Brother Leo cooks all the meals, not because the rest of us aren’t willing to do our share of the work but because he isn’t willing to eat anything that any of us might prepare. He made that point clear in several unforgettable conversations shortly after joining the Order (unforgettable to those present at the time, who have repeated the good Brother’s remarks almost verbatim to later-comers like myself), but he’s always been willing to take on assistants and bully them. Thaddeus and Peregrine today at breakfast, for instance, and Eli and myself at dinner.
I got myself in trouble with Brother Leo right away, for what he grumbled was “wool gathering.” And by golly, he was right. I hadn’t even been brooding on my troubles; far from it. In fact, I had been standing there oblivious, watching Brother Eli peel carrots. He did it as though he were whittling, the little curls of carrot spreading around him exactly like wood shavings, and I began to be convinced the twelve Apostles would soon be emerging from that bunch of carrots; twelve little orange Apostles, edible and crunchy.
“Brother Benedict! You’re wool gathering!”
“Ak!” And back to the spinach I went, salad gathering.
The Apostles did not after all appear, nor did the solution to my problem. The meal got itself made, and it got itself eaten, and the dishes got themselves washed, but my head remained a mess. Every time I tried to think about Eileen Flattery Bone my brain began to jiggle and fuzz like the television set when a plane goes over. And every time I tried to think about myself in a future outside these monastery walls my brain simply turned to snow, and then the snow melted. So much for meditation, and so much for Sunday.
Monday was a free day for me, meaning a day in which I could walk in circles in the courtyard and fail to think. I could also enter the chapel to ask God for assistance, and then realize I didn’t know what assistance I wanted. The strength to stay? Or the strength to go?
For the others in our community, Monday was the day we learned we could hope for nothing from the Landmarks Commission. Brother Hilarius apparently spent much of the day on the telephone, and he reported the result to us all at dinner. Brother Leo and today’s slaveys — Clemence and Quillon — came soapy-armed from the kitchen to listen, and Brother Hilarius began by telling us we couldn’t hope for the Landmarks Commission to designate us a landmark because they’d already rejected us seven years ago.
A lot of people said, “That’s impossible.” Brother Oliver said, “We would have known about it. Why wouldn’t we have known about it?”
“We’re not the owners,” Brother Hilarius pointed out. “The Flatterys were informed, and they attended the hearing to oppose the designation. I suppose they should have informed us themselves, but we won’t get very far with that argument seven years later.”
Brother Clemence, wiping his soapy hands and arms on everybody’s napkins, said, “What was the reason for the refusal?”
Brother Flavian thought he already knew. “So the Flatterys have friends in high places, eh?”
“That wasn’t the reason,” Brother Hilarius told him.
“Then what was it?”
“We have a dull facade.”
Everybody looked at him. Brother Peregrine said, “We’re a monastery, not a burlesque house.”
“But that was the reason,” Brother Hilarius said. “And if you think about it, it’s true. We do have a dull facade.”
What a thing to be accused of; a dull facade. Brother Quillon, who in fact did not have a dull facade, said, “What does that mean? Facade? I just don’t understand it.”
“The Landmarks law at that time,” Brother Hilarius explained, “limited the commission to consideration of a building’s facade, the outer walls facing the street. Inside, you could turn a place into a roller skating rink, but if you kept that nice Federal facade then everything was fine.”
Brother Oliver said, “Wait, let me understand this. Does the Landmarks Commission preserve buildings or front walls?”
“Front walls.” Brother Hilarius spread his hands. “The Commission itself wants to do more, but the real estate people get in and lobby against the laws, so they come up with compromises. And that one said the Landmarks Commission could not designate a building on any basis other than its street facade. Not an architecturally interesting interior, not a useful function, not anything at all except facade. And our facade is dull.”
Now that he’d explained it, nobody wanted to argue the point. In truth, our facade was dull. Since the Blessed Zapatero had been constructing a retreat from the world, he and his fellow builders had devoted their attentions mainly to the interior of our building. Facing Park Avenue was a blank gray stone wall one hundred feet long and twenty-five feet high. It contained two doors on the first floor and three smallish windows on the second floor, and that was it. From the street one couldn’t see, one couldn’t even guess at the existence of, our courtyard, our cloisters, our chapel, our cemetery or anything else.
Brother Clemence, having made a sopping pest of himself with everybody’s napkins, now broke our grim silence by saying, “Wait a minute. Hilarius, didn’t you say that was the law at that time?”
“Yes.”
“Meaning it’s been changed?”
“Not in any way that can help us.”
“What’s the change?”
Brother Hilarius said, “In 1973, the law was changed to permit the consideration of some interiors.”
Brother Clemence brightened, saying, “Oh, really? I’d love to hear a law that could open up consideration to some interiors and not include this interior.” His spreading (dry) arms suggested a magnificence in our surroundings that was perhaps slightly overdone.
Many of us felt the same way, and I could see hope entering the faces around me. But Brother Hilarius was already shaking his head. “The interiors to be considered,” he said, “in the direct language of the law, are those ‘customarily open or accessible to the public.’ If there’s one thing we’re not, Brother Clemence, it’s open or accessible to the public.”
“Then it looks as though,” Brother Clemence said, “I’ll just have to save us myself, with my secondary documents.”
Several of us turned to ask him how he was doing, and he gave us strong assurances. “Coming right along,” he told us. “It’s merely a matter of constructing the strongest possible profile.” But somehow his air of self-confidence wasn’t totally convincing.
Tuesday I was on assignment in the office, another task which left the mind free to meditate. Though in my case the word wasn’t meditate. In my case the word was stew.
There are actually two offices in the monastery, being the Abbot’s Office and the Abbey Office. The Abbot’s Office was where we’d been having our meetings and where Brother Clemence was now going through the chaos of our filing system. The Abbey Office, also called the scriptorium (inaccurately, I might say; a scriptorium in the old days was a room where monks hand-copied manuscripts), was at the front of the building, containing a desk and a telephone and a visitor’s bench. Our rare incoming phone calls and in-person visitors were dealt with in this room. Our petty cash (all of our cash was petty) was also kept here, to be tapped by me on Saturday evenings for the price of a Sunday Times. One of us was usually on duty here afternoons and evenings, and Tuesday was my turn.
I spent the first hour or so sitting at the desk, leafing through the airplane magazines Brother Leo keeps in the bottom drawer there, and from time to time mooning into the middle distance, my brain turning in fretful circles like a dog trying to figure out how to lie down.