Amandine Read online

  “But will they take my hair, Papa? Tell them not to take my hair.”

  Malicious laughter when we should have been asleep. “Would you like to join us, Annick?” They sniggered, my fellow novices, even as they wrapped it about my skirts, that heavy, sweat-smelling templar’s cloak, and as they folded the pointed hood low over my face. Twittering upon their pallets, then, “You’ll not be a novice for long, Annick.” One pull of the bell’s rope, my heart wingbeat on quiet water, head bowed, hands folded, mincingly I would follow the old monk through the black satin darkness to your private chapel, Fabrice. How old were we then, Your Excellency? You, the young, brilliant monseigneur, I, a month, two months under the veil, how old were we? How peccant were we, fiendishness spicing the lust? “I’m doing this for you, my dear papa,” I said under my breath. Mother of God, pray for us all.

  And when I could no longer acquit my own shamelessness and tried to quit you, you cajoled me. You and then the abbess. “We all have our private misfortunes, dear. Deceit and betrayal are blood rights from our pagan forebears. You will recall the escapades of the gods. And as for we brides of Jesus, though He soothes our souls, our flesh He leaves yearning. Besides, the pressure of virginity is distracting. Better to give it up. All the better to give it up to Fabrice. He’ll be bishop someday. Mark my words.”

  Later still, my desire for you finally spent, I’d come to tell you. “Never again,” I’d said, and how you laughed, wiping the tears with your surplice, saying, “Little boys are my true delight. A lesser divertissement, I took you because you were so solemn about the business. I did it for you, my dear.”

  Even scorned I remained devoted. For all the years since that epoch I have responded to your every call. To every call from His Eminence, each and every request from my old, liverish bon viveur. My own Daedalus. How cannily has your great bulbous nose taken on the same violaceous tint as your robes, Excellency. How well you’ve done. The school, the community, legacy of my work for your glory. My reward? A five-year mission to safeguard a damaged, bastard infant.

  “Ah, Philippe, you startled me. Just on my way downstairs. What are you doing here?” Paul searches for her handkerchief. Philippe, Père Philippe, is the old priest who earlier answered the door to the countess and her entourage.

  “I came to look for you. I’ve been standing here for some time, but you were so far away, your thoughts so far away, that I stayed quiet, waited …,” Philippe tells her.

  Paul nods toward the nursery, says, “Things will want adjusting. I was thinking about all that is bound to change now.”

  “Change for the better, I would think. Maybe even more for you and me than for the rest. Come to walk with me in the garden, Paul.”

  “I can’t right now. I must telephone the bishop and—”

  “He’ll wait. I don’t know why, can’t fathom why this has disturbed you so. You’re pale as death, Paul. The way you were when a new postulant caught Fabrice’s eye. Is it that? Are you envious of the baby?”

  “First fear, now envy. Of what shall I next be accused today? Old fool you are, Philippe. It’s only that having an infant and her nurse in residence is not something that fits, that seems at all fitting …”

  “You are envious. And if I’m an old fool, you’re a fool only three years younger. How much of our lives have we lived together? You and Fabrice and I, the last surviving—”

  “Yes, but he survives far better than you and I, Philippe. He thrives while we wither, while we still tremble and fetch at his bidding.”

  “It’s the way things arranged themselves. It might well have been I who’d been promoted and exalted in his place. I was the academician, after all, yet he won favor with affability. What can it matter now that we’re so close to the end? I’m grateful to him that he sent me here to you. To you and the sisters, to live out my time in this place, in this pleasant enough place. He might have packed me off to some decrepit retreat for shabby, venial clerics rather than here. Ah, I tell you, Paul, in his way, he’s done well by both of us. In his way, he’s always done well by us. And what you don’t see now is that his accepting whatever proposal was made to him to take over the care of this infant … What you don’t see is that, by this, he gives us a last chance.”

  “What sort of last chance?”

  “To be typical, I suppose that’s the word. To be ordinary. I think our calling—”

  “Your calling, perhaps. I have yet to hear my call, Philippe.”

