Awakening of Miss Prim

by Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera

  Go and catch a falling star,

  Get with child a mandrake root,

  Tell me where all past years are,

  Or who cleft the devil’s foot,

  Teach me to hear mermaids singing,

  Or to keep off envy’s stinging,

  And find

  What wind

  Serves to advance an honest mind.

  Beneath the poem, she read:

  Dearest Prudencia,

  Will you ever be able to forgive us? We wouldn’t blame you if you couldn’t. Devastated, repentant, and deeply ashamed, we’re sending you some old-fashioned bellezza wrapped in our most sincere apologies.

  Hortensia Oeillet

  P.S. Herminia thought the lines from John Donne would brighten your day. Aren’t they wonderful?

  “They are indeed,” murmured Miss Prim, pleased, plunging her dainty nose into the blooms.

  Since the day of the unfortunate incident, Miss Prim had not stopped thinking about the peculiar idiosyncrasy of the feminist group that had welcomed her to San Ireneo. And the more she thought about it, the less serious the offense seemed. That didn’t mean she approved, but, somehow, forgiveness had started to alter her view of the women. It was true that their conduct had been thoughtless and rude, and it was also true that delicacy and tact had been conspicuous by their absence, but the librarian had begun to suspect that beneath the slightly inept conspiracy lay a form of love.

  Love? The first time this thought occurred to her she was astounded. She wasn’t a sentimental woman, but she couldn’t help sensing a kind of love—brash, clumsy, maternal—in the way the women had set out to provide her with a husband. As she deftly arranged the roses in a crystal vase, she told herself that if the ladies of San Ireneo considered a husband the greatest good to which a woman could aspire and were determined to obtain one for her, who was she to judge them? If they were prepared to expend time and effort to that end, who was she to treat as an insult something intended as, and which couldn’t in any way be seen as other than, a warm, sincere gift?

  Moreover, she had to admit that the idea of marriage did not entirely repel her. Certainly, in public she’d always claimed otherwise, but like many women of her kind, Miss Prim tended to scoff at what she secretly feared she would never have. Once again she cast her mind back and recalled the distraught faces of Hortensia Oeillet and Emma Giovanacci, and Herminia Treaumont’s serene speech. If someone as beautiful and intelligent as Herminia considered marriage essential to a woman’s well-being, who was she to cast doubt on it so emphatically? Had she ever looked into the matter in depth? Had she ever sat down with pencil and paper to list the pros and cons of the marital state? Had she? Miss Prim had to admit that she had not.

  At the same time, she couldn’t say she was fully in favor of marriage, either. Marital union, she reflected as she swathed herself in a woolen blanket and stepped out onto the balcony to watch the sunset, was definitely for women of a different kind. Women with a certain flexibility of character, biddable women, women who were comfortable with such concepts as compromise or accommodation. Miss Prim was definitely not one of those. She couldn’t see herself compromising over anything. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to—she’d always valued the concept in the abstract—she just couldn’t imagine it in practice. She had a certain resistance, she’d realized in various situations throughout her life, to relinquishing, even in part, her view of things.

  While she found this resistance tiresome, in some ways she was also inwardly proud of it. Why should she concede that a certain composer was superior to another, she told herself, remembering a heated argument about music at the house of friends, when she was absolutely sure that he wasn’t? Why should she accept, as a friendly compromise, that the respective talents were probably difficult to compare when she considered them eminently comparable? Why should she feign, in an even more abject spirit of accommodation, that the superiority of one or other composer depended largely on the listener’s mood? Miss Prim believed that compromises of this kind constituted a sort of intellectual indecency. And though she sometimes forced herself to make them for the sake of her relationships, the fact was that to do so was repugnant to her.

  The sky was growing tinged with pink when there was a knock at the door.

  “Prudencia,” said the Man in the Wing Chair, “I have some business to do in the village and I’m afraid it’s the staff’s day off. Would you mind keeping an eye on the children? They’re playing in the garden. I’m sorry to ask, but I’ve no choice.”

