Vigil (12 page)

And as far as Ezra was concerned, he already had a job—the most important one in the world.

As the Xanax took hold, and afforded him this new and more serene perspective, he felt himself relaxing enough to think again about that job—and the work he’d been planning to do that very night. The house was quiet now—for all he knew, his father and Kimberly had gone out somewhere—and nothing was standing in his way. He got up from the bed and walked to the French doors that opened onto the small balcony; he opened them and stepped outside. Far below, the taillights of traffic on the FDR made a bright red ribbon through the night, and across the river in Queens, a silver cross, barely visible, was illuminated high atop the bell tower of a church.

The night air was bracing. He felt ready to get to work.

Stepping back inside, he shut the doors, then pulled both sets of curtains closed. He’d asked Gertrude to put up a second set so that no sunlight would penetrate the room; she’d looked at him quizzically, but done it.

In his workroom, he turned on the lamp attached to the drafting table, then knelt down by the toy chest and opened it with the key he’d found taped to its bottom. There, right where he’d concealed it, among the comics and bongos, lay the cardboard tube.

He popped the lid off one end of the tube and removed the cheap papyrus scrolls he’d bought at a gift shop just before leaving the Middle East. The top one was Anubis, the jackal-headed god, weighing the soul of a dead man. The next was Osiris, presiding over the creation of the earth and heavens. But it was the third, in its own cellophane wrapper, coiled around the others, that he was after—and this one he removed as delicately as he could. Tossing the other two scrolls aside, he laid this one reverently on the clean, flat surface of the drafting table; the surface of the table was tilted just a few degrees, to make his work easier.

Not that it would ever be that.

What he had in his hands, smuggled out of the archives of Hebrew University, where they had yet to be assembled, much less understood, were the fragments, the strips and bits, of a scroll undoubtedly more than two thousand years old. Scraps of parchment, some connected, some loose, together they constituted what Ezra was convinced was the most sought-after and elusive prize in all of biblical scholarship. Other scrolls from the Dead Sea that had already been pieced together, translated, and read alluded to this scroll. Indeed, there was an Ethiopic translation of it dating from the fourteenth century. But that version, in the estimation of most scholars, had been heavily edited over the centuries by church copyists; appalled by the relentlessly occult and speculative bent of the original Aramaic text, they had exercised their own judgment and cut out what offended them. No, not until now had anyone ever been in a position to piece back together the original, to decipher and read what had been known for millennia as the Lost Book of Enoch.

But then, no one had ever been looking for it among the ancient scraps of routine documents—the bills of sale, the marriage contracts, the business correspondence—where Ezra had found it. Was it serendipity or something more? Ezra often wondered. For there, buried in the detritus that Ezra had first been assigned to catalog, he’d stumbled upon this incomparable jewel. Had it been overlooked entirely, lost in the jumble of more mundane stuff? (The Cairo Genizah alone, for instance, contained more than fifteen thousand documents, many still to be studied, dating from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries.) Or—as Ezra had come to suspect—had it been hidden there by some predecessor, decades before, who for whatever reason had been unable to complete his crime, or trumpet his discovery? Scroll scholarship was rife with such skullduggery—which might have been one reason Ezra felt so at home there.

Putting on a pair of the surgical gloves he’d bought, he carefully unrolled the largest segment of the scroll that was still intact, but even this was less than eighteen inches across, and only an inch or two wide. The pale yellow parchment, lying flat on the drafting table, was the color and consistency of an autumn leaf that had been pressed between the pages of a book long ago. A tissue-thin filament, it was probably papyrus, as were most of the scrolls, but Ezra could not be completely sure; some of the earliest finds had been on animal skins, scraped and pounded and stretched until they were as smooth and fine as almost any paper made today. If he hadn’t had to leave Israel under such short notice, fleeing like a thief in the night, he’d have found a way to use the lab facilities at Hebrew U. or the institute to determine just what this text was written on.

But wasn’t that just one more example, he thought, of petty bureaucracy impeding the progress of human knowledge? Nothing made him angrier.

Still, this was no time to let anger get in his way. All things considered, he’d done pretty well; he had his prize, he had a place to work in private (tomorrow, he reminded himself, he would have to start mending his fences), he had no other pressing duties to take up his time. If left to his own devices, he’d piece together and translate the lost scroll that, according to legend, made the Book of Revelation read like a fairy tale.

Carefully lifting another scrap of the parchment between his gloved fingers, he laid it on the table and gently flattened it with his fingertips. It was densely covered, as were all the fragments of the scroll, with the distinctive Aramaic script, which was darker, closer, more square than the more common paleo-Hebrew or Greek uncial. How did this piece of the scroll, ragged at all its edges, fit together with the rest, and what, once it was translated and properly placed in the body of the entire text, would it say? What would it tell us of the War in Heaven, the word of God, the Apocalypse?

As Ezra touched the edge of this small fragment to the longer strip to see if they were meant to connect, something flashed in front of his eyes, like a blue spark, and his fingertips suddenly tingled. He sat back and caught his breath.

Had that just happened?

He blinked and rubbed the tips of his fingers together. It wasn’t a painful sensation, by any means, but it wasn’t exactly pleasant, either. There was the faintest whiff of cordite in the air, and his fingers felt—and there was no better way to describe it—as if they’d just come into contact with a live electrical source.

When the alarm clock went off at seven-thirty on Saturday
morning, Carter didn’t understand it.

It was
Saturday
.

Still half-asleep, he rolled over toward Beth and slipped one arm under the blanket, around her waist. As his hand slid lower, she caught hold of his wrist.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?’ she mumbled, her eyes still closed.

“What?”

“You have an appointment—remember?”

Now it came to him. Nine o’clock sharp, at Dr. Weston’s office. For the much-dreaded sperm test.

He withdrew his hand before things got any harder to undo, and Beth, perhaps to make it even easier, rolled away to the other side of the bed. Carter lay on his back, thinking about the next few hours. First, the test—then a trip out to Kennedy Airport. Russo’s flight was due in that afternoon.

He rolled out of bed, padded barefoot across the hall and into the bathroom—Beth had bought him slippers, twice, but he never knew where they went—and flicked on the light. He was wearing only the plaid boxer shorts he slept in. Doctor’s orders—only boxers would do.

After a quick shower and even quicker breakfast—coffee and a Pop-Tart—he caught the IRT uptown, arriving at the doctor’s offices a few minutes early, which was just as well since there were reams of forms and questionnaires to fill out about his health history, his family’s health history, his present medications, his insurance coverage, and so on. When he was done, he turned the paperwork over to the nurse at the reception desk, who glanced over a few of the pages, checked for his signature at the bottom, then said, “And you have not had an ejaculation for at least the previous twenty-four hours?”

Carter was tempted to say it was a close call, but decided against it. “No. I haven’t.”

She made a notation on his chart, then led him down a narrow corridor—muted lighting, gray carpeting, no sounds at all—lined with white, numbered doors. She opened one, and inside the small cubicle he saw a chair, a wall-mounted TV, and a night table stacked with pornographic magazines.

“The TV has a tape preloaded,” she said, “and you just have to press the On button to start it. The magazines are also there for your use.”

Carter, who hadn’t even thought about what to expect, was nonplussed.

“Please try to capture as much as you can in the receptacle,” she said, handing him a plastic cup much like the ones, he thought with horror, that were used for salsa samples at his favorite fast-food Mexican restaurant. “When you’re done, bring it back to me.”

Carter stepped into the room and the nurse closed the door. He looked around and didn’t know where to start. How in the world did you get from here to Eros?

Still, fifteen minutes later, he poked his head out the door, looking for the nurse, but there was no one in sight. Concealing the specimen cup in his hand, he went back to the reception area, where a couple of other patients were now waiting. The nurse who’d shown him to the room was talking to someone on the phone.

