A Severed Wasp

by Madeleine L'engle

  Katherine shook her head. “Nothing. Nothing at all. It is just that I always marvel at my hands because there was a time when it looked as though arthritis was going to cripple them.”

  The doctor took Katherine’s hands in her own and studied them. “There’s no sign of it, no untoward thickening in the joints—”

  Katherine withdrew her hands. “They are my miracle. I have some small arthritis in my knees and one hip, but not enough to bother me.”

  “Thank God, then,” Dr. Oppenheimer said briskly. “Your hands have given solace as well as pleasure to a great many people.” She smiled. “Would you call me Mimi, please?”

  “Thank you. I’d like to. And I’m Katherine.”

  “I’m grateful for the gift of your name. I used to go to all your New York concerts. I thought of you as belonging to the older generation, but as the years increase, the distance between generations decreases. I, too, am pushing toward retirement.” She moved to the kitchen with her cup, pausing at a bookcase where several framed photographs were propped on the shelves. “Your husband was older than you, wasn’t he?”

  “Fifteen years. But, as you say, chronologies make less and less difference.”

  Mimi picked up the photograph to study it. “Handsome, your Justin. Christ, he’s attractive, the kind of pensive eyes and fine-bridged nose with those lines of tension moving to the mouth which make me a pushover. But a bit moody, I’d say, and not easy to live with on a day-to-day basis.”

  Katherine’s laugh pealed out. “He was impossible! Moody is hardly the word for it. But then, I am impossible, too. How we managed to have so much fun together I’m not sure, but we did. We loved having people in for small dinners, and talking long into the night—music, of course, but politics, books, philosophy—and we two could talk about anything.”

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” Mimi asked. “Someone to talk with. Someone who can talk about the things in our own concerns. We need that.” A bleak expression flitted across her face. “I did a hip replacement a few weeks ago on a delightful woman who’s been widowed for a few years, and she talked about how much she missed someone to talk with about the silly little things, the small diminishments and wearings out of the body, someone to look at in the morning and say, ‘Did you have a good B.M.?’ And then to argue with—Did you and your Justin ever fight?”

  “Of course. Enormous, shouting battles. When we were working up a program for me we would quarrel violently—about interpretation, about presentation—but the important thing was that in the end I always understood the music better and so, I think, did he. Music in a sense started the battles and, in the end, resolved them. A good argument is a splendid thing.”

  Mimi looked pensively at the photograph of Justin. “A good clean one. I can see that you did not indulge in bitterness or recriminations.”

  “What for? Neither Justin nor I was capable of going to bed mad. We couldn’t stand it. Everything was all right at the end of the day.” Not quite true. Or at least more true about herself than about Justin. If he started to ‘go to bed mad,’ it was she who could not stand it and who managed to resolve whatever had been the cause of the anger.

  Mimi put the picture back in its place. “And these are your children?” She indicated a photograph of a boy and a girl, the blond little boy perhaps seven, the dark-haired little girl younger, standing one on each side of Justin, holding his hands.

  “Yes. I love that picture. Justin adored the children, and he was a wonderful father, romping with them, listening to them, while I, too often, was away on tour. That’s Julie a few years ago.” Katherine nodded toward a snapshot of a handsome woman standing with a tall Viking of a man, both carrying skis.

  “Her husband?”

  “Yes. Eric Olaffsen. They live in Norway. Eric’s a stepnephew of Erlend Nikulaussen—the conductor. Eric himself has a shipping business, and they have a house on one of the fjords. I don’t see them nearly enough, though we’re appallingly extravagant with the phone. I’m nowhere near finished nesting. I’ll get the more current pictures out eventually. Julie’s middle-aged now, and her hair’s as white as mine, and my eldest grandchild is well in the twenties. I have four grandchildren, charming young people. They, too, add to my phone bill, especially Kristen, who’s a flautist with the symphony in Oslo. We talk music too often—no, not too often. It’s a great joy to me.”

  Mimi turned to the picture of the small boy and girl. “Your son—who on earth does he remind me of?”

  “His father.” Katherine’s voice was sharp.

