The abbess sat wearily at her desk during this tirade, her hands loosely on the book, her eyes closed.
“God damn you, do something about it! That’s what I came to tell you, do something!” On this note of hysteria he rushed out.
He passed Baltazar on the road, but, as he had not seen the two nuns, he did not see his son.
Baltazar was not in a carriage, nor on his white stallion. He walked slowly on foot, not quickening his step when a dank, dreary rain began to fall, spattering the dust. He was not in his bright Portuguese army officer’s uniform, but in dark garments as somber as the lowering day. When he reached the lodge and the convent gates he did not ring, but stood staring at Mariana as she sat at her place in the small room until, feeling the brooding intensity of his gaze, she turned and looked over the barrier at him.
“Mariana.”
She continued to look, but did not speak.
“Sister, I wanted to tell you myself.” She did not react and he was not sure that she was listening. “I am leaving the army. I am taking Holy Orders.” Now her look held questioning, but still she did not speak. “Mariana, you know why I am doing this?”
Her voice was the dead voice that he had become used to. “If you say it is because of me I shall not believe you. Or I shall say it is nonsense. You are doing it because of yourself. Very well. Go ahead and do it. But don’t come to me for approval.”
“All I want is your love, Mariana.”
“Don’t come here looking for love, either.”
“Where God is, shouldn’t love be?”
“God? You won’t find God here either. And in any case love has nothing to do with God.”
“Mariana, your turning away from God doesn’t mean that he can’t love you. Love doesn’t always flow in two directions. It takes only one to love.”
Without answering she turned and left the gatehouse, left the gates unattended, and wandered to the lily pond.
She went there often, so often that the abbess declared it out of bounds, forbidden to both sisters and children.
So Joaquina, in the damp of an early morning, finding Mariana’s cell empty, knew where to look for her. She hurried along the cloister and out of its shadows. She had at last been trusted again with the key. The early morning mist lay wispily about garden and grounds, its tenuous streamers still undispersed by the sun. Her heart beating heavily she crossed the rose garden and ran along the forbidden path to the pond. Mariana was standing there, her clothes a sodden mass clinging to her body. It had rained during the night. How long had she been there? How had she left her locked cell? She, like Noël, must have used balcony for door.
When she saw Joaquina she turned her face away.
Joaquina approached her, speaking with an urgency beyond her usual nervous tenseness. “Sister. Sister Mariana. I know I’m breaking rules to come here. But I must talk to you.” Mariana turned slowly to look at her. Joaquina spoke in too loud a voice. “I forgive you.”
Mariana gave a wild and startled laugh, and turned away again. Joaquina bit her lip for self-control, then said more quietly, “We know you’re not yourself. We’re all unhappy for you.”
“Leave my unhappiness to me.”
“But we all share it.”
“It seems my life is public property.”
“A nun has no private life.”
Mariana smiled at Joaquina, an unamused grimace. “Don’t talk to me. I’ll corrupt you.”
There was no doubting Joaquina’s unwelcome, unlovable sincerity. “I only want to pray for you.”
Mariana turned on her furiously. “I forbid you to—”
Fury met fury. Joaquina’s slender control snapped. “You still think you’re better than anybody else, don’t you? You’re even too good to be prayed for. And what would be sin for the rest of us must be excused in you. But you have sinned. All your special privileges can’t change your sin. You’ve betrayed our Lord and the man you have betrayed him for has betrayed you.”
Their faces had come close together.
“You lie,” Mariana whispered.
Joaquina’s voice was still too loud. “You don’t understand anything about being the Bride of Christ! You never did. You know nothing about loving him. Don’t you see what you’ve done to us? Don’t you see what you’re doing to us all?”
Mariana whispered, her face as white and mottled as Joaquina’s. “Go away. Leave me alone in hell.”
“You’re dragging us into it with you!”
By the closeness of Joaquina’s face, her wild eyes, her sheer volume as much as her words, Mariana was brought up short. “What?”
“You’re destroying us all!” Joaquina cried. “We never laugh any more. Beatriz does nothing but pace. We no longer hear the sound of the Angelus in our ears. We hear your sobs.”
“But I—”
“Oh, I know, you cover your head, you stuff your fingers into your mouth to try to stifle your cries. But we hear. We see your eyes rimmed in red. Oh, God! My God! I wanted to help you, I wanted to pray for you! And then as usual I got angry and spoiled everything. And even my praying wasn’t selfless. It wasn’t only for the rest of us. It was for me.”
“But—”
“You think you can suffer in private? You think you can keep it to yourself? You think it hasn’t eaten through the whole convent like a cancer? And even the little children: they’re devoured by it, too. They play quietly, with grave faces, instead of running and shouting.”
“They know—”
“How can they help knowing? I cannot tell you when a laugh was last heard in this place. I have learned now that one cannot worship God in a place where there is no laughter. Peregrina cries like an old woman. Others who were always happy and gay can’t eat for homesickness, and that’s just as well, because there’s never enough food. Dolores and several others have been taken away.”
