by Liza Wieland
If only, Louise repeats.
Another Becket play, Margaret says. I hear it. Just what the world needs!
Please, Margaret! Louise says. She’s on vacation.
I am, Elizabeth says. Marianne Moore says she’s amazed by my life of leisure.
The crypt is partly Carolingian, the guide tells them. There’s some music in that. She wishes she could stop counting syllables every time this man speaks and just listen for the information.
The Cistercians had an abbey at Fontenay, which is still mostly intact but hidden deep in the woods, away from the château, though the royals engaged the monks to keep their doves and their hunting dogs. It was a noisy, smelly place, even the scriptorium, where manuscripts were copied. It was overrun with animals, all crowded together close to a stone fireplace where monks could warm their chilled hands. In the Romanesque style, Margaret tells them, so no decoration. Like a pure heart or the souls everyone strives for. Monks slept in rows on straw in a long, unheated room. The ceiling arches above like ribs inside the belly of a whale. Each monk dreams he’s Jonah. Forty separate pleas and rescues cloud the air at night.
In Semur, they climb an old road above the town to its Notre-Dame, to meet first a stony doubting Thomas in a tympanum over the north doorway.
Inside, the eye is drawn first up to the stained-glass windows. Representing the guilds, Margaret reads. Elizabeth stares for a long time at a butcher in a red tunic (so the blood won’t show), his gleaming white axe raised behind his head. The animal before him gazes out as if to say, I know, I know. You do what you have to do, but must it always be this way?
The cathedral at Vézelay, the guidebook says, is believed to house Mary Magdalene’s femur. The English explanation in the crypt reads, once thought to be.
Outside the crypt, Louise stops suddenly, grasps Elizabeth’s sleeve.
Look at this, she says. It’s so . . . female.
Oh my, Elizabeth says. I see.
But, she thinks, this is how a man would be looking. What a man would be thinking. The stone, the marble highly polished, inviting. Perspective leads visitors into the dark, round mystery of the reliquary. You want to rush inside, bury yourself. The very thing you want most, need most, whatever it is, must be hidden there. The thought makes her warm and flushed. The porches, the folds of stone to be passed through first. Smooth and gleaming wetly in this light. And always the question: What will you find there, what transforming ecstasy? Maybe the bones of the Magdalene will magically knit back together.
A priest hurries toward them, his face red with exertion.
Les femmes sont interdites, the priest is saying.
Women are forbidden? Louise says. That’s idiotic. Stupide!
He grasps Louise roughly by the arm and leads her out of the crypt.
Va te faire foutre, he says in a whisper so violent Elizabeth hears it as a shout.
* * *
In the car, they are too stunned at first to speak. Louise leans forward and rests her head on the steering wheel. After a minute, she says quietly, He told me to go fuck myself.
Sorry, Margaret, she says. The rest of the country hasn’t been like this.
We can go back to Paris, I guess, Elizabeth says.
Not yet, Margaret says. He’s just one person.
* * *
In Dijon, Margaret discovers an English-language bookshop.
That might be sort of a comfort for a while, she says.
Louise says she would rather take a walk.
Margaret and Elizabeth begin with Travel, which is beside the door. Baedekers with their cranky observations, walking guides, some French history mixed in. Belloc’s The Path to Rome, D. H. Lawrence on Sardinia, Morton on England, Halliburton. Small leather volumes that would fit nicely in their pockets. They move farther into the store, which is surprisingly deep, a series of small windowless rooms lit by soft bulbs in metal cages that sway as a breeze moves through the shop.
Where are the coal miners? Margaret says.
Or is it a subway car? Elizabeth says.
A subway bookstore. What a good idea. Maybe there could be coffee service, a bar car open in the afternoons.
Margaret stands a few feet away, wrestling large art books off and onto the shelves. Just to be near her is soothing, almost as it was in college.
On the shelf marked Poetry, Elizabeth spies Miss Moore’s first book and opens it. It’s signed To Harriet from Mummy. A little darkness falls at the edge of Elizabeth’s vision. Mothers give volumes of poetry to their daughters. Life in another universe. The only logical thing to do is buy the book.
