The Cloister

by James Carroll

As they were about to part, after their fourth time together in the cubicle, he stopped her. “I must ask.”

  Rachel responded only with a cold, dead look. She thought he’d understood that the last thing she wanted was talk.

  But he pressed her, saying again, “I must ask.”

  “What?”

  “Why do they hate the Jews?”

  “They?”

  “The Krauts.”

  “Are there Krauts here?”

  “Yes. In suits.”

  “How many?”

  “Eight. Ten.”

  “And how many dozens of you? Police? Gendarmes? Frogs?”

  He had no answer.

  She shrugged, “Because they say we killed Christ.”

  “That can’t be it.”

  “Of course it is.”

  “No.”

  “But what they say is true, Sergeant.” She put her fingers lightly on his cheek. “For sure, we killed Him—knowing all that would be done to us in His name. We killed your God. Our God told us to do so. We would do it again. The anti-Semites are right about us.” She tapped his cheek, once, as if from fondness. Then she turned and walked into the dark.

  The seven days that Rachel and her father spent at the Vél’ d’Hiv were a brief initiation, yet long enough for her to work new muscles and, as it were, let them flex. She stopped being astonished by their situation, and her responses to it.

  By the time the throng of Jews in the bicycle arena began to be herded once again to vehicles—now onto canvas-covered lorries, not the cushioned seats of municipal buses—Rachel knew what, besides clutching her father and holding on to her precious suitcase, she had to do. Thanks to her chouchou, her uniformed pet, the necessary shell around her heart had begun to calcify.

  When she and her father, in a knot of Jews, were being pushed by other French policemen out into the harsh light of day and toward the next truck, she glimpsed Maurice standing under the narrowed eyes of a pair of Gabardines. He saw her. She recognized the expression of sick longing on his face. She felt nothing.

  Her father was clutching the Historia Calamitatum. When he stumbled while making his way up the makeshift stepladder onto the bed of the lorry, one of the Gestapo watchers lurched toward him, swinging a cudgel. Rachel reacted more quickly than the German moved. She came between them, so that the blow fell on her head, not her father’s. It knocked her forward, savagely, and she might have passed out, but her mind was too intent for that. The German laughed loudly, but the triumph was hers. She was able to steady her father—“Up, Papa,” she whispered, “up!”—until he crumpled into the truck. He had dropped the leather-bound book, but Rachel, stooping quickly, was able to retrieve it. Once she was on the truck herself, supporting him again, Rachel glanced back at Maurice, whose expression had changed to one of guilt and horror. Toward him, still, she felt nothing.

  She clung to the Abelard. Her former question—Who am I now?—had its answer. I am the safekeeper of Saul Vedette. That’s all.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “You flout doctrine!” came the frenzied cry from the rear of the packed-full refectory, sparking a burst of derisive hoots, whistles, catcalls—some to defend, some to ridicule. Epithets were thrown more in the vulgar tongues than in Latin: the guttural Frankish could be heard, along with Romanic, Burgundian, Norman, and other alien modes of speech.

  At the lectern on a platform that lifted him three or four feet above the crowd, Peter Abelard simply stood with his left arm raised, the soul of patience, waiting for the howling to subside. He was tall and slender, a man in his thirties. His face had a chiseled look, its features organized within the vertical brackets of a prominent, strong chin and flashing blue eyes. Strong, yes: a demanding visage. But his expression just then was bemused, as if he took kindly to being called to account. With his right hand, he absently stroked the edge of the lectern, the smooth wood. All at once, he looked down upon that edge, as if his caressing hand were taking satisfaction in carving he had done himself. He was a supremely satisfied man. The fellows before him had come here to Paris from as far away as Britain, or beyond the Pyrenees, or below the Alps. Each lad had his native lisp, stutter, cluck. More than three hundred young men, most cloaked and tonsured as novice clerics, were crowded onto the benches and long narrow tables; others perched on the ledges at windows from which had been removed the framed and stretched hides that, in rougher weather, kept out the rain and chill while admitting a shadowy light. This afternoon, the fresh light of early spring washed into the room, bathing, especially, those near the openings.

