by Marele Day
She squeezed excess water out of the bundle then placed it in the basket and opened up the cloth again. Why in the basket instead of on the bushes with the other wool? Black sheep, he giggled with an unwanted hysteria. Had to be kept away from the rest of the flock. She tilted the basket towards him.
It wasn’t wool, it was hair. His hair. He wanted to curl up into a little ball but it was impossible. He couldn’t even bend his legs.
She put the basket down in front of the fat one. They stroked the hair, picked pieces of it up. He was horrified but he could not look away. Even though the hair was no longer attached to him he felt violated at every stroke. They turned the hairs around, looking at the gloss. Examining the quality.
His eyelids came down closing the image off. They had his hair, they had his body. But he would keep his mind and spirit from them as long as he could. He would think of saints and martyrs, those who had undergone every humiliation and he would dwell with them.
Carla left the basket of hair at one end of the table and went to get some apple chutney for lunch. Margarita tested the bread in the pan to see if it was done. Satisfied, she turned it out on the table.
The mellow roundness of freshly cooked bread and the sharp stink of sweat woke Iphigenia. Everything seemed to have more depth, definition. Smell. She could smell. She moved an arm. Tender but no longer cramped. She brought it out from under the blanket and rested her hand in her lap. Her mouth was parched and dry, an irony considering that her body was a lather of sweat. She did a sucking motion with her mouth to get some saliva going. Margarita poured hot water straight from the kettle and gave it to Iphigenia to sip. Ah, much better.
Iphigenia felt as if she’d woken from a sleep of a hundred years instead of the few hours it must have been. She was not completely recovered, her head twinged every now and then, her throat still felt lumpy but the aches and pains had been sweated out. Best of all she could smell. She was out of the fog and part of the community again. She brought her other hand out from under the blanket, placed them together and with her sisters bowed her head for grace.
The abbess’ room was lit with oil lamps and candles that cast long looming shadows on the walls. The basket of car relics sat on the abbess’ bed almost glowing with a life of its own.
The nuns were going through the relics, sorting them into piles the way Carla sorted debris from fleeces. They would discard nothing they had brought up from the car, but they knew already that not everything was useful. The papers in the pretty box were just playthings. They had examined the lighter fluid more than once, and without really knowing what it was, understood that it was important. Likewise with the battery.
While Iphigenia examined the contents of the folder, Margarita and Carla browsed through a book of maps. It was very colourful—black, red or yellow lines traversing green countryside. There were tiny squares of towns, inverted ‘v’s for mountains, circles of lakes, crosses that denoted places of worship, churches and monasteries. They turned a page and came across a thin length of ribbon, similar to ribbons they used to mark their place in the Bible. This page was a map of the coastline, with islands scattered out from it like crumbs from a loaf of bread. Some of the islands had names, others were just ragged green shapes in the blue. Was their island one of these? What was it called? The monastery was St Agnes, but if they ever knew the name of the island it had long been forgotten.
Carla and Margarita turned to another book, Negotiation Skills. It was difficult to read, almost as if it was written in a foreign language.
‘Connoisseur Resorts.’ It was Iphigenia. Carla and Margarita gave up on Negotiation Skills and gathered around. Iphigenia didn’t look up from the pamphlet she was poring over, seemingly unaware that she had spoken at all.
The pamphlet was shiny with lots of pictures. In one picture was a blue pool with people drinking coloured drinks and floating on buoyant mattresses. They were all wearing glasses, black as the car windows. In another picture people were seated at a big table, with candles along it. There was plush red carpet on the floor, tapestries on the wall and ornate decorations on the ceiling. It looked like a palace. In a third picture, some men were in a field poised with sticks. Croquet. No, it was another game. Golf.
‘The ultimate away-from-it-all,’ read Iphigenia. ‘Discretion and privacy. Luxury accommodation for private individuals or groups … Medieval fortresses, castles, manor houses.’ She turned the pamphlet over a few times. Nothing was left unread. Carla picked it up, examined the pictures closely, while Iphigenia went on to the next thing. A list of names. Connoisseur Resorts Hotel Marketing Group had a circle around it. She put the list aside too. The next item was a map, the same map of the monastery they had retrieved from the man’s pocket. But drawings of other things had been superimposed on it. The courtyard had been made into a blue square, and the chapel was different. Iphigenia’s mouth set hard.
Carla and Margarita looked at Iphigenia, waiting for her to tell.
‘He wants to turn our home into these pictures.’
Carla grinned broadly. She liked the picture of the table with the candles on it, the blood-red carpet underneath. But Iphigenia did not grin, and neither did Margarita. ‘The pictures are nice,’ Carla defended herself.
‘But we are not in them. In such a place we will not exist.’
Carla started peering at the people around the table. Some of them had their heads turned and you couldn’t see their faces properly. They could very well be Carla and Margarita and Iphigenia.
‘He said we would have to go to a place with a nurse, he said they would slaughter the Agnes sisters. Remember, Carla. The story of King Henry VIII, dissolution of the monasteries. All destroyed. All sold to the world.’
‘But God is the king of us.’
