Black Narcissus

by Rumer Godden

  ‘Who was that?’

  ‘It’s only Kanchi,’ said Dilip calmly. ‘She often passes by here to see me. She is very pretty, isn’t she? But she’s always bothering me to talk to her.’

  Sister Adela started and looked at the clock, and was very annoyed to find that she had been talking to him for a quarter of an hour herself.

  26

  Just before Easter the knife wind changed to boisterousness, playing round the trees and rattling at the windows, and snatching at skirts and veils; with its roughness it was warm, scented with the orange flowers from the groves in the valley, a languorous scent blown roughly. The snow was melting and the streams were full; their own stream pelted down the hill, swelling up round the bamboos; over the slopes came a green bloom with a blueness in it like a grape and the rhododendrons opened in hundreds, and the magnolia behind the house budded into thick white flowers.

  Ayah gathered them and put one in each bathroom.

  ‘What’s that for, Ayah?’

  ‘To drive out the fleas.’

  ‘But we haven’t any fleas here,’ cried Sister Briony indignantly.

  ‘Huh, haven’t we? I saw you scratching yourself with my own eyes this morning. If we don’t take care, the whole house will be riddled with them. Even the fleas feel wicked in this weather. If I were you,’ she added, ‘I should keep my eye on Kanchi.’

  But Sister Briony was thinking of the fleas. ‘As soon as Easter’s over,’ she said, ‘I shall have a good spring cleaning.’

  ‘This place needs spring cleaning in more ways than one,’ said Sister Adela. ‘That young General has come scented so that one can trail him down the passage and Mr Dean has been very impertinent to me again.’

  ‘I’ve told you he doesn’t really mean to be impertinent,’ said Sister Briony. ‘It’s just his natural way of talking.’

  ‘That’s just what I object to,’ Sister Adela answered. ‘He shouldn’t be allowed to talk to me like that, or to any of us. I’m going to complain to Sister Clodagh.’

  ‘Must you bother Sister with complaints just now? I’m worried about her. She’s looking so ill.’

  ‘She hasn’t enough in her stomach,’ said Ayah. ‘None of you have with all these days of hen food.’

  ‘Yes, and even when you can see she’s ill,’ wailed Sister Briony, ‘she won’t give in and let me make her a nice cup of tea.’

  ‘You should admire her for that,’ said Sister Adela. ‘That’s what I don’t understand. She seems so right and just in her discipline, even a little too strict. There’s nothing wrong there, but something is wrong. I’m not being critical, Sister, I’m seeing how I can help her.’

  ‘Are you?’ said Sister Briony dryly.

  ‘You can’t deny it, there is something wrong. Who ever heard of a Convent with a dirty Sunnyasi in its garden, and a man of Mr Dean’s reputation going in and out like one of ourselves, and that scented “Black Narcissus” as Sister Ruth calls him, and a very good name for him, too, peacocking about in front of us all; in front of those young girls. I call it asking for trouble.’

  Sister Briony told Sister Clodagh what she had said. ‘She’s probably right,’ said Sister Clodagh, wearily.

  At morning and evening now, there was an hour of grape-gold light and warmth, that Nima said was to make the plants grow. It made her think of Sister Philippa. ‘Isn’t it a pity to give in? Not when it’s something more important than yourself.’

  One evening she climbed the hill to see the Sunnyasi. She stood between the young firs watching him, her hands folded in her sleeves because the wind was cold up here on the height. She did not know quite why she had come, but she stood there very close to him; if he had seen her, he did not turn his head. He sat staring out across the gulf; if he had looked down, he could have seen the Convent on one side of the hill with the deodars along the drive, and on the other, the village round the walls of Canna Villa, but he did not look down. Faint human sounds came up on the wind but they were lost in the quiet; it was very quiet; only the birds made sounds in the tree over his head, or a shuffling and whispering showed that people had come out from the forest path, and were going down the steps. When they saw the Sunnyasi, they turned to face him with a stare as a salutation, but he did not notice them either.

