by Nancy Young
The Prioress greeted them at the door and motioned them to enter. She put her hands together and silently prayed with the visitors for a few moments before she bestowed a beneficent smile upon them. Arnaud Sébastiani was visibly startled when she spoke her first words. “I am Sister Wilhelmina. I am the Prioress here at Chartreuse Notre-Dame,” she said. “Thank you for bringing young Adrienne up here today, Monsieur Sébastiani. Did you have any trouble finding it? We are quite reclusive here.”
“Not at all, Blessed Sister,” he replied, bowing his head respectfully. “My daughter Adrienne has asked me to bring her here for three years, and only now have I been able to make the arrangements to do so.” He waited for the nun to reply, but no words came from her lips. “Thank you for replying to my letter. You know it is my daughter’s choice to come, not mine.” The nun nodded her head. “I am very sorry to leave her here … no, I mean … I am not sorry that she has given her soul to God, but I am sorry that I may never see her again. She is my only daughter.” The nun nodded her head again. “She has made up her mind so I will just have to carry on as if I never had a daughter.”
A moment later a light tap on the door announced the arrival of the converse nun. Sister Teresa entered, her head nodding almost imperceptibly to Sister Wilhelmina, and gently led Adrienne away to the small room of the postulancy that she would make her own for the first ten days of her convent life. Arnaud thanked Sister Wilhelmina and handed her a small sum of money, not knowing that his daughter had already sent her sizeable contribution in advance. He never saw his daughter again.
Adrienne found the silence of the nunnery soothing to her tremulous soul. For a young woman who had never had a mother and who had been no stranger to back-breaking work, which she shared equally with her brother and father on their small farm, the presence of so many Sisters and the fine handiwork to which they seemed to be confined made it an alien world. Most of her short life had been spent up to her small knees in rich black soil planting beans and cabbages and handling the heavy tools familiar to farm work. Each Sunday from the age of five, it was her special responsibility to sell the produce at the village markets. It wasn’t long before she began to wonder why the other families that sold at market had a mother amongst them, but hers did not.
One late autumn afternoon when Adrienne was ten, she returned from the market to find an unfamiliar woman in the kitchen surveying the few items in the larder. Even with her rod-straight back turned to the girl, she could sense the woman’s rising disdain for the sparseness of the farmhouse provisions. The girl quickly looked about her and saw the frayed and untidy furnishings of her home as if for the first time. An awful feeling deep in the pit of her stomach hit her like the striking of a sharp hoe into dry soil. Her heart constricted with the sudden sense of dread. As her mind raced and heart pounded, she found she could not express what the feeling was. She had no words to describe the betrayal. But even then she knew it was not her place to question her father, and her misgivings would be the source of strife.
Adrienne did not dare or choose to speak of it — not when the woman turned to face her with an uneasy smile, not when her father returned to the house later that evening to introduce his children to his new mistress, soon to be his wife, nor the next day when she found herself cleaning the kitchen from end to end while the woman monitored her progress. When winter finally arrived with the first silent snowfall, she built up the resolve to pose a question to her father.
“Papa,” she quietly said as he sat in his armchair before the fire with his pipe. “Who was our Maman? What happened to her? Why have we never known her?”
Looking squarely into the eyes of his only daughter, Arnaud Sébastiani knew she was a strong young woman and he never once felt that she struggled under the yoke of hard labor or resented their life of toil. The blisters and calluses that this life gave her seemed only to toughen her stubborn nature and make her impermeable to the rumors and gossip of the other young girls of her village. When he peered into her eyes — there was an amber fire ablaze that belied the calm in her voice — he knew it was time she was told the truth. “She died giving birth to you. And Jacob,” he added. Then continued: “Your brother was still mostly inside her when she suddenly … ” he hesitated again, “ … when she died. I had to pull him out with my own hands. I thought it was too late — he was the color of a frozen lake and limp. But his color changed all at once and he came to life. It was a miracle that he lived. That you both lived.”
Adrienne let the words sink in slowly, a weighty stone dropped into quicksand. At first the thought resisted absorption, and then it was sucked in all at once. It was not just a hoe striking her heart, but a knife twisting itself at the very core of her being. She was frozen; no words surfaced to her quivering lips. The crackle of the fire thundered in her ear and it was with difficulty that she finally turned and retreated to her bedroom. There she resolved in her roiling mind to never speak of it again for as long as she lived.
The stand-off that ensued between daughter and the new wife made Arnaud’s life unbearable. As a last resort, he gathered up his divided family and delivered them to church. Every Sunday after that he prayed to the Lord for an answer that would bring peace back into his household. The answer he received after nine months was not as he expected. The spring morning his new wife declared that she was with child, Adrienne, unexpectedly animated, made it known that she was going to become a nun. She had sought details through the Church on the requirements to join the silent order of Chartreuse Notre-Dame, and she started her vow that very day.
