The Convent: A Novel (7 page)

A
fter terce Sister Carlota and Sister Teresa came to see the Mother Superior and admitted that they had made a serious mistake by disobeying her instructions about the care of the baby. They stood in the middle of the room with bowed heads and spoke in low voices, occasionally raising a contrite face to peek at the Mother Superior from under their veils. Seated at her desk, she listened to them with an expression that gave no hope of clemency. She had decided that being lenient with Sister Ana had been a mistake and was prepared to mete out an exemplary punishment. She wanted to warn all the sisters that she would not tolerate a disobedience whose consequences might be graver than any of them suspected: it could deprive her of Purgatory. Sister Teresa denied that she had done anything to hurt the child; her only mistake was that she had not guessed he cried because he was hungry. She let out a torrent of apologies and honest regrets, which she repeated over and over again while Sister Carlota nodded in agreement. The Mother Superior raised her hand.

‘Enough. Your regret is sincere. But the fact remains that you were in a place you were not supposed to be, doing something you were not asked to do.’ She tapped her fingers on the desk, thinking. Then she asked: ‘Was it you, Teresa, searching through my wardrobe?’

‘I was looking for something to wrap the baby. I thought he was crying because he was cold.’

‘Do not lie to me.’

‘The fact of the matter is that the child suffered no harm,’ Sister Carlota said.

‘
Deo gratias
,’ the Mother Superior said. ‘I asked you here today to prevent anything bad from ever happening to him.’

Next to her bed in the cradle she had just finished making, the child lay wrapped in a blanket. Sister María Inés repeated in her mind that she would devote herself to him and God; she would become someone else, humbler and more repentant. At long last she could say that she ought not to be burdened with the sin of her youth any more–but it was not for her to decide.

She cleared her throat and faced the two nuns waiting in silence for her judgement. After she had threatened them with all-night vigils, extra daily tasks, the torment of thirst and even expulsion from the convent, threats which satisfied her anger, the Mother Superior ruled that they were not to join the other sisters in the refectory for recreation at the end of the day but go to their rooms and do solitary penance for two weeks. The two women bowed. The Mother Superior fixed Sister Teresa with a stare of further disapproval and added: ‘Our convent is not an inn where you can sing popular songs whenever you are seized by the muse, but a place of work and contemplation. Everything we do, at any time of day or night, whether awake or asleep, should aim at exalting the glory of God.’

‘Yes, Mother,’ the woman said.

‘If you have to sing, then sing a hymn or psalm of our faith. There are enough not to have to resort to the ravings of drunken gypsies.’

Having nothing more to say, she dismissed them with a gesture of disdain. When she was alone again, she occupied herself with her daily ritual of remembering her fiancé. She topped up the lamp that hung next to his portrait, changed the burned wick and lit it. Then she knelt and crossed herself with a devoutness that one who did not know her would suppose directed not at the memory of the naval cadet but at the saints in the icons on either side of him. All these years she had been tormented with the idea that she was responsible for his death because it was she who had suggested they put an end to her pregnancy. She had suggested it without assurance, shaking with fear, hoping that he would reply with the inspired answer that she had missed in her nights of sleepless deliberation, one that would get them out of the mess without the necessity of sin, but his gratitude when he heard her suggestion was enough to convince her to do it. She did not know what would have happened if she had never proposed it. Although in all probability he would have asked her to do it, she chose to believe that he would not have demanded it and, consequently, she now thought that her share of the blame was far greater than his. Yet he was the one who had paid for it with his life. It was an ingenious punishment, for in that way she suffered from guilt both for her decision and his death.

Before the arrival of the child, she used to believe that if she were ever to be forgiven it would only be in the hereafter, so long as she had served God with humility while she lived. No one could say she had not been sincere in her remorse. To make amends she had travelled as far as the equator, where something had happened that had given her the opportunity to put the past behind her and start a new life, but she had chosen not to do so.

She had been in Africa for some time when a new doctor arrived from Europe and the director of the mission hospital introduced them and asked her to show him round and help him settle in. Sister María Inés, who remembered her own confusion when she had first arrived, was pleased to be the new doctor’s guide. His work in the hospital was invaluable even though he was an ordinary surgeon without any training in tropical medicine. Sister María Inés did everything she could for him, but she was only a nurse with a practical knowledge of medicine. His true training was done by shadowing the director of the medical mission and reading books and journals sent from abroad. Then
he
began to help the nun improve her skills, and thanks to her commitment she soon knew far more than was expected from her. Their collaboration was productive and exemplary until a mosquito from a mangrove swamp flew to the mission with the sole purpose of passing through a hole in the net over Sister María Inés’s bed and biting her.

