“You must read neumes well,” said the Chief, returning to the abbot’s workbook, “to have transcribed them into musical notes.”
“I wish that was true. I’m not the worst, but I’m far from the best. We all do it. When a monk arrives in Saint-Gilbert, it’s the first task he’s given. Like Frère Luc. To start transcribing the Gregorian chants from our old book into modern musical notes.”
“Why?”
“As a sort of test, first off. See how dedicated the monk really is. For someone not truly passionate about Gregorian chant it’s a long and tedious chore. It’s a good way to weed out any dilettantes.”
“And for those who are passionate?”
“It’s heaven. We can hardly wait to get at the book. Since it sits on the lectern we can consult it whenever we want.”
The abbot dropped his eyes to the workbook and flipped through it, smiling, sometimes shaking his head and even tsking over some mistake. Gamache was reminded of his children, Daniel and Annie, looking through albums of photos taken when they were kids. Laughing and sometimes cringing. At hairstyle and clothing choices.
These monks had no photo albums. No family pictures. Instead, they had workbooks with neumes and notes. Chants had replaced family.
“How long does it take to do the whole Book of Chants?”
“A lifetime. It can take a year to transcribe a single chant. It becomes a surprisingly beautiful relationship, very intimate.”
The abbot seemed to detach, just for a moment. Go someplace else. A place without walls, and murder, and a Sûreté officer asking questions.
And then he came back. “Since the work is so long and complex, most of us die before we’re finished.”
“What happened just now?” asked Gamache.
“Pardon?”
“As you spoke about the music your eyes seemed to become unfocused. It felt as though you drifted off.”
The abbot turned his full attention, and very alert eyes, on the Chief. But said nothing.
“I’ve seen that look before,” said Gamache. “When you sing. Not just you, but all of you.”
“It’s joy, I suppose,” said the abbot. “When I even think of the chants I feel freed of cares. It’s as close to God as I can get.”
But Gamache had seen that look on other faces. In stinking, filthy, squalid rooms. Under bridges and in cold back alleys. On the faces of the living, and sometimes on the dead. It was ecstasy. Of sorts.
Those people got there not through chants, but through needles in the arm, crack pipes and little pills. And sometimes they never came back.
If religion was the opiate of the masses, what did that make chants?
“If you’re all transcribing the same chants,” said the Chief, thinking about what the abbot had been saying before he drifted off, “can’t you just copy off each other?”
“Cheat? You do live in a different world.”
“It was a question,” said Gamache with a smile, “not a suggestion.”
“I suppose we could, but this isn’t a chore. The point isn’t to transcribe the chants, it’s to get to know them, live inside the music, to see the voice of God in each note, each word, each breath. Anyone who’d want to take a shortcut wouldn’t want to dedicate his life to Gregorian chant, and spend it here in Saint-Gilbert.”
“Has anyone ever finished the whole Book of Chants?”
“A few monks, to my knowledge. No one in my lifetime.”
“And what happens to their workbooks, after they die?”
“They’re burned, in a ceremony.”
“You burn books?” The shock on Gamache’s face didn’t need much interpretation.
“We do. Just as Tibetan monks spend years and years creating their intricate works of art in sand, and then destroy them the moment they’re finished. The point is not to grow attached to things. The gift is the music, not the workbook.”
“But it must be painful.”
“It is. But faith is often painful. And often joyous. Two halves of a whole.”
“So,” Gamache turned his attention back to the yellowed page lying on the plan of the monastery. “You don’t think this is actually all that old?”
“I don’t.”
“What else can you tell me about it?”
“What’s clear, and why I showed you my workbook, is the difference between the chants.”
The abbot placed the yellowed page on his workbook so that it covered the modern translation. The two chants with neumes faced each other. The Chief Inspector studied them. He spent almost a minute in complete silence, staring. Looking from one to the other. At the words, and at the marks flitting all over the pages.
