A Severed Wasp

by Madeleine L'engle

  “Perspective,” Llew said, “is something we don’t have much of around here. At least I don’t.”

  “Llew,” the bishop warned softly.

  There was a whiteness about the young organist’s mouth and nose. “Madame Vigneras, have you ever been somewhere you should not have been at a time when you should have been somewhere else, and against your will?”

  “Often. I was in Poland when my husband died. I knew the end was near, though the doctors didn’t, and neither Justin nor Jean Paul would let me cancel my tour. They were insistent that a concert tour behind the Iron Curtain was important. Maybe it was. I don’t know.”

  Llew sighed. “I was hoping—”

  The bishop, too, sighed, and sat down, almost hidden by the high wood of the pew.

  Llew said, “Listening to you play—there was something so certain, as though you had no regrets.”

  Katherine looked at the young, pained face. “I’m not sure I do.”

  “But you just said—”

  “Nobody can live as long as I have, or even as long as you have, without being somewhere when you want to be somewhere else. Or doing things you would never in the world have planned to do or wished to do. But when they’re done, they’re done. Regrets are useless.”

  Bishop Chan peered over the pew. “Are you listening?” he asked the organist.

  Llew, neither turning nor acknowledging, asked Katherine, “And the people, then, who made you be places you didn’t want to be—how do you feel about them?”

  “Mostly they were seeing to it that I did my duty—unfashionable word, but I’ve learned not to take it lightly. Sometimes, if I thought they were wrong, I was angry. But there’s no point in staying in anger. It becomes a festering sore.”

  “You didn’t hate them?”

  She asked, “Who do you hate, Llew?”

  His voice was brittle. “There was a big diocesan service, one of our major events, all tied in with the UN and peace, and I know it was important—but I’m not the only organist in the world.”

  “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “Dee—my wife—went into labor—two weeks early—the morning of the service. Bishop Undercroft said my place was at the Cathedral, that everything would be all right. And it wasn’t. The baby—the baby wasn’t right, and Dee—started to bleed—and they couldn’t control it—and I wasn’t with her, I was here, at the Cathedral—” He was choking on dry sobs.

  Katherine did not move to touch him, but sat quietly at the piano, waiting.

  “It was his fault.” The words were muffled. “I could at least have been with her. I’ll never forgive him.”

  “Or yourself?”

  “Both of us. I wasn’t there, and she died.”

  “I wasn’t with Justin when he died. I knew he was ill, and I still went on with my work. I was in Poland. I know something of what you’ve been going through. As for Bishop Undercroft, I gather he was brought up in the British tradition, where the chief purpose of education is to train you to do what you have to do, when you have to do it, whether you want to or not. It isn’t a bad tradition, you know.”—Without it, how could I have gone on playing, giving that first concert after Michou’s death? “It wasn’t Bishop Undercroft’s fault that things went wrong.”

  Llew was half kneeling, half sitting on the stone floor, and he put his head in her lap. She touched his fine, thick hair. “The doctors said it was something that no one could have predicted.”

  “Then let it go. Stop blaming. You have to get on with things. You are getting on. I have heard you play.”

  “I’m alive only when I’m at the organ. Everywhere else I’m lost. I want to kill someone, to—”

  “That’s all right at first,” Katherine said, “but you can’t let it go on too long. If you do, it will destroy your music, and you are not permitted to do that.”

  “Who won’t permit me?”

  “I, for one.”

  He laughed then, a strangled sound. “At least you didn’t say God.”

  She continued to stroke the lustrous black hair. His head was heavy on her lap, and suddenly she realized that he had fallen asleep, there on the hard stone floor of St. Ansgar’s chapel.

  Bishop Chan emerged slowly from the pew. “Thank you, Madame. You’ve done more for Llew than the rest of us together.”

  “But I haven’t—”

  “You’re Katherine Vigneras. He can hear a musician where he cannot hear a priest.”

  “He’s asleep—”

  “I’ll wake him in a moment. He was holding vigil for Merv most of last night. You’ve been a catalytic agent among us, Madame. We get very lost in our own world, here on the Close, very ingrown.” The bishop leaned down and touched Llew on the shoulder. “Son.” Llew shuddered and opened his eyes. “We must leave Madame Vigneras to the piano.”

  The young organist sprang to his feet, looked around wildly. “What did I do? I dumped it all on you—”

  Katherine spread out both her hands and made a gesture as though throwing. “There. I’ve dumped it on these stones where it can’t hurt anyone. Let it go. Serve your music.”

  He nodded. “I’m tired of being told to serve God. Serving my music is something I understand.”

  “Isn’t it the same thing?” Bishop Chan crossed to him. “Come.”

  7

  As they were leaving, in trooped the Davidsons, all four, and Fatima Gomez. Jos approached her. “We’re here to escort you to the Undercrofts’. We haven’t been invited, as we’re still considered children.”

  “Perhaps it’s because there are so many of you?” Katherine suggested.

  John said, “The Undercrofts have a maid as well as Mrs. Gomez. I think they could have coped. Mom can manage any number.”

  Tory shrugged. “Mom’s used to it. And she doesn’t much care what the food tastes like as long as there’s plenty of it. People who don’t have kids can’t cope with numbers. Anyhow, Mrs. Undercroft said if it was only me, she’d invite me.”

  “Teacher’s pet, as usual,” Emily said.

  Fatima sounded smug. “I’m going to be there. I always help out when there’s company. I help serve at dinner, and then I help with the dishes.”

  “What about Topaze?” Emily asked.

  “Ma says it’s not man’s work. Anyhow, I’m older than he is, and I need the money.”

  “Mrs. Gomez likes me,” Tory said, “and she doesn’t like most people.”

  “She can have you, as far as I’m concerned,” Emily snapped.

  John said, peaceably, “I don’t want to go to the old dinner party anyhow. They’ll do nothing but talk about a new suffragan and when to call Diocesan Convention.”

  Fatima ventured, “Perhaps Mrs. Undercroft will sing.”

  “Yuk,” Emily said.

  “Okay, kids,” Jos reprimanded. “That’s enough. Ready, Madame?”

  As they left the ambulatory she glanced again at the high altar. Felix and Canon Dorsey were at either side of the coffin. The tall candle flames moved softly as though some interior breeze touched them. The two men were motionless, intent on prayer. Felix knelt with an air of quiet expectancy. Canon Dorsey was as still as a black marble statue. In the front row in the nave, Topaze was kneeling, his eyes dwelling on the great gold cross which hung over the high altar.

  Tory said, “He’s so pi it makes me want to puke.”

  Jos said, “His mother encourages it. She prays every day that he’ll be a bishop.”

  Emily looked at Topaze dourly. “To Mrs. Gomez, being a bishop means having money.”

  John stood quietly looking at the altar and the coffin.

  Katherine asked, “Is this—the vigil—held for everybody?”

  “No,” Emily said, “but it ought to be. When I die I don’t want to be off in some funeral parlor. Quite a lot of churches in the diocese are doing it—candles and vigils and all. Uncle Bishop encouraged it when he was Diocesan, and Bishop Undercroft agrees. Of course, the undertakers’ un
ion is against it.”

  John said, “I still haven’t quite taken it in. Bishop Juxon was alive, and then he was dead, without any warning, just because he was trying to help an old woman.”

  Emily’s voice was suddenly brittle. “Things can be going along, and then all of a sudden everything is changed.” Then, her voice quieter, “The old woman—we don’t even know her name, and Bishop Juxon died for her.”

  A Concert in Munich

  1

  The Davidson contingent left Katherine at the door to Ogilvie House, which was opened by a maid in a grey uniform and white apron. Ogilvie House, like most of the buildings on the Close, was of stone, and impressive. Katherine was taken down a few steps into the living room. A beautiful Chinese fan was spread open in the fireplace. The great mullioned windows had window seats covered with unbleached linen cushions. The room was furnished in a felicitous combination of eighteenth-century English and Oriental.

  Bishop Undercroft came hurrying to meet her. “Welcome, Madame! I think you will find it moderately cool here. Yolande has a weak chest, so we do use a modicum of air-conditioning.”

