“I see.” He turned and walked again, and I fell in beside him, and we walked in silence together as far as the front wall, and reversed.
I said, “I think she’s emotionally involved with me, too.” Then I frowned and moved my arms around and stared out at the courtyard on our left, and said, “At least I think so. I’m not sure of it, but that’s what I think.”
Brother Oliver shook his head, saying, “I wish you knew a shorter phrase than ‘emotionally involved,’ Brother Benedict. It’s like talking with some giddy version of Brother Clemence.”
“I do know a shorter phrase, Brother Oliver,” I told him, “but I’m afraid to use it.”
“Oh.” He gave me a quick speculative look, then studied his feet once more. “All right, then,” he said. “Whatever you think best.” His voice sounded muffled all at once, as though he were talking into a turtleneck sweater.
“Thank you, Brother Oliver,” I said.
We walked together. We reached the cemetery arch and reversed. Brother Oliver said, “So you think she is also emotionally involved.”
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “Maybe she’s just confused, the way I am.”
“And is that what she wanted to talk with you about last night?”
“Oh, no, not at all. She wanted to talk about the monastery.”
“And to say what about it, Brother Benedict?”
I said, “She told me the arguments her father used to justify the sale.”
“His arguments?” Brother Oliver sounded more intrigued than surprised. He said, “I hadn’t realized he’d done any arguing on the subject.”
“Apparently so, Brother. At least with his family.”
“Ah.” That seemed to explain things.
I said, “His argument is mostly function, by the way.”
“Eh?”
“Function,” I repeated. “The claim that usefulness is the primary virtue, that all other considerations are secondary, and that this particular space would be most usefully employed as an office building.”
“A barbaric set of values,” he said.
“Yes, Brother.”
He mused, then said, “Was Miss Flattery reporting this argument favorably?”
“No. She wanted me to counteract it.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Really? Why was that?”
“She said she could help us,” I explained, “but she wouldn’t do it unless she was convinced it was right to go against her father.”
“Help us? In what way?”
“I don’t know, Brother. She wouldn’t be more specific, she only said she could definitely help us if she chose. But first I had to defeat her father’s argument.”
He nodded. “And did you?”
“No, Brother.”
We had reached the front wall again. We reversed, and Brother Oliver said, “Because of your emotional involvement, Brother Benedict?”
“Probably,” I admitted. “And then we were mugged,” I added, as though that felony had cut me down in brilliant mid-debate.
“Yes, of course,” he said. “And did you suggest to her that she talk to one of the other residents instead?”
“Yes, Brother.”
That answer surprised him. “You did?”
“I really didn’t want any of this to happen, Brother Oliver,” I said.
“I know you didn’t,” he said, his sympathy showing again. “This all came on you too suddenly and too forcefully. You weren’t ready for it.”
“Father Banzolini calls it culture shock,” I told him.
“You’ve discussed this with Father Banzolini?”
“Only certain aspects of it,” I said. “In confession.”
“Oh.”
“Father Banzolini thinks I’m temporarily insane.”
Brother Oliver gave me a look of utter astonishment. “He what?”
“Well, he didn’t phrase it that way,” I said. “He just said I wasn’t responsible for my actions at the moment.”
Brother Oliver shook his head. “I’m not entirely convinced a Freudian priest is a viable hybrid.”
“I may not actually be insane,” I conceded, “but I’m certainly confused. I don’t have any idea what I should do.”
“Do? About what?”
I spread my hands. “About my future.”
He stopped. Frowning at me he said, “Are you seriously considering an involvement with this woman? And I don’t mean an emotional involvement, I mean an involvement.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I want to stay here, I want things to be the way they used to be, but I just don’t know what to do about it. I need you to tell me, Brother Oliver.”
“Tell you? What to do with your life?”
“Yes, please.”
We came to the arch. Brother Oliver stopped, but did not reverse. Instead, he stood there for half a minute or so, gazing at the stones over long-departed residents. There were about thirty graves in our small cemetery, all from the nineteenth century. These days, we bury our deceased residents in a Catholic cemetery in Queens, next to the Long Island Expressway. The linkages with Travel are distressing, but unavoidable.
Brother Oliver sighed. He turned to me and said, “I can’t tell you what to do, Brother Benedict.”
“You can’t?”
“No one can. Your own mind has to tell you what to do.”
“My mind can’t tell me anything,” I said. “Not the way I am now.”
“But how could anyone else decide whether or not you’ve lost your vocation? This woman is testing the strength of your commitment to God and to this life. The answer has to come from within, it has to.”
“There’s nothing within me but mush,” I said.
“Brother Benedict,” he said, “you are not tied by vows the way a priest is. That gives you more freedom, but also more responsibility. You have to make your own decisions.”
“I’ve given a vow of obedience,” I pointed out.
“But that’s the only one,” he said. “You’ve made no vows of chastity or poverty. You have vowed only to remain obedient to the laws of God and of this Order and of the Abbot.”
“That’s you,” I said.
“And my commandment to you,” he said, “is to search your mind and your heart, and do what is best for yourself. If that involves either temporary or permanent separation from this Order, you should do so. The decision is yours.”
The buck stops here. “Yes, Brother,” I said.
There’s a flow, a cyclical movement to the life of the monastery, and the points of the cycle primarily involve religion and work. Our religious activities, Mass and prayer and times of meditation, are mostly recurrent on a daily basis, but our work assignments tend to cycle at a more stately pace. While some tasks are in the permanent care of residents peculiarly suited to them — Brother Leo being our cook, for example, Brother Jerome being our superintendent-handyman, Brother Dexter handling our paperwork — most job assignments rotate among us all. I had been free of work assignments for nearly two weeks when suddenly my turn came around for two in a row. At the evening meal on that Sunday, a few hours after my talk with Brother Oliver, I was on kitchen duty with Brothers Leo and Eli, and on Tuesday I had a stint in the office.
The kitchen job was simple but unappealing; one obeyed all of Brother Leo’s barked commands about batter beating and water boiling and so on, and at the end of the meal one washed all the dishes. Such tasks left plenty of time for meditation, and all at once I had more than enough to meditate about. Washing spinach for the salad should certainly be conducive, if anything is, to dispassionate thought.
The outside world eats three meals a day, of course, but we feel content with two. We never have breakfast till we’ve been up and about for at least three hours, and then that first meal is hearty enough to carry us till the evening, when we have a second meal just as hearty. It’s a healthy regimen, and it assures we’ll have a good appetite every time we enter the refectory.