Fraternity of the Stone

by David Morrell

  Father Hafer blinked. "Remarkable."

  "In more ways than one. An order of hermits maintains its independence because of the income generated from a liquid designed to produce conviviality. Of course, the liqueur is manufactured by a lay fraternity. Even so, I ignore the contradiction."

  9

  His needs were attended to by non-eremitic brothers, whose quarters were in the lodge, which also contained the chapel, the refectory, the kitchen, and a guest room. His spartan meals were given to him through a serving hatch beside a door in his workroom. On Sundays and major feasts, however, the rule required him to leave his cell, which was never locked, and eat with the other hermits in the refectory at the lodge. On those occasions, subdued conversation was permitted, but he never indulged. He was also required to leave his cell and join the other monks in the lodge's chapel at midnight for matins, at 8 a.m. for mass, and at 6 p.m. for vespers. He disliked these interruptions, preferring to worship in the isolation of his cell. His only distraction was the mouse.

  10

  "The vows," Father Hafer said, distressed. "Have you truly considered their gravity? Not only those of poverty, chastity, and obedience, arduous enough on their own. But add to them the oath of fealty to the principles of the Carthusians. I have to be brutally direct. When the committee meets to judge applicants, we customarily reject young men as a matter of course. Their immaturity makes us question their ability to keep their vows of solitude. The consequence of disobedience is unthinkable."

  "If I broke my vows, I'd be damning myself." "That's right. And even confession could not return your soul to a state of grace. Your only alternative would be to request a dispensation. So serious a request takes months to be considered. In the meantime, if you should die... "

  "It wouldn't matter."

  "I don't... "

  "I'm already damned."

  Father Hafer flinched and raised his voice. "Because you failed to make your Easter duty for thirteen years? By comparison with violating sacred vows, that other sin is minor. I could reinstate you now by hearing your confession and giving you communion. But even confession could not return your soul to a state of grace if you had no dispensation and you continued to violate the vows. You surely understand why the committee would turn down your request to join the order. If we accepted you but doubted your ability to endure the Carthusian way of life, we ourselves would be scorning the vows you would take. To a great degree, we'd be helping you to damn yourself, and that would make us culpable. We'd be threatening the state of our own souls."

  "But if... "

  "Yes? Go on."

  "If you don't admit me, you'd be culpable anyhow."

  "For what?"

  "For what I'd be driven to do. I said I felt damned. I didn't mean because of my failure to make my Easter duty."

  "Then what?"

  "I want to kill myself."

  11

  During his fifth year at the monastery, after the first chill of autumn had colored the maples, he sensed a movement to his right as he knelt on the hardwood floor of his workroom, praying for his soul. The movement was minuscule, a subtle blur that might have been due to eye strain, the result of his anguished concentration. Sweat beaded his brow. Ashamed that he'd allowed himself to be distracted, he meditated with greater fervor, desperate to shut out the horrid images from his past.

  But the movement continued, barely perceptible, nonetheless there. For a moment, he wondered if he'd reached the stage of experiencing hallucinations - other monks, after intense devotion, were rumored to have witnessed presences - but skepticism as well as humility discouraged him, and besides, the movement was on the floor at the base of a wall. What sort of religious vision would be appropriate there?

  Deciding that his fortitude was being tested, he resolved not to look; but again the blur caught the corner of his gaze, and in a moment of weakness that eventually saved his life, he turned his head to the right, toward the floor at the base of the wall, and saw a small gray mouse.

  It froze.

  Drew was taken by surprise.

  But so, apparently, was the mouse. Each watched the other for quite a while. As if losing patience, the mouse twitched its whiskers. Unconsciously, Drew scratched the side of his nose. Alarmed, with amazing abruptness, the mouse sped toward a hole in the wall.

  Drew astonished himself by almost laughing. As the mouse disappeared, however, he frowned at the implications. The hole had not been in his workroom wall when he went to the vespers service last night. He focused on the freshly gnawed wood and wondered what to do. Tonight, while he was again away at the vespers service, he could ask a custodian brother to obtain a trap or possibly poison. After slipping one or the other into the hole, the brother could use his carpentry tools to plug up the hole.

  But why? Drew asked himself. In the chill of autumn, the mouse had come to the monastery for refuge, as he

  himself had wanted refuge. In a sense, they were two of a kind.

  The thought was comic to him. Sure, me and the mouse. He did consider the danger of chewed electrical wires, of mice reproducing behind the wall till the monastery was vermin-ridden. Common sense suggested that to tolerate the mouse would be impractical.

  But the mouse intrigued him. Something about its daring. And yet its...

  Helplessness, he thought. I could easily kill it.

  But not anymore. Not even a mouse.

  He decided to let it stay. On probation. As long as you don't raise hell. As long as you're celibate, he allowed himself to joke.

  12

  Father Hafer turned pale. "You admit... ?"

