“Zach, the guessing games are getting old. What the hell is a Eugnosis of Alexandria?”
Zach rubbed his hands together, grinning. “Not what, who! I'm thinking Eugnosis of Alexandria just might be the solution to your pa's whole conundrum. But listen here Marcus, you are just going to have t’show a little patience. This is going to involve a complicated story and it doesn’t lend itself t’hasty explanations.”
No, that would be too much to ask.
Zach calmed himself down. He floated over to the window and leaned back and folded his hands behind his head. It was weird, like was sitting in some invisible easy chair or something like some grizzled only scholar. All he needed was a smelly old pipe to complete the effect.
“As t’your question,” he said scratching his chin thoughtfully, “I can’t say as I rightly know who Eugnosis of Alexandria is. I’ve been lookin’ all through that old library for near ninety years and I’ve yet t’find any mention of the name.”
This was not helping me much. "So then why are we talking about him? What's your freakin point?"
He continued. “Well Marcus, I reckon that is my point: Eugnosis of Alexandria is an ancient Greek writer that nobody’s ever heard of before. Nobody’s heard of him because none of his books survived into modern times. ‘Cept for one.”
“One? If you’re trying to clear things up for me, Zach, you’re doing a pretty poor job of it.”
He shook his head and looked at me like I was the dumbest kid in whatever weird class this was he was teaching . “Near as I can tell, there’s only one surviving manuscript of the writings of an unknown Greek philosopher named Eugnosis of Alexandria, and to the best of my knowledge, it’s rotting in a box on the third floor of the Gierman College library.”
I’m embarrassed to admit it, but he significance of what he’d said didn’t hit me right away. “So what does this have to do with Dad’s book?”
Zach threw up his hands in exasperation. “Blast it Marcus, don’t you see? Eugnosis of Alexandria is your Dad’s book! Think of it: Not a living soul knows about this manuscript! Your Pa could be the intrepid scholar that introduces the world to an undiscovered Greek philosopher!”
Now it hit me.
This was big. This was huge. In the world of classical scholarship this was the equivalent of winning the Superbowl, the lottery, and walking on the moon! This was climbing Mount Everest! Finding King Tut’s tomb! Curing cancer!
Oh hell yeah, this was big!
I jumped up from the sofa. “You mean nobody has ever heard of this guy? This is totally undiscovered territory? And the manuscript is in the Gierman Library? Why hasn’t anyone else seen it?”
Zach laughed. “If I got all your questions in the right order, the answers are: Yes, yes, yes, and it’s a long story. You got the patience t’sit and hear me out?”
I reckoned I could.
Zach settled back into storytelling mode, leaning back in his invisible chair, eyes half closed. “It was back in 1913, just before the Great War…”
“World War I?”
“There y’go,” he gave me a look. Clearly interruptions were not going to be appreciated.
Zach continued. “Back then we had a professor at Gierman name of Dr. Everett Lewes. He and Henry Clay were fast friends, really close.
“In 1913, Dr. Lewes decided t’take a sabbatical. He was set on spendin’ a year travelin’ all around the Mediterranean, visitin’ all the ancient sites he’d been lecturin’ about but had never seen: Italy, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, the Holy Land, the whole grand tour.
“I can’t say for sure exactly how he came t’possess that manuscript. His journals are up there on the third floor of the library; I suspect they have somethin’ t’say about the matter.
“Suffice it t’say, the manuscript arrived here at Gierman in a steamer trunk addressed ‘Care of Dr. Henry Clay Fontaine’. Henry Clay let that old trunk sit for nearly three weeks, though he was near burnin’ up with curiosity over it.
“Then one day a telegram shows up sayin’ that Professor Lewes had just gone on t’meet his maker.”
I interrupted again. “He died? What happened?”
Zach shrugged. “Telegram said it was the cholera. I reckon he saw the end comin’ and just managed to ship that trunk off, ‘fore it took him.
“Old Henry Clay was saddened by the loss of a good friend, but he was also bustin’ with curiosity over the contents of that steamer trunk. So one day he hauled off with a cold chisel and just broke off the lock.
“I hope t’tell you, I was right there when he did it too. I was not about t’miss that, no sir!
“Inside we found a couple of journals. Henry Clay flipped through ‘em quickly. Travel notes mostly. Under the journals there was a typed manuscript. It was typed in Greek, which was odd, neither of us had seen a typewriter that typed the Greek alphabet before. Later, as we dug down deeper into the trunk, we found the typewriter itself.
