The Convent: A Novel (4 page)

In those afternoons Isabel and the young cadet sat in their room, where he opened a large map on his knees and described to her his training voyages round the world. On their first day, he told her how the previous year his ship had been in Sicily when the big earthquake had hit, and the cadets had been sent to help recover the bodies buried under the rubble. When he finished telling the horrific story, he put away the map, undid his braces and began to remove his clothes. Isabel stopped him and continued to stop him the next two days. But on the last day of their holiday, she kept her composure, and while he undressed she also undressed with a steady hand. They lay naked next to each other in bed for a long time with the fan turning slowly on the ceiling, the carriages passing under the balcony, the curtains flapping across the open windows. When he lay on top of her, she pushed him off because all sorts of horrors crossed her mind. But it was only the momentary lapse of courage of a good soldier before his first battle, and she said: ‘We have to be careful.’ Then she overcame her fear and they made love for the first and only time in their lives, slowly, guided by instinct, with their eyes open, until the blood of her innocence soaked the starched sheets, passed through the mattress and a few precious drops fell on the floor.

W
hen she had come home from her visit to the woman who was advertising her services in the newspaper, Isabel had had a long bath to rid herself of the smell of antiseptic and then slept for two days without interruption because of the ether. To her mother she said that she was running a fever. She slept without dreams and without pain, breathing quietly, lying on her back, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, her hands clasped over the covers like a reclining sepulchral statue. She slept so deeply that when she woke up she believed that she had never visited the woman and never had the operation. She kept the truth from herself until the effect of the ether passed off and the pain put an end to her intentional fantasy. She took two pills from the vial the woman had given her, but then remembered having argued that she ought to be suffering for her decision and regretted it. In church she had heard that the rigours of childbirth were God’s punishment for the sin that Eve had committed in the Garden of Eden, and now thought that what she had done deserved even worse. So she threw away the pills to show her penitence, and the pain duly returned. For several days she could neither sleep nor leave her bed but only lie doubled-up under the blankets with her face buried in the pillow. Worst of all was the fact that she had to endure her suffering without a sound for fear that her parents would ask a doctor to examine her and he would find the truth.

She had asked the naval cadet not to write to her in case her parents intercepted his letter, but promised to let him know that she was well as soon as she could. A month passed and still she had not written to him. Once, from the window of her room, she saw him come to the house and stand at the door with his gloved hand stretched out for a long time, but then he turned back without ringing the bell. Finally, on a day of heavy rain, she simply put on her coat, took an umbrella and went to the Botanic Garden, knowing that she would find him sitting in the gazebo. He was there. She climbed the steps and sat on the other end of the bench, the way he had done the first time they had met. Each waited for the other to speak, but time passed with neither of them saying a word. Eventually the young man said: ‘Please do something to show me you are alive.’

She knocked on the wood of the bench.

‘Thank God,’ the man said. ‘I thought you were a ghost.’

‘God has nothing to do with this.’

‘Are you afraid?’

‘I’m afraid of God.’

A wind out of nowhere carried the smell of jasmine. The man said: ‘Do not be. God ought to be on the side of those who suffer.’

‘Not the sinners,’ Isabel said.

‘The sinners need his help even more. It’s they who suffer the most. He’ll help us get over this.’

Isabel remembered their carefree past and said: ‘I’m afraid of these uncharted seas, Captain Columbus.’

‘There is no reason to be afraid, My Lady. Untold riches await us where we are heading.’

‘I am not brave–and I cannot swim.’

‘Our caravel is unsinkable. Nothing bad will happen to us again.’

And so they began to meet again on Sundays after church, no matter the weather, not only in the Botanic Garden but also other places where they would be safe from Isabel’s parents and people who knew them. The day he was sailing for his last training voyage before being given his commission, Isabel went to the harbour to wave her handkerchief to him. He saw her among the crowd and waved back to her, but suddenly the wind snatched away the embroidered piece of cloth from her hand and it fell into the stinking waters of the harbour. Isabel ignored the bad omen and continued to wave her hand until the ship left port, the band stopped playing and the crowd began to disperse.

She never saw him again. Months later she learned from another cadet that he had died of typhus in the South Pacific and had been buried at sea. She had no doubt that God had punished him for their shared sin. She took to her bed and mourned him in total silence, without tears, without laments, without lighting candles. She knew that she was as much responsible for the misfortune as he had been, and thought it unfair that she was still alive while he lay on the bottom of the ocean on the other side of the world. Her worried parents, who had no idea about the affair, asked every doctor in the city to examine her. One after another they came to tap every part of her limp body with rubber hammers, brush the soles of her feet with goose feathers, listen to her heart with stethoscopes, shine lights in her eyes, and they concluded that she suffered from neurasthenia. They recommended the rest cure–that is, to stay in bed and avoid all human contact other than with the nurse who massaged, bathed and treated her with spoonfuls of tonics and a course of electrotherapy to revitalise her body with new energy. No one recognised the symptoms of grief until Isabel took the white dress she had worn the time she had met the young cadet outside the church, asked her maid to dye it black and began to wear it wherever she went. Over the course of time, she told her parents about the affair, but set their minds at rest by telling them that it had not been consummated. They forgave her, and in order to avoid any scandal also took to wearing mourning clothes, telling everybody they met that a relative who lived far away but whom they loved very dearly had passed on.

