Saint Francis (39 page)

Elias rose.

"Well, what do you want me to do?" he demanded with irritation. "Speak!"

"Take the charter you've written, go to Francis, and tear it up in front of his eyes. That's what he's waiting for, that's what is needed to bring him back to life. If you don't do it-- and I say this in front of all the brothers also--if you don't do it, Brother Elias, Francis, our father, will die, and you will be his murderer!"

Five or six of the brothers gathered around me and fixed their eyes upon Elias, waiting. The feeling that they were on my side made me begin to shout even louder than before.

"All right, all right, stop your screaming!" cried Elias, squeezing the scroll tightly in his palm. He put on his sandals and got his staff. "Let's go," he said to me in a disgusted tone of voice. Then, turning to the brothers: "Make sure no one touches my desk. Antonio, keep watch."

The young novice went up to him and spoke in an undertone in order not to be heard. I was able to catch his words, however. "Brother Elias," he whispered, "what are you doing! You're not going to tear up our Rule, are you?" Elias smiled, and gazed at him lovingly.

"Don't worry, my child, I know what I'm doing."

We arrived at the hut. When we bent over the mat on which Francis was lying, and lifted up his robe, we both started with fear. It was not a human body that we saw before us, but a string of bones surmounted by a skull. The eyes had already retracted into their sockets. Nothing remained on the face except mustache, beard, and eyebrows, all three covered with blood.

Tying my heart into a knot, I placed my mouth against Francis' ear and cried, "Brother Francis, Elias has come--do you hear? He's come to tear up the charter, the new Rule. Open your eyes, Brother Francis, open your eyes to see!"

He moved slightly, uttered a short, shrill cry, but kept his eyelids shut. Next, Brother Elias leaned over him.

"It's me, Brother Francis, me, Elias. Open your eyes. Do you hear? I'm going to tear up the charter in order to soothe your heart!"

Finally, after much labor, Francis managed to open his eyes. It was just as though the lids had been sewn permanently shut. He glanced at Elias without saying a word, and waited.

Elias removed the scroll from beneath his frock. Unrolling it, he began to tear it slowly into tiny tiny pieces. A little color rose to Francis' cheeks and lips.

"Throw the pieces in the fire, Brother Leo," he said. He turned to Elias. "Brother Elias, give me your hand."

He grasped Elias' hand and held it for a few moments in his own. Then he burst into tears.

"Brother Leo," he called to me afterwards, "if there is any milk, give me some to drink."

Francis returned to life slowly, with great difficulty. Each day he became more animated. He began to open his mouth in order to eat, to move his lips in order to talk; he would draw himself to the threshold of the hut to sun himself, and in stormy weather he squatted next to the hearth and listened in exultation to the downpour as though he had never heard rain before, as though he had become entirely arid, had wrung his body dry, so to speak, and now felt the rain falling upon it to irrigate him--and not only his body, but also his soul.

"Brother Leo," he said to me one day, "the soil and man's soul are exactly the same. Both thirst, and both wait for the heavens to open so that their thirst may be quenched."

One day Francis' beloved Brother Giles arrived after returning from a circuit of the distant villages. Francis fell into his arms and kissed him again and again. He loved him exceedingly because, as he said, Giles kept his eyes constantly pinned on heaven. Kneeling on the ground, the visitor laughingly related all he had seen and everything that had happened to him as he went from town to town. Some of the villagers, taking him for a madman, had greeted him with jeers; others, taking him for a saint, had prostrated themselves at his feet. And he had cried, "I am neither a madman nor a saint, but a sinner. Father Francis showed me the road to salvation, so I threw off my sandals and started along it.

"I entered every village holding a basket of figs or walnuts," Giles explained, "or at least some wild flowers if I could find nothing else. Then I cried, 'Whoever gives me a slap, I shall give a fig; whoever gives me two slaps, I shall give two figs.' The whole village ran to slap me, punch me, beat me until I was half-dead. As soon as the basket was empty I would depart contentedly to refill it, and then proceed to the next village."

