The Waters & the Wild

by DeSales Harrison

  What would Daniel Abend, psychoanalyst, have said about his dream? Would he have listened in resolute silence? Or would he have simply inquired what the dream brought to mind? What the dream brought to mind was Abend’s voice itself, filling Spurlock’s head like a trapped echo. Yes, that’s what the dream brought to mind, a well or shaft sunk into the depths of a remote past, overflowing with echoes, flooding Spurlock’s head even though that past was not his own. That past had belonged entirely to others and had remained private and sealed until the moment Spurlock slid his pocketknife under the flap of that heavy envelope and started reading.

  Father, you will not remember me. My name is Daniel Abend.

  “Are you happy now, Abend? Are you satisfied?” Spurlock said aloud, as though to chase the echo out of his head. His own voice, however, merely joined with the other voices, Abend’s, Clementine’s, Jessica Burke’s. Beneath these others the voice of Abend’s correspondent repeated its refrain:

  Que ce soit avec toi, que ce soit avec la fille, je serai satisfait.

  Whether with you or with the girl, I will be satisfied.

  What Spurlock felt, to his chagrin, was envy. He envied Abend, and he envied Abend’s correspondent. He envied them their shared belief that an account could be settled, a debt paid, an obligation satisfied. Was not the document itself, there on his desk, a testament first and foremost to that fact? (Spurlock had pulled his chair to the window overlooking the avenue, and he sat with his forehead against the cool pane, watching the traffic light cycle from yellow to red to green over the empty intersection.) He envied them all, Abend, his correspondent, even Bethany. After all, Bethany’s job afforded her the pleasure of thumping her hand with a conclusive thwack on a stack of tab-indexed binders codifying the terms of a corporate merger. Months of negotiations concluded, the agreement at last drawn up and signed. “How satisfying,” she would say, dropping the stack into a file carton with a thud. “Document storage will swing by to pick this up tomorrow.” Spurlock envied her authority to dispatch her work for good, her power to banish it to a warehouse canyoned with obsolete documents.

  What satisfaction was there for him? Spurlock recalled the time Father Babbet, his first spiritual director, had said to him, “If you’re hot for worldly goods, Nelson, you won’t find them in the priesthood, and Lord knows the body of Christ is replete with assholes. If you ask me, though, the job satisfaction can’t be beat,” and he had been right. Spurlock thought so then and had thought so many times since, and he’d made a point of repeating Father Babbet’s formulation to any new seminarian posted to the Incarnation. Whatever those unbeatable satisfactions were, however, they never involved thwacking a stack of binders into a box and dispatching it to document storage.

  Was this a crisis of faith? Had he come to doubt that God’s love was the satisfaction to be preferred above all others? It was just that his work was so…was so unlike work. He suspected that somewhere priests thought of their job as the salvage and restoration of souls, in preparation for eternal life. That would simplify matters. But for Spurlock this view carried the whiff of death with it: souls laid out in uniform ranks, like bodies in a morgue or pelts drying in the sun. He tried to reassure himself that the product of his labors was in fact a kind of antiproduct, a good that could not be swapped or sold and for that reason remained invisible to the eyes of the world.

  * * *

  —

  Spurlock had met Father Babbet when Spurlock was still in divinity school, serving as seminarian at St. Dunstan’s, an Anglo-Catholic parish in Boston. In that church’s sacristy, a small room smelling of mothballs and incense, there was a special basin called a sacrarium, installed when the church had been built, its sole purpose the disposal of the consecrated remains of communion elements: the crumbs of the host, the dregs of the wine. Some altar jockey had practically tackled him when he made to pour his coffee into it and had declared to him that the sacrarium drained directly into the earth, so that the body and blood of Christ should not be made to suffer the indignity of the common sewer. But wasn’t mortality itself the common sewer, Spurlock wanted to ask, into which God had already lowered Himself? He checked the impulse; it was his first day at St. Dunstan’s.

