I found it easy and natural to be a true Poverello-to own nothing, to seek shelter wherever I was at nightfall, to let the Holy Spirit come into me when I was asked a complex question, or asked to declare a truth.
I knew joy when I preached my first sermon, in a piazza in Florence, with arms outstretched, eschewing, as was our custom, all squabbling about theology, and talking only of personal dedication to God. “We must be as the Christ Child-that innocent, that trusting, that good.”
Of course this had been the very wish of Francis, that we be true beggars and vagabonds speaking from the heart. But our Order was much torn by matters of interpretation. What had Francis truly meant? What kind of organization should we have? Who was truly poor? Who was truly pure?
I avoided all decisions and conclusions. I spoke aloud to Francis; I modeled my life upon him. I lost myself utterly in good works, and I cared for the sick with good results.
It was no miracle. A man would not drop his crutches and cry, “I can walk!” It manifested itself first in a talent for nursing, for bringing the dangerously ill through the fever, back from the brink. It may have been what men call natural. But I began to feel its power in a way; to learn from little things how to enhance it-that if I held the cup myself for the sick one he would fare better from the drink of water than if I let this be done by someone else.
During these early years another form of knowledge came to me: that many of my brothers in the Order did not keep the vow of chastity. Indeed, they had mistresses or went into the legal brothels in Florence, or bedded down with each other under cover of the dark. In fact, I myself was noticing beautiful boys and girls all the time, and feeling desire for them, and waking sometimes in the night with sensuous dreams. I had been fully grown by the time I reached Italy, with dark hair around the genitals and under my arms. I had always been as other men in these respects.
I remembered the words of the Franciscan in Donnelaith. “You must never touch the flesh of a woman.” I thought about this a great deal. Of course I’d come to realize that coupling led men and women to create children. And I concluded that I had been given this severe warning for one reason: so that I would not father another monster like myself.
But what sort of monster was I? I wasn’t sure anymore. My birth and origins became a torture to me in memory, a disgrace that I could not confide to a soul.
At this time too-during those first few years, as my personality formed-I began to think that certain persons were watching me, persons who knew about my imposture and would someday reveal me for what I was.
Often in the streets of Florence I saw Dutchmen, recognizable by their distinctive clothing and hats, and these men seemed always to have their eyes fixed on me. And then once an Englishman came to Assisi and stayed there a long time and came back day after day, simply to hear me preach. This was the beautiful springtime. I was telling the stories or exempla of St. Francis; and I remember the cold eyes of this man gazing upon me as I spoke.
Always I confronted these spies. I would stare at them. Sometimes I would even turn and start to walk towards them. Always they fled. Always they returned.
Meantime the question of chastity was torturing me-the question of whether or not I could do it with a woman, and whether or not a monster would be born.
There was no doubt in my mind that I wanted to do what was right in the eyes of God. It seemed a very simple matter to take a mistress, to take a lover. It seemed an immense challenge to enjoy no pleasure of the flesh at all. To live without knowing the answer to the mystery.
I chose the path of the saint.
I allowed no fire to kindle in me, and consequently there was never a blaze.
I became well known for my purity, that I had no eye for women whatsoever, and my healing became more and more accomplished, though still I did not know if it was miraculous and thought it was perhaps a matter of skill.
Another passion meantime swept me up. It was the simple idea current at the time that singing could bring the faithful to Christ, as easily perhaps as evangelical preaching. I began to write my own canticles, simple poetry which I made up, using much rhythm, and to sing these songs at informal gatherings. I much preferred singing to preaching. I was tired of hearing myself promulgate simple truths. But I never got tired of singing.
Soon people knew that when I appeared, there would be music from me-a brief song, sometimes little more than a poem recited to the stmmming of a small lute. And I played a little game of which no one else was aware-I tried to see how many days I could go with no speaking, only singing, without irritating anyone or attracting notice to my little sport.
Ten years after my arrival in Italy I was ordained. It would have come sooner if I had wanted it but my study for Holy Orders was deliberately meticulous and slow. I was all the time traveling, walking the roads, and meeting with people and greeting them with the word of God. Time did not seem important. In fact, I had no sense of hurrying towards any destiny at all.
I had become by my ordination utterly fearless of disease. I sang to those who were past all need of physical comfort. I sat in many a room where others feared to step.
But things were not perfect. They were not right. From time to time I remembered my birth with startling effect. I’d wake, sit up, think, Ah, but it’s not possible, and then lie back in the darkness, realizing of course it was possible, for I had no other mother, father, sister, brothers! I was not what others believed me to be. I would remember the Queen and the river and the Highlands, as if they were elements of a nightmare.
And sometimes it seemed that after these tumultuous moments, I would see those people following me, spying upon me more than before. Of course I faulted myself for imagining it, but the longer I thought of all this, the more strange my life became.
Then there were times when I betrayed my nature in a particular and spontaneous way. I loved the taste of milk. The Devil was always tempting me with visions of women’s breasts. Even during Lent I had to have milk, and I could not endure the fast, and the breaking of the fast for milk was my worst sin. I sometimes grasped handfuls of cheese and ate it. Any soft food was delicious to me, but the craving for cheese and milk was especially bad.
Once I wandered into a field filled with cattle. It was sunrise and no one was about. Or so I thought. I went down on my knees and drank from the udder of a cow, squirting the warm milk out of the udder right into my mouth.
When I had drunk enough I lay in the grass, staring at the sky. I felt bestial and ugly for what I had done. An old farmer came. He was in worn clothing, though neat and well mended, and his face was darkened from working in the sun.
He whispered something to me, full of fear, and ran away. I got up and ran after him, lifting my robes so that I wouldn’t trip.
“What did you say to me?” I asked him.
He then whispered something hostile, a curse perhaps, and fled away.
I was overcome with shame. This man knew I wasn’t a human being. And gradually from that day forward my deceit of those around me began to prey on my mind.
I saw the farmer again in the city. He saw me. I could have sworn I saw him with others, and that they were whispering, but this might have been fancy. I let it go. Then one morning I came out of my cell in the cloister to discover a great pitcher of fresh milk there. This froze my soul. For a moment I did not know where I was, or who, or what was happening. I knew only this was an offering, and that it had happened before and before and before. The glen, the little people, and one single giant among them walking down to the edge of the circle, and the offerings of milk. My head swam. For the first time in many many years, I saw the circle of stones, and the circles of figures, so many circles of figures, each wider than the other, and going on so far that I lost count.