Malachi - An Entertainment

It was early when they descended
on the town

in search of hats. As Malachi would
have said, ëEverything

proceeds reasonably,í the blue
Renault travelling

upcountry, the air grown colder
thinner

the problem of ice at this
altitude.

It was still morning, a pale
rehearsal

for the afternoon that would carry
Malachiís body

past the tiny shrines nailed
to trees, the plaster

hands outstretched, towards
the monksí cemetery.

The nuns breathing icy steam
the Sorrowful Mysteries

a trail of murmuring behind
the car

undulating across the hillcountry.
Sister Leon

on account of her long legs
sat in the front.

The hats were her idea. The car
eased to the roadside

a town of only four shops, one a
converted cinema

now a department store. Frozen
hands concealed

within their habits, the nuns
darted through the door.

When asked what hats in particular
Sister Bernard said

they required ëRussian Hatsí
the type

made of small animals or, preferably
the imitation

of small animals (as they were
themselves

devoted to the imitation of a life
not their own).

They told the shopkeeper they were
travelling to a funeral

and were expecting snow.
He said he was

ëa religious man but not a holy maní
and would, in this instance

refund their money less ten per cent
if they returned

the hats in perfect condition on
their way back.

As the nuns left the shop, after
several fittings

and refittings, the fur pulled hard
down over

the blue linen of their veils
the shopkeeper said he was

ëa holy man but not a religious maní
and wished them well.

To stretch their legs, the nuns
strolled

along the verge of the highway
that bisected

the town. ëI heard Malachi once
granted hearing

to a deaf person,í Sister Jacques
related

ëhis fingers on the boyís ears
he felt two things

like piglets coming out of them
and the boy

could hear like nobody else, went on
to become a composer

but died, tragically, twenty years
later, after

locking himself out of his house
one winter night

and catching pneumonia.í They
could hear

a radio blaring from the open door
of a hardware store nearby

Tom Jones singing ëHelp yourself
to my lips . . .í

And from another doorway
ëIt feels

like love when
the radioís

on . . .í As they walked
a conversation

preceded them along the roadside
and into a dairy

where the nuns were to buy
provisions

for the rest of their journey.
Two local women

were discussing a recent arrival
in the town:

ëHeís an artist, and his wife
ìMartheî, well

her real name is Maria Boursin
although she prefers

the stylish Marthe De Merigny.
Iíve heard

he adores her despite her reclusive
neurotic nature

which, over the years, has driven his friends
away.í

ëWhat does he paint?í
ëStrange paintings

without plots . . .
based

on ìthe direct observation of
imaginary gardensî.í

ëYouíve lost me there.í
The two women

noticed the group of nuns behind
them, paused

then continued undeterred:
ëApparently

the artist drove his wife
to distraction

following her around the house
sketching her

constantly.í ëIf the train still
went through here

the artists wouldnít,í the other
commented.

ëShe could not even fall asleep
without

an uncomfortable feeling she was
being drawn

by him. So she would make certain
he fell asleep first

then remove the pencil from
his hand.í

ëI thought you said he painted gardens?í
the other asked.

ëHe does. He places her in
the garden . . .

He has never allowed her to age
in his paintings

although they have been together for
thirty years.

She was described to me
the other day

as ìa nagging, neurotic shrew who
made life

miserable for him, knew nothing
about Art

and could not even cookî. Iíve seen them
in the garden

once or twice, wet with rain . . .í
The nuns left

the shop as swiftly as their habits
would fly them.

ëAs reality passes us by, so
depictions

of reality pass us by,í Bernard
mused.

Walking back to the car they discussed
ëthe love of the manyí

of the late Malachi for the world.
ëAs the love

of the many will keep adding
to its number

so the love of one leads only
to loss,í Bernard said.

They passed a billboard outside
the newsagentís:

ëTRAWLER NETS
NAKED GIRL

ìI fled orgy and swam
with sharks!îí

Then an old man on a bicycle
pulled over

to the kerb beside them and insisted
he show the Sisters ësomethingí.

