The Dark Labyrinth

At the Monastery

It was still high afternoon when Baird awoke and washed his face in the cold spring-water from the enamel jug. The Abbot was tending his vines. “Bravo,” he cried, “I’m glad you’re in time to bathe.” Together they walked across the woodland paths to the little spit of shale which formed the promontory’s butt. With them went the faithful Mark, carrying the towels and a basket of fruit to refresh them. The sea was an ineffable blue; as if, thought Baird, our bodies would turn Tyrian blue from dipping into it. A dolphin leaped for the sun about four cables’ length out, hitting the water with the smack of a football squarely kicked. Baird took off his clothes as one might take off the soiled and ragged clouts of this world and lay down upon the hot pebbles. “Come,” he said, “I know you Greeks never find the water warm enough till August. Make an exception.” The Abbot pleaded old age and all its infirmities, and carefully tested the temperature with his finger. “It’s terribly cold,” he said, turning pale. “I could never bathe in that.” But under the lash of Baird’s teasing he finally slipped off his robes and hob-nailed boots, and did up his back-hair into a tidy bun. Brother Mark reverently took the stove-pipe hat and sat on a point to observe. The old man entered the water uttering groans of rage. His large flabby body was like oak. Baird saw the bullet-marks in his shoulder and thigh — purple scars that looked like knots in old wood. “Here I come,” he said, and they swam slowly out into the icy blueness.

“Mark. Wash the grapes,” called the Abbot, and the little monk obeyed. “Mark’s contributions to our researches into theology and morals are wonderful,” said the old man, doing his jerky dog-paddle out to sea. “He moves from prejudice to prejudice like a logician from premises to conclusion.” Baird turned on his back and saw the little monk washing the grapes tenderly and drying them on his master’s towel.

They walked back, all three arm in arm, to the monastery garden, where Baird and the Abbot, reclining in deck-chairs, the sea at their feet, spent the rest of the afternoon in idle innocence, eating and talking bad philosophy. Brother Mark sat discreetly in earshot, drinking it all in. “Mark,” said the Abbot suddenly, “what is goodness?” He nudged Baird and invited his amusement at poor Mark’s answers by wrinkling up his nose. Brother Mark shook his evil-looking forelock in their direction and raised the hand from which an exploding depth-charge ill-fused had removed two fingers. “Goodness”, he said, “is doing right. Doing what the book says.”

“Which book?” said the Abbot.

“The good book,” said Mark darkly. He knew he was being made fun of; he moved his jaws with a queer chewing motion.

“And if you cannot read?” persisted the Abbot.

“The Abbot John is my eyes,” replied the monk with the air of having scored heavily. The Abbot roared with laughter and slapped his knee. “Was ever a man so focused on goodness?” he asked. “He would disembowel his mother if I told him to. I don’t think he’s a real Greek — he is not argumentative in a sunny obstreperous Greek fashion; but in a gloomy way, like an Englishman or someone suffering from interior stresses.” Baird closed his eyes and stretched out his legs towards the sea. In the gutter two scorpions copulated like watch springs. Bees droned in among their conversations, and almost palpable waves of heat came off the stone wall of the terrace. The Abbot caught sight of Brother Mark, sitting unhappily on the edge of the parapet, looking at his own fingers; he recollected that it is bad manners to make fun of a countryman before strangers. “Go to Brother Mark,” he said. “You are a holy man who would delight the heart of John the Baptist if he were here.” The little man looked up gratefully. His smile was like that of a small girl — a transfiguration.

“Idolatry,” said the Abbot John, shaking his head. “Simply idolatry. It makes you despair of the world.”

They dined that night on the great oaken table in the courtyard, under the plane trees. There was red wine in plenty, and in the soft candle-light the old Abbot’s face glowed with recaptured memories as they talked. Finally he went up to his room and brought down his little account book, and explained to Baird some of its mysteries. He had entries for every cargo of arms bought across from Palestine and smuggled into Tripoli. “You see,” he said, indicating the quantities, “there is not much. And I am serving your cause, my dear Baird, since I am removing arms from British territory and sending them into French; in both cases at the expense of the Jews; isn’t it wonderful? It is good patriotism, and it shows a good profit. I have bought a large farm in the south for Calypso’s dowry when she grows up. Perhaps an Englishman will come from London and marry her.”

The news of the disaster in the labyrinth was brought to them after dinner by a passing shepherd. It cast rather a gloom over their gaiety. A search-party had been into the tunnel leading to the “City in the Rock” and had reported dangerous falls of rock in many places. The Abbot was pessimistic about the possible escape of the others. “It’s a terrible place,” he said. “Even the corner where we had our headquarters was dangerous. But this place of Axelos’s …” He waved his hands expressively.

They sat for a time in silence, watching the moon rise out of Africa, bronze-brown and beautiful. Somewhere out of sight the pure scroll-like sound of a flute could be heard and the chipped noise of sheep-bells.

“Sleep early tonight,” said the old man. “I am sure that the dream which troubled you has gone at last.”

Baird smiled and said, “Good night.” In his little cell he blew out the light and climbed into the narrow bed, lying for a moment to hear the gentle swish of the sea upon the sea-wall, and the chaffer of fishermen putting out with their cargoes of lobster-pots. Then he sighed and went forward candidly, joyfully towards the sleep that fell upon him like a benediction out of tomorrow.

