119. The First Night
The habit felt strange. It billowed between Farid's bare legs, and made him walk unsteadily. When he passed one of the mirrors that were fitted at every landing on the stairs, he was startled. A bald-headed stranger in a black sack stared back at him from the mirror, eyes wide with shock. Josef would have a heart attack if he could see his friend in this outfit.
Evening dusk was already falling over the quiet inner courtyard. Farid stopped for a moment, and then followed Gabriel down to the cellars, where he heard a babble of voices. The cellar area had a high, vaulted roof of polished white stone. The doors to the refectory were open, and as Farid stood on the stairs leading down he could already see hundreds of monastery pupils, all with shaven heads and in black habits, sitting at three long rows of tables. At right angles to them, and slightly raised, stood a large table for the Fathers, and roughly in the middle of the room there was a kind of pulpit beside the wall. One of the older pupils stood at it, leafing through a thick book. His narrow leather belt told Farid that he was a novice. The Brothers and the Fathers wore broader belts.
Farid waited awkwardly near the door while Gabriel hurried up to the table where the Fathers sat, and whispered something to a rather stout priest. The priest looked at Farid and then stood up. There was silence at once, and Farid felt the eyes of the pupils and novices burning on his scalp. He looked down.
“In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,” said the
priest, crossing himself. All the pupils did the same, repeating the words after him. Farid hastily made the sign of the cross too. “In the name of Abbot Maximus, who can't be with us this evening,” said the priest, “I am happy to welcome our new pupil Barnaba. He is in the seventh grade, one of ten new students in all who have come to swell our ranks. Welcome, my son. Now sit down, and we can begin the reading.”
Gabriel moved his head in response to Farid's glance at him asking for help. Then he saw the empty place. A napkin and cutlery were already laid.
The pupils started talking again, and his twenty companions at the table showered him with questions. They were all speaking French. Farid understood a good deal of what they said, but he confined himself to simple answers to avoid making mistakes. The pupils seemed eager to hear about the outside world. Only later did he discover that neither they, nor the novices and monks, were allowed to leave the monastery walls. Unlike ordinary boarding schools and many liberal monasteries, the order of St. Sebastian wouldn't even let its pupils go home for the vacation.
The reading was in French too. All Farid understood was that it was the story of St. Barnaba. His companions told him that they had the story of a saint read to them every day before supper.
“Some of them are as exciting as thrillers, some are as colourful as movies, but some are just plain boring,” said a boy whom the others called Marcel. He sat opposite Farid and was beaming at him. As far as Farid could make out Marcel, who was rather stout, came from Alexandria in Egypt.
It was also Marcel who told him, briefly and graphically, about the hierarchy of the monastery that first evening. “The monastery pupils are squires, the novices are knights, the monks are princes, the Fathers are kings, and the Abbot â well, he's God in person.”
“Why are some of them still just Brothers although they look old enough to be ordained priests by now?”
“Only God knows. They probably have a screw loose somewhere,” said Marcel.
“What about Brother Gabriel?” asked Farid.
“Gabriel's the only ordinary monk allowed to sit at the top table with the Fathers and the Abbot,” Marcel told him. “He's cleverer than all the rest put together. But he can't be a priest, all the same.”
“Why not?” whispered Farid, leaning over the table.
“He's sick in the head,” replied a small pupil next to Marcel. The others called him Timotheus. Marcel dug him in the ribs with his elbow. Obviously he didn't approve of this explanation.
“Doolally,” said another.
“Oh, shut up,” snapped Marcel. “The Pope himself is afraid of Gabriel because he knows so many secrets,” he whispered in conspiratorial tones. The others fell silent, exchanged meaning glances, and looked surreptitiously at Gabriel.
“All those secrets probably sent him crazy,” said Timotheus.
A bell rang, and the pupils began folding up their napkins, putting them into small drawers under the table top.
“What happens now?” Farid asked in Arabic.