She caught malaria but refused to admit it, as if that was going to cure her. For several days she carried out her duties despite feeling unwell, until one morning she collapsed in the ward while giving a patient his medicine. She spent several weeks in bed suffering from fever, tremors and cold sweats before starting to get better. It was only during her convalescence that the doctor and she became good friends and began to discuss other matters besides medicine. Every evening after he finished work, he came by to take her temperature, listen to her lungs with his stethoscope, palpate her liver and spleen while she kept her arms crossed over her chest and her eyes firmly shut, and give her a quinine injection. When he finished examining her, he helped her put back on her nightdress with painstaking respect, told her that he was done and sat at the open window some distance from her bed to smoke. The nun remained deadly still and silent. He was amused by her embarrassment at having allowed herself to be seen naked, but he understood how she must have felt and did not press her to speak or acknowledge his presence in any other way. Instead he sat back and told her the news of the day in a calm voice, and when he finished his cigarette he picked up his bag, wished her goodnight and went out, leaving behind a cloud of smoke that did not dissolve for a long time afterwards.

Later Sister María Inés would say that malaria was the reason she returned home, but this was not the whole truth. One evening, when she was almost well again, she conquered her embarrassment and opened her eyes as soon as the doctor had finished examining her and was helping her with her nightdress. He pretended not to notice.

‘Thank you, Doctor,’ she said.

‘There is no need,’ he said, taking off his stethoscope. ‘I have a vested interest in your speedy recovery, Sister. As long as you’re bedridden, I have to do your work too.’

‘I thank you anyway. Although perhaps it would have been better to let the disease take its course.’

The doctor laughed. ‘What silly bravado! You know if I’d left you untreated you could’ve died.’

She knew it. She had seen it happen countless times, even with patients who had managed to make their way to the hospital. But while she was confined in bed she had the time to wonder what her torment of fever truly meant, and had decided that it was the longed-for punishment for her mortal sin. She had then tried to tell the doctor not to treat her but let God decide what to do with her. She had waved him away, knocked the syringe off his hand, wrapped herself tightly in the bed sheets, but did not have the strength to make herself understood. The doctor had interpreted her behaviour as the symptoms of delirium and rushed to reassure her that she was not going to die, even if her suffering felt like standing on the threshold of death. That evening, when she was finally out of danger and had regained some of her strength, she repeated to him her wish to die in a clear voice. The doctor finally believed her. ‘Well, Sister,’ he said, taken aback. ‘Why would you want to die?’

‘I have my reasons, Doctor.’

‘Think of your work here. You do a lot of good, you know.’

‘Oh, the hospital is important, yes. But I personally am not. Another sister would be as good–if not better.’

The doctor asked: ‘Isn’t it a sin? When one is wishing for one’s own death?’

‘Not if it is also God’s wish.’

‘God’s wish? I would guess He doesn’t want anyone dead.’ The doctor scratched his head. ‘But I wouldn’t know…Perhaps we don’t believe in the same god.’

The nun frowned. ‘What god do you believe in, Doctor?’

‘Hippocrates–the god who saved your life.’

‘I forgive your lack of faith,’ Sister María Inés said, ‘as long as it doesn’t turn into cynicism. And now I am ready to return to my duties.’

She got up from her bed and in her white nightdress, which covered her from the neck to her ankles, went to where her nun’s habit hung. The doctor followed her with his eyes and said in a serious voice: ‘Don’t put it on.’

‘Don’t worry, Doctor. I feel perfectly well.’

‘I know you do. But don’t put it on all the same.’

The nun asked: ‘Do you think there is still danger?’

‘None at all. I was only wondering whether you really have to carry out your duties in those clothes.’

‘My habit? Do you mean to say that I should stop serving God?’

‘There are many other ways to serve Him.’

‘Naturally–but I have chosen mine.’

‘I don’t think God would object if you chose a simple nurse’s uniform.’

‘Don’t think you can understand His will for a moment, Doctor.’

The doctor took a step towards her. ‘I’m talking of marriage,’ he said.

‘Well, it is not possible.’

‘Why not? A marriage has the blessing of the Church, hasn’t it?’

‘Forget it. This habit means I am already married–to God.’

The doctor took her hand in his. ‘Oh, divorce the old codger then.’

She freed her hand and slapped him across the face with as much strength as she had in her weak state. The doctor rubbed his cheek. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘At least now we are sure that you are in good health. In fact, Sister, you’re much better than I supposed. I guess I ought to have proposed to you while you were still delirious. You could hardly lift your hand then.’

‘My lips would have given you the same answer.’

‘Who knows?’ the doctor said. ‘Sometimes malaria impairs the brain.’

With a stubbornness that defeated his reassurances, she insisted that they could no longer be friends or even work together, for she could not look at him again knowing that when he was examining her he was thinking of other things than the health of her liver. And so, with a heavy heart, she decided to leave the mission, although he offered to go instead. A month later she was back in Europe, where she joined the convent of Our Lady of Mercy and gave herself over to her perpetual mourning, which only ended the day she held the orphan in her arms.

