Disappearances (22 page)

“But,” my father said, “I'd still like to know. I'd still like one good close look at its eyes.”

“A man ought always to be careful about what he wishes for,” Uncle Henry said gravely.

“Why's that, Hen?”

“Because he might just get what he thinks he wants.”

“Well,” my father said, “here hath been dawning another blue day. On a morning like this it's just good to be alive.”

The morning was wet and chilly and gray, but Uncle Henry and I both agreed with him fervently.

“I wish you wouldn't go down in that freezing water again, though,” Uncle Henry said. “I ain't even sure where that whiskey is now.”

“You row then, Henry. I'll tell you where to go. Bill, you set up in the bow. Head straight out off the end of the point.”

About one hundred feet offshore my father told Uncle Henry to stop. I started to lower the anchor.

“Don't bother, Bill. That rope ain't near long enough.”

“There must be forty feet of it.”

“That ain't half enough. We're riding over ninety or a hundred foot of water here.”

“You can't go down there,” Uncle Henry said. “It's as dark as night down there.”

“I see good in the dark.”

“Not that good. Nobody sees that good. Nobody can dive that deep in ice water neither.”

Remembering what my father had told me about his search for my mother, I didn't say anything. I didn't want him to dive, but I didn't doubt that he could do it. I suppose that I didn't believe any remotely possible feat of strength or endurance was beyond him. He took off his work shoes and vanished over the side.

Uncle Henry sighed. “He's still trying to mask them mules,” he said.

After a long minute my father's arm emerged holding the shotgun. Rat's slouch hat appeared with my father's head inside it. He swam over to the boat and handed me the gun and hat.

When he dived again I tried to hold my breath until he surfaced. I held it three times before he appeared with the end of the rope he'd used to lower the whiskey down the cliff. “It just reaches,” he said. “Haul it up.”

Uncle Henry hauled the rope up hand over hand. Tied to the other end was a case of whiskey. My father took the free end of the rope between his teeth and sounded.

I started to hold my breath again.

“Don't do that,” Uncle Henry said.

In all my father recovered ten cases of whiskey, the shotgun and the pack basket with his hatchet still inside. His skin was blue when he finally got back in the boat but he was in excellent spirits. When he got to shore Rat demanded to know which case belonged to him.

“You wait till we get home and I'll show you,” my father said. He wiped away a thread of blood trickling out of the corner of one nostril. “You should have heard the singing down there, Ratty. It was like a whole choir of angels.”

“They was choiring, you say?”

“My, yes. They was asking about you, what's more. They said they needed a good falsetto. The choir master was a great strapping fella along in years with long white hair like Moses.”

“Moses?”

“Moses with a black beard.”

“Bill,” Uncle Henry said, “stop guying Mr. Kinneson for a minute and tell me how we're going to get the whiskey down the lake. That little boat won't hold us four and the whiskey. Even if it would, we'd surely be stopped. I'm surprised the police ain't out already.”

“Just what I was thinking myself, Henry. Now here's what we'll do. I'll row this old tub across the bay to the monastery and get Brother Hilarious to stash the whiskey where it won't soon be found. You boys wait an hour. Then go up to the tracks and head north. I'll meet you before you get to the monastery. Leave me do all the talking.”

“Don't worry about that,” Uncle Henry said.

“Hand me my hat,” Rat said.

 

By the time we came out of the woods the monastery bell was ringing. As we started up the tracks we heard voices calling in French. Over them my father was shouting our names. Cassocked figures appeared. The bell continued to peal. My father had organized a search party for us.

“There they are, brothers,” he shouted in French. “They have been lost and now they are found. My prayers have been answered.”

Shouting nonsense, he came prancing down over the ties and embraced us all.

“They have prevailed over Beelzebub,” yelled Brother St. Hilaire, waving an empty whiskey bottle. “They have triumphed over Moloch. Belial has been bested, monks.”

“Only through the intercession of the Benedictines,” Brother Paul said.

“Yes, yes, the good Benedictines,” my father said, producing another bottle. “Here, brothers, here's more stimulant for the Benedictines. Here, Hilarious.”

