Marlena de Blasi

by Amandine (v5)

  “Yes, Celine might very well need your help.”

  Solange smiles, lifts Amandine in her arms, begins to laugh then, laugh and laugh, and Amandine begins to laugh, too, and they dance about the room, twirling and laughing and screeching, both of them undoing Amandine’s braids and shaking their unshackled hair until they fall onto the sofa, Amandine exhausted from her evening’s passage and its illumination. Solange from the wonder of her. They eat the cheese then, peel the pears, butter the bread. Sip the watered wine.

  CHAPTER XXI

  FOR DAYS AND DAYS THE CONVENT SISTERS, THE TEACHING SISTERS talk of nothing else than the refectory scene and, in whispered reprises, they take turns playing the role of Paul, the role of Amandine. Being wise, Paul deals with its aftermath by ignoring it. Her rage she contains in cordiality. Only to old Josette, the lay sister whose labors shift from scrubbing and polishing to a kind of lady-in-waiting to Paul, only to Josette does she speak her mind. Tells her she wishes the lot of them to burn in hell.

  And as she has always, Paul avoids the displeasure of the jeunes filles de la noblesse. Should Paul dare to waver—their lashes fluttering, eyes dancing—they would remind her to beware Mummy and Daddy. No, not even the scent of reprimand shall she press upon the dear little chits. Her composure elaborately contrived, Paul keeps to her office or stays longer at her turns in the garden, walks far less often among the classes, only rarely addresses any one of the convent girls. And when the whirring of her stork wings is to be heard in the halls, doors close, shoulders turn inward, away from her. As though she is invisible. Neither seeking nor avoiding her, and—neither ironically nor affectionately—it is only Amandine among the girls who does not veer from her habitual politesse. Amandine’s wisdom, quixotic rather than self-preserving like Paul’s, she, too, deals with the aftermath of the refectory scene by ignoring it. Amandine’s generosity Paul perceives as parody, and every display of it pushes her toward frenzy.

  In her linen shift, Paul sits on the hard, straight-back chair in her cell one evening, bending to untie her shoes. Only a small bedside lamp lights the room. Josette’s signature four-tap knock interrupts her reverie.

  “Entrez, Josette.”

  “Bonsoir, Mater. Will you be needing something before I—?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all. Will you sit for a while?”

  She extends her hand toward the bench under the window, but Josette bends to finish the job of removing Paul’s shoes, carries them to the armoire, takes out a brush and begins to clean them, stuffs them then with tissue paper, places them on the bottom shelf of the armoire. Proprietary as a mother, Josette takes Paul’s nightdress from a hook, sets about removing her shift, hands her the nightdress, folds the shift neatly, puts it in an armoire drawer, opens another, takes out black slippers—the leather deeply embossed by the deformities of Paul’s feet—places them on the floor before her. She checks to see there is water in the carafe by the bed, turns down the covers, looks at Paul, who has once again sat down upon the chair.

  “You needn’t carry on with these rituals, Josette. I can well do for myself.”

  “But I like to do for you, Mater.”

  “Yes, yes, I know. How long has it been that you’ve been doing for me, Josette? How old are you?”

  “I am seventy-eight. And in February, you shall be seventy, Mater.”

  Josette says this as though their ages can be calculated only in reference to one another. Paul, elbows resting on her knees, fists supporting her chin, turns her head toward Josette, shakes it in wonder. At the numbers? At the audacious passage of time? Turning from Josette, her gaze fixed beyond the room and the moment, Paul begins to weep.

  “You are not well, Mater?”

  Turning back to Josette, trying for a smile, “I’m well enough.”

  “What can I do?”

  As though she has not heard Josette, Paul moves her lips, forming words, half pushing them out, half swallowing them. Devastating words. “What devil inhabits her, Josette? What keeps the breath in that child? I wish her dead and gone and never having been. May God forgive me.”

  Josette steps closer in to Paul.

