The Monk

by Hallahan, William H. ;

  Maeve was delighted to see her. She made tea and they sat on either side of the fire, wearing its warmth like a lap robe. Anne noticed again that Aunt Maeve was using a cane.

  At last she asked Maeve, “Have you heard from Brendan?”

  Aunt Maeve looked at Anne and shook her head, unable to speak. Finally she gained control over herself. “Listen to me, Annie. You’re a bright girl. You know the ways of the world. Do what I told you. Try to forget him. Start a new life with new friends.”

  “I could go try to find him,” Anne answered. “I could hire a detective.”

  Aunt Maeve shook her head and put a fingertip to her lips. “Shhh. Get on with your own life. Forget Brendan. It’s over, Annie.”

  A week later Trevor took Anne to dinner, and for dessert he put a small jeweler’s box on her plate. “No strings,” he said.

  It was a small solitary diamond ring, severely simple and quiet.

  “Oh, Trevor. This—Trevor, I’m not ready for this.”

  “There’s nothing to be ready for. I wanted to find some way to thank you for launching me on my new career.”

  “Career?”

  “Yes. I’ve become a playwright.”

  She laughed.

  “No. I’m serious. After the frostbite regatta, I went home and thought things out and I wrote a one-act play, and I took it to three different playwrights I know. Three different ages, three different styles. And I told them to give me a blunt and honest appraisal of it. And they did.”

  “And—?”

  “And they were all quite critical. I have a great deal to learn. And one of them flat-out told me to forget it. He said it’s a dog’s life, writing for the theater. He said talent isn’t enough. And the other two said that if I can survive the demands of discipline and the frustrations of failure and neglect, I undoubtedly had a great deal of potential talent.”

  “Do you, Trevor?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Do you have the discipline?”

  He nodded. “Discipline I’ve got. It takes the same attributes to win boat races. Thank you.”

  She began to protest again. “Annie,” he said. “You take that little bauble and keep it. I promise you there are no strings attached and it’s little enough for what you did for me.” He smiled at her. “I think you’re a smashing girl.”

  She kept waiting for the frontal assault, dreading it, feeling more and more guilty about Brendan. But the assault didn’t come. He was always delighted to see her; sometimes he would hold her hand crossing a street. But he never made overtures. It seemed as though he too was weighing their situation, unsure what to do next.

  There were times when she wanted to cradle his head in her arms again as on the night of the regatta in Newport. He was so gentle and warm it was hard not to move closer to him. Still she held back.

  “He’s gaga about you, kid,” Jackie said in his Humphrey Bogart impersonation. “You could take him home like a Kewpie doll. Under one arm.”

  She nodded and turned her face away.

  “Annie.” Jackie turned her face back to him with a finger. “I can’t give you any advice but Maeve swears Brendan will never be back. You have to decide for yourself but I think the odds are against seeing him again.”

  “I miss him so much it hurts. Twenty-four hours a day.”

  “You can say that for both of us.”

  That night Trevor asked her, “Do you like me a little bit, Anne?”

  In reply she had Trevor come to her apartment. “I want to tell you about someone,” she began.

  Trevor nodded. “I know, Brendan Davitt. Everyone raves about him. It’s all very confusing, isn’t it?” He watched her nod. “Well, I’m not good at fighting ghosts or memories. I like you a lot. We could build something solid on that. But maybe—well, suppose I back off for a while. Give it a rest. And we’ll see. Okay?” He stood up. “I envy him.”

  He left and Anne knew he wouldn’t be back. His campaign had ended.

  She went to church and she prayed. She would willingly live in a cellar with rats with Brendan. But if it was true, if he was never coming back, she would waste her life pining. Aunt Maeve had given her the best advice: Get on with it. Live your life. Anne didn’t know what to do.

  She wrote a letter to Brendan. She told him how lonely she was, how much she loved him, how much she missed him.

  And she told him about Trevor. She knew what Brendan would say; she could hear him say it. “Go for him, Annie. Make a life for yourself.”

