Kavanagh stared at her for a moment, feeling put off, yes—but also struck again by her erudition. The woman knew so much more about this world than he did, and yet this world was his. He had come here from the Bishop’s office, like a pigeon hurtling its way home. Unlike the day before, when it had seemed only alien, the faux monastery today was an accidental refuge.
He crossed to the stone bench and took a place a couple of yards away from her. He put his breviary down. “What a stupid thing I just said. Sometimes I amaze myself.” He dared to look at her, and was surprised to see that, as she returned his gaze, she seemed not cold, as before, but kind.
She said, “What stupid thing?”
Perhaps it was her lush accent that made her seem kind.
“About conscience,” he explained. He was afraid that she’d taken his “Aw shucks” attempt at self-mockery literally. “My knowing everything about conscience. The truth is, I know very little.”
“That cannot be true, Father.”
Kavanagh exhaled a little laugh. “No. You’re right. But if I knew everything, I wouldn’t have come back here today. I’ve been thrown for a loop.” He stopped himself. He could not describe what had happened on the avenue. He said only, “I was downtown at the Cathedral. Or, rather, the Chancery. Seeing the boss.”
“The Cardinal.”
“No. The Vicar.” He laughed. “A lowly parish priest is not important enough to have business with Cardinal Spellman. Coming back to Inwood, I don’t think I actually decided to return here. I just did. Got off the subway one stop early, and headed into the park. Next thing I know, here I am. If I’ve intruded on you again, it’s not deliberate.” Even as Kavanagh said this, he realized it was untrue. Only partly conscious, perhaps, but he had come here on purpose—for this stranger.
But his headache clawed at his sinuses. The pain—was that what was making him nuts?
“Not ‘intrusion,’ Father. I am here for the public.”
“But I interrupted your lunch break.”
By raising her book slightly, she conveyed that her break was given over to reading, not eating.
Kavanagh eyed the thin, worn leather volume. She had been carrying it yesterday. He touched his breviary, and repeated what she had said: “You have your book. I have mine.” His question was implied: What are you reading?
As if in answer, she drew the book flat to her chest, concealing it.
“Le Moyen ge?” he asked. “Is that the phrase?”
“Très bon, mon père. Yes. Des lettres. Some letters.”
“So you’re studying.”
“Not precisely.” She shrugged. “I know these letters very well. My book, peut-être, is like your book. A friend.”
“Something to carry,” Kavanagh said, and picked up the breviary, letting its soft leather covers flap, to add offhandedly, “a priest’s swagger stick.”
“A what?”
“Swagger stick. What a Marine Corps colonel carries.”
“Ah, baton. The marshals of France carry the baton. For fending off peasants, I believe.”
Kavanagh gestured with the book. “In public, one can indeed fend off with this thing, burying one’s face in it, pretending to pray. I do it all the time.”
“I doubt that, Father. You do not pretend. Nor do you fend off.”
“Actually, I’m rarely this forward. My headache, for example. Normally, I would never refer to it.”
She lifted her shoulders, pleasantly. “Revelations of the Chapter House.”
Kavanagh looked around: the rough stone, the iron sconces and wall sculptures, the triptych Golgotha, which gave as much prominence to the two thieves as to the crucified Lord.
As if her remark had been the Abbot’s call to examen conscientiae, he let his gaze settle on the floor. What, he wondered suddenly, am I doing here?
Kavanagh sensed her falling into silence, too. Magnum silentium, she had said the day before, a phrase he had not used himself in years.
When the Great Silence fell each night in the seminary, students were supposed to be in their rooms, with the doors closed. One time, after the forbidden hour, someone had rapped softly on his door, and the bolt of alarm Kavanagh had felt at the sound came back to him now. When he’d opened the door, there was Runner, looking abashed. A major term paper was due the next morning, and he was stumped. He had his notebook. He needed help. Kavanagh had let him into his room briefly, but had been so obviously worried by the infractions they were committing—not only breaking the silence, but also the threshold rule—that Runner had hustled away, leaving Kavanagh feeling foolish and guilty.
