The Balcer Redemption

By David Waters

When Philip Balcer arrives at a Franciscan monastery on the southern Maine coast for a private retreat, it is clear that he is spiritually troubled. Haunted by the memory of holding his older brother, Peter, in his arms as he died of gunshot wounds thirty years ago, Philip is seeking both solitude and healing, even though he is no longer religious. Even so, he is unable to move forward because of his inability to remember large portions of the past, especially those last moments with Peter. Although he feels spiritually connected to Peter, he also feels as though he failed him.

With the help of Peters diary, Philip musters the courage to explore his own past as well as Peters, a journey that takes him into the recesses of his memory and reveals his brothers fascination with the thinking of philosopher Albert Camus. Philip also learns about Peters connection to Sean Chisholm and what led the two to an isolated house in Quebec on a summer night thirty years ago. As he delves more deeply into the mystery surrounding Peters death, Philip experiences flashbacks, the most powerful of which is triggered by a phone call from his own son.

This tale of two brothers also chronicles one mans quest to reclaim memories that have eluded him for decades. Can he make peace with what he discovers about his brother and himself?

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 16, 2012
• ISBN: 9781475927535

David Waters

David Waters is a former print and television journalist, documentary film director, and university lecturer in both English literature and journalism. Educated by the Jesuits, he acquired a lifelong curiosity and interest in spiritual and theological issues. He lives in Montreal and vacations in Maine.

Book preview

Part One

1998

Chapter One

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March 15, 1998

W hen he first came, I asked out of courtesy if he wanted any counselling. He said no but seemed hesitant. I didn’t push.

Is he a local? Father Borodin asked.

No. He’s from Montreal.

Father Borodin turned from the window and watched his superior return to sit at his desk. The two Franciscans had been quietly observing a middle-aged man of average height, his dark hair only slightly flecked with grey, as he moved slowly along a gravel path that led from the parking lot through a pine copse, toward the south bank of the Kennebunkport estuary.

Father Lukesevius absentmindedly ran a hand across the top of his head, rearranging a few strands of grey hair. He seemed to be counting them, as if their diminishing number reminded him of his own mortality. At our initial meeting, I know I saw loneliness in his eyes, and possibly a touch of depression. Introduce yourself; see if you can be of use to him.

It was not the kind of task Father Borodin wanted, but he knew better than to protest. Father Lukesevius knew Father Borodin’s views: in its simplest of terms, it amounted to spiritual counselling, yes; psychological counselling, no.

Borodin had his reasons. Before entering the monastery, he had trained as a psychologist. He had done a stint in the army counselling Vietnam War veterans, and he had taught for a number of years at a university in Maine. He had come to the troubling conclusion that psychology was at best a pseudo-science: it could treat symptoms, but for Father Borodin that was no longer good enough. If Philip Balcer had come seeking spiritual counselling, he would be happy to help. But only a few wanted to confront the implications and demands of a spiritual encounter. What most sought was empathy, understanding, and happy-talk—a Prozac for the troubled mind. He turned back toward the window, but Philip Balcer had gone. Father Borodin saw only the ravages of winter, with here and there a few shoots of pale green grass reaching out through the wet earth.

A few days later, Father Borodin introduced himself, and the two men went for a walk. On the south bank of the estuary, at the edge of the monastery’s property, there stood an old wooden gazebo that had been built in the 1920s by a former owner of the land as a staging area for stylish mahogany launches, which had been popular before the Great Depression. Father Borodin and Philip Balcer looked out from the gazebo at the estuary beyond. Balcer’s clothes were off the rack: grey slacks and a white and blue windbreaker. Borodin wore the faded brown of his order. In the middle of the estuary, color-coded markers bobbed in the wind-ruffled water. On the far bank a wide variety of modern sailing boats lay stored for the winter on special scaffolds.

Borodin turned. It is time, he told himself. He began with a question that he felt was vague enough to be inoffensive. I was wondering how you came to choose this particular monastery. I know there are other monasteries closer to home.

I visited this place by accident years ago. I was vacationing, and it seemed like a friendly place. Father Borodin waited. He knew how to wait. Balcer continued. I needed to be just far enough away to be able to take stock of my life without the kind of interruptions I would have nearer to Montreal.

Father Borodin nodded. And your family, how did they react to your decision to come here?

Balcer did not answer immediately. Finally he said, I live alone. I have only a son now; he moved into his own apartment a year ago. He’s a journalist. It did not seem to be the kind of conversation Balcer wanted, but he went on. My wife and I were divorced when our son was still a child. He stared out at the sluggish water of the estuary. I once had an older brother. He died when I was in my twenties.

