by Marele Day
‘What time is it?’ he asked.
‘Storytime,’ replied Margarita.
He didn’t want a story. ‘My clothes,’ he demanded.
‘We’ll wash them. Nice and fresh for your journey.’
‘But what if … what if I need …’ he couldn’t bear to bring himself to discuss bodily functions with them.
‘Margarita will provide.’
‘Pot,’ whispered Margarita into his ear.
Oh, the humiliation of it. Not even a bottle as he’d had in hospital. A pot. Like a child.
‘Lying comfortably?’ said Margarita, ‘Good. Once upon a time there was …’
What a day, what a day, what a day! There had never been such a day! Carla didn’t know where to start. She should have started at the beginning, with the disruption to prayers and the burnt hand, the tiny thing that had set the rest in motion. But she could tell herself the beginning later. Right now she wanted to go over the most exciting bits. Ah, but which? Was it seeing the effect of the potion or was it the other thing? Oh, it was the other thing.
The disrobing. She said the word slowly, succulently, feeling the movement of her tongue, the place where her lips came together and parted again, the final syllable of the word that vibrated in her throat. It was delicious. It was the best. She would discipline herself. Put disrobing away and save it for later.
His eyes had rolled up as if he was trying to look into his brain. Margarita had stuck her sausage fingers in, righted them and pulled the eyelids down. So his eyes wouldn’t dry out. And so he wouldn’t look like he was dead. Carla had held her breath when he fell over and didn’t get up again. Was it too much stay-at-home? She had given the mixture to a ram once to stop him roaming. She simply doubled the dose, assuming that the man was twice the size of a ram but perhaps he wasn’t. Iphigenia and Margarita hadn’t looked at Carla or admonished her when they marched over to pick him up, she hadn’t made a mistake.
The nuns had waited till he had fallen before they moved from the table, waited till he’d lurched and flailed around, as if he were a dangerous, unpredictable animal who might turn on them if they got in his way. They watched. And when he’d finally fallen in a lump and the curious sheep came to sniff him, they finished off their tea and attended to him.
The abbess’ room had been shut for many years. It was not the abbess’ office, they would never put him in there. They swung the door backwards and forwards a few times to push out the smell of mustiness, piled together the skins of all the rams that had been slaughtered over the years and brought out one of the blankets. Around the edges were scenes from the life of Jesus and in the middle a panel of the Lord as the Good Shepherd, surrounded by His flock. It was a soothing comforting blanket that would make him feel safe and secure when he awoke from his long sleep.
It wasn’t till they had heaved the body onto the skins that they saw the threads of vomit on his clothes. Iphigenia of course had noticed the curdled smell of it, they’d all noticed it, and were quite happy to leave it there. It was only vomit. But it was not fitting to have this smell in the abbess’ cell.
‘Off with his clothes.’
Carla thrilled at the prospect with the anticipation she felt on Shearing Day. Because things would be revealed. How different the sheep looked without their woolly coats. She liked the way shearing exposed the parts you didn’t normally see, unless you quietly crawled through the grass with them and looked up. But fully coated, all you saw was curly wool, matted together with mud and grass and shit. When Margarita held the sheep up, creases and folds and other things were revealed. Carla didn’t know exactly what she would see but she was very keen to see it. The thrill crept enticingly through her whole body.
Margarita and Iphigenia moved in on him. They were familiar with the task of laying out departed sisters, preparing the bodies for burial, for them to be planted in the ground like seeds. Margarita’s strong beefy arms propped him up while Iphigenia slipped the jacket off. The collar came off next. There was a gurgle in his throat and he seemed to breathe more easily.
‘Carla. Shoes.’
Though Carla was never allowed to be present when priests came, once she hid in the brambles and saw one. Not all of him, only the shoes. The shoes were talking to the abbess. Rocking backwards and forwards, heel to toe, heel to toe. They were black with a pattern of holes on the front and laces tied with bows.
