And Brother Mallory seemed to be taking it over for himself, gradually turning it into a gymnasium. Last Saturday he’d held his boxing matches here, and now his calisthenics class was spread out on the floor, raising one leg after the other with a great whiffling of robes. Brothers Valerian, Peregrine and Hilarius, looking like tipped-over wind-up dolls, with Brother Mallory marching around them and counting out the cadence.
But no Brother Oliver. I shouted out my question, breaking into Brother Mallory’s count, and while the three on the floor permitted their legs to flop and did a lot of gasping for breath. Brother Mallory mused a moment and said, “I think I saw him going into the chapel.”
Would this never end? “Thank you, Brother,” I said, and trotted out the calefactory’s side door, through the cloakroom past the sacristy, and into the chapel by the door behind the altar, where the reports of exploding knees told me Brother Zebulon was present long before I actually saw him.
Yes, there he was, sweeping the floor, and genuflecting every time he passed the center aisle. Crack! Bang! Kapow! He sounded like a Civil War battle.
Brother Oliver wasn’t here, of course. I hurried over to Brother Zebulon — adding my own rattle of gunfire when genuflecting along the way — and whispered, “Where’s Brother Oliver?”
He ignored me. I don’t think he even knew I was there.
Well. One should whisper in church, but whispering to a deaf old man is self-defeating, so I raised my voice: “Brother Zebulon!”
He dropped his broom and jumped a foot. Turning, he said, “What? What?”
“Brother Oliver,” I said. “Do you know where he is?”
He was annoyed with me, and so didn’t answer till he’d picked up his broom. Then he said, “Try the kitchen,” and turned his back on me.
I went out the far door of the chapel, intending to go through the cemetery to the cloister and thus into the kitchen, but turning out the cemetery arch I stopped and frowned and decided no. The way things were going Brother Oliver would not be in the kitchen but Brother Leo would, and he’d tell me to try the refectory, where some other Brother would tell me to try the second floor on this side — there are two separate second floors, which don’t connect — where yet another Brother would tell me to try the tower, where a passing pigeon would suggest I try the undercroft, which is the basement, back over on the other side. Directly beneath, in fact, the pacing feet of Roger Dwarfmann.
No. Enough. Leaving the cemetery, I went instead directly out to the courtyard, a big grassy area crisscrossed by stone walks and dotted with plane trees, a few struggling evergreens, a couple of birdbaths, a flower garden which was not at its best this time of year, and along the chapel wall our grape arbor. I strode now out to the middle of this space, lifted my head, and said, “BROTHER OLIVER!”
“Yes, Brother Benedict?”
He was right next to me. He came mildly around the nearest evergreen, his paintbrush and palette in his hands, and blinked gently at me, wondering what it was I wanted.
“At last,” I said. “It must be 2:43 by now, maybe even 2:44.”
“Brother Benedict? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I lied. “Roger Dwarfmann is in there.”
Brother Oliver looked pleasantly surprised, but no more. “He called?”
“He came! He’s here, right now, he’s walking up and down in the office!”
“He’s here now?” Brother Oliver fussed with his paintbrush and palette, not knowing where to put them. “In my office?”
“No, the other one. The scriptorium. Brothers Clemence and Dexter are in your office, I didn’t think I should—”
I stopped talking, because Brother Oliver had disappeared around the tree again. Following him, I saw him place his brush and palette at the feet of his latest murky Madonna, who oddly enough seemed to have been influenced by Picasso — I assume that treatment of the eyes was deliberate — and then he gathered up his skirts and trotted toward the side door, which led via a short hall to the scriptorium. I jogged after.
Dwarfmann had continued to pace. He stopped at our arrival and I tried to read those transient red numbers on his wrist, but his hands and arms were constantly involved in expansive gestures. “Well?” he said, glaring past Brother Oliver’s shoulder at me. “Well?”
Apparently I was to make introductions. “Brother Oliver,” I said. “This is Roger Dwarfmann.”
“So here you are,” Dwarfmann said. He bobbed on the balls of his feet, as though to make himself taller, and frowned severely upward at Brother Oliver’s bulk.
“Have I kept you waiting? I’m so sorry,” Brother Oliver said. “I was painting, in the courtyard. This winter light is so perfect for—”
Dwarfmann gestured that away with an impatient flick of his numerical wrist; I couldn’t see the numbers. “My days,” he said, “are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle. Let’s get down to business.”
I’m sure Brother Oliver was as taken aback as I was. The imagery, in Dwarfmann’s rattly style of speech, seemed wildly inappropriate. Then Brother Oliver said, in distinct astonishment, “Was that from Job?”
“Chapter seven, verse six,” Dwarfmann snapped. “Come, come, if you have something to say to me, say it. Our time is a very shadow that passeth away.”
“I don’t know the Apocrypha,” Brother Oliver said.
Dwarfmann gave him a thin smile. “You know it well enough to recognize it. Wisdom of Solomon, chapter two, verse five.”
“Then I can only cite One Thessalonians,” Brother Oliver said. “Chapter five, verse fourteen. Be patient toward all men.”
“Let us run with patience,” Dwarfmann or somebody said, “the race that is set before us.”
“I don’t believe,” Brother Oliver told him, “that was quite the implication of that verse in its original context.”
“Hebrews, twelve, one.” Dwarfmann shrugged. “Then how about Paul to Timothy, with its meaning intact? Be instant in season, out of season.” Again he tapped those little red numbers, and now I saw them: 2:51. I don’t know why I felt so relieved to know the exact time — something about Dwarfmann’s presence, I suppose. And he was saying, “I’m a busy man.” That couldn’t be Biblical. “My man Snopes told you all you needed to know, we’ll give you every assistance in relocation, given the circumstances we’ll go farther than the law requires. Much farther. But that wasn’t enough for you, you have to hear it from me direct. All right, you’re hearing it from me direct. We’re building on this site.”
“There is a building on this site,” Brother Oliver said.
“Not for long.”
“Why not look at it?” Brother Oliver made hospitable gestures, urging our guest to come look the place over. “Now that you’re here, why not see the place you intend to destroy?”
“Beauty is vain,” Dwarfmann said. “Proverbs, thirty-one, thirty.”
Brother Oliver began to look somewhat put out. He said, “Wot ye not what the Scripture saith? Romans, eleven.”
With that sudden thin smile again, Dwarfmann answered, “What saith the Scripture? Galatians, four.”
“Pride goeth before destruction,” Brother Oliver told him, “and an haughty spirit before a fall. Proverbs, sixteen.”