The Fifth Gospel: A Novel

by Ian Caldwell

  Finally I understood. “You think people associated Thomas with the Shroud. You think that’s how he got his nickname.”

  “No. Even more than that: I think ‘Thomas’ and ‘Didymus’ are the Shroud. I think the disciples had never seen anything like it before, so they called the image what it seemed to be: reflection, duplicate, twin. Only later did the name attach to the man who brought the Shroud out of Jerusalem. By the time the first gospel was written, most Christians spoke Greek or Latin, so they had no idea what Thomas meant in Aramaic. They might’ve thought it was the man’s actual name. That’s why the gospel of John reminds them by adding the Greek word for twin: Didymus.”

  I sat back, not knowing what to say. In the hundreds of books I had read on the life of Jesus, I had never encountered anything like this idea. There are other reasons John might’ve created the Thomas story—and yet, there was something magnetic about Ugo’s idea. Something simple and elegant and grounded. For a moment, the author of John stopped being an unapproachable philosopher. He became an ordinary Christian trying to keep our greatest relic from slipping out of the memory of our religion.

  “I suppose it’s possible,” I said. “Stranger things have been true.”

  “Then we agree!”

  “But Ugo, it’s not strong enough to make a convincing case unless we find corroborating evidence in the Diatessaron.”

  He opened his research diary to a page where his pen lay tucked like a bookmark. “Which brings me to our plan of attack. There are three passages in John that mention Thomas: 11:16, 14:5, and the Doubting Thomas story at 20:24. I’ve told the conservators to restore those verses next before they do anything else.”

  I took the pen from him and uncapped it. “There’s a fourth reference in the other gospels. Thomas appears in their lists of the twelve disciples.”

  “Where?”

  “Mark 3:14. Which Matthew copies at 10:2 and Luke copies at 6:13. All three versions mention Thomas, so the Diatessaron should have Thomas, too. If we find anything more than his name there—an adjective, another nickname, anything at all—it could be the corroboration you want.”

  “Excellent.” Ugo clapped his hands together. “Now, one more thing. While we wait for the restorers, what’s the best book on Doubting Thomas?”

  I wrote a title in his diary. Symbolism in John’s Passion Narrative.

  “Do you own a copy yourself ?” he asked sheepishly. “I’d rather not look in the library.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’ve put those new scanners in the ordinary stacks. They can probably track what we take off the shelves.”

  “My library is at your disposal,” I said. “I’ll bring the book over tomorrow.”

  He smiled. “Father Alex, we’re getting close. Very close. I hope you can feel it, too.”

  I went home that afternoon feeling as giddy as Ugo must’ve been. In my prayers that night I asked God for wisdom, for insight. The next morning I pulled out Symbolism in John, slipped a note inside for Ugo, and left it in his office mailbox before I went off to teach. That day I dreamed of Thomas. Of the Twin. Never did I suspect that Ugo and I had spoken to each other for the last time as friends.

  * * *

  OVERNIGHT, HE CHANGED. ONE morning he was invited to an important meeting—he never said with whom—and after that meeting, he was never the same.

  In retrospect, I know what happened. Two weeks earlier, Simon had surfaced in Rome for the last time that summer. He stayed just one night. In the afternoon, he went into the city for a haircut and shave. Before bed, he rolled the lint off his best cassock. Next morning he vanished before dawn and reappeared a few hours later with a white rosary of plastic pearls for Peter. Those rosaries are given as gifts by offices throughout the Holy See. Not just by the Holy Father. But no Vatican office hands out invitations to seven thirty AM meetings—and no Secretariat man would fly across a continent to accept one. Simon had Mass with the pope. He never bragged about it, never even mentioned it. But there was no other explanation. And if John Paul reached out to Simon, then he must’ve done the same for Ugo.

  The day after Ugo’s meeting, he suspended work at the conservation lab until further notice. He put a lock on the door, as if he suddenly knew that he could get away with it. That he was supported from on high. Then he called me.

  “Father, we need to talk. Face-to-face. Meet me for breakfast at Bar Jona.”

  Bar Jona. The nickname of the café Lucio had just opened on the rooftop of Saint Peter’s. A public place. Looking back, it had all the trappings of a breakup.

  When I arrived, Ugo was waiting with a cup in one hand and a briefcase in the other. A good way to prevent any handshakes or friendly embraces.

  “What happened at your meeting?” I asked.

  Nobody could’ve overheard me—there was a coffee grinder whirring, an air-conditioning unit moaning on the wall—but he led me away from the coffee bar as if we were trading secrets now.

  Bar Jona is a play on words: Saint Peter’s last name in Hebrew. But the place, like all of Lucio’s creations, was humorless. Posters taped to walls, trash cans half-filled with soda cups. The all-important Vatican mailbox standing by the door like an alms box beckoned tourists to write postcards and cover them with lucrative Vatican stamps.

  “I know,” Ugo said, lowering his head toward me and bringing his voice down to a whisper, “what you’ve been doing. And I can’t tell you how betrayed I feel.”

  I blinked in confusion.

  “How could you do this?” he added. “How could you abuse my trust?”