  The initiating indictment, called out in proper Latin—“Contemnis doctrinam”—had come from one of the dozen Masters clustered near the large fireplace in the back of the room. They were garbed like the students, only more so: long woolen robes, black in color, but belted or trimmed with animal fur; some with their heads covered by caps or cowls. Flames licking from the small fire behind them cast a net of shadows, the brighter flashes of which illuminated their faces. Yet the Masters might have been masked, such were their set expressions. That gave them the air of a disapproving Delphic chorus. The one who’d hurled the gibe could be distinguished from the others by his flushed, ruddy checks and sparking eyes—a show of anger that was more open than he wanted, leaving him exposed. But he’d said his piece, and was silent now, like the other Dons. It was the host of students who were making the noise, a cacophony of varied tongues. For as long as the outbursts lasted, the scene might have been at the cursed base of the Tower of Babel, instead of at the feet of the greatest teacher in Paris.

  Normally, sessions of the Cathedral school were held in the chambers that opened off the large Cloister, on the upriver third of the island, just beyond the curving wall of the apse—a villagelike maze of ad hoc quarters into which the rowdy young scholars routinely pressed themselves. But the lectures of the legendary Master Peter required the largest space on the close, excluding the massive five-aisled nave itself. That left this refectory. On three sides, close to the ceiling, perhaps two dozen lads clung, like monkeys, to the narrow clerestory shelves that projected into the air at twice a man’s height. Yes, monkeys—a congregation of monkeys and baboons, snorting and hissing from perches. And stinking like simians, too—or so the male aromas struck the nostrils of one of the other cloaked figures observing from the rear, also near the fireplace, yet somewhat apart from the clique of Dons.

  Finally, as the mob noise fell off, Peter Abelard said in decisive—if not quite rebuking—Latin, “Well, then, dear brothers, I put it to you. We’ll have a case. You be the judges.” He extended his raised hand farther, his arm gracefully curving toward the students, a benign gesture of blessing. “You have heard it said recently that Count Baldwin of Boulogne was taken captive by the Turks at Harran in the Principality of Antioch.” At this, the last hoots fell off. The Master let a silence build, severe and grim. He could be certain that when the boys before him had initially heard this news of the first defeat of Frankish forces in the Holy Land, they’d have fended off an impulse to take the cross themselves. Now they’d be feeling guilty about their failure to have done so, confused whether to dread a conscripting martial summons from the Pope, or to long for it. Peter Abelard wanted their complete attention, and by raising this question he got it.

  The implications of his dare, however, were heavy not only for the students—and they knew it. After all, they could do arithmetic. When Pope Urban’s great war for Jerusalem had been launched to begin with, sending Baldwin and his army east years before, Peter Abelard himself, at seventeen years of age and the eldest son of a knight, was primed to mark his tunic with the cross and raise a sword for Christ. Indeed, he was all but required to. Yet, instead, he had said no to the sword, bowing his head for the tonsuring blade and donning a cleric’s robe. Faced with the bellicose fervor that had swept all of France, young Peter Abelard had stood against it—simply by refusing the war of God’s will in favor of the battles of philosophical disputation. His “no”
to the Militant Christ had been “yes” to the Prince of Peace.

  “Let us suppose,” he continued, “that two of the young men in this very fraternity, moved by the Paraclete Himself, resolve to join in the rescue of Baldwin, the revered King of Jerusalem. You, Rudolph of Lyons, for example. And you, Tomas Clare.” Abelard pointed at each one in turn. “Are we all agreed on this diegesis?” he asked. “Rudolph and Tomas set out on the great adventure, in the name of God and all goodness. Knights of Christ.” His hand lifted once more, a gesture inviting howls of assent, and the noise came. When Abelard’s hand fell, so did the sound. The throng of students, one creature now, were his schola cantorum, an instrument willingly being played. He was broadly grinning. He tossed a quick glance back toward the knot of his cowled deprecators, reading their jealous minds: How does the varlet do this?

  “Which of our boys is virtuous?” he asked.

  “Both are,” came the answer from several.

  “Aye. Both are virtuous, because both aim for virtue. At risk to themselves, and cost to their fathers, Rudolph and Tomas wrap themselves in the mantles of selfless rescuers. They swear their solemn vows, stitch their tunics with the horizontal-vertical sign, and set out, each thereby earning the plenary indulgence.” The two named lads were alike in blushing. One was sure he was being mocked, and the second was terrified that he’d be called upon to speak. As for the others, an air of excited agitation rose from them, and also of not a little intimidation. Was the Master slyly recruiting for the much-spoken-of armed pilgrimage, the overdue successor to the storied uncles’ campaign that had banished the infidel from the Land on which the sacred feet of the Lord had trod? Land that was now, with Baldwin’s capture, in danger of being lost to the Saracens once more.

