by Tom Clancy
“Did you say something?” Brother John asked gruffly.
“No.”
His new home contained a cot, a makeshift table in the corner holding a gooseneck lamp, a chair, and a grisly, bloody picture depicting the Crucifixion on the wall over the cot. The table had a few drawers for storing underwear and small items. There was no closet. Steve shivered slightly as he thought he caught a glimpse of a scorpion that scuttled under the bed. It unnerved him. He was a city type—one who had never encountered anything in his bedroom larger than a cockroach. “I think I saw a scorpion,” he said. “They’re poisonous, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” Brother John replied with a broad grin. “We just try to stay away from them, although I should warn you it is difficult when we are literally overrun with them. Before you put anything on, shake it out thoroughly first. There is one more very important piece of information I need to tell you. We have a vow of silence here. This goes for the priests as well as the brothers. We eat in silence, work in the fields and do other chores in silence. No priest is permitted to speak to another priest. Meals are consumed in silence in the refectory after Brother Berard says the blessing. Silence is enforced with stringent disciplinary action. Nor can any of you speak to one of the brothers unless it is absolutely necessary. Breaking this rule is a serious infraction. There are a few exceptions: you can pray aloud in church and you are free to speak in therapy sessions.”
“I haven’t been invited to any therapy sessions. What about speaking in the confessional?”
“Are you trying to be sarcastic? The confessional is, of course, sacrosanct. It is another exception. However, the confessional, as you know, is not a place for idle communication. We expect that sessions be restricted to confession of sins, contrition, absolution and penance, nothing more. No chitchat among you priests. The Monastic Rule and a few other instructions in the top drawer of your table describe the schedule of services in the main chapel. The instructions also tell when, and in which of the small chapels, you are to say Mass each morning, work assignments, meal times and everything else you need to know. There is also a map of the monastery—please use it instead of asking directions.”
“You took my watch and I don’t see any clocks so how am I supposed to know when to do anything?”
“We have a system of bells. The schedule is with your instructions. When the bells ring, hop to it. There are penalties for being late.”
“Just like being in the army,” Steve said dourly.
“Not quite. In the army there is a payday. Priests here have no payday. Any money that a diocese thinks a priest should have is put away with his stuff. After all, there’s nothing here to buy.”
Steve visibly jumped as a scorpion suddenly scuttled out from under the cot. With a quick movement, Brother John slipped off his sandal and killed the pest with one blow. The crushed remains were pushed over into a corner. “Now, if you do not have any questions, we will speak no more,” he said calmly as if the incident with the scorpion had never happened.
Steve thought for a moment. The only real question that popped into his head was: How in hell did I get myself into this place? Then he remembered Bishop Rhinehart.
“No questions?” Brother John asked. “Fine. Then the silence rule begins as of now.” With that, Brother John backed his hulking frame out of the cell leaving Steve to unpack his suitcase. Steve closed the heavy oaken door noting with satisfaction that it could be barred from the inside. “I may want to keep those guys from poking their heads in here unannounced,” he said to himself, although he was aware that when he left the cell, there was no lock on the out-side of the door. I most certainly want to keep the door closed to keep the scorpions out, he thought. He was unaware that a partially opened door together with a small window high on the back wall of his cell, created a draft that kept the room from becoming a furnace in the summertime.
Steve placed his underwear and socks in one of the drawers in the table. He removed the case that held his chalice from the suitcase. Taking off his black suit and Roman collar, once starched white, but now brown resembling the color of sand mixed with dirt from the dusty ride in the desert, he placed them on a hangar and the hangar onto a hook mounted on the wall. He placed a spare suit that he had brought with him on the hook. He placed his stole in the bottom drawer. Next, he slipped into the gray habit. It was coarse, homemade and musty smelling. The cuffs were frayed. Obviously a hand-me-down, but from whom? What happened to the priest or the succession of priests who had worn it? The number 1203 was embroidered in yellow on the breast. He wondered whether the number had any significance. Did it mean twelve hundred and three priests had gone through this place? Or was it a code for a specific priestly transgression? Or did it identify his diocese? Maybe he would never know.
