The monk laid a hand upon my brother’s unyielding head and said: There is a secret Gospel – we are not meant to speak of it – but it may help you to understand why you suffer. And so I share it with you with the Saviour as my witness. It is written that Our Lord Jesus Christ said:
If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.
Brother Michel pressed his hand more firmly onto the crown of my brother’s head and asked: What is within that you must bring forth? Do you know?
Once, he whispered, I brought forth love in such a stream of joy, it seemed the light of God’s grace went on without end. But –
You have blocked the stream to block the pain. Brother Michel nodded. I see, he said and prayed:
Let everything fall away beneath a cloud of forgetting, everything except your love. Let everything dissolve in the cloud of unknowing, everything except your love. Amen.
He slipped a hand into his robes, drew out a manuscript and gave it to my weeping brother. You will find no solace in this volume, he said, but it contains instruction to pierce the cloud of unknowing which separates you from the Lord. You take a lonely road, one less travelled than most, but be of stout heart. God gives us no more than we have the strength to bear.
Brother Michel kissed him on each cheek, nodded to me and left.
After some minutes, my brother wiped his tears, the flannel of his sleeve drenched by a heart’s heavy torrent, turned to me and said:
Come. Needs be we must ride on.
Three
I had thought to leave him in the silence of the mountains, thought to journey on alone. But as snow melt continued and birches donned their luminous cloaks, trilling lime discs in a wakening breeze, our single shadow of two-as-one set out on a blue-blue day.
At the pass he tossed a last stone toward the cairn, took a last look at the hermitage and said:
As I meditated in the small of that cell, I heard Him say: No sins left to judge. But I did not believe. I did not trust. I sabotaged my own salvation.
Where do you go when there is nowhere to go?
The unseen hand tugged him out of the mountains, down to the city of Torino and eastward bound into a fresh-baked sun, a watershed followed from Alps to sea.
By firelight each night he read aloud passages from the manuscript Brother Michel had bequeathed:
Put a cloud of forgetting beneath you … for if you do not, it will let you see your old sinful way of life … before you know it, you will be scattered, you do not know where.
So you need to learn to forget?
It seems so, he said. I need to remember to forget.
We crossed Piedmont, Lombardy, cut a slice straight through the heart of the Veneto and arrived in Venezia before mid-winter gripped her lagoon and drenched her streets in icy mist, finding safe haven in a pilgrims’ hospice. Many took this route to the Holy Land, stopping off in Venetian ports from San Marco to a far-distant there.
Our fellow lodgers were full of advice. Stay the winter through, they counselled, replenish body and spirit for the long passage ahead.
We rested, drank wine, ate till our bellies ached. But alas, wine fast-floods a melancholy heart and my brother remembered not what he should forget. He slip-slid into thinking, fell deep into memory. For one who had no truck with words, words still trucked his thought.
I read in the manuscript as he slept:
Step above that cloud of forgetting stoutly and deftly, with a devout and delightful stirring of love, and struggle to pierce the darkness above, and beat on that think cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love, and do not give up, whatever happens.
Yet I could not instruct him, coerce, implore or remind him. I could only stand by his side.
In this city of resurrected thought and memory of sin, in this place where his soul scattered he knew not where, my brother found nought but a name. He was El Crucio, the Sad One.
A poetic dialect the Venetians speak and the hospice monks baptised him well for his silent agony upon the Cross of his past. By day, by night, he took his suffering to the streets, walked the alleys of the city and crossed her many arched bridges. We had journeyed hard, but he could not rest, his stride hurried, frenzied. Weary legs were forced to action on a route circuitous, confused, the line slip-wound and knotted, twisted and tangled by the unseen hand. Long would our boots echo in fog-thick streets before we found our beds.
Once, he demanded:
Who follows us? Who walks in our stead, hidden by the mist? Who is the third who never passes, but lurks in the shadow?