  “What did you say, Mater? I could barely hear you.”

  Paul flings her arm, dismissing Josette.

  “Bonne nuit, Mater.”

  Josette curtsies. Having heard every word, she shuffles from the room.

  It is a Saturday, and Amandine is walking under the loggia from the school to meet Solange as Paul is walking toward her. Amandine stops to curtsy, and Paul, without a sound or sign, takes her roughly by the shoulders, begins to shake her. Amandine does not defend herself save to shut her eyes, and then, in something like an embrace, Paul is holding her, looking down at her. Amandine does not pull away but keeps Paul’s gaze.

  “Who are you?” Paul asks her.

  Amandine steps away then, straightens her dress, finds Paul’s eyes again.

  “Who are you, Mater?”

  As for the convent girls themselves, what impulse compelled them to displace their obeisance—if not to Paul herself to her mode of operation—and to champion the creature who was for so long their communal and preferred victim? Was it hoarded disdain for Paul, a whole apocrypha of grief? Was Candide so commanding, her words—Everyone knows that Solange is good. And everyone knows that you are not—so limpid as to tantalize revolt? Was it all of these? Paul wonders. Amandine wonders.

  Delicious as it is for Amandine to taste the convent girls’ bonhomie, to be cheered, to be touched, it is not this, not this at all that pleases her most. She reasons like this: Since she’d done nothing to earn the hostility of the convent girls in the first place, how can she be certain that hostility will not be shown her again? More, what she said and did in the refectory was not a ploy to extinguish their antipathy but a defense of Solange. So fickle are the convent girls, how can she know what word or action of hers might relight the antipathy? Further, she reasons, Paul is constant. Her hate hurts more, but Amandine can count on it. So who is the greater foe, and how can one tell? And what if one can’t? The mystery swims and dives and leaps about in her, and she thinks it might continue to do so for some time. Perhaps forever. No, it is hardly the bonhomie that pleases Amandine most but rather two other spoils of the evening: The first is the thought that she might not be wicked after all and the other, a sentiment more difficult to comprehend and to name, is the beginning of her understanding of her own grit. Yes, no matter what they did or didn’t do, she is well. And she will be. Hence, when the convent girls begin to beckon her into one or another social or political sanctum of their intricately drawn castes, Amandine demurs. She says no thank you when invited to smoke Gauloises with Capucine and Antoinette in the woodshed during recreation, to borrow for a whole hour one of Frédérique’s special books along with a small black torch for reading under the covers, to observe the initiation rites into the circle of the menstruating girls. To the most distinguished of all the invitations—since it is usually offered only to a few select girls in the seventh form and higher—she does accept. It is to look at Mathilde’s breasts. Front and side views. Mon Dieu.

  There is combat for a place next to her in the refectory and to determine who shall link arms with her when they form a circle to say the beads of an evening. A praline on her pillow, a flower in her pocket, they pinch her cheeks in affection, try to commiserate with her about her mother, ask: “How does it feel, not knowing your own mother?” tell her: “Whoever she is, surely she’s even more beautiful than Hedy Lamarr.” And to celebrate her eighth birthday, they pool funds to commission from the village pâtissier a seven-layer mocha marjolaine, upon which they beg him to write: “Bon anniversaire, notre jolie mignonne.”

  Solange gasps, marvels at the convent girls’ immoderate designs to restore Amandine to favor and, all the more, she marvels at Amandine’s resistance to them. To herself, she cheers that resistance, the prudence therein.

  CHAPTER XXII

  ONLY SIX DAYS PASS BEFORE SO
LANGE HAS A LETTER IN RETURN from her mother. In the first pages, Magda is timid, formal even. But by page three she begins to speak in her real voice, the voice Solange remembers from when she was very little. Before the troubles. Magda says that talk of war is everywhere. “The boche will try with us, but I think we’re ready. Still we are beginning to think and act like people who wait for war. We were canning peaches, your sisters and I, with Madame Borange and her girls and someone asked what would be the good of all this work only to leave the fruit to be gobbled by the boche. Blanchette thought we should poison a batch, arrange the jars extra cunningly somewhere in view and bury the rest. Some people have indeed buried silver and other things they think to be valuable. Just as we did during the Great War. I admit I’ve packed two old valises with photos even though I know we’ll run them out like pigs to slaughter. The boche. Even though.”

