‘Where did you come from?’ Sister Ana asked.
‘You left in a hurry after lunch.’
‘I had to work on my painting. There is still a lot to do.’
‘Are you still worried about the baby?’
‘You know what I think,’ Sister Ana said. ‘Am I the only one who has not taken leave of her senses? The baby should be in the orphanage. Our vocation is the contemplative life. There are things appropriate to our calling that we should commit ourselves to.’
‘An orphanage is not the best place for a child to grow up,’ Sister Beatriz said.
The other woman shrugged. ‘We live in isolation. Let’s suppose the child falls ill one day.’
‘The Mother is a trained nurse.’
Sister Ana waved her away but did not protest when the other woman sat next to her. They stared at the well in the courtyard, the chapel behind it, the bell tower with the stork nest. Sister Beatriz said cautiously: ‘I saw you walking round the old buildings earlier.’
‘I like to walk. It’s good for my indigestion.’
‘You spent a long time inside the old school. I thought it strange.’
‘Many things seem strange lately. I have been saying so, but none of you want to listen.’ Sister Ana glanced round. There was no one else in the cloister. She leaned over to the other nun and added: ‘I have no doubt the Mother is possessed.’
The bell sounded the Ninth Hour. The two nuns joined the other sisters crossing the courtyard on their way to prayer. In the chapel they sat separately. Later that evening Sister Beatriz went to see Sister Ana in her room. She was standing at her easel working on the Transfiguration. She asked: ‘Has anyone seen you coming?’
Sister Beatriz had come across no one. The other women were all in their rooms. Sister Ana continued to paint with her back to her for a while, and then she stood back and asked her her opinion about the painting. Sister Beatriz came closer. ‘You have talent, Sister. You ought to paint something on the wall of the refectory.’
‘You mean a fresco. The Mother thinks it would be an indulgence.’
She picked up another brush and returned to her work. She painted with great concentration and a steady hand, her nose almost touching the canvas. Sister Beatriz stood and watched while the evening grew darker and the owls in the roof began to coo. Finally Sister Ana put down her palette and cleaned her brushes with turpentine. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘Let me show you.’
She took the bloodied sheet out of its hiding place and spread it out on the floor. ‘Mother of God,’ Sister Beatriz said and crossed herself.
‘It was buried on the far side of the convent. I found it by chance.’
Sister Beatriz pointed a finger at the stain.
‘Blood, of course,’ the other woman said. ‘It is unmistakable.’
‘Do you think that someone had an accident?’
‘Accident? You talk nonsense. Why would someone bury it? And so far out of the way?’
‘Perhaps it had been there for many years.’
‘It doesn’t look old. The rain and the worms would have ruined it.’ She knelt down and began to fold it up. ‘Besides, it’s not the only piece of evidence.’ She put the sheet back in its box and told the other woman what she had seen in the scriptorium: ‘The floor had almost no dust at all. It appears to have been cleaned recently. I have no doubt. Someone had scrubbed the blood well, but it had trickled into the gaps between the floorboards.’
Sister Beatriz shook her head. ‘But why would someone do all that, Sister?’
‘It must have been some ritual.’
‘A ritual?’
‘A sacrifice–some animal,’ Sister Ana said and added in a lower voice: ‘I believe it was one of Carlota’s strays.’
‘Do you think she is behind all this?’
‘Who–Carlota? Oh no, poor Carlota is quite harmless. One never knows, of course…but I think it’s very unlikely. I can’t say the same for the Mother. Her behaviour has been very questionable lately.’
‘Because she wants to keep the child? Do you think he has something to do with this?’
‘Naturally. The coming of the child and the ritual seem to have happened at about the same time.’
‘So you think the Mother brought him to the convent, Sister?’
‘Perhaps. Don’t ask me where she found him–I have no idea. And I don’t know what she intends to do with him. Maybe she plans to use him in another ritual. Of course, there is an even worse hypothesis. Maybe she didn’t bring the baby herself. Maybe she performed the ritual to ask for the baby.’
‘Ask whom?’
‘Satan, of course.’
‘It’s only a baby, Sister Ana.’
‘He does seem human, yes. But Satan has great powers of deception.’
‘You don’t really believe that.’
‘If you believe in God, you shouldn’t doubt the existence of evil.’
Sister Beatriz said: ‘I mean that cases of demonic visitation are very rare. And besides, I doubt the Devil would dare come into a convent. It’s a place that is guarded by God.’
‘Exactly,’ Sister Ana said. ‘It is what makes churches and convents even more desirable targets for him. Corrupting people like us is a greater victory than corrupting someone who is not devoted body and soul to God.’
‘God help us,’ Sister Beatriz sighed.
Sister Ana said: ‘There may be more evidence around but I couldn’t find it. In any case,’ she added and tapped the box containing the bloodied cloth, ‘this will be enough for the Bishop.’
‘The Bishop?’
‘The Bishop. I trust him to act. But I will need your help, Beatriz.’
