Marlena de Blasi Read online

  The countess knows that the old nun hopes there will be some slip, some fleeting indication of whence they come. Curious old wench.

  “Nor do I expect you to be responsible for them, Mater Paul. Proceed. What about the child herself?”

  “Since neither I nor anyone else here knows of the circumstances of her birth—neither place nor parentage—I shall, perforce, inform her of her ‘invented’ birth, of the sad events that left her an orphan. There will be no physical evidences of her history. No photos or letters that might later be traced or upon which she might attempt verification. Nothing. The child will have no past save a contrivance, a fable.”

  “And who will it be who tells her the fable, Mater Paul?”

  “I, of course. I will be the one.”

  “And should your death occur before the time the child can comprehend it, who shall be entrusted to tell the story?”

  “As has been requested, it will be Sister Solange to whom the duty will pass.”

  “Yes. Little Solange. And should I have a change of heart, Mater, should I, some weeks or months or even years hence, have a change of heart and return here to retrieve this child, to take it back—do you understand, Mater?—what shall you do to prevent me or my representatives?”

  “I would do what I do, what we do, should anyone seek, anyone at all seek entry, unwelcomed, into this place. I would see that you were prevented. The authorities would be summoned. The police. The inviolable impedimenta of the curia would be employed, madame. Of that I can assure you. The child shall never be surrendered to you. To anyone. From the moment it was carried through our doors, it became our legal, spiritual ward.”

  “Very good, Mater.”

  The countess looks away from the old nun and gazes about the room as though she’s only just noticed where she is. And why. She sees the terra-cotta tiles of the floor worn and waxed to the same brown as the nun’s robes, the cold white walls, the empty hearth. She is quiet for too long to suit the nun, who wants only the passing of the promised funds and the woman’s swift departure. From half-downcast eyes, the nun peruses the woman in the fox jacket, thin, silken legs crossed just above the knee, the edges of gray lace garters showing from beneath her skirt. Yes, women like her don’t have to marry Jesus.

  “And what assurance do I have, Mater Paul, that the funds which I have in my purse and the subsequent and untraceable funds which shall be transferred to the coffers of the curia,” she asks with a backward tilt of her cloched head, “twice each year until, until they are deposited no longer, what assurance do I have that the child will be cared for, educated, raised, treated as I have instructed?”

  “You have my word, madame. Just as the funds sent to the curia for the purpose of restoring the apartment for the child and her nurse here in the convent were dispersed and the furnishings acquired from the shops and the antiquaires in Montpellier were put into place according to Madame’s wishes, so shall these ‘subsequent’ funds be dispersed according to Madame’s wishes. I repeat, you have my word.”

  The countess with the soft black eyes smiles for the first time.

  “You’ll forgive me, Mater Paul, but, as much as I shall consider the inexorability of your word, I have also established, shall we call it, a fail-safe. Here within these walls, Mater. A person who knows what to look for, what criteria to use in judging the execution of your word. This person knows how to effect things should effecting be necessary. Even you, especially you, shall never know who this person is. I’ve become something of an expert in espionage over these past few months, a trader in the discreet market of buying and selling confidences. Double confidences. Yes, I’ve prepared thoroughly for the child’s welfare, Mater. At least half her blood is good. Half her blood comes from me and mine, Mater.”

  CHAPTER III

  WHEN THE LADY HAS GONE AWAY AND PAUL HAS PLACED THE thick, white sealed packet into the wall safe in her office, where it will stay until the bishop’s emissary comes to retrieve it, she climbs the twisting stone steps to the convent living quarters. To the cells fronted by thick oak doors that face either side of the dark corridor. Always silent, usually empty at this time of day but for the housekeeping nuns, who move about with baskets of rags and brushes and tins of sulfur-smelling wax, brown glass bottles of lemon oil, today blithe laughter seeps from under the last door on the corridor.

  Once the convent storage room, the long reach of the lady with the soft black eyes had brought local artisans to work at polishing the sprawling gray flags of its floor, reglazing long, lead-paned windows, scraping away layer upon layer of papier peint—all these the last traces of the epoch when the convent was the courtly villa of a highborn Spanish family from Biarritz.