  Conscious that her sunset had just been ruined, the librarian assured him pleasantly that she would look after the children. They weren’t normal children, she thought as she made her way downstairs. They didn’t read normal books, or play normal games, or even say normal things. It wasn’t that they were unpleasant, or rude—actually, she had to admit that they were delightful—but they were quite unlike any children she’d encountered at friends’ houses, in the street, or in restaurants. When she spoke to them, she often had the uncomfortable sensation that she was being interrogated. It was the children who steered the conversation. It was they too who peppered the chats with strange items of information that the librarian considered quite unsuitable for children of their age.

  “Today we learned about Russian archimandrites and starets, Miss Prim. Do you know the story of Starets Ambrose and the turkeys?” Teseris had asked one morning in the kitchen as the librarian was making herself some cheese on toast behind the cook’s back.

  Miss Prim solemnly confessed that she knew a little about the elders of the Russian Orthodox church, but that she had never heard of Starets Ambrose or any turkeys. No sooner had the librarian made this sincere admission of ignorance than the child launched into a disquisition on Starets Ambrose and the monastery of Optina, the similarities between him and Starets Zosima and the story of the turkeys that refused to eat.

  “One day, a peasant woman who tended turkeys for a landowner went to see the starets,” explained the little girl. “She was very sad because the turkeys were dying and the landowner was going to evict her. When the pilgrims at the monastery heard her crying, they laughed and told her not to bother the monk with such trivial nonsense. But Starets Ambrose listened to her very carefully and when she’d finished, he asked what she fed the turkeys. He advised her to change their feed and gave her his blessing. Once the woman had left, they asked the elder why he’d wasted his time over some turkeys. Do you know what he said?”

  “I have no idea,” replied Miss Prim, bewildered.

  “He said they were all blind if they couldn’t see that those poor turkeys were the woman’s whole life. Starets Ambrose didn’t divide problems into big and small like everyone else does. He always said that angels are in the simple things; you never find angels where things are complicated. He believed that the small things are important.”

  They definitely were not normal children, she sighed as she trotted down to the garden. She made her way along the path lined with now leafless hydrangeas and turned right into a bower formed by the branches of six large plane trees that were also starting to shed their leaves. This was where, on two aged wrought-iron benches, the children of the house had their headquarters. When they saw Miss Prim enter their sanctuary, their tousled heads sprang apart.

  “Your uncle asked me not to let you out of my sight, so I came to see what you were up to,” she said truthfully.

  “We weren’t doing anything, just reading a book from when we were small,” said Septimus.

  “And what book is that?” she asked, peering discreetly at the small yellow volume the boy was holding.

  “It’s the story of a toad who loves driving,” he said with the superior air of someone who believes he has a secret that can’t be guessed.

  Miss Prim smiled benevolently.

  “A toad who’s friends with a mole, a rat, and a badger?”

  Taken aback, the children nodded.

  “You know it? It’s a pretty o
ld book. It was already around when our grandmother was small. It’s fairly ancient,” said Septimus with absolute seriousness.

  The librarian suppressed another smile.

  “I’ve read it and studied it.”

  “Studied it? But it’s just a children’s story!” cried Teseris, eyes wide.

  Miss Prim crossed her arms and gazed over the children’s heads at the horizon.

  “It’s more than a children’s book, it’s literature. And literature is to be studied, analyzed. One traces its influences and researches what it’s intending to convey.”

  The children stared at her while the mild evening light, filtering through the yellowing leaves of the trees, threw flickering shadows on their faces.

  “Our uncle says if you do that to books it spoils them,” declared Septimus eventually. “He hates all that text analysis stuff. He’s never made us do it.”

  A cold wave of indignation washed over her.

  “Oh really?” she muttered sourly. “That’s what he says, is it? In that case, I can’t believe he got you to recognize Virgil from a single line. How can you do that without studying or analyzing? Don’t you know parts of the Aeneid by heart? I seem to remember that’s what I heard the afternoon I arrived.”

