Brothers Keepers Read online

  “Apparently so, Brother. At least with his family.”

  “Ah.” That seemed to explain things.

  I said, “His argument is mostly function, by the way.”

  “Eh?”

  “Function,” I repeated. “The claim that usefulness is the primary virtue, that all other considerations are secondary, and that this particular space would be most usefully employed as an office building.”

  “A barbaric set of values,” he said.

  “Yes, Brother.”

  He mused, then said, “Was Miss Flattery reporting this argument favorably?”

  “No. She wanted me to counteract it.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Really? Why was that?”

  “She said she could help us,” I explained, “but she wouldn’t do it unless she was convinced it was right to go against her father.”

  “Help us? In what way?”

  “I don’t know, Brother. She wouldn’t be more specific, she only said she could definitely help us if she chose. But first I had to defeat her father’s argument.”

  He nodded. “And did you?”

  “No, Brother.”

  We had reached the front wall again. We reversed, and Brother Oliver said, “Because of your emotional involvement, Brother Benedict?”

  “Probably,” I admitted. “And then we were mugged,” I added, as though that felony had cut me down in brilliant mid-debate.

  “Yes, of course,” he said. “And did you suggest to her that she talk to one of the other residents instead?”

  “Yes, Brother.”

  That answer surprised him. “You did?”

  “I really didn’t want any of this to happen, Brother Oliver,” I said.

  “I know you didn’t,” he said, his sympathy showing again. “This all came on you too suddenly and too forcefully. You weren’t ready for it.”

  “Father Banzolini calls it culture shock,” I told him.

  “You’ve discussed this with Father Banzolini?”

  “Only certain aspects of it,” I said. “In confession.”

  “Oh.”

  “Father Banzolini thinks I’m temporarily insane.”

  Brother Oliver gave me a look of utter astonishment. “He what?”

  “Well, he didn’t phrase it that way,” I said. “He just said I wasn’t responsible for my actions at the moment.”

  Brother Oliver shook his head. “I’m not entirely convinced a Freudian priest is a viable hybrid.”

  “I may not actually be insane,” I conceded, “but I’m certainly confused. I don’t have any idea what I should do.”

  “Do? About what?”

  I spread my hands. “About my future.”

  He stopped. Frowning at me he said, “Are you seriously considering an involvement with this woman? And I don’t mean an emotional involvement, I mean an involvement.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I want to stay here, I want things to be the way they used to be, but I just don’t know what to do about it. I need you to tell me, Brother Oliver.”

  “Tell you? What to do with your life?”

  “Yes, please.”

  We came to the arch. Brother Oliver stopped, but did not reverse. Instead, he stood there for half a minute or so, gazing at the stones over long-departed residents. There were about thirty graves in our small cemetery, all from the nineteenth century. These days, we bury our deceased residents in a Catholic cemetery in Queens, next to the Long Island Expressway. The linkages with Travel are distressing, but unavoidable.

  Brother Oliver sighed. He turned to me and said, “I can’t tell you what to do, Brother Benedict.”

  “You can’t?”

  “No one can. Your own mind has to tell you what to do.”

  “My mind can’t tell me anything,” I said. “Not the way I am now.”

  “But how could anyone else decide whether or not you’ve lost your vocation? This woman is testing the strength of your commitment to God and to this life. The answer has to come from within, it has to.”

  “There’s nothing within me but mush,” I said.

  “Brother Benedict,” he said, “you are not tied by vows the way a priest is. That gives you more freedom, but also more responsibility. You have to make your own decisions.”

  “I’ve given a vow of obedience,” I pointed out.

  “But that’s the only one,” he said. “You’ve made no vows of chastity or poverty. You have vowed only to remain obedient to the laws of God and of this Order and of the Abbot.”

  “That’s you,” I said.

  “And my commandment to you,” he said, “is to search your mind and your heart, and do what is best for yourself. If that involves either temporary or permanent separation from this Order, you should do so. The decision is yours.”

