02.01 — The Apophthegms of Saint Alejo (Conclusion)

The trouble with writing a sensible sentence is that afterward someone may ask you to live by it.

Alejo had not foreseen that.

For a few weeks he slept better.

Then he began to wonder whether he was sleeping too well.

Whether that peace might be indifference.

Whether leaving a question unanswered might be an elegant way of running away.

Whether the devil, seeing that he could no longer wake him, had decided to let him sleep.

He was resourceful.

You had to give him that.

The priest listened to the explanation while looking for some keys.

—Now you’re worried about not being worried.

Alejo wanted to clarify.

The priest found the keys.

—Don’t improve it.

He did not write that one down.

Perhaps that is why I remember it.

There was a woman who cleaned the seminary corridor.

Alejo knew her shoes before he knew her name.

He would hear them approaching on the other side of the door when he had already spent an hour trying to work out what God wanted of his life.

She wanted the chairs lifted.

She said so every morning.

No one needed to discern that.

Once Alejo came out of his room with the notebook open.

He had written something about humility.

A rather good sentence.

I do not remember it, but it must have been rather good, because he came out looking for someone who might listen to it.

The woman was kneeling beside a bucket.

One wheel of the trolley had jammed.

—Would you help me?

Alejo put the notebook on a chair.

A thread was tangled around the wheel.

He crouched down.

Pulled at it.

It would not come out.

The woman gave him some scissors.

It was a brief operation.

With no consequences for the history of Christianity.

When he finished, his knees were wet.

—Thank you, Father.

—I’m not a priest yet.

—Well, thank you all the same.

And she went on cleaning.

Alejo stood in the corridor for a few seconds.

The sentence about humility was waiting for him on the chair.

Now he felt a little ashamed to read it.

That happened to him often.

Life managed to answer him before he had finished asking the question.

And it almost never respected his terms.

He asked about suffering.

Someone needed an aspirin.

He asked about hospitality.

Someone had to open the door.

He asked about poverty.

A woman asked him not to step where she had just cleaned.

They were not sufficient answers.

Alejo knew that.

But they were beginning to occupy a place he had once reserved exclusively for sufficient answers.

One afternoon he found the old monk eating a pear.

He told him about the trolley.

Then about his suspicion that humility might consist in being available for what we had not chosen.

The monk went on eating.

—Perhaps.

Alejo was expecting more.

—Just perhaps?

The old man looked at the pear.

—Would you like the other half?

There it was again.

In our family, accepting half a pear could be harder than renouncing an inheritance.

Renunciation had spectators.

Even when no one was there, you could imagine them.

An emperor.

A saint.

Our mother.

Half a pear did not.

Half a pear meant receiving something because someone else had thought of you.

And then eating it.

Without turning it into proof of anything.

Alejo accepted it.

He told me about it years later with a solemnity that made me laugh.

—And was it good?

He looked at me.

For a moment I thought he was going to get angry.

—Yes.

That was all.

I do not know why I remember it better than many important things he told me.

It was then that he began having trouble with Saint Alejo.

Until that point the saint had been admirably cooperative.

He did not protest when my brother attributed a sentence to him.

He did not correct his interpretations.

He did not ask him to stop imitating him.

But the more Alejo thought about him, the harder it became to keep him under the stairs.

There was a house around him.

People coming in.

People going out.

Someone sweeping.

Someone who had to bring him food.

That man had abandoned his name.

The others still had work to do.

Alejo stared at a devotional picture.

The stairs were very clean.

That began to bother him.

—Someone cleaned them —he told me.

—I suppose so.

—They never appear.

I did not know what to say.

I too had spent years looking at that image without wondering who picked up the plate.

He did not lose his devotion.

He began to notice people.

It was a small change.

An uncomfortable one.

In the lives of the saints he now found doors that someone had opened from inside.

Clothes that someone had washed.

Animals that someone had fed while the protagonist was having a vision.

Holiness kept its mystery.

But it had expenses.

And there were people who paid them without making it into the altarpiece.

One night he wrote:

A brother wished to withdraw from the world.

Before leaving, he asked who would wash his cup.

He did not add an answer.

For the first time, he felt the apophthegm could end there.

When I saw him again in Rome, he still carried the notebook.

He took it out during the meal.

I thought he was going to read me something.

He looked for a page.

Then another.

He stopped.

—What?

—Nothing.

He closed the notebook.

That unsettled me more than any of his explanations.

We had learned to recognize Alejo by the sentence he was about to say.

The way he raised a finger.

Waited a few seconds.

Generously gave you the chance to reach, all by yourself, the conclusion he already had ready.

Now he was sitting opposite me.

Eating.

There was a stain of sauce beside his plate.

—You’re getting strange —I told him.

He laughed.

Then he asked how I was.

I told him.

The first answer was the usual one.

Fine.

Working.

A few things going on.

Alejo waited.

I had to tell him something more.

I do not remember how long we talked.

I remember that it grew dark.

That they brought the bill.

That my brother did not try to find a secret meaning in what I was telling him.

Once he opened his mouth.

He was about to say something.

He stopped.

—I don’t know —he said.

I looked at him.

I had never heard those words so alone in his mouth.

They always came with something else.

I don’t know, but.

I don’t know whether.

I don’t know to what extent.

Now there was nothing behind them.

I felt a relief that embarrassed me a little.

My brother still wanted to help me.

Only that night he did not need to be right in order to stay.

Later we walked toward the Aventine.

Alejo thought he recognized the beggar.

He was sitting against a wall, a bag between his feet.

He might have been the same man.

I had not seen him before.

My brother stopped.

I saw his face begin to work.

The resemblance.

The coincidence.

The return.

Everything we Comnenos know how to build on an encounter before finding out whether the other person wants to talk.

Then he went over to him.

He did not ask his name.

He did not ask whether he remembered seeing him.

—Have you eaten?

The man looked up.

—Yes.

Alejo nodded.

That seemed to be the end of it.

—But I could do with a coffee —the man added.

We went to get it.

Later, in the purple notebook, I found an almost empty page.

There was a sentence crossed out.

So thoroughly crossed out that I could not read it.

Below it, in Alejo’s small handwriting:

Coffee.

Two sugars.

Nothing else.

For a moment I thought a page was missing.

Then I remembered the man holding the cup in both hands.

My brother looking for somewhere to sit.

The bag that had to be moved a little to make room for him.

I do not know what they talked about.

I was standing.

I was still waiting for a miracle.