“Taken away—”
“Because we’re not fit to care for them, we sisters who are in the same convent that you are! And we’re not fit any more, it’s true! Sister Michaela wants to leave the convent—”
“To leave—”
“She’s lost her vocation.”
“Why?”
“Why do you think?” Joaquina accused.
Mariana moved away, leaning against the rough trunk of a tree to steady herself. Joaquina went up to her and said loudly, “You could see if you’d just look! If you’d think for one moment of something other than your own misery.” Joaquina’s flood of words stopped as she looked at Mariana’s face. “No. No, Sister. I’m sorry.”
Mariana stretched out one hand as though reaching for something. Her voice was very quiet, very low. Joaquina had to strain to listen. “Don’t be sorry, Sister. You’re quite right. I should have realized.”
Joaquina’s voice trembled; her eyes filled. “I’ve hurt you again. I didn’t want to hurt you—” Her tears spilled over.
Mariana reached out towards her, then drew back. “No. You’ve helped me. I thank you, Sister. I thank you very much.”
She walked, as though in her sleep, through the garden and into the cloister. She went into the chapter room, through it, along the silent corridor, up the stairs, and into her cell. There she walked round and round in her cage.
The rising bell rang.
The bell for Matins, Lauds, Prime.
From her cell she could hear the antiphonal sound of grace from the refectory below.
She went out onto the balcony, walked across it, and looked down on the cloister. There she saw the abbess and Michaela not at breakfast with the community but walking up and down the arched walk, up and down, as Mariana had walked in the smaller confine of her cell, walking up and down and talking.
With a quick turn of decision Mariana went back into her cell, dropped for a fraction of a moment onto her knees on the prie-dieu, then she rose and hurried through the convent, cutting across the square to the abbess and Sister Michaela. She went directly to the little nun.
“Sister Michaela, you must not leave.”
There was no emotion in her voice. It was cold and clear, like a voice coming from a marble statue.
“Who gave you permission—” the abbess started.
Mariana ignored her. “You’re leaving because of what I’ve done. Because of what I’ve said to you. Because of Noël and me.”
Michaela said, “Please stop, Sister.”
“You overestimate yourself,” the abbess said, icily. “I am handling this. It is not your concern.”
In the center of the cloistered square the fountain splashed with charming indifference.
Mariana continued to ignore the abbess, speaking to Michaela as though they were alone, her words tender but her voice still marble.
“Sister Michaela, dear sweet little Michaela, I love you, and all I’ve done is hurt you. Don’t destroy yourself because of me.”
For a moment Michaela forgot the formidable presence of the abbess. “But if you’ve destroyed yourself—”
The two words came with the impassive indifference of stone. “Have I?”
“You must have, because I don’t love you any more.”
Mariana did not flinch. “What is important is you, little Sister, what you’re doing to yourself. Please listen to me. Stay here where you belong.”
Michaela wrung her hands, the thin, delicate fingers white and tense against her dark habit. “How can I turn back now when the love is gone from my heart?”
Mariana said, “I love you.”
The abbess, not comprehending, accused: “You know nothing about love.”
Mariana turned to the abbess, her words careful, controlled. She was no longer the ravaged nun, wild with grief, moving like an animal between cell, gatehouse, and pond; but neither was she Mariana. “I know that love isn’t love as long as I care whether or not my love is accepted. Unless I can love without asking anything in return, it isn’t love.”
“But you are asking!” Michaela cried. “You’re asking me to stay!”
“I won’t ask any more, then,” Mariana said, still too calm. “Instead I’ll make you a promise.” The abbess looked at her searchingly. Mariana’s steady voice continued. “I will send back his letters. Noël’s letters. And his medal.”
She ripped the medal from her neck and dropped it in front of Michaela on the grass. “I will never write to him again. I will open my hands and my heart and let him go.”
Michaela seemed suspended on the pale blue point of Mariana’s gaze. She broke away from it, reached down at her feet for the medal, picked it up, dropped it again, and looked at it as it lay on the grass.
“You will—you will do that?”
Mariana’s face was white and blind and emotionless. “Yes.”
Michaela made a small, confused moan and dropped to one knee, again touching the medal with trembling, tentative fingers. The abbess spoke softly, carefully, as though afraid her words would destroy something. “Sister Michaela finds it difficult to learn that nothing man can do or say is irrevocable. Perhaps what you have just said—Do you realize what you have said, Sister Mariana?”
“Yes, your Reverence.”
The abbess winced. It was the first time Mariana had called her by this title since the abbess had struck her. “You can do this?”
There was a faint crack in the marble. One of Mariana’s hands moved gropingly towards the abbess, then returned to its place in the wide, dark sleeve of her habit. “If you will help me. If you will take his things and send them back to him.”
“Before you have time to think? If this is done without thought it means nothing.”
Mariana looked at the abbess steadily. Behind her eyes a small light of life began delicately to flicker: could the gold perhaps return? “It is not done without thought.”
“You will never write to him again? Sending back his old letters doesn’t mean that you will have the strength not to write again.”