  A woman came up from the village, a little Bhotiya with a monkey face and a plait of hair round her head; she salaamed to Sister Clodagh but passed in front of the old man to fetch his bowl; Sister Clodagh noticed that when her shadow fell across him, he did not blink. She wondered how he could sit and look into the wind, and how he kept so still without trembling; his hands rested comfortably on his knees, his back was straight, his head steady; and he was as still as if he had left his body sitting there on his deerskin, comfortably arranged, while he had gone out of it. Only the beads, moving up and down on his bare chest, showed that he breathed.

  She watched him for a little while, and then climbed down the steps behind a party of coolies and walked along the drive to the terrace. Mr Dean was waiting in the porch with his pony.

  ‘Sister,’ he said, with dangerous meekness, ‘will you tell Sister Adela that if I go into the chapel and look at the statues I won’t contaminate them. I only want to measure them for their niches.’

  Sister Adela hovered behind the door. ‘He didn’t take off his hat,’ she whispered.

  ‘Oh, it was old Feltie you were objecting to, and not to me?’ he said. ‘You didn’t make that plain before.’

  Sister Adela turned her back and went away. ‘Do you think she’ll ever get used to me?’ he asked with a grin, and then looking at her, he said: ‘What’s the matter with you? What have they been doing to you? You look starved.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said with an hysterical little laugh; at the quick friendly concern in his eyes, she felt suddenly in her sleeve for a handkerchief.

  He took off his hat and gave her his, which he kept in the crown. ‘It’s quite clean,’ he said. ‘I washed my hair this morning.’

  She shook her head and walked quickly to the terrace, where she stood thrumming her hands on the railing, trying to control herself. He followed her and said: ‘Don’t you think you could tell me what it is?’

  ‘Ever since we came here,’ she answered with a laugh that was almost a sob, ‘over all our problems it’s been “ask Mr Dean”!’

  ‘That was because there wasn’t anyone else here you could ask,’ he said. ‘None of your own people were here, or of course you wouldn’t have had anything to do with me. I don’t see anything out of the way in that.’

  ‘And I had to have the young General here, in a way, didn’t I?’ she said. ‘And I couldn’t turn the Sunnyasi out. Everything I did I was more or less forced to do, wasn’t I?’ She appealed to him.

  ‘Just what are you talking about?’ he asked her.

  ‘Ask Mr Dean! It’s becoming a positive habit.’

  She bit her lip and he waited patiently for her to explain herself. ‘Sister Philippa brought it home to me,’ she said, ‘and Sister Adela’s rubbing it in. Now I don’t know how much is true and how much is my imagination, Mr Dean,’ she said, turning to him and angrily plucking her veil down as it blew over her shoulder. ‘Do you think we’ve changed very much? Do you notice a change in us since we came here?’

  ‘In what way?’ he said.

  ‘Father Roberts said we were not as single-hearted. I didn’t take much notice then, but when Sister Philippa came and asked to be transferred, it gave me a shock.’

  ‘She asked to be transferred?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, and she gave that as her reason; that she was getting obsessed with the garden. Now with that, and what Father Roberts said, I’m watching them all and I can’t make up my mind. Is it imagination or not?’ She paused. ‘Tell me truthfully, Mr Dean. I have to ask you this, though it’s difficult to do it; has Sister Ruth ever tried to speak to you?’

  ‘I keep out of her way,’ he said quickly.

  ‘Have you ever noticed
Sister Honey and the children? And Sister Briony –’

  ‘Sister Briony’s always been a bit of a Martha,’ he said cautiously.

  ‘There, you have seen it,’ she said bitterly. ‘You see you have. And I? Am I very different?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said at once, ‘you’re much nicer.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘You’re human. Before you were inhuman, much too invulnerable. Now you’re not. You can feel.’

  ‘I can feel!’ she repeated. ‘Yes, we’re none of us strong enough, are we? We feel.’ She looked down and saw that it was getting dark in the valley and the mist was coming up the hill, only the last light was left in the sky. ‘When I was a girl,’ she said slowly, as if she were not speaking to him, but were telling it out for herself, ‘I loved a man. We were children together in Ireland where I come from, a little place called Liniskelly. I thought, everyone thought, we should marry. But he was ambitious and I found out that he was going to America to his uncle, and – he didn’t mean to take me too. He didn’t think he was doing anything wrong, I don’t think he had ever thought of marrying me; but in a little place like that – and I had shown I loved him – I had to get away first. You see, everybody knew. They were waiting for the announcement. They talked about it to me and I was so sure; my godmother had promised me her jewels. It all doesn’t sound much, but it was to me; so I did it first.’

