“I’ll wake you up and show you something tonight,” said Marcel quietly, when they were leaving the refectory three days after the scuffle in the lavatories.
“Why at night?” asked Farid.
Marcel looked cautiously around, to make sure no tale-bearers were lurking. “It wouldn’t be any good in the day. They’d catch us at it.”
“Do I keep my habit on?”
“No, you can wear your pyjamas, and I’ll fetch you as soon as the duty monk’s asleep.”
It was after midnight when Marcel soundlessly nudged him. Farid jumped up and quietly followed his friend. They crossed the washroom and then went through a door that Farid had never noticed before. It led to a stairway. Farid could smell damp air. His heart was hammering.
“We’re going up to the attics,” whispered Marcel, and before Farid could ask any more Marcel was hurrying up the small, steep staircase. It creaked beneath his feet. Beyond the door at the top was a heavy curtain insulating the attic yet further from the stairwell. When Marcel pushed it aside, Farid saw that the room on the other side was not entirely dark. Candlelight flickered in four small cells. Farid froze, for there were people behind the gratings over the cell doors: ancient, desiccated monks who could have climbed straight out of a medieval painting. One was kneeling in front of a picture. Farid recognized him as the figure who had hurled denunciations from the attic window during the performance of Joan of Arc. All that Farid could make out in the picture was Jesus on the cross. In the second cell a slightly younger monk lay stretched out, face down, with his arms and legs in a cross shape. An old man with hair down to his shoulders crouched in the third cell. He was chained to a pillar. And the fourth cell held a monk immersed in a book lying open on a stool in front of him. Two more cells were dark and empty. Their doors were open. The doors of the other cells were only closed, not padlocked.
“Who are they?”
“Nutcases. Let’s go, the others are waiting,” said Marcel. He led Farid on along a narrow corridor, past discarded furniture, implements, and large pots and pans.
“Harmless nutcases born a few centuries too late. The one stretching all his limbs out was a famous theologian once, until he started having conversations with God. He and the others are stashed away here like these pieces of furniture,” said Marcel, pointing to an old cupboard.
When they left the west wing and went down the central corridor, Marcel mentioned that they were right above the bedrooms where the monks and the Fathers slept.
“But don’t worry, they wouldn’t hear a herd of elephants down there. This ceiling is very well insulated, and when they couldn’t get the third-floor bedrooms warm enough in winter they thought it was because of the height of the rooms. They built in false ceilings lower down, and those are well insulated too,” he assured his friend. “All you ever hear is the mice and rats who fall through cracks in the attic floor, and scurry about on top of the false ceilings until they die. There’s no way for them to get out of the trap. It can be horrible.”
Now Farid heard soft whispering behind a mountain of old furniture. He stopped, rooted to the spot, but Marcel tugged his sleeve. “Come on, those are my friends,” he said.
Five of the older boys were sitting in a niche behind the cupboards on old couches and armchairs. They were smoking and drinking wine from a large beaker that was passed around in a circle. A candle on a large tin plate burned on the table in the middle of the party. Beside it lay photos of naked women dating from the 1920s. Farid saw another shabby piece of card bearing the inscription “The Nightclub”.
“This is my friend Barnaba, he’s another lunatic, he ought to be a member of our nightclub,” said Marcel. Farid had to smile.
“Can he be trusted?” asked a thin boy, scrutinizing Farid suspiciously.
“He’s okay,” replied Marcel, sitting down on a large couch. He signed to Farid to join him there.
Marcel was appreciated in this circle; no one teased him or made snide remarks. Farid took a couple of puffs at the cigarette that was being handed around, but had to cough, for it was curiously sharp in flavour. The wine, on the other hand, was sweet and sticky.
They spent about an hour up there, cracking jokes about the Fathers and nuns. It was cold in the attic, but the boys didn’t seem to notice. Farid didn’t feel at ease. This was not the kind of company he liked, and he was glad when the meeting ended.
Next time Marcel invited him to join them at the Nightclub, he thanked him but said no, he’d rather sleep. After that night, however, he often lay awake for a long time, staring into the darkness and thinking of the gang at home in Damascus, of Josef, and the attic above the aniseed warehouse. What were his friends doing now?
125. Silence
On Ash Wednesday, 3 March 1954, the world of the monastery fell silent. The idea was that you spent seven days cleansing your soul. To Farid, it was a misfortune. He loved the sound of words, the music of language, and regarded silence as the province of death, not life.
But Abbot Maximus thought otherwise. His remarks announcing the advent of a period of silence sanctified it. “Only when your lips are closed do you hear the voice of the heart,” he said, smiling kindly and looking around. “We learn thoughtfulness and patience best in silence. And only in stillness, dear brothers in Christ, do we find our way to the light.”
Observance of the commandment of silence was strictly supervised. “One word and you’re made to kneel down on the spot,” said Marcel, “and you have to stay there until the bell goes for the next meal.” He himself had once had to kneel on the ice-cold stone floor for three hours.
Everything fell silent. Even the chattering sparrows avoided the inner courtyard, for the heavy silence scared them away. The monastery became a house of deaf mutes. School and work were in abeyance. It was a week of meditation for all right-thinking people. The church and the library were open to everyone.
Farid almost lost his mind in this silence, but the sight of someone kneeling cured him of any wish to speak. The outward calm left his mind in turmoil. He didn’t want to be a priest. Why was he here at all? He dreamed of exploring the world and its secrets, he could be a pilot or a sea captain. So what was he doing behind these dank walls?
The inner courtyard, where the monastery pupils and the Fathers walked without making a sound, seemed positively ghostly in the evening twilight. Farid sat on a bench for a long time watching their silent perambulations, with a yawning void inside his head. He went into the church and immersed himself in the details of the large paintings. Just as he reached St. Giorgios the bell rang for supper, bringing release. Farid cast a last glance at the dragon. The creature looked pitiful, and he felt sorry for it. The horse was muscular, yet wrongly proportioned in some way. Its hindquarters occupied almost a quarter of the picture, and St. Giorgios seemed to be driving his spear into the dragon rather lethargically.
After supper Farid fled to the library, where he found Bulos, who seemed to be buried in a book. Bulos looked up, a smile tried to form on his lips, but he suppressed it and went on reading. The Rise of Nations, said the title on the cover of his book.
That evening Farid discovered Jules Verne’s first novel, Five Weeks In A Balloon. And suddenly a week’s silence was no longer a threat. He spent twelve hours a day reading now. Sometimes he even missed a meal to follow an exciting incident to its conclusion. During that week, he realized that books could be a life-raft in an ocean of silence and grief. And when he lay in bed at night with his back aching from sitting and reading so long, he felt Rana’s hand in the darkness and travelled with her through the world of the stories he had read.