  By page five she begins the story of Solange’s father. Of his exit from the family nearly three months earlier. She says that he’s gone to work in Belgium, a small farming village near the border, that he’s taken up with a woman there or at least that’s what she’s gleaned from the gossip which trickles down from as far away as that. A woman from Charleroi or a village near there, a widow with daughters. “God help her,” she writes.

  No, he never came near Chloe or Blanchette. But when he’d be gone for weeks during the winter, working as a carpenter’s helper up in Châtillon, well, I had suspicions. And one day, the suspicions became flesh. Her name was Margaux.

  Having hitched a ride from Châtillon in a lumber truck, she’d come down to the farm looking for him. She was pretty enough, with gorgeous auburn hair all tied up in a pastiche on top of her head, small and well-made, wearing an old tweed jacket and men’s trousers and, apart from envy of her hair, all I felt for her was pity as she stood in the kitchen, weeping and ranting about how her own father had warned her that her new boyfriend was un mauvais, un charlatan. From the first, your père proved him right. He took money, told tales, always vowing to Margaux that he loved her, that he’d never loved anyone before her, least of all his wife. He’d told her to be patient. He’d never mentioned his three daughters. When Margaux’s father saw your père with another woman in the town, he confronted him. Père laughed at him, called his Margaux a whore. The typical condemnation of women thrown about by men like your père.

  I made tea for Margaux, put bread and cheese on the table, though she never touched either, and then I drove her back to Châtillon. She was only a year older than you, Solange. It was three days later that I went to Reims, to the attorneys. Set the divorce in motion. On the way home, I stopped at the commissariat in the village and filed a restraining order. When your père came in from the vineyards that evening, two gendarmes were waiting for him. He never said a word, never tried to reason with me, never that night nor since has he asked me to reconsider. Do I regret that I waited? Yes. Am I lonely? Yes. But less lonely than when he was here.

  I’ve cut my hair, a bob with a long fringe, and now that I no longer have to turn over the money I make selling my cheeses in the market, I’ve bought new clothes. A gray dress with silver buttons made from old coins and a navy blue one, with small white dots. Chloe doesn’t like the navy one but Janka does. Blanchette hasn’t said. I think I’ll send you the navy one. Would you like that? I’m very thin but well. I’ll be forty-two in November.

  By the time Magda had filled up pages nine and ten, she’d told Solange more about herself, her sentiments than she had ever before. She asked Solange for forgiveness. Said she would understand if forgiveness could not be honestly granted. Said she hoped Solange would come home, bring Amandine—whom she’d long before begun to think of as a granddaughter.

  How I long to hold Amandine in my arms. Surely I think of her as yours. And so I admit that part of my longing for her is so that I may have another chance to be your mother. Can you understand that, Solange? I wonder if other mothers feel that. I’ve wondered this same thing about Madame Borange with her brood and about my sisters with their children. I’ve wondered about Janka. Has she ever wished for another chance to be my mother? I wonder about you, too, Solange. Do you long for another chance to be my daughter?

  The bishop has, however, not been so prompt in his response to Solange. Two weeks, perhaps nearly three, have passed since she had posted her note to him when Paul sends for her one morning as she is working in the garden. Fearing that Fabrice has informed Paul of her request for a private audience, her hands tremble as she takes the towel wet with lavender water that Sister Josephine holds out for her. She washes her face, smoothes her hair. She thinks of Amandine and smiles to herself, walks quickly to Paul’s office.

