by Marele Day
Iphigenia drew her mind back to the day she first saw it. It loomed importantly in her mind and yet it seemed implausibly small. ‘About the same.’
‘Bible?’
‘Not a book.’
‘Clue.’
Iphigenia thought about what clue she could give. ‘Black and squarish.’
Oh no. Not black and squarish. She didn’t want this to be the thing in the guessing game, not the treasure for the man. She hadn’t even given it to him yet. Carla tamped it back into the ground.
‘Don’t know.’
‘Black and squarish,’ Iphigenia repeated.
‘Don’t know.’ Carla had begun to look sullen.
‘It’s the man’s.’
Iphigenia wasn’t playing properly. Carla hadn’t even asked for a clue.
‘Don’t know.’
‘It fits in a pocket.’ Iphigenia waited a little while longer but Carla appeared to have stopped guessing. ‘Give up?’
Carla hated giving up but she thought for this game it was the best thing to do. She nodded her head, eyes looking to the ground.
‘It’s the phone,’ Iphigenia announced.
The phone! Not the battery after all. She started grinning.
‘Do you know where the phone is?’ asked Iphigenia.
Oh yes, oh yes, Carla knew. She stood up and grabbed Iphigenia’s hand, pulling her away from the battery burial place. ‘I’ll take you.’
She ran, with Iphigenia in tow.
‘Carla, Carla,’ breathed Iphigenia, ‘slow down.’ She was panting and her cheeks were flushed. She didn’t want to dampen Carla’s enthusiasm but she could hardly keep up.
Carla slowed to a trot. She was feeling so happy. Two playmates! Iphigenia and soon she’d have the man as well. She was very pleased that she’d been able to guard the battery treasure and Iphigenia hadn’t even guessed it was there.
They had to slow anyway because they were coming to the brambles. Carla found the tunnel that had been made before, by the man, by the sisters when they had gone outside. It looked as equally overgrown as everywhere else to Iphigenia but there was an invisible path that Carla knew. The brambles that had reached out to fill the gaps were green, sappy and pliant. With fresh sharp thorns nevertheless.
Carla let go of Iphigenia’s hand and pushed her way in, taking hold of the new growth and plaiting it back into the old so that it made a tunnel. She made her way to the place where she’d buried it, the childhood hole that the man had fallen into, and started digging like a dog, sending a flurry of soil behind her.
‘There!’ she beamed. She rubbed the soil off as if it was Aladdin’s lamp and held it up triumphantly.
Such a dull ugly black thing. Yet like the tarnished lamp that Aladdin found, Iphigenia was sure it had a genie in it. As Carla held it high against the infinite blue, Iphigenia smelled the bewitching tang of the sea, heard the diving and dipping of seabirds. This was the very place from which they had set out on their journey down to the world. Iphigenia needed no clearer indication that her course of action was the right one.
Carla held out a fist concealing something. ‘Play?’ she invited, putting her head to one side and giving the man her sweetest smile.
At least they had good teeth, yellowish but all intact. They never appeared to clean them. He ran his tongue around his own teeth. Mossy. He supposed his breath smelled as well. He’d almost forgotten the feel of polished mint-tasting teeth. He looked at the soil-encrusted fist. ‘What?’ he asked.
She came right up to him and opened her hand. The echo of the shouting voice was barely more than a whisper now.
Well wasn’t that dandy. Lost but now is found. She’d dug it up from somewhere. Literally dug up, he surmised from her hands and fingernails.
‘Your treasure,’ she gently nudged his memory.
OK, OK. She didn’t need to rub it in. The phone battery. The battery he’d gone looking for amongst the sheep turds. How embarrassed he’d felt to stoop to such a furtive activity. He had no idea then how much further he would stoop. ‘Low enough to slither under a snake’s belly,’ he said out aloud, in an American cowboy voice. Completely useless, that thing in her hand, but she was only trying to be friendly. He must be magnanimous. Suffer the little children, little dirty-faced, middle-aged children. She had pretty hair, now that it had grown a little, lustrous curls like his mother’s. Why had he not noticed it before? ‘Thank you,’ he said graciously.
‘Play?’
