A Severed Wasp

by Madeleine L'engle

  She did not say that she had tried to listen to him. She felt sad for Terry, sad for Dorcas, sad, too, for herself. But the girl was probably well rid of him in the long run, though she would not know that now, still torn with loving him, carrying his child. Katherine felt a heaviness in her chest, a heaviness which contained Dorcas’s pain.

  She turned her mind from Dorcas and Terry by reading a mystery story. But her attention was not on the book. On the surface, it would seem that Dorcas and Terry ought to be able to work things out, to make a go of their marriage. But something deep within her told her they could not. Terry might be more than ten years older than Dorcas, but in many parts of himself he had not crossed the bridge of thirteen. He had the same intense self-centeredness which is normal in an adolescent but not in someone who has reached thirty. And Dorcas would bear her baby alone.

  Katherine had come to America to have her baby, her father and stepmother, who had sent her so blithely to France, now assuming that she could not get adequate medical care in Europe still raw with wounds from war. Justin, agreeing, had come with her, eager to be part of the process of birth. Katherine had had the support which Dorcas would not.

  Katherine and Justin were based at the farm, which was Manya’s pride and joy. She had a farmer caretaker, twenty milk cows, and a small flock of sheep. In the darkness just before dawn the roosters would crow, each announcing his kingship. Also three dogs, in and out of the house, and several cats, which made Justin sneeze and so were barred from their bedroom. Katherine and Justin were given the comfortable guest wing, although she would have preferred to be in the small, blue-paneled room which had been hers as a child.

  ‘Nonsense,’ Manya had stated. ‘It’s not big enough for a double bed, and where would you put the baby? And you know how sensitive your father is to noise. In the guest wing you’ll be off where he can’t hear the baby cry. Face facts, Katya. Tom loves you, but he does not love noise. And in the wing you’ll have your own bathroom, and a separate room for the nurse.’

  ‘What nurse?’

  ‘Katya, a nurse for the baby. I don’t want you getting overtired.’

  ‘But, Aunt Manya, I’m going to nurse the baby.’

  ‘I’m delighted to hear it,’ Manya said, ‘especially since nursing is out of fashion at the moment. Even so, you’ll be preparing for a concert, and a nurse will be helpful. Remember, I’ll be around only on weekends, unless the play closes sooner than I expect.’

  The pregnancy itself, unlike the second one, had been easy. She had no morning sickness, felt full of energy, and spent long hours at the piano without fatigue. They stayed in Paris until a month before the baby was due, then sailed for New York Katherine was large by then, and when Tom and Manya met them, Manya cried out, ‘Thank God you’re here, Katya. You look as though you’re going to drop the baby on the dock.’

  They went to the apartment on the East River, and the next day she saw the fashionable obstetrician who had been recommended to Manya. He assured them that there were several weeks to go, and there would be no problem in Katherine’s being at the farm, which would be much more comfortable than a small apartment. ‘First babies are always slow in coming, and you can phone me if you have any warning signals, pains, a show of blood.’ He was brisk, and Katherine sensed that under the professional bonhomie lay a coldness. But she knew he had a fine reputation, and she assumed that it is not always necessary to like one’s doctor. She was to see him once a week.

  Justin asked, anxiously, ‘Is he taking proper care of her?’

  ‘Of course,’ Manya assured him. ‘Pregnancy is not an illness, and Katya could probably give birth at the farm, with us helping, and no problem.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Katherine assured him. ‘And our child even kicks in rhythm when I’m practicing.’

  Due date came and went. Manya spent the weeknights in the city, driving to the farm after the performance Saturday night, and Katherine drove down with her on Mondays to see the obstetrician, then took the afternoon train back to the country. She felt heavy, but still full of energy, and she and Justin spent much of each day in the library while she practiced. She was to give a Town Hall concert in what they had assumed would be two months after the baby’s birth, but which would now be sooner.