They followed him across the road to
an empty section

which must have, until recently, had
a building on it

a floorplan could be traced
on the soil.

The old man pointed out a plaque on
the footpath

in front of the section:
ëMAURICE PERET

WAS CONVERTED TO JESUS IN A
SHOESTORE
ON THIS PLACE . . .í

followed by an illegible date.
ëThe cultivation of the soil,í

the man said, ëSisters, is all that
should concern us.í

They followed him across a playground
to where a large

wooden crucifix stood. Sister Gabriel
read from a plaque

at the base of the sculpture:
ëJuliet Pepperís

twelve foot Christ on a Cross
was carved

from rimu and was inspired by a
visionary experience.

In 19ó she dreamed that a flood was going
to submerge all of

the central plateau. She built an ark
with room enough

for her husband and nineteen children
and affixed the figure

of Christ to the bow. When the flood
did not come

Juliet Pepper and her obedient family
moved out of the ark

and back into their home.
Shortly afterwards

the creek behind the house
overflowed

and carried the ark away. The sculpture
was the only piece

of the vessel to be recovered and Juliet
Pepper subsequently reworked it

into its present form.í Leon said
the expression

on Christís face was one of
ëI told you soí

Before riding off, the old man
asked if the Sisters

knew where they were going. They replied
that, not having a map

they relied on memories of
such charts

and memories of the region itself.
He pulled a map

from his satchel and passed it to Leon
then bade them farewell.

Leon examined the map and noted that
while it was clearly

of the region they were travelling through
it had been entirely redrawn

cities had been dissembled, their populations
relocated in small communities

denoted on the map by stars. What care
he had put into this

Leon thought, folding the map and
placing it in her pocket.

She was to find, some hours later
at the funeral

the map had vanished just as the
old man had vanished

behind them as they drove off down
the highway.

As the car continued
the nuns continued

the Joyful Mysteries, for a safe
trip along the road

and for the dead manís journey
heavenwards.

ëThat our prayers might fly straight
to heaven

like a dart,í Sister David said.
She later told

how she was converted
to Christianity

by a travelling preacher who
was visiting

the outlying island which her extended
family extended

around. They lived on an
atoll

a crown of palms. The preacher had
presupposed a certain

spirituality of them, living as they did
on a religious symbol

and in the midst of other symbols ó
the formations

of birds over the archipelago
the dogs running

circuits of the island, the fish
circumnavigating

the atoll. David recalled what first
and most

impressed her was the fact that
the preacherís voice

sounded exactly like that of a
transistor radio.

Also, the way his hair grew
outwards from his head

after the manner of the people
from her island

although this preacher was from
far away ó

a retired musician, an ex-member of the
Jimi Hendrix Experience

he had subsequently renounced
bass-guitar

and bell-bottoms to spread
the Faith

in a glass-bottomed boat
travelling from

island to island often for days
on end

on waves that stood the boat
on end. A reformed man

reforming others along
similar lines

he would watch the fishes, the evolving
religious symbolism

beneath his vessel. Supposedly
a legend himself

he set forth in the wake
of other legends

listening to the ringing of more
religious bells

than the ringing in his ears
from misspent nights

in front of a 2000 watt Marshall
Stack.

Now his messages reached as far
as the Marshall

Islands, ëthat others might hear
who care to hearí

and that their hearing might
not be damaged

as his was. David remembered
the preacherís stories

of a guitar that caught fire.
ëDonít you mean a bush

that caught fire?í Bernard
enquired.

Later in the morning the fur hats
still clung

to the heads of the travellers
those in the back seat

nodding towards sleep.
ëMalachi

once split a man in two
with an axe,í

Bernard said matter-of-factly
from the driverís seat.

ëIt was in the early days of
the monastery

with all manner of afflictions
and distractions

afoot in the world. While felling a
tree

around the monastery site
he was

distracted by a passing
sparrow

and his axe fell on his
closest assistant.

