by Dennis Must
Generally, the cast as I have described us was unchanging. On occasion, if something troubling or eventful occurred in a resident’s life, he would appear in a different guise.
My first experience of this was when Father Louis’s father passed away. Previously, he’d always arrived at Friday’s table with a silver censer and chain, and at the outset of the meal would light the incense and rise, swinging it over each of our heads one by one. But one night he entered the dining room wearing nothing but a unprepossessing, food-stained silk tie knotted about his neck and a pair of worn spectator wing tips with no socks, which I assume had been his father’s. Tied to his left thigh was a white muslin cilice in the shape of a Sacred Heart, which each of us understood had numerous nails sticking out of its reverse side to mortify his flesh. He had exaggerated his lips with clown paint into a garish grin. We never said grace at Friday’s meal. At that repast, he rose and wordlessly mimed what we assumed was a blue joke accompanied by scatological gestures, to which we responded to with dead silence. He laughed until he cried.
On the night in question, I chose not to even sneak a glance in Brother Alexander’s direction. At all other meals in the house, the only sounds present were those made by our utensils coming in contact with our wooden bowls. On Fridays, the silver rang against the bone china, and it tended to add a lighthearted air to the occasion.
Invariably, the surprise of the evening was the performance, which of course was never announced beforehand. No one knew since each was voluntary. Did that mean there were Friday evenings with no presentation? I had never experienced one, I suspect because we were all so conditioned to expect something to occur. I couldn’t imagine one of us not stepping up to the occasion.
After the meal was over and the table cleared, we were always served a brandy in a snifter glass, and then the expectancy began to grow. You could feel it rise about you. At any change of position by one of the residents, all heads would turn in his direction as if he were about to be the star for the evening.
But this night nobody stirred. Soon each snifter sat empty, and even the servers stood in the doorway surveying our table questioningly.
Could this be the night when we’d return to our rooms unfulfilled?
It was then I heard a foot move under the table and, looking up, I watched Brother Alexander stand and head toward the upright piano. He had never done this before during my time here. I had no idea what to expect. After taking his place on the piano bench, he placed no music before him and sat there immobile.
After several moments, he began to play. Within seconds I recognized the piece: a flawless performance of the Minuet in G Major from the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach.
Upon finishing, he left the dining room without acknowledging our respectful applause.
It took every bit of self-control I could muster to suppress a laugh as I walked back to my room.
My god, I thought, he’s brilliant! It’s exactly how I imagine Westley would have played it for Elizabeth Andrews in her music room.
The remainder of the evening, I sat considering how Brother Alexander had pulled it off. Where had he found the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach? I had never known him to play for himself or others during my residence.
Despite the grudging admiration I had for him for being such a consummate actor in assuming Westley’s persona, I was troubled as to how we could continue to be friends if he insisted on not breaking character. He was now playing with my head. And there was nothing now that I knew about Westley Mueller that he didn’t also share.
Prior to falling asleep, I committed to distancing myself from Brother Alexander in the hope that he would once again become himself.
I had no familiar contact with him for several days. At the following Friday’s dinner gathering, it was Father Louis, still grief-stricken, who sat down at the keyboard and, dressed as earlier in nothing more than the condiment-stained foulard and spectator wing tips sans stockings, pounded out a raucous version of “Adiós Nonino” by tango composer Astor Piazzolla, written just days after his father’s death.
Each of us sat, visibly stricken. We exited the dining room as Father Louis remained seated at the upright, now calm.
That Sunday afternoon, Brother Alexander’s code knocking roused me from a reverie on no particular incident but instead a collage of memories in which one seemed to suggest yet another. This had happened with some frequency since I arrived here, and in all honesty, I found the experience to be quite pleasant.
When I opened the door, he appeared especially distressed.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Can I come in?”
He sat on the side of my bed as I sat across from him.
“Ethan, I have something I must ask you. And I expect you to tell me the truth.”
“Go on,” I said.
“How is she?” “How is who, Alex?”
“Please. You know very well who I mean.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t.”
“What else did she tell you about me that isn’t in your manuscript?”
“You mean the widow Elizabeth from whom you learned to play that sweet little Anna Magdalena Bach composition?”
“You are very cruel, Ethan. It doesn’t become you.”
“Well, she told me what a chameleon you are, Alex. That you insinuate yourself into another’s past, learning all you possibly can from them on the pretext that you are their closest confidant . . . until the day you turn it all against them. Please, Alex, I ask you to leave. I shared my manuscript with you in good faith; now you have callously assumed the identity of my lost brother, turning our wonderful friendship into something very dark and disturbing.”
Brother Alexander neither spoke nor prepared to leave the room.
I walked to the door and opened it, gesturing for him to exit.
At that he took from his pocket a folded sheet of paper, handing it to me on his way out.
“Read it. If you wish to talk, you know my room.”
Initially, I had no interest in looking at the note, fully convinced by this time that my assumptions regarding what he was up to were correct. What I couldn’t square, however, is why was he unwilling to drop his act at the risk of ruining our relationship. Very few of the residents were as fortunate as he and I were. Most felt alienated from each other, and several from themselves.