  Paul throws open the door, waits on the threshold for it to swing wide, sharply claps her hands to gain the attention of a group of twittering nuns tightly gathered in one part of the room. Their glee unaffected by her command, Paul claps her hands again, shouts “silence,” and this time the nuns break ranks, make room for her, flail their hands in a gesture of invitation.

  Plump and tawny as a russet apple, the well-made young woman who sits in their midst wears the coarse, dark dress of a peasant, short leather boots, thick black stockings and, from beneath a black kerchief knotted—perhaps too fetchingly for Paul’s taste—above her forehead, tight blond curls fall. An ex-Benedictine postulant arrived at the convent from her Champenois village several months earlier, she is called Solange. In her arms, she holds the infant, her head bent adoringly to it. Behind Solange stands a stout, red-cheeked young woman smelling of starch and soap and wearing a long white pinafore over a much-mended black dress. She will be nourrice, wet nurse, to the infant.

  Furnishings and accoutrements packed in unmarked cartons and trunks have been carefully arranged by Solange upon the freshly waxed floors, upon a handsome collection of lush red and yellow Turkey rugs. There is a white iron cradle wrought fine as lace and fitted in hand-embroidered sheets and coverlets and, alongside it, a white-chintz-draped baldachin, a bath table, a tiny antiquated rocking chair with a white velvet cushion, a wide, plush divan with down-filled yellow pillows, an armoire hung with a baby girl’s clothes, a tall gold and white Empire chest, a small library case—still empty and with cartons of children’s books and classics piled near it, a black-lacquered writing desk with crystal-knobbed drawers. There is a little chair, which, when its switch is wound, swings slowly to the melody of “Clair de Lune.” A stately blue leather, chrome-trimmed perambulator sits under the windows. Yellow flames flap in the hearth of a black marble fireplace. All these compose a nursery and bedroom for the child and Solange. Too, there is an alcove where the nourrice will occasionally sleep.

  Paul stays apart, shouts, “I believed you’d all understood, you and the rest of your sisters, that, though I’d acquiesced, respectfully acquiesced to the curia’s request that this foundling, that this child, this child and her nurse, be permitted refuge here, I did not acquiesce to your being party to it. These two are neither guests nor visitors but a homeless pair placed in our beneficent custody who shall be offered a form of patronage that I alone shall dictate. They will be confined, as much as possible, here, in these rooms, in this nymphet’s Gomorrah. Our sisters shall feed them, wash their clothing, scrub and clean this apartment. Except for the garden, and there only at appointed hours, they are not welcome—save upon my invitation—to venture outside these rooms. This house, and you who are privileged to live and work and pray in it, this house and you shall remain spiritually unsullied by this contamination. Sister Solange, only sister Solange shall be near the child. Spread the word among your sisters as I shall do yet again. You may go now.”

  Paul’s words are close-range rifle shots. A covey of wounded birds, the nuns disperse. Solange has begun to weep, and then the child starts to cry. Solange turns the child away from Paul, muffles its earnest sobs against her breast.

  Paul walks about the room, swings the chair to and fro, notices the switch and turns it, st
ands there watching, listening to the soft tinkling of Debussy. She moves to the armoire, fondles the hem of a small pink dress. “All this while children in the villages sleep on cornhusk pallets and wear wooden shoes.”

  Solange nuzzles the baby, who is once again serene. “And they drink their mothers’ milk, Mater. Don’t begrudge her. She pays her way, after all. That should soothe the discomfort of satin booties and a small pink dress.”

  “Apropos of mothers’ milk, why must the nourrice join the household? Certainly her milk can be expelled, brought here each day for you to dispense it. Why—”

  “It’s not certain that the baby will require the nourrice, Mater. Jean-Baptiste has arranged things with her in the eventuality that she will be needed. He thinks that our own fresh goats’ milk will be sufficient to nourish her. It along with a supplement of foods I shall prepare for her according to his instructions. Vegetable and cereal paps and—”

  “You needn’t share your gastronomic plans for it. I’ll speak to Jean-Baptiste myself, advise that he limit the encroachment of strangers as best he can.”

