Tremble (27 page)

By the end of the day Clarissa’s white habit was grimy with dust. The last devotee was ushered out. Pater Dimitri locked the church, then led the nun into the room behind the altar that functioned as an office and laid out a feast of fresh fish, bread, salad, and figs. Clarissa was too numb with fatigue to speak, but slowly the food and accompanying retsina revived her. She glanced through the open door toward the casket. It looked innocuous, like a jewel case from some fairy tale.

“What exactly is the relic?” she asked. Pater Dimitri, who was already on his fourth glass of retsina, chuckled.

“They haven’t told you?”

As she shook her head he laughed even louder.

“The holy relic is the withered nipple of Saint Barbara.”

“Are you serious?” Shocked, she glanced back at the glass.

“Of course,” the priest answered sternly. “It is of the divine and has performed many miracles since they took it from her body.” And with a wink, he tossed down the last of the retsina.

Clarissa lay next to the altar on the uncomfortable camp bed covered by goats’ skin, keeping vigil. Outside she could hear the sound of the waves lapping against the stone pier. Somewhere a dog barked and
nearby a donkey brayed. It was comforting. She imagined the village night had sounded like this for centuries.

Images of the past floated through her mind: her father ecstatic with joy when she was accepted at Adelaide University; Ruby’s frightened face staring up at her, tubes writhing from her fragile body; her closest girlfriend looking horrified when Clarissa told her she was joining the order; her father teaching her to play chess when she was ten…images of family, community, all now lost to her. Outside a cat wailed; in the rafters above a bird rustled. Clarissa rose from the bed and walked over to the holy relic.

Moonlight streaming through the stained-glass window made the casket glow blue and emerald. Could it really be dangerous? she thought, strangely attracted to the engraved inscription on the glass lid. Holding a candle above her head she leaned over to get a closer look. She recognized the words as Latin. Beneath the cloudy glass sat the nipple. Clarissa peered closer. The areola was visible, a dark wine color surrounding the nipple, which was collapsed and shriveled. Fascinated, she wondered whether the nipple had ever been an object of lust, imagining that perhaps a man had once caressed and sucked on that sad piece of flesh. Guiltily she crossed herself for the blasphemy.

She had to get a closer look. As if in a trance she ran her hand across the casket’s surface. It’s just a box with a stage prop inside, she thought, nothing more dangerous than the trick rubber fingers I used to buy as a child. She dared herself to go further.
Go on
, a voice kept saying inside her.
At least open the lid
, it urged.

To her surprise it opened easily, as if the hinges had been recently oiled. Now she could see the appendage more clearly. It looked as if it had been neatly cut away from the breast and was bigger than she had thought. “The breast would have been large, with a dark smooth areola and a long nipple,” she said out loud, trying to muster a detached medical tone in an effort to exorcise any guilty feelings. The image of the full breast floated before her and briefly settled across the carved features of the suffering Christ. Now feeling incredibly furtive she couldn’t stem the flood of possibilities that ran through her mind. I wonder what it feels like? Should I touch it? What would happen if I did?

If it were fake then nothing could happen to her. If it were genuine and she saw no result it would finally prove to her that there was no God and then she could free herself. On the other hand, perhaps
touching it might restore her faith. It was all so confusing and yet the nipple was so tantalizingly close…one little caress, surely it would be harmless.

“No one would know,” she whispered out loud. What did she have to lose?

She placed one finger delicately onto the relic. It had the same texture as a piece of old leather. As Clarissa had suspected, she felt nothing—no great revelation or spiritual bliss. Just a slight clamminess and mild revulsion.

Disappointed, she closed the lid and retreated to the camp bed. As she lay there she couldn’t help but reflect on how much easier life would be if she could believe in miracles like the pilgrims she’d seen that day, their faces luminous with hope. Then the night, a comforting black envelope smelling faintly of camphor and stale incense, closed in on her and she surrendered to sleep.

She spent the next day receiving another endless line of optimistic supplicants. At dusk the convent’s Jaguar waited for her in the town square. As Pater Dimitri walked her toward the car a blind man stepped out of the shadows. Stumbling slightly he blocked their path, his face tilting as he sensed the people in front of him. Suddenly he placed a hand on Clarissa’s stomach and, in a high-pitched voice, shrieked some words. Dimitri pushed his arm away and hurried Clarissa to the car. Although the incident had only lasted a couple of seconds Clarissa found it very disturbing.

“What did he say?” she asked nervously.

