The Oblate's Confession (27 page)

But of course, in reality, something else
was
going to happen, something which, in time, would cause a woman to hide beneath a bush, would draw me out on the garth like this in service to her, in service to her and—I had to admit it—decidedly not in service to the Rule.

Which made me remember the look he’d given us. Was it possible that, wise as he was, Father Abbot had known, had expected us to mark and recall this spot? For that was surely what had happened. Whenever the miracles were mentioned, the cures alluded to, each of us in our own way pictured that last moment, our lord abbot pouring the final drops over Oftfor’s unflinching flesh, the way the water had run down his arm, disappeared into the earth around Father’s knees. A moment’s silence, thought, then the eyes raised again to look at us.
You saw it too
, they seemed to say,
you saw where it went, the ground into which it drained.
He didn’t nod but he didn’t have to. It is how we communicate, we monks, with looks, expressions. It was as if he knew.

But what did he know? I scooped up a handful of earth and thought about it, pressing the stuff between my fingers. A pinch of this dissolved in water and sipped while saying an “Our Father” was said to cure any ill. Brother Osric used it on Sinistra’s knees; Baldwin had smeared it on his head during Lent. But what had any of this achieved? Sinistra was still too old for the plow; Baldwin remained a stern and heartless monk. No one’s sight had been restored, no one’s hearing recovered; the lame did not rise from
their pallets and walk. I wondered what good it would have done as an antidote to the pestilence. I would have liked to have seen Oftfor try to cure that!

Oftfor. The little face that day in the reredorter, woolens hiked up, death tacked across his flesh, the smell of decay.

But I didn’t want to think about that, didn’t want to be reminded of that, of what had happened, of what still could happen.

Though it hadn’t. It hadn’t happened. I was alive. I was alive and well and the more I thought about it the easier it became to convince myself God wouldn’t have done that, wouldn’t have spared me like that, unless He wanted me alive, wanted me alive perhaps for a very long time. Who knew, maybe He even had some plans for me, wished to impart some task to me as Ceolwulf had, some secret mission that was as yet entirely unheard-of, unthought-of, something having nothing to do with things like this pit, its odor of earth, the grave, rank and unfortunate memory.

Unfortunate memory.

I looked back down at the hole, thought again about Oftfor, wondered why he had been chosen. Surely there must have been someone else who could have done it better, someone bigger, wiser, someone who didn’t stutter as Oftfor often had. Despite myself, I remembered the time I’d pinched him, the time I’d held him down and wouldn’t let him go, all the times I’d pushed him around, taken out some minor grievance or frustration on the one oblate who never out-grew the hunger in which he’d been delivered to Redestone. Could that be it? Could it be that God, like me, picked Oftfor, singled him out for such attention for the simple reason he was a weakling, a starveling easily dominated, easily ruled?

But that was of course ridiculous. God didn’t need to find someone weak to dominate, He could dominate whomever He pleased. And besides, He loved children. Father Prior said so. He preferred children. Which, of course, might also explain it. Perhaps God had chosen Oftfor
because
he was a child,
because
he was small and delicate; perhaps it was precisely his weakness that had made him so attractive.

I squeezed the pouch, felt its load of earth, and it was as if I squeezed some portion of Oftfor, felt again the bone beneath that meager shoulder. It was funny how I felt about him, at one and the same time despising him for his unwarranted fame (Hadn’t I suffered? Hadn’t others died? Hadn’t we all risked such a death?) while pitying him for the end that earned him that fame. I wondered what it had been like for him, those last moments before they carried him to the grave, put him (forever) underground. Did the dead feel their washing? I tried to imagine a body without feeling, the cold water pooling upon one’s stomach, trickling down the back of one’s legs, the gentle chafing of the abbot’s hands. It seemed impossible. Skin without feeling wouldn’t be skin anymore.

But of course Oftfor wasn’t there too, he was in heaven. And perhaps this was the way a body could be so utterly immune to sensation; it would be like a dream, a dream in which you see yourself but are not yourself: you can’t feel or see what your body feels and sees. I liked this idea, it made sense to me. When you died you went to heaven. And in heaven there would have to be a sense of distance, of detachment. You couldn’t be expected to feel everything anymore. Which meant, it now occurred to me, you wouldn’t even be able to feel fear anymore, not even the sort of fear that had given rise to this line of thought. What a relief that would be, to no longer fear death! No wonder the monks claimed to look forward to it. To be done with that, to have that over and done with, to never again have to worry about
that.

I leaned back and looked up at the stars. For the first time in a while I thought about Oftfor—the real Oftfor, not the one everyone talked about, not the saint. I missed him in a way. I felt bad about the times I had abused him, and I missed him. But now at least I could tell myself he was all right. It was nice how much better this made me feel. I glanced over at the buildings standing along the terrace’s southern edge. Earlier, when I had first come out of the church, the refectory and dortoir had seemed somehow overlarge and threatening—perched there before all that empty space—but now they resumed their proper dimensions, became again the
warm, welcoming places I knew and trusted. I understood that my eyes had grown accustomed to the dark, that it was this and only this that made the buildings seem normal again, right and true, but I couldn’t help thinking there was something more to it as well, that the change in perception marked a similar, if more subtle, change in discernment, that I had seen something more clearly this night, and that (as if I had been meant to) I recognized something familiar in its form. The more I thought about this, the more convinced I became that it was true. I told myself such insights would become more common now that I was growing up, that, inevitably, as I grew older, wiser, there would be fewer and fewer things that frightened me and more and more like this that I would understand.