I had a brother too, Father Borodin said. Vietnam. Came back in a body bag. The two men stood for a moment in silence. Father Borodin presumed that Philip had come for only a short stay, a hiatus from some kind of job. He asked about it.

Balcer shrugged. I’m at loose ends. I used to work for the Canadian Radio and Television Commission in Ottawa, but I found the work increasingly meaningless. And so I quit. I had put enough money aside that I didn’t need to stay at a pointless job. He spoke without rancor. In a sense he was one of the lucky ones. Most people needed their meaningless jobs to survive, doing the dirty work to create someone else’s wealth. In another sense his newfound freedom posed a problem: it heightened his awareness of the emptiness of his life. Worse, he felt much older than his years. He was spent, worn-out, like an old car sputtering on a few defective cylinders along streets that were once familiar but now seemed alien and indifferent. What’s more, he realized that most of his life had been like that, drifting on only a few cylinders and only partly engaged with the life around him.

How old is your son now? Father Borodin asked.

Thirty-two. Philip hesitated but then added, His mother died two years ago. He lived with her until she died. He felt some kind of explanation was in order. At one point I was given an assignment in western Canada by the company I worked for back then. She and Peter stayed in Toronto, where we were living at the time. I think we both knew that our marriage was in trouble. She met someone else while I was away, and when I returned, she asked for a divorce. I didn’t contest it; she seemed happy with the man she had fallen in love with. And she wanted custody, to raise our son in what she felt was a happier environment.

Did you resent that?

Yes, a little. Of course. But at the time I found that I didn’t love her enough to try to save the marriage. I didn’t contest the fact that she was the better parent. We weren’t enemies. I got to see Peter as often as I wanted.

Philip shifted his gaze out across the river. Two young couples were busy checking the state of a two-masted schooner at the marina. He felt a mild stab of jealousy. The men seemed young and calm and competent, and the women were cheerful in the mild March air.

I don’t want to give a false impression, Philip said suddenly. For the most part, my adult life was pretty normal, and I was often as happy as most people I knew. But even as he spoke, he knew he was lying. His happiness had always been sporadic grass shoots in a damp earth.

Father Borodin knew too much to take Philip Balcer’s observations at face value. He knew that few people could identify their traumas or happiness accurately, any more than they could assess their own evil or deal with it. But now was not the time to press the point. On the way back through the pine grove, Borodin asked a question, as if it were only a small point that the wanted to double check. You were raised Catholic? Philip Balcer nodded. And now?

At some point I ceased to believe. He shrugged. I think it happened kind of gradually.

Before your divorce?

Yes. At the time I always seemed to be too busy to talk about it, to find solutions.

And now you have the time.

Yes, I suppose that’s true.

Halfway through the copse, Father Borodin came to a halt, took out a package of Marlboros, and offered Philip a cigarette. Philip hesitated but then accepted. Father Borodin took a deep drag on the cigarette with obvious pleasure. It brought a creased smile to his weather-beaten face, which had also been pockmarked from a childhood illness.

Inside the pine grove, the presence of winter still lingered. Here and there, small mounds of ice and snow clung to spots shadowed from the sun. But elsewhere the carpet of pine needles had begun to thaw, and the ground showed signs of new life. Philip took only a few drags of the cigarette and then stamped it out underfoot. Nearby was an ant hill. In another few weeks, he thought, it would be teeming with furious activity. Hierarchical and organized, part of the chain of being.

When I was in high school, Philip said, I remember a teacher trying to explain the Church’s concept of the chain of being. He was not a very learned man, but he probably meant well. At the bottom were the bacteria and the insects, and at each step up the chain, what God had created was potentially more beautiful and perfect than what existed below. At the top of the human link were the saints, and then of course, there were the angels and ultimately God.

Father Borodin listened politely, but the chain of being was not one of his favorite concepts.

At any rate, that’s not what I see now, Balcer noted.

Neither do I. But what do you see instead?

A chain in which each step feeds on what’s below. Near the top of the chain is mankind with an intolerable history of behavior, both toward itself and everything that is weaker. Oh, I know there have undoubtedly been many decent people, and the founder of your order may have been one of them. But the power that is humanity is another matter. I think it’s time we let the curtain fall on what strikes me as a very vicious history.

Sic transit gloria mundi, Father Borodin thought. Balcer’s statement troubled him. Your concept, he noted, would turn God into a devouring monster of all creation. But you may get your way. There are scientists who believe the curtain will eventually fall on the experiment of creation; they see matter collapsing upon itself. His tone showed his disbelief. But these scientists say it will all start over again with yet another Big Bang. Is that the kind of thing you’d like to see happen? Father Borodin stood still, waiting for Philip’s response.

