Quest of Hope: A Novel (59 page)

By May Day his sores had healed and his skin had roughened in a way that it no longer suffered the abrasions of the clothes. Though the man was relieved for it, he felt ashamed as well. He had come to pay for his past, to immerse himself in a baptism of misery that might wash away his failings. It was the way of his order and he clung with desperate resolve to the notions it had planted so deeply within his soul.

But Heinrich could scarcely bear the frustration he felt and the growing contempt in which he held himself. “I come to pay a penance, yet I yearn for comfort and healing. I do duties that become easier each day. Woe to me … woe to me!”

On a rainy day near May’s end he handed old Anoush his remaining salt. “For the children. I have been greedy and selfish … I should have given it before.” He then reached into his satchel and retrieved his gold coins and what silver pennies he still had. “And take these idols from me. I’ve no right to them. Feed the poor, clothe the naked.” He set the pouch into the astonished nun’s palms and turned away.

On the first of June he announced an added penance. To Anoush’s horror and the priests’ affirmation, he would begin to crawl on his belly to St. John’s each night; it seemed a way to suffer more. So for weeks on end the man did just that. In the dark hours past each midnight he dragged himself through the rough rubble and fouled gutters of Rome to the Holy Stairs where he muttered his repetitions. He then crawled home to lie alone in his cell until prime when a new day of hard labor would began.

Heinrich lived this way through the months of June and July, but after ringing the bells of prime on a glorious August dawn, the man collapsed in tears. He moaned like a wounded bull as he railed against himself with yet more failings. “Methinks me mad! I hate this penance and in m’hatred I sin again!” He lay trembling and confused until the gentle hand of Sister Anoush startled him.

Sister Anoush had spent hours in her gardens reflecting on her friend’s misery and in earnest prayer on his behalf. “Dear, dear Heinrich. How can I help you?”

The haggard, gaunt penitent sat up, hollow-eyed and drawn. His beard was long, his hair unkempt. He had lost his bulk, his clothing smelled, and his breath was hard. “I … I fear I am beyond hope.”

“Nay, never.” Anoush took him firmly by the hand. “Poor wretch, you are bound to something other than wisdom’s way. You must find the courage to change … the courage to turn outside of yourself.”

Heinrich looked away.

The old woman embraced the man. “I pray this caterpillar bursts from his bondage … I pray you become a butterfly and fly away from the gutters of Rome!” Her words chilled the man.

By St. Michael’s Day, Anoush’s prayer was not yet answered. Heinrich stubbornly held to his vow and sank ever further into an abyss of melancholy and despair. He sought new ways to purge whatever undeserved respite tempted him from his path, and to Anoush’s great sadness, he finally refused to look upon the mosaic, once cursing it for the gladness it had given him.

His obsession became entangled with depression which, in turn, gave way to indolence. His sluggish ways did not go unnoticed, and on a cold Advent evening Father Vincenzo lost all patience with the man. “Sloth is a vice!” he shouted. “And sins require penance!” Heinrich groaned.

Vincenzo, of course, was surely a poor model. Content to mutter his liturgy and slump about his chambers, the man had little business crushing reeds already bruised. No longer a zealot who simply misused the faith, he had become indifferent to the pursuit of truth altogether.

“Give no more heed to
Don
Vincenzo … or Father Arturo for that matter,” pleaded Anoush. She now admitted a deep and secret heartache long denied. “They suffer a worse terror than you. They are miserable, cruel men who serve a meaningless god. They are men of religion and not of faith.”

Poor Anoush was exasperated with Heinrich. She pleaded and consoled, admonished and instructed. She urged the man to abandon his penance and save his life. She urged him to listen to the counsel of songbirds instead of priests, and to hear the wind whispering for change. But, alas, January had passed and February was upon them. The songbirds were silent and the winds blew damp and cold. She could do no more than help the stubborn sufferer to his bed and weep for him in the dark of night.

Chapter 24

ANFECHTUNG AND PURPOSE

H
e is being called the ‘Worm of Santa Maria’s! ‘” Father Vincenzo laughed. “I think the name is good. Look at the fool.”

Sister Anoush laid a hard eye on her superior. “This ‘worm’ is an uncommon man,
Pater.
He has taken your ways deep within himself… far to excess, perhaps to their natural end.” She doubted that Vincenzo had the courage to do the same.

“Ah, the ways,” scoffed Vincenzo. “The blessed ways.”

Anoush helped Heinrich to his feet after he crawled the final few rods to the church door. It was a cold night, the sixth of February in 1212. Though it was three hours past midnight, the priests and nuns were gathering for prayer to begin the Great Lent. “Dear boy, dear boy,” groaned Anoush. “You must end this penance before you die. I hear you in the night, wheezing and coughing.” She held a smoky torch over her head. “And I see you’ve lost more teeth.”

