The Convent: A Novel (9 page)

T
he chair was placed beside one of the tall windows and the velvet drapes were parted to let in the noontime sunlight. The barber shook the gown a few times and tied it again round Bishop Estrada’s neck. Then he took his scissors and comb from the breast pocket of his smock and resumed his work. Somewhere in the room, a clock struck twelve in an unhurried, melodic way. The Bishop stared out of the window and sighed.

‘Are you perhaps too warm, Your Excellency?’ the barber asked.

‘I am fine, Alfredo. Thank you.’

‘Would you like a glass of water?’

The barber poured a glass from the jug on the table and handed it to his customer with a deferential bow. Bishop Estrada took a sip out of politeness and gave it back. ‘Let us continue, Alfredo. I am afraid I have a very busy schedule today.’

The vast room began to echo again with the sound of the scissors as more tufts of hair dropped to the marble floor.

‘Your hair is a wonderful colour, Your Excellency. It couldn’t have been a more perfect silver.’

‘Euphemisms are unnecessary, Alfredo,’ the Bishop said. ‘It is grey.’

‘With your permission, I don’t agree. And the roots are very healthy. I bet you haven’t lost a single hair since you were born.’

‘I don’t know,’ the Bishop said indifferently. ‘I haven’t counted them.’

‘Oh, it’s evident. Men much younger than you already suffer from galloping baldness.’

‘You talk about it as if it were consumption, Alfredo.’

‘It is a threat to my profession, Your Excellency.’

‘Maybe you barbers should go back to being the barber surgeons of old times,’ the Bishop said.

But it was true that his hair, which was thick like a boy’s, his Roman forehead, his blue eyes and lean figure were his consolation against the cruelties of ageing, which he had begun to notice when he had turned fifty. While the barber worked, the Bishop’s gaze wandered about the room. Its grandeur recalled the absolute clerical authority of another era. The walls were hung with the portraits of his predecessors going back several centuries, while above the double doors, through which the visitors were admitted to the room, was his episcopal coat of arms. Several other smaller doors led to his secretaries’ offices as well as his private quarters, where he could come and go unseen by his visitors and staff. In the middle of the room, facing the double doors, was a big desk of varnished oak scattered with the paperwork which was a permanent obstacle to Bishop Estrada’s fulfilling his true pastoral duties. The barber pushed his customer’s head a little to trim his sideburn and said: ‘It seems we are enjoying an Indian summer, Your Excellency.’

‘It would appear so.’

‘It arrived right on time. San Miguel’s feast is tomorrow. One wonders how it keeps falling on the same day year after year. It is a very interesting meteorological phenomenon.’

The Bishop did not resist the temptation to correct him. ‘Last year it was on San Martín’s day. Eleventh of November.’

‘You have a superb memory, Your Excellency.’

The Bishop heard the double doors open and recognised his deacon’s footsteps. ‘What is it, Ignacio?’ he asked without turning round.

The deacon, a very young man in a black habit, clasped his hands and spoke with a flawless diction: ‘There is someone here to see you, Your Excellency.’

‘Who is it?’

‘She has no appointment. I tried to tell her that it is not possible without an appointment but she insists. She says it is a matter of great urgency.’

‘A woman?’

‘A
sister
, Your Excellency–from the convent of Our Lady of Mercy.’

The Bishop was silent for a moment. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Tell her to wait.’

The deacon bowed in silence and closed the door.

‘Are we done, Alfredo?’ the Bishop asked the barber. ‘You are not building the Great Wall of China.’

The barber quickly finished his haircut without making any more small talk and handed the Bishop a mirror to hear his verdict. Bishop Estrada looked at his reflection fleetingly. ‘Very good, Alfredo. Thank you.’ The barber bowed, removed the gown from the Bishop’s neck and brushed the hairs off his black cassock. As an apology for having rushed him, Bishop Estrada paid him more than usual. The barber made an even deeper bow, swept the floor and left with his tools and the dustpan. For a while the Bishop paced the room, looking at his reflection in the marble floor, until his random orbit brought him to the window, where he stood with his hands clasped behind his back. During the sixteenth century the city had gone through a period of economic splendour thanks to the textile, jewellery and leather industries, but then had entered into decline under the Bourbon rule. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the French occupation and the Carlist disputes, which followed the war of independence, had impoverished its economy even further. The Bishop had arrived when it was still a poor city, but in recent years a steady growth of wealth had turned it into a busy centre for commerce with an abundant market that drew crowds from beyond the borders of the diocese. The old horse-drawn carts that used to move slowly down the cobbled streets had now to make way for petrol cars that went past at top speed and disappeared from view before one had time to put a curse on them.

