Gospel, page 67
“Rabbi,” she interrupted, “I don’t think life in an Arab-run country would be better for anybody in the 20th Century … Where are we going, by the way?”
“My house, and then lunch at Golda’s. You who hate us so much should see Golda’s, have some gefilte fish, borscht, a blintz—they do a cream-cheese blintz there that would circumcise the heathen…” Lucy noticed the woman standing next to them in the bus stop line hiding a smile.
“I don’t,” Lucy hissed under her breath, “hate the Jews, and would you stop announcing that to the whole country.”
“Hear O Israel!” began the rabbi, before Lucy playfully hit him on the arm and they got onto the bus. The rabbi dropped in shekels for both of them.
“There,” he said. “A little return on your whopping tax investment, okay?”
Lucy and Rabbi Hersch stood and let an older woman sit down in the last seat. “Are you this wicked with all your students?” she asked.
“Oh, I’m taking it easy on you. This isn’t Jewish-strength arguing yet. If I opened up you’d fold like a house of cards.”
Lucy smiled. “Yeah, I bought a copy of your Not the Messiah in a bookstore in New Jerusalem this morning.”
The rabbi blanched and lost the smile in his eye. “Oh that. I thought those were all out of print.”
“I bought it used. It’s very instructive on how stupid the Christians were to think for a moment that Jesus could be the Messiah—”
“Hey, do me a favor, and gimme your copy, willya? I’ll buy it from you. That should never have seen print.”
Lucy discerned he was edgy about this pamphlet, produced twenty years ago. “You make a good case. A bit sarcastic and unkind, perhaps—”
“Please,” he cut her off, “no more of this. Let me buy that book from you.”
“What?” she asked, happy to discomfort him for a change. “Do I hear a recantation coming on?”
“Bah! Everything I wrote is true, I just shouldn’t have written such a thing…” He trailed off, but Lucy waited for him to continue. “You see, little girl, in 1972, 1973, Jews for Jesus was making big inroads at Hebrew University and I had a nightmare vision of the Jewish state losing its youth. I wrote it in response to Moishe Rosen and the Jews for Jesus crowd but my attack … my attack made the rounds and found itself in publication. I didn’t get a cent for it.”
Lucy considered this. “But I thought you wrote a preface for this edition.”
The rabbi, sinkingly, closed his eyes. “That’s right. I have blocked this whole episode from my mind. A limited edition was brought out and—eh! To hell with it. You give it to me and I’ll give you some money for it. It was not intended for a Christian audience.”
Lucy decided she wouldn’t annoy him about this further. But she also had no intention of giving him back the book.
* * *
O’Hanrahan in the white BMW now studied the man who was giving him a lift to the New City: a good-natured, spherical German with red cheeks and yellow hair with an unlikely golden beard in King Tut fashion. He was dressed in a continental white linen suit, painstakingly tailored to his bulk, and several of his fingers had ostentatious rings.
“Patrick O’Hanrahan, at lahst ve meet!”
The professor merely eyed his host cautiously.
The man laughed a laugh higher than his speaking voice, composed of clearly enunciated “ha” sounds. “Zu treffen ist sehr gut, sehr gut … Will you be so kind as to have a drink with me?”
O’Hanrahan had hoped to sober up, for after all, this day he had taken the pledge—
“A supreme white wine, I assure you, ja?”
“Ich möchte, mein Herr. Viel Dank,” O’Hanrahan agreed. Well hell, there was plenty of time to sober up before his reunion with Lucy, lest she ridicule him about his alcohol-free pledge so easily broken.
The white BMW made its way up the Mount of Olives to the Intercontinental Hotel, which overlooks the Old City and possessed a balcony famous for its sweeping view. O’Hanrahan let himself be led through the lobby to a terrace table with two chairs, all prepared as if they’d both been expected.
“I never travel without my wine cellar,” the gentleman said, communicating the burden of his luxury. A Turkish young man of almost feminine beauty skipped out to see what his employer wanted. “Bodo, der Trockenbeerenauslese, bitte. Ja.” The fellow ran with great energy to fulfill this order. “Herr Professor, we have almost met twice and now the consummation!”
O’Hanrahan assented with an odd look.
