Masquerade fk-12 Page 4

  Father Augustine May, O.C.S.O, was thinking about that as he sat in the modest room assigned him in the Madame Cadillac Building.

  Tom Merton, he thought, as he slowly swirled a water glass one-quarter filled with Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whiskey, Tom Merton did an awful lot for us Trappists. He brought in a lot of dough and a lot of vocations.

  In the 1950s, a bumper crop of young applicants came to the Trappists, many of them attracted by the writings of one monk, Father Louis. At the peak there were more than two hundred at Gethsemani Abbey alone. Father Augustine knew the statistics well. Entering in the early sixties, he had been among the last of that bumper crop. Now, hell, the Kentucky abbey would be lucky to have eighty monks. And his own monastery in Wellesley, Massachusetts, would feel successful if it had half that number.

  Father Augustine-Gus, as he was known to his confreres-hoped he wasn’t being too vain in thinking he could make a difference. He was convinced the world was more than ready for another Thomas Merton. Was it just possible the next Merton could be himself?

  He swished the whiskey around in his mouth. The familiar tart taste made him grimace. Somehow he found the pungency pleasant.

  He had tried the Merton approach-writing for scholarly and, mostly, contemplative periodicals. But the articles brought in little money and, as far as anyone could tell, no appreciable vocations. Then came the mystery novel, A Rose by Any Other Name. The money was better, appreciably better. Of course, it all went to his abbey; that was taken for granted. What had caught his abbot off guard was the publisher’s insistence on an author tour to a few major cities, for TV, radio, and newspaper interviews. Only with the greatest reluctance did the abbot grant permission.

  Father Augustine had to agree that such trips were not what Benedict, Bernard or, especially, Rance had had in mind.

  Benedict, of course, started the whole thing in the sixth century. He was not the first, but he surely was one of the founders of Western monasticism. The key to it all was the community of men living together with vows designed by Saint Benedict’s rule of life.

  In the ninth and tenth centuries, reforms were made as monasticism grew away from Benedict’s concept. But these reforms at the Synod of Auchen and at Cluny were overshadowed by those of Saint Bernard in the twelfth century and the beginning of the Cistercian order.

  Bernard’s interpretation of the monastic ideal endured virtually unchanged for five hundred years. Then, in 1664, at the monastery of La Trappe in Normandy, Abbot Rance made an extremely tight right turn, and the Trappists emerged with a negative appreciation of mankind and an emphasis on penance unknown to the earlier reformers.

  Throughout fourteen centuries, then, one might view the rule of life set down by Saint Benedict as an inspired document. Even now, it remains the foundation of Western civilization’s monastic life.

  That way of life was, perhaps, perfected by Saint Bernard at the beginning of the Cistercian order. Then Rance added a spartan rigidity to his reorganization of the Trappists.

  It was into the Trappist religious order according to Rance that Thomas Merton and Augustine May entered. But it was not Rance’s version of the Cistercians that Father Louis left when he died. As was the case with so much else in Catholicism, the Second Vatican Council helped change all that.

  The religious order that Merton and May entered, among many other stiff structures, forbade talking at any time to anyone but one’s superiors without explicit permission from the abbot. Of course, communication was necessary, so a sign language peculiar to the Trappists evolved. Stories are still told illustrating the inflexibility of the “Trappist way of life,” such as that of the monk who ran from cell to cell rousing the other monks and giving the sign for fire because the abbey was burning down around their ears.

  Benedict’s rule called for “ora et labora”-prayer and work. The preconciliar Trappists interpreted that so inflexibly that at any given time when they were neither sleeping nor eating, they were either chanting prayers in chapel, or working, usually in the fields. Which led to the expression, “either in the [choir] stalls or the stables.”

  One of the demands made of religious orders by Vatican II was that the orders reexamine their present status against the purpose for which they had been founded and that they return to those roots.

  For the Trappists, that meant erasing much of what Rance had introduced and restoring the monastic precepts of Benedict and Bernard.

