“You’re not supposed to be out of bed,” Brendan heard Luke say.
Brother Matthew, summoning his gusto, banged his hands together. “It’s a good night for a fight!” Then he looked longingly at the fire. “Gawd, I could crawl right in there. I don’t think I’ll ever be warm again. What was it Mark Twain said? Heaven for climate; hell for company. On a night like this, maybe hell has the climate too.” He sat down in their midst and suffered them to wrap two blankets around him.
“Smells great,” he said to Brother Vincent.
“Damned things.” Vincent threw his cigarette into the fire.
“Thirty years,” Matthew said, “I quit thirty years ago and I still miss them. I’d go back to smoking tonight if I could.” He smiled at Brendan. “Young man, you are in very bad company. Well, who’s got the ball?”
Luke cleared his throat. “This is Brother Brendan. I know you have all met him. Tonight he was followed from the general store by a creature with six fingers.”
In his heavy Bronx accent Brother Benedict cried, “You don’t say so! What did it look like?”
Several other monks smiled at Benedict. “Exonerated, Benedict. Exonerated.”
“Shhhh! Shhhh! Shhhh! I want to hear,” Benedict said. “Come on, Brendan. What did it look like?”
“I didn’t see him,” Brendan answered.
Benedict tossed his head in frustration.
Vincent, squinting an eye from his own cigarette smoke, said, “Then how do you know about the six fingers?”
“A hand print in the snow. Or maybe a footprint.”
“Did it make a noise?” Benedict asked.
“A laugh. Like a titter.”
“See!” exclaimed Benedict. “It’s exactly what I heard tonight. Just before you got here. Did you get any kind of a look at it?”
“Not much. I got the impression of something huge, dressed in white, and that’s about all.”
“Maybe it was your imagination.” Brother Zen had pushed his cowl back and revealed a shaven pate.
“Yes. Maybe it was.”
“Well, was it or wasn’t it?” Vincent’s face became angry and his thick eyeglasses reflected the flames from the fire.
“I don’t know. The hand print was not imaginary. And back at the general store, a horse had had its neck broken by something with incredible strength. No one there could explain how it happened.”
Everyone sat looking at the fire for a while. Then Benedict said, “I’m back to the same questions I’ve been asking here for twenty years. What if? What if it were all true—heaven and hell, angel and devil? No one can prove heaven and hell exist. But no one can prove that they don’t exist either. Suppose this thing I saw tonight—that hand print Brendan saw—what if it is some kind of supernatural being?”
Brother Matthew lifted his head from his layers of blankets. “Then I’d say you have your answer. If it’s a demon, hell must exist somewhere.”
“And if hell exists—”
Brendan was watching the three monks. Brother Vincent looked at Brother Zen on his left, then Brother Beaupré on his right. It was as if they mutually agreed by that look to say no more. Whatever they knew, they kept to themselves.
“Well,” Brother Luke said, “if it’s all true, then I’d say there’s a lot of smug people walking around who are going to have their toes fried. The nicest part about believing in hell is you get to imagine all your enemies being worked over by the pitchfork gang. My Christian charity stops at the doors to hell.”
Benedict said, “If there’s hell then there is accountability. There’s a room when you die with one door marked ‘Up’ and another door marked ‘Down.’ And there’s a committee there going over your résumé together. And you get either thumbs up or thumbs down.”
“That’s getting a lot of mileage from something that titters at you in the dark,” Brother Luke said, his black face smiling broadly, “an entire cosmology.”
“If God exists,” Brother Matthew said thoughtfully, “what is this preposterous mess he’s operating? What are we doing locked in here on earth with all these madmen and monsters? And if we’re all inadequate to God’s challenge why does he continue to operate this chamber of horrors?”
“The ways of the Lord are inscrutable,” Brother Luke said.
“Bullshit,” Brother Matthew said. “I’m going to bed. Brendan, if you see any more of Sixtoes, get a picture. It might answer a lot of our questions.”