"Brother Giles, I like you! Receive my blessing," said Francis.

"I also came across the saintly Bonaventura, Brother Francis. He took a different road: he believes that learning is an aid to salvation. So I went and asked him, 'Father, can both the illiterate and the literate be saved?'

" 'Why of course, my brother,' he replied.

" 'And are the uneducated and the educated equally capable of loving God?' What do you think his answer was? Listen, Brother Francis: it will warm your heart! 'An old ignorant illiterate crone,' he said, 'is far more capable of loving God than a learned theologian is.' The moment I heard those words, Brother Francis, I began to race through the streets shrieking like a town crier, 'Hear! Hear! The learned Bonaventura says an ignorant crone is far more capable of loving God than learned Bonaventura is!' " "Receive my blessing, Brother Giles," Francis repeated, smiling with satisfaction. "If anyone opens your heart, he will find the true Rule written upon it in large red letters--all of them capitals."

His former companions in the struggle came to visit him from time to time in this way and he was comforted, for their love nourished him more than bread and milk.

On another occasion Brother Masseo appeared holding a sheaf of beautifully ripe grain which he planned to sear over the fire and give Francis to eat.

"Where did you find those ears of grain, Brother Masseo?" Francis asked uneasily. "I know it's not beyond you to do something bad in order to do something good. I wonder whose field you climbed into to pick those ears for me.

Masseo laughed. "Don't be an old grouch, Brother Francis. No, I didn't steal them. On my way here I met a peasant woman loaded down with a bundle of wheat. 'Where are you going, monk?' she asked me. 'Are you one of them?'

" 'What do you mean?' I asked.

" 'I mean are you a follower of the sweet little pauper?'

" 'You hit the nail on the head, my lady. How did you know?'

" 'Because your frock has thousands of holes in it and you walk barefooted and never stop laughing, just as though someone were tickling you.'

" 'God is tickling me,' I answered. 'That's why I laugh. . . . Why not come closer to God yourself: then you'll begin to laugh too.'

" 'No time,' she answered. 'I have a husband and children, and I can't walk barefooted on the stones, so leave me alone. But there is one thing I'd like you to do for me.' She lowered the bundle from her back, drew out a handful of ears, and gave them to me. 'I've heard that he's hungry,' she continued. 'I am poor; give him this grain--a greeting from poverty.' "

Francis pressed the ears to his heart. "This bread of beggary is the true bread of the angels, Brother Masseo. So please it God that your peasant woman may enter Paradise crowned with ears of grain!"

Masseo went to the fire and began to singe the ears, then to rub them and collect the seeds.

"I have something else to tell you also, Brother Francis," he said. "You must not take it in the wrong spirit, however. Shall I speak?"

"Speak freely, Brother Masseo."

"But I think I did something foolish, mad. It will make you angry."

"Madness, Brother , Masseo, is the salt which prevents good sense from rotting. I myself, don't forget, used to go through the streets crying, 'Hear! Hear the new madness.' So, speak."

"No matter where I go, Brother Francis, I find your name on everyone's lips. Many people want to journey here on foot so that they can kiss your hand. 'How is this possible?' a haughty count asked me one day. 'I once saw this celebrated Francis. He is not learned, carries no sword, cannot trace his descent from a great family. On top of this he is undersized, puny, and has an ugly face all covered with hair. How is it, therefore, that everybody desires to see him? I don't understand!' "

"And what was your answer?" inquired Francis with a chuckle.

"This is where the madness starts, Brother Francis. 'You know why everyone wants to see him?' I said to the count. 'It's because he exudes an odor like the beasts of the forest: a strange odor which makes you dizzy the moment you smell it.' 'What is this odor?' the count asked me. 'The odor of sainthood,' I replied. . . . Did I speak well, Brother Francis?"

"No, no!" cried Francis. "Don't ever say that again, Brother Masseo. Do you want to have me hurled into hell?"

"What should I say then? Everyone asks me."

