by Rumer Godden
Another time it was a toy tricycle. ‘But Luigi, it will be two or three years before Giovanni-Battista Giuliano can ride that! He’s only nine months old.’
Luigi was downcast. Then he brightened. ‘At least he can hear the bell,’ and then he asked anxiously, ‘Do you think Vivi will laugh at me?’
‘He’s besotted,’ said Marcelline after he had gone.
‘Only happy and proud,’ but Marcelline shook her head. ‘She doesn’t look after him. Did you see that great rent in his shirt, and I swear it had never been ironed – and I bet our Mademoiselle Vivi doesn’t look after that child.’
‘Madame, your baby was crying and crying last night.’
‘Oh?’ It was snooping old Madame Robert from next door.
‘Crying and crying.’
‘So what?’
‘So I think … you don’t by any chance go out and leave him alone?’
‘You don’t by any chance have the money to lend me for a baby-sitter? Or perhaps you would like to baby-sit yourself?’ and I went closer and closer until Madame Robert backed away and I slammed the door. Then I sat down at the table and cried.
Luigi was cross because I forgot to water the geraniums. Some of them died. I hadn’t washed the Morpion’s napkins either, so they ran out and I let him go without them and the mess was worse. His bottom’s all red; I put my face cream on it but it must have stung because he screamed. I nearly put the pillow over his face. If only Luigi had let me leave him with Mamma.
And I? Do they expect me to stay here in this hot mingy common little room these summer evenings? Down in the square the little tables outside the cafés are full; the people walk up and down. I can hear talking and laughing and singing. I lean on the window sill and look out but nobody comes up this hole of a street. There are soldiers in the barracks at the end. I go out, down the path and lean on the gate. One of them looks out and waves.
With the money Madame Lise sent the Morpion last week I have bought myself a new suit. I’m wearing it now. Luigi won’t be back till Friday. The Morpion’s crying, but I can’t hear. Let Madame Robert hear. I’m going out.
Next time Luigi came Lise had asked him, ‘Do you have to go so far?’ He was bound for Hamburg.
‘I have to go where I’m sent.’ Lise thought she saw a shadow of worry on that ingenuously happy face. ‘I don’t like it, Madame. Vivi’s so young – but I’m not my own master.’
‘If you had your own lorry …’
‘Ah! If I had that …’
‘I sold my mother’s diamond brooch,’ Lise told Soeur Marie Alcide, ‘the only valuable thing of my own I had, and gave Luigi a lorry. They used that little fact at the trial.’
The sisters said the rosary in chapel after Vespers but in silence, each making her own interpretation, thinking her own thoughts. Lise knelt with the others but never touched the beads at her girdle; she kept her hands under her scapular.
‘I think that’s downright rude,’ said Bella.
They were in the last year of their noviceship; for the final six months they would go to one of the other houses of Béthanie to try community life; they would be separated and Bella obviously thought she should speak now.
‘Rude?’ Lise was dumbfounded. ‘I have been rude? When? To whom?’
‘To Our Lady. Every day.’
‘Soeur Marie Isabelle!’ But Bella was not abashed.
‘Yes – every day. She didn’t set herself up …’
‘You mean I do,’ Lise interrupted. ‘Just because I choose to make a private prayer.’
‘Private – at that time – as if you didn’t need her. Oh Lise!’ Bella used the single name, familiar between them. ‘What you miss! It’s a wonderful prayer; it holds everything. Think, it’s for an ignoramus like me and for someone as learned as – as the Pope. Our Lady makes everything plain, which is marvellous, because she didn’t say much. In all the Gospels she says less than two hundred words. I have counted them.’
‘Saint Joseph said none at all.’
‘Saint Joseph was a great saint but she is the saint of saints, and when she did speak, what words.’ Bella’s eyes were brimming. ‘Think! “They have no wine,” she told him. It wasn’t a matter of life or death – it was just a party – but she knew the shame you feel if the food or drink runs out, and she dared to ask him, who could stop a storm, make waves still, raise people from the dead, to do that little little thing. That’s what she does for all of us when we don’t dare, are too frightened, bewildered, to ask for ourselves. Even when he seemed to put her down, she knew he didn’t mean it. “Do whatever he tells you,” she told the servants – and that’s what she has taught me,’ said Bella. ‘“Do whatever he tells you” I say that to myself twenty times a day.’
