A Severed Wasp

by Madeleine L'engle

  “The present Mrs. Undercroft? Is he widowed?”

  “Divorced,” Mimi said flatly and with disapproval.

  “I’m staggered enough at married bishops, much less divorced ones.”

  Mimi shrugged. “All is permissiveness nowadays. Express yourself, fulfill yourself, no matter at what cost to others. I liked his first wife, and he threw her aside like a used tissue.”

  “I gather,” Katherine remarked dryly, “that you don’t care for him?”

  Mimi sighed. “I have unreasonable likes and dislikes. I’m aware that he’s brilliant and charming, but he’s too young for my tastes, or I’m too old for his charm. Anyhow, Dave—and your Felix—are the only clerical types I can abide.”

  “I’m still surprised at a divorced bishop.”

  Mimi put out her hand to help Katherine down the stone steps. “There are plenty. Like most non-churchgoers, you have high expectations of bishops.”

  “Not really,” Katherine demurred. “I’m pretty realistic about clergy now. When I was young, it was a shock to my childish idolatry to discover flesh and blood and human frailty instead of marble perfection. But I discovered it.” Carefully, she did not overemphasize her words.

  “Dave and Suzy chide me for what they call my false expectations of the clergy. I do get the message. People tend to have false expectations of physicians, as I know only too well.” They had reached the French château which Felix called Cathedral House. Mimi pulled open a large glass and ironwork door with considerable effort. “These doors put on weight every year.” She rang a bell and, at the sound of the buzzer, pulled open another heavy glass door. “I’m afraid there are quite a few stairs.” She looked at the cane.

  “No problem if I can take it slowly. I won’t complain about rheumaticky knees as long as my fingers aren’t affected.”

  “There really ought to be an elevator—” Mimi led the way.

  A flight of stone steps. Then a steeper flight of carpeted stairs. Mimi climbed them slowly, looking back to see if Katherine needed help. Halfway up she paused to give Katherine a chance to rest, and said, sounding slightly guilty, “I didn’t mean to prejudice you against Allie Undercroft. Dave says he’s a fine bishop.”

  Katherine breathed slowly and deeply, grateful for the respite. “I find him rather fascinating, particularly because he reminds me of someone I knew—oh, thousands of years ago.”

  “Who?” Mimi was quickly curious.

  “A German—a Bavarian—who was in charge of the prison outside Paris where I was interned at the beginning of the war.”

  “A bad memory?”

  “Yes.” Her tone precluded further questioning, and they continued up the stairs.

  5

  The dean and his wife were standing in the doorway to greet them, Dr. Davidson in as much contrast to her husband as Mrs. Undercroft to the bishop. Against the dean’s darkness, Dr. Davidson was brightly blonde, and looked far younger than she must, in actuality, be.

  Within the apartment there was a hubbub of conversation which dropped as Katherine entered, and she found herself surrounded by people eager to meet her. Somehow she had expected lionization to vanish with her retirement; another misconception.

  A bevy of little girls was going about the room, offering drinks and sandwiches. One was the pretty child Katherine and Felix had met at the gate; there was no question that she was Dr. Davidson’s daughter, the same buttery hair, the fringed gentian eyes. Standing near her, as though she were about to drop her tray of sandwiches, was the plump child who had been with her: Fatima.

  Katherine was introduced to two men who were called Canon Ulgrade and Canon Dorsey; Felix explained that “canon” was a title used in cathedrals. More introductions. She had not expected this many people. She caught a glimpse of Bishop and Mrs. Undercroft across the crowded room, talking to two tall young men. Dr. Davidson followed her gaze and said, “Those two monsters with the Undercrofts are my sons. Internships, residencies, and so forth, play havoc with family planning. Women still have a lot more juggling to do than men, no matter how supportive their husbands.”

  Katherine was relieved that the doctor had not noticed her involuntary start as once again the resemblance between Bishop Undercroft and Lukas von Hilpert struck her. Everyone was supposed to have a Doppelgänger, but Doppelgängers were identical, if she remembered correctly, and Bishop Undercroft’s bright blue eyes were very different from von Hilpert’s sober grey ones. The past does not leave one alone, she thought. It is always there, erupting into the present when one least expects it.

