“Mortify the exterior senses,” said Mother Superior, and Godrick discovered that it felt good, and moreover that she had true talent for it. At first, when eating her simple meal, she would think of something unpleasant so that the taste would not be too agreeable. When she found she could still enjoy the flavor of a tomato or a carrot she would sprinkle it with alum, to render it bitter and dry. If she tasted something sweet, she would spit it out. If she caught herself admiring a picture, or a piece of furniture, or even the cover of a Bible, she would quickly shift her gaze to the dreariest part of the room, and seek penance in something drab.
“Offer up your suffering for Our Lord in the World,” said Mother Superior, and Godrick excelled at finding ways of subjecting her body to discomfort, and exposing herself to repugnant things. She permitted only poor sandals on her bare feet, even in winter, when she would pray in the snow until she lost the feeling in her toes. She would stand on one foot while she meditated until her muscles screamed, and she would collapse on the floor, only to rise and repeat the exercise on the other. She slept without enough cover in the winter, so that she would be too cold to sleep well, and with too much cover in the summer, so that she would bake in sweat. She sewed her habit from used cloth, and then threw it away because the material wasn’t coarse enough and didn’t chafe. She bathed only in cold water, using abrasive soap that left her skin raw.
“Avoid frivolity of mind,” said Mother Superior, and Godrick learned to concentrate primarily on spiritual and academic books, rather than books that could excite her imagination. Too much curiosity was bad for devotion to God; this was the lesson of Eve.
“Avoid vanity,” said Mother Superior, and Godrick cut her hair to ragged wisps that she hid away. She shaved off her eyebrows and shortened the eyelashes that so many men had remarked upon back in the black days before Godrick was born. There were no mirrors in which to gaze, no reminders of the earthly visage she had so loathed.
“Be obedient,” said Mother Superior, and Godrick did what she was asked without question. It felt good, for obedience deprived her of the need to think for herself.
In her zealous pursuit of perfection as a nun, there arose a problem for her. As she practiced self-mortification, as she shunned vanity, as she found new ways to suffer, she realized that the more she abused herself, the better she liked it. The more something hurt, the better it felt. The better it felt the more guilt she carried, for feeling good was a pleasurable act of vanity, and ran contrary to her teaching. So she devised new ways to punish herself for feeling good. She fasted for days on end. She kept herself from sleep at night by sitting on the cold floor of her cubicle. She refused to make friends among the other nuns, for friendship made her feel warm inside, and feeling warm inside was wrong because it was self-gratification. One must be a friend only to God and to His son Jesus Christ. That was more than enough.
After five years of convent life, never-changing and serene, Mother Superior ordered Sister Godrick to begin teaching in the cathedral schools. At first she hated it. She felt awkward being out in the world again. Social contact terrified her, even though she was teaching young boys. That world, the world of men, had been lost to her for a very long time. But at length she was rescued by her quandary: when she realized how much she disliked it, she realized that it felt good, and knew that she could do it.
When the call came from the bishop of Boulogne-Billancourt for a fourth-form teacher, Mother Superior chose Godrick. So it was that she came to teach Moussa and Paul and their classmates that year in the cathedral of St. Paul.
* * *
As you have been too haughty to bow your head in prayer with us, Michel deVries, you have perhaps been occupied contemplating the nature of our studies this year. Can you tell us what they will be?” Moussa shook his head.
“I thought not. Does the word trivium have meaning for you?”
“No, Sister.”
“Ah, a well-educated haughty boy.” There were anonymous snickers from the back of the room. She raised her hand for silence. “And quadrivium? What of that?”
Nothing.
“I thought not. I see your education has not kept pace with your self-esteem. Well then, perhaps you can clear your head long enough to pay attention. For the next year your lives shall travel the crossroads: the trivium of grammar, rhetoric, and logic. And you shall have an introduction to the quadrivium: geometry, astronomy, arithmetic, and music. Nothing too demanding for your empty heads, but we will work on it together. You shall do it for the glory of God, and I shall lead the way.”