Iphigenia and Margarita were busy with his shirt. Carla put her hand out to touch the bow. She pulled and tugged and worried it. She had tied and untied bows, had endlessly made cat’s cradles with wool in her childhood games, but try as she might her nimble fingers would not untie the man’s knots.
‘Can’t.’
‘Scissors.’
She ran off to get them.
Iphigenia and Margarita worked on the trousers. There were clasps at the waist that were easy enough to undo but hidden beneath the vertical flap from the waistband to where the garment split in two weren’t buttons but a cold metal thing with a set of interlocking teeth straight as a railway track. Zip. There was a tiny handle to it which they pulled and miraculously it travelled down the track, parting it as it went. Then it stopped, caught on something on the other side, the shirt or undergarment. Try as they might they could not loosen it.
Carla hurried back with the scissors, glad to see that Iphigenia and Margarita were no further advanced than when she left. She did not want to miss one single bit. She snipped at the knots in the laces and the shoes loosened, almost seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. She slipped them off his feet, releasing an odour of old cheese. It didn’t take long for the smell to drift up to Iphigenia. She turned from her own task to see Carla sniffing the feet with delight.
‘Scissors,’ she said, holding her hand out like a surgeon.
Carla handed up the scissors. Snip, snip went Iphigenia. She tugged and pulled and the hindrance disappeared. The trousers divided smoothly. Margarita lifted the body and Iphigenia pulled the trousers down past the buttocks.
‘Pull the legs,’ Iphigenia instructed Carla.
Carla wrenched at the man’s legs, almost toppling him off the bed.
‘Trousers.’
Carla latched onto the trouser legs, one in each hand and pulled. They slid off as easily as a snake’s skin.
Underneath he had fleece, just like them. Sparse black curls of hair on skin as pale as a fish. And he was wearing another, shorter pair of trousers, without legs. Tight around the hips and across the mound in front. Iphigenia and Margarita took off this undergarment. He was disrobed.
They stood there looking at the naked body, as if they themselves, with their efforts and exertions, had created it. Frankenstein admiring his creation as it lay inert, before the bolts of electricity that would jolt it to life and make it run amok.
An entirely new creature! Carla opened her eyes as wide as they would go to take it all in. Instead of floppy breasts he had flat cherry mouths with tufts of black hair around them. A dark brown crinkly spot on his side. A line of hair like the metal track Iphigenia and Margarita had wrestled with, which descended from his navel into the bulrushes of black hair between his legs. And there nestled in the bulrushes was Baby Moses, a flaccid little sleeping thing curled up like a white worm. Such a dear little baby thing.
The man’s leg twitched, like sheep twitch in their dreams, and Carla shrank back. Iphigenia pulled the blanket up over him. Margarita neatly folded his clothes and put them on the chair. Then the three nuns stood in vigil, waiting for him to awake.
Iphigenia and Carla had gone to their cells. Margarita sat on the chair and watched. He was sleeping now, completely motionless. He didn’t even appear to be breathing. Margarita used to watch her father sleeping, when he was full of the drink. Sleeping in the leather chair, mouth open, head back and snoring. Sometimes there was a cigarette in his hand. She would watch the ash grow longer and longer and when it dropped, she would catch it. One day he was going to burn the house down.
T
hey had been such a happy family when her mother was alive. Then everything changed. Her father took to drinking, playing cards. For the company, he said. There were fights with Margarita’s brother over the drinking and one night her father hit him. Her brother disappeared for days and when he came back he announced he was emigrating. ‘Walk out of this house and you walk out for good,’ her father shouted. Her brother just smiled. He kissed Margarita on the forehead and promised he would write. If he had written, the letters had never reached her.
Now all the father had was Margarita. She had to attend to him, to get drinks for his friends, prepare them food. The cigarette smell that she had loved on her father, she grew to hate. The men talked of bawdy women in front of her and when the bud of her own womanhood began to open, their eyes fixed on her body like grasping hands. Her father was proud of his hospitality.
