Now when she walked with Marta to the market, the vendors called out her name. “Buenos días, Madrecita Catalina.” Alejandro, Tito’s father, was still a mystery to her. She often wondered what he was thinking. He worked so closely with the priests and nuns; he saw them when they were short-tempered and grouchy and when they made big mistakes in understanding the people. When she tried talking to him about his hopes for the future, he would usually smile shyly and say only that he was very happy working with the padres and hoped his son would grow up to be educated. Once he taught her a word in Aymara, chaskanawi, and she loved saying it over and over, its consonants exploding on her tongue. It meant “girl with stars in her eyes.”
So, one day at lunch when she glimpsed the letter addressed to her in heavy black ink with the Lima postmark on the buffet in the dining room, it felt like a disturbance, a threat to the precarious peace she had achieved.
“Hey, that looks like Father Tom’s writing,” said Jeanne Marie looking over Kate’s shoulder at the letter. Sister Josepha looked at Kate and rang the bell for grace, saving Kate from having to respond. Kate left the letter on the buffet, and then, after she finished the dishes, she slipped it into her pocket and went upstairs to her room.
Her heart was thundering, and she knew it wasn’t the altitude this time. She tore open the thin airmail paper, ripping a piece of the letter in her eagerness.
Dear Kate,
I have started this letter to you many times and then torn it up in disgust at my inability to say what I need to say to you. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve fallen in love with you. . . .
Kate stopped reading and took several gulps of air. Her cheeks flamed.
It wasn’t anything I planned to do, and I can only say that I tried hard to deny it to myself. But those mornings in church I’d see you sitting there so calmly, staring up at me while I nattered on in my sermon, laughing at the jokes no one else even knew I was making—that’s what really did it.
You are like springtime, young and lovely and breathing hope into me when I’ve felt so dry and stale. I’ve begun to see the world through your eyes; you make it new and fresh for me. This is getting really incoherent, I know. Then the snowy night when I came to the convent, hoping you’d be alone and you were. When I held your cloak for you I had to force myself not to take you in my arms. Oh Kate, this is impossible.
I’ve had time to think it through a bit here in Lima. I don’t want to hurt you, and I think I could, badly. You see, I still want to be a priest. It’s the deepest core of who I am, and even though it is a frustrating, foolish, at times even God-forsaken life, it’s the life I vowed. And you are a wonderful nun. You make it seem easy to be happy, and I’ve met very few nuns who did that. So what do we do? I will stay away from you. It’s the only way to avoid hurting you and sullying something true and pure. But always know that I love you.
I thought of asking for a transfer, maybe to Bolivia. But I think now that I can handle this if I just don’t see you alone or look for excuses to be with you.
God bless you, Kate. This is the hardest God-damned letter I’ve ever had to write.
Forgive me,
Tom
Kate read the letter several times. Each time her happiness exploded, and then she’d be terrified by his words. He loved her. She had never known such sweetness as those words evoked. Why then was he taking it away? She paced around the small room until she felt she would burst.
Grabbing the letter, she stuffed it in her pocket and ran down the steps, stopping briefly in the kitchen to tell Marta she was going out for a walk and would be back in time for her class at two o’clock. The gate creaked open and soon she was out in the street, walking fast past the taxi stand, down the main street of Juliaca, past the market. She was light and dizzy, and the sun shone like diamonds through the leaves of the eucalyptus trees.
Their love couldn’t be wrong. People couldn’t help it if they really loved each other, could they? She remembered old Father Finn, the chaplain in the novitiate who taught them moral theology. “Feelings are never wrong,” he would thunder. “We can’t help our feelings any more than we can help what color eyes we have. It’s what we do with our feelings that matters.” Well, what would she do with these feelings? Kate knew she loved Tom in every sense. She wanted him to hold her and kiss her, make love to her. Just thinking of it made her melt in a strange new heat of longing. But she forced these thoughts away. That they could not have. But she would not give up this love, not when she had just found what it was she’d been hungry for all this time. They would have to work out a way to love as a man and a woman without having sex.
