You hit strange caverns in the monastery’s history, layers set down by the years, geological strata: you feel like an archeologist suddenly unearthing ancient civilizations. But the terrible thing is that you yourself have lived through those ancient civilizations. The house has changed so much that ten years have as many different meanings as ten Egyptian dynasties. The meanings are hidden in the walls. They mumble in the floor under the watchman’s rubber feet. The lowest layer is at once in the catacomb under the south wing and in the church tower. Every other level of history is found in
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