You can't always count on it anymore, Ahmad says, not the way things are these days. Just once in a great while can you find him at it… But it's a sight, isn't it, Joe? Something worth looking for and waiting for and hoping will happen, our very own Stern gazing out through the eye of the Sphinx at dawn. . and it doesn't happen much these days, according to Ahmad, so we were lucky to catch Stern at it. . very lucky. Unless Stern knew you were arriving in Cairo. Could he have known that?
No, I didn't tell him.
And Bletchley wouldn't have said anything to him?
Oh no.
Are you sure?
Yes, positive.
Liffy hummed. He smiled.
Lovely then. It's chance, pure chance, and I was the one who was able to show it to you. . Ahhh, the wonders of life, the miracles. Sometimes I feel as light as a dove on the dawn. Ahhh. . .
— 7-
Monastery
Liffy was surprised when Joe told him he had a daytime meeting coming up with Bletchley. According to Liffy, the Monks were notorious for always conducting their briefings and meetings at night.
Strictly at night, said Liffy. Darkness is the sea they swim in. Do you realize that in all my time here, I've never once been to the Monastery except at night? But if Bletchley's really taking you into the desert to be briefed by Whatley, in broad daylight, at least you may not have to watch those awful films they show out there.
Films? asked Joe, pouring himself more gin. The two of them were sitting in the small crumbling courtyard behind the Hotel Babylon, a narrow enclosure strewn with rubble and old newspapers and piles of ancient debris.
On the dangers of venereal disease, said Liffy. Those same films they show back in England to young army recruits before they're sent overseas. Noses missing. . no eyes. . holes in heads going nowhere.
Just terrible. When you arrive at the Monastery at night you have to sit through a couple of those films in the cloisters first, before you're allowed inside. Ugliness by starlight, in other words, to put you in the appropriate frame of mind before you enter the black bowels of the place. It's a kind of ritual they have out there, and not the only one from what I hear. . Just blackness everywhere. Disgusting.
Joe sipped his gin, thinking how the mere mention of the Monastery always disturbed Liffy so profoundly, in a way Liffy himself seemed unable to explain.
But what is it that bothers you so much about the Monastery? asked Joe.
Liffy shuddered and clasped his hands together, twisting his fingers around themselves. For a moment he stared at his fingers in horror, as if their slithering movements reflected his feelings.
But that's just it, Joe, I don't know, I don't know. When you first arrive out there everything seems normal enough. You look around you and it seems to be just an old fortress or an old monastery or whatever it was, that an intelligence unit has made its headquarters. Just a secret place where agents come and go in the darkness, carrying out the commonplace horrors of wartime. But somehow there's more to it than that, a sickness of the soul, and after a while you begin to sense it.
Well can you give me an example, Liffy? Something specific that makes you feel that way?
Liffy waved his hands in the air.
Take the maps, for instance, those copies of maps from the fourth century. Whatley has them all over the walls in one of the cells, along with contemporary maps showing the German-occupied areas of Europe and North Africa. And there's a copy of the Athanasian Creed, prominently displayed, with symbols in the margins that correspond to symbols on the maps, both the ancient ones and the modern ones, as if there were some sort of connection between the two. .
Liffy suddenly began to wheeze, struggling to breathe, the same trouble he had as when he talked about the Nazis or Germany.
What do you mean, Liffy? A connection between what and what? I think you've lost me.
Between the German armies and the Athanasian Creed.
I've heard of the Creed, Liffy, but what does it have to do with the maps? What's the connection?
Exactly. That's what's so strange about it all. And frankly, I've always avoided thinking about those maps, just as I've always avoided the implications of those disgusting films they show out there. But would you like me to try to make some sense out of it for you?
Joe nodded. Although Liffy had made it clear more than once that he hated to talk about the Monastery, he began to do so now in a kind of monotone, slipping into what was almost a trance.
Well first of all, murmured Liffy, the Creed grew out of the Arian controversy, didn't it, a great crisis in the early days of Christianity. The Arians took their name from Arius, the Libyan theologian who taught that Christ couldn't be both human and divine. Instead they claimed that Christ was human only, and it took some time before the Church was able to overcome the heresy, stating its position in the Creed.
Arianism was pagan to the core and the Germanic tribes embraced it especially, so there were great wars as a result. The Roman Emperor Justinian had to destroy the Vandal armies in North Africa and the Ostrogoths in Italy, and campaign against the Visigothic kingdom in Spain, because they continued to adhere to the heretical view. And who, by chance, was the Church father in faraway Egypt who was so influential in helping to overcome the heresy?
St Anthony, said Joe despite himself, his head beginning to whirl.
St Anthony, repeated Liffy in his trance. The same St Anthony who'd gone into the Egyptian desert and become the founder of monasticism. And didn't all of that occur in the fourth century after Christ? And what, pray, is Whatley doing out there in the desert today, connecting Hitler's armies with the Arian controversy? Doesn't the Nazi madness have to do with A-r-y-a-n-s? And isn't this the twentieth century, not the fourth century? And don't fifteen hundred years count for anything in human history? Or is the answer to that merely a shrug and the sad whisper, Not always, my child.
Joe was stunned. For a long time he sat gazing at Liffy, his thoughts tumbling and racing.
But what are you implying? he finally asked. What does any of it mean?
I can't imagine what it means in its entirety, said Liffy, but I should add that Whatley can be a very charming man when he wants to be. A trifle erudite and also rather preoccupied with his own concerns, unlike the rest of us. But charming. . So the straightforward facts concerning the Monastery seem to be these. St Anthony and Whatley are out there in the desert with their secret armies of monks and Monks, and they appear to be mounting campaigns against heresies traditionally adhered to by the Germanic tribes, while all the while the Vandals and the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths maraud in the fourth century, and the Nazis viciously replay the ancient barbaric performance in the twentieth century.
Whatley, said Joe. Could you put your imagination to work on him for a moment?
You want conjecture, you mean? Not facts?
Yes.
Well if I had to try to understand what Whatley is truly up to out there in the desert, I think I might ask myself if it's a case of Whatley believing the Germans are denying the divine part of our natures? And if Whatley thus sees these new barbarians, the Nazis, as simply the old barbarians dressed up in snappier uniforms, with black and leather and death's-heads everywhere, who embrace the heretical Arian doctrine in the same way as the Germanic tribes did fifteen hundred years ago? And whether Whatley assumes, therefore, that he's some kind of latter-day St Anthony doing righteous battle against the evil Germanic heresiarchs?