Our Desert Fathers

Go to the Withered Man. Such were the words of the merciful bishop of Cairo who accepted all that I could then give. Finally I knew the illness of my long-suffering father had been an agent of the Lord. As he lay confined to his sick bed, thus had I been preserved from the necessities of the marriage bed. Yet even as he could summon neither the strength nor the sensibility to betroth his son, oh how did the tongues of the village women prattle over what should be done.

But the Lord who had held the door against those who would enter and sully the house allowed it open so that the winds of distant deserts might finally blow in. And thus my father’s death signaled the opening of this door no less so than the death of the Son rent the temple veil.

Burdened with the things of the world, burdened with the earth that stretched before me in all its fecundity, all its fertile depths, burdened with the flesh of animals and slaves, how else was the Lord to show me what I must renounce? Already the letters from my father’s sisters had come, as if also the voice of a demon had whispered forth upon my father’s ascension to heaven. Surely it is true, however, what they declared—a man may not manage the lands of his fathers without a wife and without sons—for the fertility of the earth is born of the fertility of man. The sweat of man’s brow was from the days of Adam set to mingle with the clay of the earth and to bring forth the life that he would incorporate into his body and so provide the vital fire necessary to induce issuances that would seed the womb with a heat that could overcome the cool sluggishness of the female form and cause her to bring forth the strong and hot flesh of men.

And I will not deny the heat of my body as I fell upon my knees before the bishop. If my words were rendered sensible it was only because of the Lord whose power flowed through me, for I could not be sure of anything that I said in my fevered state. It is this openness of heart that I believe convinced the bishop and settled him to provide for my relief.

In an instant it felt as if the weight of mountains had been lifted from my shoulders. The land and the flesh that moved upon it, slave and beast, was in the hands of the church. It seemed as if I breathed free air for the first time. So overwhelmed had I been with such a sense of relief that I barely discerned the bishop’s words. Then, with the mention of Scetis, my senses returned and hung upon that name. More than ready had I been to traverse the roads and highways afoot and to pass by and along with those so-called renouncers.

But the bishop turned aside from this idea quite abruptly. And I cannot say why. His voice resounded with absolute surety that I should go upriver. And it seemed so strange to me that one should go by water in order to find the desert. But the bishop remained firm and instructed it would be best that I depart at once. Here, however, I must admit that for the first time I paused. To go by boat—and to go so far—I had no funds for such a journey. I had returned to God everything but the robe draped over my shoulders and the sandals upon my feet.

But as if he sensed this, the bishop had placed his hand upon my shoulder and instructed me to go to the port and that everything would be provided. He could not have failed, however, to have sensed my continued hesitation. My heart, which before had seemed so open, so transparent, seemed then as cold black stone. The bishop’s face remained, however, as open as it had ever been, and it seemed as if the light of the chamber arose no less from his soul than entered through the windows. “Go beyond the world,” he repeated, “and find the Withered One.” And drawing me up he bestowed upon me the kiss of peace.

The boat, I had been told, had been set to return and that the monks aboard would provide all that I needed. I carried a scrap of papyrus on which the bishop marked instructions. And it was these instructions, I am sure, that assuaged the vessel’s captain as to the nature of the beardless youth he would carry upriver.

Seated in the hull, I watched those along the shore who watched us. Three other monks besides the captain manned the ores until the sail could be deployed. Slowly, over the course of the day, the buildings thinned until little stood along the sides of the river but mud huts, and then even those disappeared, leaving only green cultivation. Occasionally, small boys could be witnessed along the banks, tugging at a shaduf in order that the irrigation trenches might be fed.

The monks spent their time in silence. And I felt it best to emulate them. I assured myself that training in silence would be necessary for the days to come.

But since I had never been on a journey such as this, I had no knowledge of how many days it would take. And I found myself suspecting, quite falsely, that we had arrived at our destination when next we found harbor. But it had been only another city. And I found myself wondering just how many cities filled the world and how many we would have to pass through in order to pass through them all.

