by Jina Bacarr
She shakes her head. ‘You’re too nice to be a reporter. Reporters are always hiding in corners, trying to talk to you, sneaking into your cell to look for clues under the mattress… ah, there were so many of them coming here after the war.’ She giggles. ‘They never found anything.’
I double blink. ‘You were here then?’
‘Oui. I came to the convent seventy years ago after my mother couldn’t care for me any longer. I was thirteen and knew then I wanted to take the veil, so it seemed like the right thing to do.’
I suck in a breath, my heart thumping loudly. ‘Then you knew—’
‘Your mother, mademoiselle, Madeleine Chastain,’ the nun says with a sun-kissed smile and mirth in her voice like an impish fairy.
I exhale. ‘Then you know who I am.’
I admit, I never expected such a direct answer from the charming nun. She reminds me of a kind-hearted but feisty supporting character straight out of Central Casting who throws the audience for a loop with her wisecracking one-liners and snappy delivery.
‘Oh, yes, I knew who you were the minute I saw you… I see her in your eyes… I see your grandmother, too. You have her grace and her dimple.’
This is too much for me. My knees wobble. ‘You knew Sylvie Martone?’
She nods. ‘I was a young girl then, but I shall never forget her. So kind and beautiful and risking everything to protect her baby.’ She chuckles. ‘Sylvie was right under their noses when the reporters showed up. Dressed as a Belgian nun, she’d answer their questions professing to know nothing, telling them how she spent the war helping refugees from her country make the journey through the German lines to France, including the little girl she brought with her.’
‘My mother,’ I say with a deep sigh.
‘Oui, mademoiselle.’
An uncomfortable silence arises between us, as if we’re each going back in time with our thoughts, sad and happy times. From what I learnt about my grandmother from Ridge, Sylvie was a beloved star of the cinema since she was a teenager, but during the war she used her influence with the Nazis to receive special ‘favors’ to get her films made after production started up again in Paris in the summer of 1941.
I feel myself wanting to rush forward with so many questions, but I don’t know where to start. I look around the sequestered alcove, note the ripples of sunshine that filter through the ivy-covered trellis overhead, the serene pond with lilies floating in the calm water. I have a feeling this was a favorite place for Sylvie to come with her baby which is why the nun waited here for me. She must have seen me sneak out into the gardens and knew I’d end up here.
‘My mother called me Juliana. Juliana Chastain.’
‘I am called Sister Rose-Celine, mademoiselle,’ she says, introducing herself.
I pause, think. Why does that name sound so familiar? Then it hits me.
‘You’re the nun who wrote to Maman after she went to California.’
She nods. ‘Yes, I prayed for her… and you. She wrote to me when you were growing up; she told me how proud she was when you graduated from university.’ She reflects a moment, then her eyes get moist. ‘Then she stopped writing and it saddened my heart.’
‘It wasn’t her fault, Sister…’ I don’t know why, but I find myself spilling out my grief to a stranger about how my mother lost sight of everything in her life the past few years, including me. The light slowly leaving her eyes, how I felt her spirit never stopping trying to get through to comfort me. As I feel it now. I feel lighter somehow and for the first time, I know I made the right decision coming here.
‘And now, mademoiselle,’ Sister Rose-Celine says in that charming way nuns have when they’re about to teach you something, ‘you wish to fill in the gaps about your mother, things she never told you. God in His wisdom has sent you here to me.’ She exhales. ‘Alors, where do I begin?’
Sister Rose-Celine keeps the conversation lively, the two of us sitting in the garden with her recounting stories about Maman. How the Mother Superior at the time, Sister Vincent, made certain Sylvie’s baby was cared for after she died. How the nuns subscribe to a vow of silence about the goings-on within the convent walls. If they had any speculation among themselves regarding the Belgian nun who showed up here with the orphan baby after the liberation of Paris in 1944, they kept mum. Sylvie’s secret was safe. Years later, the Mother Superior – Sister Vincent – told Sister Rose-Celine about a trust fund set up in the baby’s name to pay for her education, most likely funded by Sylvie’s exquisite jewelry that she sold on the black market during the war.
