Brothers Keepers

Six

But I did find something else. Or that is, she found me. But before that I went to confession, with Father Banzolini. I was far more flustered than usual when I entered the confessional, and got off at once on the wrong foot — or the wrong knee — by saying, “Bless me, Father, for I think I’ve fallen in love.”

“What?” Never had I heard him so irritated, never, and Father Banzolini was an absolute opera of irritation.

“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry.” And I started again, doing it right this time: “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been three days since my last confession.”

“And in three days you’ve managed to fall in love?”

“Ahhh.”

“Sexually in love?”

“Ohhhh.”

“With that girl on television?”

“What? Oh, her.”

“Fickle in your affections, eh, Brother Benedict? Well, you might as well tell me about it.”

So I told him about it. He already knew about the threatened destruction, so I started my story with the onset of my Traveling, the circumstances of my meeting with Eileen Flattery Bone, and the effect on my brain — waking and sleeping — ever since. His little breathing sounds of exasperation and impatience faded away as I went on, and at the end he was unusually soft-voiced and even-tempered. “Brother Benedict,” he said, “I believe you are suffering from what has been called culture shock. I did an article on it once for a missionary magazine.”

“I didn’t know you were a writer, Father Banzolini.”

“In a modest way,” he said modestly.

“I’d like to read something of yours.”

“I’ll bring around some tearsheets,” he said, in an offhand way. “But to get back to culture shock. It happens to some people when they are suddenly thrust out of the culture, the environment, that they know and in which they are comfortable. There were volunteers in the Peace Corps, for instance, who underwent culture shock when suddenly flown to some remote Central American village, where all at once everything was different. Right down to the basics, the attitudes about food and sex and dead bodies. Some people just cease to function, they become catatonic. Others lose touch with reality, they try to force reality to conform with their preconceptions about what society should be like. There are a thousand kinds of symptoms, but the cause is always the same. Culture shock.”

I had the feeling I needn’t read Father Banzolini’s article on the subject, that I’d just heard his article on the subject. “That’s very interesting,” I said.

“It’s a problem in the missionary field, as you can guess,” he said. “And I believe it’s what happened to you, Brother Benedict. You had become so settled in your way of life inside these walls in the last ten years that you couldn’t take a sudden transfer to a totally different environment. In the language of the street, it shook you up.”

“Culture shock.”

“Exactly,” he said. “These feelings you have toward this girl are certainly real, but they’re nowhere near as specific as you seem to think. It could have been any girl, any flesh-and-blood girl that you would meet and talk to in the middle of a brand-new environment. We already know from your television watching, Brother Benedict, that celibacy has not entirely quieted your sexual nature.”

“Mm.”

“In the grip of culture shock,” he went on, “you struggled for something familiar, toward which you could give a familiar reaction. The girl was it. You reacted to her as though she were something seen on a television set.”

Hardly. But you don’t argue with your priest in confession. “That’s very interesting,” I said. Which wasn’t a lie. He might have been as wrong as Martin Luther, but he was interesting.

“You asked, a moment ago,” he said, “whether your dreams could be considered sinful. Normally I would answer that the dream itself must be regarded as neutral, but that your reaction to the dream might constitute a sin. If, for instance, you dreamed of committing a murder, the dream would not be sinful, but if on awakening you relished the thought of having murdered that particular person, the reaction would be a definite sin.”

“Well, it wasn’t murder,” I said, “but I guess it was a sin.”

“You’re rushing ahead,” he cautioned me. “I said normally I would answer that way. But in truth, Brother Benedict, I believe in this case everything has been a dream to you, from the moment you started Traveling. A victim of culture shock is no more guilty of his thoughts and actions than is a victim of schizophrenia. In fact, I did an article once on moral culpability as it is affected by mental disorder. I could bring you the tear sheets, if you like.”

“I’d like that very much,” I said. I was utterly astounded: the depths one finds in the unlikeliest people!

“I’ll bring it next time,” he said. “As to your current problem, I think you should ask Brother Oliver not to take you along on any more expeditions he might make.”

I surprised myself with my reaction to that. I should have been delighted; I should have been relieved to have at last a legitimate excuse to stop all this Traveling. But I wasn’t delighted, and I wasn’t relieved. Quite the reverse — a sinking feeling filled me, a sudden great sense of loss, as though something important, vital, had been taken away from me.

So I really was suffering from culture shock. And it was being nipped just in the nick of time. “Yes, Father,” I said. “I definitely will.” One or two more excursions outside, and I might very well have lost my Call.