‘Play what?’ he asked.
‘Your game?’
‘My game?’
‘You choose,’ explained Carla.
He had never been one for playing games, chess yes, ones where the grey matter got a bit of exercise, but not impromptu ‘made-up’ games. He didn’t have the imagination for it. But a game, any game, was better than lying here on the bed wondering what was on the menu for dinner. With no chores to do all he had to look forward to were the meagre meals. Sometimes they carried him out to sit in the sun for a few hours, sometimes they left him in his room all day. Carla seemed not to notice the crispness in the air but Ignatius found that his plaster tail, rather than providing insulation, proved to be cold and clammy. It was all right when the sun shone into the room but towards evening a chill came down.
‘Play?’ Like an eager puppy, putting a stick down in front of him and waiting for him to throw it. Running in a little bit to let him get the hang of it.
Ah, but he did have a game he wanted to play with her. I spy with my little eye something beginning with C. Not courtyard. Not cloister. It’s car. You can’t see it? Let me show you. It’s outside. Let’s play follow the leader. I’ll follow you out to the world. It’s a big black thing, can you see it? Well, let’s go a little further. There it is. Now it’s my turn. A car can go faster than anyone can run, can go faster than birds can fly, fish can swim. Watch me, I’ll show you. Watch me, Carla. The tide is down, the strand is up, watch how far I go. You can run but I am too fast for you. My magnificent black steed. You are just a tiny speck, tinier and tinier till I am on the mainland, the tide is up and you have disappeared.
Oh, but it would be a while before he could play that. Legs back first. If they wanted him to come up with interesting games, they’d have to feed him on something more sustaining than nettles and turnips. He needed protein, a nice piece of haddock with tarragon sauce, a good roast with rich gravy and lots of potatoes. He couldn’t see how they survived on their meagre fare. He was sure dietary deficiency was the explanation for their peculiarities. Some of them at least.
He was not a very good playmate even though she was giving him every opportunity. She didn’t know what game was played with the battery, it was up to him to tell her. He didn’t even seem very pleased to see it. She put her finger on her chin and turned her head to one side, as if an idea had just occurred to her. ‘Name.’ She knew very well what the name of it was but she wanted to get him started.
‘Name?’
‘This.’
‘It’s a battery. A dead battery.’
She held it up to her nose. ‘Dead?’ It was stiff like a dead thing but there was no smell and no maggots.
He sighed, capitulated, took the thing in his limited hands and started hitting it against his plaster, making a rhythm. She listened to the percussive sound for a bit then imitated it, making a clicking noise with her tongue and teeth. Then he stopped, interest lost. She would have to give him further instruction. Carla used to instruct the hedgehog over and over but it never learnt a thing. ‘Your treasure,’ she repeated emphatically, coming right up to his face.
It was a cruelty, didn’t she know that? To display, flaunt in front of him his impotent ‘treasure’. He moved it up and down the bed as if it was a toy car, gave it a final push in her direction. She pushed it over to him again. Back and forth it went.
It was not a very interesting game. It had seemed so important to him the first day. She felt sure that there was a special game he played with it. Had he
forgotten or was he just not sharing? When he appeared to grow tired of pushing it back and forwards, she picked it up, rubbed it in her hands and held it to his cheek to feel the warmth.
Instinctively he moved his head away. ‘I know a game,’ he said brightly, ‘a treasure hunt. Hunt the battery.’
Hunt the battery? But it was here.
He read the quizzical look on her face.
‘A new battery, one that works. In the glove box of the car. We could go down and get it. This could be our special game, just you and me.’
Oh, she was so pleased to hear the man talk about special games, but the car. The car had disappeared. She carved a slow arc in the air, miming the demise of the car. Step by step, finishing with her hands exploding in a splash. Then she shook her head as if it was a terrible tragedy.
Great. They’d rolled the car into the sea. The helicopter wouldn’t have spotted the car because there was no car to spot. There was nothing for the helicopter to see, nothing at all to indicate his presence here. Great. He clenched his teeth and sniffed back the tears. He was sick of it. When were they going to bring him his dinner?
Car relics, car relics. Carla loved best of all the box of soft, apricot-coloured papers. When you pulled out one, another arose to take its place. But that wasn’t what she was going to fetch. The thing that the man liked best was the battery. The car relics were kept in the abbess’ room. The abbess didn’t play with her the way the sisters did. Sometimes the abbess would smile down at her if she passed by, but she never played games like Round and Round the Garden, or This Little Piggy, where the nuns touched Carla’s fingers and toes, tickled her under the arm and made her squeal with delight. For a long time Carla thought Iphigenia was an abbess too.
As Carla put her hand on the door, she heard noises, a soft grunting. Imagine her surprise when she peeped through and saw Iphigenia at play! Playing with the phone. ‘Ho there, Iphigenia,’ said Carla, flinging the door wide open.
Iphigenia was so engrossed that she hadn’t smelled Carla coming. And so startled to hear her voice that she dropped the phone. She hoped no damage had been done. Not that she could get it working.
Carla and Iphigenia looked at each other, both wondering whether explanations were necessary. They knew they had caught each other out in a private thing.
Iphigenia was the first to recover. ‘Looking for something?’
A broad smile spread across Carla’s face. ‘Small and black.’
Two games with Iphigenia in the one day. Iphigenia was normally not keen on games although she had once described the game of dominoes. Carla had even made a set of dominoes, cutting squares out of pastry, putting little dots on them. Carla and Sister Cook had baked them in the oven and when Carla presented them to her, tears had welled into Iphigenia’s eyes. Carla couldn’t understand, she thought Iphigenia would be pleased with the gift. Carla’s lip started to quiver and her face wrinkled up. She buried her head in Sister Cook’s warm crusty smell. Sister Cook’s big hand patted her head and assured her that Iphigenia really was pleased. It was the surprise of it that caught her unawares. Buried in Sister Cook’s skirts Carla hadn’t seen the question mark ripple from one black habit to the other.
Now, in the small and black game, Iphigenia seemed a bit too bright and gay. But playing was easy. Carla knew that if Iphigenia practised, she would relax and get better at it.
They were coming at him, almost galloping. Ignatius felt his heart quicken and a sweaty prickly sensation burst out all over him. He had gone too far with Carla and retribution was running to meet him head on. He started working out a story for Iphigenia, the way he did for his mother when he was a small boy and late home from school. He wouldn’t mention the special game of going down to the car. They were just chatting, moving the battery backwards and forwards when all of a sudden, off she went. Would Carla concur, to keep her playmate? Not by the look of them hastening towards him.
Carla and Iphigenia loomed over him. Iphigenia shoved her hand in her front pocket and pulled out … Ignatius blinked. His mobile. ‘Play,’ she commanded. Mother Superior wanting to play? Was this part the first of many tests he would have to undergo to see if he was fit to wear the garment?
‘Play what?’ he said dumbly. The mobile sat in the middle of them, a mouse with nowhere to run.
‘Telephones,’ said Iphigenia. Simply, softly. Like he had no choice.
He was able to pick the thing up but his bound hands didn’t give him room to move his fingers. ‘Untie?’ suggested Carla, seeing his difficulty. Iphigenia nodded her head. Carla grunted a bit, stuck out her tongue in concentration but it didn’t take long for her to free his hands. He rubbed circulation into his wrists, moved his fingers like a spider walking up an invisible wall. When he was ready, Iphigenia handed him the phone again.
They were up to something. Important enough for them to unbind his hands. Not that there was any danger of him running amok. What could he do, throw the phone at them? He put it up to his ear. ‘Hello?’ Carla put her hand up to her ear and did the same. Iphigenia let it go on for a minute then she said, ‘Make it work.’
Another game entirely. It wasn’t a toy to Iphigenia, she wanted to use it. Who did she have in mind to call? The Bishop? The Rescue Squad? he mused. ‘It won’t work without a battery. A live battery.’
‘Live?’ Iphigenia repeated, imagining an animal or plant.
‘Charged battery.’ He looked at her evenly. ‘In the glove box of the car.’
‘Show us with this one,’ Iphigenia said. She gave him the one he and Carla had just been playing with.
‘It won’t work,’ he promised.
‘Show.’
He loaded it.
The spare battery hadn’t gone down with the car, they must have it up here with them. But they weren’t being foolish enough to let him play with it, just in case he got a message out to someone. ‘It’s very simple.’ And he showed her. She took the phone from him and pressed the small button at the base, then tapped her fingers over the numbers and finally held the phone to her ear. She went through the routine a few more times, memorising the actions.
‘My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For He hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.’ All contradictions of the day dissolve in the approach of evening. The cool healing balm of evening. The wind has calmed and insects chirrup their tiny song. Margarita kneels in the chapel going through the motions of Vespers. Even without opening her eyes she knows that her sisters have not joined her.
For the first time the words that Mary spoke to her cousin Elisabeth feel like chaff in Margarita’s mouth. Both pregnant with the holy children that they would bring forth. Elisabeth pregnant in her old age. Margarita’s body feels dry and hollow. Her old age would never be blessed with Elisabeth’s fecundity.
She remains a lonely sentinel the whole of Vespers. She takes the aching cold into her knees and spreads it through her body. Carla and Iphigenia are absent, there is not even an Agnes sister for company, common though it was for them to wander in at the sound of chanting. Margarita has to carry Vespers all by herself. It does not sit lightly on her shoulders.
She hurries over the last part. There is no calm in Vespers this evening, no healing of contradictions. In her heart worms are flipping and squiggling, trying to find their way back into the moist secure darkness of undisturbed soil. She pushes herself up heavily from the kneeling position, her hip bone gnashing in its socket.
Not in the courtyard either. Margarita was alone in its yellow light. She began kneading bread for supper. Kneading, pushing and shoving. Slapping it loudly on the table but still no-one came. Carla no doubt would be off on an exploration, visiting her plants and insects, a hospital sister doing the rounds of her wards. But Iphigenia? Afternoons found her sitting in the light of the Lord, drinking sage tea, sniffing the wind. Like Carla, doing her rounds but without getting up and moving
about. She punched the dough into a second kneading then threw it into the pan. Why should she stay and watch over it, no-one else seemed to be bothered about dinner. Too bad if the bread burnt. Perhaps the smell of it would bring Iphigenia out from wherever she was.
‘Hello, hello?’
Voices down the corridor. Margarita swished her way along, heading for the fish’s room. The occupants all looked up as Margarita’s shape blocked the mote-filled beams of light coming in through the open door. Carla’s face was flushed with excitement.
‘Ho there, Carla. A game?’ Margarita couldn’t even bring herself to acknowledge Iphigenia’s presence.
‘Play?’ Carla invited, unaware of the tight anger in Margarita’s voice.
‘Play, Carla? But it’s time for Vespers,’ her voice dripped. Too late for Vespers, actually. She cast a grazing glance at Iphigenia and was pleased to see the look of dismay. Iphigenia had missed Vespers. Iphigenia, who never missed a trick.
Margarita was so big she filled the whole doorway, could feel it framing her like a regal cloak. She sniffed the air, jutting her nose into it the way Iphigenia did. ‘Bread burning,’ she said. Iphigenia’s nose twitched but she could not pick up the smell of burning bread. Margarita continued on down the corridor, leaving Iphigenia to flounder in her wake.
She went to her cell and stood at the window, elated and angry at the same time. They had not changed him one iota. Instead, he was changing them, turning them away from the Lord. Playing frivolous games with him when they should have been at Vespers. Gushing with conversation and chat. Let the bread burn, let them go without dinner, she was sick of being the handmaiden.
She looked at the sheep grazing, the Agnes sisters oblivious to the dark clouds swirling in the cloisters. If only they were human again, Teresa, Assumpta, Sister Cook, all the others. They were her true community. She chanted softly, her special little lamb chant and occasionally the breath of her voice would flow into an ovine ear and one of them would look up and bleat.
She would be magnanimous when Iphigenia came to apologise, she would resist the urge to point out the evil influence of the visitor who had introduced Devil and Damn into their lives, who was disrupting even their service to God. A bit more time, a bit more rope to hang himself and Iphigenia would see. Then she would beg her sister’s forgiveness as well as the Lord’s.