by Marele Day
Just beyond the standing stone they found another of their angels clinging to the bushes, too sodden and bedraggled for the wind to have blown it anywhere. There remained only Gabriel. They kept climbing, the rain a constant companion.
They retrieved Gabriel near the bank of brambles. Now all the angels were safely back in Carla’s pocket. Up they went. Where was the threshold on which they had stood this morning, so long ago? There was no moon or stars to light the way and they could barely see each other in the thickening gloom.
They felt their way along, Carla in front, Iphigenia in the middle and Margarita at the rear, holding onto each other’s vests, strung together like mountain climbers.
The storm eased, the rain dwindling to drops instead of sheets. Margarita began thrashing the brambles with her stick. Iphigenia breathed heavily, her feet numb with cold despite the sharp edges of rocks, the prickly gorse. The rain dwindled even further till there was nothing but the drip of water on leaves. A star appeared in the sky, then another and another. The storm was over.
The brambles took on shapes, thick black holes of darkness, etched tangles of branches, dark hearts of leaves. Margarita kept poking and prodding till she found what appeared to be a tunnel.
‘Carla.’
Carla felt her way in and found biscuity pieces of door. Strange how already the brambles had started to close over. Carla cleared a path for them and the three nuns re-entered the monastery.
A bright fresh day greeted Iphigenia what seemed only minutes after her head had touched the pillow. She was under a pile of blankets. She could feel the slight scratch of the rough wool but there was something wrong. She saw the shaft of sun from the window, she could hear the birds and the sheep, she saw the texture of the stone wall and the heavy door but it was as if she was looking at a picture. She had lost a dimension. Then she realised what it was—she’d lost smell.
She tried to throw off the weight of blankets but found her body wrapped in a shroud of pain. It was not so bad if she lay perfectly still but the slightest movement brought her in contact with the pain. Her mouth was open and dry and when she tried to swallow, her throat convulsed. She heard Margarita’s wheezy breath and realised it was her own.
She struggled out of bed, her feet tender on the stone floor. They were scratched, with crusts of blood on them. She stood in the sunlight absorbing its warmth then hobbled her way down the corridor, wrapped in her aches and pains, her body bent trying to comfort itself.
Margarita and Carla were already in the chapel when Iphigenia sneezed her arrival. There was a small interruption to the rhythm then the murmuring continued. Iphigenia wiped her nose on her sleeve. Though it was a clear day, she was surrounded by fog. She gazed at the everlasting candle in St Anne’s corner, imagining it burning away this fog.
When Matins were over Iphigenia found she could not stand up again. She grunted and heaved, bent and put her hands on the floor, tried to put her foot flat but it was too painful.
They helped her up and led her into the courtyard. Iphigenia groaned. The fire was just about out. Her sisters gathered small bits and pieces, and larger, thicker branches from the stack of firewood. They piled it up in a pyramid under the kettle. Then they left it to Iphigenia. Margarita watched and Carla went off to get sick herbs.
With a great deal of effort Iphigenia got down to the fire. She blew on it in her accustomed manner, she huffed and puffed. But no bright genie of flame shot up from the smoulder.
Margarita looked at her solemnly, trying to hide her dismay. She had suffered no discomfort from the outing, she felt remarkably well. But they had broken enclosure, broken the vows of centuries. God was displeased and this was the sign. He had made Iphigenia’s fire-breath cold and moist.
Iphigenia turned her head, coughed, and tried again but the fire remained inert. Iphigenia was sick. Would she die? Would God take away all her breath? Domine miserere peccatrice, Margarita prayed silently. Was it a sin to not want Iphigenia to die? Death of a sister was a joyous occasion. Their lives were a continual waiting to be lifted up to the presence of the Lord. What if there was only Margarita? Could she do all the chores, maintain the rituals, tell the stories with only herself as audience, sing the sheep in on Shearing Day, keep the fire going? Could she be the whole community and live in the terrible loneliness?
She didn’t want to take over the lighting of the fire; Iphigenia had to succeed at it. Nevertheless, the Lord wouldn’t mind if Margarita helped just a little. She went away and brought back a sheet of the soft pretty paper they had found in the car. Perhaps the Lord would look kindly on priest’s paper. She gave it to Iphigenia to try but it smoked away to nothing and drifted up to the sky.