The sister also reveals during the 1960s, a rumor circulated about the Belgian nun, that she was the elusive French actress. Since only Sister Vincent and Sister Rose-Celine knew for certain she was Sylvie Martone, the truth was never known. The rumor resurfaces every few years and reporters and podcasters show up, trying to make a story out of it.
Then Sister Rose-Celine’s eyes turn tender and her breathing slows when she talks about my mother.
‘Tell me about Maman when she was a little girl,’ I beg her, yearning to know what she was like before she became the reserved art history professor.
The sister claps her hands. ‘Ah, she loved to have tea parties with her doll with the long, blonde braids, but your maman wasn’t always quiet. I remember the time she was twelve and hid in the dungeon and pretended to be a ghost, moaning and groaning and rattling a chain. She scared the knickers off me.’ The nun giggles. ‘She was like a sister to me. I was so happy when Madeleine went to university and then returned here afterward to use her skills.’
‘Do you have any photos of her growing up?’ I ask.
‘No selfies then, mademoiselle,’ she says, making me smile. ‘I do have a photo of the three of us – Sylvie, ta maman, and me – standing under the willow tree. Madeleine was six and I was thirteen. It’s in my room, mademoiselle, though I can’t say where. I promise you, I will find it, but first…’ I can see her mind zooming back in time, remembering… questioning.
‘Yes?’ I beg to know what’s on her mind.
‘You have a right to know, mademoiselle, how ta grand-mère drove her motorcar off the road during a summer rainstorm in 1950 and hit a tree, killing her instantly.’
‘Oh…’ I feel the life drain from me, as if my body melts into a pool of sadness. ‘I wish you’d told me, Maman,’ I whisper. ‘So I could comfort you.’
Sister Rose-Celine lays her hand on my arm and says in a whisper, ‘It was very hush-hush, how the authorities determined the vehicle was convent property, but the driver was never identified. That an unknown woman stole the car and died in the motorcar accident.’
‘Sylvie…’ I say in a reverent whisper, my hand going to my throat.
‘Oui, the Mother Superior confided in me that she knew Sylvie since she was a child and was privy to her innermost secrets, but she never broke that confidence. She used her influence afterward to make sure no one knew who was buried in the unmarked grave on the convent grounds… it was what Sylvie would have wanted: to protect her child from nosy reporters who might find out she was laid to rest here and unearth the truth she had a child. She wouldn’t want her daughter to grow up with the stigma of her mother’s alleged sins during the war. The Mother Superior made me promise to keep Sylvie’s secret. I can’t believe she did the terrible things they said she did. In my heart I prayed someday someone would find out what really happened during the war and Sylvie’s true story would be told.’
I feel a tinge of sadness at knowing the exact year of her death. I was secretly hoping she’d lived a longer life, got to know her daughter, even if it was from afar.
‘Ta maman and I had happy years afterward,’ Sister Rose-Celine continues, ‘filled with learning and prayer and nurturing the lily flowers for our special tea, then the road narrowed when she was a teenager and Madeleine was sent along a lonely path.’ Her long, luxurious sigh releases a burden held so long.
‘What happened, Sister?’ I fear to as
k.
‘Madeleine found her original birth registration issued from the Neuilly-sur-Seine mairie or city hall in Paris, listing the actress Sylvie Martone as her birth mother. She had no idea her mother was famous and when she heard the colorful rumors about Sylvie being spotted here in the convent… alors, you can imagine the pain she suffered.’
‘Oh, my God, no wonder she said nothing to me. How did she find the birth certificate?’
‘She was working in the convent office after Sister Vincent passed away when she came across a sealed brown envelope with her name on it, along with a photo of Sylvie, a diamond pin, and lace veil. Stuffed away in a file cabinet and forgotten.’
‘Where did they come from?’ I urge her on, my heart pounding.
