One afternoon when they’d been working together in the small sacristy polishing the gold chalices and patens, Kate tried to talk to Sister Josepha about Tom Lynch. It was a cold, rainy April day, and Kate’s mood reflected the weather. She was desperate to open up to someone.
Suddenly, Kate put down the chalice she was polishing and turned to Sister Josepha with a sob. “I’ve really got to talk to you.”
The older nun’s pale blue eyes regarded her serenely. She continued to rub the chalice briskly as she waited for Kate to go on. “Why, Sister, what is it?”
“I think . . . no, I have fallen in love with someone. I’ve tried so hard to fight it. I’ve prayed, I’ve asked God to help me through this, but nothing seems to work.”
Sister Josepha did not look at her, but smiled slightly as she buffed the golden chalice. “Why, Sister, surely you’re not surprised at being human? Men and women fall in love all the time. Remember, our feelings are never sinful; we can’t help them. It’s what we do with them that matters.” At this she put down the chalice and looked directly at Kate. “May I ask who is the object of your feelings?”
In Sister’s tone was a hint of laughter; Kate flushed. How could her superior make light of what was to her a source of agony?
“It’s Father Tom.” Kate’s tightly clenched fists rested on the wooden work table. In the silence that followed her admission, she did not look to see the other nun’s reaction.
Sister Josepha broke the silence in the sacristy by clearing her throat and saying dryly: “I confess, I never would have guessed him.”
“Why not?” Kate was eager now to talk about Tom.
“Father is—how shall I put this—rather distant; even cynical, I might add. He’s a good priest, extremely dedicated to the people. But there’s a wall around him. I always thought he had little use for nuns. I believe he finds us slightly ridiculous.” The older nun turned to face Kate squarely. “Look, dear, you know what you have vowed. You’re still in temporary vows, so this experience of struggle is healthy. But in the end only you can decide. I will pray each day for you.” As she gazed at Kate, her eyes softened. “I’d hate to lose you, Sister. You have a magnetic personality that draws others to you. This is God’s gift, and I hope you decide to continue to use it in His service.” Brusquely, she gathered up the chalices and placed them in the cupboard. She locked the small doors and hooked the large circle of keys on her cincture, unconsciously giving them a little house-wifely pat.
Kate knew she was dismissed. Well, at least she had finally told someone. Sister Josepha didn’t refer to their conversation again, but two nights later Kate found a book on her bed, The Gift of Chastity, when she turned on the light after evening prayers. Great, a book to give me all the answers. I’d probably do better to re-read Anna Karenina. Books had always been her great treasure, but somehow Kate knew the answer to her dilemma would not be found in a book.
Now in the quiet of the still-dark church Kate gazes at the far-away altar. It is decorated in the ornate, baroque style that Spaniards loved. The sanctuary lamp gleams steadily, suspended in a silver wheel above a side altar of the Virgin. She kneels, burying her face in her hands. Startled by the creak of a door, she looks up and sees an old man in a long black cassock shuffle in from a side entrance near the altar. With great effort he lights the six tall candles on either side of the altar. One by one the flames catch, flicker weakly, and then settle into a steady glowing flame. The old man works slowly, stopping often to cough, to adjust his robe. Finally, he heads down the aisle, swinging a brass circlet of keys at his side. Kate waits for him to notice her, and tries to think what she will say. But with a great rasping of sliding bolts and squeaking of wood he unlocks the wooden doors, and for an instant the strong morning sun illuminates millions of dust motes in the air.
One by one people enter. Thin, elegant ladies in black mantillas, women with babies on their backs, a few businessmen, all cross themselves on the threshold and head for a statue to light a candle or whisper prayers to their favorite among God’s saints. Mass would begin soon, she thinks; she better leave before the priest notices her, an out-of-place American nun.
Kate genuflects quickly and steps out into the freshness of the morning, her mouth dry and stale, her body stiff from the hard bench she slept on. She follows two women carrying baskets down a side street and soon comes to the open-air market. She buys two hard rolls, a banana, and a cup of coffee, and then sits on a bench in a nearby square to eat her breakfast. Carefully she folds the precious soles Peter has left her and tucks them securely in the deep pocket sewn into the skirt of her habit.
