Love Letters

by Madeleine L'engle

  Joaquina stepped down two steps, bowing her head, muttering, “I told you that it was as hard for me to tell you as it is for you to hear it. I didn’t want to tell you. You made me.”

  “You couldn’t wait to tell us!” Beatriz, looming over her, cried.

  Sister Isabella, wringing her hands beneath her scapular, tried to keep calm. “Please be quiet. Whether or not Sister Joaquina wanted to tell us or is doing a disagreeable duty is now beside the point.”

  Michaela sank down on the top step, crouching over, her head down on her knees. “I don’t believe it.”

  Beatriz said, “Of course not.”

  Sister Isabella tried, too late, to mend matters. “You saw shadows, Sister Joaquina dear. You were mistaken, I’m sure. I’ve been out in the cloister on a moonlit night and I’ve seen shadows in the garden I thought were real, and then they turned out to be shadows. I’ve even disturbed her Grace for what turned out to be nothing but wind and moonlight.”

  “You saw what you wanted to see,” Beatriz said, ruthlessly.

  “No!”

  “Sister Isabella is right. You saw shadows, and your mind distorted them and turned them into the image of a soldier.”

  “I know a shadow from the French officer who’s been here in broad sunlight and spent so much time with Sister Mariana in the locutario.”

  She stepped down another step, as though fearful Beatriz would pursue her. “I spoke to him once myself when I was called to the locutario by mistake. The moonlight was as bright as day. Why would I invent such a thing?”

  If Michaela had not been blocking the stairs Beatriz might indeed have gone for Joaquina. “Because you’re jealous of Mariana!”

  “I, jealous?”

  “Yes, you jealous. She’s everything you’ve always wanted to be and never will. She’s always had everything you’ve wanted to have and never will. Gaiety and beauty and intelligence. And the French officer. If you dreamed you saw him going to her it was because you wanted him to come to you!”

  Joaquina gave a harsh cry.

  “We cannot have a lie like this spread about one of our Sisters, a lie born out of sick jealousy.”

  “I know what I saw—”

  “You know what you thought you saw! What you went out to see! What you wanted to see!”

  “Wanted!”

  “You wanted to see a flaw in perfection! You wanted to see a stain on purity!”

  Joaquina gave a strangled cry of denial and Sister Isabella’s voice at last rose above Beatriz’s. “Sister, you must stop this.”

  But Beatriz was beside herself. “I tried to stop it earlier.”

  “Sister Joaquina,” Sister Isabella said, “are you very sure of what you have just told us?”

  “You must hate me very much if you think I’d invent something like that.”

  Beatriz pulled herself under control. “Nobody hates you. We love you and want to help you. We know that you aren’t inventing your story. We believe that you were mistaken.”

  “I was not mistaken.”

  “You felt responsible for us all because of Sister Isabella’s headache, and sometimes a strong feeling of responsibility can excite the imagination. There was a breeze from the plains and the branches of the trees were moving. There were many shadows and sounds. It would have been easy for you to be confused.”

  At last Michaela raised her head, her face blurred with heat and consternation. “That is what we believe.”

  “Sister Joaquina,” Beatriz continued, “you are asking something impossible. You want us to be absolutely perfect. And when someone shows the human qualities that all of us, being fallen creatures in a fallen world, must show, then you want her to be absolutely sinful.”

  “But our Lord says, ‘Be ye also perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.’”

  Michaela spoke earnestly. “Our Lord knows perfection takes time.”

  “I hardly think,” Joaquina said, “that we ought to use our Lord as an excuse for sin.”

  Michaela’s soft hands fluttered like small birds. “Dear Sister Joaquina, I talked to Sister Mariana once when I was upset. Why don’t you ask permission to talk to her now?”

  “She’s the last person I could talk to.”

  “What she said that helped me most was to remind me that I’m human. Sometimes I think we expect too much of ourselves. We expect to be angels, now, here on earth. And isn’t that pride? What do we have confession for if it isn’t that we’re supposed to have something to confess?”

  Sister Isabella leaned against the wall, waves of dizziness rolling over her. She thought that she was going to faint.