‘When Sister Vincent became the Mother Superior after the war, I assume she found them hidden among Sylvie’s personal items. She was waiting to give the envelope to Madeleine, but Sister Vincent left us when Madeleine was seventeen.’
‘Didn’t Maman ask about her parents when she was growing up?’
Sister Rose-Celine shakes her head. ‘Madeleine accepted the fact she was a war child and her birth wasn’t registered in un livret de famille. Instead, Sylvie secured what the government called “anonymous birth”, a way of dealing with children fathered by German soldiers. This allowed unwed mothers to give up their children at birth to orphanages. Those children never knew their parents’ names.’
‘Wouldn’t Sylvie have been recognized when she registered her child as an unwed mother?’
‘Oui, mademoiselle, unless someone else did it for her.’
My head is spinning as the mystery deepens when Sister Rose-Celine reveals Madeleine destroyed the original birth certificate and she could do nothing to stop her.
But she kept the photo of Sylvie, the diamond pin, and the lace veil.
Strange.
I can imagine how my mother felt, first believing she was the product of a rape or coercion by the enemy of an innocent Frenchwoman. When Madeleine found out about Sylvie’s nefarious dealings during the war, she went into a deep depression. She told anyone who asked she was an orphan and never knew her French parents. Madeleine became a lay sister and kept her mother’s past as a notorious actress hidden.
I never knew any of this, never questioned my mother’s roots in France. World War II was ancient history to me and for that I’m ashamed. I shouldn’t have waited so long to embrace where I came from, but we don’t always ask these questions when we don’t know where we’re going in life.
I do now.
I have my career and who knows… maybe someday I’ll fall in love.
I can’t let recent events make me question if I’m not already in love with Ridge and I’ve been too dumb to see it. Of course, he’s not in love with me. He’d have told me, wouldn’t he?
No time to ponder over my romantic notions that will probably go nowhere.
First, I need to come to grips with the past.
Old stories long forgotten that need to be found. A fragile thread entwining around my heart that tightens when I fear what I’ll find. I’ve discovered what I needed to know about Maman, but what about Sylvie? The sister has no knowledge of the actress before she showed up disguised as a Belgian nun after Paris was liberated.
I can’t contain my disappointment. Is this the end of the road?
Or did Sylvie leave behind any other traces of her existence?
‘You mentioned files, Sister Rose-Celine. Did the Mother Superior, whom you said was close to Sylvie, leave behind any personal files, identity card, letters from her? Anything that would hint at what Sylvie did during the war. Photos, notes, scribbles… anything?’
Then she lays a bombshell on me.
‘I believe God sent you here to retrieve Sylvie’s belongings.’
I gasp. Loudly. ‘What belongings?’ This information sets my bell ringing.
‘Be assured, mademoiselle, whatever boxes and suitcase Sylvie Martone stored in the convent chateau dungeon are safe,’ she adds with a secret smile.
Boxes, suitcase?
Did I hear her correctly? My heart is fluttering like a schoolgirl’s at prom, my brain going this way and that, not believing my hunch was right.
Sylvie left a trail for me to follow.
Then why didn’t the current Mother Superior mention the boxes and suitcase? Or, if the mirth in the nun’s eyes tells me anything, she doesn’t know about them.
I try to concentrate on what she’s saying while my pulse races out of control.
Sister Rose-Celine rambles on about how she couldn’t bear to throw them out, hoping one day Madeleine would return for them. When I showed up asking questions about the French actress, she saw it as a sign from God the time had come to tell the truth…
‘And you have access to the dungeon?’ I beg to ask her, praying she isn’t in the midst of an old memory with no truth to it.
She holds up a ring of keys. ‘Where do you think I go to listen to my Chopin when the other sisters get too noisy?’
13
Juliana
An impetuous nun tells all
Ville Canfort-Terre, France
Present Day
What is all this stuff? is the first thing that comes to my mind when Sister Rose-Celine shows me where Sylvie’s things are stored in the dungeon among what she calls ‘artifacts’ piled up over the decades.
