Year Zero (5 page)

The Egyptian gave up trying to guess Nikos’s purpose. “I don’t understand,” he said. “You have cultivated an impressive knowledge about early Christianity. You have gathered together artifacts that are 2000 years old. But then you tear them to pieces.” He picked up a gold and crystal container, and the opening in the back gaped like a wound. A sudden flash of recognition jolted him. “Wait. You mean to say….”

“Yes,” said Nikos. “I am hunting Jesus.”

The Egyptian coughed. He was astonished. Exhilarated. He shivered with the cold. The audacity. Only Nikos. “Christ is your prey?”

Nikos shook his finger. “Not Christ,” he said. “Jesus.”

“The same thing.”

“Not at all. Christ is faith. Jesus is history. I mean to excavate through two thousand years of superstitions and myth and religious baubles and to find his evidence.”

“Is such a thing possible?”

“People claimed Troy was a myth. That Agamemnon and Nestor were mere fictions. No longer.”

“But they left ruins and gold. What could be left of a peasant who….” The Egyptian stopped himself. “Blood,” he murmured.

“Yes,” said Nikos. “The DNA of God.”

As the Egyptian looked around the refrigerated reliquary, the brazen undertaking came rushing together. The artifacts, the blood traces, the labs. He was thrilled by the challenge Nikos had set, and felt himself tumbling into the mystery. A thousand questions crowded in.

“One must be careful,” Nikos pronounced. “Jesus is a trickster. He has hidden himself behind thousands of years of storytellers. I demand hard proof.”

Nikos paused and took down a primitive tin with early Christian etchings on the outside. “This was one of my first purchases. It was very exciting,” he said, lifting the lid. A small, crude cross—perhaps two inches high—set on the bottom. “The preliminary tests suggested it might have come from the true Cross. The wood was dated to the first century. Further it was a type of pine that only grows at 1,000 feet above sea level. It has traces of blood, see? The genotype was Levantine. Semitic. Unfortunately it came from a woman. Unless Jesus had breasts and a womb…and a double X sex chromosome…my little souvenir was a fake. It taught me a lesson, though. The road is long.”

“But how will you ever recognize the blood evidence even if you find it?”

“Didn’t you know?” Nikos said. “Jesus was blood type AB.”

“Now you’re joking.”

Nikos kept a straight face. “In the eighth century, so the story goes, in the monastery of St. Longinus, named for the Roman soldier who pierced Jesus with a lance, the wine and Host became actual blood and flesh. The blood congealed into five pellets. The circle of flesh dried into a thin disc. In 1970, two professors of human anatomy were allowed to analyze the relics. Their conclusion? The disc of flesh was striated muscle tissue from the wall of a human heart. The blood was type AB.” He paused. A grin erupted. “Of course, the professors were Italian.”

“And so my question stands,” said the Egyptian. “Even if you find the blood of Jesus on a splinter of wood, how will you know it is true?”

“I won’t know,” Nikos said more somberly. “But at least I will know if it is false.”

The Egyptian was baffled all over again. “Why not call it all false and be done with it? Let the faithful have their visions and miracles. Why mutilate these ornaments?”

“Surely a man of science understands,” Nikos answered him. “Desecration is knowledge. Doubt is faith.”

“Yes, if one is looking for the center of the universe or the structure of an atom.”

“And so I am, my friend.”

“But you said it yourself. Even if you find what you’re looking for, you’ll never know if it is true.”

“And yet I will have touched it, even if I didn’t know it.”

The Egyptian wasn’t sure what to make of that. Here was a rational man. He was filled with worldly skepticism, but seeking some hidden moment. “You contradict yourself,” he said to Nikos.

The Egyptian knew he should have expected something like this. He tried to recall his Homer, or was it Tennyson? Odysseus sets off with an oar across one shoulder. He leaves upon a quest with no end. He looked at Nikos. After a minute, the Egyptian said, “I’m cold.”

“Ah,” said Nikos, angry at his own bad manners. “Forgive me.”

