A Severed Wasp

by Madeleine L'engle

  Katherine said quietly, “Go on, please, Emily.”

  “At first we just had tea, and things, and then we used to go into the little chapel in Ogilvie House, Tory and me, and Fatty, and some of the other kids from school when Mrs. Undercroft said we could ask them. And Mrs. Gomez and the maids came. Mrs. Undercroft talked a lot about Jesus, and how he saves us …”

  “Isn’t that what Christians are supposed to believe?”

  “I guess. But the way she talked, it seemed that God was so angry with us for being born sinful that he couldn’t ever forgive us unless Jesus came and got himself crucified to sort of placate the Father. I think that’s ghoulish. That isn’t the God I believe in. Anyhow, she took us into chapel more and more often, and she had Tory light the candles, and Fatty and the other kids put flowers on the altar, and before we left, I was the one to snuff the candles.”

  “Was Fatima made to feel special, too?”

  “Well, sort of, but it wasn’t quite the same. Tory and I were more special, and that was easy to believe, because—well, you know Fatty.”

  Yes, it was easy to see how Yolande had beguiled the children. Being made to feel special is as potent an addiction as any drug. “What about Topaze? Was he part of all this?”

  “He’s a boy. Mrs. Undercroft said it was just for us females.”

  “And then what happened?” Emily did not respond; Katherine asked, “What happened to disenchant you?”

  “That’s the word,” Emily breathed. “It was sort of as if she’d enchanted us. She told us about how she’d been trained as a priestess in the Andes in Peru, and she was still a priestess, but now it was for Jesus, not the old gods, and we were her vestal virgins, Tory and Fatty and I. Then”—Emily’s voice dropped so low that Katherine had to lean close to hear her—“one day she wanted us to kiss her. On the mouth. At first. And I didn’t want to. I just didn’t, I didn’t want to.”

  Katherine said gently, “I wouldn’t have wanted to, either.” After a silence which was alive with pain she asked, “Then what happened?”

  Emily’s voice was thin. “She said of course she’d never ask me to do anything against my will, and I thought it was okay, but then she went on to say that I was one of them, whether I wanted to be or not, and that I would have to keep all their secrets. And I thought I ought to tell Mom and Dad. I didn’t say it, but I thought it, and she knew I was thinking it, because she said that if I ever said anything to anybody, I’d be sorry. And I said I’d never tell anybody anything, and she made me swear on the Bible I wouldn’t, and she said if I did, I’d be sorry, because if you swear on the Bible, something terrible will happen to you if you break your word.”

  “And?” Katherine urged. The child had to get it all out, if the infected wound was ever to heal.

  “I wanted to tell Mom and Dad. I’m older than Tory, and I was worried—but I couldn’t tell, not after she’d made me promise. I mean, I promised.”

  “But you broke your promise?”

  “Well—yes. And no. I mean, I didn’t think I’d said anything, but—”

  “What did you say, and to whom?”

  “The next day was my piano-lesson day … Oh, I wish the lights would come back on, it’s so dark.”

  “What happened the next day?”

  “My piano teacher was late. I was waiting for him, and Mother Cat—Mother Catherine of Siena came by, and asked me how I was. And I said I wasn’t sure, because you don’t lie to Mother Catherine of Siena. I would have liked to talk to Sister Isobel, because she was my homeroom teacher, but I knew I couldn’t talk to anybody.”

  “And?” Katherine prodded.

  “Mother Cat asked me if anything was wrong, and I asked her what she thought of God’s being so angry at all of us he couldn’t forgive us unless Jesus died. And she said no, no, that wasn’t right, but then one of the Sisters came hurrying in with some kind of emergency, and my piano teacher arrived. I had my lesson. And I played him one of the pieces I made up, and he told me to stop wasting my time, and his. So when I walked home I was angry and upset and not paying attention. I didn’t even see the car, till—”

  “Emily! You think the car hit you because you spoke to Mother Catherine of Siena?”

  “She said if I said anything after I’d sworn on the Bible, something terrible would happen.”