Why a brilliant man with a great future like Bishop Ezequiel Estrada would choose a provincial diocese was a mystery to everyone who met him. Impressed by his intelligence and credentials, they could only interpret his choice in terms of his humility, which was evident despite the splendour of his episcopal ring, his pectoral cross and elegant cassock. His diocese consisted of several hundred thousand faithful, hundreds of priests, a well-attended seminary and many monasteries and convents, which made great demands on his time and strength. Nevertheless, he considered that his main obligation was preaching and made a point of visiting every parish at least once every fifth year, even the smaller ones in the mountains where his car could not go and he could only get to by horse. He was not in favour of building new churches or restoring the old ones but insisted on using the funds to help the poor this side of the grave. He had also reformed the curriculum of the seminary, adding more science courses and a physical-education class whose syllabus was based on the Swedish light-gymnastics system, for it was obvious to him that a priest needed to be fit to spread God’s word.

These were the enthusiastic innovations of a man who was aware of his calling from a young age. However, his father, a marquis who was descended from one of the oldest and most illustrious families in the country, had pressed him to pursue a legal career and he had obeyed. When he obtained his doctorate in law at the age of twenty-three, he finally asked permission from his father to study for the priesthood. The marquis reluctantly agreed on the condition that he would carry out his theological studies not at home but in Rome, so that he would not end up as a village priest or provincial monsignor. The following year Ezequiel entered Collegio Capranica. After he was ordained a priest, he continued his studies, specialising in ecclesiastical diplomacy, in which he excelled. As part of their coursework, the students were required to give seminars that were attended by cardinals and other high members of the Curia, and it was there that he was noticed by an influential cardinal who offered him a position in the diplomatic service of the Vatican. During the time that he held that post, he had coordinated the relief effort for an epidemic of yellow fever in West Africa, and it was in one of his visits there that he had first met Sister María Inés. Several years later, when he became a bishop, they renewed their acquaintance, which, over time, developed into a good friendship.

He picked up a silver hand bell from his desk and rang it. A moment later the door opened and Sister Ana came in. Bishop Estrada had not expected to see her. She was one of the people he least cared for, even though he had long guessed her great adoration of him. She strode across the room with a parcel under her arm and kissed his ring, kneeling with excessive reverence. The Bishop was annoyed. ‘Please, Sister,’ he said. ‘Stand up. You are not having an audience with His Holiness.’

He showed her to the chair near the window where he had had his haircut and fetched another from across the room. The nun observed him with an awe that always made him ill at ease.

‘Thank you for taking the time to see me, Your Excellency,’ she said. ‘I know how busy you are.’

‘I am always glad to see you, Sister,’ the Bishop replied with carefully judged civility. ‘I am indeed very busy.’ And he pointed at the piled folders on his desk.

‘Oh, I understand. Paperwork must be a heavy cross to bear.’

The overstatement made Bishop Estrada feel uncomfortable. He said: ‘It is only a paper cross. I should not be complaining.’

He looked at her without blinking, despite the bright sunlight, and tried to guess the reason for her visit. She had never come to his office before. They met in the convent, and although she was always deferential to him she did not seem to join in the frivolity of his lunches with the nuns. Then he remembered that she had once spoken to him outside confession about certain grievances she had had against the Mother Superior. He had thought her bitterness inappropriate for a nun but had said nothing. Seated beside the window, he now expected her to talk to him about the same matter again, but Sister Ana handed him her parcel. ‘I meant to give you this for Christmas, Your Excellency,’ she said. ‘But I confess I could not wait that long.’

