The Great Weaver From Kashmir (31 page)

In your countenance one glimpses the understanding of a mature soul; I perceive clearly that you are a much wiser man than I. And I am humbled to walk here by your side, daring to speak to you, as if I were so conceited as to think to teach you. I myself am the least learned of the disciples. The only thing that I have the power to do is thank God that he has displayed to me, so unworthy, the grace to show a soul whom he loves the way to our house. All that I am able to do is to receive you, just as a poor servant is required to receive the nobleman whom the king summons to council.

Do not look up to me, dear sir; I beg you this as fluently as I can, because I am not in any way more worthy in the eyes of God because I wear a monk's cowl, or because the holy office of priest has been placed upon my shoulders. Neither of these things does anything but increase my obligations. I am the weakest of men and the most frail, and I perpetually forget the presence of God; keep this in mind every time that you speak to me. No one has further to go than I. If you want to see a miserable wretch of God, then look at me. I have not fallen seven times like the righteous, but rather four hundred and ninety times, like those who are most pitiable. But every time I
fall I stand up again with these words of Saint Augustine on my lips:
“Potuerunt isti et illi, quare non ego!”
– “These and those were able to, why not I?”; and then I fall once more. You are justified in finding me ridiculous.

It is the hallmark of a Christian man to know the key to true perfection. Never let God's presence slip from your mind. The key to your perfection is to remember at every moment of your life that you stand before the face of God. Therefore let your life be an uninterrupted prayer, all of your work in the service of God, every movement of your mind
ad majorem Dei gloriam
– to the further glorification of God. In the same way that the love of God enwraps you, so are you obligated to direct your thoughts to him, forever and always. In the morning when you wake let the first movement of your consciousness be a song of praise to him. And when you close your eyes to sleep in the evening let this be your final thought:
In manu tua sum.
⁸⁴
Every step that you take, every word that you speak, every glance: let all of your thoughts be directed toward this one thing. It is the hallmark of the saints that they forget themselves in the sight of God. Pray and busy yourself with nothing but prayer. Pray to God. Pray always to God. Pray everywhere to God. For everything.

Several days later, at the close of supper, the investiture of two novices took place in the abbey's chapter hall. Steinn Elliði was invited to attend, and the Guest Master showed him to a special seat. Two
young men were being accepted as novitiates: they had during the preceding months learned the abbey's traditions and participated in the life of the novices, in layman's dress and with full freedom of action. One was from The Hague, the other from Paris. Steinn had noticed them immediately in the choir, two men of the world surrounded by eighty canons, looking perpetually confused by everything that was happening. The Dutchman looked as if he had been a bank clerk or an office worker for an important company: he had gold-rimmed eyeglasses and his hair was gleaming with hair cream, his clothing and shoes were styled according to last year's fashion. His shirt and tie were handsome without awakening any special notice, just like those worn by employees of upright commercial institutions. He had a fountain pen and a pencil in the breast pocket of his jacket. The man from Paris was still quite young, obviously from a bourgeois or perhaps aristocratic family, admirably raised, with dark eyes and eyebrows, his skin bright and pink like a young girl's. His mouth, like his hands, displayed sensitivity, and his clothing was as tasteful as it was unostentatious, the mark of a good upbringing. These two youths had said farewell to the world in order to be consecrated to the cross from this day on.

All of the windowpanes in the hall were stained and let in only meager light, but above the abbot's seat burned a small candle that cast a dull gleam over the hall's Baroque style and the facial portraits of abbots many hundreds of years old, maintaining watch along all the walls. Everything is silent. Finally a bell rings dimly from a distant tower somewhere; the hall doors are opened and the monks step in two by two. They are clad in black choir robes, with their hoods pulled forward over their faces; each walks to his own seat in
the hall. Last to enter is the abbot, with a white miter on his head; he sits in the high seat. Finally everyone is seated; eighty black-clad beings stare straight ahead, their faces expressionless like stone statues; everything is as quiet as before a beheading.

