To Play the Fool (6 page)

For a very long time, Brother Erasmus did not speak. The smiles
began to fade,- people began to glance at one another and fidget. Then,
unexpectedly, the man in the priest's robe sank slowly to his
knees, and when he lifted his face, there were tears leaking from his
closed eyelids, running down his weathered cheeks, and dripping from
his beard. A shudder of shock ran through the assembly. Two or three
people took a step forward; several more took a step back. Erasmus
began to speak in a deep and melodious voice that had the faintest
trace of an English accent, more a rhythm than an accent. At the
moment, it was also hoarse with emotion.

"O Lord, rebuke me not in thy anger, nor chasten me in thy
wrath! For thy arrows have sunk into me, and thy hand has come down on
me. There is no soundness in my flesh because of thy indignation,-
there is no health in my bones because of my sin." His beautiful
voice paused to draw a breath that was more like a groan, and the noise
seemed to find an echo in the electrified audience. Whatever they had
been expecting, it was not this. "My wounds grow foul and fester
because of my foolishness, I am utterly bowed down and prostrate,- all
the day I go about in mourning."

It was something biblical, Kate could tell, but with little relation
to the readings she had heard in the chapel half an hour earlier,-
those cool tones had been nothing like this.

"My loins are filled with burning, and there is no soundness
in my flesh. I am utterly spent and crushed; I groan because of the
tumult in my heart." The young man standing next to Kate did
moan, deep in his throat. Nearby, a thin young woman began openly to
weep. "I am like a deaf man, I do not hear, like a dumb man who
does not open his mouth. Yea, I am like a man who does not hear, and in
whose mouth are no rebukes." He paused again, eyes still shut,
swallowed, and finished in an almost inaudible voice. "Do not
forsake me, O Lord. O my God, be not far from me."

He bent forward until his forehead touched the grass, held the
position for a moment, then knelt back onto his heels again. His eyes
opened and he smiled a smile of such utter sweetness that Kate was
instantly aware that Brother Erasmus was not altogether normal.
Disappointment and relief hit her at the same moment and dispelled the
spookiness of the scene she'd just watched: Probably a third of
San Francisco's homeless population had some form of mental
illness. Erasmus was obviously one of them, and very likely he had
cracked John across the head because a voice had told him to, or John
had angered him, or just because John had happened to be there. No
mystery.

This cold splash of sobriety had not hit the others,- they still
stood around him enthralled. Kate heard feet on the cement steps and
turned, to see the dean coming down. He nodded at her politely, and
then he saw the tableau beyond.

"What's happened?" he asked. Before Kate could
attempt an explanation, another man, one of the group from the chapel,
turned and answered in a low voice.

"He recited Psalm Thirty-eight, making it very...
personal. I've never seen him like this, Philip. It's
very--"

"Wait," commanded the dean. Erasmus was speaking again.

"I am a fool," he said conversationally, and scrambled
to his feet, bending to brush off the knees of his cassock. For some
reason, this phrase, an echo of Beatrice Jankowski's cryptic
judgment, seemed abruptly to defuse the tension in the crowd. The
weeping young woman pulled a tissue from her pocket, blew her nose, and
raised her head in shaky anticipation. There were two people with pen
and notebook in hand, Kate noticed. Was this to be an open-air lecture?
Erasmus had both hands in the pockets of the garment again, and when he
pulled them out, there were objects clutched in them--a small
book, a little silver plate--which his left hand began to toss
high into the air, one after another, rhythmically--juggling! He
was juggling, four, five objects now in a circle, and he began to talk.

"It is actually reported that there is immorality among
you," he declared fiercely, glaring at a figure Kate had noticed
earlier, a tiny wrinkled woman in the modern nun's dress, plain
brown, with a modified wimple. She blushed and giggled nervously as his
gaze traveled on to the man behind her. "I wrote to you in my
letter not to associate with immoral men. Not to associate with an
idolater, reviler, drunkard, or robber. Not even to eat with such a
one. Drive out the wicked person from among you! Do not be deceived,
neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals,
nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers
will inherit the kingdom of God."

