- Thomas Merton
I arrive at Villa del Re at 12:30 p.m. To my surprise, E. is there, having stopped off at the farm on her way to North Carolina for a short residency at Penland. L. is also there, home for the weekend from nursing school. K. lays out lunch for us -- toast with mustard and slabs of sharp, white Cabot cheddar, steamed snap peas from the garden, fresh raspberries, and black tea. E. has brought strawberries. J. is away at a job site and will be returning later.
L. leaves to visit her boyfriend, and K takes E and me on a walk up the driveway to inspect the new cottage and the vegetable garden. K and E talk animatedly of planting and gardening, of the movement of the seasons and of the strange alchemy of grafting pear trees. It all goes over my head. I am no gardener. E. is beautiful as always, in a black and white dress, her eyes blue and bright. The cottage has come a long way since K and L and J started building it a little over a year ago. It gets the best morning light I've ever seen.
K and E pluck mulberries right from the tree -- I'd always assumed they came from a bush, because of the nursery rhyme -- and tell me that the best ones look grayish, almost as if they're spoiled. The taste is sweet and pleasant, but bland. I've never tasted a mulberry before. E says that a friend of hers has a recipe for mulberry and rhubarb pie, but that it would take forever to pick enough mulberries to make it.
After E gets back on the road, K and I sit in the living room drinking iced coffee until J returns, wet and sweaty and muddy from pointing a slate patio for a judge. We talk about The Missouri Harmony for a while before the conversation turns to the difficult topic of my personal life. K and J are compassionate, attentive, candid, and helpful. I was nervous about opening up to them, but now I'm glad that I did. I take my leave reluctantly, promising to come back on Sunday after the retreat.
When I arrive at the Holy Cross Abbey retreat house, I am greeted by the guest master, a cheerful bald man in his fifties who, with his tight black jeans and snowy white mustache, would not look at all out of place on Bleecker Street or in Dupont Circle. He goes over the weekend's schedule and shows me to my quarters, an appropriately spare (if not quite monastic) looking room with a single twin bed, a chair, a desk, a bible, and a wooden crucfix hanging from the white cinderblock wall. I splash water on my face and hastily change so as not to miss vespers.
The church is dark. The smell of incense hangs heavy in the air. The bell rings, and one by one the monks enter, dip their fingers in holy water, and cross themselves as they take their places in the choir stalls lined up on either side of the altar. They are older men, these Trappists, some of them very old indeed. Two use walkers, one with his back hunched with scoliosis and his hands gnarled with arthritis.
After a period of silence, one of the monks begins to chant in a low baritone. His brothers join in, and soon the dimly lit sanctuary is filled with the rising and falling of their quiet voices. The chanting gives way to singing and I begin to doze. I enter a liminal state, caught between wakefulness and dreaming, the soft drone of the deep voices lifting me and carrying me, a dark current on which my consciousness bobs up and down. Time passes unnoticed as I float, and then we are saying the Lord's Prayer, my lips forming the familiar words automatically before I am even fully awake. Do I whisper? Is my voice too loud?
The service ends and the brothers file out as soundlessly as they entered. The church falls silent. I am the first of the retreatants to rise. I walk back to the guest house, listening to the calls of mockingbirds and cardinals and sparrows and swallows and other birds whose voices I don't recognize.
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