Carter caught her eye. Still talking, she held out her free hand.

She really expected him to just hand it to her?

He did. She put it down next to her appointment book, smiled, and waved three fingers good-bye.

Carter felt like he’d just had the most peculiar morning of his life, and it wasn’t even ten o’clock yet. At least he’d have plenty of time to get to the airport and meet Russo. It was just too bad he couldn’t get home again first; he’d have really liked to see Beth right now.

 
At the airport, he saw that Russo’s flight was due to
land right on time, a miracle considering that it was an international flight. And since he was early, he had time to call home. Beth picked up on the second ring.

“You know, I could have used you there this morning,” Carter said.

Beth laughed. “I don’t think it’s allowed.”

“Well, it ought to be.”

“How’d it go? Was it weird?”

“Kind of.”

“I appreciate your going. It means a lot to me.”

“Yeah, well, I’m signed on for this project, too, you know.”

“I know,” she said, softly. “And about this morning? I’ll make it up to you when you get home.”

“That may be easier said than done. Don’t forget I’ll have about two hundred and fifty pounds of fine Italian luggage with me.”

“You want me to go shopping and get some food? Maybe he’ll be tired and just want a quiet dinner at home?”

Although Carter didn’t want to say anything, he knew that Beth’s idea of a quiet dinner at home was a light meal, heavy on salad and fresh veggies, with maybe one skinless chicken breast per person. Joe Russo would regard all that as an appetizer, and not a particularly enticing one, either. No, Carter was planning on taking him out, maybe to one of the steak houses like Morton’s or The Palm. “Let’s see how he feels when he gets here.”

“Okay. I should be in and out all day.”

Carter heard an announcement over the P.A., something about an Alitalia flight from Rome, so he said good-bye and headed for the arrivals area. After a long wait, he saw a surge of passengers emerging from the customs and baggage claim areas. Like the rest of the people waiting, he had to stand behind a glass wall and scan the crowd for the person he was looking for. But these definitely looked like Italians, a lot of them, in neatly tailored suits, sleek sunglasses, and small, polished leather shoes. A woman in a fur coat was carrying a Gucci bag with a tiny dog poking his head out of the top.

And then Carter spotted his friend, lumbering along with a garment bag slung over one shoulder, a bulging cloth suitcase clutched in one hand, a battered valise tucked under his arm. Carter rapped on the glass as he passed by, and Russo looked over and raised his chin—the only part of him that was unencumbered—in acknowledgment. Carter pointed down the corridor toward the exit, then went to meet him there.

“Mio fratello,”
Carter shouted, his arms wide, as Russo came out.

Russo dropped his suitcase and garment bag, and he and Carter hugged, their hands clapping each other on the back. And even though Carter was over six feet tall and rangy, he felt himself dwarfed in Russo’s bearlike embrace. Russo carried that stale smell of the airplane cabin, and his beard—short and black and bristly—scratched the side of Carter’s face.

“It’s great to see you,” Carter said, drawing back. “How was your flight?”

Russo shrugged. “How are they ever? Too long—and not enough room.”

Carter picked up his suitcase. “Come on, we’ll catch a cab outside.”

“Yes. I am dying to have a cigarette.”

“You’d better have it before we get a cab. There’s no smoking in the taxis here.”

Russo rolled his big dark eyes, like a water buffalo stuck in the mud, and stopped. “And they say that New York City is civilized?”

Carter cocked his head and said, “You’d never hear that from me.”

Outside, the taxi line was interminable, which gave Russo plenty of time to light up a Nazionali and to tell Carter all about his recent appointment at the University of Rome, his new apartment, the paper he’d just finished on the olfactory bulbs—much larger than had previously been thought—of the
T. rex
. Carter filled him in on some of his work at NYU, but as if by tacit agreement, neither one of them brought up the big issue, the elephant in the room, the reason for Russo’s being there in the first place. It was as if it was simply too important to discuss while waiting in line for a cab, or even later, as they crawled through the dense traffic into the city.