The Cloister

by James Carroll

  Rachel quickly put the count of aged couples, mothers with toddlers, widows, and a few stooped old men, some with canes, at seventy or eighty. The terrazzo floor of the space was littered, she saw, with tiny black specks, and only as she crushed them underfoot, with crackles, did she recognize the carcasses of flies. She pushed ahead, dragging her father, to claim their space with the toss of her coat and suitcase—a two-tiered bunk in the far corner of the room. She chose it for its relative isolation, hoping for distance from the general disorder, and for safety.

  Later, after a plump but dignified woman in a rumpled, once-stylish tweed suit helped them negotiate the unswabbed latrine, Rachel helped Saul into the lower bunk, a plank bed with a thin straw mattress and a single threadbare blanket. She removed his shoes, retrieved the cushioning pillow from her suitcase, and arranged it for him. She covered him. Then, discreetly preparing his needle, she injected him. She kissed his forehead. Almost at once, he was asleep.

  When he woke, she was sitting beside him, stooped under the upper bunk, and she told him part of what she had learned in her quick scouting of their new quarters. “This place,” she whispered, “was built to be a modern planned city, apartment towers and businesses. The war came before it was finished. When the Germans moved in, they used it as a barracks; then for British prisoners. Now us.” She smiled, as if the irony of their place in this sequence pleased her.

  What she was not telling her father was that, on the fifth floor of this very block, two flights up, she had found a dispensary, which was still in the process of being assembled. That the medical unit, a long trek up a nasty stairwell, would hardly be accessible to the general population was a signal more of deliberate callousness than of bad planning. She had met the nervous young medic who was assigned as its clerk, and whose duties, he said, would include obtaining necessary medicines. She was in his presence only briefly. As she left the dispensary, she had pretended to stumble, brushed against him, and hurriedly moved away, but not before sensing his interest. She sensed, also, how his eyes followed her as she walked away.

  Her father, she saw, was listening carefully when she said, “We are less than twenty kilometers from Île Saint-Louis, a place called Drancy, in the district of Seine Saint-Denis.”

  He stirred. “Ah! Saint-Denis. So named because of the monastery.” He half sat up, clutching her sleeve. “His monastery.”

  “Whose?” Rachel asked.

  “Peter Abelard’s,” her father insisted. “Peter Abelard’s! After the catastrophe at Notre-Dame, Benveniste brought him here! Benveniste saved his life by bringing him to the monks of Saint-Denis.”

  “A good omen for us, then, Father,” Rachel said. “We, too, will be saved at Saint-Denis.”

  Saul let his head fall back on the mattress. Unconsciously, he reached to adjust his yarmulke, then remembered. He removed the skullcap to look at it, the smudges of mud. He kissed it, then placed it beside his pillow.

  —

  “HELLO.”

  Rachel looked up from her book. A man was standing only yards from her, in the center of the Chapter House. She saw at once, from his getup, that he was a priest. Then she realized it was the man from the day before, only now dressed in his black suit and Roman collar. As before, his breviary was under his arm. His other book—Simone Weil?—was gone. How long had he been positioned there? “Good day, Father,” she said quietly.

  “I was just coming back to Inwood from downtown,” he said, “and I thought I’d stop in to my new memory palace.” He grinned, but unconvincingly.

  Rachel sensed an edge of sadness in him. Or was that her own projection, an imposition on a passerby of the desolation he had interrupted? Coming back to herself, she retrieved the sensations of her actual situation: the queasiness in her belly; the cold beneath her buttocks from the stone bench on which she’d been seated through her lunch hour; the chill in her shoulders from the stone wall. That her stomach was queasy might have been a symptom of the culprit-angst that had seized her years before, and never yielded, but, really, it was only an effect of not having eaten. She never ate during the day. Hunger was so much a part of her normal state that, apart from an arid intestinal hollowness, she did not feel it.

  “The Cloisters,” he said, casting his eyes about. “I’m embarrassed to have ignored this place all these years.”