Father Banzolini said, “And until the effects of your recent Traveling wear off, I don’t think you should worry too much about any stray thoughts that might meander through your head. At this point, you aren’t entirely responsible.”

“I’m glad to hear that, Father,” I said.

One Our Father and one Hail Mary! I felt almost guilty as I scampered through my penance, as though I had somehow sneakily put one over on Father Banzolini and were now wallowing in the rewards of that slyness.

But I guess I’m too shallow to be depressed for long. By the time I’d rapidly recited my prayers and was heading up the aisle and out of the chapel I was no longer bowed down by either of my guilts. (I did have two to dwell on, had I the character to do so. First, there was my shameless toadying of Father Banzolini, resulting in the lightest penance of my penitential career. And second, there was the sense of loss I’d experienced and kept secret to myself when he’d told me I should Travel no more.) Not only was I unbowed by this double evidence of my own worthlessness, I actually gloried in them both. The penny-ante penance, it seemed to me, made up for a lot of heavyweight penances I hadn’t deserved. And there was a kind of exhilaration in the thought that Travel was not only philosophically wrong for me but was actually dangerous to my mental health. There was a titillation in the idea of Travel now that was probably very like the heroin addict’s view of his drug. Dangerous, but exciting, and finally exciting because it is dangerous.

Ah, well; my fling with Travel was over. I was to be reduced again to a bearable level of addiction, being my weekly sojourn for the Sunday Times.

Meaning now. Off I went to the office for the necessary sixty cents and permission to leave the monastery. Brother Eli was on duty at the desk, surrounded by the shavings from his whittling. Brother Eli, a brooding slender long-necked young man in his late twenties, had after an apparently normal California childhood deserted from the United States Army in Vietnam. He had Traveled extensively incognito through Asia, and along the way had picked up a skill in woodcarving with which he claimed to have supported himself for three years in southeast Asia. Returning unofficially to this country he had presented himself at our gates two years ago, saying he had heard of us in a lamasery and that his own experience of Travel agreed with our philosophical stance. He had asked us if we had any objection to a wanted fugitive joining our number. Brother Oliver had assured him the laws of Man, being transitory, contradictory and invariably in error, meant much less to us than the laws of God, and so this young man had given up the name under which his government thought of him as a felon and had become Brother Eli, a woodcarver.

Oh, yes, a woodcarver. Lean Josephs striding next to plump mules bearing plumper Marys, androgynous angels rolling massive boulders from allusive cave entrances, wise men on camels, saints on their knees, martyrs on their last legs, all were discovered by his busy knife lurking in this or that stray piece of wood. And Christs, how many Christs: Christ blessing, Christ fasting, Christ preaching, Christ rising from the dead, Christ permitting the washing of His feet, Christ carrying His cross, Christ attached to His cross, Christ being taken down from His cross.

If Brother Eli were ever to become Abbot, none of us would be safe.

Our business now was quickly transacted. Brother Eli gave me a quick greeting, a quick sixty cents, and a quick farewell, before returning to the Madonna and Child emerging from this latest block of wood. (Shades of Brother Oliver!) And out I went.

Was it my imagination, or was the world different tonight from the normal Saturday evening? The usual glitter seemed harsher somehow, the gaiety more frantic. Danger and lunacy seemed to lurk behind every facade and every face on Lexington Avenue. I strode more rapidly than is my wont, I took less pleasure in this excursion, and even the newsie who sold me my paper seemed less familiar and less friendly tonight. “Evening, Father,” he said, as usual, but somehow the tone was different.

On the way back, I paused at my regular trash basket to rid myself of the unwanted sections of the paper. Classified, Travel, Business, the advertising supplements. But then I paused at Real Estate. Might it be a good idea to keep that section? Perhaps a greater familiarity with the world of real estate would be useful to us in the weeks ahead. I returned it to the bundle of saved sections, and hurried homeward.

She must have been lying in wait for me. I was coming along 51st Street, barely half a block from home, when Eileen Bone stepped out of an automobile parked some distance ahead, walked around the hood of the car, and stopped on the sidewalk to wait for me.

She was perhaps twelve paces away, close enough for me to see her clearly in the streetlight glow, but far enough so that I could have taken evasive action. I could have turned about, for instance, walked back to Lexington, left to 52nd Street, left to Park Avenue, left past the Buttock Boutique, and thence half a block home. All in all, that’s probably exactly what I should have done.

