3

"...and then, Father, I almost took the bread and cheese.”

“But you didn’t take it?”

“No.”

“Then there was no sin by deed.”

“But I wanted it so badly, I could taste it.”

“Willfully? Did you deliberately enjoy the fantasy?”

“No.”

“You tried to get rid of it.”

“Yes.”

“So there was not culpable gluttony of thought either. Why are you confessing this?”

“Because then I lost my temper and splashed him with holy water.”

“You what? Why?”

Father Cheroki, wearing his stole, stared at the penitent who knelt in profile before him in the scorching sunlight on the open desert; the priest kept wondering how it was possible for such a youth (not particularly intelligent insofar as he could determine) to manage to find occasions or near-occasions of sin while completely isolated on barren desert, far from any distraction or apparent source of temptation. There should be very little trouble a boy could get into out here, armed as he was with only a rosary, a flint, a penknife, and a prayerbook. So it seemed to Father Cheroki. But this confession was taking up quite a lot of time; he wished the boy would get on with it. His arthritis was bothering him again, but because of the presence of the Holy Sacrament on the portable table which he took with him on his rounds, the priest preferred to stand, or to stay on his knees along with the penitent. He had lighted a candle before the small golden case which contained the Hosts, but the flame was invisible in the sun-glare, and the breeze might even have blown it out.

“But exorcism is permissible these days, without any specific higher authorization. What are you confessing-being angry?”

“That too.”

“At whom did you become angry? At the old man-or at yourself for almost taking the food?”

“I-I’m not sure.”

“Well, make up your mind,” Father Cheroki said impatiently. “Either accuse yourself, or else not.”

“I accuse myself.”

“Of what?” Cheroki sighed.

“Of abusing a sacramental in a fit of temper.”

“ ‘Abusing’? You had no rational reason to suspect diabolic influence? You just became angry and squirted him with it? Like throwing the ink in his eye?”

The novice squirmed and hesitated, sensing the priest’s sarcasm. Confession was always difficult for Brother Francis. He could never find the right words for his misdeeds, and in trying to remember his own motives, he became hopelessly confused. Nor was the priest helping matters by taking the “either-you-did-or-else-you-didn’t” stand-even though, obviously, either Francis had or else he hadn’t.

“I think I lost my senses for a moment,” he said finally.

Cheroki opened his mouth, apparently meaning to pursue the matter, then thought better of it. “I see. What next then?”

“Gluttonous thoughts,” Francis said after a moment.

The priest sighed. “I thought we were through with that. Or is this another time?”

“Yesterday. There was this lizard, Father. It had blue and yellow stripes, and such magnificent hams-thick as your thumb and plump, and I kept thinking how it would taste like chicken, roasted all brown and crisp outside, and-”

“All right,” the priest interrupted. Only a hint of revulsion crossed his aged face. After all, the boy was spending a lot of time in the sun. “You took pleasure in these thoughts? You didn’t try to get rid of the temptation?”

Francis reddened. “I-I tried to catch it. It got away.”

“So, not merely thought-deed as well. Just that one time?”

“Well-yes, just that.”

“All right, in thought and deed, willfully meaning to eat meat during Lent. Please be as specific as you can after this. I thought you had examined your conscience properly. Is there anything else?’

“Quite a lot.”

The priest winced. He had several hermitages to visit; it was a long hot ride, and his knees were hurting. Please get on with it as quickly as you can,” he sighed.

“Impurity, once.”

“Thought, word, or deed?”

“Well, there was this succubus, and she-”

“Succubus? Oh-nocturnal. You were asleep?”

“Yes, but-”

“Then why confess it?”

“Because afterwards.”

“Afterwards what? When you woke up?”

“Yes. I kept thinking about her. Kept imagining it all over again.”

“All right, concupiscent thought, deliberately entertained. You’re sorry? Now, what next?”

All this was the usual sort of thing that one kept hearing time after endless time from postulant after postulant, novice after novice, and it seemed to Father Cheroki that the least Brother Francis could do would be to bark out his self-accusations one, two, three, in a neat orderly manner, without all this prodding and prompting. Francis seemed to find difficulty in formulating whatever he was about to say; the priest waited.

“I think my vocation has come to me, Father, but-” Francis moistened his cracked lips and stared at a bug on a rock.

“Oh, has it?” Cheroki’s voice was toneless

“Yes, I think-but would it be a sin, Father, if when I first got it, I thought rather scornfully of the handwriting? I mean?”

Cheroki blinked. Handwriting? Vocation? What kind of a question was-He studied the novice’s serious expression for a few seconds, then frowned.

“Have you and Brother Alfred been passing notes to each other?” he asked ominously.

“Oh, no, Father!”

“Then whose handwriting are you talking about?”

“The Blessed Leibowitz.”

