… “Be quiet. I want to talk about myself,” Violet said. She struck a kitchen match against the rough iron rail of the balcony off her bedroom and lit a cigarette. Her spectacles lay on her two-day-old London Times. “I’ve bent over backwards in order not to manipulate people but it was really a shield to keep me from being involved. Whenever I’ve been involved I’ve been hurt. I was involved with Clement. And he died. Because I love you and Patrick I wanted to stay clear of your pain. If you’re in pain now, Charlotte, at least you’re alive and there’s hope for you.” She stubbed out her unsmoked cigarette. “I dreamed about your nun last night. What a fool she was.”
“A fool?” Charlotte asked. “Yes, I suppose she was. But she was involved, at any rate. Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to her.”
“Remember, then, that she did end up being abbess of the convent.”
Charlotte looked across the table in surprise. “She did!”
A deep voice said, “We know it from her death notice,” and both women turned as the doctor came through the dusk of Violet’s room and into the sunlight of the balcony. “Do you have a cup for me, Violet? I would like some coffee.”
Violet rang for Julia, and Charlotte sat, eating croissant and apricot jam, while the doctor persuaded Julia that he had breakfasted, that he wanted coffee, nothing more. With his cup finally in front of him he leaned back in his wicker chair, stretching his great body comfortably. “She was an old woman when she died. In her eighties. Abbess of the convent after thirty years’ penance. That’s all the death notice tells us.”
“From the letters, even the last one,” Charlotte said, “there seems to be no penitence.”
He shrugged. “What do you expect? It is sin that makes news, not repentance.”
“But it seems so strange,” Charlotte persisted, “that she would have been allowed to stay there, even demoted to portress. I don’t see how the abbess could have let her stay. If anything like that had happened when I was at school it would have made an awful stink.”
“Stink?” The doctor laughed. “What a graphic way of putting it, Charlotte. I imagine that is precisely what did happen. The convent must, indeed, have been in very bad odor. And I imagine the abbess must have been sorely tempted to throw Sister Mariana out into the streets.”
“Why didn’t she?” Charlotte asked.
Violet reached across the table for the butter. “What would you have done?”
“I don’t know. I don’t see myself as an abbess type. It’s far easier for me to identify with Mariana.”
“Then don’t forget that Mariana became abbess, and that she was probably an excellent one. But first she would have had to do a lot of growing.” Violet looked at Charlotte, then at the doctor, then buttered a bite of croissant.
“What would you have done, Violet?” Charlotte asked. “Would you have let her stay? What about its effect on everybody else?”
“I imagine that must have been considered,” Violet said.
“Was it because she was the abbess’s niece? Because she was an Alcoforado?”
“No.” The doctor was positive. “Dona Brites, because of her family pride, would have considered that beneath contempt.” He reached across the table, drew Violet’s plate towards him, and helped himself to croissant, butter, and jam. “Remember that Dona Brites was struggling against all kinds of odds to run a reformed convent. Keeping Mariana would have made things exceedingly difficult for her.”
Charlotte leaned back and watched him with affection. The sun warmed her shoulders. The hot coffee and milk, the croissants and home-made jam, were comforting. The fever was leaving her, but more than this it was the doctor himself who was part of her comfort; there was something safe in his very physical solidity.
He would always give his patients a feeling that he had everything under control, that he would never give way to alarm. (How different a doctor he was from Patrick, part of whose success came from his giving Park Avenue patients a sense of urgency, of the dramatic, of the extreme importance of their most minor aches and pains.)
“Well, then, why did the abbess keep her?” Charlotte asked.
“Think about it. Think of the set-up. She had every kind of woman there under her care, from the poorest peasant to the richest noblewoman. The rich were undoubtedly more of a problem to her than the poor, but she needed them. It must have been no trouble for her to understand why it’s easier for a camel to pass through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Why do you suppose most of her boarding students became nuns? She’d have been lucky if half of them had vocations. Yet how could she turn them away? What about Mariana’s sister, Peregrina? It was obvious that Peregrina had no vocation. But Francisco, that old lecher, wouldn’t have wanted her underfoot except as a plaything while she was still young enough to amuse him. And he wouldn’t consider a marriage for her, because he’d paid a handsome dowry to Rui de Melo for Ana. So if Brites hadn’t taken Peregrina what would have become of her? With no husband what was she to do? And sometimes, you know, a vocation may have come to one of those unwanted girls the world had no place for. Sometime, simply through being there, a true religious vocation may have come to them.”
… “So what’s to become of the girls who get sent to me, for whom the world has no place?” the abbess demanded. “Mariana was the one I thought had a true vocation. She had the gift of silence, the ability to be alone. Most important, she had joy. And she has destroyed it all. She has closed herself off entirely. Either she won’t talk, or she talks wildly.”
“This has been a devastating experience for her,” Father Duarte said.
“For us all. That this could happen in my convent—”
“Are you thinking more about the reputation of your convent than you are about the soul under your charge?” They walked along one of the paths that led them away from the white buildings.
