Black Narcissus

by Rumer Godden

  She stood behind her chair watching the dip and rise of their heads over their plates, at Sister Clodagh breaking her bread and Sister Honey clattering her fork on her plate. She was shaking now so that the chair legs rattled on the floor; she looked at her own place, at the plate she had broken and the salt cellar she had spilt and her lips began to shake too. She pushed her chair in violently and ran out of the room.

  ‘Let her go. Don’t touch her,’ said Sister Briony, catching Sister Adela who had jumped up after her. ‘It’s over now. We must leave her alone for a little, and presently when she’s calmer, I’ll go out and talk to her. None of you must look as if anything had happened. She must be sent away. Dear, what a week we’re having.’

  None of them could finish the meal; they could not forget Sister Ruth standing behind the chair talking in that threatening whispering voice. It wiped everything else out of their minds and filled the whole afternoon. The servants went to their quarters, whispering and predicting, the news spread to the village and the coolie lines.

  Sister Briony found her sitting on the horse-block. She was perfectly quiet and looked up calmly when Sister Briony came and leant on the railing beside her. Sister Briony looked out across the gulf; she was trying to think of what she could do next. Her lips moved once or twice, but she could find nothing to say.

  Sister Ruth pressed her hands together. ‘Steady. Steady now,’ she was telling herself. ‘You’ve done it once, you mustn’t do it again. Be careful. Be steady. Don’t think about Them.’ ‘They’ve been cutting the bamboos,’ she said aloud.

  ‘So they have,’ said Sister Briony looking at the sharp white and green spikes below them.

  ‘They look like swords,’ said Sister Ruth, her eyes on them.

  ‘Yes, don’t they.’

  Sister Ruth stretched and yawned. ‘Why does doing nothing make you feel so tired?’

  ‘Do you feel tired?’ asked Sister Briony, carefully. ‘You shouldn’t do that in this beautiful air.’

  ‘I feel as if I’d been beaten all over,’ said Sister Ruth.

  ‘You do look a little tired.’ Sister Briony chose her words carefully. ‘Would you like me to get permission for you to lie down?’

  Sister Ruth did not make her usual protests. ‘It’s my head that’s so bad,’ she said. ‘It isn’t as if there were any work for us to do, is it?’

  Sister Briony helped her on to her bed and drew the curtains of her cubicle. ‘I’ll get Ayah to sit here with her mending,’ she thought, ‘and tell her to fetch me if she gets restless. I’ll give her a strong powder that will put her right under for a little while, and quieten her down.’

  ‘Here’s something for your head,’ she said, giving her a white paper. ‘Tip it into your mouth and drink some water after it.’

  Sister Ruth tipped it neatly down between her coverlet and her chin and drank the water. ‘Thank you, Sister,’ she said.

  When Sister Briony looked in half an hour later she was sound asleep.

  It was in the evening that Ayah knocked on the office door where Sister Clodagh and Sister Briony had been for two hours talking, and wondering what was the best thing they could do.

  ‘I came to tell you,’ said Ayah, licking her lips uneasily, ‘that it’s a quarter past six and no one has rung l’Angelus.’

  ‘Where’s Sister Ruth? Where’s the young Lemini? Why have you left her?’

  ‘Well, I came to tell you that too, Lemini. She’s gone out.’

  ‘Gone out! Ayah, why didn’t you stop her?’

  ‘You should never stop mad people from doing what they want,’ said Ayah decidedly. ‘You should never interfere with them at all.’

  ‘She might hurt herself,’ cried Sister Briony.

  ‘If she’s really mad, that won’t matter,’ said Ayah. And if she’s not really mad she’ll look after herself.’

  ‘And you mean to say you just sat there and let her go?’

  ‘Well – I can’t tell you a lie, Lemini. I wasn’t there when she went.’

  ‘You left her after all I told you?’

  ‘She was sound asleep. I touched her toe and she didn’t move, I gave it a good jerk and still she didn’t move, so I went down for some tea.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘It was more than time for my food. I know that, and the Lemini hadn’t given me any time to have any. My head was going round and round with hunger.’

  ‘About three o’clock?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘What time did you go back?’