  The parish’s ornate observances disturbed Spurlock’s idealism, but he loved the music programming (on which the church spent an extravagant portion of its budget) and even came to appreciate something frail and not quite absurd in the high-wire theatricality of Sunday’s “Solemn Mass.” When he put away the vestments after the service, he marveled at the fragility of the fabrics, each cope and chasuble lovingly preserved since the church’s establishment in the heyday of nineteenth-century Anglo-Catholicism. The lace and brocade had by now grown brittle and beneath his fingers seemed more like museum pieces from a lost civilization, like ceremonial costumes made from moth’s wings or from the feathers of birds long extinct.

  Father Babbet, Spurlock’s spiritual director and the rector of that parish, was a dried-out alcoholic whose translucent hands still shook when he lifted the chalice during the consecration. He bypassed the customary off-quaffing of any undrunk communion wine and instead waited until after the service, when he would tip the chalice into the porcelain bowl of the sacrarium.

  “The ecstasy of protocol,” Spurlock said out loud, observing him, because the phrase was one that Babbet himself liked to use.

  “Protocol, Child Spurlock?” said Babbet, who also liked to call Nelson “Child Spurlock.” “This is not a display of protocol. This sink is the ground conductor of the church.”

  Spurlock admitted that he did not know what Father Babbet was talking about.

  “The ground conductor, Child Spurlock, the lightning rod. Keeps us from getting electrocuted!”

  “Please tell me that’s not another thing I have to believe.”

  “Why not? But if you’re having a heretical day, think how the Greeks poured out their libations on the earth. Why buck tradition?”

  “Well, if the tradition is crazy…”

  “Crazier than you or I?” said Babbet, his eyebrow arching again like a cat’s back. “It’s better off down the drain than down my gullet, I can tell you that. And who am I to begrudge it, a little sop for the bloodthirsty earth?”

  * * *

  —

  Maybe that’s what his confessor’s ear was: a sacrarium, a ground conductor, a pipe driven into the ground, through which something dangerous and unregulated could be discharged. A part of him revolted against the thought that something had been poured into or routed through him, as though he were nothing but an outfall pipe. Surely that wasn’t what he’d signed up for at ordination.

  Or had it been? Perhaps he had signed up to turn the other cheek, to walk the extra mile—but even so, Abend was wrong, he thought, culpably wrong to have put Spurlock in this position. Abend was wrong to have encumbered him with this stack of pages, this confession, unable to do anything except what he had been instructed, to hold on to them, to keep them on his desk, his attention a conduit obliged to take what it was offered. It was then that Spurlock remembered how Abend had described his own role in the same way, as a kind of prostitute, his ear open to all comers. Strange kinship, thought Spurlock, picking up the pages, this brotherhood of strangers.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The monastic order Miriam intended to join had been founded fewer than thirty years ago and described itself as a “new expression of monastic commitments.” At the time I had been surprised to learn that the monks and nuns lived together in the same community; the average age, unlike that of most other orders Miriam knew of, was under forty. New vocations were plentiful enough to allow for the seeding of new houses in provincial cities. Members of the community dwelled and worshipped together in a traditional monastic setting; their work involved them in the outside world, aiding the homeless, immigrants, refugees, and street prostitutes. All this I have learne
d in the intervening years, having received from the order ever since my return to New York a quarterly newsletter and an annual appeal for money, to which I respond with a donation of five hundred dollars. Every few years, in one or another of the newsletter’s photographs, I find the face of a nun taller than the others, her face round and smooth, the eyes a weatherless blue. The face is the face of Sœur Béatrice, who though English by birth has lately been elected the prioress of her monastic house, the house attached to the church of St. Julien in the medieval hill town of Leuvray. Sometimes Sœur Béatrice includes in the newsletter brief notices about the goings-on in the community. I read these notices with care, wondering if this time she will mention a small organic farm in a neighboring village, established twenty years ago. She does not. I learn instead that Sœur Thérèse has taken up stone carving, Frère Loïc will return to Rwanda in May, two new postulants have joined the community, or Bisou the cat has had kittens.

