After some time he leaned back. “You wait.” His voice was thick. “You hold on.”
He stood and knelt to his boots, ankle high and caked with dirt, and unlaced them and took them off and stood them one beside another, witnesses. He unzipped his jeans—they dropped to the floor . . . He fought his way out of his t-shirt, then stepped out of his underwear in slow motion, or so it seemed to her, she who wanted him all at once. He was slim-hipped, smooth above, hairy below—a satyr. She was clothed and he was not, and in his nakedness she understood many things—the power of clothes, the yielding of his nakedness, how much he had known and done to understand this.
She stood and seized his hand and held it behind him and covered his lips with hers and seized him at the root and he raised her skirt with his free hand and worked her until she gave a great shout and he was shouting with her, both of them shouting in tongues.
He sank to the floor amid the littering twigs and leaves, his chest rising and falling. He unzipped and pulled down her skirt—how strange it seemed that she was still clothed. He pulled her down to him and raised himself on one elbow to unbutton her blouse and cup her breast and then she was unclothed in the warm summer night and they kissed, a long, proper embrace.
They lay in silence. He cleared his throat as if to speak and she placed a finger to his lips. Around them the high thin call of the tree frogs, an owl’s hoo-who-hoo-who?
After some time she rose and took up her clothes. He lay watching until she was dressed—he of the sun-darkened arms and chest and shoulders and legs, a band of white flesh pale as moonlight between his waist and each thigh. For a while they watched each other—she clothed, he naked. Then he shook his head free of some thought from the other world. He pulled on his clothes and followed her outside.
The sky was clear now, the bowl of stars overhead, the white graveled path plain before their feet. In silence they walked to her car. The starlit night became a great mother heart, a silence more profound than any voice.
At the car they kissed—she felt again the clutch of desire from a place deeper than knowledge. Then Johnny Faye disappeared into the night forest.
Chapter 24
An indifferent Monday. What concatenation of chance and choice, destiny and free will, had brought Flavian to this place, where his morning’s task was to enter addresses and telephone numbers from cheese and fruitcake orders into the newly acquired computer, pride of Brother Cassian? This was the work of the Lord? Why was he here? Why had he become a monk and, more to the point, why had he stayed?
The abbot entered, all hustle and bustle, a short good morning before he sequestered himself in his office to make calls from his very handsome white oak desk. Several times Flavian stood and walked to the abbot’s door, seeking the courage to walk in and say—what? “I’ve been helping the local renegade grow pot and I’m falling in love with a woman from halfway around the world and I quit.”
Abruptly he stood and entered the abbot’s office and sat. The abbot looked up from his paperwork. “Flavian. You have lived in community long enough to know that a knock before entering—”
Flavian studied his hands in his lap during this gentle and appropriate reprimand. When the abbot finished he raised his head. “Brendan. Why do the innocent suffer?”
The abbot scrunched his lips and tilted his head sideways and frowned. “Flavian, something’s bothering you. Something’s been bothering you for a while.”
“At any particular time of day a lot of things are bothering me, but what’s bothering me right now is why innocent people suffer. You tell me. I want to hear the standard operating procedure argument because when you get right down to it, what is the point of religion if it can’t answer that basic question? I mean, we have these smoke-and-bell services that make people feel all holy and good, and then they go back to their desks and sign orders to drop bombs. Or whatever their jobs’ version is of dropping bombs. I mean, not everybody drops bombs but if you want to follow the chain of responsibility even we’re dropping bombs because we’re paying taxes and so we’re supporting the guys who are dropping bombs.”
“As a matter of fact we don’t pay taxes.”
“So much the worse then, because what we have here is a deal whereby the guys who are dropping the bombs or, in the case I’m thinking of, beating his kid to within an inch of his life, those guys are saying to us, ‘OK, here’s the deal, you make us feel good about screwing everybody else for our benefit and we’ll let you dress up in costumes from the twelfth century and play at medieval theater tax-free.’ Why aren’t we doing something, anything? What is the point of all this navel-gazing?”
The abbot sneaked a glance at the wall clock.
“Brendan, I’m serious.”
