“Like this morning, Cris-may. Father perks up when you spend your time with him. Like it snaps him out of whatever has got him down in the dumps. Your visits do him a lot of good even if it is harder on you than sweeping floors or cleaning latrines. Does you more good, too.”
∗ ∗ ∗
Father Beck seemed stronger this morning. He was sitting up in bed and in a better mood. He even seemed to be enjoying himself.
“Reading aloud,” Father Beck said to Charley, “is the key to learning any language, but especially Greek. And they tell me you could use a little help in that area, Carissime.”
“I guess that’s right, Father.”
“Well, Greek looks strange to our barbarian eyes, so the sounds don’t leap off the printed page. Our first job is to get those strange words off the page and into our ears. We have to say the words aloud to hear them and read the sentences aloud to get the rhythm and tone even if we have no idea of what the words mean.
“Just open that book and start reading, Carissime. Start anywhere.”
“Out loud, Father?”
“Of course, out loud,” laughed Father Beck.
Charley picked up the red pocket-sized book from the priest’s bedside table: Plato’s Republic, Volume I, with the Greek text on the left-hand pages, the English translation on the right.
“Just start anywhere,” Father Beck urged him. “It doesn’t matter.”
Charley found the start of a new paragraph and began to read slowly, concentrating on each unfamiliar word, until he reached the end of the paragraph.
“Enough, Carissime!”
Father Beck’s voice was weak, but his eyes sparkled.
“That was absolutely atrocious. Your reading is even worse than your father’s was, and that’s something I wouldn’t have thought possible.”
Charley glanced at Brother Hegstad who was watching the scene, smiling broadly. He and Father Beck were both enjoying his discomfort.
“Don’t pussyfoot around the Greek language, Carissime! Attack it! Grab the words in your mouth and chew them up! Have you ever heard today’s Greeks arguing among themselves? No? Then how about Italians or Spaniards? They speak with enthusiasm, don’t they?
“We have no way of knowing, but the ancient Greeks must have spoken with that same kind of passion. They were sun-drenched people, not cold blooded like us gloomy Gauls and Celts. So let the sun shine on those pages, Carissime. Put some fire in your eyes and let your tongue run free.
“Don’t worry about pronunciation, for goodness sake. That will come with practice. Get those flaming Greek sounds into your solemn Irish ears.”
Father Beck pushed his back higher up on his pillows.
“And move your hands! Always use your hands and your body when you’re speaking Greek or Latin. The ancients certainly did.”
Charley read another paragraph with what he thought was more emphasis.
Father Beck smiled. “That’s a little better,” he said. “Read another paragraph or two, Carissime. And exaggerate! Don’t forget: you are much more quiet and reserved than Plato ever was. Double the intensity of your emotions and you’ll reach about half of his.”
Charley started reading a quarter of the way down Page 234 and gave it his all.
“Wave your hand,” commanded Father Beck.
Charley waggled his hand in the air and felt the change in his voice. Halfway through the second paragraph of the Greek text, his inhibitions fell away. He was making mistakes, he knew, but he plunged on enthusiastically until he began to laugh and couldn’t continue.
“That was fun, wasn’t it?” said Father Beck, clapping his hands. “It was awful, but it was fun. And that’s the way it’s supposed to be read. Plato is not dead and dry. He’s alive and exciting. In his day, his ideas were all brand new. Can you imagine how exciting the Greek philosophers were? It was new then and it’s still thought-provoking today.”
Father Beck fell silent.
He shifted his gaze to the curtains moving in the breeze from the open window and spoke softly.
“Please read that paragraph again, Carissime. In Greek, but more slowly this time. Try to get at the thought behind the words. You don’t need to know exactly what the thought is, but it’s there. Just take what you’re reading seriously. Convince me!”
Charley took a deep breath and did the best he could.
“Amazing,” said Father Beck when Charley finished.
And then he said nothing at all.