As many people as there were, however, we kept to ourselves and took time only as necessary to restock our meager provisions. The crowds of the cities and towns seemed as nothing to us. They were the world, and we were set to pass beyond the world. As if they sensed this, none spoke to us, and the offerings that were made were made in silence. I noticed once that a man scooped the very sand of a monk’s footprint into his hands so that any residual holiness might be sprinkled over the field. To this, the monk did not react in the least. And I felt my chest swell with the thought that a man might achieve such holiness as his mere footprint could change the world and that he could care not the least about it.

Some days later we had departed Hermopolis, and it was here that routine met its first change. Another beardless youth joined our voyage. His hair had been long and curled beneath the cloak he drew over his head to guard against the sun. He smiled as he settled beside me in the hull, and it was plain to see how different was the youthful energy that radiated from his countenance than that of the elder monks.

“So,” he said, still smiling, “you too go south to be given over to chastity and fasting.”

“I go,” I said, becoming acutely aware of speaking only for the first time in so many days, “to follow the Lord.”

The youth continued to smile. And the energy of that smile seemed to compete with the strength of the noonday sun. Its infectiousness heated my face.

“I am called Amon,” he said, still smiling.

That name tumbled through my mind. I shook my head.

“Ah,” he said. “You wonder certain things.”

I shook my head in embarrassment and tried to look away. His words, however, drew my gaze again. And still smiling, he said, “If God did see fit that my parents should bestow upon me the name of a dead god…” he shrugged. “What else might I do?”

I made the only reply that I might and stated that I could not lay claim to a knowledge of God’s wishes in the matter.

To this, he laughed. “What greater humbling to former deities could there be?” he said. “What once was the name of a god, now is the name of a mere man.” He extended his arms as if he were making an offering. “Do we,” he said, “not look around us and see nothing but the corpses of gods? Even now, do we not ride upon mere water, when once it had been the emissions of Atum himself that flowed bringing life? But has God not broken the backs of the monsters and from their blood fed the world?”

He continued to smile, but then turned away, looking out over the water and at the desert far in the distance. I must confess such talk discomfited me, although I could not say why. As such, I found myself trying to sleep, leaving our new passenger to continue looking at the distant desert. Suddenly, the unknown number of days that lay ahead seemed far more of an issue.

But to my relief he did not speak of such things further. And once again silence settled upon our small vessel as what I took to be desert winds lifted our sails and carried us onward.

Soon they had carried us beyond even Chenoboscion and Pbow. And I felt we might perhaps find ourselves sailing into the heart of Nubia. However, one evening I woke to find the boat at anchor against the reeds along the bank. The setting sun turned red the dunes that rose high along one edge of the water. “Come,” one of the monks said. Already, Amon and another monk stood upon the sands. I rose. And it took a moment for me to realize that I needed not gather or unload anything. My own self was all that I had to move as I climbed over the edge of the boat and waded among the reeds and made my way toward the bare dunes.

We climbed the shifting sands until the boat seemed quite small below. Looking out from atop the dune, nothing but sand and rock stretched before us, and I felt an exhilaration as never before had I experienced. I had tasted dry air and sand, heard the rushing silence of windswept land, but this was truly something beyond any of that. And I knew why I had been sent here. This was not merely the desert. This was the gateway to the very edges of the world.

As we came to the bottom of the dune, the horizon yawned before us. We were tiny specks upon the landscape. But as the sun set, infinite shadows stretched behind us. Ahead, the horizon narrowed to a thin, red line the color of Christ’s blood. That blood washed us until darkness came. We wrapped ourselves as best we might against the chill, but there was little that could be done. The few drops of water the elder monks allowed from the skin we carried barely seemed enough to dampen the hardened bread that we chewed.

It must have been that the heavens guided our way along the silvery, nighttime landscape illuminated by the lesser of God’s lights. And the stars seemed to both follow us and retreat from us. The heavens, it appeared, wheeled overhead, the wheels turning within the wheels of the wheels, and I was overcome.

When I woke, it seemed as if I lacked even the energy to open my eyes. Water touched my lips. And I realized that a cloth had been laid across my eyes. I lay on my back, against rock. Again a water droplet struck my lips. I drew away the cloth, but many moments passed before I could see. Daylight filtered through a cave opening. Overhead hung a small clay vessel, and a droplet fell from it and struck my cheek. I tried to swallow, but my throat was too raw and too dry.