  ‘Too soon, unless you start labor right away,’ Justin said when Katherine was two weeks overdue. ‘We should see about canceling before it’s too late.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Katherine pooh-poohed. ‘It’s quite likely the baby will decide to come tonight, and if not, tomorrow night.’ She had been having a low-grade backache, and mild cramps like menstrual pains, for over a week. When the cramps first started she was sure it was the beginning of labor, but the doctor said no, it was only a false labor which often preceded the delivery of the first child, and to pay it no attention.

  ‘Minou, I don’t want to go into the city today.’

  ‘Justin. Darling, you’ve got to get that recording finished. You were promised that this was the last session and it shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours. I’m not in labor. Go. You’ll be back in good time for dinner, and I’ll suggest to the infant that tonight would be a good time to make an entrance into the world.’ She moved as close to him as her swollen belly would allow, and he put his arms around her, bending down to press his lips against her dark hair.

  ‘He is going to be the most beautiful baby in the world,’ she whispered.

  ‘He?’

  “Certainly. I’ve ordered a boy. Just wait and see.’ She did not care a whit whether the baby was a boy or a girl, only that it be complete, be healthy. But she sensed that a boy would do more for Justin’s precarious pride than a girl.

  In the afternoon she went for a walk in the woods behind the house and barns, enjoying the scents of autumn, the leaves drifting from the trees, the path half-covered and occasionally slippery as she stepped on fallen apples with their strong, cidery smell. Without warning, her water broke and she felt a small deluge. And then the first real pain came. It surprised her with its strength. She doubled over, unable to stand against it, gasping, tears rushing to her eyes. As quickly as it had come, it was gone. Her heart pounded with excitement. This was the time. This was the baby’s time. It had started at last. Somehow, despite the constant life within her, she had not quite believed it.

  She turned and started back to the house.

  —Justin will be angry and upset, she thought. And then,—I’d better get Father to drive me to the hospital, and he hates being interrupted when he’s composing.

  The pain came again. Nobody had prepared her for quite how fierce labor pains were. Again she doubled over, suddenly frightened, catching at a small maple to keep from falling. Why were both Manya and Justin in the city, and, she suddenly realized, with both cars? Even if she interrupted her father, how could he get her to the hospital? Why was his studio on the far side of the house? Help. She needed help.

  The pain left, and she hurried along, stumbling over twigs and roots. The closest phone was in the barn. She would go there and call the nurse in the doctor’s office. They would tell her what to do.

  The pains were coming more closely together. The hundred yards to the barn seemed miles. She moved toward it blindly, not sure she would make it. Where was the farmer? Why was there no one around?

  She reached the barn door. The cows were already in their stanchions. She held on to the door, smelling hay and cow manure and old wood, a strong, healthy smell. Despite the pain, she nearly laughed at the idea that she might drop her baby in the barn. When she could let go her hold on the door, she moved into the barn and switched on the light, and with the light came a swishing of tails, a moving of heavy bodies in the stalls. She looked down the length of the barn, down the double rows of stalls; it seemed a great number of cows, face to face. The cow in the stall nearest her raised its head inquiringly. The sweet, summery barn smell rose around her. The cows stamped, snuffled, disturbed by the light, and perhaps by her presence, too. The cow
by Katherine let out a long golden stream, plash, and then shook her stanchions. The phone was on the far wall; why would anyone put the phone on the far wall? Of course: it was the wall nearest the house. One of the cats swished past her, rubbing affectionately against her legs. She bent down to stroke it, could not stand up again. She counted. One was supposed to count through pains. Seventy-seven, seventy-eight, seventy-nine. It was over. She started to walk down the straw-strewn floor between the stalls.

  When she finally reached the phone, she dialed the operator. ‘I’m sorry,’ she gasped. ‘Please help me. I’m starting labor.’ Manya had insisted that she memorize the doctor’s number. Wise Manya.

  Would a phone operator be as helpful now as then? She was connected with the doctor’s office, with the nurse.

  ‘Come to the hospital right away,’ the nurse said.

  She gasped through pain. ‘I’m alone. I’m in the barn, here in the country. My husband’s in the city and I can’t get hold of anyone—’ The pain eased. She was half-laughing, half-crying at the ludicrousness of the situation.