  One day, not very long after we had returned from our own silent retreat, Miriam and I had taken a somewhat longer journey from Paris down into the Burgundy region. Once we’d left the autoroute, we followed narrow roads set in seams between billowing expanses of wheat or pasture, until Leuvray floated into view. Miriam wanted to show me the place where she would begin her postulancy and to introduce me to Sœur Béatrice, a young nun who would serve as Miriam’s guide and helper before Miriam made her final move from Paris to Leuvray.

  “And who am I supposed to be today?” I asked as we climbed the cobbled main street of Leuvray on foot. The church, at one time a basilica, seemed to ride above the town, like a ship breasting a swell.

  “Supposed to be?”

  “Your last-ditch, terminal fuck?” I said in English.

  “Comprends pas, enfin, sauf ‘fuck,’ ” she said, having understood nothing except fuck.

  “Am I supposed to be your friend?” I said, returning to French.

  She replied, however, in English. “So you say I am not your friend, only your fuck friend?”

  “Maybe I should just be your silent friend. You people seem to like silence,” I said, and we climbed the remainder of the hill without speaking.

  Sœur Béatrice was waiting for us in the small café on the square at the foot of the church, and she greeted me with a handshake and a clipped “How do you do.” I said I was Miriam’s friend from the United States, joining her for a day in Leuvray, as though that were the description Miriam and I had agreed upon. Béatrice met my eyes for a long second and said, “You are welcome,” as though I had thanked her for something. She greeted Miriam with a double kiss and throughout the interview spoke almost exclusively to her, in a French as rapid and fluid as it was heavily accented, marked everywhere with the British inversion of emphasis: mais-on, ba-teau, châ-teau. I realized Béatrice was in habit only when in the distance another nun mounted the steps to the church, wearing the same long dress of blue linen or chambray, the same white kerchief meant to cover the hair. In Béatrice’s case it failed spectacularly; her hair, long and copper blond, peeked out around her ears and forehead and lay over her shoulder in a heavy braid, the length of which she stroked as though it were the tail of a great cat.

  “Miriam has told me that you will be returning shortly to America. Have you enjoyed your vacation?”

  I explained that I had not been on vacation, but that I’d come to Paris on a medical fellowship.

  “Will you leave with what you hoped to leave with?”

  I said I had never asked myself the question.

  “We seldom do,” said Béatrice, and shifted back into French, inquiring if Miriam had received some books she had sent. My attention strayed when a trio of hot-air balloons floated into view from behind the hulking eminence of the church. They passed, it seemed, at eye level, though still high over the valley. Periodically, someone in one or another of the balloons would pull a cord and a tongue of flame would shoot up into the balloon with a coughing roar. “Les touristes américains, hélas,” said Béatrice, following my gaze.

  “American tourists like me, alas,” I said.

  “Ah,” said Béatrice, “it appears you understand some French.”

  I said it would have been difficult, even for an American tourist, to avoid learning a little French over the course of a year.

  “Miriam sings beautifully in English, don’t you think?”

  “She is a beautiful singer,” I said.

  “A voice such as hers is a gift from God.”

  “You do have a beautiful voice,” I said to Miriam.

  “It is only the voice of a little boy,” she replied.

  “You wouldn’t agree, Daniel,” Béatrice went on, “that Miriam’s voice is a gift from God?”

  I said I wasn’t in the habit of thinking in those terms.

  “Are ‘those terms’ not compatible with your philosophy?”

  “Am I required to have a philosophy?”

  “But your work is a form of practical philosophy, isn’t it?”

  “I’m used to thinking of it as a branch of medicine.”

  The conversation reverted to French, and I do not remember what else Miriam and Béatrice discussed. That afternoon, before returning to Paris, we attended Mass in the church. Miriam sat beside me this time. The towering spaces of the church blotted up the monks’ prayers and consecrations, but during the chants Miriam’s treble, closer to me than it had ever been, seemed to open a clearing around us, as a shaft of sunlight might open a sudden chamber in the woods. Miriam seemed merely the occupant of this space, not its source. It was a place she had brought me to, this clearing she had happened upon.

