Love Letters

by Madeleine L'engle

  Antonio leaned forward, poured a glass of wine, absently offered it to Violet, and continued: “You know that I am already betrothed, that my family has arranged a most profitable alliance for me, one that will be invaluable in furthering my career. As a matter of fact, I was going to tell you tonight, anyhow, I’ll be returning to France any day. My father has sent for me, and I’ll be going up to Lisbon or down to Sagres, wherever I can catch a ship at the earliest opportunity. Now do you understand? Are you satisfied?”

  Violet sipped at her wine. “Absolutely. You’ve missed your vocation, Tonio. Go to Lisbon and try the stage. Meanwhile that candle on the mantelpiece is guttering. See if you can fix it. Or maybe there’s a draft. Charlotte shouldn’t sit in a draft.”

  … The candles, the two candles that were always lit in the chapel, flickered and the thin smoke rose from them, as tenuous as Mariana’s prayers. She knelt with her arms stretched out as though on a crucifix, as though embracing the entire world. Her lips moved:

  “I confess to almighty God, to blessed Mary ever virgin, to blessed Michael the Archangel, to blessed John the Baptist, to the holy apostles Peter and Paul, and to all the Saints, that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word, and deed, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault. Therefore I beseech blessed Mary, ever virgin—

  “No, Lord, it’s no use. I can’t say these words to you alone any more than I can when I’m with Father Duarte. I can’t say them. Not here with the blessed Mother. No, no, my dearest Lady, I can no longer pray to thee, not now that—

  “Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee: and I detest my sins above every other evil—no, I don’t detest them, because I feel no sin! How can I ask to be forgiven for what has opened me to light? My heart was closed in before, shut like a bud in early spring. And I didn’t even know it.

  “Oh, God, O my Christ, now that I know how to love Noël, I know how to love you better, too! Dear my Lord, our faith is a joyous one, and yet I am only beginning to know what joy means! If I have been wrong in my vocation—that is what I must ask forgiveness for, isn’t it? The sins of pride in my vocation I’ve committed up to now. They are my sins. To think that I had a vocation was my sin. Oh, God, O gentle Father, I ask you humbly, isn’t it right for me to go to my spiritual mother, to my aunt? If I have your permission first, then shouldn’t I get the permission of the church? For I must leave here, mustn’t I? I must show my love of you through love of him … I am right, I know that I’m right …”

  … Antonio sang,

  By the rood

  And by the rod

  What is good

  And what is God?

  Vast as water,

  Bright as fire.

  What is God

  But man’s desire?

  Deep as earth

  Soft as breath

  Sharper than birth

  Stronger than death

  Is the vast God

  Whose wrath is taught

  Aught but the fear

  Of being naught?

  As Antonio stood, strong and beautiful, singing, Joaquim let the Portuguese guitar slip from his hands and drop onto the rug beside him. He gave his kitten’s yawn. Violet picked up the guitar. Antonio continued,

  Old as Adam

  Is the cry

  Since I think

  Then I am I!

  By the rod

  And by the rood

  I am God

  And I am good.

  Violet said with deliberate cruelty, “You could get a job in some night club. Your voice is not unpleasant.”

  Charlotte looked at her, startled at the ice in the voice, the rage in the light blue eyes.

  Antonio shrugged sulkily. “You used to like that one.”

  “Never,” Violet said. “Go home now, Tonio. It is much too late for Jacopo to be up. Be careful of him. He will be an important artist one day.”

  Antonio’s words were brittle. “If you would be kind enough to have my horse brought around, I will be delighted to take Jacopo home.”

  “That damned black horse,” Violet said. “It won’t take you back into the seventeenth century. I would have sent you home in the car.” But she rang and asked for the horse. “Just see that Jacopo doesn’t fall off. Take care of him.”

  Antonio pulled Jacopo to his feet, not ungently, and without further adieux limped from the room. Charlotte and Violet stood watching in the wide doorway as he climbed up onto the horse’s back, then leaned down and picked Joaquim up and set him before him, circling the boy with his left arm.