  Each evening thereafter she wrote to Brendan and each morning she destroyed the letter. But each letter seemed to help her settle things in her mind.

  She honestly missed Trevor. She was deeply fond of him, she admitted. He was a wonderful, gentle and witty man, the catch of a lifetime, and unwittingly, she realized, she had been handling him just right. The slightest move toward him would have scared him off. Wealthy young men are very skittish.

  She called him. He came right over. He almost jumped up and down like a boy, he was so delighted. He spent the whole evening with her. He even told her his deepest secret: where he got the name Hirondelle for his ketch.

  “Trivia question: What was the name of the stagecoach that Madame Bovary—Emma—took to Rouen for her assignations?”

  “Hirondelle?”

  “Right! And do you know what hirondelle means?”

  “No.”

  “The swallow. I never told that to anyone else.”

  She took his hand. “Go slow. Okay?”

  She and Trevor went to the movies one night. He took her hand as they crossed a street on the way back to her apartment and she continued to hold it, led him up the stairs and into her apartment.

  “I love you, Anne,” he said.

  “Oh, please, Trevor.”

  He held up his hands. “It’s okay. I’m sorry. I have to go.” And he fled. She heard his step on the hall carpeting, then on the stairway. She quickly pulled open the door.

  “Trevor,” she called down the stairwell. “I’m sorry. Don’t go.”

  When he came back she kissed him. “I don’t deserve you, Trevor.”

  “Annie, I’ll marry you right here, right now.”

  She didn’t sleep, of course. Trevor was a fabulous catch. Every woman in New York who met him wanted him. Some never looked beyond the money; others saw the charming reticent man and the money. Anne knew he was a marvelous person even without the money but she also knew he wasn’t as strong as she was. Few women could resist Little Boy Lost. She wondered if it would be more of an adoption than a marriage.

  And Brendan’s memory tormented her. She remembered the day on the beach when she was finishing the gown for the angel and he wanted to touch it with his dirty hand. “All of Ireland is washed by the Gulf Stream,” he said. And she had sat and watched the wind turn his hair and felt such great adolescent love for him it was like a sob in her throat. She yearned to hold him. Was his face going to haunt her forever? She could reach out with her eyes wide open and touch all his features. He’d poured himself out like a bottomless vessel for others.

  She developed a compulsion: She believed that if she kept watch faithfully enough, she could make Brendan come back. Vigilance would draw him to her. So at all hours night and day, when she was home, she would go constantly to the window, push aside the curtain and look down at the street. And each time, she half believed she would see him smiling up at her.

  One day it rained. A winter rain that rilled down the windowpanes of the photographic studio. It was suddenly true for her: She got the blues when it rained. She wanted to call Brendan in his office and go have coffee with him and hold his hand. She firmly refused to look at the rain on the window.

  She had an advertising shot to take: four children ages three and four, for a toddler’s clothing advertisement in color. “Children’s Clothes for People Who Can’t Resist Children’s Clothes,” the headline on the ad layout said. With it was the artist’s sketch of four children to show th
e photographer what was wanted. The catalog number of each item of clothing was written on the margin with an arrow.

  The wardrobe lady from the ad agency had dressed the four children, who stood about feeling special as if in Sunday dress-up. The four mothers hovered. This was show biz. Possibly a major break for the child … and a life of fame and riches before the camera. The wardrobe lady herded the four children to the set, a plastic garden with plastic lattice and plastic roses and a seamless white infinity background. They walked awkwardly together onto the set, like four victims, their mothers’ shooing voices hissing behind them.

  “Jeffrey! Keep your head up!”

  “Allison. Remember your promise to Mommy.”

  Annie looked through her camera lens and looked at the lights. Then her assistant, a young woman who clearly thought she could take a better picture, moved two lights unbidden.

  “Put them back,” Anne said. “We have to set the children in position first.”