  Joaquina asked, “Are you trying to excuse what Mariana has done?”

  “No,” Michaela said with unusual firmness. “I’m trying to excuse what you have done. I don’t believe you saw anybody. I believe you only thought you did.”

  Sister Isabella spoke through a sea of vertigo, her voice slurred. “Sister Michaela is right.”

  Joaquina came up a step, not noticing that Sister Isabella could hardly stand. “Sister Isabella, you are our senior here. What is your advice to me? Do you think I should ignore what I saw?”

  “Thought you saw,” Beatriz corrected.

  Sister Isabella pulled herself away from the wall. She pressed her hands against her stomach as though to hold nausea at bay. She spoke slowly to try to control the blurring of her words. “No, Sister Joaquina. I do not think you should ignore it. But I think you must be very sure. And even then I think there should be an acceptance that there may be some confusion in your mind. But I think we must go to the Most Reverend Mother.”

  “Thank you, Sister. If I found the courage to tell you, I can find it to tell her Grace.”

  “And the humility.”

  Joaquina nodded. “May I go now?”

  “I will go with you,” Sister Isabella said. “You will have to help me down the stairs. Sisters, I think it best if you do not discuss what Sister Joaquina has told us, so I would prefer you not to go back into the attic, even in silence. Please go to Sister Maria da Assunção and tell her that I have asked her to assign you to something else for the next hour.”

  As they descended the attic stairs, Mariana was rising slowly from her knees in the chapel. She moved stiffly, for she had been holding one posture for a long time; she left the shifting facets of sun falling through colored glass and walked into the square chapter room where the Infanta Dona Brites lay in marble on her sarcophagus.

  Michaela came running in from the opposite direction, having left the others to look for Mariana so that Joaquina’s words could be denied. Both Mariana, in her dream of ecstasy, and Michaela, in her spasm of fear, moved without looking, and the two sisters almost collided.

  “Michaela!” Mariana said. Jolted out of herself she looked into Michaela’s wild, troubled face. “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, Mariana, Mariana, please, please—”

  “What is it?”

  “Sister Joaquina—”

  “What now?”

  “She’s been saying things—”

  It was apparent that Michaela was trembling on the verge of hysterics and Mariana tried to shake off her annoyance. She made her voice calm and low. “Sister Joaquina has a habit of saying things. What is it now, to upset you so?”

  “It’s about you.”

  “Then forget it.”

  “But—”

  “Sister Joaquina doesn’t—approve of me. Don’t let it upset you.”

  “It was far more than just disapproving. It was lies. Horrible lies. She said—”

  Although Michaela paused, as though questioning, it was obvious that nothing could stop her. Mariana sighed. “Said what?”

  “We didn’t believe her, none of us did, but—”

  “But you’re not sure you don’t believe her after all. Is that it?”

  “No—no—but Mariana, you have seemed different.”

  Mariana was arrested. “I’ve seemed different to yo
u?”

  “It’s just that—oh, you’ve always seemed happy before, so gay and full of enthusiasm—but now it’s different—”

  “Sister,” Mariana asked, “what did Joaquina say?”

  “That you and—you and the French officer—”

  “What about us?”

  “That he—Oh, Sister, I know it isn’t true?”

  “Sister Joaquina said what about Noël and me?”

  Michaela’s eyes widened at the use of the first name. “That he—that he climbed over the wall—and then up to the balcony—and then—You must tell her that it isn’t true.”

  “I can’t.”

  “But—”

  “It is true.”

  “Oh, no, Sister, no, no, no—”

  Mariana bent and took Michaela’s face in her hands. “Sweet little Sister, let me tell you in my own words, not Joaquina’s. Somehow or other she’s made up a half truth.”

  Michaela drew away. “She says she saw him when she took the lock-up for Sister Isabella.”

  “Poor Sister Joaquina. Yes, it would have to be Sister Joaquina, wouldn’t it? It doesn’t matter.”

  “Doesn’t—”

  “I was on my way to her Grace when you ran into me and almost knocked me down.”

  “To tell her?”

