Страница 51 из 69
The crowd fu
“This is the Stone of Unction,” one of the many guides declared, “where the Lord’s body was prepared for burial.”
Gigantic candelabra flanked the stone. Over it hung many glass and brass lamps. Around it tearful believers bent to kiss its surface.
“That marble is not native to the region,” a tall British gentleman pointed out with pedantic disapproval.
An explanation was duly provided. “Pilgrims were too much given to chipping pieces off the real stone, so this one conceals it,” his guide replied, and redirected the group’s attention toward a circular railing. “Here is the very place the Virgin stood when the Lord’s body was anointed. Follow me, please!”
The farther into the shrine we moved, the staler the air became. Around the periphery of the shrine, the morning processions were assembling, and at least two kinds of incense began to waft toward us. The cloying scents mixed with the sort of crowd odor that silently proclaims a variable devotion to the principles of good hygiene. Arab workmen were taking a break from their morning’s task, smoking hashish near a side altar. Eating and joking, they contributed woozy laughter to echoing wails, a rumble of muttered commentary, and the occasional shocking guffaw. Chants, chimes, and clanking metal chains added to a growing cacophony. Prayers and conversations grew louder in response.
Pushed and shoved from all sides, footsore and increasingly irritable tourists complained indignantly. Pilgrims beat their breasts and wailed. The most devout of these were elderly Italian women dressed all in black, who reminded me of Mrs. Motta. Unlike the tourists, these ladies seemed undismayed by the lack of decorum, lost in their devotion. With their example to guide me, I required of myself the act of will necessary to grasp at some sense of awe.
And then, I was there: standing a few feet from the most sacred place in Christendom.
The Byzantine rotunda is some sixty feet in diameter, decorated with mosaics. A central oculus, open to the sky, is supported by riotously embellished columns. Beneath it sits a small, intensely ornamented chapel crowned with a variety of candle-topped towers, wax dripping down their sides. Above, upwards of forty hanging lamps blaze away. Around, dozens of enormous candlesticks bear bedizened tapers as tall as a man. Sentimental paintings of the Lord and the Virgin compete for attention with the statues of angels and disciples that climb the chapel’s outer walls, no inch of which has escaped its burden of decoration. Crenellations, crosses, and medallions provide asymmetrical and unrestrained adornment everywhere the eye could stand to tarry. The interior of the chapel—wherein the Lord lay and rose— is completely clad in figured marble.
No naked rock—sacred or profane—is anywhere visible, but there, in that exact spot, my sister had stood. “I felt the eternal Love and Presence,” Lillian wrote, “and wept for my sins, redeemed at such cost.”
“It was an absolute nightmare,” I told Lawrence over mint tea late that afternoon. “You’d find more decorum at the Cuyahoga County Fair! And if there was a genuine sepulchre somewhere under all that claptrap? Well, you certainly couldn’t prove it by me. And the lying! The sheer shameless fakery!” I cried, outraged in recollection. “There was an altar with a stick on it—‘the Rod of Moses.’ It was a stick. You’re told to poke it up through a hole in the marble so it will touch some hidden thing that’s supposedly the Column of Scourging. Then the guides point to another slab of marble and tell you, ‘Here is where the Roman soldiers sat to plait the crown of thorns.’ But both places should be back near Saint Stephen’s Gate—that’s where Pilate condemned Jesus as king of the Jews—so what are those things doing in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre?”
“Perhaps they were moved,” Lawrence suggested mildly, “when the church was built?”
“And that’s another thing! The church didn’t exist until two hundred and fifty years after the Romans destroyed the city. I skipped the Chapel of Saint Helena,” I told him heatedly. “Now, there’s a woman who could have done with a bit less faith. The patron saint of chumps, I’d call her! What did she expect? When the mother of a Roman emperor comes looking for the True Cross, somebody is going to make some money by finding it for her! She wants another cross? Why, here’s the one that belonged to the good thief ! How about a few thorns from the crown? Step right this way, madams!”
“Did you see Godfrey de Bouillon’s sword?” Lawrence asked. “I think it’s genuine, although I’m not certain he ‘cleaved in twain’ a giant Saracen with it. Might have been an ordinary-sized Saracen …”
“My favorite, though, was the chapel of the Division of the Vestments—”
“ ‘And when they had crucified Him,’ ” Lawrence recited, “ ‘they parted His garments, casting lots upon them.’ ”
“What a disappointment that was! What? No dice? Every other little detail in the Passion has some sham relic!”
“Not quite,” Lawrence pointed out judiciously. “There could have been a chapel for the Holy Hammer That Drove the Nails into the True Cross.”
“Helena probably bought it,” I said sarcastically. “It’s under an altar in some Barcelona basilica.”
I went on fulminating and Lawrence listened, nodding sometimes or commenting briefly. Now and then, he sipped water from his glass. It’s not true that he never drank anything else, by the way. His time in the desert had taught him to appreciate water, but he was not above a glass of wine at di
“You’re right, of course,” he said when I finally slowed down. “When they started excavations at the northeast wall of the Temple, archaeologists had to dig through something like a hundred and twenty-five feet of debris before they got to the level of Herod’s city. My field was Hittite, but I think this Jerusalem is probably the eighth.” He sat back in his chair, looking rather weary but comfortable in the role of scholar. “The city of David sat on an even earlier settlement. Then there’s Solomon’s Jerusalem, which lasted about four hundred years. Nehemiah’s—three hundred for that one, I believe. Herod’s Jerusalem was magnificent, by all accounts. That’s what everyone expects to see when they come here, but Titus destroyed it. Later on, a small Roman city was built on the ruins. Since then, Muslims and Crusaders traded the place repeatedly, and burned it down occasionally. And yet … the pilgrims come.”
“But it’s all a fraud!” I cried, feeling triumphant. “It’s a house of cards. For centuries, the stories have been sold to pilgrims who pay handsomely to be deceived. That’s what makes me angry! How can sensible people be such fools?”
“Was your sister a fool?” Lawrence asked, his blond brows lifted.
It stopped me cold, that question, because that’s exactly what I feared: that Lillie had dedicated her precious, short life to a nineteen-hundred-year-old scam. Now, without warning, my eyes began to sting with tears I had hoped to shed for Jesus.
“If it’s any comfort,” Lawrence said, “I don’t believe that she was.”
He glanced at his watch and stood. Lawrence rarely gave a reason or said good-bye when he left. I had gotten used to the way he’d simply disappear. He was dressed in his brown suit; the evening’s appointment must have involved Jews or Christians, not Arabs. Thinking I was alone again in the courtyard, I allowed myself a single sob, then wiped my eyes.
“Look at it this way,” Lawrence said, startling me. He was slouched at the edge of the courtyard, head down, thinking as he spoke. “Jerusalem has always been important strategically. It’s been one war after another for mille