Suddenly the pine door was flung open, and an old black man with a cloud of white hair and great white eyebrows came out and walked straight toward him. His beard was white too, but close-cropped, as if he shaved it once a month or kept it trimmed with scissors. He wore a clean but ragged gray cassock, and sandals that appeared to be made of straw. He was gaunt, almost a skeleton with tight muscles strung along the bones, and hollow cheeks and hollow abdomen that hinted at much fasting. He walked with a lively limp, using a short cane heavy enough to be an effective club. When he came out the door, he was looking straight at Blacktooth in the shadows, and he came right toward him, wearing a thin smile and running his luminous gray-blue eyes over the small and timid figure beforehim.
“Deacon Brownpony has told me something about you, son. May I call you ‘Nimmy’? You have left the monastery for good, is that so? Why?”
“Well, I began to feel I was wearing cangue and chains, Father. But in the end, they threw me out.”
Amen Specklebird took his arm and led him across the trail toward his hermitage.
“And now you have lost your cangue and chains, yes?” They entered a room which with its bare stone walls reminded the monk of Leibowitz Abbey. There was a fire at one end and a private altar at the other.
Blacktooth thought about the priest’s question. “No. If anything, they fit tighter than ever, Father.”
“Who tightened them? Who chained you in the first place? Was it the abbot? Was it your brothers? Was it the Holy Church?”
“Of course not, Father! I know that I did it to myself.”
“Ahh.” He sat quietly. “And now you want to know how to free yourself?”
“‘Ye shall know the truth and…’” He shrugged. “One must know the truth to be free.”
“So. And what is the truth that you already know?”
“The truth was made flesh, and dwelt among us. We must cling to him alone.”
“Cling to him? Nimmy, Jesus came to be sacrificed for our sins. We offer him, immolated, on the altar. And still, you want to cling to him?” He laughed, and produced a stole. “Are you ready to confess now?”
Blacktooth delayed. “Could we talk awhile first?”
“Of course, but what would you talk about?”
He groped for a subject. Anything to postpone the moment. “Well, I don’t understand what you mean about the sacrifice.”
“To sacrifice Jesus is to give him up, of course.”
The monk started. “But I gave up everything for Jesus!”
“Oh, did you! Except Jesus, perhaps, good simpleton?”
“If I give up Jesus, I will have nothing at all!”
“Well, that might be perfect poverty, but for one thing: that nothing—you should get rid of that too, Nimmy.”
Blacktooth became bewildered. “How is it possible for a priest of Christ to talk like this?”
Specklebird pointed to his mouth and worked his jaw mockingly in silence. Then, without anger, he lightly slapped the monk’s face. “Wake up!” he said.
Blacktooth sat down on a hard bench. He had been reciting formulas, trying to say the right thing for the old man, who was now laughing.
“You are a rich fellow,” said Specklebird. “Your riches are your cangue and chains.”
“I have nothing but the robe on my back; the g’tara which I made for myself was stolen,” the monk protested with some irritation. “I don’t even have a rosary, now. Also stolen. 1 eat other people’s food, and sleep in other people’s quarters. I don’t even piss in my own pot. I promised to be poor for Christ. If I’ve broken that vow, I don’t know how. I broke the others.”
“Are you proud of this unbroken vow?”
“Yes! I mean no! Oh, I see, I’m rich in pride, is that it?” Amen Specklebird sat down across from him. They watched each other in the dim light. The old man’s gaze was like that of a child, curious, open, pleasant, expectant. He snapped his fingers, unexpectedly loud. Blacktooth did not jump at the snap, but his gaze in turn was wary, and he looked away to the left. Specklebird continued to watch him in silence.
Still delaying, Blacktooth began to talk rapidly, about life at Leibowitz Abbey, not about his sins as sins, but about his frustrations, his loves and friendships, his devotion to the founder of his order and to the Mother of God, his vocation and how he lost it, and his homesickness for the very place he had tried so hard to escape. He kept pausing, hoping the hermit listening to his story would offer advice, but the old ordinary of Our Lady of the Desert only nodded his understanding from time to time. Blacktooth became embarrassed by his own self-pity and stopped talking. A long silence passed between them.
After a while, Specklebird began to speak softly.
“Nimmy, the only hard thing about following Christ is that you must throw away all values, even the value you place on following Christ. And to throw them away doesn’t mean sell them, or sell them out. To be truly poor in spirit, discard your loves and your hates, your good and bad taste, your preferences. Your wish to be, or not be, a monk of Christ. Get rid of it. You can’t even see the path, if you care where it goes. Free from values, you can see it plain as day. But if you have even one little wish, a wish to be sinless, or a wish to change your dirty clothes, the path vanishes. Did you ever think that maybe the cangue and chains you wear are your own precious values, Nimmy? Your vocation or lack of it? Good and evil? Ugliness and beauty? Painand pleasure? These are values, and these are heavy weights. They make you stop and consider, and that’s when you lose the way of the Lord.”
Blacktooth listened patiently, fascinated at first, but drawing himself up, becoming distraught. He felt the old man was trying to undermine everything he knew and felt about religion. Was this kind of talk the reason the bishop had forced Amen Specklebird to retire?
“The Devil!” the monk said softly.
If Specklebird heard it as an accusation, he ignored it. “Him? Throw him away, dump him in the slit trench with the excrement, throw quicklime on him.”
“Jesus!”
“Him too, oh yes, into the trench with that fucker! If he makes you rich.”
Blacktooth gasped. “Jesus? Whom do I follow? Then why follow? It’s blasphemy, what you say.”
“You know, it’s all right to pick up Christ’s cross and carry it, Nimmy, but if you think you get anything special because of it, you’re selling the cross, and you’re a rich man. The path is without reason. Just follow.”
“Without wanting to?”
“Sine cupidine.”
“Then why?”
“Your wish for a why is the cangue and chains.”
“I just don’t understand.”
“Good. Remember it, Nimmy, but don’t understand it. That spoils you.”
Blacktooth felt dizzy. Was the old man quite sane?
Amen Specklebird laughed gently. “Now for your confession, if you still want me to hear it.”