But when Malachiís gaze returned
to earth

only the manís clothes had been
sliced down

the middle, his body was
left intact

unscratched. ìUpon this plot
of earth,î

Malachi then prophesied, ìthe bodies
of many saints

will sleep.î And among the new
drops of rain

they rejoiced.í Bernard added
that although Malachi

believed such miracles might leave
the Brothers edified

and render them more cautious
for the future

he said ëit is better to dwell
on things

worth imitating than on those worth
marvelling atí.

The car wound intuitively
around

the small hills, the road losing
the river

for quarter of an hour then
crossing it again

and again, playing with it.
Stephen in the back seat

said she thought it appropriate
that Malachi, an Irishman

died in a shed of potatoes
and the others smiled.

ëWe can joke about our friends
the dead,í Bernard added

and soon their laughter had become
indistinguishable

from the decades of the rosary
that once again

flooded the blue Renault.
Sister Jacques

related how funerals were conducted
in the village

she came from. On occasion
she had already shown

the others her astonishing ability
at carrying

ëall manner of thingí on her head:
pitchers of water

baskets of eggs, a small
library.

At airports when her arms were
worn out

from carrying a suitcase
she would balance

the case on her head, without
recourse to her hands

to steady it. In her village
the custom was

for coffins to be carried
on the heads

of six of the villagers. Because
she explained, the top

of the head is the part of the
person closest

to heaven. ëHow else to bear
the dead one

heavenwards but in this fashion?í
she asked.

The pallbearers would not so much as
touch the coffin

with their hands. It was necessary
for the bearers to be

roughly the same height
minor adjustments

being made by adding to or
subtracting

from the thickness of the soles
of their shoes

which, it followed, were the part
of the person

furthermost from heaven.
The nuns yawned

in unison as they waited at
a railway crossing

for a train to pass. Bernard
passed a bag of

liquorice allsorts around.
She described

a train journey she would often
make years earlier.

At the time nuns were not
allowed

to eat or drink in public
(even in the homes

of their families, when visiting
they had to take

refreshments in a bedroom with
the door closed).

Bernard knew by heart the length
of all the railway

tunnels and, as the train entered
the darkness

she would eat and drink frantically
and by the time

the carriage had re-entered daylight
be sitting smugly

in her seat, all but the
smallest

crumbs removed from
her veil.

She gave the tunnels
various names:

this one an apple tunnel
this one

a sandwich and biscuit
this a cup

of tea, this a Moro Bar
according

to how much time they allowed
her consumptions.

Bernard said she had wanted
to become a vet

when young, felt a calmness
around animals.

Her favourite trick was to place
a cricket or locust

on her tongue and close her mouth.
When she re-opened it

the insect would just be
sitting

calmly there. Bernard told
the others

how she had found her vocation
one Saturday

afternoon, mid-summer, after
beating

her boyfriend at tennis.
She visited

the Mother Superior after
the match

and realised her vocation
the moment

she walked through the convent
door.

David asked how she met
ëthe maní.

Bernard replied, at the Saint
Augustineís

Singlesí Club, a dating agency
located in

a building the shape of a huge
fish

with disenchanted gulls circling
overhead.

She had read a brochure in a
church foyer

which said ëthe best marriages
imaginable

are arranged by the Saint
Augustineís

Singlesí Club. People with nothing
in common

meet and find each other
irresistible.í

ëAnd what became of ìthe manî?í
Jacques ventured.

Bernard was silent, remembered
lingering

in the hallway, light trickling
through

the skylight as though
from a broken tap . . .

She said she had never questioned
or regretted

her decision for a moment during
all the years

since then ó her eyes fixed on the
road ahead ó

and she had never looked
back.

.

Some sandwiches moved about
the car

and were no more. Leon broke
the silence

saying brightly she had an older
sister, Nathalie

who was a disciple of the
Dalai Lama

and had lived for ten years in
the north of India

or somewhere north of there
in a cave

eating next to nothing and drinking
only water.

