A Severed Wasp

by Madeleine L'engle

  “And you thought you were safe?”

  Yolande shook her head back and forth, back and forth. “No one is safe, ever.”

  “You used to take drugs.”

  “Years ago. I swear. Years ago. I haven’t—”

  “I believe you. But he was your supplier.”

  Yolande’s eyes were dark, tragic smudges. “How do you know all this?”

  “You have almost told me yourself. And when enough things are added up, then certain conclusions become inevitable. You pay Fatima Gomez to keep you informed—” She held up her hand to stop Yolande from breaking in. “So you know Gomez made his confession to Bishop Bodeway after the accident. And so for two years you’ve been trying to frighten Felix, making threatening anonymous phone calls.”

  Yolande tried to pull herself up. “Nonsense. Only children—”

  “Perhaps a child. But also the child’s mother. It was Mrs. Gomez who broke into my apartment and vandalized it, again at your instigation.” Katherine stood up. “Now we are coming to the truth. Aren’t we?”

  Yolande moved her fingers restlessly, like someone ill, like someone dying, plucking at the sheets. “Jesus, she loved it. She is far worse than her husband. She loved every bit of it. She lusts in it.”

  “And she’ll do what you ask her to do, because you are educating her children.”

  A harsh laugh turned into a sob. “Jesus, money is a weapon. But she’s a sadist. I had to stop her from hitting Fatty, at least in my house. She wants revenge on the whole world. It was her idea to go after Oppenheimer, to be a red herring, she said. She hates Jews, that’s really why. She hates everybody. She does more than I ask. I never wanted that portrait touched. She hates you, too, as much as—” She broke off.

  Katherine looked at Yolande steadily, pityingly. “I know you hate me, Yolande. I know you hate Felix. Hate is eating you, like a cancer.”

  Yolande lifted a ravaged face. “That shameless faggot. Seducing Allie when he was a mere child.”

  “That is not true, and you know it.”

  “They love each other.”

  “As friends.”

  “That can be more threatening than sex. I feel, you know, excluded.”

  “So you are punishing Felix? Are you so jealous of an old man who has long ago paid for the sins of his youth?”

  “We never stop paying! We pay for things we never did. I pay for my parentage, whatever it was, I pay for the beasts who used me …”

  They sat in silence. Katherine felt that she had nothing more to say. All that was left was to try to teach Emily, to develop the child’s latent talent. Perhaps a phoenix might rise from these ashes.

  Yolande reached toward her with groping hands. “What are you going to do to me? I’m in your power. What are you going to do?”

  Katherine drew away. “Does your husband know about any of this?”

  “Jesus—” Yolande slid to her knees. “It would kill him. He’d never forgive me. Our lives are in your hands.”

  “Don’t be melodramatic,” Katherine said. “When you went to the hospital to see Emily, you didn’t speak to her, threaten her?”

  “God, no, how could I! What do you think I am? She was delirious, out of her mind, screaming. Allie took me away, it upset me so, he could tell you—”

  Katherine did not need Allie to convince her that Yolande was telling the truth. Nevertheless, the visit to Emily in the hospital, which was not evil in intent, had implanted itself in the child’s fever-distorted mind, adding to the nightmare, becoming in itself nightmare.

  Again the younger woman clutched frantically. “I prayed, oh, sweet Jesus, I prayed, that there would be a miracle, you know, that it wouldn’t have happened, that Emily would only have been frightened the way I wanted, not hurt. I prayed … I stayed in the chapel all night and I prayed … Nothing can make the horror go away. Nothing can make it be all right.” Now the real tears came.

  Katherine did nothing to check the storm, but let it spend itself.

  “I dream about it.” Yolande spoke through tears which were coming more quietly. “I dream, I see it happen, and I wake up, sobbing … I will never forgive myself, never.”

  —I can’t forgive you either, Katherine thought wearily.—I don’t have the power. But you need to be forgiven. For Allie’s sake, if not your own. “Yolande”—her voice was soft but it carried strength and the younger woman raised her eyes. “Nothing is ultimately unforgivable in God’s sight, when you have repented.”

