Brothers Keepers

Nine

Father Banzolini’s tear sheets were perhaps the most difficult penance he’d yet given me. What an earnest writer he was! His articles were clearly the work of a slow but serious man who very sincerely wanted to explain every last detail of whatever subject he had chosen to gnaw. Unfortunately, he knew only one kind of sentence — the kind that has a subject and a verb and a comma and another subject and another verb and a period — and he used that sentence to tell us everything. A straightforward compound sentence is perfectly all right, of course, but seven thousand of them in a row can get wearing. After a while, the only question left was whether the word after the comma would be “and” or “but” or “or.”

But I did have to read them. Father Banzolini had given me these tear sheets at confession with a kind of shy pride, and I knew I was not only going to have to read them, I was going to have to like them. Or at least find something in each of them that I could think of as likable for the next time I met with their author.

Because I was on the horns of a dilemma, a true dilemma. If I lied to Father Banzolini, I would then have to admit to him in confession that I had told the lie. In the abstract that might make for what mathematicians call a pretty problem, but in real life it made for a very ugly problem indeed.

And so I read. I learned more than I cared to know about missionary obstacles in newly independent African states, the attitude of the Church toward the “Protestant Ethic,” Women’s Lib for Catholics, feudalism versus mass transit, translation difficulties with the Bible, and several other topics both sacred and profane. By the time I finished I was feeling both sacred and profane myself.

Well, at least I was distracted for a while from my own more personal dilemma, which could very neatly be defined in the Father Banzolini Format: “I will stay in the monastery, or I will leave the monastery.” Meditation was getting me nowhere on that topic, so perhaps distraction would help. As Father Banzolini himself had pointed out in The Subconscious and the Holy Ghost, “We think we are thinking about something else, but we are still thinking about Topic A.”

So I read all the articles, starting them Tuesday night and finishing early Wednesday afternoon. Then I took a walk in the cloisters, trying to think of something both truthful and flattering to say about them. I could call them “interesting,” which was true of at least a few — The Great Catholic Boxers, for instance, and Why Animals Don’t Have Souls. I could say of all of them that they were “fact-filled,” and I could hear myself saying enthusiastically to Father Banzolini, “I hadn’t known about—.” (I’d fill in the blank as seemed appropriate at the time.)

But it was going to take more; I could feel it in my bones. I doubted that Father Banzolini, in the ordinary course of his days, had been so inundated with praise for his writing efforts as to become jaded or blasé on the subject. It was my very strong suspicion, in fact, that he was hungry for shoptalk and “positive feedback,” as he’d phrased it in the The Confessional: A Two-Way Street. It was going to take more than a couple of carefully phrased ambivalent sentences to satisfy that hunger.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized I was going to need professional — or at least semiprofessional — help. Brother Silas did a lot of reading in the Sunday Times Book Review, and I suspected there was still something criminous buried deep within him. Could he be of assistance? Not so much with specific phrases as with a general wishy-washy attitude. I firmly intended to waffle, but I wasn’t exactly sure how to go about doing it.

Come to think of it, though, Brother Silas just didn’t strike me as the waffling type. Criminal and literary though he might be, there was still something very direct about his approach to life. I would certainly talk to him, but I doubted he was the expert I needed.

Who else, then? Pacing back and forth in the cloister, trying to think of someone who could help, I looked out over the courtyard where several of my fellow residents happened at the moment to be in view. Brother Oliver, for instance, seated on a three-legged stool, was hard at work on his latest Madonna and Child; but no, he didn’t have the devious cast of mind I was seeking. Brothers Mallory and Jerome were packing mulch around some shrubbery near the front wall, but they were even more remote from the necessary subtlety of approach. And who else was there?

Someone came out of Brother Oliver’s office across the way, turning to walk along the cloister on that side. His cowl was up, making identification difficult, but in his build and movements he reminded me of Brother Peregrine.

Of course! Brother Peregrine had operated summer theaters! Would anyone be more experienced at the ambivalent compliment, the tender treatment of tremulous talents? “Brother Peregrine!” I cried, waving one hand over my head, and dashed out across the courtyard in his direction.

