“He’s never met me,” I said and wondered why. (To explain that the personal reasons which make you want to put friends at a distance had nothing to do with Calkins and me? But that’s not what it sounded like.) I let it go.
A bell bonged.
“Oh, I guess—” he glanced at the tower—“Sister Ellen and Brother Paul didn’t forget after all,” and smiled (at some personal joke?) while I watched a model of the monastery I didn’t even realize I’d made—the three buildings inhabited solely by the Father, Calkins, and this one here—break down and reassemble into: a community of brothers and sisters, a small garden, goats and chickens, matins, complines, vespers…
“Hey,” I said.
He looked at me.
“You go tell Mr. Calkins the Kid is here, and find out if he wants to see me. If he doesn’t, I’ll come back some other time—now that I know where this place is.”
He considered, unhappily. “Well, all right.” He turned.
“Hey.”
He looked back.
“Who are you?”
“Randy…eh, Brother Randolf.”
“Okay.”
He went off around the corner, with the echo of the bell.
Beneath the chipped keystone the arched door looked as though (a slough of rust below the wrist-thick bolt) it hadn’t been opened all year.
And I got back on my trip: I had looked so long for this place; finding it had been accomplished with no care for the goal itself. For minutes I wondered if I couldn’t get everything in my life like that. When I finally worked out a sane answer (“No.”), I laughed (aloud) and felt better.
“They’re all—”
I turned from the miasmas of Holland Lake.
“—all finished for the afternoon,” Brother Randy said from the corner. “He’ll talk with you. Mr. Calkins said he’ll talk with you a little while. The Father says it’s all right.” (I started toward him and he still said:) “You just come with me.” I think he was surprised it had worked out like that. I was surprised too; but he was unhappy about it.
“Here,” was a white wood lawn chair on a stone porch with columns, along the side of the building.
I sat and gave him a grin.
“They’re finished, you see,” he offered. “For the afternoon. And the Father says it’s all right for him to talk now, if it isn’t for too long.”
I think he wanted to smile.
I wonder if that thing up under his hood hurt.
“Thanks,” I said.
He left.
I looked around the patchy grass, up and down the porch, at the beige stone; inset beside me in the wall was a concrete grill, cast in floral curls. Once I stood up and looked through it close. Another grill behind it was set six inches out of alignment, so you couldn’t see inside. I was thinking it was probably for ventilation, when my knee (as I moved across the stone flowers trying to see) hit the chair and the feet scraped, loudly.
“Excuse me…?”
I pulled back a few inches. “Hello?” I said, surprised.
“I didn’t realize you were out there yet—until I heard you move.”
“Oh.” I stepped back from the grill. “I thought you were going to come out here on the porch…” (He chuckled.) “Well, I guess this is okay.” I pulled my chair around.
“Good. I’m glad you find this acceptable. It’s rather unusual for the Father to allow someone seeking an understanding of the monastic community—as they describe the process here—to have any intercourse at all with people outside the walls. Converse with members is limited. But though I’ve been here several days, I don’t officially start my course of study till sundown this evening. So he’s made an exception.”
I sat on the arm of the lawn chair. “Well,” I said, “if it goes down this evening…”
He chuckled again. “Yes. I suppose so.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I guess the best way to describe it is to say that I’m about to embark on a spiritual course of study. I’m not too sure how long it will last. You catch me just in time. Oh—I must warn you: You may ask some questions that I’m not allowed to answer. I’ve been instructed by the Father that, when asked them, I am simply to remain silent until you speak again.”
“Don’t worry,” I said, “I won’t pry into any secrets abut your devotional games here,” wishing I sort of could.
But the voice said: “No, not questions that have anything to do with the monastery.”
And (While he considered further explanation?) I considered the tower exploding slowly, thrusting masonry on blurred air too thin to float brick and bolts and bellrope.
“I don’t think there’s anything about the monastery you could ask I wouldn’t be allowed to answer—if I know the answers. But part of the training is a sort of self-discipline: Any questions that sparks certain internal reactions in me, causes me to think certain thoughts, to feel certain feelings, rather than rush into some verbal response that, informative or not, is still put up mainly to repress those thoughts and feelings, I’m supposed to experience them fully in the anxiety of silence.”
“Oh,” I said. “What sort of thoughts and feelings?” After ten quiet seconds, I laughed. “I’m sorry. I guess that’s sort of like not thinking about the white hippopotamus when you’re changing the boiling water into gold.”
“Rather.”
“It sounds interesting. Maybe I’ll try it some day,” and felt almost like I did the morning I’d told Reverend Amy I’d drop in on one of her services. “Hey, thanks for the note. Thanks for the party, too.”
“You’re most welcome. If you got my letter, then I must restrain from apologizing anymore. Though I’m not surprised at meeting you, I wasn’t exactly expecting it now. Dare I ask if you enjoyed yourself—though perhaps it’s best just to let it lie.”
“It was educational. But I don’t think it had too much to do with your not showing up. All the scorpions had a good time—I brought the whole nest.”
“I should like to have been there!”
“Everybody got drunk. The only people who didn’t enjoy themselves probably didn’t deserve to. Didn’t you get any reports back from your friends?” First I thought I’d asked one of those questions.
“…Yes…Yes, I did. And some of my friends are extremely colorful gossips—sometimes I wonder if that’s not how I chose them. I trust nothing occurred to distract you from any writing you’re engaged in at present. I was quite sincere about everything I said concerning your next collection in my letter.”
“Yeah.”
“After some of my friends—my spies—finished their account of the evening, Thelma—do you remember her?—said practically the same thing you just did, almost word for word, about anyone who didn’t enjoy himself not deserving to. When she said it, I suspected she was just trying to make me feel better for my absence. But here it is, corroborated by the guest of honor. I best not question it further. I hadn’t realized you were a friend of Lanya’s.”
“That’s right,” I said. “She used to know you.”
“An impressive young lady both then and, apparently, from report, now. As I was saying, after my spies finished their account, I decided that you are even more the sort of poet Bellona needs than I’d thought before, in every way—except in literary quality which, as I explained in my letter, I am, and intend to remain, unfit to judge.”
“The nicest way to put it, Mr. Calkins,” I said, “is I’m just not interested in the ways you mean. I never was interested in them. I think they’re a load of shit anyway. But…”
“You are aware,” he said after my embarrassed silence, “the fact that you feel that way makes you that much more suited for your role in just the ways I mean. Every time you refuse another interview to the Times, we shall report it, as an inspiring example of your disinterest in publicity, in the Times. Thus your image will be further propagated—Of course you haven’t refused any, up till now. And you said ‘But…’” Calkins paused. “‘But’ what?”
I felt really uncomfortable on the chair arm. “But…I feel like I may be lying again.” I looked down at the creases of my belly, crossed with chain.