“If need be, I can become a professor of art. Or a curator. If I kept on painting … I’d be average. At best, average. At best.”
“Would that be so terrible? Most people are average. By definition.”
“Exactly. But then think of Velázquez and the way he uses the white of the actual canvas as if it were a color. Or of Rubens and his skin tones. Or of Pollock’s sheer strength, his courage to paint like a lunatic. I can’t do that. I can only be me. And it’s not enough.”
“You’re right,” I said thoughtfully. “How can anyone live with the fact that they’re not Rubens? How does anyone come to terms with it? To begin with, everyone thinks they’re the exception to everything. But hardly anyone is an exception.”
“By definition.”
“Are you still looking for a topic for your dissertation?”
“Not a bad idea.” He scraped the toe of one shoe in the gravel, looked up, and smiled. “Not a bad idea at all. We don’t talk often enough. Have you received minor orders yet?”
“Not yet.”
“I mean it, I envy you. Leaving the world behind. Stepping away from it all. Simply no longer being part of it.”
“It would be nice.” Rays of sunshine came through the crowns of the tall trees, flecks of light danced on the pebbles. “But one is always part of it. Just differently. There’s no way out.”
“Pray for me.” Ivan stood up. “I fly to England tomorrow, maybe we’ll see each other at Christmas. Pray for me, Brother Martin. I am one of the people who need prayers.”
I looked after him. The gate to the monastery hummed as it opened. Things looked medieval here, but there was electric current everywhere, and security cameras, and more and more monks could be seen talking into tiny cell phones. Here, as everywhere, the world was changing unavoidably. I slowly got to my feet. The bells would start ringing at any moment for evening services.
For the first two days I thought the boredom would kill me, but then it got better, and along the way I managed to kneel in church for hours and listen to the rise and fall of the Gregorian chants. And hunger no longer plagued me constantly, so I could forget the pain in my knees, look up at the high windows, and be convinced that I was where I ought to be according to fate and providence.
It was just that I didn’t feel God.
I waited, prayed, waited and prayed. But I did not feel Him.
I got along well with the other seminarians. One of them was called Arthur like my father and could do all kinds of card tricks I’d never seen before. Another was called Paul and had had conversations with the Virgin Mary. He asserted that she’d worn a raincoat and an odd hat, but there was no doubt that it had been the Holy Virgin. One of them was named Lothar and wept so noisily every night that we could hardly sleep, and even my old friend Kalm was here, surrounded by the gentle radiance of his own piety.
“I wish I were like you,” said Kalm at supper. There were mashed potatoes with fish. The potatoes were tasteless and the fish overcooked, but I still would have liked more.
“Nonsense.”
“You’ll be able to help people. You’ll go far. To Rome. And who knows how high you’ll go.”
After supper, we reassembled in the chapel. We knelt, the monks sang, their voices flowed together into a single resounding voice, and the candles filled the nave of the church with dancing shadows.
I demand it, I said. I’ve earned it. Give me a sign.
Nothing happened.
I stood up. Curious glances were cast at me, but nobody got involved. After all, these were spiritual exercises, some people had visions, others heard voices, it was expected, part and parcel of the whole thing.
Now, I said. Now would be the moment. Speak to me the way you spoke to Moses out of the burning bush, to Saul on the road to Damascus, to Daniel in front of the king of Babylon, to Joshua when he stopped the sun in its course, to the Apostles of the risen Christ, so that they could spread the truth. The world has barely aged a single day since then, the same sun moves through the heavens, and just as they stood before you, I am standing before you now and I ask for a word.
Nothing happened.
It really isn’t my fault, I said. I’m trying. I look up and You’re not there, I look around and You’re not there, I don’t see You, I don’t hear You. Just one little sign. No one else would have to see it. I wouldn’t make it all into a big fuss, no one would find out about it. Or better still, don’t give a sign, just let me believe. That would be enough. Who needs signs? Let me believe, then it’ll all happen without anything having to happen at all.
I waited and looked into the flickering candlelight. Had it happened? Perhaps I already believed without knowing it. Did you have to be aware of your own belief? I listened to myself.
But nothing had changed. I was standing in front of an altar in a stone building on a small planet that was one of a hundred billion billion. Galaxies expanding unbearably whirled in black nothingness, shot through with radiance, as space itself slowly dissolved into cold. I knelt again on the flat, friendly prayer cushion and folded my hands.
The next morning I was summoned to see the abbot. Fat, intelligent, and intimidating, Father Freudenthal sat at his desk in the purple robes of the Augustinian canons. He waved at me to come in, and worriedly I sat down.
It had not passed unnoticed, he said softly, yesterday at evening prayers.
“I’m sorry.”
Young people such as myself were rare. Such enthusiasm. Such seriousness of mind.
I realized that I was smiling modestly. A hypocrite, I thought in amazement. I had never intended it or practiced, but clearly I was a hypocrite!
Sometimes we think, said Father Freudenthal, that such young men don’t exist anymore. But they do! He was very moved.
I nodded my head.
“A request.” He opened the drawer and took out a copy of My Name Is No One. “Our monastery library collects signed copies. Could you ask your father to inscribe this one?”