She carries the book to the front of the store. The bookseller brushes glittering motes of dust off the cover.
I hope you don’t mind it’s used, he says.
Not at all, Elizabeth tells him. I like for books to have an afterlife.
So do I, he says. Obviously.
He glances around the shop. There is a kind of emptiness in his face, familiar, paper waiting to be darkened by words.
It was actually my mother’s idea, he says. As I wasn’t much for business or sports.
Nor am I, Elizabeth says.
She watches as he lifts sheet after sheet of white tissue from beneath the counter, then scissors and tape. His long, pale fingers work slowly with little flourishes, as if he were handling a needle and thread, as if the finished product were to be a wedding dress rather than a wrapped book.
There, he says, offering the parcel with both hands. No charge.
But of course I’ll pay.
I insist. He winks. What Mother doesn’t know won’t hurt her.
I see, Elizabeth says. I am a conspirator.
You are. And I hope you will come back and conspire again.
Outside and across the road, someone has put in a bench in the shade, next to an overgrown garden.
Louise appears, fighting gravity, walking stiff legged, like a cripple, so as not to hurtle downhill. She stops and holds up her hands, palms open, thumbs splayed as if to frame a picture. Elizabeth realizes she and Margaret have placed themselves just so, framed by nasturtiums and roses.
You two make a lovely composition, Louise says. Very calm.
She sits down beside them. You can’t quite get to the top, she says. There’s a church and a very large house. Of course a priest’s.
Her eyes fill with tears.
I hate him, too, Elizabeth says.
Louise nods. Priests ought not to be so damn stupid, she says. Especially not in France.
One more cathedral, Margaret says. Even I have had about enough.
What have you got there? Louise takes the white paper parcel, peers through the sheets of tissue. You visit a shop you have at home and buy a book you already own.
Miss Moore will like knowing she’s been abroad, Elizabeth says.
I think this would all be quite too much for Miss Moore, Louise says. I think the circus is about all the abroad she can take.
It’s true. Miss Moore would be appalled and frightened. Hitler, all the uncertain certainty of war. Something awful is lying in the shadows, in wait, some bloodied, menacing, monstrous thing that no one can even imagine.
And so in the center of Dijon, on the façade of yet another Notre-Dame, they touch the owl, which is supposed to bring good luck.
But it most certainly does not.
At three o’clock, Louise declares they must return to their wayward lives in Paris, even without redemption. She decides to follow smaller roads through the fields as much as they can and then return to the A6 at Auxerre. The windows are down, but it’s quiet in the car. Louise drives, consulting the map at each crossroads. Beside her, Margaret leans out the window and lets the wind toss her hair. Elizabeth dozes and wakes, having dreamed in the geometry of arches and porticoes. The word narthex comes to her as if a species of wingless bird, its sudden appearance a messenger from the spiritual world. The fields they pass make patterns like tablecloths and counterpanes, and that seems beautifully
logical: corn and wheat from these fields lead to the table. The work of harvesting leads to sleep. This idea is just spinning out to resolution when Louise rounds a curve, and a large car swoops past from behind. The road is too narrow, and Louise veers too far to the right. The wheels start to slide on the sandy shoulder, and Louise tries to correct, but the sand gives them no traction. The car turns over, spills them out, then bumps upright and stops. Quickly and quietly, a moment of flying (later, they will wonder at the complete silence of it), and then the world fallen on its side. Elizabeth scrambles to her feet and so does Louise, but Margaret doesn’t move. Her eyes are open, blinking against the sunlight. She says the word what, but without inflection. Elizabeth sees it before Louise does, Margaret’s right arm, severed above the wrist, pulsing blood into the sand.
Louise runs toward the field across the road, yelling help in English and in French. Two men look up, drop the hoe, the rake, and sprint toward them. When they see what’s happened, one swears loudly and turns pale, but the other tells him Non! and yanks the handkerchief from around his throat, kneels beside Margaret, grasps her bleeding arm, and fashions a tourniquet just above the wound. This all happens so fast it seems magical, time folded in upon itself. The large car has returned. The driver loads Margaret into the back seat, Louise climbs in, and they speed off, back to Auxerre, five miles away, where there is a doctor. Elizabeth stays with their car.
