Enter by the Narrow Gate

by David Carlson

  “But doesn’t her message—the real one, I mean—prove that the rendezvous with this Victor never occurred?”

  The question didn’t even dent Worthy’s smile. “The Martinez kid probably forgot what day it was, or maybe the college group came in the morning instead of the afternoon. Either way, we know some things that Ellie VanBruskman doesn’t want us to know. We know she’s clever, and we know where she was headed.”

  “Which means you could be done with the case pretty soon.”

  Worthy had shrugged. “Maybe, but I don’t think so. These two kids had a plan, and for all we know it’s working.”

  Father Fortis took another long sip of coffee and watched the sun’s rays play on the rough-hewn refectory tables. A monastery refectory is truly a wonder, he thought. Most refectories he’d visited, whether Orthodox or Catholic, in Europe or in the States, were surprisingly similar. Huge rectangular rooms of brick, wood, or in St. Mary’s case, adobe, they all seemed to feature long wooden tables and sturdy benches. Had it not been for the simple crucifixes or icons on the walls, a monastery refectory could be confused with a training table for athletes—a comparison that struck Father Fortis as oddly appropriate.

  And the food was always plentiful, even in a Trappist community that forbade not only meat, but also fish for most of the year. Cheese was the monastic replacement, and Father Fortis had visited enough monasteries to know that many gourmet cheeses had been created by inventive monks over the centuries. As any honest monk would concede, fasting did not always mean deprivation.

  And best of all, conversation was forbidden in a refectory. The only voice permitted at mealtime was that of the one monk assigned to intone the wisdom of the church Fathers. Blessedly, even that wasn’t happening this morning at St. Mary’s.

  He picked up the final morsel of wheat bread from his plate and wondered again why eating couldn’t also be considered prayer. Didn’t food, properly taken, promote recollection, the tastes exploding in the mouth calling forth gratitude for the bounty of creation? Couldn’t swallowing, when the food passed the heart and lungs, become a plea for strength to do God’s will? Easy for a fat monk to say, he realized, but wasn’t something similar written in the Philokalia, an ancient book of Orthodox monastic wisdom?

  Father Fortis rose from the table. Yes, I will have another bowl of the muesli and a few more fresh berries. Imagine. Fresh berries in the desert.

  Just as he sat down again at the table, he saw Worthy enter the room. His friend’s starched Oxford-cloth shirt in the midst of the Trappist robes made him look like someone who’d dropped in from another century. The smile from the night before still played across his friend’s face. The priest motioned silently for Worthy to join him and was surprised when two arms waved back. Half-hidden behind the tall policeman was the slight, hunched-over Father Linus, his research partner.

  The man’s face reminded Father Fortis of their upcoming work session that afternoon. More incessant chatter, he thought. A knife clattered to the floor, and a blushing novice stooped to retrieve it.

  A monk with a knife. Was it possible that one of the men in this very room had wielded one against Sister Anna? In the days since the murder, he had wanted to believe that the killer was someone from outside. But then again, maybe Sister Anna had also received a note in her mailbox, telling her that she, too, wasn’t wanted or needed.

  He gazed around the room at the monks’ faces, some diligent, some merely exhausted, and recognized their counterparts back at his own monastery, St. Simeon’s in Ohio. There were the old monks whose hands shook as they brought spoons to their mouths and who stood with difficulty through the community services. Not likely that one of them had gone out to the remote chapel and killed the nun.

  Then there were the seven or eight monks of middle age, those in leadership positions who stared beyond their breakfast to the pressing worries of a monastery. They had greatest access to the vehicles and were capable of the crime, but what would have been the motive?

  Finally, there were the three novices, the young men clearly prone to hormonal rages and fully capable of finding the pretty nun a temptation. What fantasies had danced in the dark of the novitiate dormitory while Sister Anna was living among them, eating with them, walking in the cloister below their windows, even working with them shoulder to shoulder? But would not the crime then have been sexual, rather than some form of ritual?

