“Mine?” My voice sounded as fatigued as I felt.
The girl said something in Italian, reached out and put a hand on my shoulder. I was startled by the gesture, flinched slightly. I looked at the bed, so thin, the rope frame showing beyond the edge of the folded blanket. My throat seized as I thought of the night before.
The night before, I’d been with him, Hermann. I was his jewel, a gem cut against his tongue. Afterward, my ankle tucked around his, hand folded between the sinew of his arm and chest, I still thought he might change his mind. That he would realize he could not send me away, that I could not go alone. I knew he believed that if he were to leave his wife and son, he would have to leave everything else – his reputation, his contacts and associates, the business. I still thought that might not matter. His hands in my hair, his hand along my collarbone, my ribs. His hands cupping my buttocks, around my waist and down, inside me, his hands along the length of me, holding my feet. His hands. And so much more. He couldn’t take all that away from me; he couldn’t empty his hands of me and keep going. Except, my God, of course he could.
* * *
There was one girl at the cloister who could also speak English. Clara and I muddled through together in a language that was neither of ours. “I’m not really supposed to be here,” I told her. It was one of my first mornings, and I folded clothes to fit into the chest at the end of my cot.
Clara sang out a high laugh. “Of course you’re not! None of us are.”
“No, but –” I was going to tell her that this was temporary, that the father of the child was coming to get me, but realized then that some of the other women had likely been told the same thing. What made me certain I was different than those I pitied?
“It’s all right.” Clara ran her hand down my arm and then held my elbow lightly, as though cupping a bird or an egg.
I pulled my arm away from her, shook my head. “It’s not.” I wasn’t like these women, some clearly pregnant, several slim, and all seemingly so young. Here I was both unwed mother and old maid. I didn’t belong.
The nuns spoke Italian, French, English, though none but Mr. Wiinstead spoke Danish. Those who could counselled me in English. “We are equal in the eyes of God. All he asks is that we are humble, that we repent.”
I had plenty for which to ask forgiveness – relations with a married man first among my misdeeds – but I still felt their words weren’t relevant to me, as though appeals for humility and penance were for someone I wasn’t. Hermann knew me, truly, even if these women did not. I wrote to him often, as though to remind both him and myself who I was, who he was, who we were to each other. In one letter, I asked if he might be able to come for me before the baby was born. This was folly, I knew. Even though the fighting was against Italy’s northern front, soldiers marched through the south and I could hear their boots on the road surrounding the cloister. We’d had drills in which we crawled under our cots, ducked our heads between our arms on the floor, imagined protecting ourselves from falling mortar, though a raid on the southern coast seemed unlikely.
Just as improbable was the chance that Hermann would be able to travel to me during the war. I would wake at night, feel my stomach tighten and tension run through every part of my body, lines of pain twisting around my limbs, burrowing into my head as an ache that would not end. My thoughts brought no comfort – I would birth the baby alone, and then it would be taken away. Mornings, I couldn’t eat. I went to the dining hall to drink as much water as I could, then sat at a small desk in the library, pressed the tips of my fingers into my temples and wrote to my H. Almost as often as I sent them, the letters would be returned, or it was Onkel who wrote back, imploring me not to write to his brother. The censor here is a friend, not one I would trust completely, a master gossip – I suspect that’s what got him the post. “Hello, fine friend!” I say to him if he is reading this. Miss Jüül, again, you must not write to Hermann in Cairo! If you have to write, address it to him here. I’ll pass on the letters. It’s best you not write at all, though I suspect you will keep it up.
I kept it up. I wrote to Hermann care of his brother. As desperate as my letters were, the responses were always from Onkel. Increasingly, they were marred with the deletions of the censor so that what remained, though intelligible, said very little – nothing of consequence or genuine feeling remained between the black marks. Still, I wrote letter after letter, received censored missives in return, until one arrived with more content visible than usual. H was pleased to receive your letter, Onkel wrote. He remembers your time in Egypt with fondness. Fondness? H reminds you that that time is now gone. The war is here now and he knows that we can all be sensible in facing our fate. H appeals to you to be discreet. He knows how good you are, Miss Jüül.
