Black Narcissus

by Rumer Godden

  She did not answer at once; she was thinking, searching for something to say to him. Sister Briony looked at her and then cried: ‘Of course we like it. Even to look at it makes me homesick for our dear Mother House. The chapel there is bigger than this, Mr Dean, and very fine. Of course we can’t expect anything very grand here, and you mustn’t expect that either –’

  ‘That isn’t the point,’ he said. ‘Sister Clodagh knows I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘I suppose it’s not a very beautiful design,’ said Sister Clodagh slowly, ‘but I don’t see why you should mind that.’

  ‘Who’s talking about beauty?’ he asked scornfully. ‘It’s the whole idea that’s wrong. I haven’t many principles, Sister, but I don’t want to build a chapel like this. This isn’t a chapel. I’m not sure what I have in mind, but will you wait one day? Give me a day and I’ll show you what I mean. Give me that plan. I’ll take care of it, I promise you. I’m not going to touch it but it gives me some idea of what a chapel should not be. Hold the whole thing over till to-morrow. I’ll be back to-morrow afternoon.’

  ‘Of all the extraordinary men!’ breathed Sister Briony when he had gone. ‘Whatever will he say next? What do you think of him, Sister? Are you going to wait for him?’

  ‘What else can we do?’ she answered.

  ‘I don’t understand why he was so rude.’

  ‘He wasn’t rude,’ said Sister Clodagh. ‘He was serious.’

  The next day he did not wait to ring the bell and be announced, but came straight down the passage to the office, where Sister Clodagh and Sister Briony were going over the accounts. He pushed everything on her desk to one side and spread out his plan.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ he said, ‘I’ve got it exactly. This is how it should be. This is the chapel you should let me build for you here.’

  They looked at it, all three together for a very long time. ‘But it isn’t a chapel at all,’ said Sister Briony, raising a bewildered face. ‘It’s more like a temple.’

  ‘Of course it is,’ he said. ‘This is the East, you’re dealing with an Eastern people. Christ Himself was an Eastern Jew. Now listen. It should be built where the path comes out from the forest on to the hill, just above the Sunnyasi’s shrine.’

  ‘Not near that shrine,’ cried Sister Briony.

  ‘Yes. He’s taken very nearly the best place, but not quite the best; just above him is the highest place of all, the best place to see the snows. It’ll be made so that the path comes right through it, and the people are going and coming through it all daylong.’

  ‘People coming and going through it all day long?’ she echoed doubtfully. ‘What an extraordinary idea!’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, firmly. ‘Built there it would be above everything, above the valley and the clouds and the trees, the highest point of all; you’d always have to go up to it. You see, these are not exactly walls and not exactly pillars; they’re placed across the corners to break the wind and give shelter without shutting it off. On the outside I thought we should letter them with stories in the local writing, so as to make them interesting; but inside they should be plain white, and you should keep them very clean, because between them the clouds will show, and on fine days the snows. On the floor you should put straw; yes, I think that would be most satisfactory to kneel on and at the same time clean the people’s feet, and encourage them to rest there.

  ‘Here’s your altar, in the shelter of this pillar. I’ve made it a rock, like Peter, and the mica will shine in it to remind you how his faith shone in his strength. Your lamp and your flowers will be safe there from the wind. From outside at night, the lamp will make it look like a lighthouse in the dark, and from inside you’ll see stars in all four spaces. Look, your bell is under the dome; it will sound deep and rounded from there, not like the silly clapper you have now. You’ll find the birds will nest there as a matter of fact, and though that sounds nice it will be a damned nuisance, but perhaps it’ll be good for you, because you’ll continually have to clean and change your straw. You can console yourselves with thinking that it’s a chapel, not only for you, but for all life. All life,’ he repeated, reverently, ‘which is God.’

  There was an amazed silence. Sister Briony was looking uncertainly from him to Sister Clodagh, her mouth a little open; Sister Clodagh’s head was bent over the plan; and then behind them came a deep satisfied sigh. Behind them stood Sister Ruth with the letters for the depot in her hand.

  She did not look at Sister Clodagh but at Mr Dean. ‘That’s beautiful,’ she said, in her tense voice. ‘It’s more than beautiful, it’s holy. Oh, Mr Dean, that’s the chapel you should build for us here.’