  Setting down his plate across from Father Fortis and Worthy, Father Linus waved a bony forefinger at the two men and pointed in the direction of the dormitory. Father Fortis felt his heart sink. Now my entire morning is shot, he thought.

  Twenty minutes later, the two visitors were sitting on a threadbare sofa in Father Linus’s simple quarters. Across from them, the old monk sat in a straight-backed wooden chair, his fingers tapping on the armrests. According to the abbot, Father Linus had a heart condition. Father Fortis had also been told that the old monk refused to slow down.

  “I passed through Detroit once, when I was young,” Father Linus said to Worthy. “It was during the Depression, when I was riding the rails, and I am happy to report that the jails were very clean in the Motor City. Do they still call it the ‘Motor City?’ ”

  Father Fortis rose and began to pace the room. We’re going to get his entire life story, he thought. He knew he should simply accept it, offer the pointless hour as a penance.

  He found himself drawn to a primitive painting of the Virgin Mary on the far wall, depicting her sorrow with daggers protruding from her heart. It reminded him of something. An icon from Greece, perhaps?

  “You like santos, Nicholas, our Hispanic Catholic depiction of the saints?” the old monk asked.

  “This one is very compelling. It definitely interests me.”

  “It’s a retablo from my village,” Father Linus said, his voice excited.

  “And what is that?”

  “A retablo is a depiction of a holy person painted on wood, not to be confused with a three-dimensional carved saint, which is a bulto. I have always thought of retablos as Hispanic icons.”

  “Yes, I was thinking the same. But I’m not the art expert,” Father Fortis said, nodding toward Worthy.

  The old monk’s dancing forefinger picked up its beat on the armrest. “Ah, are you an artist as well as a detective?”

  “Hardly,” Worthy protested, shooting a glance at Father Fortis. “Art history was my minor in college, but that was a long time ago.”

  “Still, it is very interesting,” the old monk said as he rose and walked toward the back room.

  In a low voice, Father Fortis said, “Sorry, my friend. We’ll have a cup of coffee and be going.”

  “Why not play along? Maybe the old guy knows something about the nun,” Worthy whispered back. “Anyway, think of it as payback for yesterday with that nosy nun.”

  “Oh, Christopher, that is beneath even you!”

  “Relax. When it gets to be too much, I’ll tell him I have to leave for Acoma.”

  “Did I hear you say Acoma?” The old monk shuffled back into the room, a framed painting in his hand. “The Pueblos are New Mexico’s jewels, Lieutenant. Nineteen tribes, their ancestral lands are not reservations, no, not reservations. Each pueblo is a country within this country. There is nothing like them in the world. Nothing. And Acoma is one of the finest and best preserved.”

  Father Linus placed the painting on a coffee table in front of Worthy and padded back to his chair. “I’ve put some water on for tea. So let us talk art. Did you know that Georgia O’Keeffe visited us once?”

  And off we go on another tangent, Father Fortis thought.

  “Are you saying this is an O’Keeffe?” Worthy asked.

  Father Fortis gazed down at the canvas, and found to his consternation that it interested him. His eye was first drawn to the huge sun in the center of the canvas. Everything in the painting from the sharp-edged trees to the mesas to the crowd of people off to one side had a bright orange or purple cast from
the sun’s fading glare. One object alone, a crucifixion in the foreground, was shaded in black.

  The old monk laughed dryly. “No, no, my mistake. How could a monk afford an O’Keefe? No, what you’re holding is simply a reproduction, and not even one of hers. It’s by Ernest Blumenschein, a member of the Taos school. I’m curious what both of you think of it.”

  Ask me if I care, Father Fortis thought. But Worthy accepted the invitation, lifting the painting from the table and pointing to the figure in the foreground. “Shouldn’t there be three crosses instead of one?”

  The old monk leaned his head back, his knee bobbing as he stared through feverish eyes at Father Fortis.

  “Your friend has a good eye, Nicholas. I wonder if you would agree that art is sometimes like crime. It’s often the outsider who helps us see what is right in front of us. Hmm?”