He didn’t seem to hear me. He was striding quite purposefully toward the front wall, more or less in the direction of Brothers Mallory and Jerome, angling out now away from the cloister and across the courtyard toward the front doors.

“Brother Peregrine! Brother Peregrine!” I altered my own course to intersect his, trotting around birdbaths and plane trees, and he just kept moving. Such concentration I would normally respect, but this time I could think of nothing but my own problems, so when I reached him I put out my hand to grab his forearm, his head turned in my direction, and inside the cowl he was not Brother Peregrine.

A familiar face, but not—

“Frank Flattery!” I shouted his name out loud, more from astonishment than anything else. Dan Flattery’s unmarried son, Eileen’s brother.

Eileen’s brother, but not ours.

“What—” I said, bewildered, and then everything happened at once. Flattery pulled away from me, with an imprecation that didn’t blend well with his costume. Brother Clemence came dashing out of Brother Oliver’s office, crying, “Fire!” And Flattery made a run for the doors.

“Brother Mallory!” I shouted. Flattery’s cowl had fallen back, revealing him as a stranger and thereby greatly simplifying the message I had to transmit. When Brother Mallory looked up from his mulching, I pointed at the running impostor and shouted, “Smite him, Brother Mallory!”

Well, he tried, but years in a monastery do take their toll on the belligerent instincts. Brother Mallory dashed over between Flattery and the doors, feinted with his left and threw an over-hand right. Flattery stepped inside the punch, gave Brother Mallory a short left chop to the breadbasket and a quick right uppercut on the button, and as Brother Mallory went pinwheeling backward Flattery flung himself at the doors, yanked them open, and dashed out.

I went running in his wake. Cabs, trucks, pedestrians, that great churning agitated other world boiled away outside there, and Flattery ran into it like a man in an asbestos suit running through a fire. A florist’s delivery truck was parked at the curb, and Flattery ran around it and disappeared. I gave chase, but by the time I rounded the truck he was gone. Into a passing cab, perhaps, or zigzag across this busy street. Gone, in any event. Gone.

And so was the lease. Abbot Urban’s illuminated lease, its old dry paper burned to ashes, along with a dozen other documents. “Our whole case,” Brother Clemence said bitterly.

The physical events were simply stated. Frank Flattery had disguised himself in a robe like ours and had come on the grounds through either of our front doors — we were very very sloppy about keeping them locked. He had hung around Brother Oliver’s office until Brother Clemence, working alone in there today, had been called away by nature. Then Flattery had entered, made a pile of all the valuable documents on the refectory table, put a match to them, and walked out again. If I hadn’t mistaken him for Brother Peregrine he would have gotten away scot-free.

Well, apparently he’d gotten away scot-free anyway. When we had our hysterical meeting in Brother Oliver’s smoke-reeking office five minutes after the event, with all sixteen of us present, it turned out I was the only one who could identify the arsonist, and Brother Clemence assured me my unsupported testimony would not be sufficient in a criminal action. “Particularly,” he pointed out, “when you’re already a party in a civil dispute against his family.”

Brother Flavian, who was practically eating the woodwork in his frustration and rage, cried at Brother Mallory, “Surely you know what he looks like! The man knocked you down!”

Brother Mallory, who had a swollen jaw and a sheepish expression, flushed a dull red and muttered, “It all happened too fast. We were both bobbing and weaving, I wouldn’t recognize him if he came walking through that door over there. All I know is he was white.”

“Well, that narrows it,” Brother Flavian said.

Brother Mallory looked as though he’d like to rehearse awhile on Brother Flavian in preparation for a return bout with Frank Flattery, but he said nothing.

The main subject, in any event, was the loss, which turned out to be considerable. Brother Oliver asked Brother Clemence, “Had you been getting close to what you wanted?”

“Close?” Brother Clemence’s manner combined outrage and weariness in a very delicate balance. “We had it,” he said. “We had it in the palm of our hand.”

Brother Dexter said, “We were just talking about it this morning, Brother Oliver. Clemence and I, right in this room, with the papers around us.”

“It took nearly a dozen separate secondary documents,” Brother Clemence said, “and some very fancy inductive reasoning may I say, but we had put together a profile of the lease that I am certain would have stood up in any court in the land.”

