Amandine (16 page)

Once she is alone in her rooms that evening, Solange carefully opens the letter, reads it. Reads it again. She goes to the armoire to take the brown-paper-wrapped package, unties the string, places the letter over it, reties the string to enclose it. Puts it away. She pours herself a glass of wine, thinks again for the thousandth time how right Philippe was when he said that Amandine was older than all of them. She sits down at the desk, riffles the drawers for paper, takes up her pen. For the first time in the eight years since she has left Avise, she writes a letter to her mother. Not to Janka nor to her sisters with a salutation for her mother but
to
her mother.
Cher Maman
.

On the fifth day when Amandine goes to
la Vierge
to see about her letter, it is gone. She comes round to the front of the statue, curtsies.

“Thank you again,
Notre Dame
. I was beginning to, you know, to wonder whether you had time to do things like deliver the post but well now I feel very happy-and-next-time-when-my-mother-sends-me-her-address-I-can-just-use-the-postbox-in-the-village-and-I-won’t-have-to-trouble-you-I-have-to-run-see-you-tomorrow-you’re-lucky-to-be-up-in-heaven-now-and-that-Jesus-is-always-with-you-so-you-don’t-have-to-worry-about-him-by-the-way-I-keep-forgetting-to-ask-you-if-you’ve-met-Père-Philippe-he’d-be-with-his-grandmother-who-has-blue-hair-at-least-she-used-to.
À demain, Notre Dame.”

“D
O YOU WISH THAT I PITY HER?
”

“Pity, no. Compassion, I would have thought. She is not the lisping refugee you would have the others think her to be but a little girl whose
predicament
has forced her to behave like a woman.”

“Many of us do without the luxury of a childhood.”

A week has passed since the evening Amandine escaped the dormitory and the convent girls’ torment. Solange has arranged to place herself among the convent sisters assigned to cleaning duties in the school. An assignment that Paul has specifically, repeatedly denied her. Dispensing with yet another request, Solange simply inserts herself on the roster. The convent girls’ contempt for Amandine shocks her. It is not Amandine who
prefers
emotional seclusion, as she had believed. After only a few moments, the stones fall into another pattern for Solange.
It is they, the convent girls—with tacit endorsement from Paul and many of the teaching sisters—who rebuff her, recoil from her. Make her disappear
.

Having thrown open the door to Paul’s office, Solange can barely speak up from her fury. Her whisper is choked, breathless. “Do you persecute her so blithely, Mater?”

“Is that what you would call it? Persecution? How quaint.”

“What would you call it, Mater? Would you have me believe you are not aware that you and the students injure her?”

“Life has injured her
. I have only chosen not to be part of her, her—what is it that you and all the others run about trying to do?—to
deliver
her. Yes, that’s it, I have chosen not to be part of her
deliverance
. All of you primping up the truth, trying to make her the heroine of a fable with a tulle dress and that absurd little purse she totes about on her wrist—”

“Oh, but she is a heroine, Mater. She has faced monsters and demons, and she has survived them. Brave beyond any one of us, she has fought the trolls and swum the swallowing seas and still she smiles and curtsies. Trembles. How can you not care for her?”

“I care for no one.”

She turns her gaze from Solange, casts her eyes down, moves the fingers of one hand round and round across the palm of the other. Without looking at Solange, she says, “Interesting now that I think of it. It’s true. I care for no one. I perform my duties. It’s better than caring.”

Paul rises, walks to the window behind her desk, leans her forehead against the pane. “Leave me to my indifference and her to her
predicament
. As I told you long ago, it’s her birthright.”

“If only it were
indifference
you show her. The truth is that you work against her. Take away the pitfalls, Mater. An open field on which to make her way. That’s all I ask of you.”

Paul turns from the window, once again faces Solange. “I fear you ask too much.”

Solange runs up the stairs to her rooms, opens the door so that it bangs against the inside wall, leaves it flung. She goes to the desk, takes a sheet from what remains in the box of the paper with the violets in the corners. She sits, fills her pen.

S
HE SEALS THE NOTE, ASKS MARIE-ALBERT TO INVENT NEEDS SO SHE
may go to post it in the village. Six spools of number 12 black thread, four meters of flannel for patching sheets. Elastic stockings for Paul. Done with her commissions, she walks to the park, sits down on the bench where she and Amandine had sat to watch the children play. She pulls the letter to the bishop from her bag, turns it over, gazes for a long time at her own finely penned script on the envelope. She places it back in the bag, asking herself if she shall or shall not send it. She tilts back her head, closes her eyes, lets a rogue breeze play about her face, her neck. She can feel that one of her plaits has come undone, pulls the elastic from the ends of it, puts it in her pocket, tries to push the loosed blond curls under her kerchief, and stays in this half sleep until the bells of St.-Odile strike six. She fairly runs then to the letter drop, crosses herself, lifts the lid, and pushes the note into the slot.

“Amen.”