On their way out of the chamber, Nikos paused beside a small wooden crate by the door. “A new acquisition arrived two days ago. Very old. Very exciting. I took one look and decided to wait before trying to dissect it. It might interest you. Would you care to help me? In the outer room, where it’s warm.”

The Egyptian was touched by the generosity. He held the door while Nikos carried the crate. The last rays of sunlight felt glorious. Nikos placed the crate on a table at the far end of the windows. He turned on a lamp and they each sat in chairs. A drawer held his tools and specimen kit. The Egyptian remarked on the completeness of his outfit.

Together they carefully lifted out a fourteen-inch silver and gold cross with a hollow interior. Nikos sprayed off the dust with an aerosol can for cleaning camera lenses, then lay the cross on a white foam sheet. “It comes from a Serb church in Kosovo looted by the KLA. Their asking price was $1.8 million U.S. My agent countered with $125,000 and they grabbed it. They had no idea its real worth. I didn’t either.”

“It looks magnificent,” commented the Egyptian.

Nikos appraised it more coldly, making notes on a legal pad. Each arm of the cross, front and back, displayed a different holy man in early Byzantine design. They were two-dimensional, verging on cartoons with halos of silver. But the figures stood out against the gold background, their incised lines filled with niello, a black enamel. Judging by the artwork, Nikos guessed its date at 300
C.E
. He was unimpressed. “Let’s hope the contents are at least two centuries older than that,” he said.

Unlike many of the other artifacts, this one had no little window through which to see the enclosed relic. The Egyptian weighed it in his hands and determined the cross was clearly hollow. “What if there is nothing inside?” he asked.

Nikos laid down his pencil. “Then we will have our dinner that much sooner,” he said cheerfully. He swivelled a magnifying lens over the artifact. “Now,” he spoke to it, “how do we enter your labyrinth?”

He turned the cross over several times. In the center of the back, a blot of red seal wax carried a bishop’s imprint. Nikos did not recognize the imprint. He took several photos with a small camera, then pried away the wax in chunks. Underneath, the surface was blank.

“You can never tell where the door to the house might be,” he said. “Oftentimes the
domo
is hinged on one side, or the top lifts off or a hidden lid is nested into the surface. Others simply have a hollow built into their backs that is threaded shut. But some—especially of this era and earlier—can be quite elaborate. They are puzzle boxes built by ancient masters.”

Using jeweler’s tools, Nikos touched the cross in various places. He pressed gems studding the front as if they were doorbells. “The very old ones sometimes have secret lock mechanisms, hideaways, even false capsules,” he explained. “I’ve learned the hard way. My clumsiness destroyed several of the oldest relics. One must be patient and try to think like the puzzle maker. It is a game. Him against us.”

He raised his eyes to the Egyptian. “Would you care to try? Look for a latch or dial or pressure point.”

The Egyptian was eager. “But what if I damage it?” he said.

“Then I surely would have damaged it. You’re the surgeon; I’m just an old sailor.”

The Egyptian took a dental pick and a long dissection needle. He placed his hands to either side and bent over the magnifying lens. He had noticed something about a carbuncle of amethyst at the center of the cross’s upright. It had a bit of rust around the edges, quite unlike the lead solder embedding the other gems. “What do you make of this?” he asked.

Nikos peered over his shoulder. “You’re a natural,” he said. “Something is there.”

“Perhaps you should take over.”

“Why? It’s your discovery.”

The Egyptian was pleased. He reveled in the investigation. It did feel like a game of chess as he tried to decipher the reliquary. He pried away flakes of rust. A different metal had to lie beneath the amethyst, perhaps some kind of iron mechanism. He gently pressed the gem, but nothing happened. “Am I doing something wrong?”

“Who knows? These boxes can be complicated. Some are more like machines inside. Keep going.”

“Marvelous,” breathed the Egyptian. He tried a jeweler’s tool, teasing at the purple gem. The gem refused to move. He gave up. He would never forgive himself for ruining his friend’s treasure. “Here,” he said. “Please.”

“We’ll do this together,” said Nikos. Nikos took a syringe filled with graphite oil. He laid a delicate beadwork of oil drops around the amethyst. While they waited for the oil to slowly bleed into the rusted works, Nikos went on talking.