In the evenings, when she retired to her room, her mind always drifted to the past. As soon as she blew out the candle on her bedside table her room filled with the armies of demons she had read about in the medieval books kept in the library: demons of fate, goblins, incubi, familiar spirits which offered to serve her, shape-shifting spirits which crept into her room through the cracks in the door and tried to possess her. A couple of times a year, she still suffered from sudden shivering followed by high fever, and then sweating which finally brought down her temperature and left her feeling exhausted. It felt like malaria but she could not believe that she still suffered from a disease which she had caught so long ago. Instead she thought that it too must be another battle in the unending war between angels and demons over her tormented soul.

S
ister Ana’s theories upset Sister Beatriz. She left the other nun’s room trembling from what she had heard about satanic ceremonies and blood sacrifices. She had listened with dismay before starting to say that she did not believe in all that, but Sister Ana had looked at her with suspicion and so Sister Beatriz had rushed to reassure her that she was on her side in her fight against the Mother Superior. She walked in the dark, keeping close to the wall and counting the doors along the loggia until she came to her room. She locked the door behind her and dropped onto her bed without taking off her habit. On the afternoon she had spotted Sister Ana searching in the courtyard, a sense of foreboding had driven her to follow the older nun from a distance across the grounds of the convent. Her intuition had proved correct. She had seen her pick up the bloodied cloth that the dog had dug out of the ground. She continued to shadow her and a few days later, holding her breath behind one of the pillars in the cloister, she saw Sister Ana walk into the derelict school for novices. She wanted to know what the other nun had discovered, but had been unprepared for the incredible theories that Sister Ana had just confided to her.

She stayed in bed all night, but did not manage to get a moment’s sleep. She could not get what she had heard out of her mind. The silence turned every noise into a portent: the creaking of the floorboards, the windows rattled by the wind, the calls of the owls. A sinister thought made her shudder: perhaps Satan was truly in the convent and would not go away until he had destroyed them all; he had not been summoned by dark ceremonies, as Sister Ana imagined, but by the arrival of an innocent baby. She began to see how it could have happened. She always thought of the Mother Superior as a sensible woman and benevolent leader, but had struggled to explain her behaviour since the discovery of the newborn. The Mother Superior did not simply want to keep it, but had gone much further than that: she behaved as if the child were hers and doubted the loyalty of the nuns who, apart from Sister Ana, wished to help her.

When the bell rang in the middle of the night, Sister Beatriz lit her lamp and went to nocturns, where the Mother Superior led the prayer with the child in her arms. The same thing happened at dawn and again at prime, so Sister Beatriz decided to speak to her and try to make her see sense. She found the Mother Superior in her room, sitting at a window and soaking up the sun. After a night of having tried to carry out her religious duties and at the same time take care of the child, she was tired and melancholy. Sister María Inés made a vague gesture and the young nun approached and bowed. She said: ‘I have come to offer you my help, Mother.’

The Mother Superior looked at her through her lethargy. ‘Very kind of you,’ she said. ‘But everything is under control.’

The cradle was in a corner of the room. Sister Beatriz walked up to it and looked at the sleeping child. The Mother Superior shut her eyes and leaned her head against the window. When the young nun turned round and saw her, she said: ‘Mother, you seem very tired.’

The Mother Superior opened her eyes again. ‘I am fine.’

‘Let me help you with the baby.’

‘No. I can take care of him alone.’

The nun looked straight at her. The Mother Superior’s white habit glowed in the sun but her black veil obscured her face like a shadow. Sister Beatriz said: ‘But, Mother—’

‘Be quiet. The child is asleep.’

They did not speak for a while. Suddenly the Mother Superior said: ‘You might think that I have lost my mind, Beatriz…But I have thought carefully about this. The Blessed Virgin did not conceive Our Lord in the normal way. Yet she is still his mother, is she not? God entrusted His son to her. In the same way, I have assumed responsibility for this orphan–with great humility.’ She crossed herself and added: ‘The child’s coming is an act of Divine Providence, Beatriz. I do not intend to explain to you why, for it is a matter between God and me. But do believe me when I say that I have no doubt about it whatsoever.’

Sister María Inés stopped and listened to the child breathing. He slept wrapped in a blanket while all round him hung the charms the nuns had placed to protect him from harm. But no charm could save her from her hallucinations when the icy winds that shook the pine trees on the hillside blew open the windows and announced the end of the world. In her brief sleep the previous night, Sister María Inés had had one of her familiar nightmares. She had heard, coming from far away, the howling of evil spirits, the laments of hermits who had given in to sin, the chants from a witches’ sabbath where the servants of the Devil were dancing naked, trampling the Cross, eating the flesh of children and were being baptised in the name of Lucifer. Lying under her thin blanket and shaking from cold and fear, Sister María Inés had begun, with tears in her eyes, a long prayer to the Virgin and had not stopped until the light of dawn rescued her from her ordeal.