  Dr. Davidson continued to chatter, pointing out her daughters among the children. Emily, the older of the two girls, was thin, with straight, flaxen hair, paler than her mother’s and sister’s, against a coppery skin, and eyes nearly as blue as the bishop’s. She was an odd-looking pre-adolescent, but the very oddness would likely turn into beauty in a few years.

  “My infants,” Dr. Davidson said fondly, and moved Katherine toward the fireplace, where there were two comfortable chairs, one of which was occupied by a young man with black hair and fair skin and brown shadows under his dark eyes. He looked very Welsh, so he was likely the young organist.

  Before Dr. Davidson could get Katherine to the empty chair, she had to introduce her to several more people. But at last she was seated, thinking that if Mimi had warned her that there was going to be this kind of mob she would never have agreed to come.

  A welcome breeze blew in the long French windows. In the fireplace was a great bunch of mountain laurel. The furniture had white summer covers, and despite all the people, the room had an air of comfortable coolness.

  Dr. Davidson said, “What can we get you to drink? We have iced tea, and the children have made lemonade, and there’s sherry.”

  “Lemonade would be perfect,” Katherine said.

  “Tory!” Dr. Davidson called across the room to her youngest. “A glass of lemonade for Madame Vigneras.”

  The child called back, “Coming up,” picked up an empty tray, and left the room.

  “Now,” Dr. Davidson said firmly, “Llew, we’ve run the gamut but we’re here at last. Madame Vigneras, our organist, Llewellyn Owen.”

  Llewellyn Owen leapt to his feet to take her hand.

  “That was a splendid performance, Mr. Owen,” Katherine said. “I especially enjoyed my husband’s Toccata and Fugue. Far too many people play it at a gallop, and you hit exactly the right controlled and serious tempo.”

  A quick flush suffused his pale skin. “Thank you. That means more to me than I can say, coming from you. I’m particularly fond of that piece—there’s so much—so much acceptance in it.”

  She nodded. “Justin was not a very accepting person, but he worked through a good deal while he was composing that.”

  The young organist’s eyes were bleak. “Is it worth it?”

  “Oh, yes, Mr. Owen. It is worth it. I promise you that.”

  “In spite of—death and war and terror—”

  “In spite of everything.” He looked at her with so much pain that she repeated, “I promise.”

  A swarthy middle-aged man, in clericals, came up and introduced himself to Katherine as Bishop Juxon, one of Bishop Undercroft’s suffragans. When she looked politely vague, Bishop Juxon smiled and explained that it meant only that he was an assistant bishop and what he really wanted to talk to her about was music.

  Llew rose, and Bishop Juxon said, “Don’t get up, Llew. I can stay only a few minutes.”

  But the young organist offered the older man his chair. “I want to get back to the organ. There’s a phrase in the Hovhaness I’m not satisfied with, and I want to go over it while it’s still fresh in my mind. You understand?” He looked at Katherine imploringly.

  “Of course, Mr. Owen. Go right ahead.” She wished she could go with him. As he left, he nodded goodbye to the Davidsons, and to Mrs. Undercroft, who was sitting on a sofa, surrounded by a twitter of little girls. She looked up from speaking with one of t
hem, waved goodbye to the organist, caught Katherine’s eyes, and smiled at her.

  Bishop Juxon perched on the edge of the chair. “You’ve heard about Llew’s tragedy?”

  “Yes.” And then, because it seemed that something more was expected, she added, “One survives.”

  “Some are better survivors than others.” Despite his name, Bishop Juxon with his oily black hair and olive skin looked Levantine and spoke with a trace of accent. “You have survived considerable, haven’t you?” His dark eyes were warm and friendly.

  “Considerable,” she agreed, and accepted a glass of lemonade from the younger Davidson daughter.

  “You have many fans on the Cathedral Close,” Bishop Juxon continued. “We’re great lovers of music around here. And Llew is, as you have heard, a musician par excellence. What he can do with a choir is remarkable. His children’s choir, particularly, draws crowds; he takes a pack of little wild creatures and turns them—at least while they’re singing—into angels. If you enjoy choral music—”

  “I do.”

  “Then I’m sorry you weren’t here for Holy Week. Llew does a superb St. Matthew Passion, which I consider probably the greatest piece of music in the world.”