Wondering what to do, Charley looked at Brother Hegstad.
“Maybe you’d better rest a bit, Father,” the infirmarian said. “We don’t want to wear you out this morning.”
“I guess you’re right, Brother,” said Father Beck. “That’s enough for the moment. But thanks for brightening my day, Carissime.”
C H A P T E R • 10
When the bell rang to signal the end of Manualia, Charley Coogan left the infirmary and walked back to his dormitory to get ready for the Thursday morning Ambulatio. He drew the curtains around his cubicle so that he could change his clothes in privacy. An unnecessary act of modesty, he thought. Another irritating rule to be followed. Another test of obedience.
After hanging up his gray Manualia jacket in his coffin, he put on a blue shirt and knotted his black knit tie. It was cool enough for a sweater outside, but he chose his black alpaca jacket instead. That’s what most of the others would be wearing and it matched his khaki slacks well enough. The sweater he’d brought to Milford to wear on cool days like this—his blue cardigan with the gold football monogram and the three varsity service stripes on the sleeve—remained folded in the bottom drawer of his bureau.
Downstairs in the calcenarium, the basement room where the novices kept their hiking boots and athletic shoes, he found another novice lacing up his boots who nodded toward the rack of wooden shoeboxes on the wall. One of the cubbyholes was empty.
“Carissime Magda departus est. Checked out,” the other novice said in English, in case Charley hadn’t understood.
Charley shook his head and looked away. He couldn’t think of anything to say in reply. Not in Latin, anyway, and it was against the rules to engage in idle conversation outside of formal recreation periods.
Charley reached inside his jacket to use the abacus-like gadget that helped novices keep track of their faults. He pulled down a “misery bead” from the top loop to the bottom loop and hoped that the older novice would take note that Cris-may Coogan was trying to improve his monastic behavior, even if the other novice was not. Then, after a moment’s reflection, he pulled down another bead, this one for giving way to a feeling of superiority.
Charley tried to concentrate on lacing up his boots, but his eyes kept straying to Stefan Magda’s empty shoebox. So much for good intentions. If he had made an effort to make Magda feel more at home, would he have stayed?
∗ ∗ ∗
At ten minutes after nine, Charley joined the group of novices assembling in silence outside the side entrance to the novitiate. Last night at recreation the novices had been told that today’s goal for the two-hour hike would be the summit of Tibi Dabo, the highest hill in the countryside. No one else in the state of Ohio called the hill Tibi Dabo. Only the Jesuits at Milford.
Once before, the novices had tried to reach the top of Tibi Dabo and failed. They got only halfway up the hill when time ran out. So they had to turn around and get back to their desks for Examen at eleven forty-five.
Tibi Dabo, Charley had been told, got its name from Saint Matthew’s gospel, the part about Satan tempting Christ. “Tibi dabo: I will give to you.” He had checked his New Testament and found the passage.
Again the devil took him up into a very high mountain, and shewed him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, and said to him: All these will I give thee (tibi dabo) if falling down thou wilt adore me. Then Jesus saith to him: Begone, Satan: for it is written, The Lord thy God shalt thou adore, and Him only shalt thou serve.
; Precisely at nine fifteen, a second-year novice who was leading the Ambulatio announced the end of silence and the beginning of the recreation.
“Benedicamus Dominum,” he said quietly.
The novices shouted back “Deo gratias!” and instantly began talking to each other in English. Within seconds, they teamed up with their assigned Ambulatio partners and began striding toward the rear entrance of the novitiate and out onto the narrow country road that would take them to their goal.
They marched along in groups of three, primi anni and the secundi anni mixed together. Always three, never just two. It was another way that the novitiate discouraged the formation of cliques and “particular friendships.” It was always a different three each time they hiked.
His companions on this hike were Tom Grace, a secundi anni from Chicago who had spent two years at Marquette University before entering the novitiate, and Norm McCovey, a first year novice from Detroit. McCovey was short and stocky; Grace was tall and lean and much less eager to discuss Stefan Magda’s departure than McCovey.
