A Witness to Life (Ashland, 2) (20 page)

I am going to Gethsemani. One day to travel there, one day to travel back, and three days at the monastery. I have phoned ahead, made the arrangements to stay in the guest house. The bus from Toronto will take me through Detroit, Toledo, Dayton, Cincinnati, Louisville. At Louisville, I transfer to a bus to Bardstown, and from there the short last leg of my journey.

When the bus rolls through Detroit and Toledo, I imagine Jack walking the streets that I see through the window, his hands in his pockets. When we pass a roadside diner outside Troy, Ohio, I conjure him up at a booth inside, a sandwich and coffee in front of him, cigarette burning in a glass ashtray. On the platform in Louisville, I see him leaning against a telephone pole, reading a newspaper. In Bardstown, he floats, for a fathomless moment, behind the wheel of a Dodge roadster that has pulled into the gas station across the street. Smiling that smile.

4

Within the walls are a silent herd of men, young and old, white cowls, brown capes. At a large desk in the entranceway I am greeted by an older man in monk's garb and signed in, all talk at a minimum.

There are twenty rooms in the guest house. My room is as one might imagine: a single bed, a chair, a writing desk, two lamps. A crucifix is the sole adornment on the walls. My second-story window opens onto a closed quadrangle.

I set my bag down on the uncarpeted floor, sit on the bed, read the card that was handed to me:

A MONK'S DAY

3:00 a.m. - Rise

3:15 - Choral prayer of Vigils

Personal prayer
 

Breakfast

5:45 - Choral prayer of Lauds

6:15 - Daily Eucharist

Thanksgiving/Meditation

7:30 - Choral prayer of Terce

8:50-11:50 - Work

12:15 p.m. - Choral prayer of Sext

12:30 - Dinner

Rest/Reading/Personal Prayer

2:15 - Choral prayer of None

Reading/Personal prayer/Work

5:30 - Choral prayer of Vespers

6:00 - Supper/Reading/Personal Prayer

7:30 - Compline (Choral night prayers)

Retire

Guest are invited to join in any of the above activities, but are completely welcome to structure their own time to avail themselves of any of the monastery's facilities. We also encourage exploration of the natural beauty of our acreage as an aid to silent contemplation
.

Standing in the monks' cemetery of miniature white crosses, there is a clean smell of pine and cedar that blows from the nearby woods. The fields are green, dotted with birches, poplars, the valley lush, hemmed in by the low, distant mountains.

At night the sky is cool, then there is thunder, forked lightning, rain. I lie in crisp, white sheets, see Jack digging in a garden, stop, wipe his brow, look up at the sky, and know that memory is a fiction that I can write.

I am sitting on a stone bench in an enclosed garden of pinks, whites, purples, the sun behind a cloud, when a young monk in his thirties strolls near, book in hand. I understand silence, but am not sure that I understand these men.

"Good afternoon," I say, reflexively.

He looks up, nods. "Good afternoon."

I am a bit surprised to hear him speak. "I understand that Trappists take a vow of silence. I'm sorry if I invaded that."

A smile. A shrug. "We minimize unnecessary speech. We are not antisocial. Or mute. You'd be surprised how much speech is unnecessary."

It is my turn to nod. Then: "Would you mind talking to me a bit?"

He lowers his book, studies me.

"Or is that wrong?"

"Not at all."

He approaches, sits at the other end of the stone bench. The sun slides from behind the cloud. I can hear only bees nearby, birds in the distance.

"Is it true that you make wine and cheese?"

He smiles. "Cheese and fruitcake would be more like it. We'll be doing extra work starting in September to prepare for the Christmas volume. It's a source of needed income."

"What else do you do here?"

"There is so much to keep us busy. We have cooks, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, mechanics among us. There are daily tasks: washing dishes, cleaning floors. We run our own waterworks, our own sewage disposal plant. There is a large vegetable garden, a mechanized farm, a small beef herd. We grow and harvest wheat. We have a granary."

He folds his book shut, leans the weight of his body forward slightly, his hands braced on the front edge of the bench beside his thighs.

"I'm Martin Radey," I say.

"Thomas Merton." He offers his hand, which I take. "Where are you from?"

"Toronto, Canada."

"Really? My brother was stationed somewhere near Toronto early in the war. He went to Canada to join the Royal Canadian Air Force. He couldn't wait for us to enter the war."

"Where is he now?"

A hesitation. "He's dead." Another beat. "His plane went down in the North Sea."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry too. It was the mention of Toronto that brought it back." A pause. "How long will you be with us?"

"Three days."

"Like Jonah."

"Pardon?"

"In the belly of the whale."

I smile. "A nice whale, though." I look around me.

"Have you been here before?"

"No. This is my first time."

"Have you been to Kentucky before?"

I shake my head. "No."

"What brings you here?"

"What brings anyone here?" Then, as before, I surprise myself. "I have a son who lives in Kentucky."

He nods, as if understanding. "Near here?"

"Ashland."

"That's in the eastern part of the state. Did he tell you about Gethsemani?"

I think about it. "Yes," I say. "He did." Then I ask him, suddenly, the sun in his face, the memory of lightning flashing in the night, of Jack leaning on his shovel, staring at me, of the trip here, of my years alone: "What is a monk? What is this place?"

He smiles, frowns. "Does the silence scare you?"

I do not know what scares me anymore, can think of no answer.