Marcel smiled slightly. “Well, in the summer vacation we have free time. We play cards or chess, or we go for walks in the yard and talk about people behind their backs. It's prayers at ten, and then we go to bed.”
When the bell rang for the second time they stood up. A short prayer followed. Farid kept his mouth shut and looked helplessly at Gabriel, but he was one of the few who were entirely absorbed in praying. When they all crossed themselves at the end of the prayer, Gabriel became aware of his surroundings again, including Farid, and signed to him to stay in the room.
“Let's start here,” said Gabriel, when all the others had gone. “You know the refectory now. We all eat the same food that you get, even Abbot Maximus. No one has any privileges in our order. The food is prepared here in the kitchen.” As they approached it, two elderly women in white overalls were pushing a trolley through the kitchen door and began to clear the dirty plates off the tables.
The kitchen was enormous. Several men and women were cleaning and scrubbing in it, some of them polishing up the stoves and the big white marble work surface. The floor of the kitchen, like the refectory floor, was made of polished slabs of red-tinged stone. About twenty
people worked here. Farid noticed one of the cooks in particular. Her name was Josephine, and she looked out of place among the others. It didn't seem right for her to be wearing an overall and working in the kitchen. She had blue-green eyes and fair hair, and she looked like a marble goddess. She smiled at Farid, but he soon discovered that she spoke an unattractive dialect, coughing words out with no melody to them, as if she were having a fit,.
“So this is our new boy â handsome, isn't he?” she smiled, putting her hands on her hips.
“Good evening,” said Gabriel.
“And good evening to you too, Brother Gabriel. Are we getting this handsome lad to help out here?”
Gabriel dismissed the idea with a smile. “Well, so how is Joan of Arc getting along?”
“Oh, my word, if I'd known how much work there was in it I'd have said no. Working away all day here and then rehearsing in the evening!”
“I'm sure you're right. It's too much even for a bundle of energy like you,” agreed Brother Gabriel sympathetically, and he went on his way with Farid. When they reached the corridor he whispered, “A very gifted woman. She was once one of the star pupils in St. Mary's Convent, she knows French and Latin perfectly. But the porter there seduced her, and she was pregnant at the age of sixteen. So they had to get married in haste, and of course he was fired from the convent. He found another job only with difficulty, thanks to the kindness of Abbot Maximus, who got him work in a horse-breeder's stables. But the man was useless and lazy, and a week later he was out on his ear.”
Farid was surprised not just by the frank way Gabriel spoke, but by the decided tone of his judgement.
“And this is our treasure, the library,” Gabriel interrupted his thoughts. “One of the best in the Middle East.” He pushed the heavy wooden door open. Farid's eyes were bright with amazement. He had never seen such a library before. It was at least as large as the refectory, with endlessly long, tall shelves on which all the books were neatly arranged. Most of them had leather bindings.
Between the shelves and the tall stone columns there were little
tables, each with a chair and a reading lamp. A large table with over twenty seats stood in the middle of the room. Several monastery pupils and Fathers sat there, immersed in reading.
On the wall opposite the door stood glass-fronted cupboards where scrolls and old manuscripts were kept.
“Those are the words of St. John of Damascus, or St. John of the Golden Mouth,” said Gabriel. Farid knew a lot about St. John, the writer and orator who was the pride of all the Damascene Christians.
He would have liked to spend longer in the library, but Gabriel gently impelled him out again. There was still a lot to see, and Gabriel needed to go to the lavatory.
Farid waited for him in the corridor. The cellar was enormous, apparently extending under the entire monastery building and the inner courtyard. Two thirds of it were occupied by the refectory and the library, which lay side by side, and that area was surrounded by storerooms as well as the lavatories and the little printing press and book-binding shop. All the rooms had thick, heavy doors.
A fresh breeze swept briefly over the inner courtyard, which was lit only faintly by a lantern at the entrance gate, but light fell from the rooms on to the arcades surrounding the courtyard on the west and the south.