Father Alban, this fool of the Lord,
“le fou de bon Dieu,”
as he called himself, who emphatically denied that he was a man able to teach himself, much less others, became in fact the one whom Steinn looked upon as his master ever afterward. Father Alban had found the way that the son of waywardness had sought all of his life. Although Father Alban was extremely busy with his work, which consisted of attending five hours of divine offices every day like a regular monk, as well as serving the brotherhood as prior and Novice Master, two positions laden with responsibility, he still never seemed to lack the time to speak with the foreign guest. Steinn sat for long periods of time conversing with him in his room, as the sun shone in through the window and the summer breeze, blowing in from the garden, brought the perfume of roses. Or they walked side by side through the young trees, where the crowns were low enough to brush a man's cheeks, and the days passed by so quickly that the sun seemed to set before noon. And our Lady stands in the grove.

It did not take long before the monk knew all the details of Steinn's life and spiritual journey, the hopes and disappointments of his youth, his dreams and reality, his plans and shipwrecks, his
struggles, victories, and defeats. And he knew what was sick in Steinn's soul and what healthy. Steinn studied Christian ascetic theory, either by listening to the monk's living words, or by reading the books that he recommended.
De Imitatione Jesu Christi
became by and by his fondest reading, then
Introduction à la vie dévote
by Saint François de Sales, the
Exercitia Spiritualia
of Saint Ignatius, Master Eckehart, Pascal, and finally the Doctor Angelicus himself.

Little by little Steinn became part of the household of the abbey. Its astonishing aspect disappeared: he discovered that daily life here was just like anywhere else among mortals. He learned to find his way through the halls, got to know the monks. He attended services, dipped his finger in the holy water at the church door and signed himself, kneeled whenever he walked before the cross, received a Psalter and participated in the Gregorian chant, came to understand the Mass better and better, and would not be satisfied until he had come to understand the meaning of every last little detail of the liturgy.

The monks were the most educated of all men, gentle in their conduct, cheerful, modest. When they were at Mass their faces reflected strong determination, and during the chanting, deep adoration that no outside influence could perturb. They would not have been vexed even if the house had collapsed. But in the refectory, where guests were invited to come, they were extraordinarily cheerful, and in the free time at the conclusion of meals they told antic stories from east and west, or wonderful tales about everything under the sun, and laughed in such a way that no one without a good conscience could possibly imitate. Over time Steinn came to know what each of them was named; behind each name was a
man with distinct characteristics, although all of them seemed cast in the same mold at first sight. Father Alexandre had a huge nose; he was exceptionally learned and just as absentminded, knocked on everything that came into his hands as if he wanted to find out whether it might be hollow inside, peered into his glass as if gazing into a crystal ball, held his knife to his ear like a tuning fork while he was eating. He seemed to be the type of man who held many interesting discussions with himself, and who saw most things in a philosophical light. Father Benjamin looked like a portrait of a saint from the Beuron school, both solemn and personable. His eyes shone with a childish purity and deep understanding; out in the world others take it upon themselves to trample down such persons. Father Boots' usual expression consisted of pursed lips, flared nostrils, and a furrowed brow, making one believe that he had recently committed some misdeed or other and was preparing to commit yet another. In conversation, however, he proved to be meek and harmless; he pressed his palms together as if begging for mercy and smiled out to his ears, causing one to forgive him of all his misdeeds at once. Father Benoit was handsome and dignified, portly like a medieval canon, around sixty, with an abrupt manner of speaking, gentle laughter, and frolic in his eyes. Dorval, the Guest Master, was lighthearted and animated, companionable and inquisitive; he thought it great entertainment to be told the news if there was any news to tell, told the news himself if no one else knew any, and read the newspapers. Word went around that he sometimes smoked a pipe out in the garden, but everyone adored him and found no fault with him for this. He was
un homme du Midi
and went to the Riviera for three-week stretches each winter to undergo treatment
for asthma. “The climate in Belgium,” he said, “now that's a miserable climate!” He had played as a child beneath palm trees. The Venerable Father, the abbot himself, was an aristocratic and honorable man, his smile and glance warm and paternal; they had all wept with joy when he returned to them after a half-year mission to the Congo last year. His bearing was determined and stately, his voice slightly cracked when he began the Benedicite at meals. He was sparing with words, but unsparing with his genial smile, and he would warm everything around him wherever he went. He was the incarnation of Benedictine dignity and gentility. And in the midst of these men went Father Alban, strong and gentle, kingly and meek, wise and childish, inspired and taciturn, smitten with the guilty conscience of a saint, because he was a holy man. Other men faded from Steinn's mind when he thought about Father Alban.
Voilà un homme!
Such a countenance! Such hawk's eyes! Such a bearing! His profile was pure of form, like a portrait on a Roman coin. Whenever Steinn thought of Benedict of Nursia, the nobleman who became the father of Christian monasticism, it proved impossible for him to call to mind any other image than the likeness of Father Alban.