“He was awful quiet,” said McCovey as he bounced along the road. “But I really thought he was going to make it. Didn’t you?”
“You never know what’s going on inside somebody’s head,” Charley replied. “He was hard to get to know.”
“God’s will,” said Cris-may Grace.
“Amen to that,” said Cris-may McCovey. “But it really rots my socks when somebody checks out. I start worrying that maybe I’ll be the next one to go.”
“When I was in my freshman year at Marquette,” said Grace, “I was very upset when people in my class dropped out. We lost a lot of them at the beginning of the semester and that really shocked me. I had never experienced that in grammar school or high school.”
“Yeah, right,” said McCovey. “I never knew anyone who just quit school. Maybe they’d get sick, or their families would move out of town or something. But they didn’t just get up and leave.”
Charley felt he’d better say something.
“I guess I’m not too shocked. It’s like trying out for the varsity. A lot of guys show up for the first practice, but not everybody makes the team.”
“Many are called but few are chosen,” said Grace. “When I entered last year, there were 41 of us. Now we’re down to 26. I just have to keep reminding myself that God knows what He’s doing and I don’t.”
“Amen to that,” said McCovey. “But I still feel bad about Magda. And I can’t help worrying about how I’m doing.”
“Cheer up,” said Grace. “Maybe there’ll be pie for supper.”
∗ ∗ ∗
The narrow road led them to a wider road and they turned to the right toward the small country club whose golf course abutted the novitiate’s most remote fields and meadows. The novices were supposed to drop their eyes as they hiked past, but Charley managed a covert survey of that worldly place.
It was a cool weekday morning, thank goodness, not one of those warm Sunday mornings that made this stretch of road difficult for Charley. Today there were only a few golfers on the fairways and no young women at all by the swimming pool. Charley knew it was better for him not to look at the girls, but he had never been able to resist taking a peek. He always regretted having done so.
“I wonder what’s worse,” Cris-may Grace said almost to himself, “giving way to temptation or giving way and not being satisfied? I try and I try and I try, but I always end up looking at that place every time we pass by.”
“Me, too,” admitted McCovey.
“I guess it will be a long time before I get to play golf again,” Grace said. “It’s not a Jesuit game.”
∗ ∗ ∗
The man who played Father Samozvanyetz walked out the side door of the novitiate, opened his breviary, and set off on a leisurely and apparently aimless stroll about the novitiate grounds. It would be at least an hour before the novices returned from their Ambulatio. He could take his time. Eyes fixed on his prayer book, lips moving slightly, he paced slowly along the narrow gravel path that meandered through the farthest reaches of the novitiate’s property.
The path took him through a grove of pines to a small clearing where a wooden bench sat facing a statue of Saint Stanislaus. A few yards farther along, the path split: one fork leading back to the novitiate, the other running off to the left to join the country road that serviced the novitiate’s farm. It was a secluded, peaceful place quite suitable for contemplation.
As he did every day, the man who played Father Samozvanyetz sat on the left side of the bench for several minutes and listened to the squirrels darting about in the underbrush. He had managed to visit the little shrine every day, rain or shine, ever since Oksana Volkova vanished from the church downtown. It was a perfect place for a message drop.
Satisfied that he was alone in the woods, he lowered his left arm. Slowly, he reached beneath the bench and ran his hand along the bottom of the third slat until his fingers touched the head of a thumbtack. He carefully extracted it from the wood and dropped it into the palm of his right hand. The head of the tack was red.
So, he thought, she is back. And she is demanding a meeting here this very night. Risky business, meeting here on the novitiate grounds even under the cover of darkness. It would have to be important for her to take such a chance. He would do his best to return here unobserved. Orders were orders, no matter what he thought of them. He had no choice.
