A Severed Wasp

by Madeleine L'engle

  “But you weren’t, were you?”

  “No.”

  “You weren’t drunk that first night you called me, either.”

  “No. I was just frightened—such a frightened fool to call you, which I’d never have done in my right mind.”

  “Why did you call me? We’d only had that one evening together, after all those years, so why did you call me?”

  He crumbled a cracker onto his plate. “Because you’d just come back to New York and you had nothing to do with the Cathedral or with my life there. I didn’t think it could hurt you and I knew I had to reach out to sanity. Katya, I’ve done many wrong things in my life, but I don’t believe in a punishing God. I did work that through after Pieter and Wendele—actions have consequences, and we suffer from them, but I can’t think of anything I’ve done to cause this kind of persecution. It’s not paranoia. I’ve tried to convince myself that it was, but it isn’t. Somebody’s deliberately out to terrorize me.”

  “It couldn’t be Allie?”

  He looked up, shocked. “Oh, God, Katya, no! Why would you think that? Allie would never want me to be frightened.”

  “Have you told him about it—all the calls?”

  “No. Nobody but you. I suppose it was because you received a horrid call yourself—anyhow, I’m glad I told you. It sounds less fearful now that it’s out in the open. But I’d prefer you not to say anything to anybody. And, Katya—if you get another nasty call, get your number changed. Change it anyway, to an unlisted number. And—forgive me—but you’ve no idea how it cheers me to have anybody think that you and I had or are having an affair.”

  She touched his hand lightly.

  “Oh, Katya, bless you, bless you. I’m so glad you’ve come home. I’m so glad we’re friends.”

  “I am, too. And I think it’s time we went home, now.”

  “Of course. I’ve talked your ear off.” He called for the check. “Thank you for bearing the burden of my past.” He handed the waiter a credit card.

  She put her napkin on the table. “You made me realize that I have lived a very protected life. I’ve really been woefully spoiled.”

  “And loved every minute of it?”

  “I never even thought about it. I took it for granted. What I thought about was music.”

  “And Justin?”

  “Thinking about music is to think about Justin. I’ve lived in a narrow world.”

  “Most of us do,” Felix agreed. “Mine has been the Church.” He helped her out of her chair. “You wouldn’t have believed, would you, that I could be a bishop, and a good one?”

  They walked up the stone steps into the warm, late June evening. “Mimi has told me some of the things you’ve done. She admires you very much.”

  “Does she? Truly?” He headed into the park, past a group of not-so-young men playing a transistor radio, volume up high.

  “Truly,” Katherine called above the noise, and Felix hurried them along.

  “I’m amazed. You know, Katya, I thought she saw in me only my weaknesses.”

  “Your strengths are what she’s told me about.”

  “I’m amazed!” he repeated. “I think she sees only Allie’s weaknesses. She won’t let him change from the young man who was unfaithful to Isobel.”

  “You don’t have to whitewash Bishop Undercroft for me. I find him very attractive.” They crossed Eighth Street and walked up Fifth Avenue, where it was quieter than it had been in the Square.

  “Oh, my dear, we have so much to share—”

  “And now,” Katherine said firmly, “it’s time for this pleasant evening to end. I’m not going to ask you in—it’s bedtime for us both, and you have to get uptown.”

  “You’re right, of course. Thank you, dear, dear Katya.”

  3

  In the morning she sat at her desk, coffee beside her, to pay bills. She had indeed been spoiled. Jean Paul had taken care of all her bills. One of his parting presents to her had been a small, battery-powered calculator. ‘You know your arithmetic is terrible. You’ll never get your checkbook balanced without this.’ Carefully, patiently, he had taught her to use the machine, and she was grateful for it, although even with its help she found herself counting on her fingers. But the bills were fairly straightforward. The bank had taken care of her rent money for years, and she was happy to have this service continued.

