52 Loaves (29 page)

The abbey’s trials were far from over, however. The coming centuries would bring more fires (both accidental and intentional), sackings, governmental interference, and persecutions. Napoleon allowed the magnificent fourteenth-century Gothic cathedral to
be used as a convenient “superterranean” stone quarry around 1800, leaving only the ruins standing today. The current church was a fift eenth-century Norman barn that had been disassembled and relocated stone by stone to the abbey, then built into the present church largely with the monks’ own hands from 1967 to 1969.

Unlike the great churches of Europe, with their richly carved furniture, paintings, marble statues, and enormous stained-glass windows, which flood the faithful with colorful filtered light, Saint-Wandrille’s interior was almost barren, its small windows set so deeply in the thick stone walls that whatever light made it into the church was gobbled up by those walls, darkened from years of burning incense. This church was, in fact, as bare, as dark, and as gloomy as the Middle Ages themselves.

I wondered if the very austerity was the point. This was a church built not to attract the community at large or to seduce or intimidate the heathen, but for the use of the monks, who were not here to be entertained. There was nothing in this church to distract them. I would float this theory several days later to Brother Christophe, the Dickensian monk who’d brought me into the abbey that first day. He agreed, but added, “Still, it could be lighter. It’s so bloody dark!” There was, however, one notable source of ever-present radiance: a spotlighted, nearly life-size gold crucifix almost magically levitating over the altar, suspended on thin chains that were all but invisible at certain times of the day. The position of Christ, his back arching out from the cross, added to the feeling of levitation, giving the impression that he might simply free his bonds and soar from the cross, down the length of the church, at any moment.

——————————————

My eyes having adjusted to the darkness, I took a seat in the second pew, ignoring the guest keeper’s instructions to sit in
the first because it was roped off from the rows behind (did he mean the first pew, or the first pew behind the rope?). Services are open to the public, but there were only two other people in the church, both elderly. Waiting for Sext to start, I became dimly aware of an uncomfortable sensation. My feet were freezing. In fact, my entire body was becoming chilled, even though it was shirtsleeve weather outside. I made a mental note to “dress for church”—meaning, in this case, to wear every piece of clothing I’d brought with me.

The huge church bells rang out, and the monks filed into the church in their black robes from a passageway behind the altar. Actually they didn’t so much file in as amble in over a period of several minutes, during which we three laypeople stood in respect. The monks, about thirty in all, arrived in ones and twos, taking their places in the choir, two rows of choir stalls on each side of the altar, facing one another. As would be the case with every service I attended, a few stragglers came in late, after the service had started.

The abbot, who looked to be about eighty, entered last. Then the service began, fift een minutes of nearly unbroken Gregorian chanting of the psalms, the two sides of the choir alternating verses, answering each other in stirring antiphony. The voices, particularly from several of the young soloists, were so beautiful that I later jokingly asked if you had to audition to become a monk. What a great idea for a reality show, I thought:
Monastic Idol.

The psalms were sung in Latin as our little congregation followed the monks through a baffling sequence of standing, bowing, and sitting. Or almost sitting. The monks in the choir never got to sit for this brief service. Instead they reclined back into their choir stalls at about a twenty-degree angle, looking a bit funny and informal in their identical black robes, as if they might
be leaning on the rail on an ocean liner’s ecclesiastical cruise, except with a psalm book, not a drink, in hand. The strange bow they did was equally fascinating, a deep, stiff, ninety-degree bow from the waist, making them look like picnickers who’d lost something in the grass. Fearing for my back, I never tried to imitate it.

At exactly one o’clock the short service ended, and the monks filed out toward the refectory for lunch, while the
père hôtelier
with a little wiggle of the hand nervously signaled for me to follow. What a jittery fellow! On the way he whispered that I should have been on the other side of the rope, in the front row. Damn! I had screwed up already! Yet it wasn’t so much an admonishment as it was an explanation of the privilege being afforded me.

“You have a
right
to be there,” he said, indicating that I should use the door from the courtyard, an area closed off to visitors, and this door opened to the inside of the rope. Which raised a question.