  “He would like to be Noël Saint-Leger,” Violet said as Charlotte followed her back to the great room, “but he lacks the real flair. He will never quite make it. Just as he will never quite make it as a poet. He is manqué, all the way down the line.”

  “Why do you say that?” Charlotte asked. “You were awful to him. Why?”

  “Because he maddens me. He will never finish his book on Mariana. He will never pull it together and so he will never pull it off. If he could he might have something. But it is just a collection of hodgepodge lyrics and a confusion of history. Some of his lyrics are better than he knows; he cannot separate his poems from his blasphemies. He cannot tell the difference. In his work or in his life.”

  Charlotte said, “I found his songs very moving. They made me want to cry.”

  Suddenly the rigidity of Violet’s voice and manner relaxed, warmth flowed back. “Charlotte, when did you cry last? I mean really cry?”

  Charlotte did not answer.

  “Cotty, I asked you. When did you last cry?”

  “I almost cried this afternoon,” Charlotte said. “And again tonight.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  “No. I don’t know what happens. I was all ready. But the tears won’t come.”

  “Are you sleeping properly?”

  “No.”

  “Cotty—” Violet’s voice was low, gentle, with the tenderness that came through her music but seldom in her spoken words and that certainly had been singularly absent during the evening. “Have you cried, really cried, since Andrew died?”

  Again Charlotte did not answer.

  “You have to, you know. For your sake. And Patrick’s.”

  She stood with her back to the fireplace, twirling the enormous spectacles she wore only when she was reading, either words or music. Charlotte sat on the fur rug, where Joaquim had been, Joaquim who seemed to be in Violet’s heart where Andrew might have been.

  “Violet, it’s not that easy!”

  “Who said it was?”

  “Good night, Violet. I’m going to bed now,” Charlotte said, as she had said it once to Patrick.

  Violet was, as usual, probably right.

  But she could not cry for herself or for Patrick until she could accept those minutes of holding the small, broken, bloody body, and the child still alive

  no God no no no

  She had to accept it herself as everything, ultimately, must be accepted.

  Can’t we comfort each other? Ever?

  The long French windows in her room were slightly open, but a fire had been lit and was blazing, warming the room with flickering light. Outside on the lawn Orlando Gibbons was barking, chasing a shadow.

  She undressed, numb as from Novocain, and got into bed. The three books were as she had left them on the bed table, with the letters on top. She did not want the unhappiness, the naked anguish of the letters. The ordered life of the convent, where everything was structured, all questions answered, the safe world of childhood, yes. Even the mystical poems to the heavenly bridegroom, even the language in which she had at first thought the letters were couched, even this would be analgesia, anesthesia.

  But the patient always comes out from under, doesn’t he? That is, unless he dies.

  The operation was a success, but the patient died.

  Mariana, too, had been wakened from anesthesia, from the dream, not gently, as the Sleeping Beauty,
by a kiss, for it was the kiss that had put her to sleep.

  … So that everything in this dark spell meant something else.

  Even the psalms.

  Have I not remembered thee in my bed? And thought upon thee when I was waking?

  Meaning within meaning.

  Even in the midst of her dreaming it frightened her.

  She went to Mother Escolastica. Her hands were trembling. “Please, Mother, I cannot hold a paintbrush today …”

  The old nun looked at her, silent, searching. “What is it, child? What has happened?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  Mother Escolastica stood at the tall desk in her tiny office. With her rheumatic joints, her painful back, it was slightly easier for her to stand than to sit, though nothing was easy any more. She looked from Mariana’s trembling hands to her own gnarled and distorted fingers. “Have you spoken to Father Duarte?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “Fully?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “Then what is it you want of me now, child?”

  “Permission to go to the chapel. I cannot work this afternoon. I—please let me go to the chapel.”