There was no way he could tell how he looked in the garb of a monk because there was no mirror in the room, nor even glass that he might see his reflection in. Then he remembered the shiny gold paten in his chalice case. Pulling the cowl up over his head, he looked at his reflection in the gold plate. It occurred to him that with the hood up almost covering his face, and by bending slightly forward with hands clasped in prayer, he could probably pass for one of the brothers. A beard would help. It was a resemblance he might need one day. Then he remembered the number embroidered on the chest of his garment—the very visible number that distinguished between the prisoners and the guards.
He sat on the cot and slipped into the worn leather sandals. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a centipede that must have been six inches long feeding on the remains of the scorpion that Brother John had killed and kicked into the corner of the cell. “Hope he gets enough to eat so he leaves me alone,” Steve muttered to himself.
He opened the top drawer of the table. In it he found a Catholic Bible, a copy of the priest’s daily office, a map and a copy of the Monastic Rules. Riffing through the pages of the Rules, he decided he would read the document some other time. He picked up a card that contained the daily schedule. He was pleased to note that Lauds—which some monasteries held at two-thirty A.M. was missing. This was probably because the monastery operated on self-generated electric power and the monks didn’t want to turn on the generators in the middle of the night.
The canonical day began with Mass in the church at six A.M., although some priests were permitted to say a private Mass in one of the small chapels. He assumed he was one of these. As the monk had said, he noted that all events were announced by the tolling of bells. According to the schedule, breakfast was served at seven, lunch at noon, followed by one hour of meditation in the church. Dinner was served at six; followed by Compline; lights out at nine o’clock. All of the non-canonical hours were apparently spent working in the fields, the kitchens, or in therapy. He knew that monasteries usually rang the Angelus at noon at which time, everyone stopped activities and said three Hail Mary’s, but the schedule here said nothing about prayers to the Blessed Mother. Strange.
What really puzzled Steve was that there were no clocks so the listed times were meaningless. Every event began with the ringing of electric bells that had been installed for each compound. It reminded Steve of bells at a high school. The loud bell announcements could even be heard when out in the field. While the church bells were tolled for the start of religious services, the electric bells were sounded for everything else.
The electric bell schedule seemed to have been designed by an idiot. There was no discernible order: five bells for breakfast, three for lunch, six for dinner, four to start therapy classes, one to end classes. Eight bells signaled the start of work in the fields, etc. It would take awhile, he thought dourly, until he learned whether it was time to take a shower or to go to the refectory for a meal. But he figured he could rely on his stomach for the time to go for meals. The map showed the route to the shower room. He sorely needed to stand for a long time in a warm shower. It could help him relax and think of how he could adjust himself to life in a monastery. An austere one at that
. The wash room and shower room were empty. He wondered where everyone was. He remembered hearing a bell ringing but had ignored it. “Maybe it’s afternoon tea,” he chuckled to himself. “Fat chance.” Maybe he was missing a meal but he wasn’t hungry, so no matter.
The water in the shower was like ice. He remembered it was January, and he had learned that in Arizona, winter days were somewhat warm, the nights chilly. The water, he thought, may have come from a well. An oasis in the desert. Or, perhaps, runoff from some snowcapped peaks he had seen in the distance. Threadbare towels and gritty soap were provided in the shower room. It adjoined the washroom where the priests brushed their teeth and shaved in the morning. With the single exception of the toothbrush, toilet articles were not taken back to the cells. He looked at the line of sinks. He examined a shelf of obviously shared combs and brushes. The brushes were clogged with white, brown and black hair—usually all three in a single brush. He tried a dull safety razor and winced. No wonder there are so many beards in a monastery, he thought. The washroom did have a small mirror over each sink. He noted that his stubble was already becoming a beard. Something under the sink caught his eye. It was another scorpion standing erect with its curved tail in the air. They stared at one another for a few seconds, then the scorpion scuttled away into the shower room.
