Marlena de Blasi

by Amandine (v5)

  Paul looks away from Solange. Sotto voce she says, Essentially, the child shall no longer exist once you leave this room. She turns back to Solange. “Yes, I think those were my lines.”

  “Pardon me, Mater. Your lines?”

  “Be certain of this, Solange, that the child’s life began on the day she was brought here. Left here. Be certain of that and save yourself and the child at least some part of the suffering already allotted to her. I admit the strangeness of it, but nevertheless it is all the truth we have.”

  “You thought she was going to die, didn’t you, Mater? You and the bishop, you thought it would be a few weeks, a few months, and she would be gone. She was taken on as a short-term investment of sorts, I understand that.”

  “Do you?”

  “I think I do. I understand it quite enough.”

  “Just what do you propose to do should this child, should she—”

  “Grow up? Is that what you’re asking? Not so difficult to contemplate. Once her schooling here is complete, I shall help her to find her way, to proceed with a higher education if, should that seem indicated or to take the veil if she’s inclined, to find good work out in the world. I would help her, guide her as best I can. Surely you would help her, too, Mater.”

  “She is not my charge.”

  “No. Not your charge. Your mortification. That’s how you treat her, Mater, yet you see, you know how she’s drawn to you, how she longs for your affection. And you speak to me of cruelty?”

  Head bowed to her papers, the strokes of her pen sepulchral whispers, Paul says nothing.

  “Was it a woman who brought Amandine here? A foreign woman. Beautiful.”

  “I know nothing of a foreign woman.”

  “You can tell me, Mater. I met her, you know. Saw her once. She came to our home to speak with my grandmother. I handed her tea and she pulled down her kerchief and I saw her. Amandine’s eyes are like her eyes, don’t you think, Mater?”

  Paul stands, her fists cudgels upon the desk. She screams, “How dare you? Inventions, fool inventions, which can only leave the child in greater pain than her birthright has already dictated. How dare you? Follow your instructions, Solange. Should you choose not to, count on His Eminence to support my promise, the promise that I make to you now. You will be humiliated and sent away.”

  “And I make two promises to you, Mater. It is I who shall decide what to tell Amandine about her life. And should I be sent away, I will take Amandine with me.”

  Solange curtsies, turns, walks slowly to the door. Over her shoulder, she looks back at Paul, nods her head as though to say, Count on it. Softly, she closes the door behind her.

  CHAPTER XII

  “AMANDINE, YESTERDAY WHEN I ASKED YOU WHO YOUR MOTHER was, you thought I was joking, didn’t you?”

  Red leaves fluttering to the ground, Amandine rushes among them, trying to catch them as they fall. She makes a pile of those she’s captured, reaches up for another as the wind scatters the gathered ones, which she then chases, retrieves. Solange stands a few meters distant from the leaping and screeching.

  “Amandine, Paul is not your mother, she’s not the mother of any of us. Not mine, not Josephine’s or Marie-Albert’s or Suzette’s or … She is our spiritual mother, the person who is responsible for the well-being of all of us who live here in the convent. Can you understand that?”

  Clutching leaves to her breast, Amandine walks closer to Solange. “Do you mean that she’s a spirit? Is Paul a ghost?”

  “No. Not a ghost. She is very real, and she cares for all of us as a mother would care, but she is not our real mother.”

  The two move to sit under the tree then, inside the red whirring of the leaves.

  “Is she our fake mother?”

  “No. It’s only that each one of us has our birth mother. Our own mother. And Paul is not that kind of mother to any of us.”

  “Not to any of us?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have your own mother?”

  “Yes. I have a mother. And a father. I have two sisters and a grandmother, aunts and uncles and, last time I counted, eighteen cousins.”

  “Where are they? Why don’t you live with them?”

  “They live in another part of France. In the north. And I don’t live with them because I chose to live with you.”

  “But why?”

  “Because I wanted to. My choice to come here to be with you does not mean that I don’t love my family. I love them and I love you. You are also my family.”