  The buck stops here. “Yes, Brother,” I said.

  * * *

  There’s a flow, a cyclical movement to the life of the monastery, and the points of the cycle primarily involve religion and work. Our religious activities, Mass and prayer and times of meditation, are mostly recurrent on a daily basis, but our work assignments tend to cycle at a more stately pace. While some tasks are in the permanent care of residents peculiarly suited to them—Brother Leo being our cook, for example, Brother Jerome being our superintendent-handyman, Brother Dexter handling our paperwork—most job assignments rotate among us all. I had been free of work assignments for nearly two weeks when suddenly my turn came around for two in a row. At the evening meal on that Sunday, a few hours after my talk with Brother Oliver, I was on kitchen duty with Brothers Leo and Eli, and on Tuesday I had a stint in the office.

  The kitchen job was simple but unappealing; one obeyed all of Brother Leo’s barked commands about batter beating and water boiling and so on, and at the end of the meal one washed all the dishes. Such tasks left plenty of time for meditation, and all at once I had more than enough to meditate about. Washing spinach for the salad should certainly be conducive, if anything is, to dispassionate thought.

  The outside world eats three meals a day, of course, but we feel content with two. We never have breakfast till we’ve been up and about for at least three hours, and then that first meal is hearty enough to carry us till the evening, when we have a second meal just as hearty. It’s a healthy regimen, and it assures we’ll have a good appetite every time we enter the refectory.

  Brother Leo cooks all the meals, not because the rest of us aren’t willing to do our share of the work but because he isn’t willing to eat anything that any of us might prepare. He made that point clear in several unforgettable conversations shortly after joining the Order (unforgettable to those present at the time, who have repeated the good Brother’s remarks almost verbatim to later-comers like myself), but he’s always been willing to take on assistants and bully them. Thaddeus and Peregrine today at breakfast, for instance, and Eli and myself at dinner.

  I got myself in trouble with Brother Leo right away, for what he grumbled was “wool gathering.” And by golly, he was right. I hadn’t even been brooding on my troubles; far from it. In fact, I had been standing there oblivious, watching Brother Eli peel carrots. He did it as though he were whittling, the little curls of carrot spreading around him exactly like wood shavings, and I began to be convinced the twelve Apostles would soon be emerging from that bunch of carrots; twelve little orange Apostles, edible and crunchy.

  “Brother Benedict! You’re wool gathering!”

  “Ak!” And back to the spinach I went, salad gathering.

  The Apostles did not after all appear, nor did the solution to my problem. The meal got itself made, and it got itself eaten, and the dishes got themselves washed, but my head remained a mess. Every time I tried to think about Eileen Flattery Bone my brain began to jiggle and fuzz like the television set when a plane goes over. And every time I tried to think about myself in a future outside these monastery walls my brain simply turned to snow, and then the snow melted. So much for meditation, and so much for S
unday.

  * * *

  Monday was a free day for me, meaning a day in which I could walk in circles in the courtyard and fail to think. I could also enter the chapel to ask God for assistance, and then realize I didn’t know what assistance I wanted. The strength to stay? Or the strength to go?

  For the others in our community, Monday was the day we learned we could hope for nothing from the Landmarks Commission. Brother Hilarius apparently spent much of the day on the telephone, and he reported the result to us all at dinner. Brother Leo and today’s slaveys—Clemence and Quillon—came soapy-armed from the kitchen to listen, and Brother Hilarius began by telling us we couldn’t hope for the Landmarks Commission to designate us a landmark because they’d already rejected us seven years ago.

  A lot of people said, “That’s impossible.” Brother Oliver said, “We would have known about it. Why wouldn’t we have known about it?”

  “We’re not the owners,” Brother Hilarius pointed out. “The Flatterys were informed, and they attended the hearing to oppose the designation. I suppose they should have informed us themselves, but we won’t get very far with that argument seven years later.”

  Brother Clemence, wiping his soapy hands and arms on everybody’s napkins, said, “What was the reason for the refusal?”

