw the fisherman’s paddle. He took it up and began to paddle to the shore, the way the slight current was moving him anyway.
Of course, he thought, I could walk along the shore. No mountain climbing, but I’d be in plain sight of anyone looking for me … no, the original plan was better: take the high road, in the trees, among the hills. Who knows? I might be able to find some remote skete or kathisma that would feed me, that hadn’t heard about the desecrations—
And at that moment, far on the horizon, a military-gray Greek Coast Guard boat, flashing lights and sirens, passed by, speeding farther down the peninsula.
O’Hanrahan felt himself shudder: Could they be after me?
Surely not yet … But what if another fishing boat saw the men in the water and went to retrieve them and then radioed Ouranopolis—
Or worse.
Oh, Jesus God Mary and the All the Saints, worse, much worse.
O’Hanrahan felt a chill pass over him from his head down his arms where his hair stood on end: what if for some reason one of the men drowned? What if the old man had a heart attack? The young monk sank in his heavy, waterlogged robes? Desecrating ikons and stealing a boat and assault and battery and fleeing knowing a policeman was waiting to see me—O’Hanrahan swallowed though no saliva was in his mouth—and what if murder is now the charge? Oh Lord, why couldn’t I have just gone along to the police, explained it and had it done with in a few minutes? Why has my life gone this way? Why do you bring me here in this wasteland to finish my life of error and pain?
(Get on with it, and stop whining. And when you talk to Us, Patrick, a bit more respect, please.)
He paddled again hurriedly, breathing quickly. Here I am trying to do something for God, having devoted my life to words about God and God can’t do me one little goddam favor—
(You’re not searching for Matthias for Us and don’t pretend you are. You’re doing it for yourself, some last bit of earthly glory. Money, fame, rubbing their noses in it, We’ve heard all your reasons. You’ve never once thought how We might feel about it.)
“Voices,” he mumbled, now short of breath, sweat pouring down his brow, this whole Athos adventure being his first physical exercise in years. “Greece and all the voices. You always hear voices…”
The shore approached. His thoughts again deteriorated: I’ll never make it. After a few hours in this sun my heart will stop. That’s how it will end, one big folly, O’Hanrahan’s biggest and stupidest yet. Oh they’ll enjoy this one back in Chicago! He died how? On Mt. Athos? After doing what? And what a shame about that young monk, drowning like that … Oh God, please don’t let that have happened! Don’t make me an accidental murderer!
(Selfish motivations, always. Not even a thought for young Nikolas, poor thing. Though he is a bit of a prig.)
The boat bumped the rocks in the clear lagoon. O’Hanrahan stepped out into the water up to his thighs and pulled the boat alongside him by the rope attached to the bow. He waded and hopped from rock to rock until he pulled the boat around the corner of this inlet. With all the perversity physical objects display when they are most needed to cooperate, the boat bumped, stuck, drifted in wrong directions, did everything but follow O’Hanrahan as he led it successfully to the cove, up into the mud, into the pines and the shade.
In this shade he sat down, sopping with sweat, and began lamely scooping up pine needles to cover the most visible side of the boat. He started laughing. What asininity!
This sixty-five-year-old in this ludicrous adventure of his own making. But he nonetheless felt some joy in this: if I get back and pull this off, what a story this will be! It’ll make great reading in the Trib, wait till I tell Oprah! Yes, concentrate on the fame, the glory after this scroll is translated and the findings announced! And poor Lucy, going out of her head with boredom over there in damn dull Ouranopolis—wait till she hears about my adventure! It’ll make her day!
* * *
One Ouranopolis disco bar was called the Argonaut Klub.
Since Stavros had not returned as promised with something to eat, Lucy got dressed after her intense, exhausted nap, fixed herself up nicely, and went into the town to hunt for him at his favorite night club. The Argonaut was near empty but it was early evening and people were just beginning dinner. The heart of the disco was a two-turntable music console and a teenage Greek boy in a too-large tie-dyed T-shirt and cyclist’s pants who had two discrete piles of records stacked in a preferred order.