‘God is the king of us. But the Bishop is the king of the monastery. And he has sent the man here.’
Carla arranged her own relics from the journey outside. Now she had another—the shard of black glass, as sharp as a crucifixion nail. She played her finger on it, tapping with enough pressure to feel the sharp point but not enough to pierce the skin the way it had pierced Iphigenia’s. Iphigenia didn’t even know she had brought this relic up with her. It had been in her body, nestled in her flesh and blood. Carla held its blackness up against the night, then buried it in a special place all of its own. It might tear and break the fabric of the escapecoat.
It was very late, the Great Silence had descended hours ago. She had lain there while the sliver of moon passed by her window and still sleep did not come.
In turn she held up a sprig of sea-pink, a yellow gorse flower and a shell. The shell was the shape of an ear. She pressed it against her ear and heard a faraway windy sound. She pulled the shell away and looked at it. How could it make the noise of the sea? She listened again. In the shell she heard the echo of the creatures’ song. She saw their smooth round heads and lovely whiskers, their great rubbery flippers. Carla flapped her forearms up and down, and sang their song until she grew tired. But not tired enough.
With the shell still in her hand, she went outside. Sometimes when she was little and couldn’t sleep she would creep into one of the nuns’ cells. As she grew bigger they did not like it and said she must find comfort in the Lord.
Down past the arches of the cloisters she went, holding the shell, singing the seal song, humming, mouth closed so that the sound stayed in her head and did not escape. She passed the glow of embers in the courtyard. And then she saw the fish. She stopped the singing, she pulled the sea sound away from her ear but the fish did not disappear.
Quietly she crept up. She saw his glassy eye. He was breathing in short spurts. ‘Kiri,’ she called softly but he did not respond. She unlatched the gate to the holding pen. He did not move. But the glassy eye did not stop looking. She went in and put the shell to his ear. The head turned abruptly as if trying to flick off a fly. She got down, her skirt rustling the straw.
She was very close to him. His white skin was
covered in tiny black dots, minute grains of sand. When she patted him it was the raspy feel of the sea creatures.
‘Sleep?’
He observed the Great Silence. Carla would have liked to observe it too but her thoughts were chattering. When she went to the sisters at night, they sometimes broke the Great Silence to tell her a story, to pray with her until she fell asleep.
‘Story?’
Still he observed the Great Silence.
She lay down beside him, curving into his back. He was cold so she pulled him closer to warm him. He wriggled violently but after some gentle patting, he gave up, like a little bird or insect does eventually if you hold it firmly.
She would tell him a story. But which one? Something he would like. She lay there feeling the movement of his breath, then she decided. She didn’t have all the story but she knew when she started the rest would come. She fingered the shell.
Resting her other hand on his tummy so that he was snug and warm, she began.
‘Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess. One day she set off with her lords and ladies for a land across the sea but there was a storm, a terrible storm, and the ship foundered. The sea closed over the ship without a trace. The people were not dead, only sleeping, waiting to be delivered up. By and by, a prince came along on a big black chariot. And do you know what happened?’ She started rubbing his tummy, his cold and prickly tummy. And then, oh, she felt Baby Moses. Poor little abandoned Baby, with not even the bulrushes to keep him warm. She would not abandon him, she would love him and hug him as the sisters had done for Baby Carla.
‘The prince’s big black chariot parted a way in the sea, just like Moses stretching out his hand and dividing the waters.’ She stretched her hand and closed her fingers around Baby Moses. ‘He would deliver them to the promised land where they would drink coloured drinks, and eat at a table with a carpet the colour of blood.’ She hugged Baby Moses with her hand. ‘And then …’
And then a miraculous thing happened. Right there in her hand Baby Moses started to grow up. He kept his soft baby skin but inside he grew solid and hard as a lamb’s leg.
It was unspeakable, he could barely believe it was happening. It wasn’t enough that she breathed her clammy story into the back of his neck. She was now playing with him.
Soul of Christ, sanctify me
Body of Christ, save me
O good Jesus, hide me within Thy wounds …
He thought he had reached the place where all dignity had disappeared, where he could not get lower, but still they had managed to find a way. He tried to feel Christ’s thorns pricking his own head, feel the nails through his own hands and feet, the sword in his side, to have heroic pain instead of this. He was in the wilderness. God had deserted him, left him with no weapons to fend for himself, not even control over his own body.
She kept on and on with her stupid story, the parting sea and carpets of blood. Though God had deserted him it seemed the hunger of the flesh had not. It did not matter that the hand belonged to this mad she-creature, it had the softness and surety of the nurse. He reviled them both. He reviled all temptresses, the embodiment of flesh and carnality. Of all that must be denied and abhorred by a spirit dedicated to the Lord. The phlegm, bile, rheum, the lowliness of being born between woman’s shit and piss. He dredged up St Augustine on woman’s vile venality, St John Chrysostom, but none of it prevented tumescence.
She wasn’t even using the firm quick rhythm of his own grip, it was simply the soft warmth of her encompassing hand. Oh, he could resist no longer. He let fly with it, words so corrosive they scoured his own soul.