Heinrich could say little. He was weak and desperate, obsessed with purging every vestige of comfort or island of strength that might yet be found within. Even glimmers of hope needed to be extinguished, for he imagined the very sense of any good thing was undeserved. Each night’s painful crawl to the Holy Stairs was a tortuous punishment, yet with every sharp edge that cut into his belly the man felt relief. Even his relief, however, caused him shame, for he was certain that such odd pleasure was, itself, a joy that voided the very purpose of his penance.

Anoush led the trembling wretch toward his cot.
“Tantatio tristitae!”
she whispered. “Beware the temptation to despair. You are not without hope, my son.” Heinrich groaned and stared up at the sad brown eyes of the bent-backed saint. “You don’t understand, sister. I must
lose
all hope. Hope brings joy.”

On the morning that followed, Heinrich stood on trembling legs at first-meal and tore his rye in two. “Through this Lent I, too, shall deny m’self. Until Holy Saturday I eat half and share the rest with these poor.” Those gathered simply stared.

The man’s decision was another one rooted in deception. He believed his beaten, ravaged body was little more than the prison of his spirit; as if his outward shell was an unjoined appendage, a lesser thing, an unworthy annoyance to be abused and neglected… like the reeve’s dog. But the man, like all men, was a whole. His body, though long-suffering, would not allow such inane abuse—and it finally rebelled. On the night of Holy Thursday, in the third week of March, the “Worm of Santa Maria’s” lay unconscious on the seventh step of the
Scala Santa.

The night guards of the pope’s palace knew the man well and sent a messenger to the church. Sister Anoush, of course, was the first to react. She yanked a big novice from his bed, harnessed the horse to its cart, and prodded the beast to hurry. She then marched up the Holy Stairs with her novice in tow, sharply dismissing all demands they climb on their knees. She laid a kind hand on Heinrich’s sweated brow as the novice lifted him.

Heinrich was delivered to his bed midst the loud complaints of Fathers Vincenzo, Arturo, and Florian. They were in no mood for this. Their own Lenten fasts made them irritable under the best of conditions, and now they were rousted from a good night’s sleep to carry this foul-smelling Teuton to his stale cot. “No more!” growled Vincenzo. “I wash my hands of him!”

Heinrich awakened somewhere in the afternoon hours of Holy Saturday. He had been bathed and dressed in clean linens by Anoush, who had also trimmed his hair and beard. He was sallow and sweated, too weak to even mutter a word, but when he heard another ringing the bells of nones he knew his mighty penance had failed.

The man closed his eye and his chest began to heave. Trembling, he rolled away from the blessed sister and moaned. Soon his breathing was halting and his shoulders began to jerk. Anoush gently laid both hands on him. He began to shake and lurch as the frightened Anoush prayed loudly. Suddenly she stopped and simply held him close, for the man was not wrestling in the throes of death, but rather sobbing like a child.

Heinrich lay in the care of his aged nurse for weeks. His fever had passed but his body was frail. By late April he was baking bread once again and helping the novice with the bells. In exchange for lodging and food, broken Heinrich humbly asked to serve in whatever ways his improving health might allow until he was strong enough to begin his journey home. His request was reluctantly granted with the stipulation that he not remain past the first day of July.

In the warm weeks of springtime, Heinrich spent hours listening to the words of Sister Anoush as he helped tend her gardens. She was wise and encouraging. She worked in apparent vain to teach him the
proper
order of things, that nothing on earth—no king, no pope, no village priest or reeve, nor high-minded notion—ruled with authority unless it ruled according to God’s Law of Love.

Despite her kindness and her instruction, the man remained numb, empty, and woefully shamed. His penance had miscarried, and he believed his many years away from home had been in vain. It was a new weight of sorrow he could scarcely bear. More than that, he had no more solution, no goal in view that might lighten the millstone hanging heavy on his shoulders. Everything had failed him, including himself. His spirit was wounded and scarred, barred from wisdom, closed to hope. He suffered the horrors of
Anfechtung
—the aching, unrequited contest for the soul.

In early June, Sister Anoush begged the priests to allow Heinrich the tasks of the carter. She hoped a change in the man’s monotony might kindle some spark of life. So, with some hesitation, the man was given charge of the two-wheeled cart and sent about Rome delivering eggs, carrying children to adoptive homes, fetching foundlings, bearing dispatches, and other sundry chores.

Bouncing atop Rome’s cobbles helped awaken something within the joyless man. He was particularly taken by the beauty of the Pantheon. Once the grand temple of the Roman gods, it had become a Christian church six hundred years before. The pilgrim stared up at its huge, domed ceiling, opened in the very center to the blue sky. Heinrich quickly looked down. “Cursed vow!” he grumbled. He wasn’t sure it had meaning any longer, but he was not ready to abandon all.

