A Severed Wasp

by Madeleine L'engle

  When she finished, they applauded sweetly, and began asking questions, nothing prying, nothing embarrassing, and at last one of the older Sisters said softly, “Tell us about your miracles, Madame Vigneras, please. You cannot have lived as full and vital a life as you have without some miracles.”

  She held out her hands and told them about Michou’s birth and its aftermath, and, finally, the Great Grey Wolf coming to her.

  They did not misunderstand when she referred to him thus. Many had read and admired his books. “He was a very great man, a saint,” one of them said. “How fortunate you were to have known him.”

  “Yes,” she replied. “I learned a great deal from him.”

  Sister Isobel accompanied Mother Catherine on the drive back to Tenth Street, so that the Superior did not have to return to the convent alone.

  “I hate to accept that a solitary woman driver is no longer safe after dark. There have been too many incidents of people being attacked while the car is at stop lights, even with the doors locked.”

  “Of course,” Sister Isobel remarked, straight-faced, “I am total and absolute protection.”

  “We ought to have a dog,” Mother Cat said, “a big, black, gentle dog with a loud bark.”

  “Why not?” Sister Isobel urged. “You know we all want one. I’m never happy when the younger Sisters doing lockup have to walk even the short distance home from school.”

  “I’ll think on it.”

  “We’d all love it.”

  “I know. That’s the problem.”

  Mother Cat pulled up in front of Katherine’s house.

  “I’m most grateful for this evening. I’ve enjoyed it—far more than I expected. And I’m grateful for the ride home, too.”

  Mother Catherine left the ignition on. “May Sister Isobel see you in?”

  “Oh, don’t bother. I’m perfectly all right on my own.”

  But Sister Isobel got out of the car and put her hand on Katherine’s elbow to help her up the steps.

  “Thanks, again,” Katherine said as she put her key in the lock.

  4

  Sister Isobel stayed in the vestibule, waiting, while Katherine opened the door and reached for the light switch.

  In the fragment of time it took for them to see the room, Sister Isobel turned toward the street, calling, “Mother! Come quickly!” She followed Katherine into the living room, her hand restrainingly on the older woman’s arm.

  The first thing that was apparent was chaos. Chairs were overturned. The piano bench was on its side. All the drawers of the music cabinet had been pulled out and music scattered over the floor. Katherine raised her eyes and looked at the picture over the mantel and gasped in horror as she saw that it had been slashed with a knife, Michou’s face cut through and through.

  Mother Catherine came swiftly into the room, righting chairs. The three women were silent, shocked. At last Mother Cat said, “It seems that the only real damage is to the portrait. Nothing else has been harmed. None of the music has been torn, only thrown about at random.” She moved to the telephone, skirts swishing, and dialed.

  “The police,” Sister Isobel murmured.

  “No—no—” Katherine said.

  Mother Catherine spoke into the phone. “Dr. Oppenheimer? Good. I’m glad you’re home. Will you come down to Madame Vigneras, right away, please? Vandals have been in the apartment. Good. Thanks.” And she hung up. “We will, I suppose, have to call the police.”

  Again Katherine protested, “No. Not yet.”

  Mother Cat looked again at the devastated portrait. “The father of one of our students is a curator at the Metropolitan Museum responsible for the restoration of paintings. This can be repaired so that you won’t be able to see that anything has happened to it. Sit down, Madame Vigneras.”

  Blindly, Katherine moved to the grey wing chair and lowered herself into it. “But why? Why?”

  They turned as they heard a key in the door to the kitchen, and Mimi let herself in. She was wearing pajamas and a short blue robe. She looked at the scattered music, at the portrait. “Christ, Katherine—”

  “Who would hate you so?” Mother Cat asked.

  Katherine shook her head numbly.

  Briskly, Mimi told the two nuns about the anonymous phone calls.

  “It is time to call the police.” Mother Catherine of Siena went to the phone. Katherine could hear her crisp, authoritative voice, but the words made little sense. The police, however, were quick in coming. Mimi had scarcely gone to the kitchen, saying, “I’ll make tea. It always helps to boil the water in time of childbirth or other crisis,” when they heard the siren of the police car, saw the light swinging across the windows, followed by a shrill ring on the doorbell. Mother Cat nevertheless peered through the peephole before opening the door.

  The two policemen were courteous and efficient. They were annoyed at the Superior for having righted the furniture, but she replied calmly, “You can get fingerprints from the chairs, anyhow, and from the music chest and the portrait. I felt that it was more important to put a little order back into the room for Madame Vigneras than to leave what we can perfectly well describe. The chairs and tables were overturned. They were not scratched or hurt. Even the lamps were not broken. The only damage is to the portrait.”

  “But why?” Katherine asked. “Why?”

  Mimi took over, describing the anonymous phone calls. She did not mention any connection with the Cathedral, for which Katherine was grateful, although she did not understand why.

  “How did they get in?” Sister Isobel asked.

  The police examined the locks to both doors. There was a possibility that some kind of passkey had been used on the vestibule door.

  “But it’s a Yale lock.”

  “Yale locks are no longer adequate,” one of the officers said. “They are not difficult to pick by anyone with even the smallest talent or experience. I advise you to add a Medeco lock.”

