"Our path is perfectly dear!" he said to the brothers. "Whether our faith in the Lord is secure or not, we can heal here, and we can grow the grape, and pass our lives with purpose."

He smiled as he spoke. That word -- purpose -- had not been on his lips for many years, and it gave him pleasure to speak it. But even as he spoke the smile started to die away, and the color shrank from his ruddy face.

"I beg you to excuse me," he said, putting his hand to his belly, "I am sickened by too much brandy."

With that he pulled out of his robes the bottle from which he had been drinking since early morning, and set it clumsily down on the table in front of him. Then he turned and stumbled out to get a breath of fresh air. Nobody went after him; he had no friends left in the Fortress. His old allies were too embarrassed by his excesses to publicly share his opinions; fearful that his behavior might reflect poorly on them, and keep them from advancement. So he was alone as he wandered giddily through the ruins of the dead vines. It was evening, and now that the summer was past, the air was beginning to get chilly. But the sky overhead was a perfect blue, and there was a new moon, its pallid crescent just clearing the mountains.

Sandru tried to let the sight of the sky and moon calm him; have them placate the pain of his heart, give life back to his numbed fingers. But the trick was beyond them. He realized suddenly that this was not a spasm brought on by too much brandy. He was dying.

The Brothers had medicines for weakness of the heart, he knew; it would not be the end of him if he got back to them quickly enough. He turned on his heel, attempting to voice a shout of alarm. But his panicked chest would provide no breath for him to cry for help. His legs began to fail him, and down he went, face first, into the dirt. He tasted the soil in his mouth, bitter and unappetizing. He spat it out; and with the last of his strength he pushed himself up out of the filth and let gravity roll him over. He could not move, but it didn't matter. The darkening sky overhead was spectacle enough. He lay there for six or seven shortening gasps, while a star, lonely in its solitude, brightened at his zenith. Then he let life go.

The Brothers did not find him until the middle of the night, by which time a frost had settled on the old vineyard, the first frost of that autumn. It glittered on the bulk of the dead Father; on his bulbous nose and in the knots of his beard. It had even inscribed its filigrees on his unblinking eyes.

FOUR

There was no hospital established at the Fortress; then or ever. Nor was there any attempt to replant the vineyard, or make the grounds around the Fortress in any way flourish. With Father Sandru's passing (at the relatively tender age of sixty-two), what little enthusiasm there had been for change withered. The younger men decided to leave the Fortress; three of them left the Order entirely and became members of the secular community. Of the three, one -- a young man by the name of Jan Valek took his own life less than a year later, leaving a long suicide note, a kind of epistle to his sometime brothers, in which he wrote of how he'd had a dream after the death of Father Sandru, in which "I met the Father in the vineyards, which were all burning. It was a terrible place to be. Black smoke was filling the sky, blotting out the sun. He said to me that this was Hell, this world, and there was only one way to escape it, and that was to die. His face was bright, even in the darkness. He said he wished he'd died earlier, instead of going on suffering in the world."

"I asked him if they allowed him to drink brandy wherever he was now. He said he had no need of brandy; his existence was happy; there was no need to conceal the pain with drinking.

"Then I told him I still had a life to live in the world, whereas he had been an old man, with a weak heart. I was strong, I said, and there was a good chance I'd be alive for another thirty, maybe forty years, which was an agony to me, but what could I do?

"'So take your own life,' he said to me. He made it sound so simple. 'Cut your throat. God understands.'"

"'He does?' I said to him."

"'Certainly,' he told. 'This world is Hell. Just look around. What do you see?'"

"I told him what I saw. Fire, smoke, block earth. "

"'See?'he said, 'Hell.'"

"I told him, though of course I was still dreaming, I was going to take his advice. I was going to go back to my room, find a sharp knife, and kill myself. But for some reason, as often happens in dreams, I didn't go home. I went into Bucharest. To the cinema where Brother Stefan used to bring me sometimes, to see films. We went inside. It was very dark. We found seats and Stefan had me sit down. Then the film began. And it was a film about some earthly paradise. It made me weep, it was so perfect, this place. The music, the way the people looked. Beautiful men and women, all so lovely it took my breath away to look at them. There was one young man in particular -- and it makes me ashamed to write this, but if I don't do it here, in my last confession, where will I do it? -- a young man with dark hair and light-filled eyes, who opened his arms to me. He was naked, on the screen, with open arms, inviting me into his embrace. I turned to Father Stefan in the darkness, and he said the very thing that was going through my mind. 'He wants to take you into his arms.'"

"I started to deny it. But Stefan interrupted me and said: 'Look at him. Look at his face. It's flawless. Look at his body. It's perfect. And there -- between his legs -- '"

"I covered my face in shame, but Stefan pulled my hands from my face and told me not to be ashamed, just to look, and enjoy looking. 'God made all of this for our pleasure,' he said. 'Why would he give us such a hunger to look at nakedness unless he wanted us to take pleasure in it?'"

"I asked Stefan how he knew it was God's work. Perhaps the Devil had made nakedness, I said, to tempt us and ensnare us. He laughed, and put his arm around me, and kissed me on the cheek as though I was just a little child."

"'This isn't the Devil's work,' he said. 'This is your invitation to paradise.'"

Then he kissed me again, and I felt a warm wind blowing, as though it was spring in whatever country they had created on the screen. And the wind made me want to die with pleasure, because it smelled of a time I remembered from long ago."

"So now I have come back to my room. I have a knife. When I have finished writing this I will leave what I have written on the table, and I will go out into the field, and cut my wrists. I know we are taught that self-slaughter is a sin, and that the Lord does not wish us to harm ourselves, but if He does not wish me to end my life, why is this knife within reach of my hand, and why is my heart so much at peace?"

His body was found about a hundred yards from the place where Sandru's frost-covered body had been discovered. Coming so soon upon the death of the old priest, the death of Jan Valek undid the Brotherhood completely. Orders came from Bucharest, and the Brotherhood was disbanded. There was no need to guard the Fortress any longer, the Archbishop said. The brothers would be more useful to the Church if they worked with the sick and the dying, to offer the Lord's comfort where it was most needed.

Within a week, the Order of St. Teodor had left the Fortress Goga.

There were those among the villagers who felt that the Fortress had invited its abandonment, and began its own process of self-slaughter. Superstition, no doubt; but it was certainly strange that after five centuries of life, during which span it had remained strong, a quick process of disintegration should begin as soon as the community of caretakers departed.