She would write and tell him this. After all, he couldn’t just decide everything. “I will stay away from you,” he had said. Didn’t she have a say in all this? Now she felt angry that he dared to make decision unilaterally. He thought she was young and innocent, too naive to understand what was needed here. She’d write back tonight. But he loved her, that’s all that mattered. She softly chanted it as she hurried along the dusty road and while she climbed the steps of the square and returned to the convent.
That night, after the sisters had prayed Compline together in the living room, Kate sat for a while in front of the fire. One by one the others went up to bed. Kate assured Sister Josepha that she would dampen the fire and put the screen in place before she went to bed. The older nun stood looking down at her for several seconds. “Is everything all right, Sister? You look a little flushed tonight.”
Kate stared up at her for a moment and then felt a foolish smile spread across her face. “I’m fine, Sister. I just wanted to sit here for a few minutes and enjoy the last bit of the fire.” The older nun turned away, and Kate watched her walk stiffly out of the room. Josepha seemed tired tonight, elderly somehow. Had she ever loved a man? wondered Kate. She felt sorry now for anyone who hadn’t known this joy.
When she finally went upstairs to her room, she looked at her face for a long time in the small mirror over her night stand. The black veil outlined the white wimple that framed her face. Her eyebrows were dark, much darker than her light brown hair. Her eyes were luminous tonight, the blue so deep that it almost seemed black. Her usually pale face was flushed and her mouth curved in a small smile. She felt both pretty and cherished. Then she laughed at herself, remembering the novice mistress’ warnings against vanity. She hadn’t thought about her looks for a long time.
She sat at her small desk and read Tom’s letter once again. It sounded more desolate this time. What did he mean by saying he felt dry and stale? She began to realize she didn’t know him very well. But there would be time for that, she hoped. Time to sit together and talk about their lives. She wrote:
Dearest Tom,
Your letter today flooded me with happiness. I love you, too, as you must have guessed. I finally admitted it to myself after the night you sat with me in front of the fire. But I thought I would never get to say those words to you, much less read them from you to me. I thought I would have to bury this love deep within, and now it feels so wonderful to say it to you. I know you want to be a priest—it’s part of what I loved in you first. And I have wanted to be a nun for many years, ever since I was a little girl.
So here’s the question, and please don’t think I am too young to understand the problem. I’m twenty-five, and most women by now are married. Can a man and woman who are in love with each other keep that love on a non-sexual plane? It sounds like a risky exercise, I admit. Maybe I’m fooling myself or maybe women really are different from men in these things. But I want to love you, talk to you, enjoy being around you, and still keep my vow of celibacy and respect yours. Could this work?
Tom, you made me so happy today. Don’t take that gift away now by “staying away” from me. We’ll just have to find a new way of loving. We can’t undo what’s happened between us. I love you. When are you coming back?
Kate
She would mail the letter tomorrow after lunch; she’d have to pret
end she needed to go downtown for something. She felt a twinge of guilt at the deception. Was this the beginning of leading a life of lies? Then she wondered at the boldness of her letter. Had she been too frank? The ground was shifting beneath her, and she was learning quickly how to keep her balance as she navigated the split.
That night Kate’s dreams were troubled. She felt smothered, as if something was gagging her. She awoke drenched in sweat, panting for air in the small dark room. She slid out of bed to her knees. “Oh, please,” she prayed, “please help me.” She waited for a long time, but there was no answer.
Chapter Eight
Friday, June 26, 1964
Kate wakes to the smell of coffee brewing in Peter’s kitchen. She jumps up, confused by this unfamiliar room, and lights the kerosene lamp on the dresser. She fumbles into her habit, still stained from her travels of the day before, but dry now and warm. Kissing each part as she puts it on, her lips move automatically to say the prayer that accompanies each piece. She pulls the cincture around her waist, and whispers, “Guard me this day from the fire of temptation.”