He stopped but did not look behind. Instead gripped my shoulders and shook me hard, his eyes insistent, angry, afraid.
There is none, brother, I soothed. Only we two out on a frigid eve.
This did I tell El Crucio.
Again as he slept, I read in the mystic text:
If you wish to avoid error, do not judge, but simply hear and understand. If you are called, give praise to God, and if you are not yet called, pray humbly that He will call you when he wishes.
Suddenly I knew as I had ever known, but with a learned teacher’s words as my witness, that I would be called when he had found his rest. His fate was mine and so became ours, we two out on a frigid eve, God our third veiled by the mist.
As winter’s grip loosened and first bulbs pushed through the mantle of frozen earth in the city’s gardens, as soft spring sun melted the mist cloaking her canals and chapels, the unseen hand wrapped tight about the string, tugged hard on the line of the fishhook jagged in his breast. Indeed, I was packed and ready when he said:
Come. Needs be we journey on.
Four
We left Venezia on a ship bound south, no bunk below deck for penniless pilgrims, so lay out, shivered in our cloaks and listened afresh to the songs of the sailors:
I have lost myself in the sea many times
With my ear full of fresh-cut flowers,
With my tongue full of love and agony.
I have lost myself in the sea many times
As I lose myself in the heart of my children.
We listened without speaking. But as they repeated the refrain, he turned on his side, feigned deep sleep. He who had no truck with words, he whose tongue had tasted love and agony in equal measure.
Early morn on a clear day we entered the harbour of Modon on the south-west coast of the Peloponnese. Halfway to the Holy Land, it was a worthy staging post.
We will take passage on the next ship through, he said, and we sought work on the docks in the meantime, loading and unloading wares with a rag-tag assembly of fellows – Slavs, Illyrians, Sicilians and the ones they called Romiti.
The castle well-fortified, her strong walls stretched across the cape’s frontage to protect the prosperous town. Yet his sight was drawn to the high-forested hills beyond the bay – the ancient city of Sparta, we were told, and the beauty of Mystras, the jewel of Byzantine Morea upon Mount Taygetos, lay beyond.
As a respite from weeks of solid work we hired a guide and his donkey, set out for Kalamata and crossed the border.
My brother was content. Activity settled his mind’s meanders more than the roil of a ship, and he readily enjoined conversation with the lad who guided us. Devout in his faith, he desired first to lead us to Mystras to see the cycle of exquisite frescoes the despot had funded in the church of the Virgin Peribleptos, and we agreed to his enthusiastic suggestion.
Oh, how clear is my memory of that day!
How we entered the city’s gates, the boy pointing the way while he attended to the matter of our lodgings. How we approached the monastery, cut into a cliff-face, from a busy street which opened onto a wide and unpaved plaza. How scuffed dust from many feet lifted into the dry noonday air while we stood and remarked the impressive turn of rounded walls and Orthodox dome.
On we walked toward the church b
ut all at once, my brother stopped, his cloak tugged by a swarthy beggar at his feet.
She was of Romiti blood. Her clothes were in tatters, a coarse blanket fastened across her breast. A puddle of muddy hair fell loose from her headscarf and huge silver loops swung low from withered ears.
He reached into his pocket, tossed some copper into the bowl outstretched by a trembling hand. Her grin was wide, toothless, and he was released at last.
In through the portico, and oh – the spectacle of it! A veritable feast for the eyes! Too much to take in, altogether too, too much. Glory full-sung in a symphony of paint.
We moved off in different directions, caught by different scenes in the life of our Saviour. I remember standing before the Entry to Jerusalem where the artist had perfectly expressed the innocence of children playing in the street.
We re-found each other at the wall of the Nativity – angels on high, shepherds tending their flocks, wise men in thrall to a star. Yet I fancy he focused only on the Virgin.
He walked up to the fresco and studied her black-shrouded form, looked closely at the sad face turned away from the joy of Christ’s birth, her eyes piercing straight into the heart of her witness.