  She had comforted herself with that. She had done it first, and then later she had come to be ashamed of that very thing; that it had been for that secret unworthy reason, she had entered.

  Now she saw again the library at home, the morning she had told them; mother in the armchair had given one small cry, father had said nothing at all.

  At last he said: ‘But, Clodagh, what about Con? Is this fair on him? You’ve been going everywhere together. People are waiting, most of ’em take it as a fact. Think of him, having to face them all.’

  ‘Clodagh, think of the poor boy!’

  On the bridge that evening she had said: ‘I’ll miss you, Con, when you’ve gone.’

  ‘I’ll miss you too, Clo. We’ve had great times together, haven’t we? Now I wonder you don’t get something to do yourself, a clever girl like you with all your English education.’

  ‘Yes, I did it first,’ she said to Mr Dean, holding her veil down. ‘At least I’ve always known that; but afterwards when I’d entered, I knew what I’d done.’

  ‘And being you, I suppose you wouldn’t go back.’

  ‘I was right,’ she said. ‘It was a strange way of bringing me in, but God works in strange ways. He gave me strength to bring me through that time and He gave me my reward. After the first few years I never thought of it. I had work to do and I had the life; no one outside can possibly know what it means. It came to mean everything to me. I had forgotten – until we came here. The first day I came, I thought of him; in the first time for years. I seemed to go back to the beginning, when we were children on the shore. The young General reminds me of him too, I don’t know why, they’re not alike. I’ve been drifting and dreaming, and now I seem to have come to the struggle and bitterness again. It’s queer how it’s repeating itself, isn’t it? After all these years I thought I had forgotten, until I came here.’

  ‘Then I think,’ he said, ‘that you should go away at once.’

  ‘Run away, like Sister Philippa?’

  ‘Yes, if you’ve got any sense.’

  ‘And leave all this? Abandon all this work, like the Brothers?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Before you ever came I told you not to. It’s no place for a nunnery. There’s something in it that makes everything exaggerated. I don’t know what it is unless it’s the very unlikeliness of the place. You should go, and take them all with you, before anything happens.’

  ‘But what could happen now?’ she challenged him. ‘I’m on my guard.’

  ‘Well, it seems to me,’ he said earnestly, ‘that you’re all in a highly dangerous state; an exaggerated state of mind, or heart, or soul, or whatever you like to call it. Why can’t you have the sense to leave? It’s not easy to stop people once they let themselves go, and you can’t change conditions here however hard you try. What’s the good of deliberately running into a stone wall?’

  ‘Is it a stone wall,’ she answered, ‘or is it mist?’ and she said briskly: ‘I didn’t think you’d advise us to give in. I don’t know why I told you, but I’m glad now I did. When it’s out, it’s nothing at all. Nothing has happened, why should it?’ She turned to him and said with a smile: ‘Thank you, Mr Dean, you’ve made me feel much better.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t mean to, you daft pig-headed woman,’ he cried. ‘All right, watch. Be on your guard. Watch yourself first, mind and see what time that gives you for Sister Ruth, and Dilip, and Kanchi, and all the others. Don’t forget me. You can’t afford to trust me a yard and I’ll not help you. All right, try. I give you till the rains break. Where’s that confounded pony? Phuba! Phuba! Good-bye.’

  27

  Father Roberts wrote that he was in bed again with his lumbago; he could not move out of bed. ‘It always catches me in the spring,’ he wrote, ‘and I shall be worse when the rains break. I really ought not to be sent to a climate like this and I don’t know when I’ll be able to see you. I’ve written for a relief, until then do the best you can and write to me if you need help or advice.’

  ‘In any case he couldn’t have come for Easter,’ said Sister Clodagh, ‘his own people must come first. I wish we could have ridden in for one day at least, but as he says, we must do the best we can.’