Back in the convent in Juliaca, Sister Josepha would be rising, too, in the dark dawn. She would be sad, worried, maybe even angry at her as she went all alone into the empty mission chapel for Lauds and meditation. Kate whispers the words of the morning hymn as she pins her black veil to the starched headpiece: “. . . that He from harm may keep us free/In all the deeds this day shall see.” Would He keep her from harm? It was to avoid harm that she was running away. She had become afraid of her own desire. “Forgive me,” she whispers, looking into the mirror that reflects back the nun she has once more become.
Kate finds Peter Grinnell in the kitchen, and he barely looks her way as he piles sandwiches into a bag. “Glad you’re up,” he grunts. “There’s hot water for tea in the kettle on the stove, some oranges and bread over there on the table. I’ll be loading the jeep.”
Kate nods, feeling shy now in the daylight. He had been different last night, friendlier. She supposes he is nervous about taking her into Arequipa, or perhaps he is just bored at the thought of a long ride through the mountains with a neurotic run-away nun. She hurries through her breakfast as his tall, blue-jeaned form passes in and out of the kitchen, loading his suitcases, boxes of notebooks, and camera into the jeep.
When she joins him in the courtyard at the back of the house where his jeep is parked, he mutters, “I find it incredible that you dashed off with no coat or jacket . . . or whatever you nuns wear,” and shoves at her a navy-blue jacket lined with alpaca fur.
Kate murmurs her thanks and clumsily pulls the jacket on over her habit, lifting her veil free of the collar. The air, fine and crisp, smells of frost and reminds her of a winter morning in St. Louis.
She thinks with a pang of her parents. When she left them at the airport a year ago, they were proud, and yet she saw the worry in their eyes. Walking with her onto the tarmac on the way to the plane, her father somehow sprinted ahead of her up the stairs; then he stuck his head in the door to ask the stewardess to watch over his daughter. The tall blond looked surprised to see a nun get on the plane for Miami. She probably expected a twelve-year-old. Kate’s mother wrote later that every time she tried to tell someone about her departure, she would break down in tears. Yet the night before she left, they were cheerful and joking in the Irish way of disguising sadness.
Peter helps her climb up into the jeep; then he swings in on his side in one easy movement. The jeep coughs and sputters, but in a few minutes they are out on the road, heading for Puno and then southwest to Arequipa. The sun is just rising, gilding the blue mountains with rose, sending glancing rays into the great Lake in the distance. They follow the curve of the shoreline in silence.
Soon they are on the outskirts of Puno, already bustling with trucks, herds of llamas being driven to market, and groups of women in brilliant colors, their polleras—great full skirts with petticoats—bouncing as they walk, reminding Kate of the crinolines she and her friends had all worn in the 1950s under their full cotton skirts. Many women have babies wrapped tightly in striped mantles slung firmly on their backs. Peter navigates the busy streets quickly, leaning mercilessly on his horn to warn any careless pedestrian of the danger to their life. Kate hopes no one from the Maryknoll house is out at this hour.
There are five nuns here, she knows, and a big house for the Maryknoll priests, a central place for the many men working out in the campo. The priests and nuns from Santa Catalina drive into Puno once a month for team meetings, usually followed by dinner. Last month the nuns had cooked a big pot of spaghetti; someone had saved a few bottles of cheap red wine, so the Americans and the British, along with a few German and French missionaries, had a boisterous supper.
A young priest she didn’t know got out his guitar, and soon the center house sounded like a college dorm. They sang Blowin’ in the Wind, If I Had a Hammer, and much later in the evening, Moon River. Kate saw that after a few months on the Altiplano these evenings helped them endure the profound loneliness and frustration they all felt in a culture that was so opaque, so impenetrable. If they acted silly and got a bit tipsy, it was to let out their pent-up frustration. Now, riding in the front seat next to this Englishman, Kate doesn’t want to see anyone who knows her. How would she explain what she is doing? As Peter negotiates the winding turns that would lead them through the Andes, Kate looks at him. Last night he had seemed cynical about the work the missionaries were doing. What, then, was he doing up here? She supposes he is observing, studying, cataloging in the dispassionate way of the scientist. He wouldn’t be trying to change things.