Cheroki paused to think. Did there, or did there not, exist in the abbey’s collection of ancient documents, any manuscript penned personally by the founder of the Order?-an original copy? After a moment’s reflection, he decided in the affirmative; yes, there were a few scraps of it left, carefully kept under lock and key.

“Are you talking about something that happened back at the abbey? Before you came out here?”

“No, Father. It happened right over there-” He nodded toward the left. “Three mounds over, near the tall cactus.”

“Involving your vocation, you say?”

“Y-yes, but-”

“Of course,” Cheroki said sharply, “you could NOT POSSIBLY be trying to say that-you have received-from the Blessed Leibowitz, dead now, lo, the last six hundred years-a handwritten invitation to profess your solemn vows? And you, uh, deplored his handwriting?-Forgive me, but that’s the impression I was getting.”

“Well, it’s something like that, Father.”

Cberoki sputtered. Becoming alarmed, Brother Francis produced a scrap of paper from his sleeve and handed it to the priest. It was brittle with age and stained. The ink was faded.

“Pound pastrami,” Father Cheroki pronounced, slurring over some of the unfamiliar words, “can kraut, six bagels-bring home for Emma.” He stared fixedly at Brother Francis for several seconds “This was written by whom?”

Francis told him.

Cheroki thought it over. “It’s not possible for you to make a good confession while you’re in this condition. And it wouldn’t be proper for me to absolve you when you’re not in your right mind.” Seeing Francis wince, the priest touched him reassuringly on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, son, we’ll talk it over after you’re better. I’ll hear your confession then. For the present-” He glanced nervously at the vessel containing the Eucharist. “I want you to gather up your things and return to the abbey at once.”

“But, Father, I-”

“I command you,” the priest said tonelessly, “to return to the abbey at once.”

“Y-yes, Father.”

“Now, I’m not going to absolve you, but you might make good act of contrition and offer two decades of the rosary as penance anyhow. Would you like my blessing?”

The novice nodded, fighting tears. The priest blessed him arose, genuflected before the Sacrament, recovered the golden vessel, and reattached it to the chain around his neck. Having pocketed the candle, collapsed the table, and strapped it in place behind the saddle, he gave Francis a last solemn nod, then mounted and rode away on his mare to complete his circuit of the Lenten hermitages. Francis sat in the hot sand and wept.

It would have been simple if he could have taken the priest to the crypt to show him the ancient room, if he could have displayed the box and all its contents, and the mark the pilgrim had made on the rock. But the priest was carrying the Eucharist, and could not have been induced to climb down into a rock-filled basement on his hands and knees, or to paw though the contents of the old box and enter into archaeological discussions; Francis had known better than to ask. Cheroki’s visit was necessarily solemn, as long as the locket he was wearing contained a single Host; although, alter it was empty, he might be amenable to some informal listening. The novice could not blame Father Cheroki for leaping to the conclusion that he had gone out of his mind. He was a little groggy from the sun, and he had stammered quite a bit. More than one novice had turned up with addled wits after a vocational vigil.

There was nothing to do but obey the command to return.

He walked to the shelter and glanced into it once again, to reassure himself that it was really there; then he went to get the box. By the time he had it repacked and was ready to leave, the dust plume had appeared in the southeast, heralding the arrival of the supply carrier with water and corn from the abbey. Brother Francis decided to wait for his supplies before starting the long trek home.

Three donkeys and one monk ambled into view at the head of the dust streamer. The lead donkey plodded under the weight of Brother Fingo. In spite of the hood, Francis recognized the cook’s helper from his hunched shoulders and from the long hairy shins that dangled on either side of the donkey so that Brother Fingo’s sandals nearly dragged the ground. The animals that followed came loaded with small bags of corn and skins of water.

“Sooooee pig-pig-pig! Sooee pig!” Fingo called, cupping his hands to his mouth and broadcasting the hog-call across the ruins as if he had not seen Francis waiting for him beside the trail. “Pig pig pig!-Oh, there you are, Francisco! I mistook you for a bone pile. Well, we’ll have to fatten you up for the wolves. There you are, help yourself to the Sunday slops. How goes the hermit trade? Think you’ll make it a career? Just one waterskin, mind you, and one sack of corn. And watch Malicia’s hind feet; she’s in rut and feels frolicky-kicked Alfred back there, crunch! right in the kneecap. Careful with it!” Brother Fingo brushed back his hood and chortled while the novice and Malicia fenced for position. Fingo was undoubtedly the ugliest man alive, and when he laughed, the vast display of pink gums and huge teeth of assorted colors added little in his charm; he was a sport, but the sport could scarcely be called monstrous; it was a rather common hereditary pattern in the Minnesota country from whence he came; it produced baldness and a very uneven distribution of melanin, so that the gangling monk’s hide was a patchwork of beef-liver and chocolate splashes on an albino background. However, his perpetual good humor so compensated for his appearance that one ceased to notice it after a few minutes; and after long acquaintance, Brother Fingo’s markings seemed as normal as those of a painted pony. What might have seemed hideous if he were a sulking fellow, managed almost to become as decorative as clown’s make-up when accompanied by exuberant good cheer. Fingo’s assignment to the kitchen was punitive and probably temporary. He was a woodcarver by trade, and normally worked in the carpenter’s shop. But some incident of self-assertion, in connection with a figure of the Blessed Leibowitz which he had been permitted to carve, had caused the abbot to order him transferred to the kitchen until he showed some signs of practicing humility. Meanwhile, the figure of the Beatus waited in the carpentry shop, half-carved.