  He looked uncomfortable at once, and took off his hat and began to rearrange the feathers in its band. Sister Briony rustled indignantly and Sister Clodagh said: ‘Thank you, Sister. Please give me the letters and go back to your work.’

  Sister Ruth did not move.

  ‘Sister, didn’t you hear me?’

  Sister Ruth said slowly: ‘I suppose you’re not going to build it. You’re going to miss a chance like this, of making something beautiful and – and fitting, just because it’s something new … something you haven’t thought of yourself. Oh, Sister, you can’t let it go.’

  ‘I don’t think we asked for your advice. This isn’t anything to do with you.’

  ‘Oh, isn’t it?’ cried Sister Ruth. ‘I’m as much a part of the Order as you are. It’s as much my chapel as yours, and I tell you it must be built. I’ll write to Reverend Mother myself. I’ll fight you with every breath in my body.’

  ‘Sister!’ Sister Clodagh’s voice cut across her coldly and sharply. ‘Control yourself. Remember where you are and who you’re talking to. I must apologize, Mr Dean, for such an exhibition of hysteria.’

  There was a snap of light in Sister Ruth’s eyes, she flung herself forward across the desk. ‘You –’ she cried, ‘you –’ Her hands groped in the papers and found the alabaster paper weight. Sister Briony screamed and Mr Dean caught her hand as she lifted it; she shrieked and opened her fingers, and it crashed to the floor. Red to his ears, Mr Dean stooped and picked it up, and she began to sob in sharp, terrified whimpers.

  ‘Take her out, Sister,’ said Sister Clodagh, who had not moved. ‘Thank you, Mr Dean.’

  Sister Ruth turned to the door, her hands hiding her face, and Sister Briony, stiff and outraged, went after her. Mr Dean put his hat on slowly and hitched up his shorts. He said deliberately: ‘They say your bark is worse than your bite; all the same I think it must be a pretty nasty bite.’

  She stared at him in surprise and saw that his whole face was dark and angry.

  ‘Taking charity as love,’ he bantered her, ‘you speak in a very uncharitable way. Almost like one of us heathen.’

  She was too surprised to defend herself and he stood and glared at her.

  ‘As you don’t like my plan, give it back to me,’ he said.

  ‘Why! are you angry about that?’ she said, light breaking on her face.

  ‘Don’t be foolish,’ he answered shortly.

  ‘I do like it, but you must see that it isn’t a chapel.’

  ‘It’s what a chapel should be,’ he shouted. ‘I didn’t think of it. I read through Matthew, Mark and Luke and John to find out for myself what Christ would have thought of your dadoes and your closed door. I didn’t find any mention of you anywhere. You and all your sacred mystery. A chapel shouldn’t be sacred, I tell you, Sister Clodagh, but as free and useful as the path I put it on.’ He stopped and looked at her, and the anger left his face. ‘There, it’s all right,’ he said. ‘I don’t expect you to understand me any more than I can understand you; but I respect you and that’s the difference between us. I’ll build you any sort of chapel that seems to you best.’

  He saw her eyes suddenly bright with tears, and she bent her head.

  He stood by the desk, awkwardly silent, and then he said: ‘Come, at least stick to your guns,’ and took his plan and tore it u
p.

  23

  The General sent six cherry trees for the garden; they came by a runner, their roots done up in a hard lump of clay.

  ‘I do not know if they will grow where you are,’ wrote the General, ‘but I should like you to make an experiment with them and try.’

  ‘I’ll take them out to Sister Philippa at once,’ said Sister Clodagh. ‘How pleased she’ll be.’

  Sister Philippa was not in the garden: Nima said she had not been out all day. ‘That’s very funny,’ said Sister Clodagh. ‘She must be busy in the laundry. Put these in the shed, Nima, and I’ll go and find her.’

  ‘More work,’ said Nima, morosely, but there was a gleam in his eye as he tapped the clay lumps with his finger-nail. ‘The Lemini will like these,’ he said.

  The laundry was an outhouse towards the stream and, as Sister Clodagh came round the bamboo clumps, she saw smoke pouring from its chimney, and from the stream came the smack, smack, smack, of wet clothes on the stones. As she opened the door she smelt charcoal and steam, steam streamed past her into the cold air, and the smell of irons on hot linen rose from the tables. The dhobi and Sister Philippa were both ironing, he in his white coat at the table, she pressing the elaborate folds of their wimples on a small board.