Of course he knew how good I was. How much more discreet could I be, hidden in a cloister, perched on the rocky coast of southern Italy?
We trust you’ve received the money from the Danish consulate? 150 lire last month, 150 this month. Please, send word. Two weeks later, after I’d sent more letters, another from Onkel: Please send word. We have not heard from you and are worried.
I sent words. I sent so many words. Where did they go? I received so few in response.
* * *
One morning, weak light filtered into the room, and the slow, rhythmic breath of my sleeping dormitory mates closed in around me. I was so hot. I peeled the thin cotton sheet and rough wool blanket from me. Stifled by heat, I wanted to be outside in air blown from the sea and sucked into thick trees in the crevices of mountains. I walked across the floor barefoot and left the room. I wanted to be able to go down the stairs, across the courtyard, through the gates. To feel grass under my feet, to lie under a tree. I knew I wouldn’t make it. My legs were already so weak, unstable. I went instead to the patio that jutted out from the end of the hallway. There was a glass there, full of water, balanced on the ledge. Or did I imagine it? I reached for it, first grabbed nothing but air, then tried again, felt the smooth cool of glass against my palm. I lifted it to my mouth, but it was empty. I pressed, as though I could draw water from glass, and it splintered in my hand.
I kept clenching and the sensation began as a slice across my palm, then moisture. Water! It ran down my hand, over my wrist, dripped onto the patio, and then pain seared through me. The taste of blood in my mouth as I bit down. Heat bearing down through me as my stomach tore with pain that burst between my legs, shattered and ripped out of me, blood on my hands, blood on my legs, blood on my feet. Blood pooling around me. I was so very thirsty. So very, very tired. I lay in warm, lovely sunlight on the patio and dreamed myself into blackness.
* * *
I knew in the first moments of waking that the baby was gone. I could feel nothing but an aching absence in the centre of me. I tried to turn my head, to open my mouth, speak. My body rose from the mattress and began to float at the same time as it sank so heavily, its weight pulling it down through the bed frame, the stone floor, until it was stamped in hard-packed earth. I rose again, weightless, into nothing but air, then I was held down by something stuffed, heavy and wet, between my legs. I was still so hot, so unbearably hot. The heat built and built until it shattered, and cold pierced skin and the centre of each aching muscle and organ until my empty body shook with pain so frigid it burned.
Sister Bertha’s face was above mine, blurred until it became Sister Anna’s, her lips opening and closing, pink and red and white, her teeth, the darkness of her mouth. Clara’s was the voice that came out, some of her words her own, in English, others the Italian words of Sister Bertha, and then everyone’s voices at once, mounting and merging until there was no one language, no single words or sentences, no answers to the questions I couldn’t ask – then they fell away. In the silence, I could feel my body being lifted by several hands, how they pressed the pain back into me, each hand, palm, thumb, finger imprinting aches until they became nothing but air, nothing at
all, and I was being carried, as though I had no weight, no body, nothing to me. Nothing but air that I kept rising into, sky throbbing blue, light sharp and insistent. Sun so bright that my eyes couldn’t bear it for long, so bright that it burned my sight back into darkness.
When I opened my eyes again, there was a nurse above me. Her cap was tied at the nape of her neck, white fabric down her shoulders like a bride or a nun. She wore a white apron, the red cross level with my eyes as she adjusted my pillow.
“Where am I?”
“Shh.”
Shh, shh, shh. And then the prayers. So many voices – in Italian, French, German, English – until there were only two left, Sister Bertha’s and Clara’s. I opened my eyes again and their faces were clear, in focus, their eyes kind.
“You’re in the hospital,” Clara said, as though answering the question I’d asked of the nurse earlier – when had that been?
