Lying Awake

by Mark Salzman

  “Praised be Jesus Christ.”

  “May He be forever praised. How was Father Aaron’s sermon this morning?” Speech was allowed in the infirmary, where charity took priority over obedience. Sister John thanked God for that; any distraction from her own thoughts was welcome now.

  Sister Miriam set the tray down. “I liked it. He talked about how, even for Saint Teresa, things never got easy.” She sprinkled raisins and cinnamon on Sister John’s oatmeal, poured milk on it, then buttered her toast for her.

  Sister John watched guiltily, knowing that Sister Miriam had eaten only cold cereal for breakfast. She tried the oatmeal, but couldn’t taste anything; since the operation, her sense of smell had all but disappeared. “Are you feeling better since your parents’ visit?” she asked.

  Sister Miriam brushed her veil away from her cheek. “I had a long talk with Mother Emmanuel, like you suggested. I told her about having days where I don’t feel sure.” She pursed her lips. “About belonging here, I mean.”

  “And what did Mother Emmanuel say?”

  “That she has days when she doesn’t feel sure, either. Even now.” Sister Miriam looked up hopefully. “She said that no matter how many times we hear what it costs to follow Christ, we’re still shocked when the bill comes, and we wonder all over again if we can pay it. If we make an act of faith then, it counts more than on the days when we feel sure.”

  Sister Miriam got up to check Sister Teresa’s feeding tube and change the towel under the old woman’s chin. The fog had lifted outdoors to reveal a clay-white sky. “What about temporary vows?” Sister John asked. “Do you feel ready?”

  “I don’t have it all worked out, but I’m ready. I want to try working with what I’ve got instead of wishing I had something else.”

  The sound of the wooden clapper carried from the refectory. Sister Miriam bowed again, but paused before leaving. “I want to thank you for talking to me that day,” she said. “It helped a lot.”

  “You’ll do the same for me one day, I’m sure.”

  Sister Miriam smiled, then passed under the quote on her way out. Silence took her place in the room, and Sister John felt marooned in it. A red-tailed hawk settled on one of the eucalyptus trees beyond the cloister wall, but was not able to enjoy peace there for long. A pair of mockingbirds, each a fraction of the hawk’s size, lunged and screamed at it until the hawk flew off. The mockingbirds gave chase until the giant had disappeared, then returned to their spot in the ginkgo tree.

  Sister Teresa mumbled at the ceiling, neck stretched and hands retracted as if she were clutching a purse. Sister John thought: There’s someone who knows what it costs to follow Christ. She gave God everything she had, and now she doesn’t even know who she is, much less that she was a nun.

  During private prayer after Vespers, Mother Mary Joseph shuffled into the infirmary with a basket. Her body was curved into the shape of a question mark. She uncovered the basket and held a popover roll in front of Sister Teresa, who became alert all of a sudden and grinned like a child. Mother Mary Joseph fed her by hand until she had eaten nearly half a roll, then brought the basket over to Sister John.

  “Resting well?” the Living Rule asked. It came out as more of a squeak than a question.

  “I’m looking forward to getting back to choir. I feel useless in here.”

  Mother Mary Joseph pointed to Sister Teresa. “You’re keeping her company.” The former prioress took a moment to admire the garden through the window, then asked, “Written anything?”

  Sister John pointed to her bandage. “When they took this out, my muse went with it.”

  “God must think you did enough with that gift. Now he wants you to do something else.”

  “That’s a positive way of looking at it.”

  Mother Mary Joseph brushed the crumbs out of the basket into her palm. “What other way is there?” She crossed the infirmary, opened the window, and tossed the crumbs out to where the birds could eat them. She was barely able to reach over the windowsill. “Christ died without seeing his work completed,” she said. “By human standards he was a failure, but faith turned his defeat into victory. How he looked at it was everything.”

  She returned to her spot next to Sister John’s bed. “God showed you what heaven could be like, and you shared it with others. Now you can do something even better.”

  “You think so?”

  Mother Mary Joseph nodded from the waist. “Walk in faith even though heaven seems out of reach. Think how good it would be if you could write about that.”

  Leaves dropped from the ginkgo tree like gold coins, mocking Sister John’s poverty. It was one thing to be poor in spirit, like Christ, but another to be poor in faith. “I need to read that book, not write it,” Sister John said.

  Mother Mary Joseph shook her head. “Everything we learn about God leads to deeper mystery. Hard to accept sometimes, but we have to keep going.” The old nun’s voice was ready to give out. She squinted and eyed the wall. “What does that clock say?”

  “Five-twenty.”

