On 14 September the monastery celebrated the annual Feast of the Holy Cross. It began in the afternoon, with a huge bonfire out in the car park. According to legend the Empress Helena, mother of the first Christian Emperor of Rome, Constantine, found the True Cross on which Jesus died in Jerusalem on 14 September 326. At the time, said the story, she had found three crosses. To discover which was Our Lord’s she placed the three crosses on a man who was very sick. Two struck a musical note, and then she was sure that the third was the cross of the bad thief who was crucified on the left hand of the Lord, and who mocked him to the last.
Now she had to find out which of the other two crosses belonged to the Lord and which to the good thief crucified on his right hand. St. Helena, the clever daughter of an innkeeper whose beauty and brains had helped her rise to become empress, and whose influence on her son Constantine changed the course of world history, knew what to do. She placed the crosses on two dead bodies. One of them came back to life as if waking from a deep sleep, so the cross laid on that body had been the Lord’s. Helena had fiery beacons lit to carry the message of the finding of the cross from Palestine by way of Lebanon and Syria and so to Constantinople. To this day, many Christian mountain villages celebrate the bringing of that news by lighting large bonfires on 14 September, just as the monastery of St. Sebastian did. The pupils, novices, monks, and Fathers all celebrated together until nearly midnight.
That night, however, Father Athanasius obviously went out of his mind. Just before dawn he was suddenly heard shouting for help. Some of the Fathers woke and ran to him. But his room was locked. When they finally opened the door with a duplicate key, there was a strong smell of arrack, and the Father was sitting on his bed in a daze, dead drunk and, so it was said later, soaked with piss.
Black spectres had come in through his window, babbled the theologian, overpowered him in his sleep, tipped half a bottle of spirits down his throat, and finally peed on him.
His story was rather incoherent. Grey-faced, Maximus said nothing. And when the entire event was repeated a week later, he gave orders for the priest to be moved to a nearby hospital, which sent him back to the monastery three weeks later.
Athanasius was still in a highly nervous state, so Maximus gave him a bedroom shared with a deaf old priest, and Father Istfan took over religious instruction.
From then on Athanasius was considered crazy, and was the butt of all the monastery pupils. Only one of them, quietly triumphant, refrained from mocking him, and that was Bulos.
Later, Farid learned from Matta that it was he and Bulos who had haunted Athanasius. The idea originated with Bulos, but he hadn’t lifted a finger to put it into practice; Matta did the dangerous part. Farid felt not so much admiration as a sense of distance and isolation, but also some envy, because Matta and Bulos seemed to trust each other so unconditionally.
138. Drifting Apart
Father Daniel, the monastery’s mathematician, was a tall, thin man. The pupils called him “Monsieur Integral”, which made him laugh heartily. He was a man with a good sense of humour. He liked Bulos, too, and often expressed his indignation at the penance he had been forced to do, which Father Daniel had been alone in opposing. But the disciplinary committee had been intent on making an example of someone.
One day in September Bulos asked Farid to go and visit Father Daniel with him. They drank tea and ate particularly savoury rolls. Bulos argued with the priest as openly as if they were brothers. Later they played chess. Daniel was better at the game than Bulos, but wasn’t at all arrogant about it. “I don’t let you win so that you’ll be encouraged to play even better next time,” he consoled him.
Finally the conversation came around to Gabriel. Farid was surprised to hear Father Daniel speak so frankly of the monk’s weaknesses.
“Gabriel won’t rise any higher,” he said. “He criticizes the Catholic Church too much. He’s cleverer than Loyola and Luther, but without the heroic courage of either.” For once Bulos was diplomatic, and said nothing malicious about his enemy.
In early October, after years of patient work, Gabriel managed to get the custom of passing the signal around abolished, and the unattractive sight of a kneeling sinner was no longer seen in the refectory.
Only Bulos appeared upset. Once there was no signal any more, several of the pupils saw no more need for a secret society, and distanced themselves from the group.
139. Encounters
It was a fine, warm Sunday when Brother Gabriel asked Farid to have another talk with him. As Farid was about to sit down, Gabriel looked out of the window and said, “No, let’s go out and enjoy this December sun.”
The monastery administration was concerned about the many cases of flu and persistent colds that had been plaguing the pupils, so they were letting everyone go out. The gate was wide open, and after their midday meal a number of the pupils went for a walk or sat on benches in the grounds, basking in the sun. Farid followed Gabriel along the path past the orange groves and down to the sea.
The waves were rough, and roared as they broke on the beach. Spray rose from the breakers. Farid took a deep breath, then removed his sandals and went barefoot.
“When I was small,” Gabriel told him, “I lived with my grandmother. My mother died in the sardine canning factory where she worked. It was a tragic accident; a reversing truck ran over her as she was sweeping the yard. My father blamed the truck driver and said he had killed her on purpose because she had turned him down.”
“Do you believe that?” asked Farid.
“No, but my mother’s death drove my father out of his mind. When nothing could calm him, he was fired from the factory. He went back to sea-fishing. He had been a fisherman before he married. My father loved the sea and the loneliness of it. He didn’t know how to deal with children, so he handed us — my sister, my younger brother, and me — over to his parents. They were peasants. My grandfather was a strong, simple-minded man, but my grandmother was crazy and had the second sight. We didn’t understand much about it. One Sunday I was going to Mass with her. Grandfather never went to church. Just outside the church she suddenly stopped. ‘Do you hear the rafters creaking and groaning?’ she asked. I listened, but I couldn’t hear anything.
‘We won’t go into the church,’ she said firmly. ‘It’s about to fall down.’ And then she took my hand and walked home with a firm step. Grandfather laughed at her crazy ideas.
“As we sat on the terrace, we could see the village square and the church from up on the hill. Bells were ringing for the beginning of Mass. Grandmother closed her eyes and kept still. Suddenly, without any warning, the whole church collapsed. The bell in the tower rang just once more, and then it fell silent as dust rose. First the roof and then the walls fell in, burying seventy people under their stones. Only five adults and three children survived the disaster, badly injured. To this day I don’t know why my grandmother didn’t warn the congregation.”
Gabriel fell silent, pressing his feet more firmly into the sand. Then, without looking at Farid, he said, “Keep away from Bulos. His heart is full of hatred. That’s not Christian.” He looked into the distance. Farid walked along beside him in silence, expecting Gabriel to invite him to join the Saturday meetings of the Early Christians group at this point, but the monk said no more, only smiled with relief as if he had been suffering from bearing the weight of his warning.