Oh Christ, thought Kate in disgust, he's just another
end-of-the-world, repent-and-be-saved loony. Why the hell are these
people listening to this crock of shit?

Erasmus had turned his attention to the things he was juggling,
looking at them with a clown's amazement at the cleverness of
inanimate objects. He allowed each of them, one after another, to come
to a rest in his right hand, paused, holding them for a moment, and
then began to toss them back into the air with that right hand,
reversing the circle. When he spoke again, his voice was neither hoarse
with suffering nor fierce with condemnation, but gentle, thoughtful.

"After this he went out, and saw a tax collector, named Levi,
sitting at the tax office, and he said to him, "Follow me."
And he left everything, and rose and followed him. And Levi made him a
great feast, in his house, and there was a large company of tax
collectors and others sitting at the table with them. And when the
Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, "Why does your
teacher eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?" And Jesus
answered them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician,
but those who are sick.""

There were seven objects in the air now, different sizes and weights
but perfectly, effortlessly maintaining their places in the rising and
falling arcs of the circle. Again, Erasmus studied them with the
openmouthed admiration of a child, and then suddenly the objects
leaving his right hand did not land in the left but flew wildly through
the air to be caught by onlookers. The small red book with a wide green
rubber band holding it closed was caught by the young woman who had
cried, the silver plate by the older man who had spoken to the dean, a
palm-sized plastic zip bag by a scruffy young man with lank blond hair.
A gray plastic film container hit a tall black woman on the shoulder,
and then the last thing left his hand, something shiny that flashed at
Kate and she automatically put out a hand to catch it: a child's
toy police badge, the silver paint chipped. She jerked her head up and
looked into Erasmus's dark and smiling eyes.

"I think that God had exhibited us apostles as last of all,
like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the
world, to angels and to men. We are fools, for Christ's sake, but
you--you are wise in Christ," he said slyly. "We are
weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute.
To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are ill-clad and buffeted
and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands." Leaving
the staff upright in the grass, he held out his rough hands before him
and moved slowly forward, toward the dean and Kate at his side.
"When reviled we bless, when persecuted we endure. We are the
refuse of the world, the offscouring of all things. I urge you, be
imitators of me. The kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in
power." He was very close now, and he was facing not the dean,
but Kate. "What do you wish?" he said, and stretched out
his hands to her, cupped together, his elbows in and his wrists
touching: the position for receiving handcuffs.

The whole point of St. Francis of Assisi is that he certainly was ascetical and he certainly was not gloomy.

Kate stared for several seconds at the thin pale wrists with their
fringe of black and gray hairs before the automatic cop reflex of
never react
kicked in. She calmly took the toy star, reached up to pin it onto the
chest of the black cassock, and patted it. The beard split in a grin of
white teeth.

"Our feelings we with difficulty smother, when constabulary
duty's to be done," he commented, then turned to the dean.
"Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God," he
said, cocking his head expectantly. The dean frowned for a moment, then
his face cleared and he laughed.

"I agree, I'm feeling particularly blessed myself. Omelette or Chinese?"

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning
those who are sent to you," Erasmus said inexplicably. He then
looked pointedly first at Kate, then back at the dean, who in response
turned to extend his hand to her.

"I'm sorry. Philip Gardner. I'm the dean of this
school. Are you a friend of the Brother here?" he asked.

"Not yet," replied Kate somewhat grimly. "I would
like to speak with both you and Brother Erasmus. Privately," she
added, although the people around her had obviously picked up some
signal to indicate the end of the--performance? lecture?--and
were beginning to move away, up the stairs and across the lawn, most of
them clapping the oblivious Erasmus on the arm or back as they went.

"Right. Sure. Have you had breakfast yet? Or lunch? We were just going for something."

"I had a late breakfast," she lied.

"Coffee, then. I hope you don't mind if we eat, you heard the good Brother say he was hungry."