‘But Bella, one can still honour her without the rosary.’
‘Seems to me like saying you honour a poet and can’t read his poetry,’ said blunt Bella.
Lise went to Soeur Raymonde. ‘Ma Mère, is it valid?’
If the Responsable had noticed Lise during those evening fifteen minutes, she had not commented. ‘Bella only said it for my sake,’ said Lise.
‘Of that I’m sure. Dear Bella, she’s like a cornucopia, overflowing with love and concern. One day she’ll make a great nun. It can be a little like Niagara at present, but sometimes we need a Bella. She’s right – and she’s wrong,’ said Soeur Raymonde. ‘It isn’t a question of the rosary; for some people it holds the whole teaching of God, of the Gospels and the church and meditation; for others it seems a part of what they call “Catholic treacle.’”
‘There’s none of that here,’ said Lise, which was true. What statues there were at Béthanie were placed in the garden, ‘as reminders in our work.’ The chapels were refreshingly bare; only the light burned before the tabernacle, or candles by the monstrance. ‘The saints are in our hearts and minds where Our Lady surely has a special place. It does us good to remember her faith, long suffering and patience.’ Lise winced as she thought of how she had answered Bella.
‘And her compassion,’ added Soeur Raymonde. ‘Simeon was right when he said a sword would pierce her soul. There are plenty of swords,’ said Soeur Raymonde, and, ‘I can guess, Soeur Marie Lise, some have stabbed you, but …’
‘But what?’
‘Just “but”.’ Soeur Raymonde was doing what she always does, thought Lise, putting you back on your own feet.
‘Just “but”,’ and Soeur Raymonde said, ‘Think about it, Sister. Think about Bella too,’ and Lise was silent, remembering something Bella had told her; Bella had always had battles, fierce ones, against herself. ‘But there was one that was worst of all,’ Bella had told Lise. ‘I don’t know about you, but I had to wait two years before they took me at Saint Etienne; they sent me back into the world though I spent weekends with them; if I hadn’t I should have gone out of my mind. They had found me work as help in the house of a doctor’s family. I was lucky to have it, but I had been in college – no, it wasn’t what you think,’ said Bella. ‘I didn’t mind what work I did, but we black college girls and boys had sworn we would never work for whites, no matter how good and kind, and I was breaking that promise. Béthanie taught me I had to, because it was a wrong promise. There is no difference between colours,’ said Bella firmly. ‘Of course not – it’s we who make the difference, not God.’
Then is there a stumbling block for everyone? thought Lise and, ‘I’m not as big as Bella,’ she said aloud. ‘Ma Mère, what am I to do?’
‘Be as big as Bella,’ said Soeur Raymonde and, in Bella’s parlance, ‘give over.’
‘What if I can’t?’ said Lise.
Lise had had a custom, ‘a superstition you could call it,’ since she was a girl; if she were in a dilemma and did not know what to do, she took a book – it must be a classic, but preferably the Bible – and shutting her eyes, opened it and put her finger on the page. ‘It’s probably superstitious, but I still do it,’ she told Soeur Raymonde afterwards. She did it now
and, ‘O, ye stiff neck!’ read Lise.
That serves you right, she told herself and could not help laughing and, in chapel, kneeling by Bella, she kept her eyes open, her hands down, and said the decades. She still did not touch her beads but one early morning, walking in the domaine, she found herself saying the first of the ‘joyful mysteries’ on her fingers. After all, I have ten fingers – how useful, and, ‘Fiat,’ whispered Lise.
In this last novice year, little by little, the discipline tightened: permissions, excuses, the indulgence towards faults, were slowly withdrawn. More was expected, And we can give more, thought Lise, as if the very deprivations gave strength. After all, we have to stand on our own feet, discipline ourselves. One can’t have a Responsable for ever.