When the old man had left, Brother Luke looked at Brother Paul. “How is he?”
Paul shrugged. “He’s hanging by a thread. But he’s been hanging by that same thread for years.”
“Does he see a doctor?” Brendan asked.
“Yes,” Paul answered. “I’m a doctor.”
The conversation didn’t end. After another hour it just died out. The monks sat in silence, watching the embers burn down, then one by one, softly on soft-soled sandals, they left. The three monks Vincent, Zen and Beaupré departed as they came, together.
“Joined at the hip,” Brother Luke said, looking after them, and a smile spread across his strong black face. Then he left.
Back in his room, Brendan examined the sliding door that led out to the courtyard. He was in a goldfish bowl; he felt no safer than he had in Brooklyn. He opened the door and stepped out to look over the wall at the frozen lake. The wind still blew and the night was crowded with stars. The moon, which had risen, showed the footprints as faint blue circles across the lake, his and Luke’s. Anyone or anything could follow them to his bedroom.
He thought about Anne. For a few hours on her birthday he’d actually dreamed of marrying her, loving her, spending his life with her. How wonderful that would be. And as he thought about her he knew he couldn’t stay here in the monastery for long. He had to bend all his efforts to finding a way to fight Satan and return to Anne. There had to be a way. And he had to find it. But how? Despair crept close again.
As he looked across the lake—a night scape of pure silver—a hulking figure caught his eyes. It stood on the moonlit ice, aloof, alone, arms at its sides, staring at the monastery.
A cloth wrapped around its head had partially unraveled and the end streamed in the freezing night breeze: a ghostly pennant. It was dressed in only a thin fluttering garment, hardly enough to keep warmth in a living body. Its face was indistinct, the eye sockets in deep moonshadow. But it seemed huge, possibly over eight feet tall, with shoulders that suggested enormous power. It held its head tilted forward in a threatening attitude as though ready to attack.
After studying the figure for several minutes, Brendan decided that its garment was a corpse shroud and its head wrapping a grave cloth.
Then he heard it titter.
Brendan now knew what a life sentence in prison would be like. He could look out of his window and know that somewhere over that curve of the earth were his city and his friends and his former life. He’d never realized how much he’d loved them until now.
But most of all he missed Anne. And his love for her was an ache, a constant longing. He’d delayed long enough. He had to write a letter to her. He would ask her to wait for him. He would tell her that he would overcome his adversary and return to her.
He went to see Brother Luke in the library. It was a gray afternoon. The snow blowing past the large library window reminded him of one of those glass paperweight balls that when shaken produce a simulated snowstorm inside.
Brother Luke was illuminating a page of vellum with a huge initial letter M. It occupied fully one third of the page, a handsome design decorated with flowers and birds. Brother Luke’s large brown hand moved the fine tip of the brush with great delicacy. He was running an ivy climber in dark green that twined in and out of the M.
“How do I go about getting a letter mailed, Brother Luke?”
“Give it to Brother Benedict.” He looked up at Brendan. “Don’t put any return address on it.”
Brendan sat at a library carrel and took out a sheet
of paper. And there he sat for several hours, looking at the blank white square. It exactly matched the blank white square of blowing snow framed by the window. He looked over at Brother Luke, who was busy filling his blank white square with a celebration, in color and form, of life and God.
The letter, when Brendan finally wrote it, was very short, a few sentences. He folded it, sealed the envelope and addressed it.
“Wait for me,” it said. “I’ll find a way to solve my problem and return to you. I promise. I love you. Only you. Wait. Brendan.”
He sat with the letter in his hand, hesitant. He had no right to ask Anne to wait for him. He had no means of overcoming his tormentor. Up and down he paced, furious, helpless, caged. Then unhappily he tore the letter up.
He wondered if Luke knew how to fight a demon.
CHAPTER 8
Anne and Trevor
For days Anne went numbly through her daily routine, up at seven, off to the photography studio, then back home to her apartment. During the evenings she cleaned compulsively; she washed walls, scrubbed her kitchen floor, straightened up closets. It was as though she was preparing her whole world for some momentous event. Then she would go to bed and stare at the ceiling. Inside her chest a ball of pressure seemed to be building.
