his left, its bark so contorted and rivuletted that, squinting, one saw a crowd of figures stretched and crouching open-mouthed, like medieval lechers on a Last Judgment relief. All in all, the specimen had a girth of some three metres, which Antoine had estimated himself one morning by embracing it. More than once he heard it alleged the oldest tree in Palestine. Such allegations had to be taken with good humour; guides were always reporting prodigies they hoped would propel the hearer’s arm a little deeper into his or her pochette. But quite rightly they perceived it was a marvel. Antoine found himself at this spot again and again on account of this tree, this beautiful crone, which made such superb company for the view.
Down there in the valley was Jacob’s Well. The Russians had begun building a church around it more than a decade ago, but stopped when their revolution broke out, so the church resembled a ruin before it ever lived as an entire building, and Jacob’s Well, though cleared of rubbish, remained half-exposed to the air. That was despite the fact that all the faiths of Abraham, which could squabble for eternity over relics and geographies, agreed at least on this one site, that it was Jacob’s, which was where Jesus Christ met the woman of Samaria, and he, according to the Gospel of John, “being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well” and asked that she might give him a drink. Yet no Nabulsi had gone out of his way to dress up the well for visitors, never mind the care they lavished on other shrines in the valley. No Nabulsi, aside from the odd enterprising guide, cared for European tourists at all. Other cities were forming whole quarters for pilgrims and artefact seekers. Nablus had not a single hotel for foreigners.
But this was why Nablus was perfect for Antoine’s research: the city was nigh untouched. Her inhabitants did not perform, as he had watched impoverished Jaffans do, dressing up as shepherds to greet passengers from cruise ships with splinters of Christ’s own cross. Never in Nablus. Despite or perhaps even because of the Christian and Samaritan elements, Nablus was a perfect specimen of the Islamic city. Antoine observed her lovingly from below as well as above, and noted down all the hearsay he gleaned from the patients in the municipal hospital.
Père Antoine’s official position was Professor of Oriental Studies at L’École Pratique d’Études Bibliques in Jerusalem. He joined the school as a student some twenty years ago, around the time of the Dreyfus affair when France expelled the religious orders and the Dominicans left Lyon in a flood. On the clerical grapevine, young Antoine had already heard about Père Lavigne’s new École in Jerusalem. Lavigne’s school wanted to defend Catholicism against the Modernists. The method, however, was unorthodox: the scholars would actually try to satisfy the demands of science and history, contextualise the gospel using “modern” methods—but use what they found to defend supernatural faith.
Antoine was then nineteen years old and had never left France. He travelled by ship from Marseille to Port Said and thence to Jerusalem by train, and discovered on arrival that the strength of Lavigne’s reputation had imputed to his project more substance than it had in reality. The priory was not yet built, though the priests had measured out the ground across the old tomb of St. Stephen. Along with three other seminarians who had arrived for the start of term, Antoine was directed to lodge in a temporary dormitory on the premises of the former Turkish slaughterhouse.
Père Lavigne, however, did not disappoint. A man of middling height, with a twisted friendly mouth, modest brown beard, and balding head, he infected the boys at once with his enthusiasm. His speech at the inaugural assembly gave Antoine the impression of a large-hearted visionary, striving, not without fear, but with courage enough to lead them all in their course towards truth.
Within a couple of weeks the impact was mutual: brother Antoine was star of his class in the Semitic languages, and in him Lavigne said he detected a capacious mind marked already by the anxieties of high ambition. Throughout the ensuing five years of his studies, and long after his anointment, Lavigne operated as Antoine’s personal mentor. He encouraged Antoine’s rigour, his independence, his virtue. Antoine’s was a mind after Lavigne’s own: that rare meticulous Catholic with a faith so pure he could keep one clear-sighted eye trained always on