He pushed the memory away, but the feeling stayed. He leaned forward to lower his head into his hands, not out of embarrassment that he had shown up here, or perplexity at why, although he felt both, but simply because the pressure at his temples threatened to burst.
“Jesus, Runner—it’s the Great Silence, what the hell!”
With poised fingers, he pushed back against his pulsing veins, but now what he recalled were those moments on Madison Avenue, a little while ago. “Non credo!” Not a stroke, okay. But something…something…What is happening to me?
Though he was obsessed with himself just then, Kavanagh was aware of it when the woman stood and walked away, her footfalls fading softly as she crossed the stone floor, out into the arcade, to the building beyond.
And that was that, he thought. She had done to him a version of what he had done to Bishop Donovan—just walking out. She had sensed his trouble, and wanted no part of it. But what was his trouble?
“Here, Father.”
He looked up. She’d returned without his hearing, and was standing before him with a glass of water in one hand and, in the other, a pair of white pills. Her book was wedged between her elbow and her side.
“Aspirin,” she said.
Her fingers struck him again, long and spindlelike. The white of the pills emphasized the pallor of the skin that stretched tightly across her palm. The cuff of her white sleeve was tightly fastened—not buttoned, Kavanagh saw now, but gathered at her wrist with an elastic band.
He took the pills, and then the water. “Thank you, miss. You’re very kind.”
“I hope it helps.”
“It helps already.”
They were quiet for a moment, not moving. Finally, the woman said, “ ‘Thrown for a loop.’ A strange expression.”
“A stranger feeling,” he said, surprised that she’d steered back to his admission. “Unsettled,” he said. “Caught off guard. What would you say in French?”
“Pris au dépourvu, bouleversé, perhaps. Peut-être.”
“Yesterday,” he said slowly, “when I came here, it was because someone I knew well once, but hadn’t seen in years…he came to the early-morning Mass. He knelt for Communion, but then wouldn’t receive the Host. He gave me the strangest look, then left. I followed him. I saw him come into the park. So then, later, I did, too. I never found him. Then it started to rain. I ducked in here.”
“And we met.”
“Yes. And now I find myself starting to explain…”
“You started to explain yesterday.”
“And you walked away.”
Standing before him, she had her arms folded now, like a woman to whom some accounting was due. She asked, “Why did you come back?”
“Because of something else that happened, just this morning. In my meeting with the Bishop.” He hesitated. He didn’t want her thinking he’d returned because of her. He raised his eyebrows, indicating the Chapter House, the arcade, the Cloister, all of it. “I guess I needed some quiet in which to collect myself.”
“Yes. The Cloister is good for that.” With a glance back toward the arcade, she said, “At the front desk, a group is waiting. It is time for my tour.”
“Of course,” Kavanagh said, and he felt heat rush into his face. Again. The madness of his being here. The rudeness.
“ ‘Memory palace,’ ” she said, with a sweep of he
r hand around the Chapter House. “Your phrase. Perhaps I will use that in my little talk. May I?”
Kavanagh laughed, and then so did she, which prompted him to say, “That fellow from my past showing up like that yesterday opened memories I haven’t thought of in…” His voice trailed off.
“He is what threw you ‘for a loop.’ ”
“Right.”
“Which you mention to me because you will not see me again.”
“And the same for you, right? You’re being nice to me because I am a museum visitor, not a monk in the Chapter House, reviewing the Rule, accusing himself.”
“Nice?” She shook her head. “Aspirin is not so much.” The skin at her cheeks was tinged with pink. She, too, was blushing. With the glass in her one hand, she hugged herself, the book to her chest.
“Unless,” he said quietly, “there is another time, another place.”
She took a step back. “Impossible.” She muttered the word in French, and he understood it. She turned and walked quickly away.