"What you should say is this: 'Do you want to learn why everyone runs behind him, why every eye wants to see him? It is because these eyes have never seen, nor will they ever see in the whole wide world a man so ugly in appearance, so weighted down with sins, so unworthy. And it was precisely because of this that God chose him: in order to put beauty, wisdom, and noble lineages to shame!' That is what you must tell them, Brother Masseo, if you wish to have my blessing." Masseo scratched his head and glanced at me out of the corner of his eye as though to ask: "Should I say it or shouldn't I?"

"Tell them whatever is at the tip of your tongue," I advised him. "And stop scratching your head!"

"Oh, yes, there was one more thing I wanted to mention to you, Brother Francis; only one more and then I'll go. I really do smell an odor about you, an odor like musk, or rose incense--I'm not sure which. I can smell you a mile away. That's how I found you just now at this hut--by your smell."

At long last we were preparing to leave the vicinity of the Portiuncula. Francis had grown tired of wrestling with men, and was anxious to bury himself again in some mountain cave where he could speak to God in complete solitude.

"I was made to live alone and isolated like a wild animal," he always used to say. "It was precisely because of this that God commanded me to come forth and preach to mankind. Good Lord, what can I say to them? God knows I cannot speak. I was born to sing and weep."

Father Silvester appeared at the door of our hut a few days before our departure, together with five of the old, faithful brothers: Bernard, Pietro, Sabattino, Ruffino, and Pacifico. An aged peasant who had loaded down his donkey with grapes and was on his way to Assisi to sell them had just presented a cluster to Francis, and he had taken them in his hands and begun to gaze at them in amazement, ecstatically, as though he had never seen a grape before. "What a miracle this is, Brother Leo!" he exclaimed. "How insensible, how blind men are not to see everyday miracles! A bunch of grapes: what a great mystery! You eat them and you feel refreshed. You crush them and they give you wine. You drink the wine and you immediately lose your reason: sometimes God expands inside you and you open your arms and embrace all of mankind; sometimes you fly into a rage, draw your knife, and kill!"

At that moment Father Silvester and the other brothers appeared on the threshold. They all knelt to kiss Francis' hand.

"We have come to receive your blessing," said Father Silvester. "We are going out to preach the word of Christ as you have revealed it to us."

"And where, God willing, do you plan to go?"

"Wherever the road leads us, Brother Francis. Wherever God leads us. The entire earth is Christ's field, isn't it? We shall go out to sow."

Francis placed his hand on each of their heads. "Go, my brothers, go with my blessing. Preach using words if you are able. But above all preach with your lives and deeds. What is it that stands higher than words? Action. What is it that stands higher than action? Silence. My brothers, mount the entire ladder that leads to God. Preach with words, preach with action, and afterwards, when you are alone, enter the holy silence which encompasses the Lord." Falling silent, he gazed lovingly at each of the brothers for a long time. It was as though they were going to the wars and he did not know if he should ever see them again.

"Men's hearts are hard, they are stones," he said with a sigh. "But God is with you, so do not be afraid. Each time you are persecuted you shall say: 'We came to this world to suffer, to be killed, and to conquer!' What do you have to fear? Nothing. Whom do you have to fear? No one. Why? Because whoever has joined forces with God obtains three great privileges: omnipotence without power, intoxication without wine, and life without death."

The brothers stood motionless and looked at him. They were saying goodbye without opening their mouths.

"I too am departing, my brothers," continued Francis. "I am going out to preach salvation to rocks, wild flowers, and mountain thyme. The Day of Judgment is coming near, my brothers, so let us hurry. When it arrives it must find all men, animals, birds, plants, and stones prepared. Everything you see about you--the entire earth--must be prepared, ready to mount to heaven. What is heaven, my brothers, if not the entire earth, the same that we see about us--but virtuous!"

"So please it God that our order may always follow the strait and narrow road," said Bernard. "Your road, Brother Francis."

Sior Pietro prostrated himself, then touched Francis' knee. "A question has been bothering me for a long time, Brother Francis, and I didn't want to part with you before receiving an answer directly from your lips. How long,