Fingo’s grin began to fade as he studied Francis’ countenance while the novice unloaded his grain and water from the frisky she-ass. “You look like a sick sheep, boy,” he said to the penitent. “What’s the trouble? Is Father Cheroki in one of his slow rages again?”

Brother Francis shook his head. “Not that I could tell.”

“Then what’s wrong? Are you really sick?”

“He ordered me back to the abbey.”

“Wha-a-at?” Fingo swung a hairy shin over the jackass and dropped a few inches to the ground. He towered over Brother Francis, clapped a meaty hand on his shoulder, and peered down into his face. “What is it; the jaundice?”

“No. He thinks I’m-” Francis tapped his temple and shrugged.

Fingo laughed. “Well, that’s true, but we all knew that. Why is he sending you back?”

Francis glanced down at the box near his feet. “I found some things that belonged to the Blessed Leibowitz. I started to tell him, but he didn’t believe me. He wouldn’t let me explain. He-”

“You found what?” Fingo smiled his disbelief, then dropped to his knees and opened the box while the novice watched nervously. The monk stirred the whiskered cylinders in the trays with one finger and whistled softly. “Hill-pagan charms, aren’t they? This is old, Francisco, this is really old.” He glanced at the note in the lid. “What’s this gibberish?” he asked, squinting up at the unhappy novice.

“Pre-Deluge English.”

“I never studied it, except what we sing in choir.”

“It was written by the Beatus himself.”

“This?” Brother Fingo stared from the note to Brother Francis and back to the note. He shook his head suddenly, clamped the lid back on the box, and stood up. His grin had become artificial. “Maybe Father’s right. You better hike back and have Brother Pharmacist brew you up one of his toad-stool specials. That’s the fever, Brother.”

Francis shrugged, “Perhaps.”

“Where did you find this stuff?”

The novice pointed. “Over that way a few mounds. I moved some rocks. There was a cave-in, and I found a basement. Go see for yourself.”

Fingo shook his head. “I’ve got a long ride ahead.”

Francis picked up the box and started toward the abbey while Fingo returned to his donkey, but after a few paces the novice stopped and called back.

“Brother Spots-could you take two minutes?”

“Maybe,” answered Fingo; “What for?”

“Just walk over there and look in the hole.”

“Why?”

“So you can tell Father Cheroki if it’s really there.”

Fingo paused with one leg half across his donkey’s back.

“Ha!” He withdrew the leg. “All right. If it’s not there, I’ll tell you.”

Francis watched for a moment while the gangling Fingo strode out of sight among the mounds; then he turned to shuffle down the long dusty trail toward the abbey, intermittently munching corn and sipping from the waterskin. Occasionally he glanced back. Fingo was gone much longer than two minutes. Brother Francis had ceased to watch for his reappearance by the time he heard a distant bellow from the ruins far behind him. He turned. He could make out the distant figure of the woodcarver standing atop one of the mounds. Fingo was waving his arms and vigorously nodding his head in affirmation. Francis waved back, then hiked wearily on his way.

Two weeks of near-starvation had exacted their tribute. After two or three miles he began to stagger. When still nearly a mile from the abbey, he fainted beside the road. It was late afternoon before Cheroki, riding back from his rounds, noticed him lying there, hastily dismounted, and bathed the youth’s face until he gradually brought him around. Cheroki had encountered the supply donkeys on his way back and had paused to hear Fingo’s account, confirming Brother Francis’ find. Although he was not prepared to believe that Francis had discovered anything of real importance, the priest regretted his earlier impatience with the boy. Having noticed the box lying nearby with its contents half-spilled in the road, and having glanced briefly at the note in the lid, while Francis sat groggy and confused at the edge of the trail, Cheroki found himself willing to regard the boy’s earlier babblings as the result of romantic imagination rather than of madness or delirium. He had neither visited the crypt nor closely examined the contents of the box, but it was obvious, at least, that the boy had been misinterpreting real events rather than confessing hallucinations.

“You can finish your confession as soon as we get back,” he told the novice softly, helping him to climb up behind the saddle on the mare. “I think I can absolve you if you don’t insist on personal messages from the saints. Eh?”

Brother Francis was too weak at the moment to insist on anything.