Amandine (11 page)

Often Fabrice arrives earlier in the day, sometime after lunch and, wearing Wellingtons under his purple skirts, follows Philippe down into the
chai
, where the two sit on tottering wooden chairs at a small table, uncorking bottles, swirling the fine old juice, swallowing and spitting as they wish, plumbing the depths of a terra-cotta urn—
exclusive cache of molding, grainy cheese buried in grapewood ash—Philippe gouging crumbles of the stuff, passing it to Fabrice from the blade of a corkscrew. Weary lions languishing in their den.

The bishop always asks to see Amandine, bends to bless her, holds her on his knee for a moment, remarks on her growth, her brightness, hears her recitation of a prayer. Polite and dutiful, Amandine endures, performs, glancing—now and then—over her shoulder for Philippe. When she climbs down from the bishop’s wide, princely upholstered lap, runs to the shelter of Philippe’s embrace, Fabrice looks long at the pair, listens to their chatter, a half smile playing about his pendulous old mouth.

On one morning visit, Paul—always seeking greater attention than he is wont to pay her—requests a private audience with Fabrice. “Of course, Paul. At noon, while the house is in meditation. A walk in the garden? Will that please you, Paul?” She hears the chaff, understands what he does not say.
If you could be pleased, that is
. She returns to her rooms, repeats her earlier everyday ablutions. Washes her face with lavender soap, presses a linen towel to her cheeks. Does she rub so vigorously only to dry them or also to bring on a blush? She brushes her teeth, holding the towel against her starched collar, her stiff white wings juddering as she moves. Once again the towel to her mouth. There is no glass in which she can see herself.

She begins, “I wish to know more about how she, how the child came to be under your protection. Under mine. Five years of dutiful silence, patience. Have I not earned some right to—?”

“There is nothing more to know, Paul. Nothing that would line up all the pieces in the perfect row as you would have them. A brother of the Church, an old friend. The child’s need for refuge was told to me by him. These things happen all the time, these
requests
among the greater clergy for extraordinary favors.”

“Paid favors, of course.”

“In one way or another, paid. Of course.”

“This friend. He’s not French.”

“No. He wasn’t French. But what does that—?”

“Past tense. He’s dead, then?”

“Yes. But his not having been French and his no longer being alive, these are not factors that—”

“Is the child not French?”

“Why would you care, Paul? For all intents and purposes, she is thoroughly French. But if she were not, what would it matter?”

“Solange. She came to speak with me—”

“I know. Solange speaks with Philippe, and Philippe speaks with me. With her permission, of course. I know that Amandine believed you were her mother, I know what Solange has told her. Whether or not I am in accord with how Solange has proceeded to explain things to Amandine, I will respect her decisions. She has become far more than a nurse, a caretaker to the child. If there are
earned rights
about any of this, they belong to Solange. And if your next inquiry is to be about the woman who consigned the child to you—”

“So she’s not yours, she’s not your
issue?
Amandine.”

At first Fabrice does not understand Paul’s question, is about to ask her to repeat it when the light dawns. Turning to look at her, then she at him, he laughs to tears. “Hah. Dear, darling Paul, you flatter me. At seventy-seven, you imagine I’ve sired a child?”

“You would have been seventy-one or so …”

His laughter unspent, he speaks between chortles, “Even in my dotage, in yours, you’re still jealous and possessive and rancorous. Oh, Paul, what a delicious wife you would have made to some man. No, she is not my
issue
.”

Both are quiet then. Fabrice searches beneath his robes for his handkerchief, Paul finds hers first, hands it to him. Patting it about his rheumy eyes, touching it to the saliva about his satyr’s lips, he says, “You know, we’ve grown to be an old married couple, you wanting more from me and I wanting more to be left to my own ways and means. That is, I want to be left alone as long as you
continue
your wanting more from me. Such a wonderful game.”

“I suppose it is.” She looks at him again, smiles, really smiles. Throws back her head and laughs as she has not done, has not allowed herself to do, for how long? Her voice is almost soft then.

“You have twice dismissed me, Fabrice. First from your bed, then
from your schemes. I’d grown used to being necessary to you. I felt ‘put aside’ when you became bishop, when you left me behind to look after this gaggle of misfit hens, most of whom don’t want to be here any more than I do. It was you for whom I stayed, and you knew that. You know that now.”

“Yes, just like a marriage. You the good wife, long-suffering, sacrificed to her husband’s ambitions. His titillations and fancies. But you, dear Paul, you’ve not received the usual glittering tokens of either arrival or remorse. Baubles neither to celebrate nor to beg pardon. I have rewarded and consoled you only with more work, more responsibility. It’s true. I’d never thought of it this way before, but I did leave you ‘at home with the children’ while I moved about on business, whatever business was at hand. Your only bracelets have been fetters.”

Paul takes her handkerchief from his lap, where it’s fallen, loudly blows her nose. A gesture of self-pity?
Yes, only fetters
, it says. Then she says, “The latest fetter being this child. Will it never end, your misuse of me?”

“There hasn’t been a question of my ‘misuse’ of you for forty years.”

“Less than that.”

“The child’s presence in what you’ve grown to think of as ‘your’ home has done nothing but enhance it, and even you know that. I will abide your laments but not your bedeviling of plain truths.”

Eyes like dry stones, she looks at him.

