A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller [66]
“Brother Armbruster, turn around, please.”
The librarian turned.
“Now drop your hands, and speak more calmly when you-”
“But, Father Abbot, you heard what he-”
“Brother Armbruster, you will please get the shelf-ladder and remove that crucifix.”
The color left the librarian’s face. He stared speechless at Dam Paulo.
“This is not a church,” said the abbot. “The placement of images is optional. For the present, you will please take down the crucifix. It’s the only suitable place for the lamp, it seems. Later we may change it. Now I realize this whole thing has disturbed your library, and perhaps your digestion, but we hope it’s in the interests of progress. If it isn’t, then-”
“You’d make Our Lord move over to make room for prog-
“Brother Armbruster!”
“Why don’t you just hang the witch-light around His neck?”
The abbot’s face went frigid. “I do not force your obedience, Brother. See me in my study after Compline.”
The librarian wilted. “I’ll get the ladder, Father Abbot,” he whispered, and shuffled unsteadily away.
Dom Paulo glanced up at the Christ of the rood in the archway. Do You mind? he wondered.
There was a knot in his stomach. He knew the knot would exact its price of him later. He left the basement before anyone could notice his discomfort. It was not good to let the community see how such trivial unpleasantness could overcome him these days.
The installation was completed the following day, but Dom Paulo remained in his study during the test. Twice he had been forced to warn Brother Armbruster privately, and then to rebuke him publicly during Chapter. And yet he felt more sympathy for the librarian’s stand than he did for Kornhoer’s. He sat slumped at his desk and waited for the news from the basement, feeling small concern for the test’s success or failure. He kept one hand tucked into the front of his habit. He patted his stomach as though trying to calm a hysterical child.
Internal cramping again. It seemed to come whenever unpleasantness threatened, and sometimes went away again when unpleasantness exploded into the open where he could wrestle with it. But now it was not going away.
He was being warned, and he knew it. Whether the warning came from an angel, from a demon, or from his own conscience, it told him to beware of himself and of some reality not yet faced.
What now? he wondered, permitting himself a silent belch and a silent Beg pardon toward the statue of Saint Leibowitz in the shrinelike niche in the corner of his study.
A fly was crawling along Saint Leibowitz’ nose. The eyes of the saint seemed to be looking crosseyed at the fly, urging the abbot to brush it away. The abbot had grown fond of the twenty-sixth century wood carving; its face wore a curious smile of a sort that made it rather unusual as a sacramental image. The smile was turned down at one corner; the eyebrows were pulled low in a faintly dubious frown, although there were laugh-wrinkles at the corners of the eyes. Because of the hangman’s rope over one shoulder, the saint’s expression often seemed puzzling. Possibly it resulted from slight irregularities in the grain of the wood, such irregularities dictating to the carver’s hand as that hand sought to bring out finer details than were possible with such wood. Dom Paulo was not certain whether the image had been growth-sculptured as a living tree before carving or not; sometimes the patient master-carvers of that period had begun with an oak or cedar sapling, and-by spending tedious years at pruning, barking, twisting, and tying living branches into desired positions-had tormented the growing wood into a striking dryad shape, arms folded or raised aloft, before cutting the mature tree for curing and carving. The resulting statue was unusually resistant to splitting or breaking, since most of the lines of the work followed the natural grain.
Dom Paulo often marveled that the wooden Leibowitz had also proved