  “But I’m not your ‘own’ family. Am I?”

  “No.”

  “Do I have my own mother? Who is she? Who is my own mother?”

  “I don’t know, darling. I don’t know exactly who she is, but I do know that she loves you very much.”

  “You don’t know who she is? Are you sure that no one here is my own mother?”

  “No one here.”

  “Shouldn’t we be going to find her then? I’ve been here for so long, won’t she be worried by now? That I haven’t come home?”

  “She knows that you’re well and safe here. She knows that you’re with me, with Paul and Philippe and all the rest of us. She knows that, and so she’s not worried.”

  “Oh. But can I just see her for a while? I want to see my own mother. I’m sure she would like to see me, don’t you think she would?”

  “Of course I do, but right now that simply isn’t possible. She wants you to grow up to be a beautiful, strong girl, to learn your lessons, to be kind and good, to be obedient to me and to the sisters, to—”

  “How do you know that she loves me?”

  “I know because, because she cared so much about you that she—”

  “Did she tell you? Did she tell you that she loved me?”

  “In her way, she did.”

  “What way?”

  “She sent a lady to tell me about you.”

  “She did? What did the lady say?”

  “She said that there was this precious little baby whose mother wasn’t able to care for her and that the mother didn’t want the baby to be alone. She asked me if I would take care of the baby. For her mother. She asked me if I would give her all the love in the world in her mother’s name. Just as though the mother, herself, was giving her that love. Do you understand?”

  “I don’t know. Who was the lady?”

  “She was a woman with beautiful eyes, eyes like a deer and skin white like the moon. And she was very sad. I saw her only for a moment, a half moment.”

  “Why was she sad?”

  “I think it was because she knew that your mother would miss you. That she would miss you, too.”

  “Then let’s go to find the lady. She’ll know where my own mother is and then we can all be together. The lady and you and my mother and me. And your own mother, too, and we can take Philippe and his own mother and Paul and all the sisters. And everybody’s own mother.”

  Should I have explained it in another way? Should I not have explained it at all? Was Paul right? Was my telling her that her mother couldn’t care for her more cruel than my telling her that her mother was dead? Would it have been better to wait until she was older, more able to…? I would have waited, I would gladly have put off such discourse, had the incident at the park not brought me face-to-face with her misconceptions. I had no choice. I couldn’t allow her to go on thinking that Paul was her mother. Philippe, her father. How much more cruel would it have been if I’d not told her, if I’d simply let her wander about in that nebbia, that puerile rationale? On the first day of school, her classmates would have pitilessly dispelled her delusions. She would have come running to me for solace. “Is it true? Why didn’t you tell me? Then who is my mother?” So well have I taught my little girl, she would call my omission, my silence a broken trust. She would be right. No, it’s better this way. I will console her, and she will become accustomed to the truth. The truth. But is what I told her the truth, or have I corrected her misconceptions only to p
ropose mine? An ambiguity exchanged for an abstraction. God help me. I try to forget my mother while she begins to long for hers.

  “Do you know what, Père Philippe?”

  “Tell me, beauty.”

  “When I was younger, I mean last week when I was younger, I used to think that you were my own father. Isn’t that silly?”

  “Not silly.”

  “Do you have your own father?”

  “I did once, but he, long ago he went to live in heaven. You know, with God.”

  Soft rain chimes on the stones under the eaves of the washhouse windows. Inside Amandine sits with Philippe in the old parlor chair amid the smells of soap and steam. Marie-Albert whispers the beads while she cranks the wringer.

  “Do you have a mother, Père?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do. I did. She has also gone to heaven. I had a grandmother, too.”

  “Also in heaven?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was she like? Your grandmother.”

  “Do you mean what did she look like?”

  “Yes.”

  “She was tall, or so she seemed, since I was barely eight when she went away. Yes, I would say that she was tall. She always smelled like sugar. She wore a yellow dress with red roses all over it. And on Sundays she wore a brown dress, very soft. And a brown hat, I think. And she liked to kiss me, she was always kissing me. A four-kiss kiss. Just the way Solange kisses you.”