After her breakfast she rinses her mouth in the fountain nearby. The water, smelling of copper, has a metallic taste. Uncertain what to do now, she looks around the square and notices a bus rumbling by, covered with dust, packed with campesinos. It must have just come in from the mountains. She stops a group of schoolboys, their brown packs strapped to their backs. They are dressed in the short white coverall jackets worn by public-school children.
“Con permiso, niños. Me pueden dirigir a la estación de autobus?”
“Oh yes, madre.” They grin, obviously happy to use their hard-won English. “The bus is over there. Yes, over there,” they point excitedly to the far corner of the plaza.
“Thank you,” she smiles, not wanting to leave these boys with ruddy faces and dark, shining eyes.
“Yourrr welcome,” they shout in chorus. They make Kate homesick. They remind Kate of her old neighborhood and the kids of St. Roch’s. How in the world has she landed here? She is Kate O’Neill, Tim and Mary’s daughter. She quickens her pace and holds up her head as if she knows where she is going.
As Kate rounds the corner of the square she sees the bus station, teeming with families, the women swaying in their wide skirts, carrying bundles easily with their babies tucked neatly in the scarlet-and-tangerine and green-and-yellow shawls slung around their backs. With small knitted caps tied firmly under their chins, the babies stare wide-eyed at the commotion around them. There are middle-class businessmen, schoolteachers, and across the room, a tall, thin young man with long hair tied back in a ponytail, dressed in jeans and sandals. He must be Peace Corps, Kate thinks, as he nods unsmilingly at her.
She stares at the blackboard with the destinations and times written in chalk. She could go east to Vitor, then north to Nazca, Ica, Pisco, Chilca, Callao, and finally Lima. Or she could head west, back into the highlands.
She steps up to the cashier’s window and asks for a ticket to Lima. The thin, mustachioed man looks up when he hears her American accent.
“Ida y vuelta?” he asks.
“Ida, no más,” she answers faintly. One way. She would not be returning. She counts out the soles carefully, and slips the now much smaller roll deep in the pocket of her habit. She looks around for the bathroom, hoping her period has not begun. In the grimy stall she is reassured for now. She splashes water on her face and scrubs her hands. She doesn’t dare drink this water.
She takes a seat next to an Aymara family. The husband moves down the long bench to make room. The children gaze at her and whisper something in Aymara to their mother. Both the woman and her husband laugh, and the man whispers to Kate, “The children say you are una muñeca, with blue eyes.” Kate laughs.
Finally, at nine thirty, the bus for Lima pulls up in front of the station, half full of passengers from the Altiplano. Shouting over the crowd, the driver herds the waiting passengers toward the bus, and they surge forward, clutching parcels and boxes. Kate, without baggage, arrives first and takes the third seat on the right behind the driver. Two women get on the bus chattering in high-pitched voices, giggling and swaying down the aisle, and Kate realizes they have been drinking. She is surprised, for in the mountains the women are serious and dignified, even when their men are falling down drunk at a carnival. One wide woman in a bowler hat squeezes in next to Kate, plumps herself down with a great sigh, and arranges her many parcels beneath
the seat. By the time the bus pulls out of the courtyard, the woman is asleep.
Kate stares out the window at the elegant neighborhood the bus is passing through. They travel down a wide, tree-shaded street, on both sides of which are high walls with massive wooden gates. Once in a while Kate glimpses a villa, its white walls gleaming in the sun, scarlet bougainvillea spilling over wrought-iron balconies. Kate hasn’t seen this part of Peru, the world of great wealth, in which, she imagines, sons were sent to Brown and daughters to Vassar, and women shopped in Miami, Paris, and New York, and men deposited their money in Swiss banks, safe from the dangerous currents of Peruvian politics. Kate has heard Tom and the other priests talk about privileged children, products of exclusive schools run by the Jesuits and the Religious of the Sacred Heart. Surely they had been exposed to the teachings of the Church on social justice, but the consciences of many of the rich remained serenely undisturbed by their fine Catholic educations. No wonder many missionaries followed with great interest Che Guevara’s recent attempt to arouse the Bolivian peasants to join the struggle for change.