“The biggest curiosity, though, was a tin cylinder, ‘bout two feet long and ‘bout as big around as a oatmeal box. Openin’ the cylinder, we saw, rolled up inside, what appeared t’be a very old scroll. Henry, once he saw what it was, left it inside the tin cylinder on account of it looked so delicate, like it might just disintegrate were it touched.
“Now in them days, neither Henry Clay nor myself was much good at readin’ Greek. We both knew the alphabet and a word or two, but that was about it.
“We could read the title of the manuscript though. Roughly translated it said somethin’ like: The Meditations and Commentaries on the Travels of Eugnosis of Alexandria.
“Thing was, neither Henry nor I had ever heard of Eugnosis of Alexandria. Hard as we both looked, there was no mention of him in any book that we could find. Henry Clay asked around t’all the Greek or Latin scholars he knew, but all he got was blank looks.
“Myself, I spent fifty years tryin’ t’find some mention of Eugnosis or his book and finally had t’just give up on it. Whoever Eugnosis of Alexandria was, there’s no written record of him that I can find.
“After a while, the implications of it all started t’set in t’Henry Clay. He appeared t’have an important discovery on his hands but, not readin’ Greek, there wasn’t much of anything he could do about it.
“Old Henry Clay wasn’t sure just what t’do next. He reckoned he should pass the trunk along t’someone who could give it a proper study, but just who would that be?
“See, back then…well those were some bitter times at Gierman College. The place was riddled with all manner of backbitin’ and rivalries between near every professor in the college, and old Henry Clay was right there in the midst of it all.
“Dean Gierman, old man Gierman’s grandson, especially had it in for Henry Clay. But that wasn’t the all of it. In his old age, Henry Clay was in the middle of more feuds, grudges, and rivalries than I could keep track of. Eventually there wasn’t one person in the Classics department with whom he was on speakin’ terms.
“Henry figured that if anybody at Gierman got wind of what was in that trunk, there’d be no end of fightin’ t’get it away from him. It would gall him near to death to let any of his enemies get credit for discoverin’ old Eugnosis.
“He would have liked t’send the trunk off to somebody outside of Gierman, but he hadn’t settled on just how t’do it when a stroke took him.”
“You mean it was just then that he died?” I asked.
Zach nodded. “It was a hard thing, losin’ my brother like that. Suddenly there I was all alone with nothin’ with no solace t’speak of ‘cept the contents of the Gierman Library.”
There was an uncomfortable moment of silence before Zach continued. “Henry Clay’s will stated that all his books and papers would go to the library, but the dean, Gierman Three as Henry called him, was havin’ none of that. He wanted t’just pile up my brother’s life work and put a match to it.
“Luckily, he was legally bound t’follow the terms of Henry Clay’s will and put his papers in the library.
“And that’s what old Gierman Three did. He put Henry Clay’s papers in the library all right. Everything, his whole life’s work, including Dr. Lewes’ trunk, was stuffed into an old storeroom on the third floor. Then he spent the next several years fillin’ the room up with boxes of old junk so as to make sure nobody’d ever get a look at any papers belongin’ to Henry Clay Fontaine.”
“And it’s still there?” I asked. “The trunk and the What’s-his-name of Whatever papers?”
“Eugnosis of Alexandria,” Zach corrected. “Yep, it’s all there: the whole kit and caboodle, uncatalogued, untouched, and undiscovered.”
I was getting really excited.
I’d been around the academic scholar biz long enough to know what a gold mine Zach was describing.
A previously unknown Greek philosopher!
Dad could make a whole career out of this one guy.
I could see it all play out in my mind: He translates the manuscript. He writes a book about discovering the manuscript. He publishes articles in boring journals about the how this Eugnosis guy fits into the big picture of Greek philosophy. Academic conferences! Talk shows! People magazine!
“And you’re really sure it’s still up there?” I persisted. “Nobody’s moved it or thrown it away?”
Zach shrugged. “I can’t say as I’ve been up there in the last six months or so, but I don’t reckon anyone’s moved anything since then.”
I hopped off the sofa. “I want to look at it, the trunk, can we do that?”
Zach shook his head. “Can’t now. Look at the time. They’ll be closin’ up shop in a couple hours, bein’ as it’s Saturday and all.”
“How about tomorrow? Sunday?”
“There y’go.”