  ‘You’re very busy,’ said Sister Clodagh.

  ‘We’re behindhand again,’ said Sister Philippa tersely.

  ‘Can you spare a few minutes all the same? The General has sent us some cherry trees to try in the orchard. Come and look at them.’

  Sister Philippa put down her iron; for a minute it seemed that she was going to say something, then she followed Sister Clodagh.

  ‘They look like dead sticks, don’t they?’ said Sister Clodagh. ‘It’s hard to believe that all their roots are twisted up into that knot. Do you think that you’ll know what to do with them?’

  ‘Nima will know,’ answered Sister Philippa, in a curiously flat voice. ‘Where would you like him to put them?’

  They looked at her in surprise; she was not looking at the cherry trees but out through the door of the shed, and there was something fixed and hopeless in her face that made Sister Clodagh say: ‘Sister, what is it? What’s happened to you?’

  ‘I was going to ask if I might speak to you,’ said Sister Philippa.

  Nima stood the little trees carefully in a corner and dusted his hands on his knees and went out.

  ‘Tell me what’s wrong,’ said Sister Clodagh.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong. Sister, I want to be transferred.’

  ‘Transferred.’ In sheer surprise Sister Clodagh’s voice was shrill. For a minute she could say nothing else.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sister Philippa firmly. ‘I want you, if you will, to write and ask for my transfer at once.’

  Sister Clodagh could only look at her. She was still standing at the door looking out, her hands dropped limply at her sides and in the dark shed her face seemed very pale and set. In that resolute flat voice she said again: ‘If you will, at once.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I was becoming too fond of the place. I was too wrapped up in my work. I thought too much about it.’ Sister Clodagh noticed that she spoke in the past. ‘I had forgotten,’ she said.

  ‘Forgotten what?’

  ‘What I am.’

  ‘You mean –’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sister Philippa, ‘I am a religious. I had forgotten that. I was putting my work before my religious life. I was losing sight of God in it. I was losing the spirit of the Order. I’ve been thinking it over, you see,’ she said with a wry smile, ‘and I must go at once.’

  ‘I don’t see that,’ said Sister Clodagh, after a moment. ‘Now that you know and you’ve realized the danger, you needn’t go. Surely, now is the time to stay.’

  ‘I daren’t stay.’

  ‘Isn’t it a pity to give in?’

  ‘Not when it’s something more important than yourself,’ said Sister Philippa. ‘Mopu had run away with me, I was obsessed with it and the mountain and my work in the garden. Yes, I think I was really obsessed. There’s something in this place, I don’t trust myself here. I mean it when I say I daren’t stay.’

  Other words seemed to surge up in Sister Clodagh’s mind. ‘If the place is too much for you, you will say so? You’re not as single-hearted as you were. You’re not the sort of person who’ll admit you’re wrong. Isn’t it a pity to give in? Not when it’s something more important than yourself.’

  ‘I think I understand,’ she said; but to herself she murmured: ‘What am I to do? What am I to do?’

  In the corner of the shed was a shelf with a row of pots and boxes and in their carefully sifted soil were wooden tags for the names of seeds. She began to arrange them, raking over the earth with the sharp points, sticking them neatly in the corners.

  What was she thinking of? What had she been thinking of? It was difficult to say exactly. Of all these months she had only a vague blown pattern in her mind; the work had gone on, the work had been done by Sister Briony and Sister Philippa, and Sister Honey, and Sister Ruth, and Mr Dean; she had directed it and done some of it herself, but she hardly knew when or how; most of the time she had been away. ‘I was obsessed by my work in the garden,’ that was the wise Philippa. ‘I must do something for the children,’ and the hunger in Sister Honey’s eyes. And Sister Ruth; what a carking anxiety Sister Ruth should be to her at this moment, and to-day she hardly thought of her at all. ‘I had forgotten.’ She had forgotten and had let them all forget. Again she said, as she raked the earth backwards and forwards; ‘What am I to do?’