The abbot sighed. “I know you’re serious. But I’m a better administrator than theologian. As you know.”
“But you’re the abbot.”
“Right you are, for better or worse.”
“We’re practically rolling in dough and here we sit, making and selling cheese and chanting prayers while the world suffers. And—” he indicated the correspondence on the desk “—preparing to ship to the slaughterhouse our last connection to the real, beautiful, created, animal world.”
“Better than dropping bombs,” the abbot snapped.
A moment of silence in observance of this remarkable departure from equanimity.
The abbot swiveled in his chair to look out the window at the green canopy of the meditation garden’s ancient gingko. “Um, look. I have to review last quarter’s financials and get them off to the bean crunchers by the end of today. Your question is, I’m sorry to say, not going to go away, whereas if I don’t review these financials in time for tomorrow morning’s conference call, the community may well be reduced to stealing bread.”
“Sure, fine, don’t call me, I’ll call you.”
The abbot swiveled back. “Now, Flavian.”
“Brendan. Hear me out, please. I’m not being naive. Seventeen years without red meat and I still dream of a good hamburger and it’s not like I don’t know where it comes from. I’m not saying we have to keep the herd. I get the picture. But I just don’t think we’ve thought that one through nearly as much as we ought, considering what’s at stake. These are creatures of God, after all, who give us so much in return for so little. Maybe that’s why I really became a monk—not to dodge the draft but to be a man of faith. If the rains fail and the cows die or my back gives out when I’m unhooking the milking machines, that’s a challenge to my faith that I can rise to, or so I hope, with my brothers at my side to lend a hand. But when the milk comes to us in big stainless steel tankers from who knows where I’m not working for God anymore. I’ve become just like everybody else—I’m a capitalist who’s taken his faith away from God and placed it in a corporation shielded by an insurance policy and the government from whatever lives or places or animals it nukes along the way. And we’re not everybody else—at least, we’re not supposed to be. We’re monks. So what do we say when people look to us to be models of faith? How can we ask them to have courage when we’re being cowards?”
Here he paused for a silence that grew longer until finally the abbot spoke. “Flavian, I’ve noticed that you’ve been—distracted. You’ve missed offices—a lot of offices. You need a break. Go visit the foundations out West. The change of scenery will do you good. By the time you get back we’ll have this business with the dairy herd settled.”
Usually Flavian found the bells announcing midday service to be an annoyance but today they spared him a response to the abbot’s suggestion. He gathered his notebook and pen and tote bag. “I don’t want to be a monk,” he said. “There. I quit. That’s it, pure and simple,” and so it seemed, though as he spoke the words he felt something willful in them, something to do with fear and a failure of heart, a loss of faith.
The abbot leaned back and passed his hand over his eyes. “Well within my time here, and not long before yours, we would have conducted thi
s conversation with our hands. Often I think that might have been for the best. Words, so seductive in the mouth and to the ear, have a way of betraying the heart.” Here he reached across his desk and touched Flavian’s hand, an extraordinary gesture—it was the first time Flavian could recall any physical contact with another brother that was not work-related. “I will offer a few last words, speaking from my place as your abbot: A man who’s never had a crisis of faith isn’t to be trusted. A monk who’s never had a crisis of faith isn’t paying attention. You are being taught to pay attention. That’s the good news. Now is the time. The way is dark but God has given you hands. Feel your way forward, in faith.”
After the midday office, after dinner, after a nap, back in front of his blinking, beeping machine, Flavian groaned aloud. “You could find a moral dilemma in a baked potato,” he said and at that moment the computer froze up. He tried all the tricks the salesman had shown him—CONTROL ALT DELETE, plug/unplug—and then threw in a few tricks of his own, including a gentle slap to the side of its vomit-colored casing (o Queen of Computers, forgive me). Nothing. Flavian sighed and turned to sorting the day’s mail, which included an envelope from the office of the county attorney.
Only a few months before, he’d have opened it and placed the contents in the abbot’s in-box. Now he furtively tucked the envelope into his tote bag. He had grown so jaded that his once-bedeviling conscience did not register a peep of protest.
