A bell rang, and the pupils began folding up their napkins, putting them into small drawers under the table top.
“What happens now?” Farid asked in Arabic.
Marcel smiled slightly. “Well, in the summer vacation we have free time. We play cards or chess, or we go for walks in the yard and talk about people behind their backs. It’s prayers at ten, and then we go to bed.”
When the bell rang for the second time they stood up. A short prayer followed. Farid kept his mouth shut and looked helplessly at Gabriel, but he was one of the few who were entirely absorbed in praying. When they all crossed themselves at the end of the prayer, Gabriel became aware of his surroundings again, including Farid, and signed to him to stay in the room.
“Let’s start here,” said Gabriel, when all the others had gone. “You know the refectory now. We all eat the same food that you get, even Abbot Maximus. No one has any privileges in our order. The food is prepared here in the kitchen.” As they approached it, two elderly women in white overalls were pushing a trolley through the kitchen door and began to clear the dirty plates off the tables.
The kitchen was enormous. Several men and women were cleaning and scrubbing in it, some of them polishing up the stoves and the big white marble work surface. The floor of the kitchen, like the refectory floor, was made of polished slabs of red-tinged stone. About twenty people worked here. Farid noticed one of the cooks in particular. Her name was Josephine, and she looked out of place among the others. It didn’t seem right for her to be wearing an overall and working in the kitchen. She had blue-green eyes and fair hair, and she looked like a marble goddess. She smiled at Farid, but he soon discovered that she spoke an unattractive dialect, coughing words out with no melody to them, as if she were having a fit,
“So this is our new boy — handsome, isn’t he?” she smiled, putting her hands on her hips.
“Good evening,” said Gabriel.
“And good evening to you too, Brother Gabriel. Are we getting this handsome lad to help out here?”
Gabriel dismissed the idea with a smile. “Well, so how is Joan of Arc getting along?”
“Oh, my word, if I’d known how much work there was in it I’d have said no. Working away all day here and then rehearsing in the evening!”
“I’m sure you’re right. It’s too much even for a bundle of energy like you,” agreed Brother Gabriel sympathetically, and he went on his way with Farid. When they reached the corridor he whispered, “A very gifted woman. She was once one of the star pupils in St. Mary’s Convent, she knows French and Latin perfectly. But the porter there seduced her, and she was pregnant at the age of sixteen. So they had to get married in haste, and of course he was fired from the convent. He found another job only with difficulty, thanks to the kindness of Abbot Maximus, who got him work in a horse-breeder’s stables. But the man was useless and lazy, and a week later he was out on his ear.”
Farid was surprised not just by the frank way Gabriel spoke, but by the decided tone of his judgement.
“And this is our treasure, the library,” Gabriel interrupted his thoughts. “One of the best in the Middle East.” He pushed the heavy wooden door open. Farid’s eyes were bright with amazement. He had never seen such a library before. It was at least as large as the refectory, with endlessly long, tall shelves on which all the books were neatly arranged. Most of them had leather bindings.
Between the shelves and the tall stone columns there were little tables, each with a chair and a reading lamp. A large table with over twenty seats stood in the middle of the room. Several monastery pupils and Fathers sat there, immersed in reading.
On the wall opposite the door stood glass-fronted cupboards where scrolls and old manuscripts were kept.
“Those are the words of St. John of Damascus, or St. John of the Golden Mouth,” said Gabriel. Farid knew a lot about St. John, the writer and orator who was the pride of all the Damascene Christians.
He would have liked to spend longer in the library, but Gabriel gently impelled him out again. There was still a lot to see, and Gabriel needed to go to the lavatory.
Farid waited for him in the corridor. The cellar was enormous, apparently extending under the entire monastery building and the inner courtyard. Two thirds of it were occupied by the refectory and the library, which lay side by side, and that area was surrounded by storerooms as well as the lavatories and the little printing press and book-binding shop. All the rooms had thick, heavy doors.
A fresh breeze swept briefly over the inner courtyard, which was lit only faintly by a lantern at the entrance gate, but light fell from the rooms on to the arcades surrounding the courtyard on the west and the south.
The north side was occupied by the great church, the entrance gate, Brother John’s workshop and the visitors’ room. Brother Gabriel explained that the monastery pupils and novices could be visited, under supervision, by close family members. The visitors’ room had a narrow door of its own opening on to the car park.
“Over there,” Gabriel said, pointing north, “is the church of St. Sebastian, our patron saint. I’m sure you’ve read his story and the history of the monastery in the little book given to every future pupil here.”
Farid nodded, hoping that the monk wouldn’t ask him for details, for all that stuck in his memory was the image of Sebastian with a transfigured expression on his face, tied to a tree trunk and pierced by three arrows. As he read, Farid had imagined Sebastian dying among native American Indians, and that idea had taken firmer root in his mind that the legend of the martyr.
Luckily one of the monastery pupils was coming their way, and called out to Gabriel, in French, ‘Good! At last! I can pass the signal on to you!”
“Not now,” protested Gabriel, laughing. “I’m busy showing Barnaba the ropes as quickly as possible, so that he’ll know his way around.”
“Excuses, excuses!” replied the boy, laughing too.
“Speaking Arabic is forbidden,” explained Gabriel, as he turned back to Farid, “and that applies to everyone. Anyone caught at it is given a round, thin, wooden disk with the letter S for ‘Signal’ on it. He has to carry the signal about with him until he finds someone else speaking Arabic, and then he gets rid of the little disk by passing it on to him.”
“But suppose whoever it is denies speaking Arabic? Or suppose he’s older and stronger than the person carrying the signal?”
“Large or small, old or young, it makes no difference. The carrier of the signal will have witnesses, because no one talks out loud to himself alone. And it’s best for the guilty party to take the disk, or everyone will know he’s looking out for someone speaking Arabic, and they’ll avoid him like the plague.”
“But suppose he doesn’t catch anyone else?”
“Then he eats his dinner kneeling, and the signal is taken away from him and given secretly to a scout known as the Starter, who goes around listening for Arabic.”
“But that’s espionage. Do you approve?”
Gabriel froze. The question seemed to have gone home. “Personally, no, but the monastery administration uses the system to make sure pupils are well disciplined and learn to speak French quickly. Oh, look, it’s time for night prayers! We must hurry,” he added, glancing at his watch.
The church of St. Sebastian had been built in the seventeenth century to plans designed in Rome. It wasn’t large, but it was magnificently furnished. The nave had no columns, so there was a clear view of the high altar wherever you were. Stylistically, the interior was a mixture of the Baroque, Jesuit magnificence, and Oriental opulence. Large paintings hung on the walls, showing Biblical texts, angels, and Jesus and Mary in royal splendour. Farid thought the church was cluttered by comparison with the Catholic church in his street at home.