  Mimi looked at the snapshot of Justin Vigneras, dark and hawk-like, and at the fair boy, and shook her head. “Where is he now?”

  “He is dead,” Katherine said, and Dr. Oppenheimer did not pursue the question.

  She said, “You have a gracious apartment, very much reflecting your personality. But all those bookshelves! Do you realize that a plethora of bookshelves lowers the real-estate value of your house?”

  “Not true, surely?”

  “Very true, alas.”

  “Fortunately, I have no intention of selling.” Katherine put her hand to her mouth to stifle a yawn.

  “I’ve stayed too long,” Mimi said. “Thank you for letting me come. Sleep well.”

  “You, too. Good night.” Katherine saw her out by the kitchen door. The tisane, or the hour, had made her sleepy and she yawned again, fully. Then she turned out the lights and went to her bedroom. The long windows looked down on the garden in the back, charmingly kept by the young couple. There was a small fountain playing, and the sound was cool and springlike.

  3

  She turned down her bed, not the big bed she had shared with Justin, which had been sold with most of the furniture from the house in Paris, but a smaller mahogany bedstead which had been her mother’s. The head and footboards were beautifully carved, with swans curving in graceful intertwining. The furniture for the bedroom had come from Connecticut, where it had been stored in one of Manya’s barns. It, too, gave her a feeling of continuity. Both her mother and her stepmother had used the graceful highboy, had sat at the low dressing table and looked in the mirror, perhaps had even lighted the candles in silver holders which branched from the oval frame. The rug, Chinese, soft blues and silvers, had come from Manya’s apartment on the East River. It was a quiet room, a restful room.

  She removed the light summer spread and pulled down the cotton blanket. Likely she would need to pull it up during the night. This weather was absurd for April. Nevertheless, she took a hot bath. When she was on tour she was always drained and chilly after a concert, and a hot bath was needed to warm and relax her enough for sleep. It had become part of her evening ritual, of shedding the tensions which had built during the day. Michou and Julie had had their evening rituals, too, as small children. Perhaps we never lose the need to put a frame of quiet and comfort around the events of the day.

  It was too warm for bath oil, so she sprinkled in a handful of lightly scented lavender salts, and climbed into the tub, dropping with a small splash into the water. Her creaky knees and aching hip made getting in and out of the tub no easy matter. Here, as in Paris, she had installed a handgrip, without which she did not think she could have managed. When she was on tour she had often had to ask her maid to help her out of difficult and unfamiliar tubs. She would miss Nanette, for that and many reasons, Nanette who had come to her as a fresh-cheeked, still-adolescent Breton girl, to be a nurse for the children, and then had stayed on to take care of Katherine. It was nothing for Nanette to pick Katherine up in her arms, as she had earlier picked up Michou and Julie, and carry her across a filthy stage-door alley. So, too, she had lifted her from the tub, as she had lifted the children.

  The water, she noted with irritation, was slightly muddy, but she had been informed that this was now taken for granted in the city. The bath salts, however, smelled clean and fresh, and she lay back and closed her eyes and let the warm water soothe her.

  But her mind would not relax. S
he tried to quieten it with trivia: she would wash her hair in the morning under the shower. After Justin’s death she had had it cut short, and felt that it was more becoming than the heavy masses of long hair he had loved, and which took forever to dry and dress. The short, well-styled hair toweled dry in a few minutes, and fell in becoming waves over her high forehead, her small delicate ears, showing the graceful curve of her neck.

  She could not keep her mind on anything as simple as a shampoo. Whether it was seeing Felix after all these years, she did not know.

  The bath water suddenly felt cold and she turned on the hotwater tap. Going to Paris after the bitter breakup with her young man had been the first step into what she considered reality, the world of the serious artist. How gently Justin had guided her then, when she was barely more than an overgrown adolescent, working with her through the music, relaxing the rigidity which had been her instinctive defense against rejection. After a few months he had started taking her out to dinner, to this favorite bistro or that, and then they would go back to his attic rooms and she would play—or, rather, he would seat her at the piano and demand that she repeat something he had not been satisfied with at her last lesson. Ultimately, when she had corrected the phrase which she had not, during the cold light of day, been able to master, he would walk her home to her small studio.