Isabel was convinced that not before long she would die too, but a year passed and she was still alive. One day she went to church and prayed to God with great devotion and honest desire to die there and then, but despite the tears and her repeated prostrations nothing happened. In the end she admitted defeat. ‘Fine,’ she said, wiping her tears. ‘You don’t want to do it now. I suppose You have Your reasons. But please, God, do it at Your earliest convenience.’

She was about to leave when a pigeon entered through a window and fluttered about in the church. A rain of soft down illuminated by the shafts of light fell over the pews, over the floor, over her black dress. It was then that Isabel had the inspiration, no doubt touched by the Holy Ghost, of becoming a nun to prove her penitence and to wait for the inevitable day when God would decide her punishment. More than thirty years later she was still waiting. And then, instead of the death that she was expecting, God sent Sister María Inés an orphan in a suitcase.

T
he reading that day was from
The Ascent of Mount Carmel
by Saint John of the Cross. Sister Teresa was sitting in a corner of the room reading in a clear voice while the other nuns ate with their eyes fixed on their plates. At the head of the table, Sister María Inés had eaten very little and sat in contemplation. The book was one of her favourites, and the moment Sister Teresa made a mistake, the Mother Superior shot her a stern glance.

‘Please pay attention,’ he said. ‘You are not reading a comic paper.’

The nun corrected her mistake and continued. When all the nuns had finished their meal, they bowed their heads in silent prayer until the Mother Superior allowed them to leave the table with a single word: ‘Amen.’ They took their plates to the kitchen and served Sister Teresa, who was still smarting from the criticism. Sister María Inés did not notice; since the arrival of the child she thought of nothing but him. Indeed, before leaving the refectory she beckoned to Sister Carlota and told her: ‘In an hour I will need some milk. Let it boil well and bring it to me while it is still hot.’

Sister Teresa looked up from her plate. ‘When can we see the baby, Mother?’

‘Not now–he is asleep. You can come later, when I will be feeding him.’

‘He looks like an angel,’ Sister Lucía said. ‘I won’t be surprised if one day he grows wings.’

The nuns cleared the table, washed the dishes and swept the floor. Then they were free until the afternoon prayer. After all these years Sister María Inés still did not understand why God kept her alive, but it was the companionship of those sisters and others who were now in heaven that had helped her preserve her sanity and deterred her from taking her own life.

The thought of suicide had first entered her mind the day she had heard about the naval cadet’s death. She had then interpreted it as the natural reaction to hearing the terrible news, but several months passed and the idea of ending her life continued to dominate her thoughts. It was more than a wish to punish herself or a youthful fascination with death. Rather, it was a yearning for peace that lasted until the end of her life, even though she knew that death, in all probability, would not be the end of her suffering. Her mind was briefly freed of these thoughts when her venerable parents had died a few years apart. She did not attend their funerals, claiming that the telegrams had arrived too late for her to make the long and difficult journey, when the truth was that, despite her love for them, she had never ceased to think of them as the last remnants of a life that she no longer cared to remember: Isabel was no more. Nevertheless, she mourned them in the convent, saying novenas for the repose of their souls, unable to avoid her feelings of envy, for she knew that their time in Purgatory, whatever their mortal shortcomings, would be a great deal shorter than hers. Eventually, she did travel home to see the executor of her parents’ wills and signed away her considerable inheritance from both sides of the family to charity, the money from the sale of the house, the furniture, the phaeton–everything–and returned to the convent consoled by the thought that the family line would die with her.

These days the impulse to end her life was no longer part of her daily contemplations, but it still crossed her mind from time to time, especially during Easter. On those occasions she would lie in bed with the windows open, and the air smelling of pine would soothe her sorrow without convincing her of the splendour of life. She had read what Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Augustine had written against suicide, but she still believed that it ought not to be a sin if one died of remorse and humility. To her mind the Passion was nothing less than the longest, most agonising, most selfless suicide in history. And yet in all her daring theological ponderings and moral conundrums there was one thing she had never imagined: that God would give her another chance.

She knelt in front of the crucified Jesus, touched his feet and crossed herself. On her way out of the refectory, she was approached by Sister Beatriz.

‘I would like to help with the baby,’ she said.

‘I do not think you should come near him for the time being.’

Sister Beatriz was dismayed. ‘Why not, Mother?’

‘You were unwell this morning.’

‘I am fine now, Mother. I can assure you that there is nothing wrong with my health.’