  She frowned and gathered her basket. “Too much talk. Pray for the next batch of rolls.”

  NOVEMBER 1

  All Saints

  With veils pulled forward to cover their faces, the nuns stood in choir, holding candles as Mother Emmanuel delivered the opening prayer:

  When we make our vows, we hold out all that we are or may become to You.

  Sister Miriam appeared at the far end of the room, wearing her novice’s white veil for the last time. Her novice mistress, Sister Elizabeth, had been given the honor of calling for her at the hermitage and leading her as far as the door to the choir, but Sister Miriam had to make the journey to the altar alone.

  As Sister John watched, she recalled the joy and certainty she had felt during her own ceremony, so many years ago. Everything had seemed clear then; she was falling toward God like a stone falling toward the sun. Instead of plunging into the sun’s heart, however, she had missed and been cast back into a vacuum. Her path was not to be a straight line after all, but a comet’s ellipse.

  Sister Miriam walked slowly, making it look like a natural pace. With each step she seemed to say: Here I am, as I am, as God made me. When she reached the altar, Mother Emmanuel bowed and pointed to two squares of cloth laid out before the tabernacle. One was white and represented the world. The other was black, representing the walk through darkness that all contemplatives make. Mother Emmanuel’s lips barely moved as she whispered something for only the two of them to hear, then she stepped aside.

  Sister Miriam extended her right hand and lowered it onto the black cloth, then knelt down with her hands stretched out in front of her, palms up. Mother Emmanuel came forward to adjust them so that one hand caught the light from the window, while the other was in shadow, then said to the gathering, “We stretch out our emptied hands to take hold of the Light of Christ. We ask that His Holy Spirit animate us with His love and life, but we know, in faith, that often we do not feel animated. We come to the cloister hoping that God’s will and our own may be joyfully reunited, but find instead that we are more aware than ever of the gap between them. We may feel that our prayers are arid, or that we have lost our way, or that God has abandoned us. Although we suffer deeply, those become our most precious hours here, because only in complete darkness do we learn that faith gives off light.

  “Sister Miriam, do you promise obedience, chastity, and poverty to God for the next three years, according to the primitive Rule of the Order of Discalced Carmelites?”

  “I do.”

  “Do you make these vows of your own free will?”

  “I do.”

  Sister Miriam lay facedown on the floor, her arms outstretched in the form of a cross, while Sister John helped cover her with a white sheet. This was the sign of the mystical death through which the nun promises to die to the world and to self.
Sister John raised her eyes from the ceremony to look out the window of the choir. The trees were all reaching upward. They would die without ever touching the sun, but in the meantime they provided shade, beauty, and oxygen. When they fell, they would nourish the next generation of trees.

  The prioress struck a wooden clapper and, one at a time, the nuns stepped forward to slide a piece of paper under Sister Miriam’s body. These were intention slips; tradition held that a new bride of Christ was especially close to God at that moment, and that her requests were certain to be heard. On her own slip, Sister John had written the names of her half-siblings and a prayer for faith.

  During the prostration, while the community chanted the hymn Veni Creator Spiritus, they asked that the Holy Spirit strengthen, guide, and protect them; they prayed for their monastery and for its benefactors, and they prayed for the salvation of all mankind. The hymn ended, and in the silence that followed, Sister John remembered her very first prayer at Carmel, when Mother Mary Joseph told her to kneel before the altar and make her wishes known to God.

  Please, God, let me know you.

  If God’s mystery only deepens as we learn about him, she thought, then maybe he’s been answering my prayer after all.

  The white sheet was removed and Sister Miriam rose. Mother Emmanuel lifted the novice’s veil from her head and replaced it with the veil of Profession, then turned her around to face the others. Sister Miriam’s face looked radiant, an effect heightened by the contrast between light and dark veil. The community sang the De Colores as they recessed to the courtyard, where Mother Mary Joseph passed out hand bells. The nuns circulated through the garden like fireflies, their bells tiny beacons of sound, wishing each other God’s peace as they laughed and reminisced and wondered aloud when God might call the next woman to Carmel. She was out there somewhere; could she be hearing the voice of the Other at this very moment?

  Sister Miriam had been hugged so often that her new veil, fastened hastily during the ceremony, had been pulled askew, making her look slightly drunk. Sister Anne wanted to straighten it for her, but Sister Elizabeth shooed her off. Sister Angelica kept her eyes on everyone’s feet; she worried that, in all the excitement, one of the revelers might step off the flagstones and threaten the miniature life of the garden. Mother Mary Joseph excused herself to share the good news with Sister Teresa in the infirmary, while Sisters Christine and Bernadette talked about how to deal with the noise problem once the roofers began construction.