“Nothing,” Dimitri replied with forced casualness.

“If it was nothing then you can tell me,” she persisted.

“‘He’s coming,’ that’s what he said. You see? The man has mental problems.”

“Who did he mean by ‘he’?”

“I really have no idea. Stavros is our local idiot prophet, some people listen to him, some don’t. Forget it happened, please.”

But on the way back up the mountain Clarissa couldn’t erase the image of the man’s face, the ferocity of his features as he made his prediction.
He’s coming.
Who? she wondered. Who would be visiting me
in this remote spot? Her father, perhaps? The idea of her father arriving at the dock in his suit and holding the ever-present mobile phone seemed absurd. No, it had to be someone else, someone she didn’t know yet who had searched her out, chosen her…for what?

I’m a fool to take the babblings of the local village idiot seriously, she told herself, grappling with her newfound cynicism and a yearning still to believe.

Clarissa continued counseling the village women, but her lack of faith spread like a cancer. Every morning she found it harder to drag herself out of bed and kneel on the freezing chapel floor with the other sisters. When she gazed up at Jesus’s face she no longer felt the rush of inspiration. “What is it all for?” she murmured under her breath.

In the midst of her anguish she failed to notice that her period didn’t come that month, or the next or the next.

One morning she checked the calendar and realized that she hadn’t bled for over four months. She wondered if she was anemic; remembered reading that a change in diet or even a change in drinking water could alter the menstrual cycle. She vowed to concentrate on improving her nutrition. Yes, the change in diet had to be the cause. Relieved she spent the rest of the day on a fishing boat with Georgio.

For the next few weeks she cut down on dairy products and daily forced down a local meat dish. Her stomach grew swollen, but when the end of the month came still Clarissa hadn’t bled. That day at the cannery she kept imagining the onset of period pains but nothing happened. In the evening she wept with frustration.

The next day she decided to visit the island’s herbalist. He lived in a cottage sandwiched between the bakery and the tannery. The scent of freshly baked bread competed with the sickening stench of tanning fluids and Clarissa thought she might throw up as she ducked through the low doorway. The décor looked as if it hadn’t changed since the sixteenth century and the tiny room was more like a cupboard, with hundreds of bunches of dried herbs hanging from the ceiling. Nailed to the wall next to the long wooden counter, next to a 1956 calendar featuring Sophia Loren in a spotted bikini, were several shrunken goat and sheep heads. Clarissa reeled back in disgust.

“So, holy woman, what can I do for you?” The herbalist spoke in a strange American-accented English. He barely reached her shoulders and his face was so wrinkled that it was difficult for Clarissa to see whether he was smiling or frowning.

“I’m ill, I have problems…down below.” She placed a hand on her womb awkwardly.

He looked her up and down, then sniffed reflectively. “I can see, even with my eyes. Lie down on the counter, I will tell you what is wrong.”

Clarissa swung herself up onto the long table and lay down. With her habit draped over the sides she felt a little like a giantess trapped in a mouse hole. In an effort to ward off panic she stared up at the ceiling and watched a lizard stoically crawl across the wooden roof beam toward a struggling moth. Please make him not be a total fraud, she prayed to herself, trying hard not to feel ridiculous.

The ancient herbalist climbed up onto a stool and pulled down two dried chicken claws from the wall. He hobbled over to the table and waved them slowly over her stomach, mumbling an incomprehensible incantation under his breath. Finally he laid the claws carefully in a cross across her abdomen then produced a tuning fork from one of his pockets. He banged it against the wooden bench, placed it end down next to her, and listened to the high-pitched note for a few seconds. Suddenly he clapped his hands as if to disperse the air above her.

“Get up,” he said brusquely. While Clarissa rearranged herself, he concocted a mixture of herbs, pouring a little from one jar and then a little more from another until he had created his own foul-smelling blend.

“I have seen this condition only once before, when I was four. The victim, she too was the attendant to the holy relic. Maria Stelopolis, that was her name. A beautiful woman.” He paused for a second. “You touched the nipple, didn’t you?” he asked, not unkindly.

Startled, Clarissa tried to gauge his reaction but there was nothing judgmental in his tiny buried eyes. She started to stammer but silencing her he pushed the jar of herbs toward her.

“I cannot promise I can stop what has begun, but this tea might help. You must drink it each day before the sun is in the sky and twice on a full moon.”

“What happened to the other woman—Maria?”

“I cannot remember. My mother took me to the mainland and I was not here to see the results.”