William H. Hallahan - (25 page)

Trevor was the envy of the whole crowd. Some said he had real
talent, but more important he had money. He came from a wealthy
Boston family. They owned the boardwalk in Atlantic City. No, it was
oil off Texas. Or something else. Who cared? It was big money.

He had curly black hair and nice pale eyes and he wore a cap on
the back of his head, but what set him apart was a sprig of sea oats
in the lapel of his jacket. It added a dash of romance to him--the
touch of the poet. He had a child's happy smile. When he saw the pin
on Anne's blouse shaped like a rhinoceros, he recited some lines from
Ogden Nash's comic poetry about the prepoceros rhinoceros, and for
the first time since Brendan had run out of her life she laughed.

Everyone at the Green on Green was glad to see Trevor and thumped
him on the back. It was clear to Anne why he was so popular. In a
short time he had cheered them all up. First of all, he had news,
good news. People they knew had gotten major parts. A friend named
Chuck sold a Big Script to the powers in Hollywood and already
casting was under way. He also bought rounds of drinks and toasted
them, "the most talented bunch of actors ever to be assembled in
one place at one time. Tomorrow may all your phones ring. And ring.
And ring. And--"

They picked up the chant. "--And ring and ring and--"
They burst into laughter and cheers. No one, Anne noticed, bought him
a drink or asked him how his affairs were going, what auditions he
was trying out for.

"In my next incarnation," he told her, "I'm coming
back as a part in a play looking for an actor."

Again Anne laughed. It just slipped out--a sudden giggle. But it
felt wonderful and she remembered it hours later.

Trevor reminded her a great deal of Brendan.

A few days later Trevor read a part for a play and he took Anne
out with three other unemployed actors for dinner. He did an
imitation of the play's director, who had a deep voice and a slow way
of speaking, like a very bad imitation of Alfred Hitchcock. Trevor
had them chuckling as they walked.

On the corner watching for a cab, they heard an old man playing a
fiddle. He played pieces from a number of operettas.

"Do you know 'Mi chiamano Mimi?" Trevor asked him.

"Hum it," the old man said. And Trevor hummed it. The
old man frowned.

"Here," Trevor said. He took the violin and played it.

Then the old man played the piece exactly as Trevor had. "You
have a marvelous ear," Trevor told him, and gave him a
five-dollar bill. As their cab pulled away, Anne saw the old man
salute Trevor with his violin bow.

"How did you learn to play so well?" she asked him.

"Practice," he said with a suffering Russian accent. He
watched her smile. "Do you like the violin, Anne?"

"Yes. Very much."

"Have you ever seen Itzhak Perlman play? He's going to be at
the Carnegie."

Before she'd had a chance to think about it, she'd accepted an
invitation to go with Trevor to Carnegie Hall.

Dona, an actress with a lot of summer stock credits, punched Anne
lightly on the arm when she learned of the date. "Lucky dog,"
she said. "I've been trying to get something going with him for
six months. All that money. Yum."
 
 

On the way in a cab that night to Carnegie Hall, Trevor told her a
story about his college days in Boston when he appropriated a truck
loaded with junk and drove the members of his fraternity all over the
Beacon Hill section. When the police finally caught them, the junkman
complained in court that Trevor had taken some valuable jewels from
under the driver's seat. He was a marvelous story teller and, like
Jackie, an uncanny mimic, but he was too gentle and self-effacing
ever to succeed as an actor. Impulsively she told him that.

"I know. I know. But I'm such a good loser." Anne
laughed but understood that he'd used a quip to turn the conversation
away from his affairs. It was her trick too.

Perlman's playing was brilliant, breathtaking, and he received
thundering applause. Trevor never took his eyes off the performer. He
sat, leaning forward, his lips slightly parted, frowning with
concentration. At the end of each piece in the din of the loud
applause Trevor would turn to her and smile happily.

Later, over thick pieces of German chocolate cake in the Palm
Court of the Plaza, she asked him how he like his cake. "It
looks very rich."

"Rich!" he said. "You could die from diabetes from
it Picture me dead in this chair, the last bite of cake on my fork, a
beatific smile on my face."

Everything his eye fell on got a light dab of his mirth.