  “We know lots of parts of poems and stories by heart—it’s the first thing we do with all books,” said Teseris in her gentle voice. “He says it’s how you learn to love books; it’s got a lot to do with memory. He says that when men fall in love with women they learn their faces by heart so they can remember them later. They notice the color of their eyes, the color of their hair; whether they like music, prefer chocolate or biscuits, what their brothers and sisters are called, whether they write a diary, or have a cat . . . ”

  Miss Prim’s expression softened a little. There it was again, the strange, dark, concentrated delicacy, the infuriating male ego combined with unexpected streaks of grace.

  “It’s the same thing with books,” continued Teseris. “In lessons we learn bits by heart and recite them. Then we read the books and discuss them and then we read them again.”

  The librarian removed her jacket with neat gestures and sat down on a bench.

  “So your uncle believes you should enjoy books, not study them?”

  “Yes, and he says it about other things, like music and paintings. Do you remember the day you arrived? You saw the Rublev icon and you measured it with a compass, remember?” asked Teseris.

  Miss Prim flushed, suspecting that the child was about to question her approach to art.

  “I remember,” she said curtly.

  “You didn’t take any notice when I said no grown-ups had helped me paint the icon. Grown-ups would have told me to use a compass. My uncle says an icon is a window between this world and the other one, it’s what he learned from the old starets. It’s also how old Athonites do it, and it’s how they’ve always been painted.”

  Miss Prim shifted uneasily on the bench. There was something troubling about these children, though she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Something unsettling that coexisted with a sunny, luminous innocence and their fond veneration of the Man in the Wing Chair and every word he uttered.

  “You love him very much, don’t you? Your uncle, I mean.”

  “Yes,” said little Deka, and his siblings nodded. Straight away he added: “He always tells the truth.”

  “So, do other people lie?” she asked, astonished by his statement.

  “People lie to children,” said Septimus solemnly. “Everyone does it, and no one thinks it’s wrong. When our mother died everyone told us she’d turned into an angel.”

  “But she didn’t,” murmured Miss Prim, moved.

  Septimus glanced at his sister, who shook her head firmly.

  “No one can turn into an angel, Miss Prim. People are people and angels are angels. They’re different things. Look at trees and deer. Do you think a tree could turn into a deer?”

  She shook her head.

  “Maybe it’s a way of explaining it, or maybe it’s a legend. And what’s wrong with legends? What about fairy tales? Don’t you like fairy tales?” she asked, trying to change the subject.

  “We like them,” said Eksi shyly. “We like them a lot.”

  “What’s your favorite?”

  “The story of the Redemption,” replied her older sister simply.

  Astounded, Miss Prim couldn’t think how to respond. The child’s strange statement showed that despite his efforts, despite his insistence and his arrogance, the Man in the Wing Chair hadn’t succeeded in instilling even the most basic rudiments of the faith that was so important to him. He hadn’t managed to explain the historical background of his religion. How could this be? All those morning walks to the abbey, all that reading of theology, all that ancient liturgy, all that playing at medieval jousting and what had he achieved? Four children convinced that the texts he so loved were just fairy tales.

  “But Tes, it’s not exactly a fairy tale. Fairy tales are stories full of fantasy and adventure; they’re meant to entertain. They’re not set at any specific time and aren’t about real people or places.”

  “Oh, we know that,” said the little girl. “We know it’s not a normal fairy tale; it’s a real fairy tale.”

  Miss Prim, pensive, adjusted her position on the old iron bench.

  “What you mean is it’s like a fairy tale, is that it?” she asked, intrigued.

  “No, of course not. The Redemption is nothing like a fairy tale, Miss Prim. Fairy tales and ancient legends arelike the Redemption. Haven’t you ever noticed? It’s like when you copy a tree from the garden on a piece of paper. The tree from the garden doesn’t look like the drawing, does it? It’s the drawing that’s a bit, just a little bit, like the real tree.”

