by James Reese
“We ought to be getting back, don’t you think?” I asked finally; hours of the afternoon had quickly passed. “Don’t you agree?” I prompted.
“Doesn’t the sun feel sublime?” This, after a long silence, was Peronette’s response. With it, she loosened her dress at the collar and bared her throat to the sun. She lay back upon the rock. I stared at her, pleasuring in her presence and growing ever more conscious of my laboring heart and lungs; yes, her effect on me was bodily.
I had always shied from the sun, as from so much else. But how glorious it felt to bare oneself to its rays! Of course, I did not loosen my collar, did not raise my skirts to the knee as Peronette had, but still…I lay down beside her…. And dreamed, wakefully; I may have nodded off.
Then, I sensed…something. A change. I sat straight up. The sound…the rush…. The tide was coming in! The rocks that had led to our perch were already underwater, or nearly so, and the sea was rising up the rock on which we sat, stranded!
I shook Peronette, frantically. “Wake up!” I cried. “Wake up, please. The tide—!”
Peronette rose up leisurely onto her elbows, looked this way and that, and, to my astonishment, lay back down.
“Peronette! We will drown!”
“Don’t be silly. The tide will not rise as high as this rock,” said she, quite calmly. “Or at least, it won’t cover this rock.”
“But it has already risen over the rocks behind us!…Hurry, please!”
She rolled her skirts higher. “But wouldn’t you rather wait and see what happens? Watch the water rise?”
“I would not!” Once the tide returned, fully, we would be a watery distance from the shore, from safety. I knew I would die that very day, my head dashed upon the rocks as I tried to swim ashore! Trying to put my boots back on, I worried the laces into knots; finally, I could but sling the pair over my shoulder.
“We can always swim in,” said Peronette. “If we must.”
“I cannot swim!” I began to cry. It was a child’s sobbing, graceless, complete with heaving shoulders and contorted features, and it seemed to amuse my companion.
“Ah, well then,” said Peronette, reaching for her shoes and smiling, “in that case we ought to go, no?” She held my hand and uttered through her laughter a thousand hollow assurances. I followed her over the rocks, some of which were indeed submerged, more slippery and sharper than they’d been before.
When finally we’d made it ashore, scrambling up the dune, I was fairly hysterical. I stopped crying only when I determined to do so. However, no strength of will could arrest my shaking and shivering.
When I sat in the tall grass to tackle the knots in my laces, I saw how badly I’d cut my feet. Our footing had been so unsure on those shell-encrusted rocks. Blood seeped through the sand that covered my legs to the shin. It was then the pain began. Peronette was smiling still: I assumed she had not cut herself. But I was wrong; she had. And I might have begun to think her too strange had she not then knelt to take my feet in her hands and, with the sea-wet edge of her shift, clean my wounds.
“Nothing too serious,” was her assessment. She pulled that fabric through the deepest gashes; the pain was indescribable. She set my ruined feet upon her knees. “We’ll let the air get at these scrapes a moment. They say the sea air is a curative…. That’s why I was sent here, I think.” And she kissed lightly my sandy instep.
Further unnerved by seeing that the tide had slipped over our rock, had covered it completely, I wanted to leave the shore. I said so; and surprisingly, Peronette obliged.
I would have liked to run, but pain prevented it. My feet were sore inside my boots. Peronette had replaced her shoes without caring for her own cuts; when I offered to tend her wounds, she declined and…and expressed a fondness for pain. “Stare at the pain,” she counseled, “stare at it as though it were the sun, and something magical happens.”
“Indeed,” said I, “you go blind. What’s magical in that?” I had already set to wondering how I’d secure the salve and bandages I’d need to tend properly to my wounds without having to undergo an examination from the infirmarian.
As we walked, the pain did lessen. Rather, it was replaced by all that I would feel in the weeks to come when Peronette would overwhelm me similarly, cause me to feel things I could not name, cause me to forget things easily named: prudence, pride, discretion…the list is long.
It had grown late; the sun had begun its descent. The clouds ran quick and thin. Striate bands of orange and red spread across the sky.