  ‘I think there are only two ways to live in this place,’ said Sister Philippa, ‘you must either live like Mr Dean or like the Sunnyasi; either ignore it completely or give yourself up to it.’

  ‘Which is which?’ asked Sister Clodagh, and she added: ‘Neither would do for us.’

  ‘No,’ said Sister Philippa, ‘that’s why I say we oughtn’t to be here.’

  ‘Well, we are here,’ answered Sister Clodagh, ‘and I don’t think it will help matters if we run away.’

  Sister Philippa did not answer, and presently Sister Clodagh said: ‘You know if I ask for you to be transferred, it will be a bad mark against you.’

  ‘That’s all the better,’ said Sister Philippa. ‘That’s what I need.’

  24

  It was at the beginning of Lent that they noticed that Sister Clodagh had changed. After the long winter, spring had come at last, not a tender spring, but troublesome and hard. The wind cut until it hurt, it had swept the clouds out of the valley; the snows were stark in the hard clear sky and the bamboo leaves seemed sharp as thorns. Skins felt brittle and dry, voices were harsh and the smallest things were hard to bear; the restrictions of Lent seemed unendurable. Sister Clodagh would not relax any of them.

  In Lent it was rice and beans and lentils, lentils and rice and beans at every meal. The familiar brown pots appearing on the table made themselves important by their very monotony. ‘If only we could get fish,’ said Sister Briony, ‘I’m sure we should all be better tempered.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Sister Clodagh. ‘We should eat what we can get and be thankful. This is a convent you’re catering for, not an hotel.’

  That was not fair. Sister Briony grew very red in the face. Her work here was exactly the same as at St Helen’s or St Mary’s or St Ursula’s itself; exactly the same, if not better, and no one, not Reverend Mother herself, had ever complained to her before.

  ‘I don’t know what’s come over Sister Clodagh,’ she said, more to herself than Sister Ruth, who was helping her turn out the store cupboard. ‘I’m worried about her. These last few days she’s changed completely. Whether it’s the change of food, or this horrible wind or Sister Philippa’s going that’s upset her, I don’t know, but she’s quite different. And the way she’s working! She’s like a machine. One of those Roberts.’

  ‘Robots, you mean.’

  ‘That’s what I said, Robert
s. I’ve always had a horror of them, nasty, unnatural things. Yes, she reminds me of a Robert.’

  ‘She’s a bully,’ said Sister Ruth.

  Sister Briony whipped round on her at once. ‘Don’t you let me hear you talk like that,’ she said. ‘Anyone else would have sent you packing long ago, let me tell you that. I myself advised her to. You ought to be too ashamed to speak, I should think, the way you disgraced yourself and all of us in front of Mr Dean.’

  ‘That’s my own disgrace and I can bear it as I want to, I suppose,’ said Sister Ruth.

  ‘What one religious does is done to the whole Order,’ said Sister Briony, ‘you know that. In the Community the weakness of one is the weakness of all. Doesn’t it say that in the Rule? And the honour of one is the honour of all. Sister, you can’t have forgotten that.’

  ‘I called her a bully,’ said Sister Ruth, ‘and I mean it, because we have enough to bear out here without making it worse; aren’t the work and conditions trying enough for anyone without all this extra meditation, and getting up an hour earlier and cutting down our food?’

  ‘It’s only for Lent, you know that.’

  ‘Well, I think we’ll be dead at the end of it,’ said Sister Ruth.

  ‘None of the others are grumbling,’ said Sister Briony. ‘I never thought I should live to hear one of our Sisters talking like this. Though we don’t understand, we may be perfectly certain she has a very good reason for everything she does. It isn’t for nothing that she was made the youngest Superior in the Order.’

  ‘There isn’t a name that could suit her better,’ cried Sister Ruth. ‘Sister Superior. Oh, very superior indeed.’

  ‘Really, you should send her away,’ said Sister Briony when she reported her to Sister Clodagh. ‘It shocked me to hear her speak of you like that. I wish we had sent her down with Sister Philippa.’

  ‘I haven’t been severe enough with her,’ said Sister Clodagh. ‘In fact, I think we’ve all been getting lazy and undisciplined.’ Sister Briony swallowed and said nothing. ‘That reminds me, we were late again this morning. You’re responsible for waking everyone. I was in the chapel waiting for you for half an hour.’