“As you may know, Jews, like Protestants, adamantly reject the practice of holy relics. And yet in the Book of Kings, in the Old Testament, they describe the miraculous recovery of a dead soldier when his body touched the bones of the prophet Elisha. Early Israelites were attributing magical powers to their dead saints—their prophets—centuries before Jesus was ever born. That got me thinking.” He paused and said, “try again.”

The Egyptian set the dental pick on a rugosity on the gem. He applied pressure, an ounce, no more. Nothing happened. Nikos took his syringe and circled the stone with another line of oil. Nikos continued his thought.

“All art is derivative.” He pointed at the painting on the wall. “Koons borrowed from Rubens who borrowed from earlier artists. The mortuary arts are no different. I realized that the early Christians creating these miniature tombs had a context. They lived during the Roman empire. Craftsmen from dozens of countries were being brought to Rome. Craftsmen from your own country, as well. Their ancient skills were being transported to the very place Christians were being persecuted.”

The Egyptian touched the cross. “You think one of my ancestors built this?” It was an astounding notion.

“Perhaps not this very object,” said Nikos. “But the Christians learned how to make puzzle boxes from someone. Someone highly skilled in a dying art. The art of preserving the dead. That would explain why some of these very early
domos
are so complex. Like your booby-trapped tombs and pyramids, they are meant to thwart the uninvited visitor.”

The Egyptian looked at Nikos. “We seem to have forgotten our art,” he said. “Your box is beyond me.”

Nikos smiled. Turning his pencil upside down, he gave a single jab at the amethyst. The pink eraser struck its center. The stone sank into its mount. A piece of metal clicked inside. A small hatch released on the top of the cross. “We’re in,” said Nikos.

They were like two small boys building a model airplane, only here they were unbuilding it. Neither paid attention to the twilight stealing across Homer’s wine-dark sea. Standing the cross on end, they removed the hatch and shined a light inside. At the base of a tin pit, two inches square, was a keyhole. “Now what?” said the Egyptian.

Nikos produced a locksmith’s prong. Ten minutes passed as he tried different picks and angles. After another injection of oil, the lock gave way. A second lid opened, and they carefully removed that with tweezers. It seemed a dead end until Nikos inserted a dental mirror and they found a small hook hidden under a concealed shelf.

Stage by stage, they dismantled the box. It was an ingenious device. Nikos proved himself a master, overcoming the safeguards and odd defenses. After an hour, they heard three distinct clicking sounds. “Oh no,” breathed Nikos. “It is destroying itself. They are sometimes rigged to crush the capsules and their relic material.”

But as it turned out, the sounds were of latches unfastening. The entire front rose a quarter inch. Nikos exchanged a glance with his friend, then took the invitation. With his fingertips, he evenly lifted the face from the cross.

The interior was a marvel. The artisan’s secrets lay exposed like metal organs and veins, the wires and latches and levers. There was more. “I’ve never seen such a thing,” said Nikos. “It holds not one capsule, but four. What an extraordinary find!”

In each corner of the cross, trapped like a fly in spider webbing, a glass capsule lay bound in place with red thread. The Egyptian could barely contain his excitement. Nikos drew a rough diagram of the cross and labeled each corner A through D. Beneath that, he wrote “A” and set down his pencil.

Using a scalpel, Nikos severed the threads securing the topmost capsule. Beneath the tightly-drawn threads was an oblong ampule with marbled swirls of blue and white. “Roman glass,” said Nikos. “The Romans learned from the Greeks the technology of hermetically sealing objects inside of glass bubbles.”

“What do you suppose is in there?”

“It could be almost anything. There is only one way to find out. We must crack the egg.”

The Egyptian took him literally and expected a hammer. Instead Nikos mounted the capsule in a padded vise and reached across the table for a device that fitted over the capsule. “A glass cutter,” Nikos said, setting calibrations for its height. He brought the diamond tip to rest on the glass. Ever so delicately, he moved it in a circle around the crown of the capsule. The cutter made half a dozen orbits, scoring deeper each time.