  "I truly believe," Drew said, "that retreat from the world is my only chance to be saved. Otherwise... "

  "If I deny your application, I'd be responsible for your suicide? For your unforgivable sin of despair? For your going to Hell? Absurd."

  "It's the logic you used a moment ago. You said that you'd be culpable if you let me in despite your misgivings and I later damned myself by breaking my vows."

  "So now I'd be culpable if I didn't let you in and you later damned yourself by committing suicide? Ridiculous," Father Hafer said. "What's going on here? Who do you think you're talking to? I'm a man of God. I've tried to treat your extreme request with respect, and now you want to blame me for... It's all I can do to keep from telling you to get out of here."

  "But you are a man of God. So you won't turn your back on me."

  Father Hafer seemed not to have heard. "And this application." He pointed angrily at his desk. "I suspected there was something wrong. You claim that your parents died when you were ten."

  "That's true." Drew felt his throat swell shut.

  "But there's little indication of what happened to you after that. You do say you were educated in an industrial school in Colorado, but you've obviously had training in the arts - logic, history, literature. Next to 'occupation' you say you're unemployed. As what? The natural inclination is to state your occupation, whether you're unemployed or not. I asked you a while ago, but you wouldn't tell me. Unmarried. Never have been. No children. Thirty-one years old" - the priest rapped the form on his desk - "and you're a shadow."

  Drew bitterly smiled. "Then it ought to be easy for me to erase the evidence of my former life."

  "Since it seems to have been erased already." Father Hafer glared. "Are you in trouble with the law, is that your motive? You think the Carthusians would make a good hideout? Perverting the Church to - "

  "No. In fact, what I used to do was encouraged by the law. At the highest level."

  "That's it. I've lost my patience. This interview is finished right now if you don't - "

  "In confession."

  "What?"

  "I'll tell you in confession."

  13

  The mouse turned out to be as reclusive as himself. He didn't see it for the next few days and began to think that it had gone away. But on a cold drizzly afternoon when the clouds hung low and the sodden maple leaves fell dismally to
the ground, he sensed the blur of movement again as he knelt in meditation, and peering across his workroom, he saw just a nose and some whiskers poking from the hole. He remained as still as possible and watched. The mouse strained its head from the hole, its nostrils twitching, testing for danger. Determined not to scare it, curious about what it planned to do, Drew tried not even to blink.

  The mouse took a tentative step, its shoulders appearing. Another step, and now Drew saw its side, its tiny chest heaving, its eyes darting this way and that. Another step, and it left the hole.

  But it didn't seem the same. Though gray as before, its fur looked duller, its body thinner, making Drew wonder if this was a different mouse. His previous concern about not just one mouse but a nest of them made him question his refusal to tell a custodian brother to deal with the problem. Instead of amusement, he now watched the mouse with uneasiness.

  It inched along the baseboard, sniffing. But it seemed off-balance, listing as if it had injured a leg or was dizzy. Or sick? Drew wondered. No way of telling what diseases it carried or if they could be communicated to humans. Perhaps even rabies, he realized with alarm.

  He almost stood to scare the mouse back into its hole, but as it reached a corner and veered from one baseboard to another, continuing to sniff, he guessed what it might be doing - searching for food. That would explain its apparent dizziness. It could be trembling from hunger.

  But shouldn't there be plenty of food around? he wondered. Then he realized that the rain outside had almost turned to sleet. The mouse would have to risk freezing to death and overcome difficult obstacles to travel what for it would be a considerable distance to the few ungathered apples in the orchard or the remnants of vegetables in the garden outside the cloister. There was food, of course, in the monastery's kitchen and cellar, but the mouse had made the mistake of choosing this cell in a wing that was far from the lodge. Obviously it hadn't figured out where the kitchen was; otherwise it would have nested there.

  You really screwed up, mouse. Your survival instincts are pathetic.

  As the mouse reached another corner, wobbling along the next baseboard, it faced in Drew's direction. Its eyes abruptly widened - its nose jerked. It suddenly bolted, streaking across the workroom, shooting out of sight inside the hole.

  Drew exhaled what was nearly a laugh. He watched the hole for a moment longer, then turned as he heard the rattle of a latch being lifted. In the hallway outside, unseen hands swung open the serving hatch beside his door. With a scrape and thump, his evening meal was placed on a shelf. The hatch was closed.

  He stood and went over, removing a cup and bowl from the shelf. He didn't have a watch or a calendar. His only ways of measuring time were the monastery's bell, the passage of the seasons, and the types of meals he was served. Thus today must be Friday, he concluded, glancing at the contents of his cup and bowl, for that was when he received only bread and water.

  He set the spartan meal on his workbench and glanced toward the dreary rain beyond his window. Possibly because of the chill and the damp, he felt uncommonly tempted by hunger today, and as a consequence, for added discipline, he forced himself not to eat all the bread.