“Thomas Matthias Kellner,” he said, putting out a pudgy hand. O’Hanrahan noticed a very expensive gold watch on his pink wrist. “We met almost in Rome, ja? And almost in my own hometown of Trier, when you were there this year making your researches.” Herr Kellner added coyly: “About you know whooo, hah-hah hah-hah…”
“I’m not sure I know what you are talking about.”
“Oh but you do. Herr Matthias and his amazing document, nein? Of course, I know all about it. I am a former owner of the document.”
O’Hanrahan reviewed the information: when Gabriel tried to steal the scroll in Rome and the Italian dealers swiped it back, the next buyer was a German man. The Ignatians bought it from him, before the Franciscans took possession of it. “Did you not get a good price, Herr Kellner?” the professor asked.
“Who can put a price on such a treasure?” he responded as the wine arrived. Bodo the houseboy set out glasses and assembled an ice stand. “As I said, I take my wine with me everywhere, lest I have to drink something local and dreadful. Palestine used to be famous for its grapes; still one can taste the Cabernet from Carmel, Special Reserve, but really, sir, you would with me agree … mediocrity. Now the making of wine is a scientific process, mein Freund …” Bodo uncorked a bottle of this exceedingly rare dessert wine of the Mosel from 1976 and poured a golden mouthful into Herr Kellner’s glass to sip. “And where science is required, the Middle East eliminates itself … ahhh, annehmbar, not too presumptuous, as you might say.” With a nod, Bodo was directed to fill O’Hanrahan’s glass.
“Prosit,” they said, toasting each other.
“Delicious,” savored O’Hanrahan, never having had a more expensive white wine. He noticed the label listed the vineyard as Heilig Matthiaskirche and there was what looked to be a Byzantine imperial insignia.
“You are a vintner, sir?” O’Hanrahan guessed.
“Yes,” he said, not elaborating. “Herr Tennyson’s doggerel about having loved and lost is not true in antiquities collection, Herr Professor. This scroll vas in my hands, it vas out of my hands. I was convinced by an expert that the Matthias Gospel, for which I have searched for the last twenty years, was not what I bought. That I had been cheated. This expert claimed it was a pseudo-gospel from the 1200s.”
“I’m sorry, Herr Kellner.”
“So I thought I had been swindled in Rome,” Herr Kellner went on. “How lucky then that I so quickly found a buyer for the thing. A simple Irish churchman attempting to build a library in Ireland, I understood. Ach! It was all a charade.”
“Herr Kellner, there has been a man since Ireland in a German rented car following us through Italy and, I wouldn’t be surprised, here to Jerusalem itself.”
“No, he’s not mine,” he said, a little disappointed. “Oh, I do hope there are not too many people after this scroll.”
O’Hanrahan delighted in torturing him. “Very many, sir. There is a Mad Monk, we think, following our every move, intent on destroying this blasphemous document.”
Herr Kellner fumbled in his pocket for a German brand of antacids. “No, you mustn’t tell me such things … Perhaps I shall accompany you? Two great minds are better, ja, than one, glauben Sie nicht?”
“Do you speak Meroitic?” asked O’Hanrahan, before devoting five minutes to encapsulating the century of vain effort that preceded them both.
“A lost language is a setback, I must admit,” said Herr Kellner, now taking from his pocket some prescription medicine.
O’Hanrahan barely hid his amusement. “Well sir, I still do not possess this scroll, despite what you might have heard. I foresee a trip to Wadi Natrun outside of Cairo, to the national library at Khartoum. Moslem countries, mein Herr …”
His lip turned down in Hapsburg fashion. “Yes,” he said mournfully, “where the barbarians do not allow the consumption of wine. The waste places!” Herr Kellner popped a handful of antacid tablets into his mouth, washing them down with wine. “You have no idea how deeply my folly is felt, Herr O’Hanrahan. Every part of my body is distressed. I sleep horribly, waking up to dreams of self-ridicule. My appetite is gone!”
O’Hanrahan imagined that particular hardship for his host.
“But I am brave. I shall join you in exploring this monastery in Cairo, you say? There are many fine hotels in Cairo.”
