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Updated: June 24, 2025
From the sea over the flats came to them a breeze that had a savour of freshness, of cool and delicate life. They walked for some time without speaking, then Domini said: "From the cemetery of El-Largani you looked out over this, didn't you, Boris?" "Yes, Domini," he answered. "It was then that the voice spoke to me." "It will never speak again. God will not let it speak again."
It was like the voice that whispered to Androvsky in the cemetery of El-Largani, "Come out with me into that world, that beautiful world which God made for men. Why do you reject it?" For a moment she saw all religions, all the practices, the renunciations of the religions of the world, as varying forms of madness. She compared the self-denial of the monk with the fetish worship of the savage.
But when I first came here, when I saw the white walls, the great door, when I saw the poor Arabs gathered there to receive alms, it made me feel almost as if I were at El-Largani. That was why " he paused. "I understand, Boris, I understand everything now." And then they were silent. Such a silence as theirs was then could never be interpreted to others.
"Do you mean he left it a Trappist?" "Yes." "After taking the final vows?" "Oh, he had been a monk at El-Largani for over twenty years." "How horrible!" Domini said. She looked at the pale-green liquid. "How horrible!" she repeated. "Yes.
I obeyed, of course, without a word. "The cemetery of El-Largani is on a low hill, the highest part of the monastery grounds. It is surrounded by a white wall and by a hedge of cypress trees. The road to it is an avenue of cypresses, among which are interspersed niches containing carvings of the Fourteen Stations of the Cross.
"Domini, did you hear me? Domini! Domini!" She felt his hands on her wrists. "You are the Trappist!" she said quietly, "of whom the priest told me. You are the monk from the Monastery of El-Largani who disappeared after twenty years." "Yes," he said, "I am he." "What made you tell me? What made you tell me?" There was agony now in her voice. "You asked me to speak, but it was not that.
But I had expected to be happy at El-Largani, and I was happy. Labour is good for the body and better for the soul. And the silence was not hard to bear. The Trappists have a book of gestures, and are often allowed to converse by signs. We novices were generally in little bands, and often, as we walked in the garden of the monastery, we talked together gaily with our hands.
"You have never seen El-Largani, my home for nineteen years, my prison for one. It is lonely, but not in the least desolate. It stands on a high upland, and, from a distance, looks upon the sea. Far off there are mountains. The land was a desert. The monks have turned it, if not into an Eden, at least into a rich garden.
And she had been able to tell this monk as God seemed to be telling her, making of her his messenger that now at last he might pray to a God who again would hear him, as He had heard him in the garden of El-Largani, in his cell, in the chapel, in the fields. She had been able to do this. Then she had turned away, gone into the tent and fallen upon her knees.
"Domini, I wonder if I can make you realise what that change meant to a man who had lived as I had for so many years. The hotellerie of El-Largani is a long, low, one-storied building standing in a garden full of palms and geraniums. It contains a kitchen, a number of little rooms like cells for visitors, and two large parlours in which guests are entertained at meals.
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