J. Powers - The Stories of J.F. Powers

Titus squinted at the yellowed page. He snapped a glance at the light hovering at the window. Then he closed his eyes and with great feeling recited:

“‘O how joyous and how delectable is it to see religious men devout and fervent in the love of God, well-mannered—’”

“Titus,” Didymus interrupted softly.

“‘—and well taught in ghostly learning.’”

“Titus, read.” Didymus placed the words in their context. The First Book of The Imitation and Chapter, if he was not mistaken, XXV. The trick was no longer in finding the source of Titus’s quotations; it was putting them in their exact context. It had become an unconfessed contest between them, and it gratified Didymus to think he had been able to place the fragment. Titus knew two books by heart, The Imitation and The Little Flowers of St Francis . Lately, unfortunately, he had begun to learn another. He was more and more quoting from Bishop Bale. Didymus reminded himself he must not let Titus read past the point where the martyred popes left off. What Bale had to say about Peter’s later successors sounded incongruous—“unmete” in the old heretic’s own phrase — coming from a Franciscan brother. Two fathers had already inquired of Didymus concerning Titus. One had noted the antique style of his words and had ventured to wonder if Brother Titus, Christ preserve us, might be slightly possessed. He cited the case of the illiterate Missouri farmer who cursed the Church in a forgotten Aramaic tongue.

“Read, Titus.”

Titus squinted at the page once more and read in his fine dead voice.

“‘Fourteenth pope, Zephyrinus. Zephyrinus was a Roman born, a man as writers do testify, more addicted with all endeavor to the service of God than to the cure of any worldly affairs. Whereas before his time the wine in the celebrating the communion was ministered in a cup of wood, he first did alter that, and instead thereof brought in cups or chalices of glass. And yet he did not this upon any superstition, as thinking wood to be unlawful, or glass to be more holy for that use, but because the one is more comely and seemly, as by experience it appeareth than the other. And yet some wooden dolts do dream that the wooden cups were changed by him because that part of the wine, or as they thought, the royal blood of Christ, did soak into the wood, and so it can not be in glass. Surely sooner may wine soak into any wood than any wit into those winey heads that thus both deceive themselves and slander this Godly martyr.’”

“Anno?”

Titus squinted at the page again. “‘Anno 222,’” he read.

They were quiet for a moment which ended with the clock in the tower booming once for the half hour. Didymus got up and stood so close to the window his breath became visible. Noticing it, he inhaled deeply and then, exhaling, he sent a gust of smoke churning against the freezing pane, clouding it. Some old unmelted snow in tree crotches lay dirty and white in the gathering dark.

“It’s cold out today,” Didymus said.

He stepped away from the window and over to Titus, whose face was relaxed in open-eyed sleep. He took Bishop Bale’s funny book unnoticed from Titus’s hands.

“Thank you, Titus,” he said.

Titus blinked his eyes slowly once, then several times quickly. His body gave a shudder, as if coming to life.

“Yes, Father?” he was asking.

“I said thanks for reading. You are a great friend to me.”

“Yes, Father.”

“I know you’d rather read other authors.” Didymus moved to the window, stood there gazing through the tops of trees, their limbs black and bleak against the sky. He rubbed his hands. “I’m going for a walk before vespers. Is it too cold for you, Titus?”

“‘A good religious man that is fervent in his religion taketh all things well, and doth gladly all that he is commanded to do.’”

Didymus, walking across the room, stopped and looked at Titus just in time to see him open his eyes. He was quoting again: The Imitation and still in Chapter XXV. Why had he said that? To himself Didymus repeated the words and decided Titus, his mind moving intelligently but so pathetically largo, was documenting the act of reading Bishop Bale when there were other books he preferred.

“I’m going out for a walk,” Didymus said.

Titus rose and pulled down the full sleeves of his brown robe in anticipation of the cold.

“I think it is too cold for you, Titus,” Didymus said.

Titus faced him undaunted, arms folded and hands muffled in his sleeves, eyes twinkling incredulously. He was ready to go. Didymus got the idea Titus knew himself to be the healthier of the two. Didymus was vaguely annoyed at this manifestation of the truth. Vanitas .

“Won’t they need you in the kitchen now?” he inquired.

Immediately he regretted having said that. And the way he had said it, with some malice, as though labor per se were important and the intention not so. Vanitas in a friar, and at his age too. Confronting Titus with a distinction his simple mind could never master and which, if it could, his great soul would never recognize. Titus only knew all that was necessary, that a friar did what he was best at in the community. And no matter the nature of his toil, the variety of the means at hand, the end was the same for all friars. Or indeed for all men, if they cared to know. Titus worked in the kitchen and garden. Was Didymus wrong in teaching geometry out of personal preference and perhaps — if this was so he was — out of pride? Had the spiritual worth of his labor been vitiated because of that? He did not think so, no. No, he taught geometry because it was useful and eternally true, like his theology, and though of a lower order of truth it escaped the common fate of theology and the humanities, perverted through the ages in the mouths of dunderheads and fools. From that point of view, his work came to the same thing as Titus’s. The vineyard was everywhere; they were in it, and that was essential.

Didymus, consciously humble, held open the door for Titus. Sandals scraping familiarly, they passed through dark corridors until they came to the stairway. Lights from floors above and below spangled through the carven apertures of the winding stair and fell in confusion upon the worn oaken steps.

At the outside door they were ambushed. An old friar stepped out of the shadows to intercept them. Standing with Didymus and Titus, however, made him appear younger. Or possibly it was the tenseness of him.

“Good evening, Father,” he said to Didymus. “And Titus.”

Didymus nodded in salutation and Titus said deliberately, as though he were the first one ever to put words in such conjunction:

“Good evening, Father Rector.”

The Rector watched Didymus expectantly. Didymus studied the man’s face. It told him nothing but curiosity — a luxury which could verge on vice in the cloister. Didymus frowned his incomprehension. He was about to speak. He decided against it, turning to Titus:

“Come on, Titus, we’ve got a walk to take before vespers.”

The Rector was left standing.

They began to circle the monastery grounds. Away from the buildings it was brighter. With a sudden shudder, Didymus felt the freezing air bite into his body all over. Instinctively he drew up his cowl. That was a little better. Not much. It was too cold for him to relax, breathe deeply, and stride freely. It had not looked this cold from his window. He fell into Titus’s gait. The steps were longer, but there was an illusion of warmth about moving in unison. Bit by bit he found himself duplicating every aspect of Titus in motion. Heads down, eyes just ahead of the next step, undeviating, they seemed peripatetic figures in a Gothic frieze. The stones of the walk were trampled over with frozen footsteps. Titus’s feet were gray and bare in their open sandals. Pieces of ice, the thin edges of ruts, cracked off under foot, skittering sharply away. A crystal fragment lit between Titus’s toes and did not melt there. He did not seem to notice it. This made Didymus lift his eyes.