She encountered memories of Brendan everywhere. The most constant reminder was on her living room wall, a photograph of him at fifteen that she’d taken the summer his parents died. He sat on the beach cross-legged, head bowed in thought with that characteristic expression of mirth mixed with solemnity. She knew she should take the photograph down.
Everywhere on the streets, memories haunted her; on a bitter day with sharp winds, she took six models for a photographic session on the Staten Island ferry; the bay was full of ice floes. One of the ferry attendants saw her.
“How’s the singing?” he asked her. “We still talk about that day your boyfriend got the whole ferry singing. People still ask me if I’ve seen him. Where is he?”
One night in a cab she passed the Tavern-on-the-Green. The bare winter trees were all outlined by strings of small white lights, trunks, limbs and branches, and within the glass walls of the Crystal Room of the Tavern, the chandeliers glittered. With the infinity of lights reflected in the glass panes the Tavern was a winter ice palace of crystal light.
For her twenty-first birthday Brendan had taken her there and he’d given her the rhinoceros pin she’d wanted. As her cab rode by the Tavern, she touched the pin on the collar of her blouse. Brendan.
The subway recalled the Imaginary Interviews. For her photography class in art school she needed a collection of closeups of people taken at random. To get the camera close enough without embarrassing people, Brendan had gotten a clipboard and posed as an inquiring photographer. While he asked questions, she took pictures of people’s faces bemused by his questions. It was her best work at the time.
When she was in Greenwich Village she would remember the day he gave away all their money and they had to walk to her apartment on West Sixtieth Street. He was always doing that. He often arrived at her apartment penniless. One night he arrived with no coat.
Museums recalled memories. He was enormously curious and he had taken her to every museum in the city. He spent hours at the Statue of Liberty. He climbed all over Ellis Island, where the millions of immigrants had landed. Once he’d gotten them a day’s outing on a working tugboat plying the lower harbor. From that, she’d made her first photography sale. And the pictures helped her get her present studio job.
Each memory seemed to make the great lump inside her grow larger. It threatened to burst.
She saw him so clearly walking the streets he loved. People’s eyes followed Brendan. They spontaneously poured out their hearts to him. He made many smile. He made others sing. He made others laugh with his wry, self-barbed stories. People never wanted him to leave. He was always exciting to be around. He was always rushing her off to see something, always doing something. And now he was caged somewhere, forever a fugitive. Life had been so cruel to him. His premonition had come true.
She’d lost her only love, her best friend, her hero and the world’s greatest one-man entertainment committee. Who could ever fill the gap in her life he’d left?
People around her became concerned.
Her best friend, who worked at the photography studio with her, took her aside. “Annie, you have such dark circles, you look like you have two black eyes.”
The owner of the studio spoke to her. “Anne. You don’t look good. Don’t go home tonight. Go to the movies. Have dinner with someone. Get drunk. Do something!”
She went home as usual. But there was no point in washing any more walls; she couldn’t evade the issue any longer. She told herself Brendan was never coming back. She sat on the sofa and let her grief almost overwhelm her. She cried out from the pain and wept with despair. When she was through, only a numbness remained. The lump had burst. Staring at the photograph on the wall of the fifteen-year-old boy on the beach, she said good-bye to Brendan.
The next morning she saw herself in the mirror. Her neck looked bony and thin. Her ribs seemed gaunt. Most of all, her face shocked her. She knew she had to distract herself and get her life started up again. She forced herself to eat a good breakfast. Then as she was leaving, she sat down on the sofa and fell asleep with her coat and hat on. The phone call from the office woke her at ten.
In the studio she threw herself into her work. She struggled to cast off her moroseness. For it was the day Trevor dropped in at the studio.
