The Body

by Richard Ben Sapir

  To polyvinyl the bones, Sharon needed only brushes and a jar of whitish liquid that she had been carrying in a small backpack.

  Jim left the new metal door slightly open for better breathing, he said. Actually, he felt the door might somehow not open right, and lock them in for a while. It looked like such an intrusion on the place, even though Sharon said that was just the way ancients would do things—add whatever they had to whatever they found.

  Very delicately and very carefully, Sharon applied the whitish liquid to the brown bones. Jim had to stand close to hold the powerlight. He felt a warm flush come up on his face, and then go back down to his body. Sharon’s words became like gentle caresses, even though she was talking about bones and dating.

  “Excuse me, could you hold the powerlight?” asked Jim, handing it to Sharon.

  “Sure, what’s wrong?”

  “A crick in the back,” said Jim. It was a lie. Why did he lie? Why didn’t he just say flat-out he was liking it too much? That he had vows he intended to keep and he didn’t want to go any further. Why?

  “Okay,” said Sharon. “It would be even easier.” She put the light pack right into the niche itself, so that it illuminated the hole from the other side, casting an odd light on her. Jim could see she was almost hypnotized by her own work.

  After a while she wiped her forehead, and said she was tired and needed a rest.

  “If you want to smoke, go ahead,” said Jim. “The door is open.”

  “No, no,” she said. “You know the jaw hasn’t fallen off.”

  “Which means what?”

  “Which means I have been touching the bones, which must create some vibrations no matter how careful I am and the jaw has not fallen off.”

  “You mean you think there must be some fragment of connecting tissue there?”

  “Exactly. Somehow a small fragment has survived there to hold the jaws. The jaws are not connected to the skull by bones, I am sure you are aware.”

  “What does that mean, exactly?”

  “Well, you know you can’t carbon-date the bones themselves because the substance you use is a protein called collagen, and in bones you just never isolate enough.”

  “But you can in connective tissue?” said Jim.

  “Exactly,” said Sharon.

  “So now we can get a carbon dating,” said Jim.

  “Right,” said Sharon. “Now you tell me what nice thing you saw in here last time that has made you such a different person.”

  “You could tell I felt good?”

  “A different man, a condemned man entered this tomb, and a reborn one, excuse the expression, left it.”

  “Have you heard of the Shroud of Turin?”

  “Yes,” said Sharon. “I know someone who thought he had done some work on it about ten years ago or so, but he never got a proper answer from the people he worked for.”

  “Well, for certain reasons, I think the Shroud of Turin is every bit as valid as physical evidence of Christ as this find, and if that is so, then this can never be conclusively proven … what some people might think.”

  “Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. The shroud. It did have that wound on the side, didn’t it? What was the dating on it? Did they ever do the dating?”

  “You mentioned the wound on the side?” said Jim.

  “Absolutely. Odd form of crucifixion. I could see if crowds were getting unruly, and they had to finish someone off fast, but the pilum in the side does not make sense. It would be like sentencing someone to solitary confinement, and sending along twenty obnoxious people to talk him to death. It just defeats the purpose.”

  “I read that too.”

  “The normal way of bringing about a faster death was to break the bones,” said Sharon. “Which was slow. And, of course, Pilatus asked why Jesus died so quickly, which he would do if some Roman soldier had killed him with a lance.”

  “And the shroud shows a crown of thorns,” said Jim. “Just like the Gospels.”

  “Not all that unusual. There is a game the Roman soldiers used to play with a victim sometimes, where they did make him an honorary king for a game, but of course not king of a specific people. But in Jesus’ case it would have been a natural. And I think they did that because part of the game was playing for the royal robes. I can show you the square where it might have happened. It’s inside one of your churches.”

  “But the combination of both spear and the thorns is most unusual.”

  “Agreed.”

  “The shroud had both, of course. You can’t tell if that one died by a spear,” said Jim, nodding to the hole in the wall.