  “I am glad for you, Father, that you found the museum. Glad also for us.” She spoke formally. Her mind was still partly tethered to that room crowded with tiered plank beds; its air of fear and despair; the metallic gray wash that, in her recall, always veiled the scene like an antique etching of Dante’s netherworld. Only by a concerted act of will was she able to return here, a transition through time and space that, whenever she accomplished it, marked her as a woman still capable of hope. To come back from memory was, in some way, to believe that its injury could be left behind. Yet whenever her current life took precedence over the past—the mundane over the terrible, strangers over Papa—she had, first, to shake herself loose from shame.

  She forced herself to focus on the figure before her. That this New York priest was an altogether impressive-looking man surprised her. Yesterday, in his plaid shirt and windbreaker, he’d seemed smaller, uncertain. Now he appeared as a man of authority. His black suit emphasized the sharp black of his hair, a lock of which hung as a ringlet on his forehead, an accident. Yesterday his hair had been matted from the rain.

  “Yes. I’m glad, too,” he said absently, still glancing here and there. He did seem somewhat awed, but he said only, “I’ve been thinking about this place since yesterday. The surprise it was. Hard to explain, but a feeling from the past had brought me here, and then, lo and behold, the past is the whole point. What you said about being consoled, the museum as a sanctuary.”

  “That sounds pompous. Did I say that?”

  “Something like it.”

  “ ‘Memory palace’? Surely, I did not say that.”

  He smiled, but again thinly. A grimace, really. “No, I guess I did,” he said. He made as if to join her on the bench, then stopped himself, saying, “I have the feeling I owe you an apology, but I’m not sure why.”

  “Apology? That is not true, Father. For one thing, I am the one who rudely walked away.”

  “Because I was about to overstep? Am I overstepping now?”

  “You tell me.”

  He turned to watch a pair of museumgoers pass by, guidebooks in hand. Then he faced her again. “I’d had an odd experience yesterday morning, at Good Shepherd. Somehow, it brought me here. And then you. You made me think of Simone Weil, as I said.”

  “Because Simone Weil, also, was odd?” Rachel Vedette heard the harsh note in her question, and of course, as before, she’d corrected his mispronunciation of the philosopher’s name—“vey” instead of “wile.” She did not understand why this priest was grating on her. Yet his forwardness was forced, and came as a kind of plea.

  Harsh note? He did not seem to hear it that way. He said, “She challenged the faith of the Church—not faith in Christ, but in itself. Her refusal to be baptized called the whole thing into question. I think that’s why we can’t shake her. We Catholics, I mean. I’m not sure about other people.”

  “Like Jews.”

  “No. I meant the others who go on about her, the magazine writers, the New York intellectuals.”

  “Jews.”

  The priest took a while to answer, long enough for Rachel Vedette to regret how she was reacting to him. Standing before her as he was, he seemed almost a supplicant, which made him, perhaps, a bit resentful. She wished that she’d invited him to sit, but it seemed too late for that. They’d fallen into the rhythm of debaters—not at all the way she normally responded, especially to museum visitors whose claim on her deference was absolute. Something else was at work.

  He said, “I’ll admit that your being Jewish did strike me…struck me as, well, yes, odd. But that’s because of where we are, where you are. Given what this place once wa
s, a Catholic monastery.” Kavanagh let his eyes drift to the girdered glass canopy that stretched above the Cloister garden. “It’s different in here,” he said, “when the sun is shining.” Lifting his book, he gestured with it, sweeping across the light-splashed quadrangle.

  She clutched her own book to her chest. “Do you add that thought to avoid talking about my being a Jewess?”

  His head jolted at her blunt question. “I thought that was an offensive word.”

  She shook her head no. “Jewess,” she repeated. Shifting away from debate style, she struck her docent tone, the one asserting that she was in possession of explanations. “The word ‘Jewess’ is, how do you say, archaic in English. Not so in French. Juif. Juive.” She shrugged. “The offense is in the intention. In your language, leaving ‘Jewess’ aside, the very word ‘Jew’ can be offensive.”

  “How?”

  She shrugged again. “ ‘Jew lawyer.’ ‘Jew down.’ ”

  “Is it different in French?”

