Beneath Ceaseless Skies #107 Read online

  Issue #107 • Nov. 1, 2012

  “After Compline, Silence Falls,” by M. Bennardo

  “They Make of You a Monster,” by Damien Walters Grintalis

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  http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

  AFTER COMPLINE, SILENCE FALLS

  by M. Bennardo

  As I rub down the pony after returning from Biyen’s farm, Frère Bruno steps silently into the stable, his hands and forearms still smelling of the sweet wort he has been straining from the barley mash. He has something to say, but he is waiting to be spoken to. I ignore him and continue rubbing Jacques, watching the steam rise off his flanks into the cold air of the stable as I slap him.

  After tying on the feedbag, I turn back to the cart and reach out to the basket with the two barn cats that Biyen allowed me to catch. Biyen is Cree, and his grandfather and great-grandfather have farmed the valley of the Rivière rouge since the days when the Forks were primarily a crossroads for Indians—Cree and Sioux, Ojibway and Anishinaabe, the nations of the plains and lakes trading and fighting and intermarrying at the lap of the Red and Assiniboine.

  Now, much of that history is lost under the houses and shops and silos erected by the twenty-five thousand white settlers that the railroad has brought to Winnipeg in the last fifteen years. Biyen himself now farms like a white man, still on the same land where his grandfather and great-grandfather grew maize but harvesting wheat and barley with horse-drawn mechanical reapers and threshers.

  The cats hiss as I heft their basket and carry them from the stable to the brewhouse. Frère Bruno continues to look at me, and I impatiently make the sign to ask what he wants, with my free hand. As I pass by him, he says simply, “We are meant to stay together.”

  It is not Frère Bruno who is saying this to me. Dom Christophe, the abbot, has been to the brewhouse in my absence and has made some remark. I sigh. “No,” I say, “you are meant to be with me while I am in the brewhouse. There should be no danger in leaving you alone here, and we would have lost work if we had both gone to Biyen.”

  Biyen’s knowledge of the prairies is far in advance of anything we Trappists have learned in the three summers since we were sent here from Quebec to found this abbey under Dom Christophe. And so when I found the gruesome collection of mouse bones and fur mixed in with the grain in the bins of malted barley, I carried them to Biyen for his opinion.

  Biyen merely shrugged his body into the shape of a large bird and suggested an owl had gotten into the brewhouse. But however the bones came to be, there were certainly mice there. Unless I could stop them from eating the grain, Dom Christophe would be almost certain to blame me—and that would mean another round of punishments for all the brothers.

  Already, much to my shame, my own weakness in the matter of stealing handfuls of barley to eat resulted in Dom Christophe cutting our daily meals from two down to one—a communal penance for an individual sin. And the simple fact that Frère Bruno was assigned to shadow me in the brewhouse was proof that the abbot was not satisfied I had the strength to resist a relapse into my former errors. Another unexplained disappearance of food may leave us on water and gruel for a week to drive the lesson home.

  I open the basket and the cats bound out, losing themselves instantly among the bins and tubs of the brewhouse. If I know anything about cats, I won’t see them again for days—unless they’re tempted out by the heat of the mash tun or the copper. But at night, at least, they should keep the mice from the grain.

  “What did Dom Christophe want?” I ask at last.

  “Célestin is dead. You are to tend to the body and dig the grave.”

  I nod. This is not punishment exactly, but it too is a reminder of my shameful behavior. Célestin once was a brother at the abbey, but he could not reconcile himself to the stability required by strict observance of the Rule of Benedict. In Quebec, he twice left the abbey and went to other orders for a time before returning. It was hoped that by sending him to Winnipeg he would be cured of this tendency. But again he left, and so Dom Christophe closed the door of the order against him.

  But a week ago, when Célestin turned up outside the abbey gates, half-frozen and emaciated, Dom Christophe was moved to pity and admitted him as a guest. Everyone was surprised when Dom Christophe appointed himself the special attendant to Célestin, but the task did not seem likely to be a protracted one. Célestin was so long without food that there seemed no hope of saving his life.