The Abbot John, however, could not sleep. He turned and tossed for a long time in his narrow wooden bed, and finally gave it up. The fleas were biting tonight. He made a mental note to tell Spiro, the novice, to rub the floors with paraffin and plug the seams. The wood throughout the whole monastery was rotten and cankered. In his own bedroom there were several knots upon which he was always catching his foot in the dark. He lit his small night-light and took up a book of medieval sermons. The light shone upon his narrow bookshelf, his robes hanging upon a hook in the corner, the great Bible which stood upon a lectern in the alcove — an English Bible. He was getting a very old man; he had reached that age when the body seems to develop small distempers — a heart beating over-loudly, or a lung that wheezes — and in the stillness of the night he would lie and, as he put it, “listen to himself dying in pieces”. Tonight he was filled with a vague melancholy. He got up and put on his embroidered slippers. From the bottom of the cupboard he took a bottle of mastic and poured himself a tot, noticing as he did so how slack and flabby the skin of his hands had become. Soon he would be seventy. “And so little accomplished,” was the mental thought that accompanied the reflection — though precisely in which field his accomplishment should lie he could not tell. Had he wasted his life? Those years in Asia Minor, in Athos — had they borne fruit? Had he approached a complete holiness through the exercises of the Orthodox Church? A faint smell of incense wafted from the cupboard. It was of Athenian manufacture. Ah, if he could only get some of the pre-war Damascus incense, rich and pungent. He sighed as he sipped his mastic.

Lighting a cigarette, he said to himself: “If you had told him the truth would he be happier or less happy? Would Böcklin’s disappearance as a miracle have more effect upon him than as a question of scientific fact? It is hard to say.”

In his experience it was the miracle that usually counted; and the more enlightened the person the greater the power of the miracle. He inhaled deeply and combed out his beard with his fingers. Somewhere above him Baird slept — his slumbers lulled by the prodigious snorings of the novice. The Abbot decided to take his problem to the sea-wall. He blew out the light and left the room, closing the door gently behind him. All was still in the courtyard. A bright bluish light from the risen moon deepened the shadows to the colour of ink; the sea sighed from time to time as one turning in a deep sleep. The darkness was fragrant with the scent of wallflowers. He sat himself upon the parapet close to his beloved pots of sweet basil, and consulted the glimmering tip of his cigarette. It was absurd really, he found himself thinking, that he should make a moral problem out of what was merely a kindness done to a friend. After all, he had loved Böcklin in a sense as dearly as anyone. Was there any need to reopen the whole question of his death and their guilt in making him die? “It was as much I”, he said to himself, “who fired the shot.”

He put out the cigarette and shuffled across the courtyard to the outhouse where Spiro kept the pots of tar and linseed oil, and all the tackle and gear of fishing. He lit himself a dark lantern, muttering to himself as he did so, and by the light of it unearthed a pot of dry tar. Over a small fire of shavings he melted it and then made his way once more across the courtyard to the chapel.

Here the darkness was absolute. He locked the door behind him with the great key, setting his lantern and his pot of tar upon the ground. The tinsel nimbus of St. Demetrius glimmered at him from the shadows of the altar. Mice chirped in the rotten woodwork of the pews. Other features of ikons less visible swam out at him upon the absolute darkness.

He sighed deeply, for what he was about to do would cost money to repair. Taking his pot of smoking tar he advanced into a corner and faced a small sandstone plaque standing above a slab of the paving. Through the soles of his slippers he felt the damp flags exuding their chill. He took up the stick with the rags tied to its end, which served him for a brush, and began to paint out an inscription in Greek which read:

UNDER THIS SLAB LIE THE MORTAL

REMAINS OF G. BÖCKLIN, A VERY

GALLANT OFFICER OF THE GERMAN ARMY,

KILLED IN ACTION 1944

He lingered for some time after he had successfully removed the inscription, reflecting with irony that his effort of age had been made on behalf of someone who did not believe in miracles. At any rate now Baird would never know the truth!

The Abbot fell asleep almost at once after reaching his room again, and did not wake until Brother Mark tiptoed into his cell at dawn with a crust of bread and a glass of goat’s milk. He slept very well, so there was no excuse for his drowsiness the next morning when Baird found him sitting half-asleep on the white parapet, fishing-rod in hand. The sun was shining brightly. Baird approached on tiptoe and peered down into the blue. “Your bait has gone,” he said pleasantly. The Abbot groaned. He was holding a book in his other hand and trying to read between naps. “I hate fishing,” he said. “I don’t really know why I do it. Self-discipline, I suppose.” Turning his head he roared: “Calypso. Come and change my bait.”

The little girl came and with expert fingers crushed the shell of the hermit crabs and fixed their limp writhing bodies on the hooks, while the Abbot averted his face. He could not bear to see them wriggle. “How they move,” said the little girl in her faraway voice. “Don’t,” said the Abbot, “don’t tell me. I hate inflicting pain.” She gave the signal and he cast the line erratically out into the blue again.

Baird sat down on the wall and tossed pebbles into the sea absently, waiting for his friend to catch something. “In half an hour”, he said, “I must walk over to Cefalû. Will you come?”

The Abbot John said he would. “But promise”, he said, “that you will say nothing about the City in the Rock being a real discovery.” Baird promised.