Black Narcissus

by Rumer Godden

  ‘But Sister!’ pleaded Sister Honey in anguish. ‘Try. At least try.’

  ‘Sister!’

  Without answering back, Sister Honey went to the woman and put her arm round her shoulders, patting her, drawing her to the steps.

  ‘There, you see, that’s the way,’ said Sister Briony. ‘I’ll leave her with you and send Ayah. Try and make her understand that she’s to take him home.’ She tiptoed away, her face very sorrowful.

  She did not see the woman turn and draw the hand that patted her shoulder down to the baby’s head, and hear her whisper: ‘Give him something, Lemini. Give him something.’

  ‘The children are very late this morning,’ said Sister Ruth to Joseph next day.

  ‘Perhaps they think it is a holiday,’ he answered almost under his breath.

  ‘How could they think it’s a holiday when they’ve just finished their holidays, you silly little boy? Go up to the path and see if they’re coming and tell them to hurry up.’

  Joseph stood by the desk and looked thoroughly dismayed. ‘I don’t want to,’ he said.

  ‘You – don’t – want – to?’ Sister Ruth could hardly believe her ears. This from Joseph whose obedience was his shadow. ‘How dare you answer me like that! Go at once.’

  ‘No,’ he cried loudly, ‘I won’t go,’ and made a dart for the door, but Sister Ruth had pounced and caught him by the collar and dragged him back to the desk. ‘Now you stand still and tell me what you mean.’

  ‘Whatever are you doing to Joseph?’ Sister Honey came quickly in. ‘Why, Joseph, what’s the matter?’ But instead of sidling up to her as he always did, he stood where he was and drooped his head.

  ‘Haven’t the children come?’ asked Sister Honey. She was pale and looked as if she had not slept. ‘I came to see because none of the girls are here, and I went to meet Om and none of them were on the path. I wonder why?’

  ‘Joseph knows,’ said Sister Ruth. ‘Tell us, Joseph.’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ cried Joseph in a panic. ‘Lemini, don’t make me tell.’

  ‘Joseph, you must tell us,’ said Sister Honey; she was even paler now and her voice shook. ‘Please, Joseph dear.’

  ‘Tell us,’ said Sister Ruth, shaking him by the collar.

  ‘Om’s brother is dead,’ cried Joseph. ‘He died in the night and they say that the Smiling Lemini killed him.’ He burst into terrified tears.

  Ayah told Sister Briony. They were in the dispensary. ‘There’s no one here this morning,’ said Sister Briony looking out of the door. ‘Now I shall have a nice long time to give to turning out the reception room. What a good thing no one has come.’

  ‘Lemini!’ Ayah planted herself beside her. ‘No one’s likely to come. That baby the woman brought died in the night! It began to twitch, and twitched worse and worse, and then it seemed to die only it was breathing, and then it did die; and they are saying all over the village that the Smiling Lemini killed him.’

  ‘Then you can tell them it isn’t true. The Smiling Lemini never touched him.’

  ‘Oh yes, she did,’ answered Ayah. ‘When you sent me to help her last night, she was washing the baby’s eyes.’

  ‘What?’ cried Sister Briony. ‘What, Ayah?’

  ‘And what’s more she told the woman to do it herself at home and gave her a bottle to take away and some of our cotton-wool; and I think,’ said Ayah with relish, ‘that she must have given some medicine, because a spoon and a bottle were on the table too.’

  ‘Which bottle? Show me.’

  ‘This one,’ said Ayah, holding up a long-necked bottle of oil.

  ‘Dear goodness!’ breathed Sister Briony. ‘Of course. Go and find her, Ayah, and tell her to come to the office at once. Give me that bottle. Where’s my report book? Go on, find her and tell her to come at once.’

  ‘She’s coming already,’ said Ayah, as they hurried down the passage, and there was Sister Honey and Sister Ruth and Joseph all making for the office door. They swept in, without knocking, on Sister Clodagh who was talking to Sister Adela.

  ‘There’s only one thing to do now,’ said Sister Briony, at the end of the story, ‘and that’s to send for Mr Dean.’ Sister Ruth sat up abruptly.

  ‘Tcha!’ said Sister Adela. ‘What could he do?’