“I think Brother St. Hilaire has had ample stimulant,” Brother Paul said.

“I think he hasn't,” Brother St. Hilaire said, taking a hearty pull from the bottle. “A drop now and then wouldn't hurt you either, Paul. You don't always have to put yourself up on a pedestal like Simeon Stylites, you know.

“So here are the wandering Jews at last. You've been out here thrashing around for two nights, have you? How would you like to try forty days? How would you like to try forty years, my children?”

He passed the bottle to Rat. “Stimulant for the infidels,” he cried. He drove his elbow hard into Paul's lean ribs and said, “Laugh, Paul, laugh. William, my son, Paul here would rather fart loudly at Christmas mass than laugh. Laugh, Paul. There is a season for laughter. In fact there are four seasons. Don't you know laughter is good for the soul?”

“So is stimulant,” my father said, taking the bottle away from Rat and giving it back to Brother St. Hilaire.

“Stimulant all around for the Benedictines,” cried Brother St. Hilaire. “Quaff, monks, I enjoin you to quaff of the stimulant.”

“I enjoin you to abstain from all stimulants,” Brother Paul said. “A demon has possessed Brother St. Hilaire. A small demon with white hair.”

“All demons are stunted, Paul, you know that. Dwarfed little fellows that hardly come up to your knees. Drink, monks. It is the sacred elixir.” Brother St. Hilaire staggered about proffering the bottle to other monks in the party.

“I forbid you to listen to Brother St. Hilaire. All spirits are proscribed.”

“By whom? By what authority?”

“By all that is holy.”

“All that is holy is immanent in these sacred waters. I maintain that you will quaff.”

Some of the monks took a small drink from the bottle. Brother Paul was beside himself with anxiety for their souls. Meanwhile Brother St. Hilaire had struck up a booming Gregorian chant. Others joined in as we headed up the tracks. Bottles were passing up and down the procession of chanting monks. Brother Paul raced along trying to intercept them. The›monks laughed and tossed the bottles back and forth just out of his reach. The tower bells continued to peal. Rat began to chant too. “Ooma looma booma puma,” he intoned.

“Lustily, monks,” roared Brother St. Hilaire. “The
‘Adoramus.'
”

“
‘Adoramus
Number One' or
‘Adoramus
Number Two'?” a red-faced young monk inquired.

“‘Number Two,' most certainly,” Brother St. Hilaire said. “Come in with the burden, monks.”

“
Adoramus
Number Two” turned out to be the “Mademoiselle from Armentières” World War One song. It seemed to have as many verses as “
En Roulant.
” As we trooped into the monastery courtyard Brother St. Hilaire and the monks roared:

 

Tony the Wop went over the top

Parlez-vous.

Tony the Wop went over the top

Parlez-vous.

Tony the Wop went over the top,

And he got more than the Frenchman got.

Hinky dinky

PARLEZ-VOUS.
”

 

On this divine crescendo Brother St. Hilaire reared back and hurled one of the empty whiskey bottles high into the air. It shattered against the bells high in the open tower, producing one final inspired peal. Up from the reeling column of monks went a mighty cheer.

“I hope them ain't from my case,” Rat said to my father.

Uncle Henry looked at me, his face expressionless.

At lunch the decorum and order of the monastery continued to deteriorate. We learned that the abbot had been ill and bedridden for a week and that Brother St. Hilaire had appointed himself to fill this august office. There was nothing covert about his usurpation. He had forcefully occupied and converted into a still the laboratory where Paul toiled for mankind and the glory of God to discover a cure for gout. In the refectory he had supplanted the religious tome read at mealtimes with a copy of his infamous
History,
and moved onto the abbot's dais to take his meals. For several days he had been issuing liberal rations of his home-brewed cordial at each of the canonical hours.

Now he provided us with sandals and white linen choir surplices to wear while our clothes dried in front of the huge stone fireplace. We had an opportunity to wash, and were warm and dry for the first time in nearly twenty-four hours.

