Дональд Уэстлейк - Brothers Keepers

It was for the others. “Wonderful,” they told me. “Congratulations. I don’t know how you did it,” and things of that sort. They patted my arm, they shook my hand, they smiled at me. They loved me, and I kept looking toward the road, and no car came.

Brother Mallory came out of the house, smiling, licking a skinned knuckle. “What a night,” he said. “I’ll never forget you, Brother Benedict.”

Brother Oliver and Mr. Schumacher came out last, arm in arm. They came smiling and beaming over to me, and Brother Oliver stood with me while Mr. Schumacher got into the bus. I looked out at the road.

Brother Oliver said, “It isn’t a prison. You can leave if you want.”

“I know that. I don’t want. It’s just — Alfred Broyle, that’s all.”

There was no way he could understand what I meant, so he simply patted my arm and murmured some nonsense. I said to him, “If there was any way it could work, I’d stay here right now. Any way at all. But I’m no good for her, and after a while she wouldn’t be any good for me, and after we were done with one another we’d both be spoiled for any kind of life. I’m just sorry to be leaving her to — without things worked out for her .”

“But what does this mean for your vocation, Brother? Your beliefs?”

“Brother Oliver,” I said, “to be honest with you I don’t know anymore what I believe. I don’t know if I believe in God or just in peace and quiet. All I know for sure is, whatever I believe in, it isn’t out here. The only place I’ve ever found it is in that monastery.”

The bus driver honked his horn at us. He was grumpy, having expected us all to stay until after midnight and having been found just now doing the twist in the dining room. Having honked our attention, he called out the open door to us, “You two coming or not?”

“We’re coming,” I said. “Come on, Brother Oliver.”

We were half a block from the house when a car passed us going the other way. I stood and craned my neck to watch out the bus’s rear window. The car turned in at the driveway, where the party was still going on.

Saturday, nine P.M. I sat in my pew in the chapel, waiting to see Father Banzolini for the first time since I’d gone away to Puerto Rico, and what a lot of sins I had to confess. I should have been rehearsing those sins in fear and contrition right now, but I wasn’t; instead, I was smiling around at my familiar surroundings with relief and delight.

Home. I was home, and to stay. I wouldn’t even be Traveling for the Sunday Times anymore, having cheerfully abdicated that function to Brother Flavian. (Let him worry about censorship from now on!) The outside world was already receding from my mind and I was becoming again what I had always been. (Before Brothers Clemence, Silas, Thaddeus had become monks they had been lawyer, thief, mariner. Before I had become a monk, I had been a monk who didn’t know he was a monk.)

The Confessional curtain rustled and out came Brother Gideon, in his stiff new robe and his soft new smile. I took his place in the dark booth, next to Father Banzolini’s ear, and began belatedly to organize my thoughts. “Bless me, Father,” I said, “for it’s a long story.”