Report to Grego (40 page)

Now I began to distinguish the monastery's features more clearly, its walls and towers, the chapel, a cypress tree. We reached the monk's orchard, which lay outside the walls. Pulling myself to the top of the fence, I saw olive, orange, walnut, and fig trees, also huge divine almonds, all gleaming in the sunlight here in the very
center of the desert! With the gentle warmth, the fragrance, the buzz of small insects, it was Paradise!

I enjoyed this face of God for a good while, the jovial one that loves men and is fashioned out of soil, water, and human sweat. For the past three days I had confronted His other face, the terrible unflowering one made all of granite. I had told myself that this, the fire that burns, the granite too hard to be incised by human desires, was the true God. But now as I leaned over the fence into this flowering orchard, I recalled with emotion the ascetic's saying: “God is a quiver and a gentle tear.”

Buddha declares, “There are two kinds of miracles, those of the body and those of the soul; I believe in the second, not the first.” The monastery of Sinai is a miracle of the soul. Built around a well in the middle of the inhuman desert, surrounded by rapacious tribes that profess a different religion and speak a different language, for fourteen centuries this monastery has towered like a citadel and resisted the forces, both natural and human, that have besieged it. I reflected pridefully that a superior human conscience exists here; human virtue, here, has subdued the desert.

It was only with difficulty that I succeeded in keeping my exultation in check. Here I was amidst the biblical peaks, on the elevated plateaus of the Old Testament! To the east lay the Mountain of Knowledge, where Moses embedded the serpent of brass. Behind this the land of the Amalekites and the Amorite Mountains. Northward the Kedar, Idumaea and the Thaiman Mountains, reaching to the Moab Desert. To the south, Cape Pharan and the Red Sea. Lastly, toward the west, the Sinai range with the Holy Peak where Moses conversed with God; and farther in the distance, Saint Catherine's. The monastery garden glistened amidst sun and snow. The olive trees rustled quietly, the oranges gleamed in their sober foliage, the cypresses rose up ascetically, black as pitch. The perfume from the blossoming almond trees came slowly and regularly, like the breath of God, making your nostrils and mind thrill with joy.

Truly, how had the monastic citadel been able to resist these enticing springtime puffs of wind? Over so many centuries how had it failed to crumple, one spring, to the ground?

I
entered the monastery through the high fortress gate. In the center of a large courtyard stood the chapel, and next to it a small
mosque with its slender minaret. Here, at long last, the cross and the crescent had joined. Round the periphery, covered with snow and gleaming in their whiteness, the cells, guest quarters, and storerooms. Three monks were sitting in the sun warming themselves. I stood for a long time and listened to them with absorption; their words echoed clearly in the air's great silence. Each was anxious to speak and relieve his mind. One told about the miracles he viewed in America—steamships, skyscrapers, women, brilliant illumination at night; the other how lamb was roasted on the spit in his home town; the third about Saint Catherine's miracles, how the angels took her from Alexandria and brought her here to the mountain peak, and how you could still see the imprint of her body on the rocks.

I climbed the tower to survey the environs. A pale young monk saw me and ran to bid me welcome. He turned out to be eighteen years old, and from Crete. Pierced as it was by the sun, the thick, curly fuzz on his cheeks had a chestnut-blond translucence. While we were conversing about our distant homeland, a sweet, peaceful old man of about eighty appeared, out of breath and puffing. With one foot in the grave, he no longer possessed the strength to desire either good or evil; his bowels were as Buddha wished them—emptied.

The three of us sat down in the sun on a long bench. The youth produced a handful of dates from beneath his shirt; he gave them to me, still warm from his body heat. The old man, touching my knee, began to relate how the monastery was built and how it had struggled for so many centuries. Seated as I was in the sun amidst these legendary mountains, the monastery's story seemed to me as simple and true as a fairy tale.