  Father Fortis paused, wondering for the first time if he’d underestimated the old monk. But before he could respond, Father Linus turned back toward Worthy and broke out in laughter.

  “What in the world are you doing, Lieutenant?”

  “I’m turning the painting upside down, and I’m squinting,” Worthy replied.

  “I can see that. But why?”

  “It’s one of the few things I remember from my art courses. If you want to see a painting, sometimes you have to dismiss the details and find the underlying structure.”

  “Ah-ha! I didn’t know that. And what does your squinting tell you?”

  Worthy shifted in his seat. “It tells me the shape of the crowd on the right side balances almost perfectly the shape of this mound on the other. Here, take a look.”

  The old monk accepted the painting, removed his glasses, and squinted. “Mound? Ah, you mean the mesa. Yes, I see what you mean. Quite amazing. Nicholas, do you agree?”

  “Yes, I suppose I do. I mean, I see what he’s saying. But Father Linus, I wonder if the water’s boiling. Worthy has to be leaving—”

  “In a minute, Nick,” Worthy interrupted. “What I don’t understand is why the sun is the focal point of the painting instead of Christ on the cross.”

  Father Linus handed the painting back to Worthy and turned to his other guest. “Nicholas, would you be so kind as to get the kettle? The tea and the cups are already on a tray. And when you return, I want to hear what you see in the figure on the cross.”

  Father Fortis walked briskly into the kitchen and in a moment was back with the tray. Whatever game we’re playing here, he thought, let’s get it over with quickly. He let Father Linus pour the tea while he took another glance at the painting. “I agree with Christopher. It’s odd where the painter placed our Lord.”

  “Ah, but the answer to that is simple,” the old monk said. “The figure on the cross is not our Lord.”

  Stunned, Father Fortis stared again at the painting. How could the figure not be Christ?

  “You’re looking at the Brotherhood of Our Father, Jesus the Nazarene. Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of the Penitentes, Nicholas.” He sat straighter in the chair before adding, “The Penitentes kept the Christian faith alive in New Mexico when priests were few and far between. They still do.” He paused as he looked down at the canvas and then back at Worthy. “Blumenschein has portrayed what we call a Calvario, just like the English word ‘Calvary,’ ” the monk said, his forefinger aquiver on the policeman’s knee. “That was who I was.”

  Father Fortis felt a weight drop heavily into the pit of his stomach. He’d read about the Penitentes in seminary, how their extreme mortification reclaimed some practices from medieval times, if not the earlier Desert Fathers. But how could Worthy possibly understand? And what possible reason could Father Linus have for raising this bizarre subject?

  “So you’re saying we’re looking at a passion play,” Worthy suggested.

  Father Linus looked over toward Father Fortis even as he answered Worthy’s question. “The Penitentes are devout Catholics who feel compelled to share in Christ’s suffering. The man chosen to be Christo in this painting is literally suffering with Christ—suffering as Christ.”

  As if the painting had bitten him, Worthy let it drop to the coffee table. “What are you saying? What kind of sadistic …?”

  For the first time, the old man sat calmly, his fingers quiet on the armrest, as Worthy stared at him. “Lieutenant, Lieutenant, please let me explain. Every man in that crowd wanted to trade places with the Christo; every boy wanted to grow up to be him.”

  Worthy stood abruptly. “But real nails?”

  “Of course, but there is no permanent damage,” Father Linus explained.

  Father Fortis saw Worthy’s jaw muscles clench.

  “Don’t try to tell me this man was envied?” Worthy asked, looking down on the old monk. “No child grows up dreaming of nails being hammered through his hands. What’s going on in that painting is not religion. I don’t give a damn what you say.”

  In a moment, Worthy was out the door, leaving the two monks alone.

  Father Fortis stood. “I believe you owe my friend an apology, and you owe me an explanation.”

  The old monk looked sharply at his guest. “I owe you an explanation? I’d say it’s the other way round. You could start by telling me what the abbot told you about the murder.”

  Father Fortis stared at the old monk. “What? You’ve completely lost me.”