The abbess looked at him starkly. “Yes. I suppose it was pride, to think that sin could not come into this convent, where I had tried so to protect my Sisters from evil—” She looked around her at the peace of the garden, beautiful even under the tumid skies.
Father Duarte looked around, too. “Don’t forget that the angels fell from heaven. Or that Adam and Eve sinned in Paradise. You cannot keep evil out of a place. Evil is born in the heart.”
“And God hurled Satan out of heaven, did he not?” Brites demanded. “Nor did he allow Eve to remain in Eden.”
The great gruff voice sharpened. “Take care, Mother Brites.”
She bowed her head. “No, Father. I am not confusing myself with God. Nor my will with his. I only beg to know what God’s will is.” The priest did not speak. They paced the patterned path in silence. Then she continued. “Yes. I admit it. I have been proud. And I have allowed Mariana to be proud. In my own arrogance I have raised her too high. It is for my sin now, more than hers, that I must strike her down. They that did feed delicately are desolate in the streets. They that were brought up in scarlet embrace dunghills. For the salvation of us all I must strip her.”
“And Mariana’s salvation?”
“Isn’t she already beyond salvation?”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I cannot keep her.”
“Is the decision up to you?”
“No, thank God. It’s up to the bishop.”
“I did not have the bishop in mind.”
“No, Father, forgive me.”
Father Duarte said quietly, “You didn’t really plan to go to the bishop, did you?”
“No, I cannot go to a Spaniard whose very presence here is an insult. And when I think that he supports his personal excesses by demanding concubinage money from his priests—No, I cannot go to him, Father, even if you were to command me to.”
“Then I shall not endanger you by doing so,” the priest said. “The responsibility for Sister Mariana is yours.”
“You want me to ignore what she has done?”
The warm voice steeled ag
ain. “Not at all. Unless we can make what has happened have meaning for her, then indeed it will be our responsibility to send her away.”
The abbess took several steps in silence. “I don’t see how we can avoid it, either out of fear of scandal, or willingness to condone wrong.”
“You’re willing to risk her eternal damnation?”
Anger edged the abbess’s voice. “She’s already sold her soul to the devil.”
“No, Mother. She’s rejected the devil as much as she’s rejected God. She’s keeping her soul to herself, which is the most deadly sin of all.”
“Then why do you want her to remain in the community?”
“Because I think her redemption is possible. The Father did not turn away the prodigal son.”
“After he had repented.”
“You want to deny Mariana her chance to repent? What will her repentance be worth if we throw her out into the streets? Who are we to throw the first stone?”
The abbess said angrily, “More wrong has been excused in the name of Mary Magdalene than—”
“Magdalene died to her sins. She was born again. Unless there is repentence the stain of sin will not be washed away.”
A slow, steaming drizzle began to mist their heads. The starched white of the abbess’s coif began to wilt.
“If I let her stay they will say it is because she is an Alcoforado, because I am her aunt. There is no right thing I can do. If I keep her or if I turn her out I sin. If I turn her out I hurt fewer people than if I keep her.”
“That is not the point. A soul is at stake here.” Again the abbess raised and dropped her arms helplessly. Father Duarte continued, “In our search for God we can often proceed only by searching for the meaning of life. This is so important that we must be very slow to condemn any means that will bring us close to it.”
“You’re willing to excuse any kind of debauchery, by saying that it’s a search for the meaning of life?”
He answered in an angry growl. “Mother, you are deliberately misunderstanding. People interested in debauchery aren’t searching for the meaning of anything.”
“Very well, what is the meaning of life? Do you know the meaning? I had thought that it was to love and praise God, but all I see is the reputation of my convent damaged and my own slender faith further shaken. And my child, my Mariana, has turned from a beautiful, vibrant girl into a ravaged whore. Does it have meaning, any of it? I manage the outward offices, the barren forms, while within me my soul withers in a world without meaning.”
Now he replied gently, “This strange world in which you and I try to serve God often seems to have little meaning. Without him it would have no meaning at all.”
She folded her hands again under her scapular, bowed her head. “Yes. Forgive me.”
“Whom do you magnify, Mother Brites?” he asked her. “Do you magnify your work? Or do you magnify the One who has called you to your work? Sometimes we Christians tend to magnify men’s sins whereas we should magnify God’s forgiveness.”
“Yes,” she said, her head still bowed. “It is difficult for me to accept that he can and does forgive where we can’t.”
“Let us go into the chapel,” he said. “Alone, we can do nothing. But with God’s help—”
The abbess’s words were a prayer. “God knows we need it.”
Mariana herself almost spared them a decision by trying to run away, to cross the ocean …
She hurried along a deserted road that wound through rocky hills; occasionally she glanced behind her as though afraid of being followed. She stopped in an agony of impatience as an old shepherd crossed the road with a large flock of sheep and she had to wait as they went by, the sheep baaing, the big old sheep dog running after the younger sheep who tended to stray and herding them back into the flock. When she was able to proceed she ran until she was exhausted, then slowed to a stumbling walk. She was so tired that she no longer looked behind her for pursuers, nor realized that a peasant had drawn up to her in his mule cart until he stopped, tipping his cap and asking courteously, “Give you a ride, Sister?”