“The monastery was built by the Emperor Justinian around the well where the daughters of Jethro came to water their sheep, and just exactly on the site of the bush that burned with fire but was not consumed. Justinian dispatched two hundred families from Pontus and Egypt to settle near the monastery and service and protect it, to be its slaves. A century later along came Mohammed. He visited Mount Sinai; his camel's footprint is still preserved in a slab of red granite. The monks received him with great honor, which pleased Mohammed—may his bones fry in hell!—and led him to accord the monastery great privileges. These were written in Cufic script on the hide of a roe deer. As a seal he used the
palm of his hand; he didn't know how to write, of course. The privileges say: “If a Sinaite monk takes refuge on the plain, or in the desert, the mountains, or a cave, I shall be there with him and shall protect him from all harm. I shall defend the Sinaites no matter where they happen to be—on land or sea, east or west, north or south. They shall not be obliged to pay tribute, nor shall they be conscripted or pay poll tax, nor shall their harvests be tithed. The wing of mercy shines over their heads. . . .”

As the old man spoke, his voice so removed from all human contact vivified the mountains and Byzantine walls surrounding me; the air filled with saints and martyrs. The Cretan adolescent at my side listened to the miraculous legend with gaping mouth, rapt in ecstasy. In the courtyard below, monks had emerged from their cells to weigh the corn which the Arabs had brought. The door to the kitchen was open, and through it I spied a long table loaded with huge red lobsters. A pale monk wrapped in a coffee-colored blanket was sketching a large marine conch.

“That's Father Pachomios,” said the old man with a laugh. “He's half crazy, the poor idiot, and he draws pictures.”

“The Apostle Luke was a painter too,” I said, wishing to defend all artists.

“It's a terrible temptation, my child—God keep you from it. You've got to be an Apostle to resist.”

He was right; I kept quiet. Rising, I descended to the courtyard. The monks were picking up the snow and playing with it like children. They were delighted that it had snowed, for this meant that the desert would produce grass, the sheep and goats would eat, and men would have their fill of bread.

Several slaves had come and seated themselves at the base of the monastery wall. They were smoking, gesticulating, conversing in loud voices. Among them were some filthy barefooted women wrapped in black robes, their hair done up over their foreheads in pointed buns, like the pommels of packsaddles, their faces covered from the nose downward by delicate chains, at the ends of which were shells and tiny silver piasters. Each of the women parted her robe and brought out an infant which she placed on the stones in front of her. All were waiting for the monks to appear and toss down their daily rations from above: three small round loaves of bread for each man, two for each woman and child. The rule was
that they had to come in person to receive this food, and they had left their tents hours earlier in order to arrive on time. But these small loaves do not satisfy their hunger. They also collect grasshoppers, which they dry, grind, and knead into bread.

I was deeply moved as I regarded these distant brothers. For centuries they have surrounded these Byzantine walls, and the tiny loaves (made mostly of bran) have been thrown down to them like rocks. They live and die by threatening the monastery. Today, just as in the time of Jethro, only girls tend the sheep. No one molests them. When two young people fall in love, they slip away in secret and go to the mountains at night. The young man plays the flute, the girl sings; at no time do they touch each other. Then the boy comes down to attempt to purchase the girl. He seats himself outside his future father-in-law's tent, the girl arrives, he throws his burnoose over her and covers her. The boy's father comes along, as does the sheik. The two fathers grasp a palm leaf and pull it into two parts. Then the girl's father says, “I want a thousand pounds for my daughter.”

“A thousand pounds!” exclaims the sheik. “But your daughter is worth two thousand. And the groom is willing to give this amount. . . . For my sake, however, allow him a five-hundred-pound reduction.”

“For the sheik's sake,” the father replies, “I allow five hundred.”

Meanwhile, the various relatives have been arriving one by one and seating themselves cross-legged in front of the tent. At this point they rise.

“Allow him a hundred more, for my sake.”

“And another hundred,” says someone else.

“And fifty . . .”

“And another twenty-five . . .”

Until finally the amount is lowered to one pound.

At that precise moment the women who have been grinding corn in a corner begin their cackling: “Lou . . . lou . . . lou . . . lou . . .”

The girl's father rises.

“For the sake of the women who grind the corn, I give my daughter for half a pound.”

They eat, drink, and dance on the eve of the marriage, lavishing all they own.

Thus, for thousands of years, the customs of the desert have abided unshaken.

T
he young Cretan came and said to me, “The holy fathers are waiting for you in the reception hall. Go in, please.”

Approximately twenty monks were seated in the large hall where guests are received. They stared at me with curiosity. I was going to kiss each one's hand, but there were so many of them that I decided this would be tedious, and kissed only the abbot's. Emaciated and severe, he sat in the middle without speaking. Once again the coffee, the spoonful of jam, a glass of date wine, the kindly age-old words—Where are you from? Who are you? Welcome!