  “That’s what I wanted to say. Even with a calling, celibate life is neither typical nor ordinary, and yet typical and ordinary are we. Many of us, most of us Benedicks and Jesuits and vestals. No matter the troop, celibate life makes for a monstrous aberration, a nunnish battle with the flesh, but more with the heart. I think we are meant to love someone other than God. Pardon my blasphemy. In a way, I think we’re meant to love someone more than God. Denied that, denied the anguish of a personal love, the yearning, the up-close and singular purpose it gives to a life, we religious, we, all of us, become, in some way, deviant. At best, we grow old awkwardly, pushing against the grain till the last. Calling it piety.”

  “I have had a personal love, and it has denied me no anguish, Philippe.”

  “What did you expect? That he would leave old Mother Church and set up with you? It was never an option, Paul. You, and all the others before and after you, were respites. Lusty respites from the drone. The desired, the beloved drone, you were a titillating interruption from the sway of that, a deep draft of cold air. You and the others were his particular expression of deviance. One of his expressions.”

  “What are you trying to do with all this talk, Philippe? Are you out to comfort me, to torment me? I can’t tell which.”

  “I’m trying to tell you to let loose your rancor. Especially toward a five-month-old infant. Paul, look at me. Do you see how wasted I am? I am a mirror of you. Why should we not take this singular opportunity, surely it’s a last opportunity, to live, to live like others do? Yes, let’s you and I be grand-mère and grand-père to this child. While we can. Let’s pretend. God knows how proficient we’ve become at deceit. You more than I, Paul. Let’s pretend. Who knows but that the fraud will turn about, become the truth. Wouldn’t that be the miracle of our, of our winter? That we might actually feel something spontaneously rather than by rote. Nothing so much would change. You will carry out your tasks and I mine, but in between, we could, God help us, we could try to love her.”

  CHAPTER V

  AT GREATER SPEED THAN HE DROVE ON THE WAY TO THE CONVENT of St.-Hilaire, the chauffeur retreats down the same lime tree avenue, his passengers—the Countess Czartoryska, the nurse, and the man with the thin white mustaches—composing a hardly less muted group than they did an hour before. Before having delivered their charge to its destination. Before consigning the infant. The baby is gone. Its gaze, though—the serene blue-black gaze of a lamb consenting to sacrifice—the power of that gaze flits about the Packard’s lush gray saloon. The nurse’s arms hang loosely, awkwardly in her lap, or so they seem to the countess, who looks then at the man with the thin white mustaches, this Toussaint with the twitch in his jaw, the homburg pitched far back on his forehead now, eyes closed—calculating his take, his deed? How odious accomplices become afterward, the countess thinks. And what is this pain, this heaviness about my own arms? Is it like the pain, the ghostly pain of a limb amputated? Is it she that I feel? Pray that filthy old priest shall never hold her, less that sweating bitch of a nun. Oh God what have I done? Against the pain, the countess crosses her arms about her breast, each hand clutching the long, soft fur on the sleeves of her jacket. She squeezes shut her eyes, and yet the pain and the lamb’s gaze remain.

  It’s done. It’s gone. How much longer until the station? The privacy of my compartment. Please let us not be late for that train. I must be alone. I must think. This part is done, and now I must concentrate on Andzelika. On how I shall present the events to her. I must be so careful, weigh and study every
word before I say it, construct a case for each part of the lie. I shall be quite forthcoming. I shall embrace her, tell her without delay. The baby has died. Before surgery could be attempted, she died of heart failure, just as the birthing doctors had predicted she would. Predicted she might, but Andzelika need not know the relatively favorable odds they proposed. I shall emphasize that the doctors in Switzerland offered scant hope of saving her, assured me that, should the surgery keep her alive, it would be, at best, in a life of extreme debilitation. I shall describe the symptoms under which the child would have suffered. I shall say that all agreed the early demise was “for the best.” When she asks, if she asks, why I did not arrange for the child to be brought to Poland, to be placed in the family mausoleum, I shall explain that the birth and the death of the child must remain our private business. She will understand that. I shall promise to take her to Switzerland someday so that she might visit the place where the baby is buried. I shall tell her of the services, the words of the priest: “Infants who die are angels called back to God so as not to be desecrated by time on earth.” Yes, that’s what I’ll tell her the priest said. I read that somewhere, I think that’s how it went. In time, I shall convince her that such a visit would serve nothing. She will have got on with her life by then. She’ll have put all this—the child, the man—aside. I shall see to that as I have seen to all of it. The death certificate, where did I put it? Perhaps Tous saint has it still. I shall remind him to give it to me when we’re on the train. Ah, how tired I am. Have I thought of everything? Dear old Józef, how I wish you were here to counsel me. To help me finish the job.

