“And of us,” Brother Oliver pointed out.
Brother Clemence spread his hands, saying, “The people around here say, you can’t make omelets without breaking eggs.”
“I believe I’ve heard that,” Brother Oliver said. “Does that finish Brother Jerome’s presentation?”
“Yes, it does,” Brother Clemence said.
“I have something,” Brother Hilarius said. “Nothing definite, just a sort of preliminary report.”
We all looked at him. Brother Oliver said, “Yes?”
“It’s about this question of getting ourselves designated a landmark,” Brother Hilarius said. “I’ve done some phoning, but there’s nothing conclusive yet.”
Brother Oliver said, “Just what’s the advantage of becoming a landmark?”
“If we can get the designation,” Brother Hilarius said, “that would effectively stop the bulldozer.”
We all perked up at that. Brother Oliver said, “Is that what they mean by a landmark? We couldn’t be torn down?”
“That’s right.”
Brother Clemence made an impatient gesture, saying, “Well, what do you think? Is there a chance?”
“I don’t really have that much to report yet,” Brother Hilarius said. “It takes time to find the right person in the city bureaucracy. But I think I have the right one now, and I’m supposed to call back on Monday.”
Brother Oliver said, “Well, why shouldn’t we be a landmark? We’re two hundred years old, we’re certainly unique from an architectural point of view, and we’re a religious order.”
“I’d love it to be that easy,” Brother Dexter said, “but somehow I don’t believe it.”
Brother Hilarius nodded. “The people I’ve talked to so far haven’t been very encouraging,” he said. “A building’s use, for a monastery or a hospital or whatever, has nothing to do with whether or not it gets designated a landmark. And I’m told the Landmarks Commission shies away from designating any building that’s already scheduled to be demolished. Apparently there are legal problems involved.”
“But you don’t know for sure yet,” Brother Oliver said. “You’ll find out on Monday.”
“I’ll make more phone calls on Monday,” Brother Hilarius said. “And I’ll let you know what happens.”
“Fine. I think that’s very encouraging.” Brother Oliver looked around. “Is there anything else?”
There was silence. We all looked at one another, and then back at Brother Oliver, who said, “In that case. I’ll—”
Brother Jerome cleared his throat, with window-rattling force. He hiked his sleeves up three or four times, he stamped his feet under the table to be absolutely certain they were flat on the floor, he lowered his eyebrows halfway down his cheeks, he gave himself a side-swiping punch across the nose, and he said, “I don’t want to move.”
We had all become geared up for a rather more apocalyptic statement. As the rest of us gazed at Brother Jerome in astonishment, Brother Clemence patted his elbow — his sleeve had slid down over it again — and said, “I know you don’t, Jerome. This is our environment. We need this the way fish need water. We’ll do everything we can to save the monastery.”
“Prayer,” said Brother Jerome.
“We are praying,” Brother Clemence said. “Every one of us.”
“Everybody,” said Brother Jerome.
Brother Clemence turned to look at Brother Oliver, who had been listening with a pensive frown and who now said, “I agree, Brother Jerome. We’ve tried to keep this to ourselves, to not disturb the others, and we just can’t do it. We’ll have to tell them, if only so they can add their prayers to ours.”
“I agree,” said Brother Clemence, and the rest of us nodded our approval.
“Tomorrow morning,” Brother Oliver said. “After Mass.” He gave us all a somber look, and his gaze stopped at me. “Brother Benedict,” he said.
“Sir?”
“You’ll be getting the Sunday paper tonight?”
“I suppose so, yes.”
He closed his eyes, then opened them again. “Don’t find anything else,” he said. “If you can possibly help it.”
Six
But I did find something else. Or that is, she found me. But before that I went to confession, with Father Banzolini. I was far more flustered than usual when I entered the confessional, and got off at once on the wrong foot — or the wrong knee — by saying, “Bless me, Father, for I think I’ve fallen in love.”
“What?” Never had I heard him so irritated, never, and Father Banzolini was an absolute opera of irritation.
“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry.” And I started again, doing it right this time: “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been three days since my last confession.”
“And in three days you’ve managed to fall in love?”
“Ahhh.”
“Sexually in love?”
“Ohhhh.”
“With that girl on television?”
“What? Oh, her.”
“Fickle in your affections, eh, Brother Benedict? Well, you might as well tell me about it.”
So I told him about it. He already knew about the threatened destruction, so I started my story with the onset of my Traveling, the circumstances of my meeting with Eileen Flattery Bone, and the effect on my brain — waking and sleeping — ever since. His little breathing sounds of exasperation and impatience faded away as I went on, and at the end he was unusually soft-voiced and even-tempered. “Brother Benedict,” he said, “I believe you are suffering from what has been called culture shock. I did an article on it once for a missionary magazine.”
“I didn’t know you were a writer, Father Banzolini.”
“In a modest way,” he said modestly.
“I’d like to read something of yours.”
“I’ll bring around some tearsheets,” he said, in an offhand way. “But to get back to culture shock. It happens to some people when they are suddenly thrust out of the culture, the environment, that they know and in which they are comfortable. There were volunteers in the Peace Corps, for instance, who underwent culture shock when suddenly flown to some remote Central American village, where all at once everything was different. Right down to the basics, the attitudes about food and sex and dead bodies. Some people just cease to function, they become catatonic. Others lose touch with reality, they try to force reality to conform with their preconceptions about what society should be like. There are a thousand kinds of symptoms, but the cause is always the same. Culture shock.”
I had the feeling I needn’t read Father Banzolini’s article on the subject, that I’d just heard his article on the subject. “That’s very interesting,” I said.
“It’s a problem in the missionary field, as you can guess,” he said. “And I believe it’s what happened to you, Brother Benedict. You had become so settled in your way of life inside these walls in the last ten years that you couldn’t take a sudden transfer to a totally different environment. In the language of the street, it shook you up.”