For the Love of Meat
Nine Illustrated Stories
Jenny Jaeckel
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
1. The Incident
2. Wander the Desert
3. Stumble and Fall
4. For the Love of Meat
5. Up on a Mountain
6. The Kid
7. The Teteriv
8. The Two
9. Mémé
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Jenny Jaeckel
The End
Copyright © 2016 Jenny Jaeckel
Written and illustrated by Jenny Jaeckel.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner except in the case of brief quotations within reviews and articles. For permissions please contact:
Raincloud Press PO Box 9078, Chico, California 95927
[email protected]
www.raincloudpress.com
* * *
Cover design by Josué Menjivar of Fresh Brewed Illustration & Raincloud Press
ISBN: 978-1-941203-16-3
Created with Vellum
For the authors of my five most favorite books: Messrs. and Mme. Rodoreda, Galeano, Salinger, Carter and King. Eternal thanks for that kind of inspiration.
* * *
And for my Grandma Eve, who loved through food.
One
The Incident
Dieulivol, South of France 2000
[Interview with Brother Tanh]
We can talk here. It’s always so peaceful in our Meditation Hall. Is it suitable for your machine? Good. Yes, we’ve had quite a few inquiries regarding the incident. Brother Tu has declined to talk about it up to now. It’s a private matter for a private person and we monks do not make a practice of drawing attention to ourselves. He’ll be along shortly.
Five years, that’s right, since his ordination. Vietnam? No, he grew up in Paris. His parents came as refugees from the American War, like many of us here. And he became a lawyer, you know, but once he visited here the energy of his bodhichitta was so strong, he could not resist our monastic life.
No, nothing unusual. At the Monastery we have our practices and our study. We take care of the gardens, host retreats and so on. Brother Tu has found a great peace working in the gardens, but he has also been very helpful in the business office. His experience with the law, you know, and his perfect French and his Vietnamese. He takes care of most of our dealings with la bureaucratie. He doesn’t complain but we know he prefers the garden. And really, a simple errand with Travaux Publics is where all this began.
Maybe you have heard about the building permit? We were in need of a new dormitory. Our Spring Retreats are larger every year. You may have seen the article about our Teacher? It has brought a lot of interest.
Brother Tu prepared the application for the permit last April. He is always careful about his work, but was notified three times that there was missing documentation. I encouraged him just to breathe and smile. This is part of our practice. In July he went to Bordeaux personally, with two of the other Brothers. They practiced waiting-in-line meditation for a day and a half, and they were assured that everything was in order. Brother Tu had arranged a meeting with the builder. Yes, that was Monsieur Bontecou, one of the witnesses to the incident. In any case, they saw no reason to delay. It was by now getting on in the season and growing late to start the project.
The little girl? Yes, she was another witness. That was Mobi, a friend of the community. She was here most of September while her mother was in hospital and her father was in Vietnam. We loved to have her here; she was the pet of the whole sangha. She often helped Brother Tu in the garden, though she spent most of the time looking at insects with her magnifying glass. So inquisitive.
Msr. Bontecou? Yes, we were speaking of him, the builder. He and his crew were very pressed for time since by then it was autumn and the winter weather was on its way. Yes, he has a very good reputation. Actually, he looks quite like you! He could be your father; very similar features. Though I suppose I’m not a good judge. Even after so many years in France I have never quite gotten used to the three-dimensionality of the French face. And the way you shrug your shoulders, very lavish, very amusing!
Brother Tu felt under pressure as well because of the Spring Retreat, already full and a long waiting list besides. He and Msr. Bontecou arranged to have the crew pour the foundation, expecting that the permit would arrive any day. A mistake, of course. All that has been cleared with the authorities, and Brother Tu has meditated upon it a great deal. It is our practice to look deeply at our actions, but of course mistakes cannot always be prevented, especially when one may lead to the next.
Brother Tu told me that when he saw the beams that had been built into the foundation he became very nervous. Msr. Bontecou told Brother Tu that the beams would not add to the cost of the materials. He had salvaged them from an old barn, had nowhere to store them over the winter, and they would make the building pretty.
That afternoon, a Friday, when Brother Tu returned to the office, he found that the mail had come, and among the letters was one addressed to him from Travaux Publics. He felt a great relief because surely it was the permit arrived at last. Instead it was a notice advising him that the application had been filed under the wrong class. Further documentation was requested.
When I asked Brother Tu, in our meeting, to reflect on the nature of his frustration, he saw that he had been attached to a particular outcome. I asked, What else? And he said that he supposed he had judged his efforts as wasted. You see, he is a good student. Very diligent.
I said to him, ‘It’s a good thing we monks have no hair.’
‘No hair?’ He looked up at me, blinking.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘because there are times we would tear it out by the roots!’