“All we needed,” Brother Dexter added, “was to assemble the documents in the proper order and write our brief.”

“That’s what I was doing when it happened,” Brother Clemence said. “I was writing it all out, laying every document in place, demonstrating what each one meant, how they reinforced one another, how the implications of this paper supported the implications of that paper, making sure it was absolutely airtight.”

“It was becoming a beautiful piece of work,” Brother Dexter told us.

Brother Clemence shook his head. “The rest of today to finish the draft,” he said. “Tomorrow I’d intended to go over it with you, Brother Oliver, and anyone else who was interested. By Friday my friend could have been meeting with the Flatterys’ attorneys.”

We all looked silently at the ash-and-water mess on the refectory table. Brother Oliver said, “Isn’t there any way to start all over?”

“None,” Brother Clemence said. “The secondary documents are gone. All of our substantiation is up in smoke.”

“Couldn’t they be reconstructed?”

Brother Clemence smudged his forehead with his smudgy hand. “Use tertiary documents to reconstruct the secondary documents, and then by implication reconstruct the primary document? Brother Oliver, I doubt there’s a human brain on this planet that could do a thing like that, and certainly not in two weeks.”

Brother Peregrine joined the conversation, saying, “But they won’t start tearing the building down in two weeks, will they? That’s only when the sale is completed.”

“Once the sale is made,” Brother Clemence told him, “it will be too late. Nothing can save us unless we stop the sale from going through, that’s our only hope.”

Brother Eli, who rarely had anything to say, now said, “They’ll come with the bulldozers. Bright and early on the first of January.”

We all looked at him. Brother Peregrine said, “What makes you think so?”

“We’re troublemakers,” Brother Eli said. “The longer we’re around, the more trouble we can make, but once this building is knocked down the trouble is gone.”

The Vietnam generation has a slightly different view of life from the rest of us; colder, and I suspect more accurate. Brother Oliver said, “You mean, whether they intend to start construction right away or not, they’ll get rid of us for the advantage of getting rid of us.”

Brother Eli nodded.

Brother Oliver shook his head. “It isn’t the world that Christ had in mind,” he said. Turning to Brother Clemence he said, “And was this our last chance? Do we have to give up now?”

The heaviness in Brother Clemence’s stance and voice seemed to indicate that the answer to that question was yes, but he said, “Not necessarily. There may be things we can do, delaying tactics at least, and maybe some—”

“Excuse me,” I said.

Brother Clemence paused, and looked at me. “Brother?”

“I don’t think,” I said carefully, hating to have to talk this way, “you should be specific about your plans, Brother Clemence.”

He didn’t understand me. “You mean it’s bad luck? Superstition, Brother Benedict?”

“No, that isn’t what I mean,” I said. “I mean, how did Frank Flattery know what to burn? How did he know there was something to burn?”

I had everyone’s attention now. Brother Oliver said, “What on earth are you saying to us, Brother Benedict?”

“I’m saying what Brother Silas said the other day,” I said. “And Brother Clemence said it, too. That our copy of the original lease was stolen. And who stole it?”

“Frank Flattery,” Brother Clemence said. “He obviously came in here the same way he did today.”

“How did he know where to look? And how did he know today where to look and what to look for?”

Brother Hilarius said to me, “Speak it plain, Brother Benedict. Say it right out.”

“He had to have help from one of us,” I said.

What a miserable evening we spent. There was silence in the refectory throughout the evening meal. And silence from the kitchen as well; Brother Leo could not be heard tonight, chewing out his current slaveys in his usual style.

No calisthenics tonight, no boxing matches. No discussions, no chess. No one even had the heart to turn on the TV. We brooded separately, most of us alone in our rooms, and how strange it seemed to see all those doors closed; almost always, we left them open.

At first, most of the others had argued against what I had to say, or at least they’d tried. But what counterargument was there? The original lease had been stolen, that no longer seemed in doubt. Frank Flattery had without question burned the copy and its supporting documents, and so must have known in advance of their existence. Would he have risked exposure to come inside these walls on a fishing expedition? No, he would have come in here only because he already knew there was a serious threat to the Flatterys’ interests.

