When Alice Lay Down With Peter (39 page)

She reached to take the box from his arms. “Thank you,” she said. That’s when something occurred that was either a miracle or simply a delight. Cabbage butterflies are common things. I’ve many times seen a half-dozen fly in a loose group. They keep to paths, maybe from growing up in a garden. Now, like a kite into the wind, a trail of them flew from behind the monk. There were a thousand white butterflies in clusters of four or five, so at first you might notice a small bunch and then, as your eyes tuned in, more and then more, until there was only a wave out of particles, a peaceful, wavering, dancing movement. Helen
and the monk, joined by the wooden box, an edge of which each clasped, stood their ground and the butterflies flew over their heads, twenty feet in the air. Because there were a thousand and because they wavered unevenly, patches of several and then several more, this passage took half an hour or longer. The monk had patience. Helen, desire. Neither noticed the passage of time. Though Helen was aware of a marvellous prolongation.

When she thought they’d passed, she was again conscious of the heat bearing down on them, her thirst, the high-pitched exhaustion of land and body. The monk didn’t move. He was a relaxed man. He could drop into a pocket of time as if it was a divine manhole. Standing face to face with the most beautiful woman in the world (derelict, rented out, but rub a little, see her shine), he listened for the last butterflies, which soon appeared and flitted overhead and away.

She thought to look at the box between them. One side of it was a sliding glass panel. Inside, three inches of soil and two jars filled with plants. Otherwise empty.

“What’s that?” she asked.

He hesitated before answering. “Hibernating chrysalides.” He balanced an edge upon his knee and laid his head upon his palm. “Sleeping butterflies.” Something Oriental in his movements, a blond, brown-eyed, talcum-powder-complexioned Canadian with the soul of a Chinese ancient. Pied piper to cabbage butterflies. She wanted to join his congregation.

She returned the box to him. Backed away. Wiped the sweat out of her eyes with her sleeve. He looked at her, worried, and walked on towards the junction to the monastery. He half turned and nodded, indicating she should follow. By the time
they made the footbridge, she was singing “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” Crooned like Bing Crosby, another tenor.

He could’ve approached the church through the back, but he chose instead to take her to the front gate, to make her arrival official. Lots of transients sought sanctuary with the Trappists in those days; they put a strain on the Cistercian solitude.

They bypassed the stone church, where even male visitors were not allowed, and went directly to the guest house, one of those white Catholic buildings with the green mansard roof, beautiful as a loaf of French bread. It was a building like the land around it, innocently exposed. Their shoes were loud on the wood floors, the doors shut firmly and sunlight poured through the tall windows, open and buzzing with flies. Five monks were having tea and reading in the guests’ refectory. It was cool down there, with a mud floor and high stone-silled windows. Light like amber. There was a cookstove in one corner, but it was unlit. Several monks sitting; they smiled slightly and nodded hello. Brother Bill put the butterfly cage on one of the long, low tables, slid open the glass and searched the soil with the tips of his fingers. He removed a chrysalis, which is the jewel of burnt sugar we uncover with the early planting of peas. It lay on the palm he opened under Helen’s nose. That repugnance and intrigue of embryonic forms, shocking for a woman who, while not a young debutante, was virginal to the glistening aspects of life. Her disgust was equalled by the acute desire to pop the thing into her mouth.

One of the monks cleared his throat and turned a page. The room was so quiet, this seemed as loud as laughter. A black cat leapt to the table and was idly petted by the reading monk, who poured a bit of his milky tea into his saucer without once looking
up from his book. Brother Bill was on his hands and knees on the earth floor recovering yet another box, which when opened revealed a bed of sphagnum moss, that grey-green stuff, not a local fauna, into which he plunged his insect prize, returning the box to its spot in a cool corner of the cave-like room. He stood, sweeping his hands together with a decelerating motion and looking steadily at Helen. She began again to doubt that he recognized her. His white hands and head set off from his brown robes glowed in the shaded room. The sweeping slowed till his palms were pressed together before him. Still he looked at Helen.

She thought she might bolt if he said anything. But he put the fingers of his right hand to his lips, as if blowing a kiss. Somehow she knew it was a question: Are
you hungry? Yes
, she nodded. With his left hand, Brother Bill made some flying motions, and again Helen knew:
Do you like barley soup? Yes
, she nodded.
Very much
. Brother Bill smiled, pleased.