  With an exasperated sigh the assistant put them back, too far back. Anne kicked off her shoes and walked on the set. On her knees she began to arrange the children. She smiled at them and said Serious Things that made them giggle. With outstretched arms she moved them all a few inches to the right. One stumbled and in a moment she had her arms full of laughing children. She stood up. She’d promised herself not to look at the rain on the windows but she did.

  When she looked through the camera lens at the children it seemed as though rain was running down the lens too.

  CHAPTER 10

  The Creature

  The three monks—Vincent, Beaupré and Zen—had left their meeting with Brendan, vowing to perform another incantation to return the creature to hell, if that’s where it had come from.

  Brendan heard no more from them. And the creature seemed to disappear. Several weeks passed. Brendan wondered if the creature had entered some kind of cocoon where it could evolve into a new, higher state of malevolence.

  “What have you done?” he asked Vincent one morning.

  “We’re working on it. Patience.”

  The man who delivered the food supplies to the monastery arrived the next morning. It was February and the weather was so bitter he actually drove his van across the ice to the island. He was short and stubby with strong arms and a graying beard. He arrived talking.

  He talked about the town of Milford, where the state institution for the criminally insane is located. The residents for years had been trying to get the state to move it. The buildings were old and overcrowded and there had been an uncomfortably large number of escapes in recent years.

  Anyway—the creature had struck again. This time he had thrown open the gates of the prison, killed four guards by twisting their necks, and led the inmates into the town, which they proceeded to sack and set ablaze. They looted a jewelry store, had a bun-throwing war with the contents of a bake shop, festooned the shopping district with bolts of cloth from a fabric store, then broke into a gun shop.

  The creature had worn a crown made of gold chains and wristwatches and a cape made from the satin cloth taken from the jeweler’s display cases. It had sat on an elevated shoeshine chair in the midst of the mayhem and flames and tittered while the inmates had formed a merry daisy chain around it.

  A small army of state police plus the combined police forces of nine nearby communities joined to cope with the shooting inmates before the fire engines drawn from as far away as forty miles could fight the fires. The whole downtown of the historic village was burned to the ground, including seven historically certified buildings. Fifteen people were dead, dozens injured and maimed.

  The creature just disappeared. No one saw it leave. No one even got a photograph of it.

  By the time the deliveryman finished his story, all eight monks were in Brother Beaupré’s kitchen, listening solemnly. Brendan looked at Vincent and Beaupré and Zen. “I wonder what that creature will do when it discovers hydrogen bombs and biological warfare,” he said.

  There had been an early March thaw. For three days a wind blew out of the southwest and turned the lake surface to slush. Brother Zen was out in his snow-filled garden with knee-high boots, checking the earth. Inside the greenhouse he had things going like a beehive. Four monks were helping him now, setting out seeds in large pots and trays. By midafternoon each day when the sky was clear, the sun, rising higher in the northern sky, poured heat into the greenhouse. Winter was dying. And Brendan sensed it was a matter of time before he would be outside spending his days in the garden, increasing his visibility. And his danger.

  It had been three months since Brendan had fled from New York City. When he was a little boy, he’d cried once so long and hard that his throat ached and he felt empty. That was the way he now felt, day after day. An ache in his throat. His thoughts more and more fixed on Anne. He found himself in the midst of a task, cleaning the kitchen or mopping a floor, and he’d be there in midstride, lost in thought, remembering some moment in his life with Anne in all its vivid detail. He could say her name softly to himself and feel his face flush.

  How could he spend his life in mere safety? The price was too high just to be allowed to draw breath. She’d said she’d take two weeks of life with him. And now he felt that was an abundance of time together.

  One evening during a nightly conversation, Brother Luke talked about the nowness of life. “You can’t defer life by trying to live in the future. Today’s the day you have to live. It’s the nowness of life you have to accept.”

  If Brendan accepted that thought completely, he could go to the city and spend this day with Anne. Just this one day. It seemed an incredible stretch of time to be with her.