  She fought down a feeling that she was wasting time, sitting at a desk punching buttons to add up her bills. She would give one morning a month to it, no more, and she had nothing more urgent to attend to than preparing for Felix’s benefit. Although she took a benefit performance no less seriously than a major concert, she was already well prepared. She had chosen works she had played all over the world throughout the years.

  Meanwhile, it was about time she learned to pay her own bills, manage her own affairs. She grimaced as she acknowledged that she found it abysmally boring. She kept at it dutifully, however, until the last check was written, the last envelope addressed. She looked up, stretching, and out the window she saw Mimi loping down the street, looking in a hurry as always. Katherine smiled at the retreating figure.

  Her back ached much more than when she had been at the piano for the same length of time. She rose, longing for someone to massage her neck and shoulder muscles. She eased herself onto the piano bench and started the Two-Part Inventions and was deep in them when the phone rang. Nanette had usually answered the phone; Nanette had seen to it that she did not have to speak to the hangers-on, the lion-hunters. She reached for the instrument, still half afraid that it might be another anonymous call.

  “Madame Vigneras, this is Mother Catherine of Siena—we met briefly after one of Llew Owen’s concerts.”

  “Yes, of course. Hello.”

  “I was wondering if you would consider coming to speak to the Sisters some Sunday evening? We would, of course, come for you and bring you back home. We have Vespers at five-thirty, then a light supper, and then it would be a great privilege for us if you’d speak to us for a while about your work. We’d have you home by eight or eight-thirty.”

  It was a perfectly reasonable request. How could she say no? “If you think you’d really be interested—I’ve lived a very limited life—”

  “We’d be deeply interested. After all, you have a sense of vocation probably greater than that of many religious.”

  “Yes, then, I’d be glad to come.”

  “How about two weeks from this Sunday?”

  “Yes. That would be fine.”

  “Thank you, Madame. I can’t tell you how grateful I am. We look forward to it enormously.”

  Would Nanette have put Mother Cat through? Probably. Nanette was a devout Catholic. Would she have considered an Episcopal nun a real nun? How ironic, Katherine thought, as she returned to the piano, that it should be through her Jewish tenant, even more than Felix, that she should be accepting an invitation to speak at a convent, that she should become friends with the family of the dean of an Episcopal cathedral, and even the Gomez waifs and strays. Her retirement was not proceeding at all as she had expected. And what had she expected? Did she really think she could sit in her apartment and play the piano all alone and withdraw from the world? And it was Felix, after all, who had introduced her to the great and beautiful cathedral. How strange to live on Tenth Street and have one’s unexpected social life largely involved with people whose life not only was the Church but was also geographically at the other end of the island.

  Restlessness was undoubtedly a large part of retirement. Without the benefit to work for, she would have been climbing the walls.

  June, which had been remarkably cool and pleasant, slipped warmly into July.

  “We often have the worst heat of the summer around the Fourth,” Mimi said on Saturday evening as they sat in Katherine’s apartment drinking a tisane.

  Katherine wore a light, loose robe of her favorite silvery sea green. Nevertheless, she felt hot and sticky. “I suppose when winter comes
and the north wind funnels through the street I’ll wish it was hot. But I do find this weather distressing, partly because of all the weird people who seem to appear out of the cracks. One extraordinary old crone approached me this afternoon and I think she was about to try to rob me, but I was out for my afternoon walk and had only my keys in my pocket, and I turned on her in my most abusive French and she fled.”

  Mimi laughed. “You’re a formidable opponent indeed, but I wish you wouldn’t wander about alone so much.”

  “I have to have the exercise,” Katherine explained. “It’s the only thing that keeps the arthritis in my knees and hip manageable, and I’m careful which streets I walk on. I tend not to stray far from the West Village.”

  “I suppose if you carried a small gun,” Mimi suggested, “you wouldn’t use it?”

  “I’ve lived in a century of total violence”—Katherine leaned back and closed her eyes wearily—“and if I’ve learned nothing else I’ve learned that violence is not the answer.”

  “You live in a city of violence, too,” Mimi reminded her.