Well, I didn’t. I continued the twelve paces forward, holding tightly to my newspaper and looking directly at her. She was wearing pants, and a dark-colored sweater, and some sort of hip-length jacket. She looked tall and slender and darkly beautiful. She was the refined essence of every electric peril I had sensed in the world tonight.

I stopped when I reached her. It didn’t seem possible merely to nod and say hello and walk on by, so I stopped. But I didn’t speak.

She did. “Hello, Brother Benedict,” she said, and both her smile and her tone of voice were far too complex for me to unravel. Several kinds of humor and several kinds of somberness were so entwined in her voice, her eyes, the set of her head, the lines of her lips, that I merely let it all wash over me like a Russian symphony and didn’t even seek for meaning. “I’ll drive you home,” she said.

“It isn’t far,” I said.

“We’ll make it far,” she said. Then she looked slightly more somber, slightly less humorous. “I want to talk to you, Brother Benedict.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I have strict orders to return to—”

“About your monastery,” she said. “About the sale. I might be able to help.”

That stopped me. Frowning at her, trying to read her despite the complexity, I said, “Why?”

“You mean how,” she said.

“No, I mean why. It’s your father that’s selling the place.”

“That might be a good reason right there,” she said. “And there might be others. I’m hoping you’ll tell me.”

“Brother Oliver is the one who—”

“You, Brother Benedict.” Humor was returning, glinting in her eyes and creating soft pale shadings on her cheekbones. “I have a sense of trust in you,” she said. “If anyone can tell me the monastery’s side of all this, you’re that one.”

“Tomorrow,” I said. “If you were to come tomorrow, possibly I—”

“I’m here now. I might change my mind by tomorrow.”

“Come into the monastery, then, I’ll show you ar—”

“No, Brother Benedict,” she said. “My turf, not yours.” And she gestured at her car. It was as long and sleek and graceful and competent and gleaming as she herself, and she was right about it. It matched her, as my monastery matched me.

I said, “I don’t think I could get permission to—”

“Why get permission? We’ll talk for ten minutes, and I’ll drop you off at your door.”

I shook my head. “No. We have rules.”

She was becoming impatient with me. “I’m beginning to be sorry I came here, Brother Benedict. Maybe my brother’s right about you people, it doesn’t matter what happens to you one way or the other.”

“I’ll ask,” I said. I gestured with the newspaper, displaying it, saying, “I’ll bring this in, and I’ll ask Brother Oliver.”

She studied me, frowning, as though trying to decide whether my insistence was weakness or strength. Then abruptly she nodded and said, “All right. I’ll be waiting out front.”

I found Brother Oliver in the calefactory, watching Brothers Peregrine and Quillon in a boxing match. The purpose was salubrity rather than belligerence, this being an exercise campaign initiated by Brother Mallory, the former welterweight, who was quadrupling now as referee, trainer and both seconds. Brother Peregrine, our onetime summer theater operator, merely looked absurd in his long brown robe and huge sixteen-ounce boxing gloves, floundering around like a marionette with tangled strings, but Brother Quillon looked bizarre. They were circling one another like a binary star, with Brother Mallory bobbing and weaving intently around them as though an incredible display of fisticuffs were taking place somewhere or other. In truth, Brother Quillon backed in great eccentric circles, his eyes very round and his mouth very open and both boxing gloves held out in midair in front of himself, while Brother Peregrine stalked along in his wake, delivering confused flurries of punches at Brother Quillon’s gloves.

I waited till a round had completed itself before attracting Brother Oliver’s attention. While Brother Mallory bounded from corner to corner, giving his pugilists good advice and firm reassurance, I told Brother Oliver what I had found outside. “Hmm,” he said, and frowned. “What did she want?”

I repeated the conversation, and her invitation, and the threat that she might change her mind by tomorrow. “The question is,” I finished, “should I go?”

Brother Oliver thought it over. The next round had begun, and he watched as he pondered. Out in the middle of the floor Brother Peregrine’s face was becoming very red, while Brother Quillon’s was dead white.

“I think,” Brother Oliver said at last, “you should go.”

“You do?”

“I see no harm in it,” he said.

I did. I wasn’t exactly sure what the harm was, but I saw it or felt it or tasted it; I sensed it with some sense or another, and I was torn about what to do. I’d been hoping Brother Oliver would refuse to let me out, thereby taking the decision out of my hands. But he was giving me permission, and now what was I going to do?

“All right, Brother Oliver,” I said, not happily, and left the scene of battle.