  “Ugo, what on earth are you talking about?”

  He glared. “You knew your brother had been to visit the Holy Father. You knew it was because of my work.”

  I nodded. “So?”

  “I won’t have my work stolen away. This is my exhibit, Father Alex. Not your brother’s. Not yours. How dare you transform it into some cheap negotiating chip behind my back? You know I don’t give a damn about your Eastern politics. This is over. You and I are finished.”

  I was cold in my own skin. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “What did the Holy Father say to you?”

  Ugo rose from the table. “The Holy Father? Ha! Thank God he isn’t the only one who cares about my work.”

  I never made enough of those words. In retrospect, they told me everything I needed to know about who he’d really met with. Instead, the words that lingered in my memory were the ones that hurt most:

  “Alex, don’t say another word. I don’t want to hear your lies. Respect my wishes and stay away from my exhibit. Good-bye.”

  * * *

  I CALLED HIM A dozen times that afternoon. A dozen more in the week that followed. He never answered my messages. I stopped by the restoration lab, but the guards kept me out. So I waited outside the museum one night and confronted Ugo when he emerged from the door. No matter where I followed him, though, he refused to speak. I never understood, and he never explained. We never spoke again.

  The morning after our meeting at Bar Jona, I phoned Simon at the nunciature in Turkey. He was away on business and took three nights to get back to me. When I told him the news, he was as upset as I had been. Now, though, my own feelings had turned to anger.

  “He didn’t tell you anything more?” Simon asked. “He didn’t say what they’d told him?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Is he still in Rome? Can you try to talk to him about it?”

  “I did try, Simon.”

  “Alex, please. It matters a lot. He’s . . . a very important person to me.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s done.”

  I don’t know why Ugo’s silence hurt me so deeply. Maybe because his final accusation rang true. I had claimed ownership of work that wasn’t mine. I had flattered mysel
f that his exhibit was our exhibit, and he had seen through me.

  But there was another reason. The work I did with Ugo made me feel, briefly, that I was a partner in something meaningful. The most thrilling thing about it wasn’t that I found our work so urgent and heartfelt, but that we found it so urgent and heartfelt. I never envied Simon his travels and negotiations. To be a father and a teacher always suited me fine. But to have a partner in life who sits in a booster seat and only recently graduated from a bib is to crave a daily chance for adult companionship, to feel a pathetic gratitude for a short conversation with a bank teller or the man at the butcher counter. Walking into that restoration lab with Ugo each morning and wondering what the manuscript held in store—or sharing phone calls at the end of the day, with no purpose except to vent the day’s frustrations and marvel at the little book that owned us—was the closest experience I’d had in years to walking into Peter’s bedroom with Mona and wondering what the baby was about to teach us about being parents. Without realizing it, I’d let Ugo enter my life through the open door she left behind. And when he abandoned me, with no explanation, all of it returned. The old dreams. The weird pangs of solitude in the middle of walking to work, or dialing a phone number, or reading alone after Peter’s bedtime. The sensation of having an anchor hung around my neck, dangling into an emptiness that seemed to have no bottom.

  Worse, Ugo’s disappearance felt as if it confirmed the verdict of Mona’s disappearance: that the fault was somehow in me. Life had given me a parole hearing and found me still wanting. The last I ever heard from Ugolino Nogara was that e-mail. And I thought, because I ignored it, that I had finally learned my lesson.

  CHAPTER 27

  WHEN I PICK Peter up from the Costa apartment, the first thing he says is, “I don’t want to go back to Prozio’s palace. I want to go home.”

  “Did Allegra say something to you?” I ask.

  “I just want to play with my cars.”

  “We can pick up some of your toys, but I don’t think we’re going to stay.”

  “Can I go to the bathroom, too? I don’t like Prozio’s bathrooms.”

  His insistence seems less odd now. “I’ll give you a piggyback ride. We’ll get there faster.”

  * * *

  HOME. WHEN I WAS seven, Simon and I counted the number of stairs to our floor and the number of steps to our apartment. The steps have diminished over the years, but not the habit of counting them. Peter and I do it out loud. He says he will climb the stairs faster than I do when he comes back to live here someday as a world-famous soccer player.

  Inside, the plants are wilting. The hake that Sister Helena made for Simon’s arrival is developing smells on a lonely platter in the refrigerator.

  While Peter is in the bathroom, I clean up what remains of the mess. The place looks like home again.

  “I’m hungry,” Peter announces on his return.

  I pull down a box of cereal, the single father’s standby. While I wait for him to finish, I call maintenance.

  “Mario, it’s Father Alex up on four. I need to change my lock. Do you have parts for that?”

  Mario isn’t known for promptness, but we went to school together, so I know I can trust him.

  “Father, I’m glad to hear you’re back,” he says. “Coming right up.”

  By the time Peter’s done with his second bowl, we have a shiny new knob and key. Mario has even insisted on installing them himself.

  “Anything else you need,” he says, “you call me.”

  He musses Peter’s hair. He must know about Simon, but this is his reaction to the news. I miss this place. I didn’t appreciate enough what a family we are in this building.

