Brothers Keepers Read online

  He was nodding. “Yes, I agree. If she’s run away, it means she doesn’t want reminders.”

  “But if I go there,” I said, “if I meet her face to face, then we can work on through that emotional involvement, we can get past it and then she might be willing to help.”

  “What if she isn’t even willing to see you?” he asked me. “What if she refuses to talk to you or have anything to do with you?”

  “Then it will have been a waste,” I said.

  We looked at one another, and I suppose my expression was as troubled as his. I had nothing else to say, and he hadn’t decided yet what he would say, so we sat there for two or three minutes in silence, each of us mulling his own thoughts. Brother Oliver’s thoughts were on my request, of course, while mine were on what I would do if he came to the conclusion that for one reason or another I shouldn’t go. I knew the answer to that; I’d known it before I walked in here. I would leave.

  I’d have to. The monastery and my own peace of mind were both too important to me. I had no idea how I’d get to Puerto Rico without money—aside from its being too far to walk, Puerto Rico is an island surrounded by water—but somehow I would do it.

  “All right,” Brother Oliver said.

  “What?”

  He didn’t look cheerful. “I’m very reluctant,” he said, “but I’m going to agree.”

  A weight on my shoulders and back that I hadn’t realized I’d been carrying was suddenly lifted off. Unable to repress my smile, I said, “Thank you, Brother Oliver.”

  “I’ll tell you my reason,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “If I had said no,” he told me, “you would have gone anyway.”

  I probably looked sheepish. “Yes, Brother,” I said.

  “Rather than have you break your vow of obedience, Brother Benedict, I will give you my permission.”

  We smiled together. “Thank you, Brother Oliver,” I said.

  * * *

  Most of the others weren’t entirely sure why I was making this Journey, but everybody wanted to help. The concept of Travel is obviously a profound one; even among a group such as ours which had forsworn Travel except in the most extreme circumstances, the prospect of a Journey created ripples of excitement, a glitter in every eye, and the unexpressed but obvious specter of general jealousy. Father Banzolini would be hearing about all this several times tomorrow night.

  Envy, however, converted itself into participation in one form or another, so that Brother Leo went out to find a travel agency where he could purchase my ticket, Brother Valerian climbed to the attic to seek out a presentable piece of luggage, and Brother Quillon rose from his head-cold bed to offer to do my packing. Brother Mallory, who had performed as a boxer in San Juan in the old days, and Brother Silas, who had lain low in Mayaguez for six months at one point in his criminal career, both had an infinite quantity of tips and general information for me. Spanish is the major language of Puerto Rico, and it turned out that Brothers Thaddeus and Hilarius both spoke it, or at least claimed to. They both presented me with word lists, and then fell to disputing between themselves over nuances of meaning and pronunciations.

  Brother Leo returned from his own somewhat shorter Journey rather red-faced and disheveled but triumphant. It appeared that the holiday season was popular with Travelers—I can’t think why—and all the seats on all the planes going to Puerto Rico from New York over the next several weeks had already been reserved in advance. What a lot of Traveling! But Brother Leo had used a combination of his religious affiliation, his bulldog tenacity and his natural bad temper to obtain for me someone else’s last-minute cancellation: I had a seat on an American Airlines plane leaving this very night, Friday night, at midnight. Or almost midnight; in the terms of Roger Dwarfmann’s watch, the plane would depart at 11:55. “I had to leave the return open,” he told me, handing me the ticket which had cost our community nearly two hundred dollars. “You’ll have to deal with that yourself when you’re down there.”

  “Thank you, Brother Leo,” I said.

  “It’s a seven-oh-seven,” he told me. “I tried to get you on a seven-forty-seven, but I couldn’t do it.”

  “I’m sure I won’t mind. And thank you again.”

  Brother Eli had worked out my other transportation question, which was how I would get from here to Kennedy International Airport, where I would board the plane. In his soft-spoken manner, like an urban guerrilla describing a raid, he told me what to do: “There’s a subway entrance at Lexington Avenue and Fifty-third Street.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “I’ve seen it.”