Iphigenia had lost her fire power. She had lost her smell. She could see Margarita and the sheep in the courtyard but beyond it were just splotches of colour with no defined edges. She had no defined edges herself, as if the rain had leached out her strength. Like a sick sheep she wanted to go away and lie in a quiet dark place.
He had cried for a long time, the silent inward sobbing of Christ on Calvary. The tin pot, his excuse and his protection, was nearby, a mocking reminder of his thwarted escape. It was full of water. Beside it were some crusts of bread. He saw bars and rails, and realised he was in the holding pen.
Though he lay like a huge pale fish on a shore gasping for air, he had one fish eye turned towards the events in the courtyard. Stripped of all human dignity, stripped of everything, clothes, even body hair, shivering with cold, he had eventually discovered animal cunning.
He had first thought that they were deliberately absenting themselves, as a form of torture, but when he saw the apricot-coloured tissue come out he realised that they had gone down to the car. If they had brought that back they had probably brought other things. They had no doubt taken the keys from his jacket. He wondered how they had coped with the car alarm. He hoped it had frightened the shit out of them.
He watched the feeble attempt the tall one made to get the fire going. She coughed and spluttered and breathed onto it but nothing happened. There had been a storm last night. He knew what a tearing wind there’d been outside and they were caught up in it. They couldn’t get their fire going. Good. The tall one had caught a cold by the look of it. Good. He was feeling the worst he’d ever felt in his life but he was young and resilient. They were old. Perhaps they would all catch her cold and die.
He could get in the car and fetch a doctor, go to a chemist and buy some aspirin. All they had to do was give him back his clothes, his keys and let him out. He’d be back the same day. He would promise. Would they go for it? The tall one was their strength. With her sick the others would be easy to persuade. He would wait a few days, watch her get sicker, watch them fret. Then he would make his offer.
She got clumsily down on the ground again, like a slow elephant at a circus, going through the pantomime of trying to breathe fire into that inert, damp wood. She’d got it going before but now her powers were defunct. He hoped she was feeling as humiliated now as he had then.
The fat one came back with a book this time. A handsome maroon leather cover with gold lettering. She tore a page out of it, then snapped the book shut. It was a missal. They were going to use a page of the missal as a fire starter. He almost shouted out in protest at the sacrilege.
There were stacks of missals in the library, the nuns didn’t need them. They knew the words off by heart. Burning books was a Church tradition. Nevertheless, when it had become necessary they had thought carefully about which books to burn. Those of which there was only one copy would be the last to go. Books that were rare, books that were relics, illuminated manuscripts. But missals, there were so many of them. They would burn, the words turn into smoke and drift back to God.
They had started burning books around the time of the death of Sister Scholastica. Scholastica had died on a grey Good Friday. They had not lit the stove because for the forty days of Lent they ate cold food. On Sunday when they had buried Scholastica and rejoiced in
the Resurrection of the Lord and life everlasting and the first crocuses poked their heads out of the grass they found there was no paper to light the fire to prepare the Resurrection meal. Not a scrap.
Somehow, transmuting paper words into smoke seemed an entirely appropriate way of signalling to the Lord that the spirit of Scholastica, the librarian, was on its way. They had chosen a couple of pages, put a candle to them and repeated the prayers as they burnt. The fire scoured the pages and gave off a bluish tinge. Whether the Lord was pleased to receive this communion or whether from other causes, the paschal lamb, eaten with tinned apricots, a gift from the village, tasted particularly good that year.
Quite a pile of missals remained from sisters who had no further use of them. Margarita gave the book to Iphigenia. When it caught fire, Margarita would send her own prayer up to Heaven. A prayer of thanks for her safe passage down and up the mountain. She looked at the walking stick propped against the table, perfectly intact despite the damage it had done to the car. It had given her strength and durability. Assumpta had lived into very old age with the stick, despite the leg that never set properly. Perhaps Iphigenia’s illness was an individual, not a collective, punishment. Margarita remembered that night they had spent in the chapel praying for Iphigenia’s safe return, Assumpta lying in pain waiting for the bonesetter.
