The Great Weaver From Kashmir (13 page)

On the grand piano lay a thin red volume,
Élégie
by Massenet, the song that had always reminded her of fiddles and prairies. She wished that she could play this song on the piano's strings once more, in memory of bygone days. But the grand piano was shut.

It was like a miracle or an oracle:
Pour toujours, pour toujours,
she told herself.

These songs will never be sung again.

Autumn in Europe, 1921.

The Italian peasant no longer smokes his pipe on his doorstep after completing his day's work. The evening no longer brings a fresh breeze after a hot day. He pulls his chair back in over the threshold. In the summer Hesperus ascends into the blue twilight sky and gleams like steel over the peasant's roof. Now at night the air is raw and bleak, and black storm clouds cross the sky, following peculiar paths. Huge cold raindrops fall onto the layer of white dust on the street, noiseless like heavenly tears or eerie expectorations. Before one knows it, a heavy downpour commences and the street turns into a muddy river. The winter raillery of the elements is close at hand; hailstorms and tempests dance on the peaks of the Alps.

Steinn Elliði sits one evening in a second-class compartment on the Rome-Paris express, which has reached Modane, the French border town. He sits by the window, enwrapped in a thick coat, staring out and waiting for the train to continue on its way to Paris. He shares the compartment with an elderly British couple, sleeping like marmots,
the wife covered by a huge blanket, the husband hidden behind the continental edition of the
Daily Mail.
The stop at the border station is long and tiring. Outside the window stands a man with a wagonload of pillows, which he advertises for rent for two lira. “My ladies and gentlemen,” repeats the man over and over, “soft pillows, two lira!” Refreshment vendors and newspaper sellers wind their way around each other, red and blue from shouting, their voices either distressed or threatening. Porters, railway workers, customs officers, and policemen bump into each other as they work to save the nation, and no one quite understands this bustle, since the passengers have long since been dealt with and most boarded the train. Soldiers with long sabers and cigarettes in their mouths strut back and forth along the platform and make crude remarks about the girls in town. An addled traveler who has made some mistake as well as lost his hat stands remiss in front of three officers of the state and is written up. Several experienced travelers pace around the station platform, knowing that it is useless to make a fuss, and instead use the delay to stretch out after spending the whole day sitting in their seats.

Steinn leans into the corner by the compartment window and waits passively, except for now and then when he reaches into his coat pocket for a nut; he crushes the shell on the ashtray fastened to the wall, then shoves the kernel into his mouth.

Finally!

The train jerks into motion, first backward as if it is planning to jump, then slightly forward; next it makes a decisive leap and sets off. At the last moment a new passenger carrying a little handbag steps in; he walks down the passageway, searching for seats, until he sets his eyes on the empty ones in Steinn's compartment. He
bids good evening in French, puts his bag up on the net, and sits down at the window opposite Steinn. He takes off his hat, black, low-crowned, quite nappy; the crown of his head is bald, but a thin, soft stripe of black hair covers the front, the sides, and the back. He is wearing a shoe-length overcoat, which he unbuttons because he is hot from running. Beneath it is a black shoe-length habit, and a scapular the same color can be seen beneath the edge of the habit. Protruding from his sleeves are white hands, small and handsome.

Steinn recognizes immediately from the man's clothing that this new arrival to the compartment is a monk. They glance quickly at each other's eyes. Then the monk takes his Psalter from his pocket, leafs through it for a moment until he has found the reading for the day, makes the sign of the cross, adjusts himself in his seat, and in the next breath is deep in his prayer readings, oblivious to his surroundings.

For the first time in his life Steinn sits opposite a man who has been shaped by Christian asceticism; he is therefore more than a little curious about trying to determine the psychological value of the lines in the face of such a person, and finds his opportunity to do so while the monk is reading.

The investigation resulted in the greatest promotion of Christianity's honor. Steinn came to the conclusion that if the Church counted in its flock of canons many sheep of this variety, it could easily call together a ministerial cabinet that many a state would envy. The stature of this man, the shape of his head and his physiognomy bore clear signs of an exceptionally virtuous personality. In civilian dress such a heroic figure would have immediately drawn the attention of the man on the street. The crown of his head was big and powerful,
his nose large and hooked; his chin and the lines beneath his small delicate mouth witnessed his strong will. His eyes were exceptionally clear. Yet his expression had an aura that Steinn could not help but connect with either a musical virtuoso or a mathematician, something that avouched a strong, resolute interest in phenomena beyond the realm of the visible, something that ran the risk of being considered arrogance. Almost everything in this man's countenance would have found its home in a portrait of a genius, and Steinn could not help but think, despite the nobility of his asceticism, that in the end it would be a pitiful mistake of providence to shut this man behind an unclimbable wall, behind an iron door, which screeches the few times it is opened. He would undeniably have been better suited as an orator standing in the sunshine on a green hill, with thousands of people below shouting hurrah.

The train rolls westward into France like a tremendously large, oblong insect from Earth's primeval times, howling and rattling, but the man with the shaven crown is engrossed in heavenly adventures; he is standing in the city of Zion, gazing at the Lord with the cherubim, seraphim, and blessed saints. At least an hour passes by, and Steinn is slightly annoyed that the man should not care about what is happening on Earth. But finally he finishes his prayers, takes his leave of Almighty God by crossing himself, puts the
Breviarium Monasticum
back into his pocket, and looks up. Once again they
exchange quick glances, Steinn and the monk; next the latter leans back in his seat and closes his eyes. He had apparently traveled a long way, just like Steinn, and was tired. The train rushes noisily on.