Then he fooled her. He turned solemn when they were leaving the
Plaza. She said, "I've just read Zelda Fitzgerald's biography.
Did you know that she and Scott danced in that fountain?" He
looked at the great fountain beyond the line of waiting cabs. It was
dry this time of the year and seemed forlorn without its spraying
water and lights.

He helped her into the cab and sat back. As they drove off he
looked through the back window at the fountain. He seemed saddened by
the dried leaves in it, blowing in the breeze.

"You're right, you know," he said. He nodded
emphatically at her.

"What?"

"About my career in acting. I'm never going to make it."

"Trevor. I could bite my tongue off."

"No, no. You did me a great service. These others, some of
them have such tremendous talent. You have no idea how many marvelous
actors all across America are sitting around, looking for parts or
backers or trying to get a part in a film. Some of the most famous
actors in the country are idle. And they're all so amazingly
resourceful. They work at their profession constantly, scaring up
roles, chasing playwrights to write new plays, searching for backers,
seeing people, making things happen. And the new ones coming along, I
see them every day. They will literally kill to get a part. They
never quit and they never say die."

"Then that's what you have to do, Trevor."

"I suppose." He looked away from her out of the cab
window. She had him up to her apartment for a nightcap--he took
coffee--and he read a poem to her by Cavafy. "Thermopylae."

"See?" he said. "Ephialtis does turn up in the end.
And the Medes do break through."

"Isn't that defeatist talk, Trevor?"

"Oh, no. I'm not a defeatist. I just see too clearly."

"Attitude is more important than facts, Trevor."

"Oh, good. Excellent. Is that original?"

"No. I read it somewhere. But it's true."

He smiled at her. "Yes, it is true. It always comes down to
faith--in yourself. And that's my weak backhand--faith. I have none.
Except in one area. Are you the wind-and-water type, Anne?"

He invited her to enter a frostbite regatta on his sailboat off
Newport, Rhode Island. Impulsively, when he left he kissed her cheek.
"Thanks. You're good for the soul. I wanted to cheer you up and
you reversed the tables." Then he waggled a finger at her with a
sly smile. "God is watching." He'd left her laughing again.
 
 

The monks were up. Brendan heard them scuffling past his door in
the dawn light, walking to the chapel. He opened the drapery and
looked out on the compound. Then he opened the sliding door and in
his bathrobe walked to the wall.

The air was clear and dry and painfully sharp on his face and his
breath came out like smoke. Underfoot, the snow cracked. In the east
was the first red of sunrise. He wondered where the creature was.
Maybe it had killed again. Maybe another group of men was standing in
another barn, staring down at another dead horse or a dead prize
bull.

When would it kill its first human? He turned and went through his
room, and down the hall after the monks to the chapel.

Like the other segments of the monastery, the chapel too was a
complete octagon. In six of the sides there was a stained glass
window of geometric design. One contained a cross, another a Zen
symbol, another a six-pointed star. There were a lectern and benches
made of fruitwood but no altar. The monks sat in meditation with
heads bowed. No one spoke. Brendan sat and watched them thoughtfully.
This was his life from now on. He felt caged.

Brother Luke led him to breakfast. It consisted of hot wheat
cereal with honey and milk, an orange and a soft-boiled egg with herb
tea.

Later Luke led him on a tour of the facility. Brendan saw now that
the monastery was one long, segmented, serpentine building, made of a
series of octagonal units of different sizes, each with a Vermont
slate roof and slate flooring. The structures were made of brick and
fieldstone and glass.

Brother Matthew and the other founders of the monastery had built
the buildings twenty-seven years before with the aid of an architect,
who later joined the order, and some skilled laborers. It took two
years, during which time they lived in tents.

Brendan could now see the dimensions of the garden that lay under
the snow and beyond it the vineyard. The monks grew a fair amount of
their own food and also made a passable wine. They all worked a half
day, housekeeping, gardening in season and kitchen-keeping.
Afternoons they pursued private labors. The rest of their hours were
spent in study and discussion.

