In the Fall They Leave, page 26
Her smile is beatific.
And so, Marie-Thérèse becomes a Dominican postulant dressed in black, with a black headpiece something like a veiled hat. She takes classes in theology with the other postulants, eats in the refectory with them, prays with them in chapel, rises for night prayers and dawn prayers, and rehearses for a Christmas cantata. An alien in a strange country. Since postulants keep silent except for brief exchanges in the refectory, she doesn’t have to say much. She is from Bruges. She has wanted to be a nun all her life. A lie that strikes her as egregious. But she might not be harming these innocents, she decides. They haven’t seen the flyer and probably have little if any interest in the convoluted political world and its war.
At night Marie-Thérèse buries herself under the duvet and grieves. When Mother Gonzaga visits again, Marie-Thérèse asks if she might inquire if Père Klei has heard anything about two girls who once were staying at the clinic in Ixelles. And if it isn’t too much trouble, might he also inquire at the LaBreques’ patisserie? The nun later tells Marie-Thérèse that he’s done so but learned nothing except that the clinic is still open, though with a greatly reduced staff.
Snow appears in the small rectangular window, and snow clouds moving fast. She tries to see beauty in it. And hope. Soon after the Feast of the Epiphany, the postulants are to be taken by the Postulant Director—a young nun Marie-Thérèse likes because she sometimes whistles hymns while mopping their hallway—to a convent in Ghent for a retreat. Marie-Thérèse is to be Charmaine de Chantal, from Bruges. The stamps and dates on the identity and travel papers are current; the photograph might have been her own. “How did you manage this?” she whispers.
“Oh, quite simply. Our dear Charmaine has been given a different responsibility. She will be helping our eldest nun who, most sadly, has had a small stroke. Charmaine understands that corporal works of mercy are equally important in one’s spiritual development.”
“But the photograph.”
“Ah, the photograph. Don’t you think we all have a double somewhere?”
She hasn’t noticed any such person in the group, but then the postulants all do resemble one another in their dark garb.
Identity papers. Travel documents. Photographs.
Marie-Thérèse looks more closely at the nun. And then asks if she has learned anything more about the military tribunal. “Not yet.” Her gaze slides away from Marie-Thérèse for an instant then back, and Marie-Thérèse experiences a crushing sense of finality. She was tried…and convicted.
On the morning they’re to leave, Mother Gonzaga places a small envelope in Marie-Thérèse’s hand. “Tuck it in your sleeve. Read it after you arrive in Middleton.”
“In Zeeland? I thought we were going to Ghent.”
The nun raises a finger near her lips. “You are. Then you will go on. Wait for instruction. Adieu, my dear convict. Go with God.”
And Marie-Thérèse sees Papa holding Bishop aloft.
Sister Aquinas
On the tram and then the train, Marie-Thérèse’s little group forms a funereal clump. Thoughts keep up their rush. Why Ghent? So far away? Why not a retreat at their own convent? Would postulants be coming from several convents? Was it customary, or all a ruse?
Ruse, she thinks. And if so, a clever one—sending a group.
Despite her heavy cloak, she’s shivering. The train’s military passengers hardly glance at them, but apprehension grips her each time the carriage door opens, emitting cold. The letter scratches at her forearm. She wonders if the nun included German marks. She wonders if she could get back to Brussels somehow and find the children. It hurts knowing that the thought is only a fantasy.
At the Ghent station, they draw a few glances but then pass through the center of that medieval city as if simply a flock of migrating birds. The wind is strong. Snow stings her face.
Finally, they exit a tram in a residential neighborhood where spacious mansions sit in private parks behind stone walls with imposing gates, one of which stands open. They walk through it and into a snow-swept expanse. To Marie-Thérèse, the massive crowns of specimen trees look like ornate black medallions, snow whirling around them. Patience, they seem to say. Endurance. And as usual, tears rise, hardly needing a cause.