  ‘Oh, I wasn’t away very long. Let me see. I had a little food and I gave a cup of rice to the hens, and then my brother’s son came. He had made some good arrangements for the summer; he’s bearer in the hotel at Ghoom –’

  ‘And so you stayed talking for most of the afternoon! A long time?’

  ‘Oh, I wasn’t very long,’ said Ayah. ‘I went back and sat down on my stool and everything was quiet and still. Then I thought I’d take a little look, and if you’ll believe me, the Lemini wasn’t in the bed. I was never so astonished in my life.’

  ‘She may have been gone over three hours!’ said Sister Clodagh.

  30

  Sister Ruth had not been outside the Convent grounds before. As the path went down and she came to the coolie lines, her heart began to beat; the houses were like dark boxes on stilts lining a lane of dusty earth, and the dogs began to bark. She went back a little up the hill but no one came out; only the great red pai dogs stood in the lane and barked at her. She looked at the houses curiously; they had roofs beaten out of kerosene tins and some had broken earthenware pots as a chimney; there were marrows with bright yellow flowers climbing up a trellis, and a broom leant against a wall. They did not seem so frightening after that; there was nothing to be afraid of in cooking fires and sweeping and growing marrows. ‘Don’t go out of the garden.’ She bit her lip and went on down between the tea.

  Presently she saw the River below, streaked with green and white, looping the factory which stood on a foot-hill above it. She looked up, but the terrace cut off the house except for the top line of roof; the buttresses looked like fortifications and the bamboos made a spray of green round them, except for one bare spot.

  ‘That’s what Sister Briony and I were looking at,’ and remembering dinner-time, she felt the blood surging up into her eyes again. ‘Steady, steady. You must go quietly. You’re all right if only you can be quiet.’

  As she came near the factory, the coolie gong rang out; it was the four o’clock signal for the pluckers to cease working and bring in the leaf. In another two hours she should have been ringing the Convent bell for vespers and the evening Angelus. She looked over her shoulder but the hill was bare of anyone but herself, and, far off, the pluckers with their baskets. Then she turned and saw Mr Dean riding towards her.

  She felt breathless, as if she had been running up the hill, instead of walking leisurely down it. The blindness was coming on again and she spread out her hands and swayed. ‘Steady. Go quietly.’ She drove it away, and she was standing calmly on the sunny path as he came riding towards her. Calmly she noticed everything about him; how his width made his pony look even smaller than it was, and it was so small that he had to hold his feet up off the ground; how his shirt and his hat flapped gently in the wind, and he was whistling a loud gusty tune. When he saw her, he put his feet down and braked the pony.

  ‘Sister,’ he said sternly, ‘what are you doing down here?’

  Sister Ruth was pleased with the way she answered steadily: ‘I came to find you,’ with her eyes on him.

  ‘Then you can think again,’ he said, and kicked his pony’s stomach with his heels, but she caught at the reins as he went past, and dragging after him, stopped the pony.

  ‘You’re not going to leave me like this,’ she cried wildly. ‘You’re not to go away. Stay with me, just while I tell you. Stay with me. Take me where I can talk to you just for a little while. Just for a minute.’

 
He looked helplessly up the path to the Convent and down to the factory. She was holding his hand and the reins tightly and now she laid her cheek on his hand. The dusty smell of the pony, and the smell of leather and tea and tobacco and sweat and eau-de-Cologne that came from him filled her nostrils. She shut her eyes and humbly kissed the back of his hand among the chestnut hairs.

  He snatched his hand away as if a snake had bitten it, almost knocking her down. ‘Sister!’ he cried in horror. ‘Sister! Stop it. How can you! What on earth are you doing? You can’t behave like this.’

  ‘I can’t help it,’ she said. ‘I came on purpose to find you. I can’t stand it any longer. I love you. I want to be with you always.’

  To her surprise he turned a dull hot red. ‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?’ he asked. ‘Sister, you’re a nun. You can’t behave in – in this shocking way.’

  ‘It isn’t shocking,’ she said. ‘How could it be? I love you and you’ll help me and take me away.’

  ‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?’ he said again.

  ‘No,’ said Sister Ruth loudly. Her green eyes shone and her odd thin face was illumined. ‘I’m not ashamed because I can’t help it. Nothing else matters to me now.’