  “But he can’t make it all right! It’s done!”

  “You can’t make it all right. Neither can I. But God can, in ways we may not be able to guess.” So much she had learned from Wolfi.

  “Allie—I don’t think he could forgive me. What are you going to say to Allie? If it should be made public—if Grace Farwater—oh, Jesus, what are you going to say to Allie?”

  “Nothing. Nor to Grace Farwater. Nor to anybody.”

  Yolande looked whitely at Katherine. “You won’t tell Allie?”

  “What good purpose would that serve? Emily’s accident is a burden of horror you will have to carry the rest of your life. Why should Allie be made to bear it, too?”

  “But—”

  “Would you like me to tell Allie, so that he can help you carry the guilt?” Silence. “If you truly love him …”

  “I do.”

  “Enough to spare him this? Enough to carry it alone?”

  Yolande bowed her head. “Yes.” She stared silently at the cross on the altar, making no motion to wipe away her tears.

  “Who is your confessor?” Katherine asked.

  Yolande shook her head.

  “The high priestess hears confessions and is above making them? I don’t know much about your church or confession, but I know enough to know that you won’t be able to survive what has happened unless you make yours. And now. You will have to find someone, right away. Do you understand?”

  Yolande twisted her fingers together. “Could anyone ever give me absolution?”

  “That will have to be between you and whomever you go to. Perhaps the most difficult part will be for you to accept forgiveness.”

  “From God?”

  “From yourself, which I suspect will be a great deal more painful. But you are not to put this off. You will find a confessor.”

  Yolande stretched out her arms toward the cross. “I will.” Then, “But what—” She looked at Katherine beseechingly. “What about the children?”

  “You will have to let Tory and Fatima go.”

  Yolande nodded. “Oh, yes, I know that. They don’t know anything. Not really. I made Fatima think it was only a game—that’s easily ended. And Tory, you know, knows nothing. But Emily—what about Emily?”

  Katherine replied steadily. “I will tell Emily the truth. That her accident was an accident. That you neither caused nor willed it. That you came to her in the hospital to comfort, not to threaten.”

  There was a long silence. At last Yolande said, “What about Felix?”

  “What about Felix?”

  Both women turned as Felix put a key in the gate and came toward them.

  “Perhaps,” Katherine suggested, “you owe Felix an apology?”

  The old man went directly to Yolande. “My dear, isn’t it time all this pain and punishment ended?”

  “You know?”

  “Once I stopped being a frightened and foolish old man, I realized that you had to be behind those calls. What I don’t understand is why.”

  Katherine said, “You don’t have to understand why, Felix. That is going to be between Yolande and her confessor.”

  Felix nodded thoughtfully, looking from one to the other.

  Again Yolande tried to catch air. “I’m sorry—I’m sorry—”

  Felix sat beside her, taking the grasping hands and holding them. “Does Allie know?”

  “No. Oh, Jesus, no.”

  “But he knows something has been wrong, very wrong, that your dark angel has
been in the ascendant.”

  “He’d never … Oh, Jesus, he’d never forgive me.”

  “Allie loves you, Yolande. And he has a forgiving heart.”

  “Do … do I?” It was a painful supplication.

  “You can learn,” he said. “We do learn from our mistakes, and for that I daily thank God. I don’t know why you felt that you had to frighten me, but I know that I have been a silly old man. I was an even more silly and stupid youth, but why should I be so afraid that someone would find out about me, about my past, that I should have allowed myself to take such nonsense seriously? I am what I am, and this I give to my Lord, as I am. It is all I have to give, and it is, I believe, enough.” He looked gently at the crumpled woman. “I ask you to do the same. We are, perhaps, our own crosses, but we will be given the strength to bear them.”