A rather large monk was sitting near by. A man at least six-foot-two, with a full frame and an untonsured, naturally balding head, he looked cultured, though he wore the brown robes of the lay brother rather than the white vestments of the Trappist fathers. This pleasantly authoritative man grew aware of their conversation and rose to indicate to Helen that she should be seated. Then he went to the cookstove and filled a bowl from a pot there and, returning, humbly offered it to her. With one hand he touched her shoulder, and with the other hand he said,
Enjoy!
The large monk went back to his book, one hand opening and closing quickly in a gesture that clearly expressed,
Peace be with you
.

It was the best soup ever made, thick, with firm slices of
carrot and herbs and tiny islands of fat. She felt a small bony body sit close, and glanced quickly at the monk who had taken the seat beside her before losing her way again in her meal. Little, a big French nose and an attractive, prominent mouth with thin lips, a bit of a gibbon monkey, he cocked his head and raised his neat eyebrows, indicating that the soup was of his making.
Did she like it?
Oh yes oh yes oh yes. He grinned, and with his hands, he said,
You should taste our cheese
. The bigger monk sensed this and looked up from his book with a gentle remonstrance:
You should not boast, but I must admit, our cheese is awfully good, especially the Tomme de Beaumont, that earthy, pungent stuff. Oh
, said the French monk’s hands,
not at all! It is our Fleur d’Hermitage that is the best!
The big monk nodded at the little monk somewhat condescendingly, and with both hands, he said,
Ahh, you simpleton, I forgive you
.

Brother Bill sat down with an eloquent sigh. The big monk (but Helen, rejuvenated by the soup, dared to put her hand on his sleeve, a gesture that said,
Please tell me your name
, and the big monk’s gentle smile said,
Brother Joe
, or something simple like that), Brother Joe, nodded in agreement.
Yes
, his hands said,
it is very sad
. And all the monks (even the two who had turned their backs to read) nodded with the silence that is the essence of compassion.
What is
sad? gestured Helen, the newly fed man. Everyone’s eyes went to Brother Bill, and then they looked away guiltily because it is wrong to think of one man as one man. You could see that Brother Bill himself would not survive the delusion of singularity. He seemed to evaporate, to send his cells outwards till he was light, almost invisible. It is generous, Helen saw, and dexterous, to be so light of soul.

She fell in love as permanently as someone who looks directly at the sun, scars his retina.

A tiny cry escaped her. A womanly cry.

Five monks started half out of their seats. Thinking fast, Helen wiped her nose, horked eloquently. It took away a lot of the tension. But the authoritative Brother Joe and the small French gibbon—though they didn’t stare—knew something was amiss at the monastery. They were discomfited. Helen held her breath. She overacted, scratched her armpit. It was almost too late.

Brother Bill came to the rescue. With uncharacteristic egoism, he told with his hands of the monastery’s difficulties with the municipality, which was currently suing them for back taxes.
Protestants
, said the gibbon with his small, fine hands. Brother Joe chastised him with a glance, but you could tell he agreed.
Godless Protestants and their land swindles
. Outside, summer thunder began to roll and the approaching storm bruised the yellow light of the cellar refectory.
What will you do?
asked Helen’s hands (she was getting the hang of it). A Gallic shrug. Brother Bill waved,
Give them the land
. And Brother Joe’s hands, as if unwilling to say it, closed at his heart, and then his arms extended in a gesture that a father might make when his child is ripped from his grasp.
Give away our beautiful land that is our bread and our delight, over which we have toiled, where even when the crops failed and the animals got sick, we could listen to the aspens and the silence of the sun; they take away the land we listen to, so it is not only our bread they take from us, these Protestants from the suburbia of Fort Garry; they will make us deaf!

Suburban Protestants? Richard! Helen raised her fist, the
salute of solidarity, and brought it down upon the table, jumping her spoon and bowl, and with all her might, she cried out, “No!”

The two discreetly reading monks quickly fled the room.

Brother Bill, Brother Joe and the gibbon looked at Helen with shy astonishment. The gibbon spoke first. “You are offended for our sake!” And Brother Joe said, “It is indeed very painful, but we’ll survive!” And Brother Bill said, “Ahhhh, it is wonderful to complain!”

