The Waste Land

by Simon Acland

  One of my other duties as Brother Anselm’s junior assistant was to identify damaged works among the delicate volumes in the library. Mostly of course these were parchment, but there were also ancient fragments written in strange scripts on papyrus. I was meant to take them to Brother Anselm for his view about whether they could be repaired, or whether they should be erased and reused as palimpsest. A week or so before I had happened to note that many of the pages of a copy of Saint Victorinus’s Commentary on the Apocalypse of Saint John had been damaged by moisture and mice. I remembered the occasion especially clearly because an old hole-riddled sheet fell from the volume as I opened it. At first I had been startled lest my lack of care had caused a page to fall loose from its binding. But on bending down to pick up the leaf I had noticed that it was quite different. It was grainy, of papyrus, not smooth like parchment, and covered in a distinctive Greek script – in ink of an unusual colour – the colour of dried blood. Indeed, at the time I had wondered whimsically whether some ancient scribe, in desperate need, had plundered his own veins for his writing material. Then the thought passed, as I was called away to another duty, and I had tucked the sheet back firmly inside the cover.

  Now I sought out Saint Victorinus again. To salve my conscience I carefully checked that the volume was well beyond repair. Surreptitiously I removed enough pages to accommodate the slimmer volume of Ovid. I returned to my shelf of temptation while Brother Anselm was otherwise occupied. With shaking hands I reached down my forbidden fruit and concealed it between Saint Victorinus’s sympathetic covers. Shocked by my own audacity, I returned to my desk and struggled to sit there until it was time to leave the library. Then I tucked Saint Victorinus under my arm in the normal way. Nobody suspected its cargo of treasure.

  My temptation and fall happened in March. I remember the season well, because I recall my impatience as I longed for the daylight hours to lengthen and to extend the time I could read without the help of a candle. During those months of spring and early summer I worked my way through Ovid and other great classics that I found on the shelf beside Metamorphoses – the Iliad in Baebius Italicus’s Latin translation and the Aeneid. I had never dreamed that such literature could exist, and even less imagined that a dry book could contain a world so vivid and so exciting. While the flowers in the abbey garden burst open and fruited through that hot summer, so my mind erupted with bright, vibrant colours and bold, violent figures. As my imagination ran riot, all the romantic urges of my pre-monastic boyhood were rekindled. My fear of discovery just sharpened my feverish excitement.

  Brother Anselm, kindly and considerate towards me, began to worry more and more about my health. I suppose I must have become paler and paler as the hours when I should have been sleeping were given over to taboo literature. I struggled to dissemble and to stay awake in the library. Then, one fateful morning after a wakeful night given over to Metamorphoses, whose humour, passion and extraordinary heroes, heroines and villains had made it my fast favourite, I nodded off at my desk. My dreams of Jason and Medea were shattered by Brother Anselm’s solicitous touch on the shoulder. Concern crackled between us – mine lest my catnap had betrayed me, Anselm’s for the well-being of the assistant he had chosen. Puzzled to see such an undistinguished commentary as Saint Victorinus still on my desk after many weeks, the Librarian made to pick up the volume. I stood up, desperately wondering how to divert his attention. I signed that I had finished with the apocalyptic commentary and was about to return it to the shelves. Smiling, Anselm indicated that he would gladly perform that simple task for me. We both tried to pick up the heavy book together, and as we fumbled, the smaller concealed volume tumbled to the floor. My nerves exaggerated its thump, which seemed to echo round the library with unnatural noise. Brother Anselm stared at me with surprised inquiry and gathered up the incriminating evidence before I could move. He opened the cover and recoiled in horror when he read there what he held. His kindness melted into hot rage as he seized me by the elbow, marching me off without more ado, to be interviewed by the Abbot.

  Whenever I think back, even after all that has happened to me in the intervening years, I still squirm and cringe at the memory of that audience. Brother Anselm’s jowled face, normally so friendly and well-intentioned towards me, was now wobbling with purple fury. His outrage was such that he forgot to sign and stammered out loud to the Abbot an explanation of what had happened. I prepared myself for an outburst. Instead the Abbot quietly turned to me and asked if the Librarian’s report were true. I hung my head in acquiescent shame. The Abbot then signed to Brother Anselm to leave the room. I quietly thanked God that my reprimand would at least be delivered in private.

  My gratitude was driven away by the horror of the expression turned upon me by the Abbot – an expression that I still remember with absolute clarity – an expression not of anger, but just of the deepest disappointment tinged with compassion.

  “Hugh, my son, Hugh. You have let yourself down. You have let me down too and have betrayed my trust. You have betrayed your mother and her love for you. Imagine how she would feel if she knew what you had done. Worst of all though, you have betrayed Our Lord Jesus Christ. I had thought that our philosophical discussions in the confessional had come to an end because you had found the straight and narrow path. I thought that you had conquered your doubts. It had even occurred to me that you might be ready to end your novitiate and take your full vows. But now I see that you have been led far, far astray. Your young mind has been filled with poison. There may be no antidote. You see, some books contain such wickedness that they corrupt minds. Few are immune – only those that are fully formed and resolute in Christ. Some books purport to contain knowledge but hold only lies. There are even false Gospels which must be destroyed so that none might read their heresies. This book you have been reading will also be consigned to the flames. No-one else shall be tempted towards hellfire by its contents. Better that it should burn than a soul. And the library will be scoured for any other profanities. They will meet the same fate.”