  Abelard continued, with the solemn air of one reciting an epic. “But Rudolph, en route to Jerusalem—let us propose this, to illustrate the question—is waylaid by robbers, far short of his goal. Poor Rudolph’s company is routed, his horses are stolen, his squires, arms bearers, and bowmen taken away, captive. He is required to pay the total of what remains of his father’s purse just to stay alive. He returns to Paris.” Abelard fell silent for a moment, just long enough to drive home that no one hooted at this turn in the story.

  Everyone in the refectory was staring at Abelard, rapt. He went on: “Tomas, meanwhile, succeeds in fording the Strait of Constantinople, crossing Anatolia, reaching the Principality of Antioch, laying siege to Harran, and obtaining the freedom of the King of Jerusalem.” Silence again. Abelard waited. No one cheered. No hooting. The students listened as to the report of a monumental turn in history. “Now,” Abelard intoned, “who is virtuous?”

  “Tomas!” A dozen voices called out the name.

  “Not Rudolph?” Abelard opened his hands, quizzically.

  “Tomas! Tomas!”

  “But Rudolph’s purpose was the same as Tomas’s. Wherein does virtue lie if not in purpose?”

  “In freeing the King of Jerusalem,” came the reply, followed by grunts of agreement.

  “Heroism, perhaps. Success in battle is a mark of the hero. But is goodness determined by success? Was it heroic of Tomas that he had the good fortune not to be waylaid by a superior force of bandits? Was it owing to a lack of virtue that Rudolph found himself on a particular stretch of road just when a superior force of bandits showed itself? What if Tomas instead had been on that road at that hour? Would his righteousness be any less if the pure misfortune that befell Rudolph had, rather, befallen him? Or what if both had been waylaid? Does their having taken the cross, and offered themselves as God’s men-at-arms, count for nothing? What does God see when He looks into the hearts of men?”

  “God sees Jerusalem! Holy Zion!”

  “But what of our two examples? Turn the case another way. What if the aim of our hero Tomas was not to secure the well-being of the Count of Boulogne, or even to secure the protection of the Land upon which the Lord Christ trod, but, rather, to secure the glory, fame, and wealth that would come to him, Tomas, if he were to be the instrument of Baldwin’s rescue? What if, instead of piety, Tomas was moved by vanity and greed? Is that virtue?”

  “And Rudolph”—this from one of the acrobats clinging to a clerestory ledge—“rightly intended, yet in a ditch by the road.”

  “Yes,” Abelard answered, “the one victorious, but badly motivated; the other defeated, but wanting only the true will of God. Which man is the man of virtue now?”

  “Rudolph! Rudolph!” The cheer went up, the lads raucous again. This was the victory they’d awaited—the turnabout trick of mind that Master Peter always accomplished. Those nearest Rudolph of Lyons slapped his shoulders, cuffed his head. “Rudolph! Rudolph!”

  Abelard raised his arm once more, waiting. When the shouting subsided, he turned his hand with a peculiar motion that those who’d studied with him recognized as the sign of winding up, the drawing of a conclusion, the syllogism coming home. But the Master surprised them with yet another question. “So—do we conclude that virtue resides in the intent,” he asked, “not the deed?”

  The silence of the lads now was mulish. Abelard waited them out. They knew that he would not speak again, ever. Not until one of them had ventured a word. And so, finally, it came. A boy near the back, not far from the corner in which the other Masters stood, lifted up, cautiously, a phrase he had from Peter Abelard himself, just uttered. “Virtue resides in the true will of God.”

  “Which is?” Abelard fixed his glare on the one who spoke, and once more waited.

  “The rescue of Jerusalem,” the boy said, uncertainly.

  “But rescue from whom? The Ishmaelites say that from Jerusalem their Prophet ascended to heaven, making the city holy to the Saracens, who assert that God therefore wants it for them. To Saracens, we are the infidels. Who is right? And how do we know? The true will of God? Which is?”

  It was the silence of the throng that now seemed eternal.

  Finally, Master Peter rescued them, as he often did at such moments, by turning the matter, yet again, in a wholly different direction. “Saracens,” he said. “Why are they called with such a name?”

  Silence still, thickening.