‘What can I do, Sister?’
‘Have you started to drive again?’
‘The Mother says to arrange it with Lucía.’
‘Good. You will take me to the city, and the two of us will go see His Excellency.’
Sister Beatriz did not like the idea. She said: ‘Perhaps we should make an appointment first.’
‘We have no time to waste. Let’s just hope he’s in the city when we go.’
‘But he’s a very busy man. He might have no time to see us.’
‘He will,’ Sister Ana said. ‘His Excellency is a very good friend of mine.’
Before they parted, and although it was very late, Sister Ana insisted that they knelt and prayed to God and the Virgin to grant them courage. Then she anointed the doorpost and the window frames with oil from her votive lamp and gave some to Sister Beatriz, urging her to do the same in her room to keep out the Devil.
After terce Sister Carlota and Sister Teresa came to see the Mother Superior and admitted that they had made a serious mistake by disobeying her instructions about the care of the baby. They stood in the middle of the room with bowed heads and spoke in low voices, occasionally raising a contrite face to peek at the Mother Superior from under their veils. Seated at her desk, she listened to them with an expression that gave no hope of clemency. She had decided that being lenient with Sister Ana had been a mistake and was prepared to mete out an exemplary punishment. She wanted to warn all the sisters that she would not tolerate a disobedience whose consequences might be graver than any of them suspected: it could deprive her of Purgatory. Sister Teresa denied that she had done anything to hurt the child; her only mistake was that she had not guessed he cried because he was hungry. She let out a torrent of apologies and honest regrets, which she repeated over and over again while Sister Carlota nodded in agreement. The Mother Superior raised her hand.
‘Enough. Your regret is sincere. But the fact remains that you were in a place you were not supposed to be, doing something you were not asked to do.’ She tapped her fingers on the desk, thinking. Then she asked: ‘Was it you, Teresa, searching through my wardrobe?’
‘I was looking for something to wrap the baby. I thought he was crying because he was cold.’
‘Do not lie to me.’
‘The fact of the matter is th
at the child suffered no harm,’ Sister Carlota said.
‘Deo gratias,’ the Mother Superior said. ‘I asked you here today to prevent anything bad from ever happening to him.’
Next to her bed in the cradle she had just finished making, the child lay wrapped in a blanket. Sister María Inés repeated in her mind that she would devote herself to him and God; she would become someone else, humbler and more repentant. At long last she could say that she ought not to be burdened with the sin of her youth any more–but it was not for her to decide.
She cleared her throat and faced the two nuns waiting in silence for her judgement. After she had threatened them with all-night vigils, extra daily tasks, the torment of thirst and even expulsion from the convent, threats which satisfied her anger, the Mother Superior ruled that they were not to join the other sisters in the refectory for recreation at the end of the day but go to their rooms and do solitary penance for two weeks. The two women bowed. The Mother Superior fixed Sister Teresa with a stare of further disapproval and added: ‘Our convent is not an inn where you can sing popular songs whenever you are seized by the muse, but a place of work and contemplation. Everything we do, at any time of day or night, whether awake or asleep, should aim at exalting the glory of God.’
‘Yes, Mother,’ the woman said.
‘If you have to sing, then sing a hymn or psalm of our faith. There are enough not to have to resort to the ravings of drunken gypsies.’
Having nothing more to say, she dismissed them with a gesture of disdain. When she was alone again, she occupied herself with her daily ritual of remembering her fiancé. She topped up the lamp that hung next to his portrait, changed the burned wick and lit it. Then she knelt and crossed herself with a devoutness that one who did not know her would suppose directed not at the memory of the naval cadet but at the saints in the icons on either side of him. All these years she had been tormented with the idea that she was responsible for his death because it was she who had suggested they put an end to her pregnancy. She had suggested it without assurance, shaking with fear, hoping that he would reply with the inspired answer that she had missed in her nights of sleepless deliberation, one that would get them out of the mess without the necessity of sin, but his gratitude when he heard her suggestion was enough to convince her to do it. She did not know what would have happened if she had never proposed it. Although in all probability he would have asked her to do it, she chose to believe that he would not have demanded it and, consequently, she now thought that her share of the blame was far greater than his. Yet he was the one who had paid for it with his life. It was an ingenious punishment, for in that way she suffered from guilt both for her decision and his death.
Before the arrival of the child, she used to believe that if she were ever to be forgiven it would only be in the hereafter, so long as she had served God with humility while she lived. No one could say she had not been sincere in her remorse. To make amends she had travelled as far as the equator, where something had happened that had given her the opportunity to put the past behind her and start a new life, but she had chosen not to do so.