So I would Travel. That was clearly where my duty lay, if by means of my Traveling I could at all help to save the monastery. And, I must admit, it was also what I really wanted to do, despite our Order’s thoughts on the subject, despite Father Banzolini’s warnings, and despite my own awareness that I was becoming very badly addicted. Very badly addicted. “God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist,” Saint Augustine wrote in Enchiridion. Or, putting it another way, “I can resist anything,” said Oscar Wilde, “except temptation.”

It was awkward getting into the car. Through some miracle of design the seat managed to be several inches below street level, and the door opening was a weirdly shaped parallelogram through which it would have been difficult to pass anything larger than a doughnut. However, I did effect entry, though without much grace; at the last I had to release all my hand-holds and simply drop backwards the last few inches onto the white upholstery. Then I tucked my knees up under my chin, tucked my robe under my legs, and practically had to leave the car again in order to reach the handle so I could close the door.

Mrs. Bone — I thought it safest to think of her under that heading — watched my progress with amusement. “I guess you’re not used to this kind of car,” she said, when I finally completed my labors.

“I’m not used to any kind of car,” I told her. “This is my first automobile ride in over ten years.”

She raised a surprised eyebrow. “Is that right? How do you like it so far?”

Shifting position, I said, “I didn’t remember the seats as being so uncomfortable.”

More surprise, plus amusement, “Un-comfortable? The people at General Motors will be sorry to hear that.”

“I suppose one gets used to it,” I said.

“That must be it,” she agreed, and shifted the gear, and away from the curb we moved.

The sensation was pleasant, if more startling than Travel by train. The outer world was very close, almost as close as if one were on foot, but it was approaching and receding much more rapidly. Mrs. Bone’s delicate hands made small adjustments of the steering wheel and we crashed into none of the obstacles that leaped into our path.

Neither of us spoke at first. Mrs. Bone was concentrating on her driving, and so was I. We Traveled north to 55th Street, where we turned left under a traffic light that I thought of as having already switched from amber to red, we made a green light at Madison Avenue, and we came to a stop rather reluctantly before a red light at Fifth. During this time I studied her profile in those instants when I could spare some attention from our driving, and I realized that in my dreams I had altered her somewhat. I had made her more ethereal somehow, more liquid, softer and slower and less totally present.

The process of comparison brought to mind again the content of that dream — as well as my waking thoughts the following morning — and I’m afraid I must have had a rather ambiguous expression on my face when she turned to look at me while waiting for the Fifth Avenue light to change. Her own expression became quizzical, and she said, “Yes?”

“Nothing,” I said, and looked away. Out the windshield, somewhere, looking at the lights and darkness of Saturday night. “Where are we going?”

“For a drive.” The light having changed, she glided us forward.

As we continued west on 55th Street I forced myself to concentrate my attention on the car. It was one of those small luxury vehicles I would occasionally see advertised on the television — an impression of great massive form, yet in actual fact it was very low to the ground and could only comfortably accommodate two people. There was a back seat, but it wouldn’t be much use to anybody with legs. Still, in the most wasteful and pretentious and transitory way possible, it did suggest that combination of wealth and self-indulgence that is called luxury.

And Mrs. Bone, of course, was exactly like the girls usually filmed with these cars on television.

A red light at Sixth Avenue. The car stopped, Mrs. Bone glanced at me again, and by God I was looking at her, no doubt with the same equivocal expression as before. And I had been trying to think about the car.

She frowned at me. “How long have you been a monk?”

“Ten years.”

The light changed; she spun the wheel and we turned right onto Sixth Avenue. “Well,” she said, her eyes on her driving, “that’s either too long or not long enough.”

There was nothing I could possibly say to that, so I turned away, looking out at the traffic, seeing in front of us now a yellow taxicab with a bumper sticker reading Put Christ Back In Christmas. An excellent sentiment, only slightly marred by the fact the lettering was colored red and white and blue, as though Christ were a good American running for reelection. But it’s the thought that counts, however muddled.

Finishing with the bumper sticker, I looked out my side window at the activities of the world. It was not yet eleven o’clock on Saturday night, the thirteenth of December, and the streets were full of people, most of them couples, most of them holding hands. The pagan Christmas icons — pictures of that fat red-garbed god of plenty — were displayed in store windows everywhere, but most of the pedestrians seemed concerned with more personal pleasures: movies, the theater, a nightclub, a late dinner out. Neither of our Western gods — Christ and Santa Claus, the ascetic and the voluptuary — seemed much in the thoughts of the citizenry tonight.