Kavanagh watched her go, his foolishness confirmed. He wanted out of the place as quickly as possible, but forced himself to wait a moment. Then he, too, left.
In the central hall, which opened into the several separate cloisters, but also into the staircase spiraling down to the entrance foyer, Rachel Vedette was greeting the ladies of the tour group, five of them. Her back was to Kavanagh, which relieved him, and he made for the stairwell, expecting not to encounter her again. He took the stairs at a clip.
By the time he reached the desk at the main entrance, he was aware that someone was coming after him, but he did not stop. He went past the prim attendant without looking at her. The cold air outside surprised him, as did the bright light.
“Father,” she called.
But he kept going. He’d been dragged across a threshold into a forbidden room, and was now trying to crawl out of it again.
“Father!”
He stopped, and turned. She was there, behind him. Before, she had seemed collected, reserved—but no more. He recognized in her expression a version of the visceral impulsiveness that had seized him.
She gestured with her book, and said, “This is the story of Abelard, and the letters he exchanged with Héloïse. Today, earlier…already, before you came…they made me think of you.”
“Abelard and Héloïse, the monk and nun?”
“Yes. Although ‘monk and nun’ hardly defines it. She was the greatest abbess of the age. He was the greatest scholar. I know their words by heart, yet I still long to understand….” She could not finish.
“I hardly know them. Abelard was a hedonist, right? Not in the calendar of saints. Not in the canonical syllabus.”
“To say that Abelard was a hedonist is…you say…simpliste.”
“Simplistic.”
“He was the enemy of Bernard of Clairvaux, but…”
“Bernard we studied,” he said. “Saint Bernard. Very canonical.”
“But of course. Bernard was the victor. Victors define the syllabus. Those defeated are cast aside. But Abelard…” She hesitated again, clumsily, and he thought it was because their exchange had become so stilted, academic almost. What is going on?
But then, having centered herself, she continued, “There is religious grandeur in Abelard. Hedonism had nothing to do with it. That is the ancient slander. Bernard’s slander.”
Kavanagh said, “I thought Abelard and Héloïse stood convicted by their love affair.”
“Which was the least of it. Well, perhaps not for Héloïse.” She smiled slyly. “Héloïse is another matter.” She pressed the book against herself, conveying its preciousness. “These letters show a great contest between two people, but also a contest of the two people against the whole rest of their age. They are humanists. The first humanists. But also mystics. The two things feed each other.”
“I never heard that said.”
“Héloïse has a deep attachment to the Holy”—the docent was speaking now in a rush of pent-up expression, as if a dam had burst inside her—“but also a savage indignation toward God. Abelard refuses to match her in that, but, because of her, he finds it possible to stand against the whole world—for the world. For the human, and for the holy—both! How was that? What sort of faith makes that possible? I have never discussed this with a priest.”
“An ignorant priest.”
“But a priest! It’s why I have…” With a toss of her hands, she conveyed, why I have so foolishly come after you. She cared nothing, clearly, about the odd impression she was making. She was speaking like an unleashed person who had no choice but, yes, to speak. She said, “You live in their world of reference, no? The vocation? The call from God? Readiness to stake everything on the absolute. That is what compels me about them, but also mystifies me. I cannot let go of them, but neither can I…understand.” Now her words, suddenly, began to come more slowly. “There is something essential that I miss…because…I…I do not believe in God.” That she had made such an admission, Kavanagh saw, surprised her utterly. She underscored it with stern gravity, but also with palpable alarm.
Kavanagh thought back to his own moment on Madison Avenue. “Non credo!” What the hell was that? Then he thought of Bishop Donovan, and their sentimental exchange: “ ‘To daily go from men to God…to return from God to men, bringing pardon and hope…’ ” What was it the Bishop had said? “Not a bad vocation, that.”