He was an unemployed actor, a friend of the studio owner’s and a sometime clothes model. He was also a friend of Brendan’s cousin Jackie Sharkey. In all the time he’d been coming in, all the times he’d invited her out, she’d never noticed before how much he resembled Brendan.
This day at noon, with no preamble, he took her by the elbow and guided her down to a cab that took them to the Green on Green Pub, owned by Jack Sharkey’s family.
Anne remembered the summers down at the Jersey shore when Jackie would talk about becoming an actor. By now he’d had several parts in television commercials, one with Trevor. He always joked about Brendan’s prediction that he would become a famous actor; but he secretly believed it. Meantime, he waited bar in his father’s pub.
All of Jackie’s friends were aspiring actors and actresses and they came around to the Green on Green because there was always something in the bottom of the glass from Jackie when the money was short. They’d talk about acting and arts and recite the list of Friends Who Got Parts on TV Sitcoms. This was an important list because the longer it got, the more friends it gave you in places of potential influence. The favorite story was about the 2 A.M. phone call from the west coast that So-and-so got the other night. After ten years of selling ties in Macy’s, the big break, the fabled entrée, the old favor repaid after many years.
Trevor was the envy of the whole crowd. Some said he had real talent, but more important he had money. He came from a wealthy Boston family. They owned the boardwalk in Atlantic City. No, it was oil off Texas. Or something else. Who cared? It was big money.
He had curly black hair and nice pale eyes and he wore a cap on the back of his head, but what set him apart was a sprig of sea oats in the lapel of his jacket. It added a dash of romance to him—the touch of the poet. He had a child’s happy smile. When he saw the pin on Anne’s blouse shaped like a rhinoceros, he recited some lines from Ogden Nash’s comic poetry about the prepoceros rhinoceros, and for the first time since Brendan had run out of her life she laughed.
Everyone at the Green on Green was glad to see Trevor and thumped him on the back. It was clear to Anne why he was so popular. In a short time he had cheered them all up. First of all, he had news, good news. People they knew had gotten major parts. A friend named Chuck sold a Big Script to the powers in Hollywood and already casting was under way. He also bought rounds of drinks and toasted them, “the most talented bunch of actors ever to be assembled in
one place at one time. Tomorrow may all your phones ring. And ring. And ring. And—”
They picked up the chant. “—And ring and ring and—” They burst into laughter and cheers. No one, Anne noticed, bought him a drink or asked him how his affairs were going, what auditions he was trying out for.
“In my next incarnation,” he told her, “I’m coming back as a part in a play looking for an actor.”
Again Anne laughed. It just slipped out—a sudden giggle. But it felt wonderful and she remembered it hours later.
Trevor reminded her a great deal of Brendan.
A few days later Trevor read a part for a play and he took Anne out with three other unemployed actors for dinner. He did an imitation of the play’s director, who had a deep voice and a slow way of speaking, like a very bad imitation of Alfred Hitchcock. Trevor had them chuckling as they walked.
On the corner watching for a cab, they heard an old man playing a fiddle. He played pieces from a number of operettas.
“Do you know ‘Mi chiamano Mimi’?” Trevor asked him.
“Hum it,” the old man said. And Trevor hummed it. The old man frowned.
“Here,” Trevor said. He took the violin and played it.
Then the old man played the piece exactly as Trevor had. “You have a marvelous ear,” Trevor told him, and gave him a five-dollar bill. As their cab pulled away, Anne saw the old man salute Trevor with his violin bow.
“How did you learn to play so well?” she asked him.
“Practice,” he said with a suffering Russian accent. He watched her smile. “Do you like the violin, Anne?”
“Yes. Very much.”
“Have you ever seen Itzhak Perlman play? He’s going to be at the Carnegie.”
Before she’d had a chance to think about it, she’d accepted an invitation to go with Trevor to Carnegie Hall.
Dona, an actress with a lot of summer stock credits, punched Anne lightly on the arm when she learned of the date. “Lucky dog,” she said. “I’ve been trying to get something going with him for six months. All that money. Yum.”
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