The food was hot and abundant. We had homemade vegetable soup, pot roast with potatoes and gravy, cider, three different kinds of cheese and a French torte. The monks seemed to be living very well under Brother St. Hilaire's tenure. During the meal Brother St. Hilaire punctuated the reading of the
History
with flatulent reports. He called out jovial remarks to my father and attentive inquiries to Rat, who looked especially ascetic and devout in his surplice and slouch hat. On the dais beside Brother St. Hilaire's plate sat another whiskey bottle.

Flushed and corpulent, in the mad heyday of his saturnalian reign, Brother St. Hilaire lurched to his feet and began beating on his drinking mug with his knife. A chunk of the heavy crockery broke off and sailed across the room, lacerating the reader's nose and causing him to cry out in pain. This accident did not curb Brother St. Hilaire's exuberance. “I used to be quite the Don Juan myself back in my day,” he announced, apropos of nothing. “Oh no, I wasn't one to be shy around the little girls.”

“I imagine you wasn't,” my father said, shoving back his chair and cocking his sandaled feet on the white tablecloth. “Tell us about your first time, Brother.”

Some of the other monks smiled and nudged each other.

“Brother,” Paul said, “I must remonstrate with you. Put an end to this bacchanal, I beg you.”

“Silence, Onan,” shouted Brother St. Hilaire. “Monks will maintain strict silence at table.”

While calling for silence he broke wind explosively, occasioning an outburst of laughter from my father and several of the monks. I looked at Uncle Henry, who seemed to be smiling slightly.

“I went to a tiny parochial school out on the Gaspé between Metane and Rimouski,” Brother St. Hilaire said reminiscently. “The teacher was a nun. Her name was Sister Francine. Francine of the Codfish, we boys called her, as she rather resembled one, particularly about the mouth and eyes. Francine boarded with a different family each term. The term I was about young William's age, Sister Francine boarded at my father's house. And all through the long dark winter evenings when the wind off the river roared in my father's chimney she taught me Latin—and I taught her French.”

Raucous laughter broke out. Brother Paul rose and left the refectory.

“Was it old Francine of the Codpiece that got you interested in the brotherhood?” my father inquired.

“She did indeed, William. Throughout her French lessons she said repeatedly, ‘But who will give me absolution, dearest one?' And I would say, ‘I shall, my little sister. My father will send me to the monastery soon, and after I take my orders I shall return and give absolution to both of us.'”

“Did you, Brother?”

“Oh, yes, William, many times. And to many sisters. No one ever accused me of being the cloistered capon. Where's that gelding Paul, brothers? Off in his cell spilling his seed on the ground again, no doubt. Let's go see if we can catch him at it.”

Brother St. Hilaire and several young monks rushed out of the refectory to search for Brother Paul. As soon as they left a middle-aged monk asked us to accompany him. He led us through the cloister along the enclosed inner courtyard. The floor of the cloister was covered with bright mosaic tiles. The mortar between the granite blocks of the wall had been tinted in black, yellow and red patterns. We looked into a small candlelit chapel. Our guide told us that twelve different kinds of wood had been used to finish the interior of the chapel. The cloister and chapel were imbued with a serenity that appealed to me deeply after the tumult of the past two days.

Uncle Henry seemed impressed too, but Rat got my father aside and muttered something about dungeons and inquisitions. As we continued down the beautiful arcade Rat looked at the walls as though the remains of dozens of fundamentalists were immured within them. He was still wearing his hat.

My father was chafing. Inaction of any kind had become intolerable to him. “You got a nice place here,” he kept saying. “But it's easy to see how Hilarious would get bored, it ain't lively enough.”

The monk took us through a passageway off the cloister and stopped in front of a plain dark door. He knocked and stepped inside, signaling us to wait. After a minute he opened the door and beckoned for us to come in. It was a very small room containing a washstand, a desk and chair and a low narrow bed on which an elderly man was lying. Brother Paul was sitting next to the bed in the single chair. “My sons,” he said, his face infinitely sorrowful, “you have been granted an audience with our abbot.”