Plainsong

But I sit here,

as the shadows grow longer, in the South Library, at one of the desks by the high windows overlooking the ochre grounds and the windmills in the distance and the hills beyond them, under the sky growing darker with evening, in the room growing darker with evening, in the odor of wax and dust and paper-depths; the floorboards are breathing beneath my bare feet as if alive, papers are spread out before me, empty, their pale faces growing darker with evening, my pen hovers above them like a waiting rain cloud; the light grows darker with evening, the shadows grow longer, I hear sounds from outside the library, rustling in the hallway,

and you are not here,

as my eyes search the ochre grounds outside the academy. I want to talk to you, about the windmills in the distance and the hills beyond them, about the dark comet within ourselves, about the Miracle of the Mantis and the Miracle of the Vulture, about the Plateau of Leng and the scholars who dwell and study there, about the footsteps outside the South Library, about the high windows, about the odor of wax and about the paper-depths, about the light growing darker with evening,

but you are not here,

and I miss you terribly, miss you as I miss you every time I walk the long hallways towards the North Library, climb the vertiginous stairways up to the Grand Observatory, or take the steps down to the Stomaching Hall. There are other rooms in the academy where I miss you even more, but I shall not name them here.

I miss you when I walk among them, that is: among the other members of our hallowed covenant whom I should not call 'them' as if they were a group distinct of me - but that is what I sometimes feel to be the case. As we walk together through the corridors, our soles bare on the stone floors, I sometimes feel their eyes pierce out from the long robes and seize me differently, as if I were not walking among them a peer, and in those moments I am indeed not, but maybe just because of their eyes.

And it is true that our eyes were made to seize each other differently, such as when Brother Orlando came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the corridor towards the North Library and led his hand to his mouth and, in a single, immaculate, endlessly premeditated gesture, pulled off the gums from his teeth, upper and lower row, and let the rosy gingiva dangle from his mouth like a red carpet extending before the pale columns of his incisors; and we all recognized the Miracle of the Carp as it glowed before us, and we were astonished, and stood for seconds in the pure light of the power and the glory. Of course, in such moments, our eyes seize our fellow member differently, seized as they are, in turn, by the exmeditated miracle blindingly coming into the visible world.

For that is still the order of our hallowed covenant: day and night, we wait until a miracle accomplishes itself through one of our peers, and as we wait, we meditate upon a miracle ourselves so that we should become, in the end, the vessel. And as the miracle graces those who witness it almost as beautifully as it graces those through whom it accomplishes itself, we watch each other carefully, lest we miss a miracle. And all the while we ponder the miracle growing within ourselves, even though none of us know when it will come to full fruition, and most of us do not even know what sort of miracle they are exmeditating, so our eyes are fixed as much on our peers as they plunge the invisible depths of the faith within ourselves.

For what sorrow imposes a miracle missed! Almost as when Brother Rosario walked down the steps to the Stomaching Hall, where the rest of us sat already, maybe having forgotten about Brother Rosario. But Brother Rosario came down the wide steps, slowly, towards us, as we devoured the stale bread and the roast doves in front of us, and from under his fingernails and his toenails protruded long- red-hot needles he had pushed in there in some unseen moment, and although we all recognized the Miracle of the Armadillo, and were illuminated by its power and its glory, we felt the pang of having missed the first steps of its execution.

Thus, it is true that our eyes are made to perceive each other in our differences as much as in our sameness, and it is true that we are required to never let the eye tire of observing each other as we observe our innermost selves, yet I feel sometimes that the eyes of my peers perceive me differently in another sense still.

Such as when we walked, in the early dark hours of today's morning, from the Stomaching Hall towards the North Library, I thought I heard Brother Ariosto and Sister Angelica whisper from the depths of their robes, whisper that the Unknowable Pontiff had, during their Inaudible Sermon, mentioned me by name and character, and I felt their eyes hot on me. I feel they perceive me differently insofar as they fear me (as I fear them), or maybe despise me (as I despise them), because they know I miss you, and because they surmise (I surmise) that this might lead me to another, even deeper miracle, inaccessible to even those among them that have already been seized by some of the very deep ones. Even Sister Valentina, for example, who has exmeditated the Miracle of the Serpent all while Brother Tommaso and Brother Ludovico screamed out that it was impossible, screamed almost louder than Sister Valentina; even she suspects me, I suspect, of having found some hidden shortcut into a deeper well of grace.

Or maybe they suspected me even earlier, suspected us, that is, when I was not yet able to miss you because you were there; maybe even then, they saw or thought to see, in the constellation of your shape and mine, the first sketch of a coming miracle even more unknowable to them than any other.

Whether this could even be true is not the question that I ponder, not the answer that I run after, when I study, that is: when I sit at the desks in the South Library, by the high windows overlooking the ochre fields and the windmills in the distance and the hills beyond them, not writing anything in this language that the Monastery taught me in order to impose its limits, its tourniquets and cilices on me.

No, what I meditate upon, here, is whether I should exmeditate another, different miracle that has nothing to do with either you or with them, one that I might be already exmeditating right now, which sibilates in my veins and nerves already, as I speak and as I miss you, and which shall explode out of me in some unexpectable moment, making me unreachably grotesque before them, their eyes peering at me in dumb amazement and horror and envy, their bodies, mutilated manifold by lesser miracles, trembling before the power and the glory; their fears surpassed — or whether I should break the glass of the high windows before me and jump down to the ochre fields, run to the windmills and to the hills beyond them, and become some strange autoharuspex as the farmers beat me to death on a brown road and I read the coming times, line by line, from my spilled entrails.

I can hear them gather now in front of the doors of the South Library, in the hallway. I can hear their long robes rustling, I can hear them whisper in the darkness. It is not the floorboards that are breathing, but my peers beneath them, assembled somberly in the other rooms and other spaces of this our crumbling scholomance, trying to draw the breath that is my own.

And when they finally rush in, who is to say it is not you and I who turn from the desk, from the high windows, and utter the eternal words: