Amandine (17 page)

Amandine walks to the farthest point in the room, where the older convent girls sit, begins her task. The first girl shakes her head, no. Amandine goes to the next. No. The next. No. When she has asked five girls and received five refusals, Paul says in a hoarse, harsh whisper, “And so,
mes petites
, do we begin to understand which one among us is
cruel?”

With expectations of neither rescue nor sympathy, Amandine continues her penitent’s walk. Before she can finish her question at the seventh girl’s place, the girl puts a small bread roll shaped like a rose into the pewter bowl. The next girl does the same. And the next. When Amandine approaches another table, Sidò, with the blue glasses and the red medicine on her nails, places both her biscuits in the bowl. The same Sidò goes to a sideboard, takes down a large wooden tray, comes back to Amandine, says, “I’ll walk behind you with this. That bowl is too small. Okay?”

“Okay.”

And the two proceed. Now, though, the girls don’t wait for Amandine to arrive at their places but go to her with their bread, with pots of sweet white butter, small Banon goat cheeses, each wrapped in a chestnut leaf. They touch her. On the shoulder, the arm. Kiss her cheek. One of the littler girls embraces her. Another carries a great bunch of green grapes and two brown pears pulled from the centerpiece of Paul’s table, lays them on the tray. Three, four convent girls are on their feet, collecting, table by table, every portable comestible, carrying them to Amandine, filling a second tray. A third. In all this time, not one of the sisters, not Paul, no one has interfered with the convent girls’ enterprise of feeding Amandine. When the eldest girl in the school, a beauty called Mathilde—in a final demonstration of solidarity—walks to the high, wide dresser where the evening’s desserts await, the convent girls applaud. A clafoutis of small yellow plums and a silver bowl of thick cream she places on a fourth tray, lifts it with one hand high above her shoulder, and—the applause greater
now—leads the way for the other girls. The way to Paul. Complicit as a well-rehearsed troupe, they know what they will do with the food. Amandine places the pewter bowl before Paul. One by one, so do the other girls place their trays before Paul, then touch Amandine in some affectionate way and return to their tables. Standing directly in front of Paul, Amandine empties the pewter bowl of all but two rolls, takes a pair of goat cheeses from a tray, a pot of butter, grapes, a pear. Thinks again. Takes another pear.

“For Solange. The extra pear is for the devil. All the rest is for you, Mater.”

The convent girls scream with laughter. Over it Paul shouts, “If you think you have endured your just punishment, I warn you to think again.”

“What will you do to me, Mater? Place me in
châtiment?
I am not afraid. I have lived in your disgrace for a very long time.”

Amandine curtsies to Paul, turns back to face the room, holds one hand waist high, and, like a fan, waves it back and forth to the girls.

From the room a chorus:
“Bonne nuit, Amandine
.”

“I brought you supper. Not so much but… Is the fire going? Would you like me to stay for a while?”

“What? Why aren’t you at table? Mater will have both our heads. Do they know where you’ve gone?”

In her nightdress and bare feet, Solange stands by the door to their rooms, startled, stuttering while Amandine places the pewter bowl on the table near the hearth, goes to fetch two glasses.

“May I drink water with wine this evening?”

“Amandine, come here and tell me what’s happened.”

Solange notes some change in Amandine. As though she’s older. She goes to her, takes her by the shoulders, looks at her. “Tell me.”

“I think it’s best that Marie-Albert or Josephine or one of the others tells you. I mean, I can’t remember all that happened except that I stood up, asked permisson to speak. And—”

“You stood up in the refectory and asked to speak? And what did you say?”

“I was angry. I was angry at Paul for sending you away, and so I said what I thought. I said that she was cruel, and then everyone was talking, you know, kind of surprised talking I think because I said that and then Paul punished me by giving me that bowl and asking me to beg all the girls for my supper. I had to say: ‘Though I am unworthy to eat the food our Lord has granted, I beg you to feed me,’ and at first no one gave me anything and then Sidò gave me her bread and then everyone was giving me something and soon all the girls were screeching and clapping and Mathilde took a whole clafoutis from the sideboard and then everyone was clapping more loudly and we all brought the food to Paul. I told her she could have it, most of it, except the few things I kept. The stuff in the bowl. I told Paul it was for you, and I’m not afraid of her, Solange. I’m not afraid of her at all and it was kind of easy to say what I thought and she said that I would be punished again and I asked her if she would put me in
châtiment
and I told her that she already had put me in
châtiment
and that I’d been living in
châtiment
for so long now and it was really kind of easy to tell her that and I was thinking of Philippe and of you and of my mother but mostly of you because she was so cruel to you and I don’t mind if she’s cruel to me because I’ve grown used to it but when she was cruel to you it made me feel like I wanted to stop her. I wanted to stop her so she couldn’t do to you what she does to me. I just wanted her to stop and so it was easy after I began and I’m not afraid of the girls either. Not anymore. They touched me like this. On my arm. You know like a pat. Not like a slap. And Celine, do you know Celine? she’s the only girl more little than I am and she reached up and kissed my cheek I think she might need my help being so small and—”

“Yes, Celine might very well need your help.”

Solange smiles, lifts Amandine in her arms, begins to laugh then, laugh and laugh, and Amandine begins to laugh, too, and they dance about the room, twirling and laughing and screeching, both of them undoing Amandine’s braids and shaking their unshackled hair until they fall onto the sofa, Amandine exhausted from her evening’s passage and its illumination. Solange from the wonder of her. They eat the cheese then, peel the pears, butter the bread. Sip the watered wine.