Sometimes he won at cards but often he lost, even in his own house. One day he called her from her room, told her to put on her special dress, there was a visitor. Margarita put on her white dress with its blue ribbons. She stood at the mirror, slowly combing her long golden hair. The rumble of conversation—men’s conversation—wafted up to her, the occasional laugh at a shared joke, the smell of cigars.
She stood at the top of the stairs and looked down into the study. In the frame of the doorway she saw the man. He had a brushy black moustache and when he laughed his lips were shiny with spittle. He had a gold chain and a watch and his waistcoat strained against his corpulence. A suit of good quality, white shirt and gold cufflinks. The hands coming out of the cuffs were black with hairs.
He looked up and smiled, showing her the gap between his teeth. She wanted to retreat into her room. ‘Come,’ he invited her. She could not refuse. Down the stairs she went, sinking lower and lower with each step. Her father introduced him, a business associate. She knew his face, one of the card players. ‘He wants you to stay with him for a while. You will do some chores, light housework. But it will be a holiday for you. He has a nice big house in the country, with a lovely garden. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’
‘Yes, Father.’ Then Margarita understood that she was being sold.
Iphigenia lay with her nose jutting into the air. He would not be going anywhere tonight but it was as well to have him watched. The sight of him helpless on the abbess’ bed made her see God’s purpose in bringing him here. It was to minister to him, to bring him into the fold. A priest who had strayed, not only into their pastures but strayed from the Church. He was a young man who had been tempted by worldly comforts. Invoked the name of the Devil and blasphemed. He had spoken of slaughter and sinned against the community. ‘Unless ye come as a child, ye shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’ They had to make him as a child again, teach him the way of salvation. It was a test. Iphigenia sighed. She thought all the testing was over with. One more, in her twilight years?
There were practical matters to attend to. Who else knew he had come here? Would others follow? Would he be missed? Perhaps answers would be found in his car.
The breath surged in Iphigenia’s throat. The car was outside.
She had not been outside the walls for many many years. Even in enclosure there were times to go out. Not for a frivolous picnic but for something important such as a death in the family. Iphigenia had not been allowed to attend Grandmother’s funeral. But she had been out.
Iphigenia was a young nun when the extern, Sister Assumpta, had slipped on wet flagstones and broken her leg. It was the extern sister who ran errands on the rare occasion the community needed something from the world. Even then, they never crossed the strip of tidal sand.
This was an emergency, they needed help quickly. Somebody had to go to the village and fetch the bonesetter. The abbess nominated Iphigenia. She was nimble and fleet-footed, the best to negotiate the treacherous path.
The abbess had spoken to the priest about the path many a time, especially when he and his party arrived huffing and puffing, even though they’d ridden on donkeys. He always said yes, indeed, what was needed was a road. But the priest came less and less frequently and the road never came at all.
Iphigenia hitched her skirts up and down the hill she went, agile as a mountain goat. It was summer, the air hummed with insects and sunlight, there was the gurgle of springs and brooks. She scooped up water when she got thirsty, happily munched on the cress growing in crevices. From afar she saw the village, a cluster of houses, some grey stone, others painted white, the fishermen’s boats in the cove bobbing in the lull of water like matchstick toys.
But the place was practically deserted. ‘Good day to you, Sister,’ said one of those who had remained. A young man with eyes black as plums, brown hands threading knots into the rope, over and down, across and through. She explained that the community needed the bonesetter. ‘He’s over on the mainland, for Midsummer. Big celebration in the tavern. I’ll warrant he’ll have a few bones to set by the morning,’ said the young man with a grin on his face. Iphigenia looked across to the village on the other side. She could just make out the public house. Music and merrymaking floated over the water so clearly she felt as if she could reach out and touch it. But it was at least a mile away. The tide was in and the strand submerged. Iphigenia gazed into the distance.
‘Could you telephone, please?’
