A Psychiatrist, Screams

by Simon Parke

  ‘Information withheld.’

  ‘The lies, yes.’

  ‘Bella said she found him in Barnabus’ bedroom,’ said Peter.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Virgil.’

  ‘What was he doing there?’

  ‘Previously a mystery, but no longer. I’d imagine it was his bedroom in former times. Do you remember where you slept as a child?’

  The question brought both to silence and it was in that brief eternity of space that the link came to Peter.

  ‘Hafiz,’ he said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Hafiz, he’s our link.’

  ‘Whose link?’

  ‘The link between myself and Barnabus.’

  ‘Hafiss?’

  ‘Hafiz.’

  ‘Is he local? Can we speak with him?’

  Fifty Nine

  Freedom beckoned for Behrouz - freedom at last! So why was this not good news?

  He stood in relentless sun, gazing through sweat, on the high walls that rose out of the rock - and yes, he sensed his journey’s end. A three-day camel ride from water, here was freedom, freedom from his long-carried cargo. And it was also despair.

  He’d heard of this place from passing Bedouin. They hadn’t been happy about it, not in the least. A great deal of haughty tut-tutting, evident suspicion, they spoke of this monastery as a stranger in town, a parvenu, an Abdul-Come-Lately. After 600 years, you were still a newcomer in these parts. But then who was surprised? For as the pyramids were comprised of stone, the Bedouin were made of suspicion, the nomads’ suspicion of the permanent; and there was the feeling in Behrouz, something new to his soul, that perhaps he should become a nomad himself, the temptation to walk on, travel on from this place, pass on by these rough walls and disobey his master.

  The truth was, things had changed. His master - or former master - was not here. He’d even told Behrouz he was his master no more, he remembered that, he used those words... and not having seen him for eighteen months, authority fades, relationship fades, Hafiz back in Shiraz across many desert miles and Behrouz here in Egypt. Sometimes he struggled even to remember the poet’s face. He carried literary gold in his sack, he knew that. So why would he hand it over to another? It felt like cutting off his hand.

  It was possible he wasn’t alive... Hafiz that is, entirely possible. He’d heard different stories from travellers. People spoke of a purge in both court and city, a hanging of heretics, a mutilation of malcontents. The brother of a seller of frankincense claimed to have been in Shiraz when Hafiz’s hands were removed, chopped from his wrists and thrown on the ground to be eaten by the birds, unorthodox hands now severed from the sinner. And the last act of Hafiz’s hands, so the brother of the frankincense seller said, and he seemed very convinced - though it turned out he wasn’t there himself - was to throw his poems in the fire! Well, why was Behrouz surprised? Hafiz had feared that outcome, had he not? That was why he’d sent Behrouz away, packed him off through the window with a small bag of provisions and vague instructions to travel west, with the story he was looking for work. But he’d never been looking for work, he carried his work with him, every day of the way, the poetry on his back, that was his work, keeping it safe, and which - if the brother of the frankincense seller was to be believed - was now the only record of the poet’s labour.

  Everything was terrible. It was a terrible weight, a terrible honour, a terrible importance. And thrown into the fire by his own hand? That wasn’t right and thank God he hadn’t been there, it would have been too bad, really too bad, but how it grieved him that he wasn’t there. He would have given them a piece of his mind, no question. It was possible at least.

  But now, Behrouz must decide, decide about the poems and what to do with Hafiz’s instructions. He’d spoken of a monastery, not specific, just something about the crazed loon St Anthony and the outbreak of desert monasteries he oversaw. He’d told Behrouz to aim for one of these, to make for the deserts of Middle-Egypt and to seek an Abbot, not a Caliph, and this he’d done. Here he was, looking at one now, an edifice which appeared to rise out of the rock, complete union, so that where one started, and the other ended, was hard to tell. It didn’t look right without a minaret, looked deficient somehow, like a mouth missing teeth. He could teach the Bedouin a thing or two about suspicion.