  “I am aware of that. I haven’t forgotten what happened to that nice Merv Juxon. Or to Emily. But one cannot live in fear, retreating from life. I have to try to go on living as normally as possible. Otherwise, I’m giving in to, almost condoning violence, and I won’t do that.”

  “Yah,” Mimi said. “I suppose I’m asking you to be more careful than I’m willing to be myself, and that’s not fair. Emily was certainly not being careless when she walked home from school that afternoon. Speaking of Emily, you are coming to the Davidsons’, aren’t you?”

  “Of course. I look forward to it. I gather Llew’s going to give another concert after Evensong?”

  “In your honor.” Mimi took their empty cups out to the kitchen, calling back, “The program’s going to be entirely your husband’s and your father’s works, and he’s transcribed several of their orchestral pieces to the organ himself. He’s devoted to you.”

  “He’s very Welsh, isn’t he? I like him.”

  “Indubitably Welsh. He’s beginning to be a little less bitter. Suzy reports that he actually laughed the other day. After his concert—which will be glorious—we’ll go have a quick drink at the Undercrofts’. Or we can back out of that if you like.” She stood in the kitchen doorway drying the teacups.

  Katherine shook her head. “I’m not anxious to go, because I don’t want it to be a late evening. But if we don’t go, it will hurt Yolande’s feelings and I don’t want to do that.”

  “I wouldn’t worry too much about Yolande’s feelings.” Mimi clattered the cups and saucers back into the cupboard.

  Katherine said, “She’s feeling raw about something. She’s at the point where it wouldn’t take much—even a small rebuff—to send her over the edge.”

  Mimi came back to the living room. “You should have been a shrink. I suppose you’re right. Felix says she reminds him of your Manya Sergeievna. Is that why you’re so nice about her?”

  Katherine shook her head. “Yolande and Aunt Manya both had a foreign and glamorous beauty, and they were both stars in their own fields. Otherwise, they don’t resemble each other—at least I don’t see it.”

  “Well”—Mimi crossed the room and looked out on Tenth Street—“we can go for fifteen or twenty minutes, and a glass of wine, for courtesy’s sake. Dave and Suzy will be there, and Llew, so it won’t be too bad.”

  Actually, Katherine thought, it sounded quite pleasant. And she looked forward to the concert.

  4

  Sunday turned out to be one of New York’s most beautiful summer days. The air was clear and dry, and a brisk breeze blew from the northwest. The sky was brilliantly blue, with a few fair-weather clouds. Mimi therefore suggested that they take the bus up to the Cathedral.

  “It takes forever, but it’s such a nice day that I’d rather bounce along in a bus than rattle over the potholes in a springless taxi.”

  They walked to Washington Square. “How many times I’ve made this long trek uptown myself,” Mimi said. “It’s much more pleasant with you.”

  “Thanks. You’ve made my retirement a great deal less lonely than it would have been otherwise, you and Felix.”

  “Lonely. Somehow I don’t visualize you as ever being lonely.”

  “I expect it’s part of the human predicament.”

  Mimi sighed gustily. “And perhaps it’s worse for those of us who seem self-sufficient than for the poor little twitterers who always find someone to hover over them in time of need. Everybody except me seems to think I’m omni-competent. Oy veh. Do you know your second-floor tenant, Quillon Yonge?”

  “I think I’ve met him,” Katherine said, “but he always seems to be in Europe or South America.”

  “He travels a lot. But he does come home occasionally, and one time when he was here for a few months, he and I—oh, I was stupid enough to think there was going to be something permanent between us. I, the Independent Oppenheimer, was ready to make a commitment. When Quillon said he had to speak to me about something serious, I was sure it was going to be a proposal, and I was ready to tie the knot. Instead, he told me that he felt we were both getting in too deep, and it would never work out, and he had to leave in two weeks for Africa.”

  Katherine stopped. “I’m sorry.”