The man began to enjoy his days riding in the Italian sunshine. He marveled at the ruins of Rome’s glorious past, now mere mounds of stubble rising up from the dirt and debris of the centuries. He passed the forum and imagined the voices of the senators echoing amongst the goats now chewing grass atop what once had been the world’s seat of power. He trotted his little horse through Constantine’s arch and pretended to be a charioteer in a Roman legion following the emperor to the far-flung reaches of the world.

By Midsummer’s Day, Heinrich thought the decaying city to be redeemed, in part, by its scattered gardens and wildflowers, songbirds and the few fountains that yet sprayed water in the sun-bathed air. He watched a few squealing children splash in one and Heinrich paused to think of his own good lads. He could see them frolicking in the Laubusbach. The man reached into his satchel and retrieved his stone. He swished it in the fountain’s waters and chuckled. “There, little charm, you’d be baptized in the waters of Rome!” He rubbed the smooth stone between his fingers and thumb, then dropped it back into his bag. “Home,” he resolved. “’Tis time.”

Indeed it was. And in the early hours of the first day of July in the Year of Grace 1212, Sister Anoush walked her dear friend before the marvelous mosaic of
Santa Maria in Domnica.
There, the ragged, broad-shouldered German and his frail, stooped, Armenian friend stood silently together one last time as the rising sun illuminated the flowers of the fields and the robes of the angels. The golden halo of the Holy Child sparkled like a ring of jewels against the deep blue robes of the Virgin, and the saints glowed all around.

Heinrich’s eye lingered along the gold-eyed, red blooms and his mind flew to Emma and her corn poppies. His heart filled with the colors of the rainbow; the fruit of the sun. He lifted Sister Anoush’s knotty hand to his lips and kissed it tenderly.

Don
Vincenzo broke the silence. “Sister, tell him I’ve come to release him.”

Heinrich’s mood changed as he was led to the confessional. There, he dutifully offered a short list of committed sins, but he had already reasoned it was probably useless. Whatever absolution God might have granted by His grace would certainly be rejected out-of-hand, for the man had held his own soul in the scales—and he found it wanting. God’s love was surely conditioned on his sincerity, and his sincerity was disproven by his failings. Not only did he expect his eternal state to be in the gravest peril, but his temporal indulgence would not now be granted either. His incomplete penance would leave a reckoning still due on earth, one that both he and his family must pay as penalty.

At Anoush’s insistence, Vincenzo charitably pronounced the man’s sins forgiven in heaven and remitted on earth. The priest let his words ring with the authority of the Church, but Heinrich’s heart was now cold to things of the order. To the baker of Weyer, it—like he—had failed.

With a bow and a final mumble Vincenzo disappeared from the nave, leaving Anoush a few final moments with her friend. Heinrich was sullen, though he did not complain of his unhappiness. He quietly slipped away from Anoush to the crypt below the altar, where he stood before his mother’s medallion. The relic had been draped gracefully over the neck of an olive-wood crucifix standing alongside a small painting of the Virgin. The man knelt alone in the candlelit chamber and recalled many moments of his former times. It was a bittersweet respite. Suddenly weary of such recollections, he sighed, then rejoined Anoush. He wrapped an arm lightly around her frail shoulders and bowed his head.

Anoush stood by her weary friend and would have stayed there all the day had not she heard the man draw a deep breath. She knew the time had come. She turned him toward her face and bade him to kneel. She laid her hands gently on his head and smiled. “Ah, dear, dear Heinrich. I shall pray you fly free from your cocoon.” She smiled tenderly. “In the meanwhile, I have stuffed your satchel heavy with cheese and fruit, some dried fish and vegetables pulled by my own hand. The children have stuffed your rucksack with bread and some preserves.” She stopped to fight back tears.

“Now, if you would allow, I should like to send you with my blessing.” The wise woman closed her eyes and tilted her head upward. “
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.
Attend to my cry: for I have been brought low indeed. Deliver me from my persecutors; for they are stronger than I. Lead my soul out of prison, that I may praise Thy name.” Her eyes blurred and her voice trembled. She embraced Heinrich, then walked him to the door.

Heinrich could barely speak. “I… shall always remember you, Sister Anoush. You saved my life; please pray for my soul and that of mine household.”

Anoush nodded, unable to utter a sound.

“And I shall think of you always and of what you taught me … and of this mosaic.” Heinrich turned to gaze upon the sparkling field of flowers one last time. He embraced the woman, then turned quickly away.

The man hurried for the door, but before he reached it he heard the old saint’s trembling voice calling after him. “I shall lift up mine eyes unto the mountains, from where shall my help come? Mine help comes from the Lord God, who made heaven and earth. To you, O God, I lift up mine eyes to you who are enthroned above the sun. As the eyes of servants look to the hand of the master, so our eyes look to the Lord until he is gracious unto us.”