The Sisterhood (22 page)

Hunger made her remember her food. She read the guidebook again by candlelight while she ate a cold vegetable omelette and drank the small pitcher of wine. She tried to save her bread, but was so hungry she ate that, too. Then she blew out the candle that had burned down low, but she wasn’t the least bit sleepy. How did people manage before television or paperbacks? She tossed and turned, thumped the lumpy pillow, and wished it was tomorrow already. Then the singing and drums began down in the village. She wished she could see whatever was going on. Maybe there was a way to climb up the rock wall at the back of the pilgrims’ garden and see from there. Besides, she was thirsty and her water bottle was empty.

Menina groped for the matches, relit what was left of her candle, and located the empty plastic bottle. She put on her boots, wrapped the blanket from her bed round her shoulders and peered out. The corridor was creepy, but if old ladies could navigate in the dark, there couldn’t be much to worry about. She stepped bravely into the dark, trying to avoid broken tiles in the faint pool of light cast by her candle a step or two ahead. Hand on the wall for balance, she made her way to the shuttered doors now hanging open, around a lighter rectangle in the inky dark of the hallway. Outside
the night was cool, but the air was sweet after the odor inside, and the stars shone bright overhead. She could smell bonfires and hear singing and people clapping an irregular beat to the music.

Menina felt the sloping rocks, still warm from the day’s sun, as she groped her way to the little spout where water trickled into the basin. She filled her bottle and drank. Then she blew out her candle, wrapped the blanket tight round herself and sat in her cocoon looking at the stars, listening to the peaceful sound of water and the women’s voices rising in the darkness. Was this what being a nun felt like—life going on beyond the walls, able to hear it, smell it, but never able to see it or be part of it? She hadn’t thought about convents since she was little, when her parents showed her the photos of the place they’d found her. She remembered how sad they’d been when they talked about that place; apparently it had been attacked and some of the nuns had been killed by a revolutionary mob after Menina had left.

Otherwise, convents of course weren’t mentioned at the First Baptist Church. It wasn’t until she studied the Renaissance at Holly Hill that she learned more about convents—nuns ran schools and hospitals, managed property, and even acted, performing religious plays for an audience sitting behind the
locutio
. Well-connected nuns even influenced politics. They even commissioned art and music; some convents were great patrons of the arts. They had been an important force in society, even if they led a sort of parallel existence from the world.

Suddenly it occurred to her that with so much else to worry about, she hadn’t thought about Theo since before lunch yesterday, on the bus. Sitting in the pilgrims’ garden, separated from the rest of the world, Menina took a deep breath and probed the terrible memories, like probing an aching tooth to see how bad it made her feel. It hadn’t gone away, but she was safe and at peace for the moment. Not wanting to break the spell, she sat watching the stars
until the singers grew tired and the singing stopped. She knew she had better try to sleep. She stood and stretched, felt for her matches to relight her bit of candle in its glass. There was a faint rustling noise—a plant stirring in the wind, a salamander, or perhaps a mouse. She held the light up but didn’t see anything. “Good night,” she said anyway.

Las Golondrinas Convent, Spain, Spring 2000

Menina pulled the thin pillow over her head to muffle the noise, but it came closer and got louder. Sor Teresa shrilled “
Deo gratias!
” in her ear and banged the breakfast tray on the table. Menina forced herself to sit up and pushed her hair out of her eyes.

“Hi!” she muttered, groggily trying to think where on earth she was, what day it was, and what was making such an unholy racket. “
Gracias!
” She pushed herself upright. Tuesday. It was Tuesday. The dawn chorus outside her window was on speed.

“Good, you are awake now, so I tell you, you are going in one hour, after Mass,” Sor Teresa said, “with Sor Clara to the Abbess’s rooms, look at paintings. I must go open the gate to the chapel, let people in for Mass.” Sor Teresa bustled out.

