Journey by Moonlight (14 page)

“And you?”

“Oh, I never drink. Since I joined the order … ”

“Ervin … perhaps you no longer smoke?”

“No.”

Mihály’s eyes again filled with tears. No, this was beyond
imagining
. He could have believed anything of Ervin—that he wore a spiked hairshirt under his clothing, that he would receive the stigmata before his death—but his not smoking!

“We’ve rather more important things to talk about,” said Ervin, to divert attention from this sacrifice. “But have a drink, and do smoke if you want to.”

Mihály downed a glass of the red wine. There are great myths about the wines stored by monks in cobwebbed bottles for the entertainment of their rare guests. This was not one of those but an ordinary, if very clean-tasting, country wine, its bouquet
wonderfully
suited to the simplicity of the empty whitewashed hall.

“I don’t know if it’s any good,” said Ervin. “We don’t have a
cellar
of our own. We are a begging order, and you have to take that rather literally. Now, tell me your story.”

“Look, Ervin, of our two lives yours is the more remarkable. My curiosity is by rights stronger than yours. You must tell me your story first … ”

“What is there to tell, my dear Mishy? We have no personal story. The life of any one monk is the same as any other, and you can read the sum of those lives in the history of the church.”

“But tell me, at any rate, how you came here to Gubbio.”

“At first I remained back home, in Hungary. I was a novice in Gyöngyös, then for a long time at the monastery in Eger. Then the Hungarian branch of the Order had to send a father to Rome on some business, and I was chosen because I had been
learning
Italian. Then, some time after I had dealt with that, I was called to Rome again, because they had taken a great liking to me, though I certainly didn’t deserve it, and they wanted to keep me there to work with the Pater Prior. But I was concerned that this might lead, in due course, to my making a career, purely in the Franciscan context, naturally—becoming the head of a house somewhere, or filling some rank at Head Office. And that I didn’t want. So I asked Pater Prior to place me here in Gubbio.”

“Why here, exactly?”

“I really couldn’t say. Perhaps because of the old legend, the one about the wolf of Gubbio we were so fond of at school, you remember. Because of the legend I came here once on a visit from Assisi and fell in love with the monastery. This is the place, you know, where no bird flies … ”

“And you’re happy here?”

“Very. As the years go by I feel a greater sense of peace … but I mustn’t patter on” (a strange little smile put quotation marks around the phrase) “because I know that you didn’t come here to see Pater Severinus, but the person who used to be Ervin, not so?”

“I really don’t know … tell me … these are difficult questions to ask … isn’t it rather monotonous here?”

“Not in the least. Our lives have the same pleasures and pains as those outside, only the terms are different, and the emphasis is on other things.”

“Why don’t you want a career in the Order? Is that from humility?”

“Not because of that. The kind of office I could attain would be consistent with the ideal of humility, or rather, would give the opportunity to overcome pride. No, I refused a career for quite other reasons. Really, because any advancement would not have been due to my being a good monk but for the sort of
qualities
I brought with me from the outside world, and in fact from my ancestors—my ability with languages and the fact that I can sometimes deal with matters more quickly and effectively than some of my fellow monks. In a word, my Jewish qualities. And I didn’t want that.”

“Tell me, Ervin, how do your fellow monks look on the fact that you were Jewish? Hasn’t that been a disadvantage?”

“Not at all. It worked only to my benefit. I did run into
individual
fellow-monks who made it clear how much they disliked my race, but that just presented opportunities to practise
meekness
and self-control. And then in Hungary, when I was a country pastor, the fact always somehow got about, and the good village faithful saw me as some sort of oddity and paid much greater attention to what I said. Here in Italy nobody bothers about it. I hardly ever think about it myself.”

“Tell me, Ervin … what do you actually do all day? What work is there for you?”

“A great deal. Chiefly prayers and spiritual exercises.”

“You don’t write any more? … ”

Again Ervin smiled.

“No, not for a long time now. You see, it is true that when I first joined the Order I imagined that I would serve the Church with my pen, I would be a Catholic poet … But later … ”

“What? Your inspiration left you?”

