Squinting, he peered up at the shelves and ran a gloved finger through the air, just a hairsbreadth from their spines. When he came to the one he wanted, he cocked his head and glanced back at the nearest scanner on the wall, as if estimating its tolerance for movement. Finally he said, “Put your gloves on.”
The thrill of those words was more intense than I had expected. “Before I do,” I asked, “could I touch it? Just for a second. I’ll be very careful.”
He didn’t answer. Instead, with a practiced movement he notched the volume off the shelf, opened the gilded leather cover—and out slid something gnarled and awful looking. It was no bigger than a necklace case, with rust-colored scratches that webbed the black, pitted surface of its cover. The librarians had never removed the original binding to slip it inside the papal covers.
“There’s something you need to know,” Ugo said, “before you touch this. Something I was able to track down only after I discovered it. Three hundred years ago, the pope sent a family of priests to search for the oldest manuscripts in the world. One of them stumbled upon a library in the deserts of Nitrian Egypt, in the Monastery of the Syrians, where an abbot had assembled a collection of texts in the nine hundreds AD. Even in the abbot’s day, these texts were extremely old. Today they’re the most ancient books known to exist. The abbot printed a warning inside them: He who removes these books from the monastery will be accursed of God. The priest, Assemani, ignored this warning, and on his way back to Rome his boat capsized in the Nile. One of the monks was drowned. Assemani paid men to dredge up his manuscripts, but the books needed repair for water damage, which is one reason this book ended up on a forgotten shelf.
“The other reason is that when Assemani’s cousin tried to make a catalog of these manuscripts, he died in the attempt. A third Assemani took over, only to have a fire break out in his apartment beside the library. The whole catalog was destroyed, and no one has ever completed it. That’s why no record of these manuscripts exists, and nobody seems to know they’re here.”
“Ugo,” I said, “why are you telling me this?”
“Because while I consider myself to be above superstition, and lucky to have found this book, you’re entitled to decide for yourself.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” I was a teacher of modern gospel methods. The scientific, rational reading of the Bible. I didn’t even hesitate.
He shifted the ancient text between his own gloves so that it sat in the palm of one hand while he raised the other for me to see. Where the manuscript had made contact with the glove, the latex was ruddy brown.
“The cover,” he said, “leaves an almost indelible stain. It took me days to scrub it off my skin. Please, wear the gloves.”
He waited until I had done it; then, tenderly, like the doctor who placed Peter in my arms, he handed the text over.
Never had I seen a book made that way. Like a prehistoric creature found living at the bottom of the sea, it bore only the faintest resemblance to its modern cousins. The manuscript’s cover was made with a sheet of skin hanging off like a satchel flap, designed to wrap around the pages again and again, to protect them. A leather tail dangled from it, beltlike, looping around the book to cinch it closed.
I undid the straps as carefully as if I were arranging hairs on a baby’s head. Inside, the pages were gray and soft. Flowing letters were penned in long, smooth strokes with no rounded edges: Syriac. Beside them, inked right there on the page, was a Latin index written by some long-dead Vatican librarian.
Formerly Book VIII among the Nitrian Syriac collection.
And then, very clearly:
Gospel Harmony of Tatian (Diatessaron).
A shudder went through me. Here in my hands was the creature invented by one of the giants of early Christianity. The canonical life of Jesus of Nazareth in a single book. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John fused together to form the super-gospel of the ancient Syrian church.