  “A pathologist can,” said Sharon. “Nowadays.”

  “You think a spear would leave a mark on a rib?”

  “It would have to. That’s how those wounds kill, the blade or point bounces off the ribs, and then into the heart. Ribs are like guides to the heart for those familiar with killing.”

  Jim shivered a bit to hear her talk so casually about brutal death.

  “Therefore, if the shroud is valid as a covering for Jesus, it at least establishes what we have here cannot be proven without a great doubt to be Him. Because the shroud covers a man five inches taller than the bones could have been.”

  “To hell with it,” said Sharon. She lit a cigarette and smoked inside the cave.

  “You see, I was really worried when I read back in Rome that no shroud was found with the body. But when I found bones don’t shrink and the shroud could not have covered those bones, I knew I had my countervailing evidence. In fact, conclusive evidence. That poor fellow is not Christ.”

  Sharon inhaled on the cigarette.

  “Is something wrong?” asked Jim.

  “Everything is fine, Father … congratulations.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I am not going to get in a discussion with you. Get your archaeologist. Do whatever you want. If you think Tabinian’s waste of a good mind bothered me, you ought to see what I think of what you’re doing.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You came here for something and you found it. Let’s not pretend this is a dig. Pax vobiscum. Sursum corda. Whatever.”

  “What is wrong?”

  “You have jumped to a religious conclusion and your evidence has a flaw, and if you knew where your argument fell to pieces I might have a depressed priest on my hands. Good. Go with God, Father Folan.”

  “You may disagree with me, but I would appreciate your treating me at least like an adult. Let’s have it. I am here for the truth, whether you believe it or not.”

  “The Shroud of Turin could never have covered Jesus if you read the Gospels properly.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Because I read them not as a believer but a scientist. As a believer you are being carried along so quickly you don’t notice some things.”

  “What?”

  “I really don’t want to discuss this. You will get what you want, anyhow. So let it be this.”

  “I want to know, Dr. Golban,” said Jim.

  “All right. I’ll make a deal with you. Tomorrow may be the last good day till spring for the beaches at Tel Aviv. You go with me there, and read your Gospels while I swim, and I will explain to you afterward how the Gospels disprove the shroud.”

  “You couldn’t tell me now?”

  “Maybe you will see it yourself if you read it like a scientist, like that detective you can be when you are defending your faith. All right. You’re a lot smarter than you let people know, Jim Folan.”

  “You couldn’t just tell me?” said Jim, but he knew the teacher in Dr. Golban would not let a mind like his go free without a workout.

  The next morning they bought pomegranates, dates, almonds, and the bitter oranges from the new citrus crop, and sesame loaves and Carmel wine, and they set out for the coast.

  Jim asked that Sharon drive a little bit more carefully. When Sharon turned from the wheel to assure him how safe she was, Jim gave up asking and said a f
ew silent prayers for their safety. When one of them became vocal by an unconscious slip, Sharon accused him of ridiculing her.

  “My driving is not that bad,” she said.

  “You are really serious,” said Jim, truly shocked.

  “There are worse,” said Sharon.

  “A degree of bad is not a qualification for good.”

  “I said ‘not that bad.’ I wasn’t talking about slow poke, let everybody run you off the road, ‘Oh, here come the police’ kind of good. I said ‘not that bad.’ And I meant it.”

  “You just missed a truck,” said Jim.

  “Right. Missed it,” said Sharon, angrily vindicated, and Jim decided to just close his eyes on close calls, until Sharon accused him of trying to make her feel guilty. Which she didn’t. But she would slow down because he was a guest of the State of Israel. Big deal. There, did that make him happy?

  “Yes,” said Jim, and they drove down from the hills through the land of Benjamin, into the coastal plain, past the ancient port of Yafo, until they reached the new city of Tel Aviv, where they needed a parking sticker for the beach.

  Jim sat on the blanket reading a paperback of the New Testament in Hebrew, which was ironic.