O’Hanrahan hadn’t painted a sufficiently grim portrait. “As pilgrims we should only be allowed to sleep outdoors in the caves of the Libyan Desert. And Khartoum, Herr Kellner? The rigors of the Third World?”
The German undid his bottle of prescription medicine. “Ach, perhaps I shall leave the travel to you,” he conceded, changing tacks. “Let us broach then the subject of money. How much do you suppose this Gospel of Matthias would fetch in an open auction, hm? How much higher the price goes when one considers private collectors such as myself.”
“Tell me,” asked O’Hanrahan, “what possible enjoyment could you get out of simply owning this relic? It should be seen publicly, studied by scholars, put on display in a museum. How could you enjoy it collecting dust in a case in your library? Surely you don’t want it merely because St. Matthias is your namesake.”
“Ja, it is a small part of my interest. I was baptized in the Helig Matthiaskirche forty-five years ago, Matthias Kellner.”
O’Hanrahan was struck by what a youthful ruddy face the gentleman had for being forty-five, if he was telling the truth, his fat somehow preserving him.
“Ja, I intend to put it in a museum. That scroll is the premier relic of the Holy Roman Empire, Herr Professor—perhaps of Christianity herself. But I tell you what you already know.”
“No,” said the professor, more eager to learn than to bask.
“Let us go back to the time of the Emperor Constantine and the 300s. Trier was the northernmost Roman capital, an ancient city of which there are yet a few remains, having avoided utter destruction for 1600 years by the Huns as well as American air assaults.”
O’Hanrahan wondered if this pause was intended for him to apologize for America’s role in World War Two.
“Constantine possessed numerous relics of the Disciples, any and all he might have wished, indeed. But the only Disciple’s relic he chose to take north of the Mediterranean was that of the obscure St. Matthias, thirteenth of the Twelve Disciples. Constantine’s own librarian, Eusebius of Caesarea, pronounced the Gospel of Matthias lost and heretical—an odd thing, to be so sure of the heretical nature of something one hasn’t read, hm? The truth is, Eusebius possessed a copy of Matthias. It is my theory that he owned all the so-called lost gospels and kept them in an apokryphon, a secret library, ja? And I believe that that secret library was built by Constantine in Trier.”
O’Hanrahan questioned, “But was placing an apokryphon in Trier wise, sir? With the invasion of the Huns and barbarians—”
“The exact opposite is true, forgive me. Trier was a perfect outpost for controversial matters. A few priests each generation made hidden the treasure of secret works, away from the Mediterranean squabbles and fights. Almost every library of note in the Mediterranean world was sacked or burned between 300 and 500, yes? The Huns wanted treasure—what did they care for scrolls and texts?” he added, as if he had been there. “I would like to point out to you an odd piece of l’histoire trevaise.
“It is said that a convent guarded the scroll, protected by the Masons and Templars from Crusader times, during which the scroll was first translated, and its authenticity realized. The women could be expected to protect it since it suggested matters very, wie sagt Man? Feminist. A female Holy Spirit, an ascendancy of Mary the Magdalene, tales of a secret library for Christian women alone where the true revelation of Christ existed … many curiosities, ja? And so it was guarded by the Matthiasine Sisters and the Masons through the ages.”
This was all new to O’Hanrahan, and he wasn’t sure he believed it. “So the contents of the gospel are known.”
“Oh, the translation has been lost for centuries, and only a few fragments, rumors perhaps, come down to us. I merely tell you what my own mother…” Herr Kellner looked to the clouds briefly, deeply moved. “… my own mother, who spent her final years in the Matthiasine convent herself. And passed to me, on her deathbed…” Again, emotion threatened to overtake this recital. “… these centuries-held secrets. From that time I have made the procurement of the Gospel of Matthias my life’s goal.”
“Yes,” said O’Hanrahan slowly, gently, “but might this gospel, Herr Kellner, after all our troubles prove to be as inauthentic as Eusebius said? A latter-day fake?”
His host seemed impatient. “But truly, Herr Professor, we both know that the gospel is not a work of fiction. And the Matthiasine Sisters and Masons who guarded the secret library knew it was not a fiction. Indeed, tragedy struck Trier simply because too many people knew of the Gospel of Matthias and its secrets. The Jesuits, no less antagonistic then as now. There came…” A sickened, disgusted look transformed Herr Kellner’s appearance. “… that devil, Bishop von Schoneburg. He was to lead the assault against the women of Trier and the surrounding villages in what was the worst witch hunt in European history.”