Philip’s tone was petulant. No, of course not. But I’d like to see the damage undone, the wounds healed. Personally, I want relief from the meaninglessness and the misery I see.

As they emerged from the grove, they passed a set of stone sculptures representing the 14 stations of the cross. Father Borodin said, Here we try to emulate someone who seemed to experience a moment when he wanted relief from the misery. But he chose instead to embrace the human condition rather than turn away from it. In today’s terms, he rejected the Essalen approach. He immediately regretted the remark—it had been a cheap shot. It was true that Borodin did not back movements like the one spawned at Essalen, but he knew there was more to them than sitting around communing in hot tubs in response to personal misery. He glanced at Balcer, who showed no reaction. Perhaps the word Essalen had no meaning for him.

Later that evening, Philip Balcer sat in his room staring at the window, and his mind wandered. Memories came and receded like ocean waves, but one image lingered. In it he was sitting at his brother’s desk in the year 1965, staring at a series of photographs. It was the night he had spirited his brother’s journal and the photographs away, because he was afraid the police might take them. He still had the journal and the package of photos stored in a manila envelope back in Montreal. The last time he had glanced at them was months after his brother’s funeral, more than 30 years ago. Two of the photos came into sharp focus in his mind. One was of his brother as a young boy in his first communion suit: blue serge adorned with the white armband of innocence, face unblemished, eyes serious, ready to confront the world. Why had everything gone so wrong? The other photo was a close-up of the two of them shortly after their parents died. His brother had been about 20, and he must have been about 10. His brother’s broken nose in that photo, and the loneliness Philip had experienced in those months, brought moisture to his eyes.

Suddenly he began to relive the night his brother had got a phone call and then told him in a stunned voice that their parents had died in a car accident.

*     *     *

An hour after the phone call, he was lying on his bed, having cried himself to exhaustion. He was aware that his brother had followed him into the room and was sitting in the darkness in a chair near the foot of the bed. What he desperately wanted was the heavy presence of his mother’s body holding his fears at bay, but that would never happen again. He wanted to reach out and touch his brother, but he seemed so far away. And so Philip laid there, his face pressed against the wet pillow until he fell asleep.

It was an awareness of being cold that finally woke him; a layer of clammy sweat had formed between his clothes and his body. He sat up, and because of a band of silver moonlight streaming in through his window, he was able to distinguish the foot of the bed and the open doorway beyond it. His brother was gone. He could see that the night light was on in the hallway. In the semi-darkness he found his pyjamas and put them on. Then he heard the scraping sound of a moving chair coming from the next room.

Curious, he made his way quietly into the hallway. Light from his brother’s room splayed in an elongated rectangle along the floor and up the far wall of the corridor. Drawn by the light, he made his way silently until he was able to see through the open doorway.

His brother was sitting, his hands stretched out and gripping the far edges of his desk. His posture was stiff, rigid, almost catatonic. He watched his brother take a deep breath and then shudder. Philip heard the spluttering, hissing sound of his brother’s breath being expelled in a controlled fury.

He wanted to enter the room, but a fear of how his brother would react stopped him. He watched, unobserved for a minute more as the scene repeated itself three times. Then as quietly as he could, Philip retreated to the semi-darkness of his own room.

In his trance-like state, the scene shifted to the day he and his brother buried their parents. Why this image? he wondered. He and his brother were walking on foot behind the hearse with the two coffins. The church was only two blocks away. The sun seemed unusually bright in a cloudless sky, and stares from the odd spectator made Philip nervous. As they approached the first corner, he could see his classmates being led by his teacher and the principal along the side street, and he suspected they would stop at the corner and gawk.

As the hearse passed, he saw the principal say something to his teacher and then step off the curb and fall into line behind him and his brother. Together the three of them made their way toward the open doors of the church, where the priest and two altar boys stood waiting. As they entered, the first notes of the organ reverberated through the church. Philip did not want to cry in public, and he stared at the statues, at the polished pew in front of him—at almost everything except the coffins. Throughout the service, his brother knelt trance-like, and except for an occasional glance at Philip, he kept his eyes closed until the service was over. Philip could sense that others were waiting for him to cry, but his brother seemed determined not to, and so neither would he. Imitation, closeness, solidarity with Peter was more important than anything in those days.

On a Friday afternoon in the middle of June, his brother asked in a hesitant voice, Philip, do you think you could stay here alone for a while this evening? Get ready for bed by yourself, and don’t wait up for me? Or would you like me to call Mrs. MacDougall and see if she could come over? I have to go out, and I’m not sure how soon I’ll be back.