Sitting up, the occasional droplets of water struck my hair and trickled into my scalp. I reached for the vessel, but it was small and by then contained barely a sip. I looked toward the opening of the cave, and standing, I tried to make my way toward the light.

At first, there seemed nothing but desert. But then I discerned human figures amid the rocks and sand. And I made my way toward them. Immediately upon stepping from the cave, the sun beat upon me as if it were raining hammer blows.

The men, clad only about their loins, had dug a twisted hole into the earth. And one of the men had disappeared into it as if he had been swallowed. Sunlight did not reach into the hole. And so the man’s thin and wrinkled arms extended from the shadows, and another took the moistened fabric from his fingers and wrung it so that the droplets would collect in a wide-mouthed clay jar. The droplets twinkled in the sunlight, and I moved toward the vessel blindly, like an animal, and surely would have snatched it up had a pair of hands not gripped my shoulders.

“Come,” a voice said. One of the monks guided me along the sands.

And he caused me to sit in the shade of a rock.

“Take this,” he said. And he pressed a sponge to my lips, and I tasted vinegar.

“Do you seek God?” the monk asked.

My lips moved against the sponge, but my mouth could produce no answer.

“Do you seek God?” he repeated.

I nodded.

“Do you fear the devil?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Do not,” he said. And he withdrew the sponge. “The demon we play unto ourselves. It is a mere shadow upon the walls of our mind rendered by the fires of our will.” He placed the sponge into a bowl. “Only with the extinguishing of our own perverse will do we allow ourselves to be filled by the will of God.”

“I want…” I said, “to serve God.”

The monk nodded. He breathed steadily as he sat quietly for some time. “The body is the form,” he said. His effort to speak seemed great. “The form shapes the soul just as the mold shapes the gold that is poured into it.” He raised is eyes to peer at me. “Do you understand?”

I shook my head.

“And the lord made Adam from the dust of the ground,” he said, in a near whisper. “The clay of the body must be fired by the flame of heaven from the outside and not by the heat of the internal passions.”

The monks returned carrying the clay jar and set it in the shade. After which they disappeared.

“Desire,” the monk said.

I looked away from the water vessel.

“Adam’s first sin,” the monk said, “do you know it?”

I answered that he had lain carnally with woman.

“But before the woman,” the monk said.

I shook my head. I did not understand.

“Gluttony,” the monk said. “Adam consumed more than he needed. The heats of these consumptions render moistures in the depths of the bowels, moistures which settle into the lower parts.”

I returned my gaze to the water vessel.

“Come,” he said, and slowly rose. “A beardless youth should not allow himself to tempt.”

I looked at the monk, but I did not understand.

“As Nehemiah hath written,” the monk wheezed, “and the people went forth and made for each himself his own booth.”

I tried to follow him. And the sun beat down upon my head, and my head seemed as if it would burst.

“Here.” The monk pointed amid the rocks and sand. “Make your booth.”

But I did not understand.

“And the lord spoke unto Adam saying—and in the dust shalt thou till,” he said.

I fell upon my knees in the sand, and I pressed my hands into it.

“Work,” the monk said, “teaches the body to form the soul.”

I looked back, but he had gone. Yet I continued to dig into the sand until the hole which I had opened in the earth swallowed me.

I woke to the feel of the sponge against my lips and the taste of vinegar upon my tongue.

“Once,” a voice said, “the Lord did command that men be sorted by how they drink.”

I seemed to recognize the voice. And as I opened my eyes, I momentarily believed I saw the form of a beardless youth move across the sands.

“Prepare for the night,” an older voice said. He spoke from behind a rock, so his voice came as if it were the wind. “Stay attentive to the moistures,” he demanded.

I could only shake my head.

And as if he could see this, he decried the moistures of the night. “Many men,” he said, “stand dry in the fullness of the day. Yet what are they but reduced to droplets in the darkness?”

Silence followed. I did not look to see if he had gone.

I realized that it had not been my vision but the evening hour that had caused the dimness. Already, the chill came, and I tried to wrap myself against it. The taste of vinegar yet lingered at the back of my throat as my head rested against the cooling sands.