“And noow ees time for soom real rock’n rool,” said the boy, before putting on “The Final Countdown” by the Swedish group Europe.
At some flip of a switch, the disco ball started spinning and flecks of prismatic light spun about the room. There was also a strobe light that alternated with the blue fluorescent light that turned everyone on the dance floor Martian green and purple.
This is a museum to the 1970s playing music of the 1980s, surmised Lucy. A bartender was glowering at her for not ordering a drink, so she ordered a Diet Coke that tasted nothing like the ones at home, in a smaller can, but with Greek writing on it. Interesting souvenir.
An even more sunburned Derek and Tracy appeared in the doorway. Tracy spotted Lucy and skipped over to see her; Derek sat at a table and began reading a rolled-up two-day-old British newspaper.
“I’m gonna bloody murrrrder the bastard,” Tracy said, half-smiling. “He’s getting on me nerves something awful … So how are you and, uh, what’s-his-name?”
“Stavros,” Lucy said nonchalantly. “Same story. Went out to get us some lunch, never was seen again.”
“Well, I shouldn’t tell you this then,” Tracy confided, “but I saw him down at the sailboard rental place late this afternoon.” Lucy imagined the mewling collection of German Fräuleins in attendance. Tracy put a conspiratorial hand on Lucy’s arm: “He’s something else, he is. Does he speak English?”
“Not very well,” Lucy breathed. “But then he doesn’t have to.”
Tracy giggled and nudged Lucy who nudged back. “They’re all a bunch of worthless layabout yobs, you know? Whatcha got there?”
“Diet Coke and, uh, rum.”
Tracy turned to the bartender and ordered what she thought was the same. “See the bartender?” Tracy whispered. “Lucy, he’s been giving me the eye since I bloody got here.”
Lucy checked him out: standard Greek tan with a five-o’clock shadow, broad torso, trimmed mustache, convinced he was much better looking than he was. “He’s all right,” said Lucy. “Too bad about…”
“Derek.”
“Yeah, Derek.”
“I tell you what. Next year I’m coming back without the bloody millstone there…” Derek currently was making sure his spiked hair stood out straight in the faint reflection of the dark formica paneling. “It’d be a bleedin’ Roman orgy if I hadn’t dragged him along. And you can call me a right arsehole when I tell you I chipped in to pay for his coming here too. My own bloody hard-earned dosh. Oh Luce, look at that one there by the wall…”
Tracy indicated a fashionable Mediterranean man in his early thirties, smart navy-blue jacket, a small-collared white shirt, dark tie. A cigarette smoldered in an ashtray before him and Tracy pointed out that he must be a Greek with money because it looked like a Rolex on his arm. He looked up from the table and Lucy got a good look at his face: swarthy, deep olive complexion, large liquid brown eyes, a prominent aristocratic nose, and an intelligence, a discernment about him.
“Too good for this place, he is,” said Tracy. “Maybe he’s heir to some Greek shipping fortune. He’s looking at us too,” she squealed, turning her head into Lucy’s shoulder. “Look what you’ve done! He’s coming over here…”
Lucy and Tracy composed themselves.
“Hallo,” he said in a rich baritone that made them both weaken. His accent was light and his vowels were rounded as if he had been educated in Great Britain. “I seem to have been stood up. So perhaps I will talk to you instead. If you would like.”
So gentlemanly, noticed Lucy. Old world Mediterranean charm—no ass-pinching and hooting war cries like the lowest of the species. “Please join us,” said Lucy, motioning to the neighboring barstool.
“Can I buy you a drink?” risked Tracy.
He laughed. “It is the man who should buy the drink for the woman, is it not?”
“It’s a modern world,” sang Tracy. But at this juncture, Derek was on his feet and standing a few yards from them.
Derek: “I thought you were gone to the bar for me drink not a focking hen party.”
“I’m coming, I’m coming already—what bloody cheek.”