  But were these rough walls to be the end of his journey? And perhaps more pressing, did he, Behrouz, want the end of the journey? There were his feelings to consider. These poems had held him together for the past eighteen months, given him both reason and direction. So was he, the copyist, the calligrapher - no small labour, these were joint works in some way - was he now happy to leave them in the hands of an unknown other? They were as much his children as those of Hafiz, not quite but nearly, and like a painter unable to sell his work, Behrouz wanted freedom... but not at the expense of these poems.

  These were his feelings. It was not in a man’s nature to give treasure away - and what of life beyond this place, beyond this privileged possession? Today, he was Behrouz Gul, the carrier of wonders. Tomorrow, he would be Behrouz Gul, copyist and yes, a fine hand, but there were many other fine hands. He spoke dismissively of his peers but he was not so different, not so superior, indeed quite equal, just one in a crowd. Only these poems gave him difference, gave him the sweet inequality he craved.

  But then his master’s words and the reason for travel. You can sometimes forget why you set off on a particular path, your clarity overcome by the mist of desire. And Behrouz now felt like an icon of lost clarity... for this journey had never been about him and his needs. On his back, he carried the work and witness of Hafiz, a fragile keeping for such glory, for if he slipped and fell, what then? Or if attacked by brigands or found dead in the night cold, what then? The satchel was engraved on his back, part of his body and at one with his soul; but he must wrench himself free, let go, give it up, this is what Behrouz must do, strange how decisions are made. Amid the sun-baked rocks, Behrouz was coming to his senses, slowly, slower than a camel on a crutch, but was it time to hand over the poems of Hafiz, offer them into more stable keeping? Was it time to find protection for these children, to make them safe - safe from those against love and laughter and in favour of fear? He looked at the strong walls, a holding more secure than his own. It was time.

  He walked wearily towards the gate, approached by a sharp incline to dissuade those with a mind to attack. These were the walls of a fortress built to withstand weather - and Bedouins; built to remain and remain in this unforgiving wilderness. He stood before a beaten, battered door and a bell on the end of a rope as old as the moon, knotted at the end. He pulled at the rope, a tinkling of unenthusiastic metal and then a wait, not unfamiliar in the desert, one long wait of sand and rock in Behrouz’s experience.

  Movement the other side. Was someone there?

  Sixty

  A slit in the monastery door opens and a face peers out.

  Behrouz says: ‘I come in peace.’

  The eyes through the slit continue to gaze and he feels the need to expand:

  ‘I’m a traveller who seeks hospitality.’ Eyebrows are raised through the slit.

  ‘Pray tell me, what manner of fortress is this?’ continues Behrouz. The slit slams shut, there is brief silence, the door then opens, aching hinges, and a weather-beaten face above a brown habit, greets him:

  ‘Welcome, my friend, to the monastery of St James-the-Less.’

  ‘I bring a gift.’

  ‘A gift?’

  ‘I hope you will consider it so.’

  ‘I’m sure we shall, for gifts do not come every day. Not through the front door at least.’

  ‘You’re not easy to find.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘But I believe I bring a blessing.’

  The doorkeeper looks long and hard in
to his eyes.

  ‘And yet you look sad,’ he says. And now his eyes are watering.

  ‘I am sad,’ says Behrouz, surprising himself. These were not words he’d spoken before, never had he allowed these words. But their truth could not be denied, here at the monastery gates. ‘I am the saddest man on earth.’

  ‘To be the saddest man on earth, that is a hard calling.’

  ‘It is, yes.’

  ‘Let me take your load.’

  The doorkeeper reaches out towards the bag Behrouz carries on his back. Behrouz makes to push him away, an involuntary movement, but then changes, relents, allows the weight to be taken from him and kneels down in the sand and cries.

  ‘It is good sometimes to water the sand,’ says the doorkeeper.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Behrouz.

  ‘Sorry for tears? That’s not an apology the desert understands. But we can find ourselves a cooler place to sit.’