  After sacking the town of Milford the creature had become quiet again. And Brendan wondered what staggering act it was incubating. Each day he watched Brothers Vincent and Zen and Beaupré go through their chores, and each night he saw them take to their beds without having taken any action.

  One day Brendan was working inside the greenhouse, planting tomato seeds in starter trays. The sun had grown so strong Brother Zen had to open a number of windows to let the heat out. Snowmelt dripped rhythmically everywhere. As he worked, Brendan watched Brother Zen in the vineyard, checking the vines and removing some of the heavy tar-paper wrappings. The monk was working down near the corner of the wall where the creature had disappeared several times. Brendan wondered if it could see him now—see his purple aura.

  A moment later, Vincent came out from the kitchen with a chair and sat himself down in the sun to read a newspaper. He began to smile and he called into the kitchen and read a short item aloud, then emitted a short sharp baritone laugh.

  Brendan straightened up and shoved his trowel into the mound of dark earth. Deliberately he walked into the monastery and down the corridor to the library.

  He patiently searched the shelves until he found it—Paxton’s Demonology. Then he drew it down. When he came to Brother Vincent, he gripped the man by the elbow and led him around the corner of the building out of sight of other eyes. He slammed the book against Vincent’s chest. “Tonight,” he said, and walked away.

  That night at eight the evening session was disjointed. They were all preoccupied. A new headman had to be chosen; two months had passed. A deep undercurrent of competition had appeared in the monastery among the eight monks.

  Throughout the long session Brendan watched the three monks. When he went to bed at lights-out, his resentment grew. He hadn’t seen even one word pass among the three of them the whole evening.

  In the morning he saw them again in the chapel. Nothing had happened. After breakfast the monks dispersed to their morning tasks. Brendan found Vincent in the library, doing the glass panes once again. He passed him by. Down the corridor he found Brother Zen, sleeves rolled up, cassock skirts tucked up in his waist belt, mopping the tile floor. He tried to keep working with his mop until Brendan took it from him.

  “You came here looking for God,” he said to Zen. “And you didn
’t find him. So you went looking for a demon. And you found one. Isn’t that true?”

  Zen said nothing. He stared fixedly at Brendan with his hands at his sides.

  “If you found a demon, does that mean hell exists? And if hell exists, does that mean heaven exists? And if heaven and hell exist, does that mean punishment and rewards exist? What do you think the punishment will be for bringing a demon on earth, then shunning your responsibility, leaving it to destroy the whole planet? If a demon exists, Brother Zen, accountability exists. For you. And for Vincent. And for Beaupré.” Brendan handed him his mop back.

  He watched them for the rest of the day and evening. Before lights-out he saw them talking in the hallway. Beaupré was rocking from side to side and wringing his hands. Zen was shaking a fat Oriental finger under the stubborn nose of Brother Vincent.

  The weather had changed again. And during the evening rain had begun to fall. It drummed on the slate roofing under a variable wind. By lights-out the wind had hardened from the northwest and the rain changed to snow. They were back in the deep freeze again.

  Brendan left his cubicle door ajar and lay in his bed wideawake. It was nearly 1 A.M. before his vigil paid off. He heard them in the corridor, moving slowly in their cassocks and sandals. Down the hall the outside door latch clicked.

  It was barely discernible a few minutes later, a faint light in the greenhouse. They must have lit a candle. Brendan left his cubicle, went down the corridor through the kitchen to the food storage room. There he went to the window closest to the greenhouse and stood in the dark, watching through the snowfall. One end of the greenhouse glowed like a large lantern and he could see their silhouettes moving to and fro in front of the candle. The three of them were there. Brother Zen seemed to be drawing the pentacle while Vincent held the book open. Brother Beaupré held the candle.

  At last, Brother Zen straightened up. The three of them stood in a semicircle, Vincent and Zen holding the book, Beaupré holding the candle, and they read a passage in unison. When they finished the incantation, they looked around the greenhouse expectantly.