Sister Beatriz said: ‘Reverend Mother, I have to talk to you about a very serious matter.’

It was no secret that the Mother Superior hoped the young nun would take charge of the convent after her retirement. They often went on long walks, just the two of them, and discussed not theology but practical matters that had to do with the running of the convent. Over the course of time, Sister María Inés had come to admire the young woman’s common sense and unassuming manner, which did not show the slightest trace of conceit. She had never asked Sister Beatriz about her life before she had joined the convent of Our Lady of Mercy, where she was born or what her name was; she had only asked her to choose the name that she wished to be known by from then on. The young woman had shrugged and Sister María Inés had chosen one for her.

‘You ought to be careful, Mother.’

‘You are talking about Sister Ana.’

‘She thinks you are possessed by Satan.’

‘Ah yes, Satan. Do not mind her, Beatriz. What lies at the root of her attitude is not malice but her ambition. Perhaps I should suggest she move to another convent.’

The young nun sat down next to her wanting to speak but then lost her courage. The Mother Superior said: ‘If you have something to say, say it.’

Sister Beatriz told the Mother Superior about Sister Ana’s intention to ask the Bishop to intervene, but she did not tell her about the bloodied bed sheet or the evidence of strange goings-on in the school for novices. ‘Her purpose is to undermine His Excellency’s trust in you, and have the baby put in the orphanage,’ she said. ‘I think you should punish her, Mother. Otherwise who knows what the consequences would be for the child.’

The Mother Superior showed her scorn for Sister Ana with a smile. ‘I cannot punish her,’ she said. ‘This is not a prison. You are all free to do what you wish as long as you do not break the rules of the Order.’ She stopped and looked in the direction of the cradle to check whether the baby had woken up, then resumed: ‘I have no doubt that His Excellency will see through her lunacy, but she could still cause a scandal that would ultimately hurt us. It is this I cannot allow. I do not want Lucía or you driving her to the city. Tell her that you are obeying my instructions.’

Sister Beatriz bowed. ‘It was my duty to inform you, Reverend Mother.’

‘You did the right thing, Beatriz.’

‘The problem could be solved by sending her away.’

‘There would have to be a formal inquest for that. I would have to write to the Superioress, who would then invite Ana and me to the capital to argue our case before her. You and the other sisters might have to give evidence too. It would be very unpleasant. Instead I am hoping that sooner or later Ana will go of her own accord.’

‘The child’s life may be in danger.’

Sister María Inés looked at the young nun with severity.

‘What makes you think so?’

‘She seems to be possessed without knowing it,’ Sister Beatriz said. ‘She goes round talking about demons.’

She added that in her opinion Sister Ana would not hesitate to act if she thought that she was serving God. The fact was that she doubted whether the baby was human, and therefore she might do something to free the convent of evil.

Sister María Inés listened, pouting. ‘Does she plan to steal the baby? Is there anything else that you know?’

‘I am only guessing. It’s my impression from having talked to her.’

‘I want you to carry on talking to her. Let me know everything she says.’

The other woman promised to do it. Then she asked: ‘Will you let me help with the baby?’

They looked alike in their white habits and black veils and the rosaries looped over their belts. The child stirred in his sleep and the cradle rocked a little. Sister María Inés looked at him. Her life was devoted to love, but how much easier it was to love the whole world than a single human being. The latter was, in fact, forbidden to them; their vow of chastity even ruled out platonic love. She said: ‘Very well. You can be responsible for his milk. I will show you how to prepare it. You should follow my directions carefully. Keep everything clean–hygiene is very important. Things that have no effect on our stomachs may seriously harm an infant.’

‘How many times does he need to be fed?’

‘The feeding I will do myself for the time being. You will be helping me. Also, you can wash his clothes and bed linen. I will still be changing and washing him myself unless I am occupied when all that needs to be done.’

‘You should let me take him out. The sun will do him good. All that mould can’t be good for him.’

‘But keep him well wrapped. Be very careful he does not catch a cold.’

The child woke up at that moment and the Mother Superior went to pick him up. She came back and sat down, cradling him in her arms. The young nun touched his forehead with her fingertips.

‘This is my private miracle, Beatriz,’ the Mother Superior said. ‘Never doubt God’s goodness.’

The bell sounded for the midmorning prayer but, entranced by the child, neither of the women moved for a few moments. The young nun was first to notice, and told the Mother Superior, who, holding the child, followed her unwillingly to the chapel.