“OK,
sí
. Great. Thanks.” Menina rubbed sleep from her eyes, reminding herself where she was. She sank back against the wall sipping coffee and eating her slice of almond bread as slowly as she could to make it last. Then she grabbed her towel and toothbrush and went down the hall to the bathroom. The first thing she would do when she got back to civilization was take a long, long hot shower.

When Sor Clara came, Menina grabbed a notebook and ballpoint pen and followed the little old nun this way and that through
the maze of corridors, until they could hear the cloister fountain. Sor Clara led her along the cloister’s colonnaded walk to the same doorway Menina had taken the day before, and then they were back in the dim
locutio
parlor. Menina felt she was starting to get her bearings in the maze of the convent.

Sor Clara tugged her arm and pointed to a huge basket on the floor holding broken chunks of bread. “Alejandro.
Pobres pollos
! Poor chickens!” She chuckled.

Menina needed light to work. “I can’t see,” she said in Spanish.

“Ah,” said Sor Clara, looking surprised. “Is it dark for you?” She tottered over to the far wall and tugged at a piece of heavy fabric that looked like a curtain. The room brightened, and a breeze stirred up dust in a shaft of sunshine. Sor Clara sneezed.

“Perfect,” said Menina, and sneezed herself. Pulling the curtain farther back and propping it there with a chair, she saw it was a heavy tapestry that had been hung from a pole. She looked at it closely. It was coarse wool, faded and frayed, though she could just see that it had been dyed bright colors once, and there was a pattern that looked like serpents and birds. There were several more like it hanging crookedly on the walls. All could use a trip to the dry cleaners.

“Nuns sit in this room in the winter,” said Sor Clara. “It is warm. Alejandro and other men bring wood.” She pointed to the pile of firewood stacked in an alcove. “We mend our clothes, read, say rosaries.”

Menina murmured, “Mmm, how nice,” anxious to get back to work on the girl’s portrait. She rolled a piece of bread until it was soft and set to work. Behind a veil of dirt, a flat red-and-black background set off the girl’s fine clothing and jewels that glowed faintly. She looked about fifteen or sixteen. Menina thought it must be an engagement portrait. The girl’s dark hair was studded with pearls, and a gold-embroidered tunic was pinned on each
shoulder with a jeweled clasp threaded with ribbon. Beneath that was a white underblouse with jeweled sleeves, there was lace at her neck and wrists, and she wore a necklace with a star pendant. The girl was the only thing in the painting; there were no background details, no chair, books, sewing frame, pets, horizon, clouds or sky. Just a draped curtain and beyond that, blackness.

In her left hand the girl held a tightly closed fan close by her waist. In her right hand, she held a carnation against her heart. It disconcerted Menina the way its eyes held her own in an imperious, determined way. Forget the flower on the heart and the fact the girl was all dressed up like she was going to get married, Menina had the overwhelming impression that this was a young girl with a strong personality—a will of steel, in fact. There was writing in the upper right-hand corner of the picture. Menina used more bread and was rewarded by the appearance of florid script and a date: 1590, in gold Roman numerals. She stepped back and squinted, trying to make out the inscription. Finally her eyes adjusted to the letter
s
looking like an
f
, and she read out loud that the portrait was of Maria Salome Beltran of royal Inca and noble Spanish blood, the daughter of Don Teo Jesus Beltran and Dona Isabella Beltran de Aguilar, about to enter the convent of Las Sors Santas de Jesus de Los Andes. Like an engagement portrait, only the girl was engaged to Jesus.

But a distant memory came back to her: pictures on a wall, special girls. Dressed up to be nuns. The taste of hot chocolate and sweet cakes…she couldn’t pin it down, but it was definitely not anything she had experienced in the Laurel Run First Baptist Church.

Menina felt questions hanging in the air around the portrait. The girl looked beautiful and rich. But this convent she was going to seemed to be in the Andes, and she was part Inca. So how did a portrait of a nun-to-be painted in Spanish America nearly four
hundred years ago get to the top of a mountain in Spain a million miles from anything?