  Mimi stood, swinging her satchel, looking down at her sandaled feet. “Yeah. Well.” She started walking again slowly. “He was probably right. It wouldn’t have worked out on a long-term basis. We’re good friends on the rare occasions he’s home. But I was used to doing the ditching and here I was, ditched. So for the first time in my life, if not quite the last, I turned briefly to my own tradition. I went to a rabbi and by some rare stroke of luck I got a good one, and told him my story, made my confession, as it were, that all my life I’d been afraid of personal commitment, and at last I was ready and Quill wouldn’t have me, and I did not find rejection easy. In fact, I hurt like hell. He pulled on his beard—yes, even though he was Reform he had a proper Orthodox beard, black and curly and beautiful, and it came close to making me horny. Shut up, Mimi, I’m being vulgar because it’s easier than admitting it hurt. I was feeling disgusted with myself, and the rabbi gave me back a sense of value. How I loved him for that. He really cared that I was hurting. I went to talk with him several times. I was very disappointed to discover that he was happily married, had several children, and was a devoted husband.” As Katherine laughed, Mimi joined in. “Maybe I should have become a practicing Jew then, but I didn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “That old lack of commitment, maybe? And I well understood that my motives were mixed every time I went to the rabbi, and I had a hunch that he was as attracted to me as I to him, and I didn’t want that on my conscience. And ultimately I felt that all religious institutions are equally empty. But probably the biggest reason was that after Quill ditched me I was back at not being able to commit myself to—anything, it seems.”

  “Your work,” Katherine reminded her.

  “Yes. That. Thank God, or I’d have given up on myself entirely. I’ve lived a selfish life. I’m not a good Jew, Grandmother Renier’s Episcopalianism didn’t take, and by and large, I don’t blame myself for rejecting what Christians and Jews have done to their establishments.” They had crossed crowded Eighth Street and were heading for the Square. “This used to be one of the pleasantest parks in the city for a stroll. Now it’s just another Needle Park.”

  Katherine indicated an old woman with a bulging plastic bag digging through one of the trash baskets. “Does she really have everything she owns in that bag?”

  “Likely. And one sees so many bag women lately. It’s not a nice world.”

  “I know.” The words were barely more than a sigh. “Despite everything, we’re—oh, Mimi, we’re incredibly lucky.”

  “We’ve worked hard,” Mimi said, “and still do.” They walked past a bench where two old, unshaven men sat, raising bottles concealed in brown pape
r bags. “It’s become as crummy around here as any place in the city. Let’s take this seat. It’s the best place to wait for the bus.”

  The sun was not overhot; the breeze was gentle. Katherine felt relaxed. “By the way,” she said, “your friend, Mother Cat—of wherever it is—”

  “Siena. But she’s well aware that even the Sisters call her Mother Cat behind her back—and sometimes to her face.”

  “Yes—asked me to come up to her convent and talk to the Sisters about—music, I guess.”

  “Music and you. Music and discipline. Music and vocation. I’ve gone several times to talk about being a physician. They’re a bright bunch of women and I think you’ll enjoy them.”

  “What would have made them want to be nuns?”

  “What made you want to be a pianist?”

  “I’m not sure there was much want about it. I was surrounded by music all my life and it was my gift.”

  “I have a hunch that Mother Cat would say the religious life is their gift.” Mimi stopped as one of the big buses turned to make the journey uptown. She helped Katherine up the high step. “Overlong legs are an asset in boarding buses. One advantage of getting on here is that we have a choice of seats. Let’s sit on the right so we won’t have the sun pouring in on us.” When they were seated, she continued, “Catherine of Siena, the original, was an extraordinarily powerful woman for her time.”

  “Which was?”

  “Fourteenth century. She was virtually the Pope for a while. But she never learned to write, so she dictated all her works. Like most great people, a paradox. I don’t understand why she never learned to write, since she did so many other things that women of her day didn’t do. Probably because she never had time. She had a vision which sent her tootling off to Avignon to end the schism in the Church when they had two Popes. And, whether she dictated or not, according to Mother Cat she was a sound theologian.”