Gabriel accompanied the sick boy to the dormitory, and stayed for a while when Farid sat down on his bed, exhausted. “I see you’re my brother in misfortune,” he said, stroking Farid’s forehead, and then he left.
131. Spiritual Welfare
Anyone with problems was supposed to turn to his grade teacher, although if they were serious or of an intimate nature, every grade also had another experienced monk available. Then there was the confessional for downright sins.
However, Farid never made use of any of these opportunities. At the end of March, just after the week of silence, a monk called Christian told him he had to confess before he partook of the body of Christ. When Farid replied that he wasn’t committing any sins in the monastery, the bearded monk laughed. “And there’s your first sin: pride. Seek and ye shall find, oh yes,” he added, and went away. Next day Farid set about looking for some small sin that wouldn’t mean too many prayers to be said in penance. Marcel warned him, “Thinking of Josephine’s legs will cost you a prayer of repentance, two Our Fathers and three Hail Marys. Farting in divine service costs a prayer of repentance and one Our Father. The cheapest sins are small wishes and wanting better food.”
So Farid cobbled together his first lie for confession. It turned out exactly as Marcel had predicted. Farid was satisfied with the results. Once, however, sheer curiosity made him want to find out how the Fathers would react to the sin of sexual desire, and he confessed to the priest that whenever he saw Josephine he wanted to put his arms around her and kiss her lips. At that the priest lumbered him with a whole litany of prayers. Farid never said a single one of them. He didn’t feel sinful, for he had never wanted to kiss Josephine’s lips, and his confessor knew nothing at all about Rana and hers.
Farid solved his everyday problems with the help of Gabriel, Marcel, or Bulos, but the monastery administration didn’t approve of that kind of thing. In May the monk responsible for his grade sent for him, and Bulos advised him to act naïve and come up with small problems of some kind. “Then the Brother will be pleased to have helped someone,” he said, “and next time you can tell him it worked a treat and then dish up some even sillier story. After about the fifth time he won’t want to see you any more.”
“Suppose I don’t tell him anything?” asked Farid.
“Then he’ll keep asking questions and get people to spy on you. That man works hand in hand with the monastery administration, and they’re keen to pick out potential troublemakers.”
So Farid went for a session of spiritual welfare, presenting himself as a boy plagued by minor anxieties. And yet again it worked exactly as Bulos had said it would.
At the beginning of 1955 the Syrian Brothers had fifteen members. Bulos felt like a little ruler. He had come up with the idea that if an informer was caught at it twice, next time he would be beaten up and then the punishment squad would pee all over him. A week after the first such punishment was carried out the news spread like wildfire, and the authorities lost most of their informers. The monks were going around in circles. They knew nothing about the Syrian Brothers, and that gave the group the power of which Bulos always dreamed. He was a genius when it came to choosing his supporters. The group grew slowly, but it stuck together like a block of marble.
Over the next few weeks and months Bulos didn’t say much about Gabriel. Farid thought his friend had finally realized that he was wrong about the monk. It was a long time before he found out that he himself had been mistaken.
132. Fire and Water
A playwriting competition for the eleventh and twelfth grades was held in January, and Bulos won it with a work entitled The Sufferings of the Christians in China. Apparently Brother Gabriel was the only member of the jury to have voted against his victory.
Rehearsals began in early March. Farid and Marcel joined in out of friendship for Bulos. The other members of the Syrian Brothers declined to take part; they weren’t interested in the theatre. Bulos swallowed this rebuff, but he was obviously disappointed, although there were more people in the monastery who wanted to be in the play than he needed.
Farid was to act the part of a devout Catholic who was imprisoned at the end of the play. The communists were ruling the country, all of them small of stature and wearing uniform, with conspicuous red stars on their caps. They drank rice wine and mistreated the missionaries and their pupils. Bulos picked tall boys from the upper school to play the missionaries, while the youngest of the monastery pupils acted the parts of small Chinese.
Producing his play was a considerable strain on Bulos, particularly as the secret society was involved in its first serious crisis just then. In May, Farid and the other members found out that Bulos had secretly formed a second group to operate in the monastery without the knowledge of the first. Bulos explained that his secrecy was intended to protect all concerned. But this time the crack that Farid heard inside himself was ear-splitting. His faith in Bulos was badly shaken. However, he kept quiet, and only Andreas, an eleventh-grade student, left the society of his own accord. He said he didn’t want any more to do with the group, but they could count on him not to give anyone away. Andreas had been one of the bravest of the members.
Bulos controlled his fury with difficulty, and repaid the defection with contempt. He felt sure that only the threat of harsh punishment could prevent betrayal, not the integrity of someone like Andreas.
Unlike Gabriel, who quietly followed his own route like water, taking the long way around where necessary, Bulos was blazing fire, instantly burning all doubts and obstacles in his path. He and Gabriel, each in his own way, were recruiting supporters. Farid gradually realized that their ideals were irreconcilable, and thought how agonized and hypocritical his friendship for two people at such odds with one another made him personally feel.
But a letter from his father at the end of May took his mind right off these matters. Claire had been in hospital in March, said the letter, for an operation. Farid felt dazed, and breathed a sigh of relief only when he read that she was now in very good health again, and was coming to see him at the end of July.
The letter ended with the news that Matta Blota, the strong boy from Mala who had been one of the party when the elm tree burned, and who ran away over two years ago, had now been caught and had seen sense. He would soon be entering the monastery of St. Sebastian.
Farid smiled at his memories of the boy who had been supposed to join the monastery as a pupil in the summer of 1953, and he remembered Matta’s ability to swing like a monkey from branch to branch in the trees, as if he were Tarzan. Two days later, Gabriel confirmed the news that Farid had heard from Damascus.
During June and the last phase of rehearsals, Bulos had been very irritable. He doubted everything and was satisfied with nothing. His anger was more and more clearly aimed at Gabriel, whom he suspected of being behind everything that went wrong. In mid-June came the first major dispute, when Gabriel criticized him in public during a rehearsal. Bulos rejected the criticism brusquely, and in the attic that night he raged against the monk. The Syrian Brothers said nothing. Bulos was beside himself. Gabriel was a communist, he said, and the only reason why he didn’t like the play was that it called the communists to account. He was gay as well, said Bulos, he needed two boys from the top grade to satisfy him every night.