The Convent: A Novel (17 page)

I
t was a long time before normality returned to the convent of Our Lady of Mercy. Sister María Inés mourned the child as intensely as if he had died and she had been responsible for his death. She grieved for the fact that she would never see him again and, at the same time, was full of remorse for having failed to protect him from the powers that conspired against her hope of redemption. It would have eased her pain little to learn that the woman who spirited him away was, in fact, his mother. Sister María Inés would still have insisted that the child was hers and only hers because God, in His infinite wisdom, which no man can grasp, had arranged everything so that she had been given the opportunity to make amends for the sin she had committed in her youth.

She had no doubt that it was so, and also that she would never be given another chance. She took refuge in her room and came out rarely, always when the nuns were in the chapel. She did not go to prayer herself but stayed mostly in bed and had her meals brought to her. She ate very little and was running one of her periodic fevers. Suspecting that her old malaria was returning, she began to take quinine, several tablets a day, which caused her to break out in sweats and suffer headaches and confusion. She endured the effects of the medicine without complaint, without cold compresses, without asking for help, and did not cut down on the pills, because she thought that her suffering was a suitable prelude to her ultimate punishment, which God–or she herself–had yet to come up with.

As soon as the people from the orphanage returned to the city, they notified the Guardia Civil about the disappearance of Sister Beatriz and the child, but it was another two days before an officer came to the convent to interview the nuns. With even more delay, a unit of Guardias on horseback searched the mountains but found no sign of Sister Beatriz or anyone who had seen her, and after a few weeks the investigation was quietly dropped.

The news of the young nun’s disappearance horrified Bishop Estrada. His first thought was that she intended to blackmail him, and he reviewed his finances in anticipation of her demands. None came. Next, he began to fear that she would take revenge by destroying his reputation, and talked to lawyers who advised him to deny everything. When months had passed and still no summons had arrived from the Vatican, he began to believe that he would never hear from Sister Beatriz again. It was time to deal with the situation at the convent of Our Lady of Mercy.

Pledging never to visit again the place where the Devil had ambushed him, he did everything by post. He wrote letters recommending Sister Ana to the post of sister visitatrix, as he had promised her, removed Sister María Inés from the position of mother superior, for having showed poor judgement on the matter of the orphan, and put Sister Teresa in charge. Sister María Inés received her punishment with indifference. She had to give up her spacious room because it was set aside for the use of the mother superior of the time, and did so as soon as she was told. Then she did something that surprised the sisters: instead of one of the vacant rooms in the dormitory, she chose to move to the derelict school for novices.

She had not been inside in a very long time and did not expect it to be in such a bad state, but that did not change her mind. Determined not to let the building impose its will on her, she worked for several weeks to make it fit to live in while sleeping on a mattress on the ground floor. Sister Lucía offered to help her but Sister María Inés wanted to be near no one, be friends with no one, speak to no one: she just wanted them to leave her alone. First, she cleared the rooms of the old furniture and bric-a-brac which over the years had found their way, like flotsam washed up on the shore, to the abandoned building from across the convent: stern mattresses stuffed with wool and horsehair which still preserved the shape of the body that years before had taken its last breath on them, cupboards where the rats had made their nests and innumerable desks, chairs, candlesticks and such-like items left behind from the shipwreck of centuries-old life. Then she plastered and painted the walls, fixed the door hinges and finally replaced the broken glass in the windows to stop herself from freezing to death as the winds blew down from the peaks of the sierra in deep winter.

Out of respect, Sister Teresa did not assign any duties to her until she had finished the repairs to the school for novices. Then she asked her to choose what she wanted to do. Sister María Inés did not have to think before answering: ‘The Ford.’ She did not want to be the one who drove to the city and bought the supplies, a task that remained with Sister Lucía, only to continue to service the car the way she used to do in happier times. The new Mother Superior was happy to grant her wish: Sister María Inés was the only one who could repair the damage that Sister Beatriz had done to the car. Without it their only contact with the outside world was Father Mateo, who came every Sunday, his mule laden with provisions for the convent.