Later, map in hand, he took a walk around the compound. He noted that the map showed the adobe wall around the perimeter of the compound and the heavy wooden gate. At a distance behind the lines of adobe priests’ cells, stood the brothers’ chapter house. The map also indicated a barber shop. “I’ll bet,” he said to himself, “haircuts simply consist of inverting a soup bowl on your head and trimming around the edge of the bowl.” The brothers and priests he had seen up to that point looked every bit like they had orbital haircuts. The monastery also had a small library, but nothing else. No post office, no store where he might buy an occasional snack, some sundries, or cup of coffee. Besides, they had taken all his money except for that he had hidden in his chalice case.
About a quarter mile behind the church he came across the cemetery.
It was surrounded by a grove of strange-looking trees. He was surprised at the large number of cross-covered graves spread over half an acre. Some grave markers had identification, but for the others, only God knew who they were. There were also a few mounds of fresh earth that hadn’t yet received their crosses, and a few empty graves that hadn’t yet received their bodies. It occurred to him that the abbot had talked about priests resigning, but the driver, Jeremy, seemed to imply that he took few priests back to civilization. This somber place accounted for the discrepancy.
He noticed what looked like a telephone line that ran from Brother Berard’s office out over the back wall of the monastery. But there were no power lines. He wondered where the phone line went. He was pretty sure there was no cell phone service way out here, so the only way to communicate with the outside world was by means of Berard’s phone or by message through Jeremy.
*****
Walking back, Steve peeked into the small library. Next door, he looked into a large room filled with decrepit hospital-style beds. As he walked in the stench of death was almost overpowering. He had to cover his nose and mouth with his handkerchief. A dozen men lying in the beds raised their heads inquiringly as he appeared at the door, but then with blank looks, fell back into a confined world of disease, pain, and vanishing hope of recovery.
One man suddenly sat up and motioned to Steve. As Steve went to the man’s bedside, the man twisted to one side and whispered, “I’m a priest. My name is Bill. All of us in here are priests. I can tell by the number on your robe that you’re not one of them. When one of the brothers gets sick they put him in their facility behind the chapter house. I don’t know what kind of care they get but we get very little here. They throw the food at us even though some are too sick to feed themselves. Many in here are in pain, but the brothers just ignore it and tell us to offer it up to the Crucified Christ.”
“Don’t you follow the rule of silence?” Steve whispered.
“Why bother. The monks seldom come in here. The only one who really comes is that young guy—the nurse.”
“You mean there’s no doctor here to attend to you men?”
“There’s no doctor as such at the monastery. The only monk with any knowledge of medicine was a former Navy nurse and he can’t handle anything that requires more than a bandaid. The story goes that he was drummed out of the Navy due to misconduct. Even so, no one can help me… I’m dying of cancer. I’m sure it’s spread. I don’t have much time left.”
“How do you know?” Steve asked.
“The nurse examined me. He pushed and prodded and shook his head. He told me they’ve already got the hole dug in the cemetery for me. Will you look in on me every few days and when the end comes will you give me Extreme Unction?”
“Of course,” Steve said, “and is there anyone on the outside who should be notified? Any relatives?”
“Not really. I have a few distant relatives but we parted company years ago.”
As the two priests talked, a man hobbled in with what appeared to be a cruelly twisted leg. He introduced himself to Steve as Father George. No last name, just Father George.
“Do you mind my asking, what happened to your leg? Have an accident?”
“I got into a disagreement with a monk and he kicked me so hard he broke my leg. Later, the nurse tried to set it but he did a lousy job as you can see.”