The north side was occupied by the great church, the entrance gate, Brother John's workshop and the visitors' room. Brother Gabriel explained that the monastery pupils and novices could be visited, under supervision, by close family members. The visitors' room had a narrow door of its own opening on to the car park.
“Over there,” Gabriel said, pointing north, “is the church of St. Sebastian, our patron saint. I'm sure you've read his story and the history of the monastery in the little book given to every future pupil here.”
Farid nodded, hoping that the monk wouldn't ask him for details, for all that stuck in his memory was the image of Sebastian with a transfigured expression on his face, tied to a tree trunk and pierced by three arrows. As he read, Farid had imagined Sebastian dying among native American Indians, and that idea had taken firmer root in his mind that the legend of the martyr.
Luckily one of the monastery pupils was coming their way, and called out to Gabriel, in French, âGood! At last! I can pass the signal on to you!”
“Not now,” protested Gabriel, laughing. “I'm busy showing Barnaba the ropes as quickly as possible, so that he'll know his way around.”
“Excuses, excuses!” replied the boy, laughing too.
“Speaking Arabic is forbidden,” explained Gabriel, as he turned back to Farid, “and that applies to everyone. Anyone caught at it is given a round, thin, wooden disk with the letter S for âSignal' on it. He has to carry the signal about with him until he finds someone else speaking Arabic, and then he gets rid of the little disk by passing it on to him.”
“But suppose whoever it is denies speaking Arabic? Or suppose he's older and stronger than the person carrying the signal?”
“Large or small, old or young, it makes no difference. The carrier of the signal will have witnesses, because no one talks out loud to himself alone. And it's best for the guilty party to take the disk, or everyone will know he's looking out for someone speaking Arabic, and they'll avoid him like the plague.”
“But suppose he doesn't catch anyone else?”
“Then he eats his dinner kneeling, and the signal is taken away from him and given secretly to a scout known as the Starter, who goes around listening for Arabic.”
“But that's espionage. Do you approve?”
Gabriel froze. The question seemed to have gone home. “Personally, no, but the monastery administration uses the system to make sure pupils are well disciplined and learn to speak French quickly. Oh, look, it's time for night prayers! We must hurry,” he added, glancing at his watch.
The church of St. Sebastian had been built in the seventeenth century to plans designed in Rome. It wasn't large, but it was magnificently furnished. The nave had no columns, so there was a clear view of the high altar wherever you were. Stylistically, the interior was a mixture of the Baroque, Jesuit magnificence, and Oriental opulence. Large paintings hung on the walls, showing Biblical texts, angels, and Jesus and Mary in royal splendour. Farid thought the church
was cluttered by comparison with the Catholic church in his street at home.
To the right of the altar hung a large painting of St. Sebastian, a copy of the original Italian work of Guido Reni, as Farid later discovered. The altar itself was dominated by a magnificent statue of Jesus Christ. Tall arched windows surrounded the nave of the church.
Gabriel motioned to his charge to go further forward, while he himself found a place with the other monks near the door. Farid looked desperately around the sea of shaven heads and black habits for someone he knew. A slight nod of the head and a shy smile came to his rescue: Marcel. Farid made his way along the long pew, knelt down beside Marcel, and whispered, “Thanks!”
Night prayers didn't last long. Then, silently and well disciplined, the monastery pupils, monks, and Fathers moved out in an orderly line. Farid followed Marcel. Out in the dark courtyard, the pupils dispersed into smaller groups and went on climbing the stairs to the dormitories in silence. Farid was strangely restless. His heart seemed painfully constricted, and he felt estranged from himself and abandoned.
There was absolute silence in the dormitory too. Farid unpacked his underwear and put it away in his small locker, washed, and got into bed.
Almost a hundred and twenty of the younger monastery pupils slept in the west wing. About a hundred older pupils and the novices slept in the east wing. The rooms for the monks and the Fathers lay in between.
It was a mild night, and the sea sounded closer in the silence and darkness. Farid couldn't get to sleep for a long time. The dormitory was not entirely dark; several little lamps fastened to the wall gave a muted light.