  Behrouz nods and rises slowly to his feet.

  ‘First things first, we must raid the kitchen on your behalf,’ says his host. ‘Some physical refreshment, and then we can talk. Yes?’

  Behrouz nods again... like a man in a dream.

  The door keeper picks up the cargo, swings it onto his back - how strange it looks on another man’s back! - shows Behrouz through the gate, closes it behind them and leads the way across the court yard.

  ‘It is a heavy load you have carried!’ he says.

  ‘A good load,’ says Behrouz, suddenly light on his feet.

  ‘My name is Brother Gabriel, by the way - sadly not the angel.’ Though later, as Behrouz ate and drank at a table in the kitchen, the saddest man in the world, cheering slightly, begged to differ.

  Sixty One

  ‘So who or what is Hafiz?’ asked Tamsin, as they drove along the sea front.

  They weren’t hungry, that was for sure. They’d bought fish and chips and eaten them with wooden forks, sitting in the car, looking out to sea.

  ‘We’ll make a pensioner of you yet,’ Abbot Peter had said cheerily.

  ‘It’s only the cold. Otherwise I’d be outside.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what they say as well.’

  It was cold. A bitter wind blew across from Newhaven harbour, though not cold enough to worry fishermen casting on the shore, dark silhouettes against the low wintry sun. Oblivious to the elements in their thick waterproofs, they made the most of the high tide, as squawking gulls swooped overhead. And in the end, and after some in-car dispute - each hoping the other might feel the urge - it was Peter who got out, habit a-flap, and braved the gusts to dispose of the wrapping in one of the concrete bins. He’d thrown a few remains to the birds on his way, cold chips caught by beaks in flight, before returning gratefully to the vehicle, still pungent with the legacy of vinegar.

  ‘Enjoying the case?’ he’d said, closing the car door with relief.

  ‘Nice to be back in Stormhaven?’

  Tamsin had thought before responding.

  ‘I find working in Stormhaven peculiarly embarrassing.’

  ‘Embarrassing?’

  ‘There’s simply nothing in me that wishes to be associated with this place. Is that terrible?’

  ‘A bit harsh maybe.’

  ‘But true.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘Sitting in a car eating fish and chips is about as good as it gets.’

  Peter thought for a while as the car pulled away from the kerb and turned west.

  ‘It’s been unlucky as a town, perhaps.’

  ‘Stormhaven?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You make your own luck.’

  ‘Sometimes. And then sometimes an author like Jane Austen walks along your cob - as she did at Lyme Regis - while writing Persuasion, includes it in the manuscript and suddenly you’re interesting. That’s luck.’

  ‘So the only problem with this bleak town is that Graham Greene didn’t stroll across the pebble beach, see a couple of boys fighting and decide to write a book called Stormhaven Rock?

  ‘We’ve under-performed with celebrity endorsements.’

  ‘“We?” You’ve only been here two years.’

  ‘Home is where I lay my hat, Tamsin. These are my people now.’

  ‘Those left alive.’

  They were making for Henry House, where they were due to meet Frances at 2.00 p.m.. But before that, she wanted to hear about Hafiz.

  ‘He was a Persian poet in the fourteenth century,’ said Peter.

  ‘So how does he link you and Barnabus?’

  ‘Born in south east Persia, now Iran, around 1320. Two years before the birth of Geoffrey Chaucer and a year before the death of Dante.’

  ‘Is this what we call “background”?’

  ‘Context.’

  ‘How very university.’

  ‘And remarkably, he’s still Iran’s favourite poet.’

  ‘Remarkable because?’

  ‘Have you seen his poems?’

  ‘Not knowingly.’

  ‘He writes from the Sufi tradition of Islam.’

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘It’s the mystical stream in that great river of a faith. Hafiz, for instance, believed that humans could be so overwhelmed by God’s love that they became God themselves, became one with God.’

  ‘Sounds a bit presumptuous to me.’