As the priest talked, Steve had a foreboding that he had been sent to a monastery that was a prison without any rules—one that operated on the idea that suffering and pain were tickets to heaven in the hereafter—as long as it was the priests who suffered. He doubted that the monks underwent any real suffering.
Turning back to the bedridden priest, Steve said, “Bill, is Brother Berard aware of all this? Doesn’t he try to do anything about it?”
“Not much he can do,” Bill replied. “Berard is only abbot because he has been elected to the post by the other monks. If he isn’t careful, he gets dumped back into the ranks.”
Before Steve left, he said a prayer for the dying priest and blessed him with the Sign of the Cross.
*****
Dinner in the refectory was a dismal affair. Brother Berard stood at the head table flanked by what were probably his most trusted lieutenants. Steve recognized the hulking figures of Brothers Michael and John plus a number of other monks. They looked like a lineup of pro football players or wrestlers waiting to be interviewed by the press. The only monk in the lineup who didn’t look like a gorilla was tall, thin Brother Berard in the center.
“Hear us, O Crucified Christ,” Brother Berard said in a hoarse ringing voice. “We thank thee for the food thou hast provided us this day. It is simple fare in keeping with our penitent and contemplative life here, but through thy tender mercy, it will give us the strength to persevere in thy work on the morrow. Amen.”
“Amen,” echoed from the mouths of almost two hundred priests and thirty-some brothers as they clambered over the picnic benches to take their seats.
Steve glanced around cautiously at the rough-surfaced picnic tables and benches. Food was served on a plastic plate accompanied by a skimpy paper napkin and plastic cutlery. He noticed his spoon was not very clean. He deduced from this that the plastic-ware was not throwaway—some haphazard attempt was made to clean it after use. Like eating out of a fast food garbage can, he thought. The food was deplorable. It was so tasteless he wasn’t sure what he was eating. He was forty-eight, and doubted he would make it to fifty on meals like this. Although he had seen what appeared to be a sizeable farm on the monastery grounds, it was winter and the land lay barren. The food, poorly preserved, was apparently left over from a previous growing season. Despite this, the priests across from him and on each side, ate hungrily. They seemed to attack their food with animal eagerness. The voiceless gaunt faces opposite him, eating hunched over their meals, told him the
story.
Almost all the priests in the refectory were bareheaded. Many were bearded and bald older men, but a few scattered here and there had their cowls pulled over their heads He wondered what that was all about. A few priests had to be helped over the picnic benches by their seatmates. Was it arthritis or had they been kicked by one of the brothers like the priest he had met in the clinic?
Immediately after dinner, he followed a gray, shuffling, undulating side-to-side crowd to the mission church for Compline, the evening service. It was the first opportunity he had to see the interior of the mission church which had been partly destroyed and later abandoned many years before but rebuilt by the Passion Brothers. In rebuilding, the brothers had devoted the church completely to remembrance of the Crucifixion of Christ. Inside the front door, a large wooden cross leaned up against a side wall. Easily ten to twelve feet tall, it could have been the actual size of Christ’s cross. Its purpose was a mystery to him—not like the thin gold cross he used to carry when he led processions as an altar boy. This cross seemed far too heavy and cumbersome to carry upright in the vanguard of a procession.
High up on the walls surrounding the nave were a dozen large crucifixes holding figures of the bleeding Christ. As he knelt in the last pew, Steve studied the church. He did not see a single statue or image of the Virgin Mary. The Passion Brothers seemed to have no room for display of a statue or painting of a female in their single-minded devotion to the Crucified Christ. The Stations of the Cross omitted all female figures. Even the station for Veronica’s veil showed the veil but not Veronica.
Over two hundred priests and monks knelt in prayer in their coarse gray monastic robes. The men were so tightly packed together the scene resembled a congealed mass of gray rounded lumps like egg cartons turned upside down. The service was conducted by one of the priests in the dark church that was lighted only by candles. The aroma of incense filled the air. Steve imagined the priests probably performed the evening service on a rotating basis.