(laughter)
Forgive me…
Sunday evening Brother Tu received a call on the office telephone. Msr. Bontecou regretted to tell him that heavy rains were in the forecast, and it would be necessary to create a shelter for the wooden beams. The best way was just to go ahead and put up most of the roof. What was more, he could get a deal on the roof tiles. They were terracotta and would match the other buildings nicely, and he could get them for half the usual price if Brother Tu could give him the word straight away. Msr. Bontecou said that even with the roof it wouldn’t be a building yet, strictly speaking. Of course, we know now that this is a grey area, and for the record we do not believe Msr. Bontecou was being dishonest.
Brother Tu had a most difficult time getting through to the right fonctionnaire at Travaux Publics; so many calls, so long on hold. Finally, when the roof was nearly complete, a voice on the other end of the line informed Brother Tu that the application could not be located. There was no file at all. That’s right, vanished. And what of the stack of letters he himself had in front of him? Well, they were very sorry, but he would just have to apply again.
He walked in a daze over to the building site. Msr. Bontecou paused to point out various features of the structure. He’d had to put in a couple of walls to reinforce it. And it was as he said it would be. With its high arching beams and red tiles, it was pretty. When Msr. Bontecou gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder Brother Tu felt very unsteady on his feet. And this was made much worse by the apparition of the District Inspector whom he met only a moment later in the driveway by the main gate.
There was a building and there was no permit. Unless the Monastery could present the permit in two days he would have no choice but to make a report. There would be fines, and a demolition.
Brother Tu did not appear at the evening meal. I went
to his room and found him lying on his bed listening to the rain. Little Mobi and one of the Sisters had brought him some supper. Sticky rice with mung beans, have you tried it? It’s lovely, golden and white. And stewed vegetables.
I believe it is nearly noon. Will you be staying for lunch?
Right, well, Brother Tu and I met again the next day to talk things over. He was terribly ashamed of how things had gotten out of hand. He said he was entirely responsible and that he had failed the community. He would leave the Monastery, go back to Paris and work as a lawyer again until he could repay all the debts incurred by this disaster. But, he said, what he could not repay was that this would reflect badly on the Monastery and on our Teacher, which was why he would never return. I knew it hurt him very deeply to say these things, and I urged him not to be so hasty, but he was quite lost in his troubles.
Only a few days later we received notice of the demolition. We could not believe our eyes because it was scheduled for that very afternoon. Brother Tu managed to reach Msr. Bontecou who came with some of his workers. Everyone who was able joined the crew in dismantling whatever possible in order to save something of the materials. Brother Tu was in the office making what last effort he could for a delay when the District Inspector arrived, rumbling through the main gate with a team of bulldozers.
But moments later the mail truck also arrived, and the Postmistress flagged down Brother Tu. There was something that seemed especially important, something that had been sent Express. From Travaux Publics.
It took him a moment to understand what he read. There was a letter stating that a lost file had been found, and under that, signed and stamped with all the official seals, was a permit authorizing the building of a new dormitory.
And that is when the incident occurred.
Brother Tu told me that he felt as if lightning were striking him. He ran from the office. There ahead of him the bulldozers were advancing toward the structure, less than seconds before they were to tear it down. As he ran he shouted, and at that moment felt his chest propelled forward and a force lifting at his heels.
Some have exaggerated to say that he flew a full ten meters up in the air, another fifteen meters in distance, and straight into the arms of the Inspector himself. We think it was probably closer to five meters in height and three or four in distance. In any case, the demolition was halted, the Inspector fainted and the whole of the building crew dropped to its knees. The little girl Mobi, who had been hiding behind a nearby chestnut tree was heard to shriek, ‘Again, Uncle Monk! Please do it again!’
* * *
Ah, here he comes now. All of this has been quite a strain on him. Aside from everything else it is usual that after a levitation a practitioner will be especially exhausted. It has been written of throughout history.
So you see we don’t care to place a lot of attention on it, it’s something that happens from time to time. Our Teacher says the real miracle is not to walk on water, or in this case, fly a bit through the air. The real miracle is to walk on Earth. But supernatural, you say? If you want supernatural, how was it that Travaux Publics sent the permit Express? Spontaneously sent Express, so quickly, in one of those large expensive envelopes, from an office of la bureaucratie. Now that is something no one has been able to explain!
Two
Wander the Desert
Sonora, Mexico 1936
Sister Aurelia, traveling by train, rummaged in her black case for the remains of a bolillo wrapped in a white handkerchief. She glanced at the adjacent and unkempt figure, a rumpled woman who was asleep and breathing heavily. Sister Aurelia let out a quiet sigh and carefully chewed the dry bread, watching the drier landscape outside the dusty window. Numerous small white clouds dotted the expansive sky, their flat bottoms hanging over the wind-whipped cactus and muted colors of the bare earth. Sonora was not a familiar place.