Tea, cheese sandwiches, and pastries have been laid out on a long table in a paneled room where a fire burns in a marble fireplace between two massive doorways. Marie-Thérèse’s group stands pooled together in a corner, far from the brightly burning logs in the fireplace. Older nuns are gathered there, chattering away. Marie-Thérèse observes that the eyes of the young postulants are darting from coffered ceiling, with its Biblical scenes, to oak paneling, to Persian carpet. Had someone donated the house to the nuns? Had any of her fellow postulants come from such a place and would being there now make her regretful and would she question her vocation? If so, Marie-Thérèse thinks, she herself may be responsible, given the world’s unpredictable yet relentless causality.
Then, another strange thought. Why not just stay with her group? Join the Order and let everything be ordained for her, each large and small decision. No need to choose. No need to think. She might play the organ for them. Work in the infirmary. And learn how to pray. Truly pray, not just beg for things. Heaven on earth, no?
One of the older nuns claps her hands for silence, then welcomes the postulants and urges them to have their fill of the tiny sandwiches and pastries and to converse with one another. After seven that evening, silence will be mandatory for the entire week of the retreat. The postulants resume their conversations, and Marie-Thérèse finds herself telling lie after lie. And hoping her flushed skin won’t give her away. Nor her unsteady eye movements. She’s from farming country and not well educated. She hopes to learn in the convent and be of humble service. She enjoys domestic work but can play the piano a bit. She’s not a very good singer and will have to learn. After a while the more inquisitive postulants turn away from the rather simple girl and talk instead with one another as if with old friends. Marie-Thérèse irrationally feels desolate at this unintended slight.
Following an evening service in a chapel with marble statuary and altar, the postulants are directed to a corridor with cells on either side, each holding a cot and wooden chair, a small black crucifix on the wall, and two black iron hooks for clothing. A folded cotton nightgown has been placed on the chair. An electric fixture on the ceiling offers light unsuitable for study or reading. After changing into the nightgown and placing Mother Gonzaga’s letter on top of the folded undergarments, Marie-Thérèse kneels at the side of the cot but does not say the rote prayers of childhood. Instead, she asks for forgiveness.
Then, after augmenting the thin blanket with her cloak, she lies there listening to the wind. Too many memories, too much thought prohibit sleep. Being summoned for night prayers is a relief.
Despite the raging winds outside, the chapel’s votive candles radiate peace. The still center, it seems, beyond the mutable, fractious, and imperfect. Beyond the always disappointing mortal. The chapel’s marble, wood, mortar, glass, and lead might be bombed or burned, but what exists here seems beyond earth, air, fire, and water.
Pressing palms together, she leans forward into that power like a diver into the sea.
Breakfast consists of hot tea and warm rolls spread with a soft cheese and plum preserves. A nun at the front of the refectory reads from the Acts of the Apostles, the chapter having to do with the stoning of Stephen, the fledgling church’s first martyr. He refused to recant what he knew to be true, and so townspeople stoned him to death. Marie-Thérèse doesn’t find this story easy to contemplate while eating a fresh roll sweetened with preserves, but it does offer tempering and balance, telling them that everything exists at once, in a jumble. The benighted with the good; the tragic with the sustaining. How can it not be, in their fallen world? Therefore, they must not lapse into despondency at the benighted parts. Being humble, Marie-Thérèse is beginning to see, doesn’t mean being weak and spineless and afraid. Rather, open to the possibility of good.
Endurance is faith.
Endurance is strength.
If faith is a form of humility…
Then humility is also strength…and endurance.
Euclid. Things equal to the same thing are equal to each other.
So. These nuns may in fact be more powerful than all the German forces.
The tea’s warmth, and those thoughts, send the last of the previous night’s demons fleeing. When a nun touches her shoulder as the postulants are filing out to the lecture room, Marie-Thérèse turns, as directed, into their cells’ corridor. “I’m Sister Aquinas,” the nun whispers. “Please get your cloak and papers.”
