the earth.
The modernist crisis was a personal crisis for every exegete. Lavigne’s courage was to bring this into the open, and steer the school to battle en masse. To defend the faith, he taught them, to seek out true meaning, they must fearlessly apply techniques of literary analysis to biblical text. Was it a camel that passed through the eye of a needle? Or was it, by a corruption of text and misunderstanding, a rope? Strengthened by their master’s faith, and every day crossing the very ground that Jesus trod, living one storey above the sepulchred relics of Stephanos, the young brothers read the Gospels in Greek, studied and spoke Aramaic, closed in on the incalculable questions, confronted with valour the awful fact that the Latin vulgate they were raised on was itself a dilution. But in the mad breath of Jerusalem it was easy to visualize Christ’s real body, the bony hands that healed and were maimed under the pale hot sky before that skull-white Golgotha stone, and these visions equipped them with courage where the Protestants, they knew, had already faltered.
Although the larger aim was metaphysical, therefore, Lavigne’s vision for the school was absolutely local and material. He spent great energy seeking a faculty to develop the curricula of languages, archaeology, and geography. The school grew in size and sprouted a wing for another dormitory. The brothers and fathers considered themselves in Aquinas’s image: all things in heaven and earth converged, and everything had its essence. As scholars they were stretching through their intellects to touch those essences, like pilgrims placing hands on the Anointing Stone.
The watchful eye of the papacy was not so sure. From that Latin vantage Lavigne’s “historical method” looked suspiciously similar to the modernism it purported to attack. Lavigne’s annotation of Genesis was banned. Far from discouraging the seminarians, however, this news of pontific suspicion actually spurred them on. A fever of devotion ran down the makeshift lecture halls. They were pioneers. First they had incurred the wrath of France, and now the wrath of Rome. They were a fellowship of brothers, navigating the rationalist storm together, aiming at the divine beacon of the Church’s authority, with their minds.
At the farther edge of the city a motorcar appeared. It progressed like a beetle along the valley road and passed a tiny figure holding something; the figure moved to the side, and a puff of dust rose around the wheels as the vehicle turned a corner. A Brit’s car, undoubtedly; no Arabs in Nablus owned cars, though chauffeurs were sometimes locals. Through the dust the figure continued walking. Antoine made a note:
“Ask ladies at the hospital—motorcars?”
The muezzins began to interrupt each other. He shifted his foot. A woman in a cloak was stepping off the path towards him. She wore a headdress—no, a wimple. It was Sister Louise.
“Sister! I didn’t recognise you.”
He stood and gestured at the vacated rock. She mimed a protest, then reached out for the back of the rock and circled her way around it, stepping carefully. With some difficulty, he crouched on the ground beside her.
“How are the patients today?”
“Another boy with influenza.”
“You sound peeved.”
Sister Louise tightened her lips. “Perhaps I am peeved.” She sighed. “I have something to tell you. We have been debating it for some time, and now it is agreed. We will soon leave the hospital in Nabulsi hands.”
“Truly?”
“This time, yes. We’ll continue training the local girls, but eventually that will be enough. They want us to expand the girls’ school. Don’t look at me like that, it’s by popular decree. They like the fact that we are very clean.” In lieu of a smile, she pouted. “They see it as a Muslim attribute. So we will have a dispensary attached, and continue with the village visits. But the hospital … you know, Ibrahim is extremely competent. I don’t know what that means for your research, father, but I imagine he won’t mind you on the veranda. You see I’m tired. They accuse us of espionage, and then the moment the injured arrive from Jerusalem they are desperate for us to stay again. It is exhausting.”
Sister Louise did look weary. She had a face like an elegant tortoise: wizened and close to the bone.
The Sisters of St. Joseph were a quiet, forbearing lot. They had tussled with the Nablus notables for years, accused of diverse crimes, from converting their patients to Christianity to taking business away from local doctors. But when they caught typhus during the war,