Scott Mariani - The Martyr’s Curse

If the monk was impressed by Ben’s knowledge of the Bible, he didn’t say or do anything to show it. He went on, ‘Therefore we cast ourselves into the abyss, and cut ourselves off from all that is not God. For our new life to begin, first there must be a kind of death. The death of our old selves.’ He paused, and those glowing eyes seemed to bore into Ben. ‘Are you ready for that, Benoît?’

‘I’ve faced death often enough,’ Ben said. ‘And wished I could leave my old self behind somehow.’

‘It is the reason you tried to lose yourself in wine.’

‘That’s one way of putting it,’ Ben said.

‘Can you live without it? The drink?’ For a moment, the monk’s eyes were as sharp as the directness of his question.

Ben paused before he replied. ‘I won’t lie to you, Father. It isn’t an easy thing to give up. But I feel a little stronger every day.’

The old man smiled again and fetched a small bottle from the folds of his robe. ‘Here. It will bring strength, health, and vigour.’

‘What is it?’ Ben said, gazing at the bottle.

‘Just a humble tonic that I make myself, using water from the mountain and some simple ingredients. It contains no alcohol. I have been drinking it for many years. Try it.’

Ben uncapped the bottle, sniffed, sipped. It didn’t smell of anything and had only a faintly bitter taste.

‘A little each day is all you need,’ the old man said, then fell into a state of very still contemplation that seemed to last for ever in the silence of the room.

Finally he said, ‘Very well. I believe you should remain with us a little longer, so that you may decide whether it is truly the path you wish to pursue. There is no hurry. If, after this period of time, you still wish to remain and it is deemed that you are fit and suited for this way of life, you may formally request to be admitted to the order, subject to its rules, to live at God’s disposal alone, in solitude and stillness, in an everlasting prayer and a joyful penitence. The Father Master of Novices will visit you regularly and watch over your training.’

‘Thank you, Father.’

‘Tomorrow you will move to your own monastic quarters, so that you may share the life we live. You will come and see me here once a week from now on, and we will talk.’

On his way out, Ben noticed the chessboard on a table in the shadows.

‘I find that it quietens the mind,’ the old man said. When Ben looked surprised that such things were allowed in the monastery, the prior explained that since the death of the very ancient monk who had been his chess partner, he’d had nobody to play against but himself.

‘It’s a win for white in four moves, maybe five,’ Ben said, gazing at the board.

‘You play? Good. Then when you visit me each week, we shall play together.’

Ben’s cell was more spacious than he’d expected. It was on two floors, with its own carpentry workshop and even a little walled garden outside. He began to understand that a Carthusian monk’s lifestyle of solitary contemplation required just a little elbow room to prevent him from going mad. He had the minimum of simple pine furniture, a small desk at which to read and eat, his bunk, and a lectern for praying on bended knees, where a member of the order would spend much of his day. A small, shuttered window in his main living space overlooked the mountainside and the forested valley below. With the coming of spring, he planted some seeds in his garden and watched the green shoots grow each day. He took some of the prior’s ‘little tonic’ each day, too, after his morning exercises and again at night before bed. It seemed to be working for him. Whether it was that, or the fact that he’d stopped drinking for the first time in his adult life, combined with the simple diet of wholesome home-grown food, goat’s milk and pure spring water, he’d never felt so healthy and full of vitality.

That spring, a new duty he added to his daily routine was helping the monks brew their beer, which they stored in kegs in a vault beneath the monastery and sold to make a little money for the place’s upkeep. A few months ago, it might have bothered him to have been around the beer. Now, he was barely tempted by it.

Besides, he enjoyed the company. He was getting to know them all better now. With the onset of the warmer weather, more time was spent in the neatly tended gardens and the surrounding wildflower meadows where the long-horned cattle roamed and grazed. Away from the monastery buildings, Ben discovered that the rule of silence was far less strictly observed. The monks would sit clustered together on benches during their downtime in the spring sunshine, enjoying the Alpine views, their wrap-around shades and Aviator Ray-Bans a strange contrast to their robes as they shared animated discussions and laughed and joked together, like regular guys.

Now and then a jet plane would fly over, tracking across the pure blue sky above the mountains. It was becoming strange to imagine that there was a whole other world still out there.

This place grew on you, for sure.

It was just after dawn on a late May morning, and Ben was finishing up the day’s first punishing bout of exercises before going about his duties, when there was an unexpected knock at the door of his cell. He quickly shrugged on his robe, opened the door and saw that his visitor was the Father Master of Novices.

Père Jacques pulled back the hood of his habit to reveal his tonsured scalp, and spoke in his usual hushed, benevolent tone. ‘I have come to ask a service from you, Benoît.’

Ben was getting used to being called that. ‘Whatever I can do, Father.’

In as few words as possible, the monk explained that it was about the beer. Ben already knew that once every few months the store of monastic ale, that had been ageing in barrels in the cellar deep beneath the monastery, needed to be brought up and loaded on the prehistoric flatbed truck that was the monks’ only motor vehicle. He also knew that it was the job of Frère Patrice, one of the lay brothers, to don everyday clothing and drive the laden truck down the winding mountain road into Briançon. There, it was passed on to the wholesaler’s agent who handled the distribution of the quality brew across France. It was a useful source of revenue for the monastery, as well as a proud centuries-old tradition.

But, as the Father Master of Novices explained with a frown, Frère Patrice had twisted his ankle badly a few days earlier after tripping down the refectory steps, and was unable to fulfil his duty today. Would Benoît agree to take his place?

Ben said that he’d be delighted to help in any way he could. He felt pleased and honoured that he’d been asked. It meant that he was trusted. It meant he was starting to be considered one of the community.

Before anything else could happen, though, first the beer barrels had to be brought up from the cellars. Like everything else here, that had to be done the old-fashioned way, which meant the hard way: at least eight hours’ worth of tough physical labour carrying and rolling each forty-gallon iron-banded oak barrel separately all the way up from the bowels of the monastery, to be loaded on the truck ready to be taken down the mountain first thing the following morning, in time for the rendezvous with the distributor in Briançon.

Ben welcomed the task. Soon afterwards, he joined a small gang of lay brothers assigned to cellar duty. Their names were Gilles, Marc and Olivier. After brief, solemn greetings they got started.

Ben had never visited this part of the monastery before, deep below the main buildings. Olivier led the way with a lantern down endless twisting, steeply descending passages. Their steps left a line of prints in the dust as they walked. The little light the swaying lantern threw off glistened against the condensation that trickled from the mildewed stone walls, and every sound echoed deep in the shadows. Ben ran his fingers along the damp rock and could feel the tool marks where this space had been carved out of the solid heart of the mountain a thousand years ago, a feat of unimaginable difficulty. The further they descended, the more it felt like going down into a mineshaft, and he wondered how the hell they were meant to drag the beer barrels all the way up to ground level. It seemed like the kind of punitive exercise the army would delight in inflicting on raw recruits.