In his indecision and anxiety he forgot about the filched letter until that night, when he was preparing for bed and pawing through his tote bag. He pulled out the envelope and, using his forefinger as a letter opener, ripped back its flap, which rewarded his impatience by slicing his skin, a nice paper cut that sprouted a drop of bright red blood. “Only what I deserve,” Flavian said aloud. He sucked on his finger as he read through a press release paper-clipped with Harry Vetch’s card FYI.
MEDIA RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 16, 1989
U.S. Department of Justice For more information:
502-628-7898
The Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, consisting of representatives from the Drug Enforcement Administration, State Police, Internal Revenue Service, and Federal Bureau of Investigation have entered an investigation of residents growing marijuana outside the state. To date marijuana has been seized from 29 sites, including 25 farms located outside the state. Law enforcement officials have seized a total of 182 tons of marijuana. Sixty-eight persons have faced federal or state charges concerning this marijuana.
Evidence collected by the Task Force has revealed that the marijuana seized was produced by an organized group of residents who pooled money, machinery, knowledge and workers to create the largest domestic marijuana producing organization in the history of the United States. The cooperative frequently obtains leads on farm land that is for sale through real estate firms. In many cases, one cooperative member will travel to a certain geographic area to observe and evaluate farm properties for lease or sale. A second cooperative member then travels to the area and purchases a pre-selected property, with a minimum down payment and a contract for payment of the balance due over a period of years. Deed to the property, therefore, does not transfer to the buyer until payment of the balance. Thus, many of the farms are not seizable under federal forfeiture statutes.
The cooperative generally plants marijuana in corn fields. The corn is planted late, which leads neighbors to believe the planters have little knowledge of farming. However, the later planted corn stays green longer, concealing marijuana for a longer period of time.
Once the marijuana is planted, one or two people move to the farm to monitor the crop. At harvest time, bands of workers, often consisting of the growers’ wives and children, travel to the farms to harvest, process, and package the marijuana. Many workers have $300 to $500 on them at the time of their arrest, apparently for getaway money, should law enforcement disrupt their activities. Oddly, this money, as well as money used to make down payments on farms, is usually moldy, dirty, and has an unusual smell.
Flavian read this twice. After the second reading he knelt, lifted his mattress, reached to the far corner and pulled out the manila envelope stuffed with money that Johnny Faye had given him on that night not so long ago—not so very long ago at all. He pulled out some cash, held it to his nose and sniffed. Not that he had given much time over to smelling money but it smelled pretty much like—well, like he expected money to smell, kind of papery and green, though underneath this smell was a scent at the same time completely familiar and unusual . . . he put the money down, put his nose to the window screen, took a couple of deep breaths of fresh air, then smelled the money again—yes, there was that smell . . . he looked around his cluttered cell, at the basket he kept in the corner for his dirty underwear and—socks, yes. What he was smelling was the warm, human scent of his feet, parked every night near the envelope of money.
The summer nights were still short but at this latitude, even at their shortest, they were long enough for a body to seek out the bottom of the pit of despair and for the second time that strange summer Flavian felt himself falling. The mattress on his narrow bed managed to be at the same time thin and lumpy but before that night at the pool hall and that envelope of greenbacks Flavian had slept like a child, or so it now seemed. He had stored the envelope under the far corner of his bed, there was no logical way he could feel it, and yet he might as well be trying to sleep in a rocky field surrounded by wolves.
And it was a boulder-strewn field, the rocky pastures of desire. What, or whom, did he want? “Chosen by God.” Why had he taken that left fork, ordered that beer, played those games of pool, the memory of which—the thought of his near victory—even now brought him to bask in the bright sun of vanity? Suppose he could turn the calendar back, erase that night and this stupid envelope and all that had led from it—would he take the right fork and head straight back to the abbey? He knew that he would not change a thing, which only went to prove that he was a common sinner, handmaiden of the devil, who like every son and daughter of Adam and Eve had freely made his choices and chosen sin over virtue. “What is fixed by fate must come to pass,” the words from the doctor’s story came to mind. Ridiculous. Left to its fate, the field produced only weeds and thistles. Anything more than that required the shaping hands of men and women.