  “Right cheek, left cheek, right cheek, lips.”

  “Yes, like that.”

  “Look over there, do you see how the creek looks in the rain? That was the way her hair looked, barely blue, like thin blue silk, and pinched into tight waves just like the creek water.”

  “I’d like to have blue hair someday.”

  “And perhaps someday you shall.”

  “I wish you were my own father.”

  Tears catching in the ruts in his cheeks, Philippe says, “I have the same wish.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “Good.”

  “In fact, before God and the angels, right now, right here, I choose you as my child.”

  “I choose you as my father. Before God and the angels. Is it real now?”

  “Absolutely real.”

  “It is not. I know it isn’t. It isn’t real, but I think it’s true. Between us, it’s true.”

  “Between us and God and the angels. Maybe it’s as true as anything can be.”

  “Maybe. I love you, Père.”

  CHAPTER XIII

  MORE OFTEN THAN WAS HIS FORMER HABIT, BISHOP FABRICE VISITS the convent. The ostensible motive is that Philippe seems less inclined to visit him at the curia in Montpellier, and though it’s true that the bishop misses his old friend’s company, perhaps there is yet another reason for this change in his routine.

  Unannounced, His Eminence, en entourage, arrives just before vespers, prays with the sisterhood, and then, in a parlor off the kitchen, dines alone with Philippe, their schoolboy laughter seeping out from under the closed doors, pouring in upon the household. In visceral response, the sisters, even Paul, grow flushed and chirping, glide about the place. The masters are at home and dining in the parlor.

  Often Fabrice arrives earlier in the day, sometime after lunch and, wearing Wellingtons under his purple skirts, follows Philippe down into the chai, where the two sit on tottering wooden chairs at a small table, uncorking bottles, swirling the fine old juice, swallowing and spitting as they wish, plumbing the depths of a terra-cotta urn—exclusive cache of molding, grainy cheese buried in grapewood ash—Philippe gouging crumbles of the stuff, passing it to Fabrice from the blade of a corkscrew. Weary lions languishing in their den.

  The bishop always asks to see Amandine, bends to bless her, holds her on his knee for a moment, remarks on her growth, her brightness, hears her recitation of a prayer. Polite and dutiful, Amandine endures, performs, glancing—now and then—over her shoulder for Philippe. When she climbs down from the bishop’s wide, princely upholstered lap, runs to the shelter of Philippe’s embrace, Fabrice looks long at the pair, listens to their chatter, a half smile playing about his pendulous old mouth.

  On one morning visit, Paul—always seeking greater attention than he is wont to pay her—requests a private audience with Fabrice. “Of course, Paul. At noon, while the house is in meditation. A walk in the garden? Will that please you, Paul?” She hears the chaff, understands what he does not say. If you could be pleased, that is. She returns to her rooms, repeats her earlier everyday ablutions. Washes her face with lavender soap, presses a linen towel to her cheeks. Does she rub so vigorously only to dry them or also to bring on a blush? She brushes her teeth, holding the towel against her starched collar, her stiff white wings juddering as she moves. Once again the towel to her mouth. There is no glass in which she can see herself.

  She begins, “I wish to know more about how she, how the child came to be under your protection. Under mine. Five years of dutiful silence, patience. Have I not earned some right to—?”

  “There is nothing more to know, Paul. Nothing that would line up all the pieces in the perfect row as you would have them. A brother of the Church, an old friend. The child’s need for refuge was told to me by him. These things happen all the time, these requests among the greater clergy for extraordinary favors.”

  “Paid favors, of course.”

  “In one way or another, paid. Of course.”

  “This friend. He’s not French.”

  “No. He wasn’t French. But what does that—?”

  “Past tense. He’s dead, then?”

  “Yes. But his not having been French and his no longer being alive, these are not factors that—”

  “Is the child not French?”