The abbot, an ancient oak incised and carbonized by God's thunderbolts, regarded me, but I am certain that he did not see me. His eyes had begun to grow dim. They no longer distinguished the visible universe clearly; now they saw only the invisible one. He regarded me, and behind my shoulders he viewed great cities: the “world” that was wallowing in sin, vanity, impudence, and death.

I told him I was going through a crisis, and I asked permission to stay a few days at the monastery so that my soul could concentrate and reach a decision.

“Do you desire to find God?” asked the abbot. I realized that he saw me now for the first time; earlier he had been simply looking at me.

“I want to hear His voice,” I answered. “I want Him to tell me which road to take. It's only here in the desert that the soul can hear Him.”

“All voices can be heard here in the desert,” said the abbot. “And especially two which are difficult to tell apart: God's and the devil's. Take care, my child.”

Two monks entered the reception hall in order to see the new pilgrim and greet him. One was the guestmaster, a chubby soul with a curly beard and merry blue eyes; it was his job to look after strangers. The other had a weary, ironic smile; he was tall, with mustache, whiskers, and eyebrows as white as snow, and long-fingered hands also strikingly white. He did not speak to me, but simply stared, his eyes flickering and laughing. Laughing, or mocking? At that particular moment I could not tell; a few days later I could.

The abbot rose. Giving me his hand, he said, “God grant that you may find in the desert what you sought futilely in the world.”

A monk ran to open the door for him. Walking heavily, with slow steps, he disappeared.

The guestmaster came up to me. “It's dinnertime,” he said. “Come to the refectory, please.”

The monks were seated around a long table with the abbot at the head. The monk who was serving brought in the meal—boiled lobsters and vegetables, with bread and a cup of wine for each. The fathers commenced to eat. No one spoke. The lector mounted a low pulpit and began to chant the commentary on the day's lesson, the return of the prodigal son.

Many times, in many different monasteries, I have experienced this liturgical rhythm of the collation. In this way the meal assumes its great and proper mystical significance. A rabbi once said, “In eating, the virtuous man liberates the God found in food.”

The lector chanted with coloratura flourishes about the prodigal son: his torments and humiliation far from his father's home, how he ate carob beans like the swine, and how one day, unable to bear this any longer, he returned to his father . . .

In the midst of this deep mood of Christian piety I thought to myself, In another monastery more in keeping with today's spiritual unrest and rebellion they would have read the splendid conclusion which an apprehensive contemporary fashioned for this parable. The prodigal returns tired and defeated to the tranquil paternal home. That night when he lies down on the soft bed to go to sleep, the door opens quietly and his youngest brother enters. “I want to go away,” he says. “My father's house has grown too confining.” The brother who just returned in defeat is delighted to hear this. He embraces his brother and begins to advise him what to do and which direction to take, urging him to show himself braver and prouder than he did, and nevermore deign to return to the paternal “stable” (that is what he calls his father's house). He accompanies his brother to the door and shakes his hand, reflecting, Perhaps he will turn out stronger than I did, and will not return.

H
ow can I ever forget that first night I spent in God's desert fortress? The silence had become ghostlike; it towered up around me as though I had fallen to the bottom of a dark dried-out well.
Then it suddenly turned to sound, and my soul began to tremble.

“What do you want here in my house? You are neither pure nor honest. Your glance flits first this way, then that. I don't trust you. You are ready to turn traitor at any minute. Your belief is an unholy mosaic of many disbeliefs. You do not realize that God sits waiting at the end of every road; you will always be in a hurry, will always become discouraged at the halfway point and turn back to take another road. The common people do not see Sirens or hear songs in the air. Blind and deaf, they sit bowed over in the earth's hold, and row. But the more elect, the captains, hear a Siren inside them—their soul—and gallantly follow her voice. What else, do you think, makes life worth while? The poor woebegone captains hear the Siren and do not believe, however. Entrenched behind prudence and cowardice, all their lives they keep weighing the pros and cons on a delicate assay balance. And God, not knowing where to throw them, desiring them neither to ornament hell nor defile heaven, orders them suspended between corruption and incorruptibility, upside down in the air.”