Fortunately, no one had remarked our long absence. Peronette and I entered C——through separate entrances. Her parting words were these: “I shall ask for you.” And in a shadowed doorway, she, on tiptoe, leaned in to kiss me on the lips; and then she was gone. I stood stunned. It was as though I’d been…as though I’d been beaten. Some months earlier, not wanting to peel, dice, boil, and mash yet another bowl of turnips, I’d stashed them in a cupboard; had Sister Brigid discovered them, I’d have been chastised, sent off to ask forgiveness of the Virgin. But it was the cellarer who found me out, and she went straight to Sister Claire, who deemed my crime worthy of punishment involving my palms and a thin whip carved of birch. Yes, stunned I was by Peronette’s kiss, stunned as I’d been beneath that birch rod. And stunned I would be each time she kissed me.
That night I sat alone in the small library above the sisters’ chapel, trying to study but unable to concentrate. The wounds to my feet were reminders that the day had happened, that I had not descended into a dream world. And Peronette’s mysterious good-bye resounded in my head, overwhelmed every word I read.
I was roused by a rap at the library door. One of the sisters—no matter which—came into the library, chided me for “secreting” myself behind a closed door, said she’d searched for me everywhere. Mother Marie-des-Anges wished to see me in her chambers, immediately.
I rose and followed the nun. I was certain Peronette and I had been found out, and that I was headed toward punishment: a month’s chores, perhaps two. Always, too, there was the threat of banishment: I could be sent from C——as quietly and unceremoniously as I’d arrived. I was resigned; still, I wished it were not Mother Marie who’d mete out my punishment. Why couldn’t it be Sister Claire, the Head, or another nun who meant nothing to me? Not far from Mother Marie’s rooms, near our dormitory, with windows giving out on to the yard, my escort gestured that I should go on alone. She handed me her stub of candle, and I proceeded, guided by its weak light.
“Yes, come in,” was the response to my tapping at the door. “Come in, Herculine.”
Mother Marie-des-Anges stood as I entered. She was dressed in her embroidered robe and her hair hung down such as I’d never seen it, beautifully full and freshly brushed. That familiar blue cloud was in the air, quite strong now; a curl of smoke rose from the cigarette at rest in the bowl of a large scallop shell. On the table beside her favored chair was a book that was not the Bible.
She beckoned me to join her at her table; we sat. There were ripened fruits and a wedge of white cheese in a pale porcelain bowl. There were two goblets of a deep red wine. She slid one toward me. “You will share collation with me tonight. Does that suit you?”
As reply I lifted the goblet and drank. Mother Marie stared at me; I stared deep into the wine, and drank till it was gone. Finally:
“Herculine, dear, Christ needs a favor of you.” Pause. “You have met my niece, Peronette?”
I could not respond. Mother Marie poured more wine; she pushed the porcelain bowl toward me. I took another long draught. I nibbled at a sweet, white pear.
“Peronette is joining us at an odd time. I fear she may fall behind when our regular course of study resumes.” The Mother Superior turned her eyes from mine. She fingered a cluster of crimson grapes. “A family situation has occurred, one which could not be helped.” She looked up at me. “What I’m saying is this: she needs a tutor, and she has chosen you.”
I shall ask for you.<
br />
Mother Marie waited for me to speak. I could not. Instead, I drank. I must have been smiling, for a red rivulet ran from the corner of my mouth. This, apparently, was all the answer I needed to give, for the Mother Superior smiled herself and said, “It is settled then. I shall set a schedule for you both. You shall begin tomorrow.”
Immediately, I stood to leave.
“Not so fast, dear Herculine,” said she. “I do not intend to have you fall behind in your own studies.” I saw that she worked her rosary, absently, beneath the lip of the table. “Perhaps that fear is unfounded. You are, after all, the finest student we have known here.” At this I hung my head. “In any event, I’ll be watching.”
Mother Marie-des-Anges led me to her bookshelves, which I already knew well. She asked me questions about my studies in general, about certain works in particular. Had I made it around to the Aquinas yet? I had indeed. And surely I would set time aside for St. Teresa, if I had not already? I would, yes. I stood impatiently beside her, speaking only as was necessary: I wanted to find Peronette and tell her the good news. But of course, she already knew; after all, she had requested me as her tutor. Me!
