Gilman, Dorothy - A Nun in the Closet

by Dorothy Gilman

  Sister Hyacinthe stared at the tableau in front of her in astonishment. Praying conspicuously on the steps, and in full raiment, was Father Daniel O'Malley from the church around the corner: he had been kneeling there for two hours on a pneumatic pillow. Distributed up and down the stairs, but very carefully so not to obscure Father O'Malley, stood Sister Isabelle's contingent from Community House, a respectable and conservative group of priests and nuns carrying signs that read JESUS PICKED BEANS TOO. IS GATESVILLE GODLESS? LOVE THY NEIGHBOR DON T JAIL HIM.

  At the bottom of the steps Sister Isabelle had placed her group from the House of Hope, slightly less washed, younger and considerably more militant. Their placards read UP SHERIFF MCGEE, GATESVILLE OR BERCHTESGADEN? and IF THEY'RE GOOD ENOUGH TO PICK YOUR BEANS THEY'RE GOOD ENOUGH TO WALK YOUR STREETS.

  Facing them in the opposite corner stood a small shabby cluster of migrant workers led by an exalted Melida who carried a sign WE'RE HUMAN TOO.

  To Brill, who had been supervising and observing this phenomenon for several hours, it was all very readable, one of the more modest protests in which he had involved himself but nearly perfect in its spontaneity and indignation. As if on cue he watched the Baptist minister enter from right stage and stride up the stairs to join Father O'Malley on his knees. A few moments of silent prayer and the two men rose in time to greet Rabbi Schwartz, and as they gravely conferred together on the steps the Episcopalian minister rushed breathlessly up to join them, a little late because he had been golfing. A flashbulb exploded on the far left: the photographer from the Gatesville Courier had arrived, and Brill hazarded the guess that the mayor would follow on his heels.

  Actually a popcorn vendor arrived first, but only a minute before the mayor's car made its way down the street and Hubie Johnson ordered the crowds to one side. Looking appropriately harassed and concerned, the mayor hurried up the stairs and vanished into the court house.

  "It's going very well," said Alfie, busy explaining the rituals of protest to Sister Hyacinthe.

  "It's thrilling," she said, her eyes shining.

  The climax held within it all the grandness of a summit conference; after fifteen minutes a janitor came out to set up a microphone on the portico, and after perhaps half an hour-perfectly timed because the popcorn vendor had run out of popcorn-the two doors of the court house slowly opened and the four pastors filed out, looking pleased. The janitor followed carrying four chairs, and then returned with four more chairs, and the pastors seated themselves, their faces turned toward the door. Out of the shadows emerged Uncle Joe, propped up by a beaming mayor who led him, terrified, to a chair. A radiant Sister John followed, and then Naomi, looking amused. The crowd cheered wildly although Brill doubted if many knew what or whom they were cheering. The mayor, smiling broadly, stepped forward to the microphone and beckoned Sister John to stand at his side. Of Sheriff McGee there was no sign.

  The mayor began to speak, but since he was running for reelection in the fall the point of his message was delayed by frequent references to Galesville's sense of fair play, its generosity and its warm and neighborly heart with-as garnish-a number of references to himself for keeping the town up to snuff. Eventually, if unctuously, he came to the point: there had been an unhappy misunderstanding here in Galesville, innocent people had been victimized but justice had now been done and Sister John, Miss Witkowski and Mr. Stout were being released from jail. Apologies had been extended and accepted, and the three bore the town no ill will.

  "And I'd like to go on record as saying right here and now," he concluded, "that Galesville is delighted to see the migrant workers in Galesville at any time. In our churches . . . in our stores . . . on our streets."

  Sister John received the mayor's words as a sign clearly sent to her from heaven. He did not mean a word of it, and after only five days out of cloister Sister John knew that he did not mean a word of it, but he had spoken the words publicly and she had no intention of allowing him to forget them. "We are happy to be free again," she said, handed the microphone for a response. "We are equally delighted," she added, smiling at the mayor, "to learn that migrant workers will always, in the future, be welcome in Galesville. In your churches . . . in your stores . . . on your streets. Thank you, Mr. Mayor," she said, and stepped back from the microphone.