She had been in Africa for some time when a new doctor arrived from Europe and the director of the mission hospital introduced them and asked her to show him round and help him settle in. Sister María Inés, who remembered her own confusion when she had first arrived, was pleased to be the new doctor’s guide. His work in the hospital was invaluable even though he was an ordinary surgeon without any training in tropical medicine. Sister María Inés did everything she could for him, but she was only a nurse with a practical knowledge of medicine. His true training was done by shadowing the director of the medical mission and reading books and journals sent from abroad. Then he began to help the nun improve her skills, and thanks to her commitment she soon knew far more than was expected from her. Their collaboration was productive and exemplary until a mosquito from a mangrove swamp flew to the mission with the sole purpose of passing through a hole in the net over Sister María Inés’s bed and biting her.
She caught malaria but refused to admit it, as if that was going to cure her. For several days she carried out her duties despite feeling unwell, until one morning she collapsed in the ward while giving a patient his medicine. She spent several weeks in bed suffering from fever, tremors and cold sweats before starting to get better. It was only during her convalescence that the doctor and she became good friends and began to discuss other matters besides medicine. Every evening after he finished work, he came by to take her temperature, listen to her lungs with his stethoscope, palpate her liver and spleen while she kept her arms crossed over her chest and her eyes firmly shut, and give her a quinine injection. When he finished examining her, he helped her put back on her nightdress with painstaking respect, told her that he was done and sat at the open window some distance from her bed to smoke. The nun remained deadly still and silent. He was amused by her embarrassment at having allowed herself to be seen naked, but he understood how she must have felt and did not press her to speak or acknowledge his presence in any other way. Instead he sat back and told her the news of the day in a calm voice, and when he finished his cigarette he picked up his bag, wished her goodnight and went out, leaving behind a cloud of smoke that did not dissolve for a long time afterwards.
Later Sister María Inés would say that malaria was the reason she returned home, but this was not the whole truth. One evening, when she was almost well again, she conquered her embarrassment and opened her eyes as soon as the doctor had finished examining her and was helping her with her nightdress. He pretended not to notice.
‘Thank you, Doctor,’ she said.
‘There is no need,’ he said, taking off his stethoscope. ‘I have a vested interest in your speedy recovery, Sister. As long as you’re bedridden, I have to do your work too.’
‘I thank you anyway. Although perhaps it would have been better to let the disease take its course.’
The doctor laughed. ‘What silly bravado! You know if I’d left you untreated you could’ve died.’
She knew it. She had seen it happen countless times, even with patients who had managed to make their way to the hospital. But while she was confined in bed she had the time to wonder what her torment of fever truly meant, and had decided that it was the longed-for punishment for her mortal sin. She had then tried to tell the doctor not to treat her but let God decide what to do with her. She had waved him away, knocked the syringe off his hand, wrapped herself tightly in the bed sheets, but did not have the strength to make herself understood. The doctor had interpreted her behaviour as the symptoms of delirium and rushed to reassure her that she was not going to die, even if her suffering felt like standing on the threshold of death. That evening, when she was finally out of danger and had regained some of her strength, she repeated to him her wish to die in a clear voice. The doctor finally believed her. ‘Well, Sister,’ he said, taken aback. ‘Why would you want to die?’
‘I have my reasons, Doctor.’
‘Think of your work here. You do a lot of good, you know.’
‘Oh, the hospital is important, yes. But I personally am not. Another sister would be as good–if not better.’
The doctor asked: ‘Isn’t it a sin? When one is wishing for one’s own death?’
‘Not if it is also God’s wish.’
‘God’s wish? I would guess He doesn’t want anyone dead.’ The doctor scratched his head. ‘But I wouldn’t know…Perhaps we don’t believe in the same god.’
The nun frowned. ‘What god do you believe in, Doctor?’
‘Hippocrates–the god who saved your life.’
‘I forgive your lack of faith,’ Sister María Inés said, ‘as long as it doesn’t turn into cynicism. And now I am ready to return to my duties.’
She got up from her bed and in her white nightdress, which covered her from the neck to her ankles, went to where her nun’s habit hung. The doctor followed her with his eyes and said in a serious voice: ‘Don’t p
ut it on.’
‘Don’t worry, Doctor. I feel perfectly well.’
‘I know you do. But don’t put it on all the same.’
The nun asked: ‘Do you think there is still danger?’
‘None at all. I was only wondering whether you really have to carry out your duties in those clothes.’
‘My habit? Do you mean to say that I should stop serving God?’
‘There are many other ways to serve Him.’
‘Naturally–but I have chosen mine.’
‘I don’t think God would object if you chose a simple nurse’s uniform.’
‘Don’t think you can understand His will for a moment, Doctor.’
The doctor took a step towards her. ‘I’m talking of marriage,’ he said.
‘Well, it is not possible.’
‘Why not? A marriage has the blessing of the Church, hasn’t it?’
‘Forget it. This habit means I am already married–to God.’
The doctor took her hand in his. ‘Oh, divorce the old codger then.’
She freed her hand and slapped him across the face with as much strength as she had in her weak state. The doctor rubbed his cheek. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘At least now we are sure that you are in good health. In fact, Sister, you’re much better than I supposed. I guess I ought to have proposed to you while you were still delirious. You could hardly lift your hand then.’
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