  As she spoke, a file of coolies came round the corner, men and women going up to the lines and the village after weighing in their leaf. They passed so close that they brushed Sister Ruth and she shrank against the pony’s neck. Mr Dean called to one of them and the man looked at Sister Ruth and answered tersely. Mr Dean’s face darkened but he said nothing.

  ‘What did you say to him?’

  ‘I asked him to go up and tell them in the Convent that you were here,’ he said brutally.

  She was not dismayed. ‘He said he wouldn’t. Didn’t he?’

  He grunted. ‘You’d better walk up with me.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Then I shall leave you here by yourself.’

  ‘You can’t. You couldn’t do that. Did you see the way they looked at us? It wouldn’t be safe.’

  ‘Do you think I care what happens to you?’ he said, but her eyes did not falter.

  ‘All the same, you wouldn’t leave me here.’

  He stood up and let the pony escape between his legs, then caught it by the tail and turned it round.

  ‘I can’t drag you up the hill by force,’ he said. ‘You come with me. I’m going to talk to you.’

  He went quickly down the path to the factory. In his thonged chapli shoes, he could walk like a native, but the stones rolled from his pony’s hooves and Sister Ruth slipped and slid behind him.

  ‘Don’t go so fast,’ she panted. ‘I’m tired and I’m out of breath.’

  ‘It’ll do you good to be tired,’ he answered over his, shoulder, ‘and I’d rather have you out of breath.’

  At the factory door he turned his pony loose, slipping its bridle on to its neck. ‘Come in,’ he said, and she stepped doubtfully inside.

  After the brightness outside, the room was dark, but presently she was able to see that it was filled with brown light and the sound of machinery and the clap, clap, clap of wicker trays where the women were sifting tea on the floor; at once she noticed that in the din and clatter some of them were suckling their babies while they worked and she flushed painfully, and the blood sang in her ears. ‘Steady. Go quietly. Steady.’

  She had a confused sense of the big brown room; brown faces and hands, and the bare legs and thighs of the boys at the furnaces; the paler faces of the babies pressed to the dark breasts; the brown iron of the machinery and the canvas belts, and the wooden tea boxes and glittering tin foil. The room had an overpowering smell, strong and heady, that made it swim in front of her eyes. ‘Steady. Steady.’

  Mr Dean was showing her over the factory. In a dream she let him walk her round and round, upstairs and down. He stepped among the women and picked a handful of tea for her to break in her hand and sniff; she only saw his hand as he gave it to her, the hand she had kissed. He showed her the rollers and fermenting trays where the leaf looked like spinach, and the withering trays where they were spreading the fresh leaf to die; he explained and instructed, and she looked at him with those eyes that were greener than the new plucked leaf itself and did not hear a single word he said.

  He began to be intensely angry with Sister Clodagh. It was she who had put him in this impossible position, she should control Sister Ruth. ‘Does she ever try to speak to you?’ she had asked. She knew all about it. ‘I’m on my guard,’ she had boasted, and then let the Sister escape from her like this. ‘Damn all women!’ thought Mr Dean.

  The Sister was leaning on the tiers of trays, looking at him. He remembered how she had stolen up to look at him that day in the porch; she was looking at him like that now, and there was something snake-like in her face with its intent eyes that sent a coldness down the back of his legs. He clapped his hand to his back pocket to find his pipe.

  ‘Damn, I’ve left my pipe in the office.’

  ‘Can we go in there? I’m tired. I want to sit down.’ She was leaning on the trays as if she were exhausted.

  The long narrow room with its hot damp smell and dirty windows was gloomy and stifling; the corners were dark and it suddenly filled him with a kind of panic. ‘Come along then,’ he said roughly.

  There was only one chair in the office, she dropped into it, and he stood in front of her and said before she could speak: ‘Now I understand perfectly why you’ve come here.’

  ‘Yes. To be with you. I want to be with you.’

  ‘Let’s talk it over, Sister,’ he said desperately. ‘You know this isn’t like you. You’ve forgotten who you are. You’re a religious. A nun.’

  ‘What makes you think a nun can’t love?’ she asked.

  ‘But you can’t love me. It’s ridiculous. How could you? It’s the spring,’ he said desperately. ‘You must tell yourself that. It brings everything to the surface, like coming out in spots. You must tell yourself that it’s the spring.’

