Montesereno. Benjamin W. Farley

      Montesereno

      The Chaplain’s Garden

      Copyright © 2018 Benjamin W. Farley. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Resource Publications

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-5668-2

      hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-5669-9

      ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-5670-5

      Montesereno is a work of fiction. Aside from historical personages and places, the novel’s characters, events, and situations are purely fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

      Manufactured in the U.S.A.

      To

      Alice Anne

      When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care?

      —Ps. 8:3–4

      Preface

      The idea for Montesereno was inspired by two principal events, if we may call them “events.” The first owes its inception to the many visits my wife and I have made over the years to the Pisgah Inn and its panoramic view of the mountains, west of Asheville. The drive to the Inn, through the Parkway’s many tunnels, past its oaks and firs, wildflowers, cliffs and laurel has always cast a spell of wonder and solace, regardless the season. Walking the Inn’s grounds, its narrow trails, and staring far off across range after range of distant mountains, as well as gaping down into its sunlit or shadowed coves has equally provided levels of restful calm. So I set Montesereno and its villa grounds in a wistful location similar to the grandeur of the Parkway’s scene.

      The second “event” is traceable to reading Kay Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind and the revelation of those unchartered vistas and thwarted delusions so common in our society today. Could the two realities—the unquiet mind and the healing solace of the Parkway’s mountains—be woven into a story worth exploring and telling? As one who is not a psychologist but a professor emeritus of philosophy and religion, I began perusing the more current common disorders to create a cadre of characters and situations to match the characters’ needs and the disorders’ symptoms. Thus did the story evolve. I began it in 2009, and have worked on it each year since. It is far from the dream novel I wanted to write, nor are its characters perfect in any way, let alone its central figure—Darby Peterson, PhD, retired professor of philosophy. But I sensed it was time to conclude the adventure and bring its hero and his hopes to an acceptable denouement. I can only hope readers enjoy it, or find it to be of some value, or at least worth reading, as much as I felt driven to write it. As the old Greek playwrights used to say: “So hath it fallen here.”

      Columbia, South Carolina, 2018

      PART ONE

      Chapter 1

      With each swerve of the Parkway, the mountains bore Darby higher and higher into their manicured wilderness. Bank after bank of scarlet and yellow hues, hemlocks, pines, and wind-sheared firs swept past the windshield. So too its gray cliffs and rills of laurel. But however grand the landscape, its autumnal glory could not mask the misgivings Darby struggled to quell. What was he getting into? What ever made him think he could pull it off? What if he failed and had to go back? What if there were no “back” to return to? Was it too late to say, No?

      He slowed the car to enter a tunnel; then switched on the lights. Darkness rushed over him, swallowing the headlights’ funneled beams, snuffing out all but the faintest glow of the domed cavern’s reflectors. Suddenly, the car swept back into the sunlight. Once again the oaks and maples burst into color.

      Ahead, the road opened onto a wide overlook. Darby broke the car’s speed, pulled up beside the shoulder’s stonewall, and stepped out. Everywhere the sun’s rays illumined the panorama with delicate softness, tinting the sky a graceful blue, while daubing the mountaintops umber and gold. Darby cupped his hands about his eyes. To the east in the sunlight’s sheen lay Asheville, less than 25 miles away; while to the west, beneath the sun’s ochre smudge, stretched Waynesville, a distance of 35 miles or more. He glanced at his watch. Dusk would soon be falling. It was time to look for the intersection that crossed the Parkway.

      When twenty minutes later Darby arrived at Montesereno’s gates, he placed his car in park and stared down the pebbled driveway at the Villa. Its tall Italian windowpanes shimmered silver in the dusk, bathing the pink façade in a luxuriant light that only evenings create. Its sandstone window ledges and embossed cornices added a mystique of antique elegance. To his left, an edge of the Villa’s slate deck peeked out from behind the mansion’s rear entrance, and, still visible in the evening’s glow, slumbered the Villa’s guest cottage, flanked by its garden of azaleas and ornate flora. Darby drove down to the mansion. After parking, he mounted its worn, semi-circular steps and raised his hand to knock on the Florentine door.

      His knuckles hesitated. Old memories rushed forward. Her hands drew him down. Her lips smothered his, wet with kisses. It was the night of their honeymoon, their season of boundless passion. How they had raced through the Villa’s grounds, scattering the crisp and lustrous leaves, sending them afloat in clouds of raspberry-pink and yellow flame to the blush of morning mists and the purple of sunset haze!

      It seemed so long ago, and yet was it? He—the ex-priest with a PhD, first in his class and first to be hired; and Julia Laine, his bride—a Medieval archivist, excellent in every way, his equal. It had all unfolded with such promise—the move to Georgia, the University of Oglesbee, with stipends to travel to Berlin, Paris, and Rome. He stared at the door, a casualty of his Socratic quietude, a facet of his personality he knew he would never be able to slough off. He smiled to himself, knocked quietly, and waited.

      “Ah, Peterson!” Garnett Nelson greeted him, as he swung the door open. “Thank God you’ve come!” stated the tall, pallid-faced figure. An unkempt head of graying hair matched his sallow complexion. A linen napkin dangled from his white shirt above a gray tie. His swollen milky eyes burned in the hall’s semi-light that emanated from the dining room’s chandelier. “Come in!” he motioned with his hand. “We’ll take your things to the cottage, afterwards.” He turned toward the dining room. “Linda! He’s here! Our own Dr. Peterson!” He struggled to clear his throat, but the guttural rumble remained. Darby knew what it masked. Perhaps they would talk about it later.

      Darby peered around the hallway into the lighted room. To his right, a frightened young girl’s eyes caught his; then the anxious glances of an older man, seated opposite her, clad in a tweed jacket, sporting a yellow tie. To his left, sat a surprisingly stylish woman, beautiful to say the least, dressed in a bright blue blouse, wearing a pearl necklace with matching earrings, and, opposite her, a young male, slumped forward in a suede jacket, with dark and jealous eyes. The young man had been touching the woman’s fingertips, clasping them across the table, but looked up uncomfortably when Darby stepped in.

      Just then Linda entered the room through a swinging door between the kitchen and dining room. Anorexic in size but energetic and aglow in a pleated green dress of silk, she squeezed her small frame between the chairs and breakfront to hug him. With her brown eyes and cheerful lips, willowy face and short black hair, she drank in his features with overt excitement. “Darby! How wonderful!