How could we suspect one another? And yet, how could we not? And suspicion of one meant automatically suspicion of all, since if it was impossible to believe in the guilt of any of us then it must be equally impossible to believe in the innocence of any one of us.

Say Brother Jerome. Impossible? More or less impossible than Brother Quillon? And was Brother Quillon more or less impossible than Brother Zebulon?

Oh, it was all impossible.

Defeated by it, our community destroyed by an idea more thoroughly than it could ever be destroyed by Dimp’s bulldozers, we separated into silent, unhappy, mistrustful lumps of matter. No one could meet anyone else’s eye; no one wanted to look at a suspicious face, or be caught with one. And everyone slunk around as though we all were guilty.

While I was the guiltiest of all. Which was ridiculous, I know, but there it was. Although I hadn’t been the one to betray us to the Flatterys, I had been the one to bring the bad tidings and I felt guilty for the effect they’d had. Sitting in my room after dinner, listening to the miserable silence all around me, I dearly wished I’d kept my deductions to myself.

I didn’t do much sleeping that night. If I hadn’t already had the Father Banzolini dilemma to think about, and if I hadn’t already had the Eileen Flattery dilemma to think about, and if I hadn’t already had my own future here to think about, and if I hadn’t already had the onrushing destruction of the monastery to think about, I had this damned traitor in our midst to think about.

In the theological sense, that “damned.” Oh, very much in the theological sense.

“Brother Oliver,” I said, the next morning.

He looked as sleepless and bleary-eyed as I felt. He was sitting on his three-legged stool before his latest Madonna and Child, but his hands were empty and he had half-turned away from his painting to brood at nothing in particular. Now he squinted up at me in the cold clear winter light that he was wasting, and sighed, and said, “Yes, Brother Benedict?” In his tone, he seemed to be asking me what dreadful news I had to bring him this time.

I said, “May I have your permission, Brother, to Travel?”

That caught his interest, though only marginally. “Travel?”

“I was thinking last night,” I said, and he sighed again in agreement. I went on, “I feel responsible for the way everybody feels, I was the one who told you all that it had to be one—”

“Oh, no, Brother,” he said. Rising from the stool, trying to rouse himself to express concern, he rested a hand on my arm and said, “You shouldn’t blame yourself, Brother. You merely pointed out to us something that was there for all to see. I should have seen it myself, but it was just so, so—” He made a helpless gesture, by way of finishing the sentence.

“Yes, I know,” I said. “But I want to do something, I want to make amends somehow.”

“There’s nothing to make amends for, Brother.”

“I want to do what I can,” I said.

Again he sighed. “Very well. And what is it you want to do?”

“See Eileen Flattery.”

He reared back in astonishment. “See her? What on earth for?”

“I believe she was telling me the truth the last time I saw her,” I said. “I don’t believe she was being two-faced, like her brother and her father. I believe she really would try to help us, if she believed her father was in the wrong.”

“Help us how? What could she do?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But if I went to her, if I told her what her brother has done, that might put her on our side. At least I could try.”

He thought about that. “And what about... your own quandaries, Brother?”

“Under the circumstances,” I said, “I believe I could sublimate them.”

Again he patted my arm. “Bless you, Brother Benedict,” he said. “You have my permission, and my thanks.”

I was an old hand at Travel by now, practically a commuter. Although this was my first experience outside the walls completely on my own, I strode off across 51st Street with barely a qualm. I made it to Penn Station without incident, re-excavated the Long Island Railroad without difficulty, and boarded a train for Sayville almost at once.

In the first part of the trip, in the two-level train with the tiny compartments, I shared the ride with a Santa Claus who drank something sweet-smelling from a pint bottle he kept in the pocket of his red Santa Claus coat. The white beard and red nose and huge paunch all seemed real enough, but instead of a deep ho-ho-ho sort of voice he had a raspy cracked-pottery sounding thing, as though he’d been left outside in the damp for too many nights. Drinking, wiping his mouth on his red sleeve, offering the bottle to me — I shook my head, thanking him with a small smile — he said, “Tough racket.”

“I’m sure,” I said.

He glugged again, offered the bottle again. “Change your mind?”

“Thanks just the same,” I said.