  Dean Davidson rose and held up a hand in greeting. Suzy was sitting on one of the cushioned window seats, one foot tucked under her, and Katherine wondered if she had picked up the position from Mimi. She, too, rose, and smiled in greeting. Mrs. Undercroft, dressed in white satin pants and a white embroidered Chinese top, came quickly across the room. Now that Katherine knew of her background, she was considerably more comprehensible. In any room her beauty would have been exotic, and it complemented the decor of the living room.

  The maid offered Katherine an assortment of drinks from a silver tray. She chose a dry sherry, and accepted a small plate of hors d’oeuvres from Fatima, who wore a frilly white apron and radiated self-importance. “I’d like a glass of water, too, please,” Katherine said to the child. “Piano playing is thirsty work.”

  Fatima bobbed her clumsy curtsy, as though she had been paid a great compliment.

  The bishop seated Katherine in a wing chair which had similar lines to her own favorite chair on Tenth Street, and she leaned back in it wearily. The bishop himself brought her a tall glass of water, with one cube of ice. “I remember that you don’t like it too cold.”

  “That’s very thoughtful of you. Thank you.”

  “I’ve gone to hear you several times with Felix, not only that first concert in San Francisco where we met. But there’s something very different about being so close to you, in St. Ansgar’s, from hearing you in a concert hall. I sat and listened for a while. It was magnificent.”

  “He was nearly in tears when he came home.” Mrs. Undercroft put her hand protectively on her husband’s arm. “I’m not sure I want you to make him unhappy.”

  “If the music made me sad, Madame, it was a joyous sadness.”

  She nodded. “I’m still experimenting with the acoustics—and with the Bösendorfer.”

  “Please feel free to come as often as you want. There will always be someone delighted to drive you. As I believe you know, Josiah is taking summer courses at N.Y.U.—he’s a bright lad—and the organist at the Church of the Ascension, just up the street from you on Fifth, is a friend of Llew’s, so he’s in your neighborhood fairly often.”

  “Thank you. Once more will probably be sufficient. I haven’t always had this much time before a concert with a new piano and a new room. When I was young, there was sometimes no more than half an hour before the performance.”

  “You’ve earned the right to as much time as you like. You are a great artist, and a remarkable woman.”

  Katherine smiled. “I do fairly well for an old woman.”

  “You are ageless. You see, Madame Vigneras, you have lived and suffered and rejoiced, and it’s all there, in your face as well as your playing, and it is this quality of abundant life which is what draws me to people. Yolande, before she was twenty, had lived more terribly and more richly than most people in a lifetime. Merv had this quality, though very differently. But when he talked to anyone he was there completely, so whoever it was felt more alive. That’s a rare gift. It would be my greatest joy if someone could say the same of me.”

  “There’s a theory, which I take seriously,” Katherine said, “that we live until we do whatever we’re meant to do. Mozart started composing at an incredibly early age, and when he died young he had accomplished the purpose for which he was born.”

  Undercroft nodded. “And Conrad didn’t start writing novels till he was nearly forty and died in his sixties. But what about you, Madame Vigneras? Surely you started your career as a young woman—”

  “And here I am, an old one? I’m not sure I like what that implies.”

  “Bach, too, had a long career and a long life.” The blue eyes smiled at her. “It may also mean that God has uses for you beyond your music.”

  Mrs. Undercroft summoned her husband, and the maid and Fatima brought around a tray of fresh hors d’oeuvres. More drinks were poured. Katherine leaned back in her chair and looked around the room. She looked at the pictures, and was sure that she saw a Seurat, a Mary Cassatt.

  Felix, in a white cassock, entered and crossed to her chair. “Katya! I’m sorry I’m late. How was the practicing?”

  She flexed her wrists and fingers. “Tiring. But it is a superb instrument.”

  He accepted a glass of sherry from the maid and followed her gaze. “That’s a Philippa Hunter.” It was a painting of an Alpine pasture with a spring sun slanting across drifts of snow in the shadows, and small flowers in the full light.

  “Yes, I know.” Katherine continued to look at it, enjoying the contrasts of light and shadow, spring, and the last snow of winter. “The portrait of Michou and me, over my mantel, is hers.”

  “Is it!” Felix exclaimed. “I thought it might be. How did—”

  “She was a friend of Aunt Manya’s.”