  At this point Sister Isabelle signaled her groups to surge up the steps and surround the actors in the drama. It was a perfect denouement, the dropping of a curtain at a crucial punch line. Within minutes the sidewalks emptied and the shoppers returned to the stores, confident that God had somehow been served, for certainly with such a quota of priests, nuns and ministers in view something religious had to have happened in Galesville today.

  13

  "Easy does it, Uncle Joe," said Brill, lifting him out of the van. "Left leg over the-that's it, now the other foot."

  Uncle Joe's feet met solid earth and he straightened up. "Well now," he said in a quavering voice. "Well now . . ." Straightening brought him face to face with Brill and he looked startled. "This is a day the Lord made, young man. Where are we, Melida?"

  "Back at Mr. Eaton's farm, Uncle Joe."

  "Praise the Lord," he said, and with a nod at Sister John grasped his cane and took a step forward. Slowly, with Melida and Alice on either side, he maneuvered down the narrow lane toward a row of cabins under the trees. Beyond, as far as the eye could see, stretched acres of green in the sun, brightened by the colorful shirts and kerchiefs of workers on their knees.

  They turned and climbed back into the van. "I don't think I've told you how beautiful you all look after a night in jail," Sister John said happily. "Who's guarding Sister Ursula?"

  "Bhanjan Singh," said Brill, and turning the van around headed them back toward Fallen Stump Road.

  "I worried terribly about you," confessed Sister Hyacinthe from the rear.

  Sister John turned and gave her a warm smile. "I thought you might but it was quite unnecessary, you know. The hamburgers they sent in were greasy and it's true I didn't sleep a wink last night, but neither had anything to do with being ill-treated. How clever you and Sister Isabelle were," she told Brill. "I had no idea that's how things get done these days."

  "It was nothing," Brill said modestly. "A little blackmail, a touch of chicanery, a few nudges . . . " He turned at their mailbox and drove up past the newly scythed lawn toward the house. "There they are," he said, pointing. "Sitting on chairs in the sun. Wonder how Bhanjan Singh managed that."

  As the van drew to a stop beside the front porch Bhanjan Singh rose, his round face beaming with pleasure. " 'Evening precedes morning and night becomes dawn,' " he said, and moving forward to meet Sister John, he pressed both of her hands in his. "I am so glad to see you safely back. Here also is the letter that arrived for you yesterday. Sister Hyacinthe forgot to take it to you when she left."

  "Thank you, Bhanjan Singh," she said with a glance at the postmark.

  Sister Ursula remained in his chair but his face, had brightened and he waved a hand. "It's a damn lucky day for you," he told her. "How did you like jail?"

  "It radicalized me," she told him. "I'm not sure what the word means but it has an electric sound and I feel electrified."

  "AD or DC?" quipped Alfie.

  "We'll join you," said Sister John, dropping to the ground and arranging her skirts around her. "What are we interrupting?"

  "A celebration of the senses," Sister Ursula told her gloomily. "The sun is the giver of life, he says, and he's also been lecturing me on matter, energy, mass and illusion. Did you know that no problems really exist in the world and that I'm only a prisoner of my thoughts?"

  "Exactly what I've been telling you," Sister John said unfeelingly, and peeled back the flap of her letter.

  "You haven't had any sleep, don't you want to rest first?" Sister Hyacinthe asked her curiously.

  "With so much to be done? Nonsense I'll have a cup of tea later instead. Right now I want to read this; it's from the abbess." Opening the lett
er she scanned it and nodded. "Yes, this is what I wanted to know, I'll read it aloud. Where are you going, Sister Ursula?"

  "You may not be sleepy but I am," he said. "I can hardly keep my eyes open."

  Watching him leave, Bhanjan said with a sigh, "He that will eat the kernel must first crack the nut . . . I fear I was too abstract; it is always so difficult to talk to beginners."

  "Or to people with closed minds," said Alfie. "Read the letter, Sister John."

