The Priest's Madonna (26 page)

The baby arrived on a hot day, made even hotter by the steam from the kettle that the Marcels kept boiling over the fire. Their front room smelled like a humid herb garden, for the midwife had hung sprigs of rosemary from each of the lintels to help along the early stages of labor. I stayed by Michelle’s bed—a litter of linen strips covered with a sheet that Joseph’s mother had set up by the hearth—holding her hand, rubbing her back where she felt the pain most, and praying despite myself, praying fervently for a healthy delivery. When the midwife finally pulled the baby from between Michelle’s quivering legs, I reeled, sure it was a stillbirth, for his skin was the color of dust and his body was striped with blood. But within minutes, after the midwife had wiped him down with a warm cloth and rubbed lard into his puckered legs and arms, he grew rosy, and as he peered at his mother, I saw that he was alive, healthy, and perfect. He nuzzled Michelle’s breast, and then opened his miniature mouth to suck himself to sleep, his tiny eyelids fluttering pleasurably. I felt as if I had witnessed the virgin birth itself.

Michelle named him Edouard, after Father, but we called him Pichon because he was so small. Michelle appointed me his god-mother, and I accepted my role with all the pride and trepidation of a new mother. I clasped him to my chest as we walked to his christening, keeping my neck as rigid as a pole so as not to invite the evil eye. After the service, Bérenger kissed him and called him his little nephew while Father stood on the steps of the church and tossed figs and sugared almonds to the children. I stood aside, cooing worshipful phrases into Pichon’s tiny curled ear.

Pichon, then, became my hope. I no longer languished with boredom in my free time, dreaming up fruitless fantasies, grieving myself over Bérenger’s latest minor betrayal. I visited Michelle and rocked Pichon in my arms; I boiled his diapers and spit-soaked clothing, not minding the perspiration beading on my forehead from the fire; I prepared meals for the entire Marcel family and carried them over, one dish at a time. Bérenger spent many evening hours by Pichon’s cradle, rocking it gently with his foot, humming tuneless lullabies. My father sang to him, too, beautiful melancholy melodies that reverberated through the small house. Father no longer frequented the tavern; when he returned from the factory, he went directly to Pichon, ludicrously contorting his face in his determination to elicit a smile. Claude, too, changed: he became newly histrionic, relating stories from the factory in broad caricature. Pichon’s favorite—when he was old enough to sit up and watch—was Claude’s imitation of the foreman, who wore his pants too tight and walked as if he was holding in a fart. Claude mimicked the gait for us, bringing my mother and I to giddy tears, and then my father, smiling behind his mustache, stood to offer his own impression, which sent us all rolling on the floor.

I had not forgotten about the Austrian and the mysterious book. The mayor’s story had opened up a whole new set of questions, as well as given me exclusive knowledge that I savored by keeping it secret. For I was the only one who knew what I knew: that the madwoman who had had visions of Marie Madeleine was the mother of Anne Marie Berthelot and the relative of Madame. I had no proof of this, of course, but I felt it must be true. And for the time being, possessing that knowledge was enough. As far as I could tell, Bérenger had lost interest in the stone and the tomb— he continued to occupy himself with the deluge of Mass requests as well as some minor repairs in the church—and if he was not actively searching for the tomb, I felt no pressing need to pursue it either. I bided my time, busying myself with Pichon’s infancy.

Then, some months after Pichon’s birth, my father fell severely ill. He collapsed on the path one day as he and Claude were returning from the factory, and Claude had to carry him uphill on his shoulders. Claude arrived at the door of our house weeping, Father draped around his neck like a carcass. Mother loosened Father’s vest and belt and patted his face down with a wet cloth. I ran to get Dr. Castanier. He came immediately, and by the time we had returned, Father had revived a bit, but was incoherent and feverish. The doctor declared him in danger and ordered him to bed.

We spent our days working quietly in the house, whispering if we spoke at all, so as not to disturb Father. Mother barely left his side; she sat by his bed, knitting and spinning, brushing his hair from his forehead, whispering in his ear. Claude and I tended to the needs of the household: he by working at the factory, me at home. I prepared snakeskin infusions for Father, and changed the compress on his forehead every hour. Father drifted in and out of consciousness, sometimes strong enough to sit up in bed and smile weakly at the jokes we told to entertain him, other times unable to lift his head from the pillow, his strength depleted by fits of coughing. Bérenger came to sit with us by his bed and sometimes read the newspaper aloud—my father’s republican newspaper—with commendable restraint.