‘The curse God pronounced on your sex weighs still on the world. You are the Devil’s gateway, you desecrated the fatal tree, you first betrayed the law of God, you who softened up with your cajoling words the man against whom the Devil could not prevail by force. The image of God, the man Adam, you broke him, it was child’s play to you. You deserved death, and it was the Son of God who had to die!’
His mouth screamed it out, all the rage, all the indignity that had been visited upon him and yet he knew not how he mouthed those words with such eloquence, the words that had come to him across the millennia of history.
When he was spent he lay there sobbing, exhausted and limp. In the soft cooing with which he tried to comfort himself, he heard the chorus of sheep, a bleating that sounded remarkably like his own.
Then all around him was still, the great cold blanket of night pressed down on him and he was once more alone. The woman was gone. At which precise moment she had shrunk away from him he couldn’t tell.
Iphigenia woke with the noise. A banshee. She had never heard the like. The outburst had started up the sheep, then there was quiet sobbing and then there was nothing.
After Carla had gone to her cell Iphigenia and Margarita had discussed it. ‘He has strayed, that is why he wants to make our religious house a secular one. God has sent him here so that we can minister to him. If he cannot be persuaded with our ministering, others will come.’ Margarita did not think the Lord had sent him to be ministered to. ‘We must try,’ said Iphigenia.
It was time. They did not want an uncontrollable wild thing on their hands, that terrible screeching creature. Yes, tomorrow was time. They would bring him in, start him on the edges of their company. She did not know whether Carla had provoked the beastly howl but she thought she detected the scent of a frightened Carla scurrying back along the corridor.
Remarkably, Ignatius thought when he opened his eyes to misty sunlight, he had survived the night. As he had not eaten anything he had not defecated. He thanked God for this small mercy and asked for faith to get him through this ordeal for which there was no name. He prayed for humility, for release from pride. He gave himself utterly to the Lord for His will to be done.
He could hear the hissing of water and the scrape of mugs on the wooden slab of table. Sheep grazed around him, giving no indication they had been disturbed by the events of the night. No-one did. The chair from the day before had been brought out again but the tall one was not sitting in it. Blankets and cushions were piled on the chair. Something had changed.
‘Good morning,’ said the tall one. ‘How is your ankle?’ As if he were a patient in hospital. How was his ankle? Lord Almighty, he didn’t need to be covered in plaster just to protect his ankle.
They came into the pen, all three of them. The one from last night held back a little, avoiding his eye. He would have said she looked sheepish but the word was bereft of normal meaning in this gathering. The other two stood him up and brushed the debris off. They untied his arms then tied them up again, this time in front of him, smiling, as if they were doing him a favour. He became a limp doll, letting them do what they would. He could not sink any further.
His encased legs were resting on the bench, cushions around his head, blankets tucked in, bound hands resting in his lap. Propped up like a dowager queen. He watched them pour tea then place a mug of it in front of him.
How in Heaven’s name did they think he was going to lean over and pick it up, trussed up as he was like a Christmas turkey? He looked at them dully. He would accept and receive but he would not initiate. He would be as indifferent to them as they had appeared to be to him. Though he had undergone humiliation and degradation beyond all imagination, he had to admit that they were not gloating tormentors. They had left him alone to his pain and suffering. Until the succubus in the night. Laying with him, teasing and tempting. Tormenting him with her story and her blasphemous hand.
Perhaps she had been sent to bring him to utter degradation, to test his humanity. Out in the wilderness he had been through a rite of passage. Now he was being accepted back into the tribe.
When he made no movement towards the mug, Iphigenia pushed it within his reach. He looked at it, looked at them watching him, then he fanned his fingers around it, felt its nourishing warmth.
They drank their tea, inviting him with their actions, to drink his. He had lost tra
ck of when he had last eaten or drunk, but now he felt acutely his hunger and his thirst.
Perhaps he had had an accident and broken both legs. He had a fever and the rest was a hallucination. He had been ill, had a few bad dreams and now he was sitting in a chair convalescing. A convalescent with his hands bound together.
He guided the mug up, trying to stop his hands from shaking, trying to disregard the ache in his arms. The mug finally arrived at his mouth. He breathed in the refreshing aroma then took his first sip. His body felt like a big empty well, he could feel the trickle of tea going all the way down. He took another sip and held it, aware now of how bad his own mouth tasted. The tea lacked the minty freshness of toothpaste but it was pleasantly sharp and invigorating.
In the loneliness of the holding pen he had wanted to die. He had not partaken of the water and crusts they’d left for him, had refused his body any sustenance, wanting the Lord to take him as quickly as possible. But he was alive. Out of the pen and sitting in the warm sun drinking tea. God obviously had other plans for him.
The tea finished, they brought out baskets of fleece. There were natural colours of creamy white, dark grey and brown. There were also soft greens, yellow, blue. Perhaps after all he had imagined that basket of black, the basket of his own hair. But he had none on his body, they must have done something with it.
Next they brought out a spinning wheel and a basket of sticks with knobs, and other things. The fat one sat at the spinning wheel, the young one stood near her and the tall one sat at the table.
‘Spinning wheel,’ said the fat one.
‘Spindle,’ said the young one.