  No longer are monasteries carbon copies of one another. The Trappists-the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance-have found unity in diversity. Sign language is gone. And, in an order founded for the contemplative life, finally, time has been allocated for contemplation.

  Almost thirty years ago, Harold May had abandoned a promising advertising career and entered what he considered to be a little bit of heaven on earth-Our Lady of Gethsemani Abbey. Rigorous but heavenly. And then, with the overwhelming changes-resisted at first-Father Augustine May, O.C.S.O, found a more profound and sensible heaven. This was what he was eager to share with today’s men, young and older.

  He looked at the glass he was holding as if he had never seen it before. Was this his second or third drink? He couldn’t remember. Amazing how one could build a tolerance for the stuff. But, whichever number this was, it would be his last. For now. In a few minutes, he’d be going down to dinner. Food would take the edge off the alcohol.

  He had arrived at the college wearing a business suit, but of course he had packed his Cistercian habit. Now he took it from the closet. The white tunic covered its wearer from neck to foot. A black scapular, much like a burial shroud, fitted over the head, falling to the floor fore and aft. A hood was attached to the scapular, but was pulled over the head only at specified times. Finally, a wide, heavy leather belt. This simple, ancient habit he wanted to share with others.

  He knew he could not hope for enormous numbers of new applicants. Monasticism never had been attractive to a multitude. Always it had been a very specialized vocation. But it certainly ought to be more appealing now.

  He began to don his habit.

  Look at all those gurus roaming the country, advocating Transcendental Meditation, Zen Buddhism; there were the Maharishi, the Baghwan, Moonies. The East evangelizing, as it were, the West. The first time in history. Augustine recalled Saint Francis Xavier, who brought the Gospel to India and Japan, and died on his way to China. And the thousands of Christian missionaries who had followed Xavier. Always the West to the East.

  Until now.

  Augustine May was only one of many who were concerned about and wondered at this present phenomenon. Neither he nor his colleagues had much doubt concerning the motives of these largely successful gurus. Most of them became far more financially secure here than they could be in their respective homelands. And, while some undoubtedly were sincere, one could not ignore the economic rewards.

  The larger question concerned their followers. Charges of brainwashing led to the innovative reaction called deprogramming.

  But beyond the fringe groups and their immature needs that responded to the blandishments of the mystic East, there were quite normal young adults who recognized in themselves something missing, a psychic glue that could hold together the varied facets of their lives.

  These, Augustine and his colleagues realized, were legitimate needs that were being met at least partially by the gurus with their versions of ancient Oriental religions. The hypothesis was that these seekers, completely beyond their power to change things, were products of Western civilization. Thus, whatever they might discover in the East, they would always remain foreigners to that culture.

  The idea, then, was to introduce them to the contemplative heritage of Western civilization. For it existed, to be sure. The West would not have survived without it. Only at about the time of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, did this contemplative approach to reality begin to fade, to eventually be ground under and virtually disappear in retreat from materialism
and capitalism.

  It was here, at this point, that Augustine May saw himself stepping into the picture. In mystery he had found a popular genre. Rose would be only the first of many novels he would write. His abbot had almost no alternative but to permit-nay, encourage-him to write. Each monastery had to be independently financially solvent. God, and the abbot, knew that Saint Francis Abbey, an expansion abbey to which he’d been assigned, regularly moved from thin ice to open water. Gethsemani, for example, did very well with cheese and fruitcakes. But Gethsemani was not about to bail out Saint Francis. Nothing personal, just against the rules.

  With his expected success, no bailout would be necessary: Augustine May would singlehandedly save Saint Francis Abbey. He would then become the toast of the Trappists. Coincidentally-and perhaps of equal or greater importance-his fame would spread and redound throughout this country and-why not? — the world.

  This, Augustine assured himself, was not idle pride. He would accomplish all this for God and the Cistercian Order. Was there all that much difference between the two?