It went that way the whole morning. In three more encounters Moussa was the subject of her attention. Three times it did not go well. What was worse, Moussa reflected glumly, was what he knew would come next, as soon as class let out for the morning. Every year the same thing happened on the first day of school. They would taunt him, and tease him, and maybe there would be a fight. Some years were worse than others, but it always happened. Moussa figured that getting so much attention from Sister Godrick was bound to aggravate things. He was right, for recess was less than five minutes old when it began. Another student, Pierre Valons, stood in a corner of the yard with a group of friends. He pointed and laughed when Moussa emerged from the doorway with Paul.
“Half-breed dumbbell! Infidel’s going to hell!”
“Why ‘Michel’? Why not ‘Imbecile’? That’s a good Christian name!”
Some of the others caught the spirit and heaped vicious names on silly ones. Soon a rock flew through the air and struck him on the shoulder.
The days when he had taken insults passively had passed, as had the days when he would melt in tears. He had never understood what made the others do it, only that he was somehow apart from them, somehow different, and that he would never fit in. From the time Serena had first held him after it happened, when he was only five, his mother had counseled patience.
“Ignore them,” she said. “Deny them the satisfaction of seeing you rise in anger.” She too had suffered this way. “Pay no attention to them. They are only jealous of your noble birth.” She had tried to soften their insults. “When they call you half-breed you must remember what it really means, that you are the best of two worlds, the best of the French and the best of the Tuareg.”
Her advice felt warm and wise while he was on her lap, but evaporated quickly in the schoolyard. His patience only drove his tormentors to greater creativity in their taunts, and then they accused him of cowardice, of being a sissy. If he cried it drove them to new heights of viciousness.
And then one day when Moussa was eight Henri had seen his bruised cheek and asked about it, and Moussa had poured out his sorrow and his dilemma.
“Your mother is right in her way,” Henri agreed after listening, “but just now I think they need a good thrashing. You need to teach them a lesson. I wish it weren’t so, but they respect only strength.”
After that Moussa tried hard not to forget his mother’s advice, but he found that fists often worked better. At first he lost most of the fights, but a bloody nose from fighting back felt better to him than a bloody nose from doing nothing. And with practice, along with the instruction he received from his father and Gascon, he got better. Before long the students learned to taunt him at their own peril, for even if they might finally beat him, they would pay a heavy price.
So it was that this morning he was all over Pierre, fists flying. Pierre was down on the ground on his back, Moussa pummeling him without mercy. Pierre’s lip was bloody and he flailed back. Three of Pierre’s friends joined in, which prompted Paul to enter the fray. It was the two of them against the four, Paul and Moussa raining blows on the other boys, the other boys outnumbering them, starting to hold and kick them, when Sister Godrick and her paddle appeared from nowhere. She waded into the pile of fists and feet and began whacking mightily, yelps of pain mingling with the sound of wood on bare skin and heads and elbows. Finally she brought them to bay, and stood them up in a chastened row before her.
The boys were all breathing heavily.
“It was his fault, Sister,” Pierre said as soon as he could talk, pointing at Moussa. “He started it.” The boys with Pierre nodded their agreement.
“DeVries started it!” one said.
“Yes, that’s right! DeVries threw a rock!”
Sister Godrick regarded Moussa with eyes of fire.
“Is it so?”
Moussa refused to answer. No nun, no teacher was going to settle this thing, and he would not seek the refuge of her protection. He would resolve it later, himself. Paul started to say something, but Moussa angrily ribbed him.
“Your silence is eloquent, Michel deVries.” She appraised him coldly, He had no idea what eloquent meant, but knew enough to worry about what was coming next. He tried not to show it in his eyes. He held her gaze, not defiantly but not chastened, either, until finally, intimidated, he looked away.