  Paul has yet to look at the child, but now she approaches her, held in Solange’s embrace. At a distance Paul stops. Craning her neck so as to see the child better, she stays still for a long time.

  “Have you never seen such a small creature, Mater? Come closer to her. She is quite curious, looks about at everything, everyone, and she cries almost never.”

  “You’ve had her in your arms for barely an hour. How do you know if she cries?”

  “I’ve been caring for the babies in my family since I was eight years old, Mater, learned early on to understand their characters, their needs. What makes them peaceful, what they fear. I think it would be good for her to see you, to accustom herself to you, don’t you? And you, to her?”

  “Didn’t you hear what I said to the others? She’s your charge, the living embodiment of your duty. I’ll have nothing to do with her, nor will I permit the pallid thing to shake the foundations of all I’ve worked to build here.”

  “Mater, it will be impossible, it would be unjust, that this tiny soul pass its infancy and its childhood exiled in these rooms. However lovely they may be. She will require more than the attention that I shall give her. She must hear other voices, see other faces, be held and caressed by the others in her family. Mater, we are her family now.”

  “She is not, I repeat, she is not of this family any more than you are. That her own abandoned her is no reason that I should want her. Take her in I must—and, yes, be paid for it I shall—but that I should want her, no one can ask of me.”

  “Can’t you look upon her presence here as an interlude, a blessed interlude? You know that when she turns five, she’ll go to board in the school, come here only as the other students do, to dine, to perform their house tasks.”

  “You know about her, her frailty. I don’t imagine she’ll last as long as that.”

  “Don’t say that, Mater, you mustn’t ever say that again. I’ll take the best care of her, and Jean-Baptiste will see her weekly. Come to bless her, Mater. Come to pray over her, to welcome her home.”

  “No. I shall not welcome her. I shall tolerate her. And you. And, if I must, that toothless cow who’ll suckle her. That’s all I shall do.”

  “I shall ask for an audience with the curia myself, inform them of your, pardon me, Mater, your uncharitableness. I shall ask that another convent be found for us. I shall …”

  Solange turns her back to Paul, moves the sleeping baby from her arms up onto her shoulder, and begins unwittingly to jostle and rock her. As though she thinks the baby has understood Paul. As though she would comfort her.

  “You shall do no such thing. And if you did, you’d not be heard.”

  “Mater, perhaps you forget, I am a lay sister here. The rules governing my life are not those of the others. I intend to follow, to the letter, those rules that pertain to me. Beyond my adherence to those, I am free. I assure you that if and when I am convinced that your treatment of the child—or of me—is cruel, I shall not stay quiet. Neither I nor Amandine shall be your prisoner, Mater.”

  “Amandine?”

  “Yes, I’ve named her.”

  The only sound is the baby’s sucking upon the place between Solange’s neck and shoulder.

  Without lifting her head from where it rests on the baby’s back, Solange asks, “Why do you fear her, Mater? What can make a woman of God, a bride of Jesus, what can make you fear a baby?”

  “Why do you mistake a simple lack of interest for fear?”

  “It can be nothing else but fear, Mater. Fear with a mask of anger. A common-enough device. My father taught me something of that when we would see a sanglier or a wild dog on our walks through the woods. ‘They’re growling and baring their teeth because they’re frightened of you,’ he’d say. Isn’t it true that you growl and bare your teeth today because you are frightened of this baby?”

  Solange places the sleeping Amandine in the cradle, makes a long business of covering her, patting her, bending to touch her lips to the baby’s head, and all the while Paul looks on. Hands trembling, the nun adjusts her cincture, once again takes her handkerchief from under the sleeve of her habit and, once again, presses it to her upper lip. She prepares for battle. Solange stands then, turns to look at Paul. Both search to parry. Both know the contest has begun.