  At the passing of the peace, before communion, the monastics left the choir and mingled among the sparse congregation, greeting each person with a sort of double handclasp. May the peace of the Christ be with you, each would say, solemnly, slowly, before moving on to the next person. A young nun with black eyes and a whiskery fuzz above her lip took Miriam’s hands and addressed her by name, kissing her on each cheek. By the time she took my hands in hers, my palms had grown moist with apprehension.

  * * *

  —

  “You must forgive Béatrice,” Miriam said as we drove home.

  “What reason would she have to like me?”

  “It is only that she has known me for a long time. I am sure she feels protective, responsible for my vocation.”

  “Isn’t the vocation supposed to be your responsibility?”

  “God’s, in fact,” said Miriam.

  Did I find it as unthinkable then as I do now, the prospect of her becoming one of those blue, beatific, sandaled shapes? Did I think, or hope, that she would renege when the appointed moment finally arrived? And when was the moment supposed to arrive? Would she pack up her things in her apartment? Her futon? Her CD player and her disc of African blues? Where would she put them? Would she hand over her street clothes, her carte d’identité, to a wardress behind a high counter? Would she take a name-in-religion, as Béatrice had? Béatrice had been named something like Fiona Burwell or Beryl Ferris before becoming Béatrice; who would Miriam Levaux become? Would a whiskery shadow gather on her upper lip once all mortal vanity had been buried in Christ’s side?

  “Do you think Béatrice is a lesbian?” I asked. The autoroute was dark now and the night clear, though in the distance the glow of Paris had swallowed the stars.

  “No more than you are,” she said, giving my earlobe a little tug, then resting her hand on my thigh. “T’inquiète pas, mon ami,” she said. “And anyway,” she added after a pause, “we both have our tickets.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  With absolute conviction we declare we recognize someone. The ethologists and developmental psychologists say the gift is innate, the ability to pick out one face among hundreds, among thousands. An adaptive trait, they call it, survival depending upon the parent�
��s capacity to recognize the face of the child, the child’s to recognize the face of the parent. Yet when we try to describe a face, even the most beloved, it could be any face at all.

  In this new photograph from my correspondent she is seated at a café, a map open on her lap. The image flashes with captive sunlight, but the map itself hides in the shadow of the table. Clementine is the only figure in the frame, but there are two cigarette packets on the table, and alongside the coffee cup is a tall glass nearly empty, a pastis by the look of it, dilute and milky green. The café bill has been placed beside Clementine’s hand. A little clip secures the slip to its tray, where a breeze lifts its corner. To her left on an empty chair rests a well-thumbed French–English dictionary alongside a glossy fashion magazine. The photograph, taken from behind, asks me to read over her shoulder, to examine the map held open on her knees. At my desk I take out my magnifying glass, lifting and lowering it with care over the image, as though I were trying to snare with a string something fallen through the grate of a storm drain.

  Unlike the others, this photograph is in color, and the corner panel of the map is a bright blue, somewhere between turquoise and ultramarine, the blue that in France denotes a topological map of the most precise sort, as detailed as those issued here by the U.S. Geological Survey. I recognize the blue because Miriam and I had one with us at the monastery we visited together for the silent retreat; we had taken it with us on our walk down to the dilapidated bridge. Such a map was a hiking map, one not serviceable in Paris. There would be no reason for Clementine to have such a map now unless she were planning to leave Paris, to go on a trip.

  Of course: because now one of her strongest motivations for being in France at all is to visit the place where Miriam was born, to meet, if possible, Miriam’s parents, her French grandparents. Her friend at the café, whoever this friend might be, would help her locate them, their town, their address, on the appropriate map. Miriam had been born not in Paris but in Nevers, in the provincial department of the Nièvre.