I lit a candle for my sister, offered a prayer for her safekeeping, lit another for my brother cocooned in reverie before a painted presence. And went to sit on a bench.
It was then I heard her, shuffling up the aisle, a bent stick supporting an even benter back. He must have heard as well for he turned and I saw her hold something out to him.
Damn these Romiti thieves! was my first thought. Is no place sacred? And stood to go and shoo her from his presence, but stopped. I know not why, even now. But stop I did and observed a transaction in which no coin was asked or received.
Later he came, sat with me on the bench and said: I could stay in here forever, the peace is so profound.
Truly a place of rest, I agreed.
He held a chain in his hand.
What have you there? I asked.
He trailed the fine filigree through his fingers.
Strange, he said, shaking his head. The old woman gave it me. Fortune smiles, for I had thought to buy one in Modon before we set sail. The pouch is nearly rent through, see?
At which he drew the stone from its nest, threaded it onto the chain and hung it about his neck.
We returned to Modon next day, my brother tugged by the unseen hand now twinned with a crone’s prophecy. For when we left the cool of the church, she again waited with clutching fingers. Indeed I bore witness to their conversation, but speech is always the lesser half of a fully-rendered whole. Who can tell what pushed and what pulled to send us on our next passage south?
A goods transport stood ready for the isle of Candia.
As good a place as any, he decided. And we set sail as a summer sun set hard in the west.
He looked into the sun, tears smarted his eyes. Tears smarted, because the crone’s words had not let him forget.
I stood at his side while he watched waves fold over themselves, sat at his side while he nibbled meagre repast, slept at his side and kept nightly watch.
The sailors said: Well is he named El Crucio, but you are Albaro, his mast and strength. No matter how strong a storm’s winds, you stand firm.
My brother smiled. I thought you a rock, he said, but a ship’s mast is much finer.
And for a short while we laughed as the men drew water in a pail from the vastness of the sea, their captain conducting a baptism before the temple to Poseidon.
We reached Candia, a bustling enclave of Venetian empire halfway to the Holy Land, where he would finally come to peace of mind and stillness of heart, where I would finally find my own purpose, my journey not yet at end, but further across the sea. And further still.
A last memory I have. An image, nought more. Of a bearded man staring out to sea, past me, the one aboard a ship’s deck while he remained at last ashore. Past me he stared, to a beyond beyond a horizon neither of us could imagine. I had accompanied him to his place of rest, a journey shared on the map of time, my real work yet to come.
I look out on a baked desert, a monastery hewn from the rock of Moses, the mount he climbed for his tablets of stone, commandments received from the mouth of our Lord. I have found my calling, although guided by more subtle means than a ruthless hook jagged in a torn and bloodied heart.
Here I stand ready, the Lord’s humble servant, His devoted disciple. And into my ear He speaks, into my heart He whispers.
There is one more thing you must do, He says.
I await His guidance, pray for illumination. And all the while climb the ladder of thirty rungs, meditating on the icon of St John and his sturdy ladder the way from earth to heaven.
Yes, I study the texts, but somehow feel I have already been shown the way. Climbing the ladder feels steady and firm. As if, during the time on the road with my brother, I experienced what I now read, what I see here in bright paint.
I meditate on the icon, a procession of monks on their life-long quest. I remark their fear as they begin to climb, as they see their brothers fall, pulled down by demon desires, down into the mouth of Hades. Only those close to the top exhibit beatific relief, only those yet to begin display eager expectation.
But I? Where am I on the ladder? I have come late to holy orders, I admit, yet nothing is surer than my faith, my love, my trust in His grace. Nothing less than bearing witness to a brother’s salvation has brought me this surety.
Thus I climb the ladder steadily. Each year of my life in this life.
One task remains. So He instructs in that way the heart glows with inner sight. And I shall wait, till the day He says: Now. Now is the time.