But Steinn Elliði burned with the desire to talk. He had scarcely said a word since he parted from his mother at the station in Naples, and the three-day journey had awakened in him a great many thoughts. Besides that, it was foolish to let the opportunity to compare books with a Catholic ascetic slip by once it had presented itself. And he heard himself start to speak before he had any clear idea as to what he wanted to say:

“Excuse me, dear sir,” he said, “but this is the first time that I have been granted the pleasure of sitting face-to-face with a true Christian son of the Catholic Apostolic Church, so I hope that you do not take it amiss if I address you. I should mention that you do not need to fear that I am as ignorant concerning Catholicism as any ordinary heretic; no, far from it, sir: I've read Cardinal Newman and have no qualms about placing him on the same pedestal as the gods of the nineteenth century. I've read three volumes of the apologetics of Weiss, who is sufficiently middle-of-the-road to merit being called both logical and extravagant. I've read old Bossuet, who I must admit is nothing other than a clever fool, unfortunately; I would have denied it on oath that it would be possible to write as dishonest a world history with as good a conscience as he has succeeded in doing. Concerning Pascal, I must truly say that I abhor him. Of the more recent Catholic writers I dare say that I have read the ones that are most well-known on the continent; thus I can name names such as Huysmans and Bordeaux, Paul Bourget, René Bazin, all petty
bourgeois except for Huysmans; Léon Bloy, Marsis, Robert Hugh Benson, Hilaire Belloc, Chesterton, Johannes Jørgensen; and just recently I finished the new book by Papini,
Storia di Cristo,
which of course is nothing more than flowery, prideful, chattery prattle and a regression in style from when he published
Un uomo finito,
1912. What do you think?”

“It is a genuine pleasure to speak with such a well-read man,” said the monk, and Steinn saw immediately that his smile concealed French charm, but his voice was exceedingly bright, almost lyrical, yet entirely masculine. “I will take the liberty to deduce that the gentleman is a British or Scandinavian artist, and likely a poet, on his way home from sunny Italy, blessed with beautiful memories and lofty dreams.”

Steinn acknowledged this: he was a Scandinavian, descended from Viking ancestors on his father's side. He was a worshipper of beauty. His soul was replete with sublime dreams. The monk had also come from Italy: from Monte Cassino, the great Benedictine abbey, where he had stayed for two months, lecturing to the novices. His home monastery was actually in Belgium. They exchanged cards, Steinn and the monk.

“It is truly instructive to meet an ascetic of the order of Benedict of Nursia in the year 1921,” said Steinn. “It only goes to show that asceticism is neither one of the fads of the Middle Ages nor a worthless inheritance from Eastern heathendom, but rather one of the passions of human nature. I must inform you that I admire asceticism and would likely have entered a monastery had I not been raised in heretical doctrine. As you know, the spiritual life in the Nordic countries has for centuries lacked the treasures contained
in the mystical nature of Christianity. The Christianity of the Nordic countries is as far removed from the ancient Catholic teachings as Theosophy is from Lamaism. The Catholic faith and Protestantism are two distinct religions, writes Cardinal Newman in
Loss and Gain,
and I would say that they are more than distinct religions: they are two opposing views of life that will never be reconciled. Catholicism is something that a man cannot help but call true; Protestantism is independent thinking gone awry. A man does not need to be more than middling keen to perceive the curse of excommunication that drifts like the stench of rotting flesh from every Protestant church door. The Apostolic Church has slung over the Lutherans an irrevocable ban, which presses down on us like a yoke and fills us with hatred and bigotry toward the truth; we would feel the same in a Catholic church as Swedenborg's demons straying onto the stage of the angels by mistake. Whenever I had the chance to stick my nose into a Catholic church I trembled in my soul like a man who fears being roasted on a spit. Yet I can assure you, sir, that in Scandinavia many hearts beat strongly and passionately with reverence for the Catholic Church and yearn for it. For my part, I thirst for its beauty, its authority and power, and for its ideals, especially its ideals of asceticism, which cannot be separated from unconditional belief in this so-called Lord of ours, Jesus Christ. And I despise with all my heart this latter-day Christianity, which some Saxon boors and wretches put together here recently just to tickle the ears of simpletons and strengthen the power of petty German kings. I was even convinced for three consecutive weeks this past spring that all of this deathly rubbish about atonement, the saints, and the infallibility of the pope was the highest truth that could possibly be achieved on our level of
being. And I am, as I mentioned, still not entirely averse to the idea that Christianity, as the Catholic Church teaches it, is the truth. I am not more eager to believe in anything between Heaven and Earth than this: that Jesus Christ is the son of God, the incarnation of the Almighty, and has not only established a supernatural church, but was also begotten in a supernatural way, died in a supernatural way, and rose from the dead in a supernatural way.
The New Testament
is still the most remarkable book that I know, and
La Vie de Jésus
by Monsieur Ernest Renan is and always has been the most inconsequential book that I know. And just as the New Testament becomes more remarkable in my eyes the more that I study it, so too does
La Vie de Jésus
become more banal and insignificant.