“Aha!” exclaimed Sor Teresa. Menina whirled around. Glancing at her watch, she was startled to see she had been working for over five hours. There was a snoring sound coming from the chair where Sor Clara dozed. “Sor Clara!” Sor Teresa said loudly and reproachfully, and poor Sor Clara woke with a start.

Menina did her best to save Sor Clara from a scolding. “Sor Teresa, come and see the portrait I found! Perhaps you can tell me what it’s doing here.”

Sor Teresa squinted in Menina’s direction. She rubbed her eyes, stepped back, and squinted some more. “I cannot see as well as I used to. Is too much light. I cannot make out much.” Sor Teresa had turned her head as if to look at the painting, but was staring intently too far to the left. As if she couldn’t really see at all. Then Menina saw what she had not noticed before—that the nun’s eyes were filmy, the corneas opaque. Menina stuck a hand in front of Sor Teresa’s face and moved it back and forth. The nun blinked, but her eyes did not follow. The poor old soul, thought Menina.

“Sor Teresa, you can’t see it, can you?”

“God has dimmed my eyes that I may see better with my spirit,” Sor Teresa snapped. “And I can hear. I see what I see.”

“If you can’t see, how do you know where you’re going in the convent?”

“Oh the convent…I am here so many years; I know the way from when I could see. Now God guides my steps. And all your chattering makes me forget, you have a visitor. Come.” She closed the discussion of her eyesight firmly.

“Fantastic! My parents got in touch with the American consulate.” Menina breathed a sigh of relief. “Captain Fernández Galán must have got a phone to work after all.”

“Yes, is Alejandro. He is your visitor.”

“Oh.” Damn! “Why?”

“You ask him. Come to the
locutio
, where you can talk.”

“The what?”

“Nuns cannot go outside the convent. People visit, must talk to nuns though the
locutio
.” She pointed to the wall of heavy iron grillwork. “Alejandro sit on that side, you sit on this side,” ordered Sor Teresa. “Is locked. So nothing can happen. Ha! Alejandro not used to that!”

“I thought this place couldn’t get weirder,” Menina muttered. “What did I know?”

She heard footsteps and the captain drew back the curtain on the other side. “Good morning Mees Walker. I hope you survived your night in the convent.”

“Hi. Yes. It’s odd to be talking through iron bars. Like being in jail.”

“I understand. Is not the Ritz, but what is important is, the gate is strong. Trust me, why I bring you here is not crazy and why you should stay there is not crazy. I will explain later, but I am in a hurry now. I only want to ask why did Sor Teresa tell me, find a lot of bread and bring it for Menina. I think, she cannot be so hungry!”

“The bread is for the paintings—really, you should have asked Sor Teresa’s permission about that. She was furious when she found me looking for things. She thought I wanted to steal them. Or actually, she thought I was accusing you of putting me up to it.”

“I tried to ask her! You saw how she slammed the gate in my face.”

“Yes, well, whatever. You were right, there are lots of paintings and Sor Teresa agreed to let me have a look. I warned her that if anything looks promising an expert will have to look at it, but at this stage most of the paintings are so dirty I can’t tell what they are. Stale bread is an old-fashioned way to clean them. It’s not ideal
but it’s all I can think of at the moment. Just so I can lift enough dirt from the surface to get some idea—I’m trying to be really careful and not damage the canvas or cause the paint to flake.

“The stuff hanging in the corridors looks worthless to me, but Sor Clara says there are portraits in the Abbess’s quarters,” Menina continued. “That’s where I’m looking now, and there’re more in the
sala grande
. But you said something about convents being looted during the civil war in Spain—just before World War II, right, in the 1930s? Was this one looted? Because it’s a mess in the convent, but somehow it doesn’t look like rampaging hordes came through. Maybe whatever was here before the war is still here.”

Alejandro was nodding on the other side. “You’re right, it wasn’t looted,” he agreed. “Unusually. Convents and churches and monasteries in other parts of Spain were burned by the Republicans, because the church helped the Fascists. Many nuns and priests were killed, but nobody burn Las Golondrinas. But here it is different. Nobody kill the nuns, even though most people here were Republicans. They would not attack them.”