ëThe disciples meditate naked
in the snow

evenly spaced, one every
two or three

miles around this particular
mountain,í she said.

ëAfter eight years, my parents
bought my sister

a ticket home for a fortnight.
Upon arrival

she talked of ìenlightenmentî
and the ìfinding of selfî

but within two days was
collapsed

in front of the television. It
was just like

a re-run of her difficult
teenage years

my parents said. Of course
they cried

when she left, but were also left
wondering how

after eight years of meditation
and self-discipline

she could still be the same screaming
bitch!í

Stephen said she also had
a sister

but she didnít see her often
because her sister

was always travelling across Europe
following

touring heavy metal bands.
ëShe attends concerts

equipped with body-tight leotard
and cardboard

guitar. Her passion is for
ìhead-banging

and body-slammingî ó these
she manages

with consummate skill and
dedication.

When otherwise engaged, my sister
is a nurse

at Accident and Emergency
attending

the broken limbs and concussions
of others.

In the midst of such breakages
her name is

Krystal!í Leon suggested that were
her sister

Nathalie, and Krystal ever
to meet ó

spanning the distance between
North Indian

mysticism and Heavy Euro-Rock ó
they might become good friends.

.

The monastery was now visible
in the distance

cars gleaming up the driveway which
extended from the road as far as the chapel where it
ended in a loop

resembling a lasso that had been thrown
at the steeple

but just missed. Stephen said
she had visited

the abbey in her youth, had
hitch-hiked

there, riding most of the way
in a refrigerated

truck full of ice. Each week the driver
took the ice to the coast

where he exchanged it for
a pallet-load

of stingrays which he would take home
and boil up.

He exported them to China where
they were sold

as an aphrodisiac. The other thing
Stephen recalled

from her visit to the abbey
was a bathtub

in the guest-house where you could
put your feet

out the window. As the car
turned into

the long driveway, their thoughts
turned

to the death of Malachi.
ëPerhaps seeing

the abbey was at peace
he got to

thinking of his own peace,í
Jacques said.

Malachi had died on the Sunday
afternoon

having left the refectory
with a basket

to fill with potatoes from the shed
behind the monastery.

ëAs an abbot should,í
Bernard remarked

ëhe embodied that which was good
in the abbey

the love of the many.í At dinner-time
the absence of the abbot

and of potatoes at table
was noticed

and two brothers set forth to
locate Malachi

eventually finding him
half-buried

in the abbeyís vegetable supply
knees tucked up

under his chin, becalmed on an ocean
of potatoes.

As they carried him to the
infirmary

potatoes kept dropping from
the folds in his robe . . .

The morning after Malachiís body
was found

all the sheep in one paddock
were found on the other

side of the river. Somehow overnight
they had crossed the

torrent and now grazed on
the far side . . .

In the midst of their sorrow
Malachiís acolytes

had maintained a vigil in
the chapel

had taken to the milking of cows
the moving from paddock

to paddock of the herd
the feeding out

of hay, and the carrying of lambs
back across the river

. One monk painted watercolours
ëa wisp of cloud

that was Malachiís worldí.
This was how

they managed their loss
of a brother

that it might one day seem
as natural

as a flood on the part of
the river.

.

The nuns left their fur hats
in the car

were greeted by the guest-master
who said David

and Stephen were to sleep
that night

in the house of a Carmelite nun
Beatrice

who lived a short distance
from the abbey.

A frail, elderly figure
Beatrice

sat beside them during
the funeral . . .

Bernard recalled how these monks
were once committed

to silence, had to resort to
sign language

a shrug of the shoulders, tightening
of the lips, gesture

of the palms as a wind among
palm trees, how

they learnt the eloquence
of fewer

and fewer words, until the day
they died

when there would be no more words
and the words

their lives have amassed would
dissolve as a fishing boat

dissolves into a cloud of
gulls over a shoal.

These days they were granted speech
but sparingly.

The abbotís profile was visible
above the coffin's rim

an island floating in an
evening sea

eyes shut as two lakes covered
in ice

hood pulled over his head.
There were chants

and eulogies, the recounting of
a stream of miracles.