  “Why would you care, Paul? For all intents and purposes, she is thoroughly French. But if she were not, what would it matter?”

  “Solange. She came to speak with me—”

  “I know. Solange speaks with Philippe, and Philippe speaks with me. With her permission, of course. I know that Amandine believed you were her mother, I know what Solange has told her. Whether or not I am in accord with how Solange has proceeded to explain things to Amandine, I will respect her decisions. She has become far more than a nurse, a caretaker to the child. If there are earned rights about any of this, they belong to Solange. And if your next inquiry is to be about the woman who consigned the child to you—”

  “So she’s not yours, she’s not your issue? Amandine.”

  At first Fabrice does not understand Paul’s question, is about to ask her to repeat it when the light dawns. Turning to look at her, then she at him, he laughs to tears. “Hah. Dear, darling Paul, you flatter me. At seventy-seven, you imagine I’ve sired a child?”

  “You would have been seventy-one or so …”

  His laughter unspent, he speaks between chortles, “Even in my dotage, in yours, you’re still jealous and possessive and rancorous. Oh, Paul, what a delicious wife you would have made to some man. No, she is not my issue.”

  Both are quiet then. Fabrice searches beneath his robes for his handkerchief, Paul finds hers first, hands it to him. Patting it about his rheumy eyes, touching it to the saliva about his satyr’s lips, he says, “You know, we’ve grown to be an old married couple, you wanting more from me and I wanting more to be left to my own ways and means. That is, I want to be left alone as long as you continue your wanting more from me. Such a wonderful game.”

  “I suppose it is.” She looks at him again, smiles, really smiles. Throws back her head and laughs as she has not done, has not allowed herself to do, for how long? Her voice is almost soft then.

  “You have twice dismissed me, Fabrice. First from your bed, then from your schemes. I’d grown used to being necessary to you. I felt ‘put aside’ when you became bishop, when you left me behind to look after this gaggle of misfit hens, most of whom don’t want to be here any more than I do. It was you for whom I stayed, and you knew that. You kno
w that now.”

  “Yes, just like a marriage. You the good wife, long-suffering, sacrificed to her husband’s ambitions. His titillations and fancies. But you, dear Paul, you’ve not received the usual glittering tokens of either arrival or remorse. Baubles neither to celebrate nor to beg pardon. I have rewarded and consoled you only with more work, more responsibility. It’s true. I’d never thought of it this way before, but I did leave you ‘at home with the children’ while I moved about on business, whatever business was at hand. Your only bracelets have been fetters.”

  Paul takes her handkerchief from his lap, where it’s fallen, loudly blows her nose. A gesture of self-pity? Yes, only fetters, it says. Then she says, “The latest fetter being this child. Will it never end, your misuse of me?”

  “There hasn’t been a question of my ‘misuse’ of you for forty years.”

  “Less than that.”

  “The child’s presence in what you’ve grown to think of as ‘your’ home has done nothing but enhance it, and even you know that. I will abide your laments but not your bedeviling of plain truths.”

  Eyes like dry stones, she looks at him.

  He shakes his head. “But, really, what could you have expected of me, Paul? That once I’d been ordained bishop I might take you as my official consort and that, you in your wimple and I in my robes, we would travel about the province together? Yes, it’s true, you helped me to win my colors, but I believed you did it for me and not for what attentions might overflow to you. It was your duty to help me.”

  “My duty?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your duty to me?”

  “My duty to you? Do you mean my payment to you? The price for your seventeen-year-old virginity. Is that what you still seek? That would be prostitution, Paul. A debauch for payment.”

  “You know it’s much more than that which you took from me.”

  “More than that which you gave to me, my dear.”

  “Are you the appointed, the official control over the child’s well-being? The woman, that woman, who was she? What was she? I don’t even know. She spoke of a fail-safe. That’s the word she used. The word her interpreter used. I’ll not forget, never forget the smug tilt of her pretty, pointed chin as her lackey said the words: