Hex - Rebecca Dinerstein Knight Page 0,39

owns it. She isn’t pretending anything, and she does—she has—exactly what she wants. She actually . . . shines.”

“That’s true, shining is her goal.”

“I don’t know why she puts up with you, you’re so not shiny.”

“Why did you put up with me?”

“I’d be her sidekick, but she finds my presence preposterous.”

“Your presence is preposterous.”

A chamber off the cloister’s main courtyard described itself as a place to discuss, consider, and observe the Rule of Saint Benedict, a code of monastic behavior that taught monks how to live right. We walked past it as if we could never ever live right. I wanted to turn back and sit there as much as I wanted you. I looked at Tom and filled up with jealous exhaustion. Preposterous or not, he had landed in the promised land. He kept walking straight past the monks’ educational courtyard. Maybe Tom, being the one who holds your hand, doesn’t need any instruction. His life cannot be improved.

The copper alloy Refectory Bell on the next wall had been inscribed:

TINNIO PRANSVRIS CENATVRIS BIBITVRIS

“I RING FOR BREAKFAST, DRINKS, AND DINNER”

I looked at the bell thinking No one would answer me, and Tom looked at the bell thinking I should get myself a bell. In the accompanying Glossarium illustration two long-haired and timeless men-women wearing patterned gowns rang bells at each other, grinning as if to say Breakfast. Tom and I wanted to say something to each other about the innumerable and miserable coffee mornings we’d spent together fudging but nothing came and we entered the shadow of an enormous camel.

The camel hung opposite a dragon in a vaulted hall. The dragon, brave and cartoonish enough to be a Picasso, had been frescoed around 1200 for the “aesthetic delight” of a Benedictine monastery. We turned a corner into a more austere room where one limestone fragment hung high on a wall, far overhead, with a sign at eye level that read only:

Angel.

Tom walked from hall to hall as if he’d grown up here in a back bedchamber. He led me directly to a statue of Christ Child with an Apple whose butt had been painted gum pink. Above the child, the warrior-archangel Michael was treading on a fleshy dragon. The description called the dragon “a symbol of the devil” and for a moment I faltered, full of my own solitude and regret, mourning the hideous sacrifice of Rachel Simons, affiliating myself with the devil. Then I tried to affiliate myself with the cartoon, I tried to christen myself Pablo, I tried to walk backwards into the Benedictine schoolroom. Tom walked ahead into his own destination, the tapestry room, which he’d apparently saved for last. He turned over his shoulder to see if I would follow. I followed, Joan, I understand. He is not losing his power, you are not losing your mind. I am not losing you.

The Unicorn in Captivity towered over Tom, plainly and unmistakably his master. I left him alone and looked at the hanging to his right: The Unicorn Is Found. All about the unicorn’s tail scrambled dogs and rabbits. Men assembled at the top of the tapestry like a jury. I read the men’s faces from left to right, there were twelve of them, and all of them were Tom. They wore ringlets and fine garments, their faces had all been cut from the same moon-colored marble, their features smooth and dignified, their limbs long, their pride immeasurable. The unicorn dips its horn into a pool of water falling from a lion’s mouth, the same kind of fountain that made such a good noise with its water, earlier, in a cloister that now felt imaginary.

“You could be a real adult if you wanted to be,” I said, because other people’s self-loathing is the only thing that makes me confident. “You are capable.” He lifted his phone and took a couple pictures of the walls. I wanted him to call me your only partner. I wanted him to resign.

“I suppose,” he said, vague and bored. I’d extended the conversation past his interest and now my speaking was disturbing his unicorn time. I walked away from Tom and down a flight of stairs.

Saint Fiacre, of alabaster, stood on a pedestal, his eyes closed. “Holding a shovel in one hand, Saint Fiacre is presented as the patron saint of gardeners,” I read first, then, “particularly renowned for curing hemorrhoids.” I pictured the pink butt of the Christ Child. Fiacre, in his comparative solemnity, was a colorless yellow. His head fell