  6

  The late-afternoon sunlight streamed across the nave of the Cathedral, reached colored shafts to the choir, where Katherine sat at the Bösendorfer with Emily. With a closed, guarded face, the child listened. When Katherine had finished, Emily leaned against her, reaching for her hands. Katherine rocked her lightly, following her words with the assurance of touch.

  “It really was a nightmare?” Emily whispered.

  “Yes. And it is time to wake up.”

  A long slow shudder shook the child’s slender frame. “She still frightens me.”

  “You’ll get over that in time.”—She frightens herself. And she, too, will have to get over that. “Now, my child, let us make music.”

  Emily looked around. “Here?”

  “Here. What about that Schubert duet we played at your first lesson?”

  “Oh—I love it. Yes, please.”

  Katherine reached into her music bag, found the Schubert, and placed it on the rack. “I’ll count two measures and then we’ll begin.” Music, more than anything else, would bring Emily out of the nightmare.

  The child’s fingers moved on the keys without faltering. The simplicity of the piece cut across all the fear and jealousy and anguish which had surrounded them. The gentle melody was an affirmation. Was prayer.

  When they were through, Katherine said, “Now, my darling girl, I want you to go home. There is nothing to be afraid of.”

  “Will you be coming?”

  “Yes.” She would have to spend one more night at the Davidsons’ in order to safeguard all that which needed to be protected. “I’m going to work, now. But I’ll see you in—oh, in an hour and a half.”

  “All right.” Emily rose obediently, then flung her arms around Katherine with a hug and a kiss. “Oh, Madame, thank you, thank you. I’m beginning to realize that I’m awake, that you’ve taken away the nightmare.”

  Katherine gave her a light, loving spank. “Then go practice scales.”

  When the child had gone, she turned to music. She played through the pieces she had chosen, until she came to the Beethoven. Then she sensed movement, and looked up to see Bishop Chan and Yolande walking along the nave, the bishop’s arm around the woman in a protective gesture.

  Katherine returned to the sonata.

  7

  She spent the next afternoon at the piano until the music and the great space became one. A tired ache moved from shoulder blade to shoulder blade, and she turned to see Bishop Undercroft standing beside her. So it was not over yet.

  “May we talk?” He looked pale and sad.

  “Yes.”

  A group of tourists was coming in. “They’re late,” he said. “It’s nearly time to close the doors. Will you come with me?” He led her down some side steps and into the ambulatory, away from the crowd. He opened the gates to the second chapel. “This is St. Ambrose, the Italian chapel. Isn’t it a little gem? We have a lot of tiny weddings here, and most of them hold.” His voice was carefully controlled. He pulled the grilled gates closed. When they were seated in the uncomfortable oaken stalls, he said, “I have learned about it all.”

  All? “All what?” she asked carefully.

  “The phone calls. Trying to terrify poor old Felix. And you. Mrs. Gomez slashing your Hunter portrait. I am sick at heart.”

  “How did you find out?”—And how much? What did Yolande tell you?

  “I went into the house and Fatima was having hysterics. And Mrs. Gomez admitted it. She is full of hate, nothing but hate. And because her husband once supplied my wife with drugs, Yolande is afraid of her and did not dare tell me. Why could she not have told me? Was she afraid Mrs. Gomez would hurt her physically?”

  “Probably. When one has suffered intense physical pain, as she has, then pain becomes less rather than more endurable.”

  “It does not excuse her complicity. When Fatima started blurting everything out, Yolande admitted that she knew, that she had not been able to stop it. How could she have let it go on, without turning to me—”

  Poor Allie. How little he knew. And that little was bad enough.

  “I thought I had taught her to trust me. I have spent our marriage trying to teach her trust. But my faith hasn’t been strong enough. I’ve failed her.”

  “Allie—hush—”

  “Why should forgiveness be so difficult? Forgiveness of ourselves. Ultimately I forgave myself about Ona’s death. I thought, after that, no forgiveness would be difficult. But this—I was so outraged, so distraught, that I went to the phone and called the convent and asked for Isobel. And was told that she was not available. But Yolande heard me ask. And to Yolande that was betrayal, and so I have failed her again.”

