Love Letters

by Madeleine L'engle

  The doctor laughed and held his umbrella more carefully over Charlotte’s head. “The more rational we think we are, my dear Tonio, the more we open ourselves to the wholly irrational. Our rationality is only a frail and fragile structure keeping the irrational at bay. If we were like Dame Violet, or like Joaquim, we might say that rationality is the form of the fugue keeping the passion of the music within bounds. For me my intellect is the very inadequate leash with which I try to control the enormous wild beast that is life as human consciousness experiences it.”

  “It is a wild beast, isn’t it?” Charlotte asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And it can devour us?”

  “Oh, yes,” Dr. Ferreira said quite calmly. “And frequently does.”

  They turned the corner, past the plaque saying CONVENTO DE NOSSA SENHORA DA CONCEIÇÃO and went onto the plaza. Antonio muttered, “And calling him Jacopo, after Dante’s son—I am the poet—oh, never mind. Here we are.”

  The convent lay deserted in the rain. Antonio took out a large rusty key and struggled with it, turning it back and forth in the lock. “Don’t exercise yourselves,” he said. “Professor Nunez told me that it is very difficult to open. One has to give it a special little twist to the left.… There used to be gardens south of the convent, Mrs. Napier, kitchen gardens and rose gardens and an orchard and, I believe, a pond. Of course at this time of winter there isn’t much blooming anywhere in the Alentejo. Geraniums, of course, and the palm trees are in flower. You probably saw them on your way down from Lisbon yesterday. And the cork trees being stripped … oh, good, here we are.”

  The door creaked open and they entered a damp, cold hall, though no damper nor colder than the hall of the pensão, nor more redolent of the past. That was it: the musty odor of decay, the overlushness of the tropical flower that blooms riotously and then rots along with leaves and ferns and tangled vines so that the jungle steams with the odor of death.

  The dank and musty hall led into a room that was stripped of all furnishings but that held nevertheless an aura of richness and overornamentation. The floor was a complex pattern of many colors, the tesserae tiny and vivid. The walls were faced with the Portuguese tile, again in a complex design, up to the lintel of the doors; above the tile were murals in gaudy colors depicting scenes from the life of Christ. The ceiling was arched and vaulted in rose and blue and gilt, blossoming from ornamented and fluted columns. Charlotte felt smothered with color, with design after involuted design seeming to curve in from ceiling and column, entangling her in lush tendrils.

  She stood in the center of the room and turned, slowly. Antonio looked at her expectantly and she said, “It is very different from the convents I have known—”

  Again the doctor turned his probing gaze on her, his thick brows drawing together. “You have been to many?”

  “For most of my schooling.”

  “And our Nossa Senhora da Conceição?”

  “It’s—a little ornate for what I am used to.” She looked at him helplessly, feeling that she was being impolite, and yet not knowing what else to say.

  But he nodded placidly. “Yes. They were a strange combination of asceticism and luxury, those nuns. Their public rooms were full of gilt and velvet, but, judging from their cells, and we should show you one of these cells for its absolute contrast, they may have had a sense of guilt about their gilt, for the cells were tiny and bare, and the nuns slept on a straw pallet placed on a slab of wood. And when they died they were buried in a common and unmarked grave in the crypt. All except the Infanta Dona Brites, the foundress. This is her sarcophagus here.” He patted a cold stone effigy. “She was an ancestress of our Soror Mariana and of the Dona Brites who was abbess in Mariana’s day. They liked to keep these things in the family, though in their dying they were more democratic than in their living. We don’t know which are Mariana’s bones, nor which the abbess’s, nor which the most menial of the lay sisters. We must show you the cloister because Professor Nunez has some interesting things lying around, but you must see the chapel first. How did the good nuns feel about all this luxury that is so strange to you? The chapel was the center of their lives, and perhaps it was logical to them that all the glory of which they were capable should be lavished upon this one particular place … I myself find it rather magnificent in its own slightly vulgar way.”