  Brother Flavian thought he already knew. “So the Flatterys have friends in high places, eh?”

  “That wasn’t the reason,” Brother Hilarius told him.

  “Then what was it?”

  “We have a dull facade.”

  Everybody looked at him. Brother Peregrine said, “We’re a monastery, not a burlesque house.”

  “But that was the reason,” Brother Hilarius said. “And if you think about it, it’s true. We do have a dull facade.”

  What a thing to be accused of; a dull facade. Brother Quillon, who in fact did not have a dull facade, said, “What does that mean? Facade? I just don’t understand it.”

  “The Landmarks law at that time,” Brother Hilarius explained, “limited the commission to consideration of a building’s facade, the outer walls facing the street. Inside, you could turn a place into a roller skating rink, but if you kept that nice Federal facade then everything was fine.”

  Brother Oliver said, “Wait, let me understand this. Does the Landmarks Commission preserve buildings or front walls?”

  “Front walls.” Brother Hilarius spread his hands. “The Commission itself wants to do more, but the real estate people get in and lobby against the laws, so they come up with compromises. And that one said the Landmarks Commission could not designate a building on any basis other than its street facade. Not an architecturally interesting interior, not a useful function, not anything at all except facade. And our facade is dull.”

  Now that he’d explained it, nobody wanted to argue the point. In truth, our facade was dull. Since the Blessed Zapatero had been constructing a retreat from the world, he and his fellow builders had devoted their attentions mainly to the interior of our building. Facing Park Avenue was a blank gray stone wall one hundred feet long and twenty-five feet high. It contained two doors on the first floor and three smallish windows on the second floor, and that was it. From the street one couldn’t see, one couldn’t even guess at the existence of, our courtyard, our cloisters, our chapel, our cemetery or anything else.

  Brother Clemence, having made a sopping pest of himself with everybody’s napkins, now broke our grim silence by saying, “Wait a minute. Hilarius, didn’t you say that was the law at that time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Meaning it’s been changed?”

  “Not in any way that can help us.”

  “What’s the change?”

  Brother Hilarius said, “In 1973, the law was changed to permit the consideration of some interiors.”

  Brother Clemence brightened, saying, “Oh, really? I’d love to hear a law that could open up consideration to some interiors and not include this interior.” His spreading (dry) arms suggested a magnificence in our surroundings that was perhaps slightly overdone.

  Many of us felt the same way, and I could see hope entering the faces around me. But Brother Hilarius was already shaking his head. “The interiors to be considered,” he said, “in the direct language of the law, are those ‘customarily open or accessible to the public.’ If there’s one thing we’re not, Brother Clemence, it’s open or accessible to the public.”

  “Then it looks as though,” Brother Clemence said, “I’ll just have to save us myself, with my secondary documents.”

  Several of us turned to ask him how he was doing, and he gave us strong assurances. “Coming right along,” he told us. “It’s merely a matter of constructing the strongest possible profile.” But somehow his air of self-confidence wasn’t totally convincing.

  * * *

  Tuesday I was on assignment in the office, another task which left the mind free to meditate. Though in my case the word wasn’t meditate. In my case the word was stew.

  There are actually two offices in the monastery, being the Abbot’s Office and the Abbey Office. The Abbot’s Office was where we’d been having our meetings and where Brother Clemence was now going through the chaos of our filing system. The Abbey Office, also called the scriptorium (inaccurately, I might say; a scriptorium in the old days was a room where monks hand-copied manuscripts), was at the front of the building, containing a desk and a telephone and a visitor’s bench. Our rare incoming phone calls and in-person visitors were dealt with in this room. Our petty cash (all of our cash was petty) was also kept here, to be tapped by me on Saturday evenings for the price of a Sunday Times. One of us was usually on duty here afternoons and evenings, and Tuesday was my turn.