  Célestin did not starve to death because of anything I did. The barley I stole was extra above what we needed for eating and planting, and was set aside for brewing beer. Carelessly, I thought that my actions would have no real effect on any of my brothers. But Dom Christophe of course must strive to remind me that what I took came directly from each of them.

  * * *

  Before I see to Célestin’s mortal remains, I first attend vespers with the rest of the brothers. There are eight of us—barely enough for the work required to keep ourselves self-sufficient while attending to the offices of the hours, especially on these short winter days. This year is the first that there is grain enough left over for brewing, and the income from selling the beer in Winnipeg will perhaps allow us to improve the chapel or dormitory.

  None of the prayers at the abbey are long, and vespers soon conclude. The hymn gives way to the psalm, then the canticle, and the reading from the Bible. I have never been a great student of Latin, and except for the moments when responses are expected of me, I find my mind wandering.

  We Trappists do not talk except when it is necessary, preferring to sign to each other if possible, but still I feel that Dom Christophe is cold and silent to me. Perhaps he sees my visit to Biyen as a threat to the self-sufficiency of the abbey. It is hard to plumb his mind when he always keeps his own counsel—he seems only to know how to reprove, not to guide or mediate, and I would wish for another brother to be chosen abbot if it were my place to have an opinion about the matter.

  As the other brothers file silently from the chapel to the dining room, I instead make my way to the guest house to fulfill my duty towards Célestin. As I pass by the dining room, I can hear Frère Michel reading from the Rule of Benedict as the other brothers eat silently, attending to study and prayer even during mealtimes. After dinner, Frère Michel and the brother who is serving dinner tonight will be allowed to eat. I do not expect to be finished in time to join them and may very well miss my meal for the day.

  It has been several days since I saw Célestin, so the state of his body is a shock to me. If anything, he is more hollow and emaciated than when he came to the abbey. His eyelids lie closed over deep sunken pits beneath the sharp ridges of his nose and cheekbones. His cheeks are like paper—almost translucent—and his neck is a shriveled cable of tendons and esophagus, with vertebrae jutting sharply from the back. He has no teeth and little hair, as though he began to disintegrate into a disconnected jumble of parts even before death.

  Slowly, I undress Célestin, marveling at the sparseness of the flesh on his body—the great gaping bowl that stretches from his ribs to his pelvis moves me momentarily to tears. The wintry cold was not kind to Célestin either. His ears and fingertips are black and stiff, and a few of his toes are missing.

  I bathe Célestin’s body, the water running off sharp ridges that should be round and plump and pooling in strange hollows that would be filled with flesh on any other man. My hands fit around his arms and even his shins. When I lift his body to turn him over, he seems to weigh nothing. After cleaning him, I dress him in a clean habit and sew him into a shroud. Tomorrow morning, I will dig his grave in the quiet twilight hou
r before matins. After the funeral, I will fill it over again.

  As I gather up the implements of my work, I notice the bowl from which Dom Christophe had spooned broth to Célestin during his last week of life. A chicken was killed to make the broth, its carcass boiled again and again over eight days until the bird disintegrated into its component parts—bones, tendons, flesh, feet—and the kitchen was heavy with the suffocating smell of boiled poultry. Even with such economy as this, to kill even a single chicken for food is a great extravagance that would only be afforded to a sick or dying man.

  I have not tasted meat for eleven years, since I was admitted to the Trappist abbey in Quebec. Fish, mushrooms, eggs, and chestnuts I have had since then, and often in abundance, but never beef or pork or even a chicken like the one that was sacrificed to Célestin’s broth. I lift the bowl to my nose and breathe deeply of the dregs. I can smell the chicken still, and a little liquid sloshes even yet in the bottom.

  It seems a paltry indulgence, less than a mouthful of weak broth that will otherwise be thrown away untasted. But even so, I put it away from me. I wash the bowl with water and empty it into the cold fire grate. Now the temptation is gone and there is nothing left, but still I am ashamed. It is easy to work up the one second of courage needed to throw away the contents of a bowl. But would I still be strong enough to resist the temptation of working in the brewhouse—the nutty barley grains and the sweet syrupy wort—if Frère Bruno were not always watching me?