‘It’s forbidden but not unusual for some nuns to retain a feeling of individuality by borrowing a favorite hand-painted teacup or holy candle or a personal item.’ She chuckles as if she’s guilty herself. ‘We called these acts pious thefts back when I was a young novice, though the practice fell out of favor years ago. Back then, such thefts were frowned upon and when discovered, placed here to keep the sinful deeds closed up.’
I have to hand it to my grandmother. What better place to hide the property of the beautiful film star than where it wouldn’t be disturbed? It would also explain why the Mother Superior knew nothing about Sylvie’s personal possessions stored here. I doubt the woman ever stepped into this creepy, old dungeon. Cobwebs and broken stones lay scattered everywhere among the objects tossed into wooden crates. Sister Rose-Celine told me electricity was installed down here during the Great War and later updated when the dungeon was used in the 1940s as a bomb shelter. Someone also installed a two-person lift big enough to accommodate her wheelchair. According to the sister, the lift was used to help Resistance fighters move weapons and ammo hidden here.
I wonder if Sylvie ever entertained joining the Resistance, or am I asking for too much?
‘Were you ever tempted, Sister Rose-Celine, to look inside the boxes or the suitcase?’ I ask, curious. I poke around the crates, but I don’t see any suitcase. Is this just a lonely nun’s fantasy to keep the past alive?
‘Oh, no,’ the sister says, blessing herself, ‘that would be breaking my vows to respect the promise made by the Mother Superior to Sylvie.’
‘Didn’t my mother want to see them?’ I have to know.
Sister Rose-Celine shakes her head. ‘Sylvie instructed the Mother Superior if anything happened to her, she wasn’t to tell her daughter about the boxes until Madeleine was eighteen. The new Mother Superior at the time found the notation in Sister Vincent’s last will and mentioned it to her, but Madeleine was still reeling about discovering who her mother was months earlier and never bothered.’ She lowers her eyes. ‘I told her the good things I remembered about her mother, but that wasn’t enough in her eyes to erase what Sylvie had done during the war.’
‘Wasn’t she curious? Why didn’t she want to know more?’
‘Like so many of her generation, Madeleine chose to accept what she was told about Sylvie. You must understand the shame felt by people after the war for what happened during the Occupation, a shame that’s taken a lifetime for so many Frenchmen to accept. The grey line of resistance… and the even greyer line of collaboration with the enemy.’
I understand. Sister Rose-Celi
ne is a sly old fox, leaving much unsaid, but I get the drift of what she means. How French women were often put in difficult circumstances, women whose homes were used to billet German soldiers and prostitutes forced to accept them as customers.
‘You’re saying there could be truth to the accusations Sylvie Martone went over willingly to the enemy.’
I don’t want to accept it. I may have to.
‘Alors, Juliana, I wish I knew. There have been cases of accusers who were petty collaborators trying to draw attention away from themselves.’
‘I understand why Maman chose a reclusive life as a way of atonement for what she perceived as her mother’s indiscretions, her sins. It was her way of coping in a time without the Internet and access to information.’
‘Oui, you have much insight into ta maman. She did her best to serve the Church in her own way.’
I have to smile. ‘She was also a romantic, Sister Rose-Celine, and dreamed of falling in love. No doubt that romantic part of her came alive when she met my father. When she realized she, too, had sinned, she took that as further proof she must bury the past… and she raised me without the burden of knowing about Sylvie’s part in the war to protect me.’
‘Unlike your mother, you’re willing to accept your grand-mère for who she was?’ she asks me, scooting across the stone floor, maneuvering her way around.
‘Is this a trick question, Sister?’
‘No, mademoiselle, just an honest one you must answer to yourself.’
The nun realizes she’s given me a lot to think about because I don’t have an answer. She continues looking for the box and the suitcase, knowing she’s touched a nerve in me.
‘They must be here somewhere. Could be,’ she admits with a heavy sigh, ‘the suitcase was emptied back in the late sixties when we had a leak and used to store books from the library, but I’m not sure.’
Perhaps if I show the nun the photo, it will jog her memory.