Jonathan Rabb - The Book of Q

Something Petra had never fully understood.

Arriving at the Piazza del Risorgimento-rush-hour trams swallowing and spewing passengers by the dozens-he allowed himself a momentary flight of fancy. What if the prayer did connect to those words? What if the real Christ lay hidden somewhere within it? Freed from the structure that had engulfed them over the centuries, those ideas couldbreathe new life into a faith growing ever more static, distant. Ignite a genuine passion based on the purity of the Word.

As he stepped from the curb, however, an equally powerful thought entered his mind, brought on more by the events of the last few hours than by anything else…. It’s clearly important to someone. Important enough to take a man’s life . He had done his best to dismiss the possibility twenty minutes ago; now, he found it far more difficult. Could a scroll like that be seen as a threat-a single voice, Christ’s teachings made plain at last? How might that be received? he wondered. Not as an answer to the complacency, but as a shock to its very core. Here would be something to strip away the layers of exegesis that sat atop the parables, the Beatitudes, all the dogma that had grown out of the myriad attributions of meaning. Could such clarity actually appear dangerous, even the hint of it prompt someone within the church to suppress it-better to maintain the current structure than to upend it, no matter how true to Christ’s own insights the source of that clarity might be?

The real paradox of faith: Truth versus Structure. Pearse had to believe that the church was beyond such fears.

And yet, a man was dead.

He cut across the road and sidestepped his way through traffic, one or two angry horns spiriting him on his way. Once on safer ground, he moved along the sidewalk, the Vatican wall-sixty feet of weathered brown-gray stone and turrets-lowering above him; twenty yards down, he turned into the Santa Anna gate, an equally imposing archway, vigilanza -dressed in the customary blue tunics and capes-manning the gate. A few cars were making their way out-never more than a glance from the guards for those leaving, far more care with those trying to get in. Even so, the man nodded Pearse through, a token look at the Vatican passaporto of a familiar priest.

He might have felt a bit cheated by the world beyond the gate, so little in the way of real grandeur, but he never did. The affectations were reserved for the more public areas-the museums, St. Peter’s. Here, it was a collection of administrative buildings, post offices, loggia, the only truly regal sight the fifty-foot archway leading off to the library and beyond. Even that was in need of a good cleaning. But, unlike anywhere else in Rome-perhaps the world-Pearse felt a genuine sense of security within its walls, a safekeeping that ostentation could only mar. And with it, that sense of lightness seemingly unavailable to him in the rest of Rome.

It was why he’d accepted the offer of rooms on his arrival, why he’d petitioned for Vatican citizenship a year after that. Spiritual refuge. Genuine connection to the heart of the church. A taste of the certainty he so desperately craved.

Unfortunately, his choice had dramatically changed things with his family, talks with Jack and Andy less frequent, a sense that the priest was somehow now even more off-limits. His parents hadn’t quite known how to take it either, the final realization that their son was truly the church’s and not their own. He’d tried to convince them otherwise, but there really wasn’t much hope of that. Nor of any of them understanding what had prompted the move-that maybe, just maybe after all this time, Petra wouldn’t be able to follow him inside the Vatican walls.

Then again, maybe not.

Managing his way along the cobbled drive-still slick from the rain-he thought about picking up a few pieces of fruit, something sweet at the market, but he couldn’t muster the appetite. He remembered some cheese in his rooms. It would have to suffice. Stepping through another, more commonplace archway, he hurried across a stone courtyard before arriving at the entrance to his building.

Three flights and a corridor later, he turned his key and stepped into the two rooms that had been his home for the past few years.

Sofa, chairs, desk-cum-table greeted him as he kicked his shoes across the floor, two small windows on the far wall, neither of which-as far as he knew-having ever seen the sun. But there was always hope. He kept a plant atop the waist-high bookshelf between them just on the off chance a ray or two might creep in.

It was his eighth plant in two years.

Only at night did the light venture in, harsh, from somewhere above, enough to cast shadowed bars across the room from the rusted fire escape. Tonight was no exception. The slanted black lines were instantly erased as he flicked on a standing lamp. At the same time, he pulled off his collar-always the most relaxing moment of the day-and, stretching his neck, moved across the linoleum floor to the books. He crouched down and pulled several volumes out, placing them in a pile on the table just behind him. Perfect Light . Time to see how much he had remembered.

He pulled a ball from his glove on the floor and moved to the table. Sitting, he began to toss it back and forth between his hands. Always the best way to concentrate.

The first book was one of the red-bound volumes of the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum , which contained Augustine’s anti-Manichaean works. Pearse recalled several references to the prayer appearing during Augustine’s own struggle with his faith. Long before he had decided to “take it and read,” the hero of Confessions had wondered just how high the “true ascent” might actually take him. Those were the questions Pearse now scanned for, that sense of possibility so clearly felt by the young Augustine.

Much of the writing, though, concentrated on the Manichaean “Kingdom of Darkness,” a realm for which Augustine had shown a particular fascination: evil let loose, as arbitrary as it was overwhelming. For a moment, Pearse wondered if perhaps he’d seen it for himself firsthand, the descriptions all too reminiscent of his days in Bosnia. Maybe the Manichaeans deserved more credit than Augustine had given them.

Forty minutes later, he shut the last of the books, no further along than when he had started, every reference too vague, too uncertain in its own understanding of the prayer. For Augustine, “Perfect Light” had remained a mystery. And for a man with perhaps the keenest mind in the long history of the church, such an admission only strengthened the case for its power, the unfathomable as somehow closer to the divine.

Pearse laid the book on the floor-he’d made his way to the sofa after picking up a wedge of cheese between books-and now stretched out his legs. He began to toss the ball in the air, hoping that something would click. But there was no use fighting it. Within a few minutes, his eyes shut, the sofa infamous for its nap-inducing allure.

It was an hour later when the sound of ringing woke him. At first, he thought it was his alarm, convinced for a moment it was morning. When he realized he was on the sofa, he began to orient himself, slowly aware that it was the phone. Trying to focus, he squinted across the room, the light from above verging on the painful; he forced himself up and moved to the table. On the way, he turned off the lights so as to make things easier.

“Hello?” His voice was raspy.

“Ian.” It was Cesare, the sound of traffic in the background. Pearse could barely hear him. “You have to find it, take it.” A sudden intake of breath, coughing.

“Dante? Where are you? What’s going on?”

“Somehow … they came. They knew.” More coughing, the words short of breath. “They will change everything. Everything.”