Kate had heard no such thing, but now was not the time to quibble.
The courtyard was emptying, the wet moss-choked lawn surrounded by
brick walls looking cold and bleak. Kate took out her identification
folder and held it open in front of Erasmus.

"Inspector Kate Martinelli, SFPD. We're investigating a
death that occurred Tuesday in Golden Gate Park. The man seems to have
been one of the homeless who live around the park, and we were told
that you might know more about him than the others did. You are the man
they call Brother Erasmus, are you not?"

The man turned his back on Kate and went to the tree, pulled his
staff out of the turf, came back, and, curling his right hand around
the wood at jaw level, leaned into it. She took this as an affirmative
answer.

"Were you aware that there was a death in the park?" she
asked. Silently he moved the staff to his left side and dug around with
his right hand in the cassock's pocket, coming out with a
much-folded square of newspaper. He handed it to Kate. It was the front
page of that morning's
Chronicle,
whose lower right
corner (continued on the back page) told all the details that had been
released, including the man's first name, the cremation attempt,
and even a paragraph on the cremation of Theophilus last month.

"You knew the man?"

"He was not the Light, but came to bear witness to the Light."

"Sir, just answer the question, please."

"Er, Inspector?" interrupted the dean. "Could I
have a word?" He led her aside, under a bare tree. She kept one
eye on Erasmus, but the man merely pulled a small book with a light
green cover out of his pocket, propped himself against his staff, and
began to read. "Perhaps I ought to explain something before you
go any further. Brother Erasmus does not speak in what you might call a
normal conversational mode. He may not be able to answer your
questions."

"He was doing well enough talking to all those people. There's only one of me."

"But he wasn't talking. He recites. Everything he says is a quotation."

Kate took her eyes from the monk and looked at the dean.

"Well then, he can just quote the information I want."

"It's not that simple. If the answers to your questions
were contained in the Bible or the Church Fathers or Shakespeare or a
couple dozen other places, he could give you answers. But a direct
question is very difficult. Look, you heard me ask him if he wanted
omelette or Chinese food for breakfast, or lunch, whatever you call it
this time of day."

"He didn't answer you."

"But he did. He gave me the first part of a quote from
Matthew's Gospel, which ends, "even as a hen gathers her
chicks under her wings." Hen: egg. He wants an omelette."

"But all that... speech he gave."

"All quotations. First Corinthians, Luke, Matthew. And a bit
of Gilbert and Sullivan to you--that's a first."

"Why does he talk like that?"

"I don't know. I just know he never speaks freely. I
suspect he carries a fair amount of suffering around with him. Perhaps
it's his way of dealing with it."

"Would you say that he is mentally disturbed?"

"No more than I am. Probably less, since he doesn't have
any administrative jobs hung around his neck. No, but seriously,
he's not delusional, doesn't think he's Jesus. He
never mutters and mumbles to invisible beings. He's always
cooperative and helpful. He reacts and understands even if he
doesn't always answer in a way people can understand. The board
here discussed his presence--this is not public property, you
know, so in effect he has been invited. He stimulates discussion and
thought, the students enjoy his stream-of-consciousness talks, and
frankly I find him great fun. I love asking him direct questions, just
to see how he answers. It's a game, for both of us."

Oh, right lots of fun, thought Kate: prospecting the off-the-wall
remarks of a religious fanatic in hopes of finding nuggets of sense.
Well, since he enjoyed it: "I wonder if I could ask you to stay
with me, then, while I talk with him. You can be my translator."

"I'd be happy to, but I'm leading a seminar in an hour, so could we do it while we eat?"

"No problem."

In the cafe down the road, the air was thick with the smells of
cooking eggs and hot cheese and coffee, the clatter of crockery and
voices, the essence of a morning cafe in a university town. Erasmus
stepped inside behind the dean, then circled behind the door and
propped his staff up in the corner before following the dean to a table
next to the window. Kate, behind both of them, noticed the easy
familiarity of both men with the place and its patrons, the way they
collected and distributed nods.