Love Letters

by Madeleine L'engle

  He gave a deep, lingering sigh.

  “The children have seen it,” she said.

  “Seen what?”

  “How happy I am. Peregrina knows that there is—something. And the little ones, ‘Sister, you’re always so happy, you laugh so much,’ they tell me. But I was always happy, I always laughed, but they know that now it is different. Noël, tell me. Is this wrong?”

  For a moment a shadow moved across his assurance. “You are asking me?”

  “Father Duarte says—”

  “Father Duarte says what?”

  She shook her head. Her voice came very low. “I cannot do what Father Duarte says.”

  His fingers reached again for the folds of her habit, held the dark material tightly so that his knuckles showed white under the curling hair. “Mariana, do you know what you mean to me?”

  “How could I mean anything to you? I’ve been here in Beja all my life, and you’ve been all over the world …”

  His fingers relaxed their grip on the material, moved slowly until they touched, through the habit, the long line of her thigh. “And never found what I was looking for until I came here.”

  Her body stiffened but she did not move away. “What are you looking for?”

  “I’m not looking any more. I’ve found her.”

  Still not moving from the touch of his fingers through her habit, she looked directly at him. “What can you want of me?”

  He answered only, trying to lighten the too heavily charged air, moving his fingers back to the resistance of marble, “The look in your eyes right now.”

  She started to turn away, then held her gaze. “That seems like a very small thing to give you.”

  “It is very much.”

  “I’m only a nun, and I’ve never—” She stopped, gasped, then went on, “while the women you’ve met in Paris and Lisbon must be full of elegance and wit.”

  “Yes, empty and shallow.” He shrugged.

  “I don’t know how to talk to you—” She was almost panting. “If I don’t say what’s in my heart I get all confused. I don’t know how to say the things I’m supposed to say.”

  His smile was gentle, as though for Peregrina. “I want you to say what’s in your heart. Shall I tell you what’s in mine?”

  She nodded, breathing painfully.

  “Oh, sweet Mariana, I’m not going to tell you what I came looking for, what I expected. You are nothing that I expected, or could even have believed existed in this filthy world. Dear girl, how difficult it is to talk to you here where at any moment some child may come running up, here where a bell may ring so that you will jump up and flee back to those white walls, here where one of the sisters may come walking, eternal beads clicking. How many times do I dare talk to you like this? or for how long? before Baltazar, before the other nuns will notice, will wonder? How can I tell you what’s in my heart when I’m afraid that at any moment we may be interrupted?”

  Mariana cast a half-fearful glance around her, but the path was empty, the browning lawn stretched to the hedges. “But if we’re afraid of being interrupted—”

  “Aren’t we?”

  Now she moved away from him on the bench. “Yes.”

  He challenged her. “And why?”

  She moved still further, pulling her robes about her in a compulsive gesture of hiding. “The only time a nun should ask for privacy is to be alone with God.”

  He stretched his hands longingly towards her. “Mariana, I want to see your hair—”

  Her hand flew up to the white wimple, the black veil. “Our robes are to—hide as much as possible anything that might be an earthly vanity. To make us as much like each other as possible.”

  He spoke softly, coaxingly, as though holding out a bowl of milk to a half-wild kitten. “Your eyes are so different from Baltazar’s, from Ana’s or Peregrina’s. It is the tiny golden flecks of light that seem to shine from within? And your hair—Peregrina’s is chestnut and Ana has golden curls: and you?”

  She did not move, but she seemed to draw further back. “Why do you want to know?”

  He was pleading now. “Mariana, I am a soldier and you are a nun, but we are also two human beings who find pleasure in each other’s company. And when two people like each other, when they find each other, they want to know everything they can about each other. I stand before you, right here, wholly revealed, for you to see. Is it fair that you should be hidden from me?”

  She faltered. “But I’m not—an ordinary person—an ordinary woman—”

  Again he stretched out his hands, bent his head towards her so that the light fell on the scar across his cheek, the visible mark of his friendship with Baltazar. “And it’s that in you that draws me to you. Mariana, is your head shaven?”

  She shook her head in negation.

  “But your hair is cut?”

  She nodded.

  “Very short?”

  Again she shook her head.

  “It can’t be all artificial curls, like Ana’s, nor a tangled mop, like Peregrina’s. It is curly?”

  A faint shake.

  “Chestnut, like Peregrina’s and Baltazar’s? Or gold, like Ana’s?”

  “Lighter—lighter than Ana’s.” She put her face in her hands.

  His hands reached up to pull hers down. “Let me see your eyes. Golden eyes, lit by the Portuguese sun, brilliant, startling. Mariana, does your cell lead out onto the balcony?”

  She nodded.

  “Do you sometimes go out on it at night to watch the moonlight in the gardens?”

  Again she bowed in acquiescence.

  “Do you often see people on the road by the convent gates?” he asked.

  Another nod.

  “There have been a lot of soldiers lately, haven’t there, and some of them drunk?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Do they never see you standing there?”

  “If someone comes I step back into the shadows.”

  “And then you can’t be seen?”

  “No.”

  “Have any drunken soldiers tried to climb the convent wall?”

  “Two of them did, once—”

  “What happened?”

  “Her Grace saw them and sent them away.”

  “How did she know about them?”

  “They weren’t very quiet.”

  “Suppose a soldier got drunk, but still climbed quietly. Do you think that’s ever happened?”

  She looked at him, not understanding. “Perhaps. But all he could do would be to wander about in the garden. The doors to the convent are all locked.”

  “And the doors to your cells?”

  “They’re locked, too. After we’ve retired. Sister Isabella goes down the passages and locks all the doors.”

  “So that you can’t get out? Or so that no one can get in?”

  The flecked eyes widened with surprise. “Nobody’s thinking about getting out or getting in. It’s simply a convent rule.”

  “But suppose you want to speak to someone?”

  “We’re in Great Silence from Compline till after breakfast.”

  “But if you should become ill during the night?”

  “If we called, Mother Escolastica or Sister Isabella would come. Or Most Reverend Mother herself.”

  “Does she sleep lightly, like a true mother, one ear constantly listening for her children?”

  She raised troubled, darkening eyes to his. “Why are you so interested in all this?”

  “To know more of your life, your discipline, your Rule.”

  She relaxed. “It’s light and easy for us all. When you serve someone with gladness then rules aren’t hard to obey.”

  “Yes, we are alike, aren’t we?” He pressed his advantage. “Orders that must be obeyed without question. For instance, there has been a small outbreak in the south again, and tomorrow I’m off once more for a few days.”

  “Again? So soon?”

  “Orders.”

  “To go into battle?”<
br />
  “Dear girl, I’m a soldier.”

  “Will there be danger?”

  “No more than usual.”

  She breathed in, deeply. “I will pray for you constantly till you return. Will I—how will I know if you come back safely?” She clasped her hands in a childish gesture.

  “I will come to you.” He reached towards her again, but she drew away, hiding her fingers beneath her scapular. “Am I not allowed even to touch your fingers?”

  She started to take her hands out but looked up and saw a man’s figure hurrying down the path towards them, saw him over Noël’s shoulder. She whispered, “Baltazar.” Blood rushed to her cheeks.

  Baltazar looked at the two of them. “I didn’t mean to be so long. Aunt kept me talking politics. She knows more than most men, that old bird. Is it all right for you to be here, Mariana?”

  “I’m free for a few minutes now. Monsieur le capitaine tells me,” somehow she managed to make her voice sound casual, conversational, with only the proper edge of apprehension fitting for the subject, “that you’re leaving tomorrow.” Yes. She had been well trained.

  Baltazar rested his hand lightly on Noël’s shoulder. “Only for a short time.”

  “But there will be danger—”

  Noël rose, and Baltazar took his place on the bench beside Mariana. “Where’s your faith? You’ve never seemed this anxious about my welfare before.”

  “Haven’t I? It seems to me you always scold me for worrying about you too much. And if I’m anxious it’s because I know you have no fear of your own, and wherever there’s danger you rush in.”

  “Danger’s what makes life exciting. That’s how Noël and I first became friends.”

  “Because you were the ones who volunteered for the dangerous missions?”

  “There’s safety in danger. It’s the cowards who hang behind who lose out.”

  From behind Baltazar, Noël said lightly, “Bal and I are like cats. We have nine lives.”

  “And have no intention of losing them too soon. Come, Noël, it’s time we got back.” He rose, and Mariana stood beside him, her fingers plucking at her brother’s sleeve.

  “When will you be back?”

  “We don’t expect to be gone more than a few days. We should be back in Mertola by the end of the week.”

  “And then you’ll come to Beja? And to Nossa Senhora da Conceição?”

  “Don’t I always? But it may not be possible for Noël.”

  Her eyes widened, but Noël stepped quickly back so that Baltazar could not see him, looked at Mariana, finger to lips, and shook his head.

  Baltazar came forward, close to Mariana, speaking softly. “Everything is all right with you, Mariana?”

  “Yes, Baltazar.”

  “You’re not—disturbed about anything?”

  “Why should I be?”

  “I don’t know. I just felt—”

  “Everything’s just the way it always is. Goodbye, Baltazar. God go with you.”

  He stood there, looking at her questioningly, but she simply returned his gaze, standing her ground. At last he turned on his heel, abruptly, and stalked down the path, calling to the Frenchman.

  Noël turned to Mariana, saying clearly, rather loudly, “Goodbye, Sister Mariana.”

  “Goodbye, Monsieur le capitaine.”

  He whispered, “I will come to you,” turned, and ran after Baltazar.

  … “He was, after all, a soldier,” Charlotte said. “He must have seen death over and over again. Does it ever become less terrible? Does it to you? Because you see it, too—”

  “It is always terrible,” Dr. Ferreira replied. The spindly chair creaked beneath his weight. “It is terrible even when one is grateful for it.”

  “One can learn to accept it,” Charlotte said. “At least one can hope to. Isn’t that all? When I was little I learned to accept going to bed alone in the dark, being alone in the dark during vacations, no matter where I was, in New York with Reuben and Essie, or in hotels in strange cities all over the world. But accepting it didn’t make me any less afraid. Was death terrible to Noël, do you suppose? If he was so used to the death of the body that it didn’t matter, that he wasn’t afraid to go into battle either to kill or be killed, then the death of the spirit would have seemed unimportant to him, too.”

  (Andrew had stood near her in the kitchen as she was preparing dinner, and had startled her by announcing in his clear treble, “I don’t want to die.” Still stirring her sauce, paying more attention to the double boiler than to the small boy, she answered, “Nobody does, Andrew.” He asked, “Do you?” “No,” she said. He pushed up close against her, saying, “But people get old and then they get wore out because they’re so old and so then they has to die.” But not just when they’re old …)

  She shuddered as the doctor took his smelly pipe out of his pocket, and a roll of tobacco. With quiet concentration he began the ritual of preparation.

  Charlotte watched him until his match flamed over the bowl. Then she said, “He was a soldier, and it was different, then. I mustn’t imagine it like war today, with tanks and molotov cocktails and gas and bombs and mushroom clouds. But is death from a hand grenade very different from death from a cannon burst or a rifle shot—they did have rifles then, didn’t they?—or a sword thrust? He must have seen men lying on the ground and trying to hold their guts into their ripped bellies. Don’t you think it must have been terrible to him? And he must have killed. So the way he killed Mariana was not the first death for him.”

  The doctor puffed on his pipe. “You’re not thinking about Noël, are you?”

  “Only partly.”

  “Patrick?”

