Broken Cisterns, Pt. 1

I walked into the Monastery on the hill and scanned the opening hall and the chairs that lined the old stone walls. This was a restful place, with small plants gracing the narrow hallway to please the eyes. I came here often, at least once a week, to sit in the quiet hall and read the newspaper. On this day, I was glad to see a friend of mine sitting in a chair about halfway down the hall. I walked over to him, feeling comfortable doing so, as he was sitting in the same place as I had first met him.

“Hello, Jonny,” I said, and he turned his face toward me upon hearing his name.

When Jonny looked me in the eyes, it was not with enthusiasm or liveliness, but with certainty. He was a young man, and yet he gave the impression that he had knowledge. I sat in the chair opposite his and watched his right leg bounce steadily as he tapped his fingers on the armrest with the same rhythm. The yellow school bag on the floor at his feet was partially open, and a copy of the Holy Bible was falling out.

“Did she write back to you yet?” I asked him.

Jonny stopped tapping his fingers and plainly said, “No.” He turned his head to the wall past my shoulder and rested his chin on his palm. “I wish she would, but things are simpler when she doesn’t.”

“Don’t worry about it, Jon, she’s probably busy.”

Jonny tugged on the front of his shirt with his other hand as if the room was warm, which it wasn’t. He finally stopped bouncing his leg and looked at my face again, smirking. “I won’t worry about it. There are more important things to think about, even if I don’t think about them.”

“Like what?”

“Like life, and such things. I was reading the other day, and there was this one interesting thing I read. It talked about broken cisterns, and how they can’t hold water.”

“One of two evils,” I said, knowing the passage he meant from Jeremiah. I quoted, “For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.”

“Yeah,” Jonny said, “and I’m not sure which one is worse.” He stopped resting his head in his hand and continued bouncing his leg and tapping the fingers of his right hand on the armrest. I said nothing in response, and he kept looking me in the eyes before immediately averting them. Finally he said, “Her sister knows me too well.”

“Why do you say that?”

Jonny drew his eyebrows down momentarily. “I don’t ever talk to her, but I think she knows me and who I am.”

“Why is that bad?”

“It’s not. It’s just that it worries me when I think about it. How can someone know another person so well if they never talk to them?”

“You worry too much, and you are forgetting to remember who holds your heart.”

Jonny turned his head completely away from me and again stopped bouncing his leg and tapping his fingers. He gave a brief, dry laugh, and shifted his weight in the chair. “I’m not worrying, and it’s not her that holds my heart anyway. We are all broken cisterns, so how could she hold my heart, even if I asked her to?” He looked me in the eyes as he finished his question. He had surprisingly gray eyes, but today they seemed particularly gray. Not gray like storm clouds, but like a night time fog.

I did not say anything more, and a few minutes passed in silence, during which I unfolded the newspaper and pretended to read. He pulled a cell phone out of a pants’ pocket and glanced at it. “I need to go now,” he said.

“Good to see you again,” I said.

He nodded as he bent down to zip up his bag, pushing the Holy Bible inside. He stood up slowly, slinging the bag over his shoulders, and walked away into the Monastery with a half-hearted “See ya.”

I began to earnestly read the paper, but found nothing particularly interesting. There was some stuff about wars, and some stuff about the economy too. There was even a strange article about a man who was told by his doctors that he only had six weeks to live, so he gave away everything that he owned, only to be told the next week when he went to see the doctors that the tests were wrong. He was going to live after all.

After about twenty minutes, I heard the doors open at the end of the hallway which led further into the Monastery and saw Jonny walk out. I put down the paper and looked at him. His expression was downcast, and he flopped down into the chair opposite mine, letting his bag drop to the floor.

“What happened?” I asked.

He stared at the floor somewhere to the right of my feet and said, “They won’t let me join.”

“You want to join the Monastery?”

“Yeah, I thought I might, but they said it wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t want to commit to all of their rules.”

“Well, that seems fair.”

Jonny looked at me, brows drawn further down than before. He slowly began tapping the fingers of his right hand on the armrest and looked away again, sighing heavily. “They said they would want me to forget about her.”

“Surely you knew they would want that.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t want to hear it when they finally said it.”

“She will write back to you.”

Jonny shrugged and turned his face towards me, anger no longer showing through. “What if she doesn’t write back? I think about that a lot, you know. That’s why I wanted to join the Monastery, in part.”

“Maybe you should join the Monastery anyway.”

Jonny laughed. “What for?”

“To serve, of course. That’s why you read that book so much, right?” I pointed at his bag.

He stared at me emotionlessly. “Yes, that’s why I read that book so much.”

I chose not to say anything else just then, but instead looked down at the paper and thought about Jonny’s case. He wanted to hear from that girl he wrote to, but I could not remember why. He probably loved her or something, and wanted her to say the same to him. That could explain a lot, but he was still acting strangely.

He spoke up again and said, “If it comes to finding a way to serve, then I could probably find something better to do.”

“Yeah, probably. Have you ever thought about doing anything else?”

He smiled and said, “I always thought it would be cool to start a school. Not a school like every other school that teaches math and English and history, but a school that teaches about that book.”

“They already have schools like that.”

“Yeah, I know, but I’ve never talked to anyone else who sees things quite like we do, where I go.”

“That’s true, Jonny.”

He nodded and appeared to almost be staring through the wall behind me. I figured he was deep in thought. His leg started bouncing again and he began chewing on his bottom lip. After a few minutes of this he stood up and declared, “I have to go call someone.” I nodded and he walked out of the Monastery, leaving his yellow bag lying on the floor.

I went back to my paper and waited for him to return. It seemed like nearly an hour before he returned, but it was hard to be certain as I was not wearing a watch.

He picked up his bag without sitting down in the chair. “I called an old friend of mine,” he said. “She and I have talked before about starting a school like this. Always seriously, but never really thinking it could happen. But why can’t it happen? It would be a good thing, I think, and we could get people to come to it.”

“Yes, I’m sure you could,” I said.

He nodded his head gladly and said, “She lives near here, so she is going to meet me outside in less than an hour. Until then, I’m just going to wait outside. It’s a nice day, you know. Come and join me if you want to.”

I said that I would, and we both walked out of the Monastery into a sunny midmorning light. The spring air was warm, and before long I took off my jacket. We talked about a lot of things while he waited, but mostly about this young woman who was a friend of his. He told me she was nice and that I should stick around to meet her, so I did.

She approached the front of the Monastery with a smile on her face. She appeared to be about the same age as Jonny, but with a prettier face than his, and longer brown hair. Jonny introduced her as Kerah, and I listened as they began to talk.

“So, you really want to do this?” Jonny asked her.

Her smile broadened into a grin. “Yes,” she said.

“Well then, how shall we start?”

“I suppose we should go somewhere to discuss it, if you want to.”

“Yeah, where do you want to go? No reason to keep standing around here.”

She looked thoughtful and said, “I don’t know; where do you want to go?”

He shrugged and didn’t say anything, she just kept looking at him thoughtfully, and I eventually looked the other way.

At last, Kerah said, “Well, I’m hungry, so we might as well find someplace where there's food.”

“Yes, in town somewhere,” said Jonny. He looked at me and I smiled back. I thought he was about to invite me, so I pre-empted his attempt.

“I think I should head back home. Somehow, I’m always ready to return home after visiting the Monastery.”

Jonny relaxed visibly, probably in relief. We all said goodbye, then I walked away in one direction and they walked away in the other.