  Even by the time of the apostles, Hebrew was already a language reserved for Jewish holy works, and only the rebirth of Hebrew as a common language for Israel could have brought about the edition he had now.

  Jim looked up at the water. He saw Sharon dive into the little breakers of the blue Mediterranean, and imagined Roman galleys making their way slowly up the coast, and sailors seeing someone as beautiful as Sharon on the shore, her golden body so sleek and perfect, a tribute to Hellenistic worship of the body.

  Of course, if she were an ancient Hebrew, she would not be bathing like that. The attitude toward the body, as being something definitely not to be worshiped, was Hebrew to the marrow. And now part of Christianity.

  She was wearing too little, just a string bra and napkin-size panties. But she had the body for it, a glorious body for it.

  Jim felt lucky that he had never had to wrestle seriously with a woman problem as some priests did. And of course some failed. It was a modern scandal, specifically about the Jesuits.

  But like most scandals, this was exaggerated because no one ever gossiped about the great numbers of Jesuits who kept their vows of chastity.

  Jim stopped himself from this line of thought. He said a prayer of gratitude that he did not have that problem and watched the beautiful body of Sharon Golban play in the Mediterranean, dive into the little breakers, swim out and then back, and then stand up and let the water roll off, shaking out her luxurious black hair. Some men would come up to her, and she would nod back to Jim, who would wave and then pretend to read.

  There was nothing new he was going to find in the Gospels that would disprove the shroud. If he didn’t know it by now, he wasn’t going to know it in an afternoon.

  Sharon would tell him her proof, and he would see what she was working at, and find the flaw in it, and go on. It had to be impossible that the Church could conduct an investigation and miss an obvious fact.

  He read snatches of Hebrew in the print he had come to believe at one time was the only Hebrew writing. But the marks on the disk were like handwriting compared to this print, and that is what had confused him.

  As he read, the story of Jesus dragged him in, reminding him of his mother reading him the stories in English, and how he had imagined Jesus speaking in English, and Baby Jesus playing with toys just as he had. It was an old friend he met that afternoon, in a different language, in a faraway place from his mother’s kitchen. But He was an old friend, as pure in Hebrew as in his mother’s voice.

  Suddenly, Jim felt cold water splash on him. Sharon was standing over him, shaking her hair out and drying herself. She was close. He could see the flesh of her breast firm before the line of the bra. There was nothing that was held up, and this woman, he was sure, could have modeled the suit, if she chose to.

  “Am I spraying you?” she said.

  “Oh. No. Stay there. You don’t have to go.”

  “Have you found it?”

  “No. But I think I know why you wanted me to go to the beach with you. You could say I am your date, and then nobody would bother you.”

  “Very good. This is a pickup beach, and I happen to love it and I also don’t like to be bothered sometimes by men, so, yes, you are here. I remember reading an article that an American newspaperwoman had written about how aggressive Israeli men are on the beach. It was so funny because it had to be this beach. When you come here, it is like one of your bars in America.”

  “Not all bars are pickup bars.”

  “Really? But there are bars that are?”

  “Yes,” said Jim.

  “What are they like?”

  “I don’t know what they’re like today. When I was a student, I would go to those sorts of places.”

  “You must have been very good. You’re attractive and have a nice way.”

  “No,” said Jim, laughing. “I wasn’t very good.”

  Sharon opened the wine, pouring for Jim first, and then tore off a piece of sesame bread for him, and gave him little bunches of grapes and almonds on a plastic wrapper.

  “Is that why you became a priest, because you weren’t good with women?”

  “No,” said Jim.

  “I didn’t think so,” said Sharon.

  “Why?”

  “I just didn’t think so.”

  “No. I had been thinking of it since high school, and I had thought I would like to, but I didn’t think I could do it.”

  “You mean, give up sex?”

  “Everything.”

  “Are there priests who can have sex?”

  “Some of our Eastern rites can marry. But not in our Latin rites.”