“Not at all. I left it. I realised it was all really beside the point.”

Mihály thought deeply. He was beginning to understand what sort of worlds separated him from Father Severinus, who had been Ervin … “How long have you been in Gubbio?” he asked eventually.

“Wait a moment … it must be … six years. But it could be seven.”

“Tell me, Ervin, I used to think about this a lot, if you
remember
. Do you monks also have the feeling that time goes forward,
and that every little bit of it has a special truth? Do you have a sense of history? If you recall some event, can you say if it
happened
in 1932 or in 1933?”

“No. It is one of the blessings of our lot that God lifts us out of time.”

Ervin began to cough violently. Mihály realised only then that he had been coughing for some time, a dry, ugly cough.

“Tell me, Ervin, isn’t there something wrong with your lungs?”

“Well, they’re certainly not in perfect order … in fact you could say they’re in a pretty bad way. You know, we Hungarians are really pampered. Houses in Hungary are so well-heated. These Italian buildings really wear you down, always in unheated cells and cold churches … and in sandals on the stone floor … and this cowl doesn’t warm you very much.”

“Ervin, you’re ill … aren’t they treating you?”

“You’re very good, Mihály, but you mustn’t grieve about it,” he said, coughing. “You see, it’s simply a blessing for me, being ill. Because of it they agreed that I could leave Rome to come here to Gubbio, where the air is so healthy. Perhaps I really will get
better
. Then again, physical suffering is part of our monastic system. Others have to mortify the body—in my case the body takes care of this itself … But let’s leave all this. You came here to talk about yourself. We shouldn’t be wasting precious time on things neither you nor I can do anything about.”

“But Ervin, it’s not as if … you shouldn’t live like that, and you should go somewhere where they looked after you, and made you drink your milk, and lie in the sun.”

“Don’t worry about it, Mihály. Perhaps the time for that will come. Even monks have to guard against death, because if we simply allow the illness to take us over it would be a form of
suicide
. If the problem gets serious, I really will see a doctor … but we’re still a long way from that, believe me. And now you must talk. Tell me everything that’s happened to you since I last saw you. And first of all, tell me how you found me.”

“János Szepetneki said you were somewhere in Umbria, he didn’t know where precisely. And some unusual chance
happenings
, some really strong indications, made me suspect that you were in Gubbio, and indeed the famous Father Severinus.”

“Well, I am Father Severinus. And now tell me about yourself. I’m all attention.”

He rested his head in his hand in the classical pose of the
father-confessor
, and Mihály began to speak, haltingly at first, and with difficulty, though Ervin’s questions were a wonderful help. “But that long experience of the confessional is quite wasted on me,” Mihály thought to himself, for he could never have withheld the outpouring that was just waiting to burst from him. As he spoke it all came to the surface—everything that since his escape had lived inside him like a repressed instinct: how deeply he felt a failure in his adult, or quasi-adult life, his marriage, his desperation to know where he might start again, what he could expect from the future, how he could get back to his true self. And above all, how he was tortured by nostalgia for his youth and the friends of his youth.

When he reached this point the strength of his emotion
overwhelmed
him and his voice broke. He was filled with self-pity, and at the same time ashamed of his own sentimentality before Ervin, before Ervin’s mountain-peak serenity. Then he suddenly burst out in shocked amazement:

“And you? How can you bear it? Doesn’t it upset you too? Don’t you miss them? How do you manage it?”

The faint smile again passed over Ervin’s face, then he bent his head, and made no answer.

“Answer me, Ervin, answer, I beg of you. Don’t you miss them?”

“No,” he said in a toneless voice, with a wild look on his face. “I miss nothing.”

There was a long silence between them. Mihály was trying to understand Ervin. It couldn’t be otherwise. He must have purged everything from himself. Since he had had to tear himself away from everyone, he had dug up from his soul the very roots of anything that might flower into those feelings that bind people together. Now there was no pain, but he lived on in this fallow, this barren, land, on the bare mountain … Mihály shuddered to think of it.

Then a sudden thought struck him:

“I heard a story about you … how you exorcised a woman who was visited by the dead, here, in some mansion in the Via dei Consoli. Tell me, Ervin: that was Éva, wasn’t it?”

