and an old man, at that-what do I have? Since Fleur there have been no more men. I might have turned to women for comfort, like Germaine and Clémente, but those pleasures never appealed to me.
Germaine, whose husband cut her face fifteen times-once for every year of her life-with a kitchen knife when he found her with another girl, hates all men. I’ve seen her watching me. I know she finds me beautiful. Not like Clémente, of the Madonna face and filthy mind, but enough to please her. She sometimes watches me at work in the garden, but never says a word. Her light hair is cropped shorter than a boy’s, and beneath the ungainly brown robes I can guess at a slim, graceful figure. Once, Germaine would have made a fine dancer. But something else is spoiled besides her face. Six years after the incident she looks older than I, her mouth pale and thin, her eyes almost colorless, like brine. She tells me she joined the convent so that she would never have to look at a man again. But she is like the sour apples and the dried-pea grapes, yearning to flourish but starved of rain.
Lovely, spiteful Clémente sees it and makes her suffer, flirting with me as I go about my duties. In chapel she sometimes whispers words of seduction, offering herself to me as, behind her, Germaine listens helplessly, stolid in her suffering, her scarred face impassive.
Germaine has no faith, no interest in religion of any kind. I spoke to her once about my female God-I thought it might appeal to her, hating men as she did-but she seemed as indifferent to that as she was to the rest. “If such a thing ever was,” she told me dryly, “then men have remade her. Why else should they want to lock us up and to make us ashamed? Why else should they be so afraid?”
I said that men had no reason to be afraid of us, and she gave another sharp laugh. “Oh no?” She put her fingers to her face. “Then why
this?”
Perhaps she is right. And yet I don’t hate men. Only one, and even he…I dreamed of him again last night. So close I could smell his sweat and his skin, smooth as my own. I hate him, and yet in my dream he was tender. Even with his face in shadow I would have known him anywhere, even without the moonlight that gilded the scorched flower on his arm.
The sound of birdsong awoke me. For an instant I was there again, before Épinal, before Vitré, with the blackbirds singing outside our caravan and my lover watching me with all of summer in his mocking eyes…
For a moment only. A sly succubus crept into my heart as I lay asleep. A ghost. There can be no part of me that still wants him, I tell myself.
No part at all.
It was long
past noon when at last we arrived at the abbey. I had taken off my wimple, but even so my hair was damp with sweat, my robe clammy against my skin. Fleur trotted beside me, Mouche dangling from one hand. There was no one in sight. Given the heat, this was not unusual, for many of the sisters, in the absence of authority, had taken to sleeping at that time, leaving what rudimentary duties they still performed until after Nones and the cooler evening. But when I saw the fresh horse dung by the abbey gate and the tracks of carriage wheels in the dust I was suddenly certain that what we had been expecting had finally happened.
“Is it the players coming back?” asked Fleur hopefully.
“No, sweetheart, I don’t think so.”
“Oh.”
I smiled at her expression, and gave her a kiss. “Play here for a while,” I said. “I have to go inside.”
I watched her as she ran duck-footed along the path into the cloister, then turned toward the Abbey, feeling as if a great weight had been taken from me. At last, then, this uneasy, unsettled time had come to an end. We had a new abbess, a guiding hand for us in our aimlessness and fear. I could picture her already. She would be calm and strong, though no longer in the first blush of youth. Her smile would be grave and tranquil, but with the touch of humor necessary to
Germaine, whose husband cut her face fifteen times-once for every year of her life-with a kitchen knife when he found her with another girl, hates all men. I’ve seen her watching me. I know she finds me beautiful. Not like Clémente, of the Madonna face and filthy mind, but enough to please her. She sometimes watches me at work in the garden, but never says a word. Her light hair is cropped shorter than a boy’s, and beneath the ungainly brown robes I can guess at a slim, graceful figure. Once, Germaine would have made a fine dancer. But something else is spoiled besides her face. Six years after the incident she looks older than I, her mouth pale and thin, her eyes almost colorless, like brine. She tells me she joined the convent so that she would never have to look at a man again. But she is like the sour apples and the dried-pea grapes, yearning to flourish but starved of rain.
Lovely, spiteful Clémente sees it and makes her suffer, flirting with me as I go about my duties. In chapel she sometimes whispers words of seduction, offering herself to me as, behind her, Germaine listens helplessly, stolid in her suffering, her scarred face impassive.
Germaine has no faith, no interest in religion of any kind. I spoke to her once about my female God-I thought it might appeal to her, hating men as she did-but she seemed as indifferent to that as she was to the rest. “If such a thing ever was,” she told me dryly, “then men have remade her. Why else should they want to lock us up and to make us ashamed? Why else should they be so afraid?”
I said that men had no reason to be afraid of us, and she gave another sharp laugh. “Oh no?” She put her fingers to her face. “Then why
this?”
Perhaps she is right. And yet I don’t hate men. Only one, and even he…I dreamed of him again last night. So close I could smell his sweat and his skin, smooth as my own. I hate him, and yet in my dream he was tender. Even with his face in shadow I would have known him anywhere, even without the moonlight that gilded the scorched flower on his arm.
The sound of birdsong awoke me. For an instant I was there again, before Épinal, before Vitré, with the blackbirds singing outside our caravan and my lover watching me with all of summer in his mocking eyes…
For a moment only. A sly succubus crept into my heart as I lay asleep. A ghost. There can be no part of me that still wants him, I tell myself.
No part at all.
It was long
past noon when at last we arrived at the abbey. I had taken off my wimple, but even so my hair was damp with sweat, my robe clammy against my skin. Fleur trotted beside me, Mouche dangling from one hand. There was no one in sight. Given the heat, this was not unusual, for many of the sisters, in the absence of authority, had taken to sleeping at that time, leaving what rudimentary duties they still performed until after Nones and the cooler evening. But when I saw the fresh horse dung by the abbey gate and the tracks of carriage wheels in the dust I was suddenly certain that what we had been expecting had finally happened.
“Is it the players coming back?” asked Fleur hopefully.
“No, sweetheart, I don’t think so.”
“Oh.”
I smiled at her expression, and gave her a kiss. “Play here for a while,” I said. “I have to go inside.”
I watched her as she ran duck-footed along the path into the cloister, then turned toward the Abbey, feeling as if a great weight had been taken from me. At last, then, this uneasy, unsettled time had come to an end. We had a new abbess, a guiding hand for us in our aimlessness and fear. I could picture her already. She would be calm and strong, though no longer in the first blush of youth. Her smile would be grave and tranquil, but with the touch of humor necessary to
Similar Books