  “What, has no one here read Jerome?” Abelard asked. “The sons of Ishmael. Why do we call them that?”

  “Because they spring from Abraham’s older son.”

  “Indeed! What’s your name, good lad?”

  “John of Cologne.”

  “And who, my dear John, was Abraham’s wife?”

  “Sarah.”

  “Yes?” Abelard’s hand curved in a small circle, a kindly gesture of coaxing.

  “Therefore,” the boy offered, but tremulously, “ ‘Saracens’?”

  “Precisely.” Abelard threw his arms wide. “Saracens! Because they claim descent from the wife, Sarah, not the concubine, Hagar. Legitimacy is at issue here. ‘Saracen’ is a claim to righteousness. And our colleague here cut to the core of it. Where is his acclaim? Where is the acclaim for John of Cologne?”

  With that, the boys resumed their hooting and stomping, now elaborated by the clapping of poor John about the head. Peter Abelard grinned down at them as they cavorted. An observer, even looking on from the far-off corner of the refectory, could sense the teacher’s profound affection for his pupils. He loved them for their unruliness. He believed in their unruliness. He channeled its energy into his own purpose.

  At last, Master Peter raised his voice, along with that wafting arm of his. “And what?” he called. “And what?” He waited for the settling down, the attention. When he had it, he resumed: “And what if the Ishmaelites are righteous? True progeny of Father Abraham. Legitimate! What then? Turks, Saracens, sons of heaven, all! What then of ‘God’s true will’?”

  The group fell absolutely still, stunned by these words, as by the blow of a log to the head. After a long time, Abelard asked quietly, “How do we, exiles in this vale of tears, know what the great and Almighty God, in His eternal wisdom, wants for Jer
usalem?”

  Out of the silence, from the back, came the stout voice of another of the skeptical Masters. “Holy Mother the Church tells us, through her spokesman, the Holy Father.”

  Abelard’s gaze lifted, and engaged. He had the air, suddenly, of a man who, having carefully pulled on a thread, had found its knot. “We know by listening?” he asked. “Not by thinking?” He waited, as if there would be an answer. There was not an answer, of course. He said, “Listening to what we are told? Are we made for our ears, and not our minds?” Again he waited. No answer. He opened his hands wide, shrugging slightly. “What is the point of all this trouble, then? The way we parse subtleties, compute partialities, unpeel the skin of paradoxes, arriving eventually at a place where we can draw contingent moral and intellectual conclusions, based on thought? What is the point of troubling to construct an argument, and to follow where it leads, if all we need, a priori, is the answer from above?”

  But the reply came back, ringing across the room, sure and well said: “The answer from above is certain. What you offer is uncertain. You trade in half-truths, not the Truth.”

  “Ah, Truth!” Abelard replied, “What is Truth?”

  “Pilate’s question!” shot back the disputing Master, a resounding rebuttal from beside the fireplace.

  “Indeed so, dear brother,” Abelard said, but without looking toward his interlocutor. Abelard was on his game, like a monk playing a leather-bound wad of horsehair against the Cloister wall. He went up on his toes, leaned across the lectern toward the crowd, and shook his head, declaiming, “ ‘Pontius Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all.’ ” Abelard raised his fist, and repeated: “ ‘I find in him no fault at all!’ What does the Evangelist tell us here? Pontius Pilate alone saw the truth of the Lord Christ’s innocence. He saw that single truth, and, for a moment, insisted upon it. Not a ‘half-truth,’ but a particular truth, a precious jewel of a truth: ‘I find in him no fault at all!’ So said the Imperial Procurator of Syria Palaestina, Pontius Pilate. A golden moment. If the heavenly chorus did not sing at that assertion, what are the pristine voices of angels for? My earthly chorus, by contrast”—here, finally, Abelard flung his articulate arm toward the back of the room, a gesture of contempt for his critics—“squeaks of ‘half-truths,’ and misses the point that even a brutish Roman pagan grasped. Pilate knew to care nothing for access to the disembodied ‘Truth.’ Pilate was right to ask, ‘Truth? What is Truth?’ There are only grounded truths, and Pilate saw the one that was right before him. The grounded truth of one man. The Word become flesh. One man! Here is the point, my brothers! Flesh! Flesh! God in one thing—not all things—God in one body. One man. One cut of meat! The meat of the reasoning human mind. Jesus Christ, yes. Of course. But not only Him!”