Iacobus by Matilde Asensi Read Free Book Online

are they going to serve us?”
    “Fish. It’s all they have today.”
    “Very well, then fish it is. And while we are waiting, we will talk. I know that you feel offended and I want to clear it up.”
    “I don’t have anything to say,” he uttered haughty, to immediately add, “You made an oath to the prior of my monastery and you have gone back on your word.”
    “When did I do such a thing?”
    “The other day, when we arrived at your captaincy in Avignon.”
    “But there wasn’t a Mauricense convent in the city! If there had been, Jonas, you would have slept there. Remember that I told you that you could leave.”
    “Yes, well … But during our trip from Ponç de Riba to here, you haven’t taken me to sleep in any of my Order’s abbeys.”
    “If I remember correctly, we made the journey at such a speed that we slept outside most nights.”
    “Yes, that’s also true.”
    “So, what’s your problem?”
    I watched him as he agonized between the lack of arguments and the unprovable certainty that I would not allow him to return to the monastery. My silent observation of his impotence was not cruelty; I wanted him to find the way to logically defend what were simply feelings, speculations, that fought within him to find a way of expressing themselves.
    “Your attitude,” he mumbled at last. “I don’t like your attitude. You don’t show the support that a master should give his apprentice to comply with his obligations.”
    “And to what obligations are you referring?”
    “Prayer, the daily holy service, Mass ….”
    “And who am I to force you to do something that should come naturally? Look, Jonas, I would never stand in the way of you carrying out these activities but what I will never do is remind you that you have to do them. If it is your wish, do them. You are old enough to take your vocation seriously.”
    “But I am not free!” he groaned like the small boy that deep down he really was, despite his height. “I was abandoned at the monastery and my destiny is to repeat the sacred vows. It is written as such in the Rule of St. Maurice.”
    “I know that,” I said patiently. “It’s the same in the Cistercian monasteries and in other smaller ones. But remember that you can always chose. Always. Your life, from the time you begin to have certain control over it, is a formation of good or bad choices but at the end of the day, they are choices. Imagine that you are climbing a huge tree and you can’t see the top; in order to get there, you must chose the branches that appear to be the most suitable, constantly deciding against one and picking another which in turn will bring you to a new decision. If you get to where you wanted to go, it’s because you chose the right path. If not, it means that you made the wrong decision and your subsequent preferences were already conditioned by that mistake.”
    “Do you know what you’re saying, frere?” he warned me, unnerved. “You are denying the predestination of the Providence, you are elevating free will above the secret plans of God.”
    “No, the only thing I’m elevating is the hunger in my stomach which is beginning to protest with fury. And remember that you mustn’t call me frere from now on. Innkeeper! Innkeeper!”
    “What!” replied an angry voice from the back of the kitchen.
    “Is that fish coming or do you still have to go to the river and catch it?”
    “The gentleman likes to joke, huh?” said the innkeeper, suddenly appearing behind the counter. He was a fat, vulgar-looking man, with huge sweaty jowls, and to complete his grimy look was a dirty apron tied at his waist which he used to clean the fish fat from his hands while he approached our table. The Provençal language he spoke was very similar to my Catalan mother tongue. In any case, we would have been able to communicate without difficulty thanks to the large similarities between the Romance languages.
    “We’re hungry, innkeeper. But I see that you are hard