The architect. Anna Efimenko

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 Cathedral’s 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.

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      “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 isn’t 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 choir’s 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 didn’t 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, I’ll 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 Graben’s construction sites.

      I had almond milk at the Graben’s 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 Christ’s 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.

      Jorge, fierce and angry, leaned over me. He snapped at my face, distorted with horror,

      “So what, do you feel like Jesus’ son? Do you feel now like a man?”

      Father jerked me up from my knees and told me to go to the dortǒur. The brethren condemned. You can’t help me anymore, brothers, go away. If they decided to lock me in here, I would never be able to carry on building, roofing, erecting walls, or carving figures. They will decide to break my back over the knee, dead easy, even the weakest knee, and I would fall apart alive. But if they were after breaking my will, nothing would come out of it. After all, you can always starve yourself to death. It’s white. O Lord, how white it is, and light, light is everywhere; you can hear, my heart is setting itself free from the body cage and is flying away forever, everything around me becomes white. The outlines are getting dim, and I am fading, finally grabbing at the branch, for someone’s cloak, for the air. Praise to Him! I’m almost dead now and praise you, Lord, that I’m not scared, and praise the Lord that I don’t care.

      I’ll turn myself inside out just to attract their attention.

                                             * * *

      Jorge was getting older. Sometimes, he was put in bed to be treated for several weeks, and had poultry (another reason to see a girl in the market). He could no longer have fasts.

      I used to read to him, sitting next to him in the fermery, while he was telling his beads. They say, there was a town, far from us, where the carvers of coral beads were bound apprentices for twelve years to become craftsmen… And there were other cities, Paris, and – Saint-Denis