  “Merv! Listen to this!” Bishop Juxon and Katherine both turned to see Bishop Undercroft standing near the dean, holding up a book. “It’s Orwell, and I’ve just discovered it, though Dave says it was old-hat when he was in seminary. He—George Orwell, not Dave—talks about ‘a rather cruel trick I once played on a wasp.’” He looked down at the page. “‘He was sucking jam on my plate and I cut him in half. He paid no attention, merely went on with his meal, while a tiny stream of jam trickled out of his severed esophagus. Only when he tried to fly away did he grasp the dreadful thing that had happened to him. It is the same with modern man, and there was a period—twenty years, perhaps—during which he did not notice it. It was absolutely necessary that the soul be cut away. Religious belief, in the form that we had known it, had to be abandoned.’ I suppose you’ve read it, Merv?”

  Bishop Juxon nodded. “But I’d forgotten it till this moment. It’s a powerful image.”

  “What do you make of it, Allie?” the dean asked Bishop Undercroft.

  The fair young bishop shook his head. “It is all too easy to see the Church in that image, the greedy wasp unaware of its brokenness. And I don’t mean just the Episcopal Church which still hasn’t rid itself of its image—”

  “God’s frozen people,” Bishop Juxon murmured.

  Undercroft nodded. “It’s also the Romans, the Evangelicals, the Pentecostals, all of us who believe we profess Christ.”

  “Don’t we?” a small Chinese priest asked.

  Bishop Undercroft looked sober; some of the brightness seemed to dim in his blue eyes. “Some of us do, thank God. You do, Chan. But when Christian bodies war together as bitterly as we are doing, then it would seem that some of us must be professing Antichrist, perhaps honestly believing him to be the Christ.”

  Bishop Juxon unobtrusively indicated the Chinese priest to Katherine. “That’s Ming Chan, our other suffragan. A fine priest.”

  Felix moved from the Davidson young men to enter the conversation. “Once we recognize that we’re broken, we have a chance to mend. You’re a healer, Allie, that’s what you’re called to be.”

  Bishop Chan said, “Felix is right, Allie, and your parish priests need your healing gifts. So do Merv and I.”

  Katherine turned away as Mimi headed toward her. The men discussing the Orwell passage seemed genuinely fond of each other, she thought. There was no pomposity, no—so far as she could see—jostling for power, only a shared and deep concern.

  “It’s easier in this troubled world,” she said to Mimi, “to be a pianist than a priest.”

  “Christ, yes,” Mimi agreed, and looked toward the men, who were still deep in conversation. “Katherine, I do apologize. Suzy and Dave had no intention of collecting a mob. I didn’t have any idea of getting you into anything like this. But word must have got round that you were going to be here, and you’ve given a lot of people a thrill. And you really helped Llew. It’s just around the anniversary of his wife’s death, and he’s having a rough time.”

  “It’s all right,” Katherine said moderately graciously, as Fatima Gomez came up to them, almost bumping into Katherine with her plate of sandwiches.

  “Ubiquitous creature,” Mimi murmured, “she’s always underfoot. Have you gathered that she and Topaze are siblings?”

  Katherine nodded. “Did you know that Topaze and Fatima sell information?”

  Mimi splashed tea on her dress and began mopping at it with a paper napkin. “Where on earth did you hear that?”

  “Topaze wanted to know if I wanted to know anything about anybody—for a dollar, I think.”

  Mimi whistled. “I’m not surprised. Yolande and Allie pay for their tuition—they go to St. Andrew’s, with the Davidson kids—but their mother is supposed to take care of their pocket money, and Mrs. Gomez is convinced that if they have one penny to rub against the other they’d buy drugs.”

  “Would they?”

  “I doubt it. They’ve seen what drugs can do, and they aren’t like their father.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Gomez was—is—a smalltime pusher. Right now he’s in jail. The children think he was framed, and maybe he was. He was only on the fringes of a large drug ring—the big wheels don’t get caught; they keep the Gomezes of this world for that. He was found with a large quantity of heroin.”

  “I thought the drug traffic was supposed to be slowing down.”