I am thinking about time, she says out loud, to no one.
For a few minutes, the road is perfectly empty, the air still. Elizabeth does not look at anything, can’t really see anything. A delivery van approaches, slows. The driver asks a question, Ça va? Qu’est-ce qui s’est passé? Elizabeth can barely answer. Accident. The word is the same in French, probably in every language. More vehicles arrive and stop. Everyone wants to know, to help, to take her somewhere else, away from the smashed car and the blood pooled in the sand. It’s almost the solstice, so the sky will stay light for a long time. This part of the road is on a little rise—she can look over the fields and think the words tablecloth, counterpane, brickwork, wood grain. Once, when the road is empty, she calls Margaret’s name.
What is wrong with me? she says to no one. Margaret isn’t lost! Margaret isn’t hiding somewhere nearby!
After some time, maybe an hour, the large car returns. The man tells her they will drive to Auxerre. Elizabeth asks if Margaret is all right, but he either does not hear her or does not understand. His silence is terrifying, nearly unbearable.
The hospital in Auxerre is horrifying, primitive, unclean. Blood streaks the floor of the examination room. Elizabeth recalls the stained-glass butcher and his hatchet. Margaret’s severed hand is rolled up in white gauze and left on the lip of a gray stone basin. Elizabeth is afraid someone will throw it away. She stands beside the basin, her own hand cupped around Margaret’s. If necessary, she will put the hand into her pocketbook for safekeeping.
A priest hovers outside the treatment room until the doctor invites him in. His cassock sweeps the bloodstained floor. He tells them in broken English that he has heard the news and has come as fast as he could. He asks what has become of the driver. Louise steps forward and begins to explain. The priest puts his hand quickly to his forehead as if he has a sudden pain there. His eyes are a frightening shade of blue, like a cold, northern sea. He surveys the three of them—Louise, Margaret, Elizabeth—and then he says the accident occurred because a woman was driving the car. Louise tries to explain: a larger car forced them off the road. There was nothing they could do. The priest shakes his head, makes the sign of the cross on Margaret’s chest, anoints the bandage on her severed right hand, blesses the surgeon who will perform the reattachment.
Mrs. Miller’s scream, there on the dock at Le Havre, sounds to Elizabeth like an echo from a long way off, from the other side of the ocean, from another country. Questions of meaning and injury swirl between them: What happened? What is the hurt? Can it be soothed? Whose fault is it? And who is asking these questions? Elizabeth wonders. Is she asking? Or is it Mrs. Miller? Or both of them at once? And then Mrs. Miller faints dead away, into Elizabeth’s arms. A dockworker hauling lines nearby helps Elizabeth lower Mrs. Miller onto the ground, where she lies at their feet, thin and pale and silent. The man says he can stay as long as he’s needed. His lips move. He produces a pouch of tobacco and rolling papers from his shirt pocket but seems not to know what to do next.
Someone somewhere is mending a ship, an ironworker, a blacksmith with salt on his skin, in his hair. They can hear the clang of mallet on metal. The two sounds, Mrs. Miller’s scream and the ironworker’s hammering, fuse in the air, hang there.
But minutes after screaming and fainting, Mrs. Miller is suddenly all right. More than all right. She is in charge. She opens her eyes, smiles at the dockworker, thanks him in perfect French. She stands, looks around, alert as a sandpiper, calls for a porter. Mrs. Miller is accustomed to people coming when she calls them, and she is rarely disappointed. This seems to Elizabeth an astonishing quality—in a mother or anyone else. The porter calls a taxi, and Mrs. Miller puts Elizabeth in first, behind the driver, then walks around to the other side. She asks in her perfect French for the train to Paris. In the station, she pays the fare. She wonders why Elizabeth only bought a one-way ticket.