At last, they spoke, all the hurt and anxiety tumbled out: vilification, accusation, the purgative of blame. They rose into speech like fish breaking the surface of the river.

But their chorus brought into focus one unavoidable fact: their gracious visitor was beautiful. Inspired by pity, Helen took on her most dangerous, least fraudulent role: not only beautiful, but an anarchist, a tormented and tormenting Woman.

The gibbon was charmed, charmed and beguiled. He tipped his head and smiled. Brother Bill’s skin was breathing in his new future. He had that newly born look of glad greeting, humbled by love. The thunder that had been rolling over like a piano on wheels suddenly crashed overhead. It started to rain. The stone refectory was as a bean composed of two hemispheres, North/South, East/West, I/You, Helen/Bill. The room swirled with weather and energy and the gibbon and Brother Joe looked at them and
they knew
, and the gibbon was happy even while he was scandalized, delighting in beauty and recognizing the imperatives of love.

But Brother Joe, tall and profound, grew solemn. Once he saw Helen’s beauty, he would not look at her again. He stared gravely at the stone wall. It hurt Helen keenly. She wondered why she felt the need to please him. She tried to meet his eye (he
had stopped speaking, his posture once again posed for listening, and his dignity filled Helen with yearning for his comradeship), but she was out of bounds, cut off.

The storm was upon them. A downpour that quickly flooded the window wells and streamed down the walls, and it smelled of electricity and growing grass. In thunder and lightning, they heard the sound of running footsteps, a whole army descending the stairs. Word had reached the prior, a woman was on the grounds. Helen stood, waiting for eviction. For some reason, she felt terribly afraid. The running monks were descending the stairs. Her heart pounded, her body shook; it was not that they would hurt her physically, but suddenly she knew why she was so scared:
They will turn me into a woman!
She gasped in terror.

The gibbon took her hand and put it into Bill’s—
Go now! Run!—
urgently, ushering them to the east end of the room. Bewildered, they followed. It looked as if they were walking into a wall, but the gibbon placed his palm against it and shoved, and it swung on great hinges and he pushed them inside.
Go!
he indicated to Bill.
It will take you to that stone altar by the Rivière!
And with four kisses and a last fond look at Brother Bill, he closed the door behind them.

They emerged from the tunnel by the Virgin’s altar and slipped past her blue statue and out into the pouring rain. They ran through darkness and stark white light, past the rotting woodshed (behind which a lone monk was dancing; a strong old man, he indicated,
Shhhhhh
, and then,
Joy be to lovers)
, over the dangling footbridge, through the woods and away.

After many miles running to the east, they stumbled over a fallow field and got hopelessly stuck in the gumbo. Blue mud climbed up Brother Bill’s robes, turning him into living pottery. They slogged on, overcome by shyness. At last, the monk could walk no longer. Encased in livid gumbo, his robes weighing at least two hundred pounds, feet of brick, bone weary, he came to a stop. Helen was a clay stick woman, gasping for breath, she said, “Let’s… go… on.…” Bill shook his head. The rain had stopped, but heat swelled up between purple earth and purple sky, which sent ice-hot twigs of silent lightning, ominously silent, long shoots of electrical juice sending roots. He shook his head again. His breath came in sobs. She turned around to him. They were in a field that, in years before, had been sown with alfalfa and was now mixed with clover, white moons of dandelion, clutches of thistle. He shuddered.

She went to him and tugged at his robes; she thought they might pull him right into the earth. Her hands fumbled at his chest, seeking buttons, some way out. It didn’t occur to her till much later that she was desperately trying to undress a monk. Somehow he slipped away from the rough fabric, and it opened like an acorn or the skin of the chrysalis. He emerged pale and streaked with mud.

The lightning flicked the ground, a near miss, no sound. His first sight of a woman’s breast, white alabaster veined with blue, his first touch, as lake water moving in his hand, his first knowledge, bold, her thirsty kisses. She travelled all over, uttering her joy. His blond face, his body wrapped in rain. A sandpiper soared smoothly by, whistling its long, scared note. They were standing, a lightning rod, and just before it struck, they
pulled back from a kiss and looked at each other closely, eye to eye, and then, with that leader stroke, leapt in the air still joined, straight up, united; they flew forty feet high, their nuptials in lily white light.