She remembers how one Sunday Tom had read out the gospel of St. Matthew to the impassive faces of their small congregation, with a handful of middle-class families sitting in the front at Santa Catalina. “‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and did nothing for you?’ And he will answer, ‘I tell you this: anything you did not do for one of these however humble, you did not do for me.’ And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
The engine groans in low gear as they climb the final mountain range before descending to the coast and the Pan-American highway that leads north to the capital. Suddenly Kate hears the brakes grind, and the driver, swearing slowly and methodically under his breath, stops the bus. When Kate notices a line of soldiers stretched across the highway, she thinks there must have been an accident. Then she hears a few people mutter, “Contrabando,” and she realizes this is a blockade to search for smuggled goods. According to Father Jack, the border patrol at Desaguadero between Peru and Bolivia is notoriously sloppy as well as greedy; Bolivian goods were constantly being smuggled in and traded at the extensive black market in Lima.
The driver leaps from his seat and flings open the door. He is met by two serious young soldiers who demand his papers, oblivious to his strenuous complaints. Then one of the soldiers boards the bus. Stooping a little as he peers in, he barks the orders: all Peruvian citizens are to get off the bus with their baggage and have their papers ready to be inspected. Kate feels her throat go dry and she sits very still, remembering her passport in the drawer of her desk in Juliaca. She glances at the Peace Corps worker who is pulling his papers from his knapsack. Suddenly the woman next to Kate wakes. She leans over Kate to peer out the window at the soldiers, and her breath reeks of chicha, warm and intimate on Kate’s face. Swiftly she bends down to a small bundle at her feet and slides it under Kate’s seat.
She speaks directly to Kate for the first time, her face smooth and brown and untroubled. “Madrecita, por favor, ayúdame. Guard these things for me. The soldiers will not search you, for you are a foreigner.” In a graceful motion, surprising in one her size, she hoists the other bags on her back. By the time Kate starts to protest, the woman is already down the steps of the bus.
Kate bends down and unwraps the package enough to see twelve bottles of Bolivian beer. She straightens up and keeps her eyes fixed on the cut-out picture of the Sacred Heart that the conductor has tacked up over the steering wheel. Trying to look as if she is deep in prayer, Kate reflects that if ever she needed to pray it is now, for she has become not only a fugitive but a smuggler. Oh God! How her father would enjoy this story—if she lived to tell it. The officers—finished with the Peruvians—are talking and gesturing toward the bus with the two lone Americans still on it.
In a few minutes another officer of the Guardia Civil boards the bus and heads straight for the Peace Corps worker. Short, with shiny straight black hair and intense dark eyes, the officer asks to see his passport. His voice is polite but cold. After a careful inspection, he asks the American to stand up and open his bags for a “routine check.” The Peace Corps worker does as he is asked and even tries a few friendly words to defuse the tension, but the officer is businesslike, unsmiling. Watching his compact, powerful body, Kate feels a prickle on the back of her neck.
He turns to her next, removing his hat. “Por favor, señorita, su pasaporte.” It is a demand, not a request. Kate knows that by calling her señorita he is deliberately ignoring the fact that she is a nun. This makes her apprehensive. His accent is not that of the Altiplano, but she hasn’t been in Peru long enough to place it.
“I don’t have it with me, officer. Since I was traveling within the country, I didn’t think I would need it. I am Sister Mary Katherine from the Dominican nuns in Juliaca.”
“Stand up, please.” His eyes slide down her body in the practiced, almost involuntary way of Latin men, and then she notices him staring at the smudged dirt on the front of her white scapular. He gestures toward the brown paper package, half hidden by her long skirt. “What’s in the bag?”
Kate freezes. If she tells the truth she will implicate the woman. But how can she explain twelve bottles of Bolivian beer?
“The package isn’t mine. I think there’s beer in it.”