  “In French there is blood on the word, buckets of blood.”

  Kavanagh hesitated. “I thought…German.”

  “French also. ‘Youde’ is an insulte raciale. But, Father…?”

  “Kavanagh.”

  “Father Kavanagh, how quickly we came to this thicket. ‘Complications of being Jewish,’ you said yesterday. Is this what you meant?”

  “No. Not at all. I meant nothing. But I’m surprised you remember the phrase I used.”

  Rachel, too, was surprised—that these after-impressions of their first encounter had lingered. As if to change the mood, she shifted her weight on the bench, adjusting her long skirt, crossing one leg over the other, laying her book to the side. The priest, even standing, unconsciously imitated her, letting a nearby column take half his weight. He put his book down on the ledge. His pose became more casual, hands in his pockets. If she had not thought of him since the day before, she recognized now, neither had she quite dispelled the uneasiness he had stirred in her—uneasiness she was fending off by being uncharacteristically brisk and curt.

  She had few interactions with men, which was, in fact, a consequence of how she’d arranged her life. Except for the Director, whose main office was downtown, her colleagues at The Cloisters were women, as were most of those museumgoers who showed up for her little tours. Was it also, though, that to her, inevitably, a priest was in a category apart? A man, yes, but not a man to be taken as such.

  Which, it now occurred to her, was just the point. Simone Weil’s priest, the epistolary interlocutor in her most famous book, was apparently the only man she ever trusted—and wouldn’t that have been for the obvious reason? Rachel Vedette realized that this American priest, just by pairing her with the self-punishing French misanthrope, had set this current of negative energy flowing. But was that his fault?

  If she was bugged by something, so, apparently, was he. Instead of letting the subject go, he said, “It bothered me, what you said about Simone Weil’s anti-Semitism. I found myself repeating it to others.”

  “Why?” she asked. She was struck by his mispronunciation, again, but this time let it go, to add, “Anti-Semitism is a fact.”

  “I know that,” he said firmly. “As a Catholic, I am surrounded by it. I’m probably guilty of it.”

  “That, actually, is not the sentiment of an anti-Semite. But, Father, we have done the thing again. This is not the conversation of people passing one another in a museum. I promise you, I never discuss being Jewish here. It is never a subject.” At that, even she heard the relief in her voice. She could have said, Avoiding such subjects is why I came to America…why I live as a recluse…why no one knows anything about me.

  “So I do owe you an apology.” Kavanagh laughed. “I knew it. I knew it.”

  In saying this, he was so wholly ingenuous that, to Rachel’s amazement, she, too, laughed—laughed out loud.

  As a way of doggedly perfecting her English during her first year in New York, she had gone to the cinema every chance she got, and suddenly she realized that he reminded her of one of those Jimmy Stewart characters, which made her laugh harder. Yes, that’s it. Jimmy Stewart. Even the way he was leaning against the stone column, with his hands in his pockets, the fugitive curl so unselfconsciously on his forehead, that slightly doltish but compelling American masculinity, laced as it was with an essential innocence—a goodness.

  Aware of her own sudden sparkle, and wanting to explain it, she said, “When you say, ‘I knew it. I knew it,’ like that, you make me think of those fellows in movies, although in movies they add nonsense phrases like ‘By golly’ and ‘Gee whiz.’ ”

  Kavanagh welcomed her turn toward levity, and he matched it, saying, somewhat goofily, “Slang toss-aways designed to avoid taking the Lord’s name in vain.”

  “You are not serious.”

  “Sure I am. ‘By golly’ is ‘By God.’ ‘Gee whiz’ is ‘Jesus.’ ”

  At that, they both laughed again, harder, handing themselves over to the absurdity of such nonsense. And then, within a matter of moments, recovering themselves, they both fell awkwardly into silence. Rachel felt foolish, and sensed that he did, too.

  Seeking to swat the awkwardness away, she said, “In French, we just say ‘Mon Dieu’ and refuse to worry about it. You Americans are a nation of delicate conscience. We French know nothing about conscience.”

  When Rachel saw the priest’s expression display a moment’s confusion, she guessed that it disoriented him to think of her as French instead of as Jewish. Or had he made the switch? Not so long before, in Rachel’s world, the categories were mutually exclusive.

  But he knew no more of that contradiction than a Jimmy Stewart character would have. And, sure enough, with an air of “Aw shucks,” he said, “As a priest, of course, I know everything about conscience.”

  The statement was meant to be self-mocking, but it fell flat. The silence settled once more. He took his hands from his pockets and stood up straight, away from the column. He retrieved his breviary from the ledge, turned slightly toward the garden, and looked up. Clouds had crossed into the sky above the canopy, and a chill had returned to the space, which was neither outdoors nor fully in. Rachel, who almost never noticed the loop of Gregorian chant that ran endlessly in the Cloister air, heard it now—a choir of monks, of Catholic clergy, men like this one.

  “Yesterday,” she said slowly, “when I turned to walk away, you had indicated that you wanted to tell me something.”

  “Which was why you turned.”

  “Yes.”

  “You saw how I’d arrived here. Driven by the rain, half lost, strangely defenseless. Are you inviting me to return to that moment?”

  Very quietly, she answered, “Peut-être. Perhaps.” And immediately she asked herself why—Why am I doing this? But then she knew. Only fifteen minutes ago, in her memory, she had been cradling her father’s head in the lower bunk at Drancy, fully aware of what she would willingly do to give him a chance to live. Simone Weil’s self-loathing was nothing compared with hers. Now she said, “Is that not the magic of your Confessional box—unburdening oneself to a stranger?”

  “Golly,” Kavanagh said, but without a hint of mockery now. He looked directly at her, and she found it possible not to look away.

  They were still alone. She was still seated on the stone bench, against the stone wall of the Chapter House—the place of monastic self-abnegation. He was upright before her again, like a medieval supplicant, yes—presenting himself to the Abbot? But who was she to have such an association?

  He said, “Unburden? The truth is, yesterday the question was simple. Today it is vastly more complicated.”

  “ ‘Complications.’ ”

  “Miss, I wouldn’t have a clue how to speak of what…” He let the sentence hang. Finally, he went on, “But if I did, something tells me—forgive me—I could speak of it to you.”

  Rachel wanted to nod, or offer some gesture of acceptance. But she did not. She had no i
dea where the impulse to invite his confidence had come from, nor was it followed now by anything else like it. She was relieved—grateful—that he was incapable of saying more. If one confides…complications…in a stranger, does the stranger not become a friend? If a Confessional box offers immunity from unwanted intimacy, why not a Chapter House—the place, as she routinely explained to tourists, where, chapter by chapter, the violations of Saint Benedict’s rule were confessed, punished, and forgiven? She was a connoisseur of the setting, and it might indeed have made it possible for her to offer some gentle word, something personally noncommittal, but nothing came to mind.

  CHAPTER NINE

  At the end of a garden, the wall which I scaled by a ladder of ropes, I met my soul’s joy, my Héloïse. I shall not describe our transports, they were not long; for the first news Héloïse acquainted me with plunged me in a thousand distractions. A floating Delos was to be sought for, where she might be safely delivered of a burthen she began already to feel. Without losing much time in debating, I made her quit the Canon’s house.

  It was Peter Abelard, not Héloïse, who needed some sort of objective confirmation of her condition. By the time of this garden encounter, she had resolved the womanly riddle for herself, but what could he know of such things?

  The absence of blood flow from between her legs, groin-fire, nausea, painful tenderness and discharge in her breasts—Héloïse had come to the understanding with trepidation. She took to pressing against the folding door of her vulva the small purse of silk that held a sliver of the veil of the Virgin Mary. Her own mother had, in that way, applied the relic to herself during many confinements, but Héloïse shuddered to recall that, in the end, the holy object had done no good. Her mother’s eighth child had become impossibly lodged in the channel of her womb, and both the child—a boy—and her mother had died. Héloïse, as a girl of thirteen, had stood by, pressing damp cloths against her screaming mother’s forehead—until she cried out no more.