  Yes, Charlotte thought, it was indeed a magnificent confusion of gold and more gold, of statues and paintings, and an altar against a reredos that soared, gilded tier upon gilded tier, to a statue of the Virgin crowned as Queen of Heaven.

  “Remember,” the doctor said, “that although it was the chapel on which all the money and lavishness was poured, within it the nuns knelt motionless for hours on cold stone. It is a contradiction of indulgence and denial, and the contradiction is important. What they wished was to indulge God and to deny themselves, to give him everything and themselves nothing.” He led the way out of the chapel, saying, “I think, Tonio, that it is this very paradox that appeals to the poet in you.”

  Antonio spoke with unexpected bitterness. “You keep saying there’s a poet on every street corner in Portugal. I understand. You think I’m just one of them. One of too many. We are expendable, but we have nothing but ourselves to spend. You take Joaquim seriously, but I am only a Latin teacher and so—”

  The doctor interrupted him, “Be quiet, Tonio. If I did not take you seriously do you think I would put up with you at all? You have the makings of a poet but you have absolutely no discipline. Without discipline all your talent is worthless. Now come.”

  He led the way with decision into the ruined cloister. Rain was falling steadily into the garden where there was a broken fountain and fragments of statues, a torso, a bodiless head, a hand and part of an arm. Under the arched walk were more bits of statuary, fragments of columns, and the odor of rain and dust and age. Above them, protecting them from the downpour, the vaulted ceiling was covered with flaking paint. The inner wall to the convent was again ornamented with tile.

  “We have always been like no other people, like no other country in the world,” the doctor said, “and Portugal must have seemed like another planet to the soldiers who came from France and England and Holland to help us break free from Spain.”

  To Charlotte, too, it seemed like another world. She sat wearily on a broken marble column, barely out of the rain, half listening to the doctor and Antonio telling her that John of Braganza was technically returned to the throne in 1640, but when Soror Mariana met Noël the war was far from over. The Spanish kept their hold on the southern provinces (as the dampness held Charlotte, seeming to crush her down on the marble column) and it was only with the help of mercenaries and adventurers that they were finally able to break loose.

  “Of course,” Tonio was saying, “not only was our great period of exploration and expansion two hundred years behind us—it died more or less with Henry the Navigator—but we’ve always battled for liberation, first against the Visigoths, then the Romans, the Moors.”

  “Yes.” The doctor leaned against the moisture-streaked wall and began to prepare his ancient pipe. “They all occupied us and left their marks on us. The Romans gave us our bridges, our art, our irrigation systems that are still in use today, and you cannot look around this so-called Christian convent without feeling the breath of the Moor on the back of your neck. Never forget that we are half African, and, like our young friend here, violent and volatile.”

  He picked up a corroded piece of iron that seemed to have been a shallow dish and held it out to Charlotte. “The remains of the kind of lamp that was used in the convent. A wick floating in olive oil. It gives out a miserable, smoky sort of light, but candles were expensive and were used only by the wealthy and the church, and even then only when a display was felt essential. In Mariana’s time I fancy we’d have found candles used in the chapel as part of their offering of beauty. But the dishes of oil would have served the sisters.”

  Antonio took the rather
dirty piece of metal from Charlotte and put it down on the stump of a column. “Smoky oil lamps, gold and velvet in the chapel, and not enough to eat. People used to bring the nuns all kinds of desserts and sweets, but they often didn’t have enough plain food. What miserable complexions those poor girls must have had.”

  Charlotte started to ask why there was not enough to eat but it seemed too great an effort and she realized that this was partly because her throat was now so sore that it would hurt to talk: the back of her throat felt burned and raw. No wonder, with all this plowing about in the rain and cold. The hideous yellow shoes pinched her feet, and she sat down on the broken pediment that was all that remained of a marble column. An occasional gust of wind sent a splatter of rain through the arches and into her face, and she felt wrapped in a tight cocoon of discomfort.

  Was it ever warm in Beja? Probably not. Probably it was either freezing cold, as now, or stiflingly hot. In the winter the nuns’ habits must always have been damp. They would all have had colds in winter, and chapped hands. And in the summer the dark robes would cling hotly and they would feel the sweat trickling down their backs and legs, how miserable, how unendurable, how

  … “hot it is,” Sister Joaquina said. “My embroidery thread is all damp, and the red is running. It’s going to spoil the pattern. What ought I to do?”

  Why would Sister Joaquina notice the heat, why would she find something to worry about, on this day of all days when the town was a turmoil of joyful celebration and the convent, where the abbess had relaxed all rules, echoed the noise of the streets? The parade had dispersed and the soldiers were roaming Beja, looking for women, for wine, for any available pleasure after the austerity of battle. The humid air shimmered with laughter and desire. The rough shouting and singing soared over the convent walls, was picked up by the children who romped in and out of the white buildings, tore through the gardens, throwing discipline joyfully to the winds. Everywhere, in all the silent places, talking and laughter was heard. When Michaela ran, singing, along the covered cloister, out into the garden, down the path to join the young nuns by the frog pond at the bottom of the convent grounds, Sister Maria da Assunção only smiled tightly instead of intoning her usual, “A sister does not run,” “A sister does not raise her voice.” “A sister controls herself at all times.”

  By the pond Mariana lay, stretched out on the browning grass. She did not even hear Joaquina’s complaint. When a group of children came running to the pond in a shrieking game of tag, she leapt up and ran off with them, came laughing back, threw herself down on the grass again, and plunged her hands into the tepid water of the pond, wetting the long, concealing sleeves of her habit.

  Joaquina was still struggling with her embroidery, still talking, still complaining, about Sister Michaela now, was it? “We’re not out here to chatter, Sister. We may have been given special permission to talk because of the victory, but Mother said quietly. I’m sure she didn’t mean throwing over all the rules this way. Personally, I would have preferred to remain in our usual silence during this hour so that I could pray.”

  Mariana rolled over onto her back, holding her wet fingers up to the hot and humid breeze. “We have prayed, and with joy. All we’re doing now is bringing our joy out of the chapel and into the garden with us.”

  Joaquina, sitting upright on a marble bench, looked somberly at Mariana’s relaxed limbs. “You’re always talking about enjoying things.”

  Yawning widely in contented reaction to excitement, to heat, to pleasure, Mariana said, “What’s wrong with that?”

  “If anybody’s brought any gold thread I could work with that,” Joaquina said. But nobody had, so she turned her attention again to Mariana. “Maybe there’s nothing wrong with it on earth, but we’re supposed to have our minds more on heaven than on earth.”

  Still stretched out, closing her eyes against the blinding glare of the sun, Mariana said, “Now there I think you’re quite wrong, Sister. We are on earth, and surely God has put us here to be here. If he wanted us to be in heaven we’d be there.”

  Joaquina rubbed her red-stained fingers against her handkerchief. “You have to earn heaven, Sister, and I hardly think you care.”

  Mariana sat up. “Is loving earth not caring about heaven? You think just because the sight of the soldiers who spent so much of themselves fighting for us filled us with such joy—” But her voice trailed off. She stood up, murmuring, “I’ll be back,” and moved down the path as a group of little girls called to her, “Sister Mariana! Come play with us!”

  The abbess was not at supper; rumor had it that she was seeing the governor, something about the battle, something about politics; the abbess knew everybody; her opinion was respected, and requested. She had left word that rules were still lifted, and the refectory rang with unaccustomed laughter.

  Sister Joaquina, unable to share the pleasure, was saying, “I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”

  Beatriz directed her clear gaze at Joaquina. “What? Being free of Spain?”

  “Counting buttons.”

  —What? Mother Escolastica, sitting across from the younger nuns, focused her dark old eyes, still bright as beads, on Joaquina’s pasty face. Did the young nun, like Sister Maria da Assunção, suffer from dyspepsia? Her diet should be checked. Why should a casual remark from silly little Michaela on the brightness of the buttons on the French soldiers’ jackets be made into an issue?

  Joaquina, overly fond of mortifications, took the driest, hardest crust from the bread tray. “It keeps our minds from the contemplation of inward visions.”