∗ ∗ ∗
Conversation flagged as the novices began to ascend Tibi Dabo. After fifteen minutes of steady climbing, they came to a level stretch and passed through a large farm where freshly painted white barns and stables stood close to the black-topped road behind waist-high whitewashed fences.
So close were the buildings on both sides of the road that the novices seemed to be hiking through the heart of the gleaming, prosperous farm.
Charley saw no people moving about the barnyards. Were they hiding? Were they out working in the fields? Were they somewhere in the deep shadows watching the band of novices trudging by? For a moment, Charley felt like an outlaw, an outcast, a stranger in the land just passing through on his way to somewhere else, a somewhere that could never be reached. He felt that he was, as Father Samozvanyetz had put it, “in the world, but not of it.” At least, temporarily.
He could hear cattle lowing somewhere off beyond the large white buildings. The lush aroma of loam and manure faded as the novices began climbing again, higher into the crisp, cool air. The fences were not so elegant now. Empty fields stretched up the slope toward the summit. All conversation had stopped.
The novices trudged on, ascending higher into the bright blue sky.
Up ahead, the Dux shouted: “We made it, guys!” But he was too winded to say more.
No one else had much to say, now that they had reached the summit. The novices stood along the side of the road, breathing hard and smiling. Charley rested his right boot on a fence rail and gazed across the countryside.
Maybe it wasn’t as spectacular as the vista Satan showed Christ, but it was beautiful and bright under the cloudless sky. There were white farmhouses and red barns scattered about the rolling green hills. Glistening streams were running through green valleys down to the Little Miami.
He could barely make out the town of Milford, only a hint of houses and a few church steeples rising above the trees. The city of Cincinnati was somewhere beyond the horizon with the rest of the world, well out of sight. He could see the golf course with its blue water hazards and white sand traps, the trees that lined the fairways, the ovals of the greens. Just beyond the golf course was the novitiate, the largest structure in sight, standing in its grove of dark pines.
Leaning against the gray, weather-beaten fence, he looked down the slope of Tibi Dabo and surveyed the splendid white farm buildings he had passed through.
Maybe someday, after he finished his Dad’s assignment here, he could live on this hill with his wife and work that farm. He could ride horses around the c
ountryside, and swim and play golf at the country club.
Maybe the Jesuits would give him some kind of dispensation so that he could go to the novitiate every day for morning Mass. He could probably get there from the farm on horseback along some back trail.
He could see himself riding across the rolling hills with that girl by his side, letting the horses carry them down into that line of willows that shaded that small, meandering stream down there. Charley shook himself back to reality. He began to see the countryside plain, just as it was. Had his father stood where he was standing now, looking down on the novitiate, getting the lay of the land? Had others been here studying the H-shaped novitiate with binoculars and making plans?
Charley tried to look through their eyes. He could see how they could slip from the golf course onto the novitiate grounds. That was one approach. Or they could come off the country road and move through the trees lining the playing fields. The concrete walls of the handball courts would give them cover. Or they could come in the other way, over the cemetery knoll. If they kept behind the hedges, they could get close to the door on the novice’s side of the building. Especially at night. Or they could just drive up into the courtyard behind the kitchen in a delivery truck in broad daylight. No one would stop them. Not even if they drove right up to the front door of the novitiate in broad daylight.
Viewed from the inside, Milford Novitiate seemed impregnable with its thick walls, the strong silence of its cloister, the solidity of its religious community. Inside that citadel, Charley could believe that the young men he lived with were well protected from attacks from the modern world.
But looking from the summit of Tibi Dabo, Charley could see no wall and no moat. The spiritual fortress stood isolated in the open countryside, besieged on all sides by the Twentieth Century, vulnerable to attack from any direction. The big H-shaped institution was as fragile as Father Beck.
Charley thought he heard the Devil laugh, but it was only Cris-may McCovey calling him. It was time to head back.
Red Army Spies and the Blackrobes Trilogy Page 26