Over the following months Sister María Inés worked on the Ford with parts ordered from the garage in the city. When the repairs were finished, she went to see the new Mother Superior and asked for an additional duty: to ring the bell that called the nuns to prayer. Impressed by her humility, Sister Teresa granted her that wish too.

Winter came early that year and it was more severe and prolonged than any the nuns could remember. In February the convent became snowbound for several weeks and the nuns had to cut back on food so that it would last until the road to the city reopened. All that time Sister María Inés had not stopped taking the quinine pills. They still did not cure her fever and tormented her with headaches that blinded her with pain. One morning she woke up trembling with cold because the wind had pushed open an unlatched window. In the confusion of the quinine, she saw something in a shadowy corner of the room. It was the child dressed in the white christening gown she had sewn for him, and he was playing with a rosary. She sat up in bed and watched him with curiosity. Suddenly a voice said from the other end of the room: ‘It is time you rang the bell.’ She turned and greeted the shadow near the door: ‘I have been waiting for you, Beatriz.’ The young woman stood with her hands clasped, staring back at her. She did not wear a habit. Sister María Inés said: ‘Come closer. Do not be afraid. I am not blaming you. We all make mistakes.’ She went back to observing the boy playing quietly with the rosary. Without moving from the door, the young woman said again: ‘It is time you rang the bell, Mother.’ Sister María Inés remembered that soon it would be time for the dawn prayer. ‘Yes. Let me do that, child,’ she said. ‘I will be right back.’ She got out of bed and began to dress. She felt with fear that something was going to happen…something over which she had no control. The young woman said in a slow and serious voice: ‘We won’t be here when you come back.’ Sister María Inés asked: ‘Why not, child? I’ll only be a minute.’ Her hands trembled as she put on her habit, her belt, her veil…She was in a hurry and could not find her rosary: of course, the child had it. Behind her, Sister Beatriz said firmly: ‘No. It’d be better if you didn’t come back.’ Sister María Inés said: ‘Oh, I only want to talk…I have no intention…A lot has happened since you were gone.’ In the corner, the child continued to play with the rosary. Sister María Inés finished dressing and knelt down but the child did not want to give up the rosary. ‘You’re late,’ the young woman said while Sister María Inés gently tried to take the rosary from the child. The moment she succeeded, the string of beads turned into a snake which slithered off her fingers. Tears streamed down her face and for a moment she shut her eyes. When she looked again, neither Beatriz nor the child was there. She searched every room but did not find them and went to ring the bell for dawn prayer…

She refused to admit that she was suffering from delusions. It did not seem strange to her that Beatriz would come back to the convent just to speak to her. She began to sleep very little because every noise, every shadow, every current of air blowing through the room made her open her eyes, light the candle and peer into the dark until she was certain that there was no one there. She still carried out her duties, but her mind was full of what Beatriz had told her. She looked for her and the child everywhere, scrutinising the sisters’ faces and their every word and action, seized by the suspicion that they were hiding the child from her.

It was some time before she admitted that her behaviour was absurd and thought with horror that she was starting to lose her mind. She immediately stopped taking the quinine pills, which she blamed for her hallucinations, and rid herself of everything that reminded her of the child: the cradle, the blanket, the clothes embroidered with cherubs and sequins. Soon she stopped looking for ghosts and became more peaceful, but still could not stop thinking about what Beatriz had asked her to do that dawn in her room:
Ring the bell and do not come back
.