  Mariana burst into such a peal of laughter that all heads in the refectory turned in her direction.

  Joaquina flushed. “What’s so funny?”

  “Forgive me,” Mariana said quickly as she reached for an orange and began to peel it. “I wasn’t laughing at you. You’re quite right. I should spend more time, as you do, worrying about saving my soul, but I can’t seem to do it, because surely I cannot save my soul. Only God can do that. And when I see—” she looked out the long, open windows to the garden, “—the way the evening sun is touching the flowers right now—or when I look at this orange, look at the brilliance of its color and smell the sharpness of its scent—isn’t that as much a vision of God as anything we see inwardly?”

  “I don’t know,” Joaquina said flatly. She looked across the table at Mother Escolastica. “I don’t mean to criticize, Mother, but there’s something wrong with it.”

  “With what, child?”

  “The way Sister Mariana looks out the window at the flowers, and the way she enjoys that orange.”

  “Well?”

  “She enjoys it too much.”

  Mariana’s mouth was full of juicy pulp. “Aren’t we supposed to?”

  “You get up at night to watch the moon rise. Sometimes I wonder how seriously you take our rule.”

  Beatriz intervened. “As seriously as you do, I think.”

  Mother Escolastica’s voice was reprimanding. “Beatriz.”

  “Mother,” Beatriz said quietly, “there was nothing even remotely wrong in our rushing to the balcony to see the soldiers march by. Even an order as strict as ours would have been sliding into scrupulosity to have forbidden that.”

  “And we were not forbidden,” the old nun replied.

  Joaquina eyed the bowl of oranges but did not take one.

  The talking among children and nuns reached a peak before Compline, after which Silence was to be resumed. Groups of sisters strolled up and down the arched walk of the cloister, their laughter high, sweet, and profoundly innocent against the guffawing and shouting in the street. The long last rays of light reached over the walls and caught the high spray of the fountain. Michaela, still bemused by the sight of the soldiers, the resplendent clothes of the Frenchmen and the Englishmen, stopped, leaning dreamily against one of the soaring columns. “If I had to choose, if I absolutely had to choose which one was the most gorgeous, I couldn’t possibly.”


  Joaquina strolled past. “Mariana could.”

  “Oh? Could I?” Mariana laughed.

  Beatriz allowed herself unusual enthusiasm. “That was Mariana’s brother, the one who stopped right where we could see him best, and took off his hat and bowed to us, standing up in his stirrups.”

  Now Joaquina turned in the deepening shadow of the arched walk and looked directly at Beatriz. “We all know Sister Mariana’s brother. I didn’t mean him. I meant one of the Frenchmen.”

  Beatriz moved to Joaquina. “Why were you so busy watching Mariana instead of the parade?”

  Joaquina’s voice trembled. “Maybe I was afraid, which is something you and Mariana never seem to be.”

  “Afraid of what? That they’d come leaping over the convent wall to drag us off with them?”

  “Stop it,” Joaquina cried, all control broken by anger. “It was obvious that Sister Mariana was looking at one French soldier in particular.”

  Mariana moved to the fountain—to where Sister Maria da Assunção and Mother Escolastica were standing. “Oh, Sisters, you all know that I always look at one person or one thing in particular. Joaquina’s quite right. I look at one blossom on the bough. One little lizard sunning itself on the wall. One orange. One drop of rain as it slides down the windowpane. When I look at one more carefully, then I know all better.”

  Joaquina stepped out of the shadows towards the silver of the fountain. “Does eating rain make you understand it better?”

  Beatriz was amused. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ve seen Mariana eat rain. I saw her stand out on the balcony one afternoon during a shower, and I saw her holding out her hand and catching rain and tasting it.”

  Mariana laughed. “It was wonderful.”

  “And I’ve seen her taking the petal of a flower and sucking it.”

  “I just wanted to see what the bees were after.”

  Beatriz looked affectionately at Mariana’s laughing face. “We’d all like to get as much pleasure out of things as she does.”