“You got the bloody cheek…”
They retreated to the table to squabble. Not such a modern world for some people, thought Lucy.
The handsome stranger noted, “I have met that boy before.”
“You have?”
“Many times, in England. Not him personally, just his sort.”
“Yes,” said Lucy, trying not to be nervous. “I’ve met him in England too a few times.”
“You were in England?”
“I was … well, I had this, uh, visiting scholar teaching post at Oxford University.” Suddenly she blanked out on names of colleges she could attach herself too.
“How unfortunate for you,” he said consolingly. “For both of us. Unfortunate for you, because Oxford is what it is. Unfortunate for me, because I might have met you had you come to Cambridge.”
Lucy smiled. “I wondered how you spoke such perfect English.”
“Ah, it is far from perfect. Well. I must find my brother…” The stranger stood.
Lucy noticed out of the corner of her eye Stavros in his favorite muscle-shirt and tight jeans sauntering into the club. “Oh please,” she said quickly, “won’t you stay for at least a drink? I can’t let you malign the honor of Oxford, a place far superior to Cambridge, as you surely know.”
He laughed but did not sit down again.
Stavros had spotted them.
The stranger: “I must go, but perhaps I will return, yes?”
“Please do,” she smiled, seeing that Stavros was glaring unhappily at her conversational partner.
The stranger bowed slightly and walked out of the club, passing Stavros, who in comparison looked immature and like an overmoussed adolescent. Stavros, frowning, joined Lucy.
“Who ees that?”
Damn it, she didn’t get his name. “Just someone.”
“Where were you this afternoon?” Stavros asked.
“Waiting for you to come back with food.”
“I,” he pantomimed knocking, “on yoor door. You are not there.”
Well, she did fall deeply asleep. “I was there all afternoon,” she said anyway, “and I didn’t hear you knocking.”
“I go to the room and sleeped myself, yes?”
“Was that before or after going down to see the German bimbos at the windsurfing stand?”
“Bimbos? I do not unnerstand…”
She repeated it until she knew he was pretending not to understand.
“I make many friends,” he said in his defense.
“So do I,” she said.
* * *
O’Hanrahan’s Dark Night of the Soul.
He sat on the edge of a rock and assessed the trail before him. Shadows closed in and soon he would be wandering blindly. Perhaps if he had followed the shore and walked the coastline he would be able to see in the moonlight, but reaching the coast would be impossible now … Perhaps he could sleep on the ground. With the wolves. And the rattlesnakes—one of the last places they lived in Europe. Or he could just sit here, lean on this rock until he fell asleep and get going at the first hint of light.
Soon twilight gave way to darkness, which encompassed the woods. Only above him through the pines could he see the deepening blue of night. The pines rustled, leaves brushed, and he talked himself into hearing animals approaching. Eerily a gust of wind would rustle the treetops as if some consciousness were there, some angry, long-ignored Grecian deity.
(What about the long-ignored God of Abraham?)
I’m like friggin’ St. Anthony of the Desert, thought O’Hanrahan, putting his hands under his arms to fight the chill. I’m starving, I’m seeing things and hearing things—
(When Anthony felt fear, he prayed to Us.)
No siree, I’m not going to pray. Lordy Lordy I’m so scared of the dark. More times than not, when a man turns to prayer and religion he’s being stupid, insufficient.
(But men and women are insufficient.)
It’s degrading. How can anyone believe in a religious experience when nine out of ten times one has it in extremis. Person A finds God when her plane is about to crash. Person B has got cancer and has six months to live and, whadya know, finds God. Person C is trapped in a mine for six days and, big surprise, finds God. I mean, isn’t that the least little bit suspicious? No, I tell you what, when I’m on top, when I’m successful and thinking clearly, then maybe I’ll give God a shot.
(Suit yourself.)
As my father said, “Be a man.” I was scared of the dark when I was a child. I’d lie in my room whimpering, eventually getting my good sweet suffering mother, my dear loving mother …
(Your mother is here with Us.)