I delivered the woman’s pouch the next day and, true to her word, it had disappeared by the time I checked the bush later that
afternoon. The prints were quick; she had come, found the thing, departed. But I knew she was thankful. And soon she would deliver her prize to the little girl, to her daughter, to the child who in such a short time had become so dear to me. It was strange really, how much I had come to care for this girl whose name I did not know. I prayed for her every day, pictured her in bed as I worked in the fields, ate in the refectory, chanted in choir. I had even picked out the house I thought she lived in (For it was of course ridiculous to have thought she had come from elsewhere. How could she? She was a good little girl, and, like all good little girls, she was Christian and lived in our village.): hers was the last house on the left, the one that, during the springtime floods, sometimes stood ankle-deep in water. It looked hungry and ill-kept even in summer, bare rafters showing through the thatch, wattle through the daub. Something, a broken shutter or something, lay at the base of the back wall waiting for someone to come along and repair it. But no one would. There was no man in that house, or so I had decided. The man had died and now no one would help the
little girl. Except me. Except Oftfor and me. For Oftfor too had assumed a new place in my thoughts. He appeared less and less as the boy I’d known and more and more as the saint everyone talked about. Which, now that I needed him to play that role, made eminent sense to me. Who was I to doubt the convictions of my superiors? Father Abbot believed in Oftfor, Father Prior. The bishop himself had sent for the famous soil! I pushed aside Sinistra and her knees and focused instead on the stories of the miracles (for even then there were already many of these). Baldwin had appointed himself keeper of the tales and he must have been surprised by the interest I now showed in them. I learned of the rheumatism that had been eased, the rash that had receded, the flux that had been checked completely. I could list them all. I can still. And with their telling and re-telling I grew daily more certain of Oftfor’s powers, of his ability to effect a cure; and, by extension, of the importance of what I had done. For—though I told myself I mustn’t think about it too much—I did take pleasure in my accomplishment. I might not have fulfilled my father’s charge, not yet, but I had the woman’s. I had done something. At some risk to myself, I had done something and, as a result, the world had changed: a little girl would live. The air tasted sweet when I thought of this; God smiled. At least once each day (and sometimes two or three times) I checked the bush by the river where once a woman had hidden. Sooner or later I knew there would be something there, a sign—a bit of biscuit perhaps, a small cake— something to let me know that we had succeeded, that they were thankful, that the little girl and her mother appreciated the cure I had obtained for them. I looked forward to finding this offering happily, hopefully. I wondered if it would be wrapped in something she had made, wrapped in something made by the hands of my little girl.

It must have been about a week later that the wind changed. Have you ever wondered what a stranger would think of us, a stranger who happened upon our abbey on one of those rare days when the wind blows out of the east? Wouldn’t he find this a strange place, an odd and undisciplined place where monks

wander about like empty spirits without regard for order or decorum? But we know, don’t we, we know what we’re about? Though we never speak of it, even among ourselves, we know that such an event does not go unnoticed in the otherwise routine world of a monastery. After Vespers you will find a few more monks than usual upon the garth. The silence is maintained, but there is that tendency to stand in loose clusters: two here, three or four there, each with eyes hooded, faces oddly intent, as if listening for something, trying to hear something somewhere off in the distance, some lazy lilting air. What we are really doing of course is fairly simple. We are smelling the wind, sifting it, hoping to scent something new upon this fresh and unexpected breeze.

I was up by the church, looking out over the fields toward the village. It was a warm night, still very light. People were standing or sitting in front of their houses. Every now and then a word or laugh, somebody’s name, would be carried up to us on the wind like the fragrance of something cooking. A few children were playing behind one of the houses. I think it was hide-’n-seek. As I stood there, watching the distant villagers, each of them sitting with their houses at their backs, shelters within which they could withdraw at will, it came to me why the woman had yet to leave me some gift, some offering to let me know that her daughter was well, that all had gone as hoped for. It would not occur to her to do so. The fields which separated her world from mine were more than just wheat and peas, they were a boundary as pure and perfect as that between heaven and earth (I had known without asking that I had sinned by even talking to her). Of course she wouldn’t report to me on her daughter. I would never know the answers to my questions about her and her identity. The life of the village was as cut off from me, as much a mystery to me—and would remain so always—as I had to assume our life up here at the monastery was to them. That the woman had possessed the courage to approach one of the shades that haunted Redestone’s terrace—albeit a boy—was miracle enough. To expect her to try again, and that only to inform me of the outcome of our trespass, was to expect a man to fly or a tree to talk—such things did not happen.

It was haying time. I was still very young. The next day I would work and play again with Waldhere and Ealhmund. But that night, as I stood on our terrace, the breeze just tickling the skin of my face, it was as if summer had come to an end.