Already, it seemed, the stories
of ëour Malachií

were growing around his life
as vines

engulfing a house . . . How
a mute girl

was brought to the anchorite
that she might speak

and he had retreated into a field
where he fell upon

ëreligious yearning and desireí
before returning

to the room where the mute girl
lay sleeping

and blew against the tip of her tongue
as though it were

a flute. The ligament of
her tongue was loosened

and she spoke clearly, although
in a language

no one could understand.
Malachi returned

to the field where, again, he
thrashed about

in prayer before returning.
This time

the girlís voice rattled
furiously

inside her mouth before, with a
violent hiccup

finally coming forth in a manner
both appropriate

and natural. Malachi, spurning
gratitude and gifts

left at once, his parting words:
ëReligion is planted

everywhere, it takes root
and is nursed along . . .í

Malachi said it was only courtesy
that when visiting

the first thing a Christian should do
is ëheal the small son

of your hostí. And so the coffin
was carried from the church.

ëThe love of the many
embodied

in the one we loved,í the celebrant
concluded. At this time

Stephen and David noticed
Sister Beatrice

was starting to weep
bitterly.

ëMedia vita in morte sumus.í

An interlude of
landscape

They carried the blue sky
as far as

the graveyard and buried it
the hills beyond

tracing the dead manís
profile

against a sky of ice
illuminated

by geese circling
the green

of the field, a sign
on the gate:

ëOur Exile Ends
Hereí.

As the monksí graveyard is within
the confines of the

living area, so ëin the midst
of life

we are in deathí. Stephen
and David attributed

the elder nunís dizziness to
the thinning

of air, these altitudes of
outstretched hands

as they joined the procession along
the tree-lined path.

The night before his death
Beatrice said

Malachi had dreamed of seagulls
eating stones

and a chalice of fire. ëIt is good
that you have come

from so far away even though
you never met

Malachi,í Beatrice said. ëIt is good
that grief

be spread around so many.í
So it was

with tears the procession
commended Malachi

to heaven. Only when the coffin
had been lowered to the ground was the pillow
beneath Malachiís head removed and his profile dropped
beneath the rim.

The lid was positioned and
amidst prayers

the coffin sunk into
the ground.

Stephen noticed the sky
deepening

as though a great hole had been
dug in it.

She looked at the pallbearers
and thought

they bore the expressions
of men

who had just solved elaborate
crossword puzzles.

Stephen had noticed a sculpture
on the lawn

behind the chapel ó a woman
standing on a cloud ó

only to realise, on her way back
from the cemetery later

it was in fact only a mound
of ice the Brothers

had raked off the lawn. Later
in the day

the mound was demolished by children and
moulded into the projectiles

that describe the distances
between children

on such a lawn
playing.

As the mourners drifted away
from the grave site

the brothers of one of the monks
set upon

the mound of earth beside the grave
and danced about on it

pounding the soil into the hole.
This dance

continued until all the dirt
was flattened

above Malachi and only a small
wooden cross

and the five exhausted bodies
of the brothers

marked the spot, the last location
of Malachi.

.

A cityscape of white loaves
and cakes

awaited the mourners in the
refectory while

outside, the abbey watercolourist
who had recorded

the occasion on a sheet of dampened
paper

unpinned his work from the board
and resumed other aspects

of his work as the monasteryís
Water Engineer ó

this time boiling kettles for
the mourners

serving the tea, attended only by
the clatter of cups.

He told Bernard and Stephen he was
the abbeyís Water Man

his responsibility all manner
of fountains

fonts, irrigation channels
and pipes. Surprisingly

he seemed contented with his work ó
the rules

for plumbing and engineering, he said
being the same

as those for watercolour
painting:

the problem of allotrophy
of ice

at this altitude. He showed
the two nuns

his painting of the funeral
and they nodded

with approval, although Bernard
thought

the sky, perhaps, not quite resolved.
But there was

no question of his having captured
the hills

the features of Malachiís face
staring skywards

seeking a similar resolution.
He said he often

began painting before dawn, the air
so cold

his hair would turn to ice, his beard
might break

into pieces. Stephen wondered how
a water-expert

would manage his tears, imagined him
sitting there

painting the church of ice
contemplating

the appearance and disappearance
of things unseen

how something as immaterial as friendship
could be stolen.