I do not know if the cry woke me, but it remained nonetheless. Growls came from the darkness. I huddled into my hole. Some of the sand had shifted down atop me. Perhaps they had not been carrion eaters, and thus covered over, maybe they thought I had already been dead. And I must confess that I could not know if I had been. But if I were a mere carcass, my soul yet refused to rise up, and I was a mere shade.

But, “Rise,” a voice said. And I opened my eyes upon painful daylight.

“Go down,” the voice said. “Read the signpost. Witness the boundary.”

But I could not move.

After some unknown time, I felt hands move over my arms and shoulders. I walked feebly, born by whom I could not broach the energy to discover. Then came the feeling of cool stone beneath my feet. And then I felt it against my knees.

Then I opened my eyes. At first, my vision remained unfocused. Even still, I could detect the features of a face, and I tried to bring myself to focus on it. What greeted me was a vision of dry bones and leather. And yet what occupied me most was the three round loaves stacked in the corner of the cell. So dry were they that they crumbled at a touch. And I fell face first into the cell floor as if to pray before the withered figure.

Once again, the taste of vinegar roused me. And I looked up into Amon’s face. My lips must have moved, but no sound passed them, I am sure. Even so, he seemed to know my need and brought to my lips a small dish of water. Choking, I yet tried to swallow.

“A monk may be forgiven lapses,” he said as he withdrew the dish, and I lay back my head on his lap.

Then, from somewhere, a harsh voice resounded. “Make strangers of yourselves,” it commanded.

Amon seemed to smile once again, and when he did his lips cracked. But no blood issued forth.

“Do you,” he said, “know that which you have seen?”

I could not reply. Nor could I know if I had been meant to.

“The frontier,” he said, “lies ahead, undifferentiated and invisible. And it requires markers of its boundaries. And you have seen a signpost. This is what man makes of himself—a signpost along the most brutal of boundaries.”

The harsh voice resounded. “Make strangers of yourselves.”

Amon continued to smile. “Rise,” he said. And as if ordered by the voice of God, I found myself raised. Amon stood. He disappeared into the sun.

I looked down. A bowl sat on the rock, barely anything remaining within, yet I lowered my face and rested it in the bowl and remembered nothing.

The chill woke me. A whisper emerged from the dark. “The pagan philosophers are wrong about the stars,” it said. I recognized Amon’s voice. “You know why you could not go to Scetis,” he said. And I felt a hand upon my shoulder. “Rise.”

I stumbled after him along the rock and sand. The stars shone painfully. On hands and knees, I followed his footsteps up a dune and collapsed there atop it as he stood looking out upon the plain. The moon illuminated his face. He had shaved his head. And he stood caked in dust so that there seemed no separation between him and the earth. “Do you want to return?” he asked. “Then return to the settled lands,” he said. But he did not speak with any note of contempt. “Let yourself be conscripted into marriage. Fall upon the flesh of women and burn with the desire that draws you toward the settled lands and produces those settled lands which are the world. Fasten your mouth upon their flesh and sink into their moistures until the pleasures of their bodies drive you mad and you are left as a husk, a dried pod from which all seed has been extracted and fit for nothing but to be crushed beneath the rolling flesh of their orgies.”

He looked down upon a gathering darkness formed from dust and wind in the plain.

“But as for me and my temple,” he said, “we will serve the Lord.” And he stumbled down the height of the windswept dune and made his way onto the stormy plain as a darkness ate at the stars, and a roar split the sky, and a black mist sprayed from the firmament. The sand and the wind stung my face as I tried to watch him be carried up amid great red tongues of fire that bloomed into flaming whirlwinds.

And as I tried to shield my face from the stinging sands, engulfed in the darkness of my own blindness, I fell backwards.

When I woke, I stared upward at the sky. The warm sand covered me and shielded my body from a sun seemingly bent on my punishment.

All around me the dust of the earth had shifted and rendered the landscape unrecognizable. I looked, but the Withered Man had been swept away or perhaps buried.

If the other monks have remained, then they have kept to their booths, determined to be strangers. So this is my only means by which to confess. Now I have tried to leave nothing unsaid. How else might I prove my readiness and my transparency of heart?

Raise me up, O Lord, from wet dreams. The world needs signposts to mark the boundary of the present age. Allow me to be your signpost.