The Book of Q by Jonathan Rabb Read Free Book Online Page B

Square, it had suddenly dawned on him where he might find it. Or at least how. Everything had become a little too dark; he needed to lighten things up. So he’d gone back to the games, the fun of fragments and puzzles. This time, though, it wasn’t Paul, whose approach had always seemed colored by a Pharisaic past, nor the writers of the Gospels, each too caught up in his own agenda, but Augustine, where the insights remained acutely personal and therefore somehow less limiting—the fun and wonder reclaimed all at once.
    And so, in an act of self-salvation, he’d dived in. He found himself consumed by it, simple translations leading to the more complex world of liturgical analysis. Somewhere along the way, he even began to make a name for himself—conferences beyond the walls of the church, papers beyond the scope of personal faith—a scholar of language, everyone so surprised, no one more so than himself. Except, of course, for John J. He’d known all along. The onetime Bosnian freedom fighter caught up in a world of minutiae, intricacies of meanings—energy focused on the subtleties of belief rather than on belief itself.
    So much easier to “take it and read” than to take it and know.
    He was, after all, his parents’ son.
    Unwilling to admit that he was falling into that same trap, he’d pressed on, back to Ambrose, Augustine’s mentor, inspiration for the most brilliant mind the church had ever known. The most reasoned faith it had ever known. Find clarity in that wisdom.
    So, when the opportunity to sift through a sixth-century palimpsest of the letters of Saint Ambrose at the Vatican had presented itself, he’d jumped at the chance. Not just for the scholarship but also for the placeitself. Maybe in Rome he’d be able to reconnect with the purity he’d somehow lost along the way. The certainty.
    It had been two years since then. Two years in which to find other projects so as to keep himself busy, keep him in Rome, insulated in a world of abstract piety. The answers might not have been any easier, but at least the questions were once again more distant.
    The congregation rose, Pearse with them. Communion. He moved out to take his place in the line, when he noticed a familiar face some thirty feet ahead of him, the man looking back, trying to catch his attention. Dante Cesare, brother of the monastery at San Clemente—and an avid digger in the church’s storied foundations—stood by one of the half dozen vaulted archways that stretched the length of both sides of the nave. One of its few non-Irishmen, Cesare stood almost six foot five. And at no more than 180 pounds, he virtually disappeared into his robes, all thoughts of a torso lost, only scaly hands and feet protruding from the outfit. His equally elongated head bobbed above, aquiline nose stretching the skin taut around his cheekbones. An El Greco come to life.
    They’d met just over a year ago in the Villa Doria Pamphili, a park just south of the Vatican, and the best place to find a pickup game on weekends. Pearse had gotten into the habit of taking a handful of kids from the American school out on Saturdays, play a couple of innings, keep himself in shape. Cesare had appeared from behind a tree one afternoon, keeping his distance, but clearly fascinated by it all. When a stray ball had rolled past him, he’d gone after it with the enthusiasm of a five-year-old. The image of those skeletal arms and legs thrashing around still brought a smile to Pearse’s face. It turned out that what the monk lacked in physical ability, he more than made up for in his understanding of the game. Cesare had been a rabid Yankee fan for years, knew all the statistics, the stories. The kids loved him. Pearse handled the drills; Cesare handled everything else.
    Once a week, priest and monk, two topics off-limits: Thomas Aquinas’s thoughts on eternal law and Bucky Dent’s affinity for the Green Monster.
    The relationship had blossomed.
    The Cesare who now waited