* * *
Every time, even years later, when Elizabeth arrives in or departs from Le Havre, she will hear that peculiar bell of hammer and whistle of scream. Even after the British and Americans bomb the city and port into rubble and ashes and blood, after Auguste Perret builds it up again, including the massive church of Saint Joseph, which points its large accusing finger of a steeple straight up at the sky, Elizabeth will hear Mrs. Miller’s scream.
* * *
During the three-hour ride to Paris, Mrs. Miller asks odd and even ghoulish questions. Did Margaret cry very much? How large was the scar? Was the surgeon good? Experienced? Would Margaret now be a cripple? Elizabeth says she doesn’t remember about the crying or the surgeon and doesn’t know about the future. As for the scar—it was awful. Mrs. Miller would soon see for herself, and she may faint again.
Finally, near Saint-Denis, Mrs. Miller leans her head back. Tears run out of the corners of her eyes. She pats the seat beside her like a blind person, finds Elizabeth’s hand, holds it for a moment.
I’m so glad, she whispers. I’m so glad she’s alive. I’m so glad you were with her. You must move with her to my apartment. She will need you to be close by. You’re very dear to her, you know. You always have been.
Back in Paris, Elizabeth receives a very odd letter from Clara:
Dear Elizabeth,
I was very sorry to hear about your friend’s accident (you know all news of Americans reaches me eventually). I understand you were also involved but suffered no great harm. Physically, I mean. And yet, violent events can also harm us mentally and spiritually. I believe you are back in Paris. I would very much like to see you again for coffee or luncheon or really any such engagement as you might have time for. I trust you are staying until your friend can travel. I have missed your company, and I have very important matters to discuss with you. Remember that I had mentioned a trip to Normandy. I believe that the timing would be helpful for you.
With all good wishes,
C. L. de Chambrun
Elizabeth shows the letter to Louise.
She would make me very nervous, Louise says. She seems quite fond of you.
She’s sort of grown on me. She’s a mass of contradictions.
It’s your great gift, you know. One of them. You give people lots of room to be themselves.
I don’t know what that means.
And you are so morally attractive to someone like the comtesse de Chambrun, someone with a name. No tantrums, no indiscretions.
Not at least where anyone can see.
Within a week, Elizabeth realizes that Margaret’s mother is a problem.
Two problems, really, Louise says. She pretends
not to blame me, but she does. I can tell every time I walk into the room. Pretending not to is worse than just saying it. And she’s scaring Margaret with all her worry and attention. Margaret needs to rest.
Elizabeth knows, however, of another problem, the worst one: Margaret will never again be able to use her right hand. It’s obvious in the peculiar, loose curl of the fingers, as if they’re about to grasp a pencil, frozen in anticipation. No one will talk about this, but Elizabeth understands that Margaret wants to. Margaret wants to know so she can begin to live accordingly. But everyone—doctors, nurses, her mother, Louise—assures her. No, no, dearest. You’re going to be fine. You’re going to draw and write long letters and all of that. Margaret looked at them first with disgust, but now she simply turns her back to them, faces the sofa cushions or the wall.
One morning, before dawn, Elizabeth sits down on the sofa, lifts Margaret’s feet into her lap. Margaret tries to move away, but Elizabeth holds on. She strokes the paint on Margaret’s toenails, a bright coral, the same shade Mrs. Miller wears. Margaret relaxes a bit, gazes up at Elizabeth.
Well? she says.
Elizabeth rubs Margaret’s feet. I’m going to tell you. You need to know.
I’m going to lose the hand. Is that it?
Elizabeth nods.
Lose it how though? Lose it like—amputate?
No, sweet, no. No, not that. Heavens, no. But function . . .
Elizabeth cups her hands around Margaret’s feet, keeping them warm, keeping them whole, attached.
The room goes still around them, as if time has been sucked away because there’s no place for it now. What’s time good for anyway, why is it worth having if you can’t do what you want with it? Elizabeth knows they are both listening for some sound that will contradict the truth of what she’s just said: Margaret’s mother, the doctor, a car horn.