The Bishop was surprised, although he often received presents. He said: ‘Sister Ana, you never struck me as the kind of person who subscribes to the necessity of this practice.’ Not wanting to appear ungrateful, he quickly untied the string and unfolded the brown paper under the nun’s stare. ‘Anyway, I thank you…Ah!’ he exclaimed. ‘The Transfiguration. Why, it is delightful, Sister.’ He held it up to the light and admired its details.

‘Do you really like it, Your Excellency?’

Bishop Estrada attempted a light-hearted comparison: ‘It is on a par with the Raphael painting in the Vatican.’

‘I knew you would notice it,’ the nun said, beaming with delight. ‘It is an exact copy. Of course, my colours are poor in comparison, but everything else is more or less right.’

‘More or less,’ the Bishop said. ‘Yes.’

The upper half of the painting showed the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor. Christ, Moses and Elijah were floating in the air in front of a big illuminated cloud, while below them several figures prostrated themselves in homage. In the lower part of the painting, the Apostles were attempting to free a possessed boy of his demon but could not do it without Christ’s help. Bishop Estrada continued to study the painting. ‘The shading…the folds in the clothes…the landscape in the distance…all exquisite,’ he said. ‘How long did it take you?’

‘Oh, a few weeks here and there, Your Excellency.’

She had worked on it, in fact, for three months with a dedication that was as intense and unyielding as her devotion to God. On weekdays she got up very early, without having set her alarm clock, to do as much work as she could until the bell rang for dawn prayer. Shaking from the cold in the unheated room, she put on her black cape and a pair of knitted gloves, and sat to prepare the paints according to the instructions found in Renaissance recipes: terre verte for the flesh tones, azurite for Christ’s mantle, brown ochre for the earth. Then she had to leave. During the day she stole a few minutes to come to her room and add a few dabs of paint to her canvas, but the real work was done in the evenings, when she stood at her easel in the lamplight until the Great Silence began. Then she cleaned her brushes and, giddy from the turpentine vapours, eyes smarting, fingers stiff, she knelt down to thank God for her talent before going to sleep. On Sundays she painted all day, stopping only to go to prayer or to join the sisters at lunch, and then hurried back to her room, where her painting was starting to dry. In order to avoid any distraction, she worked with the windows closed until she was about to faint from the smell of the pigments. Reluctantly, she opened the windows and resumed her work while the happy voices of the sisters chatting outside made her feel like an exile from the Garden of Eden.

She now said: ‘I wanted very much to ask you to sit for one of the Apostles, Your Excellency. But I was afraid you would refuse.’

‘I would have been honoured, Sister. But I would still have refused in all humility, I am afraid.’

The Bishop continued to study the painting with an amiable expression, pointing from time to time at a detail and asking a question. She answered with more words than were necessary and he listened, nodding, while his eyes roved over the canvas. Finally he put the painting down and said: ‘Well, thank you for this, Sister. It was truly a wonderful surprise.’

‘I am glad that you like it, Your Excellency. But I am afraid I have not come only for that.’

‘Oh, you didn’t,’ the Bishop said and his face darkened. ‘Is there something else?’

‘I felt it my duty to inform you about a very serious situation that has arisen in the convent.’

‘Is this about your dispute with the Mother Superior again?’

‘No, Your Excellency. This time it is something even more serious. It’s about the orphan.’

The Bishop frowned. ‘What orphan?’

‘The Devil sent him. I am convinced–even if the child is innocent himself.’

Bishop Estrada began to lose his patience. ‘Please tell me what you have come to tell me.’

The nun blushed and quickly told him about the recent events in the convent. While she spoke, the Bishop paced the room listening attentively without attempting to interrupt her. She said: ‘I hope you agree that it is inappropriate for a child to live in the convent, Your Excellency.’

The Bishop did not share her lack of sympathy but did not want to say so. ‘It is certainly unusual,’ he said. ‘The Mother Superior’s intentions are admirable. But you are right, Sister. She should not make such a serious decision on her own.’ Then he dismissed the nun’s suggestions of satanic involvement with an unhappy smile, adding: ‘But in any case, I do not believe the poor thing is the spawn of Satan. The demon is inside those who choose to abandon their own children like that. Thank you for letting me know. You did the right thing.’