‘I can try,’ said the young man, ‘but as you can hear, they’re making a fearful racket. The seals won’t have anything to worry about,’ he joked.
‘The seals?’
‘On Midsummer Night they come ashore, lured by the music. They shed their skins and become human. If you can capture their skin they can never go back and must stay with you forever.’
He stepped out of his boat. His shirtsleeves were rolled up and his waistcoat unbuttoned. Around his neck a glint of gold caught Iphigenia’s eye. She followed it down to the small gold cross nestled inside his shirt like a little bird. He went to the public phone, turned the handle a few times to get the operator. They exchanged a few friendly words then she connected him to the tavern.
‘Hello, Jack? They’re wanting the bonesetter at the monastery. Can you find him for me?’
He hung on for a long time. He heard a lot of noise, a lot of laughter and eventually the phone was hung up, no doubt by some soul doing a good turn and correcting a carelessness. The young man looked at Iphigenia apologetically. ‘I’m going over myself directly. I can take you.’
It was very, very late when Iphigenia returned that night. Without the bonesetter. The nuns were in the chapel praying, prayers that were answered by Sister Barbara’s announcement that Iphigenia had returned safely. It was Midsummer in the world and the village was deserted. She’d gone over to the mainland. She’d asked many people if they had seen the bonesetter. She couldn’t find him. She had left a message for him at the public house. She’d had to wait for the tide to walk back. That’s why she had taken so long. That’s why her garments were wet.
Although the community was overjoyed to have their sister back, the abbess was less than pleased with Iphigenia’s adventure. She wanted every tiny detail of Iphigenia’s time away from the monastery, who she had seen, who she had spoken to. How her garments had become so wet. But Iphigenia was unwavering. She repeated and repeated the story many times. She had learnt it so well that even years later, whenever she saw poor Assumpta limping on a leg that had never properly mended itself, and when the other thing happened, this was the story she told herself about Midsummer Night.
Iphigenia drew out the priest’s map. She unfolded and smoothed it out but still the creases remained cutting across it like a cross. In the top right-hand corner was a north-pointing compass. A heavy black line marked the perimeter of the monastery, a shape trying for circularity but interrupted by angles where the terrain had to be taken into consideration. The entrance was on the western side, away from the mainland so the path spiralled around the mountain rather than going straight up. The village was marked by a cluster of buildings, homes of
the fisherfolk who had gradually drifted over to the mainland. In the centre of the grounds was the chapel, the two wings of transepts stretched out at right angles to the nave. Iphigenia recognised the adjacent cloisters and dormitories. Other wings were unmarked. From the gatehouse a neat path had been drawn leading straight to the chapel, sculptured trees on either side of the path, and on the south-facing side, gardens delineated by neat rows of vegetables that appeared to be cabbages. There was also a garden of crosses where the human bodies of the nuns lay.
Iphigenia never thought of looking at the monastery in this way, as if hovering above it. It was God’s view. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine the monastery the way it was on the map. Yes, beneath the brambles and bushes that had grown up, around the buildings sinking into the ground, the sagging ceilings and cracked walls she supposed, yes, she could see the mapmaker’s boundaries. But there were no nuns in this picture, and no sheep.
Iphigenia woke with a jolt, the map across her breast and the sun already risen. She was late for Lauds. She hurried along to the chapel where Carla was kneeling in prayer. Kneeling in prayer but studying a beetle crawling across the floor in front of her. Iphigenia fell into rank beside her. She did not admonish herself too much for her lateness. The lapse was understandable. There had been two nights with little sleep, the first a night of prayer so intense that blood had almost burst through their pores. And then last night, saying Compline by the man’s bedside, waiting for him to awake and all of them still awake when the Great Silence fell on the house.
Lauds were over quickly as Iphigenia remembered Margarita was still with the man. She and Carla hurried along to the abbess’ cell to see their sister asleep on the chair in the corner, her head slumped to her chest. He was also sleeping, like a baby, undisturbed by Margarita’s snuffles and snores.