“You seem stricken with an excess of pride, Michel. You sneer at the world through it. It will be your destruction. You refuse to bow your head to the Lord in class, you resort to violence in this yard… Very well, then, come with me. We shall see what we can do about it. We shall help you discover whether you are the center of the world.” She marched Moussa back into the building. She rummaged through a closet and found a large pail, some brushes and old rags, and a container of lye. Then she took him out behind the school, to the building where the latrine was housed. Without knocking to see if anyone was inside, she marched him in. They stood before the long masonry trench and the holes where the boys relieved themselves. The day was hot, the stench overpowering. Moussa hated to go in there, even for a moment. It was vile. His face scrunched up in displeasure. The sister set the pail down and indicated the room with a sweep of her hand.
“Let us see how your pride fares while you labor on your knees. I will return in an hour. Cleanse your soul while you cleanse this room.”
The work was slow and smelly. The brushes splattered in his face, and he even got some on his tongue. He gagged and spit until his mouth was dry. As he cleaned he kept an eye out for spiders. He hated all spiders, but was particularly afraid of the ones who lived in the latrines, for they were ugly and black and poisonous. Sometimes they hid under the edges and bit the unwary in the worst of places.
He took stock of his situation as he scrubbed. It didn’t look good. He could tell he was going to have his hands full with this nun. She had no sense of humor, and seemed to have something against him. He wasn’t sure what he’d done wrong, but it seemed to him that everything he said or did – merde, even his name seemed to set her off. It wasn’t fair. She hadn’t paid half as much attention to anyone else in the room as she had to him. And then she had blamed him for the fight. No, he guessed that wasn’t right, she hadn’t taken sides, but he was the only one punished. Still, she was a difficult one.
Halfway through his labors the other boys came in. He guessed Sister Godrick had deliberately excused them to the bathroom early, to subject him to still more humiliation. Moussa bent over his work. His face flushed as he heard the giggles and jokes.
“Is that Count deVries’s boy, cleaning shit?”
“I don’t know. All I can see is his ass!”
“That couldn’t be Mouuussssaaaa. Africans don’t clean up pee, they drink it!”
“He’s half French. Maybe Michel cleans up half, and Moussa drinks the rest!”
“Do Africans eat shit?”
Moussa’s temperature rose, but he kept his head down. Their insults and the hurt echoed off the stone walls and rang in his ears. He felt a lump in his throat and his lip quivered. His eyes started to mist and he knew that tears weren’t far behind.
I’m too old to cry! I will not cry, I will not! He drew big white circles of suds on the gray filth, his arm moving in a clockwise direction.
“Ignore them,” his mother said. “Don’t let them see you rise in anger.” He changed directions and scrubbed counterclockwise, pressing harder and harder.
“Thrash them soundly,” his father said. “Make them pay for their fun.” He dipped his brush in the water and sloshed it onto the floor and made more circles. The bristles made a scratching sound. Laughter reverberated through the room as insult fed outrage. Their voices faded and grew indistinct as he stopped listening and drew into himself. He was learning to do that, to shut the world out, to go someplace in his head where no one else could go.
He told himself it didn’t matter. He told himself he didn’t care. But he knew it was a lie. He did care. He cared what they thought, cared what they did. He hated them for this, hated being the butt of their jokes. He desperately wished they liked him. He longed to be ordinary, to be like the others. He didn’t understand why having Henri and Serena for parents did this to him. He loved his mother and father, but sometimes he found himself wishing that they were… well, he didn’t know, exactly, but that they were normal, that they were like everyone else’s parents. Mostly he wished the other children would just leave him alone.
After much reflection he decided what to do. During school he would obey his mother, and suffer his penance in peace. After school he would obey his father, and beat their brains in.
As the boys chattered and joked Pierre moved away from them, casually inching closer to where Moussa worked. Moussa didn’t see him coming, but soon he was wrenched from his reverie as Pierre let loose right next to him and he felt the warm splash of piss in his face. Pierre howled in laughter.
“Drink that, deVries! Le meilleur de France! Take a cup home for your mother!”