‘Nevertheless, I cannot take risks. Babies are vulnerable to infections. You will be able to help later on.’

Before leaving the refectory, the Mother Superior reminded Sister Carlota again: ‘Do not forget the milk. In an hour.’

Outside a warm wind that blew from the east lifted the dust in the courtyard. Spinning columns of air lashed against the walls and the windows of the convent with a deafening noise. Sheltered under the arches of the cloister, the Mother Superior blinked several times and paused to stare at the bell tower obscured by the haze of dust. On a chimney a family of storks was standing in its nest, indifferent to the windstorm. She walked along the cloister, keeping close to the wall to avoid the dust, and climbed the stairs to her room quickly, her breathing becoming heavier with every step. She used to pride herself on her physical strength, which allowed her to sleep only three hours a day and still be able to accomplish more than the other sisters, even those much younger than her, but her advantage had begun to disappear when she had turned fifty. When she reached the top of the stairs, she paused to push back her veil and wipe the beads of sweat from her forehead.

The baby had woken up. She took him in her arms, held him up next to the photograph of the young cadet on the wall and studied the two faces. All these years the naval cadet had been at her side, as young as she remembered him, dressed in his white uniform, the peaked cap, the gold-tasselled epaulettes, the ceremonial sword. They slept together, went to prayer together, worked side by side, ate in the refectory without the nuns having the faintest idea. She talked to him about anything, from the affairs of the convent to her eternal complaint of having grown old and tired of waiting for God to grant her wish to join her beloved in Purgatory, taking care to speak in a low voice and only when they were alone: otherwise, the nuns would think that she had lost her mind.

Some time later Sister Carlota brought the milk. The other nuns had come along to see the baby too. Sister Ana was among them. The Mother Superior asked the elderly nun to leave the milk on the desk, and handed her the child. While Sister María Inés prepared the food, the nuns crowded round Sister Carlota.

‘Remember what I told you about your illness, Beatriz,’ the Mother Superior said. ‘Stand a little further back.’

The young nun obeyed.

‘Does he cry?’ Sister Teresa asked.

‘Never. I try to keep him comfortable, but this bed is not where a baby should be sleeping. Teresa, I need you to help make a cradle for him. We will need a few floorboards from the old school. Sister Ana will help you. Take them to the workshop where I will do the rest.’

Sister Ana said: ‘I prefer not to be involved. I am very busy with my painting of the Transfiguration.’

‘I’d be glad to help, Mother,’ Sister Beatriz cut in.

While feeding the baby, Sister María Inés spoke to the two nuns who were going to help her. ‘Be very careful with the splinters. The nails will be rusty so there is the danger of tetanus. Put on thick gloves and choose boards that are not warped and have no knots, otherwise it will be very difficult to cut and plane them.’

Sister Ana said: ‘You are wasting your time. The machines in the workshop most likely don’t work. They belonged to Saint Joseph.’

‘I may have never done any carpentry, but I have enough experience with the Ford,’ Sister María Inés said. ‘I have no doubt that I can manage.’

After the baby had fallen asleep, she left Sister Lucía to watch it and went to the workshop. The door was stuck but she managed to open it with the tyre iron. Thick cobwebs hung down from the ceiling and the air smelled of wood and damp. She opened the windows and examined the machine tools: all they needed was fresh lubricant. She put on her smock and replaced the oil, then pulled down the cobwebs, washed the windows and swept the floor. The steam engine that powered the machine tools was outside the small building. It was very old and had steel wheels and a tall funnel like a train engine. Sister María Inés filled it with wood and lit the fire. The water had not yet boiled when the two nuns arrived with the floorboards. She stayed in the workshop for the rest of the day, breaking off only to attend prayers and briefly visit the baby. She stopped work sometime before the last prayer of the day and returned to her room to have a bath. Then she washed the baby too, with soap and a very soft brush, and wrapped him in several layers of clean cloth to carry him to the chapel. When the nuns came to prayer, she was standing at the altar with the child in her arms. She waved them to their pews and said: ‘We ought to give praise to Our Lord for the miracle of this child.’

Sister Ana did not sit down but stood alone in the aisle with her arms by her sides and her fists clenched. She said: ‘This is wrong.’

‘If you do not agree, you are allowed to pray in your room,’ the Mother Superior said.

‘You are committing a sin. You know nothing about that child.’

‘What I know is between God and me.’

‘Nonsense,’ Sister Ana said. ‘You have lost your reason.’ She turned to the other sisters. ‘I suggest you all come with me before you commit a great sin.’

The women looked at her with confusion but made no move. Sister Ana knelt in the aisle, crossed herself and left the chapel, the yellow candlelight lighting her way. She was in the middle of the courtyard when she realised that she had forgotten her lamp and felt afraid of the falling dark. But she was too proud to turn back. She hurried to her room, muttering to herself, while back in the chapel the litany began.