The Island of Books. Dominique Fortier
that the abbey is built not on the summit of a mountain, but around it. (Where its heart should be, it is empty, or rather full of rock.) The fact remains that the interior in no way resembles what the exterior suggests, and that the plans do not offer much in the way of understanding either. In a way, the abbey is indescribable.
Today, no matter what models or representations you study, it is virtually impossible to find your way through the series of rooms, which are more or less square and superimposed; it is like playing a game of snakes and ladders, taking two steps forward and four steps back, or looking at one of those drawings by Escher in which, at the end of a series of stairs that seem to go up, you have inexplicably come back down to the starting point. This may be due to the fact that construction was spread over half a millennium – a decidedly piecemeal approach – under the direction of different builders, each of whom had different skills and means from those of his predecessor – Gothic resting upon Romanesque set on Carolingian anchored in rock. Not to mention the collapses and fires over the years, and that a room built in 1100 could be partially destroyed one hundred years later, restored, modified again fifty years later and then two centuries after that.
Since the buildings couldn’t sprawl across a large area, over the years construction continued upward. In the mid-twelfth century, the Abbot Robert de Torigni started work that changed the face of Mont Saint-Michel: he had two dungeons added, and a new, fairly modest residence that was meant for him, as well as a new, larger hostelry to receive the pilgrims who were flocking to the sanctuary. He also ordered two towers to be built flanking the church. The first housed a large number of the four hundred volumes that made up the library at the abbey, called at the time the City of Books. A considerable number of these works were lost when the tower collapsed about a decade after it was erected. The second fell in 1776.
In 1228, the construction of a three-storey double building was completed, with three dining rooms set one on top of the other (chaplaincy, guest house, refectory), intended for poor pilgrims, rich guests and monks, respectively. The rooms to the west were similarly organized: at the bottom, the cellar, meant for the needs of the body; in the middle, the scriptorium, dedicated to the work of the mind; and at the top, the cloister, a place of prayer and garden of the soul.
In the fifteenth century, the abbots were busy fortifying Mont Saint-Michel to defend it against the assault of the English, who had taken the entire province, including Tombelaine, the neighbouring island. Mont Saint-Michel was protected by a garrison of some two hundred men at arms sent by Charles VI. Cut off from revenue from sister abbeys across the channel, Mont Saint-Michel soon ran out of resources; that was no problem, however, as they melted the chalices and monstrances to mint the coins to pay the soldiers.
In 1421 or 1423, the choir of the church collapsed. It would take a century to rebuild it in pure flamboyant Gothic style. The room with the large pillars was erected first, ten columns like enormous roots that held the whole thing up, towering above, resting on a forest of exterior flying buttresses. For each shaft of light, a stone arch: two constructions, one mirroring the other.
In essence, Mont Saint-Michel does not house one abbey but rather ten, or even more, some of them now gone, phantom abbeys the building continues to bear the mark of, and other constructions modified over the centuries – all of it strung together and joined haphazardly. Gutted walls, collapsed vaults, ceilings burned, towers levelled, passages filled, stairs condemned, clock towers felled, rebuilt, crumbled in ruins; like a manuscript scribbled over ten times that bears the remnants of stories, traces of scratching and illegible characters, Mont Saint-Michel is an immense palimpsest set in rock.
The abbey has four gardens: the hortulus, the vegetable garden, where produce for everyday use is grown; the herbularius, where simples and medicinal plants are grown; the rose garden – and the library.
This morning, in the vegetable garden, I ran into Brother Clément, a pale, thin man with blue eyes so washed out they look almost white. He was busy cutting herbs that he then laid tidily in small bouquets in a wicker basket. A cat was following a few steps behind him.
He nodded at me without interrupting his work, and I studied the garden. This vegetable garden in the middle of the sky, in the middle of the sea, reminded me of the tale Anna told me about ancient Babylon, a city of hanging gardens where golden fruit grew and flowers bloomed only during the full moon.
They say that Brother Clément is a bit simple-minded. What he likes best from God is Creation, and from Creation, the humblest of plants. His prayers bear the names of house-leek, St. John’s wort, green bean. He may sing off-key, but he plants straight as an arrow. The wooden crates in the vegetable garden were lined up in neat rows, each one holding two or three species of plants that are good bedfellows. He seems able to recognize plants by touch, if not solely by taste or smell. Robert says that he knows instinctively where to sow the seeds he receives from monks who bring them back from their travels or pilgrims who present them to him as an offering, and he guesses straightaway which shoot needs plenty of water and which one needs full sunlight. Services seem to be a gentle form of torture; he strains his face toward the door while the holy words are echoing, lightly scratching at the earth under his nails. Once the Ite, missa est is said, he is the first on his feet, rushing to reunite with his pods and his hulls.
Leaning my elbows on the ramparts, I watched the monks down below. Living among this old stone, they end up resembling it: most of them have dry hands, grey skin, cold eyes. For centuries the abbey was home to one of the most important libraries on the continent and a scriptorium where the monks came to translate Greek and Arabic, but today it is a shadow of its former self. It was Robert who made this sad observation. Knowledge has been lost, the love of work, the love of books – perhaps in reverse: first people stopped loving books, then the work no longer really interested anyone, and then knowledge disappeared. Scribes started making books quickly, with crude strokes, performing the task joylessly. Books were no longer a treasure.
Seen from above, the monks all looked alike with their brown cowls, the pale halos of the tonsures on the tops of their heads. They were small and interchangeable. Is this the way God sees man? God, or a bird? I managed to recognize each monk by his shadow, the movements of which I could follow, whereas the movements of the men escaped me, a curious reversal. The shadow bound to each one like a dog to its master suddenly appeared to me as a sort of dire premonition. Death was there, lying at our feet under the noonday sun, waiting patiently until we too would find ourselves stretched out on, and then under, the ground.
Men make war, they go on pilgrimages, they work the land and build cathedrals, every one of their gestures repeated by a silent twin. All that time, the monks, soldiers, princes and lepers don’t realize that they are dancing with their own demise.
§
I asked to see the ossuary, and Brother Maximilien took me there. After going down several flights of stairs, the last of which was sculpted right into the rock, we pushed a heavy, wooden swinging door that closed behind us like the door of a tomb. Plunged in darkness, the room smelled of damp, moss and fungus. The only light was from our candles, which a mysterious draft caused to flicker, a circle of yellow light illuminating fingers and faces, gradually growing darker – gold, copper, bronze – as it advanced toward the walls, becoming black as soot.
Dozens of carefully piled skulls rested on the stone shelves, like turnips wintering in the cellar. Humeri, tibiae and femurs were placed below in bundles. Looking at them, I had the feeling, strange yet familiar, of looking into the eyes of a cat. But you cannot keep company with the dead without paying the price once you are back among the living. I can no longer look at an old man without seeing the bones under his skin, the hollow of his eyes and the hole for the nose.
The holy relics were kept elsewhere. There was nothing special about these bones. They all belonged to monks, since villagers are buried down below, in the tiny cemetery. Examining the skulls more closely, I did, however, notice that some were distinctly smaller. Child monks slept the same sleep as the others.
§
When I arrived, I spent the first days lying down, getting up only twice a day to eat and relieve myself, both with the same indifference. After a week, Robert came to see me. It must have been late in the morning. Sext had not yet been