  “Yes, of course. To tell her. And to ask her to go to the bishop in my behalf.”

  Slowly the inner door to the chapter room was pushed open by Peregrina, who was closely followed by Urraca, Ampara, and Sofia. Peregrina, seeing the two sisters, turned swiftly, finger to lips, to silence the other girls.

  Mariana said in her clear voice, “I want to be released from my vows here at Nossa Senhora da Conceição so that I may marry Noël.”

  Michaela gasped. “But Mariana, Sister, I don’t—you—you’re already married.”

  Mariana looked at her in astonishment that anybody could fail to comprehend her love. “You don’t understand.”

  “But even if—Sister, you can’t divorce Christ!”

  With a peremptory gesture Peregrina shoved the other three avidly listening girls out of the chapter room and banged the door on them. Mariana and Michaela swung around as Peregrina demanded, “Does Noël want to marry you?”

  The two Sisters turned in surprise.

  “Does he?” Peregrina repeated.

  There was a fraction’s hesitation, then Mariana said, “Yes.”

  “Peregrina,” Michaela said. “You should not be here.”

  Ignoring Michaela, Peregrina went up to Mariana. “Has he said that he wants to marry you?”

  “There are some things that don’t need saying.”

  Peregrina’s voice, clear as Mariana’s, echoed in the chapter room. “Mariana, I know you think I’m still a child. But I go home. I’ve seen how Noël behaves at home. I’ve listened to the way Dom Alipio and papa talk. I know that maybe there are things a woman doesn’t need to say, but it’s different with a man. Especially a soldier.”

  “Sister is right,” Mariana said. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “But I am here.”

  Mariana turned from one to the other of them. “Peregrina. Sister darling. Since I see now that it’s going to come out—and it’s inevitable that it should, though I hadn’t meant it to be this way—I’m glad you can hear it from me, and not from anybody else. Don’t worry. It’s all right.”

  “All right?” Michaela cried. “But how?”

  “I know. I know in a way that I’ve never known anything in my whole life before. Peregrina, you’re right. You do know more about the world than I do. How on earth could I even have guessed? The knowledge of what a man is like, a whole man, is carefully kept from us. And why? If you could only know Noël as I do, the purity, the nobility of his soul! I had no idea what a man could be—What men have I ever seen, here in the convent? Who, besides Baltazar?”

  She turned to Michaela. “Sister, how can I tell you?—the blessed archangel Michael! A man can be like that, and as worthy of worship. That’s how I want to spend my life. Serving him and caring for him. Can’t that be a vocation as noble as—can’t it?”

  Michaela’s face was blurred with confusion, like a painting that has run.

  Peregrina looked suddenly old. She said, as if to herself, “Papa shouldn’t have—Aunt Brites—oh, I hate them both.”

  Mariana turned to her. “Darling, please be happy for me. Please want it for me. I’m so full of joy that I tingle with it from the tips of my fingers to the tips of my toes. I had a body before, but I never realized it. Oh, I thought I knew. But I knew nothing. Nothing. It was as though my body were blind. And now I can see. And I feel the rapture of a blind woman opening her eyes and seeing for the first time. Peregrina—Michaela—I know I am right because otherwise I couldn’t talk to you like this without running full tilt against the word shame. What is shame?”

  The door behind them opened and the abbess, unobserved, entered and listened until Peregrina turned away from Mariana in helpless anger and saw her aunt. The two of them, abbess and niece, stared at each other as Michaela faltered in answer. “It’s what you feel when you’ve done something wrong.”

  “No,” Mariana said. “That’s guilt, and it’s a very different thing. Shame is what you feel when you’re afraid. When you’re afraid to open yourself up to be a complete human being. The word shame and the word love seem to get mixed up together, and the word shame destroys the word love. And I won’t let it happen!”

  Michaela whispered, “You’re different—”

  “Yes, I am different. I’ve just been born!”

  “Be quiet!” The abbess stepped forward.

  “Your Grace!”

  “Sister Michaela,” the abbess commanded, “go to your cell at once and wait for me there.”