After many entreaties and even a strike across the face in a desperate and frustrated rage, the father could not break his daughter’s silence. Two years and several months passed before Arnaud finally gave in to his daughter’s request and by that time she had saved enough extra income from the farmer’s markets to make the requisite donation in order to enter the gates of the convent. Almost as soon as Adrienne stopped selling the produce through the usual vendors’ method of loud and competing entreaties and waving vegetables at passing customers, her income increased three-fold from customers drawn inexplicably to her beautiful but silent fruit and vegetable stall. Her polished and finely displayed vegetables attracted the discerning buyer seeking quality over price, yet they lingered about, enquiring about her father which was met with more silence. That silence spurred them to expand further on inquiries, asking her silent opinion of their most pressing worries and eventually unloading terrible burdens. It seemed they felt much better for the telling, and in time she learned that they sought not just fruit and vegetables but the ultimate freedom of her silent pardon, bestowed upon them with her beatific smile.
Before long they came to give confession almost as a trial before they presented themselves to the parish priest. If she granted a cleansing smile upon them, they knew they would be given absolution by the priest. If she did not, they hesitated and found other smaller sins to seek forgiveness. They could rely on young Adrienne and fear not that their troubles and sins would be relayed on to others. Generous donations weekly found their way into the plain ceramic dish on the edge of her confessional table, which always contained her rosary and a few starter coins. By the end of two years, she prepared to enter the convent without her father’s monetary contribution or his blessing.
At Chartreuse Notre-Dame, the weeks and months passed slowly and silently between the convent walls. The young novitiate grew each day more patient and skilled at filling her free moments between prayer, Scripture study, and convent duties with some other purpose, mental if not physical. Initially, as a converse nun — although she never exercised this freedom of speech — she was assigned the daily duty of maintaining the convent’s library, secretly reading the elaborately printed texts, hand-written manuals, and collected manuscripts as she delivered borrowed texts to the cells of the cloistered nuns who left written notices at the library requesting them. She found the r
equired items in the library’s storeroom and slid them through the nuns’ guichet, or food-hatch, carefully recording the delivery and return details in the meticulously kept record book, which as far as she could glean dated back to 1265.
One evening between vespers and her supper, Adrienne discovered a book that had been in the library for some time, which had not seen the light of day for at least a century. The delicately bound handwritten manuscript was inadvertently obscured behind a much larger volume which had been returned to the shelf in haste well before her time. On inspection she found that the pages of the manuscript contained exquisitely detailed and numbered illustrations on the fine art of musical instrument making, particularly featuring the “new” six-string guitar.
Enlarged detailed drawings depicted the various angles of the instrument to be constructed, but between the drawings was hand-written text she could not read. On the back cover was written: Fabbricatorello, Napoles, anno 1792. Adrienne stared at the text, eyes scanning slowly over the curvaceous lettering. They resembled the Latin she learnt in the study of the Scriptures, but she struggled to make meaning out of them. It was clear that cutting and assemblage required understanding of precise dimensions, but she could not calculate them without comprehension of the detailed descriptions. She resolved to devote herself to mastering the new language in order to decipher the manuscript with full appreciation.
Motivated by a new-found purpose, Adrienne solicited her friend Teresa, whose mother she knew hailed from Siena, to seek assistance in the Italian language while on their weekly spatia mentum, a walk beyond the cloisters lasting about three hours during the course of which each nun was able to talk in turn with the others. Sister Teresa gladly spent many intensely dedicated hours with Adrienne during their walks translating long passages of Italian because it gave her spiritual connection to her family, whom she missed quite passionately. Adrienne in the secret quiet of her cell copied a page at a time onto long strips of paper or cloth and wound them around her wrist beneath the long wide sleeves of her habit. Once they were out of the view of the others, she unraveled the transcriptions and Sister Teresa would give her the interpretations quietly and solemnly as if they were the Scriptures. Once completed, Adrienne returned to her cell to transcribe the passages in French into a notebook. Within a year the entire text had been translated, and the complete set of illustrations lovingly reproduced in the notebook. While the other nuns stitched and embroidered their tapestries, wove their fine linen and muslin and made hand-bound cloth books in the solitude of their cells, Adrienne discovered her talent for working with wood.
With the aid of a small handful of ancient woodworking implements she stumbled upon in an old maintenance shed once used by the convent’s early builders, she made her very first simple, but carefully handcrafted lute. While on one of her cloister walks with Sister Teresa, she discovered several large blocks of soft spruce salvaged from the convent’s woodpile by the shed. Its large rosette was carved into a grille of three intertwining vines to represent her father, herself, and her brother. There was room for no more. Initially, Adrienne kept her prolific creations to herself, but eventually Sister Wilhelmina discovered them. Adrienne had never played music or known of orchestras, but over the course of five years she created in the solitary confines of her cloistered workshop a dozen perfectly formed instruments, including lutes, mandolins, baroque five-course and six-string guitars, and a viola-a-mano, each with a unique shape and more importantly, a faultless sound. Although the playing of musical instruments was not normally considered an occupation within the statutes of the Carthusian Order, the Prioress recognized a God-given talent and an opportunity to raise funds for the much needed repairs to the convent.
As word spread through the Alpes-de-Haut-Provence that the solitary nuns of the Chartreuse Notre-Dame convent were manufacturing exquisite hand-made instruments, there was no shortage of buyers for the special instruments thought to embody the liturgical prayers of the Sisters. At times it took many months and several attempts to cut and plane the soft woods, carve the exquisitely executed rosettes, or wind the metal around the sheep’s gut strings to Adrienne’s own exacting standards and satisfaction. Once completed, however, the instruments made the most beautiful sounds — haunting melodies and soaring lullabies as if they had a spirit and a voice of their very own. More than one customer returned within a year to commission a second and even third instrument to add to their collection and perhaps to atone for a recent trespass. They were never allowed to visit the nun however much they supplicated or offered donations. It was said that her pieces surpassed those made by ordinary luthiers; notwithstanding the fact each strum of the instrument was equal to a “Hail Mary” directly to the Holy Mother. They were exquisite and seemed to emit music even when no hands were laid upon them. And inside the convent no eyes had ever witnessed Adrienne at work in her solitary workshop.
On a particular warm autumn afternoon in 1868, exactly one day before Adrienne was to renew her vows for the next stage of her consecration as a virgin of Christ by making a profession of stability, obedience, and conversion, Tomàs found himself at the gates of the convent, almost vexed with anticipation as if he were meeting his destiny. Nearly a half day’s travel brought the monk to the convent bearing a variety of finely formed goat’s cheese and braids of rye bread. A curiously shaped leather case was strapped securely to his back while he balanced the gustatory offerings in round woven baskets over his shoulders and arms. He had walked the entire distance on foot with absolute anticipation for he had heard of the extraordinary nuns who made music instruments in silent prayer on top of the great hill and was convinced that his offerings of brotherly love in the form of fresh bread and exquisite cheeses would win the favor of even the purest of ascetics.
Sister Teresa met him at the gate just as he began to gingerly rebalance his burden to free a hand in order to sound the bell atop the gate. “Thank you, Sister,” the friar declared. “You have saved me from dropping these baskets before I even have the good grace to offer them to you.” The sister smiled.
“Good afternoon,” he continued with a deep bow, hands clasped in prayer, surprised that the nun had smiled. “I am Fra Tomàs. I’ve brought you my freshly baked bread and our specialty — Chèvre et Banon, nos fromages saints des Alpes-de-Haut-Provence. May I come in?”
The friar revealed the contents of the frayed willow basket, pulling back the hessian cloth to reveal seven small rounds of goat’s cheese, including the Banon wrapped ceremoniously in brown chestnut leaves and raffia, as cheerful and inviting as the faces of little children peering through a candy shop window. She motioned for him to follow her through the garden and into the convent. When he entered the convent and passed through the refectory doors, he was struck by the lightness and calm that surrounded him. Unlike the Barcelonette monastery, which was heavy with dark beams and masonry, the interior entry hall of Chartreuse Notre-Dame was bathed in light. He was abashed by the austere but decidedly feminine aura of the place and felt rather ashamed for his rough appearance and filthy sandals.
As if he had spoken the words out loud, Sister Teresa motioned for him to drop his baskets on a waiting table, and led him to a private washroom at the far end of the building. Years of silence had gifted the nuns with efficiency in reading the most subtle of facial expressions and unspoken impressions, answering requests well before they were made.
In the washroom, Tomàs removed his guitar, heavy robe, and leather sandals, and washed himself and his sandals thoroughly, giving thanks to the Lord for this small mercy. When he arrived back to the table where he left his baskets, he found a note written on hand-made paper where the baskets had been. It read,
Fra Tomàs ~
Thank you for your offering. May we, the Sisters of Chartreuse Notre-Dame, invite you to stay for supper, which will be served after the vespers in the mezzanine?
Please wait in the hall until someone comes fo
r you shortly. I trust you will be comfortable waiting here.
Faithfully yours,
~ Sister Teresa
He folded the note carefully and placed it in a hidden pocket of his robe. He surveyed the hall to find a seat where he could rest his feet for a while. His sandals were damp and made a squelch as he turned to go. He decided that it would be best to walk about outside to allow his sandals to dry on the warm pavement before he was required upstairs. Taking his guitar in hand, he found his way through a side door, which led to a small courtyard lined on opposite sides with espaliered apple and pear trees and adorned with a diamante herb maze in the central space. The slanting sun cast an ochre glow on the few remaining apples on one tree. Tomàs found a comfortable seat on a low brick wall facing the trees and positioned his guitar against his body. Its smooth wooden curves and familiar weight made him immediately feel at ease.