  “You go there,” he said. “You get on the platform marked ‘Downtown.’ ”

  I nodded. “Downtown.”

  “Take the E train,” he said. “Not the F.”

  “The E train,” I said.

  “Take it to West Fourth Street.”

  “West Fourth Street.”

  “You’ll change there to the A train, on the same platform.”

  “Same platform.”

  “A train, same platform.”

  I nodded. “A train, same platform.”

  “Make sure the train says it’s going to Lefferts Avenue.”

  I frowned at him. “The train says?”

  “There are signs,” he told me. “Small signs on the side of each car.”

  “Oh. All right.”

  “You want the train that goes to Lefferts Avenue.”

  “Lefferts Avenue. Is that the same as the E train?”

  “You just got off the E train. This is the A train.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “Off the E train, on the A train, same platform.”

  “Right.”

  “Lefferts Avenue,” I said.

  “Right,” he said. “Now, you’re going to take this train to the end of the line.”

  “Where’s that?”

  He looked at me oddly. “Lefferts Avenue,” he said.

  “Oh! I see, it’s the train that goes to Lefferts Avenue.”

  “Yes,” he said. “The A train.”

  “That was a Billy Strayhorn song,” I said. “Day-yam, oh, take the A train, that’s the only way to get to Harlem. Am I going to Harlem?”

  “No, Brother Benedict,” he said. “There are no airports in Harlem. You’re going the other way.”

  “I see. To the end of the line. Whatsit Avenue.”

  “Lefferts Avenue.”

  “I knew it started with L,” I said. “Lefferts Avenue, I’ve got it now.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Now, when you get there, you’ll be at the intersection of Lefferts and Liberty. You should turn right.”

  “Right.”

  “Right. Turn right, and walk along Lefferts southbound.”

  “Southbound.”

  He closed his eyes briefly, nodding. “Yes,” he said. “You’ll walk till you get to Rockaway Boulevard. It’s five long blocks.”

  “Rockaway Boulevard.”

  “Turn left on Rockaway Boulevard.”

  I nodded. “Turn left on Rockaway Boulevard.”

  “Now you’ll walk to One Hundred Thirtieth Street.”

  “One Hundred Thirtieth Street.”

  “It’s eleven short blocks.”

  “Eleven short blocks.”

  He looked at me. “You don’t have to say that,” he said.

  “Oh,” I said. “I see. Does it bother you if I say everything back?”

  “A little bit,” he admitted.

  “All right,” I said. “It’s a memory aid, that’s all. I’ll just use it for the high spots.”

  “The high spots,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  He nodded. “Okay. You’re at One Hundred Thirtieth Street and Rockaway Boulevard.”

  “Yes, I am,” I said, as a substitute for repeating.

  “You turn right.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’ll walk on a bridge over the Belt Parkway.”

  “Right,” I said
.

  He gave me a quick suspicious frown, as though suspecting I’d snuck a repetition past him but made no comment. “Just past the bridge,” he said, “is One Hundred Fiftieth Avenue. You turn left.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “This is the intersection of One Hundred Thirtieth Street and One Hundred Fiftieth Avenue?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think I love it,” I said. “Where is it?”

  “In Queens, in South Ozone Park.”

  “South Oz—sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Now, you’ve made your turn onto One Hundred Fiftieth Avenue. You walk just a little way, and you’re on the airport.”

  “There at last,” I said.

  “Not quite,” he told me. “You’ll have to take the airport road to the right down to the terminals.”

  “Is that very far?”

  “About as far again as you already walked.”

  “It must be a big airport!”

  He nodded, unimpressed. “It’s a very big airport.” Studying my face, he said, “Have you got it now?”

  “No problem,” I said.

  He considered that for a few seconds, then said, “I’ll go write it down.”

  “Good idea,” I said.