  Michaela dropped a frightened curtsy and scurried out. The abbess turned to Peregrina. “Go to your dormitory. Urraca, Ampara, and Sofia will be there. The four of you are to remain in complete silence until I send for you. You, as an Alcoforado, are to see that silence is kept.”

  “Yes, your Grace,” Peregrina said, and followed Michaela out.

  The abbess turned to Mariana. “That was the most shameful display of carnality it has ever been my misfortune to—”

  Mariana cut in. “If you can use the word carnality, either your ears deceived you or you misunderstood me completely.”

  “Have you no shame?” Her words dropped into the chapter room like marble.

  Mariana turned a radiant face towards her. “Shame? For what is the greatest glory I have ever known?”

  “Child, don’t you realize what you have done?”

  “Your Grace, you don’t understand,” Mariana said swiftly. “You don’t know what it’s about. I was just on my way to tell you—”

  “I’m afraid I do know what it’s about. I’ve just learned from three children in our school who overheard your wild words to Sister Michaela.”

  “They can’t have heard me say that I was on my way to ask you to go to the bishop for me, to use your influence with him, so that I may be free to marry Noël Saint-Leger.”

  The abbess’s eyes were pale and cold with bitterness and rage. “Sleeping with the man was a sin. Marrying him would be a catastrophe.”

  Mariana stepped back in horror.

  “I must make you understand!” the abbess said.

  “I understand for the first time,” Mariana cried. “It’s as though I went out on the balcony and saw the sun rise out of the east and the day break over the hills for the first time. For the first time I have seen day, I know light.”

  “Perhaps,” the abbess said, “for him there have been other sunrises.”

  “He’s a man! He’s a soldier!”

  “Precisely. You don’t have the faintest idea what he’s like. How many times have you seen him?”

  “I don’t know. Enough.”

  “Out of the locutario?”

  Mariana nodded.

  “In your cell?”
>
  She nodded again.

  “You admit it?”

  “Your Grace, I told you I was on my way to you. I love him. I want to spend my life with him.”

  “Did you know what you were doing?”

  “How can anybody know about—that—”

  “Are you aware that you have sinned?”

  Mariana raised her face. “God has not told me so.”

  “—that you’re exposing your soul to eternal damnation?”

  “You don’t consider Ana’s marriage a sin, yet she married Rui de Melo purely for prestige and property and there’s never been any love between them. I love the man I want to marry. And you consider that a sin?”

  “Did your vows mean nothing to you?” Dona Brites asked hoarsely. “Nothing at all?”

  There was a knock on the chapter-room door, and Sister Isabella came in, gropingly. “Your Grace—”

  “Yes. Here.”

  Sister Isabella went to her and whispered. Mariana heard only the word Joaquina, saw the ripple of annoyance, but the abbess’s voice was back in control as she spoke. “Very well, Sister Isabella. I will come now. Sister Mariana, wait for me in your cell.”

  In the abbess’s study Joaquina was groveling and in tears. “Why are you so angry with me? I did see him.”

  The abbess spoke hissingly. “Your behavior has been beneath contempt. If you had the faintest glimmering of what the religious life is about, you could never maliciously have poisoned your Sisters’ minds with vicious tales.”

  In an agony of sobs Joaquina fell to the floor; the shadow of the crucifix struck harshly across her as though with a blow.

  The abbess stepped contemptuously around her and swept out of the room.

  There are things that are unbearable.

  … But the unbearable has to be borne. Is there anybody who has ever lived who has not been asked to bear more than is possible? And we do it. Most of the time we do it. Occasionally we go mad. We break under the unbearable. We fill the mental hospitals. We shriek and scream the blasphemy of our horror. Or we retreat into silence, loss of movement, the rigidity of the catatonic. Or we regress to the slobbering, self-soiling, mewling of infancy.

  —I didn’t, Charlotte told herself.—In a sense I bore it. Someone sent my clothes to the cleaner’s and the blood was removed. In a few weeks I was even able to go out whenever Patrick wanted me to. I stopped waking up in the middle of the night screaming. I cooked the things Patrick liked to eat. I was even able to cook the things Andrew had liked to eat. I bore it.