Brother Luke also helped sort out the other monks for Brendan.
Brother Paul had been a cardiologist in New York and Matthew's heart
doctor. For a number of years he had been a weekend monk; seven years
ago he retired from his medical practice and joined the monastery
full time. His wife still lived in the city, very comfortably on the
doctor's accumulated wealth. He spent his days studying philosophy,
Wittgenstein in particular.

Brother Benedict, like Matthew, had been a stockbroker and still
practiced. Every afternoon he spent three or fours hours managing the
monastery's investment portfolio. "We're rich, Brother Brendan,"
Luke said.

"So why don't you hire people to cook and clean and have all
your time free?"

"Ah. It's against the rules. Idleness leads to sloth, we are
told." He shook a finger at Brendan and smiled. "Besides,
it would be distracting to have a bunch of strangers walking around
making beds and cooking, wouldn't it?"

Vincent, Zen and Beaupréé were the unlikeliest of friends.
Vincent had been a drug head. He came from a wealthy family and woke
up in a hospital one day, half dead from an overdose. That day he set
foot on a path seeking the meaning of life. "He's a cynic,"
said Luke. "He doesn't believe that one decent man ever lived."

"Has he found it?" Brendan asked. "A meaning to
life?"

"Well, for a long time he nearly drove us all crazy trying to
find proof of God's existence. He even hired a theological research
firm to do a thesis assembling all the proofs of God from all the
religions of the world. Took three years."

"And--"

"Well, one man's proof is another man's mythology. It's the
old quarrel between faith and logic."

"What about the other two, Brother Zen and Brother Beaupré?"

"Brother Zen was an electronics manufacturer. He's half
Chinese. He turned the business over to his children and came up here
a couple of years ago. He's the gardener--fantastic gardener. Brother
Beaupréé was a wheat farmer up in Canada and a lay preacher. He's
the cook. He knows the Bible by heart from cover to cover. The three
of them didn't seem to pay much attention to one another for a long
time. Then, a couple of months ago, they got as chummy as the pages
in a book. And suddenly they've become convinced believers. They
switched from the logic school to the faith school." Luke smiled
wryly at Brendan. "Funny thing is, and it really is funny, their
newfound faith seems to have scared them half to death. You see them
huddled all day long--buzz buzz buzz--wringing their hands and
frowning." He chuckled. "I think they were happier as
atheists."

There were two other monks. Brother Xavier, the youngest, had been
a Cistercian monk whose studies carried him far into the realm of Zen
and yoga. He spent most of his time in solitude in trancelike
meditation. "Hardly ever talks but he's a really warm person."

Brother Thomas was a recent addition. He had been a weekend monk
for several years. He had difficulty renouncing women--sex--and still
wasn't absolutely convinced he wanted to spend the rest of his life
without it. He was a travel writer.

"He's probably the best educated of the lot of us. He has a
PhD in philosophy. He likes to make sandals and leather things. His
wife visits him twice a year."

They stood by the laundry room, where a huge commercial washing
machine hummed. Next to it was the shower room and on open shelves
were the community towels, underwear, long Johns and socks and a rack
of brown cassocks.

"What about you, Luke?"

"Oh. Nothing complicated. I was a football player.
Professional. Pretty good, I guess, but I was a half step too slow, a
half smile too nice to the opposition. I had to decide if I wanted to
be a fill-in tagalong in the NFL or something else. So one day I
asked myself what I wanted to do. And I decided."

"To be a monk?"

"Well. Something like that. I'll show you." He led
Brendan back past the laundry and the kitchen and the refectory to
the library. In a small alcove of the library stood a lectern with a
chair. He reached into a drawer and withdrew a soft paper folder and
opened it. Inside was a sheet of vellum. It was a page from the
Bible, hand-lettered and hand-illuminated.

Brendan looked at it attentively. "I saw you working on this
the other day. Are you doing the whole Bible?"

"Yep. The whole thing. Old and New. Might take me the rest of
my life."

"But where did you learn to do that?"

"Oh, well, I had an interest in art all along. But when I
talked to Brother Matthew about it, he sent me to a monastery in
Ireland to learn how to do it. This is going to be a hand-illuminated
Bible in English with purely African themes. That's an eland, and
that's a--well, you see. And some are American black themes. Jazz and
such."