Wrapped to their eyes, the two emerge from the convent into a world of white stillness and golden cold.
They don’t converse on the tram, which is appropriate. One seldom sees talkative nuns out in public, Marie-Thérèse reflects. But at the Ghent station she’s shocked out of her silence when she learns they’ll be traveling east, to Antwerp, instead of north to Zeeland.
“Why?”
The nun quietly explains that this is Mother’s way—to change plans at the last minute if necessary.
This is Mother’s way?
“What about my travel papers?”
“I have new ones for you.”
“Does she do this often, then?”
“No.”
Marie-Thérèse studies Sister Aquinas’s expression, the hazel eyes and ginger-colored brows, her long but harmoniously sloped nose. The tranquil expression. It gives nothing away. She tries to think what to do if this is some trap. Then reason prevails.
“All right,” she says, and steels herself against all the German soldiers they’re sure to find in Antwerp.
Demolished villages and farms, the rummaging pigs and sheep tell her they’re nearly there. A young soldier enters the carriage to check papers. When he gets to their row, Sister Aquinas hands him both sets.
“And why must you go to Roosendaal?” he asks, not bothering to show respect by using her religious name.
“I am accompanying this postulant to her family.”
“I once knew someone who became a postulant. She wasn’t allowed to see anyone. No one could even visit her.”
Under her cloak Marie-Thérèse grips her hands.
“Yes, that is how it is,” Sister Aquinas replies in perfect German. “This young woman, however, needs time to reconsider her vocation. We have allowed her a leave of absence.”
Smiling, the young man regards Marie-Thérèse. “You wish to change your mind, Fräulein?”
“I hope to understand God’s will for me.”
“I wish you luck with that!” He laughs as he returns their documents.
Marie-Thérèse’s legs are so weak Sister Aquinas has to take hold of her arm as the two descend from the train.
On the platform for the northbound train to Roosendaal, they find an unoccupied bench, and the nun produces two rolls and some cheese from somewhere under her cloak. “You gave a good answer,” she says as they have their petite déjeuner.
“Merci.”
“Do you truly feel that way?”
“I thought I knew…being a nurse, one as skilled as our matron. And before that, a pianist.”
When the nun doesn’t respond, Marie-Thérèse glances at her profile. The thickening of moisture glazing her eye, the reddening of rim.
“They killed her,” Marie-Thérèse says.
The nun touches Marie-Thérèse’s arm. “Not here. You need to remain in control. We have the border yet.”
“Please. I have to know.”
“It seems you already do.”
“They executed her.”
The nun’s hands are clasped. She lowers her head.
“What about the petitions? Were there petitions?”
“Many. And all ignored. Now Germans are anathema to the rest of the world. Their old argument that they are fighting a just war bears no weight whatsoever. And Great Britain…well, Great Britain is grieving while every day adding thousands of volunteers to its ranks.”
Perhaps all this Marie-Thérèse knew the moment the matron said, It seemed a simple choice. But hope is stubborn.
“When did they execute her?”
“October 12th.”
“That soon!” It had been shortly after the matron came to her prison cell, then. The execution must have been carried out while Marie-Thérèse lay cocooned in Mother Gonzaga’s convent. Safe, warm, and fed. Words rush as she tells the nun about the skating party they’d organized the previous December. How the pond at Ixelles had frozen into glass. How they’d had a bonfire and chocolates their gardener had managed to find. How expertly the matron skated and how happy she seemed after she learned that everything was being taken care of at the clinic. Let them talk. They need to talk. The lesson comes home, but at the same time she senses how futile her words are. How impossible to convey the woman’s essence or the place she occupies in Marie-Thérèse’s heart. The words no more than bits of sound immediately lost in the greater reverberating din of the station. And yet they ease, somewhat, the pressure on her heart.
The platform is growing crowded with travelers intent on their own journeys and paying no attention to the two religious women seated on a bench, in earnest conversation. But Marie-Thérèse emerges from her trance-like state and realizes that she’s making the nun anxious by talking about the matron. She pauses, then asks, “How will you get back? You can’t travel alone, can you?”