Hesitantly I reached out and took the book. Arthur never signed them, nobody knew what his signature looked like.
“That’s no problem,” I said slowly. “I’m sure he’ll be glad to.”
I’ve been waiting for forty-five minutes. I have no idea why I’m here, but the air-conditioning is working, so I’m not complaining. The heat presses against the windows, the outside air is saturated with sunlight; involuntarily I wonder if the panes are going to hold. I take sips of coffee from my paper cup. In front of me there’s an empty glass plate; I ate the cookies that were on it long ago. Nobody refills it.
Office noises echo from the next room: voices, phones ringing, the humming of printers and Xerox machines. A secretary is sitting at a desk. Her skirt is very short, and I can see her legs quite clearly: tanned, muscular, smooth-skinned, and supple. When her eyes meet mine, she might as well be looking at a table, or a refrigerator or a pile of boxes. I’m glad of my priest’s clothes. If I were in street clothes, a look like that would be unbearable.
I concentrate on the cube. I have to get better at using the Petrus method. Competition is fierce, the young people are fast, and the conventional way is too slow for the world championships. Recently cubes in many competitions have started being smeared with Vaseline, to speed up the twisting. When I first started and the cube was new, the routine was to begin with one layer, which got completed, broken up, and then restored, but that’s no good anymore. Today two layers get worked on simultaneously, then the rest gets constructed from there, without ever having to break up anything already completed. It goes quicker, but you have to concentrate like crazy, none of it is merely mechanical, none of it runs of its own accord. You have to locate the first corner intuitively, and if you’re not quick enough, you lose seconds that you can’t make up.
A hand touches my shoulder. Another secretary, a little older. “Your brother can see you now.”
Eric’s office looks the way I’d imagined it: pristine desk, ostentatiously big window, pre
tentious view out onto roofs, TV antennas, and spires. My brother sits motionless, staring at an enormous screen, and pretends not to see me.
“Eric?”
He doesn’t answer. His finger clicks on the mouse, then he reaches slowly for a water glass, lifts it to his mouth, drinks, sighs quietly, and sets it down again.
How long is this supposed to go on? I pull up one of the leather chairs, let myself sink into it, and am immediately enveloped in its softness.
Eric turns his head, looks at me, and says nothing.
“So?” I say.
He’s silent.
“What’s up?” I say.
“Can I do something for you?”
I rub my eyes. Whenever we see each other, no matter what the circumstances, no matter when, no matter where, he always finds a way to make me furious. “You called me!”
“I know.” He looks me up and down expressionlessly. “We spoke.”
“No we didn’t! That was your secretary. She told me I had to come.”
“I know.”
“So what’s it about?”
He reaches for some piece of paper, looks at it, grins for a moment, reaches for another one, looks serious again, sets both of them aside, picks up his phone, and looks at it. “How are you?”
“Good. The state championships are in six months. I can’t win, but I can still participate.”
He stares at me.
“The cube.”
He stares at me.
“Rubik’s Cube!”
“It still exists?”
I decide not to go there. “And how are you?”
“Interesting developments in the housing market in Eastern Europe. We’re hedging with sources of alternative energy. Have you eaten already?”
I hesitate. I think of my breakfast, the chocolate bars in the confessional, the curry sausage I ate along the way, and the dry cookies outside. “No.”
“So come on!” He jumps to his feet and walks out without waiting for me to follow.
I want to heave myself out of the chair, but the arms aren’t firm and I sink back in. The older secretary is watching me through the open door. It takes me three attempts to get up: I smile at her as if I’d done it on purpose, master clown and king of slapstick, and go down the corridor to the elevator where my brother is waiting.
“Finally!” he calls.
There are two men with ties in the elevator, and the mirror on the wall multiplies us into an army.
“Are there statistical investigations?” asks Eric. “Into horoscopes and people’s lives? Do things come out the way astrologers predict? It should be possible to clarify that statistically. Do you know anything about it?”
“How should I know anything about it?”
“But you make horoscopes!”
“No!”
“No?”
“Horoscopes are sheer nonsense!”
“You don’t make horoscopes?”
“Is that supposed to be a joke?”
He pulls out his phone, taps on it, and puts it back in his pocket. The elevator stops, we get out. I can hardly keep pace with him. We cross the lobby, the glass doors open, I collide against a wall of pure heat. He crosses the street, just like that, looking neither right nor left. A car honks, he pays no attention. Luckily the restaurant is right on the opposite side. I couldn’t go any farther in this temperature.
It is an elegant place: linen cloths on the tables, lamps shaped like glass drops, waiters in black shirts, and, thank God, air-conditioning. Eric heads for a small table, jammed in between two other small tables in front of a leather banquette along the wall. Not a good idea, but how can I explain this to him? The waiter has already pulled out the table, Eric steps to one side, so there’s no option but for me to sit on the banquette between two men in suits who glower at me, their disapproval of my bulk only partially tempered by respect for the cloth. The waiter pushes the table back into position, Eric sits down opposite me and says, “The usual.” The waiter hurries off before I can contradict him. Where does Eric get the idea he can order for me?