  * * *

  We gather for compline, the last prayers of the day, and listen to Frère Michel read out the three psalms. Dom Christophe is short with both the hymn and his lesson, and we are dismissed to the dormitory. In Quebec, the dormitory was a single great room with a bed for each of the monks, a light burning constantly upon a table in the middle throughout the night. Here, the beds are segregated by ones and twos into recessed alcoves that look upon the common area of the dormitory.

  There is more privacy this way, but Frère Bruno’s fitful snoring is hardly dampened by the walls of the shallow alcoves. After compline, we are enjoined to keep strictly silent until morning prayers, but there is little anybody can do about that snoring. It’s a long while before I am able to sleep.

  Late at night, sometime before invitatory, I wake. Something is different about the dormitory, but at first the shroud of sleep keeps me from understanding what is the matter. Then I realize that we are in complete darkness. The dormitory light is gone—the lamp’s wick was trimmed too close, perhaps, or the reservoir was not filled with enough paraffin.

  But it is of no matter. The dormitory is silent at last, and the darkness makes it all the easier to drift back to sleep. I rearrange the coarse cloth of my habit and my blankets to make the straw tick as comfortable as possible. Surely, I think, there is no sin in wanting to lie on a smooth, soft surface, but before I can answer myself I am asleep again.

  * * *

  I am right about the cats. Not even the heat of the copper tempts them out of wherever they are hiding when I boil down the wort that Frère Bruno strained the day before. Afterwards, the boiled wort is poured into casks with yeast and herbs and left to ferment. For this batch, this is almost the end of a long and complicated process that I have not had an opportunity to practice since I learned it in Quebec. My mind is alive with details and concerns and succinct orders for Frère Bruno. The day passes quickly.

  It is the next day, when I go back to the tub of malted barley to prepare more mash, that I have misgivings. There is considerably less barley than I expect, and I call Frère Bruno over to ask his opinion about the quantity. He seems perplexed as well.

  “There was more here two days ago,” he says, sifting through the barley with a wooden ladle. “A great deal more.”

  Then I see something that sends a chill through my body. I put a hand on Frère Bruno’s arm to stop his sifting. Reaching into the tub, I brush away the barley grains and pull up a smooth, dry bone. But this is no mouse bone—it’s fully as long as the longest of my fingers. It can only have come from the leg of one of the cats, yet it is picked clean of flesh and covered with gnawing marks like the impression of teeth.

  I reach back into the tub and sift through it by hand, searching for the rest of the bones. Frère Bruno joins me, and soon we have almost the complete skeleton and skull of a cat. Every bone is utterly cleaned of flesh and covered with the same gnawing marks.

  “This is no owl,” I say.

  “The other cat?” asks Frère Bruno.

  I don’t know if he is suggesting that the other cat may have been the culprit or if he is wondering if the same fate befell her, but it is worth rooting her out in either case. It’s a long search, and many times I think it will be fruitless, but at last we find her wedged in a gap in a stack of firewood. As I peer through the hole—seemingly too small for a cat—all I can see is the glint of her eyes.

  My arm goes in and is met immediately with a scratch. But I reach further back and grab the scruff of her neck, pulling her out against her clawing and into the open air of the brewhouse. Hanging in my hand, she hisses and bats at me uselessly. She is alive, untouched but badly frightened, and hardly so fat as she should be if she had eaten her sister to the bones—if such a thing were even possible. I let her down, and instantly she runs off into some other secret hiding spot in the brewhouse.

  Later, Frère Bruno tells me that he thought the pantry was strangely empty as well as he was preparing dinner last night. I have a cold feeling. Something or someone is eating the abbey out of its stores. When deep winter falls, it won’t be so easy to take Jacques out to Winnipeg—or even to any of the neighboring farms—if we should find ourselves suddenly short on food. An ill-timed blizzard could leave us all in the same extremity as Célestin.