I looked from her face to Sister Bertha’s. “Where is my baby?”
Sister Bertha took a step closer to the bed, put her hand on my shoulder. “With God now, child, the best place it can be.”
I struggled to move, wanting to sit up, but all I could do was turn my head slightly from side to side. I wanted to yell but scratched a whisper out of my throat. “No, that is not the best place it can be. It should be with me. The baby should be with me.”
“Marie –” Clara began.
Sister Bertha spoke over her. “Sleep, child. We’re here with you. We are praying for you.”
Forty-Nine
I knew there was nothing to me then but passing time. Nothing to me but the weeks the sheets were spotted with blood, nightclothes twisted with sweat, time itself seeping out of me. I’d spent several months balled into myself, my body clenched like a jaw, then slack as a mouth pulled open by sleep. I felt my strength draining away and thought I might cut lines across my skin with broken glass, create brilliant red patterns on the bedding. I knew it was cowardly to think like that. To live, that was the thing that would be difficult. I rolled over and watched a flock of seabirds obscure the sky for a moment, and then nothing but a pale, high blue.
Eventually, I got up, washed and dressed and went into the dining hall. I was silent as I ate with the nuns and the other women who were convalescing. After dinner one night, Mr. Wiinstead approached me. “Miss Jüül, may I have a word?”
“Of course, sir.” I stood straight, thought of myself as a marionette, strings holding me, a slight lift of my wrists, feet, the hinges of my hips. I followed him to the hall outside the refectory.
He turned, looked not directly at my face but beside me. “You’re doing better now, I can tell.”
“Yes, sir, I am.”
Not long before, Mr. Wiinstead had invited me into his study, spoken in monotone about how it was only right that we should all suffer as Christ himself suffered, that it was through his empathy of our misery that he could heal us. To be tormented was to be human, wed to our condition. Mr. Wiinstead was no priest and I was no Catholic. I let him speak to me about these things, tell me that the only way to regain my strength would be to give myself to the service of others.
“We’ve been contacted by Duke Leone Caetani di Sermoneta.” I didn’t know what this name meant, so I said nothing. “A duke from a very noble Roman family, as you may know. They hold land all over the country.” Mr. Wiinstead looked down the hall and took a breath, then held it high in his chest, as though he had something to do with their landholdings. He turned back toward me. “He’s requested a meeting with you tomorrow.”
“I don’t know this man.”
He looked directly at me for a moment, brow tight, eyebrow cocked, then looked away. “He’s been given your name and your location from someone who does. I have reason to believe he may be coming to offer you employment.”
Both the letters and the money orders I’d been receiving had stopped coming. Whether it was the war that had delayed them in the post or something else, I didn’t yet know, but I didn’t want this duke taking me away. What I wanted was more rest. To be as soft and as pliable as a sheet, tucked away in the cloister until Hermann could come for me so that our lives could continue as they should.
“You are welcome to stay here with us, Miss Jüül.” Mr. Wiinstead looked into the refectory, watching the girls clear tables with a detached fascination, as though they were in the distance, animals grazing on a hill. “You’re well enough to be of some service. And,” he paused, “I’ve written to you of my intentions.” In his office, he had spoken to me of God and philosophy and ways to strengthen the human spirit, but Mr. Wiinstead had made no inappropriate advances. These he saved for letters in which he wrote to me of his great respect for my mind.
“You have, sir.” Light dropped from high windows to the tables in jagged rectangles. The girls walked through them as they cleared tables, from shadow to light and back again.
“Have you given my suggestions any thought?”
“I have, sir.” What Mr. Wiinstead had proposed wasn’t quite marriage, not yet. I was a damaged woman, after all. Both my mind and body tattered. I would need to recover, to gain my strength and then to repent, stitch up the frayed edges of my thoughts. Mr. Wiinstead wanted to give me some time, under his own tutelage and guidance. I didn’t tell him that no time would be balm enough for me to consent to marry a greying Danish man and join him as caretaker of a cloister in the Italian countryside.