  When he’s gone, Peter brings his bowl to the sink and goes to play with the new knob. “I’ve been praying for Simon,” he says, apropos of nothing.

  I try to look unsurprised.

  “Me too, buddy,” I say.

  “When it’s for Simon, who do you pray to?”

  He told me once that praying is like being a soccer coach and calling saints off the bench.

  “The Theotokos,” I say.

  Mary, the mother of God. The highest power of intercession.

  He nods solemnly. “Me, too.” He picks up one of his toy cars and flies it through the air, making artillery sounds.

  “Why do you ask?”

  He scrunches up his face. “I don’t know. But I think this car is out of batteries.”

  He opens the battery drawer beside the phone and decides to tap the button on the answering machine.

  “Simon’s going to be fine, Pet—” I start to say.

  But when I hear the words coming out of the answering machine, I rush to cut it off.

  Alex, it’s me. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come to see Peter at the class you were giving. Please call m—

  I manage to stop the message before it can finish.

  “Who was that?” Peter says.

  It breaks my heart to say the word. “Nobody.”

  But he knows women rarely call this phone. He reaches onto the counter and scrolls through the list of incoming calls.

  “Who’s Vi-ter-bo?” he asks.

  I stare at him. “Don’t be nosy.”

  He grunts unappreciatively and starts rummaging through the batteries.

  So this is how it’s going to feel, every time the phone rings. This is how my heart will be crimped every time someone knocks on the door.

  “When is Sister Helena coming back?” he says.

  “I don’t know.” I feel tired of all the white lies. “Not anytime soon.”

  He gives up looking for batteries and, with a sigh, flies the car back through the air toward his bedroom.

  “Peter,” I say.

  He returns with an old stuffed rabbit he used to sleep with, inspecting it as if for the first time. There were once teddy bears and blankets where there are now trading cards and soccer posters. I’m going to miss my baby boy. He’s making his very final lap.

  “Eh, Babbo?” he says, coming toward me.

  The cartoon bear on TV says something like this. Maybe he’s already forgetting the voice on the machine.

  But I’m not. Until we finish this, I’m going to hear that voice in every silence.

  I open my arms and lift him into my lap. I want to remember this moment.

  Running my fingers through his hair, I say, “Peter, there’s something I want to tell you.”

  He stops strafing the rabbit’s ears against each other. “Good news or bad news?”

  How I wish I knew. Every particle of hope says good. Every ounce of experience says bad.

  “Good,” I tell him.

  And then the words he’s been waiting to hear almost since he was born.

  “That woman on the phone,” I say, “was Mamma.”

  He stops. Confusion sets in his eyes.

  “She came back two nights ago,” I say. “While you were at Prozio’s palace.”

  He shakes his head. At first he doubts. Then he recoils. I’ve kept this from him. This miracle, this divine visitation.

  “She’s here?” he asks, glancing toward the bedrooms.

  “Not in the apartment. But we could call her if you wanted.”

  His perplexity is supreme. “When?”

  “Anytime we want, I think.”

  He stares expectantly at the phone on the table. But there’s a distance we need to travel first.

  “You and I have waited a long time for this,” I begin.

  He nods. “A super-long time.”

  Since before he could form a memory of her.

  “How do you feel about it?” I ask.

  His hand is tapping the table. Feet kicking underneath. “Great,” he says. But what he means is: Hurry up, please.

  “Do you remember
,” I ask, “the story of when Jesus came back?”

  It’s the only way I can think to explain this. By returning to the story we know best.

  “Yes.”

  “What happened when he came back? Did the disciples recognize him?”

  Peter shakes his head.

  It’s one of the most mysterious, poignant moments of the gospels.

  “Two men were traveling on the road to Emmaus,” I recite, “and Christ drew near to them, and walked with them. But they did not recognize him.”

  I used to imagine the two men as brothers, one taller and one shorter. Now I picture a father and son.

  “When Mamma comes back,” I say, “she may be different. She won’t look exactly like our pictures of her. She may not act like our stories about her. We may not quite recognize her at first. But she’ll still be Mamma, right?”

  He nods, but this is starting to fill him with anxiety.

  “And what else did Jesus do,” I continue, “after he came back?”

  What a poor teacher I am. A thousand possible answers to this question, and I expect him to intuit the right one.

  Somehow, though, Peter knows. It’s taken him a moment to find my wavelength, to align our minds, but we have always understood each other.

  “After Jesus came back,” he says with a hint of desperation, “he left again.”

  I push forward. “And if Mamma leaves again, we’ll be sad, but we’ll understand, won’t we?”

  He turns his head away violently and slips out of my lap. He wipes away tears with lashing strokes of his hand, wanting me to see how upset he is.

  “Peter.” I kneel beside him. If I were to make him dread Mona’s arrival, I would be sharing the very worst of myself. The part that is incapable of hope. My own heart drowns in these worries for his sake, but for his sake I have to do better. “Peter, I believe she’s not going to leave. I believe she wouldn’t have come back if she were going to do that. Your mamma loves you. And no matter what happens, she’ll always love you. She would never want to hurt you. Not for anything in the world.”