Dr. Castanier visited once again, and declared Father pneu monic, and that the only remedy was rest, hot compresses applied to the chest, and regular applications of steam. “It’s this damned house,” he said. “The wind blows through here as if you were out on the bluff.” We followed his advice diligently—every hour, I prepared a pot of steaming water suffused with garlic, and held Father’s head, draped with a towel, over the pot—but we noticed no results. If anything, Father seemed to be getting worse, his coughs racking his body, his fatigue becoming more and more pronounced, until after one of his visits, Bérenger brought us downstairs and counseled that we must be prepared for his death.

My mother raged at Bérenger, calling him a liar and a fool, insisting that Father was looking better every day. Her voice grew louder and more desperate until Claude reminded her that Father needed quiet.

“There is hope, Isabelle,” Bérenger offered. “My brother David keeps a bottle of water from Lourdes. He has been saving it for himself or someone close to him, should the need arise. With your permission, I could go to Narbonne tonight and bring back the bottle for Edouard.”

My mother only stared at him.

“Would he give it to us?” I asked.

“I think he would.”

“Well, Mother?” Claude prompted. “It seems worth a try.”

She looked to me and I nodded, despite a sickness in my gut, for I knew that were Father alert, he would protest. It would seem an indignity to him: to subjugate his fate to the whims of a God he didn’t believe in. I could almost hear him shout: “I won’t be made to drink old water from some polluted stream!” But we were desperate enough to risk his disapproval.

Bérenger left that afternoon. We kept a vigil by Father’s bedside while he was gone, only dozing for minutes at a time through the long night. My mother knelt in prayer by his bedside, her hands folded on the white coverlet like trembling pigeons. I tried to pray, but the reverent gloom distracted me, and I could only think of how Father would insist that there were no such things as miracles.
Wake up, Father,
I thought,
wake up.

The wind whistled through the cracks in the stones like a gleeful ghost. Leaving my mother by Father’s side and Claude snoring on his cot, I pulled on a cloak and left the house with a lantern, not knowing where I was headed. I wanted only to walk, to be away from the sounds of the wind in the house and the bubbling of my father’s breath in his lungs. I held the lantern before me at first, but discovered that though it cast a circle of flickering light which allowed me to see within its compass, the darkness beyond the light was blacker and more virulent than if I carried no lantern at all. So I put it out, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness until it became benign and the shapes that had loomed or been fearsome assumed their customary proportions once again: the stone at the edge of the meadow, the border of the woodland just beyond.

I sat on that stone, near the place where Michelle and I used to spend afternoons so many years earlier, and listened to the wind riffling the leaves of the oaks and the pines. The grasses in the meadow bent and trembled, while just above them the
feux follets
—the will-o’-the-wisps—flared in momentary brilliance, extinguishing themselves in blackness. Each new snuffing of light seemed an omen, and I found myself growing more and more panicked, sure that as I sat ineffectually in the darkness, my father was dying, breath by breath, in his bed. It was too early for him. Pichon was only a baby, and it would not be fair to rob him of his grandfather. Was this God’s plan, then? Having given us Pichon, had he decided to take Father? Unjust as ever.

As I sat on my stone, fuming at the sky, I saw a shape emerge from the tops of the trees and soar toward me. It was an owl, rushing silently, its wings spread wide. It flew over my head and off into the dark sky.

In our region, the call of an owl is said to announce impending death, though if you can shoot the owl and tack its feet to your door, death will pass you by. This owl, though silent, seemed to be a heavenly taunt, an apposite response to my supercilious prayer. HadIarifle, I might have shot it and saved Father, but of course, I had none, as God well knew. Cold with the fear that my father’s spirit had already left him, I sprinted home. When I reached Father’s bed and saw his chest still rising and falling, I dropped to my knees beside him and wept.

The next afternoon, Bérenger returned, the flask of water tucked in his pocket. He came directly to Father’s bedside and we all gathered about—Michelle, Pichon in her arms, Joseph, Claude, Mother, and I—while Bérenger lifted Father’s head from the pillow.