As ëthe mourning of a loved one
is a fountain

pouring forever
upwardsí

so the brothers were restored again
to their familiar tasks

the arrangement of cows on hills
their daily office.

There was one further mystery
that stood out

in this day of mysteries. The night
after the funeral

David and Stephen arrived at
Beatriceís cottage

two miles down the road
from the abbey.

The evening passed in conversation
Beatrice telling them

how she had spent most of her life
a solitary

in Ireland, but had always felt
the need to return here.

Finally the Order granted her
permission

but, upon her homecoming
the bishop

would not authorise a nun
living alone

as an acceptable part of the
diocese

or recognise the prayers
of a woman living

outside a community, tending
her own garden

and that garden which is prayer.
If it hadnít have been

for Malachi she would have
returned to Ireland.

ëMalachi accommodated me in his heart,í
she said.

ëThe day I met him, during the
problems with

the diocese, he came up to meet me
running

with a leap and a
bound

with what glad arms
he embraced me . . .

He petitioned the arch-bishop
on my behalf and

it was only because of his intercession
I was finally accepted.í

Beatrice told them of a dream
she had

the previous night in which ëan altar
caught fire

and Malachi plunged himself
into the flames

remaining there as a child
in a fountain

then he walked back towards me
more ablaze than ever . . .í

She talked of her
aloneness

and of Malachiís need
to be alone

to stand just across the river
from her, knee-deep

and say nothing. ëYou will be leaving
early in the morning

so I expect I will not see you
again,í she said

as the two younger sisters retired
to the only bed in the house.

(Beatrice insisted they have it.)
As they left they heard her say:

ëWhat you might forsake for
a kingdom, a plot of soil . . .í

During the night David awoke
with Stephen clinging

to her arm. They both lay there
listening to the sound

of crying from the living room
the pounding of pillows

groaning of the wooden floor.
They held each other

for an hour until, finally
a door slammed

and the house fell backwards
into silence.

At dawn the following morning
the blue Renault

pulled up outside Beatriceís house.
Silence, too

had fallen over the monastery
and surrounding countryside

and remained there
as the dew

that would remain
late into the day

on the lawn. The sun was just
coming up, the sky comprising

two colours only:
blue and gold.

Beatrice was nowhere to be found
in the house

so the nuns packed their small bags
and drove back

towards the main road. However
as they passed the abbey

they noticed the form of a woman
wading across the stream

habit tucked up, tiny
white legs

reflected in the shallows.
They also noticed

that all the sheep were back on
the far side of the river.

And a silence entered
each one of them.

Although it was still early
other cars

were leaving the monastery as well
and the watercolourist

had installed himself on a rock
to paint

the gleaming forms as they drove
down the tree-lined road.

The cars left as though in a
procession

but gradually the gaps
between them

increased until
they were all

out of sight of each other
and had resumed

their separate journeys.
The blue Renault

resumed its decades of the
rosary

for the decades of Malachiís
life

the Glorious Mysteries. The nuns
contemplated

the returning of Malachi, ëthe one
who loved manyí

to his maker, the returning
of the fur hats

which were once again pulled over
their veils.

Leon wondered where on the
old manís map

they might find themselves now
and how they came

to be here. David and Stephen
didnít mention

the mystery of Beatrice carrying
the sheep across the river or any other mystery for that
matter. They tried

to sleep, to place some distance
between themselves

and Sister Beatriceís
voice

that could no longer
find

Malachi, her voice that could
yield only

grief. And the blue car fell
further and further

beneath the blue sky. And
further grief.

Perhaps darkness, too, will cover us.