  “No, Emily. No! That has nothing to do with it.”

  “When I was in the hospital she came to me, when nobody else was there, and said it would be worse for me next time. She leaned over me and her face got bigger and bigger and more and more terrible and—” Emily’s voice broke and her breath came in short gasps.

  Katherine rocked the child, trying to control her own shuddering, and murmured soothingly, meaninglessly, for Emily was beyond words of comfort.

  Emily’s arms were tight around Katherine’s neck, holding her as Julie had held Katherine after one of the terrible nightmares which afflicted the child after Michou’s death.

  All that Emily was telling Katherine was nightmare. Distorted nightmare. Fevered phantasm. It was not that the child was lying, Katherine knew that she was not. She believed everything she had said. But it did not add up.

  Emily suddenly went rigid in Katherine’s arms. “Hush.”

  Katherine listened. She heard a thin sound, like a kitten’s wail.

  Emily’s body was tense. “What is it?”

  Katherine said, “You had better get your father.”

  Emily took one of the candles and limped out of the room. The remaining candlelight seemed to accentuate rather than alleviate the darkness, the darkness of Emily’s nightmare. Katherine heard a door open and slam. Silence. Eventually there was a knock on her door.

  “Madame Vigneras, it’s Suzy.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “It was Topaze. On the steps leading up to our apartment, howling like a lost beast. He’d managed to get this far in the dark, and was terrified. He’d started to go to Ogilvie House and blundered into one of the peacocks and fell over it, and the bird pecked him. It was probably as frightened as Topaze.”

  Katherine looked at Suzy, standing calmly in the doorway, her face illumined by her flickering candle. “I think if a frightened and angry peacock attacked me in the dark, I’d be terrified, too.”

  “They are anything but cuddly beasts,” Suzy agreed. “Topaze escaped into the vestibule of Cathedral House. He has a key to the inner door, which he is not supposed to have. But Dave says that when he was a boy he managed to acquire keys to all the doors and gates. Anyhow, Topaze is asking for the ‘music lady.’”

  “So he, too, knows I’m here?”

  “There aren’t many secrets on a Cathedral Close—one of many reasons I’m glad I have a life of my own. Since we’re all thoroughly disturbed—I’m sorry Emily bothered you—Dave is making hot chocolate for the kids, and I’m making tea or consommé. Sorry I don’t have any of Mimi’s tisanes. Will you join us?”

  The picture of Topaze attacked by the peacock, afraid in the dark, was vivid, ludicrous, pathetic. “Yes, I’ll join you.” She reached for her robe, and Suzy waited until Katherine had on her slippers. She took her candle and followed the dean’s wife into the living room. Several candles were lit, and their flames wavered in the breeze from the now open windows. Katherine sat in one of the fireplace chairs, and started looking about in the blowing light for Topaze.

  Sudden as lightning the power came on, the electric light dimming the candles, the music rising into life on the record player. The dean carefully took the needle off the disc. “We’d better wait a few minutes before snuffing the candles.”

  Suzy reached for the phone on the table beside the sofa. “Still dead.”

  Topaze scrambled to his knees. “Music lady! I was scared.”

  “I think we were all at least a little scared, Topaze,” Katherine said. “But you’re all right now.”

  The dean set a tray of mugs on the coffee table. “Cocoa is ready. When you’re through, To
paze, I’m going to take you over to Ogilvie House and bring Tory home.”

  “Please—can’t I stay?”

  “Your mother will be worried about you.”

  He nodded in mute acquiescence, trying to suppress tears. He lifted the mug and held it against his lips, then took a sip. “Music lady—” His voice was back in control. “You all right?” There was deep concern in the question.

  “I’m fine, Topaze.”

  “Glad you’re here,” he said. “Needed here.”

  Katherine thought she heard Emily murmur, “Oh, yes, please, yes,” but the words were lost in the general conversation which followed the return of the light.

  When Topaze had finished his hot cocoa and said good night, Katherine rose. “Once again I think I will try to go to bed.”

  Emily, too, stood up. “I’ll see you to your room.”