Ervin nodded.

Mihály jumped up in excitement, and gulped down the
remaining
wine.

“Oh, Ervin, tell me … how was … what was she like, Éva?”

What was Éva like? Ervin considered this. “Well, how should she be? She was very beautiful. She was, as always … ”

“How? She hadn’t changed?”

“No. Or rather, I didn’t notice any change in her.”

“And what is she doing?”

“I’m not very sure. She spoke a lot about how lucky she’d been, and how much she’d moved about in the West.”

Had anything flared up in Ervin when they met? He dared not ask.

“You don’t know what she’s doing now?”

“How should I know. It’s a few years, I believe, since she was here in Gubbio. But I have to say, my sense of time is pretty unreliable.”

“And tell me … if you can … how did it happen that … how did you get the dead Tamás to leave?”

Mihály’s voice sounded with the fear that filled him whenever he thought of it. Ervin again smiled that little smile.

“It wasn’t difficult. The old house made her see ghosts. Those doors of the dead have affected others in the same way. I merely had to
persuade
her to move out. Then again, I believe she played the whole thing up a little. Well, you know Éva … I’m afraid she never actually saw Tamás. She wasn’t having visions. Although it is possible that she was. I can’t say. You know, I’ve had to deal with so many apparitions and ghosts over the years, especially here in Gubbio with its doors of the dead, I’ve become rather sceptical in this respect … ”

“But then … you did cure her?”

“Not at all. As usually happens in these cases. I spoke to her very seriously, prayed with her a little, and she calmed down. She came to see that the place of the living is with the living.”

“Are you sure of that, Ervin?”

“Absolutely sure,” he replied with great seriousness. “Unless you choose what I chose. Especially among the living. But why am I preaching this to you? Even you know this.”

“She said nothing at all about how Tamás died?”

Ervin did not answer.

“Tell me, would you be able to exorcise the memory of Tamás, and Éva, and all of you, out of me?”

Ervin thought deeply.

“Very difficult. Very difficult. And I don’t know if it would be a good thing, because what would you be left with then? Really, it’s very hard to counsel you, Mihály. Pilgrims as desperate for help and so hard to help don’t often come to Sant’ Ubaldo. What I could advise, what my duty should advise, you wouldn’t accept. The store of mercy opens only for those who want to share in it.”

“But what will become of me? What shall I do tomorrow, and the day after? I expected a miraculous answer from you. I
superstitiously
believed that you would give me advice. Should I go back to Budapest, like the Prodigal Son, or start a new life, as a worker? Because I have done an apprenticeship. I’ve got a trade. It would be possible. Don’t leave me to myself. I’m so alone already. What shall I do?”

Ervin fished out a large peasant’s watch from the depths of his cowl.

“Right now, go and sleep. It’s almost midnight. I have to go to chapel. Go and sleep. I’ll take you to the room. And during my
matutine
I’ll think about you. Perhaps it’ll become clear … it’s
happened
before. Perhaps I’ll be able to tell you something tomorrow morning. Now go and sleep. Come.”

He led Mihály to the hospice. Given the deep state of distress that gripped him there seemed a fitness in the semi-darkened hall in which pilgrims down the centuries had dreamed of miraculous cures for their sufferings, yearnings and dearest hopes. Almost all the bunks were empty, though two or three pilgrims were asleep at the further end.

“Lie down, Mihály, and sleep well. Have a good, peaceful night,” said Ervin.

He made the sign of the cross over him, and hurried away.

For a long time Mihály sat on the side of the hard bed, his hands crossed on his lap. He was not in the least bit drowsy, and he was very depressed. Would anyone be able to help him? Would his road ever lead anywhere?

He knelt and prayed, for the first time in years.

Then he lay down. It was difficult to sleep on the hard bed, in
unfamiliar surroundings. The pilgrims stirred restlessly on their bunks, sighed, moaned in their sleep. One of them kept calling for aid on Saints Joseph and Catharine and Agatha. When Mihály finally drifted off day was already breaking.