  "I will," she said, and leaned over it. "First of all the abbess stresses that this information is privileged, and the official records are in Switzerland and so on and so on, but I'll read the important section. She's replying about Sister Emma and she writes: 'I do remember Mother Clothilde saying that at seventeen Sister Emma found herself caring deeply for an older man, a close friend of her family. There was an engagement, a wedding date was set, but a few weeks before the wedding Sister Emma's call to God proved the stronger: she broke off the engagement and entered a nearby convent as novitiate.

  " 'When she came to us some months later-do you remember how sweet and grave and dedicated she was?-the man who loved her tried many times to see her. About him I know nothing,' " continued Sister John, reading, " 'except that Mother Clothilde saw him in her office a number of times, always late at night and secretly. She confided in me, I think, because these were such exhausting interviews, and very troubling to her, for she said the man was alternately stormy, heartbroken, threatening and bitter at losing Sister Emma to God. (How frail human beings can be!) I remember that Mother Clothilde prayed long and hard for the man, and asked me to do the same.

  " 'All this I thought I'd forgotten-it seems so many years ago-but your query has brought it back to me. Other than this Mother Clothilde's files tell me only that Sister Emma was born in Roslyn, Long Island, on June 30, 1933, under the name of Linda Elizabeth Scozzafava, and that she was, as you know, a person of great gentleness and sweetness, may God rest her soul.' "

  "Scozzafava," said Sister Hyacinthe, frowning.

  "Yes, Scozzafava," repeated Sister John, and put down the letter, nodding. "Things begin to fit. It was Mr. Moretti, of course, to whom Sister Emma was engaged to be married."

  "But where have I heard the name Scozzafava before?" asked Alfie.

  "Exactly," said Sister John. "Sheriff McGee mentioned it to us the first evening he came here, he thought the house belonged to a Frank Scozzafava." She added thoughtfully, "And I think we must pray very very hard."

  "Why?" asked Sister Hyacinthe.

  She glanced at Bhanjan Singh and smiled faintly. "Because to tread with impunity upon a tiger's tail, breathless caution is required. I think," she said, "it's time we have a very serious talk. Preferably over a cup of peppermint tea. Shall we go, inside? You see," she added, brushing the grass from her skirts. "I accomplished some very useful thinking in jail, after Sister Isabelle was released, and I reached several conclusions, all of them rather dismaying."

  "Dangerous?" asked Alfie hopefully.

  "Oh, I hope not," she said, "but there may not be much time left to arrange things."

  Once inside she paused and stood looking into the living room as if she'd forgotten what it looked like, then nodded and continued on through the passage to the kitchen. Here she abruptly stopped. "Good heavens, what's been happening here?"

  "Oh, that," said Alfie proudly, "Sister Hyacinthe and I were hanging up mustard to dry."

  "No, no, not that," said Sister John, brushing this aside impatiently. "All of Sister Hyacinthe's rooms look like greenhouses eventually. I mean the pantry."

  At first no one understood what she meant because the pantry looked an oasis of order compared to the kitchen. The late afternoon sun poured through its window, illuminating the wide floor boards, here and there touching a white crock on the shelves and glancing off two loaves of foil-wrapped abbey bread. Then Alfie remembered that the sun ought not to be flooding the pantry because he had boarded up the window. He cried, "Good God, we've been burgled!"

  "But this is not possible," protested Bhanjan Singh. "Sister Ursula and I have been here all afternoon."

  "But outside on the front lawn," pointed out Naomi.

  "What's missing?" asked Brill.

  Sister John walked into the pantry, glanced at the higher shelf and said dryly, "Three containers of sugar."

  "I don't understand," complained Sister Hyacinthe. "Who could have stolen them in broad daylight? Who would have dared pry loose the boards and crawl through the window?"

  "Someone who badly wanted those three jars," said Bill grimly. "Someone who knew that we'd be downtown seeing Sister John and Naomi released, leaving only two of us behind, and someone who knew-or thought-there was cocaine here."

  "But it isn't," pointed out Sister Hyacinthe.

  "No, it isn't but our burglar didn't know that. There's only one person I can think of who fills that bill, or else this house is under continuous surveillance, or-" He leaned over and picked up a small dark object lying on the floor under the window. "This wasn't in the pantry before was it?" he asked. "I think our burglar left a calling card." He handed Sister John a long fat cigar.

