Amandine by Marlena de Blasi Page A

that, if someone sees her, she will be scolded, sent back to bed. When the other pocket is full of basil, she starts off toward the vineyards. Her mission is a long way away. Though she walks slowly, her heart thumps, her breath is short. She walks to the edge of the smallest vineyard. She knows this is where he is. She heard them talking. She knows exactly where Philippe is. She tears the basil leaves, lets go of the bits here and there almost artistically over the sod where new grass has already begun to grow. She sets down the brown-paper-wrapped bread and jam on the stone with his name written on it. She can read it. Philippe. She notes that it does not say Père. She thinks it should. She looks about for wildflowers, but none are in sight. The basil will do, she thinks. He loved basil. Kept leaves in the pocket of his soutane. To chew after lunch. She liked when he smelled of basil. She takes a few steps backward to look at Philippe’s new place.
    “I love you. I still love you. But I wish you hadn’t gone away.”
    “Where have you been? I was so frightened. I’ve been calling you. Didn’t you hear me?”
    “I had to go somewhere. I had to go by myself. I knew where it was.”
    “Where what was?”
    “That place.”
    “What place, Amandine?”
    “The one near the grapes.”
    “Do you mean that you walked all the way to, to where Père sleeps?”
    “I know he’s dead, Solange. You can say it. And I know he’s under the ground. I’m not little anymore, and so you don’t have to use special baby words.”

CHAPTER XVI

    I
’M BAD. HORRID THINGS HAPPEN TO ME BECAUSE I AM HORRID. I DON’T
know why or how, but it must be true. She would never have left me if I’d been good. My mother. And Philippe never would have gone away. I understand. I didn’t have to wait until I was big to understand. It’s me. It’s because of me that I don’t have a mother and that Philippe died and that Paul can’t love me and that Solange doesn’t live with her family. It’s all me. I’m bad
.
    Amandine’s power to conceal flourishes with her new conscience. Her burden. She can find no reason for all that’s wrong save her own wickedness. She is ashamed. Others mustn’t know, mustn’t ever find out how bad she is so, from now on, she will be extra good. She will be perfect.
    Amandine does not speak of Philippe. When Solange asks if she would like to visit his grave again, gather wildflowers to take to him, she shakes her head no. In her prayers, she does not name him. If less
allègre
than before his passing, Amandine remains—it would seem—cheerful enough. More than to play in the garden or the park, she prefers to stay quiet with her books or to sit for hours at the pianoforte pounding out scales and arpeggios, endless repetitions of “Für Elise” with a heavy, dispassionate hand.
    She is six now and ready to enter the convent school. She reads and comprehends in the third-and often fourth-grade primers, draws and paints and sings with—once again what would seem like—enthusiasm. As though she’d been attending it for years, she observes the convent school program meticulously.
    Five A.M . rising, community cold-water washes while dressed, for modesty’s sake, in long gray bathing shifts, hair brushing and braiding with the help of the dormitory sisters, a brisk walk to the chapel, mass, breakfast, classes, recreation, lunch in the convent refectory, rest, study, chores in the convent, the dressing bell—twenty minutes to rinse faces, rebraid hair, unlace the boots and slip into black patent ballerinas with floppy grosgrain bows at the toes, add a ruched velvet hair band, a wide Alençon lace collar—vespers, supper, prayers, lights out. Pliant, meek Amandine tells herself,
The others mustn’t know, mustn’t ever find out how bad I am
.
    At St.-Hilaire the girls are coddled precisely as their parents—who pay handsomely for such gentle handling—wish them to be. Stitched by hand in an atelier in