  At that moment, I think of the extinguished light in the dormitory. I feel I must ask Frère Bruno about it. “Did you notice,” I ask, “two mornings ago, when we rose for matins, was the lamp in the dormitory burning or not?”

  Frère Bruno looks oddly at me, as well he might in reaction to such a question. But he thinks and nods. “It was lit. I know because I blew it out when I rose.”

  This is the answer I thought I would hear, though perhaps it means nothing. One of the other brothers may have relit the lamp after I went back to sleep. It proves nothing.

  But even so, when we gather for vespers and again for compline, I cannot help but look at my brothers one by one with uncharitable suspicions in my mind. Did one of them get up in the night and take the lamp with them? I heard nothing when I woke—not even the snoring of Frère Bruno—so any one of them might have done so. But if so, then why? And what did the cat have to do with anything? Even if one of the brothers were sneaking into the pantry at night, I cannot fathom why anyone would want to strip a cat of her flesh.

  As I lie on my bed in my alcove, my eyes fixed on the yellow glow of the paraffin lamp, my thoughts follow such tracks. And they follow them on, deep into the night, until I fall fast asleep, despite my intention to watch and wait through the night.

  * * *

  I wake with a start, and this time I am immediately aware of the complete darkness around me. Once more, the light is gone and everything is silent. I lie quietly on my bed, listening and hoping to catch some clue. But I hear nothing.

  The dormitory is pitch black, but luckily it is the custom of the Trappists always to sleep in our habits so I have no need to dress. The stone floor of the dormitory is like ice against my bare feet, but I dare not look for my moccasins. Instead, I grope slowly away from my bed out into the inky abyss of the dormitory.

  It’s a long eternity until my hand brushes what must be the table in the center of the room. I spread out my fingers and sweep my arms slowly across the surface of the table. There is no lamp. Someone has taken it.

  A quick look around tells me that it is far too dark to tell who is missing by sight alone. At the very least, I would need to fumble my way into every alcove to get a close look at wh
ich beds were occupied, and that would surely wake at least some of the brothers. Instead, I follow the edge of the table by feel and quietly creep towards the dormitory door.

  It is another long, silent stretch to the door, my toes curling around the gaps between the cold flagstones on the floor. The soles of my feet are tingling, and I force myself not to imagine any terrible creatures of the night crawling over or under them.

  At last, my hand reaches the wall. Slowly I search to the left and right, feeling for the wood of the door. Finding that, I search again for the handle. Pressing down, I open the door and slip quietly outside.

  The dormitory door leads directly to a path that runs past the chapel and up a hill towards the stable, the brewhouse, and the other outbuildings. Out here, it is not so completely black, but the night is still dark. Slowly, shapes begin to form in the middle distance around me. Otherwise, I am aware of a cool wetness on my back—I have been sweating heavily without even noticing it.

  The sandy path with its crust of frost is harder on my feet than the cold flagstones, but it is too late to go back for my moccasins. I push on, up the path, pulling my habit tight around me. As I pass the chapel, a great white shape suddenly detaches itself from the building above me and falls gracefully towards the ground before ponderously flapping a set of heavy wings and soaring away. As my heart quiets and slows to its normal pace again, I recognize the night-shrouded form of a snowy owl.

  As near as I can tell, there are footprints in the frost of the path leading up to the outbuildings. They may be old footprints—I’m not certain—but they are all I have, and so I follow them. Then, as I near the top of the hill, I see the lamp from the dormitory sitting on the ground unattended in front of the brewhouse. I pause a moment, regarding the lantern glow as though it might be a trap, but finally I go forward and step into the circle of pale yellow light.

  Leaving the lantern where it is, I push open the door of the brewhouse and peer inside. Nothing stirs for a moment and I step forward. Far in the corner, I hear the rustling of something on the floor of the brewhouse coming towards me, and then a sudden squeaking retreat. A mouse, frightened by my entrance. Clearly no one else has been here recently. I step back outside and shut the door quietly.