Still Iphigenia could not get the fire going. She heaved herself up from the ground, refusing help, and limped into the chapel. She came out again with a candle lit from the everlasting one, her hand up protecting its flame, carrying it steadily like one of Hestia’s vestal virgins. She scrunched up pages from the missal, placed them under the twigs then held the candle to them. This time she did not blow on the fire at all. The paper caught and flames danced gaily. Soon the thicker branches gave off their slow sustained flame and the water in the kettle began to rumble. Iphigenia smiled weakly. She had finally got the fire going, but it had taken her last drop of energy.
‘Damn,’ muttered Ignatius.
Her foot was throbbing badly. This time she had to accept help to get up. Margarita rubbed Iphigenia’s cold hands while Carla threw sage leaves into the pot and added a drop of cider vinegar to Iphigenia’s mug. She had also brought wine from the cellar which she would heat and season with the sick herbs to make Iphigenia sweat. Iphigenia lifted her foot to Carla.
‘Sore.’
Carla gently balanced the foot on her knee. Never before had she touched Iphigenia’s foot. She saw the gash in the leathery sole. She moved her fingers over it and felt a sudden sharpness. She held the foot to the light. A piece of the car had lodged itself in Iphigenia’s foot. Carla pulled out the glistening shard of glass and held it up for them to see. While Margarita poured the tea, Carla put her punctured finger to her mouth and sucked the blood that had mingled with Iphigenia’s.
Sage. Their favourite and most useful tea. Iphigenia felt her body loosen as she imbibed. She placed her face over the steam and breathed it, feeling its heat prick her nose and eyes yet still not smelling. She felt separated from everything, as if she was behind a glass wall. On the other side of the glass she saw Margarita’s square fat fingers bringing the mug up to her face, Carla preparing the wine, sheep wandering in and out of the tableau.
‘Gargle,’ said Carla, nudging the potion in front of Iphigenia. Iphigenia was staring into nowhere.
Carla gently took Iphigenia’s hands and placed them round the bowl, her own on Iphigenia’s like protective shells. She could have forced the bowl up, could have made Iphigenia spill it and say, ‘Clumsy child, Iphigenia. Look what you’ve done.’ Many times Carla had done this in her games, spilled something and pretended Iphigenia had done it. ‘Clumsy child, Iphigenia!’ But now Iphigenia was sick. She was the poor and needy of the world.
Iphigenia was not oblivious to Carla’s ministrations. She felt how gently the child had removed the splinter from her foot. She felt the rim of the mug against her lip and the liquid enter her mouth. Iphigenia tilted her head back and gargled, like Carla had shown her, the bubbles of air tickling the back of her throat.
Carla seemed pleased with the noise Iphigenia was making. She made a spitting motion, indicating the next step. But Iphigenia was enjoying the game. She gargled some more, watching Carla pretend spit two or three times before she finally brought the liquid into her mouth again and spat it as far as she could. She gargled a few more times then swallowed the rest of the mixture.
When Carla had taken the bowl away, Margarita rugged her up in a blanket, bringing it right up to her chin. Although Iphigenia still felt foggy and her head drooped she was touched by the efforts her sisters were making. After the vinegar gargle came the mulled wine. She drank it down and with each swallow, her throat eased. She just needed to sit quietly in the sun, sweat out the rain and get her smell back. And she had to absorb into her illness the care of the community. That was the duty of the patient. Sometimes as a child, Carla would make special treats for the community. Little cakes made of mud with sprinklings of flowers on top. The nuns would declare them delicious and pretend to munch. In the glow of Carla’s mulled wine, Iphigenia recalled those times. Now she didn’t have to pretend.
She did not want to be put to bed, she said when asked, she wanted to be here. With them. Carla and Margarita went to fetch one of the high-backed chairs reserved for visiting priests, some pillows and another blanket. They installed Iphigenia on her throne. Arranged the pillows around her, put her feet up on the bench, covered the whole with the other blanket and tucked her in. She felt like Grandmother, except that Grandmother would never sit with her feet up and Iphigenia’s head didn’t sway. She actually checked herself, looking at a detail of the blanket and making sure her vision didn’t waver.
