The Priest's Madonna (6 page)

“Cabarets!” She laughed.

Other days, we spoke of moving back to Espéraza together, finding two brothers to marry. “They’ll be handsome and rich. And we’ll all live together in the same house,” I planned.

“And have babies at the same time.”

“We’ll push their prams through the marketplace, side by side.”

Michelle laced her arm around my waist, leaned her head on my shoulder. “We’ll be together, always.”

That same summer, Gérard Verdié began to take an interest in Michelle. Gérard was very handsome—tall and muscular, dark curls, ruddy cheeks, and an extravagant smile. He lived in the village and worked in his father’s vineyard just outside of town. He began to walk by our door on his way home from the fields. If we happened to be outside, he would stop to chat, and though he never had very much to say—he would inevitably remark on the weather, or on how well the eggplants seemed to be growing—Michelle smiled warmly and returned his remarks with statements that made it seem as though he’d made the most astute of observations.

Michelle began to insist on feeding the chickens and gathering the eggs at just the time when Gérard was due to pass by on his way home. Her trips to the chicken coop grew longer and longer, until on one occasion she had not returned for half an hour. This time, Mother noticed, and asked me to go find her, as the table needed to be laid.

Michelle was not at the chicken coop, nor in the garden. I called her name softly, not wanting to draw attention to her absence, but got no response. The chickens clucked and bunched at my feet; they had not been fed. I saw to that, then ducked into the coop, gathering the eggs in my skirt, all the while wondering where Michelle was and what I was going to tell Mother. As I turned toward the house, I noticed the cellar door was ajar. I nudged it open with my foot. “Michelle?” I ventured, then descended the dark staircase.

There was a sudden animal motion and a very male grunt. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw a horrified Michelle, her hands pressed to her bare breasts, her hair slipping from its pins. Behind her, Gérard struggled to extricate his torso from the potato bin. I clapped my hands (which had been holding the edges of my skirt) to my mouth, causing the eggs to break in dull wet sounds against the dirt floor. Then I fled up the stairs, my heart pounding, blood rushing to my face, and, without thinking, ran into the house, shutting the door behind me. Mother stood at the kitchen threshold, a dripping spoon in her hand.

“What happened?” she said.

I stared at her, unable to think what to say. “Michelle—” I began. “Michelle.”

“What, Marie? Is she all right? What is it?”

I felt the door pressing against my back and moved aside to let Michelle in. She appeared normal—her hair back in place, her blouse buttoned and straightened. Her face, however, was blanched and her eyes were fierce. She looked at me, trying to discern what I’d said, if anything, to Mother, and then turned to Mother and apologized with all the grace she could muster: “Forgive me,
maman.
I was distracted by a rainbow, and I walked to the hill to see it better. I know I’ve neglected my chores. Forgive me.” And she bent her head, as if in penance—a touch I thought a bit excessive.

“And where are the eggs?” asked Mother.

Michelle glanced at me, and then responded quickly. “I dropped them. I’m sorry.”

Mother became incensed. No eggs to put in the soup? She had been counting on them. And what would M.
le curé
think of an egg-less
aigo bouido
? She made Michelle apologize to him at dinner.

Michelle and I did not talk about the scene in the cellar that night, nor the next. Embarrassed, we avoided each other: we went directly to sleep rather than whispering, as we normally did, and we did not sit together on the hill. She disappeared shortly after we had finished our chores and, finding myself alone, I slid my forbidden book from beneath the tinderbox and read at the table.

A few days later, when I went to collect the eggs, I was surprised to find Michelle sitting against the cellar door, weeping. I knelt beside her.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Oh, Marie,” she said, and then began to weep again, as if I’d reminded her of whatever was giving her pain. I knelt beside her for some time, scratching a design in the dirt while I waited for her sobbing to subside. Michelle had lately acquired a taste for drama, so I was not too concerned at her profusion of tears.

“It’s too awful,” Michelle said, and then began a whole new round of weeping.

“Just give me a hint. Is it about Gérard?”

“Sort of,” she said.

“Did you have a fight?”

She shook her head. “You won’t guess,” she said.