“Where am I allowed to go?” I asked, assuming that parts of the abbey were off -limits to the overnight guests.

He seemed surprised. “Anywhere. You are one of us.”

We entered the refectory, a breathtaking medieval hall over a hundred feet long, built in the tenth century. Both long walls were lined with beautiful windows that flooded the room with light, a welcome change from the dreary church. One of the walls was decorated with Romanesque arches, and the open, vaulted ceiling gave the room an airy feel. A row of tables, pushed together to form a continuous table perhaps a hundred feet in length, lined each of the long walls. The monks sat with their backs to the wall, facing one another across the room, mimicking the arrangement of the choir. A third row of tables, reserved for guests, ran plumb down the center, just so everyone could keep an eye on us.

The
père hôtelier
and I were the last ones to enter the room, and I was startled to see that the monks and several guests were all standing at their places, almost at attention, while just before me, a young monk stood poised with a silver pitcher of water and a matching bowl. The hotelier signaled for me to put out my hands, and a moment later, the abbot of l’Abbaye Saint-Wandrille de Fontenelle did as abbots have been doing here for 1,358 years: he Officially welcomed me by ritually, and with humility, washing my hands.

Then, following the hotelier’s signal, I made the excruciatingly long walk to my assigned seat at the far end of the hall—my place was marked with a heavy silver napkin ring embossed with my room number, 13(!)—as the standing monks watched, getting their first look at the
boulanger
américain.
(I’d soon learn that everyone had been anticipating with curiosity my pending arrival.) We all stood at our places while the abbot said a brief prayer; then the monks all shift ed down one or two places toward the front of the room to fill in any empty seats, and lunch was served.

Fearing that monastic life would leave me hungry, I’d planned to stock my room with snacks beforehand, but with the last-minute rush to beat the strike, there hadn’t been time. I needn’t have worried. Lunch consisted of a robust and well-prepared meal of beef bourguignon, incredible french fries—real Belgian
fr ites,
cooked, I suspected, in duck or goose fat since that’s the only way you get
fr ites
that good—lettuce picked that morning from the abbey’s own garden, and, for dessert, flan and strong black coffee.

My heart sank, however, at the sight of the beautiful-looking baguette, with a golden crust and perfect
grignes,
that sat on a simple breadboard at the center of the table. Oh, no, how was I going to compete with this? I tentatively took a nibble, then relaxed. It was more pleasing to the eye than to the palate. I knew I could make better bread than this. At least, I knew I could at home.

Meals at the abbey are eaten in silence—among the monks and guests, that is. As food was brought to the table by waiter-monks, the abbot, standing a few feet above us in a little perch built into the wall, began reading aloud and continued until lunch was over. The tone of his voice—a strange monotone chant—said “prayer,” but the words, as far as I could tell, said “history lesson.” I couldn’t make out exactly what the reading was about, but I recognized the words “Étas-Unis” and “américain,” so it certainly wasn’t ancient history. The other words I kept hearing were “histoire de Michelin.”

I figured that Michelin, in addition to writing travel guides, must also have a French history book, or even a series, titled
Histoire de Michelin,
sort of like the
History of Herodotus
or something. Later I would have a chance to ask Brother Christophe about it.

“That history lesson at lunch, what period of time was it covering?” I asked. “The French and Indian Wars?”

“Oh, no, it’s quite contemporary. It’s about Michelin.”

“The man?”

“No, the tire company.”

“The abbot is reading the history of a
tire
company?”

“It’s rather interesting, in fact.”

Not as interesting as the discovery that the monks had daily “story time.” And that monotone chant! If I did readings like that, I’d clear customers out of a bookstore faster than a bomb threat. But of course the abbot had a captive audience.

I thought about this style of narration later and decided that like many things about the abbey that at first seemed baffling or even ridiculous, a method to the madness did eventually emerge. Chanting the text in a monotone serves several purposes: It relieves the reader of having to study the text beforehand, to understand what words to give emphasis to, and it sounds the same
no matter who reads it. As with the drabness of the church, the monotone guarantees that the focus stays on the story, not the storyteller. And never, ever, is there any mumbling.