  ‘You’ll have to come to the hospital at once,’ the nurse said.

  ‘I don’t have a car. I’m seventy-five miles from the hospital. I—’ Her voice broke off as the contraction came again.

  From the distance she heard the nurse. ‘I don’t know what to tell you.’

  ‘Mrs. Vigneras—’ A voice from the far end of the barn. Mike, the young farmer.

  She left the phone hanging, dangling, and groped her way toward him. ‘The baby—’

  He strode through the barn, soothing the cows, lifting her up in his strong arms, carrying her out to his pickup truck, putting her into the front seat. ‘Hold on. We’ll get your daddy and he’ll drive you to the city.’

  ‘He can’t. My husband has the car.’

  ‘Then we’ll just have to use the truck. Don’t worry. I’ll get you there in time. And if I don’t, I’ve helped many a cow with her delivery.’

  Again Katherine was assailed with laughter. Mike drove to the house, ran across to the studio. ‘He’s not there, and I don’t think we ought to stop to try to find him. Let me get you to the hospital.’

  He drove with such skill that Katherine was not nervous at his speed. She was too involved with the contractions, which were now coming close together, to notice how fast he was driving. In between the pains she closed her eyes. Once or twice she dozed.

  5

  In the hospital she did not have the care and concern she had received from the young farmer. Ultimately she was left in a labor room with three other women, one screaming thinly like an animal caught in a snare. She wished that Mike had pulled the truck over to the side of the road and let her have her baby there. He would have been with her, would have known what to do. Here, with three other women, she felt abandoned. They were isolated within their own pain. A nurse gave her a shot which turned the pain into a nightmare. Once, she was aware of voices in the corridor, arguing, Manya trying to get in to her, to tell her that Justin was on the way.

  Another shot. The shots did not take away the pain; instead, they blurred her sense of herself, so that she felt lost in an anguish over which she had no control. Then there were the bright lights of the delivery room and someone clamping an ether mask on her face. No one asked her anything, by your leave, or would you like. No one told her anything. She was pitched into darkness.

  She came back to consciousness slowly. She still felt wet between the legs, but when she put her hands on her belly it was flattened. She opened her eyes and saw Justin, Aunt Manya. ‘Is the baby born?’ She asked it, she learned later, half a dozen times, and was assured, each time, Yes, yes, it’s a baby boy, a beautiful baby boy.

  The experience of Michou’s birth was not beautiful. She looked at him when he was brought to her and was grateful that he was complete. But she felt nothing more than a calm, intellectual pleasure. Justin and Manya were furious at the fashionable obstetrician, and the inhumanity, which was far more degrading than impersonality. But they were told that everything had been quite normal. And the baby was fine. It was done.

  When Michou was put to her breast (none of the other mothers on the floor were nursing), feeling began to come back into her, an aching tenderness. She touched his delicate ears, his small button of a nose. Justin held him, during the hours when he was allowed to visit, in an awed manner.

  ‘My God, how he adores that child!’ Manya cried. ‘What a father!’

  All Katherine felt was a strange lethargy. She did not even think of Lukas; thinking of Lukas took more energy than she possessed. She wondered vaguely if Justin had thought about who the baby’s father might be. She knew that he had called to tell the cardinal of his birth. But she felt nothing, neither about Lukas nor about Wolfi. A grey exhaustion wrapped around her like a noose.

  When she was back at the farm she was grateful for the nurse, a kind Frenchwoman delighted to be able to talk in her own language. After a few days, she was concerned about Katherine, her lack of appetite, her lack of energy. ‘It is not natural,’ Katherine heard the nurse, standing outside the door and speaking in a hushed voice, tell Manya.

  But nothing was natural. Justin being the proud father was not natural. The cardinal, calling from Munich and insisting on talking to Katherine, was not natural. He did not even talk about the baby. ‘I am being sent to Rome,’ he told her.

  Cursorily, she congratulated him.

  ‘It is not an advancement,’ he said. ‘I am what I think you Americans would call being kicked upstairs.’