“Did he—withdraw his affection?”

She looked at me and burst out laughing.

“What?” I asked, offended. “What’s so funny?”

“You sound so prim,” she said.

“Well, I don’t know what to say. You won’t tell me what the problem is.” I stood up and brushed the dirt from my skirt.

“Wait,” she said.

“I have to get the eggs.”

“I’ll tell you. Just sit down.”

I squatted: a compromise.

“Monsieur Marcel came today to talk to Mother. Did you see him?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you know what he was here for?”

“No, Michelle! Why must you have me guessing all the time?”

“He was here to ask for my hand. In marriage.”

I stood up so quickly that I stumbled and almost fell face forward into the grass. “Marriage? But you hardly know him!”

“We’ve spoken several times. At market. He’s very kind.” She had recovered from her weeping fit remarkably well, and was now speaking with almost complete equilibrium.

“How old is he?”

“Not that old,” she said. “Twenty-eight.”

I was too baffled to speak. Marriage? We had always assumed we would both marry, but I had only considered it from afar, as I did the mountains on a clear day.

“Well, what did Mother say?”

“She said it’s a good offer. Monsieur Marcel is a lawyer, you know. He makes a good living—or will, anyway.”

“And what about Gérard? Didn’t you—weren’t you planning to marry him?”

“No, no. Gérard would make a poor husband. He’s already got too many girlfriends. I’d be lonesome. And besides, who wants to be a farmer’s wife? The work’s too hard.”

“But you don’t want to marry Monsieur Marcel, do you?”

“Well,” she hesitated. “There’s no one else in town, anyway, who earns such a good living. Except for Doctor Castanier.” She burst out laughing once again at this, and I might have joined in had I not been so shocked—the idea of marrying Dr. Castanier, whose nostrils sprouted hairs, was indeed laughable. But I was quiet. All of this was beyond my understanding.

“The thing is,” she began again, “he plans to move. To Carcassonne. He has an offer there for a position that will earn a higher salary. And what will I do then, so far away from you and Claude and
maman
and
papa
?” She began to cry again, and this time, I put my arm around her shoulders and held her, for I knew her grief was sincere, and I saw that it would be mine as well.

M. Marcel came that night and spoke to Father while the rest of us—excepting Bérenger, who was out—waited outside. Claude whittled while Mother, Michelle, and I sat in anxious silence on the bench by the front door. When Father came to call us back in, he laughed. “You look like you’re in line for the guillotine! This is a happy occasion!” he bellowed. “Let’s have some smiles, some joy!”

Inside, M. Marcel sat at the dining table looking as nervous as we were. His hat was off, revealing the thinning hair at his crown. His face was kind and pleasant, though his chin was small and receded too quickly into his neck. When we entered, he stood and bowed his head solemnly, then made his way around the table to pull out Michelle’s chair. He made quite a show of it, and had we been in a different state of mind, we would surely have teased him, for he appeared so painfully earnest. But we simply took our seats. Then my father formally announced that M. Marcel had offered to take Michelle’s hand in marriage, and that he approved of the match. “You don’t know each other well yet, this is true. But this is what an engagement is for. You find out you don’t like each other, you call it off. It’s practical.”

M. Marcel nodded seriously, his brow creased in strenuous agreement.

“
Maman
and I had only met once when I proposed. And look at us—how happy we’ve been. Eh, my piglet?” (This was my father’s pet name for my mother, whose nose turned up just slightly.) They clasped hands across the table and regarded each other so amorously that I had to look away.

He turned to Michelle, his eyes wet with affection, and, leaning forward, said, “
Chérie,
it is for you to decide.”

I thought Michelle would surely burst into tears at this, for she had always been sentimental when it came to my father, whom she regarded as her savior. But she kept her wits and, turning to M. Marcel, she bowed her head and said, “I accept.”

A few minutes later, Bérenger returned, and as he removed his hat, Claude shouted out, “Michelle’s getting married!”

Bérenger took in the scene—all of us at the table, Michelle smiling demurely, M. Marcel sitting anxiously upright—and strode over to kiss both of them on the cheeks. “Congratulations!” he roared. “What wonderful news! Let’s drink to your health, shall we?”