  He later wondered if all along he'd had another motive for partially fasting, but it nonetheless surprised him when on impulse, as the chapel bell beckoned him to leave his cell for the vespers service, he set a small chunk of bread in front of the mouse's hole.

  When he returned, the bread, was gone, and he allowed himself to smile.

  14

  "Abuse the sacrament?" Father Hafer was shocked. "If you're worried about guaranteeing my silence, there's no need for confession. Don't forget, I'm also a psychiatrist. My professional ethics force me to keep this conversation strictly private. I'd never discuss it in a court or with the police."

  "But I prefer to depend on your ethics as a priest. You put great emphasis on sacred vows. You'd damn your self if you revealed what you heard in confession."

  "I told you I won't abuse the sacrament! I don't know what trick you're trying to get away with, but - "

  "For Cod's sake, I'm begging you!"

  The priest blinked, startled.

  Drew swallowed, his voice pained. "Then you'll know why I have to be allowed to join the order."

  15

  It became a ritual. Every evening, he left a portion of his meal - a piece of carrot, a leaf of lettuce, a section of apple - in front of the hole. His offering was never refused. But as if suspicious of Drew's generosity, the mouse stayed in its hole.

  Of course, Drew thought, why bother coming out when your meals are delivered?

  The motive that he attributed to the mouse amused him, though he didn't allow his amusement to interfere with his resolve. His purpose was worship, his days taken up with prayer and penance, for the honor and glory of God and the atonement of his heinous sins.

  The gusting snow of his fifth winter here piled huge drifts outside his window. He persisted, purging his awful emotions, subduing the guilt that tortured his soul. But sometimes during his prayers, the mouse now ventured out. It looked fatter, its eyes more alert. It went no farther than a yard from its hole, but its pace was steady. Its fur had a healthy sheen.

  Then spring came, and the mouse had sufficient confidence to show itself when Drew was exercising. It sat outside its hole, its front feet raised, contemplating what must have seemed odd behavior.

  Each balmy day, Drew expected that the mouse would leave. It's time for you to play, he thought. Taste the sweet new buds, and meet some pals. I'll even absolve you of chastity. Go on, kiddo. Raise a family. The world needs fieldmice, too.

  But the mouse appeared more often. It came farther from its hole.

  When the season grew so hot that sweat rippled down Drew's chest beneath his coarse hair shirt and his heavy robe, he felt a tiny movement against his leg as he sat at his workbench, eating. Glancing down, he saw the mouse sniffing at his robe, and he realized that the animal was here to stay.

  A fellow hermit. He didn't know its sex. But given their cloistered circumstances, he preferred to think that it was male, and recalling a mouse that he'd read about long ago in a book by E. B. White, he gave it a name.

  Stuart Little.

  When I was innocent, he thought.

  16

  "I don't have my vestments with me."

  "Where?" Drew asked.

  "In my room here at the rectory."

  "Then I'll go with you while you get them. We'll have to leave, anyhow - to use a confessional in the church across the street."

  "It isn't necessary," Father Hafer said. "The rules have been relaxed. We can perform the sacrament here in the open, in my office, face to face. It's known as 'public confession.' "

  Drew shook his head.

  "What's wrong?"

  "Let's say I'm old-fashioned."

  They crossed the congested street toward the church. Inside the cool dim loftiness, their footsteps echoed as they each went into a bleak compartment of a confessional. Drew knelt in its musty darkness. Behind a partition, the priest slid a panel to one side. Drew whispered to the shadow behind the grill.

  "Bless me, father, for I have sinned. My last confession was thirteen years ago. These are my sins." He told.

  And told, not even stopping when he described the photographs in his pocket and the priest began to gasp.

  17

  It was autumn again, October, his sixth year in the monastery. The ruddy glow of sunset tinted the brilliant maples on the hill. He heard the rattle of the serving hatch, then the familiar scrape and thump of a cup and bowl being set on the shelf beside his door.

  He lowered his ax, the blunt end of which he'd been striking against a metal wedge to split logs for his wood stove, and glanced toward the tiny hole at the base of the workroom wall where Stuart Little suddenly appeared. The mouse sat on his haunches, raising its forearms to brush his whiskers.

  All you need is a knife, fork, and bib, Drew silently joked, amused at how the
rattle of the serving hatch had become Stuart Little's dinner bell.

  The mouse scurried over as Drew brought the meal to the workbench. Bread and water; another fast-day. His stomach rumbling, he noticed Stuart trying to climb up his robe, and with a sigh of feigned disgust, he tore off a piece of bread, tossing it down to the mouse. He sat at the bench and bowed his head, pressing his hands together, praying.

  You know, Stuart, he thought as he finished, you're getting greedy. I ought to make you wait to eat till grace is finished. A little religion wouldn't hurt you. How would you feel about that, huh?