  ‘It’s a pretty offensive idea to most religions, not just Islam - they all like to keep God and humans separate. But really, why can’t God give himself to someone entirely?’

  ‘He’d have to exist first.’

  Peter allowed the atheism as the car heating, tentative at first, began to make an impression on his chill hands.

  Atheist to believer: ‘I’m still waiting for the link.’

  ‘It was a poem by Hafiz that Barnabus sent me.’

  ‘That odd verse you got in the post? That was Hafiz?’ Tamsin was interested.

  ‘I knew it, but didn’t know why I knew it.’

  ‘So you know the poems of Hafiz?’

  ‘He’s like an old friend I’ve somehow lost touch with.’

  ‘So now we have Peter, Barnabus and Hafiz.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘The Three Musketeers.’

  ‘Hardly.’

  ‘And the connection?’

  ‘The desert.’

  ‘The Three Deserteers!’

  He’d remember that phrase.

  ‘We all met at the monastery of St James-the-Less. I should have remembered. I told you that when Barnabus came to stay, he spent most of his time in the library. But what I didn’t say, what I’d forgotten, was that he spent most of his time there reading Hafiz. We owned a full set of his poems.’

  ‘A Christian monastery harbouring Islamic poetry? How so?’

  ‘Truth goes wherever she’s made welcome.’

  Tamsin felt a moment of unease. She had an odd relationship to truth, the idea both intriguing and frightening. For now, however, with traffic to consider, she chose a change of subject beneath a grey sky flecked with blue, and lit by the last of the afternoon sun.

  ‘Frances,’ she said.

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Let’s hope she’s as welcoming, as we explore the Mind Gains finances.’

  ‘It’s going to be tricky,’ said the Abbot.

  ‘I don’t see why.’

  ‘It’ll sound like an accusation.’

  ‘It is an accusation.’

  ‘No, it’s a question and the best questions don’t accuse - they merely seek the truth.’

  ‘This is when I begin to enjoy it,’ said Tamsin, ignoring the moralising. ‘When the cage-rattling starts.’

  They
turned again through the old gate and started up the drive, dark and closed in by rhododendron and evergreen. With a corner turned, however, gaunt trees on mown grass appeared to their right; to their left, cold horses in wet fields, longing for the summer, and in between - the still façade of Henry House.

  Sixty Two

  ‘It’s no secret that Barnabus’ money was of considerable help,’ said Frances, as they sat together in one of the dark-panelled counselling rooms. She’d been irritated by their intrusion, ‘as if I don’t have enough things to do at the moment!’

  ‘As if we don’t,’ Tamsin had added, and once seated, she’d moved quickly to the matter in hand: money.

  ‘You can see why we might be interested.’

  ‘Not really,’ said Frances. ‘You do a good thing and then find your motives questioned.’

  ‘And what is the good thing you’re doing?’

  ‘Mind Gains, of course. A much needed mental health resource in the area. Before we came.’

  Tamsin interrupts: ‘Much needed by whom exactly? I mean, you were hardly busy.’

  Peter glanced at Frances, who looked down into her lap, while Tamsin continued: ‘I’m told the Feast of Fools was a publicity stunt, and to that degree successful - I mean, you’re certainly in the papers.’

  Cruel.

  ‘But you can see, surely, how the relationship between a struggling endeavour like Mind Gains and financial investment, might just feel like an important line of enquiry.’

  Frances looked up with some venom.

  ‘We were just starting. These things take time. You’re so stupid.’ Heartfelt but not wise. Calling Tamsin stupid generally had consequences.

  ‘We understand that nothing would have started here without the financial resources of Barnabus,’ said Tamsin.

  ‘He invested significantly, yes.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘Did I what?’

  ‘Did you invest significantly?’

  ‘I didn’t have the cash to hand that Barnabus had.’

  ‘So the answer’s “No”.’

  ‘But I had the business brain and the therapeutic experience.’