Just before the reading began, I caught a couple of the younger brothers playfully making faces at each other across the refectory, one pretending to clean his ears with his napkin. It heartened me greatly to see humor at the abbey, as I’d been a little intimidated by the nervous and severe-looking hotelier. Of course, the fact that I had disobeyed his very first instruction by sitting in the second row in church didn’t help. The sixth-century Benedictine Rule, which still governs daily monastery life today, dictates that all abbeys shall receive guests—in fact, receive them as (gulp) Christ—but it is the hotelier’s job to make sure that they don’t interfere in any way with the monks’ lives of prayer and contemplation. He had a lot of responsibility, and if I screwed up, say, by sitting down at the abbot’s table or interrupting the history lesson with a loud burp, it was his head.

I didn’t become familiar with the Rule until I’d returned home, but the level of specificity in this document is remarkable. Even the procedure for the mealtime reading is spelled out. “Not just anyone who happens to pick up the book shall read,” the Rule instructs. “The one who should read should begin on Sunday and do so for the whole week.” Such detail was necessary. Saint Benedict, writing a hundred years before the founding of Saint-Wandrille, was trying to restore order and discipline to the monasteries, which even in those early years of Christendom had become loose and corrupt.

I mostly welcomed the mandatory silence at meals for the freedom it provided from having to make obligatory small talk with strangers (“Do you come here oft en?”), but at times it became something of a farce. There were six of us at the guest table at lunch this first day (a mixture of day guests and some new
overnight guests who’d arrived), and we used sign language—as specified in the Rule—for offering to pour cider and the like. Some mouthed, “Merci.” An occasional whisper (“Say, could I have some more of those terrific fries?”) while the abbot was droning on about radial steel belt tires would’ve gone a long way. As a matter of fact, at one point I
wanted
more french fries, but other than poking the diner next to me—a gloomy, blond young man wearing rectangular eyeglasses, jeans, and a red nylon jacket tightly zipped to his chin, making him look as if he’d just descended from the French Alps—in the ribs, I had no way to communicate that critical piece of information.

As the monotone continued, everyone at the table, picking up on some signal that only I had missed, folded his cloth napkin and placed it back in its ring. I followed suit, wondering if this meant I’d see the same napkin at dinner. It did. And the next day. And the day after that. The monks took this frugality one step further, each using his napkin to clean out the inside of his drinking glass and wipe down the table before stowing the napkin, along with his silverware and glass, in a small wooden box, ready for the next meal.

With such a substantial midday meal, I suspected dinner would consist of lighter fare, but that night’s menu started with a fabulous, thick green vegetable soup, followed by chicken cordon bleu and roast tomatoes (from the abbey garden), and for dessert, french toast
—
recognizably the dreary baguettes from lunch, transformed into a sweet dessert.

Practically every monk in the place, though, was trim and fit. The French paradox at work? Not exactly. The secret here is that meals are not a lingering affair. Food is plentiful but is whisked in and out at such a frantic pace that to get a full stomach, you have to eat quickly—two chews and down the hatch—or you’ll leave hungry. During my stay, the typical dinner, a three-course affair consisting of soup, entrée, and dessert, was concluded in a
Maalox-inducing nineteen minutes! I hadn’t had to eat that fast since junior high school lunch period.

Near the end of dinner one night, I followed as the guests again put their napkins back into their rings. The man across from me, however, laid his ring on top of his folded napkin. A moment later, the
père hôtelier
rose and, looking particularly stern, strode quickly over, picked up the napkin ring (silently, it goes without saying), and walked quickly down to the far end of the hall, where he dropped it into a drawer, while the poor fellow sat with downcast eyes. Had something happened? Was he being thrown out on his ear? Maybe for sitting in the wrong pew?

No, it was just another ritual, one that I would eventually experience myself (thank goodness I’d be prepared for it). When you arrive, the abbot washes your hands; when you leave, the hotelier returns your napkin ring to the sideboard. That way, everyone knows it is your last supper.