As if he can sense her scrutiny, Peter turns toward her and grins, “I thought I ought to be quiet for a while in case you were in some sort of contemplative state.”
Kate blushes a little, realizing that she hasn’t really thought much about prayer this morning. But to pray now would be to open her mind to the reasons for her flight, to Tom.
“I just thought I should be quiet so you could concentrate on your driving. These cliffs terrify me,” she smiles, relieved at his joke.
As they ascend a steep grade, Kate gazes out the window at the deep valleys opening before them. The road is dusty and very narrow. The rule is that the vehicle climbing has the right of way, since two cars or trucks can’t pass each other on the narrow curves. To alert oncoming cars, drivers sound their horns in warning when approaching turns.
“Tell me about yourself,” Kate says. “I’m afraid I did most of the talking last night.”
Peter draws on his cigarette. “Not much to tell, really. I was born in Surrey; my father was in the RAF, shot down over Berlin toward the end of the war. I was fourteen; my sister was twelve. I went on to Cambridge to read history and then got interested in anthropology. I did some field work in Egypt, then back to Cambridge for another degree, and finally I was given a research position there.”
“Why Peru?” It seems safer to keep talking about him.
“I’ve been interested in Peru since I was a child and read The Bridge of San Luis Rey. So here I am.”
“You never married?”
“No, but there were a couple of close calls.”
“What about your mother? You haven’t mentioned her.”
“I can’t stand my mother.” He looks over to see how she takes this.
Kate is shocked; she has never heard any grown-up say this, she realizes. Most people forgave their parents as they got older. Kate has been exasperated by her parents, sometimes embarrassed by her father’s explosive bursts of anger, but loving them was natural, like breathing or sleeping. She doesn’t know what to say, so falls silent, watching the road dip and curve.
“She’s a selfish, whining bitch,” he continued. “Sorry. Anyway, let’s talk about you and why you’re here, shall we?”
“Do you mean here in this jeep or here in Peru?”
He laughs. “Let me guess. You came to Peru to help the people here liberate themselves fro
m the oppression they’ve suffered under since the Spanish conquistadors.”
Kate decides to ignore his laughter. “Well, something like that. Actually I think I’m just beginning to discover day by day why I’m here. Last week a couple of teenagers asked me if I had any American records. So I set up our old phonograph in the hall and made some Kool-Aid and we sat around and tried to talk to each other. One boy told me how he’d like to go to the city to school. Their parents won’t let them go out walking with each other. They asked me questions about my family and how I could bear to leave them to come so far away. They wondered why I don’t have any children.” Kate raises her chin defiantly. “I think for one thing I can show them another way to be a woman, that women can do something else besides work the fields and bear children.”
Peter grins. “Somehow I never thought of nuns as feminists. Aren’t you interested in proselytizing? You know, don’t you, that your Dominican habit could have bad associations for the people up here?” Kate watches him without saying anything. “The Incas were betrayed by Pizarro and his men in Cajamarca. Do you remember the story?”
“Yes, but why would my habit have bad associations?”
“The Spaniards came with a Dominican priest, Vicente de Valverde. On the night of July 26, after Atahualpa had kept his promise and filled a room with the treasure of his kingdom, the Spaniards led him out and tied him to the stake. Friar Vicente gave him a crash course in Christianity, and encouraged him to convert so that he could be hanged as a Christian rather than be burned at the stake as a heathen.”
Peter laughs as he sees Kate wince; she hasn’t heard that part of the story. Well, she isn’t going to defend the mentality of that long-ago Dominican. She’d try another tack.
“Do you think Peru was better off before the Spaniards came?”
Toward That Which is Beautiful Page 6