In my boyhood, I was all legs like a lanky rod, skinny and black-haired, with transparent grey eyes and high cheekbones. I hadnt become a monk yet and visited Graben regularly to work with stone, which made my fingers scored, much to Jorges displeasure. Such a good copyist has been wasted! Had I known what the trip to Chartres would end up with, Id have never taken you with me! he once grumbled, but I could feel a clear hint of fatherly pride in his words. But the abbot was happy deep in mind that I would have the opportunity to apply my skills to the world, but not in the Abbey. He was still stubbornly delaying my tonsuring. I had been really upset about all that. However, I could feel the advantages of being free from making vows, helping Jean the Builder to make a house for another family of a third-rate merchant.
One April morning, a peasant girl, who was selling poultry in the market, where we delivered sheeps wool for sale, stepped out to meet me,
You havent been here for long. I was looking for you among the brethren in vain.
I asked then,
We are all dressed the same. How could you tell it was me?
You are the skinniest, the girl smiled, and the cutest ever.
Later, I went fishing with Jorge. I left the old man alone fishing, and proceeded to walk around the hill, where the river made a turn and there was a quiet place where, having risen on a round stone, I quickly threw off all my clothes, dumped them on the grass of the bank and gazed at my reflection on the watery surface.
I suddenly saw the second component of Chartres Cathedrals miracle which was as clear as a day. The first component was grandeur, and it had a purely metaphysical nature. The second ingredient of the architectural masterpiece was looking at me from the water.
Emaciation.
* * *
To live out this divine plan, the Chartres Cathedral is satiated with, in addition to zealous praying and constant spiritual perfecting, it would be necessary to strictly limit myself taking meals, punishing my body with severe asceticism for all its inherent sins. So I expressed myself on the back of my main treasure, a detailed drawing of a Burgundian architectural element, a pointed arch, left to me by Mylo, who had finally infected me to be anxious for an architectural path.
I was in a hurry to bring this idea to life.
In line with the Statutes, I could have a meal once a day in the afternoon in autumn and in winter, including dawn-to-dusk fasts. Morning meals were permanently excluded, and we should also abstain from eating on Wednesdays and Fridays, mindful of The Holy Passion.
That was too much.
The fast isnt a time limit, but a mode of existence, becoming my way of life blessing fast, the mystical universe, angelic dreamland, opening the unnaturally rolling out goggled eyes on a dried face under lurid eyelids; the fast that ennobles the appearance to be attractive to the opposite sex.
It takes a day to survive without food, and vision and hearing became sharper, the choirs singing and the prayer of the community rose straight to Lord; everything is forgiven, everything starts slowly to be absolved. On the second day, when saturation is rejected, it appears in your mind, and if it has settled inside you, you will never part from each other, no matter how much food you have and whatever kind of life you decide to have in the future.
It was little divine herald, the one who drew the line between the human world and the abode of highly spiritual beings. It isolates you forever, separates you from material nasty things. The true power of the spirit is in the constant mortification.
Сanvas is warmed up, my body is a parchment, my body is Your parchment. Have a look at the mesh that carries the blood, and where the heart is locked up in prison, in a cage made of ribs; try how solid they are and how they stick outward, almost piercing the skin. Beind made in the image and likeness of Yours, I will confess to You, O Lord, with my whole heart, unto the ages of ages, see how it drives the blood, like a scarlet apple in my chest, in a bone box; it drives the blood so that it knocks already at the top of the watchtower, it beats the alarm, it has already climbed to the bell tower and calls everyone for dinner, so how it hammers in temples.
I always liked to put my restless fingers somewhere, especially into my throat. Oh, of course, Brother Miguel said at night that even a venerable abbot could not be thinner than me he said so to make me feel happy. I didnt believe him, because he could be in collision with the prior, who, in turn, ganged together with Jorge, who demanded to stop turning the fast into a tool of narcissism, and he definitely consulted with the Bishop, who instructed Jorge to force me to eat in his heavenly letters. And, how should I know, Edward was also familiar with the village seller, and she called, she, yes, there you go!, she called me a fool, and later I poured some soup into a bowl, next to nothing!, hey, Ill kick out your shoulders!, hey, just have a look Nobody is more beautiful than me, the girl looked at me and darkened. She said, she had noticed, of course, but now I was really crazy. And I had already pushed the spoon into my mouth. And I was so annoyed, the heavenly hosts. She said that I was a fool. And I got up from the table. So far, I did it for the first time, somewhere in October; and the senior monks considered themselves guilty, and they all started to exchange glances. I carried on playing with Jorge, of course, who had tried to deceive me. I deceived him in return, inventing colourful dinners at Grabens construction sites.
I had almond milk at the Grabens construction sites filling with lighting, like a high transparent cathedral. While those ones, weak in spirit, silently chewed in the fratry, listening to the reading.
I took a hard decision to nullify my own life in the name of something really worthy. At least I knew exactly what I would l always like to be until a certain idea appeared. I decided to stop eating. On the way, I had to learn a lot of tricks for example, I used to run away from dinner under the excuse of some urgent work I had to do for Jean, hiding food in the sleeves, then giving it to beggars, and, at the worst, spit it out in a house at the back, at the lavatory where no one could notice, except Jorge, who was hugging me every time before going to sleep and frowning at such moments, What are you stinking of, Anselmo? Holy saints.
Sleep was gone as well as hunger. Getting up before the midnight mass, I was trying to overcome dizziness, pain in the creaking bones and aching joints, me being fiifteen years old, and at these moments I felt like a real man, a great martyr, a future genius. I felt no less than Jesus Christs son.
The market girl should have seen changes that had occurred in my appearance, gradually being carved out in the image and likeness of Thy Lord. When I came up to say hello to her, she put a handful of nuts into my hand, without uttering a word. Having allowed myself to eat two of them on the way to the mountain, I took out a tooth from my mouth that had rolled under my tongue. The fallen molar of a fifteen-year-old, look, my Lord, what a delicate ascetic is growing out of this rough log, from this body, being recently full up and filthy.
After Holy Communion, I managed to scratch my throat so that a piece of obley jumped out onto the rainy mud and clay, while I was convulsing with colic. Prior Edward this unexposed mystic worried that I had been melting away during the recent months, ordered the little Miguel to keep an eye on me; and now the monastery was gathering beside the crap-house to witness my shame, my skinny face bespattered with spittle, my holey fingernails and to top it all up, the undigested sacramental bread on a slush right under their feet.