The Love Letters Read online

  Mariana turned from the empty bed, sighing, deeply, unconsciously, so that Ampara pricked up her little cat’s ears and opened her eyes.

  But Mariana had turned and was leaving the dormitory. She had already checked the younger children so that when she left the dark corridor her evening duties were done, and she went swiftly down the marble stairs and hurried along the cloistered walk. Under the stone arches there was darkness, though a residual light lingered in the garden. Her lamp faintly illuminated the pattern on the tiles that decorated the inner wall. At the end of the cloister she sat the bowl down and stepped into the rectangular garden.

  She moved slowly, with a controlled joy, among the flowers, holding out her arms to the moonlight. The hood of her loose night robe slipped down as she raised her face to the tingling silver light, and her fair cropped hair was suddenly haloed with radiance. In the garden insects called and the frogs clunked from the lily pond. In the streets there was more noise than usual. Celebrations were going on in many of the houses; laughter rose and fell; from a hidden street came the sound of running feet, shouts, more laughter, a shriek, silence.

  Beneath the arches slid the shadow of another nun and a soft, childish voice called “Mariana,” as Michaela stepped out of the darkness.

  Mariana looked up, startled.

  Michaela’s voice was tentative. “Mother Escolastica said I might—she said since we had been given permission to talk this evening I might—but only for a moment—and not to bother you if you wished to return to silence—”

  Mariana turned to Michaela as though waking from a dream. “You wanted to talk to me—”

  “Yes. Please.”

  Mariana smiled, then, as though Michaela were one of the little children she taught in the early morning. The two nuns were not more than a year or two apart, but Michaela’s round little face had not changed since the days of her postulancy, nor had her round eyes lost their look of bovine innocence. She seemed to have been arrested in a state of perpetual childhood. “What is it, little Sister?”

  “I wanted to ask—”

  “Is it important? I’m not sure Mother meant—No, I can see it’s important. Let’s sit down.” She led the way to a wooden bench that circled an ancient eucalyptus tree. Michaela picked up a long shard of the silver bark and pulled it nervously through her fingers, her face seeming to quiver as the light breeze moving the branches patterned the two nuns with a constant shifting of shadow and light. Finally she burst out, “I’m like Sister Joaquina.”

  At this incongruity Mariana laughed, and Michaela looked at her pleadingly. “I mean, I’m not like her, but I wasn’t brought up in the convent the way you and Beatriz were. Joaquina and I came together to start out postulancy. For you and Beatriz it was home. That’s how I’m like Joaquina. Do you see?”

  Mariana leaned back, her head against the soaring trunk of the tree, and let her eyes rest on the water of the fountain spraying up into the moonlight. “Not, yet. Go on.”

  Michaela cried out, as though it were a great tragedy. “I have three sisters!” and stopped again.

  Mariana prodded patiently. “Yes?”

  “And of the four of us I’m the only one who isn’t talented … and gifted … and full of graces … and my father thought …”

  “Thought what?”

  Michaela began to cry. “That probably no man … no man worthy of our name … would have me … but that probably our Lord would … because … and he thought … my father, I mean … that I might be happy in the convent … and I thought so too …”

  “And I thought so, too. I thought you were one of the happiest people here. Was I wrong?”

  Michaela rubbed the back of her hand against her eyes to wipe away the easy tears. “No, no, I am happy. I’ve been happier here than I’ve ever been in my life. But—”

  “But what?”

  “This morning, when the soldiers came by … and then hearing them on the streets all day, and tonight … and seeing them from the balcony … and then …”

  “Then?”

  “Have you ever … have you ever wanted to leave the convent and go back into the world?”

  “No,” Mariana said. “No, little Michaela. No. I’ve been back. I’ve visited my father’s house. I don’t want to go back again.”

  “Never?”

  “No. Though of course I will go if her Grace sends me. But how could anything in the world give me half what I have here?”

  Michaela’s voice was low. “I thought that, too. That’s why I’ve been so happy. People haven’t … haven’t made me feel that I’m a fool … and silly …”

  “You aren’t.”