  * * *

  Brother Valerian had found a small canvas bag in the attic that had once belonged to Brother Mallory, and Brother Quillon had packed it. Giving it to me, he said, “I put in some aspirin, in case you get a headache.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And a cake of soap, wrapped in aluminum foil.”

  “That was thoughtful.”

  “You never know what conditions are going to be like,” he told me. “Oh, and I put in your toilet things, toothbrush and toothpaste, razor, all of that.”

  “Fine. Thank you.”

  “And some extra Kleenex.”

  “Good. Nice.”

  “And I must say I didn’t much care for your socks, so I put in two pair of mine.”

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “Well, you’re representing all of us down there, so you really should look your best. I’ll darn those other socks while you’re gone.”

  “I’ll get to that, Brother Quillon, I was just putting it off, I meant to—”

  “Yes, yes,” he said, “I know all about that. I’ll just darn them while you’re gone, and then they’ll be done.”

  “Well—thank you.”

  “It’s nothing really.” He handed me the packed bag and sniffed; from the head cold, I suppose. “Don’t have any—disasters or plane crashes or anything,” he said.

  “I’ll try not to.”

  * * *

  I left after dinner, at around nine o’clock. The last thing I did before departure was get Father Banzolini’s tear sheets and give them to Brother Peregrine, asking him to return them for me when Father Banzolini came tomorrow night. He promised he would. “Tell him I found them very interesting,” I said. “And fact-filled.”

  “I’ll do that,” he said.

  I patted his arm, encouraged by him. “You’ll know what to say.”

  Eleven

  What did I feel as I walked up Park Avenue in the darkness, past the Boffin Club and the, uh, shop and around the corner onto 52nd Street, putting the monastery out of sight behind me? What did I feel? Nothing.

  I did not feel frightened, apprehensive, uncertain, insecure, inadequate to the demands of Travel. I had Traveled so much in the last two weeks that I felt a seasoned campaigner by now. Why should there be terrors in the simple transitional movements of a Journey?

  I did not feel excited, expectant, curious, agog at the anticipation of adventure. I had never craved adventure, so why should I embrace it when it was thrust upon me?

  I did not feel tender, flushed, earnest, ardent, eager to be in the presence of Eileen Flattery Bone. Like adventure, I had not craved her existence, so why should I embrace her now that—

  Well. The phrasing may be unfortunate, but the point is, I did not want Eileen, or at least I did not want to want her. What I desired from her, or what I desired to desire from her, was two salvations, and no more: I wanted her to save the monastery, and I wanted her to save me for the monastery. I had a round-trip ticket in that nicely packed bag, and I very much wanted to use all of it.

  I suppose, in truth, I really was feeling all those emotions I’ve just denied, and more as well: self-doubt, cosmic rage, a slight digestive disturbance. But the result of all this was an emotional overload, a mutual cancelling out, the same effect you get if you throw a little paint of every possible color together in a vat and mix; it all blends down together into a neutral and not very interesting gray.

  Protected, I suppose, by that coat of gray, I set off on my Quest.

  * * *

  Is the subway always full of such people? When I boarded that E train at Lexington Avenue and 53rd Street—having previously boarded an F train and then hopped off it again as the doors were closing on the skirts of my robe—it was full of scruffily neat people who gave the impression they had dressed themselves up to attend a public execution. Since it was now nine-something of a Friday evening, they were undoubtedly provincials from Queens coming into Manhattan for a night on the town, but did they absolutely have to look as though their parents had been first cousins?

  Over the next several stops most of these people left, to be replaced by a shabbier and yet more appealing group: older men and women, many of them stout, who were finishing work somewhere and were on their way home. (Three of them were Santa Clauses.) This transition was complete by 14th Street, and the very next stop was mine. West 4th Street, just as the long detailed printed directions in Brother Eli’s crabbed whittler’s hand had promised.

  This was a much larger station, with two long concrete platforms, each flanked by a pair of tracks. Along both platforms, flights of concrete steps led down into the bowels of the earth where, signs informed me, D and F trains were to be found. F trains? Hadn’t I rejected an F train back at Lexington Avenue and 53rd Street? Then what was it doing here?