  I started, filling with shocked dismay that such precious writings might be wiped forever from human knowledge. For the first time I understood that even a holy man – even this abbot who was the closest thing to a father that I now had – might seek to erase information which did not support his own beliefs. But my unspoken protest died on the sharp point of the Abbot’s stare.

  “If there is a cure for your pollution it will be long and painful. I have no alternative but to punish you severely. You will receive thirty-six blows of the rod in front of the whole chapter. When you are recovered, you will stand at the furthest end of the nave during each holy office from now to Michaelmas holding in your outstretched arms a copy of the Holy Scriptures – the only book, by the way, that you will in future be permitted to read.”

  The Abbot’s expression relaxed a little. “You have been helpful to me. I have grown fond of you. I will pray for your return to grace.”

  Tears clouded my eyes until I could scarcely see. I stumbled from the room to pour them out in private. That interview was the worst part of my punishment, worse even than the acute pain of the rod, worse than my humiliation in front of the other monks, and worse than the tiresome week of recovery lying flat on my face in the infirmary while the wounds knitted across my tattered buttocks. It was worse than the hours every day holding the heavy book during all eight holy offices as the weather grew colder through autumn and winter and the icy wind whistled beneath the west door of the chapel around my legs and under my habit. Physically perhaps I benefited, becoming more resilient, more tolerant of pain, and gaining in strength and stamina. Perhaps, for my determination to bear my punishment without complaint, I regained some silent respect from my fellows, several of whom I saw had been far from disappointed by my fall from grace. Throughout those long months I stood at the chapel door as straight as the rod which had left me with scars that I still bear today.

  ST LAZARUS’ COLLEGE

  The Classics
Fellow was in an unusually good mood as he warmed himself at the Senior Common Room fire before dinner.

  “Well I must say. I like that chapter. The trouble I have in getting my idle students to read Metamorphoses! And here is a fine chap actually falling in love with it. I had never heard of someone being flogged for actually reading Ovid, but by God I’d like to be able to flog them for failing to do so!”

  The History Don did not share the Classics Fellow’s humour.

  “Well I don’t like it at all. I want to see more facts in the story. How do we know Cluny’s precise bibliotheca? The collection was scattered when the abbey was destroyed seven centuries later in the French Revolution. Scant records remain. Why can’t we have some more description of what it was like to be a monk at the end of the eleventh century? You skate over the daily routine of the abbey but include various details that are frankly irrelevant.”

  This last comment was addressed at the Best-Selling Author, who had come up to deliver his latest chapters for inspection and was in a jovial mood thanks to the rapid progress of his story and his third glass of sherry.

  “Don’t worry, old fellow,” he said. “Readers find too much of that monk stuff pretty dull. They want to get on to the battles and romance. But there is a lot of history coming in the next chapter. I promise you. And it will all be very accurate; even the description of the weather is validated by the contemporary chronicles. And the meaning of the bits of information you may think irrelevant will be revealed later on in the story – that blood ink papyrus for example. At this early stage in the book I’m just seeding the plot. We writers call it exposition.” And he roared with laughter.

  The Professor of English nodded his head sagely. “Exposition. Yes indeed. That’s very good. But perhaps you’d let me polish some of your prose later on. I did like the pun about Saint Victor-in-us.”

  Now it was the Chaplain’s turn to bridle with pious indignation. “Pun? What do you mean, pun? Saint Victorinus actually existed. His Commentary on the Apocalypse of Saint John really is quite interesting.”

  The Research Assistant sat silent in a dark corner, a murderous expression on his twisted face, oozing bitterness at the theft of his precious manuscript and its perversion in the filthy cause of lucre.

  CHAPTER THREE

  WAITING FOR A KNOCK UPON THE DOOR

  I did not forget my reading, nor the scholarship I had acquired. Hard lessons are sometimes the best remembered. That much at least they could not take away from me. My desperation rose – to break loose, to find a place where I could hear laughter, and laugh myself.

  The eternal cycle turned through winter and spring, summer and autumn, and back to winter again. I was uncertain if I would have slowed it down if I could, to prevent the waste of my youth, or speeded it up in the hope that fate might have something better in store.

  So I reached the beginning of that extraordinary year 1095, seventeen, unhappy and disillusioned. The New Year announced itself in startling fashion. As we monks left Compline on the very first day of January, the night sky was lit by a violent shower of meteors and shooting stars. I ignored the cold to stop in the wintry dark and to gawp at the spectacle. Crackling sheets of green and purple light unfolded on the northern horizon, lending the faces of my brother monks a ghostly hue. How appropriate, I remember thinking, for these creatures are indeed half-dead, scarcely living their lives.