  Miss Prim, who had begun to feel hot—feverishly, suffocatingly hot—remained silent for a long moment. The sun had almost set in the distance when at last she got to her feet and gave the children permission to go and play by the carp pond for a while, before slowly heading back to her room.

  PART II

  It’s Winter on the Russian Steppe

  1

  In the middle of November, Miss Prim had the opportunity of meeting her employer’s mother. She arrived without warning, wearing an elegant hat and followed by a maid weighed down with luggage. The children greeted her jubilantly, signifying to the librarian that behind the imposing aspect was concealed an attentive, devoted grandmother. An opinion Miss Prim held on to even after she observed that the children’s joy was due in large part to the pet bulldog and the numerous presents she had brought with her. Miss Prim was immediately struck by her extreme beauty. An attractive, refined woman is a work of art, her father had always said. If this was true, and the librarian believed it was, the lady who had just entered the house was a Botticelli, a Leonardo, even a Raphael.

  “Where is my son?” she asked briskly as the maid helped her remove her beautiful silver-fox fur stole.

  “At the abbey, I’m afraid,” replied the librarian.

  “The abbey,” the old lady echoed in a disapproving tone. “If he thought less about the abbey and more about this house, everything would go much better. And you are?”

  “I’m sorry, I should have introduced myself. My name is Prudencia Prim, and I’m here to sort out the library.”

  The lady stared at her for a few moments without a word. She looked closely at her face and examined her figure minutely, finally bringing her gaze to rest on her neat hair. Finally she asked the maid to bring her a cup of coffee and sat down in an armchair.

  “And him too? Are you here to sort him out?”

  The librarian blushed furiously. Miss Prim loved beauty, and the woman was beautiful, but that did not mean she was prepared to put up with certain insinuations. And of all possible insinuations, this was the one she was least able to tolerate.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she replied curtly.

  The visitor looked up at her with a s
ardonic grin.

  “First of all, Miss Prim, I must tell you that I don’t like having to crane my neck when holding a conversation. Do sit down. In my father’s time, a librarian wasn’t considered an employee, exactly; it was a position of trust, so it wasn’t customary for them to remain standing when spoken to. I’m an old-fashioned woman, and I don’t like to change my habits.”

  Miss Prim obediently sat down in an armchair. She’d abandoned her work and was painfully aware that Herodotus’s Histories awaited her in the library.

  “I didn’t mean to offend you, but you can’t deny that your employer is rather peculiar. Or hadn’t you noticed? Don’t be afraid to speak freely, my dear, he is my son. If there’s a woman in the world who knows him thoroughly, it’s me, Miss Print.”

  The librarian opened her mouth to correct the pronunciation of her name but thought better of it. It was plain that this lady was not accustomed to being interrupted, much less contradicted. She had probably never in her life had that salutary experience.

  “He’s a pleasant, generous employer. I have no cause for complaint. With regard to his character, you’ll understand if I say that I don’t consider it right or appropriate to give my opinion.”

  The old lady, removing her gloves, was silent for a moment.

  “It’s a relief to hear it, Miss Prim. I’m pleased to see that you’re exactly as they say you are. I’d like to make a confession: I have a bad habit of testing people before I trust them in the slightest. You must be aware that in the space of half a minute I made a malicious insinuation about your intentions in this house, prompted you to gossip about your employer’s character flaws, and deliberately mispronounced your name. You, however, responded to my insinuation with dignity, politely rejected my prompting, and overlooked my mistake. As my son says, you’re impeccable. There is absolutely no doubt about it.”

  Hearing this, the librarian felt confused. The idea that this stranger had been testing her was not pleasant, and yet she wasn’t offended. Not only because she had evidently passed the test but because, despite his prejudice against highly qualified people, the Man in the Wing Chair had described her to his mother as impeccable.