A quiet place
Konfekt
Issue 4 - Autumn 2021
UK London 2021
My taxi driver picks me up from the train at Horn in Lower Austria.
Young and handsome in reflective sunglasses, he regales me with anecdotes until we reach the baroque gates of the Altenburg Benedictine Abbey, where he insists on roaring up the driveway.
I get out, take a deep breath and slowly walk through the gate. Father Michael, resplendent in a black skapulier (the hooded Benedictine habit) is out in front of the church to welcome me and lead me away to my cell. Yes, my cell. This is where I am to spend the next four weeks. There is a bed, a wardrobe, a small table and a chair.
Outside my window I see the stone monastery walls and the woods and fields of the hilly landscape. Waking the next morning, I am plagued with doubt. What am I doing here? I’m in a monk’s quarters, making preparations to write a novel. My notebook glares at me in recrimination. Next to it on the table is Patrick Leigh Fermor’s 1957 book, A Time to Keep Silence (the only reading that I’ve packed), in which he spends time in French monasteries. Not much seems to have changed since the Englishman penned his account of a stint at the Abbey of St Wandrille in France.
Other than tolling bells, there is little noise. It’s an atmosphere of sustained silence, interrupted only by the prayers and services of the monks – Laudes, Vesper, Komplet –which vary by season. According to the Benedictine rules of ora et labora, the monks alternate a rhythm of prayer and work. I immediately realise that I am a woman who is diving into a different life, completely away from the world outside. It starts with another concept of time that is a part of the spiritual energy in cloisters. This isn’t the first time that my search for quiet inspiration has led men to unusual places. I have sought solace in the Lybian Sahara, lived on a goat farm high in mountains above Lake Como, and spent months in a house on a cliff in southern Italy. But this time I was really chastising myself.
My doubts disappear once I get down to the dining hall for breakfast where Father Michael is in animated conversation with two Montenegrin mountain bikers who had pedalled all the way up the Kamp Valley the day before and been offered beds in the monastery for the night. Soon we were all chatting together. Father Michael was himself a mountain biker, it turns out. Perhaps the voluminous skapulier takes a rest on Raleigh days.
My days settle into a rhythm of writing, going for walks and taking meals. I enjoy the soup made from vegetables from the gardens and delicious homemade cakes. We dine every evening at a wooden table in a large vaulted room. And as the days go on, my powers of perception start to improve. My senses open up in an astonishing way. My busy thoughts become calmer, my occasional moments of inner unrest are calmed. I become both mindful and relaxed all at once. Time seems to take on a different meaning. Every day is structured in a natural way without any distraction. Sometimes, when the abbey bells ring to break the silence and punctuate the day, I reflect on my life’s journey, as well as on Altenburg Abbey’s many histories and mysteries. The strange room in the Imperial Wing, for example. Why are there so many erotic references: women in revealing dresses among the ceiling frescoes painted by hot-headed young artists from the Vienna academy? It is a divine comedy that is begging for an explanation. As for the abbot who rebuilt the monastery in baroque style – he was clearly an early Enlightenment man, so who exactly was he? I linger awhile in the architectural history exhibit, in elegant and innovative exposed concrete, by one of Vienna’s leading architecture firms, Jabornegg & Pálffy. In the evenings, small groups of grey-brown long-eared hares convene beneath my window. And then I work: churning out page after page. By the end of my stay, to my amazement, it is summer. The swallows begin returning to their nests. I rattle my way by train along a small branch line, watching the beautiful Kamp Valley pass slowly before my eyes, back towards the big city.
“When everything is quiet, the most happens,” wrote Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard – and so it seemed to me after my stay in Altenburg. An effect of healing silence and deprivation had led me to serenity. I am not a religious person but the cosmos of the monastic world miraculously brought me back to myself, to an inspired productive state and to a warm feeling of joy.