Put Christ back in Christmas. The next thing they’ll say is, Put Jehovah Back In Justice. Think about that for a minute.

How the gods change. Or, to phrase it more exactly, how our image of God changes. Long ago, human beings became uneasy with that stern and unforgiving God the Father, the thunderbolt who lashed out so violently and unpredictably. Western man replaced Him with Christ, a more human God, a kind of supernatural Best Friend, a Buddy who would take the rap for us. (The Holy Ghost has always been too... ghostlike, to pick up many fans. What’s His personality, where’s the character hook, where’s the worshipper identification?)

But even Christ carries with Him that sense of austerity, that implication of duty and risk and the possibility of truly horrible loss. So on comes jolly Santa Claus, a god so easygoing he doesn’t even ask us to believe in him. With that belly and that nose, he surely eats too much and drinks too much, and more than likely pinches the waitress’s bottom as well. But it doesn’t matter, it’s all harmless fun, the romping child in all of us. Bit by bit over the centuries we have humanized God until we have finally brought Him down to our own level and then some; today, with Santa Claus, we can not only worship ourselves but the silliest part of ourselves.

“Four cents for your thoughts.”

Startled, I twisted my head around to gape at Mrs. Bone. “What?”

“Inflation,” she explained. “You were brooding about something.”

I rubbed my hand over my face. “I was thinking about Christ,” I said.

“I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Just quoting the Smothers Brothers. We could talk now, if you’re ready to come back to the Church Militant.”

I looked around, and we were no longer in the city, which made not the slightest sense. It is true that over the years my habit of meditation has improved to where I can almost automatically shut out the natural world completely, but I do retain an awareness of time, at least roughly. And I hadn’t been thinking about the manifestations of God for more than three or four minutes, of that I was positive.

Yet here we were in the country. Or not quite the country. Trees and greenery surrounded us, but we were also amid fairly heavy traffic, all moving in the same direction, and the darkness out there was spotted with frequent streetlights. “Where are we?”

“On the Drive in Central Park,” she said. “We can circle in here and have our chat without being distracted by traffic.”

“You want to talk while Traveling?”

“Why not?”

“Well,” I said, “I’m willing to try.”

“Good.” She adjusted her position, as though settling down for some serious activity, and kept her eyes on the cars ahead while she talked. “Your position is,” she said, “that your lease with my father ran out, and my father sold the land, and you people will be evicted so the new owner can tear down the monastery.”

“That’s the position, all right.”

“Why shouldn’t it happen?”

“I beg pardon?”

She shrugged, still watching the road. “My father’s a decent man,” she said. “In his way. He owns property and he wants to sell it. Nothing wrong with that. These other people — what are they called?”

“Dwarfmann.”

“No, the little word.”

“Dimp.”

“Yes. Dimp is a useful functional part of our social system, providing jobs for the working man, putting capital to work, increasing the value of the city and the state and the nation. Nothing wrong with them either. Now, you people, you neither sow nor reap, do you? You’re decent, too, you don’t harm anybody, but what do you have to offer that’s stronger than either my father’s property rights or Dimp’s usefulness to society?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t think of anything.”

“So why not just pack up and move? Why make a fuss?”

I didn’t know how to deal with such questions. “If you’re asking me,” I said, “to justify my existence on the basis of my usefulness, then I guess I don’t have any justification at all.”

“What other basis is there?”

“Oh, you can’t mean that,” I said. “Do you really mean that usefulness is the only thing that matters?”

She glanced at me, with a quick ironic smile, and faced the traffic again. “And do you really intend to talk about beauty and truth?”

“I don’t know what I intend to talk about,” I said. Then I said, “This is a nice car.”

She frowned, but didn’t look at me. “Meaning what?”

“A cheaper, less attractive car would perform the same function.”

Now she did look at me, and her smile was almost savage. “So. You admit it. You are a luxury.”

“Am I?”

“We all like luxuries,” she said, “as you just pointed out. But wouldn’t you have to agree yourself that where luxury and function clash, it must be luxury that gives way?”

“Mrs. Bone, I don’t—”

“Call me Eileen,” she said.

I took a breath. “I think I’d rather call you Mrs. Bone,” I told her.

Again she turned her eyes from the traffic, this time giving me a searching look. In a softer voice she said, “Am I an occasion of sin for you, Brother Benedict?”

I didn’t answer immediately. She watched the road again. I said, “I never really knew what the phrase ‘occasion of sin’ meant.”