  “She knew everybody, didn’t she? I count myself fortunate to have known your stepmother even slightly.”

  Katherine said, “She was wonderful. We had a closeness that was possibly richer than if we had been biologically bound. But I gave her a lot of trouble in the beginning. I was an extraordinarily prickly adolescent.”

  “You always seemed to me to get along very well with each other.”

  “We did, by the time you and I met. She was one of the most generous human beings I have ever known.”

  “Doesn’t Yolande remind you of her?”

  Katherine considered. “I hadn’t thought of it. I don’t think so.”

  “They’re both tall.”

  “Aunt Manya wasn’t unusually tall.”

  “She seemed to be. And they both have black hair and what the romantic novelists call generous features.”

  Katherine glanced over at Mrs. Undercroft, who was talking with the dean. Manya Sergeievna could have been nothing but Russian; Yolande Undercroft—Yolande Xabo—was definitely Spanish-looking.

  Felix said, “I don’t mean to press the point. Manya Sergeievna had a great energy, a kind of cosmic energy; so did Yolande when she was working. How do you like Ogilvie House?”

  “It’s beautiful. And the pictures—isn’t that a Georgia O’Keeffe?”

  “It is. Allie has superb taste, and the pictures are an investment for him, as well as an example of his love of beauty.” He glanced across the room. “I’m still sorry you had to hear about Allie and Isobel from Mimi. She and Iona have turned Isobel into some kind of saint.”

  “Not really,” Katherine protested.

  “Divorce is always ugly, but Allie and Isobel’s was far less ugly than most.”

  She nodded. “I know what a strain the death of a child can put on a marriage.”

  “You do, don’t you? And you and Justin had been married considerably longer than Allie and Isobel. It must have been hell, anyhow. Allie said people avoided them, after Ona’s death; as though he and Isobel carried some kind of contagion. He would come to me, and I would try to comfort
him, careful not to touch him. We should be allowed to touch each other without innuendo.”

  “Yes.”

  “We change, and the Church changes, too, and perhaps it has swung too far. When I first was priested, you could be a murderer, confess, be absolved, and be welcome at the altar rail. But if you were divorced, you were forbidden. If my marriage had not been dissolved, I couldn’t have become a priest, much less a bishop.” He looked across the room again at Allie. “Iona Grady is a fine doctor, but—well, I just want you to know that tragedy changed and deepened Allie.”

  She tried to reassure him. “I really do understand that people change, as Wolfi said, not so much from who we are as to who we are.”

  Felix sighed. “Forgive me. We’re all feeling fragile and vulnerable because of Merv’s death, and the manner of it.”

  “Did he have a family?”

  “No. But he’ll be missed by many people. He was a superb confessor. It will be like the loss of a father to more people than I can count. We all carry a full load of counseling. That’s another way I can help out—hearing confessions. It takes some of the burdens off the others. There’s more and more demand for spiritual directors as the world keeps on getting more and more confused. Being able to make my own confession isn’t always easy, and I firmly believe that no one should hear confessions who doesn’t make confession. I have a superb spiritual director, Father Fieldstone, one of the Community of the Resurrection. But they’re in England, and I don’t travel much overseas any more, and he comes here only a couple of times a year, if that. If I’m in a bind I go to Mother Cat, and she is magnificent. But she, too, is overburdened. So now I am talking to you as my spiritual director, Katya. I never dreamed such a blessing would come to me.” As she demurred he said, “I can tell you anything—anything about myself, that is. It’s the burdens of others that weigh heavily on me. I try to do as John of Kronstadt advised, and hang them on the cross. If I have to carry everything around with me, it means I don’t trust God. Sometimes I think that single-handedly I put more weight on the cross than …” His words drifted off. He seemed smaller and frailer than ever. He added hastily, “I’ve never heard those things that come up in plays or movies: should the priest tell that Jack the Ripper has confessed his crimes and so break the seal, or let him go on murdering …” He looked around as Fatima was passing more hors d’oeuvres and lowered his voice. “That child always seems to be wandering around.” His tone was irritable. Did he know that Fatima was some kind of spy, that Topaze made pocket money dispensing information? If the children had to wait for their mother before going home, no wonder they got into mischief. Nasty mischief.