A picture of her soft, indulgent face floated before O’Hanrahan. He remembered: My mother would rise from her bed and come comfort me, read to me. She would look so old in the light of that little bedside lamp. She never cut her hair like many women of that generation, but rather arranged it every morning, neatly piling and braiding it atop her head. But in the night, in her faded flannel nightgown, without her spectacles whose absence made her face so vulnerable, she and her long, combed-out silver hair would look into my room and … and she seemed perpetually sad for me. Why isn’t my little Paddy asleep and dreamin’, she’d say. Well, what will it be, she’d ask, reaching for the Bible-stories book in the nightstand, the one with all the colorful pictures of miracles and Christ suffering and bleeding.
(So began your interest in Us.)
My father on the other hand was harsh, disciplining. Unloving, as his father had been.
(And what do you suppose your son would say of you?)
My father refused to buy a nightlight for me. And if he caught me with my bedside lamp on wasting valuable electricity, he would remove the light, cursing as his hands were burned on the hot bulb. And once … why does this come back to me now? Once he shut me in the closet, saying, “There, now be a man … And don’t come out till ye can act like a man.” And the closet wasn’t really so dark and I wasn’t scared, just humiliated, so I decided I would sit in there until I died. And I never would have come out except for the muffled sounds of my mother weeping, and to comfort her, I came out. Over a goddam half-century ago! Another lifetime!
(No, not another lifetime.)
I hated my father for a long time. Then I felt sorry for him. A son’s love can survive hate and disagreement, violence and abuse, but no son’s love can survive the emotion of pity for his father. I can say to my credit, my son Rudy never thought I was pathetic. He may have hated me, but never pitied me.
(Your son did pity you. Shows what you know.)
My father, Patrick O’Hanrahan, Sr., worked in the stockyards, loading and unloading freight. Despite a solid union wage we were always poor. He lent money to no-account relatives and friends over drinks in the bar, and he borrowed money just as liberally from loan sharks. My mother hocked heirloom after heirloom, all junk, of course, Irish schlocky junk from the halcyon Old Country. As his son I was caught between him saying, “Ah, ye’re not gonna have to slave yer life away like yer old bastard of a father, not on me life…” and conversely: “Workin’ where I work wouldn’t hurt ye none, or is it that you’re too good fer us workin’ folk…?”
I could never win.
A good report card? I got “Ye think ye’re so smart, do ye? Smarter than yer old man? Well, I can teach ye still a thing or two…” Around the house, never I, nor my mother, nor any of my brothers or sisters, received any evidence that he loved us, so it’s hardly something to feel guilty about.
(Then why do you?)
God, how I dreaded family occasions, weddings and funerals. There’d never be a wedding without all three of his sisters and four of his brothers, jostling, getting drunk, bleating Irish songs until the union local catering staff asked them to leave, and there’d always be a fight. Someone would say something utterly, indescribably inconsequential and then my father would stand, wobbling on his feet, drunk:
“If ye say that … if ye say that again, then by God and the saints, I swear on Christ Almighty…”
And here my mother would restrain him, beg him to sit down, calm down, have some coffee, surely it was time to go home—
“By God, a brother of mine saying that … saying what ye just said…”
Even at this point, my father could not tell you, if his life depended on it, what exactly was said. It was merely an opportunity to hear himself roar and be manly, one more good-for-nothing bog Irish, dumb harp, millrat mick … I’ll admit it, no argument here: I was thoroughly ashamed of him.
And funerals. Christ almighty, at funerals like some third-rate Irish vaudeville sketch, they’d weep one minute and sneak shots from the flask the next, then shove each other in the parking lot, then blame one another for the death of whoever had died, bar them from ever stepping foot in their houses again, swear by every saint and holy presence that they were no longer a brother/sister/in-law of theirs, that they were dead to each other! Dead as whomever they’d just ruined the funeral of! How I would run back to the car—yes, that was when we still had the car—and lock myself inside and put my head down on the backseat and shut it all out, all the emotional violence and drunk Irish grandstanding I didn’t comprehend.