  ‘He’s the only person who could do anything. He knows how to deal with these people. He may be able to think of something. We don’t want this to get to the General’s ears, do we, Sister?’

  Sister Clodagh did not want it to get to Mr Dean’s ears either. ‘Let me think,’ she said. ‘The General is away.’

  Sister Honey sat in a chair, her hands rolling her soaking handkerchief into a little ball and unrolling it to wipe her eyes; the bottle of oil and the report book were on the desk and Joseph and Ayah, the witnesses, stood in front of it. Sister Ruth was by the window and Sister Adela had gone to the door and stood with her back against it.

  ‘We’ve already offended the young General in some way,’ went on Sister Briony. ‘We don’t want anything else to get about, and Ayah says the people are very furious.’

  Sister Honey gave a faint moan.

  ‘But Ayah, don’t you think they’ll get over it?’ asked Sister Clodagh. ‘Don’t you think it will all die down and the children will come back? When you tell them that the baby was dying when the woman brought him? When you tell them that in any case he would have died?’

  Ayah shrugged her shoulders. ‘If only the Lemini hadn’t touched him,’ she began.

  ‘What’s the use of talking like that when she did touch him? Very well, I suppose we’d better send for Mr Dean.’

  Sister Ruth watched her as she wrote the note, trying to see what she said.

  ‘Joseph, can you take this to Mr Dean? Can you find him and ask him to read it at once? Don’t let him put it in his hat and forget it.’

  ‘No, Lemini. Yes, Lemini.’ He trotted forward. As he took the letter, he slid his handkerchief to Sister Honey under the desk. She burst into fresh sobs.

  ‘Before you all go,’ said Sister Clodagh, ‘I want to tell you that, much as I blame Sister Blanche, she did not kill the baby. She probably hastened his death by giving him the oil, but he must have died anyhow. Sister Briony diagnosed it as a case of tubercular meningitis, and she’s more than ever convinced that this was it, by the way in which he died. It’s always fatal. Ayah, do you understand?’ She repeated it in Hindustani, and added: ‘Go and tell everybody what I’ve said.’

  ‘I had to do it,’ moaned Sister Honey. ‘I couldn’t let him go without trying to help him. Sister Briony never told me what it was, and he was such a darling. Such – a – darling.’

  They all sat waiting for Mr Dean; it seemed hours before he came.

  ‘Do you think it’s serious?’ Sister Clodagh asked as soon as she had told him. He had already had it from Joseph on the way up. ‘Don’t you think they’ll come back? Is it serious?’

  ‘I think it may be very serious,’ he answered.

  ‘Tcha!’ said Sister Adela again.

  ‘Sister Clodagh,’ he said looking at Sister Adela. ‘The Agent here before my day was riding his pony down to the factory one day and he let it kick an umbrella that was open on the path, over the edge. There was a baby asleep under it and it was killed. It was an accident but they murdered him that night.’

  Sister Honey gave a shriek and Sister Briony’s mouth fell open and they all stared at him, breathing a little quickly. ‘I’m not trying to frighten you,’ he said, ‘I’m trying to make you see that it may be serious. Nothing of the kind’s likely to happen to you, but you’ll find the servants and the people will be sullen and queer-tempered for a while. I’ll go to the village and the lines and talk to everybody. Meanwhile you must none of you go out of the garden, but try to go about as if nothing had happened and as if you weren’t at all perturbed.’

  That was more easily said than done.

  A sinister quiet hung over the Convent. In the class-room there was only Si
ster Ruth at the teacher’s desk and Joseph sitting miserably at the end of the first row of empty benches; at every sound they started and looked at one another. In the Lace School Sister Honey worked with clumsy fingers at a pattern she could hardly see for her swollen eyes; she had her back against the wall facing the door and had shut the windows. Sister Briony turned out the reception room as she had planned to do, and in her nervousness she kept up a stream of orders to the servants; but Sister Adela was the bravest of all; she went up and down the garden as usual, standing over the coolies, turning her back on them, and they, as Sister Briony said, ‘with mallets and hoes and I don’t know what lying round them’.

  ‘Sister, I shouldn’t do that,’ she called out of the window.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go so close to those coolies, if I were you. Look at that man with the fork. I’m sure he’s not safe.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Sister Adela. ‘Do you think I believed all that talk?’ But all the same she did not go quite so near the pig-tailed coolie swinging the three-pronged fork.