She was feeling very warm and sweaty under all the layers of coverings. It was a fine bright day, everything sparkling after the rain, with just the right amount of breeze. Seabirds wheeled through the sky far above, and closer, small brown birds chirped in the apple trees.
‘Washing Day,’ she croaked.
Margarita filled the trough with water that had collected that night in buckets and pans, while Carla got the bag of sorted fleeces and brought over what was to be washed. Some fleece they left unwashed, so that although rougher, it retained more of its waterproofing lanolin.
Washing softened and brightened the wool. They had a piece of soap in a wire cage with a handle attached. Margarita moved it vigorously about in the water. The suds came easily in the soft rainwater. Carla tipped in the creamy fleece and they started working their fingers in it to loosen the dirt, working with the grain of the wool, not across it, careful not to mat it, preparing it for spinning.
Iphigenia watched, eyelids heavy, ready to fall asleep at any minute, her head nodding to her chest.
The sun shining, the birds singing, sheep in the grass, women at their washing, it was a picture of bucolic bliss. What about him, was he invisible? Couldn’t any of them see the human being caged like an animal, hands tied behind his back, legs in a plaster cast, every hair of his head and body missing? Was this part of the pastoral idyll?
At least the first time he had passed out he had woken to find the three of them standing there staring at him. Oh how he wished for that now. He would not have believed it but he craved the company of his captors. He opened his mouth as wide as he could and produced a heart-rending scream. He was not a stone or a blade of grass. He was flesh and blood, the same as them.
Iphigenia’s head lurched up and her eyes opened at the disturbance. Margarita and Carla turned lazily from the trough and looked. The scream wound down to a quiet whimper. As there appeared to be nothing further, they went back to their tasks.
A bank of white fleeces hung on the bushes drying by the time Carla and Margarita felt their cold fingers needed the warmth of a cup of tea. They pressed their hands against cheeks which had grown rosy from work and went back to Iphigenia and the fire.
Iphigenia was asleep, head resting against a pillow, breathin
g through her mouth and snoring. A thin line of spittle had dried white on her chin like a scar. She did not stir when Margarita and Carla joined her. Carla put her cool hand on Iphigenia’s moist hot forehead. The sick herbs were working.
It was time for Sext. There at the table they said their prayers softly, punctuated by Iphigenia’s snores. When they had finished, Carla dipped her finger in the remaining tea in the pot and wet Iphigenia’s dry lips with it, her teeth and her tongue. She added a branch to the fire.
While Carla continued with the washing Margarita made a quick unleavened bread. They went about their tasks wordlessly. Words were for prayers, chants and stories. In the silence they could carry on eternal adoration of the Lord. He watched. Looking for hints, trying to determine what they had in store for him. Were they going to keep him here forever, torture him? He watched the way they fussed over the one sitting on her throne snoring grotesquely. How vulnerable she was. Asleep, mouth open, limbs tethered beneath the coverings. He was sick, too. He had his legs in plaster. He had spent the night on straw stinking of sheep shit and his own urine. Why weren’t they fussing over him?
As a priest he had spoken of the resilience of the human spirit, of those crippled by war and famine, prisoners of conscience who had suffered unbearable torture and had never lost faith. It was easy to give out those lofty words, to had pray for the victims in his crisp neat collar, knowing he’d soon be enjoying a glass of wine with the Sunday roast. And now he was one of those wretched creatures. He had never imagined, never really imagined, that he and the unfortunate belonged to the same species.
The fat one worked away, slapping a lump of dough into shape, using the tea from the pot the young one had stuck her finger in to moisten it. Disgusting. She oiled the pan, patted the dough down in it then put it on the fire. With her hands she swept the flour off the table, wiped the floury hands down her vest then blew the residue onto the grass.
The other one walked past, giving him a look that was hard to discern. It was certainly more than curiosity and lasted too long to be furtive. She had a small basket of what appeared to be black wool. She carefully placed it onto a thin cloth, wrapped the cloth around like a plum pudding then sluiced it in the water. Doing this with one hand and looking at him at the same time. He couldn’t turn from her gaze even though he felt a sharp prickly sensation, like thousands of tiny needles, all over him.