FOUR
There was no hospital established at the Fortress; then or ever. Nor was there any attempt to replant the vineyard, or make the grounds around the Fortress in any way flourish. With Father Sandru’s passing (at the relatively tender age of sixty-two), what little enthusiasm there had been for change withered. The younger men decided to leave the Fortress; three of them left the Order entirely and became members of the secular community. Of the three, one — a young man by the name of Jan Valek took his own life less than a year later, leaving a long suicide note, a kind of epistle to his sometime brothers, in which he wrote of how he’d had a dream after the death of Father Sandru, in which “I met the Father in the vineyards, which were all burning. It was a terrible place to be. Black smoke was filling the sky, blotting out the sun. He said to me that this was Hell, this world, and there was only one way to escape it, and that was to die. His face was bright, even in the darkness. He said he wished he’d died earlier, instead of going on suffering in the world.”
“I asked him if they allowed him to drink brandy wherever he was now. He said he had no need of brandy; his existence was happy; there was no need to conceal the pain with drinking.
“Then I told him I still had a life to live in the world, whereas he had been an old man, with a weak heart. I was strong, I said, and there was a good chance I’d be alive for another thirty, maybe forty years, which was an agony to me, but what could I do?
“‘So take your own life,’ he said to me. He made it sound so simple. ‘Cut your throat. God understands.'”
“‘He does?’ I said to him.”
“‘Certainly,’ he told. ‘This world is Hell. Just look around. What do you see?'”
“I told him what I saw. Fire, smoke, block earth. ”
“‘See?’he said, ‘Hell.'”
“I told him, though of course I was still dreaming, I was going to take his advice. I was going to go back to my room, find a sharp knife, and kill myself. But for some reason, as often happens in dreams, I didn’t go home. I went into Bucharest. To the cinema where Brother Stefan used to bring me sometimes, to see films. We went inside. It was very dark. We found seats and Stefan had me sit down. Then the film began. And it was a film about some earthly paradise. It made me weep, it was so perfect, this place. The music, the way the people looked. Beautiful men and women, all so lovely it took my breath away to look at them. There was one young man in particular — and it makes me ashamed to write this, but if I don’t do it here, in my last confession, where will I do it? — a young man with dark hair and light-filled eyes, who opened his arms to me. He was naked, on the screen, with open arms, inviting me into his embrace. I turned to Father Stefan in the darkness, and he said the very thing that was going through my mind. ‘He wants to take you into his arms.'”
“I started to deny it. But Stefan interrupted me and said: ‘Look at him. Look at his face. It’s flawless. Look at his body. It’s perfect. And there — between his legs — ‘”
“I covered my face in shame, but Stefan pulled my hands from my face and told me not to be ashamed, just to look, and enjoy looking. ‘God made all of this for our pleasure,’ he said. ‘Why would he give us such a hunger to look at nakedness unless he wanted us to take pleasure in it?'”
“I asked Stefan how he knew it was God’s work. Perhaps the Devil had made nakedness, I said, to tempt us and ensnare us. He laughed, and put his arm around me, and kissed me on the cheek as though I was just a little child.”