It was one of Father Alban's particular characteristics that he never spoke about himself except during those few times when he could not refrain from saying what a contemptible and imperfect person he was, frail and helpless, unworthy in the eyes of God. He never
made any mention of his former life. Had he put all of his memories to sleep or had he been born with a scapular on his shoulders? The information that Steinn received about the upbringing and former lifestyle of his master came from others, in particular the talkative Guest Master, Père Dorval.

Father Alban's story was in certain respects parallel to the life of Charles de Foucauld, his compatriot, an ascetic who lived in the Sahara desert and was killed by the natives there in 1916. Landry was an aristocrat like Foucauld, a member of an old and renowned family, born in Paris, brought up either there or at his family's estates in the Pyrenees and on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Early on the astonishing artistic ability of the young aristocrat came to light: his violin playing earned him the admiration of virtuosos by the age of seven. His father, however, did not believe in prodigies, and thus the boy was made to follow the normal course of schooling. But along with his schooling the boy continued to practice the violin with extraordinary gusto; his energy for work seemed inexhaustible. And after he had
fait son droit
⁹⁸
he entered a conservatory at the age of twenty, and it did not escape the notice of any musicians qualified to judge that here was a manifest gift of grace, and that he surely had a shining future as a virtuoso ahead of him. After studying for almost two years at the conservatory his teachers sent him away with the testimonial that he had surpassed them. In the winter of 1910 he held his first public concert in Paris, when he was twenty-five. His performance became legend. At that time Alban de Landry was worshipped in the concert halls of Paris, the stately man with a genius' youth behind him and a prospective future as a superman. But he was cool and reticent; in his eyes dwelled the perception of
another plane; the ways of men were not his ways. He did not let the adoration of women or the veneration of masters seduce him into a more comfortable way of life; instead he drove to his old estate in the Pyrenees and hid himself from the world for two years, following the example of Paganini. There he cultivated his art, playing the violin days and nights, roaming about in the countryside in between and hearkening to the echoes of the Aeolian harp. No other environment is better suited to raising a true troubadour than the land of the Gascons, and when he felt that the time was right he reappeared in the world of men and embarked on a concert tour throughout the various capital cities of the Northern Hemisphere, leaving a trail of fame from Stockholm to Rome, from Saint Petersburg to Madrid. In 1913 he was heard from in America; he continued his victorious journey from one great city of North America to another, and then on to Brazil and Argentina. It was there that snow started to cover his tracks, until finally it was no longer possible to follow his trail. Months pass and people cannot agree on what has happened to him. Some believe that he has returned to Europe to prepare new concerts. One newspaper claims that he is living on the island of Capri in the company of another virtuoso, a Spaniard, and that they spend their time together composing music. Another newspaper suggests that he has returned to his estate in the Pyrenees to refresh his health.