  “Oh, yes, I am. I’m the foolish one. I’ve heard the others talking about me often enough. First at home. And then here. In the Chapter of Faults. Even the older sisters. I’m the foolish virgin who’ll always forget to have enough oil for her lamp. I’m stuck into a pigeonhole. And so are you.”

  “I am?”

  “Yes. Of course. You’re the abbess’s niece. Everybody knows you’re being prepared to be the next abbess. You’re in that pigeonhole. Even I forget who you are sometimes. I have to remind myself that you’re Mariana and I love you, and when I remember that, I’m not afraid of you.”

  Mariana looked at her in quick surprise. “Nobody could be afraid of me!”

  “Nobody is. We’re afraid of the abbess’s niece.”

  “Is that what you came to talk to me about?”

  Michaela, sensing reproof, became immediately apologetic. “No. No. It was the soldiers. This morning when I saw the soldiers go by … and then I thought how everybody here likes me … and then I thought … I thought maybe if I went back into the world I wouldn’t be so bad at things any more, and it wouldn’t be impossible for my parents to arrange a good marriage for me.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “I don’t know! I never thought I’d feel like this! I don’t even know if I do feel like this! I thought I had a vocation, a true vocation, not like … and I still don’t know if I do or not … because surely I shouldn’t have been excited when the soldiers came by.”

  “But we were all excited,” Mariana explained.

  Michaela glanced at the other girl slantwise, looking darkly through her long lashes, and whispering, “Sister Joaquina wasn’t.”

  “Of course she was,” Mariana said impatiently. “And so was I.”

  “It doesn’t worry you?”

  “We’re happy here. Isn’t that enough?”

  “You’re going to be the next abbess. You know where you’re going. But for me … I don’t know.” Michaela’s voice rose to a thin, childish wail. “I just don’t know.”

  Mariana put her fingers for a moment lightly on the other girl’s knee. “Sister, dear, don’t fret so. After all, we’re human beings. We can’t retreat entirely. I don’t think we’re supposed to.”

  “But the soldiers—” Michaela said.

  “Remind us that we’re women! That we’re still young. It seems to me we’d be half dead if we could watch the men who fought for us march by our convent and be unmoved.”

  “It didn’t make you want to leave?”

  “Why should it? How could any man hope to compete with our Lord?”

  Michaela looked at Mariana and said in a small voice, “You make me feel foolish.”

  “I don’t mean to. I don’t think you’re foolish. Just natural.”

  “I know that if I stay here I’ll never be rejected again … and then sometimes I think that this is cowardice … and I ought to go back instead of taking the easy way …”

  “The way of a sister is not the easy way!”

  “For me it is. Far easier than the world.”

  “Then you have a lot to learn,” Mariana said brusquely, but broke off into laughter. “Oh, dear, that’s what Mother Escolastica and her Grace keep telling me. I expect we both have a lot to learn.”

  “You, Mariana? All of us feel that you are wisest and closest to s
ainthood of us all.”

  Mariana’s voice was suddenly ice-cold, sounding startlingly like the abbess. “Please stop, Michaela, or you’ll make me angry.”

  “Don’t be angry. Please just let me thank you. I came to you for help—”

  “And I haven’t been much help.”

  “But you have! I don’t feel guilty about the soldiers any more. I’m surer about my vocation. I can go back to my cell and pray.”

  “I’m glad,” Mariana said, but her eyes were troubled.

  “I shouldn’t have kept you so long. Mother thought I meant only a word. But I couldn’t talk to her about it—”

  “It’s all right,” Mariana said, the warmth returning to her voice. “Sometimes we need to talk.” She stood up and walked with Michaela back to the shadow of the column where she had placed her lamp. She held the shallow dish of smoking oil until Michaela had walked the length of the arcade and into the convent.

  Mariana put the lamp down by the column again and went out into the open gardens. At the far end of the convent grounds she walked past the frog pond and stood on tiptoe to see over the wall. She gazed out into the dark street that led to the great, open-air market; during the daylight wagons constantly creaked by, and patient, panniered donkeys. Now, in the dark hours, the shadows lengthening as the moon dipped, a horseman approached. Was he on a black horse? Straining on her tiptoes the nun watched. Yes, the horse was black, it was—No. It was a Portugese uniform, the horse was dark brown, the soldier was Alipio de Vasconcelos, Sister Joaquina’s father. Mariana ducked, but he had seen her. She heard his coarse laugh as he called, “Looking for someone, Sister? Shall I send him a message?”