  Well, perhaps there were complications with the F train and Brother Eli hadn’t wanted to confuse me. I was here, that was the important thing.

  But where was the A train? Trains kept coming into the station, all with letter codes and destinations spelled out in little windows on their sides, roaring in by both platforms—and from the bowels of the earth came the occasional rumble and grumble of restless D and F trains as well—but where was my A train? Perhaps it had been stolen in Harlem.

  No, here it came, covered with nicknames and numbers in brightly colored spray paint. It stopped, the doors slid apart—that kept startling me, doors opening with no one touching them—and I stepped aboard. I sat next to a young black man in wide-cuffed plum trousers, chartreuse platform shoes with red-and-white-striped laces, a mustard-colored shirt that zipped up the front with a pair of dice dangling from the zipper tab, a pinchwaisted long coat in panels of two shades of green, and a big floppy cap in a black-and-white check design. He was also wearing sunglasses, for which I did not blame him.

  This train was more full, and the occupants more varied. I looked at their faces and their clothing, still not being used to masses of strangers, while the train lunged from station to station. After a few stops I began to notice the station names, beginning with Jay Street-Boro Hall, then Hoyt-Schermerhorn. The people were strange, the names were strange, everything was already alien and foreign and I’d barely left Manhattan. I held my bag tight on my lap and felt myself drawn irresistibly away.

  * * *

  When I emerged from the train at the end of the line, signs informed me the Q10 bus would take me to Kennedy Airport, but I saw no point in wasting either the money or Brother Eli’s directions. They had done very well by me so far.

  My only trouble on the subway ride had been with the names of the stations. Kingston-Throop? Euclid? Ralph? Perhaps the City of New York had hired Robert Benchley to name its subway sto
ps.

  A more serious problem had been names that echoed Brother Eli’s instructions. Soon I was to walk on Rockaway Boulevard, for instance, and it had been a momentary shock when a station emerged out of the night—the subway had become an elevated train by that time—calling itself Rockaway Boulevard. (Previously, while still underground, a station named Rockaway Avenue had given me a similar start.) Liberty Avenue also figured in my walking instructions, and had also blossomed along the way into a place where the train stopped and the doors slid invitingly open. In retrospect, it seemed as though I’d done nothing all the way out but paw through my robe for the instructions, clutch at my bag, half-rise from my seat, and not quite dash out to the platform.

  Von Clausewitz once said, “The map is not the terrain,” and he was right. Brother Eli had been working from maps, of course, in preparing these directions, and when I now descended to the street I learned that Lefferts Avenue had become Lefferts Boulevard. Being by now a seasoned Traveler, however, I ignored the anomaly. Turning to the right, as per my marching orders, I marched.

  This was a working-class residential pocket of the city’s fringe, blocks of narrow two-story houses packed closely together, all of them with front porches that had been enclosed into rooms years and years ago. Some of them had separate garages in back, with one narrow driveway frequently serving two neighbors. Most of the tiny lawns were defended with metal fencing, and there were lots of “Beware the Dog” signs. There was also a lot of lawn statuary, about evenly divided between geese and Blessed Virgins. The time now was around ten P.M., but a number of the houses were already dark, and most of the rest showed wavering blue television light in their front windows. I was the only pedestrian on the narrow sidewalk, though in the street there was a steady pulse of automobile traffic.

  Turn left on Rockaway Boulevard. A busier thoroughfare, with heavier traffic, this street was devoted almost totally to the automobile, being flanked by gas stations, used car lots, body repair shops and the like. Again I was the only pedestrian, and the strangeness of it made me realize that I was the alien and this was normal life. Of course I was used to automobiles in Manhattan, which is usually clenched into one huge traffic snarl, but Manhattan is full of pedestrians as well. People still walk on that narrow island, as they just don’t do anywhere else. Here, in South Ozone Park in Queens, was the edge of the real world; people who either drove their automobiles or stayed home.