  “I will see to it,” Katherine said, “first thing in the morning.”

  “Thus,” Mimi added, “carefully locking the stable door after the horse is stolen.”

  The only baffling thing to the policemen was that nothing had been taken. It was not a simple breaking-and-entering case. Someone wanted to upset Madame Vigneras. “But this is fairly common,” the senior officer said, “random acts of violence for no purpose.” He looked around the apartment again. “Your radio hasn’t been touched, nor your stereo, but I see that your television is gone.” He seemed satisfied at this discovery.

  “I don’t have a television,” Katherine said.

  This disappointed him.

  The younger officer said, “Very odd. The bedroom radio is still there, too. They appear to have concentrated on the living room. Nothing seems to have been disturbed in the rest of the apartment.”

  It obviously was not an important enough case to interest them. They made Katherine promise to keep in touch, and said they would keep the case in an open file. They asked if she was all right.

  “I will stay with Madame Vigneras tonight,” Mimi announced. When the police had driven off, she marched back into the kitchen. “Now we will have our tea. I suppose it is necessary to call the police as a matter of form, but they’re not going to do anything about it. Mother—Sister—will you stay and have a cup of tea with us?”

  Mother Catherine glanced at Katherine’s ashen face and nodded assent. Then she took the portrait down. “This is what really hurts, isn’t it?”

  The defacement of Michou. Yes. Her entire body was filled with horror. This was far worse than …

  “It’s a Hunter, isn’t it?” Mother Cat asked calmly.

  “Yes. Of me, and my son, Michou.” She shuddered.

  “We should put something else in its place until it’s restored.”

  Katherine spoke through cold lips. “I sent most of my spare pictures to my tenant in the downstairs apartment—”

  Mother Cat looked around, then took a picture off the wall
by the entrance to the kitchen, a seascape about the same size as the portrait, a painting of blues and greys and soft mauves, and hung it over the mantel. “There. That will do for now.”

  Mimi wheeled in the tea cart. “I’ve made a mixture of all the most soothing ingredients. This is lousy, Katherine, but worse things have happened. You weren’t hurt. Thank God you weren’t here.”

  “It was someone who knew she wouldn’t be here?” Mother Catherine of Siena suggested.

  Who? Dorcas knew. But this could have nothing to do with Dorcas. Even if Terry had come roaring in, feeling destructive, he would not have simply overturned the furniture and damaged the portrait. Had she told Llew? Felix? She must have, she did not remember. Nothing seemed to add up.

  Sister Isobel was busy gathering up music manuscript, setting it in tidy piles on top of the rosewood chest. She had put all the drawers back in. To the casual observer, the apartment would appear to be pleasantly normal.

  Mimi put a teacup into Katherine’s hand. “Drink. It will help. You have to work through this, and I will be here.”

  Mother Cat put down her cup and knelt at Katherine’s feet. “Madame Vigneras, your son died when he was very young, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. When he was seven.”

  “How did he die?”

  Katherine raised her teacup with trembling fingers, took a sip of the soothing liquid.

  “Would it help if you told us about it?” the nun suggested.

  Katherine continued to sip her tea. Her reaction to the defacement of the portrait was witness to the fact that she could still be reached and hurt; she had not shed her attachment to possessions. Did her words to Felix in the museum mean nothing, then? Did she believe them? But it was not so much the portrait as Michou …

  The three other women remained silent.

  5

  Perhaps she could tell them about the actual death itself, but there was much else that she could not tell.

  She had been invited to play at a music festival in a small town in Bavaria, a festival which had become famous because of the caliber of the artists who came each August. She and Justin had decided to bring Nanette and the children, to make it a family holiday. They had not done anything together as a family for too long, and there was a kermesse, a carnival, at the same time as the music festival, which the children would enjoy. They were put up, comfortably, in a small chalet of their own. The first evening, they took the children to the kermesse and Katherine had a vivid image of the joy in Michou’s face as he rode a white horse on the merry-go-round, a horse with a flowing wooden mane and flaring nostrils. Nanette would not let little Julie on one of the big horses, but rode with her in a small carriage made of two wooden swans.

  She remembered eating ice cream with the children, and then taking them to the chalet and singing them to sleep.

  The next night she was playing. She had worked often with the conductor of the chamber orchestra; she was easy with him. There was no precarious moment as the piano joined the orchestra; he would draw her in as gently and securely as Erlend. They would be playing Mozart works with which she was thoroughly familiar. So she persuaded Justin to stay with the children. The kermesse was at the side of the lake, and there were small pedal boats which Michou had been begging to ride, and fireworks after dark. Nanette, as always, would see to it that there was no danger.

  She walked through the soft August evening to the theatre.

  A man was in her dressing room, waiting for her, a tall man with a fair beard, and spectacles with heavy frames.

  ‘Lukas!’

  ‘So you do recognize me.’

  ‘It took me a moment.’

  ‘May I sit down?’

  ‘Of course.’ But she was trembling.

  ‘Your husband is at the kermesse with the children.’ It was a statement.

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I made it my business to find out. I need to see you alone.’