  She turned and ran back to the protection of the cloister. The fountain splashed, pure and clean. Her lamp—yes, there was enough oil—burned low in the shadow of the column. As she bent to pick it up a gust of wind blew out the wavering light of the wick and she was lost in darkness.

  … She opened her eyes and met Violet’s cool, blue stare, heard Violet’s cross voice. “Idiot. What is this all about?”

  She closed her eyes again, refusing consciousness, giving a small, rejecting movement of her body. The roughness of the rug scratched her into wakefulness, and Violet’s voice came again, probing, demanding. “Cotty.”

  She sat up and there was Violet standing by the couch wrapped in a long coachman’s cloak of soft, grey fur, a fur cap pulled down on her head so that her sharp eyes and beaked nose made her look like a wise and predatory grey owl.

  “How do you feel?”

  The question was peremptory. If Charlotte did not say, “Fine, thanks,” Violet would be annoyed. Therefore Charlotte simply looked at her mother-in-law warily.

  “Well?”

  Goaded, Charlotte responded with all the dignity she could muster. “I feel abominable, thank you.”

  “Idiot.”

  Charlotte untangled herself from the moth-eaten fur rug the doctor had wrapped about her, and put her stockinged feet on the drafty floor. Where were her hideous new shoes? “It was a great mistake for me to have come,” she said. “Go away, Violet, please. I’m not going to bother you. Don’t worry.”

  Violet took an angry step forward as though she intended to strike the girl. But the doctor moved out of the shadows and put his arm around Violet in a rough hug. “Leave the child alone, Violet. She’s not well.”

  To Charlotte’s surprise, Violet did not turn on the doctor but permitted his arm to rest about her shoulders. “She’s not a child, João.”

  “But she is not well.” He left Violet and put the back of his hand against Charlotte’s cheek. “She has high fever.”

  Violet glowered, as though it were Charlotte’s fault. “Now I understand why Patrick called me in Paris last night.”

  “Patrick?” Charlotte looked up, startled.

  “Yes. Patrick, being Patrick, of course did not say what was on his mind. But it is not Patrick’s wont to make transatlantic calls to tell me about a successfully performed minor operation on an equally minor Manhattan politician. Now I understand. At least a little.”

  “I’m sorry,” Charlotte said faintly.

  “It is not a matter of being sorry or not sorry. Please do not attempt to use me as a confessor.”

  The doctor’s voice boomed. “Violet, you are impossible. If you are going to continue to behave badly I shall keep Charlotte here.”

  “You called me to come get her.”

  “I am changing my mind. Antonio and I will care for her.”

  “Antonio?” Violet’s scorn was sharp.

  “A young man. Attractive. Ambitious. A poet.”

  “Be quiet, João. Do not pretend I don’t know Tonio far better than you do. Blackmail will get you nowhere. Attractive, ambitious young men are always, for some obscure reason, drawn to Charlotte. All right, Cotty. The car is waiting.”

  “Both of you leave me alone.” Charlotte’s voice trembled. “I’m going back to the pensão for the night. Tomorrow I’ll go back to Lisbon and return the car. I should never have come.”

  The doctor came over to her, speaking gently, calling her softly by her first name. “Charlotte.”

  She turned her head away. “What?”

  “You are here. You have fever. You must accept both these facts. You can’t eradicate them by running away again. Do you want to get pneumonia? And you know Violet. She is being completely in character. She is angry only at the people she loves. She is concerned and upset about you and therefore, because these are painful emotions, she tries to rid herself of them by a display of temper. It won’t last. She’ll calm down and face things. As you must.”

  Charlotte bowed her head submissively. “All right.”

  He looked at Violet and smiled. “Am I still invited to dinner?”

  The sharp face softened. “João, you’re an old fool.”