That night prior to turning in, I decided that reading the note might unravel the mystery. It read as follows:
Dear Ethan,
I have been in contact with our father. He’s asked to visit us.
Let me know.
Westley
And on the reverse side of the sheet of paper, he had written:
I was not surprised at your response today, fully expecting to be rebuffed. Yes, there are moments when I question if it wouldn’t be better for me to leave well enough alone and remain Brother Alexander. It would be so much easier for each of us that way. But, Ethan, as you recognize by now, life doesn’t permit us to narrate our lives as we might wish. You’ve come to peaceful terms with yours . . . until I decided to remove my mask. I’ve thought long and hard about it.
Except you appear to have found peace and I haven’t . . . and that’s because the story must play out in its own time, its own will.
I asked you today regarding Elizabeth. Have you known love? When you were in that room with her that day, Ethan, couldn’t you feel my presence? Didn’t she telegraph our intimacy to you? Did it not unsettle you? You suggest as much in your manuscript.
Well, that’s what I was beseeching you to gift me this afternoon. Yet you spurned me. Are you fearful of having to suffer the memory of such intimacy? And why did she look so fiercely into you that afternoon? Was she attempting to call to life again what you and she had once enjoyed? Is that what you are afraid of, brother?
Think about it.
He had touched on the afternoon with Elizabeth. Her gazing at me as if she were seeking to summon up a memory that I no
longer recalled. In all my time seeking Westley, it was those fraught moments in her presence when I anguished that I could have been, and perhaps was, the very person I was seeking.
Was Brother Alexander wise to this?
And why had my father brought me here?
What I couldn’t comprehend was the motivation behind Alex’s maneuvers. Any desire to pursue the quest that occupied me for some time had expired. Prior to his reading my manuscript, I had become accustomed to my daily routine, the unchanging nature of my new environment where there were no surprises and each day was indistinguishable from the day before. The other house residents were as self-contained as I in that we enjoyed being alone, outside our coming together for the evening meal. Yet, even then, a vow of silence was in order. I do admit, however, that without those diurnal gatherings, the prospect of being totally alone frightened me. As I suspect it did others.
It had been Brother Alexander who first insinuated himself into my daily routine. Unlike the other residents, he made an effort to get to know me. And in short order I found myself looking forward to his coded knocking on my door.
What most intrigued me about him was his past vocation as an actor. The template for my manuscript was Christopher Daugherty’s “Going Dark” story, in which the narrator lost himself in several personas. It was that thread that wound itself through the work’s couple hundred pages. And from the start it was sufficiently evident that Brother Alexander was a master at assuming a role so masterfully that he came precariously close to convincing himself, let alone his audience, that in fact he was that individual.
It took me some time to wonder why he was a resident in this house, until I finally concluded that one too many times he’d fallen victim to being kidnapped by characters he performed. Each of us had a reason for our residency here. Except I was not that interested in learning why others were admitted, knowing that at some later point it would be revealed by accident or intentionally. The Friday dinners offered a storehouse of possible reasons for one’s admittance.
It was not lost on me that Brother Alexander had fallen into his earlier “sickness” for want of a better word . . . that of assuming a character and then becoming victim to it. I fully believed he had become infatuated with the idea of Westley, the author, and had begun to slowly build that character into which he would eventually slip. Alex had become Westley Mueller throughout every hour of the day now. I had opportunity to observe him with some of the house staff, establishing that he had adopted a character with whom they were unfamiliar.
And the bitter irony is that I had created him.
Now he speaks about our father visiting us.
In truth it would be quite easy for me to concede that he is my brother. What comes to mind initially is that we could now leave this house on our own and go on about our lives. Isn’t that what I set out to do? And since he is convinced that he is Westley, and has integrated that character into his very marrow, what is there to lose?
Two brothers reuniting after many long years of separation.
After all, do I have more evidence than not that Brother Alex is indeed my long lost sibling? Furthermore, would anyone actually care one way or another, except possibly our father?
Even then, since it was he who admitted me here, I suspect he’d go along with the arrangement once he saw how compatible we were with each other. Truth? What does it matter finally?
But what if, at some point, Alex is able to free himself of Westley’s persona? Then I’d have to take that risk. But in the meantime, my manuscript would become alive; we would revisit it and improvise on its pages. We could even seek out Elizabeth if he or I so desired. Brothers loving one woman? It’s happened in the past. So we share her without trying to hurt the other.
We could write new stories together, he in one room, I in the other, and then share them at dinnertime.
The only difference being that I’m aware Alex is trapped inside his Westley character, while my playing his sibling is a choice and a role that I could at any time abandon.
Why was I resisting what had begun to increasingly occupy my thoughts? I missed the interaction with my friend. So what if he insisted he was who he wasn’t? Friday’s dinner revealed infinitely more complex and troubled issues. And now that I knew he could play the piano, why, that would bring some needed light into our lives.