  “The death of the body,” Charlotte said. “The death of the spirit. It seems to me that I have known them both ever since I can remember and they grow no less terrible to me. But Patrick: it isn’t just that he sees death all the time. It’s that he takes it for granted. He isn’t shaken and shattered. It is so commonplace to him that even—” She stopped.

  “Even what?”

  She could not answer him. He looked at her intently but did not repeat his question. She shook her head. “Patrick has only an intellectual knowledge of death. He doesn’t see its obscenity. But I’m not an intellectual—”

  The pipe went out. Slowly, patiently, the doctor lit it again. The door of the room was pushed open and the English setter padded across the softness of rug, put his forepaws up on the bed again so that he could touch Charlotte’s fingers with the moist coolness of his nose, then sat on his haunches by the doctor. Automatically, without thinking, the doctor pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket and put it across his knees. “There, Gibb,” he said. “Dribble on that.” So had Charlotte put a diaper over her shoulder whenever she picked the infant Andrew up to hold him there, to burp him, to walk with him when he was restless.

  “If I could understand about Mariana,” Charlotte said. “Why, when she loved so much, her Frenchman treated her so cruelly—”

  “You still don’t understand?”

  “She was so happy and then: what started with such happiness is tears, and deathly despair, and I see no help anywhere.”

  “And you still look to her for help?”

  “I have to look somewhere. Because I know now I shouldn’t have come to disturb Violet. And she seems to be everywhere here, Mariana, the nun. I keep blundering into her. There were her letters in my room at the pensão. And the convent itself is still full of her. I could feel her there so strongly.… And this house of Violet’s. It is the way I would imagine the Alcoforado villa. And Tonio—Violet says he rides a black horse. He sees himself as Noël but he can’t quite make it. But he’s in love with Mariana, probably more than Noël ever was. And even you. The way you and Tonio were fighting that battle on the tablecloth, and then yesterday afternoon in the convent—”

  “Charlotte,” he said gravely. (When had he started calling her Charlotte, as though she were a child, instead of the more forma
l, adult Mrs. Napier? He did not seem like one who would easily drop the formalities and yet the gentle Charlotte fell completely naturally from his lips.) “You must not become emotionally dependent on your point of reference, whether it’s the living and unpredictable Violet or the dead, misunderstood nun. In order for you to see yourself in relation to a point of reference you must look at it with dispassion and objectivity.”

  “I don’t feel very objective.”

  “That is quite apparent. But, as you yourself said, your point of reference does not tell you in which direction you are going. And I think you came wanting Violet to tell you.”

  She moved restlessly against the soft linen of Violet’s sheets, but said nothing.

  “Charlotte.” The doctor stood up, the gilt chair creaking as it was relieved of his weight. “You have told me that your husband does not love you, or that you feel that he does not love you.” He walked heavily to the window and looked out at the driving rain. “Was this a sudden and unexpected discovery?”

  “No. I’ve known it for a long time.”

  “But this trip to Beja—to Violet—was sudden and unexpected?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did something happen, something new, to precipitate so radical a move?”

  “Yes.” She looked at the bulk of his back in the brown tweed suit. It was a good tweed; it had once been an excellent suit. Now he wore it shabbily, carelessly, and this bearishness was somehow comforting. She wanted him to question her; she could not tell him unless he was willing to probe deeper, as though for a hidden splinter, and why should he? Why should he care enough to spend the emotional and physical energy when he was—even she could see this—already tired? Out of concern for Violet, perhaps, so that she would not upset Violet. But why shouldn’t Violet be upset once in a while?

  “I wanted to get things in perspective,” she said. “I was—I was stuck in the moment. I couldn’t see beyond it. And it wasn’t just that I couldn’t see myself. I couldn’t see Patrick any more. I couldn’t see him any more than I could see myself.” She realized with horror that her voice was quavering, though her eyes were painfully dry. “I’m sorry. I’m really not very bright, you know.”

  He turned from the window and came back to the great four-poster bed, lowering himself carefully again onto the small gilt chair. “You’re beautiful, Charlotte. And I think you’re loving. You have a giving heart.”