A Severed Wasp
Page 45
“Yes. I knew him well.”
“And you say he was an honorable man?”
“He was incapable of doing anything dishonorable.”
She was grateful for Felix’s reminder of what she so firmly believed. A sick world, greedy for sensation rather than salvation, does not need to have every appetite sated.
“Thank you.” The tears started again. “I cannot thank you enough. You have—oh, my God!” It was a cry of joy. “You have given me back my father!” She stroked the fair hair gently. “I know you would not lie to me.”
“No.” Nor had she.
“When I was sent to England to my mother’s relatives, I lost touch with my family. All I remember—except my mother’s bedroom smelling of menthol and medicine and her last words to me—is Christmas in the country, at the Schloss, and a great tree, like the one in the Nutcracker, and I was on my father’s shoulders, and even so I could not touch the angel at the top—” Silent tears trickled down his face, and he buried his head in her lap, and she stroked his hair, wiped his tears, as though he had been Michou.
8
When Mimi came for her, the dean insisted on driving them home, asked no questions except, “Is Emily all right?”
All right. Two small words which could mean many things. “Yes. Emily is all right.”
The first large concert after Michou’s death was in Rome. Had Wolfi somehow managed to arrange it? Katherine and Justin had flown there, arriving only a few hours before they were due at the concert hall. Her fingers ached, taking into themselves the pain in her heart.
‘I can’t play,’ she said flatly.
‘You must,’ Justin said. ‘For me. For Michou.’ He said it, but he did not come near her. He rubbed his broken hands together and his own pain was all he could hold.
The cardinal sent his car to their hotel. Katherine got in, still saying to Justin, ‘I can’t. I don’t know what to do. I can’t.’
Justin got in beside her, saying nothing.
Wolfi was waiting in the dressing room. He had put a bowl of vivid anemones on the dressing table. Katherine looked at the brilliant color of the flowers, then at the two men. Wolfi put one hand gently on her shoulder.
There was no need of a miracle. Still saying I can’t, but silently now, not out loud, she knew that she could. That she would.
And the miracle came then, in her playing, in the music which was an affirmation, so that as she rested her hands on the keyboard at the end of the concert, before the applause began, she was able to say, ‘All right.’
9
The very size of the Cathedral would always be a surprise. Felix, wearing a light, white cassock, led Katherine across the choir to the Bösendorfer, and she was met with a great thunder of applause from the audience filling the nave, the choir stalls, applause rolling the length of the Cathedral like great ocean waves.
Felix stood beside her, slenderly dignified, until the applause diminished, dwindled, ceased. He introduced her with a tender pride, and stepped back into the choir to take his seat.
She stood by the piano bowing to the audience, first to the gathering in the nave, then to the choir stalls, where the Cathedral family sat—Bishop, Dean, and Chapter; many of the secretarial staff, the maintenance men, the Stone Yard workers, and their families and close friends. There was a feeling of unity here that touched her deeply. She looked slowly around as she seated herself at the piano, taking her time, in quiet preparation for the music.
On her left sat the Undercrofts, Fatima between them. Yolande, in a black dress, looked pale, with less makeup than usual. But there was a marked change: the anguish was gone.
Bishop Chan came in one of the side entrances, saw an empty seat, and slipped into it, looking gently, lovingly at Yolande, then sitting back and leaning his head against the dark wood of the choir stall.
On the opposite side sat the Davidson family and Mimi Oppenheimer. And, Katherine noted with some surprise, Iona Grady. Behind them were the Sisters, the whole Community, with Topaze sitting between Mother Catherine of Siena and Sister Isobel. Llew and Dorcas, Katherine knew, were somewhere in the nave.
She looked toward the Davidsons and caught Emily’s eye. The child gave one of her solemn smiles, and blew a kiss.
Katherine returned the smile, and glanced once more at all these people she had known for only a few months. Between them all they held a great many secrets. Between them all they had worked out as much peace as the human being is likely to have.
She turned her mind away from them and focused it on music. The rustlings in the stalls and throughout the crowded nave stopped, and there was anticipatory silence.
For Katherine, as she held her hands over the keyboard, there was nothing but the piano, and she and the sensitive instrument were no more than living extensions of each other.
When the music had fully entered into her, she began to play.
A Biography of Madeleine L’Engle
Madeleine L’Engle was the award-winning author of more than sixty books encompassing children’s and adult fiction, poetry, plays, memoirs, and books on prayer. Her best-known work is the classic children’s novel A Wrinkle in Time, which won the Newbery Medal for distinguished children’s literature and has sold fourteen million copies worldwide. The Washington Post called the science fantasy tale of an adolescent girl and her telepathic brother’s journey through space and time “one of the most enigmatic works of fiction ever created.”