He shakes his head. “But, really, what could you have expected of me, Paul? That once I’d been ordained bishop I might take you as my official consort and that, you in your wimple and I in my robes, we would travel about the province together? Yes, it’s true, you helped me to win my colors, but I believed you did it for me and not for what attentions might overflow to you. It was your duty to help me.”

“My duty?”

“Yes.”

“And your duty to me?”

“
My duty to you?
Do you mean my payment to you? The price for
your seventeen-year-old virginity. Is that what you still seek? That would be prostitution, Paul. A debauch for payment.”

“You know it’s much more than that which you took from me.”

“More than that which you gave to me, my dear.”

“Are you the appointed, the official control over the child’s well-being? The woman, that woman, who was she? What was she? I don’t even know. She spoke of a
fail-safe
. That’s the word she used. The word her interpreter used. I’ll not forget, never forget the smug tilt of her pretty, pointed chin as her lackey said the words:

“‘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.’

“Can you truly wonder, Fabrice, why I have never accepted, shall never accept the child’s presence?”

“From the beginning I’ve known you were a sham. That you are still. That you have no calling, that you were deposited here and left a prisoner of sorts. I’ve always known that. But have not forty years of even a sham life of piety, have not these marked you with sufficient humility to allow an orphan child into your midst?”

“More someone’s abandoned bastard than orphan.”

“And so? Does that make her less needy? Children die from abandonment. Another kind of hunger. Be they orphans or merely ‘unclaimed.’ Either way the child is wounded. In the case of Amandine, one must add her
condition
to the quotient.”

“‘Children die from abandonment. Another kind of hunger.’ At five months. At seventeen, too.”

“Touché. You speak of yourself, of course. At seventeen, one can hardly still be called a child, Paul. The gravity of the wound is not the same. But if you recognize that you and Amandine have shared a common fate, all the more I should think you would have embraced her. It might have helped you, Paul. It still could. No. It’s too late, isn’t it? I didn’t know that until this moment. You prefer to pass on your pain. Not so different from the pest-infected souls who wiped their spit on doorknobs. Yes, you suffered and, by all that’s heavenly, let
her suffer more. That’s it. You who inspire no love are envious of a child who inspires it so deeply. As I look at you, I can’t help but think that your profanity, your godlessness, have made an ugly old woman of you, Paul.”

The stab finds its mark. She gasps, flutters her hand about her face, feeling it, checking it—feminine impulse—as though homeliness is palpable. She recovers. “You? You can call me profane and godless when—”

“I am as proficient a priest as I am a sinner. I have given almost equal energy to both sides of my character, and the balance, the outcome of my life shall be judged by no one less than God. Good day, Paul.”

T
HE PLASH OF A LEAPING TROUT IN THE CREEK, THE DRY RATTLE OF
the November leaves still on the vine, the chaste duet of his wheeze with her snuffling, Amandine and Philippe sleep in the bluish light under the walnut tree. Solange smiles to herself as she fusses with the quilt, already tucked in around them.
Au revoir, mes petits
.

As she does always when she and Philippe rest together, Amandine wakes before Solange returns to call them to vespers. But rather than stay quiet until Solange arrives, she gently shakes Philippe, tells him it’s almost time to go and will he please finish the story. The one about the giant horseman who rides across the sky lighting up the stars with the sparks from his spurs. “Père, wake up.” She shakes him harder.
He must be so tired
. She lies back down deep in his arms, closes her eyes tightly.
Why does it hurt in my heart? Why is it thumping as though I’d been running when I’m lying here so quietly? I must slow the pounding as Baptiste has taught me. Think about wildflowers and baby rabbits, just born, and about the baby Jesus in his crib
. Still her
heart beats a hard two-note tattoo, an unfastened shutter against the stones of the house. “Père, wake up. Have you gone away to that place where your grandmother lives? Your grandmother had blue hair and she went to live with God and now you’ve gone there, too, I know you have.”

Fried corn cakes and duck sausages. Warm apple charlotte with cream. A good supper Josephine has prepared
. As Solange hurries toward the creek, she tastes each dish. Fifteen minutes until vespers.
What is that sound? An animal, some small animal wounded. Where—

A high, screeching wail. In the darkening under the walnut tree, Amandine kneels beside him, rocking on the heels of her muddy red boots, tugging at his sleeve.

H
E ASKS TO BE LEFT ALONE WITH PHILIPPE. FABRICE DOES. ARRIVING
at the convent a scant hour after Paul had telephoned the curia, he descends the long black official automobile—no badge of office, no pontifical vestments—his great girth wrapped in a simple soutane, black velvet slippers on his oddly dainty feet as though he’d been settled by his fire for the evening. A pandering retinue neither precedes nor follows him. Paul scuttles behind him. “I shall call you and the others later,” he tells her.

In sconces on the walls, in black iron holders on the dresser, twelve white candles light the small spare room that was Philippe’s. Over the flame of one of the candles, Fabrice warms oil, washes the breathless body of his friend, dresses him in the starched white undergarments and the black soutane laid out by the sisters. He combs Philippe’s hair, shaves three days’ growth of whiskers. Amandine so loved the roughness of it that, for years now, Philippe had kept his beard in stubbles for her. Fabrice says the canonical prayers for a newly departed soul,
reads from the Bible, picks up a Jesuit text that lies open on the bedside table and reads aloud from it. He pulls a chair close to the bed, then sits and talks for a long time to his friend. He kisses Philippe. Both cheeks, forehead. Kneels.