  “Emily.” Suzy was stern. “You are not to bother Madame Vigneras. Say good night to her at the door, and go on up to bed.”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  They walked silently to the guest end of the apartment. Had she sent Julie to bed, Katherine wondered, when the child needed her? Shouldn’t Suzy have recognized that Emily was in no fit state to be alone? Do we always see it better with someone else’s children than our own?

  “Would you like to come in for a little while?” she asked as Emily paused in the doorway.

  “Oh, I would, but Mom—”

  “You’re not bothering me, Emily. I’m inviting you.” She folded her robe once more at the foot of the bed and looked at Emily. “Would you like to spend the rest of the night with me? What’s left of it?”

  “You mean here, with you, in your bed?”

  “Yes.”

  “You really wouldn’t mind?”

  It was not a question of minding. It was what had to be done.

  Emily stood by the bed, looking thin and old-fashioned in her long, seersucker nightgown. “I’ll have to take my leg off.”

  “Of course,” Katherine replied calmly.

  “I’d just as soon you didn’t look.”

  Katherine turned away until Emily was in bed beside her. The child nuzzled up to her and fell quickly into sleep, worn out.

  Katherine’s own sleep was shallow. It was a long time since she had shared a bed. She slid in and out of dreams. Concert halls where she had played dissolved into cathedrals. Yolande appeared in the middle of a concert and knocked Katherine’s hands off the keyboard and began to sing. Lukas appeared, saying, ‘No, no, this will not do. No wife of mine must behave in this manner.’ And Yolande dissolved and Lukas announced that the concert would continue and that he would take Katherine safely home. Dreams overlapped, vanished, returned, always including Lukas, and Yolande, who in the dream was Lukas’s wife. Where was Justin? Wolfi?

  She woke up and lay on her back, not wanting to disturb the sleeping child. The usual pinkish light from the city shone through the windows. Once more the spotlight illumined the Angel Gabriel. The statue had indeed not kept evil away from the Cathedral Close.

  She looked at her travel clock. Two-thirty. What the Scots call the wee sma’ hours, during which it is impossible to think reasonably.

  She was exhausted when the sunlight woke her.

  Emily was beside her, still deep in sleep. On the chair to the dressing table lay the prosthetic leg with its harness of metal and leather. Katherine turned to look at the clock; the hands were just pointing to nine, and as she looked, the hour boomed from the clock tower. Emily stirred, but did not waken.

  A gentle knock came at the door, and a pleasant-looking dark-haired woman appeared carrying a breakfast tray, followed by Tory. “Dr. Davidson said not to let you sleep too long. I am Dolores, a friend of Raissa. She would want me to take good care of you.”

  Emily moaned, and pressed closer to Katherine. The old woman smoothed the fair hair, and the child opened her eyes.

  “Breakfast,” Dolores said. “Sit up, and I will arrange the pillows. You can help, Tory. Breakfast for two—brown eggs I brought from Brooklyn, and my own bread, toasted and buttered.” She handed the tray to Tory and pulled Emily up in the bed, patting the pillows until they supported both Emily and Katherine.

  When the tray was settled over Katherine’s legs, she left. “On Saturdays I do the ironing. Tory, you can bring the tray when they’re done.”

  Tory perched on the foot of the bed. “Dolores thinks she can boss us around. But Mom says we couldn’t manage without her.”

  “How does she happen to know Raissa?” Katherine opened her egg, which was cooked exactly to her liking, soft, but not runny.

  “She’s a friend of Dr. Oppenheimer’s maid—didn’t Dr. Oppenheimer find Raissa for you?”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “And speaking of finding, how come we, didn’t find you in your own bed, Emily? How come you’re with Madame Vigneras?”

  Katherine detected a strong tinge of jealousy. “We had rather a disturbed night, if you remember. Didn’t you nearly sleep over at the Undercrofts’?”

  “I would have, if Daddy hadn’t come for me. Anyhow, Mom said Emily wasn’t to bother—”

  Katherine broke in, “Emily was here at my invitation. We got to talking, and when she fell asleep I didn’t have the heart to disturb her.”