A grown boy, Philip told himself, does not need a babysitter.

It’s okay, I’ll be okay alone.

And so he did what his brother asked.

But his brother did not return that evening. The next morning Philip sat at the window worrying and watching the street for some sign of his brother. It was noon when Peter finally appeared, and for a moment Philip hardly recognized him. His nose was hidden in a cast and there was a large adhesive patch on his left cheek just below the eye. His brother mumbled an apology but offered no other explanation. A distance had opened between them.

*     *     *

In the ten subsequent years of living together, although love and kinship united them, they matured differently. And they began to argue about everything. Peter was increasingly cynical and pessimistic. Philip was still the optimist, motivated by hopes that he did not want to let die. But as Philip looked back now, it was their subsequent similarities that made him feel a tremor of unease: paradise gone, innocence lost, no inner peace, faith troubled and shattered. And now, sitting in his room in the monastery, Philip knew that Peter had tried desperately toward the end to regain meaning.

Philip Balcer tried to recall the night his brother died, but his mind would not respond. The harder he tried, the worse it got. A bilious anger got in the way, searing any hint of a remembered image into black ash.

Puzzled, Philip stared at the window. Because it was dark outside, the window reflected an image back at him. He half expected to see a frightened boy of ten, or a ghostly image of his brother, but all he saw instead was the blurred, sagging image of a man in his mid-fifties with nowhere to go. He could not know then that he was embarking on a journey that would mark him with an indelible insight.

In the week that followed, Philip and Father Borodin met sporadically. Philip never mentioned that a crucial part of his memory was missing. He had tried the next morning to recall those events, but he failed, and the experience disconcerted him. Consequently he also avoided any probing questions about his older brother. They talked about his son. With a measure of regret, Philip had to acknowledge that he and his son were not close, more like acquaintances who met periodically to chitchat about the evolution of their lives. Friends, maybe. He had hoped for more and felt that he had deprived his son of the love that should have been there.

Father Borodin had noted Philip’s evasiveness about the years Philip had lived with his brother. But Father Borodin had his own weaknesses, and he was loath to probe the shadowy areas that Philip wished to protect. When Philip is ready, Borodin kept telling himself. There is a time for everything under the sun. God is in no hurry.

Philip ventured into Kennebunkport on a number of occasions, usually to treat himself to a meal and a bottle of wine in an atmosphere that was very different from the dining room in the monastery. Once he spent most of the evening at the bar in the lounge that overlooked the small harbour. He drew some pleasure from watching others pursuing happiness, and he grew sentimental later in the evening after a few cognacs when the piano player sang songs of love and betrayal.

Near the end of his second week at the monastery, he and Father Borodin drove to a beach about 15 miles away. Father Borodin had suggested the excursion; he felt that a change of venue, some kind of neutral ground, might be useful. They stopped for a rest near the barnacle-covered rocks at the southern end of the beach. At this time of the year, the beach, a mile-and-a-half crescent, was almost deserted. Many of the wealthy beach houses were still boarded up. The beach was semi-private; there was a limited public access at either end. But public parking space was very limited, and the posted signs indicated that it was rigidly controlled. It was not nearly enough space to meet the needs of the poor of the city less than 10 miles inland—blatant evidence of the gap between the rich and the poor.

The sight of those unused, expensive houses greedily controlling beach access offended both men. They had found common ground. Both men wanted a world that was socially more just, but they knew it was not to be, not in their lifetime. Globalization and the reigning theories of modern economics would see to that. Philip described his sense of guilt at having unwittingly, through his career, contributed to the inevitability of the new economic order. In these things, Father Borodin said, most of us are just pawns. The empathy they felt momentarily led Father Borodin to reach out. Much of what you have been telling me since we first met could be summed up as a broad-based concern for past failures. I could give you a general absolution for all of that, if you want.

And with those words an image from a cold night three decades ago in the Laurentians sprang unbidden from Philip’s blocked memory. It made his hands tremble. He forced his attention upon the wet sand at his feet.

No. That’s not what I want, he said, hiding the dismay he felt.

Father Borodin chastised himself for having instinctively moved too fast. When they had returned to the monastery and were about to part, Philip said, There’s a question I would like you to ask you.

Certainly, what is it? Father Borodin made his voice deliberately warm and friendly. He was hoping to make up for some of the coolness that had settled between them since his miscue on the beach.

Philip paused, searching for the right words. How in your world of faith is a murder redeemed? I don’t mean forgiven, but redeemed. And not the murderer, but the act itself. How is the murdered person redeemed?

Father Borodin looked puzzled.

I’m in no rush for an answer, Philip said

Then let me think on it. It’s not an easy question.