  His problem, to this point, was that he had gotten it all backwards. Merton had written his magnum opus, the classic Seven Storey Mountain, first. After gaining popular fame, he had gone on to write more substantial religious wisdom. Merton’s contemplative work scarcely would have achieved the acceptance it had without that best seller. Seven Storey Mountain had given Merton entree to the mass public. A goodly number of that vast readership had stayed with Merton throughout the rest of his life. So he had been the cause-not merely the instrument-of a large proportion of popularity that the Trappists enjoy to this day.

  Granted Augustine had published-no mean accomplishment in this day and age. But who had read him? A few monks, even fewer erudite professors of arcane subjects. By no means the reading public Merton had attracted.

  Augustine counted on A Rose by Any Other Name to turn things around. Of course, it was no Seven Storey Mountain. How many books are? But Merton had written one-and only one-million-seller. Augustine would make up in quantity what was lacking in quality. Rose would be but the first of a series of popular novels with monastic settings. He was certain he could achieve this goal. Then, after having made a solid name for himself, he would produce the scholarly, profound, contemplative, Mertonesque writings.

  And there it was: Augustine’s formula for his personal-and the order’s corporate-success.

  He checked his reflection in a full-length mirror. Nice. The habit gave him the immediate cachet of poverty, antiquity, simplicity, cleanliness, and yes, even holiness.

  He finished his drink, set the glass firmly on the dresser-top and headed for downstairs, where he would meet the others in this workshop.

  He gave momentary thought to taking the elevator but decided on the stairs. He could use the exercise. It would clear his mind.

  He would need a clear mind, and everything else he could muster, including God’s providence and presence, to deal with Klaus Krieg.

  Funny, before the publication of A Rose by Any Other Name, Augustine had never heard of Klaus Krieg. Or at least he’d paid so little attention to the televangelist/publisher as to be completely unmindful of his celebrity. No Krieg-type book would be found in the monastery, nor did Saint Francis Abbey have television.

  Of course, Augustine did not spend his entire life behind cloister doors. Oh, he had in the beginning, when he would blow on his finger and wiggle his hand to indicate air conditioning. But after Vatican II and his move to Massachusetts, he was sent outside the monastery with some regularity. He was a better than average speaker and what with the priest shortage, pastors frequently were desperate for weekend help. Supply and demand. He was sent to these parishes on condition that he be allowed to address issues at the core of Cistercian existence: solitude, silence, self-denial, the centering prayer, the contemplative life and, occasionally, donations to the order.

  Still, even on the “outside,” he had been spared exposure to Krieg and the Praise God Network. To a man, priests loathed televangelists-and at the very top of their aversion list was the “Reverend” Klaus Krieg. Thus, with no exposure to Krieg whatsoever, not even having been afforded the luxury of selecting what he and the pastor would watch on TV of an evening, Augustine could not have picked Krieg out of a lineup of two people.

  Until Augustine’s book was published.

  Shortly thereafter, he was bombarded by mailings and phone messages from P.G. Press proposing contract talks.

  At first, the abbot leaned toward looking into the Krieg propositions. However, not for nothing had Augustine spent years in the advertising business. He smelled a con.

  On a mission to Framingham, he stopped in a large bookstore, browsed and searched until he found several books bearing the P.G. logo, all in the religion section of the store, as he had expected. The tide and dust jacket of one book promised a monastic setting. A few scanned pages confirmed his initial diagnosis: It had something to do with a monastery. And there was something peculiar about it. He bought the book.

  Later that evening, eschewing the pastor’s offer of before-bed drinks and the TV news, Augustine retired. He propped himself in bed and opened Their Secret Solitude. It was bad, but he persevered. He forced himself to finish the book. Actually, after about page 25, he had to force himself to read each page. It was that bad.

  The fictional “Monastery of the Blessed Spirit”-fictional to the extreme; it resembled no monastery he’d ever heard of-was replete with spurious monks.