He looks at his phone, taps it, puts it away, and stares at the wall behind my head. Then he picks up the phone again.
“How’s the economy doing?” I ask.
“What?” He’s tapping away, not looking up.
“How’s the economy? Do you have a prognosis?”
“Prognosis?” He taps. “No.”
As always, people all around the room are looking at me surreptitiously. I’m used to it. If they were to see me at the head of a procession, they would think nothing of it, and nor would they regard it as odd if I were discussing questions of morality on TV. But seeing me just sitting there in a restaurant like this with a glass of water in front of me, facing a businessman staring fixedly at a phone, strikes them as curious. Many of them feel comforted by the fact that people like us still exist—that we still walk the earth, saying Mass, praying, and behaving as if man had a soul and there was hope. I feel it myself when I see priests I don’t know.
The waiter brings the food. The portions are even smaller than I had feared. A minuscule heap of tangled threads of pasta and mussels in the center of a more or less empty plate.
Eric puts the phone away. “If you send someone a message and he answers and you answer back and ask for a quick reply, and none comes, would you assume he didn’t get the message or that she’s simply not answering?”
“He or she?”
“What?”
“You said ‘he’ and then you said ‘she.’ ”
“And?”
“Nothing.”
“What does that have to do with my question?”
“Nothing, but—”
“What do you want to know?”
“Nothing!”
“It doesn’t matter what kind of message. It’s irrelevant.”
“And that’s not what I asked.”
“Perhaps it’s all part of what you do. Perhaps you have to be so curious.”
“But I’m not curious!”
He stares at his phone, taps on it, and ignores me. That’s fine by me, because the dish is proving so complicated that I have to concentrate. It defies all reason that you’re not allowed to cut noodles. A commandment that carries quasi-religious authority. Cutting noodles would be a gigantic misstep. Why? Nobody knows. And mussels? You have to pull open every shell and then extract the tiny, tasteless lump of stuff. It’s hard enough with your fingers, even harder with a fork.
“Do you still conduct exorcisms?”
“Do we …?”
“Demonic possession. Do you still do that? Do you have people for that?”
“I don’t know. It’s possible.”
He nods, as if my answer confirms a suspicion.
Eric hasn’t yet touched his food. I open the last shell, sauce drips onto my sleeve, then I concentrate on the noodles, but it’s not easy, the plate is full of broken mussel shells. My fingers smell of fish. And my neighbor on the banquette keeps jabbing me with his elbow, he’s gesticulating wildly. He’s facing a man with a bald head and glasses; the two of them are discussing the credit rating of a fixed-income fund.
“What’s the classic school of thought?” asks Eric. “Do you have to let a demon in if he comes? Does he need an invitation, or can he just take possession of someone?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“A book, just a book. I read this book. A strange book. Never mind.” He picks up his glass of water, looks at it, takes a sip, and puts it down.
“So, what did you want to talk to me about?”
He frowns and looks at his phone. I wait. He says nothing.
This is gradually becoming exhausting. I pull out my phone, tap in a message: How are you, call me if you have time! Martin, and I send it to Eric.
He’s just put down his phone. It vibrates, he reaches out and looks at it and raises his eyebrows. I wait, but he doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t smile either. He rubs his brow, puts down the p
hone, picks it up, puts it down again, and says, “This heat!”
I admit it wasn’t the wittiest joke, but a brief smile would not have been amiss. Why does he find it so hard to be polite?
“How’s Laura?” I ask. I barely know his wife. An actress, what else. Very good-looking. What else. “And Marie?”
“She’s doing well in school. Sometimes I worry about her.”
“Why?”
“Sometimes I worry about her. But she’s doing well in school.”
“And your mother?”
“She’s got this TV program now. People call in, talk about their illnesses, and she comments.”
“I thought she was an eye doctor.”
“There was an audition, three hundred doctors, and she won it. She gets good ratings. And your mother?”
“Healthy. Thank God. Retirement suits her, she reads everything she always wanted to read.”
“Do you still live with her?”
I look at him to see what he’s thinking. But why should I keep it a secret? The hours I spend with Mama are bright and peaceful, the best hours of the day. We eat cake, sitting facing each other, we don’t talk much, we wait for evening to come. What’s bad about that? “I live at the presbytery, but I visit her often.”
“Every day?”
“Are you still eating your pasta?”
He looks at his untouched plate as if it’s the first time he’s seen it. But before he can answer, a man stops behind him, bares his teeth, and claps him on the shoulder. “Friedland!”
Eric jumps up. “Remling!” He pretends to box the man in the stomach, while the man holds Eric’s upper arm tight. Both of them laugh awkwardly.
“Do they let just anyone in here?”
“As you can see!”
“Everything okay?”
“Obviously. And you?”
“Absolutely.”
“That last game! A disgrace!”
“Madness!”
“I wanted to shoot myself! This is my brother.”
Remling looks at me. A fleeting look of surprise passes over his face: the usual look people get when they find themselves unexpectedly face-to-face with a priest. He holds out his hand, I reach out too, and we shake hands.