There were, of course, days, weeks even, that could only be described as glum, when the weather was dismal and nothing seemed any good, only hollow and purposeless. What am I doing here, Lise would ask herself, treading round and round? I might as well be taking exercise in the prison courtyard. ‘Well, you did that to get fresh air and health,’ she answered herself. ‘It wasn’t purposeless.’ A sensible answer but it did not make her feel better; sometimes, indeed, there was almost rebellion. I can’t help feeling I’m not as humble as this, doing a servant’s work.
‘Here we are all servants,’ Soeur Raymonde would have said.
It was in such times that Lise learnt the meaning of community. ‘Ours is not a silence of separation but of communion.’ Working alongside Bella in the turnip plot, seeing her stop and wipe the sweat from her forehead under the handkerchief they wore for manual work – the drops of sweat stood out pale on the dark skin – and hearing Bella swear to herself: ‘How did I ever damn think I should come to this!’ and then look up at Lise with a broad smile, had an odd power. ‘If our sisters can, we can,’ said Bella, Soeur Marie Isabelle – not at all Soeur Bella de Belzébub – and we could, thought Lise.
It was on the evening of one such hopeless day that Lise escaped to walk in the garden – to walk and pace, even in the confine of the domaine, helped her mood of helplessness, as it always had – ‘Oh, your long legs!’ Patrice would moan – and on this summer evening, Lise, already soothed, had stopped to pull a stalk of lavender and rub it between her fingers, lavender with its sensible earth-and-spice smell. How blessed I am, she thought, to come before I get too old and live in the country!
There was a butterfly hovering over the bushes, an ordinary cabbage white, but, watching the fluttering wings, the antennae searching, Lise was struck as if by a miracle, the everyday miracle of a butterfly that has gone through its stages of growth. Isn’t that happening to us? thought Lise. We are getting a power we didn’t know we had, any more than a grub knows, when it spins its chrysalis, that one day it will come out with wings. How can a grub know it has wings?
No wonder, thought Lise, standing in the summer evening light, that the old-time Chinese sages thought a butterfly the symbol of the soul. Slowly, and she was sure of it now, she was coming from the chrysalis; her wings, still creased and crumpled, were unfolding imperceptibly, but unfolding.
One day they might even fly.
6
‘I, Soeur Marie Lise du Rosaire, now vow and promise Poverty, Chastity and Obedience to God, the blessed Virgin Mary, to our holy Father Dominic and to you, Very Reverend Mother, Soeur Marie Emmanuel, Mother-General of the Congregation of Dominican Sisters, called Béthanie, and to those who will succeed you in this same charge, according to the Rule of Saint Augustine and the Constitutions of the Congregation of the Third Order of Saint Dominic for three years.’
Lise knelt before Soeur Marie Emmanuel, Mother-General, one hand in hers, the other laid on the book of the Constitutions, which Soeur Marie Emmanuel held open on her lap. These were what mattered: the hand in hers for loyalty and absolute submission – and the Constitutions; Lise had read them from cover to cover – they held the whole vision and rule of life at Béthanie. These were the bastions on which the Congregation was built. ‘As Christ … is called the corner stone, so also are his members called stones,’ ‘… lively stones.’ And now two new stones – pebbles, thought Lise – she and Bella, were being added in this quiet ceremony in which they took their temporary vows in the chapel before the priest and the community.
‘It seems queer – when you reach your heart’s desire,’ said Lise, ‘that it should seem so simple, steady, almost logical.’
‘I have heard of girls fainting with relief when they were accepted,’ said Bella with fellow feeling.
‘I don’t think there’s need for that,’ said calm Soeur Raymonde. ‘As Soeur Marie Lise said, it is logical. After all, you have been tested for a long time.’
‘Seven years,’ said Lise.
‘It’s hardly likely you would get as far as that, or that we should let you, without it being more than a hope and, in any case, if God has chosen you, he will admit you.’
‘If not?’ Bella was still apprehensive.
‘Not.’ There was no doubt about that. ‘But I don’t believe he would let a handful of nuns, however wise, turn him from his purpose. It might not be just yet,’ Soeur Raymonde had said, ‘but I’m sure it will happen,’ and, mercifully, it had.
‘Of course you may not be ready at the end of three years to take the next step, Profession, your final vows, the vow until death,’ said Soeur Raymonde, ‘though you can renew these simple vows for another three years, and again and again, but you are nuns now. God bless you.’
