"The debir?"
"That's what the Holy of Holies is called in Hebrew. It's true that he himself never looked inside, of course; only the high priest was allowed in. Well, that's all on one side. But!" said Onno, sticking up his index finger and putting his other on a sheet of notes. "Because — and let this be your consolation — there's always a but in life, Quinten. The other side of the matter— and that will give you false hope — is a text from the twelfth century by a certain Johannes Diaconus. In it, the term Sancta Sanctorum occurs for the first time. But it doesn't yet refer to the papal chapel but to a treasure of relics that was supposed to be found under the high altar of the old Lateran basilica."
"That altar with the heads of Peter and Paul in the ceiling?"
"Yes, but down below. And what was supposed to be there, according to the deacon? Not only Moses' rush basket, the foreskin of Christ, and all other conceivable rarities, but also — pay attention: arca foederis Domini. What do you say to that?" said Onno, leaning back with the satisfaction of a generous giver. "God's ark of the covenant."
Quinten looked at him perplexed. "Why false hope? We're there, aren't we!" he asked excitedly. "Since when has the papal chapel been called Sancta Sanctorum?"
"I know that, too. Since the end of the fourteenth century."
"Well, then! That means that the ark was taken from the basilica to the chapel sometime between eleven hundred and fourteen hundred. The name simply went with it."
"In itself what you're saying is not at all implausible. In the thirteenth century the chapel was completely restored and the relics were taken out of it for those months; afterward the ark could have been added to them. Except that you're forgetting the minor point that the ark, in the best possible case, is still lying somewhere in a cave in Jordan. It's never been in Rome." With both his hands Onno made a gesture of resignation. "Realize that it's all based on a medieval legend. What do you think of that foreskin and that rush basket?"
Quinten shook his head decidedly. "That's as may be, and I don't know either how it happened, but I know for certain that the ark is there in the altar."
"And I," said Onno, who now felt like a surgeon who has to put the scalpel into the patient without anesthetic, "know even more for certain that it isn't."
"How can you be so sure of that?"
"Because I know what's in it," said Onno, without taking his eyes off Quinten.
Quinten looked back at him in disbelief. "What, then?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing?" repeated Quinten after a few seconds.
"An empty box."
"How do you know that?"
"Because the altar was opened in 1905 and emptied. Here," said Onno, and took the book that he had borrowed from the institute — giving his address, so that wouldn't stay secret for very much longer, either. "Here you find an exact description and photographs of everything that was in it. There were extraordinary things there — the umbilical cord of Christ, for example, and a piece of the cross — but no ark. On the orders of the pope, this Professor Grisar from Innsbruck took all the things personally to the Vatican Library, where you can go and look at them tomorrow in the chapel of Pius V."
Quinten leafed through it a little, glanced at an illustration of the decorated shrine, and put it back on the table. It didn't interest him now.
"And yet," he said, "that chapel is called Sancta Sanctorum. And there are two angels above the altar. And it says above the altar that there is no more holy place in the world."
"It won't let go of you, will it?" laughed Onno. "You trust your intuition more than the facts. I regard that as a heroic quality, but you can actually take it too far. I hope you don't mean to say that there's a conspiracy — that for example this whole book was only written to hide the fact that the ark is definitely in the altar."
"Of course not," said Quinten. "I'm not crazy."
"But what are you, then? A dreamer perhaps? Forget it. As far as this is concerned, your intuition has been refuted. Another time you wouldn't have been far off the mark. The last time you suggested that Vespasian may have been frightened of the God of the Jews and had therefore hidden the ark in his palace. Well, there was no question of an ark, but yesterday I read in Flavius Josephus that after the great triumphal procession through the Forum, he did have the veil of the Holy of Holies taken to his palace."
"How strange," said Quinten suspiciously. "And not those costly gold things — that candelabra and that table with the shewbread?"
"No, they were displayed in a temple. Only the purple veil and the Jewish Law."
"The Jewish Law?" Quinten raised his eyebrows. "What was that?"
"That's a name for the Torah, the five books of Moses. He's also called the Law Giver."
Quinten thought for a moment. "How am I to imagine the Law?"
"You must have seen an illustration of it at some point. A great role of parchment, such as you now see in the ark of every synagogue."
"How large?"
"I assume that the Torah roll from the temple of Herod will have been very big. Perhaps even fifty-four inches long."
Quinten nodded. "That monster was therefore also carried in that procession through the Forum."
"Of course. According to Josephus, the Jewish Law passed as the last trophy."
"Did it?" said Quinten. "And if that thing was so important to the emperor that he took it into his palace, even more important than the menorah, why doesn't it appear on the arch of Titus?"
"How are you so sure that it doesn't appear?"
"Because I've just been back there. But something else did strike me," said Quinten, suddenly hectic. "The last figure, at the extreme left, a man without a face, who in that case ought to be carrying the parchment, is standing there as though he's got nothing to do, with his arms hanging straight down beside him. Like this," he said, demonstrating. "You can't see his left hand; but if you look carefully, you can see that at least he's got something in his right hand, something heavy and oblong, that comes approximately to his elbow." He took the book from the table and let it rest on his bent fingers against his thigh.
"Shall I tell you what he's got with him, then?"
"I'd really like to know."
"Moses' two stone tablets with the Ten Commandments on them."
58. Preparations
Onno stared at him in astonishment.
"That was the so-called Jewish Law!" cried Quinten vehemently. "How large were those stone tablets?"
Onno bent over a note. "According to R. Berechiah, a rabbi from the fourth century, six tefah long and two tefah wide."
"And how long was a tefah?"
"The width of a hand."
"And how wide is a hand?" said Quinten, looking at his own hand. "Three inches or so? That means? Eighteen inches by six! So that's exactly right!"
"But that Mr. Berechiah never saw them."
"Everything's clear now, isn't it, Dad!?" Quinten began pacing the room passionately. "Listen…" he said, his eyes focused on the floor. "Jeremiah took the ark with him and hid it in a cave, but that doesn't mean that he left those stone tablets in it. Or does it say in that book of the Maccabees that they had to disappear as well?"
"No."
"Right, so he took them out. And they were seen by that priest from that rabbinical legend, who thought that they were raised tiles. They were preserved and later they were placed in the Holy of Holies in the second and third temples. It would be too stupid if that had been really empty for centuries! A high priest who goes in through the curtain every Yom Kippur— and then nothing? An empty cube? Surely he'd look a fool. Just as if God didn't exist. Then that temple would have been in a kind of coma for all those centuries — like Mama."