L’Engle was born on November 29, 1918, in New York City, where both of her parents were artists—her mother a pianist and her father a novelist, journalist, and music and drama critic for the New York Sun. Although she wrote her first story at the age of five and devoted her time to her journals, short stories, and poetry, L’Engle struggled in school and often felt disliked by her teachers and peers. She recalled one of her elementary school teachers calling her stupid and another accusing her of plagiarism when she won a writing contest.
At twelve, L’Engle and her family moved to France for her father’s health (he had been a soldier during World War I and suffered lung damage), and she was sent to boarding school in the Swiss Alps. Two of her novels, A Winter’s Love and The Small Rain, drew on her experiences in Europe. She returned to the United States three years later to attend another boarding school in Charleston, South Carolina. L’Engle flourished during these years and went on to graduate from Smith College with honors in English.
After college, she moved back to New York City and started work as a stage actress while devoting her free time to writing. During this time, she published her first two novels, The Small Rain and Ilsa, and wrote many plays that were produced in regional theaters. While touring in a production of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard as an understudy, she met actor Hugh Franklin, and they married in 1946. After the birth of their daughter Josephine the following year, they bought an old farmhouse, which they called Crosswicks, in Goshen, a small town in rural Connecticut, planning on weekends in the country. When she became pregnant with their second child, Bion, they moved to Crosswicks permanently and ran the local general store. Their family grew with an adopted daughter, Maria. After nearly a decade in Connecticut, they moved back to New York so her husband, who would go on to star in All My Children, could focus on his acting career. She was happy to return and hoped that she would find success as an author again. Indeed, A Wrinkle in Time was published in 1962.
The family often returned to Crosswicks over the years and these visits inspired L’Engle’s Crosswicks Journals, including Two-Part Invention, which tells the story of her marriage, and A Circle of Quiet, in which she explores her role as a woman, mother, wife, and writer.
Back in Manhattan, L’Engle worked as a librarian and writer-in-residence at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, a position she held for more than three decades. Her lifelong fascination with theology and philosophy, and her personal faith, largely influenced her work. A Wrinkle in Time hints at many Christian themes, yet religious conservative
groups have spoken out against the book, accusing L’Engle of misrepresenting God in a dangerous world of witchcraft, myth, and fantasy. It has been one of the most banned books in the United States. Apart from her religious influences, she said that Einstein’s theory of relativity and other theories in physics also served as inspiration. The novel’s combined use of both science fiction and philosophy established it as a sophisticated work of fiction, proving L’Engle’s belief that children’s literature deserves a place in the literary canon.
However, L’Engle initially struggled to achieve success and recognition for her work, and she almost quit writing at forty. She finally broke out onto the literary scene in 1960 with Meet the Austins, the first in her popular young adult series about the Austin family, which includes Newbery Honor Book A Ring of Endless Light. Even A Wrinkle in Time was rejected by twenty-six publishers before being accepted by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Although it was an instant commercial and critical sensation and has never gone out of print, the book’s strong female protagonist and intellectual themes were unusual in children’s fiction at the time.
L’Engle’s long literary career expanded far beyond the publication of A Wrinkle in Time. Among her many books are adult novels dealing with relationships, faith, and identity, including Certain Women, A Live Coal in the Sea, and A Severed Wasp; several books of poetry; and more overtly religious works like her Genesis Trilogy of biblical reflections. She won countless accolades, including the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, the National Religious Book Award, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention. In 2004, President Bush awarded her a National Humanities Medal. L’Engle lived out her final years in Litchfield, Connecticut, and passed away at the age of eighty-eight on September 6, 2007.
A portrait of L’Engle in her first years of life.*
L’Engle ice-skating in Brittany, France, circa 1926.*
L’Engle with her dog, Sputzi, circa 1934.*
From July to September 1943, the Repertory Players at Straight Wharf Theatre produced two of L’Engle’s plays, The Christmas Tree and Phelia. She acted in both plays, among others.
L’Engle with her husband, actor Hugh Franklin, in 1946.*
L’Engle and her husband renovated and ran a general store in the late 1940s.
L’Engle always illustrated her family’s Christmas cards, including this one from 1952.
L’Engle with her granddaughters Charlotte Jones Voiklis and Lena Roy at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, Cathedral Library, circa 1975.
L’Engle in the library of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, circa 1977.
L’Engle at a Manhattanville College commencement ceremony, where she received an honorary degree in 1989.*
L’Engle with her granddaughter Charlotte Jones Voiklis the night before the young woman’s wedding on August 30, 1996.
L’Engle speaking at a church in 1997.
L’Engle at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, circa 1997.*
*Photograph courtesy of the Madeleine L’Engle Papers (SC-3), Special Collections, Buswell Library, Wheaton, Illinois.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1982 by Crosswicks, Ltd.
Cover design by Connie Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4153-9
This edition published in 2017 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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MADELEINE L’ENGLE
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