  Józef, my confessor, my friend, may God rest your magnificent soul. Strange that you would have died—how long was it?—only days after that last meeting. Yes, as though your great heart could contain not one more secret, as though this business of counseling me about the placement of the child was your last act of benevolence. Can you see me, Józef? Can you hear me? Surely a bishop of Mother Church can see and hear from his heavenly resting place. I did do the right thing, didn’t I, Józef?

  She’ll be safe. Doubly safe. Your Solange. The old abbess in her white-winged cornet. And should either of them fail her, there is your friend the bishop called Fabrice. Yes, His Eminence Fabrice. Yes, it’s done. It’s gone. I’ve cast the lovely little beast upon all those caring hands. Greedy hands. Oh, Józef, can you hear me? That last day, that last meeting of ours, you were exasperated with me, almost embittered. How was it that you began?

  “Let it stay with us. With me and with the Urszulines. I will baptize it. They will feed it, swaddle it, and let it be. I will bless its soul, and should God choose to claim it, I shall help it to die in sainted peace. Oh, Valeska, it will be better this way. Trust that all your and Toussaint’s machinations to find just the ‘right’ situation for the child, trust that all came to nothing because it is not God’s will. My dear Valeska, it’s hardly murder that I’m suggesting but salvation. This child is both unwanted and mortally ill. What hope has she? Let her be. Let her go.”

  “I can’t. I won’t. It’s true that she is unwanted, that I don’t want her. It’s also true that I love her. I do love her, Józef. I wish to provide a chance for her. Every chance. To be cared for as I would care for her. Were that possible.”

  “You don’t want her, yet you seek some blissful life for her, some good fay to suckle her, to love her as you would. Were that possible. Ah, dear Valeska, how strange a path takes your love. You have not been spared suffering in the past, and yet I fear that you, with your margrave’s will, now seek another occasion for it. Perhaps the greatest one yet.”

  “What sufferance can compare with that which Antoni bequeathed me?”

  “That of denying your child.”

  “You will remember that she is not my child.”

  “All the heavier your cross. You are taking Andzelika’s child from her.”

  “And by doing that I am saving Andzelika. By removing the child, by erasing the child, I am saving Andzelika a life of degradation and shame. I’ll not have all of Krakow saying, ‘she is, after all, her father’s daughter.’ No scarlet letter for Andzelika, Józef. I’ll not have her sacrificed to her bastard, conceived with the brother of her father’s whore. That I shall not do. Daughter of an assassin suicide, Andzelika has lived since she was two years old with the legacy of her noble sire, kept her child’s fierce dignity amidst whispers and ridicule from everyone outside our family. And when she was older, from many who are part of it. What juicy, dripping flesh to chew on would Andzelika and her child be. I want it away. Far, far away, Józef. Carefully placed, then irrevocably lost to us.”

  How long did we two stay silent then? The clicking of the nuncio’s boots up and down the corridor during the short intervals when his ravening ear was not pressed to the door.

  “There is a family in France. In the region of Champagne. Is that remote enough for you, my dear? Far enough away from Krakow is it? They are the family of my sister’s husband. Janka’s husband.”

  “Tell me about them, Józef.”

  “She was late in marrying, Janka was, late in finding her love.