The laugh died on his lips as Moussa was upon him. He had no time to react or defend himself before Moussa hit him squarely in the nose, and then dunked his head straight down into the bucket of dirtwater. None of the other boys went to his defense. They read the rage on Moussa’s face. Stunned by the fury of his reaction, they dared not interfere. The water in the bucket turned from its sickly brown to brownish red as the nosebleed fed it. Pierre struggled and gurgled, but Moussa held him fast. His face was red; he was breathing hard. He had never felt such wrath. He intended not to let go.
“Stop it, Moussa! Stop! Let him go!” Paul shook him roughly. “Stop it, I say! You’ll kill him!” Moussa ignored him. He had Pierre by the base of his neck and pushed down. Pierre’s arms were waving wildly, helplessly. With a huge effort Paul grasped the back of Moussa’s collar and pulled him back onto his rear end. Moussa let go. Pierre’s head popped out of the bucket like a cork. He lay on the floor and sputtered and bled and coughed and cried, his eyes shut from the lye and piss in the water.
Sister Godrick was at her desk when she heard a cry from the bathroom. She stopped writing and listened. A miserable wail, as she expected. She nodded her head, certain her solution had worked out satisfactorily. There would be no further trouble from the deVries boy. By the time she returned to the latrine to inspect Moussa’s work Pierre was gone. He was absent from class that afternoon. When she asked about him no one seemed to have any idea where he’d gone. She shook her head in disapproval and wrote a note to herself in her logbook. She would deal with the truant in the morning.
That afternoon the class studied Latin. Moussa decided he liked it about the same as cleaning the latrine. Godrick gave them each an exercise book with stiff covers, and told them to write their names inside. He paid no attention as the class droned conjugations. They chanted in unison. “Rego, regis, regit, regimus, regitis…” His lips moved, but it was the make-believe kind of movement he used at prayer. He doodled with his pencil inside the cover of his exercise book. He didn’t feel good about what had happened that day with Pierre, but he didn’t feel bad, either. He guessed his troubles would ease up a bit, and for that he was glad. Maybe this year wouldn’t be so bad after all. A few of the other boys had already tried to make up to him, the ones without any spine. They at least would stop bothering him for a while. It was something.
“Superatus sum, superatus es, superatus est, superati sumus…”
He stared at the name written on the front page of the exercise book. “DeVries,” it said. “Michel.” It had felt funny writing it. It sounded like somebody else. He never wrote that name, never used it. No one ever called him Michel. It was an extra name he’d never needed until now. He doodled around it, the loops of his pencil getting closer and closer to the clear block letters. “Michel.” He said it to himself, turning the word over and over in his mind. He didn’t like it. It was his name, but it wasn’t. Sister Godrick had no right.
“They respect only strength,” his father had said.
Finally he scratched over it and through it, scratched until he made a hole in the paper and the name was gone. He tore the page out and made a new one. He wrote in bold, clear letters across the middle of the paper, taking care to stay within the lines and doing each letter twice, so it would stand out better:
DE VRIES, MOUSSA.
He felt better. It looked right again.
At the end of the day the students turned their books in to Sister Godrick. She sat at her desk as they stood in single file to hand them in. She opened them one at a time to be certain their names were in the proper place, that the assignments were complete. Moussa’s heart beat faster as he got closer to the front of the line. At last he stood before her. She opened the book. She looked down at it for a while without saying anything. He couldn’t see her face, only the black crown of her habit and the white rim above her forehead. She looked up at him and for the second time that day, their eyes met. He shifted from one foot to the other, but held her gaze. Looking into her eyes was like looking into the eyes of one of his father’s hawks. They were narrow and cold and had no eyebrows. He couldn’t read them. They focused somewhere inside him, somewhere even he’d never looked.
The class was still. Sensing that something was going on, the other boys watched quietly. Without a word Godrick began ripping the pages from his book. One at a time, she tore them up and dropped them into the wastebasket next to her desk. When all the pages were gone she held the book over the basket and dropped it in as well.
Empires of Sand Page 17