  The story began almost innocently with Brother Gregory fighting vainly an overwhelming urge to masturbate. In no time, the reader learned that the procurator, Brother Louis, had no sooner hired a young village maiden as cook than he raped her, several times in several ways. Throughout the book, he periodically found new occasions and new ways to rape her. Naturally, Abbot Rufus, by this time, was found to be a sadistic homosexual. The sex was kinky, kinkier, kinkiest.

  And so it went. It was almost an afterthought that the local antediluvian archbishop had been swindling everyone in and out of sight for years.

  Augustine, revolted by this raunchy insult to legitimate monastic life, had a difficult time getting to sleep that night.

  When he returned from Framingham, he told his shocked abbot what he had discovered. He then had to caution Father Abbot, who was close to hyperventilating at the thought of what P.G. Press might perpetrate against Saint Francis Abbey, that, just as a book should not be judged by its cover, so a publishing house should not necessarily be judged by one book. Even a book this execrable. So, Augustine received permission to make several long distance calls.

  The third call hit pay dirt. It was to Dick Ryan, with whom Augustine had once worked in a New York advertising firm. Ryan was still at the same firm, but had risen to a position in management.

  It took a few moments for Ryan to place him. It wouldn’t have taken that long had the caller not identified himself as Augustine. Realizing the problem, he immediately gave the befuddled Ryan the name Harold May, and the connection was made.

  Ryan was unaware that Harold had had a book published. Then, as the conversation proceeded, Ryan recalled having heard about A Rose by Any Other Name. But he hadn’t linked Harold to the Father Augustine who had authored it. “Well, congratulations, Harold. Son of a gun, I didn’t know that was you. Yeah, sincere congratulations.”

  “Thanks. Yes, it was I.” After the two exchanged small talk bringing each other up-to-date on their separate and very different lives, Augustine recounted his past publishing experience, the bombardment by the P.G. empire, and his grossly negative reaction to the one and only P.G. book he had read or was likely to read.

  Ryan whistled softly. “So Krieg wants you, eh? Well-how is it you monks put it? — resist him, strong in the faith.”

  “Tu autem, Domine, miserere nobis. I’m surprised you know that antiphon, Dick. You must be a better Catholic now than when I knew you.”

  “That’s true. But then, you’re a b
etter Catholic now, yourself.”

  Augustine chuckled. “It’s good to know we’re both working at it.

  “But Dick, I didn’t really call to ask your opinion about my linking up with Krieg. My question is: What is he up to? Why in God’s green world would he want me? What possible interest could he have in me?”

  “Authenticity.”

  “Authenticity?”

  “You’re a real, live monk, my friend,” Ryan replied. “I must admit I’ve never had the misfortune of reading anything put out by P.G. Press. But I know their reputation. Everybody in the business knows what Krieg is doing.”

  “Well, I’m no longer ‘in the business,’ Dick. Could you fill me in?”

  There was a pause marked by the sound of deep inhaling. Ryan had just lit a cigarette. Instantaneously, Augustine recalled the pressure-packed days in the advertising world. He himself had smoked like a chimney; with few exceptions, they all had. It got so one could not imagine having a phone at one’s ear without the attendant cigarette between one’s lips.

  “Okay,” Ryan said. “I won’t get into the TV scam for the moment. That’s a long story all by itself. But Krieg didn’t ask you to fake a miracle for his TV viewers. He wants your pen, not your crutches.”

  Augustine snorted.

  “Part of it works this way,” Ryan said. “Krieg maintains offices in Los Angeles for budding writers. Haven’t you ever seen the ads in magazines, trade papers?”

  “’Fraid not.”

  “Damn, that’s right; you don’t read the trades anymore.”

  Augustine shook his head, a motion that could not be heard over the phone. Reading the trades was just one of many, many things he no longer did.

  Ryan continued. “Say you’re an amateur writer, know in your heart you’re good, and that sooner or later you’ll get published. All you need is a chance, a break.”

  Millions of them, thought Augustine.

  “Well,” Ryan said, “you look at the ad from P.G. Press-”