Tunnel Vision

12

“The last thing I need is a bunch of religious fanatics flocking around him like he’s Our Lady of Lourdes,” Maggie said.

“Well, they won’t get to him anymore,” Kate said.

They were sitting in the hospital café the morning after the incident. Zack had been moved to another room in a different ward, known only to a handful of staff and family. At Maggie’s insistence, the hospital had posted a guard outside his room around the clock. “If he was such a healing force, you’d think it’d occur to them that he’d wake himself up.”

“Logic doesn’t appear to be their strong suit,” Kate said, sipping her coffee.

“Whatever. I’m not sure I’ll be by Sunday.” That was Easter, and Kate usually hosted a meal, less as a religious celebration than as an occasion for a family gathering.

“Maybe you can stop by for dessert after the hospital.”

Maggie nodded, distracted by something in her sister’s manner. And she was certain that missing Easter dinner wasn’t the issue. “Is everything okay?”

Kate looked at her for a moment as she turned something over in her head. “Yesterday Bob dropped in on a friend, Art Avedisian, in Harvard’s Department of Near Eastern Languages.”

Bob taught French literature at Wellesley College. “Yeah?”

“Well, he showed him the video of Zack.”

Maggie was suddenly alert. “Yeah.”

“It wasn’t glossolalia.”

“Of course not. It was plain gibberish.”

“Actually, it wasn’t gibberish. It was Aramaic.”

“Aramaic? Isn’t that some ancient language?”

“Yes, and the native tongue of Jesus Christ.”

“What?”

“According to Bob’s friend, who’s a scholar and an expert on Aramaic, it’s still spoken in small parts of the Middle East. He says Zack spoke it in an older dialect.”

All Maggie could say was, “What?”

Kate nodded. “That’s what he claims.”

“Well, that’s not possible. He’s wrong. Zack doesn’t know any ancient languages. That’s absurd.”

“I’m just telling you what he said. He also translated what he could make out.” She removed a notepad from her handbag. “I guess he was repeating several phrases: ‘Father, with You everything is possible. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what You will.’ Then Zack recited the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic.”

“I don’t believe this.”

“I know. But according to Avedisian, that’s what it was, an excerpt from the Sermon on the Mount in the original dialect.”

“W-what?… How?”

“I don’t know,” Kate said. “As far as you know, did he ever take a course in Aramaic?”

“No, and why would he?”

“I don’t know. And I guess it’s not your basic college elective. According to Art, the only place you can find such a course in New England is the grad school at Harvard. And we know he never did that. Nor is Aramaic something you can pick up on Rosetta Stone.”

“Then the guy’s wrong. That’s not what it was,” Maggie insisted.

“I guess. Even if you wanted to, where would you find Aramaic versions of Jesus’s sermons?”

Maggie felt a rash of gooseflesh flash up her arms. “He’s not even religious.”

“I know, but how do you explain it?”

“The guy is wrong. Dead wrong.”

Kate nodded and sipped her coffee.

And Maggie rubbed her arms against the chill.

* * *

Later at home, Maggie listened to the tape over and over again. She could make no sense of the language, of course. It sounded a bit like Arabic crossed with Greek. But what stayed with her as she lay on her pillow in the dark was not the language, but the voice.

All she could hear was Nick.