All of this cogitation was entirely self-centered, concerned only with my own future. I had virtually abandoned all thought about Dimp and the demolition deadline fast approaching. We had only sixteen days left to save ourselves, but I spared that fact hardly a thought.
Nor had I done anything about my suspicion that one of the residents must have stolen the original lease. I’d mentioned the idea to nobody, and in fact I didn’t even think about it myself. It was too grim to contemplate.
Whom would I suspect, out of my fifteen fellow monks? Brother Oliver? Brothers Clemence or Dexter or Hilarius? Brother Zebulon? Brothers Mallory or Jerome? Brothers Valerian or Quillon or Peregrine? Brothers Leo or Flavian? Brothers Silas or Eli or Thaddeus? There wasn’t one of them I could suspect. How could I think about such a thing?
And my own problems did seem so much more acute. Brooding about them, it occurred to me at one point that I hadn’t been considering Eileen Flattery’s mental state in all this. Shouldn’t I care what she was thinking? Didn’t it matter that I might leave this monastery and then discover she didn’t want me after all?
Well, no. In some strange way, she wasn’t what really mattered. Brother Oliver had been right about that; her existence was the form of the test I was undergoing, but my vocation was the subject. Whether Eileen Flattery wanted me or not had finally nothing to do with my staying or going. The question was, would I remain Brother Benedict, or would I go back to being Charles Rowbottom? Everything else was confusion and irrelevancy.
It was nice to have the question defined, of course, but it would have been even nicer if it had come equipped with its own answer. I was continuing to ponder that little black spot in my thinking when all at once the street door opened and in came a lot of loud traffic noise and a tiny forceful man who slammed the door on the noise and then said, “All right, I’m here. I’m a busy man, let’s get this over with.”
I’ve been snapped back from meditation by the exterior world before, but never quite like this. In the first place, that street door was almost never opened, most of us preferring to use the courtyard door instead in our rare expeditions outside. In the second place, I’d assumed the street door was locked, since it usually was. And in the third place, who was this forceful little man?
I must have been gaping. The little man frowned at me and snapped, “You an unfortunate?” He darted quick impatient glances around the room, apparently looking for somebody swifter to talk to. “Where’s the head man? Oliver.”
“Brother Oliver? Who are you?”
His look grew even more impatient. “Dwarfmann,” he said. “This Abbot wants a face-to-face. I’m here.” He tapped a watch which was nervously displaying skinny red numbers on a black background: 2:27, it trembled, and the tiny brisk fingers tapped it, and it changed its mind. 2:28. “Time flies,” Dwarfmann commented.
Dwarfmann?
Dwarfmann! I jumped to my feet, displacing airplane magazines. “Roger Dwarfmann?”
He couldn’t believe how I was wasting his flying time. “How many Dwarfmanns you expecting today?”
“None,” I said. Then, “Wait. Yes, yes of course. Mr. Dwarfmann. Why don’t you, uh, sit down.” I looked around, my brain ascramble, trying to work out what piece of furniture people used when sitting down. “On that,” I said, pointing, spying the bench. Then I remembered its name. “That bench,” I said. “I’ll go tell uh, I’ll find Brother — I’ll be right back.”
He frowned after me as I fled the room. I couldn’t help it if he thought I was an unfortunate; I’d been startled, that’s all. I’m not very good at being startled. In the last ten years, before all this current craziness began to happen, I lost all of my training at being startled. There isn’t all that much of a sudden nature that takes place in a monastery. Once, about six years ago, Brother Quillon tripped on the door jamb coming into the refectory and dumped a tray containing twelve dishes of ice cream on me, and of course the other week Brother Jerome had dropped that wet washcloth on my head, but other than that my life had been fairly placid for a long long time. It wasn’t as though I were a cabdriver or something.
Brother Oliver was not in his office, though Brothers Clemence and Dexter were, both of them elbow deep in paper and looking mildly hysterical. I asked them if they knew where Brother Oliver was, and Brother Clemence said, “Try the library.”
“Fine.”
“Or the calefactory,” said Brother Dexter.
Brother Clemence looked at him. “The calefactory? What would he be doing in there?”
“I saw him in there just the other day,” Brother Dexter said.
Brother Clemence said, “But what would he be doing in there now?”
“Thank you,” I told them both.
They ignored me. Brother Dexter said to Brother Clemence. “I just said he could be in there.”
I hurried on, hearing their voices rising somewhat behind me.
Brother Oliver was not in the library. Brother Silas was sitting there, reading his book — when joining this Order, he had donated to our library fifteen remaindered copies of I’m No Saint, the memoir of his life as a professional criminal, and he frequently came here to glance through one or another copy — and when I asked him about Brother Oliver he said, “He was here. I think he went upstairs.”
“Upstairs. Right.” I turned back down the hall, and then I realized I’d have to go back through the office — the one containing Roger Dwarfmann — to get to the stairs. Well, there was nothing for it.
The sounds of Brothers Clemence and Dexter in contention rippled from their doorway as I retraced my steps. I trotted back to the front office and found Roger Dwarfmann not sitting. He was standing, and he was pacing, and he was looking at his watch with the trembly red numbers. He paused to lower his eyebrows at me, but I didn’t pause at all. “Upstairs,” I said, en passant. “I’ll just be—” And up the stairs I went.
Brother Oliver’s room was second on the left. I could see it was empty through the open doorway, but I knocked anyway, and Brother Quillon came out of his own room diagonally across the hall to say, “Did you want somebody?”
“Brother Oliver.”
“I think he’s in the calefactory.”
Two votes for that suggestion. “Ah,” I said.
Brother Quillon went back into his room, leaving the door open. Starting for the stairs, I paused to look in at him and say, “What’s he doing in there?”
Brother Quillon was puzzled. “I beg your pardon?”
“Brother Oliver. In the calefactory.”
“Oh. Calisthenics,” he said.
“Calisthenics? In the calefactory?”
“Brother Mallory thought it was getting too cold in the courtyard.”
“Ah. Thank you.” And I hurried back down the stairs, wondering fretfully what little red numbers were showing by now on Roger Dwarfmann’s watch. But I really didn’t want to know.
He was pacing again. He stopped to glare at me, frowning like a rock fault, and I said, “Calefactory. I’ll go, um—” And down the hall I went again.
Brothers Clemence and Dexter were very angry at one another. I paused on the way by to close that door, not wanting Roger Dwarfmann to hear monks shouting at one another that way, and then hurried on down the hall to the calefactory.
The original idea of a calefactory was that it was a room that was kept warm in winter. Until this century, most rooms of most buildings were left unheated, and the calefactory in a monastery was where one could find heat if it was needed. The great fireplace in one wall demonstrates that this room was originally employed as its name suggests, but in more recent years it has become a general sitting room, our communal parlor. We most particularly like it in summer, perhaps, when it is one of the coolest spots in the building.