I have learnt to wait, to be patient. I have learnt that everyone finds his true place, his true destiny, in the end. I am Brother Albaro of the Monastery of St Catherine in Sinai. I have been, and always will, a faithful brother be.
Song of the Gypsy
Long years have I sat waiting for the one who would come. Long years outside the church of the Virgin, my begging bowl in hand.
I felt him come. It cannot be described in any other way. I felt his presence move slowly toward me from across the seas, across the sands, across the fields and plains and mountains of rock. Long years I felt him move, and waited, knowing he would come. Knowing he must so I could tell of what I had seen.
Finally. Yes. Footfalls shivering the ground, scuffed stones loud in my ear. He had come, and I reached out a hand – instinctive it was – to clutch at the hem of his cloak. I looked up and into a face unseen but known since the first. Looked up, and he tossed coins into my bowl.
A companion stood by him. On they went together, on and into the church. Oh! But I could not lose him now once found, so I rose, stumbled up on my hoared and lame legs, lent on a stick gnarled and splintered with age. Better days had it seen, much as I.
Once I was beautiful, a dancer with bangles and bells. Shifting camp as is the will of our kind, up from the coast we came as they began to build this very church. My husband a blacksmith, he turned candlesticks and wrought balustrades for the choir. All the time he worked the furnace, hammered the iron, I danced. And at night, in the quiet of our tent, he told of the artists who laboured in the nave, conjuring vast stories in paint.
One day he said: Come. Come and read the walls with me. I know we cannot read their great books but this church shall be our Bible.
Yes, I remember well the day I stood before the beauty of the Virgin, our Lady Kiria. I could not move from her presence, her eyes followed wherever I went. I stood before her, felt her pain as my own. But then, oh!
Sudden it was – a dove flying swift from the folds of her shroud streaked skyward toward the roof and out through the dome. I craned my neck, spun round. Where had she gone? Sound rushed my ears. A waterfall of images, one atop the other, rained down from the space where she had vanished. I slipped and slid in the torrent, sank from on high to far
deep.
Everything changed that day. Every tiny thing I could have called my life had no part in my life now. I had to wait for the one who would come, to tell of what I had seen. My husband could not understand. He journeyed on, but left me a fine filigree rope. Something to pawn if needed, he said. But it was not mine to sell. It belonged to the one who would come.
At last. I shuffled into the church, saw him standing before her. He reached out his fingers, drawn up by an unseen hand to touch her. And be touched. By her. I watched him, watched her, knew she watched us both.
I have something for you, I said.
He seemed dazed, disoriented, as if she too had taken him to a place beyond sight. I saw the pouch, threadbare, at his breast, held by a leather thong about his neck almost torn clean through.
Yes, yes. I have something for you, and held out the fine chain forged years before ready to meet its destiny in this moment, a moment freezing and unfreezing as he stared at my gift.
He took the rope, held it up to the light, studied its strength, its delicacy. But shook his head, made to pass it back.
I cannot take it, he said. I have no money, and this is no place to trade trinkets.
This is no trinket, sir! Nor do I trade! And I wagged a grubby finger at him. Well do I know the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ:
Make not my Father’s house a place of merchandise.
It is a gift, sir, my voice more conciliatory now. You carry a heavy stone, its pouch rent and the cord frayed. A difficult weight to bear. And if it were to be lost? Such fate could you never bear.
My words shocked him. He tore the cord from his neck, pulled wide the pouch’s throat, plunged his hand within – an amethyst inscribed with foreign script.
I could have wept. Even as I trusted my knowing all these years, even as I took up my post outside the door of the church each day, even as my husband shook his head, moved on with the caravan, a small voice – the Devil’s no doubt – laughed full in the face of my knowing, to tease and taunt me that I suffered without reason.
Now I trembled. To see the stone in his hand? Oh, the magnitude of revelation! I excused myself from his presence and returned to the blinding light of day to ready myself for what I need tell.