The following Friday, he appeared wearing his choir cowl with the white rabbit hanging down his back. He glanced in my direction, and we surreptitiously made eye contact, a rarity at these gatherings. Nothing noteworthy occurred at this repast; each of us appeared in our customary “costumes.”
It was following the cordials while we awaited the surprise performance that tensions spiked. No one volunteered. We must have sat for nearly ten minutes before Father Louis stood up and agitatedly announced, “In all my years here, this has never occurred before. We can’t leave this gathering without fulfilling what so little is asked of us. Please.”
Yet not one of us could bring himself to perform. It was an unwritten assumption that each performance was to be inspired and not rote. That it was something an individual was truly moved in the moment to do.
I could feel the tension rise in the residents about the table. Each was hoping an inspiration would come as if from God. But we were empty, hollow; only the echoes of ourselves ricocheted within ourselves.
Until Brother Alexander rose and announced:
“We have two distinguished visitors gracing our presence this evening. I couldn’t be more pleased to introduce to you, my fellow residents . . .” At which point he disappeared behind a screen for several moments, upping our expectations, only to reappear, bloated like a belly-god, and gesture for me to stand.
“Holy-Schlitz to my left, and yours truly, Whadizit?.” At which point he lowered the hood of his cowl to reveal his cone head with the identifying tuft of hair tied with a red ribbon. Whadizit? solemnly bowed, took my arm, and led me over to the piano, where he sat down and played a rousing yet dissonant rendering of “Love for Sale.”
Smiles began to break out on the formerly tortured miens of the residents.
One could feel the unease escape from the room. The servers, for the first time in my recollection, refreshed our brandy glasses.
Now Whadizit? and I were to perform. There was no reason for me to anguish over what might occur between us, since I’d witnessed him so cleverly digest every last word of my manuscript. I also assumed that he was fully equipped to improvise on my experience with Brother Stanislaus and the Living Curiosities.
I stood at the table’s head and proclaimed:
“After all, how can you be happy and have any real peace if you are not mortifying yourself?”
At which Whadizit? stared at me, stupefied.
It was Father Louis who guffawed, then proceeded to paroxysmally cough in an effort to disguise his mirth. He brought his food-stained silk tie to his lips while standing and exposing the muslin cilice tied to his left thigh. His clown-painted grin of self-reproach accompanied his concealing the flesh-mortifying Sacred Heart with the linen table napkin.
“I tried so hard to love God, and it didn’t work!” Whadizit? cried.
Now aged Brother Rostislav belly-laughed. The dozen wooden torsos of saints began collapsing, with several sliding onto the floor.
Penitent Mary Magdalene, aka Brother Joseph, scandalized by the incipient levity, shot up without breaking her canvas verisimilitude until she banged the rood on the groaning table in utter disgust, then quickly resumed Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato’s work.
Chastened, the residents resumed their air of communal guilt once again, even more so.
Whadizit? was not about to be dissuaded. Once more he cried, “I tried so hard to love God!”
Again he disappeared behind the screen, returning with an oversized ear that he attached to one of the screen’s muslin panels. And above it a sign reading:
CONFESSIONS IN PROGRESS. SILENCE PLEASE.
&n
bsp; Whadizit? assumed the countenance of a priest and pointed to the ear, then to me, as if I were next in line. It was positioned belt-high, forcing me on my knees. He vanished behind the make-believe confessional booth.
I proceeded to mime an agonized prolix confession, and at various points Whadizit? gestured as if he’d never heard anything so vile, so blasphemous, so utterly depraved . . . each expression more aghast, so that by this time the residents had begun audibly laughing. Even Father Louis was inspired to stand and circle the table while swinging his silver censer as if to promote our performance.
By this time I, too, had thrown off all inhibitions and began to gesture obscenities, manifesting a countenance that mocked Magdalene’s. Father Dominion untied his luminous St. Francis crimson silk cincture and handed it to me, whereupon I flagellated myself with its multiple capuchin knots while venting into the confessional ear.
But Whadizit? no longer appeared. Soon, in character, I expressed concern and peered behind the screen, only to return looking apoplectic and despairing.
Father Louis, who was also ringing epiphany bells in his trousers, froze, as did each of the diners.
I opened one panel of the ersatz confessional to Whadizit?’s inert body on the floor. Wildly gesturing for assistance, I tried to lift him. Father Dominion and Brother Rostislav, the septuagenarians, came to my aid.
Onto the table, I pantomimed.
Once we laid Whadizit? out, I bent my ear to his chest, hoping for a heartbeat.
But because of his ballooned body, I was having difficulty. I kept trying to press the “stuffing” down so that I might hear better. Only when I reached into his shirt did I begin to withdraw loose ends of what appeared to be adding tape on which were written in heavy red letters the following words: LIES, ADULTERY, GREED, SEX, SIN, repeated continuously.
Now, as if fighting against the clock, I admonished the residents to assist me. Fathers Louis, Ogden, and Jeffreys worked on Whadizit?’s arms and legs, unrolling from his person what seemed to be countless rolls of tape bearing those words.