  I spent the first hour or so sitting at the desk, leafing through the airplane magazines Brother Leo keeps in the bottom drawer there, and from time to time mooning into the middle distance, my brain turning in fretful circles like a dog trying to figure out how to lie down.

  All of this cogitation was entirely self-centered, concerned only with my own future. I had virtually abandoned all thought about Dimp and the demolition deadline fast approaching. We had only sixteen days left to save ourselves, but I spared that fact hardly a thought.

  Nor had I done anything about my suspicion that one of the residents must have stolen the original lease. I’d mentioned the idea to nobody, and in fact I didn’t even think about it myself. It was too grim to contemplate.

  Whom would I suspect, out of my fifteen fellow monks? Brother Oliver? Brothers Clemence or Dexter or Hilarius? Brother Zebulon? Brothers Mallory or Jerome? Brothers Valerian or Quillon or Peregrine? Brothers Leo or Flavian? Brothers Silas or Eli or Thaddeus? There wasn’t one of them I could suspect. How could I think about such a thing?

  And my own problems did seem so much more acute. Brooding about them, it occurred to me at one point that I hadn’t been considering Eileen Flattery’s mental state in all this. Shouldn’t I care what she was thinking? Didn’t it matter that I might leave this monastery and then discover she didn’t want me after all?

  Well, no. In some strange way, she wasn’t what really mattered. Brother Oliver had been right about that; her existence was the form of the test I was undergoing, but my vocation was the subject. Whether Eileen Flattery wanted me or not had finally nothing to do with my staying or going. The question was, would I remain Brother Benedict, or would I go back to being Charles Rowbottom? Everything else was confusion and irrelevancy.

  It was nice to have the question defined, of course, but it would have been even nicer if it had come equipped with its own answer. I was continuing to ponder that little black spot in my thinking when all at once the street door opened and in came a lot of loud traffic noise and a tiny forceful man who slammed the door on the noise and then said, “All right, I’m here. I’m a busy man, let’s get this over with.”

  I’ve been snapped back from meditation by the exterior world before, but never quite like this. In the first place, that str
eet door was almost never opened, most of us preferring to use the courtyard door instead in our rare expeditions outside. In the second place, I’d assumed the street door was locked, since it usually was. And in the third place, who was this forceful little man?

  I must have been gaping. The little man frowned at me and snapped, “You an unfortunate?” He darted quick impatient glances around the room, apparently looking for somebody swifter to talk to. “Where’s the head man? Oliver.”

  “Brother Oliver? Who are you?”

  His look grew even more impatient. “Dwarfmann,” he said. “This Abbot wants a face-to-face. I’m here.” He tapped a watch which was nervously displaying skinny red numbers on a black background: 2:27, it trembled, and the tiny brisk fingers tapped it, and it changed its mind. 2:28. “Time flies,” Dwarfmann commented.

  Dwarfmann?

  Dwarfmann! I jumped to my feet, displacing airplane magazines. “Roger Dwarfmann?”

  He couldn’t believe how I was wasting his flying time. “How many Dwarfmanns you expecting today?”

  “None,” I said. Then, “Wait. Yes, yes of course. Mr. Dwarfmann. Why don’t you, uh, sit down.” I looked around, my brain ascramble, trying to work out what piece of furniture people used when sitting down. “On that,” I said, pointing, spying the bench. Then I remembered its name. “That bench,” I said. “I’ll go tell uh, I’ll find Brother—I’ll be right back.”

  He frowned after me as I fled the room. I couldn’t help it if he thought I was an unfortunate; I’d been startled, that’s all. I’m not very good at being startled. In the last ten years, before all this current craziness began to happen, I lost all of my training at being startled. There isn’t all that much of a sudden nature that takes place in a monastery. Once, about six years ago, Brother Quillon tripped on the door jamb coming into the refectory and dumped a tray containing twelve dishes of ice cream on me, and of course the other week Brother Jerome had dropped that wet washcloth on my head, but other than that my life had been fairly placid for a long long time. It wasn’t as though I were a cabdriver or something.