(The Trier Witch Hunt of 1587 to 1593 led by the Jesuits, Archbishop von Schoneburg and Bishop Binsfield, both currently reliving each execution exquisitely in Hell. In six years no woman remained untortured, some 368 witches were burned outright. Two women survived, an old woman they thought harmless and an orphaned idiot-child they thought ridiculous.)
Herr Kellner encapsulated the history of the Witch Hunt of Trier, concluding, “But the Gospel of Matthias was sewn by the old woman into the skirt of the idiot-child. Or so my dear mother…”
O’Hanrahan permitted himself to pour another glassful of the golden elixir while his host regained his composure.
“… my mother told me in her fevered final revelations of her deathbed.” A pink silken handkerchief was produced from his white linen jacket and he blew his nose. Then he said quite normally, “The convent there has known of these mysteries for 1700 years!”
O’Hanrahan was dismayed his own thorough research had missed this information. Why hadn’t he visited the convent?
(Because it didn’t occur to you that women could be the key to the Gospel of Matthias’s mysteries. Just the Crusty Old Bachelor Fathers.)
“Herr Professor,” said the rich German seriously, “I invite you to research what I am saying. Jesuit accounts of the witch hunt reveal women claimed these so-called witches said the Holy Spirit was female and that God had a special mission for women—this sort of thing, with St. Matthias as the source. The secrets of Matthias were known only by a precious few after the witch hunt, but then we come to the World War Two.”
O’Hanrahan wearily expected an SS connection brewing, from the Templars to the Matthiasine Sisters to the Masons to the SS. But he was wrong.
Herr Kellner said, “The usual wartime rapine and plunder went on. Not from British soldiers or Americans, no, but from the town. Very typical of a war-oppressed rabble. Jewelry stores, clothing stores, all looted and pillaged, and someone, some ignoramus found the treasury in the Matthiaskirche. It was not difficult with the Allied occupation to sell these jewel-encrusted relics, the Matthias scroll. I thought at first we had again the Templars to blame for the theft!”
“Does every bizarre thing in Europe have to do with the Templars?”
“That BBC reporter’s book says it’s the Priory of Zion, Umberto Eco suspects it’s the Templars and Rosicrucians. Any Protestant can tell you it’s the Jesuits, any Italian can tell you it’s P4 and—what’s the new one?—Gladio? Any European can tell you world conspiracies are plotted by a handful of crypto-Nazis who have engineered the EEC and 1992, the Germans’ most diabolical plot so far. Any South American, the CIA. In Germany we used to say the Jews were behind all conspiracies, so you can gauge the danger in believing these things too much. However, it must be said that I do believe the Masons are currently involved.”
“The Masons? In America, mein Herr, Masons are like the Lion’s Club and Kiwanis and Rotary Club—do you know of these organizations?”
“Ooh, I think those are very dangerous too, but living in the Rhineland I am used to conspiracies. I would hate to think of a world without them!”
“You were saying about the Masons?”
“Yes, an American Mason bought the antiquities illegally from the thief who raided the church. For shame, an officer! He sensed the scroll case was ancient and hoped somehow his find might be the centerpiece of some Mason ritual. This major was from Detroit and that’s where the Matthias scroll stayed for a few months.”
“Detroit?” asked O’Hanrahan, incredulous.
“He sold it to a very rich man who ascertained its value, a Chester Merriwether II. A rival of my mother’s! Throughout my dear mother’s life, she was plagued by this American collector with too damn much money, as I am plagued by Mr. Getty in my own time…” Here Herr Kellner laughed repeatedly. “Ah, but fate intervenes. Herr Merriwether was old, and his own son Charles takes over this multinational company, leaving his aging father to his art collection. Before Chester’s death the son, a mere twenty-five years old and a thorough boor—but Gott sei Dank—sells off everything, including the Gospel of Matthias papyrus. It is purchased in 1948 by the National Museum of Egypt, for they believe it is a document of their culture. In that time, a Jewish fellow … ah, the name eludes me…”