He shrugged, screwed the cap on the bottle, and stuffed it away in his pocket. “Fuckin little kids,” he said.

“I suppose so,” I said.

He nodded, brooding at his reflection in the window. We were still in the tunnel, with only blackness outside the train. Then he looked at me again and said, “What do you do off season?”

“I beg your pardon?”

He gestured, with a thick-knuckled hand. “You know. After Christmas.”

Understanding the misunderstanding then, I smiled and said, “I go on being a monk.”

He looked interested. “Oh, yeah?”

“A real monk,” I said.

Then he got it, too, and he grinned widely, showing stumpy brown teeth inside the snow-white beard. “No shit,” he said. “You’re a real monk?”

“That’s right,” I said.

He laughed at that, with his hands on his knees. It wasn’t a Santa Claus laugh, but it was a laugh. “A real monk,” he repeated.

I nodded, smiling back at him.

He leaned forward, tapping my knee. “Whadaya think,” he said. “Maybe I’m the real Santy Claus.”

“Maybe you are,” I said.

He tugged at his beard. “This ain’t fake, you know.”

“I can see that.”

“Damn right.” He sat back, studying me, pleased with himself, and abruptly said, “So whadaya want for Christmas?”

“What?”

“Sure,” he said. “Whadaya want for Christmas?” His grin was huge.

I grinned right back at him. “I want my monastery back,” I said.

He nodded, chuckling to himself. Laying a finger beside his nose, he said, “You got it.” And he winked at me.

They told me she wasn’t there. I spoke to her mother first, and she said, “Oh, Eileen went away for the holidays. Aren’t you the monk that came here last week with that other one, the stout one?”

“That was Brother Oliver,” I said.

“Oh, he made Dan very upset,” she said. She hadn’t invited me into the house, and I could see she wasn’t going to. “I think Dan would be very angry if he saw you here,” she said.

“I’m sorry we upset him,” I said. “Could you tell me when Eileen will be back?”

“Oh, not till after the first of the year,” she said. “But I’ll be certain to tell her you called. Brother — what was it?”

“Benedict,” I said. But I was thinking that our deadline was the first of the year. Fifteen days from now. After that it would be too late.

“Brother Benedict,” the mother was saying. “I’ll be sure to tell her.” And she was starting to close the door.

“Uh, Mrs. Flattery. Wait.”

“Yes?” She didn’t want to be impolite — I could see that — but on the other hand she didn’t want this conversation to continue any longer either.

I said, “Where is she? She’s gone away where?” Thinking that it might be somewhere close by, that I could still get in touch with her.

But Mrs. Flattery said, “Oh, the Caribbean. She loves to get down there two or three times every winter. I’ll be sure to tell her you called.” And she firmly closed the door.

The Caribbean. She might as well have gone to the Moon. More wasted Travel. I’d come out here for nothing. Gloomily I turned away from the door.

To see a small, dark green automobile turning in at the driveway, with a female at the wheel. Had Mrs. Flattery lied to me? I waited, hope fluttering in my throat, and when the automobile stopped it was Eileen’s sister-in-law who clambered out. Peggy, her name was, married to Eileen’s brother Hugh. Not the brother who had burned our papers, that was the unmarried one, Frank.

Peggy was a pleasant enough girl, and she recognized me at once. “Well, Brother Benedict,” she said, with a big open smile, “what brings you way out here?”

“I wanted to see Eileen,” I said. “But I understand she’s gone away.”

“Down to Puerto Rico for the holidays,” Peggy agreed. She was so open and friendly with me that I couldn’t believe she was a part of the plot against us, or knew anything about it.

“Puerto Rico, eh?” The vague concept of writing her some sort of letter entered my head, and I said, “Would you know her address? I’d like to, uh, send her a Christmas card.”

“How very sweet,” she said. “Yes, I’ll give it to you; wait, um—” She rummaged in her shoulder bag, produced a stub of pencil and an envelope with LILCO in big letters for the return address, and carefully printed on the back of the envelope Eileen’s address in the Caribbean, using the top of her little green automobile as a writing surface. “There you are,” she said.

“Thank you very much.”

“Nice to see you again,” she told me.

“And you,” I said, giving her a smile and a bow. I was becoming quite the lady’s man.