  “Laurent Besson. They met in Prague, where she lived, barely eating, almost never keeping warm, so she might study violin, study her music and live and walk and be in the only place on earth where she said she was meant to live. Yes, in Prague. Laurent had come from Champagne on a pilgrimage with his church. Only for a few days. They met on the Charles Bridge. Of course, it would be the bridge. And, of course, it would be winter. It was dusk and, in her mother’s beaver coat, Janka played Prokofiev. People on their way home from work surrounded her, placed fir branches or small faggots of kindling at her feet. Janka would have a fire that evening. They left small cherry tarts and poppy-seed cakes, black bread, a wedge of good white cabbage, some part of whatever they were carrying home for supper. Some even had a coin to drop onto the purple velvet of her open violin case. Laurent stood among the crowd. He unfastened a gold cross from around his neck, placed it in the case. When she finished playing all she knew of Prokofiev and then of Stravinsky, she took her bows, shook hands with her audience. Laurent stepped up to her, took her hand, and kissed it. ‘I am Laurent Bresson from Champagne. I am in love with you. Will you be my bride?’

  “After looking at him for a long time, Janka bent to finish the business of closing up her performance. She stood up then, slung the violin case across her chest, took Laurent’s arm, said, ‘First you will take me to supper.’

  “I trust he did indeed take her to supper that evening, since they married soon afterward. They lived on the farm in Champagne with who knows how many others in an already epic family. They birthed five daughters. Through the years Janka and I wrote to one another faithfully, her letters helping me to feel the place she’d always saved for me in her French life. Of course I traveled to Avise, to their small town, when I could, not letting more than a year or two pass between visits. And when I became ill that first time, Janka—a three-month-old daughter cradled in a red carpet bag strapped across her chest just as she once carried her violin—came back to Krakow, arranged herself and her baby in a maid’s room in the presbytery, and cared for me day and night. And when I’d gained my strength, she insisted that I travel back to France with her and little Magda, spend the summer in further recuperation. She convinced me easily. Nearly a year I stayed. I baptized Magda, performed a marriage or two, as I recall. Learned about grape growing and winemaking and how good it feels to work hard and eat well and sleep a child’s sleep. Surely I’d thought more than once about making it my permanent refuge.

  “It’s a good story, don’t you think, Valeska? Even with the uncomplicated protagonists. Not many intrigues, not much patrimony over which one of them might grind his teeth. Not a single murder that I can recall. And if there were betrayals, I never knew about them, save the ones of poaching wild rabbits or the rights to a certain chestnut grove. Or so I believed back then. In any case, my dear, I tell
you all this because of Magda’s daughter. Magda’s Solange. Just past seventeen, she’s come home some weeks ago after a novitiate year and one as a postulant at Beaune. Says she’s not meant to be a nun, that she would rather live and work on the farm with her family. Janka is now the clan’s old matriarch, and she would lovingly take in and care for your child. With the help of her daughter and her granddaughter. With the help of Magda and Solange. They would take her as their own.”

  “What would you tell them? Would they take her knowing nothing about her?”

  “They would need know only that she is without a home.”

  “Had I forgotten there were such people, Józef, or is it that I never knew there were?” From a thin silver case in her purse, Valeska takes a cigarette and—as a man might—holds it between thumb and forefinger. The bishop pulls a long match from a box on the desk, strikes it once on the roughened patch of a marble ashtray, lights Valeska’s cigarette without rising from his chair. She does not thank him but says, “As much as you are offering, I want more, Józef. I want the child to be educated.”

  “Children are educated very well in rural France, my dear.”

  “No, no, I don’t intend her to be schooled at home or in a public lycée. A convent education, the niceties, the advantages of a fine Catholic boarding school, just as I had, as Andzelika had.”

  “Valeska, Valeska, listen to yourself. Will you even choose the stuff of her dresses, dictate—from some stifled place behind the drapes—how she’ll arrange her hair? She is congenitally ill, mortally ill, yet you imagine her reading Virgil. Hold her to you or surrender her. You cannot do both. Not even you can do both.”

  “Hush, Józef. Why must you always speak like a priest? Like a good priest. What about Montpellier?”

  “What about it? You are mad if you’re thinking to send her where Andzelika herself was schooled.”