  ‘It isn’t the spring. You’re not really thinking. You say that because you’ve heard it so often. This isn’t the spring. All through the winter it’s been the same. I’ve loved you ever since I saw you. It’s not your fault, you’ve never taken any notice of me. Once or twice you’ve spoken to me; the first time was about that woman with the cut wrist, her name was Samell and I wrote it down as Samuel. You see, I haven’t forgotten. And this is the hand you held when you caught me. I think I was going to hurt Sister Clodagh, but you stopped me, didn’t you? You hurt my hand, but I liked it to hurt.’ She smiled. Her eyes were soft and she spoke tenderly and gently. ‘I’ve loved you ever since I came to Mopu.’

  He had not seen her radiant and softened like this and in spite of himself he was touched. ‘Are you sorry you came?’ he asked.

  ‘If I went away to-morrow I shouldn’t see anything else as long as I lived,’ she cried passionately. ‘I wouldn’t want to live if I went away from here.’

  She looked suddenly startled. ‘They’ll send me away. Of course they will after this. They’ll send me away at once.’ She sprang up and came close to him, shaking his arm in her hands, and now her face was crafty and narrowed. ‘You mustn’t let Them get me.’ She whispered: ‘Don’t tell Them where I am.’ She looked back over her shoulder and round the room. ‘They’ll come after me. They’ll send me away. They will unless you stop them.’

  ‘I can’t stop them,’ he said.

  ‘You must. You must take me away.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You must. You don’t know,’ she cried violently. ‘You don’t know what They are.’ She came still closer and now she whispered again: ‘They watch me. She told them to watch me. She gave orders. Do you know why? She thinks I’m mad. I know she does. She and Sister Briony were whispering. They spy. They all spy on me, and They whisper, whisper, whisper about me. To-day they set the Ayah to spy on me, but I got away. I don’t know how. I’m so strong, you see. I can do anything. Soon they�
��ll come after me. She’ll find out where I am. I’ll tell you why. She’s jealous. She’s jealous of you and me, and I’ll tell you a secret. She’s mad. Quite mad and she knows that I know. That’s why she says I’m mad, she’s afraid. She wants me to make scenes. Sometimes I do and then she’s glad. She wants me to go mad.’

  ‘My dear. My dear, be quiet,’ he said, taking her hands. ‘It isn’t like that. You know it isn’t.’

  Her hands clenched his. ‘It is,’ she cried. ‘Take me away. Oh, take me away.’

  ‘I can’t,’ he said, very pitifully.

  She said violently: ‘You say that because you love Sister Clodagh.’

  ‘Of course I don’t,’ he said, shaking her hands. ‘I don’t love anybody. I don’t love Sister Clodagh and she doesn’t love me. She never would. She never could. I like her – and admire her in a way; she makes me very angry sometimes just as she does you. I like to talk to her. That’s all there is to it with either of us.’

  ‘Then why can’t you take me away?’

  ‘Because I couldn’t think of such a thing, and I don’t love you either.’

  ‘Is it because I’m a nun?’

  ‘Of course it is,’ he answered. ‘But if you weren’t a nun I wouldn’t love you.’

  ‘Why don’t you like me?’

  ‘I do like you. I like you and I’m very sorry for you.’

  ‘Then take me. I won’t be any trouble. You needn’t love me if only I can be with you.’

  ‘I can’t. You know I can’t.’

  ‘What’s to become of me, then?’ she cried. ‘What can I do?’

  ‘You must let me take you back.’

  ‘I can never go back. Never!’

  ‘Of course you can, you silly child,’ he said carefully. ‘No one will know. I’ll say I found you wandering on the path –’

  ‘They’re all waiting for me, I tell you,’ she cried. ‘Do you think I can stand it any longer? Do you think I’m made of iron? They whisper, whisper, whisper, and the way They watch me! She sends Sister Briony after me with those doses of medicine and I’m afraid to touch them. I tell you I daren’t take them, because,’ she looked round again and tightened her hands, ‘they’re poisoned. Do you wonder I’m afraid? I’m afraid all day and all night. At night I can’t sleep because she comes and stands by my bed, so do you know what I do?’ She laughed. ‘I go and stand by hers, right over her while she’s asleep, to see if she’s afraid. She’s trying –’