  “Since my arrival here three months ago, I have thought you cold, inaccessible, bitter toward me, but I was certain that, once the baby arrived, once you saw her, held her, you would, you would soften. I believed that instinctual affection, if nothing else, would take over. And if not that, your calling, your vows, your Christian love, surely those would prevail. I’ve never known anyone made like you, Mater. I’ve never known anyone who couldn’t look into the face of a baby.”

  “You don’t know anything of me, of my life and my work. You’re nothing but a child yourself. A brazen child. I’d rather expected you to be more docile.”

  “I think one of the reasons that it was I who was brought here is that I am not docile, Mater.”

  CHAPTER IV

  IS IT NOT ENOUGH THAT I MUST TAKE IN THE BASTARD CHILD OR GRANDCHILD or whomever it may be to that aging demimondaine but, too, the bishop, His Eminence Fabrice, asks me to extend my tolerance to include a lapsed postulant, freshly fallen from grace? Why couldn’t I have been privy to the child’s parentage? Could it be his? I think not. Had he sired the thing, he’d have arranged for its disposal in some farther away post. And so whose is she? Who is this child? The ostentation of its trappings, the ceremony of its arrival, the saber rattling over its care, all these are made of mockery. And who is the little farm girl? Perhaps it’s she who is his. His daughter. His paramour. I was his paramour.

  How effortlessly you took me, dear Fabrice. A sweet from a proffered tray. Or was it I who took you? Supreme vendetta against my father, who’d said, “Don’t bother packing too much, a dress for evening, one for daytime strolls along the sea.” No cottage by the sea, only the burnt-milk stench of sorrowful halls. The good sisters of the Carmelites. “I’m doing this for you, my dear,” he’d said.

  Yes, I was his dear, my father’s darling dear, plain as dirt save my beautiful hair. Lovely hair piled and massed like cream, white-blond waves of it caught in the stones of Maman’s marcasite clips. It might have been enough, my hair, Papa, it might have done for Jean-Jacques, it might have done for him or for the one who came from Béziers with the wood, the one who kept his eyes on me while he drank the marc. “Bonsoir, Mademoiselle Annick. Bonsoir.” My hair might have been enough. And for you, Papa, wasn’t I enough for you?

  Twelve-forty-five—no sooner, no later—pluck the radishes with the greenest leaves from the wet, black earth. Ten beauties into the lap of my apron. In the kitchen, shake the clinging dirt into the sink, rinse them under the cold-water tap, dry them on the blue and white towel, lay them, one by one—roots and stems untrimmed—onto the Char-bonnier footed plate with the r
ust-colored flowers. Three prints of butter to the side, the salière in the middle. From the baker’s boy, from the deep, narrow basket tied to his bicycle, I would choose un baton ben cuit, hold it to my lips to catch the broken blisters of its crust, open my hand, which clutched the two sous for him. Bonjour.

  “Annick, Annick. Pour vous,” the baker’s boy would shout then as I was already running back into the house.

  Straddling the bicycle, his feet flat on the road, he’d pull two barely burnt croissants from the pockets of his smock, hold them in his fists like pheasants by their feet. I would turn round, take his gifts. “Merci, Émile. À demain.” For Émile, too, my hair might have been enough. But back to your lunch. Tie the baton about its middle with the pale blue napkin, lay it above your fork. Five minutes before I call you, no more than five, draw wine from the barrel. A full balloon, cool, clear, smelling of apples and thyme. “Papa, Papa. Déjeuner, Papa.” I was plain and you were poor, Papa, too poor to buy a husband for me with a dowry, but my hair might have been enough.

  “How close are we to the sea, Papa? I think I can see it, Papa. Is that it, is that the sea lying there beyond the hills? It is, it is. Ah, I can smell the sea in the breeze now, Papa.” You pulled short the reins, turned the carriage down a smaller road. Not even a road. Away from the sea. “But, Papa, where are you going?” Like a whip, your hand. The first time you’d raised it to me. “I’m doing this for you.”