The architect

“A brothel, brother. You’re not supposed to know, I believe, and you’re too young, anyway…”

Having got the answer to my main question and trying to remember the unfamiliar word, I hurried back to the square, so that Edward wouldn’t notice my absence.

“What is a brothel?” I asked the Abbot first thing that evening.

After that, neither the prior nor I went to Graben again.

I was in my tenth or eleventh year when Jorge was called for some business to another town. When he was getting his things ready for a trip, he couldn’t get rid of me, as I was literally grabbed holding the flaps of his cassock, pleading to take me with him. Finally, Jorge gave up. He placed me in the cart, and the two of us set off for Chartres.

Chapter 2.

Chartres

The cart creaked and groaned with its wheels swaying as Jorge and I rode southwest on and on breathing in the scent of tired fields and dried cornstalks. Ice cold water, scooped up from a creek in the palms of your hands, opened by a ladle of prayer, with a throat full of road dust filled with silver ice. Father Jorge missed a right turn to the river several times, although, he said, he had once known every tree here. Hence, we had lost our way and stopped to take a rest beside a mountain stream.

“My eyes are not the same as before,” Jorge complained while scooping up water for the journey ahead.

Having strayed a little, we finally discovered the right road and dismounted beside the river for the second and last time.

Having set eyes on the Chartres Cathedral, I was blown away.

I hadn’t seen anything like it before. The cathedral appeared before my eyes like an arrow directing itself straight up to the sky, elegant, light, and at the same time, insanely high. The facade, decorated with sculptures, looked as if it had been squeezed by strong massive towers from two sides, covered with the finest lancet tents. Magnificent, noble and exquisitely beautiful, that’s the way it appeared to be, the true House of Lord.

“What is it?” I pulled at Jorge’s sleeve.

“It’s a beauty, it’s not for nothing that they talk so much about it,” the abbot narrowed his eyes, looking at the solemn building. “A terrible fire happened, only the under-croft with the facade remains of the old church. And those bits would have not survived, but for the Veil of the Virgin…”

“Is it housed here?”

“It is, Anselmo! That’s what saved the Lord’s House. It was rebuilt on donations. They say, the inhabitants delivered stones from the surrounding quarries…

For the first time ever I was not concerned about Jorge at all.

How impressive the cathedral was – it could just be seen as something completely immaterial, separated from this world, from people hardened in sin. All its space was striving upward so vigorously as if the cathedral was heartily sick of mortal life; that’s why it decided to give this life up for good, to be focused only in heaven.

Unfairly playing the second fiddle in my daily life for ages, quadrivium was embodied in this cathedral with its geometric and arithmetic bizarre configurations. It epitomized the divine order, and kept sacred secrets. The soul was going up into the sky, following eye motion. It was the universe, it was everything. It was the single line, which dominated over the entire world – the great and noble vertical.

It could scratch, injure, or run through me.

It struck me to the heart. From that very moment, I was convinced that I would never be a monk.

* * *

Oh, unattainable heaven, I desperately aspire to you whatever it takes.

Growing up on the earth, I join real life only in heaven. I look tragic acting on impulse. I seem to be a poet carried away by inspiration. I throw away the reality, which I hate and see – myself! – being the House of Lord, high and beautiful.

* * *

I came to the monastery quite obsessed with this cathedral.

Prior Ed was finally caught red handed during one of these evil moonless nights. I hunted him down in the Black Gardens sprinkling ashes on balls of wool and trampling the crucifixion with his feet. Suppressing fear and disgust, I tried to scare the blasphemer by using my already sufficiently low and roughened voice,

“Edward Kelly, are you calling the devil?”

He might have accepted these words at that very moment as the greeting of Satan. Whatever it was, while turning around and seeing me in the dark, his deathly white face was distorted by immeasurable fury and anger. Accepting his own defeat and most probable exposure, bearing in mind I had been close to Father Jorge, he reluctantly put the cross again on his neck, taking a few steps to meet me and uttering with a pretense of repentance,

“What shall I do to make us forget about this episode?”

His guilty slanting brown eyes were trying to avoid my glance – icy and arrogant. I had never felt so powerful before. Now I was in control with that cunning being. And there was only one thing I wanted.

“Bring me the one who can teach me how to build.”

* * *

“I have called a craftsman to restore the western part of the building,” Edward announced to Jorge when the joint prayers were over after twelve o’clock.

Both senior monks shifted their gaze at me.

“What’s up?” I pretended to be unaware.

“Get his chambers ready and provide him with a welcome treat!” the Abbot ordered and then added, suppressing a chuckle, “Don’t let him mess up sable with sinople!”

* * *

One side of the building was cluttered with pieces of wood and ladders. Walking back and forth around the monastery yard, I was vainly trying to casually run into the architect to take him to the chambers. However, he had already set himself to work, examining the wall and making some calculations, keeping away from everybody. It was then, I decided to wear him down.

“Sir! Your name is Mylo, isn’t it? Will you work with our house?” having my folded palms at the mouth, I loudly called out to the man who had climbed up the scaffolding and was carefully studying the walls from up there.”

“I will, brother, and who are you?” he looked down towards me.

“I am Anselm, a novice,” I said and grasping up more air, I lifted my head even higher and roared with all my might, “Why does the Cathedral in Chartres have such high arches?”

The man was surprised by this unusual question and decided to descend from the scaffolding and come towards me. There was his bundle with tools left on the ground. I glared at them, although I didn’t even know what to call them.

“Such arches arise due to the use of arc boutans, based on buttresses.”

“Butt… resses,” I repeated in a singing voice.

“I bet, its arches look lighter than yours. But their structure is much stronger.”

“How?”

“Blocks on the top are pressed against each other inside, but not down.”

Our conversation stopped before it started.

“I can’t get a thing, Mylo.”