‘I think he has,’ said Lise.
They had not met the new Mother-General, Soeur Marie Emmanuel, until two months ago when they had been called to the office she kept in the novitiate to be told whether they were admitted to take these vows or no. Lise had expected someone elderly, slightly grand and dignified, though she knew Soeur Marie Emmanuel had only been elected last year. The dignity was there, but here was a slight woman, hardly older than herself, with a soft creamy skin set off by a black veil and brown eyes that could be amused as well as penetrating. They were amused when Bella, getting up, clumsy in her emotion, caught her heel in the hem of her habit and, ‘Merde!’, the Bella word came out, though she clapped her hand over her mouth in consternation.
Not to be with Bella! From now on they would be, in truth, what they had been by courtesy, Soeur Marie Isabelle, Soeur Marie Lise. Not to have Soeur Raymonde! But once it had been, Not to have Soeur Théodore. ‘I’m sure we shall meet again,’ said Soeur Raymonde. ‘It’s remarkable how in Béthanie our paths separate, then suddenly cross or meet again.’
And so Lise came to Belle Source.
This house of Béthanie was in Normandy, standing inland among apple orchards that spread in a basin of low hills. Part of the convent was once a château, the Château de Lanvay; workrooms, two floors of bedrooms and a chapel had been built on, but it still had its gatehouse, now used as a modest hôtellerie, and its spreading domaine, part of it a moat where ducks and geese swam; in the garden was an enchanting small pavilion, where once the Comte de Lanvay had held his notorious midnight suppers. The sisters used it if any of them needed a day retreat and, if one of them died, it became a chapel of rest where she could lie in dignity on a candle-lit bier until her burial. ‘Yes, it’s a holy place now,’ said the Prioress as she showed it to Lise.
‘So it’s places as well as people you convert,’ said Lise.
‘God converts,’ corrected the Prioress.
It seemed to Lise that a blessing lay on the whole of Belle Source. ‘It’s odd,’ she told the Prioress, ‘This is the kind of house I have wanted to live in all my life, and never thought I could.’ Everywhere the eye looked was beauty, something she had not expected. Saint Etienne and the novitiate, though well designed, were functional buildings. Here the stucco walls of the château had faded to a warm cream-yellow while the slates of the mansarded roof were dove grey. The walls of the whole domaine were of old French brick, rosy behind the espaliered fruit trees; not a foot of space was wasted. The
once-upon-a-time gardener’s cottage where, now, the garden tools were kept, was inset in the walls and matched them as did another cottage, hidden behind a yew hedge, the aumônier’s house to which, one day, in that Year of the Rabbit, 1976, Marc was to come.
The big vegetable garden was set out in orderly rows. Soeur Fiacre, fittingly named, because Saint Fiacre was patron of gardeners, would not permit a single weed. Separated from the orchards by a pond, there was a paddock for the cows, pens for the pheasants, while rabbits were bred for sale. ‘We make pennies where we can and breeders pay handsome prices for our pheasant eggs and plump rabbits as they do for our Jersey calves,’ Soeur Thecla, who was the farmer, told Lise. The cows were Bienvenue, Bibiche, Blanchette, and Joyeuse, born on the Feast of the Annunciation. ‘We have a better strain even than the famous herd at Solesmes,’ Soeur Thecla said with satisfaction. ‘The monks come to us to buy their calves.’
As in every house of Béthanie, besides the nuns’ individual skills there was always a general employment for the outside commercial world – ‘so as to bring in a modicum of money we can at least count on,’ said the Prioress. One house sent out circulars for an insurance company; another supplied a Paris shop with handworked tapestries and petit-point for upholstering chairs and stools. At Belle Source, First Communion robes were made for boys and girls in fine white linen or muslin.
Belle Source, too, made cider, a specially sought-after cider from a recipe handed down by a certain Soeur Marie Dominique who got it from her father, a Normandy farmer; she had been one of the few sisters of Béthanie whose ancestry was known.
Lise helped in the cider presses, the tending of the trees, the picking of the apples. She helped too in the laundry and in the kitchen. ‘Marcelline’s work,’ Patrice would have answered.