  “She must have meant to spend the night.” Tory’s glance went to the dressing-table chair. “She took off her leg.”

  Emily, who had sleepily been breaking bits of toast into her egg, was suddenly wide awake. “Mind your own beeswax. Where’s Daddy?”

  “In the office with Señora Castillo, catching up on mail while things are Saturday-quiet.”

  “Mom’s at the hospital?”

  “She said she’d be home early. No office hours this afternoon. Dolores has a pot roast in the crock pot. It smells good already. My job this morning is to mop the bathroom floors. Em, you’re to polish the silver.”

  “I polished it last Saturday.”

  “So? That’s what Dolores says you’re to do.”

  The conversation sounded casual enough on the surface, but there was enough electrical tension between the two girls, Katherine thought, to light the city. Tory, she realized, was intensely unhappy.—No, she thought again.—Dave and Suzy will have to take care of Tory. Emily is all I can take on.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” Emily said.

  As Katherine moved the breakfast tray, Tory reached for the artificial leg and tossed it on the bed.

  All the color left Emily’s face and her pupils enlarged. “Don’t. Don’t ever do that.” Her voice was low. She pulled herself out of bed and hopped to the bathroom.

  Tory’s eyes filled with tears. “I can’t do anything right. I was just trying to help.”

  There seemed nothing to say. If Katherine mentioned that Emily was sensitive on the subject of the leg, it would not make Tory feel any better. “Did the Undercrofts have overnight guests?”

  “Just Mrs. Gomez and the kids. They invited the bigwigs—it was an enormously tall African bishop and his wife—but when the lights came back on, a car came for them from their embassy. They thought the power failure was all because of them. Isn’t that weird? They thought someone pulled a power switch just to hurt them.”

  Katherine smiled. “Not so weird. They’ve probably been hurt so often they’re oversensitive.”

  “But to cause a blackout on purpose?”

  “They may not have felt that it was on purpose. People are often hurt inadvertently by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And we all hurt people without meaning to, as you just saw.”

  Tory’s eyes widened. “I never thought of it that way. Shall I take the breakfast tray? Are you finished?”

  “Yes, thanks. I’ll just keep the coffee.”

  “Sure.” Tory took the tray and left.

  Katherine sat leaning against the pillows, sipping coffee. The morning was cool and radiant, the storm spent, the air washed clean. But the storm which Emily had let break
at last was still not over.

  The child hopped in, picked up her leg, and hopped back to the bathroom. In a moment she walked in. “I shouldn’t have snapped at Tory.”

  “No.”

  “We didn’t get enough sleep. I’m always snappy when I don’t get enough sleep. Madame. What I told you last night—do you believe me?”

  Katherine held out her arms to the child and Emily moved to her. “Emily.” Gently, she kissed the top of the fair head. “I believe that you were telling me what you believe to be true.”

  “But you don’t believe it’s true!” Again the child’s voice was a frightened wail.

  “Hush,” Katherine said. “Mrs. Undercroft did not deliberately cause your accident. I am positive.”

  A faint note of hope came into the child’s words. “You promise?”

  Katherine shook her head, though Emily’s face was pressed into her shoulder so that she could not see. “I cannot promise, Emily, until I have found out the answer to a few questions.” Perhaps Yolande had somehow or other, unwittingly, caused the accident which had resulted in the loss of Emily’s leg. That could be the burden to which she had referred with such anguish. That, surely, would account for her ‘demons’ of the past two years. But Katherine had to know for certain that her hunch was correct before she could give the child the reassurance that would still the storm of released fear. She said, “Has Mrs. Undercroft talked to you and the other children about her horror of physical abuse?”

  “Yes,” Emily admitted. “Once Tory pinched Fatty and Mrs. Undercroft wouldn’t let her come to tea for a week.”

  “So you can see that it isn’t likely she would ever deliberately cause physical harm to anyone. In any case, how would she have known of your conversation with Mother Catherine of Siena?”