“A little drink for you, Edouard,” Bérenger said, and Father’s eyes fluttered open. Bérenger held the flask to his lips and, bless edly, Father drank, offering us a weak smile before he sank into sleep once more.

“What now?” Claude said, as if he expected Father to rise immediately from his bed like Lazarus himself.

“Now we wait,” replied Bérenger.

Wait we did, all of us, until, exhausted by the previous night’s vigil and reassured by Father’s continued breath, Mother and Claude fell asleep. I was resolved to stay awake. If the water worked miracles as it was supposed to, I wanted to see it. Strangely, my scolding of the heavens the previous night seemed to have given me some comfort. I picked up the little
santon
of Marie Madeleine that my mother kept by the bed, fingering the folds of her robe, and prayed—experimentally and humbly—for Father’s immediate recovery.

I must have fallen asleep finally because I woke the next morning, still gripping the little
santon,
to the warmth of my father’s hand on the back of my neck.

“Your neck will be stiff,” he whispered. He fingered my forehead, which had been pitted with the impression of the Madeleine’s open hand. “You’ve been sleeping with a saint, Marie?” he asked.

He ate a good dinner that day, slurping the
aigo bouido
from his spoon. Over the next several days, he grew stronger, stayed awake for longer, and finally, after a week of steady recovery, rose from his bed to stretch and take a breath of fresh air.

Bérenger proclaimed Father’s recovery a miracle, and attributed it to the extraordinary blessing of Our Lady of Lourdes, and publicly we all agreed. Privately, I wondered whether my own prayer had anything to do with it. I thought again of the owl, the wake of its flight-wind on my face, and wondered whether what I had interpreted as an omen was actually an apparition, a holy incarnation. I had grown so accustomed to doubting, had cowered within the shell of my unbelief like an embryo. My urgent communion with the awesome and mysterious night was the tapping that cracked the shell, and now I was shivering and blinking in the bright foyer of wonder.

It was a quiet wonder, a general sense of
maybe so, after all.
It was walking through the day, holding a spoon, stirring, tasting a dish, sneezing into a rag, always thinking,
what if?
and
perhaps.
It was a delicate transfer of feeling, from the heavy-handedness of doubt to the lightness of possibility. I still chafed at a Church that damned my father to hell simply because he would not submit to its doctrine, still despised the hypocrisy of an institution that could massacre thousands in the name of God—but I felt now that belief was something to consider. I wasn’t sure what I believed. I had no name for it. If I believed in anything, I suppose, I believed in the unfathomable power of nature, in its potential to heal as well as destroy. Illogically, I made the little
santon
of the Madeleine my talisman, endowing her with the power I had witnessed that night on the meadow, with the silent rush of the owl’s wings. I prayed to her, making small experiments: I asked her to make Claude less of a grouch in the mornings, and, miniature miracle, the next morning he kissed me cheerfully on his way out the door. I prayed to the
santon
that Pichon would love me better than any of his other relatives, and several days later, he spoke his first word: my name. She was not one hundred percent reliable, of course—I asked her again and again for insight into the workings of Bérenger’s heart, or, if not that, at least for him to tell me his secrets—and this did not happen, or at least not right away. Nor did the
santon
bring Madame back when I asked her to, not for some time. But the
santon,
and, by extension, Marie Madeleine herself, had won my affection, not just because of the little wishes she granted but, more profoundly, because of the peace that burned like a candle within me as I held her figure in my two hands and pressed it to my forehead, or kneeled before the painting Bérenger had made of her on the altar. It was this feeling I clung to, wondered at, and longed for, this sense of communion with the larger mystery that encompassed and transcended everything I could perceive.

The village celebrated Father’s health. People laid gifts of fresh vegetables, oil and honey, wine, and dishes of food on our kitchen table, and everyone stopped by to see the miraculous recovery for himself. My father loved the attention. Sitting up by the fire, a blanket over his knees, he held court in the living room, entertaining, listening to stories, tasting the gifts of food and wine, even singing a few bars upon request, to demonstrate the improving vigor of his lungs. My mother waited on him, anticipating his every desire. And Bérenger sat with him in the parlor, receiving guests as if he were another member of the family.