  Sister John stopped by the fountain and saw that leaves had nearly clogged the filter leading to the pump. As she cleared them away with a stick, Mother Emmanuel approached and whispered, “I don’t know who looks happier—Sister Miriam or Sister Elizabeth. That was a difficult novitiate.”

  “She wasn’t allowing herself to be human,” Sister John said. “I’m glad she talked with you about it. She seems much more relaxed now.”

  Mother Emmanuel looked pleased. “I tried to reassure her that her feelings were normal. We all have to try to become holy on our own, and fail, before we can approach God with humility.”

  The bells set the canaries off, turning the garden into a rain forest.

  “Which got me to thinking about Claire Bours,” Mother Emmanuel continued. “She’ll be arriving next month. She’s a bright girl, used to succeeding when she sets her mind to it; I worry that she’ll have trouble adjusting to the fact that she can’t force God to come to her. She’ll need a novice mistress with a special understanding of the difficulties we face trying to do God’s will.” The prioress’s eyes were the same color as the sky. “My heart tells me you would be the right person.”

  Sister John could see in through the window of the infirmary. Sister Teresa, her own novice mistress, was just out of view. “I don’t feel I know anything about God’s will, Mother.”

  “Yet you’re still here, trying to do His will anyway. That’s the kind of understanding I meant. The doing kind, not the knowing kind.”

  Neither of them spoke for a while. Sparrows drawn by the commotion in the garden called down from the trees. They seemed to have the best kind of understanding of all; they answered yes to everything.

  “I’ll do my best, Mother.”

  A group had formed at the Blessed Virgin’s shrine to pay respects. Mother Emmanuel left to join them, but Sister John stayed behind to finish clearing the fountain. When she got the water flowing properly, she stepped back, took her bell out of her pocket, and rang it. The sound cheered her, then vanished into the deep blue air, which seemed to go on forever.

  MARK SLAZMAN

  Lying Awake

  Mark Salzman is the author of Iron & Silk, an account of his two years in China; the novels The Laughing Sutra and The Soloist, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction; and Lost in Place, a memoir. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, filmmaker Jessica Yu.

  ALSO BY MARK SALZMAN

  Lost in Place

  The Soloist

  The Laughing Sutra

  Iron & Silk

  Acclaim for MARK SALZMAN’S

  Lying Awake

  “A shining novel about devotion and doubt…Salzman, having entered this world so completely, so faithfully, describes it with perfect pitch.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “A marvelous accomplishment.”

  —The Seattle Times

  “Completely persuasive and utterly convincing.…It is a book of substance, written with economy and precision.”

  —The Baltimore Sun

  “A satisfying and evocative questioning of faith and art.”

  —The Oregonian

  “Lying Awake showcases an almost ethereal talent, one that can handle complex ideas with a touch lighter than air.”

  —New York Post

  “Lying Awake unfolds like a devotional prayer.…A small, splendid book.”

  —The Columbus Dispatch

  “Salzman’s eye and ear for tiny, resonant details eventually yield their riches in a clear-eyed vision—not, perhaps, of what God means, but certainly of what it means to be a human being.”

  —New York

  “A remarkable novel.…[Salzman] reaches beyond experience to the heart of the religious requirement.”

  —Karen Armstrong, author of The History of God

  “Lying Awake is a quick, engrossing read, testament to Salzman’s talent for tackling such a complex subject without melodrama or skepticism.”

  —The Times-Picayune

  “A unique treat: a heady page-turner.”

  —The Hartford Courant

  “Lying Awake is stripped to essentials.…This story seems almost to be told through [Salzman] rather than by him.”

  —Commonweal

  “Impressive.…Mark Salzman conveys the nature of convent life without romanticizing it. A touching portrait of a woman trying to strike a balance between science and soul.”

  —Kathleen Norris, author of The Cloister Walk

  FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, OCTOBER 2001

  Copyright© 2000 by Mark Salzman

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

  Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc.,

  New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited,

  Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf,

  a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2000.

  Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Contemporaries and colophon are

  trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:

  Salzman, Mark.

  Lying awake / Mark Salzman

  p. cm.

  1. Carmelite Nu
ns—California—Los Angeles—Fiction.

  2. Epilepsy—Patients—Fiction. 3. Los Angeles (Calif.)—Fiction. I. Title

  PS3569.A4627 L95 2000

  813'.54—dc21 99-089890

  Vintage

  Illustrations by Stephanie Shieldhouse

  Please visit our website at www.vintagebooks.com

  eISBN: 978-1-4000-7775-5

  v3.0_r1

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