  It was difficult for people now to realize that she had ever been so shy that she spoke in a mumble, looking down at her feet, so insecure that she came to life only at the keyboard. Justin had grown her up, she thought, and that is no small thing.

  She wondered what had grown Felix up. And what—or who—had turned him from the self-indulgent young man to the far more interesting person he was now. She was vaguely relieved that he had not talked about religion, and yet she found herself wondering what he believed.

  With the help of the handrail she pulled herself out of the tub and put on a white terry robe. She moved slowly about the apartment, making sure the doors were locked: the door from the kitchen into the front hall; her private door into the vestibule. She could leave the windows open because of the iron grillwork which protected them. Although she had had the beautifully wrought grilles sent over from Spain, she still resented the necessity for barring herself in.

  She paused in the kitchen to pour a glass of water from the large bottle which was replaced weekly. It was tepid, but she had been away from New York long enough so that she had become indifferent to iced drinks, just as they were becoming de rigueur in Europe. Back in the bedroom, she put on her reading glasses and stretched out on the chaise longue by the windows to read until she was dry. In the garden below, two couples were lingering over coffee. Candles burned in glass globes, and voices and laughter came up to her. It was still not eleven o’clock and they were not being noisy.

  She was hot in the terry robe, so she moved back into the bathroom, finished drying with dusting powder, and put on a light cotton-batiste nightgown. Getting her book from the chaise longue, she lay on the bed, throwing off the sheet. She felt too tired to read, and after a few pages put the book on her nightstand and turned off the light.

  4

  The sound of the phone, raucous as the peacocks, broke across her.

  Automatically she reached for it, first on the wrong side of the bed, the side it had been on in Paris. She rolled over, groping for the light, then the phone. A phone call after she had gone to sleep could well be her daughter, Julie, or one of the grandchildren, knowing that this was the one time she could surely be reached. Or it could mean something wrong, an accident to one of the children, to …

  During Justin’s last years, when he was not well enough to travel, it could be her husband calling to chat. Or it could be, as it had been several times before the final call, a summons to his bedside.

  As she said “Hello,” chronologies swirled. She did not know when she was, or where.

  “Katherine, did I wake you?”

  “Yes. Who is it?”

  “Katya—”

  Chronology still had not settled. She almost called out, “Aunt Manya!”

  “It’s Felix.”

  The past, like a weary bird, dropped into place. She was in the bedroom of her house on Tenth Street, in New York. “Felix, what on earth—”

  “I’m sorry I woke you. I don’t sleep much nowadays.”

  “I do. Eight hours—when the phone doesn’t interrupt.” She looked at the traveling clock. Nearly one in the morning. He was presuming on friendship, on old times. She was not feeling apologetic for sounding angry.

  “Katya, please don’t be cross, I need you.”

  “Felix, I told you not to badger me about that benefit.”

  “Not the benefit. I need you. I need to hear your voice. I need to know there’s someone at the other end of the phone.” His voice rose in anxiety.

  “Surely I’m not the only person you know in the City of New York.”

  “Katherine. I’m afraid.”

  She sat up in bed. “Felix, what on earth is this? Why are you calling me?”

  “You’re not involved.”

  “In what?”

  “The Church. The Cathedral. And you could call Dr. Oppenheimer if—”

  “If what?” Felix had always tended to theatricality. She could not tell if the terror in his voice was feigned or real.

  “I had a nightmare …”

  “Why tell me?” She did not know why she did not hang up.

  “I don’t want to bother Dave—the dean. He has enough on his hands. I’d wake Suzy and the kids. And Llew is too involved in himself. And the others—I don’t want to be laughed at—”

  Had he been drinking? He had never had much of a head for alcohol. Even if he’d only finished the Frascati—“What is all this about? Why are you calling me at this hour?”

  “I’m afraid,” he repeated, and there was no doubting that his fear was real.

  Her voice softened. “Are you ill?”

  “No, I’m not ill.”

  “You’re not in pain? Your heart’s all right?”

