Free A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Page B

overcome by temptation, so that, on Palm Sunday, with only six days of starvation remaining until the end of Lent, Prior Cheroki heard from Francis (or from the shriveled and sun-scorched residuum of Francis, wherein the soul remained somehow encysted) a few brief croaks which constituted what was probably the most succinct confession that Francis ever made or Cheroki ever heard:
    “Bless me, Father; I ate a lizard.”
    Prior Cheroki having for many years been confessor to fasting penitents, found that custom had, with him, as with a fabled gravedigger, given it all “a property of easiness,” so that he replied with perfect equanimity and not even a blink: “Was it an abstinence day, and was it artificially prepared?”
    Holy Week would have been less lonely than the earlier weeks of Lent, had the hermits not been, by then, past caring; for some of the Passiontide liturgy was carried outside the abbey walls to touch the penitents at their vigil sites; twice the Eucharist came forth, and on Maundy Thursday the abbot himself made the rounds, with Cheroki and thirteen monks, to perform the Mandatum at each hermitage. Abbot Arkos’ vestments were concealed under a cowl, and the lion almost managed to seem humble kitten as he knelt, and washed and kissed the feet of his fasting subjects with maximum economy of movement and a minimum of flourish and display, while the others chanted the antiphons.
    “Mandatum novum do vobis: ut diligatis invicem…” On Good Friday a Procession of the Cross brought out a veiled crucifix, stopping at each hermitage to unveil it gradually before the penitent, lifting the cloth inch by inch for the Adoration, while the monks chanted the Reproaches:
    “My people, what have I done to thee? or in what have I grieved thee? Answer…I exalted thee with virtuous power; and thou hangest me from the gibbet of a cross…”
    And then, Holy Saturday.
    The monks carried them in one at a time-famished and raving. Francis was thirty pounds lighter and several degrees weaker than he had been on Ash Wednesday. When they set him on his feet in his own cell, he staggered, and before he reached the bunk, he fell. The brothers hoisted him into it, bathed him, shaved him, and anointed his blistered skin, while Francis babbled deliriously about something in a burlap loincloth, addressing it at times as an angel and again as a saint, frequently invoking the name of Leibowitz and trying to apologize.
    His brethren, forbidden by the abbot to speak of the matter, merely exchanged significant glances or nodded mysteriously among themselves.
    Reports filtered to the abbot.
    “Bring him here,” he grunted at a recorder as soon as he heard that Francis could walk. His tone sent the recorder scurrying.
    “Do you deny saying these things?” Arkos growled.
    “I don’t remember saying them, m’Lord Abbot,” said the novice, eyeing the abbot’s ruler. “I may have been raving.”
    “Assuming that you were raving-would you say it again now?”
    “About the pilgrim being the Beatus? Oh, no, Magister meus!”
    “Then assert the contrary.”
    “I don’t think the pilgrim was the Beatus”
    “Why not just a straightforward He was not?”
    “Well, never having seen the Blessed Leibowitz personally, I wouldn’t-”
    “Enough!” the abbot ordered. “Too much! That’s all I want to see of you and hear of you for a long, long time! Out! But just one thing -DON’T expect to profess your vows with the others this year. You won’t be permitted.”
    For Francis it was like a blow in the stomach with the end of a log.

6
    As topic for conversation, the pilgrim remained forbidden subject matter in the abbey; but with respect to the relics and the fallout shelter the prohibition was, of necessity, gradually relaxed-except for their discoverer who remained under orders not to discuss them, and preferably to think of the matter as little as possible. Still, he could not avoid hearing things now and again, and he knew that