“I go on to Utrecht.”
“To a convent? And then you’ll find someone to accompany you back?”
The nun shakes her head. “I, too, am going home. You see, I am merely a professor of classics at the university. Now pull yourself together, my dear. It’s time.”
“Mother and you… You’re part of…”
She touches Marie-Thérèse’s arm again and then they’re boarding.
Soup and Bread
As the train slows to a stop in a snow-covered field, Marie-Thérèse holds her prayer book and focuses on its title. Devotions and Meditations. Cold air wafts into the carriage as two German soldiers enter. One slams the door behind him, and then the two begin examining documents, working their way down the aisle, each taking a side. One of them is an older man with red brow, jowls, and nose. His mouth forms the horseshoe shape she’s observed in the fleshy faces of men his age.
She’s pretending to read as the younger soldier checks the documents of those on the other side of the aisle, uttering a danke in a flat tone at intervals. The one on her side says nothing as he works his way closer. When he reaches the row ahead of theirs, he takes a long time studying each of the four sets of documents. Finally, he pronounces that the dates on one set are inconsistent. Misprint or not, they’re wrong. The passenger cannot be allowed to travel with such incorrect documents. Yes, he’s aware that the date is correct on another line, but the inconsistency invalidates the whole. The document is incorrect and thus invalid and thus worthless. “You must leave the train immediately, Herr Brege.”
Herr Brege meekly tries to assert that another guard allowed him to travel despite the misprint.
“But I am not that other guard! He is an idiot. Gather your things. You will have to wait for a southbound train here. Return to Antwerp and get new papers. It is your responsibility to see that they are absolutely correct.”
Herr Brege puts on his coat and hat and takes his satchel from the upper rack. In no time he is standing outside the train. Beyond him stretches a long field bounded by a distant windbreak. Wind whirls snow into spinning tops. Marie-Thérèse’s companion sits with her head bowed. “Frau Brege, these are in order. You will have to help your husband next time.”
His horseshoe scowl deepening, the soldier extends his hand toward Marie-Thérèse’s companion, then studies her documents. While gazing at the title of the prayer book, Marie-Thérèse wonders if reading is difficult for him. Judging by his silence, the other soldier has already reached the far end of the carriage.
“Do you stay in in Roosendaal then, Frau Aquinas?”
He pronounces the name A-quinn-is.
“Yes, sir. I will be at the Convent of the Sisters of Mercy.”
“I see that here. Very good.”
He thrusts the documents back and extends his arm toward Marie-Thérèse. It takes him long minutes while she waits, eyes downcast. Finally, he lowers the papers. “You go to the same convent and then on to your family. Why is that?”
“I am going to my family, sir, because I need time to reconsider my vocation. I have been given permission to do so by my Mother Superior.” To her ear the words sound rehearsed, as they were.
He continues to scrutinize her, then finally says, “Well, Fräulein, that is probably a good thing. One should not rush, in a situation such as yours. The dates,” he adds, “are correct.”
But he doesn’t return the documents.
“You are how old?”
“I am twenty years old.”
“Yes, I see that here. What does your family think of you sacrificing your life like that?”
“My family”—she can’t help it, tears are rising—“has been disappointed in me.”
“Well, I would be too, Fräulein. Religion is all well and good, but on the other hand…What is it they say? Wisdom is wasted on the old? Something like that.” This proof of sagacity causes the horseshoe to momentarily invert itself. He hands back the documents.
Marie-Thérèse’s heart resumes beating. Her companion grips her hand as the soldier questions those in the row behind them.
Some minutes later, the train passes over the invisible line demarking one world from another in the white light of a winter’s late afternoon, the snow lemon-colored in fields and whipped, here and there, into dunes and the curving designs waves make, sliding up on shore and back, nothing straight, nothing imposed, and everything holding light.