  “My heart is fine. It’s thumping only because I’m frightened.”

  “Of what?”

  “There are noises … I thought if they heard me talking on the phone …”

  “Who?”

  There was a small, choking sound.

  She tried to be gentle with what sounded close to hysterical panic. She had known terror in the night, although she could not imagine what was frightening the bishop. “Isn’t there somebody closer you could call? Someone who could come over?”

  “No, no, I don’t want any of them. It’s helping just to hear your voice. You’ve always been so strong—people have always been able to talk to you. You’ve done me a world of good. You’ve saved my life.”

  That sounded more like the old Felix, prone to hyperbole. “All right for me to go back to sleep now?”—If I can.

  “You’ve made all the difference. Just hearing your voice has reassured me.”

  “Why don’t you turn on your radio? There are some good all-night stations.”

  “Yes, yes, I’ll do that. Forgive me. I’ve been drinking.”

  Had he? She was not sure. “Good night, Felix.”

  “Oh, bless you, Katherine, bless you.”

  It was an appropriate way for a bishop to end a conversation. She replaced the receiver in its cradle. What had all that been about? She felt baffled and vaguely concerned. There was only one thing of which she was sure: Felix was afraid.

  But why had he called her?

  There was no answer to that, this night at any rate. And he had thoroughly wakened her. Fear is contagious, and she had caught some of his.

  5

  Slowly she stretched out her hands to make sure they were all right. Her memory would never lose that time during the war when she had been beaten; she had clenched her fists so tightly against the pain that she could not open her fingers without agony until the next day, and she had been afraid they would never open
easily again. The unremitting damp of the Nazi prison and then the beating had been the beginning of the arthritis which had for so many years been a sword of Damocles hanging over her head. Once again, in the infectious terror she had caught from Felix, she was afraid that the thread might break, so that, after all these crowded years, she needed tangible reassurance that her hands were all right.

  She opened her bed-table drawer and pulled out a small, tooled-leather box. Inside was a rosary of small, carved myrtle-wood beads, the patterning almost worn down by Cardinal von Stromberg’s fingers. Although her own praying was little more than an anguished cry of “Help!” or a “Thank you!” in the startlement of joy, the rosary held the strength of von Stromberg’s prayers, and her heart slowed its rapid beating.

  She eased herself out of bed, moved to the living room, and sat down at the piano. Bach. The last prelude in the second volume of The Well-Tempered Clavier. Her hands were all right. As Justin’s had not been. Nor her mother’s, whose right arm had been so injured in an automobile accident that it cut off her career, broke her marriage, nearly drove her to drink—

  Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand had been composed for a friend whose right hand had been blown off in the trenches during World War I. Surely Felix could not believe in a God who made a world where people were given great gifts, only to have those gifts smashed, irrevocably, while the life which was no more than a vessel for that gift went on and on, meaninglessly. Are there other gifts to replace the broken one? For her mother, there had not been.

  Justin had turned to composing as well as nurturing Katherine’s talent, maturing her, expanding her, never forcing or manipulating, but helping her serve the gift for which she had been born. She played the Prelude and Fugue through to the end, then dutifully returned to bed, returning the rosary to its box and the bed-table drawer. To her surprise, she slid almost immediately into sleep. And dream. Her dreams, of late, had been reliving the past, as though her subconscious mind was helping her to recover all the things she had not had time to think about. It was not so much that she had deliberately repressed the memories as that she had been too busy for them. The present had been too full, even in these years after Justin’s death. Now the past was returning to her in her dreams, not to shock and frighten her, but to help her complete herself. Even when the dreams were nightmares or, rather, reviewing what had been living nightmares, she welcomed them. But this dream was as much of a chronological muddle as she had been in when Felix’s call had roused her. She was in his Cathedral, listening to the organ, and in the dream she could see the organist, Llew whatever his name was, and he wept, wept for his wife and child, wept for Bishop Undercroft. Why was he grieving for the bishop, who was very much alive? But he wept, and his tears became part of the music, bathing the columns of the nave with a gentle, cleansing flow. She ran the length of the dark building to hold him, to give him a light, because he was afraid of the dark.