"Monasticism is rooted in all major religions of the world. It was practiced in the East a thousand years before the Christian era. Gethsemani has been here for a hundred years. A monk," he says, looking away, "is not a man with a fiery vision. A monk has nothing to tell you except that if you dare to enter the solitude of your own heart, you can go beyond death even in this life, and be a witness to life." He turns to me. "You can be a monk, just by accepting that. It is a process, not a destination."

I look at him, into his dark, confident eyes.

He stands, picks up his book. "Pray for me," he says, nods, and leaves.

The sun beats down warmly on my neck, my back, as I lean forward, hands clasped, elbows on my knees.

"Tell me about your son."

It is the next day. We are in the garden again, on the same stone bench.

"He runs a hotel in Ashland," I say. "The Scott Hotel." I see Jack in a shirt and tie, hair slicked down, at a large desk in a private office.

Thomas Merton nods, looks down. "How old is he?"

My mouth is dry. "Midthirties," I say. Jack signs a form, folds it, places it on the side of the desk.

"I'm thirty-three," he says.

I look at him. "You could be my son. I could be your father." You could be Jack, I think. He could be anywhere.

"My mother died when I was six. My father died when I was sixteen."

We are quiet.

Then, sitting here, beside him, the past surfaces. I remember another priest, at the graveside of my baby brother Patrick, more than sixty years ago. I remember him telling mother that Patrick had been redeemed.

In this garden, with this man, the question flows naturally, yet surprisingly: "What is redemption? I don't think I understand."

He squints, smiles. "It's an interesting theological concept. Very complex. The root meaning is to set free or to cause
to
be set free. To redeem is to ransom. The Old Testament saw redemption as a transaction. One could be redeemed by sacrifice, by giving of self. We were capable of our own redemption. The New Testament, ah, now that's slightly different. It is imbued with a redemption for which God paid the price."

I feel the sun warm my hands, listen to the silence around us.

"Men need to be set free from a power greater than themselves, but it cannot be accomplished without cost. Someone must pay. Man or God." He stares out into the rush of summer colors: impatiens, petunias, white roses, baby's breath, soft mauve forget-me-nots, moss rockfoil, dark red.

On the third day, I sit in the same place, hoping, then finally knowing, that he will return, and he does not disappoint me.

"I'll be leaving tomorrow morning," I say.

"I've enjoyed our conversations," he says. "Will you see your son before you head back home?"

My eyes waver, then focus on a rose arbor, arched and bowed, climbing with red and green. "No," I say. Jack opens the door of his Dodge roadster, climbs in, checks the rearview mirror.

He hears more than I say, tilts his head. "I had a son," he says.

I watch a pollen-heavy bee lean forward into a daisy.

"Both he and his mother were killed in the war, during the firebombing of London. I never married her. I never saw him."

I am quiet for a moment. "You didn't have to tell me."

He is calm. The air is still. "We only seek," he says, "to avoid unnecessary speech here." He turns, looks at me. "Has your trip been worthwhile?"

I look up. A lone hawk is circling high in the blue August Kentucky sky. "It's been good." Then: "It's been inevitable. It's like I've been drawn here."

"I know." He looks at me. "This is the center of America."

I watch his eyes. They focus on a point I cannot see.

"This monastery is holding the country together. This is its heart. I have a hermitage less than a mile from here. I write by candlelight at sunset, view the valley, the woods from my window. One has to be in the same place every day to realize how rich the uniformity is. The solitary life is awesome. It can shock you, and it can give you grace. We discover our eternal dimensions in the midst of our failures."

He reaches down, picks up a stone at our feet, rubs it clean, hands it to me. "Here."

I hold it in my palm.

"This stone is life."

I say nothing.

"It exists before and after death."

I close my hand over it.

"It is all that we have, all that we are, all that we will be."

I squeeze its hard, unyielding surface.

He offers his hand. "We are all monks," he says. His hand waits.

"Thank you," I say.

"Good-bye, Martin."

"Thomas."

"Pray for me," he says.

Before I board the bus to Bardstown, I walk once more among the array of small white crosses on the hilltop, feel the earth giving gently beneath my feet, among silent men who lead silent lives, among my brothers. My fingers touch the small stone in my pocket. And from a corner of my eye, cowled in white, retreating into an arched doorway, I see Jack, my son, fading into the stone walls.

5

March 1949, at age thirty-nine, Margaret has another baby, a son, Dennis. Anne, Ron, Judy, Leo, and now Dennis.

On my way back from the hospital, ahead of me on the streetcar, with my eyes still open, in blacks and whites and grays I see Jack brushing a daughter's hair, straightening up the collar of her coat against the cold, then pull the cord above his head. They leave by the side door.

On Saturday, September 17, 1949, the Great Lakes excursion ship
Noronic
catches fire at its pier in Toronto harbor. The single exit blocked, the ship's fire hydrants dry, one hundred and eighteen people die.

I dream that in the smoke, Jack is trapped, looking for me.

A warm, beautiful Saturday, weather in the seventies, just before her twenty-second birthday, October 14, 1950, Joan marries A1 McLeod. During the reception at the Old Mill, my sister, Mary Rossiter, four years widowed, in her eighties, drinks too much wine, but no one cares.

Margaret and Tommy are here. Jock is here. Things are good.

And then everyone is waiting. I must dance with her. One dance. It is expected.

There is a spotlight, the circle widens and we are alone. As I move about the floor, my daughter in my arms, I realize that it is the same: I am touching Joan at last, lifting her, like Gramma in the cold room onto her bed so many years ago.