  Mother Escolastica studied the girl’s clouded eyes. Usually she could read Mariana by those eyes. Now there was a darkness moving up from the depths through which nothing could be seen; it was like silt swirling the disturbed waters of a pool. She could see nothing.

  “For half an hour, then,” she said. “After that you must join your Sisters in the attic. You must not shirk your assigned duties. Even for prayer.”

  “No, Mother. I—thank you.”

  In the convent attic, under the rather ineffectual supervision of Sister Isabella, the younger nuns worked on altar linens and vestments. Beatriz, Joaquina, and Michaela were mending the frayed gold thread on a heavy brocade cope. It was a feast day and they were allowed to talk. The attic was hot and crowded and musty, filled with candelabra, prie-dieus, unwanted gifts, all the paraphernalia of a large convent, as well as the magnificent linens and brocades of gold, purple, scarlet, blue, white, violet, black, many heavily embroidered and encrusted with jewels; these could not be taken out into the gardens to be gone over in the fresh air for fear that they might fade in the brilliance of the sun. Yellow light filtered in through small, high windows.

  “Why,” Sister Joaquina asked, her face damp and white from heat, “is Sister Mariana staying in the chapel?”

  “To pray, presumably,” Beatriz answered dryly.

  Joaquina asked, “Did her Grace give permission?”

  Sister Isabella spoke with her usual mildness. “Sister Mariana’s not in the habit of doing things without the Most Reverend Mother’s permission,” and moved across the attic to help another group of sisters fold a great linen altar cloth.

  Joaquina murmured, her voice low so that it would not carry across the dusty room to Sister Isabella, “It seems to me that Sister Mariana’s in the habit of doing pretty much anything she wants to.”

  Across the attic one of the sisters tried to muffle a dust-provoked sneeze and came out with a strangling coughing. Under cover of this, Beatriz said, “We’re all tired of this kind of talk.”

  The dust made Joaquina’s nose stuffy and her voice was unusually nasal. “I suppose someone always has to be the scapegoat. And I’m the one.”

  Little Michaela raised a shocked face from her work. “Sister, what’s the matter with you today?”

  Sister Isabella, whose ears were as sharp as her eyes were dim, returned and said with unusual asperity, “Sister Joaquina, if you do not feel well you will please report to the Infirmarian.”

  “I’m perfectly well, Sister. I’m just very tired.”

  The dust and heat of the attic was irritating them all. Beatriz blew her nose, asking, “Why? We haven’t done anything out of the ordinary lately. Nothing but our usual duties.”

  “No? None of us?”

  Sister Isabella’s face was distressed. “I know you took the lock-up for me this week, Sister. I’m sorry it tired you so. I won’t ask it of you again.”

  “But Sister!” Joaquina cried. “You misunderstand! I wasn’t thinking of myself when I said that perhaps one of us was doing something other than her ordinary duties. I was glad to help you for a few nights. We all know your headaches—”

  Michaela, who more than once had bathed the old nun’s pain-tensed brows with cooling lotions, asked earnestly, “Is it really quite gone now, Sister?”

  “Quite, thank you,” Sister Isabella said, and could not leave well enough alone. Her insatiable streak of curiosity made her turn back to Joaquina. “What were you thinking about, then?”

  “Nothing. Nobody. I’m upset.”

  “But why are you upset?”

  Michaela, her pliable face anticipating trouble, said, “We can see that something’s bothering you, Sister dear.”

  With unusual acumen Sister Isabella asked, “Did something happen last night when you locked up?”

  “Not last night.”

  “When, then?”

  “The first night.”

  Were all the sisters in the attic listening? Sister Isabella drew in closer to the little group, almost whispering. “Then perhaps you’d feel better if you talked to us about it.”

  “Perhaps I would. Perhaps it’s my duty to tell you.”

  At the word “duty” Beatriz looked up sharply. “Tell us what?”

  “What I saw when I took the lock-up.”

  “What did you see?”

  The four veiled heads were close. “I know you think I take my duties too seriously. Even doing the lock-up for Sister Isabella.”