  “I take it that means yes. Go ahead, then. I’ll bring Charlotte. If she goes with you, you’ll be at her, and I don’t want her bothered tonight.”

  In the doctor’s car, wrapped again in the moth-eaten rug, Charlotte leaned back, letting her aching limbs relax. “Will I see you again?”

  “Of course. I’m not going to abandon you now.”

  She looked at him. Although his lips were partly hidden by the unkempt mustache and beard, she could see that he was smiling; but he was not laughing at her.

  “I see now how stupid it was of me to come,” she said.

  “Since I don’t know why you’ve come I can make no judgment.”

  “But I told you, didn’t I?”

  “Some wild talk about leaving Patrick. This tells me nothing.”

  “I love him.”

  “Evidently.”

  “But I do.”

  “You don’t need to repeat it.”

  “To want someone to love you, and to want him to be in love with you are quite different things. I haven’t ever wanted anybody to be in love with me except Patrick, but it seems to have happened the other way around, so I’m confused, you see … about Antonio’s nun—”

  “What about her?”

  “She really loved this French soldier?”

  “Read the letters.”

  “I have.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know anything about love. I’m asking you.” She was suddenly conscious of the black mourning band on his sleeve. In the dining room at the pensão it had simply presented itself as a curious surprise to her a reminder that in Europe customs that she had thought lost in the past persisted in the present. Now she felt suddenly the presence of a person, a loss, a grief.

  He did not answer. He drove out the gates of the town, turned and headed uphill. After about five minutes of driving in silence, during which the coldness swept over her again, he turned the car through tall whitewashed gateposts and down a long dirt driveway lined on either side with poplars which were being lashed by wind and rain. At the end of the drive was a large, low house, with light spilling out of long window
s.

  “If I were a nun perhaps I could pray,” Charlotte said.

  “Is the qualification necessary?”

  “It might help. I assume a nun would believe in God.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “Not any more. So I can’t pray. So I wish I were a nun.”

  “But you are not. And I do not imagine that Mariana always found prayer easy. Or God available. Or comprehensible.”

  … “My nuns do not know how to pray,” the abbess said. “Portuguese convents are either completely given over to the things of this world, or are filled with religious hysterics.”

  “I do not think this is hysteria,” Father Duarte said.

  Father Pessanha looked down his long nose. “It is very suspicious.”

  Mariana had been alone in the chapel when the first unusual happening occurred. She was twelve years old, no longer a child, certainly not yet a woman. She had been kneeling quite quietly, not praying, her mind not even wandering, but resting on the golden cross that soared heavenwards. Suddenly she was, as it were, taken, translated from the gold and light and warmth of the chapel into coldness and darkness. It was as though she were being taken through death, and it was her terror that brought her back to consciousness. Her body was ice cold and she was shaken by shivering. It was not what one would imagine a vision, a beatific experience, to be at all. And yet she was left with a profound conviction of having been almost unbearably close to God. She had dutifully reported the experience to Father Pessanha, her confessor until her profession. He had accused her of letting her imagination run wild, and had, with her dazed permission, since she had spoken in the confessional, reported it to the abbess and Father Duarte.

  “No, I do not think this is hysteria,” Father Duarte said again. He was Father General of his own order and in priestly charge of the convent. “It has the ring of authenticity. But we must watch it—and the child.”

  Fortunately she was unaware of their watching. At first she had been afraid to go to the chapel alone in case the shattering experience should come again. Then she overcame her reluctance, and when the cold and dark came again she was not as frightened; she did not fight against it; she went in, in, into the dark which was at the same time a blast of light. The experience never came when she was looking for it; it could not be asked for; when it happened it was always totally unexpected and she was wracked by the wildness of it. When she returned to herself she was ice-cold and trembling. She did not need to be told not to speak of it to the other children or, later, to the other nuns, though Father Pessanha enjoined her to silence so often that she could not help realizing that what happened to her did not happen to everybody, that it was not ordinary. Nevertheless she simply accepted it without overmuch thought. It was, in its strange wild way, as beautiful as the bursting of the pear tree into bloom. But one did not question the blossoming of the pear tree. One simply accepted it and rejoiced.