  Father Linus rose slowly, painting in hand, and shuffled to the far wall. He hung the offending scene on a hook before moving to the balcony door. Closing it, he drew the curtains.

  “All I know about the murder is the trivial bits that the abbot and Father Bernard have decided to tell us in Chapter,” he hissed. “Unlike you, I’ve not been invited into his office to discuss the details.”

  Father Fortis studied the monk’s trembling mouth. “Let me get this straight. You’re jealous because the abbot told me things about the murder? And that’s why you scared my friend off with this crazy painting?”

  “So it’s crazy? Is that what you’ve decided?”

  Father Fortis started for the door, but the old man blocked his way with surprising speed. “Sit down, Nicholas. Please,” Father Linus asked in a calmer voice. “We must talk.”

  Father Fortis remained standing in the center of the room. “No more pointless stories, or I leave. Do you understand?”

  The old monk shuffled hurriedly to the wall and removed the santo of the Virgin Mary. “What was it you said about this when you came into my room?”

  “I’m not sure I remember,” Father Fortis replied. “Didn’t I say something about the santo being beautiful?”

  The monk placed the santo on the table before returning to his seat. “No, you said you found it interesting.”

  “So?”

  “There are few secrets at St. Mary’s, Nicholas. That’s why I knew you had met with the abbot, and I’ve even seen the photos you were given—don’t ask me how. But then you come into my room with your police friend and immediately walk to this particular santo. What did you mean by interesting? What does that mean?”

  Father Fortis pulled on his beard for a moment as he studied the santo. “I meant just what I said. The grief in her eyes, yet the calmness, it’s … arresting. What did you think I meant?”

  As the old man stared at Father Fortis, his eyes seemed to soften. “That’s all?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Nicholas, if I trust you now and I’m wrong, many people will suffer for that mistake.” The monk took off his thick glasses and rubbed his eyes. He brought his watch to his face to check the time before folding his hands beneath his cassock.

  “You gave me quite a fright this morning,” he said. “I’d been hoping that you might trust me with what the abbot knows, but when you walked directly to my santo, I thought you, or even worse, the abbot, had figured things out.”

  Father Fortis glanced down at the sorrowful image before him. He shrugged and waited for the old man to explain.

  Father Linus
motioned behind him toward Blumenschein’s painting on the wall. He pointed to a small building to the left of the bright sun.

  “That building is a morada, Nicholas, a Penitente meeting place. The brothers agree to stay there during Holy Week. Everyone, including the women and children, come on Good Friday to see the Christo on the cross.”

  The old monk leaned toward Father Fortis and continued in a whisper, “The police think Sister Anna died in our retreat house, but the place wasn’t always that.”

  Father Fortis nodded. “So that’s what this is about. It was a morada, then.”

  “One abandoned long ago, maybe forty years or more. It didn’t even show up on our property maps when we bought the land. Father Bernard accidentally found it several years ago when he was on one of his runs. Abbot Timothy thought it might serve us as a type of hermitage.”

  “Sister Anna went out there to pray for direction, didn’t she?”

  The old monk leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “She was one of the first to use it after the renovation. Did the abbot tell you what she was holding in her hand when she died?”

  Father Fortis thought for a moment. “It was a piece of paper, wasn’t it?”

  “Sister Anna was an artist. She was holding one of her drawings, the only one not shredded by the killer. It was a drawing of a santo of the Virgin Mary.”

  “The same as this?” Father Fortis asked.

  “Nearly.”

  “It must have meant a great deal to her.”

  The old monk reached over and grasped his guest’s wrist. The next words were even fainter. “Did they tell you about the marks on her body?”

  “I know she was stabbed in the back and then, for some reason, she was stabbed repeatedly in her heart.”

  “ ‘For some reason,’ you say,” the monk muttered. “Yes, that’s the problem. How long will it be before they think they know that reason? Did you notice the pattern of her wounds, Nicholas?”

  “Pattern?”

  “Sister Anna was stabbed precisely seven times. Four wounds here,” he said, pointing to the right side of his chest, “and three on the other side.”