Bread consumed, Sister Aurelia again reached into her case and brought out a small brown volume borrowed from the convent library, a book of essays by the rather obscure Antoni Vernet Pruneda, on the contemporary application of Leviticus. It was her second reading. She liked to think of herself as erudite, and admired Pruneda as a brilliant scholar overlooked by lesser minds. She imagined him with a noble profile, an aquiline nose and a thin mustache not unlike that of Errol Flynn… She had his company, at least, on this most tedious errand.
The car was nearly vacant since the last station. The shrieking children had gone, the noise and commotion and the heavy fog of tobacco smoke had also diminished agreeably. She lay the volume of essays on her bosom and dozed…
* * *
Sister Aurelia had taken up her vocation not for any particular devotion to God, but for practical reasons. She couldn’t see herself raising a brood of children, as her mother had done. She liked education and enjoyed quiet. She was nothing like that lunatic Sister Edna, for example, who claimed to have visions and spoke aloud to the Virgin. It was for Sister Aurelia’s steady practicality, in fact, that she had been selected to supervise the installation of a new school in El Pico, the small northern town to which she was now making her journey.
She hadn’t been meant to go alone. Sister Beatriz had also been chosen to visit the new school. But she had fallen ill at the last moment and Sister Aurelia had offered to go anyway, so as not to delay the inspection of the students, and the deposition of the banknotes that required her witness. Not that she, a mere woman, held any real authority. Rather, her reports could be trusted, her observations would be accurate and in alignment with the appropriate directives, and, not least, her handwriting was tidy. The Mother Superior could appreciate that especially. She had been waiting two years for funds to replace her eyeglasses.
* * *
Sister Aurelia woke abruptly when the train jolted to a halt. Peering out the window she saw a low, tile-roofed building, a small concrete platform and nothing more. Her solitary fellow passenger was still asleep.
The train had been sitting on the tracks motionless for most of an hour when nature’s call grew urgent. The toilets would be locked while the train was stationary and there was no telling when the train would be off again. A few stations back they’d been held up for nearly three hours. Sister Aurelia would just pop off the train and find the station outhouse. She stowed her case beneath the seat. It would only take a minute.
The building was curiously deserted, with an interior pitch black in contrast with the glare of the midday desert. She glanced over her shoulder at the tracks and saw a porter on the ground lighting a cigarette. She stepped over the gravel, holding her heavy skirts up a few inches. Just on the other side of the building she easily located a small tin shack. The door hung unevenly on its hinges, but with some effort she managed to close and latch it behind her. A moment later Sister Aurelia experienced her second misfortune.
The first piece of bad luck, as it turned out, was Sister Beatriz’s illness. Sister Beatriz had been excited about the journey. Looking after children was the diminutive sister’s pet service to God. Out she went each evening with baskets of yesterday’s bread and tortillas for the ragged urchins of the neighborhood. She touched their heads and blessed them, always smiling and shedding a tear or two. But she was a nervous type, vibrating like a hummingbird, and the anticipation of visiting the school had resulted in a fever. Sister Beatriz was terribly disappointed. Sister Aurelia had patted her hand, and packed the black case with a sense of duty, if not purpose.
Had Sister Beatriz been there, someone would have known. Because now, at the rumble of the engine and the scream of metal grinding against metal, Sister Aurelia understood the train was leaving, and, after hastening to arrange herself, found that she could not open the outhouse door.
Was it a prank? The idea flashed wildly through her mind. But it was a loose hinge, a bent latch, and an ill-placed groove that had conspired to trap her inside. She struggled with the latch, shouted, banged her fist against the tin. The sound from the train grew louder and then all at once fainter. She
paused a second, glanced quickly around, then kicked against the bottom of the door where some light showed through. The door swung open with a clang. But it was too late. The tracks lay quiet, disappearing into the hazy distance. The train was gone and she was alone.
A cold sweat trickled down her back.
There was no one at the station. Not inside --she looked again-- nor in the vicinity. She scanned the flat plains in all directions and saw only the empty desert. The only sound was the wind.
She sat on the edge of the platform under the tiled eaves to gather her wits. An attendant might show up, but she knew it could be days, even a week, before another train passed by. The first thing would be to look for water.
Thinking she had seen a pump she went back around to the outhouse. There was indeed a water pump and she tried the handle. It creaked with rust and after several pulls emitted a dry gurgling sound, and then miraculously issued a thin stream of reddish water that cleared after several more arduous minutes. She thanked God and spent a long time drinking from her cupped hand.
Presently she straightened, dabbed at her face with her sleeves and looked around again. A trace of road led away to the east and toward what appeared to be a range of low and distant mountains. She reasoned she could walk a few miles --there was nothing to carry water in-- and then return if no help was to be found. She would at least have water and shelter for the night. Anyway that road had to lead somewhere.
She drank again, removed her wimple and veil, and wet the cloth. Replacing it on her head she took a deep breath and began walking. She grew thirsty again almost immediately. The enormous sun burned just behind her and cut a short shadow in her path.
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