  “Hush, Allie, hush,” Katherine repeated.

  “When Yolande first came to me—despite all the success, all the adulation—she was a broken child. She brought me her lack of faith and asked me to teach her faith. And I thought I had. But that she could not trust me, that she could let Felix be hurt, and you, without coming to me … I have failed her.”

  “We all fail each other,” she said, “especially those we love most dearly. And is it so strange?” As an echo, she heard Wolfi’s words under her own. “Wasn’t Jesus singularly unsuccessful with a great many people?”

  He was silent for a moment. “Yes. Of course. Thank you. We live in a world sold on success, even in the Church.”

  “But love is what it’s about, isn’t it? Not success?”

  He nodded. “Yolande was right. She said that I should come talk to you, that you had been very kind to her, that you knew all about it, and that you had forgiven her.”

  —Does keeping silence constitute forgiveness? Katherine wondered.—It would not be only Yolande, or only Allie I would hurt if I told him the truth. We must all look at ourselves, and the ill that we have done, and if we are to survive, we must have great compassion on ourselves. “How amazing,” she tried to lighten the tension, “that Mrs. Gomez cooks like an angel. One would think that so much anger would cause her soufflés to fall, and I gather they never do.”

  But he was not ready yet for lightness. “I cannot bear to think that Felix was frightened, after all he has done for me. I gather this has been going on for a long time, someone I love terrorized, and I knew nothing about it. How could I have been so insensitive? I have been like the wasp, guzzling jam, unaware of my own brokenness …” He bent over, his eyes dry and tearless.

  In St. Ambrose chapel the stalls were separated by high carved barriers of oak and she could not reach over to touch him. If he was this devastated by the least of all that Yolande had done, she hoped that Bishop Chan had reinforced her own advice to the bishop’s wife to bear her burden alone. She thought that probably he had, and that he would help her to bear it.

  The stall was a little too high for her, hard and uncomfortable. She thought of all the good advice she had given Dorcas about marriage, advice which had turned out to be useless. What did she have to say to this man, torn apart by only a small fragment of the knowledge that Yolande was going to have to carry with her for the rest of her life?

  “When she was using drugs she was in touch with at least t
he fringes of the criminal world—that’s how she knew Gomez.”

  “Hush,” Katherine said. “She hasn’t used drugs for years, now. You’ve done that much for her.”

  “I thought I could do more. In my pride I thought—” Suddenly the tears came.

  She felt exhausted, but she could not ignore this naked grief. She reached across the oaken barrier and put her hand over his. “That’s all right, let it out, don’t be afraid to cry, Lukas, it’s all right.”

  He was suddenly still as marble, the tears arrested. “What did you call me?”

  She had not heard.

  “You called me Lukas. That was my father’s name.”

  She had known for a long time, since that first meeting on the Close, really. But she had not wanted to know. No one could look that much like Lukas von Hilpert and not be his son.

  Still with her hand over his, she said. “Yes. Lukas von Hilpert. I knew him a long time ago. You are very much like him.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “Because at first I thought it had to be coincidence. You had another name, an English accent with no trace of German—”

  “I was only a child when my parents died. It was said that my father was killed in a shooting accident, and my mother of a weak heart. But my mother took sleeping pills, too many sleeping pills. Perhaps by accident. But she called me in—I was the baby and her favorite—and told me that my father had killed himself because of some woman.”

  Katherine’s voice was steady. “Unhappy women often want to make their sons hate their fathers, in order to keep on possessing them, even beyond the grave. You have just seen what an unhappy, jealous woman can be driven to do.”—Let him keep on thinking it was Mrs. Gomez, and not his wife. “Your father was one of the most honorable men I have ever known. My husband respected him, too.”

  He moved from the uncomfortable stall and knelt at her feet, but it was very different from the way his wife had groveled; it was simply to avoid the carved oaken barrier, to get closer to her, closer to the truth. And this truth she could give him. “You truly knew my father?”

  “Yes. I knew him well.”