  ‘Lukas, what is wrong?’

  ‘I am not here because of something that is wrong. I am here because your son, Michou, is also my son.’

  She sat at her dressing table, looking at his face in the mirror.

  ‘There have been many pictures of you and your husband and your children. It is obvious that Michou is not your husband’s child. You are both dark.’

  ‘My mother was fair—Justin’s sister was fair—’

  ‘And Michou looks exactly like me.’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out a snapshot. ‘Look.’ It was Michou, and it was not Michou, because the clothes were too old-fashioned. ‘So,’ he said, ‘I grew a beard. I wear spectacles I do not really need. Did your husband never suspect?’

  Still looking at him in the mirror, she shook her head.

  ‘I will never understand that weekend,’ Lukas said, ‘why you were willing to spend it with me. It was obvious to me then and has been obvious to me ever since that you are in love with your husband. But for me, that weekend was the only lovely thing to happen in many years. I kept it to myself, as a treasure. And then I saw pictures of the child … Katherine, I want to see my son.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I will be discreet. I manage this theatre, too. I will come to your husband and introduce myself. I will tell him that many years have passed since the war, and that I am an admirer of his compositions as well as your playing. All this is true,’ he added as she continued to shake her head. ‘I will not reveal anything. It will be forever our secret. He will never know that the boy is not his. But Michou is my son and I have a right to see him. Tomorrow is Sunday. You are not playing again until Monday. I will invite you out to dinner at the kermesse—the entire family—’

  ‘Justin may not accept.’

  ‘But he may.’

  Sighing, she nodded, still not looking at him directly, but in the mirror.

  ‘Perhaps I should have waited until after the performance to speak to you, but I was afraid that your husband would be here by then. If he is, I will speak to him.’

  She was grateful that night for the daily discipline of long hours of practicing, for the music which took over, first her fingers, and then, as she moved into it, her mind. She did not, she thought, play brilliantly, but she played well enough so that no one would notice there was something wrong.

  At the end of the concert the conductor congratulated her on her magnificent performance. ‘I have never heard you play better.’

  And Justin was waiting backstage. ‘That was superb, my love.’

  So.

  Then Lukas came.

  At first Justin’s face hardened, the fine lines from nose to mouth whitening as they did when he felt anything intensely. But he listened to Lukas, and at last he said, ‘You are right. We cannot hold hate in our hearts forever. My wife has made me see that.’ And he accepted Lukas’s invitation for the following evening.

  During the day, while Katherine practiced, the children paddled in the shallow waters of the lake, under Nanette’s watchful eye. They both had long naps, in order to be allowed to stay up for the evening, and then Nanette dressed them. Michou wore soft green lederhosen with embroidered suspenders; while Julie was arresting in a smocked blue dress which set off her dark hair and strange pale eyes.

  Lukas took them to a restaurant at the water’s edge. He was charming to both children. He talked to Justin about his work, and it was apparent that Justin, despite himself, liked the other man. Lukas described the Schloss and his happy times with his children there. His wife, he explained, seldom came, since she was an invalid and preferred the comforts of the city. He did not hide the fact that it was not a happy marriage. There was nothing in his behavior which could cause Justin or anyone else any suspicion about his motives in arranging the evening. Like the cardinal, he was a lover of music; it was music which brought them together.

  After dinner they walked through the grounds, lit by long chains of tiny lights which blew softly in the summer breeze like bright stars caught in the trees.
Nanette carried the children’s sweaters, and Katherine had swung hers lightly about her shoulders. They all rode the merry-go-round, Nanette relaxing enough to allow Lukas to take Julie up on one of the horses with him, watching and waving each time the merry-go-round swept past. Katherine and Justin, too, were up on horses, Michou between them, laughing at the rocking motion as the horses went up and down on their poles. Julie, in Lukas’s arms, was shrieking with delight. Michou, looking from Justin to Katherine, was lit with joy.

  After the merry-go-round, Nanette stood on the grass verge, holding the children’s hands, while the grownups rode the Ferris wheel. Then Michou pointed to a ride, a circle of swings where the children were tightly strapped in, and as the ride progressed, the swings lifted farther and farther up and out.

  ‘Is it all right?’ Lukas asked Justin.

  Justin nodded. ‘It looks safe enough. There are children smaller than Michou.’

  ‘Me, too!’ Julie cried.

  But Nanette was adamant. ‘No. You are too little.’

  Lukas bought the ticket for Michou and saw to it that he was safely strapped into the swing. Then he hefted Julie onto his shoulders.

  This was the only part which Katherine could tell Mimi and the nuns, and perhaps Mother Catherine of Siena was right and she needed to say it out loud.

  “At first the children were all laughing with pleasure. And then the swings went faster and faster—we suddenly realized that they were going too fast—and the laughter turned to screams of terror, and I could see Michou’s face and his fear—”

  Lukas had thrust Julie into Nanette’s arms and rushed toward the machinery that controlled the swings.

  “We could see the young man who worked the swings pulling and pulling on the level, frantically trying to slow them, to stop them, but they went faster, and faster, and then there was a terrible explosion, and the central column, to which the swings were attached, burst into flames. Everything was fire—”