P. Deutermann - The Last Man

“Look inside, Mr. Hall,” the abbot said, ushering David to the doorway. “Tell me, what is that thing on the altar?”

David looked inside the chapel at the wine bowl, which he had put on a back corner of the altar after the last service of the evening. The chapel was suffused with a warm glow, but the wine bowl looked just the same, plainer than even the candleholders and the simple Orthodox cross on the altar.

“A first-century wine bowl,” David told him. “From the great discoveries at Metsadá.”

“How did this thing get here, Mr. Hall?”

“Dr. Ressner brought it to me. The authorities weren’t interested in it. Why is everyone so excited?”

“Look again, Mr. Hall. At the chapel, not the bowl.”

“Okay, I’m looking. I don’t see any changes.” White stone floor and walls, with no ornamentation to speak of. The Stations of the Cross represented by simple wooden crucifixes. No windows. A white stone altar with simple vestments. Two large brass candlesticks on the altar.

With no candles.

“Where is the light coming from, Mr. Hall?” the abbot whispered. “Can you tell us that, please?”

Feeling the hair rise on the back of his neck, David looked again. No candles. There was no electricity in the tiny monastery. No batteries that he knew of. If they needed light at night, they’d get a candle. Yet there was no mistaking it: There definitely was a faint, almost golden glow to the chapel’s interior.

He looked again at the bowl, but it was not glowing. It was just a plain bronze bowl, not quite perfectly symmetrical, looking a little wobbly around the rim. Dull, plain metal. It looked no different than the moment at which he’d first seen it.

“Father Kamil,” he said finally, “we need to talk privately.”

The abbot closed the chapel doors and instructed the monks not to go in there until he returned. Then he took David across the courtyard to his cell, which was no different from the one David occupied except for a desk and a second chair at one end. He pulled up the chair and indicated for David to take the other one.

“Proceed,” he said.

For the first time, David told him the whole story of how he had come to Israel, what he’d discovered, and how he had entangled Judith Ressner into his deceptions and ultimate success. He then described the words on the wall that Judith had translated, which were probably now gone, regarding the bowl and the writer of the words.

The abbot sat there the entire time, fixing his eyes on David’s face with the intensity of an eagle about to launch. When David had finished, he sighed.

“God give me strength,” he said quietly.

“We were both making rather large assumptions, Father Kamil,” David said. “She was translating from Aramaic, and even she said there were always many different interpretations for any word in Aramaic, especially of that age.”

“Yet there is light in the chapel. Like no light I have ever seen.”

David had no answer for that, but he was suddenly, perhaps irrationally, glad he had not touched that bowl.

“What will you do now?” he asked the abbot.

“We shall pray,” the abbot replied promptly.

“In the chapel?”

“Oh, no,” the abbot said. “At the door. Until we understand the light. So: This is why you are confined here? The government knows about that bowl?”

“No, the government probably doesn’t know about it,” David said. “They were so overwhelmed by the other things, they disregarded the bowl. I think Judith just took it and then told them it would go into a museum somewhere.”

“Very well, Mr. Hall. As I said, we shall pray together to seek guidance and wisdom.”

“Mind if I join you, Father Kamil?”

“Not at all, my son, not at all. Tell me one more thing, please. After your lady friend told you what was written on the wall, did you touch the bowl?”

David said yes, when they first found it, but after that, he had been afraid to.

“Why?”

“You know exactly why, Father Kamil. Do you want to touch it?”

“Never, Mr. Hall. Let us go back to the chapel. Ah, wait. First I must send a message. Come with me.”

David went with the abbot to the far side of the garden enclosure. Father Kamil unlocked a wooden door that led to a set of steps going up into the ruined corner tower. David wondered if the abbot was going to make some kind of signal, but when they got to the top of the tower, the abbot opened another door that led into a dovecote. There was an immediate chorus of cooing and purring from the tile nesting pipes wedged along the walls.

“Homing pigeons?” David asked.

“Yes, indeed, Mr. Hall. Very reliable.”

“Where’s the message going?” David asked, as he watched the abbot scratch out some words on a small piece of paper and then insert it into a short metal tube.

“To our Patriarch, in Jerusalem, of course,” the abbot said. “He will know what to do about this wine bowl that lights a room with no flame. He will think us all mad, of course, but he will come to see for himself. ”

Wow, David thought as the abbot secured the tiny cylinder to the leg of a fat pigeon with a leather jess. Now he understood why Judith had brought the bowl here.

You’ll see, she’d said.

Soon, of course, the whole world would want to see.

They came for him three hours after sundown, ten days after the message had flown to Jerusalem. David had been asleep when the sound of a helicopter woke him up. He got up, shivered in the cold, and looked through both window embrasures. He could see nothing but the distant snow-capped mountains in the moonlight. There was much more snow up there now, he noticed. Maybe the helo had been just passing by, he thought. He had never heard one at night. Then, fifteen minutes later, he heard the truck cranking over and knew that something was up. He lit a candle, washed his face, and got some clothes on. For some reason, this time he fished out his own street clothes.

A half hour later one of the monks who often sat with him in the garden unlocked the door, knocked, and came in. He was carrying an oil lantern, and he smiled when he saw how David was dressed. He indicated that David was to come with him. They went to the front gate, where two soldiers were waiting.

Comes now the big question, he thought. They were either going to let him go or take him to a real prison. Or worse. He took hope from the fact that everyone was acting pretty nonchalant about what was going on. There was nothing in the soldiers’ faces to indicate they were going to execute him. Besides, they didn’t need to send a helicopter to do that.

They slipped on a set of plastic handcuffs but this time did not blindfold him. They put him on a wooden bench in the back of the canvas-covered truck and hooked his cuffs up to a metal rod. Then the truck bumped and banged its way down the same mountain track he’d come up before. What, he thought — almost two months ago? He could see the trail opening out behind him as they went down. Briefly he considered escape. No. Nothing but wild goats could survive out there in this wilderness, and even they were pretty thin.

They did blindfold him once they put him in the helicopter and strapped him in. This time he sat back without being told to and relaxed as best he could, trying not to think of all the possibilities here. It was very cold once they got up to altitude and leveled off. He remembered stories of CIA contract people throwing Vietcong prisoners out of helicopters while other prisoners watched, supposedly as an incentive for the others to talk. He shivered again, this time not entirely because of the cold. They landed after about a half-hour flight and then ground-taxied a long way before the turbine spooled down and then went silent, which was when he heard the noise of a propjet, a big propjet from the sound of it, somewhere near the helicopter. The doors opened, and the blindfold was briskly removed.