I was shaken from this reverie by Mother Marie. “It is time you started your own library, Herculine.” She gestured grandly to her shelves, which spread over an entire wall. “And the best books are the ones that have been lovingly read. Choose.” I demurred, said I could not accept such generosity. It was insincere politeness; Mother Marie would have none of it: “Nonsense,” said she. “Choose.” She ran her finger along my jaw, tilted my face back at the chin; she looked at me a long moment. “Peronette is very special,” said she. Our eyes locked, and she went on: “But mark my words: it is dangerous to indulge her.” And with that the Mother Superior set to drawing down books and piling them into my arms.
“Let us see…. If you’ve already read the Aquinas then you should have it, no? A trophy of sorts.” She smiled. “Oh yes, Plutarch. And Petrarch…. Have you read Shakespeare’s sonnets? No! Well then,” and she loaded me with the Bard’s complete works, quarto-sized and bound in red kid, quoting as she did, “‘Two loves I have of comfort and despair,/Which like two spirits do suggest me still.’” I knew she might have finished the sonnet, but chose not to; a sadness overcame her then, and hastily she drew down the rest of my gifts. The Lives of the Saints. Texts in Latin and Greek. Writers I knew and others I didn’t. Poets. Obscure theologians like Busenbaum, Ribadeneira and Sánchez. Here was even the latest novel by Mrs. Radcliffe! She stopped, smiling, when I could carry no more; and wordlessly she showed me from her rooms.
Ironic, that I should be given a store of books that were to teach me of the world, of life, when all that would soon transpire at C——would make plain but one overarching lesson: I knew nothing. I held to a dream of friendship, as the Faithful hold to the dream of Redemption; but I knew nothing of friendship, nothing of love, certainly nothing of lust. Likewise, I was unacquainted with Evil, then.
3
The Devil’s Dance
PERONETTE, AS THE niece of the Mother Superior, the daughter of that woman’s beloved, afflicted sister, enjoyed privileges the other girls at C——did not. If this was to be expected, so too was the envy it incited.
Peronette, more accurately, might be said to have assumed such privileges; they were not all accorded her by Mother Marie, whose heart beat weakly before her niece. Peronette came to C——quite spoiled. Once arrived, she remained so. Living among girls who sensed this favoritism and some nuns who, one assumes, did sometimes struggle against their vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, all of which Peronette mocked, it would have been wise for Peronette, with her gaily-wrapped boxes arriving almost daily, chock-full of perfumes and candies and clothes, to have shown some discretion. She showed none. These parcels—sent by her father, who thus relieved himself of the duty of visiting his daughter—came from Paris, Vienna, Brussels, London; they came too from smaller cities where a certain craft was practiced perfectly: lengths of lace from Alençon, for example. Peronette would receive these parcels with utter equanimity. Often, I would be asked to open them. And often Peronette would let the contents lie wherever it was we’d laid them bare; and so some wanderer at C——may have come upon pink scallops of soap at the shore, candied fruits strewn through the woods.
Yes, with her wild heart and untamed tongue, it would have been wise for Peronette to have exercised a little discretion, but no…. And the least hint of ill-will or censure simply encouraged her. She would wear a new and blindingly exquisite brooch to mass. She would pull an atomizer from the folds of her dress and spray lavender- or orange-water on a passing nun. And, as she enjoyed the protection of the Mother Superior, no one, not even Sister Claire de Sazilly, who ruled the Upper School with a simple and unwavering will, dared to discipline Peronette.
To the private rooms of Mother Marie, Peronette enjoyed absolute rights of in- and egress. She spent more time there than in the dormitory. Any hour of the day she might slip away to those well-appointed rooms, forbidden to everyone else (I was fortunate, indeed, to have enjoyed library privileges there), and while away the hours; in the heat of the day she would strip down to her “inexpressibles” and take to the cool stone of the windowsill. Meanwhile, everyone else kept to the strict routine at C——, only slightly more relaxed during summer recess.