  That was the worst of it, that the servants should have gone suddenly silent and sullen. That Nima and the fat cook Toukay and Jangbir and the smiling house-boys had changed into enemies.

  ‘I’m sure they’re perfectly loyal,’ said Sister Clodagh. ‘It’s only because we’re afraid that we imagine they’re unusual. All the same,’ she added: ‘I should be careful what you say to them.’

  When Mr Dean came back all of them without waiting for permission left their work to see what he had to say. Sister Clodagh made no attempt to send them back.

  ‘I don’t think you’ve anything to be afraid of,’ he told them. ‘They’re perfectly quiet.’

  ‘But what did they say?’

  ‘They didn’t say anything. They listened to me and said nothing.’

  ‘Did they believe you?’

  ‘I don’t know. They went back to their houses, but I saw the woman, and I drank the bottle of lotion that Sister Honey gave her.’

  ‘Drank it?’

  ‘It was only boracic and water. I wanted to show them I wouldn’t drop down dead … I don’t think you need worry yourselves, but if you like I’ll send Pin Fong and Phuba up to sleep here with Jangbir to-night.’

  ‘Do you think they’ll come back?’ asked Sister Briony. ‘Do you think they’ll come back to us?’

  ‘They may,’ he said comforting her. ‘Yes, I think they’ll come back.’

  ‘We shall look very silly if they don’t.’ That was Sister Ruth. ‘With a dispensary and a clinic and a school with no one in it.’

  ‘Of course they’ll come back,’ said Sister Clodagh.

  ‘But if they don’t?’

  ‘Well, if you want me again, send for me,’ said Mr Dean. ‘I won’t leave the factory and the bungalow. If you ring the bell continuously, I’ll know it’s for me. I don’t think you need be afraid.’

  Sister Ruth had put herself close beside him. She could almost have touched the sleeve of his shirt; it only came to his elbow, and she could see the muscles and veins of his arm, thick with chestnut hairs to his fingers as he held his hat, flapping it against his knee. She thought that he deliberately did not look at her, but kept his head turned to Sister Clodagh. She bent across him and picked up the bottle of oil.

  ‘Look,’ she cried, flourishing it in front of his face. ‘That’s what Sister Honey gave the baby. Aren’t you glad it wasn’t this you had to drink; it’s castor oil. Hee! Hee! Hee!’ She began to laugh and, seeing their scandalized faces, she could not stop. ‘Hai! Hai! Hai!’ she laughed.

  Still laughing, she pushed him away and stumbled to the window, her handkerchief to her mouth, and stood with her back to them, still shaking. After a while she grew very still, Sister Briony saw tears running down her cheek as she pressed it against the glass.

  ‘Mr Dean will begin to think this is an asylum, not a Convent,’ said Sister Clodagh. ‘Well, we’re all very grateful to him, but I think I’m right in saying that we’re not afraid and there’s no need to send Pin Fong and Phuba. Am I right?’

  ‘Yes, Sister,’ came firmly from Sister Adela, and more subdued from Sister Briony and Sister Honey. Sister Ruth did not move.

  After he had gone there was silence except from Sister Honey who had begun to cry again, and occasional small sniffs from Sister Ruth.

  ‘Well, it’s no use crying over spilt milk, that’s what I say,’ said Sister Briony. ‘We can only pray that they’ll come back, that’s all.’

  ‘Yes, we can pray,’ said Sister Clodagh. ‘It’s nearly twelve o’clock. Sister Ruth, if you’ve recovered yourself, will you ring? I think we’ll say the Angelus in chapel to-day.’

  29

  Two days passed and no one came. That quietness hung over the Convent, there was no one on the path; no voices and running footsteps in the playground, no rings at the dispensary bell. There was no sign of Kanchi. Every day the books were set out, the lace cushions put ready on the table, the General’s desk opened for him and his chair dusted, and every day they were put away again.

  Sister Briony finished her spring cleaning; Sister Adela started her silent coolies on their work each morning and talked over her plans with the strangely monosyllabic Nima; Sister Ruth taught lesson after lesson to Joseph who did not hear a word that she said, and Sister Honey sat sodden with crying, and worked on a particularly elaborate rose pattern with four small cushions with their spread bobbins sitting useless on the table opposite her.