As Solange hurries through the village on her way back to the convent, the reflection of a woman in a shop window catches her eye.
Who can it be who follows close as a shadow behind me? Dark rings under sad eyes, deep creases around the mouth, thick waist, matronly bosom, dowdy dress, cumbrous old boots, both plaits loosening now under her kerchief
. She turns away, shuts her eyes and, in a graceless blind run, escapes the shadow, the preposterous image. Breathless then, her face wet with tears and sweat, she slows her pace. Approaching the next set of shop windows, she keeps her eyes forward until, at the last—barely turning her head—she dares to look. Despising, taunting, the same woman looks back at her. Weeping aloud now and mindless of the choking heat, the lace on one of her boots undone and slapping hard against her leg, she runs up the chalk white road to the convent, heaves her parcels in the vestibule of the chapel, slips sideways through the half-opened door, blesses herself, genuflects, hurries to her pew, falls heavily upon the wooden kneeler.
Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina
. Vespers have begun. As one, the sorority turns to look at her.
God, make haste to help me
, she prays with them. And as they proceed in the liturgy, their voices soaring in plainsong, Solange whispers the same phrase again and again, her body swaying, barely swaying.
God, make haste to help me
.

As vespers finish, Sisters Josephine and Marie-Albert, whose places are on either side of Solange in the pew, bend toward her, whisper concern.

“Solange, how pallid you are.”

“Have you fever, Solange? What is it?”

As the pews empty and the sisters walk in double file from the chapel toward the refectory, Solange breathes deeply, smoothes her dress, smiles at Josephine and Marie-Albert. “I’m fine. It was only that I was late coming back from the village. I ran up the hill. Just a bit tired, that’s all.”

Josephine pleads, “Why don’t you go to your rooms and I’ll explain to Paul, tell her that you’re not well. I’ll send supper to you. I’ll prepare the tray myself—”

“No, no. It’s better that I go in. I’m well enough now. Besides, I
haven’t seen Amandine at all today, and I’d like to greet her for a moment.”

“At least go to wash your face, fix your hair. Better to be late than …,” says Marie-Albert.

Solange tucks her hair farther under her kerchief, touches her face with one hand. “And suffer Paul’s wrath for tardiness at table?”

The three laugh quietly, fold their hands, and join in the exit. They do not notice Paul, who stands to the side of the altar in silent observance.

When everyone is seated in the refectory, it’s Paul rather than one of the sisters who stands to say grace. As she finishes the prayer, she does not sit, does not wish the sorority and the convent girls a smiling
bon appétit, mes petites
, as is the custom after grace. Rather, her arms crossed and tucked inside her sleeves, she remains quiet, looks about the handsome room warm with the steamy perfumes of a good supper.

“Disorder of the mind and disorder of the body are invitations to the devil. Do we all agree?”

“Oui, Mater Paul”
rings out the collective response.

“Therefore you will also agree with me that Soeur Solange, rather than having prepared herself to sit at our sacred table, has seen fit, this evening, to invite the devil to join us.”

The sisters sit quietly while the convent girls crane their necks to see Solange, whisper. A few laugh. Mortified, flushed, shaking, Solange, trying once again to push strands of hair under her kerchief, rises, asks, “Mater, I beg your pardon for my appearance, but you see—”

“Silence. I shall give no pardon to your transgression of modesty nor, I’m certain, shall any of your sorority nor our dear young ladies. You are not worthy to sit among us. Please leave us now and go to humble yourself before our Lord.”

Solange, still standing, bows her head, then moves slowly, awkwardly among the tables until she reaches the clear area near the doorway. She turns to look at Paul who stands watching her progress. She opens her mouth as though to speak, then turns away, rushes from the room.

“And now,
mes petites, bon appétit!”

The sisters are stunned, picking up their knives and forks as though they are foreign instruments, putting them down again. Fidgeting.

“Mater, may I please have permission to speak?”

It is Amandine who asks. A small, sober soldier standing erect at her place, hands at her sides, her tiny pointed chin tilted upward, she awaits response. The room is hushed as a tomb.

Clearing her throat, clearing it once again before she answers, Paul asks, “What have you to say?”

“I think that you are cruel, Mater Paul.”

Paul chuckles as though to discount what the child says. “So you think that what I did was cruel? Is that—”

“No, Mater. I said that
you are cruel
. Everyone knows that Solange is good. Even you know that Solange is good. And everyone knows that you are not.”

Her voice has grown stronger, more shrill with each word.

The silence of the others bursts into gasps, into shouts. Paul, on her feet now, her face red as meat, bends to pound her fist on the table.

In a voice half strangled, Paul begs, “Silence. Silence. Silence.”

Still rooted to her place and as though she has not heard the din, Amandine is tranquil, prepared for the next parry.

“I have never in the thirty years of the life of this convent school felt the necessity to impose punishment upon either a sister or a student in this refectory. This evening I have been first forced to do one, and now, now I am forced to do the other.”

Paul turns her back to the room, walks a few meters to a tall, dark wood armoire, its massive doors incised with intricate scrollwork. The consensus around her is that she is searching for some sort of strap or paddle or birch with which to inflict penalty upon Amandine. Rather, when she turns, she is holding what looks like a bowl. Small and made of pewter, it has a long, thin handle. She walks to where Amandine stands, picks up one of her hands, places the bowl in it.

“And now we shall soften your insolence. Your punishment is this: You shall go to each and every one of us here in this room and beg for
your food. It shall be the right of each to refuse you. Or to grant you. To each you will curtsy, say, ‘Though I am unworthy to eat the food our Lord has granted, I beg you to feed me.’ Say it. That’s right, ‘I beg you to feed me.’ Louder. Good. Begin.”