  The spectacle continued for hours. This was unquestionably a portent, a sign of great events to come in the year ahead. I sorrowed that they were events in which I could but hope to be involved. What is more, this unusual heavenly activity continued as the months went by. As well as meteor showers and those strangely coloured fires in the north, many bright comets moved across the sky, putting in my mind the holy star which marked the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ and led the wise Magi to His stable. My bitterness at missing great events grew with each manifestation.

  A week into January I was on duty in the kitchens, serving a small group of tattered travellers who had come to seek overnight refuge from the vile weather. Many pilgrims passed through, some coming specifically to pray at Cluny. Others were en route to different destinations. The rule of silence did not apply to these visitors, who took their meals in a small chamber at the side of the great room where we ate. The glimpses of the outside world afforded by the travellers’ conversations gave me a Jacob’s ladder to a happier place. For a time my oppression was lifted by their tales, especially as meals progressed and the pilgrims’ loquacity was fuelled by the rich abbey wine. So I looked forward to nothing more than the occasion every three months or so when my turn came to serve them. In winter this was particularly welcome, for the visitors’ room was far smaller than our great refectory and better heated by a warm fire, offering temporary escape from the frigid conditions in the larger hall.

  On this occasion the focus of attention in the group of five travellers was a small grizzled man with close cropped hair and leathery sun-darkened skin. I started with excitement when I heard the word ‘Jerusalem’ and gathered that the fellow had recently returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre itself. I hovered round the table, dragging out my tasks, anxious to hear as much of the conversation as I could.

  “It was a miracle that we reached the port of Acre on that rat-infested floating sieve. But then we still had over a hundred leagues to cover to the Holy City. We walked mostly at night and rested during the day, because of the heat. And for fear of the infidel. We found precious little to drink and less to eat. Several of our group were unable to make it, let me tell you.”

  He paused and looked round the table to make sure that he held the attention of all his companions. I saw that like me they were hanging on his words. Satisfied, the storyteller continued, his fluency indicating that he had told his tale many times before.

  “We just had to leave them where they fell by the road, for the dogs and beasts. Poor bastards. It was a far cry from years gone by. Apparently then even the damned Musselman might give help and succour to Christian pilgrims. At last, after five weary nights’ march, we saw the blessed sight. The Holy City’s massive walls were silhouetted against the sun rising beyond in the East – one of the finest sights in all the world, that was. I wish I could say in all Christendom. How we thanked God, for I do not believe we could have managed much more. Then we got lucky. The sentries must have still been half asleep, because we were able to enter by King David’s Gate when it opened. Then we made our way to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, praise be to God. But that was where our troubles really began. We’d just knelt down to pray when we were dragged out by some of those dark heathen bastards. They robbed us and beat us half dead. We were kicked out of the city to bind our wounds and fend for ourselves. I can tell you we were lucky to make it back…those few of us who did.”

  The storyteller paused to take another gulp from his goblet and I reluctantly moved back towards the kitchen with some empty dishes. By the time I got back, the talk had moved on, but for the next days my head swirled with indignant rage at the desecration of the holy places and the Moslems’ cruel treatment of Christian visitors, and filled with notions of making that sacred journey myself. I constructed wild escape plans in my head, thinking of joining up with a group of pilgrims as they travelled on from the abbey, before rejecting such ideas as forlorn, for who would risk the wrath of Cluny by taking with them a renegade novice?

  As the year progressed it became clear to those of us working in the abbey fields that the harvest was going to be one of the worst in living memory. April is the cruellest month for nature to rebel, and that spring was marked by days of burning sun soon after the crops had begun to sprout, shrivelling them in the ground, only for the dull roots that remained to be surprised by torrential summer rains that washed away what was left. I prayed with the others for mercy as best I could, but in my heart I knew that my prayers would go unanswered. Surely God was showing His displeasure to us and indicating His wish for His children to ave
nge the insult given to the places where His Holy Son was made man, had suffered and died for all sinners?

  The Abbot returned to Cluny during the course of that burning spring, his latest effort of diplomacy to reconcile Pope and Emperor successful for a while. My spirits lifted a little at the news imparted in the first of the daily addresses that he was accustomed to give to us in the chapter house when he was resident at the abbey.

  “My brothers, it saddens me that I have been away from you for so long, but I cannot shun the duties entrusted to me by our Holy Mother Church. Many of you will remember our Holy Father Pope Urban II as Prior Odo de Lagery, when he was a much-loved and trusted member of our humble community here, before he was called away seventeen years ago to serve the Church in Rome. Well, he now intends to pay us the signal honour of visiting in the month of October. He will lead the consecration of our new high altar and will spend a week with us here in prayer and contemplation in preparation for a great council of the Church to be held at Clermont in November.”

  Such was the excitement aroused by this news that a collective murmur echoed around the vault, before it was stilled by a sharp look from the Abbot.

  Abbot Hugh’s return also meant that he took charge again of my spiritual well-being. I feared that I would not be able to hide my inner turmoil for long from my Father Confessor’s uncanny perception and sensitivity, however bland the words that I placed after the formulaic “Bless me Father Abbot, for I have sinned…” And sure enough, some time toward the middle of that turbid summer, I found myself having another conversation about the future course of my life.