  "Sani-Smoke," she said, reading the gold print on the black label. "Made in Zambia, Central Africa. Good heavens the sheriff broke into our pantry?"

  "I don't know who else," Brill said. "He was conspicuously absent from the court house steps this afternoon, he'd know by now-he must-that it was cocaine he took away with him on Thursday and he knows where he found it."

  Sister Hyacinthe, examining the cigar, said dryly, "He must have been carrying it in his back hip pocket again."

  "But a sheriff?" protested Sister John. "The world is falling apart around us and no one screams? A man with his job and reputation? Why would he have done such a thing?"

  Alfie said cheerfully, "Overtaken by a spasm of pernicious greed, I imagine. Selling fifteen pounds of snow on the open market would net him a fortune bigger than his reputation, which isn't all that great anyway, you know."

  Bhanjan Singh said softly, " 'To an ass a thistle is a delicious fruit. The ass eats the thistle. He remains an ass.' "

  "Of course he's an ass but what do we do?" asked Sister Hyacinthe.

  Sister John turned away, her face troubled. "What we must do is make plans," she said, "because if it was the sheriff in our pantry-" Removing a pile of mustard from the chair, she dropped it to the floor and sat down at the kitchen table. "I think it's time to tell you what Sister Hyacinthe and I discovered in the well on the day we arrived. I don't know how much time we have left us, and Sister Hyacinthe and I need your help."

  "But it isn't our secret to tell!" gasped Sister Hyacinthe.

  "You don't feel they can be trusted?" asked Sister John, suddenly grave.

  "Of course they can be trusted but-"

  "I think they can be trusted, too," said Sister John, nodding. "We haven't even finished counting it yet but I know that on Monday morning it simply has to be placed in a safedeposit box, and under no circumstances will I step out of this house without a convoy of people guarding it."

  "Guarding what?" asked Naomi, distributing chunks of goats' cheese.

  "Money. An incredible amount of it, with a great deal more to be counted."

  "Good God, I missed that too?" gasped Alfie.

  "Well, you can't have everything," Sister Hyacinthe told him indignantly. "You found the bug and the secret passage, you can't begrudge us the money and Sister Ursula."

  "It was hidden in the well," pointed out Sister John, as if this explained everything, "and its being there changes all the recommendations I plan to make to the abbess for the use of the property."

  "You're not going to sell?" Brill sounded startled.

  "I expect you'll want to turn it into a retreat," put in Naomi. "Everyone does."

  "No," said Sister John, rising, "no, I don't have a retreat in mind at all." She glanced at her watch. "It's growing late-nearly five o'clock-and I was going to ask you to h
elp us finish counting the money. It's hidden in the basement."

  "You're being mysterious," pointed out Naomi, following her to the cellar door. "Wells . . . money . . . your plans for it. Aren't you going to tell us what you have in mind for the property?"

  "Later," said Sister John, starting down the stairs. "It all depends on how much money there is. So far I've counted up to ninety-nine thousand," she said, and ignoring their shocked gasps she added casually, "What I'm hoping for is half a million . . . ."

  In the end neither the pickle barrel nor the Steinway yielded up half a million but the total counting proved to be four hundred twenty-one thousand and nine dollars and was enough, said Alfie, to give him indigestion for months.

  "Like an orgy," said Sister Hyacinthe knowingly.

  "Well, not quite," Alfie told her reproachfully, "but it's an awful lot of paper. It's taken us nearly three hours, it's past seven o'clock and I'm famished."

  "And all this was down a well?" echoed Naomi.

  "Yes, in a genuine cowhide suitcase with a 1963 New York Daily News tucked inside."

  Brill glanced at her curiously as he wrote down the final tally. "You've had all this lying around here for six days and you haven't felt the least uneasy?"

  "Nothing," said Sister John, "could happen to the money if it's intended for us, and I'm sure it must be because God has been guiding us with a very firm hand."

  "Even to jail?" asked Naomi.

  "But of course," said Sister John impatiently. "That was one of the most important experiences of my life. You mustn't feel that good comes only from happy things, you know, it's often the most painful experiences that bring enlightenment."

  "Now you sound just like Bhanjan Singh," Brill told her, amused.