  She did not have the energy to ask why. She did not want to know why.

  Then he said, low, so that it sounded indeed as though the ocean lay between them, ‘It should have been my baby. I will never understand.’

  6

  She reached for her bed lamp, then sat up in bed. She was hot and yet she was shivering. She turned her mind carefully from the past. Emily Davidson, who reminded Katherine of herself, Emily, who might or might not be able to play the piano, with some unlearning, but who nevertheless had music coming out of her fingers. Perhaps her ballet training, living with the body’s response to music, had been preparation, not waste. Wolfi said once that nothing was ever wasted, nothing. Michou?

  Almost without volition, Katherine left her bed and went to the piano. After Michou’s birth it was expected of her that she practice on the piano in the library; that, after all, was what the nurse was for, to free her to go on with life. It took more effort to explain that she was too tired to work than to go to the piano.

  ‘You’re not thinking!’ Justin shouted at her.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t you feel well? Is something wrong?’

  ‘I’m just tired.’ She did not want them to worry. She assumed that this was how one felt after having a baby, although the nurse told her she was bleeding too much.

  Sitting for the portrait was the easiest of all those tasks she was expected to perform. She could be still, holding Michou, and Philippa Hunter was a quiet young woman, as committed to her work as Katherine and Justin were to theirs. They talked little, but during the quiet hours of the sitting they became friends.

  But other tasks quickly wore her down. As Katherine’s energy dwindled, the nurse became more concerned. The doctor was phoned once, twice, and after a third call he had, rather reluctantly, made an appointment. She would be in New York for the Town Hall concert and could come and see him the next morning.

  Sheer willpower took her to the theatre, propelled her onto the stage. The surge of adrenaline Yolande had talked about poured like fresh blood through her body. She moved, as in a dream, through the program, playing well. During the intermission she did not lie down, saying that if she lay down she would not be able to get back up again. Back on stage. Ravel. Satie. Poulenc. Two encores. And finally the bowing, the smiling, smiling toward the top balcony where the young musicians sat, and suddenly, as the curtain was being lowered, blood, blood pouring down, staining the
ivory satin of her dress, staining the floor.

  Justin came leaping across the stage, first pushing away the stagehand who had started to lift the curtain again, crying, ‘A doctor, quick!’

  And she was back in the hospital again.

  The highly recommended physician had left in part of the placenta.

  Dilation and curettage. Pain. Pain worse than the labor pains. And a sudden high fever. Puerperal fever. Childbed fever.

  Penicillin. At least in the frenetic post-war world the eminent obstetrician had penicillin, the new wonder drug. Katherine, unlike Llew’s wife, did not die. The fever abated, leaving her weak, exhausted, lethargic. She lay in the hospital bed, listening to Justin telling her that Michou had lifted his head to look around, that he was already grasping a rattle, that his reflexes were amazing for so young an infant, and she tried to feign interest. If Justin cared so much about this child, so should she.

  He told her that Manya was buying the Hunter portrait for them, that Philippa Hunter, herself, felt she had made a major breakthrough in her own work, that Katherine need not worry about more sittings, the painting was finished. She listened to Justin and there was nothing to say. It was as though there were a wall of glass between herself and the rest of the world. She could see people, could hear them, but she could not reach out to touch them, and they could not touch her.

  Manya came to the hospital daily, bringing flowers, a bottle of Yardley’s lavender water, a pretty bed jacket. ‘Penicillin is a depressant,’ she told Katherine. ‘That’s why you feel so low.’ But she could not quite mask her anxiety. ‘Depression is a side effect of the antibiotic. As soon as it’s out of your system, your spirits will lift.’

  She did not believe Manya. Depression enveloped her like a fog which was never going to dissipate.

  Justin brought a silent keyboard to the hospital so that she could work her fingers for a half hour a day. And then one morning she woke up with an aching arm, two fingers swollen, knees inflamed and full of fluid, her hip an agony. She could hardly walk to the bathroom. She could not get into a comfortable enough position to sleep. The two affected fingers hurt as though someone had crashed down on them with a hammer.