  “His Eminence has sent a note requesting a meeting with you at four o’clock this afternoon. In Père Philippe’s parlor no less. I trust you’ll see that the room is in order, that there are flowers.”

  “Yes, Mater.”

  “I’ve ordered les calissons from the village.”

  “Yes, of course. Though he’ll likely bring his own.”

  Paul looks up at her with a frank, confiding smile, begins to say, “No doubt of—”

  She checks her candor, is flustered by it, as is Solange. The silence is long then. Paul does some business with the papers on her desk while Solange pats her perfect plaits, bites her lips, forces them into a smile and then a purse and back again.

  Failing at nonchalance, Paul openly waits for Solange to tell her more. Rather, Solange asks, “Is that all, Mater?”

  “What do you suppose is the object of his desire to meet with you?”

  “I don’t know, Mater. Surely something to do with Amandine.”

  “It seems that everything in this house has to do with Amandine. I shall, of course, be available should he wish me to join the two of you.”

  “Of course, Mater.”

  “Plaits and a kerchief.”

  “Yes, Mater.”

  Not long past four, Fabrice arrives at the convent in much the same unceremonious manner that he did on the evening Philippe died. In his country priest’s soutane and a black cap, he alights inelegantly from the official limousine, the green of his Wellingtons thrusting out like the short, thick stems of succulents from under his skirts. Reminding the chauffeur to carry in the pastry boxes and wines from the boot into the kitchens, he mounts the steps—“bonjour, mes petites soeurs,” he says to the sisters who’ve gathered to greet him under the portico—passes through the door, nods to Paul, who stands just inside it, and propels his massive, rubber-shoed bulk down the long corridor to the far wing, to Philippe’s rooms. Without turning around but knowing they all watch him, he shouts, “I trust Solange is waiting.”

  And she is. Holding the door open for him, curtsying, bending to kiss his ring, she watches as he burrows himself in the depths of Philippe’s high-back chair, bends to remove his boots, raises purple-stockinged feet to rest on a hassock. Set near the chair on a gilt-painted table with a black marble top, there is a footed silver tray, a silver candlestick set with a thick honey-colored candle, already lit, a cut-crystal bottle, a matching tumbler. In a long, untidy gush, Fabrice pours out the old tawny port he likes at this time of day, cradles the glass between his large white hands, manicured nails glinting in the yellow light of the candle.

  “Now, my dear. Come sit by me. I hope you don’t mind that I preferred to meet with you here. Though I understand your desire for privacy, there is no need for secrecy. You, as do all the other sisters, have a perfect right to seek audience with your bishop. That you shall incur Paul’s wrath by exercising that right should hardly matter. I’ve left off caring what Paul thinks, and I would recommend the same to you. It would seem that Amandine has already done so.”

  Liquescent, mud brown eyes nearly swallowed in the glee-crinkled folds of his lids, he laughs. Sipping the port once, then again, he holds the glass upon the taut abundance of himself and looks hard at Solange.

  Still standing, Solange smiles, nods her head, carri
es a small wooden chair close to where Fabrice is sprawled. She sits, folds her hands in her lap. Still smiling, she says, “It’s Amandine about whom I wanted to speak, Your Eminence.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “I’ve practiced the words I wish to say, the way I wish to say them, but—”

  “Would it be simpler if I began?”

  “Well, if, well, yes, of course, as you wish.”

  “I think you should take the child and leave this place.”

  “What? What are you—?”

  “Listen. Hear me. Neither you nor Amandine thrives here.”

  “How do you know—?”

  “I asked you to listen. I know of the recent events in the refectory, I know that Amandine has, shall we say, found her voice, that in her artless way she has gone toe-to-toe with Paul and held her ground. Won the admiration of her schoolmates, whatever that might be worth. More than a reason to stay, this seems like a natural ending, a victorious exit, if you will. Why should you not run from a place that nourishes neither of you? You and the child are not prisoner to Paul. Why would you stay?”