The Clouds

by Juan José Saer

  When I approached her, she opened her eyes and looked at me: She had round, gray little eyes, too restless there between her broad, domed forehead and her small nose, a round, pale little button with almost no septum, a single fleshy bump protruding above her thin lips, which remained closed all the while. Her tiny white face, a circle drawn from where her hair emerged above her bulging forehead, outlined her pink-dusted cheeks and closed at her delicate, almost nonexistent, chin. It was hard not to love her at once, with the same love one has for a pet rabbit, for example, knowing that its hot and nervous existence will bring us more complications than happiness once we adopt them—their motives, so different from our own, count ours for nothing. When our gazes met, I thought I perceived fleeting sparks of mockery in hers, that sort of tacit mockery with which, in the presence of third parties, certain people acknowledge us, believing we share the same point of view about things; in reality, it is a search for complicity, and usually a fruitless one. The Mother Superior noticed it right away and, more worried about morality than the health of her ward, went to Sister Teresita and encircled her shoulders with an arm concealed by the wide, black sleeve of her habit, exposing no more to the world of sin and corruption than a white, slightly wrinkled hand that alighted firmly but without violence on Sister Teresita’s left shoulder. A detail that almost immediately attracted my attention, although frequent dealings with madness had accustomed me to that kind of dissonance, was the contrast I observed in the little nun, between the terrible humiliations she had borne for months, and the good humor, the air of health and determined energy reflected in her person. When I began to interview her, as pleasantly as possible, she adopted an attitude both childish and demure, curling up against the Mother Superior’s chest so, I realized, the Mother Superior had to respond to my questions for the patient, who darted occasional glances at me from the corners of her eyes, provocative yet mocking. As the Mother Superior’s answers added nothing new to what she had told me upon my reception, I chose to defer the interview for the coming days and took a moment to cast a glance about the room, ascertaining that the meticulous reigned therein: The bed was made without a wrinkle, with a sort of black cape spread carefully at the foot, and there was a table with a three-branched candelabra from whose stand not a single drop of wax had fallen, as well as two stacked books of equal size, a metalwork inkwell with two or three pens resting in the horizontal groove at the base, a small rectangular pile of white, well-aligned papers, each one in its place, and a crude wooden chair whose rattan seat was tucked in beneath the table. Even the wicker cushion of the armchair from which she had arisen to see us enter seemed not to have a crease, not a dent, as if the small girl’s body resting on it a few moments ago had been weightless and without substance.

  When I expressed my wish to retire, announcing I would return a few days later to finish the preparations for departure, the Mother Superior, relieved perhaps, removed her arm from Sister Teresita’s shoulders and approached me, intending to bring me to the front door. The little nun did not move from her spot but, abandoning the vulnerable attitude she had held a moment ago, she straightened up so the sunshine streaming through the window suddenly made her look bigger and stronger. A noise I could not at first identify began to carry through the room, until I realized that the little nun had grit her teeth and puffed her cheeks out slightly, building up saliva inside her mouth and making a screeching sound, and I was still wondering why when she began to writhe her tongue obscenely, moving it all about, licking her lips, thrusting it in and out of her mouth, rhythmic and rigid, and how, even as she carried out these movements, she was gathering spittle, drooling and screeching. A heightened expression of ecstasy came over her face and her eyelids drooped once more. She pushed her belly in and out while she slowly shook her head in rapture as, at the sides of her body, her hands made strange, slow movements. All this sudden activity, excepting perhaps the writhing of her tongue, reminded me of certain group dances I had seen the African slaves perform sometimes in the port of Buenos Aires, and it took me a few moments to realize that my astonishment at the little nun’s contortions, presented somehow like a dance, came from the fact that they were carried out (apart from the saliva-choked screeching) in utter silence. The pink in her cheeks burned even brighter and, because of the effort it cost her to produce saliva, spread across her whole face, but when I turned to the Mother Superior, who had lost all reserve in my presence and looked at me, her expression helpless and supplicating, it was plain to see that redness—in her case of shame and confusion—had won out on her face, as well. Sister Teresita’s outburst came to be of great use to me, however, as it allowed me to show great calm before the Mother Superior, which I did not refrain from exaggerating, to suggest to her how ordinary the little nun’s behavior appeared in the eyes of science. When I saw that despite her so-called ecstasy, the little nun would sneak glances from time to time to see the effect her behavior had on us, I burst out laughing, which alarmed the Mother Superior but not so the little nun, who abandoned her strange posture and, having cheerfully contemplated us for a few satisfied moments, came toward us. Thirty years have passed since that morning, but I can still see clearly the curious way she moved then, throwing her torso forward and her buttocks slightly back, arms folded with elbows out and hands crossing each other rhythmically at her navel, a slight swing in her hips, adopting with her expression and agility, despite the apparent delicacy of her form, the masculine air of a young boy. Impudently, she planted herself a meter distant and wagged her left index finger, crooking it in to signal me to come closer; trying, amiable and firm, in the patient tone one might use with a disobedient child, she said: Come here, and I’ll suck it. With a cry both overwhelmed and appalled, the Mother Superior hurled herself from the room, although she must have witnessed similar scenes many times. But among the mad I had seen far worse, and I have to say, there had been something amusing in the contrast between the little nun’s crudeness and the excessive modesty of the Mother Superior, who was unable to see things from a medical angle, and so—without becoming the slightest bit upset, and trying not to appear shocked by anything—I approached the little nun with my best smile, explaining that I had not come for that, but rather to look after her as a doctor, and that as we were going to be living together from now on it was best that we maintained a good relationship. She burst out laughing and stuck out her tongue again, and tapped at it lightly with her finger, taking it into her mouth and asking: So not like this . . . ? I promised I would come by to see her that week and left the room. While the Mother Superior was locking up, Sister Teresita stood in the window behind the grille, and, in a cheery and playful tone, as if telling a secret the three of us would share, began to softly recite a list of horrifying obscenities, describing voluptuous acts that the Mother Superior and I were supposedly about to commit and from which she was unfairly excluded.

  When we arrived at her chamber, I saw that the Mother Superior’s eyes were full of tears and, taking pity, I tried to console her, explaining that madness ought not be judged by moral standards nor addressed within our usual categories of thought. After a time, the Mother Superior seemed to quiet and, as I bid her goodbye, I noticed her attitude toward me had changed; she appeared to have set aside her mistrust. However, when we parted, the unpleasant sensation remained that the Mother Superior had not told me the whole truth about the little nun.

  A surprise witness would confirm this for me a few days later. Notified of my presence in the city, Dr. López, a local physician and friend to the Parra family, invited me to visit him—out of politeness to be sure, but also to discuss several matters important to the due practice of our profession, and to consult upon a few difficult cases he had been treating in the hospital. That hospital was once Jesuit and has since been restored to them on their return to America; if my information is correct, it was in those years under the charge of the Franciscans, who had, to put it one way, “annexed” the neighboring monastery. If anything can su
ggest the general poverty that reigned in that city, and how only a few families were spared, it is the fact that the chapter-house, the hospital, and the jail operated out of the same building, a long chorizo, as the cheeky local idiom had come to name all constructions with a plan that, vertical or parallel to the street, extended in a single long line of rooms, or in two, separating at a courtyard and meeting at the front to form the building’s main body. In this building, shaped then like a squared-off U, the façade, where the government, the administration, and a small police station were located, occupied an entire block on the main plaza, and of the two wings extending from the façade to the river, one lodged the hospital and the other, like its grimmer reflection across the courtyard, the jail and the customs-house.

  Out of some fifteen patients, two or three thorny cases required a consultation—the rest posed no problem since a mere glance told me there would be no cure—and once we finished examining them, my colleague, an older man who impressed me with his clear experience and insight, glanced all around as if in fear of committing an indiscretion. He told me there was another case he wanted to submit to me, but that we would examine him in a chamber adjoining the common area, where he had his office. That said, he signaled to a male nurse who had been circling us persistently during our visit to the common area. The nurse left the office immediately and, through a window, I saw him briskly cross the courtyard toward the jail. As soon as we were settled in his office, my colleague explained the reason for all this intrigue: As everyone already knew that I had come to the city to fetch Sister Teresita for admission at Las Tres Acacias, the nurse, who was a cousin of the nun’s supposed rapist, had begged the doctor to hear the convent gardener’s version of events, which was quite different from the one issued by the ecclesiastical authorities. Only the fact of this contradiction had staved off the firing squad, but the gardener’s defenders had not managed to dispel the threat altogether. Dr. López was convinced that the gardener spoke the truth, and he had the utmost confidence in the cousin, his main collaborator for years. A small clerical faction supported him, especially among the Franciscans, but the Church refused to admit that the little nun’s conduct—the hypothesis of a demonic intervention had been rejected—was due to, as it were, natural if inexplicable causes, and preferred, perhaps in the hope that the sin of some person outside the Church might explain the events, to maintain the gardener’s guilt. The doctor told me the gardener admitted to having had carnal relations with the little nun, but he denied in the most energetic, even horrified, fashion, having violated her and particularly insisted that, if they had been found in circumstances that might be considered sacrilegious, it had been unexpected and against his will.

  A few minutes later I heard, in greater detail, that version of events from the gardener’s very mouth. Despite suffering months in prison, his appearance was that of a vigorous man and his manners those of an honorable person, and he must have been younger than his air—that of being overwhelmed by the situation—made him appear. His story seemed all too plausible, especially his description of the little nun’s behavior, so well did it coincide with several similar cases I had treated with Dr. Weiss, and the gardener could not have invented certain characteristic details of that type of derangement on his own. In the transcript I made of his words I will address the obligation, as I believe I have already warned above, of using several terms and turns of phrase that might sound overly harsh to certain listeners who—with all due respect—consider themselves decent, but it is necessary to keep in mind that, in mental illness, the afflicted subjects’ vocabulary and conduct differ completely from those of healthy persons. (The use of Latin borrowed for the scientific tract seems out of place in the case of this personal report, which addresses hypothetical readers. I cannot prejudge if they will or will not be men of science, a detail, for its part, that is secondary to the present manuscript. But as a more general reflection: What can be the aim of putting certain parts of the body and certain acts into Latin that, without Latin or any language at all, humans and animals use and carry out every day?)

  The gardener, from the very start of his story, proved his sincerity in several ways, acknowledging his carnal relations with Sister Teresita for example, and also always referring to the nun without the slightest animosity, as if despite all that happened and the precarious situation he found himself in, he had preserved the liveliest sympathies toward her. For the gardener, it was the Mother Superior who was refusing to see the facts as they had truly occurred. And another important detail that seemed to confirm the gardener’s sincerity was the justification he gave for his conduct: According to him, it took a long time to realize the little nun was acting strangely, and that things she said or did, if he had attributed them at first to an unbridled lewdness, must have actually been caused by madness. The gardener stated that all the while it was he who had felt himself under the little nun’s influence and that sometimes he even had the feeling she was subjecting him to a sort of violence. That inability to recognize madness is in no way unusual, and I would even dare assert that he is nothing out of the ordinary, that such inability was no phenomenon of isolated individuals, but rather of entire nations which, as history has already repeatedly shown, may be under an influence like the gardener, and driven into the abyss by the seemingly flawless logic of delusion, when in fact all logic has been abandoned.

  The gardener said he had been working in the convent for a few months without even noticing the little nun, who, aside from youth, lacked any special charm, and that things would have doubtless continued that way if her insistent glances, which became most suggestive when they were alone—the gardener told us this in slightly coarser language than I now employ in writing thirty years later—hadn’t attracted his attention, first intriguing him without a thought for what would happen later, but then drawing him in that direction. When he confided this to his cousin, who worked in the hospital, a fact that the cousin confirmed immediately, the cousin told him the little he knew of Sister Teresita: namely that, among their principal tasks, the Handmaids of the Blessed Sacrament cared for women of ill repute, and a few gossiped in the city—where young girls, as in every city, think they know everything even when they do not—that the young nun, who was overly familiar with women of ill repute and was sometimes peculiar in word and bearing, had a tendency to overstep the bounds of her mission. But everyone acknowledged her to be genuinely kind, and she was quite popular among the poor, especially those who had given themselves over to fallen ways—not just camp-following prostitutes or the harlots who plied their trade in shacks along the outskirts, but also deserters, cattle thieves, robbers, vagabonds, murderers. Some said they had seen her sitting in a hovel doorway, smoking a cigar, talking and laughing with a couple of whores. Others said she didn’t decline to take a pull if someone thought to offer, and two or three even claimed to have seen her once, habit-sleeves rolled up, playing jackstones with a cluster of gauchos and soldiers on the porch of a general store. But they were only rumors. Of all those who circulated the stories, not a single one had, if pressed, been able to provide a witness for what was said. The gardener said the little nun was simply kind to him at first, but that one day, when he had gone into the chapel on a whim, he’d seen her climb the altar and rub the crucified Christ’s drapery across his groin. On taking in the scene in the dim chapel, which he’d entered while still a little dazed from the brightness outside, he thought the little nun had been cleaning the statue, but he then saw her rise up on tiptoe from the chair she’d clambered up on to better reach the desired height, and the little nun began to lick the drapery in the same spot she had just been rubbing. The gardener had made a small, inadvertent noise that made her turn, peering into the half-light until she found him at the end of the chapel. The gardener said he was afraid that the little nun was going to dress him down on being caught, or become angry at the intruder who’d spied on her, but that, to his surprise, she didn’t show the slightest alarm and smiled at him, a
nd perched on the chair as she was, signaled to him to come closer. When the gardener told me this, it reminded me of the little nun’s crooked index finger and innuendo-filled smile some days earlier, urging me to take a few steps toward her.

  With the abrupt and evidence-filled sincerity of one who plays his final card to champion himself, the gardener told us, with the support of continued approving nods from his cousin and Dr. López, of his relations with Sister Teresita, which commenced within five minutes of their first meeting, on the little chapel’s very floor, at the foot of the altar. According to the gardener, he’d resisted at first, precisely because of where they found themselves, but the little nun had convinced him, saying that nowhere in the Gospels or Church doctrines was the act they were about to perform—or, in particular, the fact of carrying it out where they were preparing to do so—condemned by any text. She might be certain of this, though it is necessary to add that, due to the enormity of such acts, even the most punctilious Fathers of the Church, whom few possible circumstances of sin eluded, would have deemed it superfluous to condemn these acts explicitly. Further: According to the little nun, Christ had ordered her many times to consummate both carnal union with the human creature and divine union with the Holy Spirit. This would allow her to attain perfect union with God, for Christ’s divinity and his human nature had been separated anew upon his ascent to the Kingdom of Heaven, his divinity seated at the right hand of God and his humanity dispersed among men.