Mother got the wine and Father poured us each a full glass. Standing, he held his aloft. We all followed suit. “To Michelle and Joseph. May they live long and bear me many grandchildren.”

“
Papa!
” Michelle scolded. Father laughed. M. Marcel sipped from his glass, his cheeks already rosy, his eyes shiny with glee.

“Marie will be next!” Claude teased.

“Yes,
ma chérie,
” Father added. “Who will come calling for you?”

I stared into my wine, avoiding Bérenger’s eyes.

“Gérard, I’ll bet,” said Claude. “He lost one sister, why not try the next?”

“Shut up,” I said.

“Leave the poor girl alone,” my mother said. “You’re not too far behind anyway, Claude,” she added. “A working man, you are.”

“I’ll never get married. Who needs a wife? She’ll only take my money.”

“Oh, now,” my mother said.

As they bantered, I stole a glance at Bérenger. To my surprise, I found him watching me with a startling intensity, as if he were trying to discern my thoughts. I flushed; he looked away.

From that point on, Gérard stopped coming and instead, every evening after supper, M. Marcel would knock gently on the door. Michelle would sit with him at the table while Mother and I cleaned up after dinner, taking care not to make too much noise so we could listen. They did not talk of anything interesting. M. Marcel told Michelle of his work, peppering his conversation with apologies for its tedium—the bulk of his job was devoted to writing up contracts between business partners. Michelle told him of her pleasures—sitting on the hillside with me in the afternoons, making dolls. She had gotten quite good at it and had been thinking about trying to sell some at market. M. Marcel encouraged her and suggested that when they moved to Carcassonne, she could even set up a shop, if she liked, to sell dolls to children. Whatever she liked, he said. He repeated this often.

Claude’s tactlessness aside, it was natural that both my mother and I would begin to wonder about my own prospects for marriage, now that Michelle was accounted for. Mother was discreet—she never pressured me, and I was grateful for it. Though I was not as striking as Michelle, I was passably pretty—I owned a full figure and plump lips, though I was cursed with Father’s thicket of a brow. We both expected that I would eventually find a husband, though I knew no one, save Bérenger, with whom I could envision a future. I spoke occasionally of finding someone as nice and gentle as M. Marcel (whom we now called Joseph), but with perhaps more of a chin. Mother nodded, humoring me. We both knew I had little desire to find anyone at the time, though only I knew why.

The first rose in her as bubbles in a broth, exploding into hilarity in the midst of prayer or the nightly blessings of the bread and wine. The second devil poured itself into her heart as an inattentive vintner pours wine into a wineskin, filling it until it stretches thin. Possessed by this devil, the sight of a child with its mother or a suckling calf made her feel as if she had been filled to bursting; she ached, became dizzy, wept inconsolably. The third came on her as a fit, causing her limbs to thrash and her head to roll. Under the sway of this devil, she had once swept her arms across a jeweler’s table, scattering amulets of lapis lazuli, beaded anklets, pendants of hammered gold under the feet of the crowd. The fourth leapt from her lips as fiery language, rough words that scandalized her mother and sisters. This devil possessed her as she strolled by the booths displaying spices, fragrances and incense, dates, wine, oil, calves and lambs. She tried to clamp her lips tight, but she couldn’t keep the forbidden language from spilling out. “Leper! Leper! May God plague you with pustules!” The village had declared her a menace and forbade her from attending the market.

The fifth devil sat by her bedside after dark, humming insistently and whispering unintelligible syllables in her ear, robbing her of sleep. The sixth took hold of her hands when she was alone and passed them through her loosening hair and over her breasts and her thighs, making the blood rise in her face and her breath come quickly in her throat. And the seventh—the seventh was the worst of all, for the seventh was always with her. It cowered in her heart and while she moved about her house weaving, baking, studying the Law with her father, dining, bathing—constantly whispering Torah to herself, verse after verse—it threatened her; at any moment it could rise and stretch and occupy her whole being, causing her blood to chill and her body to slow until all she could do was curl herself into a fist, immobilized by fear. She whispered God’s word to keep the devils at bay.