She looked up at him, smiled painfully, and nodded, climbing up onto the wagon without speech.
“Where are you going, Sister? Perhaps I could take you there.”
Briefly she raised her downcast eyes. “I’m afraid not. I have business in Sagres.”
“Sagres? That’s a long way, Sister. You’ll be spending the night somewhere, then.”
She nodded, and began moving her fingers on her rosary to discourage further conversation.
The road left the windings of the rocky hills and cut across a vast plain. The peasant stopped his wagon by two stone gateposts marking the entrance to a long drive that led to a large yellow house. He looked at her shrewdly. “If you would care to spend the night here, Sister, my master is a devout man, and would be glad to care for you.”
She shook her head. “Thank you. I must try to get a little farther.”
“You needn’t worry about my master, Sister. He’s not like some with women, even nuns. He has a sister who is a Religious herself, and his mother would tend to your needs.”
“No,” she said. “Thank you.” She climbed down from the wagon and started walking. The peasant stared after her for a moment, then got back into his cart and turned it up the drive.
The road narrowed, became a path, became at last a field of waving grain. She waded into it, and the grain moved like water about the dark folds of her habit. She could scarcely move, but she pushed through the tall, clinging grasses until she came to what must be the road she sought, but which was no more than a narrow path winding southwards. She stood at the start of the path, then fell to her knees and rolled over and lay down in the sharp grass at the side of the path, her vulnerable face exposed to the blinding sun.
A merciful cloud moved across the sky.
She fell asleep, moaning softly from time to time, a small, animal whimper. The clouds gathered, massed. Rain began to fall, in great soft drops, glistening against her face, her robes. The drops came more quickly, sharply, stinging her face, waking her. She sat up, not knowing at first where she was. Then she stood and started to walk again, lurching along the path. The rain progressed to a drenching downpour, whipping her wet robes against her body.
The sound of horse’s hooves was muffled by the wet ground. Even when she heard she did not turn to look. The horse drew up beside her, and the rider bent down to her. It was the small, delicate French officer, Noël and Baltazar’s friend, Mathieu de Berenger. “Sister!” he cried.
She raised her arm as though to ward off a blow.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said gently. “You’re Baltazar Alcoforado’s sister, aren’t you?” She nodded. “You shouldn’t be alone here so far from the convent, and in this storm. It’s not safe.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Where are you going? May I take you somewhere?”
“I was going—I was going—”
Realizing her distraught state he bent down closer to her. “Where, Sister?”
“To Sagres—”
“Sagres?”
“Somebody who might be there—”
He spoke to her kindly, but with firmness. “The ship has gone, Sister, and he with it.” She shook her head, rejecting his words. “Let me take you back to the convent.” She shook her head again. “Do they know you’re gone?” Again she shook her head. “There’s nobody for you in Sagres, Sister. The ship has gone. He has gone. He will not return. It’s a long journey from here to Sagres for nothing. I’ll get you back to the convent without anybody’s seeing you. Nobody’ll ever know. I promise you.”
She let him help her up onto the horse before him, and they turned back, the horse moving swiftly through the rain.
So they had to make a decision after all.
… “Whatever I do now it is going to be wrong. Anything I decide will be wrong. Does that ever happen to you? that you get involved in wrongness so deeply that ever
ything is part of it?”
“Daily,” Violet said, dryly.
“But I mean in the large things.”
“Those, too.”
“I came away to get perspective, to try to understand. But I seem to get more and more deeply into confusion. If I understand anything at all it’s only by paradox.”
“How else?”
“I wish I knew more about paradox, but I suppose if one did then it wouldn’t be paradox. And yet I’m coming more and more to feel that this is the only way one ever understands anything at all. Never directly.”
She looked apologetically first to Violet, then to the doctor. Since neither of them looked disapproving she continued. “If I’m to understand Patrick it will have to be this way, obliquely, by paradox and contradiction.” She smiled unsurely at the doctor. “The way it is about your Portuguese nun.”
“She’s not my Portuguese nun,” the doctor said.
“Tonio’s, then.”
“Not Tonio’s, either. He understands her least of all.”
She pushed the thought of Antonio away with a shoving movement of one hand. “I guess I’m pretty simple if you compare me to Patrick, but even Mariana can be seen more clearly glimpsed out of the corner of my eye than if I try to look at her directly. We count so much on the looks of things, and yet what we actually see isn’t really the object we’re looking at, but just the minute part of it that our inadequate vision can cope with, and even that little bit we see upside down, and then our brain has to turn it right side up, to translate, as it were, for us. Since everything is upside down anyhow I don’t see why it should bother me.”
“I find it rather fascinating,” Violet murmured.
The Love Letters Page 29