  The air, too, was close. “No,” Sister Isabella said, “Our duties are serious. Even the most minor, like mine. Go on.”

  “After I’d finished locking up I couldn’t sleep. I felt responsible. And then I heard—” Joaquina gave an ugly gasp.

  “Heard what?” Beatriz asked testily.

  The tension in the group was heavier, more stifling than the air. Sister Isabella tried to draw back from what she had started. “If you are telling us something of gravity, and I can tell by your voice that you are, you must be very sure that it is true. Perhaps you should go to her Grace instead of talking to us.”

  Beatriz was suddenly irrational with anxiety. “We’re always disturbing her Grace about nothings, and she’s very tired right now. Let Sister Joaquina tell us what’s on her mind and then if it’s really serious enough she can go to her Grace.”

  Even through her fear Beatriz spoke with authority, but with such courtesy that it could not seem that she was usurping the prerogatives of the older nun.

  “It’s serious enough,” Joaquina said.

  Michaela dropped her hands, with the needle and heavy gold thread, onto the cloth on her lap. “Oh, Sister, it sounds as though it were going to be something unpleasant.”

  “It is.”

  “Come on, come on,” Beatriz said impatiently. “What did you hear?”

  Sister Isabella reproved, “Let her tell it in her own way, in her own time, and with God’s help. If she feels it is something that should be told at all.” Perhaps if Sister Isabella had been able to see Joaquina’s face, even now she would have stopped her.

  “I would rather tell you first, then if you think—what happened was—I thought—I was sure—I heard something out in the garden. And I remembered how sometimes the soldiers—so I went and opened the door to the cloister. I didn’t want to disturb you, Sister Isabella, or her Grace, unless I was sure there was somebody there.”

  “Quite proper,” Sister Isabella murmured automatically. “Go on.”

  “I went out and looked around the garden. The moon was high and very bright. At first I didn’t see anything, and I thought I must have been mistaken, that it must have been the wind in the trees or somebody going by outside the walls. But now I feel that I must have been sent out into the garden at that particular moment because—” Again the ugly gasp.
>
  “Because what?” Beatriz demanded.

  “Hush, Beatriz.” Sister Isabella was as unrealistically romantic as Michaela.

  Joaquina filled each word with portent. “I saw a man climbing over the garden wall.”

  Again Beatriz cut in. “What’s so terrible about that? Drunken soldiers have tried it before.”

  “This wasn’t a drunken soldier. But it was a soldier.”

  “So?” Beatriz masked her apprehension with scorn.

  “You’re trying to stop me from telling it, because you know what I’m going to say.”

  “No.” Beatriz’s voice was heavy with defeat. “I’m afraid, but I don’t know. I apologize for interrupting you. Please go on.”

  “It’s difficult for me. I don’t like telling it any more than you like hearing it. But it’s my duty. He climbed over the garden wall. Like someone who knew where he was going.”

  Sister Isabella asked, “Did he see you?”

  “I stepped back into the shadows.”

  Beatriz’s voice came clear and cold. “And spied?”

  “What would you have done?”

  “The same thing, I suppose.”

  At last Sister Isabella realized that she should never have allowed Joaquina to start. She realized, also, that if she sent Joaquina to the abbess now, she would never hear the whole story. She peered dimly around the attic. She saw a dark blur of discreetly bowed heads. Pulling more closely towards the three young sisters she whispered, “Since you have gone so far you had better continue.”

  “He went to the balcony. He climbed up. He went across it and into Sister Mariana’s cell.”

  “Stop!” Beatriz’s voice rang across the attic.

  Sister Isabella knew that she had let things go too far. “Come,” she said, and shuffled across the attic and out the door and stood breathing painfully on the tiny landing that led to the steep, circular stairs. Joaquina, Beatriz, and Michaela followed. Beatriz closed the door, shutting them off from the others. Sister Isabella said, “Joaquina, you don’t know what you’re saying.”