  “It can be slowing down and still be big business. In an unhappy world there’s always someone who wants to buy oblivion. I use various morphine derivatives for my patients who are in extreme pain, and I’ve learned to assess those I have to be particularly careful with. Pain is better than addiction, even if they’d argue with me. Some I don’t have to worry about. They’re grateful to have their pain alleviated, but as soon as it drops to a bearable level they’re happy to cut out their shots. Odd. It doesn’t run to a predictable pattern.”

  Katherine returned to the original subject. “Who would want to buy the kind of information a child could pick up?”

  “You’d be surprised what a child can pick up, just because the adults don’t pay them any attention. As to who’d want to know—oh, all kinds of people. That’s why gossip and scandal sheets are so popular.”

  “So—that’s a kind of addiction, too?”

  “And probably as dangerous as drugs. Oy veh, I understand it only too well. I have a strong streak of nasty curiosity myself.”

  Katherine looked at Fatima, who was handing her plate of sandwiches to a group of priests. Selling information was nothing new, she supposed, even for children.

  6

  Mimi turned toward another group as the two Davidson young men approached, the elder with a pitcher of fresh lemonade.

  “I’m Jos,” he said, refilling Katherine’s glass. “The number-one Davidson offspring.”

  “Chronologically,” the younger boy said. “I’m John, and I’m number two. Jos—his real name is Josiah, but he prefers Jos—is in his first year at N.Y.U., pre-med, and I’m a junior in high school.”

  “John’s a musician.” Jos set the pitcher of lemonade on a long table behind a sofa. He was a big brown bear of a young man, not handsome, but good-looking in a reassuring kind of way. “He plays the violin.”

  “Like Bishop Bodeway,” John said.

  Felix had left his conversation and come over to them. “Much better than Bishop Bodeway. John’s a real musician.”

  “But you did—” Katherine started.

  “I had delusions of grandeur,” Felix said wryly. “Actually, I played fairly well, and still do. But John’s the real thing.”

  A soft, adolescent blush suffused John’s cheeks. “Uncle Bishop is my great encourager. Dad plays the English horn, and we sometimes get together and play.”r />
  Josiah said, “Lots of it sounds horrendous, but we have fun. Sometimes Bishop Bodeway comes, too.”

  “It doesn’t really sound that bad,” Felix protested. “I’ve taped some of our Sunday evenings.”

  Josiah said earnestly, “We play your records a lot, Madame Vigneras. It’s a real privilege to meet you.”

  And John, shining, added, “It really is.”

  “Thank you. You’re very kind.” Her answer was less automatic than with most of the people she had met at the Davidsons’. John’s admiration was the kind that comes only from an artist; she suspected that Felix was right and the child was going to be good.

  The priest who had been introduced as Canon Ulgrade came up to shake her hand and say goodbye; she had the feeling that he had no idea who she was, but had been told she should be treated with respect. Mrs. Undercroft rose, shaking small girls away as though they were flower petals.

  “We really ought to be going,” Katherine murmured. She was tired.

  Felix reached for her hand. “Katya, it is so good to see you. Allie and I’ve been reminiscing about our first meeting at that concert hall in San Francisco. Allie doesn’t play an instrument, but he loves music. Dave, by the way, could have made a career of the English horn if the priesthood hadn’t called him.”

  Katherine looked around for Mimi, but did not see her. This gathering of bishops, deans, priests, was an alien world and she wondered that Mimi was so comfortable in it.

  “Madame Vigneras.” Bishop Undercroft had come up to them. “I realize it’s time for you to go home, but may I take you into the library for just a moment?” He held out his arm and she took it. He slowed his pace to match hers, and led her into a room filled with books and comfortable chairs. There was a fireplace with a bouquet of shasta daisies in a white vase, giving a spring-like feeling to the room, which would be cozy in winter with the fire lit, but was, on this May afternoon, stuffy, smelling of crumbling leather.

  “Parties sometimes creep up on Suzy,” the bishop said. “The Davidsons more or less keep open house, but this afternoon they asked only Yolande and me, Felix, Llew, and you and Mimi. Or so they thought. Wind of your presence drifted across the Close, and people are so used to the Davidson hospitality that they tend to come crowding up, uninvited, despite all those stairs, and of course Suzy and Dave would never turn anyone away. Did you enjoy the concert?”