The officer’s eyes are expressionless. “Then to whom does this package belong?” he asks in Spanish with exaggerated politeness.
Kate looks directly into eyes almost on a level with her own. “I don’t know,” she says evenly, trying to keep a tremor out of her voice.
At that he wheels around and barks out a command, all pretense of politeness gone. “Follow me. We’re taking you in for questioning.” Then he stops and comes back to the seat where she still stands, unable to move. With a lithe movement he reaches down and picks up the package, holding it away from his body as if it were garbage.
Kate follows him then, and as she steps off the bus into the harsh sun the people move back in silence as the officer strides to his jeep. He motions for her to get in the back, and then quietly gives orders to his men. Another soldier hops into the driver’s seat, and in a moment they are speeding down the treacherous mountain road, back toward Arequipa.
As in a dream, Kate watches the deep blue of the mountains as they appear and disappear above the hairpin turns in the road. They drive fast, the driver honking his horn at each curve to warn any approaching car or truck. By now it is almost noon, and the sun directly overhead is hot. Descending through shade and sun, the winding curves, Kate feels nausea rise in her. Finally they come to a tin hut with a Peruvian flag, slightly faded, hanging over the door at an angle. Two mangy black dogs drowse in the dirt.
While the driver helps Kate out, his superior is already striding toward the first building. As Kate and the driver enter the hut, the officer is speaking gruffly to a heavy soldier who is eating a plate of sausage and rice, a bottle of beer at his elbow, at the only desk in the small front room. The soldier wipes his mouth and stands up.
The officer motions for Kate to follow him. She enters a large room with several windows looking upon jagged mountains. Surprised by the clean, orderly air of the place, Kate tries not to stare. Books on crude, homemade bookshelves line the walls from top to bottom. A few pieces of pottery adorn the shelves, and leaning against one wall on a low bookcase is a framed print of Diego Rivera’s The Flower Seller. Kate recognizes it because she had once cut this same picture out of a calendar and hung it on the wall of her sixth-grade classroom at St. Rita’s. She stands by the lieutenant’s desk watching him as he moves restlessly around the room, loosening his collar and rolling up his sleeves. He seems almost to have forgotten her when he suddenly goes to the door and asks the man in the next room to bring them two bottles of Orange Crush. Finally he tells Kate to sit down. He sits in his desk chair, facing her.
“I am Lie
utenant Roberto Vargas, in charge of a small patrol here that does routine checks on buses and trucks for smuggling. However, it is very seldom that I encounter such an interesting case as I have today.” For the first time his face relaxes and a glint of humor shines in his eyes. But his face turns serious, and he speaks in slow, clear Spanish as if she were a child. “I am afraid, reverend sister, that there is something very irregular about your situation. Perhaps you would like to clarify everything for me?”
Hesitating, Kate tries to sift through the facts; she’d tell him just enough truth but not too much. His eyes focus intently on her face, and Kate struggles to breathe in the stifling room.
“First of all,” she begins, “the beer beneath my seat wasn’t mine. It was put there by someone sitting next to me, and I did not want to cause her trouble.” She watches him to see if he accepts this. His face remains impassive.
“Go on,” he nods.
“I left Juliaca rather suddenly,” Kate says in halting Spanish. “I had some problems and I needed to get away for a little while. So I hitched a ride to Arequipa.”
“With whom?” Vargas watches her.
“With an Englishman from Cambridge University, Peter Grinnell.”
Vargas’s eyes widen, and he asks her to spell the name for him, writing it down carefully on a scrap of paper. “So where is this Englishman now?” Vargas looks faintly incredulous.
“I . . . I don’t know. He was staying on in Arequipa for a few days, and then going back to England for vacation.”
A knock on the door, and the fat sergeant with pockmarked skin brings in two Orange Crushes and two cloudy drinking glasses. Glancing insolently at Kate, he puts the sodas on the desk in front of his superior, and adjusts the pistol hanging carelessly from a belt around his bulging middle.
“Algo más, teniente?”
Toward That Which is Beautiful Page 11