  All through Easter she had scanned the Sisters’ faces and thought about them ceaselessly, and it seemed to her that each of them was normal and well and took her due part in the outer and inner life of the community. It was a quiet time, and on Easter Sunday, in spite of Father Roberts’s absence, a feeling of joy and serenity seemed to bind them all together. It was a day of prayer and meditation and after Compline each went silently to her cubicle with a face of blissful peace. Sister Clodagh knelt on in the chapel after they had gone, and she felt that she had been right to stay, and humbly gave thanks for her decision. She thought and prayed for every Sister. Sister Honey had given coloured eggs to the children with no more than a nod and a happy smile, Sister Ruth asked if she might arrange the lilies that Pin Fong brought them for the altar, Sister Adela was almost amiable and reassured. The day was serene, the night dark and quiet; the moon had gone, and the roses had opened on the trees in the garden, bursting into such magnificence that it was easy to look at them and not at the snows.

  Then after Easter, Sister Briony started her spring cleaning.

  ‘Ayah, have you seen the small brass vase from the chapel? It was among the other vases. I’ve counted them over and over again and I can’t see it.’

  ‘It was on the shelf,’ said Ayah.

  ‘It isn’t there now,’ said Sister Briony, and unwillingly she said: ‘I gave them to Kanchi to clean this morning.’

  ‘Kanchi wouldn’t steal,’ Ayah flared up; but her eyes sparkled and, as soon as she could, she went unostentatiously away towards the Lace School.

  That afternoon the young General Dilip Rai came for his algebra lesson with Sister Clodagh for the first time since the Easter holidays. ‘I don’t want a holiday,’ he had said. ‘I want to get-better and better and better as quickly as I can. It’s my plan to be clever very soon so that my uncle will think again about sending me to Cambridge where I do so want to go. Need I have a holiday, Sister Clodagh?’

  She explained that the schools must be closed so that the Sisters might celebrate Easter. ‘I hope you understand,’ she said gently.

  ‘Yes, of course I understand. It is quite right. It is what I should do myself,’ he said. ‘First of all I mean to be very clever and then very famous and then very holy. Like my great-uncle. At least,’ he added truthfully: ‘I should choose a bigger place to be holy in; after all, there are not so very many people here to know how h
oly he is, are there?’

  Now he came down the drive wearing his corded coat that made his white pony look almost grey. He had on new ruby earrings and his shoes were new too, brown and white buckskin from Calcutta. Kanchi opened the door to him before he could ring. She had pleated her skirt so that it fell into graceful folds in front; it was a brighter blue than St Elizabeth’s which he had admired. Her bodice was white, straining its pearl buttons over her breasts, and she had braided her plait of hair with red.

  She stood stroking her veil into gathers, eyeing him. It was a beautiful veil of net edged with lace, but he did not even glance at it. He went quickly past her to Sister Clodagh’s room.

  Sister Clodagh was sitting upright at her desk, another table and chair were ready for him and the embroidery frame was pushed against the wall.

  ‘I am to sit here?’ he asked, puzzled.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and before we begin, General, I have something to say to you.’ Without glancing at his work she told him that he must come more suitably dressed for lessons.

  ‘I’ve wanted to consult you about that,’ he said, looking up with eyes as large and lustrous as the antelope’s who stood at St Francis’s hand in the embroidery frame. ‘I’ve been thinking of it all through the holidays and I wrote for this.’ He took a catalogue from his pocket. ‘I’ve been thinking that, as I’m planning to go to England, and when I’m visiting and receiving instruction from European ladies, it would be very polite of me if I wore European clothes. Like this. It was the algebra lesson that reminded me. Sister Clodagh, why are they called plus fours?’

  Sister Clodagh frowned at the picture of the young man in plus fours. She did not want to talk. ‘We must get on with your lesson, General,’ she said.

  ‘One minute, Sister. Perhaps it’s a mathematical measurement,’ he suggested. ‘It looks a kind of knickerbocker suit. That’s what my Narayan Babu often talked about, a knickerbocker suit. Perhaps these are plus four inches bigger on every side than the usual kind of knickerbocker. They certainly look very big. This is another that I have thought of.’ He flipped over the pages. ‘You see what it says. “A very gentle-manlike suit. Highly recommended. Double-breasted, pin striped, in a choice of colours. A nice quality material that hangs well.” That sounds nice, doesn’t it, Sister Clodagh? But what does it mean?’