Broken Cisterns, Pt. 2

It was a year later when I saw Jonny again. He never came to the Monastery anymore, and I eventually decided to find out what had happened to him. He had started a school after all, and it was set up in a small, old church on the south side of town. I came to the old church on a warm, rainy Wednesday, and saw from the sign outside that I was just in time for class. As I walked into the long, dusty room I saw the tables and chairs formed in neat rows, facing the far end of the room where there was a small, brown desk and one of those whiteboards on wheels. Jonny was alone in the room, sitting at the desk and reading the Holy Bible, so I went up to him.

As I came close, he looked up from the book and stared into my eyes, much the same way he had back in the Monastery. “Hello,” he said, giving me a smile which seemed forced. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Good to see you too, Jonny.” I paused, and he played with the pages of the book as he waited for me to continue. “The sign outside said there would be classes right now. Where is everyone?”

Jonny shrugged. He sat still then, staring past me, with a distant expression on his face. “Nobody came today. It’s all voluntary, of course, so some days nobody decides to show up.”

“How many days per week do you have classes?”

“Twice a week; on Saturdays and on Wednesdays, in the afternoon.”

“Do people normally show up?”

“They showed up in decent numbers at first, but now only half of them come on Saturdays, and almost none on Wednesdays.”

“Why don’t they come anymore? Did they get bored?”

“They always said it was interesting, and they seemed to read what I asked them to, for the most part. Although, I can always tell when they are about to stop showing up. They are the ones who have not read everything, or not read very closely.”

Jonny stood up from his seat and walked over to an open window, where sunlight streamed in. He put his hand on the sill and began tapping his fingers.

“So does Kerah help you run the school?”

He did not turn from the window as he answered. “Yes, she helps a lot. She teaches one class every two weeks, and I always talk with her about whatever we are studying.”

I nodded my head even though he didn’t see it. He was in no mood to talk, it seemed, but I did not feel like abandoning him too quickly. I walked over to his desk and looked over what he had been reading. I asked, “Is this what you were going to go over today?”

He finally looked away from the window. “Yeah, we are studying Jeremiah this week.”

“You are on the page where it talks about broken cisterns,” I said. “The same thing we talked about last year at the Monastery.”

“I’ve been thinking about it again.”

“Find anything new?”

“No, just what we already suspected.”

“And what is that?”

“That we always make ourselves broken cisterns.”

“True, but we don’t have to be broken cisterns, if we are well made.”

He shrugged and tugged on the sleeves of his shirt. “Still, nothing we make for ourselves can hold water, like this school.”

“Ah, surely it’s not that bad, Jonny.”

“It’s a lot of work to keep putting the water back into the cistern every time it falls out.” He returned his attention to the window, and I didn’t feel like saying anything more on the subject.

I began paging through his bible and finally came to the back cover. I wasn’t careful enough, and an envelope just inside the cover fell out onto the desk. I picked it up, saw it was still sealed, and turned it over to see the addresses. It was to Jonny from the girl he had been waiting to hear from. I looked at the postmark and saw it was from the previous spring.

“When did you receive this?” I asked.

His eyes looked tired when he returned his attention to me from the window. He briefly glanced at the envelope and said, “Last spring. The day after we met at the Monastery, actually.”

“Why didn’t you open it?”

“Didn’t feel like reading it. I was too busy, helping Kerah start the school and such. And I don’t want to read it now.”

“Why not? Well, it is too late now to respond to anything in it, but why not see what it says anyway? And why didn’t you feel like reading it? If I recall correctly, you were waiting rather impatiently for this.”

“Yes, but then I didn’t want it anymore, after the Monastery.”

“And you haven’t seen her since then?”

“No.”

“Well, why don’t you read it now anyway? Who knows what it could say?”

He sighed and said, “That’s the problem. I’m afraid of what it might say, now that I’m going to marry Kerah.”

“I see. When are you going to marry her?”

“At the end of the summer.”

“Well then, if you are afraid of what this letter might say, why do you keep it?”

Jonny waved a hand at the letter. “I don’t want to keep it, and I should just get rid of it. You can have it if you want. I don’t care if you read it, as long as you don’t tell me what it says.”

I looked at the letter in my hands for a few moments, not sure whether I should take it. “Well, I don’t….”

“No, please take it,” said Jonny, holding a hand up towards me. “Do whatever you want with it, but please take it. If I kept it, I would try to burn it, but I don’t know if I could bring myself to do that.”

“Well, then I'll burn it for you, Jonny.”

“Thank you,” he said.

The doors opened then, and Kerah walked in. Jonny glanced at my hands before turning to smile at the young woman, so I stuffed the letter into a pocket in my jacket.

Kerah noticed me standing there, and after a moment recognized me. “Hello,” she said without any shyness.

“Good to see you again,” I replied.

“No one showed up again today, Jonny?” she asked him.

“Not a single person, except our friend here.”

“That’s too bad. This is the third time in three Wednesdays. Maybe we should really think about meeting only once a week.”

Jonny sat down at the desk again and said, “Maybe.”

Kerah looked sad and about to say something to him, but she instead turned to me.

“Well, since no one seems to be showing up, maybe we should all go out to lunch.”

I nodded slowly and said, “I am willing to do that, since I haven’t had anything to eat today since breakfast.”

Kerah turned to Jonny, her eyes asking him the question, and he said, “Yes, let’s go get something to eat. I’m hungry too.”