When I didn’t say anything else, he said, “I suppose the duke will be able to offer you more in some respect. Far less in others. Italy has examples enough of how power is at odds with a spiritual life. And with this war ... I just hope you consider the merit of a simple, healthful life in the service of God.”
“Of course. I will.” The refectory was nearly cleared. Two girls were still wiping down the tables, cloths in hands, arms sweeping broad arcs across the surfaces, moving toward the middle.
* * *
In the library the next morning, Mr. Wiinstead brought the duke into the room. On introduction, I bowed slightly and held out my hand, my arm trembling slightly. My hand had not yet healed properly, had become reinfected more than once at the cloister, and it was bandaged again. The duke was more than a foot taller than me. He turned and nodded once toward Mr. Wiinstead, a signal for him to leave. The duke said, “Please, sit,” so I did, on the edge of a straight-backed chair, my hands flat on my knees. He walked the room, looked at the books, pulling some out and turning them over before sliding them back into place, each fitted against the others. Eventually he said, “I understand that you’ve come from Egypt.”
“Yes, sir.”
“No need for sir.” He was still looking at the shelves. “A fascinating country, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
The duke turned and came toward me, sat in a chair opposite mine. “I’ve spent a lot of time in that part of the world, so I know it can also be difficult.”
He looked at his own hands and I did as well, his fingers long and tapered. “Sometimes, the people could be – I heard it described once as brutish.” I had said too much, the wrong thing.
The duke folded his hands in his lap, looked directly at me for a moment. “I suppose that people can be brutish anywhere.”
“Yes, I suppose they can.” It had been unseemly to bring that up. I would find a way to make more appropriate comments.
“You’ve been told why I’m here?”
I wasn’t sure. “I believe so.”
“My wife is pregnant. The baby will come soon and she’ll need help. I’ve several people to help us – a governess, a nursemaid – but I’m looking for someone more for her. She’s fragile.” He looked at me for a moment, then away. “Her health is fragile. She could benefit from a companion, someone to help her through this, to make appointments, that sort of thing.”
“Of course.” Why had this man come to me?
As though answering, the duke said, “I believe that we knew some of the same people in Cairo.”
“Oh?”
“I used to travel there quite a bit on political business – a kind of diplomacy, really. I spent some time at the Danish consulate.” I saw light riding the curved rims of wineglasses, felt the warmth of Hermann’s hand briefly on the sway of my back as he walked by. Had he given the duke my name? This wasn’t right. It was supposed to be Hermann who came for me, or even Onkel at the least, not this stranger, noble though he was.
“You will be able to relocate to Rome?”
We had agreed that I wouldn’t leave the cloister. That Hermann would come to me when he could, when the war waned and he knew how he could care for his child. But, as the war blustered on, the letters had stopped coming. The baby was gone and I’d had no way to tell him. I carried nothing, received nothing. Perhaps the duke’s nobility enabled him better contact with Egypt. Perhaps he was a kind of messenger and it was understood that I was to go with him.
“Miss Jüül?”
For how long had I been quiet? I held my elbow against my waist, my bandaged hand trembling again. How I wished someone had been able to send me instructions on the answer I was to give. Finally, I said, “Yes, of course.”
“We’ve already quarters set up for you at the villa where my wife is now. She’ll like you, I can tell.”
“I’m sure I will like her as well,” I said, though I was certain of so little.
“You’ll be able to come with me today, then?”
“Yes, I will.” I had only a few things to pack – clothing and books, no household items.
“I will speak to Mr. Wiinstead. Have them bring your things to the west entrance – I have a car waiting there for us.” I wondered who he supposed would be tasked with bringing my things. I asked Clara and a couple of other girls to help me. Before I left, Clara pulled me back, behind an archway. “We’ll come visit you, Marie, we will! If, that is, you’ll admit us into the home of nobility.”
Little Fortress Page 27