It became a riddle which at first she interpreted as an instruction to quit the Order and leave the convent. The thought of returning to the outside world filled her with misgivings. She had been prepared to do it to save the child but now saw no reason for it, and told herself that the words had to mean something else. The riddle bothered her all spring. She would be in the shed working on the car and it would come to mind, and then she would rub her forehead with greasy hands, speaking to herself as if arguing with someone. At other times she would simply sit with her head bowed, deep in thought, unaware of what was happening around her, her open eyes the only sign that she had not fallen asleep. In the chapel she stayed kneeling in silence long after the other sisters had gone, but instead of praying she was again thinking about what Sister Beatriz had told her during the illusory visit. She continued to live in the school for novices. At Sister Teresa’s insistence, she had accepted the petrol heater which she had bought for the child, and left it burning near her bed all night. Her only true company were the ghosts that haunted the derelict building. Every night she heard the empty rooms echo with voices that repeated the catechism. In the morning the blackboards were filled with conjugations of Latin verbs. One day she discovered a scroll of parchment in the scriptorium on which someone had copied in a beautiful hand, and with ink that was still wet, the poems of Teresa of Ávila:
Give me wealth or want, delight or distress, happiness or gloominess, Heaven or Hell, sweet life, sun unveiled, to You I give all.
She was terrified to think that she might have left her bed in the middle of the night and done all this herself but in the morning could not remember it. And so she began to go from room to room sweeping the floors, fixing the locks, hammering nails, doing all sorts of odd jobs that did not need to be done but kept her busy, which was her simple tactic in her battle against madness.

One day, while replacing the glass in a window broken by the wind, she cut herself badly. She looked at the blood on her fingers and at that moment the answer to the riddle that had been troubling her for months came to her at last. Leaving drops of blood behind her on the floor, she returned to her room, where instead of treating her cuts she sat on the bed and began to say the rosary: ‘
Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum
…’

She did not decide what to do right away. She deliberated on the matter all summer, coming up with sound reasons for and against her decision, changing her mind several times, until she ran out of arguments and counter-arguments and simply went through the motions, knowing that she was set on doing what she had decided to do. She chose a day and thought that she would do it at dawn, but when the time came she changed her mind with the excuse that she should attend prayers one last time. Then, just before the early morning prayer, Sister Teresa came to her room simply to see how she was, and walked with her to the chapel when it was time to ring the bell. At the next prayer of the day her hands were so weak and she trembled so much that she could hardly ring the bell. Finally, three further hours later, when the clock on the bell tower said almost midday, she felt that she was ready.

She had gone through it many times, and what she had to do was as clear and precise as the ritual of Mass. She took her rosary from her belt and kissed it, but there was no time to say a prayer. She placed it on her bed and took off her belt and placed it next to it. Then she took off her veil and the rest of her habit except for her white tunic, folding each item neatly and placing it on the bed. While she did all that, slowly and methodically, she began to recall everything that had happened since the summer of the previous year. She remembered when she had woken up and found the cradle empty, then the attack of the dog in the courtyard and then the day when on the steps of the convent she had taken the child out of the old suitcase. Then she discovered, to her dismay, that she could no longer remember his face: they could show her any baby and she would believe he was Renato. If she had not failed in her duty, she would have lived to see him grow into someone she could remember.

But she had no time to dwell on what could have been. She only said: ‘Dear God, keep him safe,’ as if waving goodbye to someone from a train that has begun to move. The rest of her past came to her, her memory growing clearer the further back it travelled. She remembered her time as a missionary nurse in Africa, where she had secretly hoped to catch a disease and die like a saint, not knowing that God had other designs on her. Before leaving her room, she also relived the moment when she had heard the news of her fiancé’s death, the visit to the woman in another town and the end of her pregnancy in a small room of a beautiful villa. Her last memory was of making love for the first and last time in her life, which she still associated with the smell of blood.

She came out of the school for novices in only her thin tunic and began to shiver despite the warm weather. A nun filling buckets at the well did not raise her head. Sister María Inés went quickly to the chapel and climbed the steps to the top of the bell tower. She gathered the rope of the bell that reached the ground and looped a noose around her neck. Then the enormity of what she was about to do hit her, and she hesitated. But she wanted to do it. She said: ‘Don’t be afraid. I’m not killing you but the evil that lives inside you independently of your will. It’s not a sin to cast out a demon.’ As if to support her argument, she began to recite the prayer of exorcism. A few precious minutes of life went by. She raised her head and looked at the pine forest and the mountains beyond. From where she stood she could also see the cemetery. She knew that she would not be buried there because the Church considered what she was about to do a mortal sin. She was about to step into the void when she saw somebody riding an animal along the road. She could not help but believe that it was Beatriz coming back with the child, and she would not have to go through with her plan. But soon she saw that it was only Father Mateo on his mule. Her heart sank with this final disappointment and she crossed herself. It was time.