F
OR DAYS AND DAYS THE CONVENT SISTERS, THE TEACHING SISTERS
talk of nothing else than the refectory scene and, in whispered reprises, they take turns playing the role of Paul, the role of Amandine. Being wise, Paul deals with its aftermath by ignoring it. Her rage she contains in cordiality. Only to old Josette, the lay sister whose labors shift from scrubbing and polishing to a kind of lady-in-waiting to Paul, only to Josette does she speak her mind. Tells her she wishes
the lot of them to burn in hell
.

And as she has always, Paul avoids the
displeasure
of the
jeunes filles de la noblesse
. Should Paul dare to waver—their lashes fluttering, eyes dancing—they would remind her to beware Mummy and Daddy. No, not even the
scent
of reprimand shall she press upon the dear little chits. Her composure elaborately contrived, Paul keeps to her office or stays longer at her turns in the garden, walks far less often among the classes, only rarely addresses any one of the convent girls. And when the whirring of her stork wings
is
to be heard in the
halls, doors close, shoulders turn inward, away from her. As though
she
is invisible. Neither seeking nor avoiding her, and—neither ironically nor affectionately—it is only Amandine among the girls who does not veer from her habitual
politesse
. Amandine’s wisdom, quixotic rather than self-preserving like Paul’s, she, too, deals with the aftermath of the refectory scene by ignoring it. Amandine’s generosity Paul perceives as parody, and every display of it pushes her toward frenzy.

In her linen shift, Paul sits on the hard, straight-back chair in her cell one evening, bending to untie her shoes. Only a small bedside lamp lights the room. Josette’s signature four-tap knock interrupts her reverie.

“Entrez, Josette.”

“Bonsoir, Mater
. Will you be needing something before I—?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. Will you sit for a while?”

She extends her hand toward the bench under the window, but Josette bends to finish the job of removing Paul’s shoes, carries them to the armoire, takes out a brush and begins to clean them, stuffs them then with tissue paper, places them on the bottom shelf of the armoire. Proprietary as a mother, Josette takes Paul’s nightdress from a hook, sets about removing her shift, hands her the nightdress, folds the shift neatly, puts it in an armoire drawer, opens another, takes out black slippers—the leather deeply embossed by the deformities of Paul’s feet—places them on the floor before her. She checks to see there is water in the carafe by the bed, turns down the covers, looks at Paul, who has once again sat down upon the chair.

“You needn’t carry on with these rituals, Josette. I can well do for myself.”

“But I like to do for you, Mater.”

“Yes, yes, I know. How long has it been that you’ve been
doing
for me, Josette? How old are you?”

“I am seventy-eight. And in February, you shall be seventy, Mater.”

Josette says this as though their ages can be calculated only in reference to one another. Paul, elbows resting on her knees, fists supporting her chin, turns her head toward Josette, shakes it in wonder. At the numbers? At the audacious passage of time? Turning from Josette, her gaze fixed beyond the room and the moment, Paul begins to weep.

“You are not well, Mater?”

Turning back to Josette, trying for a smile, “I’m well enough.”

“What can I do?”

As though she has not heard Josette, Paul moves her lips, forming words, half pushing them out, half swallowing them. Devastating words.
“What devil inhabits her, Josette? What keeps the breath in that child? I wish her dead and gone and never having been. May God forgive me.”

Josette steps closer in to Paul.

“What did you say, Mater? I could barely hear you.”

Paul flings her arm, dismissing Josette.

“Bonne nuit, Mater.”

Josette curtsies. Having heard every word, she shuffles from the room.

It is a Saturday, and Amandine is walking under the loggia from the school to meet Solange as Paul is walking toward her. Amandine stops to curtsy, and Paul, without a sound or sign, takes her roughly by the shoulders, begins to shake her. Amandine does not defend herself save to shut her eyes, and then, in something like an embrace, Paul is holding her, looking down at her. Amandine does not pull away but keeps Paul’s gaze.

“Who are you?” Paul asks her.

Amandine steps away then, straightens her dress, finds Paul’s eyes again.

“Who are
you
, Mater?”

As for the convent girls themselves, what impulse compelled them to displace their obeisance—if not to Paul herself to her mode of operation—and to champion the creature who was for so long their communal and preferred victim? Was it hoarded disdain for Paul, a whole apocrypha of grief? Was Candide so commanding, her words—
Everyone knows that Solange is good. And everyone knows that you are not
—so limpid as to tantalize revolt? Was it all of these? Paul wonders. Amandine wonders.

Delicious as it is for Amandine to taste the convent girls’ bonhomie, to be cheered, to be touched, it is not this, not this at all that pleases her most. She reasons like this: Since she’d done nothing to earn the hostility of the convent girls in the first place, how can she be certain that hostility will not be shown her again? More, what she said and did in the refectory was not a ploy to extinguish their antipathy but a defense of Solange. So fickle are the convent girls, how can she know what word or action of hers might relight the antipathy? Further, she reasons, Paul is constant. Her hate hurts more, but Amandine can count on it. So who is the greater foe, and how can one tell? And what if one can’t? The mystery swims and dives and leaps about in her, and she thinks it might continue to do so for some time. Perhaps forever. No, it is hardly the bonhomie that pleases Amandine most but rather two other spoils of the evening: The first is the thought that she might not be wicked after all and the other, a sentiment more difficult to comprehend and to name, is the beginning of her understanding of her own grit. Yes, no matter what they did or didn’t do, she is well. And she will be. Hence, when the convent girls begin to beckon her into one or another social or political sanctum of their intricately drawn castes, Amandine demurs. She says no thank you when invited to smoke Gauloises with Capucine and Antoinette in the woodshed during recreation, to borrow for a whole hour one of Frédérique’s special books along with a small black torch for reading under the covers, to observe the initiation rites into the circle of the menstruating girls. To the most distinguished of all the invitations—since it is usually offered only to a few select girls in the seventh form and higher—she does accept. It is to look at Mathilde’s breasts. Front and side views.
Mon Dieu
.