I cannot say for certain that Mother Marie knew of her niece’s behavior. Someone would have had to alert Mother Marie to Peronette’s absence from services or class, or some other activity. And Mother Marie, who was the soul of sweetness to me, was feared by her sisters; more accurately, she intimidated them, with her beauty and extravagant ways.
But surely the Mother Superior noticed the dwindling supply of wine in her cellar, the aroma of freshly smoked cigarettes in the still air of her chambers, the missing articles of clothing, et cetera. If she did, she said nothing; and Peronette went undisciplined. This went on through late July and the first weeks of August; and all the while I was Peronette’s constant companion—ostensibly, her tutor.
Of course, our tutorials were a sham. “Peronette,” I would say, “your aunt worries that you may fall behind in September, when regular study resumes.”
“September?” she would adjoin. “God help me…God help us all if I’m here come September!”
And though I tried in earnest, for a short while at least, I could not discipline Peronette’s mind. Let alone her behavior. Often in the course of a lesson—held outside, weather permitting—it would occur to me that I might address a squirrel or stone with equal effect.
She had no use for history: “the mere exploits of the long dead.” Regarding penmanship: “I never wrote a word I could not read.” Mathematics, she said, was for merchants. Greek and Latin hurt her head; and German rendered the tongue obscene. Her written French was passable, almost good; her spoken French was crisp, elegant, and correct, and her voice mellifluous.
The tutoring went on with little progress. Mid-exercise, she’d up and run toward the shore or someplace, anyplace, leaving her books open to the elements. A session in which I held her attention for a half hour was a raging success, after which I too would be tempted to retire for the day. Miraculously, Peronette often performed well on examinations. Perhaps she listened more intently than she let on; perhaps she studied. More likely she cheated. Regardless, I would be quite relieved at these occasional successes, for I feared constantly that I would be summoned yet again by the Mother Superior, who’d relieve me of my charge. This, of course, never happened. Would that it had.
I should say that I knew Peronette offended, was disliked and envied. I knew she was willful, rude, grossly inconsiderate of others. She had a talent for such. Still, as she seemed to like me, I loved her.
Enfin, I was helpless before Peronette. I did as I was told. Often, after a day in her company, under her command, I would burn with shame at what I’d done. Never the truest of believers, I would then spend hours in the chapel beggi
ng forgiveness, for Peronette as well as myself, for all that we had indulged in. As is always the case, the progression from bad to worse was quick. I too entered Mother Marie’s rooms, lounged about there without permission. I too smoked Spanish cigarettes and drank cognac—discovered beneath layers of bed linens, buried deep in a trunk whose lock we broke—until I was light-headed. I too rummaged through the splendid, secular wardrobe Mother Marie kept.
The end began on a beautiful late-summer day. Peronette had been at C——but a few weeks. Bees droned about the convent grounds in pursuit of their queen; so too did the girls move in their constant, ordered allegiance to Sister Claire de Sazilly. The clouds hung low and seemingly motionless in the sky that day, the day I followed Peronette into her aunt’s rooms, as I had countless times before. This was the time of year when rain showers come quickly at midday; a quarter hour of rainfall, often less, and all the while the sun continues to shine. Such a storm was expected that day: the heat of the day simply had to break.
Peronette and I had repaired to the Mother Superior’s rooms. Such was the routine we’d established—no more than a half hour of study couched in two or more hours of idleness, during which we’d often hie to the Mother Superior’s rooms while she, in her office, saw to the secular affairs of the house, such as they were. In recent days, I’d realized that Peronette was bored; it seemed she was begging to be caught, leaving the door to our refuge ajar, wearing the Mother Superior’s rings to mass, unmaking her bed…. The games we played in the room had been fun enough for me, and indeed they still were—just being in Peronette’s presence was enough for me—but it was the danger of detection that thrilled Peronette. Consequently, she grew ever more bold. I waited, worriedly, for what was next…. And then, that day, as we lay across Mother Marie’s bed, sated, smoking, giddy from an imagined excess of liquor, listless in the late-day heat, attendant upon the rain, Peronette had an idea.
“Get up,” said she. “Quickly.”