  “Do you have sex?”

  “That’s personal.”

  “You don’t want to answer it?”

  “Uh. I don’t have sex. No, it doesn’t bother me to answer it.”

  “Are you a virgin?”

  “No.”

  “Did you like sex when you had it?”

  “Yes,” said Jim.

  “And you gave it up?”

  “Yes,” said Jim.

  “How?”

  “With the help of Jesus. I don’t expect to do it alone. He gave me the grace so that I would not be tempted beyond what I could handle.”

  “Sort of a self-hypnosis?” asked Sharon, biting into a piece of bread but never taking her eyes off Jim. She was locked in like a bird hovering over something, aware of any movement, even while she chewed.

  “Unless, of course, Jesus Christ is God, and therefore capable of giving that help that I need to bring me closer to Him.”

  “All right,” said Sharon, rather pleasantly. “Yes, that’s possible.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in God.”

  “Where did you get that idea?”

  “My God, you’re a personal anticlerical pogrom.”

  “Ah,” said Sharon. “God and men who claim they represent Him are two different things. Spit out the pits.”

  “What?”

  “You’re chewing the grape pits.”

  “I didn’t find what you wanted me to find in the Gospels. I see nothing that remotely disproves the shroud as the covering of Jesus.”

  “Pits are not good for you.”

  “Never mind the seeds.”

  “All right,” said Sharon, putting her forefinger on the text in Jim’s hand. “Where in there does it mention Jesus Christ was tall?”

  “What does that have to do with the shroud?”

  “The shroud in your measurements is five foot ten. Yes?”

  “Right,” said Jim. “That’s not tall.”

  “For Boston, Massachusetts, twentieth century, no. For Waco, Texas, no. For London, no. For Jerusalem today, no. For the Second Temple period, during Herod’s time, yes! And nowhere in the Gospels, the Synopt
ic Gospels, from eyewitness accounts, nowhere does it say He was tall.”

  “Synoptics don’t describe Him.”

  “Is it possible they would not mention He was tall, that He stood out in a crowd, that He towered over the people who followed Him, that one could see Him at a distance, because He was the tall one?”

  Jim thought about that. There was no mention of Christ being tall. Where had he gotten the idea Christ was five feet ten? And then he realized where the tradition came from. He realized it with horror. It had come from the shroud itself.

  “Jim,” said Sharon, “Goliath, the giant Goliath of the Philistines was six feet tall, maybe six feet one inch tall, in your measurements.” Jim put down the text and looked out to the Mediterranean, and the painfully blue sky.

  “Five feet ten was huge, Jim. They couldn’t have not mentioned it. And Jesus was just not big enough for that shroud.”

  “Yes,” said Jim.

  Sharon offered him wine, and he refused it. On the way off the beach, Jim kicked up sand.

  “I’m sorry,” said Sharon.

  “Truth is truth,” said Jim. “The investigation is not over.”

  “Absolutely,” said Sharon. It was getting cold suddenly as the wind shifted coming in off the sea. Sharon said he should have a jacket.

  11

  Lavelle Again

  “Regret previous report on countervailing evidence incorrect. Due to hasty judgment. Reports will follow.”

  The message was hard to send. The report was even harder. He had not only to explain his jump to a conclusion but then why that conclusion was wrong, and that meant why the report on the shroud was wrong.

  He had to explain why so many had missed such an obvious fact. Perhaps because they had to see something that was not there. Or more likely because they had never grown up without the Gospels, because they too learned them as children and could never approach the works like historical documents no matter how much they thought they could.

  What was even more brutal was Jim’s examen, and there was no escaping this airing of conscience. He had lost a battle for his Church because of a flaw within him. He had been afraid because he feared failure, that he would fail the Church.

  When he got down to it, it was pride. He jumped at the first good evidence to make himself look better, to make the Holy Father feel better, as though Father Jim Folan were playing benevolent God.