“I will not write.” She stretched her hand out towards the abbess, though she did not touch her, nor did the abbess dare to reach out for her hand in return. “And if I should ever ask you for anything of his, even if I come to you sobbing and begging and groveling, then you must deny me.”
The abbess commanded Michaela, “Give me the medal.”
At last Michaela picked it up. She held it out to the abbess, who took it, in turn offering it to Mariana. “I do not want you to do this unless—”
Mariana recoiled. “I don’t want to touch it again.”
Michaela, like a small child needing comfort, spoke to Mariana but moved closer to the abbess. “Mariana, how can you do this?”
Mariana’s words came clear, but there was still the strange coldness in them. They were understood, but they were not felt; they were not alive. The sun broke through the clouds and moved across the convent roof, the cloistered walk, falling on the three of them standing there, but Mariana seemed untouched by its warmth. She said, “Her Grace told me once that there is no virtue in loving the lovable. There’s no virtue in loving where it’s easy. Maybe I will learn to love Noël now. When I want nothing from him. When I don’t even want him.”
Michaela hid her head against the abbess like one of the smaller children. The abbess drew her hand lightly over Michaela’s coif almost as though she had been going to smooth a child’s hair. Michaela said, “I don’t understand. You don’t—you don’t love the Frenchman any more?”
“Oh, yes, I love him,” Mariana said clearly. “Or I will. I can love him now that I see Christ in him. Before, I saw only myself, only the gratification of my own self will. Now I can love him within God’s will. If God will.”
Dona Brites looked at Mariana. Mariana returned her gaze; the abbess’s voice strengthened. “It is not necessary that we understand everything, Sister Michaela.” She put the back of her hand for a moment gently against the young nun’s flushed cheek. “Would you like to be excused to go to your cell and pray?”
Michaela nodded mutely, looked at Mariana, at the abbess, back at Mariana, tried to speak, could not, and ran off, disappearing into the shadows of the arched walk and then into the convent.
The abbess looked long and searchingly at Mariana, then held out her arms, and Mariana moved slowly into them, but still like one dead, like one in a dream. The abbess was afraid, but she asked, her voice harsh, demanding, “You are going to give me his letters?”
“Yes, your Grace.”
“All of them?”
“All. There aren’t very many.”
“You will not ask for them back?”
Mariana looked steadily at her aunt. “This isn’t only because of Michaela, your Grace. Perhaps she was what made—but the time had come.”
The iron was back in the abbess. “It had come a long time ago.” Then she asked, sharply, “You are ready to make your confession?”
Mariana shook her head.
“You will not confess?”
“No, your Grace. I cannot do that.”
“Why?”
“I have gone too far away for that. But at least I can stop dragging others into the pit with me.”
The abbess looked into the cold, unmoving face; she hit the back of one hand into the palm of the other in sudden decision. “You could begin now to make use of your suffering.”
“No, your Grace,” Mariana said. “Suffering has no use. No use at all.”
The abbess turned away from the girl; her voice was harsh. “You shall suffer,” she said. “Come with me.”
She led the way to her study. She took the book of letters from a drawer and thrust it at Mariana. Mariana looked at it, opened it. It was a moment before she realized what it was. She gasped. Her pupils dilated until they were enormous, swallowing up the pale cold blue. It was as though she had been struck a violent blow. But she was stunned, rather than in pain. She handed the book back to the abbess and turned away. She walked to the door.
The abbess shouted, “Where are you going?”
Mariana did no
t answer. The abbess moved as though to follow her, but Mariana said, “No,” just the one word, but in such a way that the abbess stopped. When Mariana was out of sight the abbess hurled across the room to the window and stood, watching, until the dark form appeared in the sunlight of the cloister and moved, like a shade, a phantasm, to the gatehouse.
In the refectory the sisters were still eating breakfast.
In the gatehouse Mariana sat in the shadows and stared, not within herself now, dulled eyes turned in to some vast dark chasm within her skull, but out the gates and down the road.
She seemed to be looking for something.
Was she looking for someone to approach the convent?
Surely not a black charger?
In the distance at the turn of the road a small figure moved, limped, towards the gates. Through narrowed eyes, against the sun, Mariana watched.
The figure, whoever it was, was carrying something, cuddled tight like a baby (was it a baby?) against the breast.
The early sunlight hit the white of convent walls and was thrown back upon the road, upon the figure.
It was Peregrina.
It was Peregrina carrying Pinto, the monkey, her own face wizened, distorted, simian, the monkey’s placid, in repose, like a sleeping infant’s.
The monkey was dead.
Peregrina saw Mariana and began to scream.
Mariana was out of the gatehouse, out of the gates, on her knees on the dirt before the child, holding the child and the dead stiffening body of the monkey in her embrace.
Peregrina screamed. Screamed.
Then, as Mariana did not loosen her embrace, the screams thinned, became a whimper.
She sounded frighteningly like the monkey.
Mariana said nothing. Waited.
The strange, animal moans continued.
The Love Letters Page 35