  ‘Really, for all the good we’re doing, we might be the Sunnyasi,’ said Sister Ruth.

  ‘Are you so sure he does no good?’ asked Sister Clodagh.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Sister Ruth.

  ‘Think about it,’ said Sister Clodagh. ‘Sister Briony, we will have extra time for meditation to-night after Evensong. I think we all need it.’

  But all through the hour they were listening and straining, even Sister Adela was not as prompt as usual. Sister Honey wept steadily all the way through, and Sister Ruth sat with a smile round her lips, not attempting to pay attention.

  The long dragging idle day passed, and the next. There was only a pretence of doing work. It seemed to Sister Clodagh that she sat for hours at her desk, trying to keep her thoughts at bay. There were no report books, no accounts, nothing to inspect, though she went round from Sister to Sister to keep up the pretence that they were busy, and found endless small tasks for them to do; they were so obviously manufactured that it hardly seemed worth while doing them. The silence was unnerving; the servants and coolies and workmen used to shout and talk while they worked, and, though the Sisters had often complained about it, now they missed it. The loud cheerful people were sinister in their silence, and if anyone came down the path, they went quickly and sullenly past the house, turning their faces away.

  The weather was fine and warm, the roses filled the garden with hot sweetness, the folds of the hills were blue and the snows shone solidly into the sky. Sister Clodagh declared a holiday all round and organized sewing parties in the garden and thought of small competitions to make them think of something else. But her kindness and the relaxation only seemed to make the trouble worse. She had hoped to make something of it; she had hoped that it would bring them closer together, and had imagined them drawing together as one person. They were not close together, they preferred to sit apart without anything to say to one another, they were not struggling, they were simply waiting, and in chapel she felt that not one of them, not even herself, had prayed.

  She dared not think; she sat at her desk and, pretending it was important, she began to translate a carol for next Christmas into the dialect.

  It was on the fourth day at dinner-time that Sister Honey burst into tears for the hundredth time. She was cleaning her plate with a piece of bread when she bent her head and began to sob violently. ‘I can’t bear it. I can’t bear it!’ she sobbed. ‘I couldn’t let him die without t-trying to help him. I loved him so.’<
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  They looked wearily at one another. Sister Adela took the piece of bread from her hand and laid it down. Sister Clodagh was beginning: ‘Now, Sister, you must really –’ when Sister Ruth sprang to her feet and crashed her plate down on the table.

  ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ she cried, in a high-pitched voice. ‘I can’t stand any more. What’s she crying for, I’d like to know? Not for what she’s done, but for a little black brat of a baby that’s not even her own. That’s why she’s crying, only she hasn’t the courage to say so. Because all the time she’s been pining and longing for a baby of her own. Yes,’ she sank her voice and leaned towards them and whispered, ‘she – wants to – have – a – baby – of – her – own.’ She stood up again and cried: ‘She won’t say so. She’s afraid to say it. She’s afraid. And you’re afraid,’ she turned on Sister Clodagh. ‘You’re more afraid than anyone. You’re afraid we’ll know why you steal away and walk on the terrace, aren’t you? And why you have consultations alone in the office, and why you’re always visiting the buildings. You’re afraid we’ll find out, that’s why you hide it. But I know. Yes, I know. And I’ll tell you something else. It isn’t you he likes, it’s me. Yes, me. That’s why you bully me, that’s why you make them watch me. Oh yes, you’re clever, very clever, but I’m not afraid of you. Not if you starve me and poison me and shut me up. I’m still not afraid. He’ll help me. I’ll tell him all about you. I’ll tell him what you do to me and he’ll be very angry. So take care.’

  She put her chair between herself and them. ‘I know you’re all watching me,’ she whispered, ‘I know all about you, but take care. Take care. He’s stronger than you are.’ Her eyes looked at them without any sense in them, strangely terrifying. ‘I know you’re looking at me, but I’m not afraid. I’m stronger than any of you.’

  ‘She’s mad,’ breathed Sister Briony.

  ‘Don’t move,’ said Sister Clodagh in an undertone. ‘Sit still. Go on eating. Don’t look at her.’