She laughed, but in a friendly way, and said, “I’m not sure, but I think that may be the nicest thing anybody ever said to me.” Then she suddenly leaned over the wheel, determination clenching her features, and the car surged forward. We rocked around a clopping hansom cab, threaded through a minefield of moving cars, and suddenly turned off, coming to a stop in an otherwise empty parking lot. Darkness surrounded us, but I could see her face when she turned to me, saying, “You’ve got to help me, Brother Benedict. I want to help you, I really do, but first you have to help me.”

“How? In what way?” I responded to her intensity with a helpless intensity of my own. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

“Don’t you realize,” she said, “that those are my father’s arguments? I want you to beat them down, Brother Benedict, I want you to win the battle for my allegiance. I am the sincerest of Flatterys, I want to help you, but I can’t do it unless I can believe it’s right to go against my father.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not very good at argument. Now I wish I were.”

“I’m not asking to be conned,” she said. “I don’t want you to bring out some clever Jesuit to sell me a bill of goods. I want honesty. I can help your monastery, Brother Benedict, believe me I can, but you’ll have to convince me I ought to.”

“How can you help? What could you possibly do?”

“Never mind. Just take my word for it. And convince me, Brother Benedict.” And she sat there, leaning sideways toward me, her burning eyes staring at me in the darkness.

Never had my mind been such a blank. Convince her? Beat down her father’s arguments about the usefulness of usefulness, and the luxury of everything else? There were no words in my mind, no words at all, and certainly no words in my mouth. Staring at her, into those unblinking eyes, all I could do was pray for a distraction.

God answered my prayer almost at once. We were mugged.

They yanked both doors open at the same instant, two tall skinny black boys with flashing knives in their hands. “Okay, Jack, get outa there,” one of them said, and the other one said, “Come on out, honey, and meet the man.”

Only Eileen was the one they called Jack, and I was the one they called honey.

It was an easy mistake. Eileen was driving, she was wearing pants, and my robe undoubtedly looked like a dress in the uncertain light.

But that realization came to me later, when I had more leisure to reflect on the situation. At that moment, all I could think was, They’re not going to hurt Eileen!

The car was just as difficult to leave as it had been to enter. I squirmed out, clutching parts of it here and there to hoist myself up to ground level, and when I finally did get out and upright I stomped my attacker on the foot. The sneakered foot.

He wouldn’t have been so careless if he hadn’t thought I was a girl. He would have stayed farther away from me. But probably having some unseemly ideas about actions he would take toward me, he had stood very close while I was getting out of the car, and that was why he was now hopping around on one foot, clutching the other with both hands and yipping like a dog that’s been hit with a stone.

Now the other one, menacing Eileen. There was one advantage in a car as low as this; when in a hurry, you didn’t have to go around it. Hiking up my skirts, I ran over the hood and fell on the other mugger like the Red Sea on the armies of Egypt.

Why, the nasty little creature, he tried to stick me with that knife of his. And me a man of the cloth. I whomped him two or three times, wishing I had Brother Mallory’s expertise in punching people, and then he wriggled out from underneath me, got to his feet and took to his heels, disappearing almost at once into the surrounding darkness.

I struggled up, tripping over my own robe and running forward into the rear fender of the car. The second time, climbing up the automobile, I made it to my feet and looked across the auto roof to see the other one hobbling away as well. He gave one dirty look over his shoulder — aggrieved, that’s what he was — and then he too was gone.

Panting, bewildered, I looked around and saw Eileen sagging against the side of the car. Her eyes seemed to be closed. I took two sudden strides to her, grabbed her by both shoulders, and cried out, “Eileen! Eileen!”

Her eyes opened. Beneath my hands her body was trembling. “My goodness,” she said, in a much smaller and younger voice than I’d ever heard from her before.

“Are you all right?”

“—I—” She was more bewildered than I was, more thunder-struck. “I’m not... cut or anything, I’m... Oh!” And she squeezed her eyes shut again, the trembling becoming much worse.

“Eileen,” I said, and pulled her in close, putting my arms tight around her to contain the trembling. My face was in her hair.

We both sensed the change. This slender body in my arms... the fragrance of this hair... There is nothing else like it on earth, and I’d been celibate a long long time.

We drew back from one another. She wouldn’t look at me, and I was just as glad not to have to meet her eyes. She cleared her throat and said, “I’ll, uh, drive you home. I mean, to the monastery.”

“Yes,” I said.

“To the monastery,” she repeated, and fumbled herself back into the car.