But perhaps thistles were what we were meant to eat. After all, the first person to clear a patch of forest and dig a hole and plant a seed was the first to thumb her or his nose at the Almighty, and the history of the race since then was one long tale of woe.
And yet there was some great honor in choosing rebellion over submission, in refusing to bow to the inexorable laws.
Flavian found himself on his knees before the crucifix that hung on the wall of every cell—how had he come there? He had no memory of kneeling, but all these years and habit would have its way. Maybe that was all that we were, and are, and could be—creatures of habit. He considered the gory Christ in agony, the incarnation of God learning in a particularly brutal way the lessons of the flesh. He climbed stiffly to his feet—from whence that stiffness? How long had he been on his knees? He was thirty-eight—he was beginning to stiffen and harden until the only part of him that wasn’t stiff was the part that he wanted to become so. Yes, he knew what awaited—the old monks talked about it. “Oh, God,” Brother Cyprian joked, “when will this horniness cease?” And God gave an answer: “About fifteen minutes after you’re dead.” The desire never left—only the capacity to bring it to fruition. And here he was, ripe as Augustine’s pear, dangling. Was that to be his fate? Unrepentant, unfulfilled? A creature of the flesh, a creature of habit, whose habits happened to be a white alb with a black scapular cinched at the waist with a broad leather belt; whose habit happened to be reading and writing?
He lay down and pulled up the sheet and studied the bloody Christ. The Word made Flesh. In that last liminal second before sleep the dull ache in his knees told
him what he must do, the approach he must take to teach Johnny Faye how to write.
Chapter 25
Doctor Chatterjee had trained herself in the discipline of skeptical inquiry, or so she told herself when she scrutinized a patient’s records or test results. And now her skepticism was unrelenting. What was she doing, taking up with this character? What future could he hold for her? She had accepted assignment to this town with every intention of completing her required service and then obtaining her green card and establishing a practice in a prosperous suburb. There was no imaginable circumstance under which Johnny Faye would accompany her. What had she been thinking? Sex with a harijan, he might as well be untouchable, no matter the continent. A lifetime of infertility and she did not fear pregnancy, the odds were in her favor but she knew they were only odds, what had she been thinking? She was a doctor, his doctor.
Each time she drove to the statues she promised herself that this time she would speak to Johnny Faye about the impossibility of what they were doing. From her conviction of the rightness of this path and to keep firm in her resolve she wore her drab dark suit and squat black pumps, all business she was, what had she been thinking? In the evening light she walked down the graveled path practicing speeches that she would deliver, making clear that she accepted her responsibility in setting this nonsense in motion but that she was breaking it off, this time was the last time, no, not even that, this time was good-bye.
And then he arrived, summer rain, the recovery of something lost, dawn after night. She said little and he said less. He took her hand and led her to the blind and his eyes were a sweet devouring as much as if she were dressed in the raiment of a goddess.
After that first night he brought blankets so that they made love now without the prick and grate of sticks and stones. His hands were on her and then his fingers inside her, this penetration, this fact of him inside her. He was the plow, she was the earth, it was so simple, how could she not have understood? Until now she had thought of sex as a process, a function like peristalsis or breathing, one of those things the body did to perpetrate itself into the world of samsara, the world of suffering, a means to an end of the endless world of life devouring life with no purpose other than to make more life. An instant’s pleasure—no, not even that, how could she think of this wild loss of herself as pleasure, it was what it was, nothing else, all-consuming, no identity, no Meena, no Johnny Faye, but something new that was of the two of them but more than the two of them. His fingers were inside her, one then another, opening her up until some part of her yielded and she was open to him, every part of her was open to him. He entered, not fast, he had known too much suffering to enter fast, he supported himself with his arms while she wrapped her legs around his back and he entered one thread at a time, a tender thrust each barely deeper than the one before until she clutched his buttocks and pulled him into her in one swift thrust that brought him against her entrails, the word came to her from some delicate British medical journal because exactly so, precisely right. Now he was thrusting harder and she was rocking in time and they were one, one and one much greater than two. And so this, her last thought before losing thought, is what we call love.
The Man Who Loved Birds Page 22