Temptations, a novel.

"A refreshing, almost curious study of one very modern man's investigation of the spiritual life."
--Los Angeles Times Book Review

Ballantine Books, 1993

ISBN 0-345-38642-6

Excerpt 

I have seen men rise to anger, but Columban's ascent was all the more terrifying because of both its speed and what then issued from his lips. He was consumed with anger at me for what I had said, and somehow this passion was magnified a hundred times over by what I had inadvertently forced him to relive.

"Where are levels of this game, like any other. As in art, writing, music. There are those who are hacks. There are emotional cripples all over the world and we have our share—fewer, let me add, Mr. Hotshot Reporter, than you'll find in most other walks of life. Middling writers, middling monks; yes, you could fit in just fine here.

"You want to paint by numbers? Or do you want to be Van Gogh? Just remember he hacked off his ear in one frenzied moment of creativity. Pulp fiction or Dostoevsky? Muzak or madman Mozart? You cheater! You pathetic Goddamn cheater!"

The tears flooding his eyes could never have been mistaken for a gesture of sympathy or concern. They were the outpouring of fury now beyond his control.

Turmoil, pain, struggle, conflict—that's what produces great literature. And great monks. And you, you pip-squeak, you want to find Christ in peace? The Rod McKuen of the Trappists. 'Listen to the warm. Listen to the heartbeat of God..' Oh, God, you'd sell millions! They'd love it: the new, no-pun religion. You're just right for your generation out there working out on their exercise machines, with their headphones on; Maybe that's exactly what you came in here to find. It'll sell like hotcakes. Oh, Joseph, another in that proud lineage of your kind of writer: lose a husband, get cancer—live the pain and take notes while you're still bleeding. Helicopter in and helicopter out. Don't stay long enough to really know or understand anything. Once over lightly, use some strong verbs and move on. Better story, different brand of pain down the road.

"All this pious drivel we see coming out between book covers—priests and pastors and 'reverends' and nuns who think they are people of faith, and all they amount to are crummy, second-rate writers. Not even 'middling,' mind you. And those alleged monks over at Wakefield Abbey, wailing for Jesus, selling those pathetic albums, sounding like a poor imitation of—what's his name?—yes, Barry Manilow. That's the level you want, Joseph. Drip-dry, low maintenance religion! Go down the road to those Benedictine nuns at Mater Dei. Old-fashioned—up at two A.M. for the night office; we've already slipped to three, and some monasteries aren't up before six! Those grand ladies still do the office in Latin and maintain a strict cloister that makes this place look like a college campus. Smiling faces, every one. But take a trip through their ovaries, up and down their fallopian tubes, into their uteruses. Ravaged! A gynecologist could spend full time over there, for Christ's sake. Why, little Joseph?" He leaned still farther over the table.

"Because they care!

Travel through the neurological passages of the monks of New Citeaux; feel the short circuits, the overload, the blowing of fuses. Why? Because they care. They care enough about God to offer themselves up, burnt offerings. Go dry out with the alcoholic monks who've been boozing on that altar wine for years, stealing and sinning just to get some relief. Go ahead, if you have the guts; which you don't."

I reached out to touch his hand, but he pushed me away. I began to mutter some apology.

"You, you, Joseph," he breathed. I thought—I thought you were different, an exception in a generation whose -moral compasses are shot. But you're not willing to be an adventurer, a discoverer, a pilgrim. You want a guided tour, all-inclusive fare, baggage handling and tips included. You are afraid to get out of the tour bus, Joseph; afraid you might get lost, somebody might touch you. A reporter! Read back over those books of yours—as I have in recent weeks—and you'll find you were nothing but a poseur, nothing but another disingenuous poseur.

"Out there"—his fingers stabbed at the air in the direction of the window—"is a world out of breath, searching for meaning. They try this -guru and then TM, they meditate, they try to levitate; oh, let's be Buddhist this year and Unitarian the next. Sufi? Islam? Let's eat cottage cheese and get thin, let's jog a hundred miles a week, keeps the pulse lower, you know. Move on to the next fetish! Their rod: diversion! You and all of them worship at the altar of Hat tin god, that contemptible false idol.

"You're not ready to be a foreign body, Joseph, to be incomprehensible to people, even to yourself. You want everything to add up, neat little columns. You don't have e courage to wager on what is uncountable."

He sank into the chair, exhausted. He put his head in his hands. "Forget everything I said," he said, his voice muffled. "But know this. Nothing is more worthwhile than the pursuit of God. Nothing. And here, we wretched men who call ourselves Trappists try to know him. It hurts, Joseph, believe me, it hurts." He looked up at me, his eyes milky and bloodshot. "Deprivation, sensory deprivation of all things familiar. Only then is God made clear. When you have nothing, you find him.

"I must go."

"Father?"

There was nothing left of me in that word. I was between one life and another, at a moment of judgment so exacting as to preclude any semblance of volition or hope.

He nodded tiredly toward me to proceed.

"Father, I came to Falmouth to see the face of God—okay, so I could write about it, to find out how men sought God, what paths they took, why they persisted, why they left. But we both know that's past now. I'm trying to see the face of God for myself. I can't go back knowing I didn't follow through. If you walk out of this room and I drive past those gates with no more than what I have now, I go a broken man. With no hope of a cure. Help me, Father, I beg of you."

At my supplication, his fingertips dug into his scalp, gouging frighteningly at his skin, leaving behind a pattern on his forehead not unlike a crown of thorns.

"You pathetic creature!" The anger of moments ago had been only a tepid sampler of the true wrath of Columban Mellary. His eyes flamed and his lips quivered in an uncontrollable spasm. "'Came to see the face of God!' Where did you learn that fervorino? When are you going to get a clue about simple honesty?"

"Now." The word choked me.

" 'Now,' the great impostor says. Are you ready, God—Joseph is ready," he screamed to the exposed-beam ceiling. "Oh, you lucky, lucky God to have such a declaration of intention. Rubbish! Crap, shit and rubbish!"

"I want to. Please, Father, help me." My eyes were dry and clear. To have cried then would have been just another facile ploy in a life laden with such contrivances.

" 'You want.' That's just the problem. You haven't a clue. Our Lord is mine—Our Lady, the sweetness of a mystical communion with the saints, is mine, mine, mine! And do you know why, Joseph? Because it is only by not wanting anything else that you gain them. Putting your face to the ground and telling God how wretched you are and that you do not even deserve to draw the next breath. Want! When you want to possess one particular thing, you get nothing. Nothing, you hear me! You can have it all, but you can possess nothing; everything must go. And it takes a man to give it all away, not some two-bit writer from New York."

The bell sounded for morning work period to end, and outside, in the circular driveway, a tourist called for his family to gather closer together so that they and the church rising behind them would fit into the viewfinder of his camera.

"I guess I deserve all this," I said hoarsely. "God, it hurts!"

His lips were moving; Columban was praying, of that I was sure. He kissed the top of his hand, the way a peasant does after making the sign of the cross. Then he spoke. "Perhaps we have both over dramatized this situation." He was completely calm.