The woman pointed down the road, a serpentine curl through the overarching, bare November trees. She said, “There is a coffee shop halfway to the subway. I stop there sometimes, on my way home. Coffee keeps me alive.”
“What time?”
“A bit after four o’clock.”
Kavanagh could bring himself to do nothing more than nod.
Rachel Vedette turned and hurried back to the museum.
He watched her go, at first taking in the way her legs moved inside her long swirling skirt. Then he looked away, as a phrase popped into his aching head: “custody of the eyes.”
—
THAT AFTERNOON, in his room at the rectory, Kavanagh had changed his mind twice before deciding, after all, to wear the Roman collar. He’d thought of going in his windbreaker, because that was how he’d first met her, but he knew now that the collar—his “world of reference”—defined her interest. He made the uniform complete by bringing his breviary, although, in leaving his room, he’d thought also to bring the Simone Weil book. But no. He left behind the French Jew’s exchange of letters with a priest.
Though he had never been in the coffee shop, he’d been aware of it, a refurbished stone-and-timber Tudor cottage, the sort of little structure that a groundskeeper would have occupied in a more feudal age. Come to think of it, that’s probably what it had been on the nineteenth-century robber-baron estate that Rockefeller would have requisitioned for his monastic museum folly. Inside, the place was linoleum tiles, Formica tables, glass-and-chrome sugar dispensers, tall-fold napkin holders, and round tin ashtrays. Kavanagh, the lone customer, took a table by the window, overlooking the road that cut through the hilly, wooded Fort Tryon Park. He lit a cigarette.
He saw her coming, but did not recognize her at first, so dramatically was her look altered by what she was wearing—a flowing black cape and a tight-fitting black turban. As she drew closer, he saw how the headdress pulled her brows down over the dark pool of her eyes, a slant that gave her face a hint of the East he had not seen before.
When she entered, he stood, cigarette in hand. She barely looked at him as she took a chair, on the opposite side of the small table. Before they spoke, a waitress appeared from behind the large refrigerated case that displayed pies and preset bowls of pudding. The waitress was a stout woman, wearing a pencil in the bun of her hair behind the pointed white headpiece. “Hiya, Father,” she said happily, and even in that brisk greeting, the harp of her brogue played itself. “What’ll it be? It’s on the house.” She said this without a glance at Rachel Vedette. K
avanagh exchanged rote pleasantries with the waitress, and he ordered two coffees.
While they waited, Kavanagh offered his cigarette pack. Miss Vedette took one and leaned forward for his light. They took refuge, each of them, in the business of smoking.
The waitress returned with the coffees, then disappeared again.
Miss Vedette said, “She serves me coffee most afternoons. She has never greeted me. I believe she has never seen me.”
“Don’t be offended. She didn’t see me, either.” Kavanagh lodged his cigarette between his lips and flicked his celluloid collar. He knew full well that this eccentric Frenchwoman, too, was seeing only that.
Rachel put her book on the table, next to his. Kavanagh extended his hand. “May I?”
She nodded.
He picked the volume up. The worn leather cover was smooth to the touch. The pages were edged with faded gold leaf. He opened the book to the title page: Historia Calamitatum: Heloissae et Abaelardi Epistolae. He turned the page. “It’s in Latin,” he said, showing surprise.
“Of course.”
“But…Paris…I would have thought French.”
“Early twelfth century, Father. French did not exist quite yet. The earliest chanson de geste came just a bit later. Educated people would have written to each other in Latin.”
“And you know the language?”
“I attended the lycée classique. Latin was routine.”
“And your English?”
“My English came later. It helped with my coming to America.”
He offered the book back to her. “Would you read something?”
“But as a priest you know Latin.”
“I know Church Latin. The Holy Office. The Mass. The Creed. Otherwise…” He shrugged, but, again, “Non credo!” popped into his mind.
“Thomas Aquinas?” she asked.
“Of course. Not so sure about Virgil.”
The Cloister Page 17
