The Fifth Gospel(179)
The next two verses work the same way. Jesus is marched to the site of his crucifixion. But after being scourged and beaten, he’s too weak to carry the beam of his own cross. It has to be carried by a passerby named Simon of Cyrene. Luke agrees with Matthew’s account, as does Mark, who even names two of Simon’s sons to make sure there’s no confusion about who he was. But once again Ugo has chosen the companion verse from John, and it’s theological. Since Jesus is shouldering the burden for all of us—since he’s about to die for the good of all mankind—John has no room for a character who shoulders the burden for Jesus. So Simon of Cyrene vanishes from the text. Instead, John says: “they took Jesus, and he went out, bearing his own cross.” Ugo is making the same point as before: John has changed the facts to make a spiritual statement.
As I scan Ugo’s column of verses, I notice that this pattern repeats itself again and again. I also notice that many of the verses here are the same ones from Ugo’s caduceus drawings. They focus on the two powerful Old Testament symbols—the Good Shepherd and the Lamb of God—that John summons to answer the hardest question in all of Christianity: why did an all-powerful Jesus let us crucify him? These symbols seem to follow Jesus throughout the final days of his life. When Jesus enters Jerusalem, John says, he rides an ass, just like the Good Shepherd of the Old Testament. When Jesus is dying on the cross, John says, he has a sponge of wine raised up to his lips on a stalk of hyssop, a flimsy little plant that could never really have held the weight of a sponge. The other gospels say the sponge was raised on a reed, but John is more interested in symbolism, and hyssop was the plant used to wipe the Passover lamb’s blood on the doorposts of the ancient Jews. John even changes the day of Jesus’ death so that Jesus, the Lamb of God, is crucified on the same day that the Passover lambs are slaughtered.
This obsession with the Good Shepherd and the Lamb of God is so obvious in Ugo’s choices that it must be significant. Yet how these verses can form a proof of any discovery he made, I continue not to see. I feel uncomfortably close, however, to understanding something I couldn’t make sense of before.
On the first day of the trial, Ugo’s assistant Bachmeier said that Simon had done something odd when he was tasked with overseeing the exhibit: my brother removed one of Ugo’s photo enlargements of the Diatessaron. At the time, the accusation seemed absurd. Now I wonder if the gospel verses on that page of the Diatessaron are somehow related to the ones in this letter. If Ugo’s proof, whatever it is, depends on seeing both.
Time is working against me. The trial has been under way for half an hour. I need to hurry back to the Palace of the Tribunal.
CHAPTER 34
MIGNATTO IS MILLING in the courtyard when I arrive.
“Why are you late?” he demands.
“Why are you out here?”
“We’re recessed,” he says angrily, “so the judges can consider the new evidence.”
Boia.
“The letter,” I say.
“And the security video. And the personnel files.”
“Monsignor, I need to talk to you.”
But at that moment, the gendarmes reopen the doors.
“No, you need to come inside,” Mignatto snaps. “We’re back in session.”
* * *
WHEN WE’RE SEATED, THE gendarmes bring in Michael Black. He sits down at the witness table in the center of the room and takes a sip from a glass of water that’s already half-drunk. His testimony must’ve been interrupted by the arrival of the evidence.
I try to whisper to Michael, but Mignatto squeezes my arm. When I steal another look at the photocopy of Ugo’s letter, a new thought crosses my mind.
Cardinal Boia compared the Orthodox patriarchs to the Beloved Disciple. The gospel of John was on his mind. I wonder if he was trying to crack Ugo’s letter, too.